February 11, 2019

I want to become a tortoise (Habits and Goals)

We all have a hare 🐇 start when it comes to forming a new habit. DAY 1 visiting the gym, we’ll do a 2-hour workout. We’ll do cardio, weights, yoga, pilates, stretching! We’ll have a protein shake too! No one ever will visit the gym for 12 days in a row only to do a 10-min workout. Most people are like that including myself. If only we could get to the finish line tomorrow!

My experience shows it doesn’t work like that. When it comes to habits and goals, we’ve got to be a tortoise 🐢. Maths say 1% better every single day means 37 times better after one year (1.01^365 = 37.78). We’ve just got to show up every single day and do that tiny little bit we’ve got to do for the day.

Got 10 minutes? Do a few push-ups or sit-ups, practice meditation or breathing, read 10 pages, whatever the habit is, then forget it. You’ve done the thing today. You’re a winner today. You’ve ticked the box today. Go have a coffee with your friends now. Just show up again tomorrow winning tortoise.

I’ve used only “we” because I’m a hare myself who wants to be a tortoise.

Any tips on becoming a tortoise? Leave a comment below.

PS: I was inspired to write this after going back to James Clear’s book Atomic Habits this morning. I say “going back” because that’s not a book you read once and then shelve it. It’s a book you keep going back. It’s the habits bible.

By angelos No Comments

February 7, 2019

I found a lot of answers in this book

Book suggestions

A great book about intelligence analysis which taught me a lot of things!

This is probably one of my top 5 books 📚. I first read it 10 years ago when serving in the army. Although this book is intended for intelligence analysts who want to understand why and how they make inferences, this book can teach you human relationships, marketing, the secrets of a happy marriage, mindset, politics, economy, and … life!

I’ve taken a screenshot below to give you an example. Suppose some country A does something that has some unfavourable implications for country B. Country B instantly concludes that Country A did that to harm Country B. Hang on! That may be some secondary or tertiary effect of Country A’s action, or the result of some other player’s involvement (Country C), or pure coincidence! How many times have you thought, “That person did that because he doesn’t like me!” Are you 100% sure your that person took certain deliberate action because he doesn’t like you?

Daniel Kahneman wrote Thinking Fast and Slow, a fantastic book (probably the most famous book) on the way we make inferences but if you’d like to read something different try Richards Heuer’s book, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. You can download it from the CIA’s website here. You’ll love it!

PS: – Talking to myself – We often tend to read the same and the same books, we’re after best-sellers, the top 10 marketing books, the top 10 psychology books, etc. However, a few times, the answer might be hidden where you don’t expect it to be. Be different. Be curious.

By angelos No Comments

April 5, 2018

Stock Market Investing for Beginners

Investing, Stock Market Investing

In this guide, I will explain the basics of investing in the Stock Market in simple words without assuming anything. Stock investing is not and should not be presented as rocket science. To become a successful investor you don’t have to be a math genius. You only need to understand a few things well and keep emotions away from eroding your investment decisions.

This guide is for people who want to invest their money in great companies and be rewarded for doing so. A real investor invests in a great company today because he thinks it will be a great company after ten or twenty years. Here, I want to teach you a long-term Warren Buffett approach to investing which will make your money grow slowly but surely.

If you want to make money in the Stock Market and turn from broke to rich this year, this guide is not for you. If you want to become a stock day trader buying stocks in the morning and dumping them in the afternoon, this is not the right guide for you either. There are other resources out there that promise to make you a successful day trader. In that case, I wish you good luck with that because you’ll indeed need lots of it.

By angelos No Comments

March 29, 2018

Steffan Surdek – Leadership Coach and Forbes Contributor

Me Interviewing awesome people

Steffan Surdek is a professional speaker, author and coach. His passion is collaborative leadership. He works in organisations and helps them to improve communication, unleash leaders, and define that element of success which is a shared vision. He regularly writes for Forbes. You can find Steffan here.

This is the long Skype session we did together a few months ago. Enjoy!

Highlights

Steffan insists on learning by doing. Don’t focus on success or failure but take action, experiment and aim to learn something out of the experiment.

17:35 I don’t charge consulting commissions when I refer people to a job. It’s business. If they I helped them, they are more likely to help me when I am in need. You have to give to get.

30:40 Bring the people to the feeling space. How does the progress feel?

32:15 Awesome Stuff Here: On marketing yourself and how to get noticed: Deliver value first and the money will come later. First, get to know your customers to see what you can offer to them. If you want to sell them something, you have to meet their needs. To see what their needs are, you have to get to know them. Maybe a free workshop at the beginning? Give them the opportunity to introduce themselves and their needs to you first!

36:59 Question: Is it OK to give stuff for free? People don’t value free stuff. Steffan says giving away stuff always creates business. When you give away stuff though, you have to be prepared that you may not be given anything back. Do something because it’s part of you.

43:00 Create content that’s reusable. Create content that you can chop up and use it in a different form or source. Do you have a long talk on YouTube? Take that long video and create a new one with the highlights.

By angelos No Comments

March 26, 2018

Interview with Kit Carstairs – Publishing, Book Editing, Writing Inspiration

Me Interviewing awesome people, Publishing

A few months ago I had a very interesting chat with Kit Carstairs, the founder of the Manuscript Appraisal Agency.

Kit shared with me a lot of tips for those who want to write a book and get published. Here we discuss Traditional VS Self-Publishing, book editing, writing inspiration, entrepreneurship, work-life balance, and more.

I enjoyed this talk so much! Kit is not only a publishing guru but more importantly a sweet, lovely person! Enjoy!

05:57 – Why go with a traditional publisher?
09:35 – Self-Publishing
11:00 – Appraisal Fees
16:00 – What can an editor do and cannot?
17:46 – How to edit your book – common mistakes
21:44 – Wanna write a good book? Experience Life!
25:25 – Freelancing, growing organically, work-life balance

By angelos 1 Comment

February 2, 2018

Interview with Adobe Deliverability Expert Jon Burke

Email Deliverability

Last weekend I had the honour to host Jon Burke who is an Email Deliverability Consultant at Adobe. Did you know that Adobe could be your ESP? Yep, there isn’t only Mailchimp guys. 🙂

We covered a lot in this Q&A with Jon (he crushed it) and the video could have been longer if I had remembered to press record when he had to call me back due to connection issues. Damn me! Anyway, we’ll do another video with Jon in the near future.

Highlights of the video:

You have to build your own reputation when sending bulk emails. No Adobe, Amazon, Drip (they claim they have 99% deliverability or something), or any ESP can save you. If you send spam or if you send emails that people don’t bother to read, the IP reputation will not get to their inbox.
Domain Authentication is required to show that you are a legitimate sender sending from your own domain or your ESP sending on behalf of your domain. By the way, remember that if you receive emails with SPF or DKIM authentication doesn’t mean that they are not spammy emails. Spammers can also set up authentication for their domains which may resemble other legitimate domains just to get your attention (spoofing). This is an awesome article which shows what spammers can do, brilliant!
The List-Unsubscribe header is very important for your campaigns. Check out with your ESP on how you can implement this. Most ESP’s set this up by default. Make sure you give priority to the mail-to header as per Laura on WttW.
Place an Unsubscribe link on the top of your content because they reason you’re getting complaints is that people can’t probably find your unsubscribe link down there in tiny 6 font! Make it easy for people to unsubscribe, how many times do I have to say that? Jon said that lately Hotmail and Microsoft penalise senders more when somebody marks their emails as spam. Laura said that too not long ago.
Check your emails with different email clients (seed lists) to see how the email is rendered if you’re using HTML code, where does the email land, ie. inbox, spam, etc. For testing purposes, remember it’s better to use real peoples’ addresses rather than brand new email accounts as the ISP filters use machine learning algorithms to learn how to classify emails according to a specific user’s previous actions (based on experience in machine learning terms).

Enjoy the video with Jon.

By Angelos Georgakis No Comments

February 1, 2018

Tips and Tricks for those who use Aweber

Email Service Providers

Do you use Aweber? Just a few killer tips here.

Delete Duplicate Subscribers from your List

I know some of you have the same person (email address) in more than one Aweber list. Why? Because you probably use more than one opt-ins and offer different resources/downloads as part of opting-in. So, after they opt-in they get added to a separate list with different follow-up series.

In certain cases, you have a reason to keep them in multiple lists because each list has a totally separate funnel journey. In other cases, having them on the same or multiple lists makes no difference so you may consider removing duplicate addresses. Remember, Aweber charges for the total number of subscribers in all your lists without looking at duplicates.

By Angelos Georgakis No Comments

January 29, 2018

How to Increase Email Deliverability – Complete Action List

Email Deliverability

Below is a list of things you can do to increase your email deliverability, ie. your inbox placement rate (emails got into your subscribers’ inbox/emails sent out). This article could be a whole book or series of books so I’ll try to be updating it as often as possible.

Re-engage with Inactive Subscribers

Subscribers who are not engaging with your emails (not reading, not clicking, not replying, not forwarding, etc.) have a negative impact on your email marketing campaigns. Inactive subscribers is a sign to the mailbox providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, etc.) that your emails don’t provide value.

A good ISP has to protect the mailbox of their clients, right? So, a good ISP thinks: If my people don’t even bother to open these emails every week, why shall I keep sending these emails? Dump the bloody emails into the spam folder.

It’s very easy to increase your deliverability right now: Send only to the dudes that open your emails and you’ll see your open rates skyrocket! 🙂

By Angelos Georgakis No Comments