Category: Attitude and Belief

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How Long Does It Take To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing?

I’ve often heard the question “how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing?”. It’s a difficult question to answer so I thought I’d put aside some time to answer in in a post. For me, it’s taken years!  However, I’ve seen other people start earning within months. It really depends on a number of factors which I’ll break down here:

  • Motivation – Some people are just motivated more than others. This might be because you’re absolutely nauseated by your boss, fed up with having no money, or simply because you have no time to actually enjoy or appreciate your life anymore.
  • Life Situation – Your situation can be different to your motivation, so I’ve included this as a possible reason here. You either have no time or no money. Affiliate marketing can help out both, but they require different paths. If you’ve no time, you can spend budget and get things going faster than if you’ve no money, which might mean taking the longer route of content marketing.
  • Your resolve – This is different for everyone. Lets say 10 people are given a gym membership and told to build their best body in 5 months. They will all look different. Those with the strongest resolve won’t necessarily have the best looking figures either. It depends where you’re starting from. But it’s your resolve which will determine whether you stick the course at all!
  • Mental Blockages – Any conflicting beliefs and attitudes around money and the business model you choose in your affiliate marketing journey can hold you back from success.
  • The Path You Take/Products – This is probably one of the most important reasons why an internet business can take years or months. I started looking online for an income many years ago. I took several wrong turns though and never had any money. This set me back. You can do it quicker than me! The product/s you choose to promote has a great deal to do with your success.
  • What marketing Strategy Will You Opt For? – Your marketing strategy will determine to a large extent the time it takes to build your online business too. Paid advertising can be expensive, but it’s much faster than creating content. Content creating is a cheap method of building traffic, but it takes ages to get any tangible results.
how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

 

Motivation – What Creates Success Online?

You can think of affiliate marketing like joining a gym. Just because you buy a gym membership, you shouldn’t expect to get great results. Some people will only go to the gym once a month. Others will not go at all! The people who get the most out of a gym, work hard and regularly for a long enough period of time to see the results they want. They eat right too and cut out distractions and habits which would get in the way of their progress. Not everyone has the motivation and discipline to keep doing this through life’s ups and downs. Many will quit before they even start seeing results at all.  Affiliate marketing is the same – don’t expect your ‘gym membership’ to do the work for you!

My motivation for starting out online came from a need for both direction and income. I was struggling with low paid jobs and attempting to build a stunt career! I’d had a few professional stunt performing jobs for TV and film but the career was a patchy one to say the least! I needed something to subsidise my passion for the stunt career. The internet was my ‘way out’ of menial low paid work and was something I could do in-between jobs. My motivation was patchy at best and I was ‘split’ by a number of other hobby jobs including a passion for Kung Fu and for stunts! Perhaps this is the reason it took me such a long time to actually make it work.

how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

Cordelia, a member of the community I belong to online has gone from having a full time nursing career and 3 kids to being a full time online entrepreneur in around 6 months. She was absolutely focused on getting the result she needed to get out of a career which left her with no time for her children.

Dan is another member of the community who is now a huge earner online. He left his job to pursue an online business full time. It took him around a year to transition to full time online after burning through a budget he had left from a high paid job which left him no time to pursue the things he wanted in life.

Life Situation – What Limitations Are Holding You Where You Are?

how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

Your life situation can in some ways determine which strategies you will use as an affiliate marketer. I started out will no job and a very sporadic income. Some affiliates start out with a high paid job but no time to really enjoy their life or spend how they choose. Both situations call for a different strategy within affiliate marketing. I used my time to learn all the free strategies to build my affiliate marketing business up from scratch. Initially, I tried various systems and strategies and made a lot of mistakes on the journey.

I focused on free strategies which took a long time and much of which didn’t work at all. It took me several years to find both a strategy of affiliate marketing which worked, and a strategy of traffic generation that worked. I’ve saved you the time of failing as much as I did by recommending the best courses and mentors I have found on my journey!

Your life situation may determine how you go about marking an affiliate business, or on which path you decide to go down. I recommend using a high commission affiliate program for a number of reasons:

  • You can earn larger amounts more quickly than with low cost affiliate items
  • Earn from multiple strategies
  • Get ongoing commissions from subscription based products
  • You can use paid marketing strategies and recoup costs more quickly and easily

Not everyone is in the position to afford the best training and education online. I chose a cheaper route and for years struggled with low value courses which didn’t help me. You can read about some of them here.

Your Resolve – How Bad Do You Want To Be Free?

how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

A lot of people start down a path and give up too early. Affiliate marketing is no magic bullet and you won’t get the results you’re after without a stubborn determination and stead-fast mind to succeed. You’ll have many set backs on the journey too. I struggled for years with affiliate marketing trying all sorts of courses and strategies. If I had given up, I wouldn’t know the ability to work for myself, create an income from home and be free of the fears and anxieties which dogged me for years. But it came at a cost. I worked for a long time to understand affiliate marketing and eventually I found a business model which worked.

Only something like 3% of affiliate marketers who start down the path actually continue and turn it into a real income. For those who do stick it out, there are great rewards. You can use automation and a global audience to sell digital products. You can work from anywhere and scale up your business to earn a fantastic income. But first you’ll need to overcome a lot of barriers and potential set backs.

how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

This comes back to your reasoning too. If your life is currently alright, just how it is, you might not be prepared to go through what you need to do, in order to make if better. Many who are desperate to escape their current circumstances are far more prepared to take giant steps out of their comfort zone in order to get the result of time and geographical freedom.

Just decide never to quit and you’re half way there. You’ll have good days and bad days, but if you never quit, you’re already there in many ways. It’s not an easy journey and it’s not paid like a job is every month, regardless of how hard you work. Affiliate marketing is performance based. But before you can perform well as an affiliate marketer, you need to learn what to do. Only after a lot of failing, can you know how to excel. Once you do though, you can continue to grow your business using automation and the ability to scale. See also on resolve why affiliate marketing does not work.

Mental Blockages

how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

It’s also worth talking about any mental reservations you might have towards really creating some financial freedom in your life. What comes up when you imagine living a life of financial freedom? I tried this exercise as I was having difficulties moving my online business forwards at one point. I imagined having more tax worries, greater demands on my life and more stress! Funny how the mind can work! How do you think this affected my ability to make my affiliate business work for me? Many of the blockages to moving your business forwards and creating more income are mental in nature. Unless you uncover them within your self, you’ll sabotage your conscious efforts with unconscious beliefs and negative programming you’ve picked up from your past.

What beliefs do you have about making money easily from the internet when many people work really hard for it? Do you have any of the following beliefs about money:

  • You must work hard for money
  • I must suffer to make money
  • Money is the route of all evil
  • It’s greedy to want more than you need
  • I’m satisfied with what I have already
  • Wealthy people are lazy

We can also prevent ourselves from living a more pleasant and bountiful life for other reasons:

  • What duty must you do in order to feel ‘right’
  • What are you trying to be right about in life?

It’s worth thinking about your inner world of beliefs and attitudes because they can hold you back and cause you to take much longer in generating money from your affiliate business.

The Path You Take – How Long Does It Take To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing

how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

The path you take can be a major benefit or a major obstacle to your online success. I took several routes to learn affiliate marketing, many of which were complete red herrings. After completing several online courses and trying out many strategies including:

  • Keyword researching
  • Niche website building
  • Google Adsense
  • Ranking websites on Google
  • And many more…

I finally got lucky and found a fantastic online business community which had a great business model. The business model included:

  • high ticket items
  • Up-sells for which you can earn commissions
  • A built in sales team
  • Multi-tier sales
  • Subscription products

In short, the business model does a lot of the selling for you and you can earn ongoing commissions by referring a customer once. Most affiliate models only pay you once for the referral. They then get the customer who may go on to purchase again for a lifetime, but you, as the affiliate, don’t get any further commissions. With this business model, you get the benefit of potentially lifetime commissions from a single referral.

Obviously you need to make sales first though, but you can also access an online community who will help you do so. This is a massive benefit and a huge help, especially if you don’t have a clue what you’re doing. It’s much harder to get things moving with an online business if you don’t have the support of a community and a step by step procedure for getting things done.

Your Marketing Strategy

Your marketing strategy will be a large determining factor in the speed of your online business success, or lack of it. I started out using only content marketing strategies and it’s one of the reasons it took me so long. Content marketing is a slow process of building and promoting content and attempting to get it seen by as many people as possible. There’s many ways to do this and many attempts I made to get my content ‘out there’ really just plain didn’t work! Probably less than 10% of the content I created got some traction. If you throw enough ‘mud at the wall’, some of it will stick though.

I created ebooks too as well as doing a lot of blogging. Here’s a couple of the books I created:

You don’t need to do this of course. People have far faster results that I have had simply by following a simple route using paid marketing strategies. Paid marketing, although costly, is far quicker at generating traffic than content marketing. Most of the top earners have figured out paid strategies and leverage it with high ticket affiliate programs. Unless you have a program which offers the benefit of high ticket, up-sells and monthly membership (subscription) commissions, you are more limited in what you can spend on advertising. Low value affiliate products can limit you to cheap advertising platforms and content creation tactics. This means you progress will be slow, and that’s only if you put the work in consistently for long enough to produce a result. Many give up before they see any results at all.

Training And Education – An Ongoing Process

As another factor in determining how long it takes to make money with affiliate marketing, I’m including your training and development. Unless you surround yourself with forward thinking entrepreneurs and continue to develop your business, and yourself, it’s easy to fall back into old habits which don’t move you or your online business forwards. In particular, well meaning friends and relatives can hold you back from achieving the result you would like.

how long does it take to make money with affiliate marketing

Connecting with other entrepreneurs has been a vital part of my marketing and mindset development. If you don’t get results quickly in your business, which is very likely, it’s easy to dismiss it as something that doesn’t work. Until you get to this point where you see results, it’s possible that you will quit. If you have a community to go to with your problems and concerns, your chances of success are far greater.

You need to keep going for the long term and overcome the various difficulties which you will definitely find on your journey. An internet business isn’t something which is built in a day. It takes time and you need to keep going even when your belief is very low. Connecting with others on the same journey is hugely important for your growth. An internet business can make your life easier in the long run because of the automation involved. Keep putting it together peace by peace and eventually it will work for you! Keep taking small steps and never stop!

If you’re ready to take the first step, join an online business community and start building your online business today! Access a FREE video series, and an online community I found a few years ago which helped me on this journey.

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Realistic Affiliate Marketing Income

So what is a realistic affiliate marketing income? How much does an affiliate marketer make? This is an incredibly difficult question to answer. Keep in mind that anyone can be an affiliate. Join an affiliate program and you’re technically an affiliate. That’s why there’s so many naysayers in the affiliate industry. The door is wide open to ‘have a go’.

For those people who learn their trade and stick at it no matter what, there’s great rewards. Top affiliates can earn millions, especially if they have created an affiliate program of their own and have other affiliate marketers effectively working for them, promoting their products. But what is a realistic affiliate marketing income, for someone new to the industry?

Realistic Affiliate Marketing Income $5000 to Zero

realistic affiliate marketing income

For someone getting started in affiliate marketing, you can’t place a figure on their likely income for a number of reasons. Sorry to disappoint, and I’ll take a stab at some figures in a bit, but realistically, everyone is different. Everyone who starts affiliate marketing can come at the business from an entirely different angle.

When I started out several years ago, I jumped on the ‘free traffic’ bandwagon and attempted to ‘rank’ several websites with very little success. My income was far below my expenditure for a number of years. On the other hand, some people get started and straight away begin to make a profit. However, the tentative nature of affiliate marketing can mean anyone can get zapped in a number of ways.

10 years ago, many were learning first hand what it’s like to go from $5000 a week to zero! Google penalised many affiliates who had top rankings and were thinking they had ‘made it’ on easy street! Their website disappeared from Google search and never returned.

Realistic Affiliate Marketing Income – Zero to $5000

realistic affiliate marketing income

On the other hand, many affiliates have had the opposite realisation. They’ve struggled and learned and eventually have turned a zero income business into a $5000 a month or a week one. This is just as possible if you’ve done the hard work up front. It’s hardly possible for someone walking into affiliate marketing and throwing up a website though. For someone who is testing and measuring paid advertising strategies, this is very realistic.

Paid advertising is definitely the fastest way to start earning from affiliate marketing. But you still need to make sales. Be wary of the videos which only show income. It’s easy to buy traffic and make sales, but far more difficult to also make a profit! Look, here are my sales! I’ve made $10,000 in the last month! This might be true but they may also have spent $20,000 to earn this much! Their videos prove nothing!

Top affiliates who are earning $40,000 + a month are often spending a lot too. If you spend $35,000 to make $40,000, you’ve still made $5000! Over time and with a lot of discipline and patience, affiliates can lower their expenditure and raise their profit by simply testing and measuring their adverts.

“But who has $35,000 to spend on a marketing budget”?, I hear you ask! Of course you don’t start out with such a large spend. You initially start out much smaller. Affiliates who spend this amount every month have learned what works in their marketing before taking the steps to increase their budget gradually.

How Much Do Affiliate Marketers Make?

So let’s cut to the chase! What’s a realistic affiliate marketing income? There’s a few things which will determine whether you should pursue affiliate marketing:

  • Your current financial position – will determine whether you start and what strategy you use
  • Your tenacity – will determine whether you stick at it long enough to start seeing some results.
  • Paid strategies will mean spending money regularly, without any come back at first. This should be sustained for the foreseeable future. By testing and measuring your adverts, you’ll see which adverts work and which don’t.
  • Free marketing strategies will take much longer to see any results. Be prepared to put in a lot of work with no initial return.
  • Your income will also depend on the strategy and the business model you use. More on this later.

realistic affilaite marketing income

Realistic Affiliate Marketing Income

Ok for the sake of the pedants I’ll put some figures down. But it’s really only to placate you more than anything. The reason I say this is because it’s going to come down to:

  • What marketing strategy you implement – paid/free
  • Your business model
  • Work ethic
  • Your Understanding of the business model and your ability

With a good sales funnel, marketing strategy and email list, you could expect to earn from $0-$500 within your first few months. This is with paid advertising, and by following a mentor who will show you the correct strategies. I’m not saying this is profit, it might just be income at first. But with a good multi-tier sales funnel and multiple products, this could easily grow and here’s why:

With a sales funnel which contains:

you stand to earn more from your email list that you would with a typical affiliate digital product from which you would only earn a single commission. By choosing a business model which gives you more per sale and more income for each customer, your income can grow over time because of the back end sales within the business system.

Realistic Affiliate Marketing Income

realistic affiliate marketing income

Over time and as you continue to make sales, your income will grow. If you continue to make sales and even if you break even initially, you can continue to make an income on the back end. This is why it pays to choose a multi-tier sales system which has a product range. (See ready made sales funnel).

Subscription products pay you again and again for your initial referrals. As long as your members continue to keep their membership, you’ll continue to get paid as an affiliate long after you have referred them. Over the next year or so your income can rise exponentially as you continue to make sales on the front end. Particularly with multi-tier products too, you’ll be able to earn commissions from sales of your team. Within the next few years you’ll be able to scale up your business because you’ve made the effort to learn the strategies which are working.

This may have cost you a pretty penny in advertising budget. However, long term affiliates know the value of learning how to use pay per click advertising. Once you find a ‘vein of gold’, that is, a marketing strategy which consistently pays out more than you put in in advertising costs, you’re ready to scale it up and move on the the next one. Over time an income of $500-$5000 per month is then achievable.

Top affiliates have learned these marketing strategies and continue to learn and develop them. They find a strategy and study it until they have mastered it. Then, once they have found one which continues to pay out, they leave it running and move on the the next one.

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How To Make A Small Business Grow

If you’re wondering how to make a small business grow, listen up. There are lots of ways to do this and in this article I’ll be sharing some proven methods. Some of them are completely free methods which can give you a lifetime of free business. Yes, free business listings are available on the internet for locally based businesses.

So if you’re based somewhere physically, and you’re not an entirely online business, you can benefit from a free listing. Pay per click marketing is also a strategy you really need to learn. If you’ve tried this and “failed”, you really need to try harder! Let’s take a look at the free listings first.

how to make a small business grow

(If you want to skip to the end there’s a brief summary of the tips in this article)!

How To Make A Small Business Grow

Here’s how to make a small business grow with a free listing on Google. So, if your business is a local one, that is, you have a physical place of business; you can create a free listing on Google with Google Places For Business. Simply create a profile for your business through the online platform. You will then be required to verify it somehow. Usually Google will send out a code in the post, and you’ll use a code to prove that you are actually at the address you say in your listing.

Google Places listings often show up at the very top of the listings on Google search. So if someone is searching for a specific business like yours in your town, your business listing should come up. Depending how competitive your local town is for your particular business, you can rank anywhere within the top 20 results, depending on how many are listed.

how to make a small business grow

This is a totally free resource and well worth a few minutes of your time to get your business listed. If you seriously want to know how to make a small business grow, start with a local listing.

Once you’ve created a local listing for your business through Google, you will have to wait until you receive a code in the post. When you do, you should be able to verify your business and your listing should be up and running shortly afterwards.

Bing and Yahoo also offer these services.

How To Make A Small Business Grow – Business Model

Before we go into further advertising methods, it worth mentioning that growing a small business isn’t just about acquiring more customers. Yes of course more customers helps. But there a couple of things that you might be missing out on if this is your only strategy. So, how to make a small business grow without solely focusing on acquiring new customers? What about your existing customers?

Leveraging Your Existing Customers

how to make a small business grow

Referrals

Yes, leveraging your existing customers is a great way to grow your small business. You can use your customers in a couple of ways. Firstly, your customers obviously like you already since they shop with you. Offer a reward for referrals through your customers.

Give your customers discounts or rewards when they bring a new customer into your business. You can do this in a couple of different ways. Create discount vouchers and give them to your customers with individual codes. When someone new comes to your business, you’ll know who referred them. They you can give the customer who has referred the new customer some kind of reward. If you’re worrying about giving away profit, think again.

Value Of A Customer

A new customer is worth far more than a discount or prize which you can offer. Knowing the value of a customer will help you determine how much you should be paying to acquire one. For most businesses, a customer is worth more than you might think. If a customer repeat buys every week, consider how much they are worth to you over a year.

Leveraging Customers With A Range Of Products

how to make a small business grow

Your already existing customers can be ‘leveraged’ in another way too. Growing your small business isn’t just about finding new customers, it’s also about creating a better business model. Think about what else you can offer to your existing customers as an add-on product. Can you create a product to sell from your website (hands free)?

Your existing customers are really a great asset to you. You just need to know how to make more of them. Creating more value and offering a better service, or more personal service is one way of doing this. Add-on products can be worth a lot to your business, and you can offer new products to existing customers at a very low cost.

How To Make A Small Business Grow – Test Your Pricing

Testing a small price change is a good way to judge whether your customers will still purchase from you. Although you may put off some customers, you’ll also keep many of them who don’t buy on price alone. In fact most people won’t buy on price. They purchase based on the perceived value the product gives them. Testing a price increase can tell you where to set your pricing for optimum profit.

How To Make A Small Business Grow – Adwords

Google’s Adwords platform is a good place to start with direct response marketing. Direct response refers to the ability to measure the response of a potential customer every time someone clicks your advert.

how to make a small business grow

Adwords allows you to create adverts on Google search platform which show up when people search for phrases which match your business. So if you have a shoe shop in Manchester, your advert would be shown for searching with those keywords in it. This is very effective because you can specify which keywords you want your advert to show up for.

Adwords also allows you to track your adverts to see how they perform. Once you have tested enough advertising, you can scale up to increase the customer interaction with your website. Once you get this right, you can continually increase the number of people who see you business, just by increasing your advertising spend.

Although many people attempt using the Google Adwords platform and give up, this is a mistake. It’s well worth learning how to successfully use this platform if you have a small business. When you know the value of a customer, you won’t be afraid to spend money to acquire them, even if at first it seems you are spending more than you are making. Keep in mind the annual income you make for each customer you acquire. Then you’ll realise that even if you make a loss initially, you’ll recoup it over time, while building your business.

Bing also offers these services too, and your Adwords platform easily transfers over to Bing.

How To Make A Small Business Grow – Facebook

Facebook is a great advertising platform for small local businesses. You can advertise your business and target very specifically the location you want to show your advert. You can also target your demographic very well too.

how to make a small business grow

This means if you have a certain type of person who uses your business, you can narrow down your target audience and define who you want to show you advert to. You can do this by sex, age, location, interests and a number of other criteria. Targeting by your location is great for small businesses. It means your advert will only show to people near your business. This can save you a lot of wasted time and money which you would need to spend when using other traditional advertising methods.

You can also create a Facebook business page for your business. This is free if you have a Facebook profile and well worth doing. Fill out your business page as much as possible and from there you can link through to your website. A free Facebook business page can rank on Google depending on your competition too, so it’s a useful option if your budget is tight.

Traditional Advertising Methods

Despite the amazing digital platforms which allow you to target customers very specifically, it’s worth remembering traditions advertising methods too. There’s many other digital advertising platforms you can use which haven’t been mentioned already – Linkedin, Yahoo, Bing, Adwords, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc. Learn one first such as Bing and Adwords and then look at the others once you have one strategy working.

how to make a small business grow

Traditional advertising includes things like banner advertising, newspaper advertising and advertising through local newsletters and grapevines. There’s also radio and television if you have the budget. However, for small local businesses, it’s worth sticking to local advertising methods which are cheaper. A well placed banner advert can bring in customers for free if you can find place to put it. Whatever your method, you should always make sure you track your customers through your adverts.

How To Grow Your Small Business – Tracking

Tracking is an important part of any advertising campaign. Without it, you won’t know whether your customers just saw your shop, were referred by another customer, saw a Facebook advert or came through an Adwords campaign. Your customer might not necessarily know either, so asking them isn’t a reliable strategy. To track online adverts you can offer giveaways on your website and get your website visitors to opt in to your rewards email system, more on email marketing later.

Tracking newspaper adverts can be done by offering discount codes which are specific to your advert. Or you can offer a tear off discount voucher, for example. However you do it, it’s a necessary step if you want to grow your business. When you can understand which methods are working and which aren’t working as well, you can increase your well performing adverts and cut back on the less well performing ones.

How To Make A Small Business Grow – Email Marketing

Email marketing is a vital strategy which any business can use to grow their customers and profits. By offering a discount code, or some other useful giveaway on your website, you can get your website visitors to opt-in to your email list. From an email list you can update potential customers on your products and give them value, building a relationship with them over time. This puts your business in the minds of potentially thousands of new customers. Over time, an email list can build your business dramatically, if you offer value and help your subscribers in some way.

How To Grow Your Small Business – Develop Yourself ‘The Owner’

If the owner of the business isn’t growing, neither is their business. A business can’t grow beyond the decisions of its owner. If you’re making decisions based on lack of knowledge, or poor insight, your business is probably going downhill. As a business owner, any investment you make in yourself in personal mindset growth, is well worth the money.

how to make a small business grow

It will pay you back in dividends if you make a habit out of growing yourself as a business owner. How do you do this? Take some action on at least one of the suggestions in this article. If you’re serious about growing your business with online marketing, access my ebook The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing.

How To Grow Your Small Business – Blogging

Yes of course! Let’s not forget the power of blogging to grow your business. This does work if you do it in the right way and depending on your business model and the relative competition. Want to know how to grow your small business by blogging? There a few different ways of blogging for your business. I share a strategy based on finding long tail keywords which match your customers in my ebook Niche Blogging For Profit.

how to make a small business grow

Blogging is a cheap way to generate more presence online for your business. It’s a much slower method than paid advertising though, and it’s not guaranteed to work either. You need to keep at it for the long term. Over time, and as your blog archive increases in size, you should notice people visiting your website more and more. By writing useful content, and sharing it and linking to it, you can create a stream of free potential customers to your website.

Once you get them there, make sure they see your opt-in subscription offer and that it offers them huge value. If you can get your website visitors on your email list, it’s much better for your business. A website visitor can spend only a few minutes on your website. Get them to opt in to your email list, and you can communicate with them and turn them into a customer, potentially even years after they joined the list.

How To Grow Your Small Business – Summary

To finish up this article on how to grow your small business, here’s a quick summary.

Use free advertising methods such as:

  • Bing and Google Places For Business (Also Yahoo)
  • Obviously get a website!
  • Blog regularly on your website use my ebook Niche Blogging For Profit
  • Get a banner and place for free if you can
  • Leverage customers and offer a referral program
  • Get a free Facebook business listing page

Use paid advertising strategies such as:

  • Adwords pay per click – also Bing
  • Facebook advertising targeting specifically to your locality
  • Newspapers and local magazine (make sure you track all adverts)
  • Work your way through different advertising methods studying one at a time and then moving on when you have a profitable one. (Use my ebook The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing)

how to make a small business grow

Remember your business can also grow in other ways – not just by acquiring customers:

  • Test a price increase – most people don’t buy on price alone
  • Offer more products for your existing customers
  • Create digital/physical products you can sell from your website (hands free).

Finally, remember if you’re not growing as the business owner, your decisions are based on previous knowledge – which brought you your current results! Become a better marketer, learn the value of a customer in your business.  Choose at least one strategy shown here to learn and implement. Work through the strategies in my ebook one at a time (The Ultimate Guide To Online Marketing).

If you want to learn more about marketing, or even grow your own online business from scratch, join the online business community I’m already part of. Access this free video series to learn more.

Thanks for reading this article “how to make a small business grow”. If you can add anything useful please comment below. If you’ve enjoyed this article please share it!

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Entrepreneurial Mind Frame

What is the entrepreneurial mind frame? The mindset, or state of mind of an entrepreneur is an important part of their success, or lack of it. The entrepreneurial mind frame is the ambition or worldview which the entrepreneur has. It all starts with belief, both in themselves and in whatever it is they are doing. Many successful entrepreneurs have overcome years of adversity, in order to create their perfect outcome, or follow through on something they have believed in.

Entrepreneurial Mind Frame

Look at James Dyson, inventor of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. His idea for the bagless vacuum cleaner came from the cyclone technology used at a saw mill. He saw the loss of suction of the traditional vacuum cleaner with the removable bag, and looked for a solution. He spent 5 years and created over 5000 prototypes of his vacuum cleaner. However, initially there was no interest in his idea when he launched the “G-force” cleaner in 1983.

entrepreneurial mind frame

No manufacturer of distributor would touch his product because of the vast market for vacuum replacement bags. So Dyson launched his product in Japan through catalogue sales. It won a design award in 1991. After no major manufacturers would pick up his invention, he launched his own manufacturing company in 1993. Given that his initial concept for the idea was in the late 70’s, you can see the entrepreneurial mind frame which he had.

His wife was an art teacher and was able to partly support him through her salary. Given the same circumstances though, how many people would have seen this through or just given up after so much adversity?

Great inventors throughout history have had this same die-hard entrepreneurial mind frame: The Wright Brothers, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, for example, all persevered through uncertainty and adversity because they believed in something greater than their circumstances.

This vision and determination is what gives an entrepreneur the will to continue with their intention, when everyone else would have given up.

Entrepreneurial Mind Frame – Disposition To Entrepreneurialism

Not all entrepreneurs are inventors though. The entrepreneurial mind frame is a disposition of certain individuals to entrepreneurial activities. This might be because they don’t accept the status quo, or, they look towards more meaning in their working lives. Entrepreneurial types are often drawn to risk, opportunities and innovation, rather than accepting the traditional working values of the ‘herd’.

entrepreneurial mind frame

They can see the long term benefit of short term circumstances and often entrepreneurs will work diligently in conditions (which others wouldn’t accept) for years, because of their vision for the future. Great accomplishments often come with years of struggle and poverty. Entrepreneurs are able to accept this, based entirely on their belief in what they are doing for the future, a better life, or even a noble cause. In fact, the cause is often a driving factor for the entrepreneur rather than their own material needs or desires.

Entrepreneurial Mind Frame – Passion & ‘Why’

There were two teams competing for the first aerial flight – The Wright Brothers and Samuel Pierpont Langley. Samuel Pierpont had a massive advantage. He had friends who were wealthy and powerful and was able to secure a $50k grant from the War Department, which was a huge amount at the time. His friends included Andrew Carnegie and Alexander Graham Bell. He was able to create a team, afford the best talent, technology and materials. He was also a mathematics professor who had worked at Harvard.

entrepreneurial mind frame

Wilbur and Orville Wright on the other hand didn’t have money. They were operating out of a bicycle shop and their team didn’t have a college degree between them. They won the race and took flight in 1903. But how? Simon Sinek, in his book ‘Start With Why’ suggests the reason was their passion and ability to inspire those around them. Their vision was to develop a technology that would change the world. It was their ‘why’, writes Sinek, that let them to victory.

Entrepreneurial Mind Frame – Resilience

When questioned over his apparent failures of creating a lightbulb that worked, Thomas Edison’s reply was that he hadn’t failed at anything:

The Thomas A. Edison Papers of Rutgers University, (quoting Walter S. Mallory): ‘Isn’t it a shame that with the tremendous amount of work you have done you haven’t been able to get any results?’ Edison turned on me like a flash, and with a smile replied: ‘Results! Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work!‘”

Resilience is a mindset of the entrepreneurial which is vital for sustaining an often difficult passion or destination. In fact, resilience is often cited as the most important characteristic of an entrepreneur and a predictor of their success.

entrepreneurial mind frame

Without it, a would-be-entrepreneur is more likely to give up before they reach any purposeful goal. Entrepreneurs therefore look for small wins and consider adversity a necessary obstacle to success. Having the mindset that any short term failure is only ‘feedback’ to alter your trajectory is a useful and necessary mindset which taking on a large and time consuming project.

Many would of course give up, when short term success isn’t reached. Perhaps this explains why successful entrepreneurs only make up a small percentage of the global population – (nearly 13% starting up in the US according to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor). However, this statistic will be much lower for successful entrepreneurs, since many who startup will fail and quit within the first 5 years.

Entrepreneurial Mind Frame – Focus & Attitude

Entrepreneurs think differently to most people:

  • Look at the world differently
  • Seek out opportunities, rather than immediate security.
  • They often want something more than the status quo
  • Need to do things differently to the norm.
  • Are not afraid of taking risks and doing things a bit differently.

This does mean they have to develop themselves along with their businesses. Unless they do so, their limitations will hold back their business.

Most people have a certain level of fear which holds them back in life. For business owners and entrepreneurs, holding onto fears can be a major roadblock to success. See entrepreneurship development ebook free download. If you have a business, but are afraid to step outside your comfort zone, you could be preventing the growth of the business due to your lack of personal growth. This is particularly true when it comes to advertising a business.

If you’re new in business, your mindset might be very different to that of an entrepreneur. If you’re used to earning a set wage every month, you tend to stick to the boundaries within your means, or your personal limitations. This can be limiting if you want to grow your business with paid advertising, for example.

Entrepreneurial Mind Frame And Online Advertising

Shifting from being an employee to an entrepreneur is difficult. Partly because you are shifting roles and you will likely bring your old attitudes and behaviours with you to the new role. This can mean you’ll get stuck in your employee mindset.

As an employee, you get paid no matter what. Just as long as you do your job, and the position exists, you’ll continue to get paid. Entrepreneurial life is different.You need to actively grow your business. Starting out, this can be tough because you don’t know your new role and you don’t have an income yet.

entrepreneurial mind state

Spending money on advertising your business, for example, can be counterintuitive, especially if you don’t have much budget. You’ll actively avoid anything which puts you outside your comfort zone. This, ironically, is the very thing you will have to do in entrepreneurial life.

Mindset Development For The Entrepreneur

Developing your mindset as an entrepreneur is incredibly important. Unless you can keep your motivation up and maintain a positive attitude, your chances of success are vastly diminished. Even then, you need to carefully craft your desired outcome, so you can concentrate on the right activities.

One of the best resources I have found for developing the mindset of an entrepreneur is Stuart Lichtman’s book on Cybernetic Transposition. In his book, Stuart describes his strategy which he calls the cybernetic transposition three step process. Lichtman worked as an MIT professor. He developed and successfully tested his strategy on test groups who successfully achieved their ‘impossible’ goals on their first attempt.

Aligning Purpose

Two of the main problems for people to carry through on their goals is belief and desire. By successfully crafting your goals with these two powerful attractive forces aligned, you have a far greater chance of success. If you don’t believe you can achieve a goal, your motivation to do the work is vastly reduced. If you don’t really want the goal you set for yourself, your chances of following through are vastly reduced also.

We often set ourself goals and achievements which we don’t want either through peer pressure or social pressure. Getting clear on what you really want is key because you’ll be continually motivated towards it, much like in the examples of entrepreneurs above. Even if there is some doubt in your motivation, chances are good that some old habit pattern will get in the way. This is because you have competing goals within your subconscious mind.

entrepreneurial mind frame

Stuart Lichtman’s book helps you to get clear and align all parts of your brain so your goals all line up perfectly. When we are congruent, and all parts of the brain are aligned with our goals, we can create far greater outcome than when our intentions are all running in different directions.

Entrepreneurial Mind frame – Looking For An Opportunity?

If you’re entrepreneurial and have read this far, you might be a good fit for our online business community. Access a digital business and training platform; learn how to build your own online business from scratch.

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entrepreneurial mind frame

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Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind And Belief System

It is possible to reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system. Why would you want to do this? Simply because most of us have picked up unconscious beliefs which stagnate our growth in some way. When we get to a ‘sticking point’ in our lives, it can often be because of some unconscious belief, standing in the way of the momentum. It’s also referred to as a ‘glass ceiling’. A glass ceiling is a limiting, unknown ‘obstacle’ to our success. In many cases, a glass ceiling is an unconscious barrier which prevents you from moving forwards in some way.

reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind And Belief System

So, how do you reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system? A good start is to uncover some of your limiting beliefs. Write down your biggest bug-bears in life and the reasons why you aren’t already where you want to be. Why don’t you have the career you want, or the partner you want? Why don’t you live where you want to live, or do the job you really want to have. Whatever your situation, write down 10 areas which you want to improve in life. Next to each objective, write down your excuses, I mean reasons, for why you haven’t moved forwards in this area.

This is a good way of uncovering your unconscious beliefs systems which are already holding you where you are.

Your list might look something like this:

  1. Living in a nicer area in the next year- I don’t earn enough to move/I can’t get the loan
  2. Earning another $1000 a month within 4 years – I hate my job, my boss doesn’t like me
  3. I want a job/career which I love – I need the money so I’m stuck in this one
  4. Upgrading my car by February – My job/career isn’t secure and I need to save the money
  5. I would love to re-train for another career – my situation doesn’t allow it/I’m too attached to my comfort zones.

Keep going in every area of your life and look at your reasons. Your reasons will give you a good idea of what you have accepted as the reasons why you are where you are.

Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind And Belief System

reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

Your belief system is real. At least it is very real to you. It holds you where you are because you believe it with every fibre of your being. By slowly changing your belief system, it will lose power over your decisions and your current lifestyle. From your shifting beliefs you can shift your energy. Each element of your life is held by the “bedrock” of your belief system. As your beliefs change, so does you reality.

Let’s look at the first area above: 1. Living in a nicer area – I don’t earn enough to move/I can’t get the loan

Firstly examine how much you want to live in a nicer area. Perhaps it’s just a fleeting thought. Perhaps you don’t really want it enough to change your current circumstances. That’s fine, but at least admit it! Don’t say you want something but then accept you don’t want to change your circumstances to get it! Things change when you want something enough to move from your current circumstances. Examine your excuses/reasons. Could they change over time? How could you speed this up? What motivates you to both change your circumstances and what motivates you to accept the status quo/current situation as it is?

Perhaps not moving is the very best thing you could do right now. Maybe moving would put you in greater debt and make your situation worse.

If You Want Something Enough

reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

If you want something enough you’ll make some moves to get it. Sometimes you need some help from your subconscious mind though. If you’re continually butting your head against a brick wall (metaphorically), it could be because you do want change but you can’t get beyond your current circumstances. Look at your reasons and write down a statement which counteracts it, like this:

  1. I don’t earn enough to move – My income is increasing continually and steadily

Use this new idea to reprogram your subconscious mind. Although you probably don’t believe it, you need to start repeating it to yourself and imagine it is true. This is communicating your new belief to your unconscious mind. Doing this repeatedly, is a simple way to reprogram your subconscious. For a long time, you have probably been repeating your old belief of: “I don’t earn enough to ….”, or whatever it is. Over time this is picked up by the subconscious mind and reinforced every time you repeat it. By doing the same with a contrary belief, you can reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system.

Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind And Belief System

As you can see in the video, your paradigm is the controlling factor which keeps you trapped in your current circumstances. Unless you change your paradigm, your life will continue as it already is. In fact, the longer you continue to do the same things and, more importantly, think in the same way, you’ll continue to bring about the same results over and over. Shifting your energy and thinking is the fastest way to bring about change.

How To Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind And Belief System – Who Are You?

You have been ‘programming’ your subconscious mind and belief system for many years. Cultural factors and your surroundings while growing up have also all been absorbed into your subconscious mind. These are powerful subconscious beliefs which will take time to shift. The heritage your have been born into, the lives of your parents and your grandparents, all will have a factor on the subconscious ideas you have picked up from your surroundings. Before you were even 10 years old, you will have picked up some powerful signals as to what you can do with life, what you’re capable of, how you should behave, treat yourself and treat others.

Reprogramming some of the ideas which limit you and stunt your growth is well worth your time.

Start With A Goal

Starting with a goal, you can use a ‘mantra’ or affirmation to train your subconscious mind to shift its focus. But you need to really want this goal, or otherwise you’ll find excuses as to why it’s not really that important for you. You’ll slip back into your unconscious behaviour patterns and continue to belief your old programming.

how to reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

Stuart Lichtman’s book on Cybernetic Transposition is the best resource I have found on this. He uses what he calls the Cybernetic Transposition three step process to powerfully alter your subconscious programming using a very specific strategy.

This requires you to simply set an objective and write it down. Then, as you repeat it to yourself, you adjust it to meet all your needs. The subconscious mind is very powerful and will have many competing behaviours which may stop your achievements for a number of reasons. Stuart Lichtman’s Three Step Process helps you to align all parts of the brain to focus on your most important achievement. This then ‘flags up’ this goal to the subconscious mind so that it can continue to look for solutions, even while you’re doing other things.

There’s a few important points to this strategy and you need to be very clear on them for this to have the biggest impact. Access Stuart Lichtman’s book here to get started.

What’s Involved? Getting Started Reprogramming Beliefs

how to reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

Setting a goal is the start point. But it can’t be any old goal. You need to pick something which you:

  • Really really want – on a scale of 1-10 this must be at least a 6 in desirability, ideally a “10”
  • Believe you can achieve – on the same scale you must again have a 6 in ‘believability’, ideally a “10”

If you don’t really want your goal, you’ll find reasons to give up later down the road. You won’t be focused on achieving it if you don’t really want it. Equally, if you don’t really believe you’ll achieve the goal, you won’t fully go for it. You’ll find a reason to stop working towards it.

So you’ve got you goal, now what? You need to put your goal into a ‘story’ format which you unconscious mind can understand. This is explained in Stuarts’ book here. Stuart calls this your “Meta-story”. It’s basically a story you have already from your past. You’re just going to use a story you actually have in your memory, re-write it, and use it to reprogram your subconscious mind.

A Powerful Affirmation To ‘Talk’ To Your Unconscious Mind

OK so let’s assume you’ve done this and you’re now ready with your “meta-story” to start ‘talking to your subconscious mind. As you repeat your “meta-story” over and over, you’ll notice some resistance most probably. Perhaps you don’t fully believe the story you’re telling. That means your story has fallen from at least a 6 on the “believability” scale. Re-write it so that it goes back up to at least a 6. Ideally you want a “10” for both desirability and believability. Otherwise you won’t be motivated to achieve it.

reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

As you repeat your story over and over, you’ll continue to ‘tweek’ it so that it meets your motivation criteria. Also though, you’ll find your unconscious mind is starting to offer some signals of resistance. As these things come up for you, just notice what is happening. You’ll rewrite you story each time you receive some “feedback” from your subconscious mind.

As I did this, I noticed my subconscious mind was busy looking for reasons why it wasn’t going to work. Just notice these objections and carry on.

By creating a story from your past, you can include sights and sounds and even smells and feelings which powerfully signal to your subconscious mind. These are vitally important to your affirmation. Unless you can include these, you’re just talking to your subconscious in words. Think about how your subconscious mind talks to you in your dreams. It’s pictures and feelings. That’s why you want to include the same in your story.

Reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system using Stuart Lichtman’s book. This is especially useful if you have a specific goal or outcome you would like to achieve. See also my Stuart Lichtman Review.

Reprogram Your Subconscious Mind And Belief System – Other Strategies

Thoughts and Words

There’s a few other strategies you can employ to reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system. Noticing your words and thoughts is an important starting point because you’re continually ‘feeding’ your subconscious mind with thought which are either taking you towards your best goals and intentions, or away from them. Consider some of the things you say, which counteract (or push away) the very things which you want to manifest in life.

reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich – “Remember what has been said about the unconscious mind resembling a fertile garden spot, in which weeds will grow in abundance, if thoughts of a more desirable crop are not sewn therein.”

Your thoughts and words are the ‘seeds’ of the ideas which dominate your thinking. By those thoughts your life is created. If you want to reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system, start by paying attention to the thoughts and words you permit to remain in the conscious mind.

Checkout Think and Grow Rich.

Self Image

Your self image is a huge part of your subconscious makeup. Unless you change your self image. it may hold you back from altering your life’s circumstances. Maxwell Maltz’s book on Psycho-Cybernetics is a huge game changer in self development. One of the fastest ways to reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system is by changing your self image.

reprogram your subconscious mind and belief system

Get a copy of Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-cybernetics here.

Your inner ‘identity’ is something which doesn’t change much over the course of your life. This is a huge part of your glass ceiling if you’re trying and failing to change your circumstances for the better. Ask yourself what you truly believe about yourself. Are you worthy of a happy life, success and joy in every area? If you don’t believe you are, ask yourself why? This is a huge key to your moving forwards in life and growing personally in every area of your life. It’s well worth your time to investigate these ‘inner stories’ which we all hold onto regarding ourselves.

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Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast

It is possible to reprogram the subconscious mind fast, if you want to make some changes in your life. Many of the thoughts you currently have will be based on years of thinking and asserting your beliefs on the subconscious mind. You will have developed powerful paradigms, (patterns / your model of the world) which, although they give you some security, can dramatically hold you back from the life you really want. If you want to reprogram the subconscious fast, you need to become aware of the assertions and affirmations which you are already feeding into your subconscious mind.

reprogram the subconscious mind fast

These affirmations may have been in your mind for many years. They are what you tell yourself most about life, or your circumstances. In many cases they are negative affirmations about your current situation in life. The purpose of reprogramming the subconscious mind fast is to change these assertions for more positive ones which can and will change your outcomes.

Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast

If every day you are telling yourself how difficult life is, even if it’s only in your head, you’ll be feeding a powerful belief system which resides in your subconscious mind. This ‘mantra’ you tell yourself gains momentum over time. If you repeat something regularly enough, it become embedded in the subconscious mind.

This is when it becomes a powerful paradigm. Your paradigms are your deeply embedded patterns or your world view. They shape your life according to what they are. The reason to reprogram the subconscious mind fast is to change these paradigms for something more beneficial to your life situation. This can be done fast, but if you’re telling yourself these same stories about your self or your life, you will be competing with the new ideas which you want to carefully choose to counteract your previous negative mantras or sayings.

By unearthing your current patterns of negative thought, you can put a stop to any negative energy in the form of thoughts and words, which is contributing to your current life “story”.

Reprogramming The Subconscious Mind Fast – Unearthing Your Demons

Uncovering out your current speech and thought patterns which are not helping you is a major key to reprogramming the subconscious mind fast. Even if you begin a new mantra or thought process, your old habits can counteract the good work you’ll be doing. So uncovering your mental habits is key to making a lasting change. You can do this with a few exercises.

reprogramming the subconscious mind fast

A Simple Meditation

The first one is a simple meditation. Simply sit quietly where you won’t be disturbed and watch your thoughts without engaging in them. Just observe them. Avoid judging them, trying to ‘block’ them or criticising them. This again is your inner mind with it’s endless ‘chatter’. Quieting the mind is a useful skill which will serve you well if you learn to develop it. Just observe quietly your thoughts as they pass through your mind. You might notice a pattern a thought which you have given a lot of energy to in the past. If this comes up, simply observe and allow the thoughts to come and go, without giving them any energy.

Noticing Your Patterns

Here’s another great exercise to notice your patterns of thought and behaviour. Take a notebook and an alarm which can be set to go off on repeat over the course of the day. Don’t set an obvious time like on the hour, for example. It should catch you unawares when it goes off. Set it to go off several times a day; every 1 and a half hours is a good amount of time. Each time the alarm goes off, take your notebook out and write down these three things:

  1. What were you thinking?
  2. What were you doing?
  3. Ask yourself do you want this?

Do this exercise over the course of a few days and you’ll soon see where your mind (and energy) is going.

Pay Attention – Reprogramming The Subconscious Mind Fast

Consider these two exercises very important. This is the ‘groundwork’ to reprogramming the subconscious mind fast. If you want fast results, you’ll need to do the work. By uncovering some of your patterns of thought and speech, you’ll see how you are ‘feeding’ your subconscious mind with powerful intentions already. These are the intentions which have created your life up to now already. Later in this article, we will look into how you are going to alter these to better create what you really want to manifest in your life.

reprogram the subconscious mind fast

The next exercise is going to help you to uncover some more of your ‘blockages’ which are stopping you creating the life you really want.

Answer the following questions on a separate piece of paper:

  • What is stopping you from being the person you want to be right now?
  • Why haven’t you got the life you say you really want?
  • If you could set an incredible goal which you truly desire to make come true, what would it be?
  • What’s the biggest obstacle to your achieving this in the next 1-5 years?
  • What would be another great goal you really want and is much more achievable?
  • How do you hold yourself back from achieving this?

What Do You Really Want?

Take some time to answer these questions honestly. Your answers should give you some of your beliefs and paradigms around limitation. Consider these as useful clues to discovering your paradigms which hold you back in life. Pay close attention to your reasons for not having achieved what you want, or for what is holding you back in life. They will give you a good insight into what is more important to you.

reprogramming the subconscious mind fast

Perhaps the security of these reasons and your current comfort zones are more important that your goal, or what you say you want. That’s ok, but just acknowledge that this is the case. Perhaps you don’t want the goal you think you do? Deciding on a goal which is right for you is as important as achieving it. If you end up with your goal, and you’re not happy about it, it would have been a lot of wasted effort to get there. So getting clear on your goal is vital.

Getting Clear on Your Goals – Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast

Getting clear on your goals is important for a number of reasons. For starters, have you ever set a goal only to give up on its achievement? This is pretty common. After starting out towards a certain direction or goal, all kinds of unconscious behaviour patterns will get in the way. For example, let’s say you decide to join a gym and get fitter. You hit the gym hard in the first few weeks and then your interest starts to wane. You don’t really want it that much anymore. Or, you miss going out for a drink and eating whatever you like. So you fall back into old behaviours and eventually you’re back where you started.

This is because of some of your behaviour patterns which block your ability to keep focused on your goal. In the next section we’re going to look at powerful ways to get clear on your goal and then focus your subconscious mind on the achieving of it for the long run.

Getting Clear On Your Goal Setting

In Stuart Lichtman’s book How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast, he shares his cybernetic transposition three step technique. This starts with making a goal which you both really want, and which you believe is possible to attain. Unless you really want something, you won’t work hard to attain it. You’ll ultimately end up making excuses as to why you didn’t achieve it. Or, you’ll give up because the attaining of it gets in the way of some other unconscious behaviour or pattern which you don’t want to give up.

reprogram the subconscious mind fast

Setting a goal which you don’t really want will ultimately end in it’s failure, most likely. So, setting a goal which you want is far, far better. But how you know if you really want something, or whether it’s really someone else’s idea? What if it’s just a vague wish rather than a burning desire? Again, you’re unlikely to work towards something if you don’t really want it with every ounce of your being. Defining your goal is therefore of paramount importance and is the work described in Stuart Lichtman’s book which you can get here.

Criteria For Goal Setting

Setting a goal which you don’t believe you can achieve can have similar outcomes. You’ll end up giving up on it without really trying because, well, you didn’t really think it would happen anyway. So setting a goal which is highly desirable and which you believe is achievable is very important. 

reprogram the subconscious mind fast

Once you have set your goal, you can refine it by repeating it over and over to yourself. This is much like what you already do with many of your unconscious inner thinking processes. You hopefully have uncovered some of your negative thought patterns though the previous exercises in this article. If not, go back to the start and learn the two exercises at the beginning of this article.

An example of a negative thought pattern might be something like:

“I’ll never be able to do …….”

“I’m unlucky and always fail, why bother…”

“I’m stuck in this situation because…”

“No matter how hard I try, things never work out for me”

These kinds of negative beliefs perpetuate problems by creating powerful negative beliefs about yourself and your potential in life.  We are going to create the opposite: powerful intentions and beliefs about you that empower you (and your belief system) to allow you to create the life you really want. 

Reprogramming Your Subconscious Mind Fast – Countering Negative Thought Patterns

If you’ve found some of your old thought patterns within your inner dialogue or when you are speaking, this can give you a huge insight into what you’re currently “feeding” your subconscious mind.

reprogramming the subconscious mind

Napoleon Hill writes in his book Think and Grow Rich “Recall what has been said about the subconscious mind resembling a fertile garden spot, in which weeds will grow in abundance if the seeds of more desirable crops are not sewn therein.”

Now, consider how long you have been thinking like this and how much of an effect this will have had already on your subconscious mind. We are going to be reprogramming your subconscious mind fast by carefully choosing new, specific commands and affirmations to ‘feed’ to your subconscious mind.

You will need to repeat these new ideas and affirmations over and over in order for the subconscious mind to accept them as your new belief system or paradigm. Whatever it is you want to achieve, you can do so by using the techniques described in Stuart Lichtman’s book, if you carefully follow the directions and do the exercises repeatedly. 

Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast – How Fast?

So how much of this will you actually need to do before things start changing? That’s a difficult question to answer because everyone is different. It depends on the difficulty and desirability of your goal. You must also believe that it is possible. Pick a goal which is believable to you. Unless you do, you’ll easily quit and fall back into your old behaviour patterns.

By doing the exercises described in Stuart Lichtman’s book, you’ll soon find yourself in a new place and seeing life in a whole new way. If you give up too easily on the exercises, you perhaps didn’t choose a goal which was desirable enough. It should be something you really really want and something you think is attainable. If you don’t really want it, or believe it, you’ll easily give up on it, or find an excuse to not do the work involved.

Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast – Birds Of A Feather

“Birds of a feather, flock together”

You can estimate someone’s income by taking the average income of their 10 closest friends. This is a very interesting truth. If you want to improve in any area of your life, you must put yourself in the company of those who are succeeding in that area. Unless you can do this, you current friend group will very likely pull you back towards their own subconscious belief patterns and habits. Most people have experienced this when they set out down a new path and attempt to improve themselves in some way. It could be a new business venture or a fitness campaign. It’s not that your friends don’t want you to be happy, but you might be threatening the status quo, and that can have an effect on your friendships.

reprogramming the subconscious mind

Recently I have given up drinking alcohol, and it’s quite fascinating how some friends are viciously opposed to this! I knew what I was up against and this was definitely one of the biggest obstacles. I was inspired to do a 90 day drink free period by a member of an internet business community I belong to. Learn more here.

Often, your friends won’t support you in a new venture because it threatens their own view of you, or it threatens the social standing of your relationship. See why your friends and family don’t want you to succeed.

So, be careful who you share your dreams with, because even well meaning friends might not want success for you because it might somehow reflect back on them in an unfavourable way.

Ask yourself too, are the people you spend time with cheering you on? Do they want success for you? How would they react when you have achieved the best outcome you can imagine for your life? If their reaction isn’t positive, you may need to consider a new group of people to surround yourself with!

Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast – Speech

What you say has the power to influence both your subconscious mind and those around you. The way you talk, particularly about yourself, is a good way to measure how you think and ‘feel’ about yourself too. If you’re serious about reprogramming the subconscious mind fast, pay attention to how you talk to others and of course to yourself also. Do you put yourself down? You you talk bad of yourself?

Or, do you say how capable and worthy you are of the things you want to create in your life? Remember, people are listening to what you are saying and so is your subconscious mind. Think well of yourself and if you notice yourself saying anything derogatory about yourself, consider it a major clue and breakthrough. You have discovered a limiting self image which is a powerful belief residing inside your subconscious mind.

reprogram the subconscious mind fast

Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast – Self Image

Your self image is a major part of your subconscious programming. If you’ve ever had a goal which you haven’t achieved, it is quite likely that it’s because of your limiting self image. The self image is how you see yourself in your “mind’s eye”. If you can’t imagine yourself doing the things you enjoy, and living the best life possible for yourself, it is your self image which is letting you down. If you want to achieve something but often get in your own way of achieving it, your self image might be the ‘glass ceiling’ which holds you back.

reprogramming the subconscious mind

Maxwell Maltz discovered that it was the self image of his clients which preventing them from living more full and enjoyable lives. He was working as a plastic surgeon and noticed that even after surgery, many of his clients were still unhappy. When he developed a way to help people change their self image, they reported a greater sense of well being and happiness even if they didn’t go through with the surgery.

Checkout Maxwell Maltz’s book Psycho-cybernetics.

Reprogram The Subconscious Mind Fast – Summary

So, to recap some concepts about reprogramming the subconscious mind which we have covered in this article:

  • Notice your self talk – how do you talk to yourself in your mind?
  • Watch your patterns of thinking and behaviour – our behaviour often doesn’t match what we say we want.
  • Learn to still the mind with meditation and become more conscious of the thoughts you are giving energy to.
  • Read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich
  • Get Stuart Lichtman’s Book on Cybernetic Transposition and create a desirable goal which you believe is attainable.
  • Use his book to create your own new “meta story” a new story to repeat over and over to reprogram your subconscious mind. 
  • Notice the people around you. Do they support your new intention for yourself? Choose people who are supportive and who have created the success you want for you life in each area.
  • Watch your self talk – how you speak to yourself and about yourself
  • Change your self image – this is a huge part of your unconscious paradigm. If you are hitting a ‘glass ceiling’ with your goals and achievements, your self image must change for you to change.
  • If you’re looking for a new direction in business, or, want to create more time and financial freedom, learn how to build an online business from scratch through this powerful business system and community.

reprogram the subconscious mind fast

With these strategies and techniques it is possible to reprogram the subconscious mind fast. However, there is a lot of work to be done before you can reap the rewards of a new belief system. It has taken time and a lot of energy to get the results you have already got in life. Much of this has been “unconscious” creation, meaning you have created the things you have despite not knowing how to consciously program the subconscious mind. Use the exercises described in here and in the recommended reading materials.

If you have enjoyed this article on how to reprogram the subconscious mind fast, please leave a comment below or share it.

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How To Activate Subconscious Mind

If you’re wondering how to activate subconscious mind, wonder no more! Your subconscious mind is already active. However, most people simply haven’t learned how to harness the huge power which lies in the subconscious mind. For example, have you ever set a goal to achieve something only to give up not long after?

Have you ever wondered why you haven’t kept up your gym membership or continued working on a specific skill? Why does your life continue to give you the results it does, whatever you seem to try? Learning how to activate subconscious mind ‘power’ is a big key to success in any area of your life! Buckle up, because what you’re about to learn is life changing! If you apply it to your life, everything can change for the better!

How To Activate Subconscious Mind – The ‘Old’ You

We all have a conscious mind and a subconscious mind. We are mostly aware of our conscious mind. Our subconscious mind lies hidden mostly from our conscious awareness. Since being a young child your subconscious mind has been trying to make sense of the world. It does this by building pieces of your world view and putting it together into a cohesive ‘map’ which it uses to feel safe and secure in the ever changing world around us.

how to activate subconscious mind

If we had to constantly adapt to continual changes around us without this, it would be very difficult and stressful. Your subconscious mind gives you some internal ‘walls’ from which to navigate your world. This can become a problem when you are attempting to create something new in life or change your circumstances. We’ve all had this experience when we want to get fitter or learn something new. Before long, we give up and find we are back in our comfort zones again. Unless we can move away from our comfort zones, we will struggle to make real change in our lives.

The problem arises when you want something new in your life, but it doesn’t make for a good ‘fit’ with your inner view of yourself and your subconscious ‘map’.

How To Activate Subconscious Mind – Your Self Image

Your self image is a big part of your subconscious mind ‘map’. It is the part of you that determines what kind of person you are, what you are capable of, and what you believe about yourself. It’s how you see yourself in your “mind’s eye”. The self image is massively important to self growth. Unless you can change your self image, it can act like a ‘glass ceiling’ preventing your from attaining anything beyond what it sees you as being capable of. If you’ve ever struggled with anything in life, chances are, it was your self image, stopping you from moving forwards.

how to activate subconscious mind

The self image is hugely powerful and no matter how hard you try, it will assert itself in some manner; often sabotaging your best efforts, just when you thought everything was going well! Changing your self image therefore can be much more powerful than simply trying to change things on the ‘outside’. In fact, we can often get ‘stuck’ and frustrated by only focusing on our external actions, to the detriment of achieving our goals. If you learn how to change your inner world as well as working on your goals with specific action steps, your changes of success are far greater than by struggling against a poor or limited self image.

How To Activate Subconscious Mind – Noticing Your Thoughts

The self image is fed by your continual dialogue and stream of consciousness – whether that be your inner thinking process or the words you speak. The first step in changing this is to notice your thoughts and words. Become the silent watcher. This can be done by sitting quietly and simply ‘watching’ your thoughts.

Don’t engage with them, or judge them, simply watch. Start off by doing this for 5 minutes and then extend this time period as you become more proficient. The idea isn’t to label, judge or block any of these thoughts; just begin by noticing them wander in and out of your consciousness, without ‘attaching’ yourself to them. This will seem very difficult at first. You will become engaged with your thoughts and may even act them out. When you notice this, just stop and bring your awareness back to just watching.

how to activate subsconscious mind

You can use the breath to focus your mind on something if it helps. Just focus on the in and the out breath. A simple meditation is to pick a spot on the wall in front of you and count to 5 repeatedly. As your thoughts intrude, as they will, bring your awareness back to counting from 1 to 5 again repeatedly. By practicing this every day, and slowly extending the time period, you will learn a lot about the nature of your mind and become more aware of what is going on with your inner dialogue. Notice in particular, how you talk to yourself and how you feel about and see yourself. This can give you an insight into your self image – how you ‘see’ yourself from within.

How To Activate Subconscious Mind Power – Clearing The Clutter

When there’s a lot of clutter, it’s difficult to notice the space. If you’re going to learn how to activate subconscious mind power, you first need to ‘de-clutter’ the chat which is already there. Your inner dialogue is already being “consumed” by your subconscious mind. It is being listened to. Your life is very likely to be (at least partially) a result of the “chat” that has been going on for a long time in the background in your mind.

how to activate subconscious mind

This is what has been creating your self image so far. Start by listening to what you say to yourself and observe. If you notice anything negative, that’s a good place to start making changes. Write down any patterns which you find, particularly if they are limiting ideas about who you are or what you are capable of. Sometimes your thoughts are subtly disempowering. Notice these thoughts and write down some more empowering affirmations to repeat to yourself instead.

An example of a disempowering thought might be:

“I’m not very good at…..”

“I try very hard but…” “trying” implies struggle of failing.

“If only my situation was different…” etc.

These kinds of thoughts are how you are disempowering yourself. Choose empowering affirmations such as:

“I can do anything if I put my mind to it though..”

“Whatever I put my mind to, I can be good at”

“I achieve a lot with my time”

Take your disempowering thoughts and turn them around with a converse viewpoint. You might not believe it at first, but this doesn’t matter. The important thing is to dislodge the ideas which already feed your present self image and then create a new self image based on more empowered beliefs. See affirmations, mantras and positive intention.

How To Activate The Subconscious Mind – Your Speech

Becoming aware of your speech is another way to change the input which you choose to feed your subconscious mind. Who you interact with, and what you say, has a good deal to do with how you see yourself and what you are creating. Your subconscious mind is listening to everything you say and you are sewing the ‘seeds’ of your future with your words and intent. Becoming more aware of your thoughts is the first step. As you notice how you speak to yourself, and others, you can gain more insight into what you are feeding your subconscious mind.

how to activate subconscious mind

Napoleon Hill “Remember what has been said about a garden resembling the subconscious mind, in which weeds will grow in abundance, if seeds of a more desirable nature are not sewn therein.” … “Nature has so built man that he has absolute control over the material which reaches his subconscious mind, through his five senses, although this is not meant to be construed as a statement than man always exercises this control. In the great majority of instances , he does not exercise it, which explains why so many people go through life in poverty.”

Notice if you ever talk yourself down or talk in a derogatory way about yourself, even in jest. Remember you are feeding your self image all the time with your thoughts and words. In particular, what you say about yourself is important since it relates directly to your self image which is a controlling factor in your life.

Changing Your Dialogue – How To Activate Subconscious Mind Power For Change

So far, a lot has been said about listening to your inner and outer dialogue. That’s because, unless you can learn to listen to your existing ideas about yourself, you won’t make lasting changes just by covering them up. You must change the way you think about yourself on a deeper level, and not just ‘try’ to cover it over with new beliefs.

This takes time and effort, but it’s well worth it. Imagine your life as you would like it to be. Give it some energy and really daydream, like you used to. It’s much harder when you cover all your possibilities over with the problems which surround your self image and the ‘realism’ you have developed as an adult. Let go of all that first! Then you can start afresh!

how to activate subconscious mind

Now that you have uncovered some of your unconscious behaviour patterns, you can start applying techniques to change your inner map and world view. Until now it has done its job and kept you safe. But you don’t want ‘safe’ anymore, you want change!

How To Activate Subconscious Mind – Goal Setting

Have you ever set a goal that you’ve never actually achieved? Maybe you really didn’t want the goal you set, or perhaps you didn’t want it enough to put in the effort. Or you thought it would be a good thing to have, but you really didn’t believe it was going to come to fruition anyway, so why bother struggling? It’s far easier to allow your life to carry on the way it is, unless you have a big enough reason for change. Unless your life is really giving you problems, there might not be enough of a reason to make the effort required for change.

how to activate subconscious mind

These are all reasons why you might have fallen short in life with your goals and best intentions. You need a good reason to focus on something for long enough to make a lasting change. That’s because anything worth pursuing, is going to take time and effort. Unless you really want it, you’ll like fall short in some respect. Especially, if you have a negative payoff of some kind for not achieving what you set out to achieve. What’s a negative payoff for failure? Some negative payoffs might be:

  • Sympathy
  • A consistent world view
  • Maintaining a relationship
  • Something to complain about (maintaining your self image and identity)
  • Ability to maintain similar relationships
  • Letting someone else be “right” about something
  • Being “right” about something yourself
  • An alternative possibility becomes more important

The importance Of Goal Setting

So, setting a goal is an important business because we all have competing parts of ourselves which may influence the desired result. Unless we get clear about what we really want, for ourselves, we can easily self sabotage for a number of reasons. If friends and relatives are not supportive of your new goal, that can add another dynamic to the relationship and alter your intentions – either to work harder, or maintain the relationship at the expense of the goal. If you’re juggling a multitude of plans, goals and relationships your subconscious may interfere to create an outcome which it sees as the best all round solution.

how to activate subconscious mind

So, talking to your subconscious mind is a useful skill because you get to tell it what is the most important for you. If you don’t do this successfully, you will most likely create a confused mixture of the thoughts, desires and expectations which you hold in your mind. If you don’t set any goals at all, you’re likely to fall into being controlled by others or fall back to your default self image setting, whatever that is.

Effective Goal Setting & Talking To Your Subconscious Mind

We are of course always talking to our subconscious mind in some way or another. As already mentioned we do this often in an unconscious way though our continual mental and verbal chatter. What we say in that chatter has a great deal to do with our outcomes, so we need to ‘harness’ it in a way that is congruent to all of our needs. Most goal setting is fairly slapdash and arbitrary. We don’t always know what is possible for us and what is best for us. We can often be led by others and set goals which someone else wants for us, but which we don’t really want for ourselves in our heart of hearts.

So getting clear on your intentions is the work which needs to be done first. Imagine arriving at your goal, only to find that it wasn’t what you wanted after all. Or, you arrive at your ‘target’ only to find you sacrificed a much more important opportunity, for the sake of a lesser one. In Stuart Lichtman’s book “How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast“, this is the work involved in his Cybernetic Transposition three step process. By aligning all parts of your mind, with your greatest outcome, and by using an ‘insurance policy’ which offers the opportunity of something better than your intended goal to arrive, you can set and achieve your goal more effectively.

how to activate your subconscious mind

“Activating” Your Subconscious Mind

When most people set a goal, they focus only on the outcome they think they want. Over time this may change too. Other, competing parts of themselves can ultimately soften their intention too, or, divert them from their initial target. Old behaviour patterns can get in the way too. That’s why it’s important to focus all parts of the mind on the goal you want to accomplish. How is this accomplished? By repeating your target over and over so that the unconscious mind ‘flags’ it as the most important thing to focus on. Unless you do this, other competing goals can take over. Your self image can intrude on what you want to achieve and sabotage your results too.

Stuart Lichtman’s Cybernetic Transposition three step process takes into account all parts of the mind. As you repeat your goal, you’ll become familiar with any limiting beliefs which are preventing you from achieving it. You will also be able to ‘sculpt’ your goal to include sounds, feelings and smells which you have actually experienced in a real event from your life. This activates parts of your subconscious mind which are familiar to you and which solidify your intentions.

Access Stuart Lichtman’s book and use his Cybernetic Transposition Technique for goal setting and activating your subconscious mind for maximum success here.

 

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Hypnosis For Wealth And Prosperity

Is hypnosis for wealth and prosperity possible? We are constantly “drip feeding” our subconscious minds with information which can either take us towards or away from wealth and prosperity. Our thoughts are sending messages to our subconscious which is either giving us power or making us victims of our current circumstance. By learning to choose more empowering thoughts we can use ‘self’ hypnosis for wealth and prosperity.

Hypnosis For Wealth And Prosperity – Words Have Power

We are already subtly hypnotised by the suggestions from our upbringing and society. Our income can be determined by the average of our 10 closest friends. We often spend time with people who see the world in the same way we do. Choosing our thoughts and words more carefully can bring about a massive change over time.

Napoleon Hill – “Remember what has been said about the subconscious mind resembling a fertile garden spot, in which weeds will grow in abundance if seeds of a more desirable crop are not sewn therein”.

In Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich, he says that our words and thoughts are feeding our subconscious mind just as a garden feeds the seeds which grow in it. Unless our thoughts change, our circumstances are likely to remain the same. By watching our thoughts carefully, we can see the foundations of our future lives.

Self Hypnosis For Money Attraction – Self Image

Don’t doubt that you are not under the influence of self hypnosis already. The life you are living is due to the very thoughts and ideas which you have adopted in life as your very own. Learn to become more aware of these thoughts through meditation. Choose your thoughts carefully because they are the “keys” to your future. What do you say about yourself to others? Your self image is a big controlling factor in the life you are able to create. How do you see yourself?

hypnosis for wealth and prosperity

Maxwell Maltz discovered, while working as a plastic surgeon, that many of his clients were unable to improve their lives after surgery. They still had the same self image, even after their corrective surgery. So Maltz started working with their self image first, before they undertook any surgery. He found that many of his clients no longer needed the surgery because the fault wasn’t in their “looks” or body shape. It was a poor self image which was responsible for their difficulties and failures in life. 

Changing your self image is a very effective way to change the circumstances on your life. If you continue to try very hard to create the life you want, but continue to fail, chances are pretty strong that it is down to a negative self image. Checkout Maxwell Maltz’s book Psycho-cybernetics.

Affirmations and Self Hypnosis For Wealth And Abundance

For years I used negative affirmations on myself. I had a very poor self image and low self esteem. I would talk to myself in a very negative way, over and over. No wonder my results in life sucked! Many people do this. If you have a negative inner voice which continually puts you down, instead of lifting your up and empowering you, it’s time to make a change. Changing this inner voice to a more positive one takes time. After all, you may have been doing this for quite some time. Would you talk to anyone else like this? Perhaps not!

hypnosis for wealth and prosperity

If we continually put ourselves down, our chances of creating a life of wealth and abundance are pretty low. After all, would we believe we deserved it if we only thought negatively about ourselves? Probably not!

Meditation For Abundance and Prosperity

Noticing your inner chatter is the first step towards making a corrective change in your self talk. You can do this simply by sitting quietly and watching your thoughts. Don’t engage with them, just observe. Start off doing just 5 minutes at a time. Over time, you’ll find you can do it for longer periods. Once you have done this for some time, you’ll want to start installing some new “software” in place of your old limiting ideas about yourself.

You might have some old negative beliefs about money too. You can be pretty sure that they are blocking the success and wealth in your life. Uncovering these limiting ideas is a major breakthrough. It will give you a huge awareness about what you have been “hypnotised” to believe already regarding money.

Prosperity Hypnosis – Meditation For Money And Prosperity

Stuart Lichtman has written one of the best books I’ve found on this subject. He developed what he called the Cybernetic Transposition technique. This technique allows you to tap into your subconscious mind and make specific instructions so that your unconscious mind will be continually focused on achieving your most important goals. One of the main problems with our goals is that we have competing parts of our minds which want something else. We say we want something specific, but then something else which we want gets in the way.

For example, we say we want to lose weight so we go on a diet and start hitting the gym. However several weeks in we fall back into our unconscious habit patterns where we stay out all night, eat what we want and give up exercise. By training our mind to focus on what we really want, and by aligning all parts of our brain with this goal, we can make more effective steps forwards in a shorter timeframe.

hypnosis for wealth and prosperity

What we really want is the key here, too. We often find a goal which we think we want, but under closer investigation we may find that it’s not really that important to us. Therefore, to pursue it would be a waste of time, since we’re likely to give up when we come up against any difficulties. Getting clear on your goals and aligning all parts of your brain with that idea is what Stuart Lichtman teaches in his book. Get your copy here.

Hypnosis For Wealth And Prosperity – The Right Business Model

We have been programmed by television and the media to believe in some dream, utopian lifestyle. But many of us won’t realise it. For years I continued working in low paid jobs, believing some magical destiny was awaiting me! It wasn’t until I woke up did I realise that it was never going to give me what I wanted from life.

“If you continue to do what you have always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always gotten”.

Working for someone else won’t pay you more than a limited monthly income. If you want something more, you’ll need to do something different. If you want to realise more wealth and prosperity, you’ll need to step away from your comfort zones and look for a different business model.

hypnosis for wealth and prosperity

It’s now possible for anyone to start an internet based business and build it up around existing employment to the point where your income grows beyond that of your job. Because an online business is scalable, the income potential is much greater than most jobs where you are trading your time for money. It takes time and effort, of course, but so does a normal job. The difference is that an internet business can be grown and scaled and automated, whereas in a job you’ll always need to keep turning up for work, if you want to get paid.

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Why Your Internet Business Is Failing

There might be a few reasons why your internet business is failing. Here’s a few of the reasons why I failed in the past. Successful online business owners aren’t afraid of failure. In fact, they see failure as ‘feedback’ rather than failure. If you continue to fail for long enough, you’ll eventually learn what not to do and therefore learn to use strategies which work. Ultimately, it’s easier to quit and blame whatever strategy you are using. It’s much harder to keep going and accept that you simply didn’t use the right strategy, or use it in the right way. Keep learning and never quit, you can’t fail if you stick to that mentality!

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing

why your internet business is failing

So what’s the main reason why your internet business is failing? One of the main reasons I failed so many times was that I simply didn’t know what I was doing. I was all enthusiasm and no knowledge. The idea in my mind was that I could make money very quickly online. I soon learned that this wasn’t the case. In my mind, I thought I could make money by just throwing up a website and letting it find customers for me. My ignorance soon caught up with me though. I learned through many failures online what didn’t work. Putting up a website is no guarantee of success. Think of your website as a tiny little store in outer space and you’ll come somewhere close to how many people will actually visit it, without you working at it.

1. Expectation

Are your expectations too high? Are you expecting an online business to be easy? I expected people to come running to my websites because there were there. It took a long time for me to realise that the key to making any kind of success online is by getting people to your products through your website, if you have one. If your expectations are too high for your online business, and you’re looking for quick success, you will likely be disappointed.

Any business takes time to build up. Don’t expect to make it big in only a few months. Would you expect that from a normal business. Of course people so have huge successes online in less than a year. However, they massively commit to their business in more ways than one. Could your expectation be too high for what you have put in? Could this be why your internet business is failing? What have you beed spending most time on in your business? Are you growing personally and professionally?

2. Lack Of Specific Knowledge

why your internet business is failing

I started out with a lot of enthusiasm and no knowledge. Seeing how little I knew took a lot of the shine off the idea and by the time I realised how much work was ahead, I was already pretty committed. Had I known how difficult it would be, I might never have started! Getting the right knowledge upfront is key.

I jumped around from one system to another, never really getting the continuity of training and expertise I needed. It was always the next “shiny object “which promised more riches in less time. I bought into the idea because of my lack of knowledge. It took a long time for me to realise that it was a long term business, like any other.

3. Shiny Object Syndrome

Because the internet is so accessible, it’s also very easy to become overwhelmed with information. There’s always something better than what you’ve already got. Someone is always there to promise the unobtainable. If you’re struggling with one direction, there’s always someone promising you an easier path. This is known as ‘shiny object syndrome’. Sticking to a path and finding a community and good mentors is key to avoiding this pitfall.

4. Commitment

why your internet business is failing

How committed are you to your internet business? This may be a reason why your internet business is failing. I thought I was committed for a long time, but it turned out I was only committing my time and I was only prepared to do certain things. I wasn’t prepared to commit any money because that was my problem. It became like a self fulfilling prophecy. I had no money to give, so I couldn’t step from my comfort zone and pay for more training, software or products which would help me. So I stuck to working for hours at a time blogging.

Much of my time was spent learning various strategies. But the real problem was I couldn’t get any traction with my online business because I didn’t want to step out of my comfort zone and spend money to get things moving. The fastest way to get an online business working is to invest both time and money. Paid advertising strategies can very quickly change your circumstances with the right business model. Free content marketing strategies take much longer. You need to commit both time and money if you want to escape your job within less than 2 years.

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing – Own Your Business

If you’re not taking ‘ownership’ of your business, you’re expecting it to simply work without your input. While this is part of an internet business, the ability to automate it, you still need to asses every part of it and look for improvements. The main part of your business is you.

If you’re limiting yourself by going it alone, not seeking out help and not committing to your own personal growth, how can you grow your business? Seeking out successful entrepreneurs who can help you is a massive factor. I kept doing the wrong activities for years and it wasn’t until I changed my actions did things begin to change. This was after finding a community and getting involved in the regular online meetings.

Develop The Owner Not Just The Business

Not developing the owner is probably one of the major causes for why people fail with their online businesses. After all, pretty much anyone can start up online without any previous experience. Most people are not entrepreneurial. This can mean they bring their own mindset to their online business with them. I made this mistake too. I worked a job and expected that if I worked really hard for long enough, results would come.

But being an owner is different to a job. Affiliate marketing or drop shipping or any online business is performance related. If you don’t get things done, you don’t get paid! Working on the wrong activities can mean you never get paid, if you never make any sales. You need to take an overview of the business as a whole and focus on the best money producing activities, not just those activities you are good at, or enjoy. You also need to learn the things you’re not good at.

Self development is key to success with an online business. Both in terms of your online business education and your motivations

Who Are Your Friends?

why your internet business is failing

Another key reason why so many fail with their online businesses is that their friends and family don’t support them. If your 10 closest friends are opposed to your internet business, the changes are pretty good that they will subtly (or even not very subtly) attempt to undermine your efforts.

An internet business can be very lonely without some support. Again, this is why a community is good to find. Remember too, that your income can be determined by taking an average of the income of your closest 10 friends. “Birds of a feather flock together”.

Your Self Image – Why Your Internet Business Is Failing

If your self image doesn’t allow the concept of success to be a part of your life, you’ll self sabotage and default back to your comfort zone. This is a very important realisation to make. Unless you can get all parts of you mind ‘on board’ with your highest purpose and achievements, you’ll hold an inner blockage which you can’t get past. If you’ve ever felt like there is an ‘inner wall’ which blocks your success, it’ll be very likely to be your self image.

Your self image tells you ‘who you are’. If your continually reminding yourself that you’re not up to it, or that you can’t do something, it’ll be very difficult to move past this to create a successful online business. You need to find out this inner saboteur and take steps to remove its influence to your subconscious mind. Read Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-cybernetics and get Stuart Lichtman’s book “How to get lots of money for anything fast“.

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing – Your Unconscious Saboteur

There’s a good reason your internet business might be failing because of your unconscious behaviour patterns. While consciously you want your business to succeed, you may be sending your subconscious mind conflicting signals which maintain the current status quo, or, which block you from achieving the success you desire.

If despite your best efforts you feel as though you can’t succeed, it’s probably down to your unconscious inner blocks to success. Removing these is possible by first noticing your thoughts, words and actions. What contrary thoughts do you have about success or money? How do you talk yourself down, against your best intentions? See how to train your subconscious mind for success.

Frustrated And Want It Now?

Another reason your internet business is failing is simply down to you being too impatient. Perhaps you’ve had some success already, but it’s not at the level which you want. Remind yourself of the 80/20 rule – Pareto’s principle. This basically states that most of your success comes from only 20% of the activities which you have done. By concentrating on the 20% of actions which give you your best results, you can make more progress than working twice as hard and twice as long, on the wrong kinds of actions.

So, if you’re frustrated and want more success, it’s entirely possible that you are focusing on the wrong actions in your business. If your actions are “slow burners”, like article writing, v’logging or organic traffic generation, you will have to accept that success will come much slower than if you can use paid advertising. Paid advertising takes time too, but you can scale it up very quickly once you’ve learned it. You can’t do this with organic content generation.

Working At The Wrong Strategy

It’s entirely possible that you have wasted your time on the wrong business model too. I did this several times over. I built websites which were supposed to rank on Google and make money from both affiliate marketing and Google Adsense. The problem was always traffic but I was also using an outdated strategy.

I learned from a course which was outdated. It taught how to rank websites on Google. The problem was, it didn’t work. Or, at least it didn’t work for me. Google is constantly changing and despite the strategy working several years previously, after I had bought a ‘how to’ course, it was no longer a viable strategy.

Why You Fail – Working on The Wrong Activities

why your internet business is failing

A common cause of failure with an internet business is through working on the wrong activities. You can also get ‘stuck’ in learning mode too and spend endless hours watching “how to” videos without actually applying that knowledge. If you’ve been working really hard, but haven’t seen any results for 6 months, it’s likely you’re working in the wrong direction. Of course you should get an idea of your timeline according to your strategy.

If you’re building a niche website which you hope to rank on Google, you’re going to have to do a lot of work before you see anything happen. On the other hand, with paid marketing strategies, you can start to see sales come in much more quickly. This will also depend on the training you get and your ability to take an overview of what you are doing. I made the mistake of expecting results far too early in the grand scheme of things.

Entitlement – The Hidden “Cancer” Of Your Internet Business

I’ve definitely made this mistake too. Being ‘entitled’ means you think that just because you’ve paid for a course, or have taken a certain action, that you must get a certain result. This thing about an online business is that absolutely nothing is guaranteed.

why your internet business is failing
Mindset is everything

Although a healthy expectation gives you motivation and is necessary, too much of an expectation can become entitlement. This is the idea that success should just come to you because of something you are or something you have done already. This can bring a huge amount of disappointment with it. Keep taking a step back from your internet business and ask yourself “how am I getting in my own way?” “What can I do to move things faster?”

If you’re bringing an entitlement attitude towards your internet business, you may be doing less than you can to bring about success in the long run. If you expect results to come, without doing the right actions, you’re going to be in for an unpleasant awakening.

Until you have the results you want, consider yourself to be the main reason why, instead of placing the responsibility on someone else or on a strategy or system. Until you take 100% responsibility for your life, there’ll always be an element of blaming someone else. This means you’ll shirk taking charge, because you can diffuse the blame!

Why Your Internet Business Is Failing – Your Why?

There’s many reasons which could explain why your internet business is failing. One of them is your “why?” Unless you have a strong enough reason to make your business a success, you can easily give up before you have given it a chance. I’ve heard a lot of reasons why people simply just give up. “Not enough time” was a recent one. This is quite ironic, since something an internet business can give you is time.

why your internet business is failing

But if you don’t have enough of a reason to put time in, you won’t get any of the benefits out of having a profitable internet business. If you don’t believe it will work over the long term, it will be hard to maintain the actions required to make it a success.

Unless you absolutely despise your job, have huge financial problems, or are in a situation you can’t abide by anymore, you may not have a good enough “Why?” to motivate you to take the right actions for long enough to replace your current job and provide a growing income for the future.

What’s Your Motivation?

why your internet business is failing

Is your “why?”, (your reason for starting an internet business), good enough to motivate you towards success? If life is “ok” and you don’t have a strong enough compulsion towards creating more time and financial freedom, or, you don’t believe it’s possible for you, you’ll create excuses in your mind before you even get any traction.

Could this be why your internet business is failing? If any of these ideas have hit a nerve, it’s likely that it relates to you and your business. If you want to build an online business and learn from mentors within a community, access a 7 day video series here to learn more and get started.

Thanks for reading my article “why your internet business is failing”. I hope you’ve enjoyed it? If you have anything to add or would like to leave a comment please do. Also, I’d be grateful if you shared my post! Many thanks!

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Retrain Your Anxious Brain

It is possible to retrain your anxious brain, and use that nervous activity more productively. Our minds need a job to focus on and when we give it a task, it will set about doing it, or, finding some solution. The problem is, most people don’t do this. They allow their minds to wander and instead of setting it a task to accomplish, it runs riot instead, worrying and focusing on everything that could go wrong.Sound familiar? Your brain is better than the best computer. It can find solutions to the problems in your life, if only you’d let it. Controlling your mind is a valuable skill, even if it is only to calm it down or focus it on a task.

In the book Chimp Paradox, Steve Peters uses the analogy of having a chimp in your mind! Your chimp wants to do everything right now, it doesn’t care about anything other than instant gratification. The other part of your mind is the human side, which understands consequences. Your job is to balance out the two. If your ‘chimp’ runs wild in your mind, it could be likened to your anxious thoughts creating turmoil and anxiety in your life. The human side too can be too cautious and create many problems which aren’t there in reality. It can paralise us and stop us from fully living.

Retrain Your Anxious Brain – Calming Your Mind With The Breath

Calming your mind is a useful skill to learn for so many reasons. Whenever you get stressed or anxious, you can revert to your calm state if you have learned how to do it. Using your breath is a simple strategy for calming down the ‘business’ of the mind. As you become anxious and stressed, your breathing will become shallower and more rapid. By taking control of your breathing patterns you can reverse this pattern.

Focus on your in breath and out breath. Breathe in from the base of your diaphragm through the nose, and breathe out through your mouth. Count slowly from 1 to 5 on your in-breath, and from 1-10 on your out-breath – or whatever you can manage. Your out-breath though should be longer. Try to expel all the air in your lungs on your out-breath. Hold for 2 counts before breathing in again. Try and extend this time for longer periods each time. Breath in for 5, hold for 2 and breathe out for 10.

As you practice this you will notice it takes all of your attention. Do this for as long as you can. This exercise can be used to calm your mind and increase your oxygen intake. Breath hold divers use this to extend their breathing capacity. By expelling all the air in your lungs completely, you can breath in a fuller lung full of air and expel any ‘dead’ space of trapped air in your wind pipe. Controlling your breathing is a fast way to regain control of your anxious mind and slow down your breathing and heart rate. The more you practice this, the easier it will be to use this exercise when you’re feeling anxious.

When you find yourself in an anxious state, do 10 minutes of this breathing exercise; breathe out for 5, hold for 2, breathe in for 10. Repeat for 10 minutes or as long as you like.

Retrain Your Anxious Brain – Focus On A Goal To Accomplish

If your brain is running rampant with thoughts about a problem you have, you can also use it to speak to your unconscious mind to give it new instructions. For example, many people are anxious about money. Rather than having a focus to solve it, they run over the problem again and again in their mind, without an obvious solution. This creates anxiety and the subconscious mind doesn’t have a solution because it’s not been given any specific instructions.

how to retrain your anxious brain

Hand over the problem to your subconscious mind and it will provide you with solutions. You must wait for feedback from your subconscious and be attentive to it when it comes. Calming your mind is the best way to ‘listen’ to the feedback from your subconscious mind. If your mind is running rampant with anxious thoughts, you won’t be able to listen to your subconscious mind giving any feedback. Also, you will confuse your subconscious mind with all the ‘chatter’.

Tell Your Unconscious Mind What You Want

Create a goal or action plan which will solve your problem. For example, if it’s money, decide what you want to do to change your circumstances. Focus on your goal and use affirmations, mantras and positive intention to direct your subconscious in the direction of your intent.

In Stuart Lichtman’s book How To Get Lots Of Money For Anything Fast, he uses what he calls the cybernetic transposition technique to focus your intent to ‘talk’ to your subconscious mind.   We all do this to an extent already. The difference with cybernetic transposition is that Stuart explains how to communicate your ideas more specifically to your subconscious mind. This is done through the basic three step process which lets you focus on a very specific outcome which you want to achieve in your life.

Most people have many competing intentions. This creates confusion for the subconscious mind which tries to deliver everything you want. If the ‘chatter’ of your mind is too much, or is conflicting, it sends conflicting signals to your unconscious mind, which eventually gives up! By getting clear on your intentions, you dramatically increase your opportunity for success. So, the main problem for anyone with an anxious mind, is that they are sending negative signals to their unconscious mind and creating more of the same. Learn more in Stuart’s book here.

Retrain Your Anxious Brain – Speech and Thought

You can retrain your anxious brain too, by becoming more aware of your thoughts and speech. Your unconscious mind is listening attentively to everything you think and say. It is attempting to deliver results in your life based on what you want and how you think. By becoming more aware of your thinking and speech patterns, you can more specifically focus your mind on creating what you want, rather than by creating through default and unconscious creation.

In Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich, he likens your unconscious mind to “a fertile garden spot in which weeds will grow in abundance, if seeds of more desirable crops are not sewn therein”.

He is referring to the thoughts you ‘feed’ your subconscious mind. The continual thinking process going on in your mind, is part of the creation process of your life. Thoughts which are contrary to what you want, create conflict in your mind. If you can observe this, you can become a more conscious creator in your own life.

how to retrain your anxious brain

Retrain Your Anxious Brain – Meditation

One strategy for observing your thoughts is meditation. Sit still and comfortable for 5 minutes, without stopping, with your eyes closed and simply watch your inner mind. You will notice chattering and self talk come up. Don’t engage with it or attach yourself to this talk; just watch for 5 minutes without becoming attached to the speech.

The first step in changing your inner dialogue is to watch it and dissociate your self from it. It is not ‘you’! As you learn to watch your thinking as an observer, extend the time period in which you do it. Start at 5 minutes daily and gradually increase this time period. You will find a great inner peace in doing this if you persist for long enough.

Retrain Your Anxious Brain – Your Story

A lot of the inner chatter in your mind is your story which you continue to tell yourself over and over. Your ‘story’ is the things you say to yourself to excuse your behaviour and explain why your life is the way it is. What are you constantly telling yourself over and over? Why are things the way they are? What happened to you anyway? The story you tell yourself, and others, is a big clue as to why you want to retrain your anxious brain.

This is your ‘self image’. Your self image plays a huge role in how your life plays out. If you want to change something about yourself or your life, change your self image. Why? Because it is your self image which continually tells you ‘who’ you are. Think about anything you’ve ever tried to accomplish. Let’s say you want to lose weight, or increase your income, for example. You started off with the best intentions and perhaps gained some ground, only to fall back into your comfort zones to ‘normality’.

How Do You See Yourself?

Let’s use the losing weight example. You start by joining a gym. You get into some good habits but then your unconscious programming hits in and you find yourself on a night out having a few drinks. Then, you lose momentum and then you give up. What happened? Your unconscious behaviour patterns took over. Those are the ‘key’ concepts which you believe about yourself which keep you ‘safe’. A consistent world view keeps you safe and this is based on your self image what you ultimately believe about yourself.

retrain your anxious brain

Maxwell Maltz discovered that many people going for plastic surgery later felt the same way about themselves, despite their new looks/feature/s. He discovered that if he changed someone’s self image, they often felt so different that they no longer wanted/needed the surgery. Checkout his book psycho-cybernetics here.

How To Retrain Your Anxious Brain

So how is the self image developed and how can we change it? The self image is the most important part of your mind, if you want to make any changes. Unless you see yourself a certain way, you’ll always struggle to produce those results in your life. It’s much easier to change your self image, that to fight against it. If, for example, you don’t see yourself as a success in life, it will be very difficult to attain success, given your view of yourself.

That’s because you will sabotage your efforts to achieve it somehow, because, deep down, you don’t believe you’re worth it. No-one can persuade you that you’re a success either, if you don’t believe it yourself. You’ll discount the positive things people say and focus on the things you believe already. This is known as confirmation bias. It’s a tendency to confirm what you already believe about something, despite any evidence to the contrary.

So how do you change this? If we hold a negative belief about ourselves, how do we find it out and change it? Many of our negative beliefs will surface when we attempt to change something in our life. If we try and alter something in our life, and our excuses prevent us from taking action, chances are good that those are some of your limiting beliefs.

Changing Limiting Beliefs – Retrain Your Anxious Brain

If you notice these coming up, write them down. These are the keys to changing your limiting self beliefs. They might look something like this:

“I’m no good at that”,

“I can’t do that because…..”

“I’m only good at …….”

“If only things were easier…..”

“I’m just….(insert limiting belief).”

Or, your beliefs could be about attaining a better lifestyle or increasing your income level. In which case you might find some negative beliefs about money which are sabotaging your best intentions and efforts to increase your salary.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees” – Although true, this hides a negative view on money

“There’s never enough money”

“I’m not good enough/not worth it”

“That’s for someone else/rich people”

“rich people are greedy”

“That’s just for people born into money”.. etc. etc.

‘Unpicking’ your Limiting Beliefs

retrain your anxious brain

Some of the stories you tell yourself about money will prevent it from coming to you. As they come up, notice them and soften them. They are perhaps things you have believed for some time. This makes them harder to budge. Be gentle with them at first. If you have fervently believed something for all your life, it’ll be more difficult to counter this belief. Start by noticing your limiting beliefs around money, fitness, family, lifestyle, or whatever it is you want to change. Then use affirmations, mantras and positive intention to change them.

So, for example if your belief about attaining wealth in your life is stunted by a belief that “rich people are greedy” how well will this sit with you if you become rich. Not well at all! So, you’re less likely to become something you actively despise, since that will mean despising yourself! So you can use a different mantra when you notice this one coming up. “Wealthy people are generous”, for example can be used in its place. As you notice yourself saying things which contradict your best intentions, “I’ll never be…”, for example, ask yourself “Is this actually true?”.

As you learn to ‘unpick’ your ideas about life, you’ll find new ways to be which are more in line with your long term goals and ambitions. These old ideas will begin to have less power over you and you’ll start seeing better results in your life in their place.

Retrain Your Anxious Brain – What Do You Really Want?

Your brain is a super computer which is continually running day and night. By taking control of your brain through the strategies described in this article, you can become more conscious about what you are creating in your life. If you feel as though your brain is running the show, you need to take charge of it again. Don’t neglect exercise either because it helps in the proper functioning of your brain and gives it the chemicals to function at the best performance.

Recap

To recap, here are some of the main strategies I have covered in this article:

  • Breathing techniques – controlling your breathing gives you greater control over your inner mind chatter. If you are getting stressed about something, breathing exercises are the best way to slow your heart rate down, and control your thoughts by focusing on your breath.
  • Focus on a goal you want to accomplish – remember your brain is a super computer. Put it to work and it will produce amazing results for you. Ignore it, and it’ll run wild! See Stuart Lichtman’s book here.
  • Notice your speech and thought which are ‘feeding’ your unconscious mind. Are you feeding it the thoughts, words and deeds which will produce the results you want in life? Read Think and Grow Rich.
  • Meditation – Learn to meditate and you’ll bring more peace and tranquility into your life, and make you more aware of the thoughts you are feeding. Everyone has the opportunity to start with at least 5 minutes of meditation per day. It’s a discipline which can change your life.
  • Your Story – What do you constantly tell yourself? This is your self image. You are becoming the version of yourself which you give most energy to. Is this how you want your story to go? If not, change your self image. Read Maxwell Maltz’s Psycho-cybernetics.
  • Change your limiting beliefs by first uncovering them and then challenging them. Are they true? Then, focus your mind on contrary ideas which support your new self image and destination. Use affirmations, mantras and positive intentions to re-program your subconscious mind.

As you can see, there’s lots of ways to retrain your anxious brain. Don’t neglect exercise though, because often regular exercise is the only thing missing. Notice how frustrated and anxious a dog gets it if doesn’t go out for a run. We are no different except we can get too caught up in our minds to the exclusion of the obvious. I hope you have enjoyed this article “retrain your anxious brain”. Please leave a comment below and share!