Archive for Success Mindset
Internet Marketing Overwhelm Is Kicked Into Touch
Posted by: | CommentsI looked at my inbox first thing and felt my energy drop as I was bombarded with the latest Internet Marketers plying their wares. As I’ve been feeling overwhelmed recently, I’ve not been opening these emails so they’re just sitting there, torturing me.
Here are just a few:
- Really cool opportunity (get in now)
- Life Changing (I Promise)
- Ready to TURBOCHARGE your web visitors and profits??
- Webinar That Will Change You (Seriously)
- I’ve got something BIG I WANT TO GIVE YOU
Why do I do this to myself? Why even read them?
I am haunted by a fear of missing something important – of missing the one big thing that’s going to make the difference. It seems to be part of my cells now, an almost instinctive response that makes it hard to let go. And yet, if I only stop to think about it this fear has no validity whatsoever because THERE IS NO ONE BIG THING.
I know from personal experience that there is always another “life changing” opportunity in internet marketing. Not to mention that, all the ones I’ve signed up for, in the past, never actually changed my life. But that’s all part of the internet marketing dream isn’t it? The magical promise that some product is going to be the big thing that changes everything. It’s the same erroneous mentality as winning the lottery. And we all know that the vast majority of the big “winners” can’t hold onto the money or end up miserable. But still we chase the dream.
Well not me. Not any more!
Behaving as though there is something important out there to miss is slowing me down, confusing me and is counter productive to my achieving what I’m really after. I have caused this internet marketing overwhelm so I can get out of it too. Here’s how:
- take a deep breath.
- unsubscribe from all “just in case I miss something” email lists – not just internet marketing but coaching as well.
- unsubscribe from all teaching lists apart from Ed Dale’s.
- cancel all teaching products apart from Ed Dale’s mentoring.
- filter automated emails from my coach Elese Coit and from Michael Neill so they don’t hit my inbox. Read only when I need a bit of a motivational push.
- DO NOT SIGN UP FOR ANYTHING NEW unless it forms an intrinsic part of my CURRENT (as in RIGHT NOW) web marketing strategy.
- take a deep breath.
. . . Done!
Life In The Grind
Posted by: | CommentsLife in the Grind was the subject of last week’s webinar. Apparently, there are a few mentoring students moaning about the boring work they’re doing. And, I have to admit, I’m one of them. Dull, dull. Endlessly dull.
The good news is I’m keeping at it. I’m plodding on and, for the most part, not being diverted. So that’s a success. Hoorah!
Before my 1:1 call with Ed Dale last week, I made a hasty dash to complete my CFT file. I’d been slacking a bit. Not wishing to gloss over the truth my last entry recorded:
21.4.10
45 mins 3 by hand comments
45 mins Faffed around
45 mins Faffed around
Fundamentally, I was struggling from a lack of variety. And, a lack of not noticing exactly what I’d achieved. Oh yeah, and from impatience.
Ed wrote a great blog post about this topic earlier in the week – How Farmville holds the secret to online success or something. In it, he explains that in the computer game World of Warcraft, apparently paid for and played by 11.5 million people per month, players (Oops, sorry, gamers) talk about “grinding”, i.e. getting to the next level. How soon they do that is a function of time spent playing the game, i.e. DOING stuff.
The equivalent in internet marketing is what you do in your Critical Focus Time which, as we know, consists of stuff like creating content and building back links.
So, considering the fact that most people who have a go at the internet marketing game don’t get very far, and faced with a bunch of moaning mentees, Ed poses an interesting question – given that millions are willing to grind away at games such as World of Warcraft everyday where there’s no monetary reward, where as in internet marketing being willing to work means you end up with actual cash -
“What’s different, what makes one form of grinding a game loved by millions and one seem like dreary work?”
Two things jump out at me in answer to that:
1. Implicit in the build up to the question is the assumption that people are “doing” internet marketing purely for financial gain. Now, admittedly that’s what most people would say they are doing but, in my experience as a coach, it’s never about the money. It’s what you think the money will buy you that’s what you’re really after. And if you don’t know what that is it’s hard to keep going when the going gets tough. If you can connect your end goal to your daily grind then you will find it easier to stay motivated. But just saying you want to make money isn’t sufficient.
2. The words “seem like dreary work” are an interesting choice. The fact is, no work is, in and of itself, dreary. Only your thinking makes it so. So, as I mentioned in ‘How To Manage Boring and Repetitive Tasks‘ if you keep telling yourself what you’re doing is boring then you’ll be right. Your work will be boring. (Note to self – please remember this and adjust voices in head accordingly!)
By making the daily grind into a bit of a game you can begin to play with ways of making it more interesting. For ideas on how to do this read the “boring and repetitive tasks” post. I would add to that the strategy of mixing things up. So far my focus has been on this website and building traffic to this website. Now that is ticking over I am ready to add a bit of variety and will be revisiting my old websites to see what might be done with them. Do I work on them and sell them? Do I just sell them? Do I work on them and keep them? Not sure.
The key thing is to accept is that the daily grind is a part of setting up an internet marketing business, that cannot be avoided. (At least in the beginning). So you might as well accept it. Then you can free up the energy, currently used in complaining, and use it on experimenting to find the ways that will make this process less painful for you. And, who knows? You might even find yourself enjoying it!
Once The Shiny Wears Off
Posted by: | CommentsLast week’s webinar was just the kick up the bum I needed and I made a decision and just went with what I had as I said I would in my Fail in the Field not in Your Head post. So I’ve put up a site, done days 1 to 6 of 30DC and the Stage 1, getting indexed linking, recommended by Rob in 30DC+. And . . . OMG . . . drum-roll please. I’ve just checked and I’m already indexed AND ranking for my main phrase and indexed (but not yet ranked) for 2 category phrases. Cartwheels of excitement and all that!
This was written on March 23rd and then the rubber hit the road.
As the site was indexed and ranked I assumed I could now stop doing a couple of the really boring tasks, e.g. adding the links to Traffic Bug and Propeller and Rank Tracker etc. But apparently not. And this is where, without the accountability provided by a coach, I would normally wander off to pastures new.
Interestingly, the subject of this week’s webinar was about just that. Entitled “This S@@t is hard, a job and often times, boring and repetitive”. Every project, once the shiny wears off, feels like a chore. But the difference between being successful or not depends on getting through this bit.
I actually felt encouraged by that because I know that my usual pattern, of changing tack, doesn’t work.
My mind, ever hopeful, at the possibility of getting out of such work immediately turned to the possibility of outsourcing. Maybe I should just pay someone to do this stuff. But I’ve tried that in the past too and it didn’t work. What I learned was that if you don’t have an effective system in place, all that happens is, you have 2 people jumping from task to task, from project to project, instead of one. Outsourcing comes later, once you have effective systems in place.
So, there’s nothing for it but to knuckle down and get on with the boring repetitive tasks that must be done. However, there are ways to make the process less painful which I will cover in another post.
