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First, let me explain that I’m not a golf expert. I’m not a PGA pro. I’m a weekend hacker just like most of the amateur golfers out there.  I believe you shouldn’t take advice on your golf swing from other amateur golfers, especially ones who are worse than you. The purpose of this post isn’t to give you advice, but rather to outline how I personally plan to get to a point where I can consistently break 90 when I play golf. I’ll also be asking for some help from some of the pros on the web (more on that later).

Breaking 90 is essentially the same as getting a bogey on every hole you play (plus or minus a couple strokes depending on the course). If you can consistently break 90 on a regulation length course, you’re better than 78% of all golfers out there according to the National Golf Foundation. I feel it’s a great goal to have as an amateur golfer because it means you’re likely enjoying every game you play. You’re consistently getting the ball in the air roughly where you want it to go and two putting most holes. You’re probably making some pars, maybe the occasional birdie, and you’re likely staying away from triple bogeys or higher on any holes.

The Before

This is my third year playing golf. I’ve never had any formal lessons. I play on the weekends. I try to get out at least once a week during the season here in Montana. Most of what I know has been learned from reading books, watching golf on TV,  searching the internet and from my brother-in-law who has worked as an assistant pro. That means I’m pretty inconsistent. I don’t know what my handicap is but I’ve probably averaged double-bogey this year.

I’ve mostly been playing an executive course near my house which is 9 holes and all par 3′s except for two par 4′s. It’s a great learning course because you’re working on your game from about 150 yards and in, which is where most of your score is made (or lost). It lets me get in and out in about 2 hours which is great since that fits about perfectly with my 2-year-old’s nap schedule.

I recently played better than a bogey round on this course for the first time. It also happened to be the same day I took my two year old with me for the first time. Coincidence, or could he be my secret weapon? We’ll see.

Here’s a copy of my score sheet to give you an idea of how much work I still have to do.

Scoresheet - First Time Playing Bogey Golf

The Work

I’ve been wanting to write up this experiment for awhile, but I first wanted to play a bogey round on the executive course before I committed to attempting to break 90 on a regulation length 18 hole course. Here’s my 30 day plan. I’ll also add that I’m using the rules of golf to keep score including holing every putt and not taking mulligans.

Overall Strategy

By simply thinking differently, you can do a lot to reach the goal of breaking 90 without changing your swing at all.

• Add one to the PAR of every hole. P.A.R. stands for Professional Average Result. I’m not a professional so I’m going to establish a new PAR for myself. That means I’ll play par 5′s as par 6′s, par 4′s as par 5′s, and par 3′s as par 4′s.
• Get the first putt within 3 feet of the hole. Once I’m on the green, the first putt’s goal will be to get the ball within 3 feet of the hole which leads to a two putt on every hole.
• Get chips within 6 feet of the hole. Gives me a good chance of getting up and down.
• Never miss the green inside 35 yards. This means not always going at the pin, just get it somewhere on the green because I know I’ll two putt.
• Putt first, then chip, then pitch. If given a choice between these three shots, choose in this order.
• Know my club distances. I know I’ll hit a ball right or left, but there isn’t any reason why I shouldn’t be able to hit it hole high with clean contact if I know my distances.
• Take trouble out of play. If there is a possibility a ball can get in the water or out of bounds, take that possibility out by laying up. The goal here is to get rid of the really bad triple bogeys or higher on holes.
• If I’m in trouble, just get out. This means if I hit it in the trees, just punch it back to the fairway rather than trying to shoot a gap towards the pin and remaining in trouble if I miss.
• Get out of the sand the first time. Just get it out without wasting strokes.
• Don’t hit clubs I’m not confident with. On a tight fairway or on a second shot on a long Par 4, just grab a club I know I’ll get it closer to the pin without getting into trouble.
• When going for the green, aim at the biggest part. No need to always go at the pin if it’s sitting next to a bunker or at the back of the green.
• Choose consistency over distance. Club down, use 3/4 swings, use the bump and run, choke up, swing at 70% power, or do whatever it takes to be consistent.
• Get a perfect grip and setup. This is the easiest thing to get perfect every time.
• Get help for your most common mishits. I need help fixing my fat shots and pushes.

Practice Plan

• Putting
  • 100 4-Foot Putts Holed Per Week
  • 200 20-Foot Putts Lagged Within 3 Feet Per Week
• Chipping
  • 100 15-Yard Chips Within 6 Feet Per Week
• Pitching
  • 100 35-Yard Pitches On Green Per Week
• Bunker
  • 50 Balls Out the First Time Per Week
• Irons/Hybrids
  • Half Bucket Per Week to Determine Distances
• All Clubs
  • Half Bucket Per Week to Practice Perfect Grip and Setup
• Misses
  • Get Swing Analyzed by Professional to Determine Cause
  • Determine At-Home Practice Drills to Fix Misses and Practice Daily

I’m going to record a video of my swing when I’m hitting my worst misses and get some help from some of the online pros. For instance, Hank Haney provides some help to golfers on his twitter page. I’ll also email some of the shows like “School of Golf” on the Golf Channel and anyone else who I can find that’s willing to help me out.

I’ll stick with this practice plan for 4 weeks then give myself two full rounds to break 90. I’ll stick to my strategy above regardless of how tempting it might be to change mid-round.

The After

Let’s now look at hypothetically how this strategy will affect my score on a course with 4 par 3′s, 10 par 4′s and 4 par 5′s. With my plan, I’ll have  54 strokes to get on greens and 36 putts for a total score of 90 (bogey). I’ll just need to pick up one additional stroke over 18 holes to break 90.  Sounds so simple!

I’ll come back and update here with progress as I go along and a final update after I attempt to break 90 in two rounds.

If you have any advice or would just like to wish me luck, please comment below!

For a long time, I’ve been the guy behind the curtain with many of my websites and projects. As one of my business associates put it, I’m like the Wizard of Oz. You don’t completely understand what he’s doing back there, but you know he’s pushing levers and buttons to make things run. Frankly, I’m not the kind of person who enjoys the limelight. However, I’ve been getting into the website buying and selling business and have been putting my personal name on a lot of the products that we sell. Due to this, it makes business sense to begin getting some name recognition in the market as an expert on buying and selling sites.

So, let’s assume you’re positioning yourself as an expert in a field and someone wants to find out more about you. If they search for your name on Google, what do they find?

In my case, I searched for “Chris Yates” on Google and I was nowhere to be found. So, I decided I wanted to get to page one and preferably number one on Google for the term “Chris Yates” in 30 days.

The Before

I had a few things going for me before starting the experiment.

1. I had recently registered the domain chrisyates.org. Search engines love it if the website address is the “exact match” to the search term for which you are searching. I would have preferred chrisyates.com but the Chris Yates that owned it wasn’t at all interested in selling it to me. Bummer.
2. I had recently installed wordpress on my site and had set up a very basic personal blog type of website.
3. I had several websites I controlled which could be leveraged.
4. The term “Chris Yates” isn’t nearly as difficult to rank for as say “Weight Loss” because there are fewer competitors.

Even with those assets, I had a brand new website that was basically nowhere to be found on Google. Brand new websites typically have a tough time ranking in the search engines so this experiment is challenging. I’m also not the only Chris Yates in the world (obviously) so getting to number one means knocking out all the other Chris Yates’s of the world.

The Work

I did my best to document the steps I took throughout the month, but before I get into that, let me explain the basics of search engine optimization (SEO). I’ve been doing SEO for years, have taught it at seminars, and provided SEO services for companies large and small. There are two basics that you have to know to be successful.

1. Create quality content which includes the keyword you’d like to rank for.
2. Get other people to talk about you and link back to your website.

I could go on talking about all the other factors that affect rank in search engines for hours, but if you focus your efforts on these two, you’ll do well.

Before I started the experiment, I took care of item 1 above by writing a few hundred words on the About Chris Yates section of my site and fleshing out the homepage of my site with a few blog posts.

Here is a time-line of the work I did and my rank on Google for the term “Chris Yates” that day.

• May 6th – not in first 10 pages.
  • Looked over every website I have control over and searched for mentions of my name. I linked each of these back to chrisyates.org.
  • I asked friends who had websites to link to chrisyates.org in the following fashion <a href=”http://www.chrisyates.org/”>Chris Yates</a>. I picked up a few links from that throughout the month.
  • I submitted a press release about my new blog on a free press release website with links back to my site. I randomly picked the press release site and if I could go back and do it again, I would have chosen to pay for a site like prweb.com because the one I chose never showed up in Google News. Here’s a link to the press release about chrisyates.org.
• May 9th – first spot on page 7
• May 10th – fifth spot on page 5
• May 11th – Bounced around from second spot on page 6 to 4th spot on page 5.
  • I updated my Chris Yates YouTube channel and uploaded a video with a link back to my site in the description of the video.
  • Updated the about Chris Yates section of my site.
• May 12th – second spot on page 6
• May 13th – Bounced around from second spot on page 6 to 8th spot on page 5.
• May 16th – Second spot on page 6
• May 17th – Seventh spot on page 1. Bingo!
• May 18th – Seventh spot on page 1.
• May 19th – Seventh spot on page 1.
• May 20th – Seventh spot on page 1.
• May 23rd – Eighth spot on page 1.
  • I added a  new post on flipwebsites.com with links back to my site.
• May 24th – Seventh spot on page 1.
• May 25th – Eighth spot on page 1.
• May 27th – Eighth spot on page 1.
  • Hired someone to build 115 quality links to my site. Cost about $20.
• May 28th – Interview published on IdeaMensch.
• May 30th – Eighth spot on page 1.

The After

As you can see, it only took about 10 days to hit page one. From there, I kind of got stuck near the bottom of page one. I suspect with a couple more weeks time (considering some of the things that occurred near the end of May and with this post going live), I’ll take the number two spot. I think it might take me another one to three months to consistently take over spot one.

Sorry to the other Chris Yates’s of the world, but I’m determined to get to number one!

Have questions about SEO or would you like to know some more specifics on the work I did? Make a comment below.

My business partner and I had recently acquired a website that had solid ranking on the search engines, was getting a decent amount of traffic, and had a solid base of email subscribers. We were looking for a way to get consistent revenue from these assets within 30 days.

The Before

The problem was that the site was very inconsistent with its income. I would have had to constantly be manually sending out emails to generate new sales if I followed what the previous owner had been doing. Instead I decided to focus on creating a series of email autoresponders in a drip campaign.

The Work

I was looking for a shortcut because at the time of this experiment, I had a ton on my plate. In order to save time, I went to clickbank to find a product in the niche which would resonate with the email subscribers but also had an “affiliate tools area”. One of the products I found had a pre-written and tested series of about 7 or 8 emails that I could simply copy and paste into my autoresponder program. This literally took me about 30 to 45 minutes.

The After

The results speak for themselves. I doubled the sales of the site and am now seeing a much more consistent trend in sales.

Graph of Website Sales Improvements

About a month before my 30th birthday, I was lying in bed thinking about my upcoming big ‘three oh’. I had this nagging feeling that with a little more than a month until my birthday, I needed to do something challenging; both physically and mentally. I also wanted whatever I decided to do to be a memorable experience; something I could tell my kids about later in life.

The next day I started looking around and asking my friends for ideas on what to do. I came across something called the Blue Mountain 30K run which seemed like a great fit since it’s my 30th birthday. So, I registered to run in the race that same day.

I also thought that to make the race more memorable, I should do it for charity. There is a great charity here called Camp Mak-A-Dream that runs an event called “Ride Around The Pioneers in One Day” where bikers raise funds for Camp-Mak-A-Dream based on how far they ride. I figured the same model would work for my run so I set a goal of raising $3,000.

The Before

This wasn’t an easy task for me. First, I’d never run over 18 miles at one time. Second, at the time, I hadn’t even regularly exercised since before my son was born (almost two years). Also, $3,000 was a lot of money for my first fund raising attempt. BUT… it was a worthy goal that would ultimately send 6 kids to Camp Mak-A-Dream for a week.

The Work

Going into the run, my real goal was simply to finish without getting injured. Since I left myself less than a month to prepare, I felt this was reasonable.

A few days after deciding to the do the run, I found a trainer here named Kiefer at Momentum Athletic Training who put together a training plan. It looked something like this:

• 09/11 5 miles easy
• 09/12 7 miles easy
• 09/13 Day off
• 09/14 3-4 miles
• 09/15 3-4 miles
• 09/16 3-4 miles
• 09/17 Day off
• 09/18 8 miles easy
• 09/19 10 miles
• 09/20 Day off
• 09/21 4-5 miles
• 09/22 4-5 miles
• 09/23 4-5 miles
• 09/24 Day off
• 09/25 10 miles
• 09/26 14 miles
• 09/27 Day off
• 09/28 4-5 miles easy
• 09/29 3-4 miles easy
• 09/30 Day off
• 10/01 Day off
• 10/02 3 miles easy
• 10/03 Race day!

I stuck to the training plan for about 4 or 5 runs then did a big run with hills.

I started getting some pain on the right side of my right knee. I found out I had developed IT Band syndrome. This is a very common running injury and is caused by a tendon repeatedly rubbing over your knee when you run. I had to back off from my training plan and started a heavy dosage of stretching, icing, and Ibuprofen hoping it would get better by race day.

The After

The weather was amazing on race day. 70 degrees and sunny doesn’t happen very often in October here. My wife and son came out to see me start.

After a short warm up and listening to a few announcements, I lined up at the back of the pack. There were 100 runners for the race and most of them looked in much better shape that I am. With a gun blast we were off.

My focus on the first 1/3 of the race was to take it easy and try to stay in sight of the back of the pack.

A few Kilometers into the race I was staring at the first mountain I had to climb. In this type of run, most people (except for the hard core ultra-runners) hike the uphill sections and run the flat and downhills. There was no way I was running up a mountain so I was happy to see everyone was walking. I turned on my Ipod and settled in for the climb.

Somewhere between the 5K and 10K mark I started mixing up kilometers and miles in my head. The run was 30K or 18.6 miles. At 10K I was thinking I only had 8K more to go when really I had another 20K to go. Oops!

When I reached the 15K mark, I snapped back to reality. At the aid station where they give you water, food, etc., they told me I’m half way done and was probably on pace to finish in 3 hours and 45 minutes. I loved the aid stations. Everyone was super supportive and when you’re running a long time it’s amazing how good pretzels and fresh orange slices taste.

The trouble started when I came out of the half-way mark aid station. I think it was a combination of just running a long downhill section and letting my muscles tighten up when I stopped to rehydrate but my IT Band really started hurting. I was able to run with the pain for awhile longer and climbed the second mountain in the race.

I didn’t realize how difficult the climbs were going to be in this race. The elevation change was about the same as climbing up and down the “M” trail here in Missoula about 6 times. It does make for some nice views though.

The top of the third mountain was amazing. It’s the highest point of the race and provides a 360 degree view of the Missoula and Bitterroot valleys. I filled up on pretzels and orange slices and started back down, but this time I couldn’t run. Basically every step hurt due to my IT Band.

This was the low point in the race. I realized I probably wasn’t going to be able to run the rest of the race, I’d have to walk. Injuries are very frustrating and knowing I had over 10K left to go where every step would hurt really got me down.

However, I was committed to finishing and kept going. As cliche as it sounds, all my supporters who donated and thinking about what the kids at Camp Mak-A-Dream have to go through kept me motivated to keep going.

On a lighter note, by this time I was completely sick of all the music on my Ipod so opted for the sounds of nature and the occasional ATV zooming around the trails. At this point, all I really wanted was to be done.

I pushed through the remaining 10K and even managed to run through the finish line. I was so focused on finishing that I ran right past my Wife, son, and sister-in law who were cheering me through the finish.

My time was horrible, but that’s okay. I finished in under 5 hours and was the last of the men and 3rd from last overall. However, considering my goals going in and my knee issues, I’m happy with the result.

It took me about 4 days of recovery to be able to walk somewhat normally, but I’m doing much better now. I still get the occasional “ache” in my knee so I know now to be a little more careful in my old age.

I’m also so grateful for everyone’s support. I’m amazed I was able to raise over $2,500.00 for Camp Mak-A-Dream. That’s enough to send 5 kids to camp for a week for free. Thank you so much!

The builder of our home had a somewhat “eclectic” choice in finishes. For whatever reason, he tried to mix a cabin style with more contemporary finishes. For example, our staircase was custom made of pine logs showing knots and all. My wife and I have more contemporary taste, so we took it on ourselves to attempt a DIY remodel of the stair railing.

The Before and After

Take a look at my wife’s writeup of the staircase remodel process (with pictures) by clicking here.