Aaron Hoos

Friends,

It’s the time of year when I reflect on the past 12 months and think about what’s in store for the next 12 months.

I’ve had an amazing year and am so thankful for you.

For my clients, thank you for entrusting me with a critical part of your business. I’m thrilled to have been able to write for some pretty great people.

For my friends, followers, and community, I have benefited immeasurably from your insight. I hope to have given back even a small portion of what you’ve given me.

You’re not going to hear much from me this week because I’m wrapping up some end-of-year projects for clients, I’m planning for next year, and I’m relaxing with family and friends. I hope you take some time to recharge your batteries as well.

I’ll be back with a vengeance in 2012 and I hope you will be, too.

Let’s work together this coming year to take your financial or real estate business to a higher level than you thought possible!

Have a fun, relaxing, happy, and safe holiday season.

Sincerely,

Aaron Hoos

It’s a weird time of year: Some clients still have the pedal to the floor and I’m writing at full speed for them — nothing changes during this season; other clients are slowing down and winding up the year’s projects; other clients are already in the prep stages for a strong start in 2012. It’s hard to schedule… plus there are all the seasonal get-togethers to attend.

Here are some highlights of what I’m doing this week:

• Writing online articles for a credit repair expert, an income fund, a mortgage broker, and a stock pick website.
• Working on two books for real estate investors and starting the research and planning stages of a book for a tax prep specialist.
• I’m also doing a lot of work for 2012. I have some plans to grow my business and I’d like to start implementing them on January 1.

Oh, and I’m going to the dentist this week, which doesn’t really qualify as a “highlight”… although I take pretty good care of my teeth so it’s not a low-light either.

When I was a kid, I watched “Family Ties”. Yeah, I’m that old… or young. Whatever.

One of the occasionally recurring characters on “Family Ties” was deadbeat Uncle Ned — a guy who struggled with alcoholism and periodically ran afoul of the law. The actor who portrayed him was character actor who had only started his on-screen acting career about 3 years earlier.

Recognize him? He appears about 3 seconds into this clip:

Yeah, it’s Tom Hanks. By the time this aired (in 1983 or 1984), Hanks had made appearances in episodes of “Happy Days”, “Taxi”, and “The Love Boat”, and he had a regular role in a show called “Bosom Buddies”.

And before all that, his very first on-screen appearance (according to IMDb.com) was in a 1980 horror movie called “He Knows You’re Alone”. Check out his appearance here:

For his role in “He Knows You’re Alone”, Hanks was paid a whopping $800.

Today, Hanks earns a little more than $800 when he makes movies.

Eight years after his on-screen debut, Hanks brought home $1.7 million from his role in “Big”. And it just went up from there. With the exception of his work in “Toy Story” and its sequels, he consistently makes $15 million to $20 million (or more from gross profits and participation) in his movies.

I find Tom Hanks’ success story inspiring and instructional. Here’s why:

• Hanks is just a regular guy who is good at what he does. He’s not famous because he has an outrageous personality or rugged good looks or muscles that stick out everywhere. He’s an average guy but he’s a great actor. (Interesting note: In a Vanity Fair interview, Hanks himself admitted that his acting wasn’t good in the beginning but he improved over time). I think I’m a regular guy. That tells me that talent lasts, and it inspires me to constantly get better.
• Hanks is now known for (and made a ton of money from) his dramatic roles (and sometimes has a romantic comedy roles). But he wasn’t always known for that. Throughout the 80′s, he was a goofy guy who usually got the comedic roles. He did okay there but he has successfully reinvented himself as a respected dramatic actor. We all go through different phases in our work. The successful ones are willing to reinvent themselves until they find something that works.
• Hanks slogged for more than a decade before he achieved what most of us would call “success” — he worked tirelessly in live theater and then on television shows and movies. Hard work and thankless sweat are a prerequisite to success. If you want success but aren’t willing to work for it, success will elude you.

Success doesn’t land on your doorstep. You need to work for it. You need to get up every day and go do whatever it is that you do and you need to get better at it.

If you’re a real estate professional or a financial advisor (or any other type of entrepreneur for that matter), Hanks’ story can inspire you. There are calls to make and relationships to build and paperwork to do. I can sometimes feel like like a thankless, slogging grind.

But grind it out everyday! Get better everyday! Stop wondering how to be successful and instead start thinking about how to do more of the hard work you need to do. That’s the key to real success!

Since I rarely get to meet my blog readers or clients in person, I try to occasionally post a few things about myself from time to time so you can learn more about me. (For example, check out my blog posts Aaron Hoos: Writer and Aaron Hoos: More than you need to know about me plus 8 random facts).

In this blog post, I want to tell you about the 13 sites I can’t live without. These are the first sites I open for the day (actually, since I’m using Firefox 5, they just open automatically as “App Tabs”) and I reference them regularly throughout the day.

SOCIAL TABS

The first four tabs are my social tabs:

• On the left is Facebook. Who DOESN’T have Facebook open all day, every day? haha. Since I work at home (mostly), my social interaction can be somewhat limited, so this keeps me connected to friends and family.




• Next is Twitter. I used to use TweetDeck but since I’m in my browser all day long, I found it easier to just use Twitter itself. For a while I was using UberSocial on my mobile but I confess that I wasn’t engaging with my Twitter followers as much as I would have liked. I find that I’m way more connected when I’m using my browser-based Twitter account. (By the way, are we connected on Twitter? Follow me at @AaronHoos and maybe tweet a “hello”).




• Next is Quora. I’ve only started using Quora within the last couple of months and I haven’t answered any questions on it… but I am addicted to reading questions and answers and have used Quora for a considerable amount of research. Check out Quora.




• My last social tab is LinkedIn. I consider LinkedIn to be the business version of Facebook in terms of my interaction. I wasn’t really engaged on LinkedIn for a while, because it felt like they were being outpaced by other social networking sites, but they’re getting caught up and I’m becoming more engaged there. Here are 6 ways I’m creating opportunities from LinkedIn. I would love it if you would connect with me on LinkedIn.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT TABS

The next 6 app tabs are about managing my business:

• The next tab is Upvise. I love this app. It’s both my project management and my CRM system in one totally awesome little package. It’s easy to use and it syncs with my Blackberry so I have everything no matter where I am. Yes, there are more robust project management and CRM systems out there but this has everything I need. You should check out Upvise! (Not an affiliate link).




• The next tab is MindMeister. I’m a strong proponent of mindmapping and this is the site I use. (I used to use a well-known desktop-based mindmapping software but I prefer this one. I subscribe to their premium software and use it frequently to capture my ideas and to capture client content as well. In fact, if I’ve ever written an ebook for you, it probably started its life in this place. Oh, and I’ve built a couple of public mindmaps there. Check out my Business Meta-Map and my Build Your Sales Funnel map. If you’re into mindmapping, check out MindMeister. (Affiliate link).




• The next tab is Delicious. Pretty standard. It’s where I store my bookmarks (duh!).




• The next tab is my Google Account. From here, I jump to Google Docs, Google Analytics, Google Trends, Google’s Keyword Tool, and Youtube pretty frequently.




• Then there’s Guru.com. This is where quite a bit of my business comes from. I use Guru as part of my CRM system and it’s one of the tools I use to communicate with clients, manage projects, and accept payment for work. If you want to hire me, I’d advise going to my Guru account and requesting a quote.




• The last tab in this group of app tabs is the WordPress Admin page for AaronHoos.com. I’m always here poking around on my blog making tweaks and adjustments and writing posts.

COMMUNICATION TABS

There are two app tabs I use for communication: My primary email address (aaron@aaronhoos.com — hey, why not send me an email and say hello!) and a secondary email address that I use for blog and ezine subscriptions, archives, and personal IMs.

AND GOOGLE, OF COURSE

And the 13th site I can’t live without is Google, which I use to search basically everything all the time.

SITES I LIKE BUT DIDN’T MAKE THE CUT

The above sites make sense to keep open all the time and there’s a manageable number of them. But there are lots of other sites I use slightly less frequently that I just don’t keep open all the time. These include:

• FireFTP for file management.
• Pingdom for tracking how my site functions. I subscribe to their uptime and performance monitoring.
• Evernote is a site I don’t use enough. It sort of fell out of favor with me when its Blackberry interface didn’t work for me. But I do like it and use it and maybe I really should put it into my App Tabs.
• Foursquare is a site I access pretty regularly but I only access it on my Blackberry so it’s technically a site I can’t live without but it’s not something I run in my browser.
• GrooveShark is quickly becoming a site I spend some time on… probably more time than I should. And for that reason, I purposely avoid iTunes because I’d bankrupt myself buying music.

Okay, let’s be honest for a moment here — Not every post on your blog is a nominee for an Academy Award.

Yes, there were great posts that you feel are so good they could spawn their own religion. There were good posts that you’d be proud to bring home to meet mom. But if we were sitting in a Bloggers Anonymous group, you’d reluctantly admit that there were also blog posts that you phoned in. There were times when you settled for “meh” when you should have pushed yourself a bit to get “woohoo”.

I’ve phoned in blogs, too. I hate to admit it, but it’s true. We all have posts that are on the leeward side of mediocre. Sure, it’s not as if those phoned-in posts were scraped off of the bottom of your shoe — they’re not THAT bad — but those posts lack the sparkle that most of your blog posts have. They’re not the link-magnets that some of your other content is.

What should you do about those duds?

I don’t think you should delete them or even overwrite them. Blogs (even business blogs) are richer and more textured with their flaws. And that content can still be put to good use even if a particular post wasn’t your brightest moment.

Here’s what I suggest instead:

KNOW WHY YOU BLOG

First, make sure you know what role your blog plays in your sales funnel and in your business. (Here’s a related blog post you might find useful: A simple tool to solve your blog’s identity crisis). You can spice up your phoned-in blog posts but you first need to know what your blog’s purpose is.

FIND THE BLOGS YOU PHONED IN

Next, identify the posts that you phoned in. Yeah, suck it up and look. Maybe start with your top 3 or top 5 or top 10 or top 5% of most-phoned-in blog posts. (Chances are, you already know what some of them are).

However, if the list seems overwhelmingly large and you’re reluctant to tackle such a big project, maybe just pick a few of the worst — the ones that were phoned in long-distance on a rotary dial phone in a thunderstorm. Fix up your worst few first. Make them your best posts. Then go on to the next worst.

USE THESE IDEAS TO IMPROVE YOUR PHONED-IN BLOG POSTS

Now it’s time to take a look at those blog posts. Use one or more of the ideas listed below, write a totally awesome, bring-a-tear-to-your-eye blog post — the kind of blog post that your grandmother tells her friends at the quilting club. Here are some ideas to inspire you to build great content on a foundation of your so-so content:

1. What would you have written if you had shown up for work that day?
2. What could you have said that would have made this a piece of cornerstone content instead of the lukewarm leftovers that it seems to be?
3. What additional questions might this content raise if someone took the time to read this post?
4. How does this content align with your blog’s focus and, more important to this exercise, what was left unstated that really should have been mentioned?
5. If a potential new client called you up and said that they were intrigued by this post and want to know more, what would you tell them?
6. If two or three industry experts stumbled upon your blog and it started a discussion or debate between then, what would the conversation be about?
7. If your mentor asked you to list for him or her the 5 ways that this wishy-washy post connects with your very best blog post, what would you say?
8. If this blog post was the start of just one chapter in a $397 ebook, what would the ebook be about? And what would the rest of the chapter say?
9. What questions would your target market need to ask in order for you to answer with the following: “Those are great questions. To get a comprehensive answer, you should first read this blog post [link to phoned-in blog post] and when you’re finished, here’s the rest of the answer…”

UPGRADE YOUR POSTS

Now that you’ve got great content based around a phoned-in blog post, it’s time to post it. Open your phoned-in blog post and add a section at the end of the post with something to this effect:

Then say whatever you want to say.

• Make it compelling
• Focus on quality
• Try to write a “bridge” between that mediocre content and some of your better content
• Add tons of extra value — a great, free idea with some step-by-step how-to’s
• Add a link or two to get people clicking elsewhere in your blog
• Update the categories, tags, labels, or whatever you use

Want to see an example? Of course you do. Here’s a post of mine (written back in May 2009) that feels a bit like the runt of the litter. I didn’t exactly “bring it” that day: Virtual business meets real business. Note the mediocre blog post and then a lengthier (and, in my opinion, far superior) blog post below that connects the content of the phoned-in blog to where my blog’s focus is today.

USE THE NEW AND IMPROVED POST

The goal here is to turn your mediocre blog posts into works of art. So be sure to use it. Refer to it. Link to it. If the content isn’t good enough to refer to and link to then go back rewrite your edited part! Make it sing. Turn it into valuable content.

Write related content in more current blog posts and link back to that blog post. Tell your readers (or don’t tell them) that they should be sure to read the initial post and the note you added later. If you want other ways to get people to link to your blog, try some of these blog post defibrillator techniques.