My K.I.S.S. Method

A reader recently sent me the following:

Love your emails, Jon I look forward to them every day. My trouble is overwhelm so I have committed to starting a little each day. Man, if someone could produce a course on how much overwhelm is a killer and provide a step by step to get through to the other side it would be worth a pretty penny.

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I remember days filled with overwhelm.

But it wasn’t because I had a lot to do to get to where I wanted to go. I still have PILES of work to get to where I want to go, yet I don’t feel overwhelmed.

Overwhelm stems from not knowing what to do.

Indecision.

Analysis paralysis.

Doubt.

You’re not sure that what you’re doing will work. Why should you?

You’re newish and still waiting for results.

You have a brain overloaded with information on all kinds of ways to build an online business.

Several sound good.

In fact, anything that will work sounds good.

You just aren’t sure what will work.

So you’re overwhelmed.

I have the advantage of getting some positive results.

Fortunately, instead of looking for something “better,” I stick with the thing that’s working.

If it ain’t broke…

Here’s how you deal with overwhelm.

As much as I like packaging up what I know into a course and slapping a $97 price on it, this doesn’t warrant a course.

I get to avoid having to write a sales page and you get this info “on the house”.

STEP 1: Choose ONE proven model

This is hard but you have to choose something.

Imagine your dream online business. What is it?

Choose the model that most closely aligns with that.

Maybe it’s showing off your 6 pack abs on YouTube and selling a gazillion fitness programs.

It could be helping local businesses with their SEO and online marketing.

Perhaps you like the idea of dropshipping or creating an e-commerce brand.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s building up an online content publishing business similar to what I do.

There are so many other options.

Whatever you do, pick one and go with it.

All of the above are proven models that work.

STEP 2: Identify the MOST important tasks

Any business model has one or two fundamental tasks. Identify those and focus on those.

Avoid distraction.

Whatever you’re doing at any given time ask yourself whether it’s the most important thing you should be doing to get where you want to go.

For example, for my content biz, the most important thing I can do at any given time is focus on content.

I can either publish more content OR improve existing content.

That’s it.

If that’s all I do (and it pretty much is all I do), it’ll work.

Recently, one thing I did to improve existing content is add a ton of internal links throughout all my niche sites.

I spent days doing this. Link Whisper helped a ton. Without LW, this would have taken months. I used it on every site to create literally thousands and thousands of internal links.

How are internal links focusing on content?

Links are part of content. They help users. Together they help the content rank. Internal links are good good good.

Because I’m a systems guy I’m working on implementing better internal linking as I publish new content but in the meantime, it was good to interlink all the existing content.

STEP 3: Spend 80%+ of your time on the most important task(s).

Now that you know what the key drivers are that will grow your business… spend at least 80% of your time on that.

What about the other 20%?

Things will come up. You’ll field emails from readers, deal with hosting issues, monetization, etc. Don’t worry, the 20% that isn’t important but kinda needs to be done will suck up the other 20% of your time.

What you need to avoid is getting sucked into rabbit holes that really don’t do anything for your business.

You should NOT spend time on website design. Use a theme as-is. Way too many people tinker with design. Every single successful content publisher I know pretty much uses themes as-is. They don’t touch them.

And these folks get millions of monthly visitors. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for you.

Social media: Focus only on channels that can send real traffic.

For most niches, it’s one or two social channels at best.

If you really want to establish a presence on all social channels, wait until you have some serious revenue and then outsource.

The time vs. results with social, unless it’s a great fit for your niche, is not worth your time.

I could go on and on.

It’s easier telling you what to focus on than what to avoid.

Focus on content – new and old.

What about building links?

If you like link building, go to it. I don’t do it. But based on what other folks tell me, it works if you do it right.

If I focused on ranking for high-value KWs I’d build links. I’d focus a good chunk of time on it too just because that would be a high-value task.

A high-value task is something that gets huge results.

For me, focusing on content gets huge results. It’s the main results-driver.

STEP 4: Choose a high-impact default task

This has been huge for me.

When you fall into a state of procrastination or indecision and can’t get yourself to do anything other than mindlessly read more blog posts or watch videos, snap yourself out of it and do your default task.

My default task is to write an article or do KW research.

I’m not kidding.

When I find myself wasting time not sure what I should do, I snap myself out of it by writing for one of my niche sites.

When you’re wasting time chasing shiny objects, do your default task.

If you do your default task enough, you’ll get results (assuming you choose the right default task).