It took three months of planning, countless hours of research, and another forty hours to write, but our business plan was completed in June of 2012.  I found out that writing a business plan takes a lot of work.  However, over the last year I’ve learned something else… fleshing out the business plan is even harder.

Looking back over the year, we’ve made some great strides.  New sites, cool systems, and techie technology were added to make LMS run very proficiently.  I’m really pleased when I see how far we’ve come.  Mistakes?  Yes, we’ve made our fare share as well.  Going through this process has taught me so much, but one thing really sticks out in my mind.  Everything takes longer and is more difficult to accomplish than you originally plan it to be.  It can be disheartening!  It is really hard after all the planning to have staff members not work out, technical delays, and projects catch snags so that the entire plan is delayed.

It reminds me about Christopher Columbus who sailed across the globe in 1492.  The journey was long, and after more than sixty days, his crew feared that Columbus was wrong because they hadn’t found land.  In their fears, they considered a revolt so that they could turn back.  However, they had already come too far.  There was NO TURNING BACK.  They were better off to take risk and keep going.  It turned out that three days later they would discover the new world, simply by moving forward.

While I’m not discovering a new world, we are trying to push the envelope on what is possible with marketing.  Anytime you step out on a new venture or try something new, there is an inherent risk you are forced to take.  Like Columbus’s crew, many people want give up before they taste success.  When things get tough and don’t go as planned, it is easy to retreat or want to turn back around.  But the glory of success might just be a few days away.  The first year of our business plan didn’t go exactly like I had hoped that it would.  However, I still hold on to the believe that the greatest successes are coming.

Entrepreneurs take risks!  That is our in our nature.  We calculate a risk and go for it.  From everything I’ve learned thus far, I firmly believe it is better to give 110% and forget returning to security, then to only slightly attempt something for fear that it might not work.  We must find the courage to believe that there is something great that will happen in just a few days if we don’t give up.

Most believe that when you sleep until eight in the morning, one should feel rested!  Not me!  Last night there was a terrible storm… The storm wasn’t outside, but rather in my brain.  As a responsible adult, I  did go to bed early enough, but then a thought grabbed me and before I realized it, two hours had passed.  A glance at my watch told me I was in trouble as it was already one thirty.  Of course I wasn’t just staring into blank space, but looking at the small screen of my phone.    Right before the red warning sign stop blinking show me the power was low, I decided to plug it in for a good night’s recharge.  I wanted to sleep, but the wheels kept spinning…

Here’s what I learned about last night:

1. There is a web FTP Script that you can purchase for about $12.00.
2. There is an affiliate management script that can be purchased for $48.00
3. There is a way for someone to register as an affiliate and also be added to an email autoresponder at the same time.
4. You can include hidden affiliate fields in a Mail Chimp opt-in form.

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In today’s post I’ll give you a quick an honest review of Platform University and how it has helped me keep learning and growing.  The founder of Platform University is Michael Hyatt, former CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers.  I found Michael’s blog a while back while researching something and ended up buying his book, Platform in 2012.

As a marketing consultant, I’m no stranger to online membership areas, communities, and author’s promoting their products, so I expected there to be some sort of extra add-on to the book.  I figured I’d just read the book and get a little bit out of it.  While to book is pretty good (read my review here), I have to say, I was hoping to have more questions answered about the process of writing a book, getting published, and going to the next level.    While the book is a great foundation, I wanted some personal interaction and help, and that is why I decided to check out Platform University.  I found that Platform University provided that extra little boost of learning how to grow your personal brand and “get noticed in a noisy world.”

In today’s review, I’ll share with you the GOOD, the BAD, and why I’ll probably stay connected to Platform University for a while as I’m working on some of my business goals.  Just for clarity sake, Platform University doesn’t have an affiliate program, so I’m not receiving any compensation for writing this.  Really, this is a “thank you” to Michael and his team for the help they’ve given me as I’ve been fine tuning the “art” of building a platform.

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May has come and gone and it’s time for another Blog Traffic Report.  In May, we continued to grow in traffic without doing a whole lot of work.  The biggest boost in traffic was from a post I did about my daughter and facing failure that ended up going viral.  I seldom share my business stuff on my personal Facebook account, but in this case I did and I had dozens and dozens of shares.

You can see that post here.

In May, we didn’t acheive any major goals for the blog due to another busy schedule, but we did continue to post as much helpful information as possible. This is now my 100th post, so we added 20 new informative posts in May and are averaging about 20 posts per month on the blog.  I’m really pleased with our growth and thankful for our readers who are connected with us.  Let’s break down the traffic and results we received.

May Traffic Report

Over 4000 unique visits came to the site in MAY!  Awesome!  This is our first time hitting this milestone, but I’m really pleased with it.  Last month we had 2,639 unique visitors with a total of 3,100 visits to the site.  As you can see we really crushed it in May with some posts that really gained some traction.

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