Everyone thinks online business is s*xier than Pamela Anderson in the 90s.
At 26, my entrepreneurial dreams got lit on fire. It left me with a level of mental illness I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, the Donald Duck president. And I still have scars.
I began to hate entrepreneurship. I hid in a bank for a decade as an employee to escape the madness. I never thought I’d become an entrepreneur again, let alone start an online business.
I didn’t intend to start one in 2024.
But I wanted to sell eBooks. I liked using affiliate links to promote products I was using. And I started to hate my job with the long hours & micromanagement culture & pandering to whatever culture war was cool.
Online business has taught me a lot. Here’s what you need to know if you want to join the club.
It’s more lonely than life right after divorce
I’m not supposed to admit this.
Online business is lonely because it’s done from home with a laptop, Zoom, and a bunch of messaging apps. I rarely go out into the world. Back-to-back meetings and customer lunches are gone.
They’re replaced with emails, launches, and building websites.
Some days all you wanna do is desperately be in an open-plan office again so you can touch office carpet and get interrupted by John from accounting.
The stuff you used to hate about your job becomes what you miss most.
Takeaway
You must actively be more social in the real world to counteract the loneliness of working online.
- Join masterminds.
- Email other creators.
- Make friends in the DMs.
Trial and error doesn’t work
Going it alone is a bad decision.
You can’t trial and error your way to a $100K a year online business unless you’re an outlier, which 99.9% of people will never be. I don’t encourage you to treat online business like the lottery.
The best way I found to start is to copy.
Yep, steal everything another online business does. It’ll feel weird or even illegal. But that’s how we all start whether we admit it or not.
I got a behind the scenes look at an online business I wanted to copy by working for one of them for free, paying for coaching, buying courses, and joining paid communities.
Life is too short to wing it and hope you’ll figure it out. You 100% won’t because online business is counter-intuitive, especially if you’ve been an employee your whole life.
Takeaway
Take a proven formula for online business and use it. Adapt it later once you’re making proper money.
It’s easier to build an online business with others
My online business and life changed forever when I joined a group chat.
That’s no exaggeration. Being around like-minded people building online businesses meant I didn’t have to guess. We’d build landing pages together. Or courses. Or write books. Or give feedback on each other’s writing.
Build-in-public-together™️ is a powerful formula for success.
Takeaway
People who think they can do everything alone are overconfident and delusional. Find your tribe.
If you fail you can end up stuck in a dead-end job forever making excuses
“Making money online is a scam.”
You’ve probably read this many times. It’s easy to fall for the lie. After 10 years I’ve learned that people who fail at online business go back to a 9–5 job. To justify their failure they become an unpaid critic.
They tell people internet money is a pyramid scheme and you should run back to the freedom of….a job??? Wrong.
Just because someone didn’t figure out online business, doesn’t make it a scam. It just means it didn’t work for them and they weren’t willing to keep going or give it a second, third, or tenth go.
Your first online business will probably fail. That’s to be expected.
What’s remarkable is for someone to try again. It’s easier to become angry and blame platforms, entrepreneurs, or the world for your failures.
Online business is all a mindset game.
If you master your mindset and can deal with basic failure, rejection and setbacks, you can make a lot of money.
If you can’t, you end up at a job getting paid less than you’re worth while a sales team and company website does the selling you failed to do.
It sounds harsh because it’s true.
Takeaway
Learn from your mistakes. Get help. Lower your expectations. Have fun. Expect the business to fail multiple times.
It’s choosing hard mode
Someone said to me “Wow, your private business community is full of people with a lot of problems. Don’t you feel guilty?”
I smiled.
Choosing to start an online business is playing hard mode in the video game that is life. It’s similar to training for the Olympics. It’s not easy but it’s also not impossible.
Starting a business is full of problems. They’re good to have. It means you’re learning and growing. The wisdom you acquire is incredible.
Of course business is hard. It makes sense.
You’re attempting to start an online business that can operate from a laptop in any country of the world while accessing an uncapped income that can easily become 6,7 and even 8 figures a year.
Freedom is a prize worth paying the price for. It’s one of the best feelings in the world and my online business has given me that.
Because online business starts out as hard there’s almost zero competition. I’ve been doing it 10 years. Every business that existed when I started (except one) is no longer around.
In a way, online business is just a game of who can stick around the longest. It’s never been easier because the crowd is looking for hacks and shortcuts when there aren’t any.
Takeaway
Choose to play hard games in life. The fulfillment you get is incredible.
If your online business isn’t making any money, it only comes down to these factors…
Whenever my businesses have a money problem it’s always come down to two causes:
- Not enough people seeing what I have to sell.
- Not converting enough people into customers.
I know wannabe influencers with 500K+ followers that can’t make $100 a month. Why?
They can’t convert attention into sales because they’ve built their online business on vanity metrics, cliches, quotes, and borrowed content.
I also know people who have amazing products or services that convert better than Ryan Reynolds going on a Tinder date for the first time. But they can’t make a dollar because they have zero attention on social media.
Good ideas with no distribution lead to bankruptcy.
If you can ethically gain attention online, and convert it into sales of a product or service, it’s a license to print money and feed your family big juicy mangoes for the rest of your life.
Takeaway
Get attention. Learn how to convert attention into sales through offers, sales pages, lead magnets, and sales funnels.
That’s what I wish I knew about online business when I started 10 years ago. I’m an internet grandpa now and proud of it. If I can do it with low IQ, no degree and no money, then you can too.
