How to Start 2022 Off the Right Way

A new year is on the horizon and that means a fresh start, new opportunities, and a clean slate. Today, I want to share how to start next year off the right way. The lessons I’m sharing today, though, apply all year long. They are guaranteed to make you happier, healthier, wealthier, and more fulfilled.

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My Top 10 Mistakes of 2021 and What You Can Learn From Them

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A new year is on the horizon and that means a fresh start. It means new opportunities. It means a clean slate. Today, I want to share with you how to start next year off the right way. The lessons I’m sharing today, apply all year long and they’re guaranteed to make you happier, healthier, wealthier, and more fulfilled. Now there’s a lot to cover today.

It’s kind of that time of year. Not only do we have a lot of podcasts episodes like this, where we talk about things like the lessons I learned this year, we shared that a few episodes ago and talk about the mistakes I made. I shared the lessons that I learned this year. Then in the last episode, I shared my affiliate marketing predictions for next year. That seems to be kind of a theme around this time of year.

It’s a time of year where we reflect a lot. Part of that is I’m heading into a time, a season of some rest the end of the year, traditionally, our company is closed from sometime around three to, depending upon how Christmas falls, I think this year we’re, we’re off from like the 22nd through the second or third of the new year.

Sometimes we go a little bit longer, Christmas is on like a Wednesday. We’ll take off starting the Saturday before, and we’ll be off through. I mean, we’ll be off for a while. We actually, our offer this year is probably one of the shortest times that we’ll have off. I mean, it’s still good, like 12 days, I think, 12 or 13 days. So it’s nice. It’s a time of rest.

Because of that, it’s allowed me to reflect on the past, it’s allowed me to reflect on things that have happened in the past few weeks, in the past few months, this year, and even some stuff that happened a long, long time ago, at least like if in a land far, far away, right?

So we inch closer to 2022, I was reflecting recently on a really what I can call a life-changing day, 11 years ago, 2011, the end result of the event was good. It was one of those times where I look back and go, man, I learned some good lessons, the struggle was worth it, but I didn’t feel like it at the time. Right? So we’re 11 years later, I’m going to sum up that lesson in 10 things. These are 10 commitments that I made and I believe that if you make these 10 commitments, you’re going to start 2022 off the right way.

So I’m really excited to share these lessons. They apply in all aspects of life. All right? So don’t dismiss them because these aren’t, there is one that is specific to affiliate marketing, but they apply to everything. They apply to affiliate marketing, they apply to online business, they apply to entrepreneurship. They apply to your full-time job. They apply to your health.

They were applied to your relationships. They applied to your mental wellbeing, your sanity like times you’re just crazy and all of these apply throughout life. These are going to apply in 2044 in 2070 if you’re still around. I don’t know. I think I might be.

We’ll see the reality is I said this a couple of episodes ago, the first half of 2022 is going to look a lot like 2021. January is going to look a lot like December, not only things like weather but just the reality is life doesn’t change that much in 30 days in 45 days if you keep on waiting for the world to change if you pull a John Mayer and you’re waiting on the world to change, it’s not going to, this is just not going to. Here’s the hard fact, this is the bad news and the good news. I look at it this way. It’s the good news, it’s you that needs to change and that’s what we’re talking about today. How to start 2022 off the right way.

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I mentioned that day back in 2011 when my life got flipped turned upside down. If you get the reference there, the fresh prince of Bel-air, to give you some perspective, we just moved to Fort Wayne, Indiana from Nashville. I’ve lived my entire life in the south. I literally had never spent more than seven consecutive days north of the Mason Dixon.

We decided we wanted to be closer to my wife’s family, Tara’s family. We had a baby girl she’s now 10 years old about to turn 17 and Aracelli was at this time was just, I don’t know, maybe six months old, five months old at the time Tara had quit her job. So my income was all that we had and I hated my job.

I had just started my side hustle, but my, my job, I hated it. It was toxic. It was stressful, all sorts of issues with my well-being, my mental health, and then I was fired. Now, the reason we found out later, why I was fired was a guy had come in as a consultant to our CEO. The CEO had actually left. The CEO is my best friend, but the new CEO who was the CFO brought this guy in and it turns out that this guy’s emo was to take over distressed companies and buy them for the debt. So he‘d helped drive a company that maybe was a hundred thousand dollars in debt.

Our company, at that time, it was about $175,000 in debt. Not a huge deal. When you think about it on an on eight to $9 million in revenue, but we were struggling. This was, we were coming out of them, the stuff from 2008 that particularly hit our industry really hard at that time. And I had just been back at the company for about seven months. I went back because the former CEO had asked me to come back and blah, blah, blah.

So we had not much debt, but this guy would come in and he would run the company into more debt and then buy the company for debt. So kind of a cool business model, if it’s, wasn’t sinister, but basically, he would, take companies that were already struggling a little bit and then drive them more into the ground and it’s like taking an obese person and then stuffing them at the give them an all, you can eat buffet six times a day for two months adding on 60 pounds and then helping them lose 60 pounds and going, look at me, I’m a weight-loss expert. That’s what this guy was doing.

The reason I got fired I found out later was I was running the only profitable division in the entire company. The affiliate program was doing okay. When I had taken it over about seven months before and come back, it was struggling like the whole company, but I came in and within, it took me about five months, but I got it back to profitable. In fact, I was fired in early November 2011, October the company as a whole, lost about $75,000. The affiliate program actually brought in profit over 50 and so, if not for the affiliate department, we’d lost even more and we were trending towards, hopefully, by January of the following year, we were going to get the affiliate apartment to about $250,000 in profit per month, which would take the company as a whole profitable. And so that didn’t work for his emo. He wanted to run the company in the ground.

So of course I’m panicked. I find out on a Saturday morning, I got a new dad single-income family and got a brand new house that we could afford, but it was a little bit of a stretch like it was one of those where it was a little bit over our budget and I’m glad now I’m like super thankful that we bought the house, but I’m, I was just helpless and the reality is I hated my job. Tara told me the night before you need to find a new job, the stress and the chaos were too much for both of us, but it still kind of sucked to be fired. And within a couple of weeks, I got multiple offers.

It got to the point where I basically had said, I can’t accept just one of these offers. I have to, I’m going to start a consultancy and I’m gonna be able to take all the offers and work five, 10 hours a week with multiple companies. Three years later, I was making three times more than what I’d made in 2011 because I had transitioned from the, I need a job to, I need to build a business mindset and that was the big transition for me.

So we’re going to talk about the kind of when I reflect back on, I mean like this, this, this day was a complete game-changer for me. It completely, as I said, flip turn my life flipped turned upside down. For the next couple of months, we lived off our savings. Then we started to get checks from clients. About a year later, I made my first $588 from affiliate promotion. And suddenly my business was real, right. That first affiliate commission changed everything. Some of you know what that’s like, right. It proved that I could make money.

I could create income for myself by promoting affiliate offers long before I ever heard a product of my own and so, we built our business on that. Again, fast forward, three years later made more than I made in all of 2011. We’ve continued to grow year after year or year over year after that. So I was reflecting on that amazing turnaround, over the past couple of days and I found 10 things. These are 10 commitments that have turned my life around and I think that can turn your life around in 2022, all about how to get that year started off right.

So if you make these commitments nowhere just a few days before the new year, or maybe it’s a few years into the new year, doesn’t matter. Like, oh, it’s January 5th. I can’t start my year off. Right? Yeah, you can, you can you’re can start January 5th. You can start on January 11th. Your year can start on March 3rd. If you’re listening to this 72 weeks into the future, I don’t know the math on that. Your year can start on May 17th. It doesn’t matter. Like the calendar flipping to a new year is just arbitrary. So whenever you’re listening to this, make these commitments start now.

1. Commit to developing and maintaining a powerful and warm network.

So the first statement I made I’d made years before commitment, number one, commit to developing and maintaining a powerful and warm network. All right. Without my network, I don’t know what I would’ve done that day.

I’m gonna tell you right now, I got fired. I processed the stuff. I sat down. I remember I had to finish the laundry like an hour later I was like, oh crap, I guess. I left all my laundry in there. Now I gotta and I was frustrated. I was like,

dang, it. That’s your fault for making my laundry be wrinkled because I don’t iron. I pull the stuff out as soon as it’s done, put it on high for five or six minutes to get the wrinkles out, and then I hang up my clothes. Like that’s how that’s my version of ironing. I don’t even only an iron.

I remember just being looked so angry at the world. Like you, you, I’m not going to say what I said. I’m like you, people cause me to have wrinkled clothes. So I had to do the laundry and then I had to go back to moping and I did for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half.

I just moped. And I felt sorry for myself. I had lunch breathe and all right, time to get to work because I had built and maintained a powerful network. One that was ready to help me when I needed it most, I knew my next action. Yeah. It took an hour and a half, two hours. It’s fine.

Mope around beep be angry, be livid at what happened, and then reach out to your network. My network came through for me in a big way. I got two clients to start my consulting business. Within a matter of, like I said by about January, they’re both for my network. In fact, all of my clients are referrals from people in my network.

This is a big reason why I believe that building your network is such a critical step. If you’re going to turn your life around in 2022 to make it your best ever, you’ve got to commit to this. Why do I talk so much about keeping my network warm and how to keep your warm. So I’m going to drop some links in the show notes about keeping your network warm. Make sure you go check those out. All right, this is critical. You’ve got to make this commitment and it starts now, if you’re not doing it, is it going to have an immediate impact. And you’re going to have a warm network by January 1st now, it’s going to take a few months. It can take many months, but if you keep at it, if something bad happens at the end of 2022, you don’t go into 2023 worried, you’ve got the network. So that’s commitment. Number one, build and maintain that warm network commitment.

2. Commit to building a financial cushion.

Number two, you need to make a commitment right now, 2022 is going to be the year you build a financial cushion, you’re going to build an emergency fund. Thankfully when I was fired, one of the things that helped me, I didn’t have this immediate fear of going hungry or getting kicked out of our home was our house was a little bit expensive and as I like guys we had to cut back Because I didn’t know where we going to have income coming in right away.

I’ll talk about, well, I’ll just share there. There was another thing that did help us with. I said I had started my side hustle that was bringing in a little bit, not enough to live off of the side. Hustle basically was making the mortgage payment. That’s about what it amounted to and everything else like food, shelter, and shelter was covered food and electricity and gas and transportation that all came from diapers and all that came from the emergency fund. It gave us the ability to hold out for the right opportunities, kind of build our business. So make it a goal. If you don’t have an emergency fund build one this year, I don’t care. We recommend that you have at least a month’s expenses in the bank.

Sometimes it’s hard when you’re starting out and I mean a month like a month full expenses, which typically if you really cut back can last anywhere from six to seven weeks almost two full months we recommend we keep a six-month emergency fund. So if anything happened, I have six months in liquid assets immediately available.

So I don’t have to tap into a Roth. I don’t have to go pull money from our retirement and pay penalties. Like we have six months cash readily available for us. Now, when you’re starting out, you don’t need to do that. You don’t need to do that. Get up to a month, get up to two months.

If you can get to even like two months, usually you can stretch that if you normally spend $4,000 in a month just making the number up, right? And you have $8,000. Most people if, unless you’re already really cutting back, most people could go about three months on two months expenses. Again, you’re not going to eat out. You’re not gonna do anything but will use. You’re not going to go hungry either. You’re going to be fine. Right?

Promoting affiliate offers is a great way to generate some extra income. So if you’re looking for some affiliate programs, go check out our recommended affiliate programs, just go to mattmcwilliams.com/whatsup. I’ll put that in the show notes as well.

I’ve got all of our recommended programs. Also, click the subscribe button there. We have a subscription there where we’ll make sure you’re notified. When we add new programs, we’re adding the plainest at least 13 new programs in 2022, 1 basically every four weeks, but once a month. We’ll probably add more. So in 2021, we added about 18.

We’ll see, in 2022, somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 to 25. So make sure you sign up there. So you get notified of those new programs. There are going to be some good opportunities. It might be that you make a thousand dollars here and 500 here in 2000 here, and you build up that emergency fund.

3. Commit to building your personal brand.

Committing to building your personal brand. I mean, even if you’re working a full-time job, one of the reasons why I had such a powerful network, I had name recognition. One of the reasons that I had name recognition, I’d invest in building my personal brand. In other words, I advertise myself right now. I’m not suggesting if you have a full-time job,

I’m not suggesting you don’t do a good job for your company, or if you’re employed, do your job right. But make a name for yourself, either in your industry or in other ways, right? So these are things that’ll benefit. Later they’ll benefit your brand will also benefit your company. So when I was an affiliate manager for a company called Legacy learning systems for learning, master guitar, I learned to master drums, learning, master, sign, language, all that stuff. I still built a brand for myself that helped the company. For instance, when I want to fill it, the first affiliate manager of the year award that I won in 2010, that helped the company affiliates want to work with the affiliate manager of the year. They know they’re going to be taken care of.

So when I won that, that helped the company, our CEO was super excited. He celebrated it in a staff meeting. Well, how did I get to that point? Well, it’s hard to win affiliate managers here. If you’re just a good affiliate manager, you have to get out there.

So I wrote for trade magazines. I started a blog. I shared articles on LinkedIn. I started a podcast. Now all of these things were building my personal brand, but they were helping the company. In fact, the podcast itself was built around the legacy learning systems brand. It was just I was the host and I talked a lot about our stuff, but I talked about principles in affiliate marketing as well. I participated in forums and blogs and social media for you it might be writing for your local newspaper. I don’t know. Right. But I had done all of these things before we started our business before we started my blog so that when I was fired, I not only had credibility, but I had an existing audience.

So when I launched my blog, I mean, I’ve shared this before, but I instantly had about 200 followers. I had like 150 subscribers at the end of the first day. I didn’t do that because I had such great content. People loved my first blog post and wanted to subscribe. I didn’t even have a good lead magnet. Okay. Lead magnet, no people subscribed because they knew and liked me and trusted me. And that’s the key.

4. Commit to surrounding yourself with others who can help you.

Two of the biggest steps that I took in the past three years, real four years were number one. I got a mentor. I got a life mentor, things like spiritual stuff and whatnot. Parenting got a mentor, not a coach, more of a mentor. Number two, I joined two different mastermind groups, one, a marketing mastermind group. And one more about personal growth and leadership. And then I heard two coaches. I hired a business coach and I hired for me. I heard a weight loss coach a couple of years ago. And in other words,

I surrounded myself with others who were helping me, my spiritual mentor, I guess that was long ago. That was actually a few years ago. I started meeting with him. It was a big reason why I was able to work through some issues a few years ago. I forgave my father. It’s a long story.

I wrote a blog post about it. If you want to go, if you look it up, like lookup forgiveness and father and stuff like that. Like I wrote a letter to him that I shared on my blog. I think it’s still there. You know that was hard. He helped me work through that.

That freed me up personally, the mastermind groups have helped my business grow. I mean, I just, I cannot stress the power of masterminds enough. All right. I cannot stress just how important they have been to me. I started one years ago just for my own use. It was three of us or four of us. So there are three others and we just met.

We met every other week and we helped each other a bunch. So I started another one with a group of, I think there were five people in that one. There are six of us in total. And then a funny thing happened. Other people started reaching out to me to join their masterminds and then I joined theirs and I was actually in three at one point I started saying no to a lot of them.

And then there’s an evolution to those. There’s an evolution. I joined a high-end mastermind a couple of years ago. That has just been absolutely amazing. I’ll talk a little bit more about that later, but if you’re interested in a mastermind, if you here’s the simplest way, start one, find people who are in similar positions as you, and start a mastermind. Simple as that, we have a mastermind, it’s a paid mastermind.

I’m not even going to suggest that you necessarily need to join my mastermind, but if you’re having trouble starting one, you can’t find good people and you want to be you want to make it easy on yourself people pay for convenience, right? If you want access to me as a coach, just email me Matt@Mattmcwilliams.com. And I’ll share more about the mastermind that we are.

We have a mastermind now, but we’re starting a new one sometime in 2022, probably in the second quarter of 2022. So just email me, Matt@Mattmcwilliams.com and I’ll share some details on that, but commit to surrounding yourself with others who can help you. All right, that’s our number four commitment.

5. Commit to setting big goals…and hitting them!

If you want 2022 to start off right If you want it to go well all year if you want it to be your best year ever,

you’ve got to set big goals and then you’ve actually got to hit them. I mean this for every area of life, I don’t just mean this. Okay. I want to make a million dollars right now. Just business goals, business goals, family goals, personal growth goals, financial goals, health goals, right? You’ve got to set them in every area.

And I want to talk about two types of goals. There are smart goals. We’ve all heard this right? Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time-bound. These are great. It’s a proven method. It works. But I hate them now to be clear. I don’t mean that I hate smart goals versus no goals. That’s not what I’m talking about.

In fact, I think they’re well-intentioned and I actually think there’s a place for smart goals. I think there’s a place for smart goals. We set them up in our business for specific things all the time. When we rely on smart goals. I think we forget to think big. We forget to shoot for the moon. We forget to dream, right?

I’m reading a book right now. Let me double-check and see what it’s called because I wasn’t sure if it was this call. Yeah. American Moonshot, John F. Kennedy, and the great space race by Douglas Brinkley, an amazing book. And the thing is smart goals. Don’t make history putting a man on the moon was not a smart goal.

It was absolutely crazy. It was dangerous. It was daring. It was inspiring. You all think of all the stories of children from that generation who saw John F. Kennedy announce that goal and something lit up inside of them. It’s like the thing I’m getting out of this is how it inspired a nation. So powerful. I write about this in my book. This was before I read American moonshot about the speech that JFK gave at rice university when he says, why do we go to the moon? Why do we go to the moon and do the other things? Not because they’re easy, but because they are hard. And I might’ve messed that up a little bit. I’m doing it from memory, but not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Think about Ronald Reagan,

Mr. Gorbachev tore down this wall. That was not a smart goal. It was specific. I guess it was measurable as the wall was torn down. I don’t know how actionable it was or how time-bound it was, it was a dream. It was the announcement of the vision that Ronald Reagan saw for a unified Germany. It sparked the fuse that, that reunited a nation.

You think about it. I mean, Martin Luther King, had a crazy idea. He did not say I have a smart goal. He had a dream. He had a dream and he inspired others to dream with them. So that March on Washington was 52 years ago now I think, that was not the result of a smart goal. As a result of a crazy idea, smart goals don’t make history dreams do. And so instead of smart goals, we want, we want to have dream goals. It’s another acronym, D R E A M goals that make history. So what’s a dream goal. I’ve shared this before, but I’ll share. I think this was a couple of years ago that I shared it, but I’m gonna share it again.

The D is daring or dangerous, right? These are not safe for Ronald Reagan to go to Berlin and say, Mr. Gorbachev tear down, this wall was dangerous. It was daring. There was a factor. There were a lot of people inside of his own administration who wanted him to take that line out. It was too risky they said, but good goals always dare us to do something.

They’re often dangerous. They’re risky. They require us to stretch. They require us to that lump in our throats. We’re like, oh gosh, they allow us to swallow that. They make us swallow that and say, you know what? I’m willing to take this risk. The R is Rapt. Now I had to look up the dictionary definition to make sure I was using the right word and I was showing complete interest in something lifted up and carried away, transported with emotion, wholly absorbed, engrossed.

Let’s say that one more time. Showing complete interest in something lifted up and carried away, transported with emotion, wholly absorbed or engrossed. Isn’t that what our goals should do, keep us completely interested in them right? Lift us up, carry us away to a new world. Transport us with emotion, wholly absorbing, and engross us.

When you set a dream goal and you set six to 10, really good dream goals, it should consume you. Not at the expense of your family. Not at the expense of your friends, not at the expense of your health.

Don’t misunderstand me, but it should keep you awake at night and it should wake you up in the morning. You should have a few goals. That just that’s what they do. They consume you. You read numerous books about them. You buy courses about them. You talk about them. Your family is getting a little bit annoyed that you spend so much time talking about it.

A dream goal should hold your interest in the dark times, right? It should inspire you and everyone around you. And you should be overcome with emotion every time you think about it. You think about it. If your goal is to lose 50 pounds, you need to lose 50 pounds. Think about what that would look like. And that should consume you, right?

You should be reading numerous books about it, and you should be focused on you should be waking up in the morning, deciding to work out and eat healthily and losing another quarter of a pound. And then you should be just wholly consumed by what the vision of what you’ll look like and feel like when you reach that goal.

E is energizing. A dream goal is energizing. The thought of your goal gets you excited. Kind of like I just said, like that, it’s just sparked something inside of you. When you talk about your goal, you talk faster, your hands flow, your heartbeat quickens. Somebody asks you what you’re working on. You should immediately. Okay. All right. But that’s how you talk about it right?

You burst into the same elevator speech. You’ve given a hundred times before and you never get tired of it. I’m excited about this topic and that’s how I am right now. And part of that was, I was demonstrating it, but I’m serious. That’s how you should feel about a goal. It should be energizing. It when Gandhi set out to free India from British rule, he did not set smart goals. What did he do first? He energized an entire population prior to his involvement in the independence movement in India, the masses were removed from the struggle.

It was mostly the elitist calling for small concessions from the British, right? In other words, the elitists were aiming at smart goals. If we could have a 2% improvement in this, by the end of the year, a 5% improvement, right? No Gandhi changed all that. He made it into a mass movement. His goal of a free India inspired a nation. That’s energizing.

They should be action-oriented that’s the A. Now is we want them to be inspiring. We want him to be daring and exciting. They still require specific actions. I would say, this is like the AON smart, right? Very similar. It’s where you put actions on paper. What are the specific actions you need to take to make your big goals happen? If your ultimate goal is to run the iron man triathlon, I don’t know when that is, but let’s just say it’s a year from now.

How many miles are you going to run next week? You got to work backward you got to figure out, okay, one week before when I probably two weeks before you start tapering off for that. So two weeks before I want to run I want to swim. I forget what it is. I think it’s like 2.4 miles and 52, I don’t know, a hundred bike miles in a marathon, right? So that day, two weeks before something I want to swim a mile and a half. I want to bike 75 miles and I want to run 20.

So then you got a backup from there from where you are now, where are you now? And what do you need to do? If you run a lot, running 20 miles will be no problem, but you don’t really ride a bike very often. I can’t remember the last time I rode a bike, then, okay, what are you going to do to get better at that? How much money do you need to save for the bike?

Maybe you need a good bike. How much money do you need to save? This is the part where I think smart goals are useful inside of this framework, right? When Kennedy said, we put a man on the moon, he broke it down into steps. These were specific actions that took place in the coming months and years. So what specific actions do you need to take?

The M is meaningful. They’re meaningful. They have a purpose beyond themselves. They’re part of a higher calling. They changed the world right. Now, this is the part where you ask yourself, okay, what’s my, why? Why is this your goal? Why do you want to complete the Ironman? And just want to get a metal? Do you want to get in better shape so you can be healthier for your kids?

Do you want to inspire someone? I’m going to run the triathlon because I want to inspire my kids. These are the things that get you out of bed. When you’re when your bones ache, when your muscles are sore, your goal should have an important why behind it. It should have deep meaning, deep, deep meaning. The purpose of your goal should be something amazing. The results should be inspiring. The process should bring you to just bring you to life. So remember to make your goals daring dangerous. It’s another way of saying it wrapped and then gross. You energizing action-oriented and meaningful.

Set some 30 to 90-day goals. So it’s not just this long slog, everything I’m going to do. I’m going to accomplish it in December early.

You’re not going to accomplish anything in February or even June, like at least set a few goals, like start the year fast. Right? I want to accomplish this by the end of January. I want to accomplish this by the end of the first quarter. So I’m looking at, I’m looking ahead. I’m probably adding one or two goals. I’m working on my goals right now of the nine that I have set.

Four of them are complete by the end of well, by the middle of May, for them are complete by the middle of May. I’ve got one little stretch, two weeks into May. So that’s four of the nine are in the first four and a half months of the year. I’ve got another one that’s by the end of July. And then I’ve got four that are year-long. So I should have accomplished five huge things by July. I should have accomplished two things by the end of February. That’s pretty significant. Set those sprint goals throughout the year.

6. Commit to investing in yourself.

Commitment to investing in yourself. I am a huge, huge believer in investing in yourself. I don’t care if it’s money, time, energy,

whatever. It may be real money and time are the two ways. Those are, you need to be investing in yourself. Yeah. Invest in others, invest in your kids, invest in your spouse of course, but invest in yourself this year and start on day one starting now, whenever you’re listening to this start now

a few years ago for the last few years, I’ve invested over $22,000 a year to join a high-end mastermind to help take my business to the next level. It’s going to the next level. I mean, the growth that we’ve had in the last two and a half years has been amazing. It doesn’t take $22,000 to invest in yourself though. Maybe it’s,

I remember the first time I bought a premium WordPress theme. The first time I invested in Facebook ads, the first time I invested in, a good podcast microphone, right? The first time I invested in good lighting for my videos, the first time I invested in better hosting for my website next year, we’re going to spend a little bit over $2,000 for hosting.

When I first started, I was paying 395 a month. Actually, I think I was paying 995 a month. I don’t think I ever did the really cheapest one because I wanted to have like the slight next level up. But when I was at a 995 level, I felt like a 995 a month blogger. When I bumped up to $20 a month, it was a little bit faster. I felt different. It was a small but important step for me, just that extra 10 bucks a month. And then when I upgraded way too late to the well, over a hundred dollars a month, actually we were at 110 to start with. And now we’re up close to $200 a month.

I feel even more legit, right? I mean, I’ve invested in books, conferences, courses so much more. It’s less about the amount you invest in, more about the mindset of being willing to invest. So start where you are. If you’ve got 20 bucks, invest in yourself, one book, one book, that’s all you gotta do. So commit to investing in yourself.

Maybe it’s joining a mastermind. Maybe it’s buying a course. Maybe it’s investing 30 minutes a day and going for a walk. That’s one of the biggest investments I make going for a walk. Yesterday. I knew I was busy when I said kids, let’s take our dog Weston for a 30-minute walk. Some days I do hour two. If it’s nice outside and I’ve got a lot of calls where I can do them on the phone, I’ll be outside for two hours going for a walk.

Yesterday. I didn’t have the time. I didn’t have the 30 minutes, but I found it. I invested 30 minutes. It meant that I was a little bit stressed for the next couple of hours trying to get everything done, but it was worth it for me to get outside. It was a beautiful day. It was sunny and it was like 60, some odd degrees in the middle of December. And it was important for me to get the outside.

7. Commit to involving the most important person or people in your life more.

Commit to involving the most important person or people in your life more. And this applies to business. It applies to really any type of, any aspect of life, really in any decision-making process. The number one mistake I made when we started our business was not involving my wife, Tara more.

The reality is that most of the day-to-day work of the business falls on me. So what my tendency to do is just kind of do my thing and I left her out. Now I’m going to share a little bit more of that story in a little bit,

but just know that one of the biggest breakthroughs that I had for me was when I started involving her more, the quality of my work improved, it was easier. It was less stressful. It was, it was a lot more fun as well. And that just goes to show that involving the most important person in my life has been a really good idea.

Now, if you’re not married, just identify the most important person in your life and involve them more in your business, personal growth and personal growth doesn’t mean you have to do it alone just because it’s personal growth doesn’t mean you’ve got to go it alone. And I know for me it was involving Tara in that has helped so, so much I used to get in these ruts where I would just like,we just wouldn’t communicate about business. Why?

Because I’m, I’m doing business all day. And I didn’t want to talk about business at night, but now I’ve made it a point that Mondays at four, we’re going to meet every week and we’re going to talk through things and we’re going to, we’re going to solve problems together and I’m going to share five or 10 minutes at night or just five or 10 minutes.

I’m not going to talk for an hour to take up the whole dinner with the family, talking about business, but I’m going to share, or like the one to three highlights of my day, what are the one to three problems that we’re facing and maybe I need a little bit of help solving what is the one to three opportunities we have? What are a couple of updates? You know, usually, it takes 10 minutes tops and that’s been super important. So commit to involving the most important person in your life.

8. Commit to learning

Commit to learning, commit to intentionally learning, making, learning a priority. Now you’re listening to this. I know you are a learner. I know you’re a learner. Keep doing that. Keep listening, make sure you hit subscribe by the way. So you don’t miss any episodes. That’s important. But yeah, I was thinking back to this past year, over the last couple of years, I made a commitment to learning and I wanted to learn in areas that directly impact my business, marketing leadership things like that. I wanted to develop personal growth areas. I wanted to learn more about my health.

I wanted to learn more about psychology and things like that. Also want to improve and things like my marriage and my parenting and just my overall knowledge of things. I mentioned a few episodes ago, I talked about creating content. And one thing I talked about is you gotta be able to learn and bring in things from other areas of the world. You gotta learn history and bring that into your content, or you gotta learn whatever it is. Like, no matter what niche you’re in, be able to take these areas that are outside your niche and then bring them in as examples.

It’s a great way to come up with content. I was thinking I read 157 books this year, sort of I’ll share what I mean by that. But 157 books. It’s actually business books this year. I’ve read probably total between listening to and what I’m about to share with you. Well, over 200 total books now on the business side, these things have led to some major breakthroughs, on the personal side, when I listened to stuff about history or parenting or spiritual stuff I don’t quote-unquote cheat.

I listened to the whole thing. I do read some too. I actually do know how to read, like know I’m literate. That’s cool. Right? But I read some, but mostly I listen, but one thing that’s really helped me is listening to business books and listening to these business books. Now that’s 157. That’s about three a week, probably so far this year. I’ll probably end up topping out around 161. I actually stopped listening to business books around December 22nd for the rest of the year when I take off, I disconnect completely.

So the only thing I’ll listen to in that stretch is history and I’m probably maybe like a fiction book or two. So how do I do that? How do I do three-ish books on average? Well, the truth is I don’t read the full book a couple of years ago, I made a friend named Steve Cunningham.

Who’s the founder of a company called Read It For Me. And it’s just, it’s been amazing, he’s the one who picks the books. There are tons, all the latest big business books, a bunch of classics as well, marketing, entrepreneurship, leadership, personal growth, all that stuff. And basically what he kind of does is distills it down. what would normally take, say 10, 12 active hours of listening or reading, distill it down into about 20 minutes? Whatever the math is on that 20 minutes, it’s three hours. So I get 30, 40, 50 times as much information in the same amount of time. And so I tested it out. I was like this, I could definitely see this being something that could transform my business, tried it out for about a year, just loved it. And so Steve and I are on the phone a while back and I was like, dude, you can, you like you don’t have to make a promise right now, but could you hook my audience up with something, It’s like a cool deal. And he’s like, yeah, absolutely. Let me think about it. I’m like, all right, whatever. And I’m thinking, he’s going to be like, all right here, I’ll do 25% off and be like that’s amazing.

Maybe he might come at me and be like 50% off their first six months and we’ll be like, dang, that’s awesome. Or I don’t know. I had some stuff in mind, even like 50% off for a year or by whatever, by like three months, get the rest of the first year free. I was like, that’d be cool. And he emails me and he’s like, here’s what I’m going to do, dude, it was weird. He’s like, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to give your audience a lifetime membership for the price of one year. I’m like, you gotta be fricking kidding me. And then I kept reading and he’s like, also they’re going to get basically 10 gifts that they can give ten one-year memberships to give away.

So you get a year, you get a lifetime, actually a lifetime membership for the cost of one year. So what we normally just pay for one year, you’re going to basically get it for the rest of your life and you get to give away 10 one-year memberships. I’d like, I’m not trying to hyperbolize what he’s doing. We’re going to talk in the next episode about how to sell without sounding like a used car salesman.

It’s hard not to sound like a used car salesman when you’re talking about something that’s like this fricking amazing. So I’ll just say if you’re committed to learning, you want to get the best parts of the best books. Maybe even read a hundred plus books next year, go get this deal. Now it’s not going to be around for long. Go get this deal now because it’s going to be absolutely amazing. I mean, I can tell you reading it for me is absolutely amazing.

9. Commit to Picking 4 affiliate promos you can go ALL IN on

So number nine commitment is a commit to picking four affiliates promotes. You can go all-in on it. Now the key here is all in. I talked three episodes ago. I talked about one of my big mistakes in 2021 was not going all-in on enough affiliate promotions, big, big mistake, right? I’ve talked many times about the importance of going all in and how that’ll separate you and you’ll just convert better and you’re going to make more sales by going all in.

So all I want you to do is once a quarter, once a quarter goes all-in on affiliate promotion. If you’re looking for some promos, go check out our, our recommended affiliate promos page Mattmcwilliams.com/whatsup. Probably should’ve come up with a better URL than that, but Mattmcwilliams.com/whatsup. It’s what’s up and the affiliate marketing roles.

So go there. We’ll put that link in the show notes as well. And you can get all of our, our recommended affiliate programs and then commit to going just pick four once a quarter or so pick four, go all in, create a promo plan, right? Treat it like it’s your own launch and go all-in on those promos.

10. Commit to making health and wellness a priority

That leads us to our last commitment here. Commitment, number 10, commits to making health and wellness a priority. Now for different people. That’s going to mean different things, right? But what are the basics? sleep, exercise, diet, stress management, mental health. Those are the basics, right? I think a lot of times when, when people hear what this means is, well, okay, I’ve got to sleep eight hours every night.

I got to exercise an hour and 15 minutes a day and I have to eat nothing but kale and I need to meditate for an hour and I need to take like a million supplements. No, that’s not what it means. We’re going to go to the gym. No. What does that mean to commit, to making health and wellness a priority? For me, it means that I commit for me personally, six hours of sleep at night, the minimum, and I prefer seven and a half. I sleep in 90-minute cycles. We’ve pretty much studied this, I think I’m on like 88-minute sleep cycles. And so for me, it takes me about 10 minutes to fall asleep. So if I do the math on that right at six hours is an okay amount.

But I prefer right at seven and a half that’s like the perfect amount for me that I’m going to catch somewhere. I’m going to wake up, not in the middle of a sleep cycle. I did that the other night, I got woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle, close to when I would normally wake up. And it was like, it was only like 18, 20 minutes early. And may not want to tell you it wasn’t even the 18 or 20 minutes. I would have been better off sleeping an hour and 10 minutes less, man, just getting woke up in the middle of that deep sleep. I mean, I, it took me till 10, 10 30 in the morning just to kind of get out of a fog.

It was really weird. And because I haven’t done that in forever, I’ve woke up in the middle of sleep cycles, but it was at two in the morning like it was a sick kid, but then I got to go back to bed. And so it’s not as bad when I get to do that. But just the way I felt was awful, but committing to whatever the amount of sleep and the quality of sleep you need is committing to some amount of exercise. I shared this before. There are like, I love getting in a nice long workout where I’m lifting, I’ve got some cardio in him I’m just drenched in sweat.

The other day I had 22 minutes. I was like, what can I do? So I did 22 minutes. Just rocked it for 22 minutes. I did squat jumps until the truth is I am so sore. My legs hurt today for a 22-minute workout. I went all in. I was all in for 22 minutes because I prioritize. I can be like, I only got 22 minutes. Just got to get some stuff done. No, I prioritized it made it a priority diet, the same thing. Here’s the key. Just change the way you eat to fuel your body. I don’t care what that is. If you, if you honestly feel like you can feel your body with a ham sandwich, ham and cheese sandwich go right ahead. If you feel like that’s going to fuel your body in a positive way, food is either positive or negative. It’s very rarely neutral.

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So just be positive and just make sure that everything you put in your body is positive. Does it have to be as positive as fresh kale? And I don’t know, whatever, a perfect really raised fish. No, it doesn’t positive could mean maybe it has a little bit of sugar in it, but overall that that meal is positive. That’s, that’s the key to me. It’s just, it’s positive or negative. Pick the positives. If it’s about stress and things like that and focus if you need to meditate 10 minutes a day is going to help you then meditate for 10 minutes and make that a priority. I cannot nor do. I want to meditate for 45 minutes a day. I’m not going to be one of those people, but I can meditate for 10. I can do some box breathing for 10 minutes and meditate.

It helps me stay focused and grounded. And if I get it done, I prioritize that 10 minutes. If weight loss, if weight’s holding you back, email me, Matt@Mattmcwilliams.com. I’ll introduce you to my coach. I made it a priority a couple of years ago. I got a coach just like we talked about earlier. So make it a priority, whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Maybe there are areas of your life where you like, no, I’m so dialed in on that.

I don’t need to cool then pick one or two other areas and just focus on that when it comes to health and wellness. So I’d love to hear from you, which of these commitments is the biggest priority for you this year, which of these is going to make the biggest difference. What’s the most important to you in 2022? Which commitment is the most important to you in 2022? You can text me anytime at 2 6 0 2 1 7 4 6 1 9.

I’d love to hear from you. I’d love to find out like, okay, what’s the commitment that you’re going to make in 2022 that you feel like is going to make the best, the most impact, and then make sure to come back for the next episode, I am super stoked going to talk about how to sell what I mentioned this earlier, how to sell without sounding like a used car salesman. So hit that subscribe button, make sure you’re subscribed.

So you don’t miss that episode. The one after that in the new year, we’re going in 2022. Oh my gosh. We’re going to talk about how to onboard affiliates, how to get them started the right way. So lots of good stuff coming up, so make sure you hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode and I’ll see you in the next one.