The First Post

Oh, I just hate writing the first post of any new blog/online venture. Where do you start?

Since this blog is about working with people just like you, to help you find your passion, turn it into a meaningful money making idea and then using the internet to propel that idea into a financially sustainable business, I say let’s start with the journey I have been on over the last 3 years.

The Past 3 Years – Paying The Price Of Success

3 years ago my wife and I moved to Portland (her dream city – my home state). We had nothing, and I mean nothing. An air mattress, 3 camping chairs loaned to us from my parents and the dish sets we were given as wedding gifts. We had no jobs, no savings and I am pretty sure our car insurance had long expired.

Fast forward 3 years and I am pulling in a cushy 6 figure income working online and my wife and I are finally starting to feel like we have two pennies to scratch together again. The days of borrowed camping chairs are far behind us.

What changed? How did my situation go from that – to this?

Without sounding like every other “guru” or “ninja” (both words I hate when used by people in marketing) – there were a few fundamental mind-shift changes that had to take place before those goals could be reached:

Fundamental Mind-shift #1

“Everything has a price.”

Everything has a price, especially success. While you may have heard that saying before, I doubt that you have looked at it in the way it SHOULD be looked at. Think about this:

How much is a candy bar? $2 maybe?

If you want a candy bar, all you have to do is PAY THE PRICE right? You reach into your wallet and pull out $2. If you don’t have $2 you figure out how to get $2 (go to the atm, borrow from friend, etc.) and you buy the candy bar. You pay the price, you get the goods.

The same goes for reaching your personal, financial and spiritual goals. You want to make 6 figures a year? There is a price to pay for that (and it is a lot less than you think). All you have to do is figure out what that price is and pay it – and THEN the dream will be yours.

Sound like some pie-in-the-sky crazy? It isn’t. Consider this:

What is the easiest way to finish a marathon?

The answer is to measure the steps you are taking today.

If you want to figure out exactly how to finish a marathon, take a few strides, measure how long each stride is and then figure out how many strides it will take you to finish the marathon. THEN all you have to do is either figure out how you can complete all of those strides OR figure out how you can take less strides.

THAT is business.

Want to make $100,000 in less than 12 months. Spend today figuring out how to make $1. Then, figure out how to make $10. Then figure out how to make $100 and then figure out how to make $1000. Once you have figured out how to make $1000 – you only need to do it 100 times inside a calendar year and you will be living the six figure lifestyle.

There is the price – are you willing to pay it?

Fundamental Mind-shift #2

“Doers make it, dreamers get bitter.”

I have had several business partners over the past 3 years – most of them I would classify as dreamers. I think dreamers make the worst entrepreneurs. Why? Because nobody pays for dreams, they want results.

Even the great Steve Jobs – someone who was known for his forward thinking “dreaming” style was primarily a man of action.

Let’s say that you figure out how to make $1000. Let’s say that you are so smart that you actually figure out how to make $1000 every single day! Let’s say that you draft this magnificent plan that includes all of these elaborate drawings and you start designing what your CEO office will look like and where you are going to live.

Who do you think is going to pay you for that?

An investor? Not likely – you ever seen Shark Tank?

Will clients pay for your ideas? No way! Clients barely pay for results and even then they have to be pretty darn amazing.

The only way that you can make money – whether you are just getting some funding going for your startup or whether you are trying to land customers for your business is to take action.

Fundamental Mind-shift #3

“The best thing you can do for yourself is to fail.”

Want to cram an entire 10 week, college level business course into a 48 hour period? Find something to sell – and then go try and sell it. You will learn more about business in the first 48 hours of trying to sell that thing than 90% of the business majors I know.

Business isn’t about spreadsheets, proper email formatting and presentations. Business is about hustling. If you can’t get people to trade your service or goods for money, then what you have is a hobby, not a business.

If you are unwilling to get out there and look like a fool, then I suggest that you put your dream on a shelf and go get a job somewhere that won’t rustle your feathers too much.

I STILL get laughed at and turned down even though I am literally months from becoming a millionaire (remember when I said business isn’t about spreadsheets – I told a small little lie – without spreadsheets you can’t track money and if you can’t track money you don’t know where you are going and when you are going to get there. No hard feelings spreadsheets, I still love you). I get yelled at, cursed at, laughed at, looked down on and generally treated like garbage by a wide range of people. Some have paid my a lot of money, some have only spent $7 – the sooner you realize that it is all part of the price you have to pay the faster you can move on and get yours.

Just the other day I had someone sign up for my mentorship program who obviously just wanted to tell me about what a big shot he had been in his former corporate life. After a few minutes of realizing that moving forward with the program would be a bad fit for us both he literally laughed in my face when I told him I wouldn’t be able to help him. For the next ten minutes he went on to talk about how I couldn’t help him because he knew way more than me. He wasn’t nice about it either.

Want to know a little secret? Turns out this guy signed up to my program because he hasn’t made a single penny in his entrepreneurship efforts.

Two tasty tidbits to take away from that experience:

#1 – If you are afraid that you have to be successful to move forward, realize that even when you are successful people will look down on you. So just go for it already!

#2 – This guy was your typical “dreamer”. He talked a pretty big game, and was even really rude about it, but results don’t lie.

Fundamental Mind-shift #4

“Help people first and the money will follow.”

If you want to get rich, find out how to help people reach their goals. There is a huge, evergreen and never ending market out there of people willing to pay for your to make their life better. I am not talking about becoming a Tony Robbins, or Zig Ziglar (Rest In Peace), I am talking about taking a good look at what value you can bring to other people’s lives and simply figuring out how to turn that into a dollar driven value proposition.

Whether you want to help people overcome mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, physiological or financial hurdles, there is a market desperate and hungry for your services. If you point your entrepreneurship compass in the direction of figuring out how to help people first and then building a business around that, you too can achieve what I have achieved in the short time I have been doing this.

Here is a great little exercise to get you started:

Answer the following questions on a sheet of paper. If you do it truthfully and honestly, hidden within the answers to these questions is your million dollar idea:

What do people say that you are good at? Don’t confuse this question with “what do you think you are good at?” – this is an entirely different question and one that is more revealing.

If you could fix one ill in the world, what would it be?

Would you rather be a therapist, a chef, an electrician, an ER doctor, a personal trainer or a librarian? Why? Get specific.

What is one thing that people do to other people that really get’s your blood boiling?

What is wrong with society today?

From this list you might have discovered new problems, thought of new solutions and maybe even started a conversation with a friend or loved one. The point is, that real entrepreneurship is about fixing problems that people have. Your job as an entrepreneur then becomes trying to find out how to help people in the MOST beneficial way that YOU can.

Fundamental Mind-shift #5

“Never, never, ever lie.”

I have spent the majority of the last 3 years buying, downloading and reading every “how to make money” product I could. I purchased self help books, SEO books and a whole load of other types of manuals and instructions. I purchased services (like SEO and Webdesign), I offered services like writing and rep management and lead selling and the one thing that I can promise you is that the business that is built on lies in a business that is built on a house of cards.

I know a few people, have even met them personally that sell products teaching people how to make money online for different niches. You know what gets my goat about these products? The sale of those products represents 90% of their online income – and in most cases they are selling products teaching people how to make money on stuff that they have never themselves made money from.

If you want to be successful, be true. True to yourself, true to your customers and true to business.

This isn’t just an idea for a business ethics class, this is good business. For the person who isn’t running a truthful business, a single question can bring their entire enterprise to a grinding halt.

I am not just talking about honesty either. I am talking about under-promising and over-delivering.

If you say you are going to do something, either do it plus some, or don’t do it at all. You want to operate in a highly competitive niche – whether offline or online – over deliver.

This past year I have competed with the best in one of the most competitive and cutthroat niches in all of internet marketing – the MMO niche. And I have succeeded. Why? I am not any smarter, I am not any more skilled and I am certainly not any more creative – I simply told the truth and gave more than I promised. That is it.

And that is all you have to do as well.

The Future Of This Site

As you can see right now, this site is pretty lame design wise… I will be fixing that here shortly.

Aside from the outer-shell of the site, I will be starting a regular show where I interview guests, give presentations and hold all sorts of free and paid webinars that you can attend. If you want to make a living running a meaningful business, then bookmark this site, because I can assure you that we are going to be big.

Aside from holding webinars and podcasts and interviews and all that good stuff, I will be documenting my own trial and error through several live case studies of turning ideas into businesses using the internet as the mode for getting your business out there. You won’t want to miss this – it will be like getting access to a $500 course for free (I know this because I purchased a $500 course from a guy here in Portland and was a little disappointed actually).

I look forward to working with you, learning with you and moving forward as we both achieve our dreams and live the lives that we most truly want to live!

Mike