Make Money Discipline

This story starts way back in 2002 when I decided that I wished to work from home and maybe internet marketing was the way to go. After all I already had 24 years offline business experience and most of it successful so what could the internet throw at me that I couldn’t handle? At least that was the way I was thinking when I started out and time was soon to paint a very dismal picture for me.

The main thing I didn’t understand was the amount of interference you get when working online, in fact so much information is thrown at you that it only takes a few days before you start suffering information overload. This is the biggest obstacle to starting a successful business online because after a few days you start suffering paralysis by analysis and you are able to convince yourself that you need to know more before you get started. This is a big, big even massive, mistake to make. What’s so hard about running a successful business? Look at some of the successful imbeciles running government, commerce and industry around the world today. If it was difficult they would be incapable of succeeding. A business today is exactly the same as it was at the time of Adam and Eve; you sell at a higher price than you bought. What’s difficult about that?

Back to the plot: It took me almost three years to discover that I was going nowhere and my savings were dwindling and credit card debt was blowing out. It was a time to take action or go the way of many people before me and slip into bankruptcy. Although bankruptcy per se does not hold any fear for me it remains something I’d rather avoid.

Initially I took two days away from my computer to give my mind a chance to work in the manner I wished it to work. Obviously I lacked the necessary discipline to shut all interferences from my mind. With more than 150 emails each day hitting my inbox that was an obvious source of interference. Action had to be taken to cut back the number of incoming emails; they were taking at least two hours each day of my business time.

Next I seemed to be on the mailing list of almost every internet marketer that had a list. I needed to stop these people sending me every offer that they, or one of their friends was trying to sell to me.

Finally I needed to change my diary from a day by day to an hour by hour schedule to keep my mind focused where I need it to be focused and not running off at tangents every few minutes.

Discipline was needed and urgently. Unfortunately what I needed most of all was an old fashioned Sgt Major screaming in my ear each working minute of each day. The good news is that I couldn’t afford to hire one so my eardrums are still intact. But the discipline message got through.

Next day I was determined to start and I had scheduled my diary for a whole day of deleting favourite links that had been unused for six months or more. Opting out of mailing lists and anything I else I needed to do to claim back a minimum of three hours of my work time each day. By the end of the day my desktop was no longer full of icons and there was just 12 icons remaining. I decided to change my email address just to be safe and retire the email address that had become out of control. I started a free email account with Gmail to give to people I worked with online - my new business email address was now off limits to all internet use.

Taking a single one of the hundreds of programs I had purchased over the years I spent three weeks focused on getting that up and running. The parts I couldn’t do myself were outsourced to ensure they got done. Before the three weeks were completed I was getting payments into my PayPal account almost daily and growing. This was all I needed to prove to myself that there is such a thing as money making discipline.