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Are you frustrated that you’re not getting the results you want?

Are you working hard producing content but nobody’s paying attention? Are you wanting to get out of the nine to five rat race and liberate yourself with a location independent online business, but just can’t get any traction?

This article is based around “getting results” from an internet business perspective, but many of the points can apply to such diverse goals as losing weight and becoming wealthy.

You’re not getting the results you want because of one or more of the following:

• You have no defined goal – you don’t know what you want, in this circumstance you need to decide on a clear goal.
• You’re doing something wrong but you don’t know it’s wrong (assuming you wouldn’t knowingly be doing something wrong). If you’re not getting the results you strive for then you can be sure something is missing, something in your understanding. You need to find what this is to make any further progress.
• You don’t know what to do or how to do something that is important, you may not even know you need to know or do it. This is a difficult one but ideally you want to look to role models – people who have trodden your path before you and got the results you are looking for.
• You’re knowingly not doing something that’s important, Got to take action here, simple as.
• or a combination of some these.

There are two components required to getting the results you want these are:

1. knowing what to do
2. Doing what needs to be done

Looking for relevant information to help you

If you don’t know what to do to get the results you’re looking for, it will be nothing more than a matter of luck if you achieve them. If you’re looking for online success you need to know the options open to you and the best practices in doing them in an effective manner. So for instance, if you’re at the start of your online journey, some of the options open to you are:

• Affiliate Marketing
• Running an eCommerce store selling physical products
• Blogging free information (monetise with ads)
• Running an Amazon store

So lets take affiliate marketing as an example. If you want to know how to go about getting results as an affiliate marketer you can search for a book on the subject, check out any reviews about it and buy. The problem with books on the subject of affiliate marketing is they quickly go out of date. The internet is evolving at such a pace, printed books can be old hat as soon as they hit the shelves, this is why self published kindle books or ebooks are very popular because they contain more timely information.

Alternatively you can start searching the major search engines for “becoming an affiliate marketer”, or similar searches. Then you have to start sifting through the vast amount of results which come in the form of blog posts, video tutorials, podcasts etc. In fact I have just done such a search and found nearly 300,000 results.

The explosion of the internet has resulted in us having access to unparalleled amounts of information about any topic we turn our attention to. The problem with this situation is not all the information has been created equal. Some of it contains gold nuggets while some of it can only be described as mis-information and trash.

If marketers are motivated to get you to buy their latest product, they will frame the information in such a way as to encourage you to buy that product rather than giving you balance or accurate information.

But let’s be fair, you ain’t ever going to go through all of these 300,000 results, probably just a few on the first page. So lets look at the criteria you need to use to find the golden nuggets of information that will help you get the results you are looking for.

First thing is to make sure you are only taking advice from people that know what they’re talking about. Look at the business models, systems, and habits and relationships they use and try them out yourself. It isn’t guaranteed you will get the same results they have, but until you try them out you will never know. Look at what they sell, how they sell it, who they sell it to, how they find their customers, how they drive traffic to their sales funnel etc. Then try to use their system as the basis for of your own. Don’t just duplicate them, but try to understand why they do what they do and use this as a guide. Check out a few models and see what they have in common. This will most certainly help you understand the process more clearly.

With affiliate marketing specifically you need to find a product to sell, ideally one you use yourself, that you like, find valuable and would be happy to recommend to someone else, then offer it to your audience. Find your own angle, don’t just blindly follow others, but think about what value you can bring to your audience and build a brand around this point of difference..

Get to know the right people

It’s not always about what you know, often who you know can help move mountains. So whatever area you want to get results in, look for people in the know, the influencer’s, and the thought leaders. Join relevant network groups, Facebook groups, and forums and get involved in the conversations and make contacts. If you aren’t getting results and are already in some groups and forums, leave and join others. Check out other blogs, listen to different podcasts, read more books. If you’re not already getting the results, then make a change, but don’t give up.

Make sure you have set yourself a Goal(s)

If you want to get results you need to start with a goal in mind, otherwise how do you know if you’re making progress. If you’re not heading somewhere specific then you’re like a rudderless boat, at the mercy of the tide.

Make your goals big and specific, check out my post all about goal setting for more information on the topic. In a nutshell. Have smaller goals which lead to your bigger overall goal, lined up like domino’s. Smaller goals can be daily, weekly, monthly. Keep your overall goal in mind at all times, and don’t be scared of thinking too big. Ask yourself, “If I couldn’t fail what would I want to do”. It’s okay to have big goals, but be realistic about how difficult they are going to be to achieve, don’t let the difficulty aspect de-motivate you. Use your success in the smaller goals to build momentum towards your overall goal.

Have a sound plan and take action

Your plan is “how” you get the results you want. It’s how you get to achieve your goal. When you’re formulating your plan you need to think about what gets done and when. Start with a basic framework and fill in the details. I find it easier to start with my goal and work backwards to the present time. A simple reverse framework might look like this:

• Sell £x worth of X product
• Email sequence – demonstrate the value I can bring and allow visitors to get to know me before I try to sell them something. To sell £x of product I need Y number of email subscribers
• Lead Magnet in exchange for opt-in
• Lead Generation – my customers spend most time on Facebook so use Facebook ads to get leads. It’s important to think about who your customers are, and how to best reach them.

Remember this is currently in reverse order because I find it easier to think things through in this way, but do what works best for you. I’m not going too much into the details about planning in this article, I just wanted to mention a few points and to stress the importance of actually making one, which I’ve now done.

If you find you’re not following your plan then find out why. If you’re:

• procrastination
• burying head in the sand/denial/ignoring/making excuses/keeping busy doing something else and justifying it
• doubting your own ability
• being indecisive
• feeling overwhelmed
• or anxious – perceived imbalance of “ability” and “necessary requirements/skills”

these are usually a manifestation of some fear you have

Avoiding fear of…

Failure

Ask “what’s the worst that could happen?” you’ll realise the consequences of failure are not as scary as you might have first thought. Each failure is a learning experience, and with each failure we take out another obstacle. Ask yourself “What would I do if I could not fail for next 24 hours.” This will help you focus on what needs doing immediately to achieve your goal(s) with the fear of failure removed.

You can not fail until you give up. “Winners never quit and a quitters never win”. Winning often follows losing, remember everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die. For winners, losing inspires them, for losers, losing defeats them, winning means being unafraid to lose.

Don’t let failure put you off, failure is a great teacher and helps you become more focused on what is needed. Your plan is the journey that you intend to take to reach your destination, and sometimes your way might be blocked, but reassess your options and take a detour. Just make sure you don’t forget that you need to get back on track at the earliest opportunity.

Don’t fear:

• Rejection – if others say “no thanks” they are rejecting your proposal not you personally and are just protecting themselves. You need to convince them of your reliability and trustworthiness. “Profit from criticism”
• Disappointment – each hurdle is a step closer to the finishing line, learn from each disappointment, change your mindset and learn from any disappointment.

Doing the important things productively

When you’re taking action, make sure you are doing the important high value tasks rather than keeping busy shuffling paper around your desk. It’s not about working hard or slaving away for long hours, its about working smart and effectively and making your work matter. You should make doing the important things a priority and doing them in a productive manner. In his book “The One Thing” Gary Keller advocates living with:

• Purpose (determines who we are. It sets our priorities.)
• Priority is our focus
• Productivity are our actions

If you align your purpose (goal), your priority and productivity should easily fall into place, and motivation should be easy, because you’re doing something that really matters to you.

Get an accountability buddy

If you’re finding it difficult to maintain motivation, then look for help from someone else as an accountability buddy. Make your progress reportable to them and have them give you honest feedback and push you to hit your deadlines.

Avoid Distractions and Temptation

Many people love social platforms, but they can be a real “time drain”. Enticing headlines can easily encourage you away from the task-in-hand and off at tangents,  usually on to pointless trivia sites, if you’re anything like me. Avoid such distractions, generally avoid anywhere where you will be distracted, they are killing your productivity.

Temptation is another goal killer, particularly with regards to weight loss and dieting. The same applies here, avoid being in situations and places were temptations exist, unless you have an incredible amount of will-power, and most of us just don’t.

It doesn’t have to be perfect

If you’re bringing a product to market then the best thing to do is get it out into the marketplace. It doesn’t have to be perfect, get the minimal viable product out there and use customer feedback to help you improve it. That way it evolves into what the customer wants and is likely to be more successful in the long term.

 Taking Risks

We have come to something that is greatly variable from person to person and is heavily dependant on financial circumstances and pre-disposed tolerance to risk. The bottom line is every new action you take has some element of risk connected to it. You’re moving from the known to the unknown and usually outside your comfort zone, which feels scary.

However to get more in life you need to grow, and to grow, you need to do new things that you haven’t done or tried before. Self-belief is also a big component of risk taking. If you feel you have the skills necessary, you are more likely to take action. Fear will hold you back, re-read the section about fear, above.

Risk taking requires a mind-shift, and unless you make it, you will find yourself stuck in the same situation. However don’t be reckless. Don’t invest thousands of pounds in something that you know nothing about. Any idiot can lose money. Build up your knowledge first and only take calculated risks. (“Risk benefit analysis” is a useful tool for this).

Embrace Change

Taking risk feeds directly into the ability to accept change. Being open to new experiences or new ways of doing things is a crucial skill in a rapidly changing world. If you fail to adapt you will almost certainly get left behind. The days of learning a skill that would see you through to retirement has long gone, think of the steel industry, and mining industry to name just two. Whole towns lay derelict in the USA as testimony to the necessity to accept change as a part of life. Aim for skills that will always be needed, such as the skill of “selling”, businesses will always need to sell products and to employ people that are good at it.

Learn and never stop learning, be a master of what you know and an apprentice of what you don’t know. Don’t be satisfied with doing things the best you can do them, but the best that they can be done. We talked about it earlier, but use role models, and the systems, models, habits and relationships they have developed to get their results.

Additional Points

Just a few additional points to consider:

• Have drive, be consistent and adopt good habits, if you think you lack the mental strength to lead others, then you will need to toughen up.
• Don’t use failure as an excuse to fail bigger, be critical of yourself and strive for better results.
• keep it simple, if you don’t understanding it you can’t control it,
• Never give up, persevere and do whatever it takes.

Summary

You’re not getting the results you want because:

• You have no defined goal – you don’t know what you want,
• You’re doing something wrong but you don’t know it’s wrong,
• You don’t know what to do or how to do something that is important, you may not even know you need to know or do it,
• You’re knowingly not doing something that’s important,
• or a combination of some these.

You must:

1. know what to do
2. Do what needs to be done

Sounds simple when it’s put like this but of course the devil is in the detail. However I am all for simplifying complex issues wherever possible. It allows me to go back to basics and helps me understand the underlying key issues with all the surrounding noise removed. This structure of analysis can be used for all goals, such as losing weight, getting fit, earning more money, finding success online, or in your career.

Hopefully you have found this article of use, if so, please share it with your friends, family and colleagues.

This is a piece I posted in 2015 on a different website, I thought I would include it here. I lost 3 stone within a few months, and continue to maintain the same weight today, so I consider that a success.

Originally posted 18th June 2015

Are you feeling frustrated that you’re not getting the results you crave? Disappointed with your poor results? Ongoing failure can lead to chronic anger, where you become difficult to be around in other areas of your life, snapping at others for the least thing. Often this state of being causes many to give up with a deep feeling of failure remaining in the background of their mind.

Wouldn’t life be so much better if you could take control of your destiny, without feelings and other things getting in your way. We all want to be high achievers, successful and consistently able to get results even if we fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.

Knowledge

I recently decided  to lose weight and knew that a combination of exercise and diet would be critically important. knowing what I should be eating, and when, as well as knowing the best type of exercise to be most effective for my weight loss being key to success. I want to lose a lot of weight in fact.  I’m currently 19 stone, which is the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ve decided it has to go, I’m aiming to get down to 15 stone over the next 12 months or sooner if possible. Below is what I think I need to do to lose weight

Exercise

• Build muscle – resistance exercise rather than cardio
• High intensity exercise, with low impact on joints
• Don’t sit so much at my computer and have regular breaks in between, walking around and standing more
• Burn more calories than consume on a daily basis

Diet

• Low calorie intake
• Regular intake throughout the day rather than binge eating late at night
• More calories early in day and less at night
• Less snacking of fatty foods, instead fruit and veg snacks if at all
• Drink less fizzy drinks and consume more water

This is only a brief overview of my plan of action based on the little bit of research I’ve done so far, I won’t bore you with the details, the important thing to know is it’s vitally important you find a good source of accurate up-to-date information to enable you to succeed in your endeavour. There is so much conflicting information out there about subjects such as weight loss, fitness, business, on-line business and the like, it can be really difficult to know for sure that you have the right information you need. Most of the time I go with the view, if it makes sense give it a go, but if I’m honest I’m forever reading and improving my knowledge bank and searching out more information. knowledge is power or the potential for power, but without action it’s useless.

Motivation                                   

Well  for me, this is a biggie particularly when considering the subject of losing weight. I don’t need to work on my motivation levels for business because it just comes easily to me, but cutting down calories and exercising are not my favourite things to do. I have an inner conflict which stops me doing what I should be doing and keeps me doing what I shouldn’t (cognitive dissonance)

What I mean by that is I eat too much fatty foods because I love the taste of it (doing what I shouldn’t be doing) and don’t do what I should be doing (eating healthier and restricting my calorie intake). This is double negative. When it comes to the exercise part of the equation, I’m just as bad, not exercising, instead sitting watching the TV or working on my laptop.

So what’s going on here. I want to do something I shouldn’t be and don’t really want to do something I should. The end result is I pile on more weight and move ever further from my goal of losing weight.

This is what’s going on in a lot of us I suspect.  Lack of motivation and cognitive dissonance (inner conflict) is not just killing us but killing our chances of getting the results we crave.

There is no silver bullet I’m afraid. Gonna have to make a change mentally and physically if I wanna achieve my goal.

Get Results – Make the changes

I recently came across this quote or similar but I remember like this:

“What you do in this moment shapes all your tomorrows – make it count”

It helps me to think from a “this moment perspective”. If I eat something fatty it’s not okay, cause I’m sewing the seeds of failure for all my tomorrows. It’s a zero tolerance approach. All we have is this moment, nothing else really exists, so aligning my now with what I want tomorrow is the only way to do it in my eyes and even though it’s early days…it seems to be working for me.

You might find taking a longer term view works best for you – the point is, you do what works for you and the way your mind works by default.

Alternatively you have to break bad habits and destructive thought patterns and replace with more empowering ones. This is harder to do than the previous option, requiring a great deal of “will power” but is greatly rewarding and can certainly be achieved with purpose, determination and perseverance.

The important thing is to get results, and that brings me back onto the purpose of this post, to help you get results, not just in weight loss but whatever you are trying to do.

1. So you’re here at the beginning – frustrated, disappointed, angry and ready to give up, right?

2. You want to be there (your goal) – achieving, successful, consistently getting results?

3. To get from here to there, you need to know:

• What to do – this is the knowledge bit – What to do, How to do it, When to do it – this is all about doing your research and answering these questions. Find good sources of reliable information, study it and understand it thoroughly. Secondly
• Do what needs to be done – this is mainly about motivation – doing what needs doing, and not doing what’s counter productive. This is often the hardest part of the equation. Most of us have inner conflicts where we find ourselves wanting to do something that is counter productive to our goal. Using the example I used early where I find myself enjoying eating tasty fatty foods while also wanting to lose weight. I find that changing the way I frame the situation in my mind helps, so focussing on eating well rather than the discomfort of not eating junk (re-framing the issue). Also I would suggest getting yourself an accountability buddy who will hold you to task if you don’t follow through on your plan. I am kind of doing this with you, my audience because if I haven’t lost weight within 12 months of writing this article, than you will know I have failed to practice what I preach, and with that, I’ll lose any credibility on the subject.

Fear is a big de-motivator that can trap you in your current situation and prevent you following your goals. Fear of failure, rejection, disappointment, change, embarrassment, of the unknown can all be dream killers. Often such fears manifest themselves in the excuses we give ourselves for not taking action, procrastination, buying your head in the sand, denial, avoidance, keeping busy doing other things, over-complicating situations, insisting on perfection before taking action, giving up without a fight. Facing fear head on and moving past it, although scary to think about, is often easier to overcome than our imagination would have us believe. Jim Carey said it best “Know the difference between a dog that is going to eat you in your mind, and an actual dog that is going to eat you”.

Use as much help as you can elicit from others especially people who have experience doing what you’re trying to achieve. From a knowledge perspective, consider hiring expertise where appropriate and look towards friends and family for motivation purposes to help keep you on track. Look for tools which will help you succeed with your goal, including things like phone Apps that you will have with you all the time..

Just going back to my plan of losing weight, I came up with the following list of additional things I could use/do to help me in my pursuit, should I need to:

• Use fitness Apps – to keep me motivated
• Listen to Audio books – to prevent boredom during repetitive workouts
• Watch TV while working out doing cardio exercises (treadmill) – aimed to prevent boredom
• Undertake what I consider to be enjoyable exercises such as bike riding, and 5 a side football with mates to make it more fun
• Join a club  and exercise with others possible down my local gym
• Find an accountability buddy or exercise partner
• Undertake Shorter exercise routines – high intensity in short bursts
• Remember I don’t have to increase intensity if I’m just wanting to maintain fitness at a certain level
• Have equipment set up all the time so there’s no time setting up and packing away, or use minimal equipment (ideas for exercises without equipment)
• Investigate tasty, healthy recipe choices
• Drink more water to fill stomach – avoid fizzy pop – drink flavoured water if I get fed up of plain water
• Keep mind occupied to prevent snacking due to boredom in evenings
• Eat health snacks – fruit or veg instead of crisps and sweets
• Use recipe apps for healthy eating advice
• Put X’s on calendar every time I follow plan. Don’t break the row of X’s
• Read motivational quotes, watch motivational videos to help inspire me

I’ll let you know how I get on…