Hey, everybody.
It's Andy.
I wanted to shoot you this quick video and give you this message.
I was just inspired to talk to you about not being afraid to try new ideas, and I'm coming
at you from my writing room.
Actually, I haven't even completely furnished the room.
You could probably see some bare shelves behind me, but I did manage to get a couple of books
up on this side, and one book on this side, although there seems to be a lonely, little
spot there, which I saved for my next book, which hopefully won't be out in the not too
distant future.
But this is where I like to spend a few minutes each morning.
It's on the east side of my home.
The sun comes in through that window behind me.
It's a wonderful ... It makes me feel so great, to feel about the new day, and new beginnings.
I like to spend about 15 to 20 minutes a day up here ... At least, up here, where I do
my excellence planning.
I've shared that with you, where I ask myself five questions, and I think about ways to
better my business.
I come up with new ideas, more things to share with my community, better ways to market my
services.
All those kind of good things.
I sit here.
I'm at my reclaimed standing desk, although I'm cheating and I'm sitting here while I
do this little video because I've got a whole selfie setup here.
And so I thought as we return to live office hours today after a couple of weeks of being
off, because I've been in my job search boot camp ... In celebration of my new weekly content
calendar that started this week, I wanted to share this message with you because I wanted
you to be encouraged to try new ideas.
And the reason that's important is that you will never know if your idea is a great one
unless you put it out there.
So, about five months ago or so, I came up with the idea that I would do live office
hours every week, and I would engage with my community.
It would give me a chance to spend more time with you, learn you better, get to know you
better, understand the issues you're facing, have that interaction.
It would help me become a better coach, and it would deepen my engagement with you.
And all of that was true, and it's been a raging success.
But it also had some unintended consequences that I didn't anticipate, and by somebody's
measure, this would be considered a miserable failure.
Not by mine, although it had these unintended consequences that, while my engagement with
my community was deepening, the rate at which my YouTube community was growing ... While
it still continued to grow, the growth was 60% slower than it had been in previous months.
So, as a business owner who relies on his community to support him and our business,
that's not a great consequence, and by many people's measures, that would be a failure.
From my perspective, the way that I looked at that is I now know people still love to
see those three to ten minute videos every week.
YouTube, the search engine that it is, wants to see those videos from me, and that engagement
from you.
That's great!
It's not a failure; it's just something that I discovered, and I needed to give it a certain
amount of time to make sure that the trend was actually occurring.
So, while my new idea of engaging with you in live office hours was a hit, for a lot
of you ... Hundreds are showing up every week.
For a lot of other people, they might not have loved that format, so I've recently changed
it.
You're now getting videos every Sunday and Tuesday, and live office hours on Thursday,
and I hope you join me.
It's going to be on in a couple of hours here.
I hope to see you there, but I want to make sure that you dig deep.
If you've got an idea, try it.
If you've got an idea, share it.
You will never know if it's going to be a success if you don't give it a try.
I want you to know I very much encourage you to get out there.
Make that call, try that sales pitch.
Reach out to that person, whoever it might be.
See if there's a connection there.
Don't be afraid to ... Wait, let me see if I can just ... To roll the dice.
You will never know if it's going to work unless you try it.
So, I want you to know you will see me live or recorded very soon, very often, and until
then, have a great one.