I recently stumbled upon a blog I highly recommend you visit anytime you need a recharge, called https://www.wakeupcloud.com. It’s written by Henri Junttila, and frankly it’s a much needed breath of fresh air in the field of positive self-change.
One of his blog posts is his own personal compilation of “77 Great Quotes That Will Change Your Life,” and within that post I discovered 10 quotes that are especially relevant to our chosen field of Internet Marketing. I offer them here, along with my personal thoughts. Enjoy!
If we’re growing, we’re always going to be out of our comfort zone.
– John Maxwell
Every first step you take in your Internet marketing career – be it setting up a website, making a blog post, creating a product, doing a launch and so forth – will take you out of your comfort zone. Relish the experience because it means that you are growing, that you are succeeding, that you are LIVING.
If you wait to do everything until you’re sure it’s right, you’ll probably never do much of anything.
– Win Borden
Time and time again I see new marketers who are waiting for just the right time to launch a product, just the right moment when they know everything to start a website, just the right alignment of the planets to build a membership site. You’ll never know everything you need to know – so just take action.
It’s like riding a bull – you don’t know how he’ll try to buck you off, so get on, hang tough, and enjoy the ride. Afterward you’ll bask in the glory of your success and plan your next conquest, while those who were too timid will forever wait for the “perfect” time.
Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
– Jim Rohn
Many people start things in Internet Marketing, but few finish. They start a blog, write a half dozen posts and then quit. They begin creating a product, get halfway finished and then set it aside to go do something else. Others don’t even get started because they’re too busy bouncing from one idea to the next, never settling on one long enough to begin, much less seeing it through to completion.
So get started, and then keep going. Each day do something – anything that moves you forward. I don’t care if it’s late at night and you’re dead tired – if you haven’t moved your business forward today, then DO SOMETHING before you fall asleep. This habit will be the one that propels you beyond the finish line and into the waiting arms of triumph. Remember: If you fail to persist, then you fail.
Action will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve.
– Petryl Hsieh
New marketers doubt their ability, doubt their market, doubt their systems and even doubt their own minds. They doubt their ability to sell, their ability to communicate and I suspect their ability to get out of bed and take action. Result? They buy more ebooks on how to market. They do more reading, more research and more learning, thinking this will remove the doubt and replace it with unbridled confidence.
Reality check – this NEVER works. The ONLY thing that removes doubt and instills confidence is ACTION. All the knowledge, learning and theory in the world cannot erase doubt because it is only through action that anything real is achieved. And without achievement, there is no sense of self worth, and without self worth there is no confidence – only doubt.
Here’s an example taken to the ridiculous: A new, intelligent marketer studies how to make a product that everyone will adore. He studies the other products in his market, he studies the market itself, and he works for years at devising the perfect product, which of course has evolved over and over again to adapt to the ever changing market.
While this is going on, a not-so-bright marketer finds a question on a forum about a problem someone has, creates a 20 page report that holds a solution to that problem, and sells it for $7. He sells a couple of hundred copies, which means he now has a list of buyers, $1,400 or so in cash and some real world experience in marketing.
The not-so-bright marketer isn’t smart enough to know that $1,400 isn’t a fantastic start. After all, don’t those guru websites say you should be making $30,000 your first month? But this guy isn’t bright, so he duplicates his efforts and creates more products to sell. Some of these products bomb terribly, some of them do well, and eventually after taking one action after another after another, he has a thriving business and a six figure income.
If only he had been smart enough to know that you cannot create a new product until you know everything there is to know about making and marketing the product, he would surely have been all the wiser and very much the poorer, just like our “intelligent” marketer who knew better.
Too silly? Not really – I see this happen all the time.
That some achieve great success is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.
– Abraham Lincoln
Really, what more is there to say? You’ve seen other marketers go from homeless or jobless to six figures. This doesn’t make them super smart, super special or even super nice. What it does make them is super confident that they can grow their businesses even bigger, larger and more profitable if they choose to – or they can work less and be content with six figures, which is still plenty enough to take tropical vacations and look good in a new car every couple of years.
And since they’re not super smart, special or gifted, this should ring one thing loud and clear in your mind and heart – if they can do it, YOU can do it. Period. You might want to make that your mantra – “If They Can Do It, You Can Do It.” Say it a hundred times a day if that’s what it takes to embed it so deep within yourself that you believe it with every fiber of your being. Because you know what? It’s a Fact. Pure and simple. If they can do it, YOU can do it.
Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was.
– Robert Louis Stevenson
Funny thing about Internet marketing – there are no prerequisites like there are for being a doctor or a lawyer. No one is going to ask for your credentials before they allow you to become successful. So whether you’re a corporate CEO who just got downsized, or someone who’s living in his car, it just doesn’t matter. Begin where you are right now, with whatever talents you already possess, and build on what you’ve got.
Fall seven times, Stand up eight.
– Japanese Proverb
The bad news is, you’re going to screw up. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to have days that make you wonder if you should quit. That’s okay. Pick yourself up one more time, dust yourself off, have a laugh at the situation, and keep going.
When I was new I asked a big time guru to promote one of my products for me. Much to my shock he said yes, and he emailed his entire list. He sent so much traffic to my website that my server crashed within minutes. Can you imagine how mad he was that I hadn’t prepared for the avalanche of traffic he sent me?
I got my website back up within 2 hours and offered him numerous humble apologies, but he never mailed for me again. Some might have thrown in the towel at that point – heaven knows the thought occurred to me. But I pressed on, and in the grand scheme of things that seemingly horrible, tragic day was but a tiny blip on the screen of life.
What if I hadn’t gotten back up? Then you wouldn’t be reading these words right now, and I’d be back where I was, wondering what would have happened if only I’d persevered and kept going.
The path to success is to take massive, determined action.
– Tony Robbins
Sure, you can set up a website and hope someday someone comes along and buys your product. Or you can take massive, determined action to drive hordes of traffic to your site. You can hide in the shadows, or you can build a name for yourself and a brand that is recognized the world over. You can write content to try to please everyone, thereby pleasing no one, or you can take a stand and thus stand head and shoulders above the rest.
Taking action is not enough to ensure your success – you must take real, decisive action on a large scale to win the day. Yes it’s scary – but it’s that leap of faith that can produce remarkable results in a very short amount of time.
Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other
– Abraham Lincoln
There will be those who tell you that you can’t. That you will fail. That it’s a dumb idea, that you don’t know what you’re doing, that if it were possible, everyone would be doing it. Believe me, there are a thousand ways people can tell you they don’t believe in you, but there is only one person’s opinion that matters – yours. Resolve to succeed and hold fast to that resolution no matter what happens, and it will simply be a matter of time before you persevere and win the day.
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
– Muhammed Ali
Remember, courage is not the absence of fear – courage is action in the face of fear. Whatever your fears might be, simply acknowledge them and then move past them. Do not dwell on them, do not make them larger than life, and never allow them to cause you future regret for your inaction.
Fear is almost always an illusion, a simple trick of the mind with no basis in reality. Unless your life is in immediate and real danger, fear is a cosmic hoax perpetrated by the primitive part of your brain that couldn’t distinguish an ebook from a duck. All it knows is survival, and really – how many people have died from building websites, creating products or hitting the send button on their email program?
The brilliant thing about Internet Marketing is that there is very little risk other than your time. There’s no remortgaging your home to buy web hosting and there’s no chance of building a website so shoddy it collapses and crushes you to death.
Yet time and again I see people held prisoner by their fear, and nothing makes fear stronger than a lack of action. So anytime you feel fear tingling your spine, take swift, decisive action and you’ll be pleasantly shocked at how fast and how far fear retreats back into the shadows.
Bottom Line? By now you should have noticed one major theme running through all of these quotes. If you haven’t, then I encourage you to go back and figure out what it is, because when you do, success can be yours faster than you ever imagined possible.
