Nothing irritates me more than people KNOWING that consistency matters, understanding that if they simply commit to a few simple tasks every single day they WILL hit their goals, and still not doing it.

Sometimes I just want to shake people and say “Just Do It!” It’s not that hard and takes minimal effort.

The big problem is that most people can’t sacrifice today (a little bit of time and effort) if they aren’t 100% sure they are working towards a definite outcome tomorrow.

Look at it this way, you probably set your alarm every Sunday night and drag yourself to work Monday morning all because someone signed a little piece of paper saying they would give you a check at the end of the month.

Getting out of bed and going to work sucks, but most people do it because they know the outcome.

The one thing that EVERY single rags to riches tale online has in common is consistency.

There are hundreds of ways to make money, and hundreds of ways to drive traffic… but each time a new person is successful everyone wants to know their way, and their secret.

Frankly, it doesn’t really matter!  Their secret is they picked something and stuck to it.

Because this (obviously) irks me so much… here is a little video I recorded that illustrates the outcome of consistency overtime (using math and everything!

;

For you lazies who hate video online (sorry to say I’m one of them!) … here’s the honest truth.

This is what happens when you work in fits and starts (kinda like a hare).

This is what happens when you work consistently (kinda like the old tortoise):

Everytime you STOP you have to start from scratch again.  Everytime you decide to take a break for a month, Google decides your website has gone cold and your social media contacts decide they can’t trust you to stick around or that you don’t take your business seriously.

When you’re a hare you start from nothing every couple of months.

When you’re a tortoise you build on what you have already done.  You might not see much in the way of results for the first couple of months, but something is growing under the surface.  You are establishing a history with Google.  You are building trust with your social contacts.  People are seeing that you are real, that you are genuine, and that you are not going anywhere.

Stability is rare online.

Be the person who can be trusted to still be marketing, to still be blogging, and to still be delivering the same message six months from now…and you will be followed!

I know it sucks, I know some days you simply want to throw in the towel (on those days use the fingerless ninja blogging technique!), but I promise that the only thing that will get you your dreams is consistency.

My team has a core 3 steps that we do daily.  We leverage our knowledge and our tools to ensure that a small amount of work goes a long way, but we ALL know that being consistent is more important than any other thing!

Decide what you can do daily, commit to doing it every single day no matter what!  And you will reach your dreams!

Learn more about my team and our simple daily action steps!

It’s the worst situation you can find yourself in…

You find out in work that half your department is being laid off.

Effective Immediately.

You have two kids at home and your wife is due soon with your third child.

You’ve worked incredibly hard to get a good six figure job, and now in a matter of seconds someone can suddenly take that all away from you.

This is the exact situation my friend and fellow EN team member Lawrence Tam found himself in just last week….

And the dreaded moment happened.

He was told that his name was on the list of those that were being laid off.

But Lawrence (being a bit of a bad ass) didn’t bat an eye.

Instead, he simply told his wife the news and sat back smiling.

You see… while everyone else was busy getting panic stricken about whether or not their jobs were safe, Lawrence was methodically building an online business part-time.

At this point he is earning 5 times what he earned in engineering (we’re talking over six figures in the last four months alone).

So instead of being faced with the horror of a lay-off just two months before his third child is due, he and his wife are overjoyed that he will now be full-time at home with his family, and he got to leave his job with a redundancy package as he was laid off!

Not bad for a bit of part time work!

These kinds of stories are coming out of the team NONSTOP!

Here’s a screenshot from another fellow teammate Bryan’s Facebook Timeline yesterday:

And my very favorite stories are the ones coming from total newbies…

People who could barely afford the $25 to get started!

And, while I’m telling happy stories… here’s a screenshot from my own email:

So what does every one of us have in common (besides being part of a great opportunity)?

We all were willing to follow a few simple steps daily.  Some of us part time, some of us full time. Some of us brand new to internet marketing, some of us old hats.  The secret was nothing more than a good opportunity… and putting in some genuine work!

I always pride myself on not being about “Hype” and I’m not going to tell you to just blindly join us because we’re having success.

But I am going to tell you to think hard about where you are and where you want to go.

I am going to tell you that I’ve never seen anything like the training and real help offered by our company and within my team.

And I am going to tell you to learn more about what we are doing to achieve the most NEWBY success stories I have ever seen in my four years online!

Decide if you’re ready to achieve real results, decide if you’re ready to be part of a bullsh*t free team, and decide to take action towards your own success.

Learn more about the Rebel Marketer’s Team here.

A few years ago I decided that work sucked.

I decided that I was a pretty smart person and should be using my skills to earn myself money.… not someone else money.

So I quit my job and moved in with my mom for a summer with the plan to launch my internet business, make something of myself, and live my dreams.

What happened?

Well, like many other people who decide to make a change….

I made a decision, and then I got stuck.

If you’re stuck then you are most likely in one of the following situations…. and don’t worry, I’ve been in them both.  Here’s a few tips to help you get unstuck, get moving, and get where you want to be!

1. You Don’t Know What To Do

This was my initial stumbling block.

I joined a network marketing company and quit my job with some money saved up and the intention of making the company so successful that I would never have to work again.

Funny enough, four months later…. I was back in a job.

Because I didn’t know WHAT to do!

I spent those four months pretty much trying to solve this problem.  Now this was back in 2008 when there was not as much free training, sharing info, and general help online as is available today.  So all I had to go on was what my mentor told me.  And unfortunately, they never really said anything SPECIFIC.

I would here phrases like “take massive action” and “just make a decision to be successful”…. and I’d think “Yeah, I’d LOVE to be taking action… but doing WHAT????”

It was so frustrating to never be told exactly what to do, just these vague ideas like use Google advertising without any help on how that actually worked.

I still now sometimes think back regretfully on all the wasted time wondering what to do to get leads for my business.  But I’m still glad it happened because it showed me a few things.

It showed me what it felt like to be trying to achieve success and have mentors who weren’t specific and who seemed afraid to tell me what they were actually doing (I guess they didn’t want competition, LOL).

It showed me how disempowering it is to have someone tell you they are going to help you make money only to give you vague answers and let you struggle alone.

And most importantly, it showed me that failure isn’t all that scary.

I gave up a nice rental home, a job, and a life in Ireland to try something.  When it didn’t work out guess what I did.  Moved back to Ireland, got the exact same job, and a lovely rental home.  Basically, I lost nothing but time (ok… and a bit of money on credit card debt), and I gained a LOAD of important lessons.

I knew that I would never again join a business based on excitement alone, that I would need to find a way to stop relying on mentors, and take things into my own hands to learn how to market myself.  I knew I would never be stuck again.

2. You Know What To Do, But Don’t Do It!

When after several months of working and pretty much giving up on my dreams to work from home I came across a young guy that was not only doing well himself, but actually TRAINING people on real things and specific strategies to get leads for a home business I was intrigued.

I knew that my problem before had been WHAT to do… here was the answer.

So I dove back in, but this time with a hardened attitude.

I no longer trusted what people told me, I was wary.

I had the attitude that I would wait until I saw something work BEFORE I put my heart into my business.

But guess what happens when your heart isn’t in your business, or you don’t really believe in success.

Nothing.

This time I knew WHAT to do… but I didn’t do it.

I suppose I was trying to protect myself because I had been so terribly disappointed at my initial failure that I was afraid to let myself believe.

But without belief, without a KNOWING that you will be successful if you simply do the work…. the work doesn’t happen.

Oh I would do bits here and there, and then blame others and my circumstances when nothing happened.

I don’t even consider this time in my business as failing, I see it as the time when I just stopped.  I didn’t open my heart to even the possibility of success so I never really started.

Getting Unstuck

I want you to stop and think about an elephant with a rider on its back.

The elephant is a powerful force that can move shockingly big loads, but doesn’t know which direction to go to achieve what it wants to achieve.

The rider is intelligent and knows the path to get to where it wants to go… but without the elephant it can’t move much.

The elephant needs the rider to tell it where to go, and the rider needs the power of the elephant to actually get there.

Without the elephant the rider will never be able to move loads down the right path.

Without the rider the elephant goes charging in the complete wrong direction and never ends up where it wants to be.

No I probably don’t need to tell you that this is a metaphor for your mind.

The elephant is your emotional (unconscious) side, and the rider your logical (conscious) side.

The rider needs to know where to go, what to tell the elephant to do.

The elephant needs to WANT to go there.  If it doesn’t want to move in the same direction as the rider you will simply go in circles.

You get unstuck by making sure the rider has a clear roadmap to follow, that it knows what to do. And by making sure the elephant WANTS to go there so it wont make you veer offcourse.

Both need to know where “there” is.  There has to be a destination.

How I Unstick My Team

1. I make a clear team goal (engages the elephant, gives the rider a destination)

Our current team goal is for ten people to hit a 10k month in June.  It’s a specific number with a specific end date.

The team can think about this number and imagine what life would look like ifyou made 10k a month.  They think about how they could stay home with the kids,what vacation they would book, what they would buy their spouse.

It makes them emotionally engaged enough to make better decisions.  When they are faced with the decision of watching tv or working, they choose work because they KNOW that, that 10k is worth more than any tv show.

2. I make a clear path

In my team tools section I have six daily steps for my team members to complete, so when they sit down with whatever time they are able to carve out for their business they don’t waste a second.  They know what to do, they know how to do it, and they don’t waste time on silly activities.

3. I build their belief (engage the elephant)

Everyone uses different evidence to help them believe something, but constant stories can help them change beliefs.  It took me a long time to engage my elephant because I had a couple failures under my belt, and I carried a crappy belief that I was always going to fail.  Now that I see myself as successful I have become successful.

The good thing for the team is that the company we work with actually gives us real data.  They could explain statistics and show exactly what the people who make 10k a month are doing.  How much they are selling, etc.

Armed with this knowledge we could also look at the people who have achieved this and realize that they aren’t specifal… they are just doing the work.

If you feel stuck. Pick a destination, create a road map, and gather evidence that YOU CAN DO IT!

Get support of a team working together towards a common goal, learn more about what our team does here.

 

Business owners in the “real world” don’t start a business without doing their market research.

You wouldn’t buy a franchise, or open a store front without first doing a business plan, doing your market research, creating a SWOT analysis, understanding the costs, creating a five year plan, knowing exactly when the business will be in profit, etc.

So why the heck do people start online businesses on a whim?

Why do people just dump their hard earned money into a business based on one sales video, or the fact that they think the Guru marketing the business seems cool, etc.

Because most people don’t actually expect online  businesses to do much of anything.  They treat it as a hobby, as something that might, with a bit of luck, get them something someday.

They limit their investment so that it doesn’t feel risky (thus dropping their chances of success down to basically nil as their business is underfunded.)

They limit their time spent on it because they don’t want it to interfere with their “real life”, and they want to have wasted too much time on something that is probably going to fail.

They typically quit after about 30 days if they haven’t started to make money.

Is it just me, or is that completely CRAZY?

Could you imagine someone starting a brick and mortar business and expecting it to be in profit in 30 days?

That’s nuts.

There’s so many advantages to a home business, the entry costs are achievable, you don’t have to find a premises, you probably don’t need to go into debt to get it started, and the risk is minimal.

But if you start with the expectation of “dipping your toe in the water” you should know that it’s not going to work out for you.

To have a successful home business you need:

1. To fund it (figure out in advance what it will take to be successful, and plan to cut that money out from other areas of your budget).

2. To work it (plan on investing at least an hour or two a day…. if you want to be making big money fast you’ll need to spend more time)

The great thing about online businesses is that they work on momentum.  Why can you sing the jingle to multiple ads on tv? How come you know the slogan of many popular brands? Because advertisers know that buyers make decisions based on exposure.  The more times a day they show their ad, the more they expose you, the more likely that you will think of THEIR product when you need an insurer, or cereal, or whatever.

Online marketing works much the same.  When someone sees your name and your picture everywhere, when they see that you are active and serious they are many more times likely to think of you when they decide to buy, and to trust what you have to say!  This comes from time investment.

The result is the more time you put in the more exponential your success can be.

3. To Treat it Like a Business

Give it time, and don’t quit.  You will need to find a way to become consistent in your work (to help with the momentum) and actually work the business as though this will be your only source of income.

Expect to spend at least 3 months getting your business really off the ground.  If you aren’t willing to spend 3 months to change the rest of your life then I’d like you to go to the top of this screen and click that red close button…. because I can’t help you.

Treating this like a business means taking it seriously from the start.  Create an “Evidence Report” for your prospective business before you join to understand if it’s actually a good opportunity or just hype.  Here’s an example Evidence Report I did for the business I decided to join.  You can borrow the format for your own Evidence Reports.

Stay strong, stay focused, and never give up the drive to change your life and follow your dreams.  If you take the time to treat this like a business from the start, to look at EVIDENCE not hype you are far more likely to take a logical, methodical and consistent approach to your business.  If you make decisions based only on emotion, you aren’t likely to ever treat the business seriously.

Go find out what it means to join a serious business and understand EXACTLY what you will need to do to succeed by checking out my example Evidence Report here.

Hello Loyal Blog Readers…

It’s just me, not any “Big Guy” in the clouds.

If I’m calculating this correctly I should be somewhere over Asia, winging my way to Singapore for a little holiday.  Not a mastermind, not an event, a real holiday.

You see the odd thing people don’t tell you about working from home is that….home can get a little boring.  And when you’re working from home with two small kids sometimes it can be great to take some time to unwind, decompress, and just be YOU (aka break from being a Mom).

So how can I blog from the plane?  Well, I’m sure I COULD blog from the plane, but I don’t want to.

I love long plane trips because you can watch as many ridiculous movies as you can, catch up on all the novels you have stored in your kindle, and have your phone/email/social life switched off.  It’s one of the only ways to actually be cut off from the world for 12 hours… unless you have the mental fortitude to switch off your computer, and I don’t!

I love enforced relaxation/entertainment!

So there IS a point to this blog.  Which is, I commited 24 days ago to a 90 day blog challenge with some team members.  The idea is to blog every single day for 90 days.  If it’s a search engine article you have to SEO and syndicate it.  If it’s a more social post, you need to spread it through the social networks and email your list.

When you commit to being consistent, does it mean your life goes on hold and everything grinds to a halt?

NO.

Consistency is the absolute most important part of being successful online.

But I committed to doing a blog post a day, and I’m not going to miss my post because I’m flying to Singapore, and I’m not going to miss my relaxation day (aka flight) because I’m committed to writing a blog post a day.

The solution: write the blog post ahead of time, and SCHEDULE it to come out today.

This post was written while I was still sitting at home, everything organized, bag packed, ooops…still have to print out itinerary, but yeah…it was written ahead of time and scheduled to come out on the correct day.

It will then be scheduled to be emailed to my loyal readers.

Now, here’s the GOLDEN NUGGET and whole point of this post.  If you HAVE to be consistent, but your consistency just sucks.  Or you think it will ruin your life, or you think you don’t have the willpower…try one simple little trick to get CONSISTENT instantly.

Make a PHYSICAL list of the things you are committing to do, and put it out in the open in your house.

Doing this one thing has made me more consistent than anything I have ever tried before.  More consistent than using willpower, more consistent than using daily visualization, more consistent than tracking documents on my computer.

See it harnesses TWO important human traits.

1. We like to build things up, see our work as a whole entity and be proud of what we have done.

2. We hate feeling like someone else is judging us!

If you have a physical chart (for me labelled from one to ninty with the date of the post next to EACH number) you see it growing. You are proud to add your post name every night, and you really don’t want to look at a gap every day.

But EVEN MORE you don’t want someone else looking at a gap, knowing it means you didn’t do your work.  Even if they don’t comment, or are fully supportive, you will be motivated by not wanting them to judge you.

If you live alone, use the poster for yourself and find a mentor that you email each night with a link to your blog post (or whatever consistent activity you are aiming for).

It doesn’t have to be fancy. My poster was written out in 5 minutes on the back of a micky mouse roll of colouring paper belonging to my two year old.  But I am probably more proud of my poster than anything else in my room!!

Because it means a change in consistency, and a massive increase in the reach of my message online. (Before anyone points out that I haven’t posted daily, I actually post on 3 seperate blogs…AND I sometimes do posts that are hidden from the main page and use them for SEO! )

Soooo…I’m probably enjoying my 3rd film about now, knowing that I’ve still been able to write today’s post on my poster!!

Just be consistent! It doesn’t take alot…and you can still enjoy life and be consistent in your business.  If that’s not the case for you, maybe it’s time for a new business, lol.

Check out what I do for the majority of my online income!

(Ok, I found the downside….I had a great pic of my little poster to put on here for you guys, but apparently I forgot to put it on my computer and instead it’s on the camera currently at the bottom of my suitcase! Whoops!)

If you know me personally, you probably know that I’m a natural worrier, that I’m more than a little bit scared of authority, that I agonize over what people will think of each move I make in my life.

You know what, for YEARS I hid my blog from my friends, coworkers, and family.

Because I know a lot of them think that making money online, is silly, impossible, and even EVIL.

Marketing has a really bad name, but not necessarily because it is bad, but because it is against the NORM.

The “Norm” is to sell your time for money.  To be miserable in your job. To get to be friends with other people through complaining about how much everything sucks, and how there isn’t enough time in the day, etc.

You see people are like crabs.

If you put one crab in a lidless bucket, escape is certain.

But if you add just one more crab neither will ever get away.

As soon as one tries to crawl out the other crab pulls it back in.  They are both stuck forever in the bucket.

People won’t always actively keep you down.  But without meaning to they inadvertently do by our hopeless slavery to random social norms.  You will often find yourself afraid to step out of your comfort zone or do something a little bit different because you are worried about what other’s will think!

It’s practically impossible to force yourself to simply not care about social norms, or not worry about what others are thinking and who is judging you.  But once you have identified the problem, you can at least work on it.  You can at least make sure that THAT is not the one thing holding you back from achieving your dreams.

Because if you don’t go after what you want because you’re worried about getting judged you are doomed to be a crab living a sad, mediocre life.

I haven’t totally nailed this one yet.  And I still get nervous about what people will think of me or how my actions and my business seperate me from others…. but I don’t let it stop me from attacking my business full on, and I don’t hide my business.

Here’s a few simple ways you can move away from fear of judging, and towards living your dreams:

1. Find a way to get around others who share your worldview

Even if your family thinks you are stupid or crazy, theres millions of other people who don’t!  There are people who understand what it is to feel suffocated by the working world and to NEED to do something different.  If you have no access to these types of people in your day to day life, use the internet to find them.  Join entrepreneur groups online and on Facebook, find groups of people who help and support each other in going for their dreams (and avoid groups that simply market to each other).

2. Do weird things.

Find moments to do things a little different from the norm. Go in the further less used door into the movie theater (and then watch how many people follow you!), go get your garbage can in your PJs, admit to the ridiculously frivolous novel you’re reading, read books about making money on the bus.  The more little ways you find to be confident in doing your own thing, your own way the better you will feel about stepping out, putting yourself forward and allowing others to judge you.  Because judgements don’t hurt.  It’s your reaction to judgements that make them hurt you.

3. Focus on the people who matter.

The only people who’s judgements should matter at all to you are your loved ones.  And even they can get in the way of your dreams by not wanting you to fail or get hurt.  But remember, even when they judge you it doesn’t dampen their love for you one little bit.  There will usually be at least one person in your life who “gets it”, who understands why you HAVE to do something different. If you don’t have someone like that try to meet new people who share your goals and then find one or two to get to know better!

For me it’s my kids that matter the most.  I KNOW they are a hundred times happier when they have both Daddy and Mommy at home all the time.  I know because my relationship with my daughter improved dramatically when I left work.  They matter to me more than anyone.  So who really gives a crap what friends and family think.

My kids LOVE that I do something different and I get to be there for them all the time. And they are the ones that matter.

Don’t be a crab.

Start doing your own thing.  It can actually be pretty fun to step out and be a bit of a weirdo.  And just WAIT until you prove everyone WRONG!!!