An Interview with Stuart Mills

Stu is a great guy. I noticed we were commenting at many of the same spots, so I thought I better check out his site (Unlockthedoor.net). When I did, I was overwhelmed with how awesome his blog was, and immediately approached him for an interview. He was happy to help. We got on great, hence the interview lasted over 40 minutes!

He really knows his stuff, and is a blogger through and through – all focused on community and conversation, and a truly excellent writer, as you’ll see when you look on his blog.

It was Stuart’s first audio interview, he did a great job! It was also my first time interviewing someone that was also from the UK!  Sure you’ll enjoy this interview and get to know a different side of the great guy that is Stuart Mills! You have two options: You can listen below or read the (concise) transcript underneath the link. Enjoy!

“Click here to listen to the Interview”

Robert: If we start with a bit of history and background about you.

Stuart: Unlockthedoor.net was founded in October 2010. Initially was very difficult. After a few weeks of having the blog, Jk Allen fromHustlersNotebook.com commented on the blog, and also told Stuart that he would give him any help that he needed. Connecting with Jk, his readers and other bloggers meant that Stuart’s blog really started to take off. This really encouraged Stuart and started the momentum for his blog.

Robert: What were/are your aims with unlockthedoor.net ?

Stuart: Unlock the door comes from a scene in the Matrix where Morpheus says to Neo: “I can only show the door, you must go through it.” That made me consider openthedoor.net, but unlockthedoor.net was more appropriate because I wanted the blog to help people unlock the doors in their minds. Personal Development seemed the most natural path to take, to genuinely help people with no expectations in return.

Robert: Can you tell us a bit about your awesome “Value 101” series of blog posts, I understand that Value 101 Part 8 has just come out?

Stuart: Something big involving a lot of people needed to happen on the blog. I asked the question “How do you provide value?” It’s a very open-ended question. I sent the question and a quick explanation to over 50 bloggers. On the whole, people came back with an answer to how they provide value. The project started getting big, so I did it in parts. Amazingly, this project has connected some of the bloggers involved in the project. They’ve seen what the other featured blogger is about by looking at how they answered the question. It’s been very rewarding, there are four more parts to come out, and I think I will be making an ebook! I’m going to move on to another big project soon.

Robert: I see you recently had a guest post on the famous Problogger.com titled: “How to Blog Without Comparing Yourself to Others”, which was an amazing post by the way! Congratulations on that! Can you tell us a bit about the post and then explain the story surrounding it?

Stuart: About a month and a half ago I wrote a post for Problogger and sent the title and a quick description through the contact form on the site. They soon got back to me saying the post sounded great but unfortunately wasn’t relevant enough for the site. I wasn’t giving up that easy. I wrote a new post and titled it “How to Blog Without Comparing Yourself to Others”. I now had an email address I could forward it to as an attachment. They loved it and told me they’d be featuring it on April 13^th. A bloggers dream come true. I promoted the post. I’ve had immense response and over 150 comments, I also got a load of new traffic, readers and subscribers. I think that every blogger should aspire to write a guest post for an authority blog such asProblogger. I think that a lot of times people get put off, but the reality is: all you’ve got to do is try. If your first one gets rejected, dust yourself off and try again! The first thing to do with anything is just try. It was the same with the first guest post I ever did for a blog called Make it Happen. I liked what I saw, wrote up a post and it got accepted! It felt very liberating to know that someone else was willing to take me on board and trust me to write on their blog.

Robert: Many things get overcomplicated. It’s not actually that hard at all to get a good guest post on a blog, as long as you take the time to write a high quality post that will appeal to the blogger and THEIR readers.

Stuart: The quality of the post will shine through. Don’t worry about the hurdles. Even if one big blog rejects your post, send it to another, they might accept it! Just because it’s not accepted doesn’t mean it’s a bad post.

Robert: It’s just getting yourself out there, too many people get caught up on the little complexities. I see you regularly guest post yourself as well.

Stuart: Don’t be put off aiming for the bigger blogs when you start guest posting. For example Rob, your first guest post was on Firepole Marketing.

I’ve done about fifteen guest posts now. It’s all about practice. The more you do something the better you’ll get at it.

Robert: How important do you think that community is in blogging?

Stuart: The two great treasures of blogging: Community and Conversation. The community is one of the greatest things that has happened to me, not just for my blog but for my life. I’ve met so many like-minded people who also want to provide value, and to see my own blog grow, just from community. The possible benefits that you can get from community are just astounding – blog commenting, guest posts, swap guest posts, interview another blogger jointly over email as I did with Bryan from Elevation Life, do an audio interview. If you go to places like Blog World, you can connect with people that you already know online. Without community and conversation I wouldn’t be blogging at all. Communication = communicating in unity. There’s no fun in blogging without community and conversation.

Robert: I’ve definitely realised how important community is these last couple months.

Stuart: Some of the biggest blogs out there have turned off their blog comments for time management reasons, but I’d find that very hard to do, because community and conversation is the lifeblood of my blog.

Robert: Definitely, I know what you mean. We’ll cross that bridge when it comes! Who are some of the coolest people you’ve connected with so far?

Stuart: Marcus Sheridan recently did a post about time management and having a huge community on his blog.

Robert: Who are some of the coolest people you’ve connected with so far?

Stuart: Massive shout out to Jk Allen, he was the first blogger that reached out to me without him asking. He helped me out a lot when I started, he’s been an absolute inspiration to me. Marcus Sheridan, he inspires me because he puts out amazing posts whilst also focussing on community. John Sherry, he was actually the first blogger I hooked up with face-to-face, and we got on great! Brian Thompson from Elevation Life, I’ve known him for months. There are also great people from the more business-focussed blogs like Mark Harai, I hooked up with him not too long ago and got a lot of inspiration about community as well. There are also others with bigger blogs who still find the time to connect, like social media bloggers Danny Brown and Ingrid Abboud. There’s just so many. The weird thing is there have also been people that I’m not really in contact with any more, for various reasons such as lack of time and just finding other blogs. I’m grateful that I still talk to Jk, Marcus and Bryan, and it’s been great seeing their blogs grow. It takes time to build a relationship, but it’s nearly always more than worth it.

Robert: It’s all about finding a balance between not having too much on your plate and connecting with enough people and growing sustainably. There are loads of people that I want to connect with but haven’t got round to doing so yet. Moving on…what tips do you have for someone starting out online?

Stuart: The single most important thing that I think you can do when it comes to blogging is connecting. Some people start their blog and expect people to come to them without doing any networks. I have to go to other blogs and raise their awareness of me. Even if you’ve never left a comment before, head over to a blog that is similar to your own or in the same niche and just leave a comment saying: “Hey, this is my first time at your site. I really like what this blog’s about. I thought this was a great post, really enjoyed reading it. I’ve got a new blog which is similar to your own. I’ve just recently started it. I’m a little unsure of what to do. Any tips or advice will be greatly appreciated.” More often than not that blogger will respond in kind. The more you do that, the more people will come and check out your new blog! You won’t have that unless you get yourself out there; leave comments and send a few emails asking for tips. Raise their awareness of you as much as possible. You need to give people a reason to come to your blog.

Robert: Absolutely. I understand you have an “Offline” day once a week, can you tell us why you decided to do it and where you got the idea from, and what the benefits and drawbacks of doing it are?

Stuart: Due to external commitments including an amateur dramatics group, taking a course and working it was kind of forced upon me. I thought, “Why not use this to my advantage and a break from online activity. It gives me a chance to engage in other beneficial activities that are not online. My offline day is every Tuesday. I still check my emails on a morning, but that’s about it. As much as I love blogging and commenting, it’s good to take a step back from it, take a break and look at it from a different perspective. It gives me a chance to refresh, and go back in with new vigour, energy and ideas. If I had a choice to pick a day, I would probably pick Sunday, as it’s supposed to be a day of rest! It does take a bit of adjustment, but I love my day off now. One blogger has taken an extended break from blogging because it had taken so much out of him. It’s an extreme situation, but it can happen.

Robert: I think that when people see that guys such as yourself do it and can still have a successful blog, they may consider doing it themselves. It’s good to recharge your batteries and engage in other activities. Finally what are your future plans in the coming months for Unlockthedoor.net?

Stuart: I’ve taken a “Zen” approach to my blog. I don’t have a specific set of plans. I just want to keep growing it and keep producing quality content. I’ve ditched the high targets; huge numbers would be very hard for me to obtain without it being detrimental to my health! I’m not worried about getting 100,000 subscribers or 100 comments on every post. It’s like the Alexa ranking, I don’t use it because my blog could be doing well, but my Alexa ranking can dip. I measure my blog by the amount of people that are aware of it and the amount of great conversations taking place within it. All I ask for is that I keep doing what I’m doing, and do it well. To me, I would rather have 100 subscribers who are loyal, who connect with me and that I have great conversations with; rather than 10,000 subscribers that I hardly ever talk with. Community and conversation are the two great treasures, numbers don’t compare at all!

Robert: Exactly. I don’t much care for Google, StumbleUpon or Alexa. Sure, they may help you get traffic, but they will never subscribe, leave comments or share your stuff! It’s all about quality over quantity. So we’ll wind it up there. Stu, it’s been great talking to you and I hope this has given your readers and the people you connect with a great insight into you. It’s been great talking to you, thanks a million for agreeing to this!

Stuart: No problem Rob, and it’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you and being here.

Robert: Excellent Stu thanks, speak to you soon.

Lessons Learnt from Obama’s recent visit to Ireland

Let’s get one thing clear from the off. This post is not about politics!

As some of you may be aware, Obama recently visited the United Kingdom and Ireland. As I am based in England, various stories about different aspects of his and Michelle’s visit were all over the news.

There were a number of notable events, but one in particular stood out to me.

When he visited Ireland, he made a speech in front of thousands of “fans” in Dublin. Big deal, right?

Well actually it was a big deal!

As part of his speech he addressed the people of Ireland in their native tongue, the Irish language – being half Irish I can tell you that this is not an easy language to speak!

Here is a link to a video of the speech.

If a guy as busy as Obama can go out of his way to accommodate the people that he wants to influence, then why can’t we? Yeah sure, he has a huge team behind him and it wouldn’t be hard to pick up a few words of the Irish language; but the point is, he did it! He made a conscious effort to speak to them IN THEIR TERMS.

Every single person in this world speaks their own language. Sure, hundreds of millions of people speak the English language as their first language, but the way each person looks at, responds to, perceives and interprets a given situation is COMPLETELY UNIQUE.

This is something that we must understand in our everyday lives.

If we want to connect with, empathise with or influence another person, we need to understand and accommodate their point of view, we need to speak to them in their terms and in their language.

How can we apply this to Blogging?

If you know me at all, you know that I’m all about community and forming connections with other people in the blogosphere. So to form a connection with someone we must look at things from their perspective as much as possible and understand their point of view. If you can find some common ground, it will be much easier to connect. Socrates spoke about this a little while back – don’t start a conversation with someone you don’t know by talking about the things upon which you don’t agree (or words to that effect).

Guest Posting – I did my first guest post this week  . Some people are very worried about guest posting, but in reality all you have to do is speak the language of the person whose blog you want to comment on. Study their blog, look at their posts, look at their readers. How can you maintain your uniqueness, talk about a topic that hasn’t been talked about before, whilst also appealing to the owner of the blog and their readers. If you can do this, you are 9/10 of the way to having a guest post accepted, in most cases!

In Summary

Connecting with others and influencing people means that you need to be willing to go the extra mile for them. This doesn’t mean you have to kiss ass, it just means you have to look at things from their perspective. What makes them click? What common ground do we share? Your personal opinion is vital, and it’s what blogging is all about and what makes this community so interesting. Don’t change it for anyone – “Keep it real”. However, people are rarely influenced by you pushing your opinion on them, especially when they don’t know you!

If you want people to understand and appreciate you, start understanding and appreciating others.

Thanks guys, hope you enjoyed this post. Would much appreciate your comments and thoughts as usual 

That "C" Word!

A warm welcome if my “Guest Post on FirepoleMarketing.com“ has brought you here. A massive thanks to Danny for asking me to guest post. 

You’re going to hear me use the “C” word an awful lot in this post!

So what does it stand for and why is it the most important word when it comes to blogging?

It is of course community. As far as I’m concerned, blogging is not about community, blogging IS community. Some of the kind acts that I have heard about, read about and experienced myself over the last few months have been truly touching and inspiring. There are so many people out there that are willing to help you it is unbelievable.

So why should we embrace community and how does it relate to blogging?

It took me a few months to realise the importance of community in blogging. When I started out, I had no focus, no idea of where the blog would be six months down the line. Now I know. Focus 100% on community, on being a part of a community and as a symptom build my own community here on the blog. Notice that building a community on my blog is a symptom of becoming active in a community, not the primary reason for doing it. Engaging with people and leaving a good Social Footprint is what it’s about. Of course there are other vital criteria for a good blog, such as good content and having a unique perspective on things to name a couple, but you’re blogging success ultimately hinges on focussing on community.

Five tips for building a community:

1. Start with the right intentions
2. Be ethical
3. Have meaning and reason behind all of your actions
4. Have no expectations from the other person
5. Focus on promoting and helping others

Let’s get real here for a second. Everybody with a blog wants to promote themselves and their blog at every given opportunity. Put that self-promotion on the back burner for now. Start connecting with people because you are generally interested in them and the stuff they talk about. You will be amazed at how reciprocating most of the people in the blogosphere are. It’s all about following the business principles of Know, Like, Trust. When you have established these three things you can really start to form a strong relationship with the other person. Go out of your way to promote them, and expect nothing in return. Be patient, and the rewards will come back tenfold. Remember, none of this happens overnight, as with face-to-face interactions, solid relationships take a long time to form. But it’s worth every second and every ounce of effort. You can’t put a price on real connections.

What sort of a post would this be without promoting some of the great people I have met on my journey so far? These guys clearly understand the importance of community – Danny Iny, Jk Allen, Mark Harai and Marcus Sheridan to name a few.   They are great role models for us newer bloggers, and are living and breathing proof of the success you can achieve by getting out there and engaging with the community. These guys are omnipresent in the blogosphere, and go out of their way to promote and help others.

So, what does this all boil down to?

The success of your  blog hinges on your willingness to participate in the community for unselfish reasons.

If you liked this post and want to become part of the community here at BeliefandAction.com, please subscribe to this blog.

Now it’s your turn: How important do you think Community is? Do you participate in your blogging community? What do you do to encourage community on your blog?

What We've Discovered in The Blogosphere

A few days ago I did a great podcast with Ryan Critchett, fromiMarketinghacked.com. As some of you will know I recently did anInterview with Ryan on here.

Ryan has become a great friend of mine, and we always have enjoyable and useful chats. His blog is awesome, it’s basically about experimentation and investigating effective online business. Ryan is definitely a rising star in the blogosphere; his awesome content, focus on community and unique perspective on things are making his blog increasingly popular, and rightly so!

Our Podcast is all about trends and changes in the blogosphere, and what people need to do to build a successful blog. This Podcast is PURE CONTENT – I’m sure that many of you will get value from listening.

***DISCLAIMER – Sorry if I come across a bit forceful, it’s just my passion oozing out  . I have not directly quoted any of the guys below, just talked about general ideas that they have written about or things that I have discussed with them.***

Check out our Podcast on iMarketingHacked.com

Some of the people we mentioned in the Podcast:

• Danny Iny from FirepoleMarketing.com
• Jk Allen from HustlersNotebook.com
• Dino Dogan from Diyblogger.net
• Pam Slim from EscapefromCubicleNation.com
• Jon Alford from JonAlford.com
• Marlee Ward from MarleeWard.com
• Marcus from TheSalesLion.com

(I hope I haven’t missed anyone out!). Please have a listen if you have a spare few minutes, and leave your thoughts either here or on Ryan’s blog. Thanks

Experience vs Progress

A couple of days ago I had a conversation with someone who used to work with my Father. He’s a really nice guy with an excellent understanding of marketing and, well, life! I was telling him that I had recently started an online business. He then went on to ask me a very interesting question: “Are you at the point of experience of progress?”

Anyone who starts anything new encounters these two things, usually experience then progress. This is particularly applicable to someone starting out online. With all the rubbish that’s out there, it’s easy to get stuck in the “experience” section for longer than we want to. My rule now is that I only buy software that is useful for this blog or my business, I don’t buy any of these one-week wonders stating that you’ll make “34,416.62 per month” all for $37, and that’s because of my experience with these type of products.

Everybody quickly wants to get to a point where they are making progress, so I suppose the defining factor is how quickly we can go from experience to progress, or is it? I think that it’s more important to use our experience to initiate progress. Everyone has got to try things out. People like Ryan Critchett and Tim Ferriss will tell you all about the importance of experimentation. But the takeaway is more important than the experiment. What did you learn? How can you use that to propel yourself forward?

Experience is part of trying and starting something new. We shouldn’t try to prevent people getting experience. Plus, have you noticed that you can give them all the advice in the world but they must find out for themselves? Many of our experiences define us and change how we respond to things in the future.

It was definitely a case of experience vs progress here at BeliefandAction.com. Much like my online business, the first couple of months were certainly experience, and now I feel that I’m starting to make progress here on the blog, and that’s all from focussing on community.

There are many great people that I wish I’d come across as soon as I’d created the blog, such as Danny & Peter, Jk, Ryan, Jon, Marcus and Mark, and many more, but it’s funny how things turn out, the two months prior to that are all part of the experience. As soon as I started connecting with these guys, the experience started turning into progress.

So this is a post to say thanks to the guys I connect with, and also to say that we should embrace experiences, but also use them to propel ourselves into progress.

I hope you enjoyed this post, please leave your comments underneath. What stage are you at, experience or progress? How important have your experiences in business been? Have you used these to make progress? Don’t feel compelled to answer these questions, if you just want to leave a comment about the post, you’re more than welcome  .

An Interview with Jon Alford

A massive thanks to Jon Alford from JonAlford.com for making time in his busy schedule to do an interview with me. We quickly established a rapport and the thirty minute interview flew by, it’s full of great content!

A bit about Jon: Jon has considerable experience online, and although his blog is relatively new, his excellent knowledge of Internet Marketing really shines through in his great quality blog posts. I highly recommend you check out his stuff at JonAlford.com. He also offers a number of different services for people starting out or struggling with their online businesses. Here are some of the things he has experience in:  “From eBay businesses and affiliate marketing, to informational product sales, and now content marketing and social media engagement I’ve gathered a few nuggets of wisdom to share.” So Jon is certainly in a position to educate many of us with our online businesses, and he presents his content in an educational and non-patronising manner.

As aforementioned, the interview lasts about thirty minutes, but Jon focusses completely on providing value and the content is darn good…definitely worth a listen!

What we talk about in the interview:

1. Some of Jon’s most popular and interesting posts
2. The importance of Planning
3. Advice for bloggers starting out
4. How a blogger should use Social Media
5. What characteristics a person needs to possess to achieve success online.

“Click here to listen to the interview”

Wait a minute!

Ok, so the semi-hot girl horsing into cake might be a little unnecessary. But the truth is, I don’t care how skinny you are, it’s something that we all do, usually without realising.

We overindulge. We keep consuming without taking stock.

I’ve just done an interview with Jon Alford (which will be up on the blog shortly), and we talked a little about this, but it really stuck with me.

Why do we over-consume, but never leave time for digestion?

We live in a world of information overload; but instead of pausing for a second, we keep piling up our plates with information.

What happens when a person regularly eats too much? They become unhealthy. The same can be said for our minds. Feeding the brain too much (irrelevant) information without allowing time for digestion makes our minds unhealthy.

We should absorb information the same way that we absorb food. We eat until we are full then we digest. Our bodies use the previous meal to give us energy for the next few hours. After that we go back and eat some more.

Why not apply this principle to how we absorb information? When we learn something we need to digest it and use it positively before moving on to the next “meal”, not just jumping straight onto the next thing.

With all the “noise” and frankly crap out there on the internet, it’s easy to get overloaded, but we don’t have to. Remain mindful of what  information you decide to take in, ponder on it, use it as fuel.

Benny Hsu wrote an interesting post about this recently. Humans are the only organisms on the planet that take much more than they need.

Using the “food principle” (Unregistered Trademark  ) to absorb information:

Ingest. Digest. Utilise. Repeat Cycle.

Fear of the Unknown

As entrepreneurs we face many uncertain times.

If I asked you: Would you prefer to be in a deep, dark forest in the middle of the day or the middle of the night? You’d say the middle of the day, right? Well I hope that most people would!  Sounds obvious, but why would you make that choice? The woods is not necessarily more dangerous in the middle of the night, it’s just harder to see what’s going on. It’s an inherent fear of the unknown that makes most people want to be in the woods during daylight, so they can see everything that’s going on around them.

As entrepreneurs, we can’t always see what’s going on around us, especially when we take risks (calculated ones if possible!).

Just remember, the darkest moments in our life and in our business are usually the defining moments. They can change everything, either for the better or for the worse, depending on how we choose to respond. However you choose to respond, be sure to remember that experience and channel it in a positive way wherever possible.

These defining and dark moments make us look at and approach situations in a different way. We may start to see things that we previously missed during the brighter hours.

So the next time you’re in that deep dark forest in the middle of the night, stay calm and keep moving, because daylight is just around the corner.

Ask yourself what your defining moments have been in your life. How have you used them in a positive way? Feel free to share below if you so wish.

An interview with Jk Allen from Hustlersnotebook.com

Jk Allen, from Hustlersnotebook.com, very kindly agreed to do an interview for BeliefandAction.com. I’m honoured to say that this was his first blog-related interview! Jk is a really cool guy who has a unique perspective on things. His blog is less than 12 months old and doing really well. It mainly covers personal development and business, and he focusses on providing high quality, value-adding content. , I’m sure you’ll learn something and appreciate his content. “You can check his posts out here“

In the interview we talk about all themes covered on my blog – business, blogging, and personal development.

Some of the cool stuff I learnt from Jk:

1. Be yourself and keep it real
2. Base your content on personal experience
3. Blog about stuff that you love and you can write about
4. As bloggers we have a responsibility to help others, add value and provide good content
5. And much more…have a listen below!

“Click here to listen to the interview