February 24, 2025 • 24 mins
Are you constantly chasing goals but feeling like you're missing the mark? You're not alone. This episode takes a closer look at my personal journey of using the Align Framework to create a five-day mini course within a challenging 90-day timeline. The Align Framework offers a structured method for keeping your goals on track, allowing for both clarity and accountability.
Listen in as I outline how I set achievable SMART goals, tackled common pitfalls, and transformed my vision into reality through meticulous planning. Discover how integrating weekly reviews and harnessing the right tools, like an innovative scheduling system, revolutionized my workflow and allowed me to stay on track.
Every setback became an opportunity to reevaluate and recalibrate, ultimately leading to a successful course launch. I delve into the importance of building sustainable habits that reinforce your goals and encourage continuous progress. Whether you're looking to create your own course or achieve any personal milestone, this episode provides actionable insights you won't want to miss.
Ready to start your journey? Explore the Align Productivity course at alignproductivity.com, and for a limited time, use code APFREE25 for free access. Let’s get you aligned to reach your goals!
Resolutions off the rails? You’re not alone. But there’s still time to turn things around. The ALIGN Productivity Challenge is a proven system to help you achieve your goals in just 90 days—no fluff, no overwhelm. Head to AlignProductivity.com and start your comeback today.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing
Podcast, we're going to talk allabout a practical, real-life
application of the Alignframework.
In fact, I'm going to tell youhow I used the Align framework
to create the Align framework.
It's a behind-the-scenes lookat using Align to create an
actual mini course, a real-worldapplication of the framework in
(00:23):
action, and it'll be ablueprint for you for starting
and finishing your own goals.
All this and more on the LateNight Internet Marketing Podcast
the Late Night InternetMarketing Podcast, and now
broadcasting late at night froma little studio in the big state
(00:46):
of Texas, your host, mark Mason.
Hey, hey, hey.
How is everyone doing?
I am your host, mark Mason,coming to you from the little
studio in Dallas, texas, wherewe're talking once again about
the Align framework, which isnow released over at
alignproductivitycom.
(01:08):
And the question for this weekis how did that get there?
I know a lot of you haveprobably dreamed about creating
your own course or building yourown website or starting your
own business, and maybe you'veeven started a time or two, set
some goals and fell off thewagon and not gotten those goals
(01:30):
achieved.
And I know for me personally,this was something that has
happened to me time and timeagain over the years and it's
happened to the people that I'vecoached time and time again,
and so I saw a need to developthe Align Framework, which we
talked about in the last coupleof episodes.
(01:51):
In episode 270, we talk aboutthe framework and then in the
last episode episode 271, weactually talk about the kinds of
goal mistakes that people makethat prevent them from achieving
their goals and how the Alignframework helps correct that.
Well, in this episode we'regoing to be talking about an
(02:11):
actual real-life practicalapplication where I actually
used the Align framework tocreate the Align productivity
course over atalignproductivitycom, and the
problem was I needed the coursebecause I was ready to take that
to a broader audience.
So I set a smart goalessentially to create a five-day
(02:35):
mini course that I could use toreach a lot of people, and I
wanted to launch it in 90 days,complete with a marketing plan
and Facebook ads and landingpages and all of the things that
you need to do good marketing.
And then, in addition to that,I wanted to make sure that that
(02:55):
course had this impactful scopethat would actually help people
achieve their goals, and, in mymind, my vision for the course
was something that would lastfor years, that people would
send me emails about and tell mehow the application of Align
Productivity in their liveschanged everything for them.
(03:18):
That was the vision that I hadfor the course and what I really
wanted to do, and that's the Ain Align it's getting in touch
with what it is that you'rereally trying to accomplish.
And for me, the bigger visionis not only building my business
, which is important to me,obviously but also this idea
that one of the things that getsme really excited is helping
(03:40):
people.
That's been part of my lifesince I was a little kid and the
Align Productivity Frameworkwas one way that I knew I had
proven I could help people and Iwanted to take that to a larger
audience.
So I assessed my vision in usingthe Align Framework and that's
what I came up with and itculminated in this SMART goal,
(04:00):
this 90-day goal, where I wantedto deliver the Align
Productivity 5-Day Challenge.
So when I broke that down intokind of a set of steps, weekly
milestones, like I teach inAlign Productivity, obviously in
the first couple of weeks Ineeded to outline the course,
(04:20):
write scripts for the course orfor me in my case, really
outlines for the course or forme in my case really outlines
for the videos and then recordand edit those videos, and we'll
talk about this in a little bit.
But part of this also involvedme kind of exercising some new
platforms that I wanted to tryand use and exploring a new
(04:44):
space from some of the technicaltools that were needed and that
included in week six and seven,building out the course
platform, moving away fromKajabi, which I was very
familiar with, moving away fromConvertKit to Go High Level,
which I'm using to deliver thecourse.
All of that took learning andmore time than normal.
(05:05):
And then in weeks eight through10, rolling out the course,
testing it, improving it, makingadjustments to the sales page,
the landing pages and stuff likethat, and then really start
marketing in earnest in weeks 11and 12.
So those were the milestonesthat I set as part of the Align
(05:25):
productivity framework.
In 90 days my vision was to havethis completed course out there
that was ready for people, thathad everything done bonuses,
all the things that you need tolaunch a course marketing
sequences, landing pages,landing pages because you know
(05:47):
after all, I'm a marketerEverything that I needed to make
the course work in terms ofreturn on ad spend and building
my list for late night internetmarketing and the Mark Mason
brand.
All of that needed to becomplete within 12 weeks.
So I set all that up as part ofthe L in a line.
I listed the steps, the majormilestones that I needed to
complete, and then I was on tothe I part of the Align
(06:10):
framework, actually initiatingaction.
And so what I did was Ienvisioned or identified at
least three critical tasks everyweek.
I adopted, as I teach in theAlign Framework, this habit of
reviewing my work every week anddoing the nightly review or
(06:32):
really the more important one isthe weekly Sunday review to see
how the week has gone and whatadjustments I needed to make,
and my morning coffee where Iplan my day, see where I am on
my tasks and get a few daysahead on my week.
And then making sure that everyday, I tried to have at least
one deep work session thatlasted an hour.
(06:54):
This is part of the Alignframework, part of what I teach,
and it's an hour of focused,distraction-free work.
Now, a lot of times, whenyou're doing something like
creating a course, an hour ofdeep work is involved in
recording content or editingcontent, and so it's really easy
to find these one-hour chunksof work that needed to be done.
In fact, many times, these deepwork sessions had the bonus
(07:17):
effect of going on much longerthan the hour that I had
scheduled, which is really great, because it's one of those
things where, when you startsomething, it becomes a snowball
and you're able to get a lotmore work done than you
anticipated.
I will say that in this process,one of the tools that I relied
on the most was this automatedscheduling tool that I've been
(07:40):
talking about some I'llcertainly be talking about more
in the future called Motion, andyou can find that tool over at
alignproductivitycom.
Forward slash motion, and thatis a tool that uses artificial
intelligence to combine theinformation in your calendar
with your project managementinformation and the tasks that
(08:01):
you need to get completed by acertain time and when you can
work on certain tasks what timeof day you've allocated, for
example, for your side hustle tocombine all that together and
tell you what to work on nextliterally what you should be
working on right now.
It's an amazing tool.
We'll probably have anotherpodcast episode about motion in
(08:24):
the future, but I'm reallyenjoying that tool, and that was
critical in helping me managemy actions that I needed to
initiate for the accomplishmentof this 90-day goal.
So all during this project I wasreally working through this
four-part cycle as I gauged myprogress.
(08:44):
You know that's the G in theAlign framework and of course,
one way to gauge your progressis to understand whether or not
you hit your 90-day goal.
But by the time 90 days getshere, if that's when you're
finding out that you didn't hityour goal, that's too late.
So really, what you're tryingto understand is every week, did
(09:06):
you get done what you said youwere going to do?
And that's why this idea of theweekly review initially, I
think, brought forward by DavidAllen in the Getting Things Done
book is so critical.
So for me, that's every Sundaynight sitting down looking at
what I accomplished in the weekand just being honest with
(09:26):
myself about whether or not Idid a good job achieving my
goals and where I am with regardto my project schedule.
Now, this is another way thatMotion is great.
It shows me my calendar for theweek.
The tasks that I completeactually show up on my calendar.
I get a visual representationof what I was actually able to
(09:47):
accomplish during the week.
But also Motion, because of itsinbuilt AI.
It understands the impact ofwhat I accomplished during the
week on what will happen to my90-day schedule.
So my project is scheduled allthe way out to the 90-day due
date and if it slips in certainways it can actually put the
(10:09):
90-day goal in jeopardy.
Motion understands thisrelationship.
Property Motion understandsthis relationship.
It understands, for example,that perhaps delaying recording
a lesson today will impact theediting, which will impact
putting the course up on go highlevel, which may impact the
actual delivery of the course,and it could this one choice
that I make today.
(10:29):
It can understand how thatmight impact the whole schedule.
It understands the idea ofdependencies so it knows, for
example, that I need to record alesson before I can edit that
lesson and so I could every weekunderstand whether or not I was
going to be on target.
I think also during this weeklyreview I'm able to identify
(10:51):
issues.
For example, maybe I've gotsome energy challenges, Maybe
I'm not getting enough sleep, ormaybe I need to shift the time
of day that I'm trying to docertain things.
Maybe I've got some problems inmy tech stack that are slowing
me down, but I can look throughthe week and see if I didn't
achieve my goals, what were theissues, what worked well, what
(11:13):
didn't work well, and I can makeadjustments accordingly in the
next week.
And that's a really powerfulidea that's embedded in the G
gauging your progress in theAlign framework.
And finally, once you do anhonest accounting of what you
did that week and celebrate thethings that you got right, you
(11:33):
can implement changes to helpbetter prepare for the next week
so you can get more and morethings right and build up
momentum as you proceed throughthe 90 days of work.
So that gauging progress thing,it's really important and I
find, when I'm teaching thetopics involved in the Align
Productivity Framework, thatthis honest keeping of the score
(11:55):
and a willingness to evaluateit and understand what it means
and what you can do about itwithout beating yourself up is
one of the key missing thingsand that's why G is such an
important letter in the AlignFramework.
And then, finally, nurturingHabits, this idea of habit
stacking.
(12:16):
For me it was two main habits.
The best example is I love togo down to Starbucks.
In my building at my day jobthey have a Starbucks and I love
to get to work way before I'msupposed to start working,
sometimes at six o'clock in themorning, and go down to
Starbucks and get a cup ofcoffee and sit there and plan my
(12:39):
day.
Some of that planning is thework I need to do for my day job
.
Other parts of that planningare work that I need to do for
my side hustle and I'm gettingthat all planned out for the day
and looking forward in the week, trying to do that every day.
That daily planning habit stackgoes with the coffee.
Not only is it a trigger forthe planning, because after all,
(13:02):
I'm sitting there in Starbuckswith my laptop, but it's also a
reward for doing the planning.
It's like what do I get if Iinvest in the organization of my
day?
I get a fantastic cup of coffeefrom my favorite barista at
Starbucks and then, of course,celebrating wins.
I did a lot of that and one ofthe best ways that I celebrated
(13:24):
was being able to tell my wifethat I was making concrete
progress on this project whichshe had challenged me to
complete.
So there's a lot of thingsthere.
There's this sharedaccountability, where she was
kind of like my accountabilitypartner for the project, but she
also was goading me a littlebit, because she's fun like that
(13:44):
and, you know, kind ofchallenging me to see if I could
do it.
So whenever I made progress, Iwould.
I was able to go up to her desk, which is upstairs, and claim
victory, and that was reallygreat.
One of my favorite ways tocelebrate wins was sharing those
victories with my wife.
(14:07):
And then, finally, one of thehabits that was interesting that
came out of this was sort of adiscovery for me was this idea
of buffer time and planning forsetbacks, and it's actually not
setbacks so much, but one of thethings that I found was that a
lot of the tasks, particularlyvideo content creation and
editing, took longer than Iexpected, for whatever reason.
(14:30):
I guess I was really trying toget things right.
I did a lot of editing, I did alot of retakes, I tried to put
as much quality into the courseas I can and of course I'm no
newbie at creating audio andvideo content but it just
everything that I thought wasgoing to take an hour took an
hour and a half, and so I hadthose kind of setbacks, and so I
(14:51):
had to constantly reevaluatethe schedule to the point where
planning some buffer time becamea habit where I was sandbagging
a little bit because I startedrecognizing that when I was
honest about keeping score, Iwasn't able to do things as
quickly as I thought I would dothem.
So the recap of this looks likethis I got really clear about
(15:17):
my vision for this course, aboutwho it was going to help and
why I wanted to do it and why Iwanted to do it.
And I set myself a clear andcompelling goal to get this
large, heavyweight lead magnetessentially a self-liquidating
offer lead magnet out into thewild in 90 days.
(15:41):
And then I did some carefulplanning.
I actually used ChatGPT prettyheavily to help me list out the
12 milestones in a 12-week plan,just like I teach in Align
Productivity, so that every weekI knew exactly what I was
working on.
And then in the initiate actionphase I was as rigorous as I
could be.
I had as much integrity as Icould muster about executing
(16:04):
those plans week by week, day byday, and I used this amazing
tool called Motion to help meget things scheduled and keep me
on track and alert me when Iwas falling behind.
Really in love with that tool.
Definitely recommend that yougive it a free trial.
Try over atalignproductivitycom forward
(16:26):
slash motion.
And then I gauged my progress.
Every Sunday night I sat down,I assessed where I was and I
tried to be honest about what Ineeded to do to do better next
week without beating myself uptoo much.
And then I built some habitsalong the way and some of them
involved coffee.
And you know, dave, ramseywould not like me spending $3.50
(16:52):
every morning on coffee insteadof putting that in my Roth IRA,
but for me that was my rewardfor staying focused and staying
on track and I think for me theROI of that was much higher than
what Ramsey would have you dowith the money which is put it
in your Roth IRA.
I'm joking, dave, I know youlisten to the podcast and I'm
(17:14):
just pulling your chain a littlebit, buddy.
So a call to action for you isto go check out Align
Productivity, of course atalignproductivitycom.
I would love to see you insidethe course and as a listener of
this podcast.
For a limited time you can usethe coupon code APFREE25.
(17:35):
That's Alpha Papa Free 25 toget the course for free, the
base course, absolutely for freeand check it out, see what you
think.
If you choose to do that, Iwould love if you could repay me
with the kindness of somefeedback in the form of a review
or a criticism or anything thatyou feel is appropriate.
(17:57):
Send me an email, let me knowwhat you think about the course
and, of course, you can reach meat feedback at latenightimcom.
In any case, that coupon codewill be available for a short
time After that.
The course is still veryaffordable.
I'd like you to try it yourselfand see if you can apply the
(18:20):
Align framework to your businessand let me know how it goes for
you.
So that's what I have for youthis week with regards to the
Align Framework.
Next week we're going to getsort of back to normal.
I was reminiscing with a friendof mine about how I first heard
about Zig Ziglar.
That's a great story I'd loveto tell you, and I'd like to
tell you about the three mostimportant things I learned from
Zig 40 years ago that I stillthink are absolutely critical
(18:43):
today.
That will help you in your life, in your business journey.
Until next week, I am MarkMason, coming to you from the
little studio in Dallas.
Ciao, you can do it right whenit's late at night.
You've been listening to theLate Night Internet Marketing
Podcast.
(19:03):
Be sure to visit LNIMpodcastcomtoday to leave feedback for
Mark, download special bonuscontent, access the show notes
and more.
See you there.
Until then, go and make somegreat progress on your internet
business one night at a time,hey.
(19:32):
So thanks so much for listening.
I would love it if you get achance to go over and check out
the Align Productivity FrameworkAgain.
If you do that quickly, you canuse the coupon code APFREE25 to
get the course for free.
I would love, if you do thatquickly, you can use the coupon
code AP free 25 to get thecourse for free.
I would love if you do that,because you know I'm using a
whole new tech stack over there.
(19:53):
I'm using go high level, whichyou can check out.
I I'm really loving high level.
You can check that out over atmark Masoncom forward slash, g,
h, l and you can get an amazingfree trial and check out go high
level.
If you're like I am and you'reusing a thousand legacy things
(20:14):
WordPress hosting, a landingpage tool, an email tool I use a
convert kit, which I actuallylove, kajabi, just all of these
different tools A tool forforums, a tool for scheduling,
zoom meetings, you know, I meanit's just on and on and on.
You can just go over tomarkmasoncom slash GHL and get
(20:39):
everything you need pretty muchin one spot and it works.
It's a thriving tool.
It's interesting.
The tool is really built forpeople who want to build
software as a service marketingagencies because you can buy the
(20:59):
$297 or $497 a month packageand host as many websites and
have as many sub accounts withas many clients as you want.
So if you're a web servicesbusiness and you're building
websites for clients and thoseclients want to be able to log
(21:19):
into their backend and follow upon leads and do all this kind
of customer relationshipmanagement stuff, it does all of
that and it's amazing.
At the $97 level you get all ofthat for three accounts, which
is enough to run almost anyonline business.
So, of all the things that I'veseen, for people like us that
(21:40):
want to have landing pages andwebsites and blogs and deliver
courses and conduct surveys,have an email autoresponder All
of the things that we need to doin a normal business Go High
Level is just amazing for thatand I encourage you to try that
out over at markmasoncom forwardslash GHL.
Anyway, we got off on that topicof GHL because everything is
(22:03):
new.
So if you do check out AlignProductivity and you have
feedback on the look and feel,how the emails are, whether or
not all the buttons work and soforth the checkout page,
anything that you see or haveproblems with, whether or not
the coupon code works right, anykind of little ticky tacky
thing that you'd like to givefeedback on, I'm very interested
(22:25):
because this is the first timeI've really tried to do a
sizable launch on the GHLplatform and I'd love to hear
your feedback.
So that's it for me today.
I hope you have an amazing weekthat's incredibly productive.
I'll see you next week when Itell you all the stuff I learned
from Zig Ziglar.
Ciao,
This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing
Podcast, we're going to talk allabout a practical, real-life
application of the Alignframework.
In fact, I'm going to tell youhow I used the Align framework
to create the Align framework.
It's a behind-the-scenes lookat using Align to create an
actual mini course, a real-worldapplication of the framework in
(00:23):
action, and it'll be ablueprint for you for starting
and finishing your own goals.
All this and more on the LateNight Internet Marketing Podcast
the Late Night InternetMarketing Podcast, and now
broadcasting late at night froma little studio in the big state
(00:46):
of Texas, your host, mark Mason.
Hey, hey, hey.
How is everyone doing?
I am your host, mark Mason,coming to you from the little
studio in Dallas, texas, wherewe're talking once again about
the Align framework, which isnow released over at
alignproductivitycom.
(01:08):
And the question for this weekis how did that get there?
I know a lot of you haveprobably dreamed about creating
your own course or building yourown website or starting your
own business, and maybe you'veeven started a time or two, set
some goals and fell off thewagon and not gotten those goals
(01:30):
achieved.
And I know for me personally,this was something that has
happened to me time and timeagain over the years and it's
happened to the people that I'vecoached time and time again,
and so I saw a need to developthe Align Framework, which we
talked about in the last coupleof episodes.
(01:51):
In episode 270, we talk aboutthe framework and then in the
last episode episode 271, weactually talk about the kinds of
goal mistakes that people makethat prevent them from achieving
their goals and how the Alignframework helps correct that.
Well, in this episode we'regoing to be talking about an
(02:11):
actual real-life practicalapplication where I actually
used the Align framework tocreate the Align productivity
course over atalignproductivitycom, and the
problem was I needed the coursebecause I was ready to take that
to a broader audience.
So I set a smart goalessentially to create a five-day
(02:35):
mini course that I could use toreach a lot of people, and I
wanted to launch it in 90 days,complete with a marketing plan
and Facebook ads and landingpages and all of the things that
you need to do good marketing.
And then, in addition to that,I wanted to make sure that that
(02:55):
course had this impactful scopethat would actually help people
achieve their goals, and, in mymind, my vision for the course
was something that would lastfor years, that people would
send me emails about and tell mehow the application of Align
Productivity in their liveschanged everything for them.
(03:18):
That was the vision that I hadfor the course and what I really
wanted to do, and that's the Ain Align it's getting in touch
with what it is that you'rereally trying to accomplish.
And for me, the bigger visionis not only building my business
, which is important to me,obviously but also this idea
that one of the things that getsme really excited is helping
(03:40):
people.
That's been part of my lifesince I was a little kid and the
Align Productivity Frameworkwas one way that I knew I had
proven I could help people and Iwanted to take that to a larger
audience.
So I assessed my vision in usingthe Align Framework and that's
what I came up with and itculminated in this SMART goal,
(04:00):
this 90-day goal, where I wantedto deliver the Align
Productivity 5-Day Challenge.
So when I broke that down intokind of a set of steps, weekly
milestones, like I teach inAlign Productivity, obviously in
the first couple of weeks Ineeded to outline the course,
(04:20):
write scripts for the course orfor me in my case, really
outlines for the course or forme in my case really outlines
for the videos and then recordand edit those videos, and we'll
talk about this in a little bit.
But part of this also involvedme kind of exercising some new
platforms that I wanted to tryand use and exploring a new
(04:44):
space from some of the technicaltools that were needed and that
included in week six and seven,building out the course
platform, moving away fromKajabi, which I was very
familiar with, moving away fromConvertKit to Go High Level,
which I'm using to deliver thecourse.
All of that took learning andmore time than normal.
(05:05):
And then in weeks eight through10, rolling out the course,
testing it, improving it, makingadjustments to the sales page,
the landing pages and stuff likethat, and then really start
marketing in earnest in weeks 11and 12.
So those were the milestonesthat I set as part of the Align
(05:25):
productivity framework.
In 90 days my vision was to havethis completed course out there
that was ready for people, thathad everything done bonuses,
all the things that you need tolaunch a course marketing
sequences, landing pages,landing pages because you know
(05:47):
after all, I'm a marketerEverything that I needed to make
the course work in terms ofreturn on ad spend and building
my list for late night internetmarketing and the Mark Mason
brand.
All of that needed to becomplete within 12 weeks.
So I set all that up as part ofthe L in a line.
I listed the steps, the majormilestones that I needed to
complete, and then I was on tothe I part of the Align
(06:10):
framework, actually initiatingaction.
And so what I did was Ienvisioned or identified at
least three critical tasks everyweek.
I adopted, as I teach in theAlign Framework, this habit of
reviewing my work every week anddoing the nightly review or
(06:32):
really the more important one isthe weekly Sunday review to see
how the week has gone and whatadjustments I needed to make,
and my morning coffee where Iplan my day, see where I am on
my tasks and get a few daysahead on my week.
And then making sure that everyday, I tried to have at least
one deep work session thatlasted an hour.
(06:54):
This is part of the Alignframework, part of what I teach,
and it's an hour of focused,distraction-free work.
Now, a lot of times, whenyou're doing something like
creating a course, an hour ofdeep work is involved in
recording content or editingcontent, and so it's really easy
to find these one-hour chunksof work that needed to be done.
In fact, many times, these deepwork sessions had the bonus
(07:17):
effect of going on much longerthan the hour that I had
scheduled, which is really great, because it's one of those
things where, when you startsomething, it becomes a snowball
and you're able to get a lotmore work done than you
anticipated.
I will say that in this process,one of the tools that I relied
on the most was this automatedscheduling tool that I've been
(07:40):
talking about some I'llcertainly be talking about more
in the future called Motion, andyou can find that tool over at
alignproductivitycom.
Forward slash motion, and thatis a tool that uses artificial
intelligence to combine theinformation in your calendar
with your project managementinformation and the tasks that
(08:01):
you need to get completed by acertain time and when you can
work on certain tasks what timeof day you've allocated, for
example, for your side hustle tocombine all that together and
tell you what to work on nextliterally what you should be
working on right now.
It's an amazing tool.
We'll probably have anotherpodcast episode about motion in
(08:24):
the future, but I'm reallyenjoying that tool, and that was
critical in helping me managemy actions that I needed to
initiate for the accomplishmentof this 90-day goal.
So all during this project I wasreally working through this
four-part cycle as I gauged myprogress.
(08:44):
You know that's the G in theAlign framework and of course,
one way to gauge your progressis to understand whether or not
you hit your 90-day goal.
But by the time 90 days getshere, if that's when you're
finding out that you didn't hityour goal, that's too late.
So really, what you're tryingto understand is every week, did
(09:06):
you get done what you said youwere going to do?
And that's why this idea of theweekly review initially, I
think, brought forward by DavidAllen in the Getting Things Done
book is so critical.
So for me, that's every Sundaynight sitting down looking at
what I accomplished in the weekand just being honest with
(09:26):
myself about whether or not Idid a good job achieving my
goals and where I am with regardto my project schedule.
Now, this is another way thatMotion is great.
It shows me my calendar for theweek.
The tasks that I completeactually show up on my calendar.
I get a visual representationof what I was actually able to
(09:47):
accomplish during the week.
But also Motion, because of itsinbuilt AI.
It understands the impact ofwhat I accomplished during the
week on what will happen to my90-day schedule.
So my project is scheduled allthe way out to the 90-day due
date and if it slips in certainways it can actually put the
(10:09):
90-day goal in jeopardy.
Motion understands thisrelationship.
Property Motion understandsthis relationship.
It understands, for example,that perhaps delaying recording
a lesson today will impact theediting, which will impact
putting the course up on go highlevel, which may impact the
actual delivery of the course,and it could this one choice
that I make today.
(10:29):
It can understand how thatmight impact the whole schedule.
It understands the idea ofdependencies so it knows, for
example, that I need to record alesson before I can edit that
lesson and so I could every weekunderstand whether or not I was
going to be on target.
I think also during this weeklyreview I'm able to identify
(10:51):
issues.
For example, maybe I've gotsome energy challenges, Maybe
I'm not getting enough sleep, ormaybe I need to shift the time
of day that I'm trying to docertain things.
Maybe I've got some problems inmy tech stack that are slowing
me down, but I can look throughthe week and see if I didn't
achieve my goals, what were theissues, what worked well, what
(11:13):
didn't work well, and I can makeadjustments accordingly in the
next week.
And that's a really powerfulidea that's embedded in the G
gauging your progress in theAlign framework.
And finally, once you do anhonest accounting of what you
did that week and celebrate thethings that you got right, you
(11:33):
can implement changes to helpbetter prepare for the next week
so you can get more and morethings right and build up
momentum as you proceed throughthe 90 days of work.
So that gauging progress thing,it's really important and I
find, when I'm teaching thetopics involved in the Align
Productivity Framework, thatthis honest keeping of the score
(11:55):
and a willingness to evaluateit and understand what it means
and what you can do about itwithout beating yourself up is
one of the key missing thingsand that's why G is such an
important letter in the AlignFramework.
And then, finally, nurturingHabits, this idea of habit
stacking.
(12:16):
For me it was two main habits.
The best example is I love togo down to Starbucks.
In my building at my day jobthey have a Starbucks and I love
to get to work way before I'msupposed to start working,
sometimes at six o'clock in themorning, and go down to
Starbucks and get a cup ofcoffee and sit there and plan my
(12:39):
day.
Some of that planning is thework I need to do for my day job
.
Other parts of that planningare work that I need to do for
my side hustle and I'm gettingthat all planned out for the day
and looking forward in the week, trying to do that every day.
That daily planning habit stackgoes with the coffee.
Not only is it a trigger forthe planning, because after all,
(13:02):
I'm sitting there in Starbuckswith my laptop, but it's also a
reward for doing the planning.
It's like what do I get if Iinvest in the organization of my
day?
I get a fantastic cup of coffeefrom my favorite barista at
Starbucks and then, of course,celebrating wins.
I did a lot of that and one ofthe best ways that I celebrated
(13:24):
was being able to tell my wifethat I was making concrete
progress on this project whichshe had challenged me to
complete.
So there's a lot of thingsthere.
There's this sharedaccountability, where she was
kind of like my accountabilitypartner for the project, but she
also was goading me a littlebit, because she's fun like that
(13:44):
and, you know, kind ofchallenging me to see if I could
do it.
So whenever I made progress, Iwould.
I was able to go up to her desk, which is upstairs, and claim
victory, and that was reallygreat.
One of my favorite ways tocelebrate wins was sharing those
victories with my wife.
(14:07):
And then, finally, one of thehabits that was interesting that
came out of this was sort of adiscovery for me was this idea
of buffer time and planning forsetbacks, and it's actually not
setbacks so much, but one of thethings that I found was that a
lot of the tasks, particularlyvideo content creation and
editing, took longer than Iexpected, for whatever reason.
(14:30):
I guess I was really trying toget things right.
I did a lot of editing, I did alot of retakes, I tried to put
as much quality into the courseas I can and of course I'm no
newbie at creating audio andvideo content but it just
everything that I thought wasgoing to take an hour took an
hour and a half, and so I hadthose kind of setbacks, and so I
(14:51):
had to constantly reevaluatethe schedule to the point where
planning some buffer time becamea habit where I was sandbagging
a little bit because I startedrecognizing that when I was
honest about keeping score, Iwasn't able to do things as
quickly as I thought I would dothem.
So the recap of this looks likethis I got really clear about
(15:17):
my vision for this course, aboutwho it was going to help and
why I wanted to do it and why Iwanted to do it.
And I set myself a clear andcompelling goal to get this
large, heavyweight lead magnetessentially a self-liquidating
offer lead magnet out into thewild in 90 days.
(15:41):
And then I did some carefulplanning.
I actually used ChatGPT prettyheavily to help me list out the
12 milestones in a 12-week plan,just like I teach in Align
Productivity, so that every weekI knew exactly what I was
working on.
And then in the initiate actionphase I was as rigorous as I
could be.
I had as much integrity as Icould muster about executing
(16:04):
those plans week by week, day byday, and I used this amazing
tool called Motion to help meget things scheduled and keep me
on track and alert me when Iwas falling behind.
Really in love with that tool.
Definitely recommend that yougive it a free trial.
Try over atalignproductivitycom forward
(16:26):
slash motion.
And then I gauged my progress.
Every Sunday night I sat down,I assessed where I was and I
tried to be honest about what Ineeded to do to do better next
week without beating myself uptoo much.
And then I built some habitsalong the way and some of them
involved coffee.
And you know, dave, ramseywould not like me spending $3.50
(16:52):
every morning on coffee insteadof putting that in my Roth IRA,
but for me that was my rewardfor staying focused and staying
on track and I think for me theROI of that was much higher than
what Ramsey would have you dowith the money which is put it
in your Roth IRA.
I'm joking, dave, I know youlisten to the podcast and I'm
(17:14):
just pulling your chain a littlebit, buddy.
So a call to action for you isto go check out Align
Productivity, of course atalignproductivitycom.
I would love to see you insidethe course and as a listener of
this podcast.
For a limited time you can usethe coupon code APFREE25.
(17:35):
That's Alpha Papa Free 25 toget the course for free, the
base course, absolutely for freeand check it out, see what you
think.
If you choose to do that, Iwould love if you could repay me
with the kindness of somefeedback in the form of a review
or a criticism or anything thatyou feel is appropriate.
(17:57):
Send me an email, let me knowwhat you think about the course
and, of course, you can reach meat feedback at latenightimcom.
In any case, that coupon codewill be available for a short
time After that.
The course is still veryaffordable.
I'd like you to try it yourselfand see if you can apply the
(18:20):
Align framework to your businessand let me know how it goes for
you.
So that's what I have for youthis week with regards to the
Align Framework.
Next week we're going to getsort of back to normal.
I was reminiscing with a friendof mine about how I first heard
about Zig Ziglar.
That's a great story I'd loveto tell you, and I'd like to
tell you about the three mostimportant things I learned from
Zig 40 years ago that I stillthink are absolutely critical
(18:43):
today.
That will help you in your life, in your business journey.
Until next week, I am MarkMason, coming to you from the
little studio in Dallas.
Ciao, you can do it right whenit's late at night.
You've been listening to theLate Night Internet Marketing
Podcast.
(19:03):
Be sure to visit LNIMpodcastcomtoday to leave feedback for
Mark, download special bonuscontent, access the show notes
and more.
See you there.
Until then, go and make somegreat progress on your internet
business one night at a time,hey.
(19:32):
So thanks so much for listening.
I would love it if you get achance to go over and check out
the Align Productivity FrameworkAgain.
If you do that quickly, you canuse the coupon code APFREE25 to
get the course for free.
I would love, if you do thatquickly, you can use the coupon
code AP free 25 to get thecourse for free.
I would love if you do that,because you know I'm using a
whole new tech stack over there.
(19:53):
I'm using go high level, whichyou can check out.
I I'm really loving high level.
You can check that out over atmark Masoncom forward slash, g,
h, l and you can get an amazingfree trial and check out go high
level.
If you're like I am and you'reusing a thousand legacy things
(20:14):
WordPress hosting, a landingpage tool, an email tool I use a
convert kit, which I actuallylove, kajabi, just all of these
different tools A tool forforums, a tool for scheduling,
zoom meetings, you know, I meanit's just on and on and on.
You can just go over tomarkmasoncom slash GHL and get
(20:39):
everything you need pretty muchin one spot and it works.
It's a thriving tool.
It's interesting.
The tool is really built forpeople who want to build
software as a service marketingagencies because you can buy the
(20:59):
$297 or $497 a month packageand host as many websites and
have as many sub accounts withas many clients as you want.
So if you're a web servicesbusiness and you're building
websites for clients and thoseclients want to be able to log
(21:19):
into their backend and follow upon leads and do all this kind
of customer relationshipmanagement stuff, it does all of
that and it's amazing.
At the $97 level you get all ofthat for three accounts, which
is enough to run almost anyonline business.
So, of all the things that I'veseen, for people like us that
(21:40):
want to have landing pages andwebsites and blogs and deliver
courses and conduct surveys,have an email autoresponder All
of the things that we need to doin a normal business Go High
Level is just amazing for thatand I encourage you to try that
out over at markmasoncom forwardslash GHL.
Anyway, we got off on that topicof GHL because everything is
(22:03):
new.
So if you do check out AlignProductivity and you have
feedback on the look and feel,how the emails are, whether or
not all the buttons work and soforth the checkout page,
anything that you see or haveproblems with, whether or not
the coupon code works right, anykind of little ticky tacky
thing that you'd like to givefeedback on, I'm very interested
(22:25):
because this is the first timeI've really tried to do a
sizable launch on the GHLplatform and I'd love to hear
your feedback.
So that's it for me today.
I hope you have an amazing weekthat's incredibly productive.
I'll see you next week when Itell you all the stuff I learned
from Zig Ziglar.
Ciao,
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