A while ago, I shared with you a sample email from a visitor. It was quite the negative tone I set forth since the sender was an unrealistic dreamer…

Once in a while, I also get an email like the one you’re about to read below. It’s no where near as frequent as the first type, but it does happen and boy does it set me on fire (in a good way).

Here is an unedited email I received from an Irish chap who must remain nameless. It was less than 6 months ago, I believe, that I got his first email where he stated his intentions to make a living online.

Here is the email in its entirety reproduced completely unedited with his permission for your reading pleasure:

Hey Alex,

Just read your promo email for pginsider subscriptions. Man you can write, I’m already a member and I wanted to order again.

You asked me to keep you posted on how things are going for me. Well, I am delighted to be able to tell you that I’m still putting bread on the table. Very expensive bread and as a result I’ve also been putting on weight .

No excuse now as I can well afford a gym membership.

SUCCESS

My financial high was $420 in a day (Mainly Affiliate sales) and I average out at about $170 per day consistently. I know that’s not a massive amount but It is very significant for me as for the first time in my life I can confidently say, “I’ll never work in the corporate world again”.

Getting off my ass and just doing it has awarded me with much more than my $170 per day. I feel like a brand new person – Confident, proud, ashamed of my lazy former self, excited and full of Ideas (Some crap of course but I’m excited by a new creative side that seems to have come out of nowhere)

I keep my portal building to about 1-2 hours per day lately and that seems to keep my income fairly stable. The rest of my day consists of “whitehat” building/maintenance, study and testing (especially Woody’s methods). I’m very excited about his Super Affiliate program.

SET BACKS

- I f**k something every day but I won’t f**k it up again, this time last year If I made a mistake I would sulk and blame the world.

- I haven’t hit $100 a day yet in adsense. I know if I do more building I would easily get it but I feel its more important to expand into other revenue streams. Im at $70 per day consistently with adwords.

- Arbitrage – I can’t seem to crack it. Breaking even at best. I won’t stop till I get it as it’s bugging the hell out of me that I cant make money on such a simple proven business model.

There you have it – In twelve months time I hope to be writing to you with another zero or 2 added to my earnings.

2 cheeky questions:

Can I have your thoughts on TrackBack Spider and do you use it?

A post or email on how you manage your time and outsourcing would be gold

Thank you for persisting to help and advise people in an industry where so many “Cheap Lazy Bastards Get What They Deserve“.

Make sure you let me show you the Dublin nightlife if you ever come to Ireland.

Regards,

xxxxx

————-

Emails like this make my day. More often than not, you see people give it a try and disappear back into the miasma of internet chaos, more disillusioned than ever before.

A couple of points stick out that I want to comment on:

1) My copy writing is great. Thanks for pointing it out. (:P)

2) “For the first time, I can say I will never work in the corporate world again.” This is one of the best feelings a person can experience. I’ve heard giving birth to a child is pretty high up there. Giving birth to your new lifestyle and freedom is an incomparable joy, especially when you did it all yourself…

3) “Getting off my ass and just doing it.” There you have it folks, the number one secret to having success in any aspect of life.

4) “I feel like a brand new person- Confident, proud, ashamed of my lazy former self, excited and full of Ideas”

This is incredibly important. In the beginning, “doing it” is hard work. Not only that, but very often, you have the ugly face of risk breathing down your neck. Plus you have little confidence in your abilities and ideas. Fact of the matter is, most of the time you DON’T know what you’re doing.

Plus it feels like so much work. More work than you’ve ever been accustomed to doing.

BUT

Then it starts working and you realize how fast you are learning. Very soon, you look back and determine how far you’ve come and how much you know now that you didn’t before.

Even while still in your day job, you see things differently. Bosses, time, efficiency and especially that all important Big Picture.

And here’s the real kicker. Your confidence level goes way up. You believe in yourself, as it should be.

You DO become a different person. The new found faith in yourself fills you with ideas and vitality. The new strength this builds inside you makes work a pleasure rather than a pain. Hard work is no longer unpleasant, it’s a challenge you welcome with open arms.

And you know that most of the time, you’re going to win.

This is what defines a life well lived and that feeling of accomplishment and self fulfillment that escapes so many.

5) Multiple streams of income. At this early stage in his career, it might not be the best choice to branch out so much. Better to master one skill set before going on to the next. But this guy already making money in 3 different ways.

He could probably build any of those methods into a huge income proving once again that there is a flurry of opportunity out there but you just have to grab one and wring its neck until it starts laying the golden eggs.

6) My thoughts on Trackback Spider.

7) Time management and outsourcing. Both very tough ongoing quests. Post to come.

Drinking in Dublin. You bet. In fact so many people have extended offers to drop by for a drink, I think I will retire and go from country to country sampling the local fermented beverages. Ok maybe not quite yet.

If you liked this post, let me know in the comments and perhaps I can get him to come on here and share some more of his experience.

There is no better blueprint for success than other people’s achievement.

I just got off the phone with my mastermind group. Seems the two members present had an epiphany this week.

As a result, we’ve taken the project we were working on from the backburner and thrown it off the stove entirely.

Normally, something like that would get me pretty pissed off. I like to plan things, and I like things to unfold according to that plan. Any deviations, delays or cancelations will get you on the business end of cold stares, long silences and a big ugly piece of my mind.

The thing is these are two extremely smart, thriving marketers. They’re both making over XX grand a month pretty much on autopilot. They both know their markets to the point where almost everything they handle gets injected with the magic touch of success.

And during the same week, they pretty much came to the same conclusion. They needed to change their approach and that involved dropping the project we had been discussing.

One of the main culprits is The Four Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris.

I haven’t read it yet but I have seen the reviews and heard the raves. Now I have just witnessed the direct impact of this book on intelligent people’s lives.

Marketer One:

Is moving to a foreign country where it’s warm in the winter and his beachfront home overlooks palm trees and postcard-green water where you see tropical fish soaking in the sun.

What he quoted to me from the book:

“What you most hesitate to do, what instills you with the most doubt, that is probably what you should do.”

And so he did. 1 year away from the homeland with his young wife and kids. He also vowed to spend more time with them, take up kickboxing and focus on his core business, pouring everything into his “best shot”.

He knows where he’s going to live, he’s found a car there, a school and he’s bought the tickets. Bam. Action.

Marketer Two:

Sketched out his first business plan. Cruelly stacked up all his ideas, projects, To-Dos and swung down upon them the sword of truth.

Once the mission was defined, everything that didn’t fit into it directly got sliced off like a gangrenous 6th finger.

Bam. Action.

If I email either of them now, I get an auto-responder message that kindly informs me the intended recipients only check and answer their email twice a day in the name of greater efficiency.

These guys have balls, they have brains, and they have my respect.

Define your life. Optimize your time. Outsource the bullshit. Grow richer. Enjoy yourself.

I’m off to read The Four Hour Work Week. If you’ve read it, let me know what you think.

Not all effort or work has the same value, as we will see in this post.

The first investment, whether it be in time, money or labor is virtually useless unless it is maintained until critical momentum is achieved.

And even then, it can be ruined pretty easily.

This is a normal curve. It serves many purposes, most of them statistical.

It’s amazing to realize that so many things in life fit almost perfectly under a normal curve. For example, the average height of a population, average intelligence and average ability to complete any task will almost always fit a pattern very close the normal curve.

At the lowest end, there will be very few examples; in the middle will be the great bulk of the population and at the end another very small select group.

The curve can also be used in a completely different manner. For example, it can be used to view how money is made in just about any business.

Forget about the second half of the curve and just look at the first part. Let’s also double the percentage we attribute to each section since the second half of the curve doesn’t exist anymore. That leaves us with the following figures:

First section: 4.30%

Second section: 27.2%

Third section: 68.2%

Also notice how each section has the same length on the graphic.Which brings me to whatever it is I’m writing this for in the first place.The first section, equal in investment of time, money and effort to the following 2 sections brings only 4.30% of the value.In real world terms, this means no profits or even losses.Let’s switch back to the internet marketing world of ebooks and scripts and purported money making systems.

There have been some bad ones and lately, eyebrow raising awful products. But most of them aren’t. Most of them have some foundation to them and could in fact be used as the basis for a real business.

Because most of the buyers don’t understand how business works, they never get anything out of it other than a little excitement and some cheap thrills.

For this example, buying an ebook and reading it corresponds to the first section of the graphic. It is responsible for 4.30% of the overall success of the enterprise. I say ebook here but it could be any idea one hears about and researches to the point where they have enough to take action.

Sadly, this is where most people drop off. They’ve obviously seen no results and already, they yearn to move on to the next “opportunity”, thinking it will be easier, more profitable or in some mystical way, better than the one they are looking at now.

Then comes the second phase. Of equal length to the first and last, it is responsible for 27.2% of results.

In this stage of a business, effort, money and time are still being fed into the machine. Results are starting to show but that may be the equivalent of breaking even or making minute profits, hardly getting anything back at all and certainly not justifying everything that has gone into the business so far.

This phase kills off another solid percentage of new entrepreneurs, even those with solid determination. This is particularly true of those that don’t know the scientific, mathematical precision with which businesses develop.

Which brings us to the third phase. The numbers don’t lie; this is where almost everything happens. 68.2% of the value is created here.

What’s even better is that at some point in this phase, things take a life of their own and continue spiraling upwards even with decreased effort and investment.

I’m not advocating this as the time to become lazy, but it’s ridiculous to see how things have a tendency to all come together at once. I’ve experienced this again and again in business.

You work and work and nothing happens. You keep plugging away and see some very small signs of encouragement which sometimes almost feel like slaps to the face. You’ve put in all that effort and the results are pitiful, but they are there, where there was nothing before.

And then you wake up one morning to see you have 5 times more orders than you usually get in an entire day. You have a request for an interview and have been blogged on a big site. Plus you have a JV offer.

And it’s no fluke, it keeps going that way and you try to find where this sudden craziness is coming from, but it’s not one single thing.

It’s all those prior investments that have suddenly gelled together in one cohesive entity, forming something greater than the sum of all the parts.

Critical velocity.

And it happens like clockwork, only most people never find that out for themselves… 

I’m not talking about a pitiful salary earned doing something the boss is too smart and important to do himself.

I’m talking about real money. The kind that isn’t a direct multiplier of how many hours you work. The kind that keeps coming in while you’re off doing something else, perhaps on a beach in another country surrounded by beautiful women in bikinis.

I’ve had several intelligent discussions lately on why gurus are able to sell so much junk and why people buy it. They buy it because they aren’t making any fungolas.

The reason for that is not because they’ve failed to buy the latest fad ebook. It’s a direct effect of how you think and act everyday, and the ugly habits and traits that hold you back.

Making real money stems from a specific mindset. It’s no accident. You’re either in the “zone” or your not.

These are the 13 most common factors that stop you from making any real money. Most of the time it’s several of these.

Here we go:

13 Sure Signs You Aren’t Ready to Make Money:

1) You agree to easily.

When you decide to think independently and try to make some real dough, almost everyone you encounter will try to dissuade you from it or otherwise implant negative ideas in your mind if you lend them your ear.

They’ll try to convince you it’s much safer to have a job and fuel your dreams by buying lottery tickets. If you listen to their poison, you’re smoked.

2) You procrastinate.

Entire books have been written on the subject. If you don’t get in the habit of taking action now, your life will be over before you even start living it. Time flies and there is not reason to wait. When you know the next step, you must take it immediately.

3) You need reinforcement to act.

Similar to number 1, this factor is just as deadly. If you need people to agree with your ideas and tell you how good you are before you act on them, you’ll wait a long time. Learn to trust yourself. That’s the person that has the most influence on your success.

4) You tolerate excuses.

If you’re going to make real money, you have to lower your B.S. tolerance to zero. Take no excuses from others and even less from yourself. Small compromises too often duplicated make a perfect plan a pathetic failure.

5) You haven’t taught yourself to make decisions.

Great fortunes stem from the ability to string together good decisions and execute the necessary actions. At first, the only person that can make those decisions is you. Most employees are like herd cattle, they need a barking dog in front of them to guide them right or left.  Break the habit.

6) You don’t know what you’re good at and what you like.

If you do something just because you heard it makes money, chances are it’ll do the exact opposite. Building true wealth will require a brief period of very hard work. If you don’t like what that work consists in, you won’t finish the race.

Sometimes we think our inclinations are “too unconventional”. That is often not true. There is a market for almost anything.

7) You automatically think new is better.

Here is a proverb: “things seem worst just before they get better”.

Most people give up in that dip, thinking they’ve come to a wall when in fact they’ve come to a door.

Persist in what you do and resist the temptation to jump on the new hot ticket. Persistence is much more lucrative than just about any other possibility.

Your attention controls you instead of you controlling it.

If this is the case for you, you get nothing done that has any real value. You get lost and stumble around as your unfocused energy disappears into the great beyond leaving you with nothing to show for it.

Make a plan and stick to it. No excuses.

9) You criticize rather than analyze.

If you do this, you are a human cancer to yourself and others. The best thing to do, metaphorically speaking, would be to cut you out of the picture with a sharp knife to stop you from spreading.

With this mentality, your ideas are killed in the egg and the people that could help get what you want will have nothing to do with you.

10) You have a low tolerance for risk.

Maybe you have no money or a family to support. Those are darn good reasons not to take chances with your money or situation. Many others prefer safety to potential gain.

None of the above are ready to make any money. Change your situation or change your belief system before you even attempt it or you will soon confirm why you don’t like risks.

11) You’re unable to make a commitment.

“Plan the work and work the plan”. 95% of the accomplishment is not worth 95% of the reward, it’s hardly work anything at all.

When you don’t see things through to the end, you have done nothing at all except assure your failure. Don’t cheat yourself. If you make a decision, it becomes written in stone except in very rare situations. Make it happen.

12) You’re not willing to pay the price.

Never mind all the other things that come into play, like the option cost on your free time and leisure activities. Just look at all of the above. You won’t get there by accident. There is a price to pay, over and over again. How bad do you want it?

13) Being afraid to fail.

You should be afraid NOT to fail. If you don’t fail, it’s because you didn’t try. If you didn’t try, you never even had a chance.

Direct marketers consider a 10% success rate great because they can ride that one success into the sunset.

Don’t count the “Yeses” count the “Nos”. For every one you get, you’re that much closer to the big breakthrough.

————-

Remove all those obstacles to success and what do you have?

A resilient, determined, focused entrepreneur, ready to kick some asses.

A financial force of nature, half man, half money magnet.

A whirlwind of – well you get the point…

There are several definitions of the word determination. The two that I retain for this article are as follows. Determination: the quality of being determined to do or achieve something. And also determination: the act of determining the properties of something.

The first speaks of a burning desire for achievement and the second the simple act of figuring out the qualities and features of something or other.

When they are used in a human context, they become intimately related.

 

The Secret:

Do you know Napoleon Hill? He wrote “Think and Grow Rich”, perhaps one of the most important books in my life.

In it, the author, fueled on by Andrew Carnegie, sets out to discover the real secret of success. The secret of riches, lets even call it the secret of the universe. On his quest, he interviews the great men of the 20th century. Amongst these are: Henry Ford, Theodore Roosevelt, Edison, Schwab and a score of others.

The secret is a modern day adaptation of the principles found within. There is only one main idea behind it: “thought can be transformed into its physical equivalent”. This can be rephrased a thousand times and it comprises one of the greatest pieces of wisdom known to man.

(There is a link to the Secret video at the end of this post. It’s plenty cheesy, with Joe Vitale’s beady eyes full of surnatural light, but it can give you a welcome dose of inspiration if you’re not quite on track to where you want to go.)

How about this quote by Henry Ford: “Whether you think you can or whether you think you cannot, you are right”?

Some people like to put a metaphysical spin on this idea. I believe its logic is sound enough to require no “special” explanation.

There is a force in each healthy human mind that is greater than any conscious thought. It is from this force that stems intuition for example.

Consider our minds. So limited and yet so vast. How much of your life do you think you consciously remember? Not much I would venture to say. Yet more than likely, it is all there, recorded in the most minute detail. 

What is the average value of a million dollar idea? That is: an idea that could make a million dollars or more.

I would venture to say it is less than a single dollar, probably less than a quarter. Because every one of us has had one and more likely dozens. But where have they gone?

If salmon were like men, they would be extinct by now.

Think about it. For the single right to reproduction, they must travel thousands of miles against the current without eating. They must propel themselves up waterfalls several times their height. And then they must fight off their brethren, all that for the simple act of copulation.

They either go all the way or die trying. 

They can’t decide “I’m a bit tired this time, I think I’ll go back to the ocean and try this again next year.” It’s simply not an option. 

In front of those odds, how many humans would make it? Very, very few. Ours lives are far too comfortable. The status quo is far too easy, the easy way out far too inviting. It does not hold the immediate promise of doom, only the doom of “ordinariness”.

But here is the truth. Destiny, fate, the substance of determination is shaped by ideas. More so, it is shaped by the will behind those ideas. The idea is the lump of iron which through the furnace of your will becomes a sword or remains a cold shapeless mass.

Hold an idea in your mind’s eye long enough and it will begin to shape you. It will shape your life and the universe around you until that idea becomes reality.

And if the furnace of your will is not strong enough, the world will shape your idea. Rather it will tarnish it and make it fade until it disappears just as if it had never existed.

Salmon have no choice. One might say they are lucky. They are programmed to win against incredible odds. They are destined to heroic acts.

Through the possibility of choice, we are not.

When you know the “what”, the “how” will come, if you want it enough. If you want a million dollars, a new car, a beachfront house, a healthy mind and body; whatever it is your mind could conceive can be achieved with sufficient desire.

And therein lays the greatest challenge of all. Learn to sharpen your desire like a diamond blade and you will cut down any obstacle effortlessly.

Lean to focus your will. Whenever you see the first step toward your “what”, take it and your mind will give you the next step and the one after that until you are there.

That is what the secret means to me. Find for it your own meaning and you will be a force to be reckoned with.

I will stop here and give you the link. This post is long enough and somewhat out of context on this blog. 

If you want to watch the whole video in one place for free, go to secret-seminar.com. Don’t buy anything there and don’t be distracted by marketing messages, just watch the video and lay out your plan. You will already be on your way.

He who is master of determination holds a universal key that will open any door.