The first time I heard about 30 day challenges was a “No Complaining” challenge several years ago. The person wasn’t going to allow themselves to complain for 30 days. Complaining sucks on every level, doesn’t it?
I’ve come to love 30 day challenges. The reason why is…
They COMPOUND…
…and I absolutely love compounding.
Example:
Month one – No sugary drinks
Month two – No carbs for breakfast (Eggs/bacon/meat only)
Month three – Salad for lunch
If you continue each 30 day challenge after the initial 30 days, you can dramatically change your life as time passes. One positive change becomes 6, 12, 24, 48 positive changes.
30 day challenges allow us to use time to our advantage, which is kinda cool.
I think there are three basic types of 30 day challenges we might consider:
1. Heath/Mindset/Well Being
Challenges in this category are designed to improve the overall quality of our lives. Examples might be meditation, exercise, healthier eating, journaling gratitude, the what went right exercise, visualization/affirmations, etc.
The 30-day challenge I’m working on in this category for myself is to slow the f#$k down. I want to slow down and enjoy every experience. If we were to meet for dinner, I would probably be the first one finished. I eat at lightening speed like I haven’t eat in… 30 days. I want to eat slower, drive slower, walk slower…. just slow down. No multi-tasking. No listening to podcasts at faster speeds. No speed reading.
There is no damn hurry. Life is a lot better when we’re going slow. When we take time to smell the roses.
2. Skill Acquisition or Improvement
Recently I watched a video by Steve Pavlina. He was doing a 30 day video challenge by creating one new video a day for 30 days. The reason was because he wanted to improve the various skills surrounding making and editing videos. You can set a 30 day challenge for any skill you might want to acquire. Examples might be archery, writing, sailing, target shooting, painting, selling, public speaking, website design, etc.
3. Asset Creation
How cool would it be to create one new asset a day? If you own your own business, you could write one new lead generation advertisement each day for 30 days. Or one new sales letter a day, one new video sales letter a day, one new content article, one new marketing follow-up step for your funnel.
The legendary marketing guru Gary Halbert once said the best way to get better at writing marketing copy is to write a new sales letter every day. Gary actually advised to hand write proven sales letters from other marketing experts. By re-writing proven sales letters from other copywriters, you start to see and feel the flow of how the sales letters are written.
My tweak to Gary’s advice is to re-write proven sales letters for things you can actually sell. As an example, you can take a proven sales letter written by an expert marketer and re-write it for your business. Each sales letter has the potential to become an income producing asset. You can write a sales letter for your business, or for an affiliate product. As an example, a guy I follow writes and sends one email a day to his list. Each email details lessons he learned from a different book. The email contains a link to the book on Amazon. I would have to think the link is an affiliate link. Each email is a sales letter and the benefits compound over time.
Think of Steve Pavlina’s video challenge. You create a new video every day for 30 days for your business. These videos could be sales letters, content, upsells, downsells, tutorials, etc. As you create each video, you’re improving your skill set AND creating an asset for your business at the same time.
My family fell in love with YouTuber Casey Neistat a few years ago. He started a vlog and made one new video a day for over a year. He has a large following and every video became an asset. By monetizing these videos, he created a very large income and improved his skill set in the process.
In my humble opinion, the best way to use 30 day challenges to our advantage is to be very strategic with them.
Combine skill acquisition with asset creation and things get very interesting.
