“Always do what you are afraid to do.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today is a big day for my blogging buddy Sean Ogle at Location180.com. In his newest post, “My Last Day,” he talks about quitting his job and striking out on his own. But in this post, Sean talks about something that I think we all struggle with, especially when we actually make the leap to “blaze our own paths.”

We are filled with excitement and motivation and we revel in the freedom of exploring the opportunities that come our way. But we are also filled with trepidation, fear, and anxiety and we sometimes second-guess our decision to make the leap.

I am asking for your help. I want to create a discussion in the comment section below with answers to the question, “how do YOU handle being scared shitless?”

We ALL have our fears and worries, especially when we make the leap to take control of our own path. My goal here is to generate a discussion that will help those of us who are just getting started or who are on the brink of making that jump.

I would love to hear from everyone but especially from those who have already made that leap of faith. How were YOU able to push through that fear?

Thanks, everyone, and I can’t wait for the responses!

Paul

I am 29 years old and I have a bogeyman. When I was younger, he would chase me through my neighborhood at night. I never saw him but I always knew when he was close. The hair on the back of my neck would stand straight up and I could feel him breathing over my shoulder. When I sensed he was near I wouldn’t stop to turn around, I would just tuck tail and run like the wind.

I was fast so it wasn’t too difficult to outrun him. He never caught me and he faded away as I got older. I just assumed he got bored and gave up trying to catch me. But he is a hell of a lot smarter, and much more insidious, than I gave him credit for – I say this because my bogeyman is back and he’s been whispering in my ear this whole time…

I have just recently become aware of what my bogeyman has been doing all these years. He did, in fact, give up trying to outrun me (I’m still fast). But he never went away; he just changed his method of attack. You see, my bogeyman is responsible for that little voice that pops into my head from time to time telling me I may not quite be good enough or I may not quite have what it takes. He doesn’t care as to what his comments are referring to, he just waits until I am vulnerable and drops a few snide comments to sew those seeds of doubt. He likes to whisper to me using my own voice – not only to make me doubt myself, but also to make me anxious about all the things that could go wrong if I make a particular decision or step down a certain path. I have to give my bogeyman credit, he’s been pretty effective all these years. But now I know his game…and I am not going to let him beat me.

We all have self-doubts from time to time. All of us, at some point in our lives, give up on a goal or a dream because the end seems so far away and so unattainable that it’s not really worth the effort. But this can lead to a vicious cycle that affects not just one goal or dream, but ALL facets of our lives. Anxiety about what the future MIGHT hold leads to little mushrooms of self-doubt. Self-doubt, in turn, tends to make us more anxious about an uncertain future. When we have reached a sufficient level of anxiety and self-doubt, we become paralyzed by fear and become stagnant. When we become stagnant, we kill any momentum or forward progress that we had previously made. It’s like trying to ride a bike up a hill with the brakes on.

It pains me to say, but I have been caught in this negative cycle more times than I would like to admit. But rather than dwell on all the times I wasted momentum, all the times I gave in and believed the little nagging voice, I decided that enough was enough and that I would take a stand. And it’s working. Here are a few weapons I have been using in my battle:

Focus on the Present -

Everything is better when you stop worrying about a future that may or may not come to pass and instead focus on the task at hand. Develop a plan, but focus on what is right NOW and what is RIGHT now. And ENJOY yourself. Enjoy the process of putting yourself out there, of laying it all on the line. If you can focus all of your energy and enthusiasm on the small steps that are immediately in front of you and get yourself to take action, you will find that the paralysis by analysis is largely alleviated and you will build positive momentum.

Take Action and Fail Forward -

Whether it’s the saying, “get knocked down seven times, get up eight,” or the story of Thomas Edison finally producing the incandescent light bulb after a reported 10,000 attempts because he “simply ran out of ways that wouldn’t work,” the notion that one must first learn to fail in order to achieve great heights is ever-present in business lore. But the part that is misunderstood by most people is that the “failing” that facilitates growth actually requires action. Failure induced by action, if viewed from the right perspective and learned from, is actually a GOOD thing as it moves you closer to where you want to be. But too often we are afraid that all of our energy and our hard work will be for naught so we don’t even attempt to get moving. The only real failure in life is NOT taking action, NOT taking the chance for fear of falling short. If you want to gain further perspective on “failing forward,” read “Triple Your Rate of Failure and You Might Succeed” over at Illuminated Mind.

Condition Yourself -

Let’s be honest – even though we know negative self-talk is bad, we don’t do much to change it. In fact, we are our own worst enablers – we think it’s “normal” to let the mind chatter take control. But like any habit you try to break, it takes time, patience, and a certain amount of vigilance to monitor your negative thought tendencies throughout the day, especially in the beginning. But, over time, it becomes second nature. Don’t expect to “quiet the beast” overnight. Remember, it has been living and thriving unchallenged for quite a long time.

I can’t say my bogeyman is gone. I can’t say I have destroyed him completely. I know he is probably just biding his time waiting for me to slip up before he rears his ugly head. But I intend to stay vigilant and to never give him that chance again. For now, I am beating my bogeyman at his own game.

Paul

P.S.  If you liked this post please subscribe to the RSS feed or “tweet this” to your friends using the buttons below. I would also love to hear from you – drop a comment if this post moved you in any way (or even if it bored you to tears). As always, thank you for following along on my journey to “break the chains.”

We all know football is a game of inches. And, if football is life and life is football, it stands to reason that LIFE is a game of inches. Al Pacino does a pretty nice job of summing it all up in one of the better movie pre-game motivational speeches of all-time:

“The inches we need are everywhere around us!” Are you fighing for each inch?

Have a great weekend and THANK GOD FOR FOOTBALL!

“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.” -Rabindranath Tagore

If you are reading this, chances are you are either already running your own online business and are looking to take it to the next level or you haven’t yet started a business but are very much interested in doing so. Either way, we all struggle from time to time trying to figure out exactly how to get the ball rolling. So what’s the absolute FIRST step you need to take to start a successful online business?

Just jump off the cliff and get started…Listen, we all want to improve our current life situations. We all have aspirations and goals, values and dreams. We all have “big ideas” as to where we would like to see ourselves in the future. But most of us continually struggle with actually turning those dreams into reality. Building a successful online business is no different.

Maybe you have an idea that you are excited and passionate about but you don’t have a clue as to where to start. Maybe you have experienced some minor success in adding people to your list but are unclear as to how to monetize that list. Maybe you have studied and learned some great concepts that are sure to take your business to the next level but haven’t yet implemented them because you’re not sure which tips and strategies will be the most conducive to your success. Or maybe you are merely waiting for the “perfect time.” If any of this sounds familiar than you’re not alone; but if you don’t stop procrastinating and don’t get off your ass to do something about your current situation your dreams will be just that for the rest of your life…dreams.

So how do you begin to transform your dreams into reality? How do you go about building a successful online business? It’s as easy as (but a lot safer than) jumping off a cliff. You JUST DO IT! Yes, Nike’s slogan has become a bit played out over the years…but that certainly doesn’t mean the message is not applicable to your current situation. Every successful person, regardless of the industry, will tell whoever is listening that the reason they are more successful than the average Joe is because they TOOK ACTION. They visualized what they wanted and then they got STARTED.

I can already picture some of you saying, “No shit, Paul. Get started?…great advice, asshole. How about you give me something tangible that I can actually apply? How about you lay out exactly what steps I need in order to get started.”

I can’t. I won’t. Everybody’s situation is different. Everybody’s path is different. But the point is, picture exactly what you want and GO GET IT. Make it happen.

Who gives a shit that you don’t know the first thing about developing a loyal list of followers who will eagerly pay you money for information and content that you develop? None of the gurus knew how to either when they got started. BUT THEY GOT STARTED. They visualized the end-game and started to move their feet. Sure, they spent time developing a plan. But, unlike most people, they had the discipline to APPLY what they planned and they learned from their mistakes. They failed time and time again…but they failed FORWARD and kept moving. Each dream, each project started as an idea. And they didn’t KNOW how to make it a reality until they put one foot in front of the other and made it happen.

My mentor, Alex Jeffreys, has beaten me over the head with the statement, “don’t worry about getting it perfect, just get it going.” And I am glad he beats me over the head with this advice. Because sometimes I get too involved with the planning stage. Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I get wrapped up in the HOW to do something as opposed to actually DOING that something. But when I focus on the end-game, when I picture in my mind the exact outcome I desire, and then I actually go out and do something about it, I stop worrying about HOW I am going to do it and I JUST DO IT. Not knowing what I am doing at the time is just a minor obstacle that I have to get through. I don’t stress over the hurdles I know I will have to jump over – I just get off my ass and start moving forward. There is always time to cost-correct or modify and change any errors you make along the way. It’s better to fail forward than to succeed at a standstill.

It’s mind boggling how much I accomplish when I have this mindset of just getting it going. And it’s equally amazing to me to notice how stressed out, worthless, and ineffective I become when I let go of this mindset and get bogged down with the “HOW am I going to do it?”

So let’s do a little exercise. You are going to tell me what you want and I am going to tell you how to get it. Here we go:

YOU: “Paul, I can tell by your blog posts that you are an incredibly wise and sage man. If Buddha and Confucius were to mate and have offspring I think you would be the result. I want to buy a boat but I want to pay cash for it and not use credit. How can I do this?”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

YOU: “But I make minimum wage, work 14 hour days, and have $10,000 in credit card debt. How can I possibly afford a boat you jerk?”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

YOU: “I hate you. You suck donkey-balls.”

ME: “Get off your ass, grasshoppa, and just get started. Make it happen.”

Okay, you get the point. We don’t always need to know exactly how we are going to get where we want to go, we just need to know where we want to end up and then get going. And though I mentioned above that I cannot and will not lay out the exact steps needed to build a successful online business, I will help point you in the right direction.

First, become completely clear about what you want to accomplish. Not just in terms of money but in terms of what that money will afford you. For those of you who read my last post, “Rich Schefren Called Me Out…but I Stepped Up to the Challenge,” you will know how important this part of the process is. If you aren’t clear on what you want (and I mean dead-clear), you will continue to float like a ship that has set sail with no destination. How can you GET what you want if you don’t KNOW what you want?

The method I used to “get clear” was simple. I pictured what my “ideal life” in five years would be like. I pretended I was watching a movie in which I was the main character and the plot was my ideal life in five years. When you do this exercise (at least when I did it), you may think it a little lame. But then I got into it. I started to picture, down to every last detail, exactly what I wanted in five years. From the view and location of my dream home, to my cars, to my golf game, to my relationship with my soon-to-be-wife and kids. Picture it all. And write down what you see. Once you have it down on paper, turn it into a story. It doesn’t have to be a long story. Just long enough and detailed enough that if anyone else were to read it, they would (1) know exactly what you wanted in five years and (2) be intrigued enough to want to read more. Once you have the story, read it at least once a week. Imagine your life in 5 years but view it as an outsider…like it’s someone else’s life. Because, in five years, it WILL be someone else’s life…it will be the new you.

Secondly, if you haven’t already started a blog, do so now. Right now, right this minute. Get it going. It doesn’t have to be perfect. A blog is not the only (or even the best) way to make money online. But it’s a start and gets you headed in the right direction. Everything else will fall into place and you will follow suit. Don’t stress if you don’t know the first thing about setting up a blog. Neither did I…but I made the decision to get a blog up and running and made it happen.

Getting started and taking action for me was seeking out the help of a blogging expert who is a fellow Alex Jeffreys’ student by the name of Matt Wolfe (http://www.matthewwolfe.com/). Not only was he able to get my blog up and running in a matter of days, Matt was able to set it up to my exact design specifications. Now, some of you may think this blog design needs work…and it does. But it was my first go at a blog and Matt Wolfe was able to whip up exactly what I wanted and I can’t thank him enough.

If you need to get your blog up online, or if you need to learn more about the coolest widgets or how to do something specific with your blog, Matt is the guy who can help you. Lucky for us, he has a series of videos (Wordpress Classroom) that explain in great detail how to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING with your wordpress blog. Best of all, as I can attest, the videos are extremely easy to follow and are even short in duration (each video ranges between two and ten minutes). Even if you are a techno-phobe or code-phobe, Matt’s videos do an amazing job of walking you through each process step-by-step and you will have the know-how and tools to blog like the best.

So GO! Get going. It doesn’t need to be perfect…it just needs to get started. Whatever you are looking to do, get off your ass and get moving!

And I would love to know how it goes – drop me a comment if this post has helped you get those feet moving. Or, considering the extreme length of this post, if you started to nod off, drop a comment and let me know how I was able to help you have a great nap Until next time….

Paul

]]> http://www.paulnorwine.com/2009/how-in-the-hell-do-you-start-a-successful-online-business/feed/ 13 http://www.paulnorwine.com/2009/i-have-yet-to-make-a-single-dollar-online-and-i-just-quit-my-job/ http://www.paulnorwine.com/2009/i-have-yet-to-make-a-single-dollar-online-and-i-just-quit-my-job/#comments Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:43:23 +0000 Paul http://paulnorwine.com/?p=4 My name is Paul Norwine. I am 29 years old and I live in Austin, Texas. Last week I was the Director of the San Antonio Sports and Social Club, a highly successful offline business that I built from scratch to one of the largest and most profitable social organizations in the country – in just a little over two years’ time. I had what most people would consider their dream job. But last week I walked away from my relatively-lucrative position in the offline world and now consider myself a full-time “Internet Marketer.”

There’s just one small problem…I haven’t made a single penny online and I don’t know what I am doing.

More on that in a bit – for now let me tell you how I got to this point. I am originally from California near Santa Barbara. I did my undergrad years at UCDavis and grad school at the University of Texas, Austin. I spent quite a bit of time in the realm of professional and collegiate sports and was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to run my own sports participation-based business. I had an amazing time building the business from the ground up…but then we exploded and I spent more time working IN my business than working ON my business. Every day was spent putting out a new fire and it was tough just to keep my head (and the organization) above water let alone focus on continual growth.

There was one more problem – I was building someone else’s business. My figurative blood, sweat, and tears were making someone else money…a lot of money. I was stuck in a situation that I always told myself I would avoid.

I made a promise at a very early age that I would never settle for a “conventional” life stuck in the rat race. Fighting my way up the corporate ladder by playing the good soldier for 50-65 hours a week for 51 weeks out of the year hoping for a promotion that may or may not come is NOT my idea of living the good life. In fact, I equate the corporate cubicle lifestyle with a slow and particularly boring death. That may seem a little melodramatic but I am determined not to settle for a life I don’t want to lead.

I have just one life to live…and I want to squeeze as much out of it as I possibly can. It’s not just about the money. It’s about having the freedom to go after the life of my dreams.  I won’t go into exactly what those dreams are in this post but suffice it to say that I crave the freedom of working how I want, when I want, where I want so I can do what I want, when I want, where I want. And I can’t possibly live this type of life if I were to stay stuck in the “corporate world.” I knew there had to be a better way.

Ever since I read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss my perception of “work” and making money was irrevocably altered. For those of you who haven’t yet read this book do yourself a favor and grab a copy…you will be glad you did.

So, like most of you who are reading this can relate, I began researching “home-based” and online business opportunities. I bought into a number of “fail-proof” systems that guaranteed to make me tens of thousands of dollars virtually overnight. I read sales letter after sales letter, ebook after ebook. I tried data entry and survey systems. I tried MLMs and Network Marketing and affiliate programs. I even tried a “roulette system” for God’s sake (I’m pretty embarrassed I fell for that one – I knew it was a scam but went after it anyway). And, as you can guess, none of it made me a penny. It honestly started to feel like a search for the holy grail…sacrificing and searching for something I didn’t even know for sure existed.

I knew that if I were to have any chance of succeeding in this industry I would have to find mentors. I would have to find people who were already successful at doing what I wanted to do. I needed to find these people to not only prove to myself that making money online is possible but that it is a process that can be learned and that I CAN actually do it!

In my search I stumbled across Eric Farewell and Alex Jeffreys. For those of you who do not know who Eric is, he is a product-launch genius and niche marketing specialist who spends his free time flying, racing, skydiving, traveling and pretty much doing anything that he wants when he wants to do it. He is also a damned good photographer (lucky for me he may be photographing my summer wedding in Jamaica ). He hates the moniker of “guru” but he has achieved that status and has made lots and lots of moolah on the internet – I don’t want to put his earnings on the spot but let’s just say there are a lot of zeroes on the checks he gets in the mail. Oh yeah, he’s also only 24 years old!

I met Eric at Pat O’Bryan’s Unseminar 6 at the end of May, 2009. His outlook on living life to the fullest and financing your own freedom resonated deeply with me and I became one of his students. One major set back, however, is that I was (and still am) a complete novice when it comes to the world of internet marketing. Until that seminar in May I didn’t even know what a squeeze page was. I didn’t know what was implied by the word “copy.” I didn’t even have a twitter account. So though I completely understood Eric’s coursework from a conceptual standpoint, I was far from being able to actually implement any action steps. I knew I needed a mentor that would help me start from the absolute beginning.

Eric actually recommended a guy by the name of Alex Jeffreys. I did a little research on Alex and what I found amazed me. Here was a guy who sounded as though he was exactly the type of mentor that I was looking for. And it wasn’t his own hype that I was reading – it was the words, praise, and testimonials from his past students! Instead of empty promises and conceptualizations, Alex walks his students step-by-step through the process himself – and he refuses to let his students NOT become successful.

At first it sounded too good to be true and I was hesitant to join Alex’s coaching program based on the price tag. But I knew I needed a mentor so I ponied up the money and hoped for the best. And now I am beyond grateful that I signed up for the course! I can honestly tell you that I am light years ahead of where I would have been had I not joined this program a month and a half ago. It would have taken me months of struggling via personal trial and error to figure out what I learned in the first two weeks of Alex’s Coaching program alone. Alex genuinely cares about his students’ success and does everything he can to facilitate that success. I can’t say enough about Alex Jeffreys and the community that he has created.

This brings me to the purpose of this blog. I know there are a ton of you out there that want to develop a profitable online business but don’t know where to begin. Or you have an online business but it’s not going quite the way that you want. You are sick and tired of being bombarded by all the hype without results, or sick of falling for the next “sure thing”, or at the end of the rope and thinking it’s impossible to make money online. I’ve been there. I almost gave up before I even started. But now I have mentors and am part of a highly motivated community of individuals who are successfully making money on the internet. And now I KNOW I am going to be successful online.

This blog will serve two purposes: First, I will be writing about what I learn from the training provided by my uber-successful mentors Alex Jeffreys and Eric Farewell. I will be writing about what is working (or not working) for me and I will be learning from the best of the best. This training will serve to help you, the reader, effectively implement the same strategies that two of the industry’s biggest success stories used to build their own online empires. Second, keep in mind that as of this first blog post I have yet to make a single dollar online. This blog will (hopefully) provide documented proof that someone who is completely new to the realm of Internet Marketing CAN build a profitable online business!

Some people think I am absolutely nuts for leaving a “good job” for something I really know nothing about. Some people are nicer in their assessment and believe me to be naive or that I am just chasing a pipe dream. All I know is that this is the right decision for me.

So why should you care who I am? Why should you come back to read my posts and add your name to my list? Because I am starting from nothing (like most of you) and I am going to show you that it’s possible. I am going to build a successful online business from the ground up. And I am going to help YOU build YOUR business. I have burned my J.O.B. bridge. I have put all of my eggs in one basket and it’s put up or shut up time for me.

Again, it’s not just about the money. It’s about the freedom to pursue the life of my dreams…and this is the first step towards me actualizing those dreams. I look forward to the journey and hope to help as many of you as possible.

But I am also asking for YOUR help. I would love your feedback – if you have any questions about any of my posts please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. Or if you have your own suggestions or advice, stop by and drop a line. Or even if you just want to swing by to introduce yourself. My goal is to foster discussions within a community of readers to help each of us build more profitable online businesses. Here’s to all of our future successes online!

Paul Norwine (8/10/09)