SUCCESS KEY #1:

Embrace Your 3 Mental Ds

Most people focus on all of the “tactical” aspects of creating an online business, such as promoting the right offers, generating traffic and converting leads into buyers…

And these are very crucial to your success and is why I talk about them in depth in my “Only 3 Things” Online Business report. If you haven’t read it yet – you should.

But online business success really starts in your head!

Success in anything, but especially business, always starts with the right mindset, and without the right mindset from Day 1 you will never build a successful online business.

Your first step to success is therefore changing the way you think.

And this applies to both selling your own products and services online and selling commission based products as an affiliate marketer.

Whenever asked about my personal successes, in both business and real estate, I always tell people that they must possess and maintain what I call the 3 Mental Ds.

These are your Dream, Desire and Dedication.

Without these you are doomed.

dream /drēm/ noun

a cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal.

No one wakes up one morning and says “I think I’m going to be an entrepreneur and start an online business today”.

The reality is that you decide to start an online business with a specific, ultimate dream in mind. This dream is unique and personal to you…but every entrepreneur has one!

For some it is the freedom to spend more time with their children and watch them grow up…

For others it’s the freedom to satisfy the travel bug inside of them by traveling around world…

As many of you on my email list already know, for me it’s to have the freedom to spend more time in my home of Barbados, a tiny island in the Caribbean, with my parents, while fulfilling my passion and love for surfing.

I also use the majority of the money I earn online to fund my real estate investments and continue to grow and protect my wealth.

So before you start building your online business you need to get clear on your dream, your WHY” and never forget it!

de·sire dəˈzī(ə)r/ noun

a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen.

But success is not achieved by simply being a dreamer!

Once you know the dream you are after and have it imprinted in your mind, you have to have the mental desire to achieve your dream.

It is really easy to dream of running your own successful online business that provides you with the freedom to live your life on your own terms but still never actually work towards making this dream a reality.

If your dream is to travel the world, you can sit in your work cubicle from Monday to Friday and google exotic travel destinations around the world…

But without the desire to truly change your life you will never have the time, money or freedom to experience this dream of world travel.

By keeping your level of desire for success as high as possible while creating your online business you will remain motivated to keep moving forward.

This is why 99% of successful people listen to and read motivational books and podcasts on a consistent basis.

It is to maintain the highest level of desire to deep them pushing forward while leaving the rest behind.

ded·i·ca·tion /ˌdedəˈkāSH(ə)n/ noun

the quality of being committed to a task or purpose.

Now that you have your dream in mind and the desire to achieve it, the final mental D to success online is staying mentally dedicated to your success.

This goes hand in hand with your desire.

You can have a dream and the desire to achieve that dream but without dedication you will never reach your goal of success.

Building an online business and becoming an entrepreneur requires sacrifice.

There is no way around it because there simply is only so many hours in a day.

Your dedication is what keeps you from letting too many of those hours slip by while preventing you from…

…heading out to the bar for drinks with friends when you know you need to create online ad campaigns that will drive more leads and ultimately customers to your business

…or even watching the Sunday night NFL game instead of crafting a series of follow-up emails that will engage, educate and nurture leads and ultimately turn them into paying customers…

It is very easy to be like everyone else and be complacent and average but it is the entrepreneurial no quit attitude that leads to success.

SUCCESS KEY #2:

Get Focused and Stay Urgent

The most successful people in business always act with focus and a sense of urgency.

The sad reality is that most people don’t even get started and come up with any and every excuse they can find…

• “I’m too old”.
• ”I’m too busy”.
• ”I’m not smart enough”.
• ”I don’t have enough money to get started.”
• “I’ve tried and failed before so I’ll probably fail again.”
• And on and on and on and on….

Early on I realized that I too was urgent to achieve freedom and live my dream.

I knew I was only getting older, that my parents who I wanted to spend more time with were getting older and….

…that every day I spend answering to someone else’s agenda is another day of my life lost!

So I decided to dedicate 1 hour every day to uninterrupted focus on building my online business. I call this my “HOUR OF POWER”.

During this hour I would sit at my computer desk and turn off all distractions, including my cellphone and the Internet. This was because I knew I was surrounded by so many distractions!

You see, at the time I was 22 years old, single and new to the big metropolitan city of Toronto in Ontario, Canada.

In your early twenties there is a crazy world of endless things to distract a young man…

From peer-pressuring friends to…

…professional sports on TV every night to…

…attractive women at night clubs & bars to…

…huge music concerts & music festivals!

With these distractions removed for 1-hour each day, I knew I’d be able to achieve consistent business building productivity that would keep me on the path to making my dream a reality.

Still to this day I complete an “HOUR OF POWER” every single day!

SUCCESS KEY #3:

Find A Mentor and

Join A Community of Like Minded People

One of the biggest struggles people go through when they are taking the initial plunge from earning income through a traditional and comfortable 9-5 job to simulataneously launching an online business and working towards being their own boss is FEAR OF FAILURE.

You spend time reading success story after success story of people no different from you earning 6 and 7 figures online…

…but yet you still doubt whether or not “YOU” can actually achieve the same success too.

There is this little voice inside of your head that is constantly casting doubt and trying its hardest to hold you back!

This is natural….it is normal to experience this because starting any business alone is a scary process.

But it doesn’t have to be!

When I first made the decision to take control of my life and start an online business I knew very little about marketing and business…and it was scary!

But one thing I knew for sure was that I wanted success so badly and I wanted to take the fastest path to success!

I knew to do this I had to educate myself and surround myself with people who had already achieved the success I wanted.

So I joined an online business education training program and started attending masterminds. For 2017 alone, I have spent over $40,000 on growing my knowledge and marketing skills through coaching and networking events.

This resulted in me finding a mentor and coach who has already built a 7 figure business to help guide me along the way.

It also allowed me to meet hundreds of people with years of business success and experience that have been through the ups and downs of the entrepreneurial journey.

This not only gave me more confidence but also provides me with the support I need to stay motivated and dedicated to my dream.

This drastically accelerated my successes and will do the same for you.

You have got to do the same!

SUCCESS KEY #4:

Provide Value and Use A Proven Business Model

One of the most restricting things you can possibly do is try to create your own online business from scratch while figuring out everything on your own.

Many people try to learn how to:

• create a website and blog
• write blog post and online articles
• create online advertising campaigns
• create front-end products
• create back-end products
• write sales copy
• create an online sales funnel
• build opt-in pages
• write follow-up emails

As they spend time trying to master all of these skills from scratch they end up piecing them together along the way with the expectation (hope) that the final business they create will be profitable.

What ends up happening is various pieces of your online business underperform and become what I call “profit constraints”.

Don’t do this! Don’t reinvent the wheel!

Instead, find a proven business model that works and that others have had success with.

Preferably a proven model that offers perks, such as products you can license, Done-for-You services and automation tools that help drastically accelerate the business creation process for you.

If you do choose to create your own offers, or already have your own suite of offers, then consider outsourcing some of the tasks that you

don’t have the skills to do quickly. Momentum is key!

And ensure that all of your offers provide your customers with more value than their sale price!

SUCCESS KEY #5:

A High Converting Sales Funnel

When starting out many people are blinded by the notion that the key to building a successful online business is mastering the latest traffic generation tactic, like Facebook Pay-Per-Click or YouTube ads.

They think that the more clicks or views of their ads at the cheapest cost per click (CPC) or cost per view (CPV) will guarantee that they make more money.

They therefore end up chasing the latest strategy that promises boatloads of traffic to their website, blog and sales pages.

The truth is that the cost of the clicks on your ads and the number of leads you drive to your website mean nothing if you don’t have a high converting sales funnel to flow your leads and customers through.

Conversions are more important than traffic and a sales funnel is what converts your leads.

Think of your sales funnel as a step-by-step process that you take a stranger through that allows them to go from knowing nothing about you and your business to actually buying your offers, products and services.

Your sales funnel must be effective at doing 4 things:

• Introducing yourself and your brand to new leads
• Nurturing and converting these leads into paying customers
• Ascending your customers up your suite of products or offers
• Ultimately turning your existing customers into repeat buyers.

This is the very first thing you need to setup for your online business as this will become the engine that drives your sales. Once you have a well-optimized, high converting sales funnel in place then when you spend $1 on advertising you will make back $2 or more in revenue.

Only at this point can you confidently go out and buy Facebook ads, newspaper ads or even radio ads, knowing that you will make a return on

your investment (ROI). Now advertising is no longer a cost to your business but an investment in your business.

Without a high converting sales funnel that ensure your ROI, no amount of traffic will result in profits.

SUCCESS KEY #6:

Drive Highly Targeted Traffic

The success of your business hinges heavily on your ability to acquire customers…

…and your ability to acquire customers depends on your ability to market your products and offers to your “target” audience.

Your need to focus on driving high quality targeted traffic to your online sales system and offers.

But a misconception most people have when building an online business for the first time is that if they can get hundreds of clicks on their

online ads every day they will automatically make sales.

If a ton of clicks is your goal, simply achieving this is very easy as there are thousands of online ad platforms that will happily let you place ads in exchange for your money.

However the reality is that not all traffic is equal.

You have to remember that this traffic and these clicks on your ads are actual people! People with varying emotions, desires and goals they wish to achieve.

If you don’t place your online ads in front of the right people (your target audience) it won’t matter how many people click your ads, land

on your website and listen to, read or watch your sales message.

Quality is more important than Quantity!

All successful online business owners understand the importance of message-to-market match and offer-to-audience match.

They know that their success is dependent on getting their marketing message in front of the right people, through the use of online ads…

People with whom their ads and ultimately their offers will resonate with and appeal to.

And this all starts with having an intimate understanding of your target audience.

You need to understand:

• who they are,
• what their typical day looks like,
• where they hang out,
• what books and magazines they read,
• what their “true” desired end result is,
• why they want to achieve it and
• what is holding them back from achieving this desired result right now.

Once you have this deep understanding of your ideal customer you will know where to place your online ads to attract an endless number of higher quality leads and ultimately buyers.

SUCCESS KEY #7:

Understanding Your Marketing Metrics

Once you have high quality traffic being fed into your high converting sales funnel, your online business revenue and profits become solely dependent on your understanding of marketing metrics.

It’s all about math at this point!

When you put a dollar into advertising your business online how many dollars do you get out in return?

The most successful online business owners understand this. They know their numbers and check there numbers everyday!

As a marketer of your business you must understand that acquiring a customer comes at a cost and that each customer is worth a certain amount to you over their lifetime as a customer with you…

And if you can acquire as many new customers as possible without it costing you more than a customer is worth to your online business then you can grow your online business month after month.

Each month you track your marketing metrics and allow these numbers to dictate how you optimize your ad campaigns.

Knowing your marketing metrics is how you make the competition irrelevant and scale up your business to 6 figures, 7 figures and beyond!