Time after time I experienced this strange phenomenon.

No matter how much I would accomplish, after a while I would always find a way to slip back into feeling like shit.

I could wake up on the most beautiful beach in the world with the most gorgeous woman on earth with piles of money in the bank and for some reason my head would whisper softly to me: “Life Sucks”.

It seemed to come out of nowhere and really screwed with my head:

• I’d get my life on track: Then I would feel lost.
• I’d hit record-setting profits: Then I would feel like a loser.
• I’d accomplish a goal: Then I would feel like my life was ruined.

Here’s what it looked like:

Each time I would make an accomplishment there was a period of short lived celebration and then I would hit a rut.

I knew that in reality, none of these negative things I was thinking were true. But for some reason I found myself falling into that same hole over and over again.

After going through this several times I finally figured it out. The problem almost always boiled down to one thing:

I felt like I had stopped making progress.

“To reach a port we must set sail –
Sail, not tie at anchor
Sail, not drift.” 
― Franklin D. Roosevelt

The Key to Happiness is… Progress

I remember the day it clicked. It was late January a few years ago. I was digging around YouTube and came  across a Tony Robbins video about New Years Resolutions. (It’s included below).

The video came out on January 15th, the day when according to Tony Robbins, most people abandon their New Years Resolutions each year. I had recently set my goals for the year so the topic was relevant for me, so being the Tony Robbins fan that I am, I watched it.

He started talking about New Years Resolutions as expected and then… Out of nowhere he said something that reached out and punched me in the face.

In that moment he solved my strange phenomenon forever.

*Watch 1:51 to 2:34 to see the part I’m taking about.

Quotes from the video:

“There’s no denying that inside of you the only thing that’s going to make you happy… is going to be having an experience where on a regular basis you feel like your life is making progress”

“Getting things is not going to make you happy… whether it be money or opportunity, all those things might excite you for the moment, but
[tweetable]the secret to real happiness is Progress[/tweetable]”

Goals Are Important, But So Is The Process

Without progress, nothing is possible.

• You can’t make a million dollars online without methodically launching, testing and optimizing campaigns.
• You can’t get into shape without going to the gym over and over adding more weight to your lifts over time.
• You can’t write a book instantly, you write it one page at a time

Accomplishment Won’t Make You Happy (For long)

And the thing is, once you progress all the way through accomplishing your goal, you have to set another goal and start progressing towards that to continue to feel happy, as his quote says: “having an experience where on a regular basis you feel like your life is making progress“.

Here’s what that looks like:

The things is that more often then not, all it takes for me to feel good is to feel like I’m progressing towards a goal. It can be big or small, far away or near by, I just have to be heading somewhere. It’s simple, powerful and doesn’t require immediate success to work.

Feeling Lost? Do this.

Take a minute and think about whether or not you are making progress at something, anything in your life. And if you can’t think of anything, be honest with yourself about it.

• If you’re making progress, feel good about it and keep it up.
• If you’re not making progress, set a solid goal today and start taking steps towards it.

Then let yourself feel the progress.

• Made a landing page faster today than you did last week? Progress.
• Learned a little more about how to count your calories. Progress.
• Wrote another 500 words for your book? Progress.

Accomplishing a goal feels good, but it can also take some time. So to keep yourself going remember: you can also feel good about the progress you make along the way.

This is Part 3 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

Holy sh#t… The conference was ready to begin.

Everyone took their seats and Jason took the stage to welcome everyone. Here is a run down of the speakers and a little bit about what they talked about.

*I would love to expand on all of the talks more but I could never do it in a way that would serve the speakers justice. I’ll just give you an idea of what I got from them.

I’ll probably send my presentation out to my email list, if you’re not on it yet, click here to automatically subscribe.

The Speakers

• Jason Akatiff (opening). Jason (owner of A4D and founder of the meetup) got up and opened the show. He thanked everyone for coming and commented that the crowd looked a little light. Mainly because most people were still waking up and shaking off hangovers from the night before.
• Zeal Caiden (Multivariate testing). Zeal did a full walk-thru on how to build a profitable email campaign using PPV and Multi-Variate Testing (MVT) with Landing Page Genius.

  

  He went over exact steps on how to pick a niche, create your LP, capture leads and then optimize the funnel with MVT. @zealcaiden

My Turn

I’ll intrude here and tell you a little about my experience.

I was pretty nervous as I walked up to the stage. Part of me thought something was going to go wrong. I figured the laptop wouldn’t turn on, or the presentation wouldn’t open or the microphone wouldn’t work.. you know, all those kinds of things.

Jason gave me a little intro as I got things hooked up. Big thanks the A4D guys that were onstage to help, you made it really easy for me.

Luckily my computer turned on, the presentation opened and showed up on the big screen. Someone handed me a little clicker to go from screen to screen and I was set.

The second I started talking my head cleared. It was all good. Everything was fine.

I had a lot of fun and people seemed to respond pretty well.

• I’d tell a joke, they’d laugh
• I’d show some stats, they’d nod their heads.

As a speaker, that’s all you can ask for.

The entire thing flew by. I’d cut my presentation down to 38 minutes, so I’d have a few minutes for Q&A. Before I knew it, it was over. I asked if there was time for me to do Q&A but since the show was a little behind we had to skip it.

It’s funny, after all the stressing and near-cancellations… when it came down to actually doing it, I didn’t want to get off the stage. I was having a great time.

Ok, back to the run down.

• Malan Darras. (High volume media buys) My presentation covered how to negotiate, launch and maintain gigantic volume campaigns. I showed how to use managed media buy networks, a lot of guts and some creativity to wield massive streams of traffic. I also explained why I scale campaigns at break even and use the traffic volume to my advantage. If there is interest, I may post a more in-depth outline of my talk at some point on the blog or email list. If you want to be notified when it’s live, click here to automatically get a spot on the list.
• Lars Callary. (Tailoring communication) Lars killed it. He talked about how affiliate marketers have a bad reputation int the business world and how it hurts our business. He then broke down how to  dress, how to talk on the phone and how to build your website so you don’t look like a guy working at home in his underwear. Doing this correctly gives a single affiliate the same respect as a startup in Silicon Valley. @larscallary

Lunch Break

For lunch I hit a seafood place across the street called Tin Fish with a few guys including Jason, Zeal and Nana from Prosper202.

After lunch we headed back over to the conference — and this is when I got mobbed by blog readers and new affiliates that wanted to talk about my website and my presentation.

Mob Scene

It started when one girl stopped me in the hall to talk, then her two friends walked up, then 2–3 more people saw us and walked over. Before I knew it there was a circle of about 15–20 people all around me asking questions at the same time and trying to get my attention.

At first it was cool – and I did my best to talk to everyone and answer questions. But after a while it started to become a bit overwhelming. But I did my best to answer everyone’s question, shake everyone’s hand and have a good time.

It was really cool to get to meet so many new people, especially the regular readers of this website. Thank you for being there and I hope I said something worthwhile.

I remember telling several people “we’re all in this together and heading in the same direction I’m just a little further down the path.”

Back to the Meetup

• Sergey Sundukovskiy. (Product development) How to build your own product. How to take your project from an idea all the way through hiring and managing the build out.
• Coast Law Group (Legal). The guys from Coast Law gave a full on legal smack down about compliance in marketing. Rob speaks every year and is always a show stopper. They also did a long Q&A session and gave free legal advice. coastlawgroup.com

Break

I wanted to avoid getting mobbed this time so I left the room a few seconds before everyone else. I really just wanted to go to my room and lay down for a few minutes.

So I dashed out, headed to my room and took a break.

Jason had been telling me about Zack’s presentation and I knew it was going to be something I didn’t want to miss, so I was sure to get back before he started. And I’m glad I did.

• Zack Linford. (Next level) Hard for me to summarize. The title of his presentation was ’How To Make Your First $1,000,000 $10,000,000 in Affiliate Marketing.

  

  In it he introduced a whole new level of what can be done with this skill set and how we can grow companies to 9 figure valuations. @zacklinford

• Jason Akatiff. (Managing next level) Jason closed the show with a presentation on next level stuff. He went over how to grow your business and manage the people you hire so that you’re free to do what you do best. His advice on goal setting inspired me to rethink all of my goals and go for much, much bigger targets. @smaxor

The flow of the Meetup was really cool. Each presentation built off of the one before. The crowd was taken from their first profitable campaign all the way through turning it into a $10 Million+ a year company.

• Zeal: How to launch and optimize a profitable campaign
• Malan: How to do gigantic media buys
• Lars: How to present yourself to the business world
• Sergey: How to build your own products
• Coast Law Group: How to keep your products/campaigns legal
• Zack: How to take your skill set and go to the next level
• Jason: How to manage your business and time as your business grows

That was it. A really great Meetup, probably the best meetup/conference/event I’ve ever been to. I spent about 1/2 an hour talking with the other speakers and sharing ideas and then headed out in search for food.

I opted for dinner alone at Mary Janes. I was too beat to talk to anyone and just kinda wanted to chill out.

While eating, I was approached by several different people that wanted to say thanks and tell me about their businesses. I didn’t mind really, it’s nice being surrounded by people that get it, people that understand what we do. And they actually had some pretty cool backgrounds and ideas.

The After Party

There was a huge after party / networking event on the roof of the Hard Rock hotel that evening that kicked off at 9pm. I was pretty beat, but decided to stop by.

I took a Zzzquil before going. My plan was that I’d stay for an hour and be back to the hotel room just as the Zzzquil was kicking in (so i could get some sleep).

When I got up to the roof I immediately ran into some affiliates I didn’t know that wanted to talk. Then I talked with a few more readers from the blog. We all swapped stories for an hour or so until I was ready to go.

On the way out I got stopped a few more times by drunk affiliate marketers who wanted me to tell them exact details about my current campaigns. And while they asked, they stepped on my feet and spit all over my face. Really great.

Finally on my way out I saw my friends Chris, @uccash and Joe by the elevator so I stopped to talk for a bit. Pretty soon the Zzzquil was hitting me so hard I had to go or I would have fallen asleep on my feet.

I took the elevator down, headed to my room and officially called it a done deal.

– –

Conclusion

Going to this meetup was a great reminder of how necessary it is to take breaks. For the past few months I’ve been living in my routine without a break at all. I didn’t realize at the time how burnt out I was.

But taking some time to road trip to San Diego, see my friends, meet tons of new people, break all my schedules, get no sleep and not enough food was the best thing I could have done for myself.

On the drive home I felt recharged and excited to get back to work.

[tweetable]If you’ve never gone to a Meetup or conference I suggest you make plans right away.[/tweetable] And if you’re only going to go to one, go to the A4D Meetup in San Diego.

1. The speakers are higher quality than any other conference there is
2. The information is exactly what you need to hear (no fluff)
3. You can network with some of the biggest names in the business
4. It’s Free

Big thanks to the A4D team for putting on a great event.

See ya next year.

This is Part 3 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

Click Here to Watch the A4D Meetup Day 2 video on Youtube >> 

This is Part 2 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

Part 2: Saturday Morning

7:00am came way too early. Mainly because I didn’t fall asleep until 4:30am the night before. The noise in the hotel got louder and louder with each hour that passed. From midnight to 4:30am it just kept growing… and growing…

Then… all of the sudden – it stopped.

It was as if someone hit a secret sleep switch in the hotel somewhere and all of the screaming robots were simultaneously shut down for the night.

Unfortunately the switch wasn’t hit until 4:30am, so when I woke up… I felt like shit.

I’ll probably send my presentation out to my email list, if you’re not on it yet, click here to automatically subscribe.

Feeling Foggy

I’m used to getting a solid 8 hours of sleep every night. I never miss. And if my body is used to getting something every day for months and then I suddenly take it away it feels rough. It feels like I’ve been dropped in the Sahara desert without food or water for a month and I’m going to die at any second. My lips were chapped, my head hurt and my body felt like I’d drank a case of cheap vodka and slept on the street.

The meetup started at 9:00am, so I needed to get up, do some version of my morning routine and go over my presentation one more time.

I drank a bottle of water and realized – – I had no coffee. Shit… wait, I  remembered hearing that there was free coffee in the hotel cafe until 9:00am. Saved.

I pack light so the only shoes I had were these black boots with zippers up the sides. I figured I’d look like a homeless person if I wore my boots and sweat pants, so I just walked down to the restaurant in my socks.

I grabbed two free coffees and headed back up to the room.

Apple Tries to Ruin My Talk

I decided to make a last minute change to my presentation and do a final mini run through in the hotel room, and I’m glad I did. Because when I launched Apple Keynote, instead of seeing my presentation, I saw the following error message.

Error: Apple Keynote cannot be opened while it is updating.

Hold on a minute.

I hadn’t initiated an update so I panicked for a second. What if it didn’t work and my presentation couldn’t even be shown on the screen? I’d have to do the whole thing from memory and that was going to suck. I got a little anxiety, but then I laughed:

“This is going to be really bad” I thought, “but of course it crashes today, the only day I will probably ever need it to work.”

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I didn’t get mad. I just went back to my adventure conversation (from part 1) and said to myself:

“Well…. this is the adventure and the adventure has taken an unexpected turn”.

There was nothing wrong about the situation, and nothing right about it either. The Universe wasn’t cursing me and I wasn’t a victim of bad luck. The adventure had simply taken a turn.

Tech Support

After a few minutes of looking around I realized that Apple had released an updated version. It must have come out that morning, the day of the Meetup because the day before it opened fine.

How funny is that that they updated the software, and COMPLETELY changed the look/feel of it the morning I needed to use it for the first time ever? Classic.

Luckily I was able to go into my Software Updates, restart the failed update (that I didn’t initiate) and after about 20 minutes things were working fine. Thank God it didn’t happen on stage. That would have been a pretty epic fail.

The A4D Meetup

When I walked up to the Meetup room there was a huge check-in table covered in A4D Swag. In the past they’ve had t-shirts but this year they really stepped it up.

They had A4D stickers and A4D sunglasses and 5 or 6 women checking people in. All of them were wearing A4D tshirts. It looked really pro.

I thought to myself: [tweetable]”A4D is officially kicking some serious Meetup ass this year.[/tweetable]

I talked to a few people and found out there were some technical difficulties with the projector so the schedule was thrown off a bit.

That was fine with me. It gave me a chance to find a place to sit and put my stuff down. I sat in the back, next to Jason and a few other A4D guys.

People started approaching me at this point.

Mainly readers from the blog. This is my first public appearance since relaunching the site in November last year so it felt strange to be recognized by people I didn’t know.

It was cool but also kinda like “What is happening here?”

Minutes later we got word that things were ready to go and the Meetup was ready to begin. I finished shaking hands and talking and took my seat. The first speaker was getting ready to begin.

My heart was pounding.

This is Part 2 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

This is Part 1 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

It’s 8:54am, Sunday June 22nd, 2014. I’m sitting in a hotel room looking out at a hazy view of the Pacific Ocean.

It’s the morning after the 2014 A4D Meetup and I feel good. I also feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.

I wanted to write this out before I get back on the road and drive back to Hollywood today. So – here goes. But before we start, if you’re not on my email newsletter yet, click here to automatically subscribe.

Friday

I left Hollywood at around 2pm. I knew traffic was going to be a mess (it always is) but I wanted to get to the hotel early. I was going to be speaking at the event for the first time ever and I wanted to have a little bit of extra time to prepare.

I did my presentation in Apple Keynote, an app I’d never used before so not only was I unsure about speaking in public, I wasn’t sure if the presentation would even work when I got there. I figured I’d test it in the hotel room, make a few last minute edits and be ready for the show the next day.

Before I left I had a quick conversation with myself. It went something like this:

“Dear self: Today I am going to be driving on the highway to San Diego. During this trip, things will probably not go my way. There will be traffic jams, wrecks, people will cut me off and honk their horns at me. I will most likely have to pee in a disgusting gas station toilet.

All of these things are part of the adventure and the adventure is the thing that matters. The time I arrive at my destination is irrelevant.

The thing that matters most is that I enjoy the adventure as it unfolds. Every part of it, good or bad.”

Conversation over, I pulled my car out the garage, and drove onto Sunset Blvd. A few minutes later I hit the 101 and headed out on the highway.

Straight into a massive traffic jam.

Traffic Jam(s)

Cars were bumper to bumper for as far as the eye could see. People were honking, I could see arms in cars waving at each other and flipping each other off. It was like driving into a stream of hot, raw anger.

As my car came to a complete stop I laughed. “Just as planned I thought, it’s going just as I planned”.

It’s crazy how setting your mind up before going into a situation can change things.

Normally I would have:

• Punched my steering wheel a few times
• Started looking for holes in traffic I could wedge myself into
• Spend each second trying to advance through the mess as fast as possible

This time I just sat, turned on the radio and listened to some music. No problem.

The traffic finally cleared about 30 minutes later and I was finally able to drive the speed limit. It didn’t last long though. Just minutes later I’d come to another complete stop. Over and over again.

• I had prepared for this
• I listened to a few podcasts
• I had a Monster Zero Ultra.
• No problem.

Hard Rock Hotel San Diego

I finally pulled into the Hard Rock valet area around 6:30. The two and a half hour drive had take four and a half hours. The valet opened my door:

“Checking in?” he asked. “Yeah, two days” I answered.
“Okay – valet is $40 a day, just so you know” he said.
“$40 a f#cking day to park, are f#cking crazy asshole?” I thought.
“Okay, cool” I said, and I walked inside.

Arrival complete.

I Don’t Want Pizza or Drinks, But I’ll Go

That night I went to a gathering at Basic bar and saw some old friends.

Basic is a place for pizza and alcohol, which are two things I don’t really mess with these days… But I decided to go ahead and go down there to see who was there. I only get to see my online friends a few times a year.

I ended up hanging out with and meeting a lot of the newer A4D team (they just keep growing) and saw some long time buddies like Jason, Joe and Tobias

I got to meet a long time Twitter friend @uccash in person which was really cool. Dude is a heavy lifting maniac. We talked marketing and fitness for a good while. Nice to meet ya bro.

I also ran into “Steve”, the affiliate manager that introduced me to the game 5 years ago. We still see each other from time to time, he’s no longer an affiliate manager (so don’t ask for an intro haha) he’s doing his own thing now, a very wise move on his part.

I’m Outta Here

I called an Uber around 10pm. I was beatdown from the drive, the San Diego Padres were playing a game just a few blocks away, the entire GasLamp district was a mad house.

@uucash jumped in the car with me and thank God for that because our UberX driver spoke very little English and had no idea how to get us back to the hotel. UberX is cheap, but it’s a gamble. About 50% of the time they don’t know how to get around at all. Thankfully @uucash did the navigating and we got there in one piece.

Bachelorette Party Central

The Hotel was insanely loud. I saw 3–4 bachelorette parties go by. A madhouse. Elevator to my room. People were running up and down the halls screaming, laughing, fighting, screaming again. It was pretty clear that there would be no sleep.

*Note: If you want a quiet, peaceful stay in San Diego, stay FAR FAR away from the Hard Rock hotel. It’s been this way every time I’ve stayed here. Great if you’re looking for a big party night, horrible if you want to actually sleep.

Somewhere around midnight I got into bed, launched my Rain Rain app to drown out the partying, pulled the covers up and breathed deep. Come on sleep, come on baby.

Day 1 in the can.

This is Part 1 of a 3-Part Series. Read the rest below.
2014 A4D Meetup Part 1
2014 A4D Meetup Part 2
2014 A4D Meetup Part 3

Click Here to Watch the A4D Meetup Day 1 video on Youtube >> 

Failure feels miserable. But what if you could feel good, even when you fail by celebrating the small wins you make along the way?

Failure.

It sucks, but it happens in all facets of life. Whether you’re in a band, acting in Hollywood, trying to get in shape or starting out in affiliate marketing, the first step in the process is usually a long string of failures.

• Rock Stars. Played for years in empty clubs to no one
• Famous Actors. Got passed over on their first 20 auditions
• Ripped Guy/Girl at the gym. Worked out/dieted for years before figuring it out
• Super Affiliates. Lost money on their first 10 campaigns

Most people that come to this site are new affiliates looking for their first big win online. So I’ll use affiliate marketing as an example. But you can replace “launching a new campaign” with just about anything else in life and it will be the same thing.

Launching a New Affiliate Marketing Campaign

You get excited. There’s a buzz about a new offer that is doing really well on mobile for a lot of people. You’ve never done mobile before, but you decide to give it a shot.

The Setup: 

1. You contact an affiliate network that has the offer, introduce yourself to your affiliate manager on the phone and tell them what you want to do. They set you up with the offer, a decent payout and you’re ready to go.
2. Next, you sign up at a mobile ad network that you’ve never used before. A rep calls you to talk about your plans and help you get your account set up correctly.
3. You spend two days making banner ads and a landing page. It’s different than the web, so it’s frustrating and takes you more time than normal.
4. Now you setup your campaign on the mobile network – there are lots of new targeting options you’re not used to so it takes a while.
5. Finally you are ready for launch.

The Launch: 

1. On the first day you spend $100 and make back $5.
2. By the end of the first week you’re spending $200/day and making back $50/day.
3. After two weeks of hard work you’re spending $200/day and making back $100/day.
4. You do the math. You’ve spent $2500 and made back $1500. You’ve lost $1000.
5. You have to pull the plug because you’re low on funds.

Dammit.

The Fail: 

1. You stop the campaign
2. You decide that mobile isn’t going to work for you
3. You feel like a horrible, miserable failure. Again.

If you’ve ever launched a campaign that didn’t work, then you understand the process I just described. It’s very real and the emotional toll that it takes on you is heavy.

But if you take a deeper look at what just happened. You’ll see that there were a series of small wins – that you totally missed, that you can choose to feel good about.

The Reframe:

At the end of the day, your campaign lost $1000. So as far as profitability goes, the campaign failed. But along the way you had some major wins, which you should be feeling awesome about right now.

1. You successfully created a relationship with a new mobile affiliate network and showed your affiliate manager that you will actually send revenue. You’re now on their list of affiliates to pay attention to. (Win)
2. You successfully created a relationship with a rep at a mobile network. (Win)
3. You successfully setup your first campaign on a mobile network, a skill you can use in the future to launch more campaigns. (Win)
4. You successfully figured out mobile targeting and now know which carriers and handsets work best (Win)
5. You successfully found a network that doesn’t require a cloaker. (Win)
6. You successfully created banner ads at new size dimensions that you were previously unfamiliar with. Your new experience and templates will save you tons of time when you launch your next campaign. (Win)
7. You successfully created a mobile landing page for the first time. You now have a template that will make your next campaign easier to launch. (Win)
8. You successfully tracked your costs and revenue on mobile. Even though you lost money, you now have a system for tracking mobile ROI. (Win)
9. You successfully improved the campaign from –95% roi to –50% roi and improved your skill of optimizing a losing campaign. (Win)

When you look at it this way, the campaign you previously saw as a failure can now be seen a series of small wins.

You actually won every step of the way. The only step that failed were the cpc vs epc numbers. And while they are the most important numbers in the campaign, they are not possible without winning on all of the smaller steps. And you dominated on all of them.

So Why Not Feel Good?:

In reality, the campaign you just launched is still a loss. You still have $1000 less in the bank than when you started. But guess what? No amount of regret and depression is going to bring that money back.

The thing is, if you continually feel like a failure, you’ll quit. So why not choose to feel good about it, turn it into a series of small wins and keep yourself in the game?

• No one came to your concert? Your band got in a paid rehearsal
• Binge ate last night? You learned you need to get out of the house in the evenings
• Server goes down? You learned that you need a server uptime monitor

Remember, [tweetable alt=”People that succeed aren’t always the ones with the most brains, but rather those who persevere”]The people that succeed aren’t necessarily the ones with the most brains or talent – but rather the ones who persevere.[/tweetable]

Stay in a winning mindset and there’s a good chance that you’ll be standing on the shore, with your bags packed and ready to go – when your ship finally comes in.