Secret #5:  Build on Your Successes

Each success is going to create another success for you.  I suggest you start small at first.  You don’t have to build a million-dollar or $10-million or $100-million business.  You can dream big and have a plan for getting there. 

My friend John Reese says, “Make your first dollar online.”  If you make just one dollar online, you’re already ahead of a lot of people that are trying to make anything, that are scattered around and doing all kinds of stuff.

So you make your first dollar online, and that builds and builds and builds. 

Start with a project that you can manage to get going quickly and easily. Remember, there can always be a version 2 or an updated edition. It’s better to put something out there and see the response then it is to be absolutely perfect. Fact is, you will never have a perfect product or service. I don’t and I don’t know anyone else who thinks they do. But my little ‘imperfect’ products are still raking in a whole lot of dough because I got out there and started. My first success with Instant Sales Letters really boosted my confidence and helped me formulate my next projects. And each one has helped me build bigger and bigger.

I want to introduce you to something called the “Leapfrog Theory”…

You should get a book written in the 80’s called Winning Through Intimidation by Robert Ringer. [Side note: I had a chance to have dinner with Robert about a year ago and it was great hearing how he made a huge splash in the marketplace with a book that misconstrued.]  It’s definitely one of my favorite books (though I haven’t read the new edition called “To Be or Not to Be Intimidated”.  Inside he talks about the leapfrog theory, which says we don’t have to wait for somebody to come anoint us an expert. 

There’s no person that’s going to come up and say, “Joe Blow, you have been proclaimed the expert on self-help.  Now you are the true expert.  Go out there and make money.”  That’s not going to happen.

Each of you has to be your own expert. 

You have to have the confidence, which comes from the knowledge (full circle back to secret #1), from starting and doing.  And as long as you have that knowledge, the leapfrog theory says you leap over all the other people that are hanging out here in the middle, the mediocre majority and the people trying to climb up.  You jump all the way up to the top and you proclaim yourself the expert.

Who’s going to challenge you?  If somebody challenges you, you know you have the confidence and the knowledge, because you’ve studied.
 
If you don’t have that knowledge, you’ll easily get knocked back down to the ‘mediocre majority’.  So use this leapfrog theory and just jump over everyone else, and don’t worry about somebody coming up to proclaim you an expert.  It’s not going to happen. 

Remember, success creates success, and that builds more confidence for you. 

Secret #6:  Decision 

This is such a big point. 

A lot of people have so many problems with decision even the simplest ones like “Where do you want to go to dinner?” 

That’s because they don’t like it because it cuts off other options.  But frankly that’s exactly what you want.  You want to cut off other options.

It’s just like Hernando Cortes during the Spanish Conquest. Cortes was determined to conquer the Aztecs of Mexico and he realized that some of his men wanted to return to Cuba because they didn’t think they could walk through 200 miles of jungle and swamps, climb mountains, avoid thousands of hostile Indians and attack the Aztec fortress city which was surrounded by water. To keep his men from deserting, Cortes carried out a desperate and bold scheme. He removed the sails, rigging, compasses, and all other valuables from
all but one ship and burned the others.

You probably don’t need to be that bold but if you cut off your options, you’re much more motivated.  You make that decision and make decisions quickly.  That’s a sign of successful people. 

There’s a magic of attraction when you make your decision.  However, when you’re hemming and hawing, you don’t experience this magic.  I don’t want to get into too much woo-woo or metaphysical or spiritual stuff. 

But there’s this magic of attraction.  I can’t even explain it.  When you set your mind up that you’re going to do this, all of a sudden, at the next dinner party you’re attending you meet somebody that can help you get to where you want to go.  Is that luck or is that something else? 

I don’t think this is a result of luck.

It’s like once the decision is made your mind is tuned into the solution and all kinds of ‘freaky’ coincidences and occurrences happen.

And that brings me to another important point about decisions – fail quickly. Don’t be afraid of failure.  A lot of people are so afraid of I’m going to screw up, I’m going to make a mistake that are forever frozen.  Who the hell cares?  Screw up quickly!  I screw up all the time.  And you want to fail quickly. 

That’s the great part about the Internet.  You want to go out there and find out if your dumb idea is going to work right away. You can do it in days instead of months. Sometimes hours and if it doesn’t work, you move on.  You say, “Next!”

Look, I know a lot of people who are working on their products for the last two, three, four years.  Get the damned thing out!  If it’s crap, it’s crap.  At least you’ll figure it out.  And you can sell crap.  You really can – you just make it better as you go along.
 
Instant Sales Letters, my first product was not where it is now.  We’ve added a ton of stuff to it and made it better.  But I just wanted to see if the thing was going to sell.

It wasn’t complete and utter rubbish, as my British friends say, but it was enough that it made the point.  It found out if there was a marketplace for it.  So find out. 

Some people like to go around at dinner parties and so on and say, “I’m writing a book.  I’ve been writing a book for five years.  I’m an author.” 

Uh huh. I can show you 6 different ways to have your book done in days. It’s a cop-out and complete B.S. Bottom line – make the decision to get the product out there.  See what happens and fail quickly.

Look for the next secrets coming shortly…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Financial Independence. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.