Mindset for Success - Support

Many people who talk to Carole and me about the changes they want to make in their lives see Internet Marketing as the route out from the current rut they're in. We can understand that. For many would-be Internet Marketers, a key attraction to starting a career online is that fact they'll no longer have to answer to a boss. They feel, if only they could get rid of him or her, they'd be free to soar and reach the heights.

What they most often fail to recognize about their current employment position, though, is that along with the boss, there most often comes a whole support structure - colleagues to share problems with, company structures and procedures to follow that it's been someone else's responsibility to devise, priorities that have been established by the company, product development, sales, marketing and accounts departments all charged with carrying out their own specific duties - and at the end of the month (in most cases, anyway) the relative certainty of a pay cheque.

So, along with the boss you're so desperate to fire, you'll be throwing out some pretty cool stuff, too. Now, please don't think I'm trying to put you off setting out on your own! Far from it. I know I'd find it very difficult ever to go and work for someone else having tasted the freedom of having our own business - but some of that cool stuff certainly has its attractions.

If you are serious about making it in Internet Marketing, you need to start to replace the support structure you benefitted from in corporate life with a structure of your own making. It's likely, at least in the early stages, that you will be your own product development, sales, marketing and accounts departments and you will certainly be responsible for establishing your business's procedures - but you WILL need a support system.

This can take several forms. Make use of the Social Media to seek out others in the same field and get to know them; discuss issues you have and ask if they've had to deal with them in the past and how they overcame them. You may also want to look at specialist forums - these can be a real wealth of information. They can also develop into pity-parties, too, so beware. If the posts are all negative and full of doom and gloom, get out of there quickly!

You may decide to put all this on a more formal footing and find a mentor. A mentor will take time out to listen to what you're trying to achieve, understand where you're at with your project, get to know your levels of skills and knowledge, answer any questions you may have and suggest ways you can develop your business and yourself. What a mentor won't do, though, is do it all for you - and you don't want him or her to. It's your business; while your mentor may want it to succeed, you need it to; so it's your responsibility to get things done. And your mentor, if he or she is any good, will hold you accountable each time you meet and check your progress since your last meeting.

Another excellent support mechanism is the Master Mind Group. If there is not one already in your neighbourhood, form one. All you need is a group of like-minded people, no more than 6 in number, and somewhere to meet. The group has one purpose, the advancement of the business of each of its members. The members need not work in similar fields; in fact, it's often an advantage if they do not, as they can bring fresh insight untarnished by prejudices formed by familiarity. A great format for the meeting is for each member to be allocated a 15 minute slot, during which they can introduce or remind the other members as necessary of their business, report on progress since the last meeting, outline the goals they have set themselves prior to the next meeting and detail any concerns or problems they may be experiencing or expect to experience along the way. The other members should then devote up to 30 minutes (that's why you need to limit the number of members) focussing on and discussing the issues raised and applying their own experience to formulating a strategy for overcoming those difficulties. Once that is done, it's the next member's turn to give their 15 minute presentation.

The Master Mind Group helps in two key ways; first, it's a great discussion forum where problems can be aired freely and just as freely be resolved. Second, each member is held accountable by the group for following through on what was agreed at the meeting. While I've already said, one of the joys of being an Internet Marketers is being able to sack the boss - sooner or later, you'll miss having someone to report your successes to and tell your problems - the Master Mind Group can fill that gap in a better way than any boss ever could!

Ivan Eyre spent thirty years pursuing a typical career path, when a series of events led him to suspect there must be more to life. So he and his wife, Carole, decided to see if there was. The answer was a resounding YES!

Ivan and Carole now show others how they can have the life they want if they just make the decision to go out and get it. To get your free report and 21-day video programme, just visit http://www.facebook.com/YourNewFutureStartsHere.

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Mind-Set for Success - Frustration

Anyone who is in business for themself will have periods of frustration. There will be times when, no matter what you do or how hard you try, things just don't go the way you planned. And, if you're an Internet Marketer, those periods of frustration seem to come around with alarming regularity!

You may have outsourced some work and, no matter how detailed the brief you gave, the finished job was not as you imagined; or you downloaded a new product to help you in your business and it falls well short of delivering what the sales letter promised; or maybe your computer froze or the internet went down. As well as being frustrating, these can also be turned into positive experiences, either for your business or for you as a person.

In each case, it seems you have a choice - you can either get wound up or you can decide to see what you can take from the experience. Of the two, I know which I'd choose to serve both me and my business best.

So, let's look at those earlier examples one by one and see what benefits we can take from them that could help us in the future.

Your outsourced work didn't come back as you expected - well, I'm assuming you'd checked out the person you were using for the outsourcing and made sure they could prove they have satisfied customers from previous jobs. If that's the case, somewhere along the way, there's a communication failure - either you didn't prepare your brief as thoroughly as you thought you did, or your contractor did not read it properly.

Before you do anything more you need to make sure you let go of any frustration you're currently feeling - do whatever you need to do for this, count to 10, walk round the block, meditate for half an hour - but be sure when you begin the exercise you are feeling in an open, objective frame of mind.

Once you are, print out the brief you provided and read it through carefully. Now check it against the finished job - where do the two diverge? Is it obvious where the misunderstanding has arisen? Can you see any ambiguity in your instruction or does it seem as though the contractor has not read the brief properly?

It is vital at this point to remember the objective is not to apportion blame - it is to establish what has gone wrong so that a suitable remedy can be found. You should also bear in mind that a shouting match between you and your contractor is not going to move your business any further along the track to success.

So, having established where the problem lies, you can now do what is needed to rectify it - either, modify the way you've presented your brief and go back to your contractor and negotiate the necessary changes and their cost or, if you're certain your original brief was clear, you can contact your contractor and explain your concerns and ask them to redo the job to your specification.

Whatever the outcome of your own investigations, you will learn lessons that will help you going forward - whether it's to ensure you reread your brief - or better yet, give it to someone else to read who knows nothing about the job and ask them to explain to you what you're asking - or brushing up on your negotiating skills with a view to striking up a long-lasting business relationship with the contractor. The very worst that can happen is the contractor refuses to redo the work and, if that's the case, you've also learned a valuable lesson - even if it's only not to use that contractor again!

Now for that software you downloaded that does not do what it says in the sales letter - again, you need to make absolutely certain that you are in an objective frame of mind before tackling this. Take the time out you need. Then, go back over the sales letter - are there clear, unambiguous promises it just doesn't deliver on, or are there just vague hints at what you might, in an ideal world expect, and you read between the lines exactly what you wanted to read? Or are there any system requirements that your own computer spec doesn't match? Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software? Again, you're not trying to find who is to blame, just where the problem lies so you have the best shot at fixing it, and, once you've done that, you can go through a similar process to the previous example to either get things back on track or chalk it up to experience, draw a line under it and move on.

And what if your computer freezes or the internet goes down? I used to get so wound up by these but now I see them as real opportunities. Sure, I'm temporarily unable to get on with what I'd intended to do but, while my computer recovers itself from whatever nastiness it had got involved with (you know the type of thing, a message will come up on the screen telling you that such-and-such a thing is happening followed by the totally redundant words 'Please Wait' - like you had a choice!) but what I have now got is a learning opportunity. If the problem needs my input, I can learn how to fix it quicker next time it arises. If it just needs me to hang around, then I have some time to catch up on any number of things; some reading, a little light exercise, a few minutes meditation, a personal brainstorming session, read a few paragraphs of that book I've had on my reading list for ages, or revisit my short, medium and long-term goals and assess my progress towards them.

There's lots of stuff we can do in the analogue world if we temporarily find we can't play in the digital world. Once we start regarding these not as frustrating interruptions but as welcome opportunities, not only does it feel as though our day is going better, it actually is going better.

There's no doubt, lots of things happen each day that we can regard as frustration but, if you intend to succeed as an Internet Marketer, you'll do it far quicker if you reframe as many of these frustrations as you can as opportunities.

Ivan Eyre spent thirty years pursuing a typical career path, when a series of events led him to suspect there must be more to life. So he and his wife, Carole, decided to see if there was. The answer was a resounding YES!

Ivan and Carole now show others how they can have the life they want if they just make the decision to go out and get it. To get your free report and 21-day video programme, just visit http://www.facebook.com/YourNewFutureStartsHere

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