Name the One Thing Photography, Gardening, Bodybuilding and Blogging Have In Common

They are all things that seem easy at first, but prove to require a developed skill to be successful.

Photography:
Buy a nice camera and point it at things while pressing the button.
Easy.

Gardening:
Dig hole, place plant (or seed), replace dirt, add water, Miracle Grow® and sunshine.
Easy.

Bodybuilding:
Lift a lot of weights, eat a lot of protein, consider supplements.
Easy.

Blogging For Business:
Start blog on Wordpress, type articles about real estate, publish.
Easy.

They all seem easy enough, but when it comes to measuring your success, after the effort, most will be left disheartened.

The question that irks skilled photographers more than any other: “Wow, that’s a beautiful picture. What kind of camera did you use?”

Excellent photography is not so much about the technology in the hands of the artist as it is in developing the vision and applying the expertise garnered from critical analysis of thousands of snapped images. You’ll need to learn all about composition, lighting, frame speed, motion, processing, aperture, and a dozen other topics that I am not an expert in. I do know that worrying about megapixels and brand of camera mean that you have a long way to go before success comes ‘easy.’

I have what I refer to as a brown thumb.

Every plant I have ever cared for has died. I go to the local nursery, look out over the acre of beautifully maintained plants, and fall for it every time. Hundreds of dollars later, I am excited with the idea of having a back porch full of blooming happiness. Every year I am disappointed as they almost instantly look worse than when I first watered them. Every year I throw away pitiful looking plants that never lived up to my expectations.

Bodybuilding I’ve never tried, and don’t plan to. But watching some documentaries on contests, and reading about the intense dieting, training, chemistry and biology that goes into forming oneself into a formidable Atlas, it’s been revealed to me that it takes a lot more than pumping iron.

Sure, you can tone up, and even build some nice muscle with little knowledge of what you are doing at the gym, but to get beyond the plateau and really push the human body to its protein limits takes knowledge, skill, technique, discipline and hard work… lots and lots.

Skills like the ones above, once honed, are referred to as Disciplines.

It is with good reason, given the amount of time, energy, commitment and focus that is normally required to develop such skills.

In the book the Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains the 10,000 hour rule (threshold) of becoming an expert in something. Want to compete with the best of the best? You need to be willing to develop your skills for thousands of hours before you are ready to even step in the ring.

Real Estate Blogging is a discipline, for sure.

But the good news is that you don’t have to develop skills over thousands of hours to be seen as one with whom we want to do business. However, it is not as easy as just typing your thoughts about real estate and hitting publish for you to break through to the threshold where people see you as the expert.

Blogging is a journey through learning how to:

• Define an Audience
• Find Inspiration In Clients’ Needs
• Write Headlines
• Connect With Readers
• Organize Content
• Beautify Articles
• Establish Call-To-Action
• Market Your Content
• Develop a Voice
• Commit to Regular Publishing

Once these layers of the onion have been peeled back and you have a few dozen articles under your belt, you’ll find you hit stride and the effort becomes a habit and a learning skill.

You will recognize potential articles in every conversation as the photographer sees the frame in every light. You will have a plentiful bank of fruitful content just as the gardener will have baskets full of delicious reward. You will publish as effortlessly as the bodybuilder plows through his/her daily workout.

You may, after decades, have invested 10,000 hours in developing content for your business, but you’ll be the best of the best long before that.

Most will quit after less than 20 hours because they fail to see the success quickly enough. The quitters never looked at the effort as a discipline, but rather nothing more than a few simple steps to an expected result.

Now, with such little competition in the blogging-for-business market, once you master the above list, you’re likely to be standing without peer.

If you want to master these techniques alongside a personal trainer, contact us right away to schedule a session.

To read the original article, as seen on Real Estate Tomato, please click here.

Learn more about blogging tools.

• The Writings on the Web: Fun with Format
• Are You Technically Ready to do Business Today?
• Create a Fancy iPhone Email Signature for Free