Bill & Kayla also ran a company helping companies get more leads & customers through targeted content creation and has worked with industry powerhouse brands such as Content marketing institute, Social Media Examiner, Search Engine Journal & Sumo.com to name a few.
The are now full time bloggers and enjoy running an online business & travel in their RV!
Kayla also runs a food blog over at TheSustainableHarvest.com
Podcast Topics:
- The Wandering RV gets over 200k organic visits per month! Learn how Bill and Kayla strategically build the traffic.
- Why did they get into blogging?
- How long did it take you to start making money?
- What were some of the key strategies that helped to grow the website?
- Starting new projects or staying focused on one blog. What is the best idea?
- Life in an RV!
- Tips for someone who wants to start a website/blog that can generate significant revenue.
Transcription:
Adam: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Digital Nomad Cafe Podcast. I’m super excited to bring you today’s guests, Bill and Kayla, who run Thewanderingrv.com, a hugely successful website that generates revenue through affiliate commissions.
Welcome to the show. I don’t even know where to start. There’s so much to talk about.
Kayla: Thanks for having us.
Bill: Yeah, thank you.
Adam: So I came across your website through a friend of ours. He recommended that I reach out to you, guys. I had a look. So The Wandering RV, as what I will call it, it’s a website specifically focused on one niche. And you put a lot of thought and time and effort into building this up. So can you take us back? Why did you decide to build this website? What led to it?
Kayla: Originally, it started that we just wanted to fill in our friends and family with our travel journeys.
Bill: Yeah, so we started off living in an RV. And Kayla’s idea was to start the site just to show people where we were going and what we were doing. And it kind of took off from there. Then we started using it as a guinea pig, because we used to do SEO for clients. We were learning a bunch of new cool stuff and I was really passionate about the SEO aspect of it. So we wanted to take what we were learning and kind of apply it just so we could test out some theories. That kind of eventually led to us making a little bit of money. And we realized, hey, why not scale this up and see how far we can take it?
Adam: Did you start out with the Amazon affiliate program, which is where a lot of people may start out? Because I mean, there’s unlimited products. I know it’s a small commission, but if you can build it up over time, is that how you would have cut your teeth with, doing affiliate content on the blog?
Bill: Yeah. So Amazon was the first one that we started with. And then we slowly branched out from there once we figured out what was selling.
Adam: Yeah. I mean, Amazon’s commissions aren’t the best these days. They keep slashing it. So a strategic alliance for a rental company, similar to — I mean, I know another guy who runs a website and he does a lot of hostile reviews. Like, best hostels in Dublin, best hostels in Amsterdam. And he’s an affiliate for the likes of hostelbookers, hostel world, places like that. And you can get a good commission for recommending over to a booking software company. So is it something like that that you had for RVs?
Bill: Yeah. We work with Outdoorsy for RV rentals and use a lot of our content to get people into rentals and exploring around a little bit. We make a commission there.
Adam: I guess when you started the site, you were just updating your friends and your family. You mentioned that you were working in SEO. So were you freelancing while traveling around, I imagine the United States in your RV?
Bill: Yeah. It started as freelance writing. Kayla and I were both doing the same thing but separately. She had her clients, I had my clients. And it just got to a point where you can only make so much money doing freelance writing because people are only willing to pay so much for just strictly words on a screen. So that’s when we started to learn SEO to kind of be able to charge more. And then that was kind of what led into learning about content marketing, and SEO and blogging and link building and all this other stuff.
Adam: Well, I was reading through on your website, which is Billwidmer.com. And just looking through your client list, people who you’ve worked with over the years such as Content Marketing Institute, Social Media Examiner, Search Engine Journal, Sumo.com, to name a few. So those are huge clients. So we do get a lot of freelance writers who listened to the show, and a lot of people who have — or not a lot — but a couple of people who’ve come on who are freelance writers. So can you talk a little bit about when you were freelancing, how you did get these sorts of clients? What was your digital outreach to these people? Was it LinkedIn? How did that look?
Bill: Pretty much, it started as us just writing for our clients. And when we were learning about things like link building, and guest posting, and stuff like that, that’s when we reached out to these different sites because they accepted guest posts. And they were really big sites. So we started off writing guest posts for them. And eventually, they just loved our guest posts so much that it turned into a client relationship. So I would say guest posting and referrals have been our two biggest drivers of new clients.
Adam: I get what you mean. So actually go through these websites to have authority in the industry, but have a Write For Us section. I mean, you’re writing for free. You’re writing for exposure at that point, but it can help. Well, first of all, it can be in your logo banners. I’m a good enough writer that I can write on Social Media Examiner and have my content accepted, but also can create this referral process for you.
Bill: Yeah, exactly. You have to find a way to kind of link your different processes together. So when we were doing SEO for clients, part of that was link building. So we were doing guest post outreach anyway. And while we were at it, we just made them as high quality as possible. That’s kind of really what it did for us. It’s not like just your generic 1000-1500-word guest posts. This was usually like 2000, 3000, some of them are even 5000-word guest posts that were just like bangers. We really put everything into them.
Adam: If you haven’t been to the website yet, you need to head over to Thewanderingrv.com, for anybody listening, just click through. What you’re seeing here is 100%. This isn’t like 500-word, 1000-word, even 2000-word articles. These are dynamic pages, beautifully built, multiple questions. You’re linking out to other people’s websites. There’s so much thought that goes into these. I would say that it’s the best piece of content on the internet for that query. And that is, in my opinion.
Bill: Oh, thank you.
Adam: Truthfully. The 50 must-have RV accessories. You click into that, and you look at it. And there’s just so much content. It’s all well put together. It’s visually aesthetic. It’s mobile responsive. Yes, it’s got loads of affiliate links, but that’s how it makes money. It’s absolutely fabulous content. So when you’re putting this sort of content together, what’s your thought process on this? Does it begin with keyword research? Is that where it all starts?
Bill: My favorite way of finding keywords for these articles is to use a tool called Ahrefs. Essentially, they have a content gap tool, which you plug your website into, and then you plug in all of the other websites that are in your niche into it. And it’ll compare your site to their site to see what keywords they’re ranking for that you’re not. And you can go through those keywords. And I’ll literally spend an hour, two hours, sometimes three hours, just sitting there going into these keywords one by one to see what’s the content that’s ranking? How many clicks does this get compared to –? A lot of times, you’ll get a lot of views, but not a lot of clicks. So if it’s like an information query — I know I’m getting kind of into the guts of things right now.
Adam: Go, do it.
Bill: But if you see a keyword and it’s got a ton of clicks — or not a ton of clicks — kind of views, so tons of searches every month, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good keyword if it doesn’t have a lot of clicks. So if someone googles Trump’s birthday, it’ll show Donald Trump was born on this day, and you don’t even have to click on anything. And that isn’t a good thing to rank for, because all it’s doing is showing information and you’re not actually getting any traffic to your site. I don’t know why that was an example. I think I read that as an example somewhere before and that’s what —
Kayla: What an odd example.
Adan: I’ve seen some stuff come out around this. I believe in France, they might be even suing Google for this at the minute. They’re doing these little drop down snippets. So people are googling things now. And they’re not actually going out to the website. You just click in like a little drop down arrow and get the answer to your query. But in France, I believe, they’re making a case about this that that wasn’t Google.
Bill: They’re stealing information.
Adam: Yeah. They’re stealing. It wasn’t Google, for sure. But it’s definitely something that’s made — I mean, look. I noticed myself doing it sometimes. You might not actually go into the website, you’ll click the drop down. But look, Google is forever fluid. It’s always changing. I’ve even read some articles recently about people who had really good, well thought out, well put together articles. And I believe it was the guys over at authorityhacker.com. And they we’re talking about, I think they were taught how to make money blogging, or something. And they lost their ranking. And it was a really difficult keyword to rank for. And all these pages that were like, really generic listicles had taken the top spots. And they were like, “Alright, let’s pull back this really big, long, detailed piece of content, change it to a listicle.” And up, they went back up the rankings. Because that was what Google wanted. That’s what they decided, at this time, that that’s what the sort of content they want for that query.
Bill: Yes and no. So what you’re talking about is user intent, search intent. What are people actually looking for when they type something into Google. So even if you have this really long in depth piece of content, that doesn’t mean it’s going to rank if it’s not what the people actually typing it into Google are looking for. If people are looking for the listicles and that’s what’s getting the clicks on the front page of Google, then that’s what Google is going to rank, regardless of the quality of your content. It’s still going to rank quality, but it also takes into factors which things are people actually clicking on and how much time are they spending on those pages. So if they’re not interested in reading this super in depth long piece of content, and they just click back, and they just want the quick and easy tips, then that’s what Google’s gonna rank. So it’s not necessarily that Google wants to show these things. I think it’s more so that people want to see those things on Google. Does that make sense?
Adam: Absolutely. Yeah. It’s what the people want. And like you’re saying, what they’re engaging with, where they’re spending their time, because we all know Google tracks everything. It knows everything or what’s going on with the website. I guess, with yourself, how long did it take between like, let’s say, launching the site, you’re out, you’re traveling, you’re working on your clients, to like, did this is a real serious thing we have here. The traffic has grown, the content is ranking, you’re getting some commissions. How long do you believe it took for the website to really start to ramp up for you?
Bill: It was probably two and a half to three years before we started making an actual income off of it. We made some money before that, but it wasn’t nearly enough to live off of or to stop working with clients or anything like that. And then it wasn’t until probably about year four, I want to say. What do you think?
Kayla: Yeah, I think so.
Bill: Yeah, that we started making enough to actually compete with our clients, as far as income goes. And then this year, literally, in the last three months, we stopped working with clients. So this is the first first year that we’ve been able to focus completely on our own projects.
Adam: So you’re all in? The second guest I’ve had on who’s all in under affiliate websites. Well, sorry, I call it an affiliate website. I’m sorry, if that’s not what you call it.
Bill: No, it’s fine. Call it whatever. I don’t care.
Adam: It’s just a term. With the skills that you have and the knowledge that you have, I know this is a beast and the content takes, I imagine, a lot of time to put together. And we can get back to that afterwards. But seeing as you have the skills, you’ve proven the concept, does it make you want to diversify and build out new sites and similar industries? I imagine, especially yourself, Bill, when you’re in a draft, if it’s you who’s doing that and the keywords, you’re bound to come across things where you’re like, “Jesus, there’s opportunity there.” How do you catch yourself and be like, “Nope. Come back to The Wandering RV and let’s they’re focused.”? What’s your thoughts on that?
Bill: I definitely think it’s more of an issue that I have than Kayla. Kayla is a very focused person, whereas I’m more like, “Alright, let’s do this. Let’s do that. Let’s do this.” I’m all over the place. So I do have to catch myself. I think right now, we are diversifying. I mean, Kayla’s got her food blog that she’s working on, thesustainableharvest.com. And I have my website, Billwidmer.com, that I do want to put more time into. Most of our time right now does go into The Wandering RV, but we are starting to kind of branch out and try other things. So does that answer your question?
Adam: Yeah, absolutely. So you do have, like you said, you’re building another site out, you have your own site as well, which primarily was used as a place to help with your clients, but now you’re not really need that. So it’s probably, we’ll see what we do with that further down the line.
Bill: Yeah, I have plans for it. But we’ll see when I actually get to them.
Adam: Believe me, I know how that feels. So I guess let’s talk a little bit about the content that you put out on the website. They’re quite robust articles. There’s two parts to it. One is the making of the content. And the next is the actual promotion of it and building some links and doing everything else. Pinterest, as well, I noticed you do quite well. Let’s just get a little bit into that. How long, typically, would you put into maybe research and publication and then the promotion of content for The Wandering RV?
Bill: I would say it depends on the goal of the piece. If we’re trying to rank something on Google, typically, those are a lot more research. It’s a lot more in depth and also depends on the difficulty of the keyword we’re going after. So if it’s an extremely difficult keyword, we’re going to put days, if not weeks, of effort into one piece of article. Kayla, for instance, had an article where she reached out to — how many people was it? Is it a hundred? 300 people —
Kayla: Yeah, 300 people.
Bill: — their favorite places to travel. And that took her two weeks, three weeks to —
Kayla: Yeah. I mean, that’s also relying on other people to get back to us.
Bill: Yeah. It does take time when you’re doing outreach posts like that.
Kayla: But there are posts, too like I did an RV generator post or a trailer hitch post and we don’t really know too much. We have to research those. But then 50 RV accessories, that took me like a day to find.
Bill: A full day, at least.
Kayla: A full day. But it doesn’t take as long as the heavily in depth posts.
Bill: Yeah. And a lot of the time, it depends on how much formatting goes into it, like creating custom graphics. But to give you a generic number, most of our articles probably take us at least a day or two, like a full day or two.
Kayla: Yeah.
Bill: That’s good for people to know. I mentioned the last guest who was a freelance web designer, and he now was all in on his website, doing really in depth course reviews. Some of his stuff takes weeks. It takes weeks to put together that one course review. But that’s what it takes now if you want to be an authority in a niche, if you want to create the best piece of content on the internet for that topic, especially if you’re looking to involve other people and loop them in and get their input, if you will, and everything else. Get quotes from them, get the recommendations. So just for people listening, if you are building these sorts of websites, if you want to get to this level, that’s the sort of quality that people are putting out there. That’s what you have to compete with.
Bill: On a note there, too, I do want to mention, quality doesn’t necessarily just mean the length either. We’re talking about before, search intent on Google. So if you go on Google and the top three results are less than 2000 words, pumping out a 6000-word article isn’t necessarily going to help you beat out those articles, because that might not be what people are looking for. I’ve had situations where I was helping a client write some articles for certain keywords. And I saw all the top ranking articles were like 1500-words or less. And I was like, “Ah, I’m just gonna bang out something amazing, way longer, way more in depth than any of these.” And I did. And it didn’t even hit the first page of Google, after months. And I didn’t know what was going on. And then once we changed it to be shorter, kind of similar to the authority hacker’s case study, it ended up actually hitting the first page. And it was because a lot of the tips and advice that people were looking for were just like bullet points. Like, here’s what you need to do, boom, boom, boom. It wasn’t going in depth on each of those points.
Adam: Yeah. The listicle style stuff. To go a little bit deeper into that, so if you were doing research now for a new — if it’s for your website, or for somebody else’s, would you Google the phrase and actually look at what’s ranking versus just spending your time in a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush, or whatever it is that you use?
Bill: Yeah. I literally Google the keyword. Anytime I think I might want to rank for something, I will Google the keyword, always, not just looking at Ahrefs. And I’ll go into each article and I’ll skim through every single article to see what they’re talking about, and how long it is and what their angle is, and all that kind of thing. So I never write anything without actually looking at the search results.
Adam: Okay. And the format of the article. That’s important. Because I think a lot of people didn’t do that before, but now it’s become more important like we’re talking about, because this is what’s being served, this is what the users want. So it’s all well and good if you think you’re going to write, like you’re saying, a really long article or really cool and put all this effort into it, but Google wants what it wants. Or the users want what it wants, not Google. So it’s important to see, for the keywords you’re going after, what sort of content that’s ranking and make something similar. Don’t try to recreate the wheel.
Bill: Google is always changing. But at the same time, it always comes down to getting more people to click on the search results. So giving people more of what they want, having a similar format to what’s already working. As long as you create quality content that matches search intent and you build links, that’s all you’re ever really going to need. I don’t think Google’s ever going to get rid of those three things. Those are going to be the staple forever.
Adam: That’s it. And then when it comes to promotion, because I think this is where a lot of people struggle. You mentioned a lot of guest outreach to help build these big contributor articles. So, when it comes to promoting an article, where do you even start? What’s your strategies? I know you have a lot of Pinterest pins going on, there must be a good RV community on Pinterest. But besides that, what else have you got going on, when you have a piece of content finished?
Bill: We’ll reach out to anybody we link to within the article and mention that we link to them. We do initial outreach to get people like quotes and suggestions and things like that into the article beforehand. So it’s kind of like a pre-promotion. So that way, once it’s live, they’re like, “Oh, show me once it’s live.” because they contributed to it. So that gets a lot of shares, some backlinks, things like that. Doing any kind of original research, or studies, or things or statistics of any kind is usually a really good way. And then reaching out to journalists and different news outlets and stuff like that is a good way to build links. Kayla, can you think of anymore?
Adam: I actually signed up to HARO recently, which is, people keep mentioning it to me, Help A Reporter Out, and you get your email twice a day. So if there was anything about or RV or stuff like that, you can get mentioned in some pretty big newspaper and blog websites. But you gotta be quick. One day, it’s like those journalists got to do however many articles a day. So it’s like, when you get that email, you better be replying or you better have a VA monitoring that or something. Hit me up pretty quickly. But you can get links from some very powerful websites by using HARO. And it’s free. I mean, there’s a free plan. That’s all I’ve signed up for. That’s an interesting one. And look, I love the idea of these contributor posts that you’re talking about. You often see it like, 30 SEOs gave their tips or, 20 social media marketers gave their tips. And this is really good. It’s a really good strategy because, like you’re saying, those people feel like they contributed. It was fairly easy for them to do. They just give you over a paragraph or something, you do the work. You build out this big, beautiful article with loads of contributors, and they link back to it and share it because it’s a quality piece of content.
Bill: The key to making that work, too, is making sure that the article that comes out of that makes them look awesome. So the design, the graphics are designed really well, the formatting looks good. It looks good on mobile and desktop, no matter how you look at it, because the way an article looks is just as important, sometimes even more important than the actual quality of the words on the page itself. Because when someone lands somewhere and it looks well designed, like professionally done, they instantly trust it over just seeing a white background with some text on it.
Adam: Your site is class. I love it. What are you using. I know you mentioned Thrive in your podcast, but I mean, that could have changed or maybe you’re too far in bed with Thrive. Is that still what you used to build your website, the Thrive Content Builder?
Bill: Yeah, we still use Thrive. Kayla use, what’s it called?
Kayla: I use Elementor for my site. I like Elementor a lot better.
Adam: I went with that on the Digital Nomad Cafe for my website, Astra Theme and Elementor. And I had Thrive before but it kept breaking for me, but maybe I just didn’t know what to do with it.
Bill: Yeah. We’ve had a lot of issues with it over the years, but their support team is really good. They’re good about fixing things right away. And they’ll actually go in and if anything breaks, they’ll fix it for you and stuff like that. So it’s been a rough ride, but all in all, they fixed pretty much all the issues, and it’s working pretty well now.
Adam: That’s good. And like you said, it builds beautiful sites, it has content all sectioned up. It’s class. I absolutely love what you did over there. It’s something to be admired. And for people who are aspiring to build authority websites, or websites in general, it’s very good. Even the holiday gift guides I see there. Gift guides for our viewers. I mean, that’s perfect. As this Christmas, hopefully, you’re getting plenty of links and shares on that piece of content over the Christmas. When it comes to all the outreach, do you use any tools for this or is it purely just research yourselves or with an assistant or a freelancer to help you with all of the outreach?
Bill: We do like to use a freelance assistant when we’re able to, but it’s been —
Kayla: It’s been just us for quite a while.
Bill: Yeah. Not the best experience working with others. We need to get better at finding and hiring the right people. But I think that’s a problem a lot of entrepreneurs have. But as far as tools go, we use mailshake for the actual outreach. What is it? Hunter.io, I believe, for the email finding, for what we can. No, Violanorbert is the one we use.
Kayla: Didn’t we just start using BirdSend?
Bill: No, that’s for email marketing. Not for outreach.
Adam: Yeah. I have a mailshake, myself. That’s what I use. And Hunter as well. So similar tech sites for outreach. So, look, this has been so good. So what will be your tips, takeaway with all the experience you have years down the line? I mean, when you look at a website like yours that’s so well established, and ranked so well, it gets so much traffic from Google, for somebody who’s just starting out that might be like, “Jesus, where do you start? How would I even begin to build something like this?” So what would be your tips to somebody who wanted to build a website and a niche that they could then potentially live off, like you’re able to now, with the wandering RV?
Bill: Start small. See if it’s something that you like. Start with one piece of content after one keyword and don’t stop building links and promoting that until it ranks. Don’t try creating content every week or every month, or whatever it is, until you’ve kind of gotten a process down, and you can find something that actually works. Too many people are just creating way too much content. I would say spend more time researching keywords, spend more time writing better content, spend more time building links. And don’t worry about having X number of articles on your site or anything like that. You can rank a site with literally one page. It doesn’t have to have all this different stuff on it. And the website that you see now was not the website we first had.
Kayla: Oh, no. It’s changed a lot.
Bill: Yeah. We’ve redesigned it at least three times. And this is the final one. And it’s been a lot of iteration.
Adam: I’m done. I’m not doing this again. It’s challenging, but it’s true. When you have a website, it’s not just built and done. It’s a constant innovation. Ideally, you’re always going to be looking to improve it, looking to roll out new things. I mean, messenger is a big thing at the minute, the Facebook Messenger. And I’m looking to guess Facebook Messenger chat bots, the episode with Paul S who’s doing the chatbots for like, John Lee Dumas and Amy Porterfield at screwtheninetofive.com. His episode should be released tomorrow on the podcast. Once you hear it out, you’re like, “Oh, my God. Why am I not doing that?”
Bill: What I will say on that, to anyone listening to this, don’t get distracted by all the new fancy technology. Pick one strategy and just keep hammering it until you get it to work. And don’t give up on it until you’ve really exhausted it. Because too many people are just like, “Oh, I’ll try chatbots. Oh, I’ll try Facebook ads. Oh, I’ll try SEO. Oh, I’ll try social media. Oh, XYZ.” And they only do it for a couple days or a couple of weeks or whatever. And then they give up on it. And that is kind of what held us back in the beginning. I did how many different businesses, I had different ecommerce stores and Etsy stores, and all kinds of different stuff that I was trying. And I never was successful until I found the one thing that started to work and then just hammered home on it.
Adam: Double double down on it.
Bill: Yeah.
Adam: I mean, it helps when you have a partner who can help you keep aligned, because mine is good for calling me on my shit, too. She’s like, “Adam, stop it. You’re trying to do too many things again. Get focused, please. I know we could possibly do that. But you can’t do it all right now. Let’s get this thing working.”
Kayla: I think more than that, too. You should build relationships with other people, more than social media and everything too.
Bill: Yeah. I mean, a big part of our success has been building relationships. Like with you, Adam, for example, doing this podcast. Like getting on other podcasts or even just listening to podcasts and reaching out and saying, “Hey, this was an awesome episode. I learned this and implemented it. And this happened.” Don’t even ask for anything. Just reach out and say thank you.
Kayla: Even the people that you want in your posts. Like when I reach out to people, I try to be as personable. And if they have a website, I read it and I’ll try to talk to them before just asking them for something. Just like building relationships in general has helped a lot.
Bill: And I think I even mentioned this in the article that you were talking about, the white hat SEO one. I mentioned relationship link building is the best link building we’ve ever had.
Kayla: Yeah. Just as important as anything else.
Adam: Is this mostly done virtual or do you go to events? Because I mean, we’re in the USA, I mean, I know there’s all sorts of events for bloggers and digital marketers and social media.
Kayla: We have gone to some events, but mostly it’s online.
Bill: It’s like 99% virtual.
Kayla: Yeah.
Adam: That’s fair enough. I agree with what you’re saying. This personalized outreach to relevant people in your industry. I like doing videos. I’m a wild man for talking. So I’ll send people voice clips on Facebook or Instagram. I’ll record a video and attach it to an email and be like, “Hey, what’s up?”
Bill: Yeah. Plus, once you start building relationships, you can do what Steve did with you and I and just introduce people to each other that you think would get along and then people will view you as a connector and as helpful and all this other stuff. It’s not like I’m trying to ask Steve for anything. He just introduced us just because he knows that you and I would be potentially a good fit for the podcast and everything.
Adam: Yeah. He knows that I’m into building affiliate sites and building what I call authority websites. He was just like, “Oh, you gotta meet Bill and Kayla.” I was like, “Alright, sweet.” And I was like, “Jesus, look at that site. That is an absolute beast. I gotta talk to these two.” How the hell did you build such a thing? And it’s consistent effort over multiple years, or extensive research and lots of work.
Bill: Pretty much, yeah.
Adam: That’s what it sounds like. So look, thank you both for coming on and joining me. I really appreciate it. So where can people find you on the internet? If they were looking to connect with you?
Bill: Yeah. Thanks for having us, Adam. For me, you can go to Billwidmer.com or Thewanderingrv.com. We have contact pages on both those sites. Kayla, you want to give the name of your site out?
Kayla: My site is thesustainableharvest.com.
Adam: Yeah. Looking forward to it. That’s the newest one, the newest venture. Elementor, not Thrive. So we’ll see how that gets on.
Bill: Yeah, it’s been interesting.
Kayla: I’ve been doing that for almost two years now. It’s just that I’ve redesigned my site so many times, and I just recently rebranded it. So it’s kind of new, but I’ve been doing it for a while.
Bill: It takes some time to figure out what you want.
Kayla: Yeah.
Adam: But it always does. This is the thing, too, for people who are listening. Even when you are experienced, you still do things and then you’re like, “No, that’s not quite right. Let’s change it again.” That’s just life. But the hardest part is — or not the hardest part — but the most important part is taking action. Getting something up, sticking to it, being consistent, and doing the work. That’s the most important thing at the end of the day. Because if you’re just thinking about it not doing anything, nothing’s gonna come of it.
Bill: Yeah, absolutely. And this might be totally random compared to everything we’ve been talking about. But one of my biggest tips for anybody listening to this is get some kind of daily journal, like the self journal, or John Lee Dumas has that. What is it called? Not the Master Journal, the other one. I forget what it’s called. But if you look it up, you’ll find it. And it’s just like these journals where you figure out where you want to be in three or six or 12 months. You figure out your exact goal, you write it down, you write down an action plan, like the steps that you need to take over that time. And then every single day, you write, here’s what I’m gonna do today. And at the end of the day, you write, did I do it? Yes or no, why or why not? What can I do better tomorrow? What am I grateful for? And that’s it. Takes less than five minutes a day. And it keeps you on track. And it’s probably one of the biggest things that’s ever helped me to get our site to where it’s at and keep me accountable. Along with Kayla, of course.
Adam: Of course. I have the Best Self Journal sitting literally right beside me on the desk, which is similar. Yeah. I don’t use it religiously. I use it kind of weekly. But I think it’s really important too, like just on what you’re talking about there, to not set yourself too many things to do then you don’t accomplish them. Because then you’re wiring your brain in a way that’s like, “I don’t do all the things I said I was going to do.” So small, correct actions, taking actions, doing things that you say you’re going to do so you’re not lying to yourself. And that helps to build that momentum, and also build neural pathways in your brain just like, “I do the things I’m going to say.” And not somebody who’s like, “I’m going to do all these things.” and then you don’t do them. And then you’re kind of reinforced in that belief. So don’t be that person.
Bill: Yeah, that’s huge. And if anybody out there has been lying to themselves or saying they’re going to get something done and haven’t been able to do it, you can always change that. Don’t continue to beat yourself up. Just say, “Look, this is what I’ve been doing, this what I’ve been doing wrong.” and then start small. Say, “I’m going to take five minutes today to do this one task.” and then do that. And then just those little, teeny tiny baby steps will build that confidence in yourself over time.
Adam: That’s it. Marginal gains. That’s what it’s all about. 1% better every day, at least.
Bill: Yes, exactly.
Adam: That’s a brilliant story. Look, thank you, Bill and Kayla. Have a lovely evening. And thank you very much for joining me. And thank you to all our listeners for tuning in. I hope you found this actionable and insightful.
Bill: Thanks for having us, Adam.
Kayla: Thank you.
