443: Take More (Fast) Action, Follow-Through and Be Consistent Daily: How I Wrote a Book in a Day and Got Married in a Day

Robert Plank 0:00 Marketer of the day number 443 take more fast action, follow through and be consistent daily. How I wrote a book in a day and got married in a day. Hey everyone, welcome back to the Robert Plank show. I'm sorry the marketer of the day podcast. Please go to marketer of the day.com/ 443 because we've put the text of this episode on LinkedIn. Please click over to LinkedIn. Give us a like. Give us a comment. We really appreciate it. Here's what happened. I got married the other day. I'm now a married person. We're now Katie plank and Robert Plank, and the reason I got married was because when I woke up that morning, I decided that was something I wanted to do, and eight hours after having the idea, we were married. So here's what happened. I guess the idea really started. It really popped into my head while drifting off to sleep on a Thursday night. Anytime that sort of thought had come into mind in the past, I'd talk myself out of it because of details. So can you relate to that? To putting your hopes and dreams on hold just because you were unsure about say how to use WordPress, or you were uncertain about paying for a website. That kind of thing happened to me with me not being married, and the marriage obstacles I'd always invented for myself were, first of all, don't I need a ring first? And what if I don't spend enough money on the ring, or it's ugly, or she doesn't want it, or like that particular ring, or do I need an elaborate proposal? Or, you know, because I don't want to do something lame and low key, I don't want to do something over the top that embarrasses her. And then I wondered, well, am I too early or too late in the relationship to even be doing this in the first place? And that last uncertainty, worrying about if the timing is right, that really played mind games with me back when I worked a day job in my early 20s, and I was bored with that day job, my online business had earned 150,000 in the previous year, and that exact year I would go on to earn $220,000 online, but I was still clinging to that certainty of a $32,000 a year after taxes, nine to five job, that breaking point happened when I didn't have enough vacation or enough sick days remaining to attend an arm and mourn Seminar The following month, and I realized that was it. Something had to happen. Everything clicked, and I knew with 100% certainty, instead of just 95% certainty that I needed to take simple action, I needed to walk into that boss's office and give him my notice. My last day at work happened to fall on the day before I hopped on a plane to Atlanta to attend the event. That job quitting day was over eight years ago, and I've been full time since. Every time I think back to that day, I know that I made the right decision and that I quit at exactly the right time because I had been employed there full time for two and a half years. If I'd quit after just a year, I'd have thoughts and that maybe I'd quit out of impatience or impulsiveness or restlessness, and if I'd waited five years or 10 years to quit, I'd have regrets about missed opportunities or lost time. So Katie and I had been dating for two and a half years. I woke Friday morning and I still wanted to get married. And this might sound bad, but I didn't have a logical reason to do it. It was just something that I really wanted to do. I could have listed tons of logical reasons to get married if I wanted to, but I can't put my finger on one single logical reason that was the driving force behind this. I just wanted to do it. So sorry. And perhaps, if your own goal is to create a podcast or publish a book, there could be a number of concrete reasons to get it done, but whatever reasons you think of pale in comparison to the urge and the urgency to make it happen, plus the 100% confidence to make quick decisions, to know what you want and have that snap judgment, to either hold your ground on specific details you want or let things slide if There's a particular detail that really doesn't make a difference. Concept number one, keep it simple. There's no question that Katie O'Connor is the right person for me. We have all the right differences and similarities. We get each other, but we don't annoy each other. We're there for each other. We have a compatible sense of humor. We make a great team, and we want the same things that Friday morning. The phrase that kept coming to my mind was, why fart around and also the Mark Twain quote 20 years ago, you'll be more disappointed about the things you didn't do than the things you did do. I'm assuming and hoping that you have a dream that you need to pursue right now, but you're letting all these excuses get in the way. Maybe they're money excuses, like I have to save X dollars until I do this. Maybe they're general uncertainties, or it's If This Then That thinking which means I'll only take action b If result a happens, which is really a recipe for shifting the blame and the guilt of your own inaction onto others, and the end result is. Abandoned dreams and lost time instead of thinking 10 steps ahead, I thought none of the other steps in this marriage didn't even matter until I do step one, which is asking her and hoping for a yes. In the same way you might have talked yourself out of publishing a book because you got stuck thinking about ways to promote the book once it was done, maybe you could do whatever research you needed to write your book to ensure a buying audience, but then write the book and only worry about the raw details of promoting once you've finished that book. It was 7am on a Friday morning, and we were headed out to breakfast. I stopped her at the door and asked, Will you marry me? She said, Yes, I didn't have a ring. I didn't get down on one knee. I just asked. It was still a romantic moment. It was just a down to earth romantic moment, and not cheesy over the top, romantic. It was very us. And then I asked, Do you want to get married today? Get it all done today. Component number two set a real goal. We went to breakfast and made sure that we were both on the same page about what we wanted that day, Katie and I were both nervous about getting married so suddenly, but that anxiety diminished as soon as we began breaking the problem down into manageable pieces or milestones, I began asking about various knowns and unknowns. How did the marriage license process work? And where do we have to go to make that happen? We needed a simple dress for her and a new suit for me. We had to pick out rings. We needed to land on a place to get married, and for a person to marry us. Was the same day winning in town in Modesto. Would that work, or would we have to go out of town for such a thing. Which family members would we invite? Where would we go out to eat for dinner after the wedding? It was only 8am but we knew we needed to get the ball rolling on certain things quickly in order to make this work. You may have heard people say that your goals should be SMART goals. That's S, M, A R T, which means that they are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time bound. Most people skip over the last two they set unrealistic goals because their goal setting eyes are bigger than their stomach, so to speak, and they don't set deadlines because they are afraid of pushing themselves. Component number three, ask the right questions one day can sometimes make a huge difference. A few months ago, I woke up with an idea in my head to write a new book about getting organized with Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Calendly Zapier and these other tools. Working together, I knew that if I set the idea aside and only outlined half of it, or just put the idea out of my mind. I would never have finished the book. Thinking about it would have then become a waste of time, and that would have set me up for future failures that those future failures of letting the habit of passing on a great idea become normal. I just knew that if I hadn't asked Katie to marry me on november 17, then November 18 would have just been one day since I passed on getting married. The next day would have been two days after a missed opportunity, and three days and so on. Tony Robbins says that you should be committed to your outcome, but flexible in your results. So maybe perhaps you too would like to create a book out of thin air the same day you thought about it, but you might have let a little detail distract you from the main goal of having a book, any book out there. One of the best things I've ever heard from Grant Cardone was, if someone asks you a question and the answer is, I don't know, you should instead answer. That's a great question. Let me find the answer to that and get right back to you. And in this case, he was talking about selling. But the same applies to your own problem solving. Don't just stop it. I don't know if you'd like to create a book in a day. Here are the steps you need to take. First, decide what your book will be about, who's it for, and what problem does it solve? You can choose the title of your book first if you want, but what will most likely happen is, after you've written the book, a better title will appear in front of you. After you've decided what the book will be about, list 10 questions a person would have about that topic. For example, my book The Checklist mindset, is all about using various online productivity tools to have a more manageable business and workspace. Instead of listing chapters such as Gmail, Google Drive, etc, I listed them like this, what is Gmail and why should I use it instead of Outlook or Yahoo mail? What is Google Drive and What advantages does it have over traditional word processors such as Microsoft Word and open office. What is Google Calendar and why should I use it instead of iCal or a paper calendar? List 10 questions,

Robert Plank 9:50 but you'll only need seven after listing 10 cross out or combine the questions, which will soon be chapters, you'll just rename the titles of those chapters to nine. Be questions once you've written them. However, list all 10 questions you need to list out more material than you'll need. That way you can throw out the crap. When I planned my book, I had separate chapters planned to talk about Google Drive, Google Docs and Google Sheets, if you know what those are. However, compressing the book to seven chapters forced me to fit all the Google stuff into one chapter. In the same sense, we approached the day with a sense of urgency. We assumed lots of obstacles were coming our way as far as planning everything that day. So we made it a point to get everything done as early as possible. Component number four, rearrange your actions into a timeline that makes sense, and do it early to reduce stress. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR says, You don't need to see the entire staircase. Just make the first step. As breakfast was winding down and the sun was coming up around 8am we asked ourselves, what do we need to do first? When it comes to planning your book, take those seven questions that you narrowed down from 10 and rearrange into a logical order, then map out four sub questions under each of your seven questions above, in the form of, why, what? How to what if, for example, the chapter on Gmail would have these four sub questions, why use Gmail instead of the alternatives? What is Gmail, and what concepts do I need to know? How do I use Gmail, and what are the steps? What if I use Gmail? What are the next steps? I simply fleshed out the Gmail section into four questions. One question being, beginning with why, another, beginning with what. Another, how to and another. What if I also added a couple of keywords next to these questions to help me, although you can skip that step if you prefer. So for example, I said, Why use Gmail instead of the alternatives? Next to that I had in parentheses, online conversations labels and having those keywords assist me when I'm dictating the book later on. So anyway, back to the wedding. We both agreed that nothing could happen until we paid for and filled out the marriage license. We looked up the steps involved with that, and we found the address to the County Clerk's Office. Immediately after that step, we'd begin calling a few close family members to see if they could make it that day, after making those first few calls, we tried to land a venue we'd see if we could do it in the courthouse or find a quick wedding chapel. We ended up getting married in a place with a beautiful backyard garden with a cat who was climbing all the trees, and the package we bought included a pastor to perform the ceremony, and a couple of our family members were the witnesses who signed the notaries document. We definitely needed rings. We went to the Modesto mall and found the jewelry store. The best part was that Katie was able to choose her ring, no guests for me to screw up there. She chose an emerald ring, and I chose a titanium ring, and we were in and out in five to 10 minutes. She needed a simple white dress. We couldn't find exactly what we wanted, but we had something at home that we could make work. I needed a new suit. I knew going in that I wanted a dark charcoal gray suit, no tie, white pocket square. We picked it out. They measured it for me for tailoring to be picked up later that day, in and out in 10 minutes again, we called our four guests back to fill them in on the exact location and time. It was just a matter of going home, getting ready and dressed and showing up. We had a 4pm winning, and then our group went out to eat at 5pm so 7am marriage proposal, 4pm winning that same day. It made for a nice, unique, romantic story, and everything seemed to work out perfectly that day. Now, quick flashback to creating a book. I have the idea for that book, the checklist mindset at 6am on a morning walk. I outlined it as above, from seven to 730 took another break. I spoke the book out from nine to 10:15am or so, and I spoke out each of those sub questions above, I spoke out the answers in two minutes each, that made for an eight minute dictation of each chapter. So each chapter was eight minutes written into 1200 words or so, seven chapters 56 minutes of audio, total, all in about 9000 words of text. So a good start to a book and enough to submit to Amazon for now, I spoke a little longer in some sections. So the book was probably a little longer than 9000 words. And then I sent the recording off for a transcription, which came back at about 1pm that same day, after lunch, I bought a quick cover for the book on Fiverr. I edited and formatted the transcript quickly, and I was submitted to both Kindle, the digital version and create space the physical version by 2pm My part was done. Both books were live and approved by Amazon by 6pm so if this sounds interesting to you, my course about how to self publish the book quickly using the method I described is available at make a product.com and I highly recommend that if there's something simple or some. Thing that is normally complicated, that could be made simple, like getting married or publishing a book and even putting it off, then not only should you do it now, but find a way to get it done the same day, in some form, get it done the same day you were thinking about doing it. That way, you develop a habit of consistent completion, and you get instant gratification, you set yourself up for future patterns of turning ideas into reality, and you expand your thinking about what's possible. Just think about the concept of the four minute mile. Most people thought it couldn't be done. It was done. Then others followed suit. As I said, please go to marketer of the day.com, forward slash 443, click the link to go to LinkedIn, give us a quick like or a comment. I'm Robert Plank. I'm an online marketer whose most recent book is checklist mindset.com check out my course on how to create a book out of thin air and get it published as soon as that same day. You think about it without using existing content, without a ghost writer, and without writing it yourself, use my system and check it out at make a product.com. I'm Robert Plank, and there's a story about me getting married. Thank you. You.