Remember the five major goals that we wrote down just a few lessons ago? Our objective for this lesson is to figure out every single step we need to take to accomplish that goal. Every freaking step. Let's go. Google University.
Have you ever done deep Google research dives and come out the other side feeling like a bear coming out of hibernation? Typically, this happens for me at about, you know, one, two, or 3:00 AM when I don't have anything better to do. I know the feeling very, very well. And you probably know the feeling too when you have about a hundred different tabs open and you have no idea how this tab relates to this tab or where you are, how you got to where you are right now. Honestly, I'm getting anxious just talking to you about it right now. Here's the thing.
I wanted to show you a better way, a way to go to Google University without the stress. A way to organize yourself on these deep Google dives without feeling like you just got tossed up into a hurricane or a trash compactor from Star Wars. When you sit down to do a Google dive, you just need to get one thing straight right off the bat. Don't put pressure on yourself.
Google dives can sometimes bear absolutely no fruit. That's okay. Write this time off as if it doesn't matter if you accomplish everything or nothing in the next two, three hours that you're going to do this particular research dive. For the purpose of this exercise, let's say that you want to make $5,000 per month as a blogger. Let's just use that as an example. First, there are two steps to this process.
One, we need to zoom way out on this goal and look at it from a bird's eye view. Think of it like zooming way, way out on Google maps. We need to get an overarching idea of where to go before we start making left and right turns. So in this instance, I'm going to search "how to be a successful blogger" on Google. The first step is to read every single one of the posts on the front page of Google. Let's click into the first one: How to start a successful blog in 2020.
At the top, you'll notice these fine folks decided to give us a bit of a cheat sheet. So let's read them off, shall we? One, choose your blog name and get hosting. Two, start your blog by adding WordPress. Three, pick a simple theme to make your blog your own. Four, add two key blogging plugins to track readers and keep stats. Five, write compelling content that your audience will love. Okay, so each of these steps towards becoming a more successful blogger takes more research.
This is where we pause the Google University part and get into what's going to keep us organized during this whole thing. And that is a simple Google document. These saved my freaking life. Included in this lesson is a Google doc template that you can use to keep yourself organized. I recommend clicking into it, copying it, and pasting it into your own Google doc to help you save some time. I want you to name this Google document "Google University." Over time, you're going to be able to type Google University into your search bar at the top and you'll automatically get recommended straight to this Google document that you're about to make. Right now, all you need to do is to write down the major steps that these people are telling you to take to accomplish the goal that you want to accomplish.
So we already have those five other major steps they just told us to take, like get posting and set up a domain and set up your WordPress theme, etc. Copy that and paste that directly into this Google University document. So you're going to have "Google University" up at the top of your worksheet. And then you're going to have your first major goal, which is to create a blog that makes $5,000 per month. And then you're going to put the major steps that you need to take to create that down below it. You're sort of going to make a tab and create one, two, three, four, or five, all the major steps that you need to take to actually achieve that goal.
One really important step to this is to create a bibliography underneath all of right underneath this major sort of goal that you just wrote down with links to all the URLs that you source this information from, just so you can go back and click into them if need be later on. Very, very important. Let's move on to the next one. So this one's from CoSchedule. As I scroll down the page, it honestly seems like a lot of advice that doesn't really seem tactical in any real way. We need tactical advice. The first result was tactical.
Make a website, go get a domain name, get hosting. I don't need "find your niche." Keep looking for tactical bits of information. We can leave the BS for later. Okay, the next one: 14 ways to be a successful blogger and online entrepreneur. This one is a mix of both tactical advice and BS advice. For instance, "grow your email list" is a hidden gem among the trash here. Write it down in your Google document.
"Learn SEO" is another one that's actionable. "Create products" is another one that's really great. Copy these three and put them right underneath the ones that you just put into your Google document. So you have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, I believe there are eight different steps now. So not every result on Google is going to yield us great results. My advice? Make it very simple. If a post is not getting to the point right away, it's slightly just there to sell you something. So "X" out of it and move on.
If the advice that you would have found there was actually great, then you'll be able to find that advice anywhere else on the internet as well. After about an hour or two of decent research with the first page of Google results, you should be able to have a pretty good idea of everything that you need to do to accomplish this major goal, all major steps, I should say. Looking at my list, I know I need to set up an email list.
I know I need to set up a domain name and hosting. I know I need to choose a theme. I know I need to get into some search engine optimization. So great, we have the major roadmap. That's step one of this entire process. Let's move on to step two. It's really time to prioritize. After about an hour of researching, you know exactly what needs to happen to accomplish your dream goal. You know all the major steps. Welcome to step two though. This is the part where we dig in deeper to each of the major steps that we just outlined. I mean, how exactly do you set up a website?
That's pretty complicated. It's going to take more than just someone telling you, "Hey, you need to start up a website." Well, how? How do you figure that out? More Google. For example, guys, "create a website" is one of the major steps here in my Google University document. What you're going to do is you're going to press "enter" and then hit "tab" underneath that major goal. It's going to look something like this. You're going to add "best places to buy a domain name" and "best places to buy hosting." Now we know that these two steps are underneath "choose your blog name" and "hosting." This is keeping us organized, guys. You see that?
These formatting tools are exactly why I love Google documents and why I've chosen them to be the backbone of this course. Google University can feel like diving into a rabbit hole. One search result can provoke another search result, which provokes another search result. And before you know it, you forgot what you were researching in the first place because you're 30 freaking levels down. It's like Inception. For us, it's important that we keep coming back and tweaking this table of contents so that we know where we are and why we're searching for what we're searching for right now. Just hit the "enter" button, press "tab," and now you have a whole other layer that you can show, okay, this is beneath this, and then this has beneath this, and then this has been this, right? We may settle on three different choices: Bluehost, SiteGround, or WordPress Engine.
We need to write them down underneath "best places to buy hosting." Follow me for a second. What if we choose WordPress Engine? How do we set up WordPress Engine hosting? Well, just hit the "enter" button, press "tab," and then paste the link to the URL that will show you how to do that right there in the Google document. Bingo, we fixed it. It's so incredibly important to stay organized. That's what a big Google University dive is all about.
As far as staying organized is concerned, use H2 headers to your advantage. Earlier, I told you to just throw all of your goals underneath your big major goal in numeric format. You can definitely do that. That's good for when you're just initially listing off a bunch of things and you don't know anything about how to accomplish your goal. But later on, it might work out for you to create something a little more organized. So use H1 headers for your big goals, "how to create a blog that makes $5,000 per month," and then use H2 headers for any big pillars that make up this goal. So for instance, a big pillar would be "get a domain name and set up hosting," and then all you would do is create your tabs underneath that major pillar. After step one, which was just basically to spend one to two hours to get the general roadmap of everything you need to do to accomplish your goals, you now transition into step two, which is to attack each different pillar that we just explored in the first one to two hours of our Google University session.
So if we found out that we needed to get domain hosting and a domain name, that's going to be your pillar. And that's the one that you're going to get even more detailed about in step two. After ten or so hours of Google researching, you should know pretty much all there is to know about a particular goal of yours. One of those goals, at least. So break it up into two-hour Google University sessions. Say, in these two hours, I'm going to spend two hours researching my work goal.
And then tomorrow, I'm going to spend two hours researching my hobbies goal. The next day, I'm going to spend two hours researching my location goal. So break it up like that. And after about 50 hours, I should say, of Google researching, you should be well on your way to understanding exactly what you need to do moving forward. These pillars are going to save you in the stage where you're actually going to start taking action. This is going to save you a lot of time.
You'll be able to say, "I want to take down the 'create a WordPress site pillar this week.'" And you're going to know everything that you need to do to take that pillar down because you've listed all of the steps underneath that pillar. Staying organized doesn't just help you right now. It helps you much later on in the course as well. Some of your big goals might only take about one to two hours of Google researching before you find out exactly what you need to do. Others might take you, you know, ten hours to do. For instance, my goal of buying a property in the Philippines, it's pretty straightforward.
I know exactly what I need to do. I just need to contact a real estate agent, go take a look at some properties, see which ones I like the most, and then, you know, close the deal, get a bank loan if I need it. And then, you know, we're working towards that. It's not that complicated. The only other thing I would need to research is what locations I would like to live at. That's pretty much it. I would say just set aside 40 to 50 hours of Google researching time to get a good bearing on all of your goals. It might take you less than that.
It might take you much less than that. And that's okay, but just set aside those hours, about a week's worth of work, and you should be fine by the end of the week. Sure, you're probably going to need to do a little more research later on in the execution stage. But for the most part, the planning stage is over. One thing I want to leave you with is this: Don't get discouraged. This part is supposed to take time and it's supposed to be a little stressful because you're not really sure what you're doing or what you're researching or where you're going, but you will find out in time.
It may feel like you've made no progress after an hour of researching. Just be gentle with yourself, okay? The answers will come. Just write off 40 to 50 hours to do this particular part of this course. And by the end of it, you're going to be much, much, much more knowledgeable of what you need to do over the next remaining lessons of this course. Thank you all so much. Let's move on to a quick Google document masterclass that I'm going to teach
