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Seriously, have you ever received an affiliate commission before the product was even created? Of course not. A frequent objection I hear from affiliate marketers is they don’t want to create their own products because they will have to wait until after the product is created to get paid. BUT, what if you could get paid before you create the product?

Here’s how you do it: Offer to let your customers watch over your shoulder as you do what you’re going to teach. In other words, do a live case study so they can see step by step what happens.

Let’s say you were going to make a product on how to sell t-shirts. You would let them see the process from start to finish, watching everything you do. You then take these recordings and sell them as your finished product, too. So you get paid in advance by people who want to see you do this as you do it, and then you have an asset you can sell over and over again.

Pick something you want to learn that others want to learn, too. Spend a week or two learning the basics, and then do it. Whatever it is, just do it. Then report on your results as you go. That is, document each day what you do and the results you get.

How to Promote Your Product to Buyers

There’s likely no need to make a humongous promise, like earning a million bucks in 22 days. Who’s going to believe it anyway? Instead, promise that you’re going to show them how to do the thing that you’re teaching. You’ll use video, screenshots, writing, etc., to show them what to do in each step and how to do it, and what to do if this happens or that happens. And when you make a mistake, add that in as well, since it shows them what not to do.

You’ll begin with the very first step, whether it’s research, finding an outsourcer or whatever, and do it in chronological order. It’s easy for you to do this way, and it’s easy for your customers to follow, too.

In your marketing, you’ll tell them why they should care about what you’re teaching – for example, that it’s an easy market to break into, extremely hot and so forth. You’ll also tell them what expertise you already have that you’ll be applying to this training, if any.

Then you’ll tell them exactly what they’ll learn, step by step, and what they’ll get out of it. It might be as simple as they’ll have their first product sold.

This is how you market the product before you’ve even made it. After you make it, then you’ll know your exact results. Maybe you sold 82 units in 21 days. That can become part of your promise, that you’ll show them how you did it, and maybe by copying you, they can do it, too.

But What if My Product Doesn’t Sell?

Hey, it happens. You spend hours, days or weeks creating a product and only sell a few copies. Guess what? That’s okay, for two reasons. First, you now have more experience creating products. Second, and this is the big reason – you can re-purpose the content. Maybe it didn’t sell as a $27 product, but can you turn it into a Kindle book and sell a few copies a day? “But I’ll only make $5-$10 bucks a day on Kindle.” Yeah, multiply that by 365 days and tell me if it’s worth it.

You can re-purpose it into list building material, email autoresponder series and so forth. You can rename it and re-market it, because odds are you didn’t do a very good job the first time because you’re still learning. You can use it as a free bonus to sell more of your next product. You can repackage it – if it’s audio, add video. If it’s video, add a pdf. You can sell rights to it. You can sell an entire website and sales funnel based around it, and so forth.

You now have an asset. And even if it didn’t sell very well in its first incarnation, there are plenty of things you can do to still make money from it.

The Big Why of Creating Your Own Products

Do you know why you should create your own products, above and beyond what we already talked about? Because when you create products, you are exchanging a few hours of your time for an asset that can pay you for months and years to come. Creating and selling your own products will allow you to travel the world if you choose, enjoy more financial security than 95% of the population of the U.S., and live the life you want. And if that isn’t reason enough to create your own products, I don’t know what is.

Are you one of those marketers who only wants to promote affiliate products? If you are, you’re not alone. Affiliate products are great – you don’t have to create the product and you don’t have customer service problems. Heck, you can make a fortune promoting affiliate products, and I highly recommend that if your heart is set on affiliate marketing, that you pursue it without hesitation.

That said, if you are ONLY doing affiliate marketing, you are putting yourself and your income at the mercy of other people, other businesses and other entities that you have NO control over.

Plus, it’s not always a bag of laughs, either. You want to promote that cookware set on Amazon because it’s got great commissions? Cool. So go set up a website, get some lousy articles written by someone whose first language isn’t the one you need, buy a few thousand spam links and so forth to get this site ‘ready.’ Then find a way to send the traffic, and then do it all again with the next product.

Great fun, right? I’ll bet you don’t even care about that cookware set or the people who might buy it. But you should care that the seller can stop selling it at ANY time without notice. Or they can change the commission structure. Or they can do whatever they like.

Are you getting your traffic from Google? Then you already know how fast Google can pull the rug out from under you. Maybe you’re buying traffic from Facebook? Facebook has already banned countless businesses and untold numbers of marketers, and they will be banning more – without notice.

How do you like affiliate marketing so far? Yes, there is a right way and a wrong way. If you choose a great niche and focus just on that niche and build up your readers and your traffic and especially your lists, you can make a ton of money in affiliate marketing.

But you know what? You can make even MORE money by creating your products, and it’s not nearly as difficult as you might think.

Plus, creating your own products has great perks:

First, when you make a sale, you get to keep ALL of the sale.

Second, you can get your own affiliates to promote for you. Just think how much more you can sell with a hundred affiliates promoting your products, than if it’s only you promoting. The difference is beyond huge, it’s almost mind-boggling.

Third, if you’re a good affiliate marketer, you’re building lists anyway. Why not sell your own products to those lists, in addition to selling affiliate products?

Fourth, when you have your own products, you can earn money for months and years on work that you did ONCE. It’s like being a songwriter and earning money every time the song is played for the next 20 years, only instead of a song it’s an info product.

Now, I know your next objection:

And let me tell you, this isn’t a good objection for two reasons.

#1, YES you do. If you’ve been alive for more than, say, 15 years, then you know stuff that other people DON’T know but they WANT to know. Have you found a way to treat your own illness? Have you lost 20 pounds? Have you traveled somewhere? Do you know how to save major money on something? Do you have secret to seducing lovers?

Think of it this way – what do you know? Make a list. Write that stuff down, and keep writing over the next few days because you will realize you know a lot more than you thought. Do this and you’ll likely have three sheets of paper filled with things you know that others want to know.

#2: Let’s say that you do the exercise in #1 above, and you come up with nothing. NOTHING. You are the only person on the planet who doesn’t know ANYTHING that anyone else wants to know.

That’s okay, and here’s why: All you have to do is pick your topic, learn it, do it and teach it. That’s it. Learn it, do it and teach it. You don’t have to become an expert. Just learn enough to get started DOING it, whatever it is. Make notes of what works and the results you get, and guess what happens?? You have yourself an info product. YES, it really can be that easy.

True. So here’s a shortcut: Choose your niche, go find an expert and use THEIR knowledge to create your product. Then cut them in on the deal. You get a percentage, they get a percentage.

“But then I’ll have to share the profits – wouldn’t it be better to just promote affiliate products?”

True, you’re sharing the profits with the expert, but remember – you can then get affiliates to promote for you, something you cannot do when you are an affiliate yourself.

So even if you give the expert 25% and you keep 25% so that affiliates earn 50%, that’s 25% that you continue to earn for as long as the product is selling.

One more thing before I forget – when you sell your own products, you are building lists of BUYERS. And as you know, one buyer can easily be worth 10-50 people who are just looking for freebies.

So when you have your own products, whether you create them alone or with partners, you are building lists of buyers that your affiliates send to you. And this alone is HUGE. So much so, that even if you gave away ALL of your commission up front, it would still be highly profitable because of all the backend products you could sell to your new buyers.

A hot niche is one where there is more demand than supply. That is, there are lots of people looking for a solution and ready to pay money for that solution, and not enough marketers out there offering the solution that buyers are looking for.

Seeing what is selling, or doing keyword research, or haunting the best seller lists of Amazon are all great ways to uncover niches. But oftentimes the very best niches are right under our noses. These are the niches were people are truly desperate for a solution and you can be the hero who steps in, saves the day and makes a healthy affiliate commission for your effort.

Just to be clear: There are niches and there are keywords, and these two things work together but are NOT the same.

Your focus should be on finding a hot niche and only then do you look for the keywords you’re going to target.

And finding hot niches can be as easy as paying attention to what’s happening around you.

Look for the problems in your everyday life. Your computer is running just about as fast as molasses in winter and it’s driving you bonkers. Cheer up, you’ve just found a niche, because you can BET you’re not the only one with this problem.

You do a Google search and sure enough, there are forums everywhere full of people looking for ways to speed up their computer or laptop.

You do a second search and find there are several products out there, with affiliate programs, that address this specific problem.

Congrats, you just found your first hot niche. You can now create your own WordPress site addressing the issue and offer the products as your solutions. In fact, if you purchase one of the products and then use some of their tips as your content (rewrite it!) you’ll come across as the authority. Then when you recommend they get the product to get the other 90% of the info they need, sales will be easy.

Another example: A young lady was taking self-defense classes but found the entire experience to be frustrating. The instructor would rush through a dozen or more examples of different moves in each class, and by the end of each class she couldn’t remember more than one or two. She said, “If only I had this stuff on video, I could actually LEARN it.” Bingo! If you overheard this comment, within minutes you could find a self-defense program for women online, and within a week you could be making profits from it by addressing the exact problem stated by the lady in class. Keep your ears open and opportunities will abound!

Promote a best selling product to an entirely different niche. Speaking of getting the product, here’s a backdoor method of finding niches: Buy a HOT selling product, one with tons of competition. See how everyone else is promoting this product, then do it differently. Look inside the product, find out who else it applies to, how else it can be used, what niches would benefit from this product who aren’t being marketed to, and market the product to those niches.

Instead of meeting stiff competition, you’ll be in a league (and a niche) of your own promoting a hot seller to people who otherwise would never have heard of the product.

Watch the news for things that are about to catch on. For example, if you were at the forefront of the Paleo diet or the Keto diet or any of these special diets, you could have cleaned up. Guarantee, there is a new diet on the way.

Or maybe there’s a really hot star who is bragging about her workout or her exotic pet or her accessories. Watch to see what’s going to catch on, and if there is an affiliate program tied to it, you can do really well if you’re a first mover.

Look for what drives people to distraction. That is, what is it that invades their thoughts at all times of the day? What keeps them awake at night? What would they pay money to solve RIGHT NOW?

Weight loss is a big one, and so are most health issues. A bad relationship is at the top of this list. Pregnant women are continually thinking about their baby and whether or not they’ll be a good mother. Men are continually thinking about sex. The key here is to get really specific and not try to go after the entire niche. A fellow marketer knew a pregnant woman who had a particular health issue. He found a product that addressed this issue, made a website on this and because it was so keyword specific, he got it ranked easily and still makes several sales from this a week, passively.

Look for the fears. All around you, people are afraid. The woman next to you in the check out line is afraid she’s going to lose her husband. The person behind her is afraid he’s going to lose out on the promotion. In the next aisle is someone who is afraid they won’t get the job they want, or any job at all.

Next to them is someone who is afraid she’s going to have to pay thousands to get her car or her home fixed. And next to her is someone who fears their tax problem will never be solved. Look for the fears and you’ll find people who will leap at the chance to get their problem fixed so they can start relaxing again and not be so worried every moment of the day.

The next time someone looks worried, or your friend complains about a problem, or you find yourself frustrated – realize you may have just found your next hot, profitable niche.

Let’s face it – some products are just more boring than others. An air filter that takes out all the nasty stuff you don’t even know is there in the first place? Uninteresting. A video game that makes you feel like you’re going at mach speed with your hair on fire? Exciting!

So how do you sell a dull product? By making it exciting. As an example, let’s take one of the most ho hum products there is: White bread.

If you’re like most people, you’re already yawning. Sell white bread? You’d rather sell dust.

But what if you make that white bread into delectable frybread? Spicy croutons? Brandied bread pudding? Combine it with chocolate fondue? Toasted cheese with tomato and turkey?

You get the picture – it’s not the product you’re selling at all, it’s what you can do with the product. It’s the sizzle, not the steak.

You’re selling pimple cream? Then you talk about how they’ll be pimple free, right? Not really. Yes, you’ll show the before and after, the face with the pimples and the face without. But what you’ll talk about is how they’ll finally get the girl they’ve been lusting after for the past six months, or how the boy of their dreams will finally notice them and ask them to prom.

How about life insurance? What product could possibly be more boring and even repulsive than life insurance? Burial insurance, I suppose. Who wants to talk about either one of those?

But what if you made that life insurance and burial insurance EXCITING! Think it’s not possible? I think it’s VERY possible.

Consider this: When Joan Rivers passed away, we heard a quote from her that went something like this:

“When I die, I want my funeral to be a big showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action… I want paparazzi and I want publicists making a scene! I want it to be Hollywood all the way. I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag. And I want a wind machine so that even in the casket my hair is blowing just like Beyonce’s.”

And by all accounts, Joan’s funeral was indeed a beautiful, funny, lovely and bittersweet event attended by 1,000 of her closest friends.

So why don’t life insurance sales people and burial people help the client plan a FUN funeral that shows the person as they truly were in life? Why not help them leave behind a legacy for their loved ones, a tribute to their life and give them a feeling of immortality?

It would be so simple to do, and the insurance/burial people who do it would be rich beyond measure because they’d have no competition. Imagine that – a life insurance person being SOUGHT OUT by clients. Yes, it could happen for them, and it can happen for you, no matter what it is that you’re selling.

So stop worrying that you have a product that makes paint drying look fascinating, and find a way to make it EXCITING, memorable and yes, FUN! Do this and you will be rich indeed.

…“OUCH!” Yes, it’s an old joke indeed. But what if… What if the guy walked into the bar, sat down next to you, and told you the following story:

“3 years ago I was flat broke, working at a department store waiting on people all day for minimum wage and hating it. I knew there was a better way – there just HAD to be – and I kept hearing about this “Internet Marketing” thing. So I did research, bought courses, haunted the top marketing forums and finally made my first move.

I made several thousand dollars from that site over the next 4 months, and then I sold it for several thousand more. And I was on my way. Today I own 22 sites earning me money, and I owe it all to that one concept – doing what has already been proven to work.”

I know you’re trying to make it online, and you think you have to have this incredibly brilliant idea that no one has ever had before, but you don’t. You simply need to find out what’s already working and DO THAT.

Online success isn’t hard. In fact, it’s been right under your nose all this time. You just have to reach out and grab it.

We talk all the time about having a great headline to draw your visitors into reading your blog posts. After all, while 80% of people will read the headline, only 20% of those will begin reading the post itself.

But what about writing effective headlines that not only get your posts read, but get them shared, too? While a good headline will get your article read, the RIGHT headline will increase shares through social media. That’s why I’ve compiled 5 of the very best tips for writing the kind of headlines your readers can’t help but share.

Make your headline extremely easy to read and understand. Sure, your die-hard fans know you and know what you write about, so you can be clever with them and they’ll still understand. But if you’re writing cryptic headlines that only they can decipher, they’re not likely share it with others. And even if they do share, their fans and followers aren’t likely to click something that isn’t perfectly clear.

If your headline is, “27 Ways to Stitch Time on Blog Posts” most people will be clueless about what you’re saying and they won’t click the link. And you regular readers probably won’t even share the link in the first place. But if you write, “27 Ways to Save Time Writing Blog Posts,” then it becomes very clear what your post can do for them.

Make your headline irresistible. Remember, the whole purpose of a headline is to entice the visitor into reading, or in this case, to compel the person on social media to click the link and go to your post.

So how do you make headlines irresistible? One way is to offer massive value to the reader. “How to save $200 on your heating bill with a 5 min phone call.” Of course the value doesn’t have to be monetary. “3 ways to know if your marriage is in trouble and 7 ways to save it.” That’s offering huge value.

Another irresistible method is to share insider knowledge, secrets or the latest gossip. People love to get the lowdown. “This movie star’s secrets to a bodacious bottom.”

Then there’s the common enemy theme. “How corporate greed will make your children into slaves.” Ouch.

Ask a question, such as, “Do you know how to buy a house for nothing down?” or “Do you know how to look 5 years younger and 10 pounds lighter in 3 seconds?” By the way, the answer to that second question is to stand up straight and tall instead of slouching.

Use curiosity when appropriate. If your article is all about how a peanut butter sandwich inspired you to earn $10,000 in a weekend, then use that in your headline, but only if it’s true. Don’t use curiosity as a bait and switch – you’ll just annoy your new visitors.

Make your headline short(er). Remember, Tweets are limited to 280 characters. That includes the title, shortened URL, hashtags and so forth. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for your title, so make every word count.

Be the person readers want to share with others. If your integrity is questionable, if it’s unclear who you are, if there is any ambiguity or negativity associated with your name and persona, readers will hesitate to share you with others.

This doesn’t mean you can’t hold controversial opinions, though. In fact, being somewhat controversial is perhaps the best way of all to get your readers to share your posts with their followers.

Just a little strategy can go a long way towards getting your readers to share your posts, thus increasing your traffic. Be sure you have system in place to capture the email addresses of your new visitors, too, along with links to your main social media counts. Once you get these new readers, you don’t want to lose them.

Okay, so you’re still growing your online business and there are people in your niche you’d like to reach out to. Maybe they have bigger lists, more blog readers, more exposure, more clout and so forth. And like any sane marketer, you’d love to hitch your wagon to their star, or at least make a friend in the business… So how can you do it?

One way NOT to do it goes like this:

Hi Joe Smith, you don’t know me but I love your (blog / product / website) and would really like it if you would (mention my blog / promote my product / email for me) etc.

Sincerely, New guy

If that sounds even remotely like emails you’ve sent in the past, realize you are not alone – many new marketers make the mistake of starting a correspondence with what the other person can do for them.

And what does the recipient actually hear when they read these messages? Something like, “You’ve worked hard to build your business, now drop everything and let me – a total stranger – piggy back off your success for free.”

Ouch.

Is it any wonder why they seldom respond?

So how do you get better known people and influencers in your niche to pay attention to you? Here are 7 methods proven to work:

Mention and link often. Mention them in a blog post, point to a specific article they wrote and blog about it, share their stuff on social media and so forth. Then TELL them you mentioned them. “John, loved your article on ___, especially what you said about ___. Just wanted to let you know I included you in my latest blog post here ___ and sent your article link to my followers on Twitter, too.”

Make lists, round-ups and recaps. List the 20 most influential bloggers/chefs/snipers/___. Or make a list of the 10 people you most admire and why. Or do a weekly round-up of all the best of the best in your niche for the current week. The main point here again is to link out to the influencers in a very real, authentic way and then let them know about it.

Build on something they’ve done. Let’s say your guru of choice wrote a great post – now you’re going to write your own post that first declares how much you appreciate their post, and secondly builds upon what they said. If they wrote about 10 ways to increase conversions, you might point to their article as being a must read, and then add your own 10 ways for a total of 20. Or you might show how to take what they teach and ramp it up a notch or even throw it into high gear. The point is to acknowledge their work and use it as your own inspiration to create something even better. And remember to email them and let them know about your article – it’s possible they will blast it out through their social media accounts and possibly even to their list.

Repackage what they’ve done. Your favorite influencer wrote a great post on the 20 newest trends of the year? Turn their post into an infographic, video or slideshow presentation, then email them and let them know. If you do this well you are almost assured they will share this with their followers.

Quote them. They’re the expert, right? So when you’re writing a post, quote them as proof of what you’re saying or teaching. Be sure you link to them when you do. And as ever, let them know you quoted them.

Send them a thank you. For no reason, except that they rock. This could be a gift certificate, an actual card in the mail – maybe a book you picked out for them from Amazon. Attach a note that let’s them know this is a thank you for all that they’ve done for you. Used in conjunction with any of the above methods, you will become unforgettable.

Offer to do a service for them. For free. No strings whatsoever, it’s simply your way of thanking them for how their posts, articles, products, etc. have helped you. If you’re good at graphic design or caricatures, create one of them or their product. If you’re good at photos, offer to let them use yours for free. If you’re good at writing emails, offer to write one promoting a product of theirs that you love, and so forth.

Everyone was at one time a complete stranger to everyone else but their own mother. Yet they were able to make connections, and so can you. Don’t let someone’s stature in your niche stop you, just know that the best approaches come from an attitude of gratitude. Be an asset rather than someone looking to get a free step up, and always have the goal of building a long term friendship first, with business coming in a distant second.

One of the toughest things about blogging is the self-imposed pressure to always have a terrific, earth-shattering, life changing blog post that makes people catch fire reading it.

You know what I mean. You’ve got that little voice whispering in your ear that if your posts don’t measure up to some impossibly high standard you’ve set, then all is lost and the world will know that you’re a fraud.

The good news is, it simply isn’t true. You don’t need every post to be a 2,000 word masterpiece or the final definitive word on your topic. Instead, all you need is content that gives your readers what they want. That’s it. Your readers want to know the latest news or the best methods? Then that’s what you give them. Forget trying to be a great writer and instead focus on being your readers’ ‘friend in the business’ and you’ll be an AMAZING blogger.

Here are 10.5 more tips to take some of the blogging pressure off of you and put the fun back into blogging:

Make yourself a posting schedule and then stick to it as regularly as you brush your teeth. Surprisingly, having a blogging schedule actually makes it easier for you to blog. It provides soft deadlines that keep you motivated to sit down and write. You won’t be able to put off your blogging if your readers expect a new post every Tuesday and Friday, and you know it.

Keep a running list of blogging ideas. Use a program like Evernote to keep track of your ideas and the resources you can draw from when writing your posts.

Forget being totally original. Seriously. Every idea is built upon or inspired by some one else’s idea. So give credit where credit is due, provide your own unique twist or take on the subject and relax – no one expects you to reinvent anything.

Re-purpose your content and other people’s content, too. Curate, list, pull bits and pieces from here and there – it’s all good. Just give credit to everyone you sourced from. And go back to your own content and see if you can’t update it, re-purpose it, mix it up or whatever. Odds are if you’ve been blogging for more than a year then you’ve got a small goldmine of content you can mine to create new content.

Be more of a reporter and less of an expert. Being the go-to expert in your niche is difficult, especially when you’re new to blogging. The pressure can become so unbearable that you cease to write, afraid you’ll pen something that will make you look foolish in your readers’ eyes.

But if you place your focus on reporting instead of being the absolute authority, magic will happen. You’ll feel freer to express your own opinions, you’ll find it’s far easier to write posts, and because you are referencing other authorities and experts in your niche, you become your own authority to your readers.

Mix up your content. Are you only writing blog posts? Then add videos. Are you only podcasting? Then write blog posts. If you limit yourself to one media, you’re also limiting the number of people who will engage in and benefit from your content.

Short is great. So is long. There was a time when it was suggested (actually, I saw this again quite recently) that no post should be under 2,000 words, and all posts should take days to write and be the absolute authority on whatever you’re writing about.

Hogwash. I briefly mentioned this in the beginning – write as much as you need to. If you can cover your topic in 200 words, DO IT. If it takes 2,000 words, then just make sure you’re holding your readers’ attention for the ENTIRE 2,000.

This reminds me of the “short sales letter vs long sales letter” debate. It’s a stupid, ridiculous debate, and here’s why: A blog post or a sales letter should be exactly as long as it needs to be and no longer. Period.

Stop leaving terrific blog comments on other people’s blogs. Seriously. You just read a post on a high traffic blog and you’ve got your own opinion or insight you want to share that you’re sure will help that blog’s readers.

Don’t do it. Instead, create your own post on your own blog and link back to the original blog. Then let the original blog know that you mentioned and linked to them in your post. This way your blog has more great content and who knows? You might get a backlink from the blog you referenced.

Use images. Every. Time. Maybe more than once, too. It’s irrefutable that images work at grabbing attention, so make sure that every post you make has at least one image. And be sure to place a caption under the image, because people are far more likely to read the image caption than anything else on the page (other than the headline, of course.)

Publish your articles on other sites. Sites like LinkedIn, The Huffington Post and many, many others allow content to be republished on their sites as long as it fits their guidelines. This is a terrific way to pick up new subscribers by posting a link back to your own profile or blog.

And what about Google’s duplicate content penalty? The duplicate content penalty doesn’t apply to syndication or curation. If it did, you’d never see a major news site appear in the top of the search results because they all subscribe to services that helps them get duplicate content, such as the Associated Press. And bloggers who frequently syndicate their content to other quality sites report that they receive no penalties what-so-ever.

10.5. Ask for the subscribe. Ask. And ask. But don’t be obnoxious. You wrote a post on getting traffic, and you’ve got a free report on even more ways to get traffic? Ask them to subscribe right there at the end of your post. “To get 27 more ways to get targeted, free traffic with the push of a button, simply tell me where to send the report and it’s yours.”

If you’ve been having trouble blogging on a regular basis, hopefully reading this has made you realize that blogging doesn’t need to be stressful. The rules are not as rigid and some would have you believe, and the most important thing of all is to simply give your readers what they want and lots of it, in whatever form it might take.

I see new marketers all the time freeze up with fear. They’ll have a great idea for their business and start to act on it, all excited. Then something happens, something that plants the seed of doubt, and suddenly they’re asking, “Who am I to be doing this?”

Maybe they have something great to teach that would help others, or they have a different way of doing things that would solve people’s problems. Whatever their idea or their business, that seed of doubt takes root. They get scared. They become self-conscious. And they doubt themselves and their abilities.

This is when I tell them, “It’s not about you, it’s about your customers. It’s about the people you’re going to help.”

Imagine you’re about to go on stage to present information that will change the lives of your audience. But you’re nervous. You think you’re not a good presenter. You’re focused on how you’ll look and how you’ll sound and what the audience will think about you.

This is the wrong focus.

If you focus instead on helping those people, if you focus on THEM and not YOU, then you will find it easy to give your message.

I’ll give you an example: Just as you’re going on stage to make your presentation, someone whispers in your ear, “The building is on fire, we’ve got to evacuate these people NOW!”

Do you hesitate? Do you wonder what you’ll say at the microphone? Do you worry about how you’ll look and sound? NO! You rush onto the stage and immediately start directing people to find the nearest exit and go to it now. You tell them to stay calm, to move swiftly, to leave no one behind. If you see smoke coming from the back, you direct people to the front. You say and do whatever it takes to get those people out of there.

And lo and behold, not ONCE during that process did you think about YOURSELF.

Magic indeed.

If you have doubt – If you’re worried – If you’re scared – Then you’re thinking about yourself and you’re NOT thinking about your customer.

Remember, it’s not about you – it’s about them.

Whatever it is that you want to do – just begin. Don’t think about doing the whole thing, because you don’t have to do the whole thing… You only need to take the first step.

Most people don’t start because they’re thinking about the whole thing. It’s too big. There’s too many obstacles. They don’t know how they’ll do it all.

The thought of the whole project is overwhelming and paralyzing. It’s easier to put it off…

“I’ll start it later when I have time. When I finish this and that. When the kids are gone. When I’m retired. When life isn’t so hectic.”

Life is always hectic. It’s busy. It’s a whirlwind. But we decide what we do with each moment. So just start. Just begin.

You want to exercise but you don’t have time? Just do 10 minutes a day, everyday. Just start. Don’t worry about running marathons, just do 10 minutes today. Then tomorrow, do 10 minutes more.

You want to write a book? No one can write an entire book. But anyone can start. Just write for 10 minutes, that’s all. Easy, right? Look at the clock. An hour has passed and you’re still writing.

Challenge is good. Little challenges. Lots of them. Just begin. Don’t climb Everest, climb the jungle gym. You can do that. Tomorrow climb the hill behind your house. Lots of little challenges add up.

Do you want to learn to play the piano? Just begin. Imagine if you had started when you were a kid and played 10 minutes everyday. By now you would impress almost anyone. Now imagine you start today – in 5 years, who knows? You might be entertaining your family and friends during the holidays, but not if you don’t begin.

You want to start a business. Ooooh, scary. So many things you’ll have to learn. Better to wait, right? No. Just begin. Just start.

Everything conspires to keep you from beginning. But there is power and magic in taking that first step, because it’s the first step that leads to the second, and the second to the third.

If you never begin, you will have only regret. By starting, you can create your own future.

All you need to do is begin.