OK Time To Get Into The Trenches !

Recently I put a post out that asked what you struggle with most, the amount of form submissions from that one post was fantastic and it really helped me to get to know you a lot better. I will cover the point that were raised in those emails another day, but I just want to focus on one over riding factor that most people said they are suffering with and that’s belief.

I openly talk about who I am and where I’ve come from and for me belief comes easy, but how can I make sure you believe in yourself? I’m going to try two different ways and see how we get on, because it’s clear some of you out there despite talking the right way on your site or through your business, you still have doubt in your mind.

• Attitude

Some of the email submissions from the post asking what you where struggling with where really quite detailed, one in particular was nearly 800 words and ultimately asnwered their own problem, but couldn’t see it. The problem with beleiving you can do it is the results side of things.

Quite often if you don’t get near immeadiate returns for the time you have invested then it can be difficult to actually think it will pay off in time. To date I think I have put a total of roughly a 1000 hours of work into this site (averaging 6hrs a day since the first day 27th October 2009) and only now am I seeing the type of returns that will take this site forward into a bsuiness.

You will sometimes get quick returns like comments and traffic spikes no matter how big or small, but like Chris Brogan said it’s a long game. Think about where you want to be 12 months from now not 12hrs from now. I haven’t written a business plan but I’ve got a rough guide on my calender where I want to be at what stage, then I’ve got a breakdown of how I’m going to achieve each goal. Some goals are weeks away, some are years away, the point is you simply won’t achieve anything unless you put the hours in.

I keep banging on about the amount of time you have to put in, now I’m not saying it’s going to take you 1,000hrs, to be honest I could have started this phase of my business a lot earlier, but I wanted to wait until I felt I had educated myself to a level that I was comfortable with, which in turn gave me the experience I needed to talk about certain things. You could achieve the results you want after only 100hrs of work, but the point is have a goal and think about achieving that, not gettign over the latest traffic slump or why Wednesday is your quietest day out of the way.

• Trenches

A good friend of mine, who happened to be NATO’s ugliest man (inside military joke) trained for a whole year before he went on a arduos selection course and I can’t stress the word arduos enough, the course is hideously tough, 99% failure rate, it’s not really a question of how fit you are, it’s a case of how lucky you are. Anyway back to my point, he made it onto the course in the best possible physical and mental condition of his life, he broke my record of a 1.5 Mile run and over distance with extreme wieght he was fenominal.

Half way through the first phase of the course, which is pretty much all physical tests he fell down the side of one of the mountains the course revolves around, he was lucky to survive but he did break his femur in two places. He snapped his IR Cylume (InfaRed Glow Stick) knowing that the search helicopter would be up as soon as the training staff knew he was missing. Now he should have just laid there in pain waiting for the pick up, did he?

Of course he didn’t, he put the cylume on the back of his bergan so it could still be seen from the sky and then crawled back up to his check point which was nearly a mile away. The search team picked him up hours later about 500 metres away from where he fell. I spoke to him once he got out of the rehab unit and asked him why he tried to make it to the check point knowning he now wouldn’t pass the course.

Would you want to be know as the guy who broke his leg half way through selection, or the guy who crawled 500 metres on a mountain with 40kg of kit and a broken leg?

That stuck with me ever since, you have two types of people on this planet, the ones who do and the ones who watch others do. This life, your life could be over in a flash, you have to take action, no one is going to haul you up the mountain, no one is going to put the hours needed into your business, there is no magic pill, no silver bullet, just you.

Think about what you have done so far. Have you got a domain name, website up and running or even a business name and trading account. Do you realise how many people don’t even know how to do those things never mind how to get one for themselves? Be proud of what you have achieved so far, but you absolutely have to get your hustle on!

photo credit: gbaku

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