People HATE to feel left out!

You can feel perfectly fine and happy in yourself and then log onto Facebook or bump into people at the mall and realize that other people are busy doing stuff without you.

Man that really sucks.

Your heart feels heavy, you get the sad feeling in the pit of your stomache.

What’s wrong with you?  Why can’t you be “part of the group”?

This can hit really hard when you decide to start your own business online.

There are your old friends, going to work, complaining about their bosses, and generally bonding over the fact that life sucks…but at least we’re all in it together.

And there is this new set of people you can see ahead of you.  The mythical successful internet marketer, who won’t give you the time of day (because everyone is asking for the time of day) and seems to only be willing to talk to the other successful people.  It seems like they are all in this club together, keeping the real secrets of success to themselves and laughing at the little people who want to make it online, but never do.

So you try to follow the steps they give you….

But you feel crummy.

You feel like you will NEVER make it, and you feel left out.

You are left out by the normies who bond over their shared job misery and seem to resent that you are trying to do something different, and you feel left out by the successes who don’t differentiate you from the hundreds of other people desperately trying to get their attention.

The result, you feel pretty lonely.

I remember that feeling.  It used to hit me like a ton of bricks.  I’d open my computer and check my email inbox, only to have about twenty marketing messages, and maybe one message from someone I actually knew.

I would go onto Facebook and see other internet marketers desperately trying to sell me their stuff.

I would go to my company page.  No orders, sigh.

And somehow I would have to pick myself up and KEEP going!

I would feel ostracized by my old world, and not fully accepted into my new world.

But I realized that as long as I was focused on this feeling I couldn’t possibly be successful.  My loneliness and self doubt would come out in my work.

I had to find a way to not feel lonely, and to do that I would have to make sure I wasn’t pretending to fall into either group to try to feel more at home.

I would have to be willing to be HONEST about where I was and what I was doing to move forward.

I couldn’t indulge in complaining just for the sake of feeling like more a part of the normal world, and I couldn’t engage in pretending to be one of the big boys because they would just see right through it anyway.

Instead I could be open and honest about where I was and be happy with it.  I could share my journey with other people on the same path and support them in their journey.

And coming from this perspective, I began to meet people who were interesting, open, and dedicated.  People who knew that it wasn’t all roses, that it did take work, and that wanted to see me succeed just as I wanted to see them succeed.

Here’s a few simple ways to make your path a little less lonely:

-Find a Facebook Group

Take some time to find a facebook group that isn’t just covered in links!!  You don’t want to get distracted by people trying to sell you stuff or get you as traffic to their site.  You want to find one with people who are discussing different ideas, or even commisserating on their struggles.  Sharing their goals and their progress toward their goals.

I recently started one for Mompreneurs, as only other Moms understand the unique difficulties you face when trying to launch a business while raising a family! (You can find it here).

-Get on Twitter

Twitter is a great place to have conversations.  It can be a little bit overly “linky” so find people who use it to have conversations.  These people are great as it is that little bit more anonymous.  Also as you make friends on Twitter you will find that the people there really like to share each other’s stuff and give genuine support.

Here’s an article I did that will help you learn how to use Twitter and get followers by making true connections.

-Be Open

I’ve seen it happen over and over again.  Tell people WHAT you plan to do before you do it and they will support you.  People love to see the journey from “one of us” to somewhere bigger and better!  They like to be a part of it.

Here’s one of my favorite author’s blogs.  What is amazing about her is that she told her whole story on a blog AS IT HAPPENED. She talked about her letters to agents, her first book getting picked up, her sudden inspiration for her next book, the WHOLE story.  And do know what, when she got published she had a swarm of followers dying to pick up her book to support her!

Another one is Kyle MacDonald of One Red Paperclip (I wrote a post about the awesomeness of this guy here).  He traded up from a paperclip to a house.  How?  Because he told everyone that’s what he was doing before he did it!  So the people who “got it” helped him, they did their best to come up with great trades, they helped him make the story public… and they were all supporting him in his quest.

- Get to know ME :)

Blatant self promotion coming up!  I’m on a quest to get to a $30k a month average marketing online.  But my smaller goal at the moment is to hit my first $10k in one month.

When I hit that I’m going to move my family to California so we can escape the endless rain of Ireland :-)   Sorry Ireland, love ya, but I need some SUN!

At the moment I’m well on my way.  Both me and the mister stay at home with our two kids (and I run out to the library to do my work so I wont have to listen to baby madness).  But we want to do more than just live a normal jobless life.

I have an awesome team of people I work with.  I help them get going online and get on their way to their own first 10k month.  My ultimate dream would be one of them hitting that goal before me… that would totally ROCK!

Being in a TEAM is way better than going it alone. Here’s an introduction to my team.  Or you can just join us! It’s only $25 :-) to be part of an awesome team of Rebels.

Whatever you do, don’t let yourself feel lonely.  You don’t have to be alone.

Find other people who are uplifting, supportive, and want you to succeed! 

You can do it, I believe in you ;-)

 

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