You Just Might Learn Something

About a year ago I started my ven­ture of work­ing online (again). I started out pretty well blind and fum­bled around for awhile.  A few months actu­ally. I hit a few walls and just about gave up. But that was then, this is now. Now I’m focused and mak­ing strides towards my own idea of suc­cess and I thought I would take a look back and see what I have learned so far.

Here are 35 things I’ve learned over the past year. Obvi­ously I’ve learned tons from read­ing all kinds of infor­ma­tion. But these are things that I’ve learned about myself and the gen­eral idea of suc­cess. These are from expe­ri­ence, not from a book or report. I hope to pass on some nuggets of wis­dom along the way.

1. Improv­ing your­self is a key com­po­nent to mak­ing your busi­ness successful.
2. Peo­ple don’t like to be sold to, but they do like to buy stuff.
3. Mak­ing goals and get­ting through them is one of the most sat­is­fy­ing experiences.
4. Work­ing online isn’t as easy as some peo­ple make it out to be. In fact it can be quite the challenge.
5. Guru’s are humans. They even make mis­takes (gasp!). They are just extremely good at what they do.
6. You should pro­vide value in every­thing, even if it is free.
7. Prac­tice makes per­fect. You might screw up a few times, but the more you try the bet­ter you get.
8. Always fol­low your passion.
9. If you want to you can do just about any­thing you want. You just have to put your mind to it.
10. I fig­ured out that I don’t have to work like a slave to make money online. I just have to learn how to work more efficiently.
11. I’ve learned that pro­cras­ti­na­tion isn’t really a laugh­ing mat­ter like it used to be.
12. Although I tend to work hard most of the time, an hour or two, or even a day, to goof off is actu­ally good for you.
13. Find what works for you. Fig­ure out what clicks, and what coin­cides with your pas­sion. Then come up with a way to make a liv­ing from that.
14. I have met way more help­ful peo­ple then scammers.
15. It’s super easy to get infor­ma­tion over­load. This stuff is everywhere!
16. Focus is key. Pick some­thing and go with it. Try­ing to do every­thing at the same time doesn’t help any.
17. I’ve learned that even writ­ers hire other writ­ers. Design­ers hire other design­ers. And so on.
18. I’ve learned how to orga­nize bet­ter. I’m still not that good at it, but even just a lit­tle bit has made a world of difference.
19. Every bit of progress is good. Even if it’s some­thing small, it’s a small step towards your goals.
20. I’ve learned that it’s okay to dream big. As long as that isn’t all you do.
21. I fig­ured out that in the end it’s not about the money itself. It’s what you can pro­vide, both with the money and what you pro­vide to get the money.
22. Being dif­fer­ent is def­i­nitely a good thing. First you have to find out how your different.
23. I love my music, but I’ve fig­ured out that it’s actu­ally a bit dis­tract­ing only when I’m writ­ing. Hmm.
24. I have learned more val­ues to pass on to my children.
25. No mat­ter what you do, you will fall at some point. It all depends on whether you get back and keep going or not.
26. Peo­ple aren’t always going to have faith in your endeav­ors. That is until you prove them wrong.
27. Crit­i­cism is actu­ally highly valu­able, not an insult.
28. I’m not very good at recruit­ing for MLM’s.
29. Mar­ket­ing isn’t as hard as it seems once you fig­ure it out.
30. If you screw up, learn from that mis­take and move on.
31. Twit­ter is really strange until you try it out for your­self. I can tell you how cool it is all day long but you won’t get it until you see it in action. Weird.
32. I’m start­ing to notice adver­tis­ing tech­niques every­where. I see why they did that and under­stand thing much better.
33. Email sucks up tons of time if you don’t use it right. So does Twit­ter and Facebook.
34. My idea of suc­cess is prob­a­bly dif­fer­ent than yours. Either one is still suc­cess if it’s reached.
35. Work­ing online and peo­ple in online mar­ket­ing have a bad rap. Some of the coolest and most help­ful peo­ple are also doing very well for themselves.

That should about do it. I could prob­a­bly add more but I didn’t want to stretch it too much. By this time next year it should be inter­est­ing to see how things have changed.

~Chris

Have any­thing you would like to share or add to this list?

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