[Success Story] Newbie Revisits 1 Year Later - Lessons Learned A long The Way

Hello Warriors,

It's almost exactly 1 year since I found and registered at the Warrior forum. I was quite the newbie and hadn't earned a single dollar online. To this date I still haven't "worked" a single day. I'm enjoying the benefits of living life on my own terms and being able to travel the world - the last year I've lived or traveled in Asia, South America, USA, Europe and Scandinavia. It's been quite the journey and I've learned a lot about everything from business and marketing to languages and argentinian bife de chorizo.

The sole purpose of this post isn't to brag, but rather to inspire and share a few short lessons I've come to learn a long the way. My business focus is on the offline market, however i knew from the start that i still wanted to be mobile and flexible which lead me to structure the business in a different way than most people do. For me, this isn't so much about economic goals as it is about lifestyle goals. There's no point in earning a lot of money if you're still stuck in an office doing something you don't really like all day long, right?

1. Learn Sales - Sales is the heart of any business. If you're great at sales, you can literally get a well-payed job anywhere you want in the world, anytime. I know what you're thinking, "Yea, but my goal isn't to be a great salesperson, I'll be the one hiring them instead...". Neither is it my goal, however if you learn sales and the psychology behind it you will be so much more likely to get what you want, whether it's that blonde girl by the bar or some business partnership. When you think about it, a lot of the things we do is related to "selling", whether we think about it or not... meeting a new person at a party, job-interviews and so on.

2. The thing that you least want to do is often what needs to be done. Have you been dragging yourself around cringing to start cold calling? Do it. Thinking it might be good to go to a networking event but you're a bit scared, or you don't have a business card, or you dont have this or that? Just do it.

3. Have someone who can hold you accountable. Business partner, friend, mentor or whatever you choose. Have someone who will let you know when you don't follow through and do the things you said you would.

4. Stay consistent, and have laser beam focus. I think many of us entrepreneurs have this problem, we start working on something for a few weeks, even months, but then after a while it starts itching in that nerve, we found something new we want to try out. Learn to recognize it and stay focused on your goal. Another specific kind to this forum is what I call the "WSO-addicts", the name says it all (sorry WF-Gurus).

5. Ask yourself, is this worthy of my time? If it's something more important you could be working on (i.e working on growing your business vs. doing a web design project), you probably should. Of course when you're first starting out you might have to do it all by yourself, but pretty soon after your first profits starts coming in you will have the option to start delegating/automating. When I outsource something it's for either one of two reasons, profits or pain. The last one meaning it's something I really hate doing - however try to see the difference between "hate doing" and "outside your comfort zone". If it's the latter, it's most likely worth doing it.

6. Read the good-old books. The internet is amazing for learning new subjects, however don't forget about real books and even old books. It's where some of my "best learning" comes from.

If you want more specifics and details, I just did a blogpost on "how I did it". Click the first link in my signature to read it.

To all of the people who contribute valuable content to this forum - you know who you are, thank you and keep doing what you're doing. I will do my best to give back, if there's any questions for me don't hesitate to post below. Will do my best to give a good answer.

Cheers,
Carl