October 2018 Looking Forward + 4 New Experiments

The beginning of 2018 Q4 is upon us! This month begins the Montoya family's journey to the new normal. Thankfully, our new arrival has been a minimal adjustment (especially compared to the previous two children). It's possible that could change, but I'll embrace it while it lasts. 

The primary focus for me this month is finishing my audacious goal to accumulate 400 total blog posts. Including this one, I'll have reached a total of 388 articles by publishing 106 new 2018 blogs. That places me just 12 new blog posts away from my goal. The objective was inspired by the research I conducted indicating that a 400 article library would become a tipping point for increasing my digital footprint reach. While it's a bit early to tell, the data indicates I'm on a sharp upward traffic trend. Have I hit or passed a tipping point? I don't yet know. It is exciting to watch it unfold, although slower than I prefer!

On the work front, this month is mostly booked up. I've got 20 hours of availability remaining, so I suspect that will fill up. If you want to get started working together or increase our current pace, now's the time to talk. 

One of the new projects I'm working on is The Purple Primer, an online membership website for elderly to continue learning and keep their minds sharp. We're working together to optimize the website (built on Joomla) for streamlined administration, and providing a more user-friendly experience. The founder has a great business, and I'm simply coming alongside her to help shore up the areas preventing her from growing.

Sandboxing My Life

As a growth hacker, I’m constantly testing out ideas, techniques, and tools to more effectively grow my self, others, and organizations. This section provides you with insight into what these experiments are and how they’re playing out.

New Experiments

• Waking Up @ 6:30 am: With my wife focused on the new baby, I've stepped up to launch our two older kids to school in the morning. I was looking forward to this shift as it would launch me into my day quicker. So far, it's been a great trigger to start and finish stronger work days. While it's not always enjoyable to wake up this early, the benefit makes it worth it.

• Website 2-Factor Authentication: As you know, this website is built with Joomla as is many of my client sites. Joomla natively has the ability to leverage 2-factor authentication through Google's security system. I've implemented this for logging into my website as an additional layer of website security. While it does add an extra step in the process, it's minimal.

• Respondent.io: Especially while we're focused on knocking out our student loans, I'm always looking for extra ways to make money on the side. I've recently tapped into Respondent to earn some good income as a lab rat answering questions on videos calls. I've also got some referral revenue from a friend participating in a video interview, and will collect more if you join and participate as well!

• Building Out Category Pages: As part of my effort to reorient this website around growing your self, your small business, and others, I've been updating my anemic category pages to make them more user and search engine friendly. I've completed the faith and personal development topic pages. With as many categories as I have, it'll take me some time to work through them all, but I believe it'll have a strong positive impact on growing this website.

Existing Experiment Updates

• Skillshare: Several months back, I experimented with Skillshare by migrating one of my Udemy courses to it. Now, I've finished the online course for Path Of The Freelancer surveying the eight achievements. It was one I recorded a while back but never finished. Now it is, and its loaded up for Skillshare members. Two students have signed up so far! If you're on Skillshare, you can check it out here.

Alright, go make October amazing! 

Hero Photo by John Arano on Unsplash