Do You Have Enough Personal Desperation?

In preparing for this week’s podcast interview, I spent about 45 minutes last night listening to an audio file that served as the introduction to my guest’s training material. The thing that really stood out for me was that the introduction had very little to do with the “how to” you’d expect in a course on how to make money online. Instead, the focus of almost the entire introduction was on the importance of developing a success mindset and a plan of execution.

This really got me thinking about what had made me successful in any of my various business ventures, as well as what I believed to be a large contributing factor in any of my friend’s success.

The answer, of course, was that we all shared a deep desire for success; backed by a plan of action that we were extremely committed to executing.

In fact, I’m willing to be that if you interviewed 100 millionaires, you’d find that virtually every one of them possessed this same attribute.

What is Your Personal Desperation?

For many of my readers, I’m willing to bet that you have a job that takes 40 hours of your week. You probably also have a spouse, a social life, and a few hobbies, too.

Add up the time consumed by all of these and you may find that there isn’t too much left over, right?

Well, guess what? Millionaires (financial success is not my only barometer of success, by the way, however, I’m using it here because this is a blog about making money) have exactly the same amount of hours in the day as regular folk. The difference is that prior to becoming wealthy, they possessed a greater personal desperation to change their financial lives, and as such, they were willing to do things that regular folk weren’t.

In other words, successful people are willing to commit to a list of activities that regular folks aren’t. Put another way….”If I am willing to do what others won’t do, over time, I will be able to do things that others can’t do”

For example, every day I look out my office window and see my neighbors do exactly the same thing – they come home from work, crack open a beer, and flip on the TV to watch sports. Clearly, they have no personal desperation to change their lives.

As you are reading my blog, I would say that you are well ahead of these folks and much more likely to improve your financial life than they are!

Just reading my blog, however, is not going to be enough to get you out of the poor house and into the Internet lifestyle.

Its All in the Execution

If you’d ready my blog for a while, you have probably heard me talk about the shiny object syndrome. This is where newbie marketers get all excited about the latest get-rich-quick-scheme that they’ve just read about and then, for a week or two (at best), the pursue said strategy with reckless abandon. As they proceed, they find that things aren’t quite as easy as that guru’s sales page suggested, and sadly, most give up and begin pursuing the next shiny object.

Repeat this cycle for a year or two, and you have pretty much explained why most new marketers fail.

Now lets go back to someone with the millionaire mindset. In fact, lets call him Bob.

Bob has an OK job, a nice wife, and a nice life. Bob knows that he could keep it on cruise control and continue to just get by; however, for Bob, this just isn’t good enough, dammit!

Bob sees his neighbor living large, driving a nice car, and taking his family on awesome vacations and thinks to himself, “I’m not going to stop until I have what he’s got”.

Bob can’t stand that he’s got to go to this boring job. Bob can’t stand that he’s only making $56,000 a year and that he can barely afford to take his family on vacation.  In other words, Bob has a personal desperation to improve his life.

Beware! Not Everyone Will Support You

Have you ever gotten excited about a business idea and then told your friend/family/spouse that you were going to go after it and change your life for the better?

If you did, I’ll bet you noticed something: some of your supporters weren’t giving you a whole lot of support, were they?

Know why? Because if they are “just getting by” and you go out and make a success of yourself, what does that say about them? Not much, right? It’s because of this, that they don’t really want you to have any more success then they are having. If you do, it makes them look bad, and, oh lordy, we can’t have that.

This is one of the reasons why successful people tend to hang out with other successful people.

When a would-be millionaire describes his business idea to another millionaire, the response they get is going to be far different. Instead of saying “oh, I don’t know if that will work”, the already-successful person will say “go for it, believe in yourself, and never take no for an answer!” (By the way, if your idea sucks, they will be honest with you, however, they will still encourage you to try something!). Because they are already successful, or at least on their way towards it, they aren’t going to be intimidated by your desire to succeed. In fact, they will probably feed off your energy and want to be around you!

Case and point; last night I attended an Internet Marketer’s BBQ. Everyone at this party was doing very well. Many were millionaires many times over. At one point, I got into an hour long conversation with the wealthiest guy in the room (he took a company public in ’99 and earned an astronomical sum) and started to tell him about one of the ideas that I’m working on. He saw some weaknesses in it. He also saw to big opportunity, so long as I could overcome the weaknesses. When I asked him if he’d take a role on the board of advisors, he indicated that he probably would.

Had this fellow been someone who’d never been very successful, do you think he would have been so encouraging, yet truthful? I doubt it.

The message, I’m trying to convey here is that you need to be very selective of who you go to for support for your new ideas.

What are the Ingredients of Success?

If you have a personal desperation to succeed, you are going to need a few other ingredients in your success cocktail. Here are a few that I consider the “must-haves”:

• A proven strategy to pursue (I like using Adsense as well as creating my own training products)
• Someone to show you what to do (I have had mentors for my entire career)
• A network of support (this can be a mentor or friend(s) that are pursuing their own business dreams as well)
• An accountability partner (this can be your coach, mentor, or business-friend)
• A success mindset (I read lots and lots of books to train my brain to think ‘yes I can’)
• A 60 day plan with all your activities scheduled in advance (I do this every Sunday night for the week ahead)
• No TV and only two nights a week for socializing (the rest are to be used to run your business until your business gives you enough money so you don’t need your job any more)

Its Time to Take Action

There are plenty of resources on the web to help you succeed and I’m sure that for those who possess a strong enough personal desperation, the coaching and training that (and others) provide will be extremely helpful. If you are looking for other’s who share your passion to join the Internet lifestyle, then I invite you to sign up for Niche Site Mastery so that you can benefit from the following:

• Direct coaching with me
• Extensive training material to show you what to do
• Participation in the Mastermind Forum so that you can network with others who share your personal desperation to succeed
• Ongoing support from me and the rest of the NSM community