Today Matt Levenhage wrote a terrific post about what it really takes to succeed online, in which he included the following statement:
“No eBook or guide is going to make you a success. You will gain a lot by reading many of them. There are some great systems and techniques out there to make a lot of money with Affiliate Marketing, but the elements that will find you with a highly profitable and expanding Affiliate Marketing Business lie within you and your mindset.”
You can read the full post here.
I agree with that and I would add that there are many people who have great aptitude for online or offline business success but are being blocked by emotional barriers of which they may or may not be aware. Now whether a person is actually really WORK through those emotional roadblocks is another question.
It’s a different type of work than the work I discussed in the post here.
But make no mistake – it is work. It’s hard work. And ultimately it can be very rewarding work in many different ways.
Matt also states about “desire”: “The pure desire to succeed. You need to make up your mind that Affiliate Marketing is real…”
While I agree that’s important, I don’t agree that it’s always as easy as “making up your mind”. There are a lot of people who have lost heart in parts of their life or life in general who in fact are quite capable of regaining their heart and desire through specific processes designed to help them do so. In other words, if someone doesn’t have the desire to succeed right now, I don’t believe it’s not there.
It is like all work, either you have an aptitude or you work like a maniac to cover up the fact that you are an average talent.
I understand that, Michael – I’m talking about people who DO have aptitude, but are held back by emotional blocks that they have to work through.
For example, I’ve created a LOT of automated systems for the various businesses I run with my partners, but I really had to work through the emotional barrier of being raised via the puritan work ethic and feeling like “not doing the HARD work” was “bad”. I.e., by 13 I was expected to work hard to pay for my clothing, musical instruments, etc., etc. I remember my Grandmother lending me money for a clarinet and working to pay that off.
And we were all expected to pay our own way through college, etc. which I think was a GREAT idea on my parents’ part, BUT I still got the message that “hard work” = “self-worth”.
There were a lot of twists and turns as I processed through all of that, but in the end it allowed me to create some systems that I had been told were pretty much impossible (ironically, other people developed similar systems during that same time-frame).
Now, I get that some people don’t need to do that – it sounds like you may be one of them – but for the people that do I think it’s important to make them aware that the possibility of that emotional block is there.
That is interesting, but my usual beef is that people think that they can get something for nothing.