Welcome to my Business & Lifestyle Review for Quarter 2, 2015.
Each quarter I’m going to write a very detailed review how I did when it came to achieving the previous quarterly goals both in business and my persona life.
I do this not only to help me track my own progress, but I want to be as transparent as possible about what’s going on in my business and life. I want to lead by example by showing you what’s working for me, and what’s not – both in business and when it comes to my lifestyle/traveling. And I do all this by telling stories in writing, photos and video.
Check out my Epic Biz & Lifestyle Review for Q1 here.
In each quarterly report I’ll cover the following topics:
- Did I hit my quarterly goals?
- Lessons learned during this quarter
- Revenue/expenses (full breakdown of revenue/expenses may come in future reviews)
- Lifestyle design & travel check
- Plans for next quarter
- Other things worth mentioning
Without further ado, let’s get into my first ever Business and Lifestyle Review for quarter 2, 2015. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!
Warning! This is a 7,392 word in-depth blog post covering everything I’ve done for the past 3 months, the lessons I learned and goals for next quarter, mixed with text, a lot of photos and some videos. Enjoy, and do let me know what you think in the comments please!
Did I Hit My Goals For Q1?
My 11 goals for Q2 were:
- Survey my audience
- Set up my funnel properly with Infusionsoft
- Finish recording my Virtual Summit Mastery program
- Finish slides for exclusive Virtual Summit Webinar
- Get sales page done for Virtual Summit Mastery
- Get 1-2 high end consulting clients I can use as case studies for virtual summits
- Start writing on my book on how to create, promote and profit from a virtual summit
- Get featured on bigger podcasts and online publications
- Promote Natalie Sisson, Ramit Sethi and Selena Soo
- Create and complete my daily routine (and sticking to it)
1. Survey my audience
I didn’t actually send out the survey yet to my audience, so in some way I failed with this goal.
However, I did set up my new funnel with Infusionsoft (see below) where I encourage people to tell me what they’re struggling with and respond to my emails (even more than before).
I will send out an annual survey at some point this year to my audience, but not sure when I will send it out. I have prepared most of the survey, but right now my biggest focus is on launching my Virtual Summit Mastery later this fall, and I already have proof of concept that this is what people in my audience want, because of my pilot students, case studies, and 100’s of people asking me about it.
2. Set up my funnel properly with Infusionsoft
I accomplished this goal just in time for writing this quarterly review.
Why did it take me so long to get this done and move everything over from AWeber?
Well, now that I just decided to do it, it wasn’t as complex as I first thought, especially after getting some awesome help from Infusionsoft expert Roger Graves Jr. I couldn’t have done it without him… if you’re just getting started with Infusionsoft, I highly recommend him.
Here’s a little snapshot of what my current sequence looks like when you sign up somewhere on my site for my Virtual Summit Mastery Cheat Sheet PDF or one of my content upgrades.
Note From Navid (late 2018): I no longer use Infusionsoft (now Keap), and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. I currently use ConvertKit (I switched from ActiveCampaign recently) and it works extremely well for us at the moment.
3. Finish recording my Virtual Summit Mastery Program
This was a big goal of mine, that I actually didn’t accomplish for many different reasons.
After I moved to San Diego, it was a bit hard for me to get focused, and then when I moved back to Cancun end of April, I didn’t have an internet connection so I had other things to think about.
Now I’m finally back on track with everything and working extremely hard to make this the BEST program and step-by-step system out there for creating, promoting and profiting from a virtual summit to skyrocket your business and brand online.
While you wait for the official launch of VSM, check out some epic virtual summits my pilot students are putting together:
Self-Publishing Success Summit
I’ve been working with Chandler Bolt since early May on The Self-Publishing Success Summit to make it “the online event of the year”… and I’m proud to say that we crushed it!
Our initial goal was to get 10,000 opt-ins in total for the summit. Well… we are approaching 25,000 opt-ins now, and we currently have 1,070+ sales. YES, we hit 6 figures from an epic virtual summit!
A big case study on how we did all this is coming soon… but it all started with Chandler downloading my epic Virtual Summit Mastery Blueprint PDF, trusting and following through the system.
Traffic Generation All-Stars
My good friend, Anthony Tran has brought together a fantastic line up of online entrepreneurs for his summit, Traffic Generation All-Stars.
I personally love the branding, and I highly encourage you to sign up to his summit to watch some of the interviews… and if you’re interested in creating a summit yourself, pay attention to his branding, especially the videos… they look very professional!
I remember speaking to Anthony about what topic/niche he would pick… he decided to follow my advice to go more niche and specific, rather than broad.
When it comes to defining your profitable virtual summit theme (step 1 in my 7-step system), niche summits almost always does better than very broad summits (like Online Marketing Summit for example).
A fantastic example of a niche summit is The Self-Publishing Success Summit I created together with Chandler, and we get a very high opt-in rate + sales, speakers promoting it to their audiences etc.
The Appreneur Summit
I love what Charlyn Keating did wit The Appreneur Summit… the power of going super specific with your niche!
Here’s what she has to say about me and VSM:
When I first saw Navid’s Branding Summit, I was blown away. I knew right then I needed to follow his model and do a virtual summit for mobile app and game developers. I had a very small list and few contacts in the industry. Navid helped me put together a strategy to get the right expert speakers and walked me through the technology I needed to pull off a massive worldwide event. By the time my summit launched, I was able to grow my email list 15x, with people in 87 countries. I’m now regarded as an influencer in my industry, and I count some of the leaders in the field as my personal contacts. The summit was featured in Business Insider, App Marketing Weekly, Appmasters and other influential publications. I couldn’t have done it without Navid’s guidance and support. His Virtual Summit Mastery gave my career an incredible boost!
The Sales Funnel Summit
The Sales Funnel Summit is created by fellow VSM member Lauri-Ann Ainsworth. She managed to get some incredible speakers onboard like Ryan Levesque, Russel Brunson, Kevin Rogers, Danny Iny, and many more!
When she first came to me, her idea was to do more of an “Online Marketing Summit”, which is very broad. She decided to go with The Sales Funnel Summit, which is much better.
As I mentioned above, rather go niche and specific, and focus on a topic you have an interest in and would like to position yourself as an expert in.
The WP Summit
Here’s what Jan Koch has to say about me and VSM:
“I grew my email list by 600% and became the go-to WordPress expert for online entrepreneurs.
Navid’s training program Virtual Summit Mastery helped me pull off one of the biggest virtual summits on WordPress, the WP Summit.
The event got 1,100+ attendees from 110+ countries and earned a few thousand dollars in revenue. It helped me get featured on SEMrush, GoDaddy Garage, WP Engine, and other well-renowned platforms.
Without Virtual Summit Mastery, I would have never been able to grow the summit this big. Being the host of the WP Summit opened a number of opportunities I was dreaming of ever since I started my online business.
Thank you Navid!”
If you would like to read more about The WP Summit and what it did for Jan’s business, check out these posts:
Not convinced a virtual summit will work for you yet? Read this post:
The Movement Marketing Summit
I worked with Aj Amyx and Andy Zitzmann on The Movement Marketing Summit from January to April this year.
The summit was a great success, and they got around 2300+ opt-ins and close to 140 sales plus a lot of business after the summit ended.
4. Finish slides for exclusive Virtual Summit Webinar
Since I pushed the launch of Virtual Summit Mastery till September 2015, I decided that I will get the slides done sometime in August.
I already have most of the structure done, and my designer created a nice template in Keynote I can use.
5. Get sales page done for Virtual Summit Mastery
Believe it or not, the sales page for Virtual Summit Mastery is more or less done. Just a few tweaks here and there, and my designer will make the integration very soon. Super excited about this!
What’s interesting is that I wrote most of the copy for the sales page in one day… and that’s after procrastinating for at least a month or two.
6. Get 1-2 high end consulting clients I can use as case studies for virtual summits
Even though I didn’t put much effort into actively finding new high end consulting clients, I took on one exciting new project when Chandler Bolt contacted me.
After he thought about it for a few days, he reached back out to me, and we decided to go all in and create the summit of the year… The Self-Publishing Success Summit (see above). The results speak for themselves…. we CRUSHED all our goals big time!
7. Start writing on my book on how to create, promote and profit from a virtual summit
I actually put this project on hold until I get my Virtual Summit Mastery program completed.
Then I will turn my extremely in-depth online course, into a bestselling book. The book itself will serve as great lead generator for my high end program as well, and be an entry level offer in my funnel which is currently missing.
8. Get featured on bigger podcasts and major publications
I didn’t actively have time to seek out that many opportunities myself, but fortunately some came to me organically.
Business Insider
Yes, I was featured on Business Insider again in May in a roundup post together with some other friends and influencers. This article has 156,000+ views right now!
What’s interesting to note is that my first feature on Business Insider is still getting tons of views, and bringing me more email subscribers. It went up by almost 30,000 views since my last quarterly review post… currently 160,000+ views, pretty impressive ha?!
Podcasts
I was only a guest on one podcast, the Entrepreneur 360 by Yannick Illunga (I believe I recorded it in quarter 1 but it went live in June), mostly because I was traveling quite a bit during quarter 2. That’s about to change as I move into quarter 3 and I already have a few scheduled that I’m very excited about.
Virtual Summits
- Traffic Generation All-Stars
- The Sales Funnel Summit
- Movement Marketing Summit
Other Interviews
- Exclusive interview for Zero to Launch Accelerator – Primoz Bozic interviewed me about my process for creating and promoting epic guides (and expert roundup posts)… turned out really epic. The interview is currently only available for ZTLA students and students in my Virtual Summit Mastery program.
9. Promote Natalie Sisson, Ramit Sethi and Selena Soo
Natalie Sisson’s Freedom Plan Program
My goal was to get 5 sales for promoting Natalie Sisson’s Freedom Plan program.
Not only did I get 8 sales, but I also became her #1 affiliate for getting the most sales for the launch. Hope to do even better on the next one, and I’m a proud member of Natalie’s program myself!
Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch
I promoted another round of Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch in April, and as expected I didn’t do as well as in January when I got 34 sales and won the grand cash prize as his #1 affiliate.
I got around 9 sales for the promo in April, and I’m quite happy with the results considering the last one wasn’t too long ago.
Worth mentioning is that I get $800-$1400 in commission per sale, which adds up even if I only get a few of them.
I tend to get a sale here and there every once in a while without doing anything. They sign up via my link through a blog post, find a video interview on YouTube etc, and then within 60 days buy Zero to Launch, and I get commissions. Love when that happens… thank you Ramit!
Selena Soo’s Get Known, Get Clients
After becoming Selena Soo’s #1 affiliate for the launch of her online course, INFLUENCE, I was very excited for promoting her high-end program, Get Known, Get Clients to my audience (GKGC).
Even though I started the promotion kind of late (mostly due to not having internet in my apartment in Cancun!), I still managed to get quite a lot of leads from sending just one initial email.
Selena offered a detailed free report of how she went from $0-157k in her first year of business, and my audience loved it… and the opt-in rates were very high. I believe I sent her a few 100 leads from this first email alone to my list.
Then I ramped up the promotion a little bit, and also offered a few bonuses for signing up via my affiliate link as I usually do for affiliate promos of this kind.
My initial goal was to be the first person that got to 10 sales because then I would also win Selena’s grand cash prize of $5,000 … and I won, super proud of this (and for being able to support Selena with her launch of course).
I got 13 sales in the end on a $3,000-$3,600 high-end program which is incredible.
I’m looking forward to many more partnerships with Selena, and she will also help me get the word out there for my Virtual Summit Mastery program when I finally launch it to the public later this year.
11. Create and complete my daily routine (and sticking to it)
Creating and completing my daily routine (and sticking to it) was a big goal of mine, and I’m proud to say that I did it almost without failure.
If you ask most successful entrepreneurs, they will tell you that their morning ritual is one of the biggest keys to success in business and life.
And I agree with them… I’m so much more productive now, and get even more done in my business in less time than before, while feeling better than ever before. I’m working hard in my business right now, but I still have time to explore and do some cool adventures as well.
It’s all about finding the right balance, and working smarter, not harder!
Here’s what my current daily routine tend to look like:
- Have a big glass of water the first thing I do when I wake up.
- Meditation for 5-10 minutes on my terrace, overlooking the Caribbean Sea and watching the sunrise.
- Go for a nice run on the beach or swim for 30-60 min in the pool
- Have a healthy breakfast, with fresh fruit, eggs and smoothie.
- Do a high intensity workout, and some stretching.
- Work on the launch of my Virtual Summit Mastery program
- Read or listen to something that will help me in my business right now (for example study product launches).
- Find time to do something that’s not business related, for example go on adventures and spend time with friends.
- Reflect over the day, what I’m grateful for, and then plan tomorrow today (just write down my most important tasks to get done the next day) before I go to bed every night.
Something I will also get started with more and more, is mixing in learning Spanish every morning for 30 minutes. If I stick to this every day, I will improve my Spanish a lot over a couple of months since I can also practice with locals in Cancun.
I personally like to wake up early, between 6-7am in the morning, and get my morning routine done, and then complete my most important tasks in my business before lunch time if possible, so I can have the afternoons free for other things.
With that being said… it’s ok if it’s not always perfect. During product launches, I will probably work even more hours than I usually do, but I have the freedom now to take time off if a friend comes to visit or go to NYC for a couple of days to attend a business meet-up… that’s the power of building a location independent business around your lifestyle you can run from anywhere in the world with as little as a laptop and an internet connection.
Do you have a daily routine? What does your morning ritual and daily routine you stick to every day?
Feel free to share in the comments section!
5 Lessons Learned During Quarter 2
1. Don’t make anything distract you from your daily routine.
2. When I complete my daily routine every day, I feel much better and get a lot more done in my business. At the same time I also have more time to do fun adventures, go on a business trip to NYC, or spend time with my friends when they come to visit me in Cancun.
3. I can make a lot of money in my business if I front load the work, and then reap the benefits later.
I can definitely say that I’ve seen this. In the month of May alone I made over $20k, and I barely worked at all… but people tend to only see the success, and not all the hard work leading up to this.
4. I’m a catch! Period!
What do I mean by that?
Well… to some it may sound kind of “arrogant”… I get that but I don’t care what other people think of me at all.
After a conversation with Todd Herman when I told him that I may not go to NYC at all because I wanted to stay in Cancun and focus on my business after I ended it with a girl I was seeing… he said “Navid, you’re a catch… always remember that”.
I always knew this too… but it felt great hearing it from someone else, and he gave me the extra push I needed to start crushing it in business and life again… and I went to NYC for 9 days which was the BEST trip of the year.
5. Some things take more time than you first think they will. That’s why planning is absolutely key, in order to get things done sooner rather than later.
To give you an example, I struggle at first to move from AWeber to Infusionsoft, but when I finally decided to go all in, I set everything up within a week or two.
Revenue & Expenses (full breakdown is coming at some point)
As I mentioned in my first business & lifestyle review for quarter 1 this year, I made over $70k without putting in that much work. With that being said, I put in a lot of hard work up front, and then it kind of started to snowball more and more.
I will also do a full breakdown of revenue and expenses since I started out online mid June 2013, but that has to wait a little bit because I haven’t had time to sit down and do all of that yet… 😉
I didn’t make as much quarter 2 for several reasons:
1. In January alone I made over $40k and I didn’t expect that happening again unless I did a product launch. Most of this also came from a very successful promotion I did for Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch.
2. I didn’t have great systems in place, and was in a transition phase, moving from AWeber to Infusionsoft which wasn’t completely painless in the beginning. Now everything is set up properly and I can focus on other things like launching my Virtual Summit Mastery program which will bring in a lot of money in my business.
While I didn’t make as much in quarter 2, I still averaged over $10k every single month. And quite frankly, I barely worked at all.
Could have made more? No doubt… but I had some other things on my mind which I will get into below in the lifestyle & travel check section.
So where did the revenue come from?
I made most of it from affiliate partnerships with Ramit Sethi, Selena Soo and Natalie Sisson.
For example in May I made over $20k through promoting Selena Soo’s high end program, Get Known, Get Clients. And as I mentioned above, I also became her #1 affiliate and won the grand cash prize of $5,000 which I will be getting soon.
I didn’t actively promote my Virtual Summit Mastery pilot program that much at all, but I get at least a few requests per week via email, and some turned into paying customers as well.
I also decided to not take on many coaching/consulting clients, because I took on a very big project with The Self-Publishing Success Summit as a partner with Chandler Bolt. While I didn’t get paid a lot up front, I knew this could turn into something incredible…. and I was right! Not only am I getting an amazing case study, but I should be getting a pretty decent payout as well after the summit ends.
My business expenses are still fairly low compared to how much I’m making. I try to invest more and more back into my business as well when it comes to design and getting transcripts done for my Virtual Summit Mastery program, etc. I’m also looking to build my team a bit soon, like hiring a virtual assistant, and later on a copywriter.
Note: Not all of this is actual cashflow in my business, but money I will get throughout the year since some are on monthly payment plans.
Lifestyle Design & Travel Check
I’ve been living abroad now for about 7 months, and I’m loving it… no intention of moving back to Sweden…. EVER.
Yeah, that’s right. I’m currently living my dream. This lifestyle is what I worked so hard to achieve, and now I have it.
I’m all about getting a little bit better each and every day, and keep growing in all aspects of your life… so I definitely have a lot of things left I would like to accomplish, but I couldn’t be happier the way I’ve managed to design my business around my lifestyle, and not the other way around…. in other words, a true lifestyle entrepreneur!
San Diego
Overall I had a really good time in San Diego living in a house in Pacific Beach together with two fellow lifestyle entrepreneurs, Natalie Sisson and Catherine Newton.
I could have probably had an even better time if I wouldn’t have talked to this girl in Cancun during this time. I don’t regret anything, but looking back, I wish I would have done way more stuff in SD, both business and lifestyle related.
On the good side… I got to meet some amazing people, and I can always go back there whenever I want in the future.
Sailing in San Diego Bay
Thanks Rick Day for a taking us on an awesome sailing adventure in San Diego Bay… one of the best things I did during my time in SD for sure.
