Internet marketing sounds fun, right? You get to use technology and the internet, learn about “secret tricks,” and work 4 hours per day from home while earning money in your sleep, right?
It almost seems as cool as hacking did back in the mid-eighties, except this time money is involved. And there are all these “gurus” going around saying that it’s really easy and if you give them $2997 they’ll send you their 38 DVD course that’s basically a “done for you blueprint for $20k per day” (essentially a business in a box).
It seems like a game, right? Especially when you’re brainstorming lots of ideas and writing them all down and having great insights left and right.
The problem is that internet marketing is a game a lot of people lose. The vast majority of websites created to earn money never ever ever do. (The failure rate is so high because the barrier to entry for an internet business is so low).
Anyway, most people lose the internet marketing game because it never ceases to be a game in their mind. They never put their foot down, declare “this is MY business,” and work like a madman to make it work. They never tell their family about their business (but they might tell amused friends at a cocktail party), they never pursue it full-time, they never stop entertaining other business ideas (or business models), and they never stop building new websites.
They also never liberate themselves from their day jobs.
There comes a point in every successful entrepreneur’s life when they stop considering every business idea that floats through their head and say to themselves “this is my business,” “this is how I will feed my family,” “this will be the main focus of my career,” and “this is something I will pursue for the next 2+ years.”
I call this point “game over.” Because, at this point, their business had ceased to become a game. It stops becoming a game because they don’t just do it when they want to. And when it’s fun.
They do it when it makes them sick to their stomach with anxiety. They do on days when they don’t want to get out of bed and face the world. They do it because it’s the fucking 20th and if they don’t hustle their ass off, they won’t make their mortgage payment on the 30th.
They do it because the game is over. They do it because it’s their business, their livelihood and their identity.
Their is no blueprint for “getting to game over.”
But if you never get there, your business has a snowflake’s chance in hell.
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