How Much Would You Improve?

by Jason Helmes

We should all have “balance” in our lives, right?

We hear this all the time. Balance, balance, balance.

We should have just the right amount of health food, balanced with the occasional taste of junk food.

We should have just the right amount of work, balanced with rest/relaxation/vacation.

We should have just the right amount of working out, balanced with off-days and active recovery.

We need to train the mind, body, and soul, right?

How do you relax?

What do you do?

Are you a “Netflix and chill” kinda person, who comes home from their long day at work and immediately throws on the comfiest pair of sweatpants you can find?

Are you a “sporting event” type, who lives to find the best game on ESPN each night. It doesn’t matter what team it is, you’re going to watch an athletic competition.

Are you a “Facebook junkie”, who finishes dinner to fire up their smartphone and spend a few hours looking at your timeline and living vicariously through social media celebrities?

Are you a “book reader”, who can’t wait to curl up in the corner of your couch and lose yourself in the latest tales of science fiction?

We all have our times to relax. Times to relax are integral – it’s a positive to get some down time and de-stress from the grind.

What would happen if your “de-stressing time” took a different form?

What if you turned your passion, whatever you did during your “down time” into a side business?

If you’re a “Netflix and chill” kind of person, what would happen if you started blogging about niche Netflix movies?

You could review one movie per week about obscure movies only found on Netflix. You could post them to various message boards and grow your readership.

If you’re a “sporting event” kinda person, what would happen if you started your own site and provided commentary and analysis of the “Game of the Night”?

You could pick the best match-up of each particular night and do an analysis of what happened. You could embed the video highlights and encourage comments from readers who disagreed with your opinion.

If you’re a “social media junkie” who loves reading about gossip and celebrities, what would happen if you started a site which compiled all of the various “paparazzi sites” out there?

You could call it “Celeb-Hub”, and it would contain the best in the world of celebrity gossip for each day. (Perez Hilton did something very similar to this. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.)

If you’re a “book reader”, what would happen if you made it your goal to start a blog, read one book each week, and do a thorough analysis of the book.

You include an Amazon affiliate link for each book, and you are sure to read interesting books in each genre.

What if you set out on your plan, and you began to execute.

Each night, instead of wasting 3-4 hours in front of the TV, or on your smartphone, you began to plug away at your new hobby.

You would find it difficult at first. Nobody would read what you were writing. Nobody would know who you are.

Yet.

Your writing would be terrible, likely, unless you have some natural talent on the written prose.

But if you continued, day in/day out, week in/week out, do you think you would improve?

Might you get better?

Slowly, as you post your articles, your celebrity gossip, your game analysis, or your book reviews, might you start to gain a following?

What would happen if you followed your plan for 6 months?

Would the needle move?

What if you kept at it, you learned tricks along the way, you reached out to others who have been successful in your field, and you kept on your grind?

What if you attended business conferences, you networked, you learned how to grow an email list, and you found a way to monetize your blog over time?

What do you think would happen?

What if you made $100 the first year? Could you figure out what you did wrong and eliminate it? Could you find out what you did RIGHT – and scale it?

Could you turn the $100 into $500? That wouldn’t be too hard, would it? $500 is less than $10 per week, on average.

Could you get better at your craft and become an authority? Over time, would others start to listen to you? After your words and your site start to blossom and bloom, would your word be trusted and would others take your advice?

If you decided, for the next 5 years, you were going to pour every minute of free time into a side hustle, an extra stream of income, or a productive outlet……………….