You Want Online Success? Ask Your Woman.

Andy,

That is such a good post - I'm lost for words.

Sadly, most people will go on about their daily "my gf/wife is nagging me" routine, because it's much easier to believe in a dream than it is to face the facts, man up and stop being a pathetic little loser.

Not many people are going to agree with you though. After all, they're just a few months (weeks?) away from becoming rich, rich, riich... Oh wait.

My wife always telling me that I should focus on a "real job" instead of wasting my money in vain! She never believed in what I'm doing and she always telling me that she never believe in that internet thing.
That had created a strong challenge inside me to succeed, although I did not reach my target yet, but based on current results and putting myself finally on the right track, I feel I'm almost there and I'll finally prove that my money and long times in front of my computer was not in vain.

You're absolutely right - and that's a good point.

If you just start out with the focus of learning and enjoying it, with a sale being a bonus - you're much likely to get understanding from those around you, after all - we all have hobbies.

It's when you say "I'm going to be rich" and then the money doesn't come that most people start to resent the questions. But you're right - if you didn't say it'll make you rich then you don't set an expectation.

In the UK there's a TV program called Only Fools & Horses where the main character has a saying with his brother of "This time Rodney - we'll be millionaires" whenever they start a new money making scheme. I use the saying to my friends when we start an IM project now - just for the laugh

Andy

I've been involved in IM for a few months now, have a paid membership where I get free hosting and have a couple of sites that haven't yet earned me a cent due to the fact that they are more practice-runs than anything. My girlfriend thinks that I am crazy for giving this my everything, especially as no money has been earned yet and may not be for a while to come. However, my plan is to return to live in South Africa where my normal line of work as a mechanichal engineer is rather unpredictable in the current climate out there so I will also continue with Del's saying "This time next year we'll be millionaires, Rodders" and just get on with it and make it happen.
Mike :-)

That is so true of any relationship. I've watched couples tear each other down, and I can see why they have trouble being happy and being successful. It's a form of trying to have control over the other person.

My better half and I have always supported whatever projects, businesses, or interests we each have. We don't need to each take part in the same activities, we can each have our individual interests, but we each support the other one's right to to have interests.

Being with a spouse or significant other who gives total support makes for a much better relationship... And for a more successful business.

:-Don

I know that's true because I used to spend hours helping my ex with her studies because I really wanted her to do the best that she possibly could in anything she did.

It's true that 2 minds are better than one, especially since it means you get to check the reality of your ideas with someone who isn't lost in the emotion of it.

I wonder how many times a guy has 'almost' bought a nice car only to have his girlfriend/wife remind him that he just plain can't actually afford it.

I'm jokingly making this about men/women and I know it works both ways, but the point is - whoever you are, as soon as you get to the point where you're basing your financial future on the advice of people you don't actually know that are saying things that sound 'plausable' on the Internet - you probably do need someone who cares about you to give you a sanity check.

The number of times that people have come to me for coaching and their business model has been fundamentally flawed is crazy.

When I say things that are generalisations about 'IMers', I know I'm generalising but I have met and spoken with many thousands of IMers from all over the world at all stages of their game, so it's not all hypothetical.

Brilliant post. And maybe these are some of the questions one should keep asking to their own self. Are you really doing the right thing? Are you seeing the right things with your eyes, or are you simply blind? Does your mind believe, with sufficient reasons apart from a regular emotion, that you are on the right track?

To succeed, you have to ask and answer the hard questions. The easier questions are easy to answer andd anyone can do that !!

Great post Andy. You're right, it's good to have close 'somebody' who will give you an honest reality check every now and then.

I know a lot of people go through this and the last thing you want is your goal to come between you and your family and even when they are trying to help they can (out of lack on knowledge about what you're doing) be a drain on your mental state - especially when you're struggling and already criticising yourself for your lack of results.

But their questions are valid and if you can't give them rational and reasonable responses - that's definitely something to look at.

I know it can be hard to ask yourself accountability questions - but it's so easy to forget that you're sometimes 'hoping' a little more than is reasonable and having a sanity check can be massively helpful.

On the other hand.........Yes, people close to us sometimes question our sanity in working with this Internet thing. To someone whose idea of Nirvana is working for the same company for 40 years, doing the same thing day after day after day, what we do is insane.

But in reality, no job is safe. Well, unless you're a professional thief but the downside there is a killer. Unless you're a lawyer, who is also a professional thief, but very little downside there so long as you don't have a need for respect.

Seriously, some internet jobs can be a little hard to describe. If you make a living writing articles online, how many people on the outside can understand how that works? And are you willing to educate them? If you build websites and flip them, how to explain that to the uninitiated? Want to try explaining SEO to someone who hasn't a clue as to what that means?

I'm lucky. My friends and family have seen me succeed so many times in the outside world, that they have faith that I'll do it online, too. And if I don't, then I'll take a close look, find out where I'm going wrong, and try it again. And yet again, if that is what it takes. Failure is not only an option, it's a great learning tool.

Nick, in terms of the broad strokes of your business, I agree with you. You should be able to come up with a simple explanation of your basic business model, i.e. "I sell how-to info online", "I help other businesses find leads and customers", and so on.

As far as explaining some of the nuts and bolts, it can be frustrating when people ask simple questions that to you are self-evident. If you can't explain some of your processes without your listener climbing the same learning curve, it just means you can't explain to that person - you might still have a business.

Even if you never do succeed in making your listener understand what you are trying to explain, the act of explaining itself can help you get things straight in your own mind.

Back in college, one of my math TAs was trying to figure out something he was having a problem with for his doctorate - something to do with chaos, set theory and game theory. As far beyond the calc he was teaching as that calc was beyond simple arithmetic. He spent 30 minutes just explaining the problem to me, never mind the answer. Then he got this funny look on his face and started scribbling like mad on the white board. Something he said while trying to "dumb things down" for me triggered the answer he was looking for.

But there's one massive problem with that........

Einstein and Edison were geniuses and were experts in their field - way ahead of the crowd at the time.

If you think not having a sensible plan and avoiding taking responsibility for your results so that you have the comfort of always being able to say "well Edison never gave up" while your family and loved ones are wondering why you never spend time with them anymore, is a good idea? come on... surely you don't believe that.

Most people that get in to IM spend their first year just learning that there's more to long term success than they thought.

Sure you need to spend some time, be determined, not give up just because it's not easy - but that's not the same as deluding yourself that you'll get rich while staying busy doing stuff that will never get you that result.

The whole point of this thread is to avoid people blindly taking action without taking a step back and ensuring that their plan is sound.

Why bother?

Simple - there's so much misinformation passing off as good advice about this subject that it's easy to start out with a positive and hopeful mindset and not realise you're following the advice of liars and con-men.

If you base your actions and goals on the lies of other people and don't even realise it - you're not helping yourself by saying "as long as I'm taking action I'm building my dreams" or "Edison never gave up so I shouldn't".

There's a reason so many people like to learn about goal setting, business plans, time management and marketing - They focus on results.

If you learn 'proper' marketing (i.e not just from ebooks and forums) you'll come across things which many businesses base their actions on (especially in ecommerce and sales focused businesses) - KPI's.

These Key Performance Indicators are set out so that every element of the business can tell that it's getting the results that company need in order to be profitable.

Now - obviously I'm not saying that you have to have KPI's for you IM business, what I am saying there's a reason why companies do have these things - It's because they need to make money and understanding what needs to happen in each business unit for that to happen makes a lot of difference.

So many IMers think of IM as some sort of creative art where it's not reasonable to actually think that you can have an expectation about results and that it's a trial and error process.

Well, you can sure make that true easily enough - just put your head in the sand and don't assess your business when it's failing and keep telling yourself that it's all just part of the journey - the problem is that THAT journey can last until your money and your patience run out and you have no choice but to go get a job (or go on welfare).

It's a very arrogant and selfish perspective to think that what you do doesn't affect anyone else and that it's ok for you to just fumble around with IM with no realistic business model. It's a really good way to end up feeling sad too.

Who really wants to spend years of their life questioning whether they'll ever get the results they believe are possible?

But I guess all the time you don't hold yourself accountable (and don't accept the accountability that those around you hold you to) then your failure can always be someone else's fault and not your own.

Blame it on the Gurus.

Blame it on the liars.

Blame it on bad luck.

But the truth is - you can be successful without anyone else involved in your business, so if you're not successful it's all down to one person......

Anyone that cares about you and questions your strategy is doing you a favour.

If you think they're not then you're probably just insecure about your model - and that's something that should be ringing bells in your head.

I'm not sure I agree.

I think it depends entirely on how you express it.

There are bound to be exceptions, but I think the main problem people face when encountering resistance from loved ones in IM - is that they're not able to properly make what they do sound logical.

There's a big difference between saying:

"Stop bugging me! the reason I spend all my time on the internet is because I'm gonna make us rich selling stuff - it's called Internet Marketing"

and

"I know I spend a lot of time on the internet, but I'm retraining myself so that I have new skills and can find new ways to help us make money"

even worse when you buy into the hype and actually expect that you're about to get rich quick because you just bought some CB ebook about PPC.

If you tell people you're gonna get rich - they will naturally be skeptical if you've never made any decent money before.

If you tell them you're learning new skills - they won't be so likely to push back.

Either way - after a few months they might well ask how you're doing and if you stated your situation in financial terms (i.e I'll be rich in a few months once I finish my first ebook) then you'll probably have some explaining to do.

If you stated your situation in terms of learning new skills you can say how well it's going and how much you've learned.

I see so many people telling people around them about the money they're going to make - that they're setting themselves up for difficult questions and even negative feedback.

So while I can understand the advice to not tell anyone - it's only really a problem in this case if you frame things around financial expectations.

I think fundamentally that it's better be accountable than not as far as achieving your goals is concerned.

Andy

Einstein once said, "genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99% persperation" he also said, "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Genius and success according to Einstein and most successful people in the world is simply the desire to learn and not give up and ignore people who try to put you down.

BTW I guess I've heard Edison failed 10,000 times before he succeeded. Now does that sound like an ingenius man who is just smarter then all of us, or does that sound like the work of a man that just stays with problems longer?

But that's not actually true - other people can't actually demotivate you - only YOU can do that.

If someone tells me that what I'm doing will never work and I should just stop - I ask myself if I think they're qualified to make such a statement. If they are - I'll take a step back and look at what I'm doing and ask them to explain their thinking.
If they're not - I just thank them for their concern and ignore what they said.

My motivation is down to ME.

So I'm not buying the whole - they'll drag you down with their comments thing.

And again - if I have a lack of motivation - that says something about my business model. If I can't get fully behind it then it's probably the wrong model.

Ken,

I'm obviously not being very clear...

I wasn't referring to you personally 'pushing back'.

My communication is obviously lacking since you seem to be reading my comments differently to how I'm intending them.

So - I'll just shut up and leave what I've said there in case someone does find it useful and not confuse things by adding anything more.

Thanks for your feedback. I do sometimes talk crap and not realise so it's good to be reminded when I'm not making sense.

Thanks

Andy

And be brave enough to ask yourself questions about why you think you will be successful and if your expectations are based on substance or hope.