7 lessons learnt on the road to Awesome

Hooray for Guest Post Wednesday and Gareth!

The universe is a great teacher. It has an endless amount of lessons that it is willing to teach you. The only problem is that it’s not all that selective. It’ll teach you lessons you’re ready for, lessons you’re not ready for, and lessons that you’ve forgotten and need to relearn. Now, I’m not always the most attentive student, so often, I need to be shown something multiple times in order for it to sink in, and well, The universe obliges there too. These are the seven most important lessons I’ve learned about starting and running anything online.

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Lesson 1 – It’s hard work

This cannot be emphasised enough. The amount of work required to get something off the ground is massive. If you’re lazy, stick with the day job. If you can’t self motivate, stick to the day job. If the thought of going to bed at 02:00 after a call and getting up at 04:00 and being shiny and perky for another one terrifies you, stick to the day job. But, here’s the thing. if you’re doing something you love, the long hours don’t feel that long. You’re happy getting up at 04:00 as you’re excited to help the next person. It’s hard work, but it doesn’t always feel like hard work, and those are the days you have to live for, and, 99% of the time, you can sort your schedule out so that those 4AM mornings happen infrequently.

Lesson 2 – It’s scary as hell

Part of the whole “being authentic” that people love to throw around is putting yourself out there. You open up to people, you allow them to catch glimpses of who you really are. Sometimes, you reveal things that you weren’t even aware of. And you’re going to get criticised. You’re going to offend people. You’re going to have to learn that sometimes, you aren’t going to please anyone, and you still have to get up the next day and do it all over again.

And that’s not even touching on the whole “no steady paycheck thing”. Fortunately, Catherine has a kick-ass product to help you manage all that fear . (If you haven’t checked it out, you need to. It’s kick ass and promotes cage matches)

Now the lesson you’re supposed to learn here is that the fear is good. Fear tells you you’re moving. And while you may not be moving in the right direction, at least the feedback you get from the scenery changing can allow you to change course.

Lesson 3 – It’s hard work

Like I said, sometimes, I’m a little dense. I used to think the height of wit was a sign saying “Hard work never killed anyone, so why should I be the first” I lived by this motto, which is why I suspect this lesson needed to be given to me again. My superpower/kryptonite used to be “procrastination excuse generation”. I can probably come up with 15 different rational believable excuses for 12 different projects every day. It took me a while to realise that no matter how good the excuses were, it wasn’t the procrastination that people were reading. They were reading the articles I wrote while not procrastinating. I wasn’t getting any traffic from procrastination on other sites, the guest posts needed to be there. You have to knuckle down and do the work, otherwise…

Of course, I haven’t completely lost touch with the superpower. It still gets lots of practice at the day job.

Lesson 4 – Being a solopreneur is lonely

It’s amazing how few people get it. You can have a succesful business with a couple of hundred true fans. Even the most popular sites only have 100 000 subscribers. That’s 100 000 people out of 6 000 000 000. What this means is that 1 in 60 000 people will understand how you’re going to make a business out of this, if you’re lucky. That means that if you’re standing in a football stadium full of people, 1 of them is going to get it. And that 1 is you.

To counter this, you need to seek out like-minded individuals who do get it. Fortunately, the power of technology comes to your rescue. No longer do these awesome people need to be in the same city as you. They don’t even need to be on the same continent. Your best bet here is forums. Forums are great. Often they are built up around similar interests, so straight away you’ve got something in common. Some of them are composed entirely of “people who get it” and these are worth their weight in bytes.

Once you’ve found your circle, start talking to them. Comment on each others posts, do whatever it is you do on facebook (I don’t get facebook), talk. Some of your problems will already have been solved by others. Some of your issues melt away when compared to other peoples and most importantly, everyone has weird issues about something. So, while you may not have the same issues, it’s always nice to have someone say to you “you’re being an idiot, it’s not like the internet police are going to put up yellow hazard tape across your site with ‘Caution, boring content inside’ emblazoned on it in black” (although, I would kill to have that job)

P.S. if you don’t want to go out and search for an awesome group, just sign up for the awesome chat sessions.

Lesson 5 – Comparisons is not a fun game (unlike Monopoly)

The surest way to find the Dragon is to compare yourself to other people. Trying to get the same number of subscribers as Copyblogger, or the same number of Twitter followers as darthvader or real_hulk is a recipe for failure and discouragement. The only person that you are allowed to play comparisons with is past you. In fact. do this now. Go to your calender and set up a meeting in 2 months time with an automatic reminder. In the meeting, put a list of the metrics you use, facebook fans, twitter followers, monthly views, words written, anything you track, and the current values for all of them. Then forget about it. In 2 months, the reminder pops up, and you have a list of Past You things to compare yourself to. You’ll be amazed how things change.

Lesson 6 – It’s Hard Work

I keep on having to learn this one. It’s kind of a battle of wills between myself and the universe. And while I have, how does my wife phrase it, vast amounts of bloodyminded pigheadedness, I think the universe is going to win this one. If it didn’t want me to work hard, I would already have won the lottery.

Lesson 7 – Know your motivation cycles

My motivation cycles go up and down more often than Sisyphus. When I’m on an upswing, I can push that boulder up the hill like its a frictionless plane in space. When I’m on a downswing, I can’t even crawl down the hill to fetch the boulder. Because I am aware of this I know that I need to get breathing space while motivated. I need to pull some extra posts together, get some guest post slots in the future that I can write during the upswing and genreally be superproductive. All so that when I’m on the down swing I can sit and play puzzle pirates and not worry about having to work.

You need to learn what works best for you. Perhaps you can write 12000 words of a resource in one weekend, but then it takes 4 weeks to write the remaining 4000. Perhaps you can consistently write 1500 words a day that are your best work. There’s no best way here, there’s just a best way for you. Find it, learn it and make sure you take it into account before committing to things.

Lesson 7 – It’s hard work, but it’s worth every blood filled drop of sweat.

Yes it’s hard work, and yes, I did have to have that lesson beaten into me with repeated Dragon encounters, but there’s nothing like it. It’s uplifting, energising, rewarding, and just plain Awesome. Just ask Catherine.

Well, that’s all the lessons that have actually sunk in. I’m sure there are more out there. Let me know what you’ve learned in the comments.

Gareth is a slow learner which explains why he gets beaten up by the Dragon so often. You can follow his percussive learning process over on Fight Mediocrity.

http://twitter.com/dawnbwriter Dawn Brewer

Great post … but did you mention that it's hard work?
http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

hehe. Every time I start to think, “things are going well, perhaps I can coast for a bit” something reminds me that at some point I'm going to have to do the work.

It's normally presented as a choice though. Either, I can do some work consistently and continue to build the momentum, or, I can coast and have to do three times as much work later to get back to the point I'm at now. So, I'm still being a little lazy, it just masquerades as productivity.
HannahCB

Awesome post! I loved the idea of setting up a meeting with yourself in 2 month's time. It's so easy to lose track of how far you've already come when you're focused on your final destination.
Sinclair

Nail on head…. hit.
Bam! Incisive and entertaining as usual, dearest. I think I'm most surprised by the lonely part of solopreneurship. Even in the midst of a loving, fabulous community, no one knows your business like you do. Hm.
http://www.BeAwesomeOnline.com Catherine Caine

Hooray for Gareth!
http://www.anencouragingbird.com BirdyD

Oh, I hear you on the 'lessons will be repeated until learnt'! I've had the Cosmic 4X8 over my head a time or two myself.
http://twitter.com/FaeNathara Nathara

Wow! I especially liked lesson 5 with the 2 month reminder. I definitely have the habit of comparisons and it's REALLY bad for me. I really do have to remember to only compare with myself. And the other reminders were good!
http://www.chewdigestbooks.com Gwen

It is hard word and you don't usually have a cheering section or a skeezy boss breathing down your neck motivating you to get the job done. Focus is probably the hardest thing for me about doing this. I have the attention span of a gnat and I need a little voice in my head that sounds like a slave driver pushing me.
http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

That meeting with yourself thing is incredibly useful. 2 months is generally where I start to get discouraged with the fact that I'm not closer to my long term goals, so getting reminded where I started and where I am now is useful.

The other thing to do with it is that once you start using the meeting, you can just update the information every time you have a “meeting” This way you can start to see acceleration as well as just growth, and decide whether you need to change your strategy or merely continue with what you're doing because it's working.
http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

It's more than just knowing your business.

if something great happens, you post it on twitter and you get some electronic words in response, you can't just pop your head into your colleagues office and give them the news. Even though you know that the words are put there by people, you have none of the body language or tone of voice input that you may crave. And, lets face it, the Barista at the local Starbucks isn't going to give you the response. (There's a lot to be said for the office watercooler)
http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

Yeah, sometimes they only way to learn certain things is to have them beaten in repeatedly. I just wish that the implement of instruction would stop getting bigger with each lesson.
http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

Quick factoid – The Comparisons Game was actually mentioned in a tweet by Catherine some months ago. It stuck with me though and I've been trying to figure out how to avoid playing it.

The biggest problem is that comparisons are everywhere in life. Brand X is cheaper than Brand Y and does the same job. Brand A does a better job than Brand B for the same price. Sports thrive on the fact that the comparison between two players/teams is quantifiable and exists within certain rules.

Where it starts to become tricky is when the comparisons start to become subjective. Two people going after the same promotion at work. Regardless of competence, the job will go to the one the boss has a better impression of. This subjective comparison is the one you really have to guard against. Even when only comparing with yourself, especially if you're always hard on yourself. It's too easy to look at what you've accomplished and think that you should have done more, or different or better, without celebrating the distance you've travelled.
http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

I find lists to be a surprisingly useful tool to self motivate. Something about ticking items or crossing them off is satisfying.

Currently I run 5 lists
“Frogs to be eaten” list – this is things I have to do that i don't enjoy. Some of them are daily and some are once offs. I try to keep this list under an hour so I can get it done first thing.
“A week of stuff” – This list only gets cleaned once a week. it's generally stuff that is either unurgent or unimportant and can be done when I have time. sometimes there's crossover between this list and some of the later ones. I manage this one during the week by adding to it, but only remove the completed items on Friday. I normally average about 50% completion on this one. Sometimes, tasks have to get moved from here onto the frogs list, but i try to avoid that as much as possible.
“Today's Successful if” – This is a short list, no more than 3 things. Either last thing before I stop work or first thing before I start I pick three things that if they get done the day will be succesful. this could be as small as sending 3 emails or as big as completing 3 sections in a product, but they all need to be able to be finished in a day.
“Dragon Hunts” – this is kind of an overiding list of projects I am currently busy with. It's useful to keep track of everything that's going on – Guest posts, products, JV's, all that sort of thing. I try to move forward on each item on this list at leat once a week. Sometimes I'll make a choice to focus on one specifically for a couple of days, but over a week they all tend to get at least one check mark.
“Dragon Sightings” – This is a list of possible future projects. About once a month, or when I succesfully hunt one of the dragons on the other list, I'll look at this and see whether I've gathered enough information or have any concrete ideas on how to move on the things on this list. Once the sighting is confirmed, I move it onto the other lists as necessary.

Granted, this may not work for you, but I always find it useful to see how other people handle things.
http://www.anencouragingbird.com BirdyD

Well, the Universe & the agents thereof figure that you didn't listen with the Smaller Stick, so maybe a bigger one will work.

A great motivation to learn, if on the harsh side sometimes. Tough love, I suppose.

Or at least it certainly has seemed to be that way in my life.

Btw, my typesetter mind wants to know – did you intend to have two #7s? Or did it just work out that way?
http://fight-mediocrity.com/ Gareth

How did I not notice that. must have been some sort of Spanish inquisition moment.

I did not expect there to be 2 number sevens. There should have been a number 8 and then the title would have had to change and I don't know, 7 feels right, 8 doesn't.

Clearly I'm just rambling on here trying to come up with some justification other than “oops”

Clearly the next lesson I need to learn is Lesson 7 – Proofreading
http://www.anencouragingbird.com/2010/07/22/thoughtfull-thurs-rising-ashes/ An Encouraging Bird » Thought-full Thursday – Rising from the Ashes

[...] There are regrettably, many such in my life. There are places where I’ve learned very slowly, and am learning still. (for an excellent post on this sort of thing, see Gareth’s recent guest post on Catherine Caine’s “Be Awesome Online”) [...]