This is a guest post from Brian - a past student (and now somebody we’re happy to call a friend) who had made some serious progress online. He emailed me this post out of the blue the other day; Court and I were blown away by his insights. Unfortunately, we can’t even link back to Brian’s blog because he’s anonymous on that site (his consulting business requires it). Hopefully at some point we’ll be able to link to him because I find his blog an extremely interesting read, even though I have no background (or future) in his field. I encourage you to soak up and internalize what Brian is trying to share with you.
Hey everyone, I’m Brian, one of Court and Mark’s former students.
I joined the coaching program in late January and Mark referenced me in a recent post as having gone from $0/month to over $10,000/month online recently.
Going from nothing to a full-time income online in just over half a year sounds impressive.
But it wasn’t easy, and I put in a huge amount of time and effort to get there. I reached my goal differently from what I had originally envisioned (I had planned to sell products, but I ended up selling my own high-priced consulting while my products were still under development).
Court and Mark might tell you that persistence, time, and effort are the most difficult parts of making money online. But I would add to that list the barriers I overcame to get there.
Barrier 1: Formal Education
In an earlier post, Mark mentioned how a formal university education is a terrible investment if you look at how little you earn right out of school.
I was in a much better position than most graduates because I had a $150K job shortly after graduating, due to a combination of persistence, luck and going to one of the top schools in the country.
But I still think Formal Education is a huge barrier to starting your own business for one simple reason: it gives you the wrong mindset.
In school, you get assignments from professors and get quick feedback on whether you succeeded or failed. The scope of each assignment is clear, and someone tells you exactly what to do.
But this is exactly the wrong kind of experience if you want to be a business owner rather than an employee.
Why?
- There is no such thing as “quick feedback” in business. You need to test things for weeks, months, or years before you know whether they worked.
- No one can tell you exactly what to do or what not to do. You need to test a lot of different ideas and see what sticks.
- There’s no one judge to tell you whether you succeeded. The only way to determine your success is whether or not your customers are satisfied.
Having spent so much of my life in school, these points were really difficult for me at first. I overcame this barrier by surrounding myself by people who had succeeded in business or were looking to succeed online, rather than by the naysayers who liked to complain rather than take action.
Barrier 2: Friends and Family
To this day, 90% of my friends and family do not support me even though I make more money than them and have a better lifestyle at the same time.
Why?
Here are 4 reasons that come to mind immediately:
- They don’t “get it” - they don’t understand that the money you make is determined by the value you create, not how many hours you spend doing it.
- They don’t know anyone else doing it, so they assume it’s impossible or that I’m lying.
- They get defensive because I’m implicitly telling them that their approach is flawed.
- They just don’t care - believe it or not, some people are happy to endure crappy situations because they assume everyone else’s life also sucks.
When you start making money online, there will be a million naysayers who say it can’t be done.
And if you listen to them, you immediately endanger your chances for success. It’s like getting marriage advice from the guy who has been divorced 5 times: if he hasn’t succeeded in achieving your goal, why should you listen to anything he says?
There are two methods I used to overcome this barrier:
First, surround yourself with a more supportive set of people. It can be hard to find people who have had success with their own businesses - but finding people who are supportive of what you do can be easier.
Second, prove the naysayers wrong and win supporters. You can then work with them on future projects, and even if they don’t want to commit to anything full-time, they can still help you out quite a bit.
When I was starting out, exactly 0 people in my immediate circle had succeeded online - so I found groups and forums for those with similar goals instead.
Proving the doubters wrong can also be a very powerful way to win supporters. Two friends who doubted me in the beginning have now expressed interest in working for me after seeing how much money I’ve made.
Barrier 3: Yourself
A few months ago, some friends who had studied abroad with me in Japan met up for dinner. Towards the end, someone mentioned how we should make a return trip but how no one could afford it. Then someone else said, “Well, maybe if one of us gets rich…” and everyone looked at me.
I’m not smarter or more talented than anyone else who was there. In fact, many of my friends were more capable than me or had skills I didn’t have.
But there was one reason why everyone felt I had the best chance of “getting rich”: my mindset. Of course, they didn’t label it as such: they just felt I had been “born with talent” (I was terrible at sports, music, and most other things) or “born rich” (my parents never made more than $50K per year, combined).
The truth was simple: I thought big, while they thought small.
When you’re only making $10/month online, there are times when you’ll wonder if it’s even possible to make a full-time income via the Internet.
The best way to overcome this barrier is through incremental success. It took me many months to make a full-time income online - but even before that, incremental success helped keep me positive and focused on my goals.
One morning, for example, I woke up and the largest site in my niche had published one of my articles - that gave me thousands of visitors and offers to write for the 2 largest newspapers in the country. Of course, that didn’t just occur randomly - it happened because I had built up a relationship with the editor and kept sending him my articles each week, until I finally got my break.
Another time, before I had even begun selling anything, a reader emailed me and asked if he could pay to ask me for my advice. When you’ve been an employee or student your whole life, it’s quite refreshing to get an offer to give advice for $300/hour.
Incremental success is crucial online because most sites take many months, or even years, to become big successes.
If you wait for that to happen and don’t also set smaller goals in between, you lose motivation and can become the biggest barrier to your own success.
There Are Always Barriers
Although I successfully quit my day job and now work online full-time, I still run into barriers with each new project. For a new premium subscription site I’m working on, I’ve run into problems setting up partnership agreements, hiring voice talent, and even explaining to potential customers why it has been delayed.
Relative to the three barriers above, though, these seem like small problems - and that’s why I know I’ll succeed.
In fact, that might be the best part of overcoming barriers: you not only achieve whatever business goals you’ve set, but you’re also in a much better position to achieve whatever future goals you set.
I just finished reading this post for about the fifth time this morning…a thought keeps coming into my head: If the American (and world) economy is going to get back on track we need a lot more people like Brian and a lot fewer people like those that are trying to slow him down.
Choose to be a “Brian”. Decide to become part of the solution to the world’s economic problems.
Thanks Brian, for being the voice of optimism in a time when most people are choosing to live in fear.
- Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment