If you take a look at any of the top internet marketing and online business building forums online, you’ll find these questions asked repeatedly:
“How much time does this take?” “How fast can I make money?”
“Do I need any skills to do this?”
“Do I have to learn anything?”
“Does this require any investment?”
And so forth. We’ve seen these questions so many times, they seem legitimate – as though a business should take no time, require no skill, need no investment and so forth.
Just press a button and WHAMO! Hundred dollar bills start spewing out of your computer. Anything short of this is something we’re just not interested in, thank you very much.
And there lies the clue of why so many people fail in business, and in life.
They’re not willing to put in the time. They’re not willing to invest even the smallest amount of money, other than to purchase the initial ‘how-to’ product. They’re not willing to just DO IT.
Most people will say it’s because we’ve gotten lazy. We want success NOW, not in a week or in a year. Everything is NOW NOW NOW or never.
But I have another theory. I don’t think people are lazy. Nor do I think they lack the time or the motivation. Heck, just look at how much time some people spend looking at and buying new how-to-make-money products. They literally invest hundreds of hours reading sales pages and buying products.
And they might even read some of them. Maybe. But do they put them into action? 99 times out of 100, they don’t.
And it’s not because they’re lazy. It’s because they’re AFRAID.
Somewhere in the recent past, we forgot that it’s okay to not be a smashing success the first time we do something. We forgot that it’s okay to fall down and get back up when we’re learning to walk. We forgot that it’s okay to look like a complete jackass the first few times we try to dive off the diving board. We forgot that the first time we made love, we were as awkward and clumsy as could be.
But we kept trying to walk. We kept diving off that board. And we kept making love until we got GOOD at it.
So why is it that we are so afraid to fail in business? Why is it that we are only interested in making the smallest, briefest of efforts before we throw our hands up and declare that, “This doesn’t work?”
When did we get so damn AFRAID?
More importantly, how do we get unafraid?
By putting blinders on. You choose the path you want to take, and then you research the heck out of it for seven days or less. You read and watch everything you can get your hands on, and you take notes.
Distractions are NOT an option. Nor is mulling it over and thinking of all the reasons why it won’t work. You don’t have TIME for that.
After your 7 days (or less) of research, you take action. Because you know what? Taking action is actually EASIER than learning. And it’s more fun, too. But because we let those little fear monsters whisper in our ear, we think it’s gonna be hard. We think it’s somehow going to hurt.
But once you break that first barrier and start moving, you realize that brick wall was only made of tissue paper, and you had the ability all along to walk right through it to the other side.
Now here’s where it gets really interesting: “D” and “F” students often do better in business than “A” students. Which is another way of saying that quite frequently the not so bright people build empires while the geniuses don’t have two nickels to rub together.
Do you know why? Because the really smart people are too smart for their own good. They’re thinking of all the reasons why their new business venture will fail. And because they’re so smart, they’re able to come up with all kinds of perfectly legitimate reasons why it won’t work and why it won’t last if it does work.
And they’re right, too – it will fail because they’ve already put their business on that course of failure simply by thinking about it. Not because of some voodoo mind magic, but because they will either not start the business at all because they fear the failure they see headed their way, or because they will start it but then quit at the first problem. “There! I knew it, I just knew this wouldn’t work!”
But the “D” and “F” students aren’t quite so bright, so they don’t ponder all the reasons why their new business will fail. Nor do they try to “fix” the business before they start it, with their new fangled ideas (another “A” student problem.)
Instead, they take the book or course they bought, and start at page 1, and follow the steps. When they get stuck, they ask for help. “I can’t figure this out, so I’ll ask these people on the forum, or hire someone on Fiverr to do it for me, or whatever.” And they muddle through because they essentially don’t see all the obstacles the “A” students see. They’re just following the recipe.
And guess what? They succeed!
But what about fear of failure, doesn’t that come into play even for the “D” and “F” students? Yes, it does, but to a much lesser degree. Think back to school and you’ll realize that the “D” and “F” students have a lot of experience at failing because they got those grades. Contrast that with the “A” student who had a nervous breakdown if he/she got a “B” on a test. You remember that person, right? They were practically hysterical, because they had no experience at failing, and to them a “B” was a total and complete failure because it fell short of that magical “A” grade.
Which, I think, is why so many are afraid to fail. We go through school thinking that we will always get that “A” or “B” grade, and we do get the grades until we leave school. Then we realize the REAL WORLD works differently, and we might actually =GASP= not be a stellar success from day 1 at something new.
So we decide to only do those things we KNOW we will be good at. And then the ultimate universal revenge happens – because we don’t try anything new, we succeed in not failing, but we fail in LIFE. And that truly sucks.
So all of this is perhaps a very long winded way of saying, go out there and fall in love with failing, because only by embracing the concept of failure can you truly succeed. I don’t care what online business you choose, in the beginning you will not be good at it, and that’s okay because you will learn more and become more skilled every day if you put in the effort.
Do you think the information sellers making six figures a month started out making that kind of money? No way. They started out small, threw themselves into learning the business and grew their income as they grew their knowledge and confidence. This is the way it works. This is ALWAYS the way it works. And to think that there is some magical button somewhere that, if only you could find it you could be an instant success from day 1 with no investment of time, learning and failure, is perhaps the stupidest notion of all.
So choose your path, put on your blinders, learn everything you can for 7 days, and then just DO IT.
You’re new found successes may astound you.
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