The Need for Speed

If you are going to successfully build a business online, you will eventually have to embrace the need for speed.

Now let me say right out the gate, I used to suck at this.

I am an online entrepreneur but my background is in journalism.

When I put together my first online course in journalism, it took me over six months. The course was super-long consisting of about 80 videos. And I labored over it.

But at least I learnt some lessons from this.

YOU HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE

Now to be fair, we all have to learn to master the skills needed to build a business online, so when you are starting out, you will be slow out of the gate.

To build a viable business online, there is a lot to learn. And it takes practice.

Basketball star Michael Jordan needed a ton of training and practice to build up to “star status” – and so will you in the online space.

In fact, if you know Michael Jordan’s story, he was initially cut from his team – he wasn’t good enough.

SUCK BEFORE YOU SHINE

Now here’s the thing – you need to be willing to suck before you shine.

What do I mean?

Ignore the naysayers, ignore the little voice in your head casting doubt on your efforts.

Building a business online involves working on skills and practicing and you need to practice, practice, practice – even if you think you suck starting out.

GETTING IT DOWN IN WORDS

Everybody has their own strengths and weaknesses. And when you are building up your skills to market and sell online, there will be things that come more naturally to you and others where you really labor over them.

Take writing those emails that you should be sending out to your email list every day.

Whoa!

It takes time to get into the swing of this.

Banging out an email or two every day takes practice.

Out of the gate, you may well suck at this.

If fact, we can be our own worst critic, anguishing over how bad our email writing is.

But the key is to learn how to write a good email and keep working at it.

PRACTICE MAKES PROGRESS

Take to heart the message of one of my mentors, “Memory Man” Jim Kwik.

Jim stresses that you need to practice to make progress.

At first glance, this might seem pretty obvious.

We know athletes do this to win gold.

Then, shouldn’t we do this when it comes to building our online business?

The key point here is making progress – not aiming for perfection.

DON’T GET IN THE LEARNING RUT

Now it is crucially important that we learn skills to build our own personal online business.

And we need to devote time to learning. If you are reading this, maybe you are currently getting training from an online mentor.

Learning and bettering yourself is essential.

But where a lot of people have problems is they get caught up in a learning rut.

They buy one course after another course and they are constantly learning.

What they are not doing is putting what they learn into practice.

SALES FUNNEL MAN

Take the example of another mentor of mine, millionaire internet marketer Shaqir Hussyin.

Shaqir can knock up the words for a long sales letter in an afternoon.

But he wasn’t always like this. He used to be a “young punk” deeply in debt who was trying to put together the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle – to build a business online.

Shaqir has been in the online game for about a decade.

His sales letter writing skills come from learning from top mentors – but crucially from doing, writing sales scripts again and again and again.

He’s a star at writing sales funnel scripts.

He’s a star at writing emails.

But he will also tell you that his skill with writing sales funnel scripts and writing engaging emails every day comes down to practice.

And Shaqir will admit that he sucked at this at the beginning.

YOU UNDERSTAND THIS

You know that there are certain things you can do that don’t involve much thinking because you have practiced them over time.

It’s the same with the skills you need to build a business online.

No baby learnt to walk without falling over.

So you need to take action. You need to practice.

If you fall down, then you pick yourself up and keep moving forward.

THE NEED FOR SPEED

And this leads us on to the need for speed.

What logically follows the grind of practicing is that you pick up speed.

When you are starting out, it doesn’t matter if you labor a whole day over writing one email.

You’ve got to start somewhere.

I personally have had a love-hate relationship with writing. As a journalist, I have labored over writing stories. And I have also knocked out stories at “lightning speed” – well, I might be exaggerating a bit here …

But my skill in writing and my ability to write fast when needed comes down to practice.

And if there is a “secret” to building up speed it comes down to hammering away at it.

If it’s emails. If it’s videos. If it’s setting up ads. If it’s sales funnels or bridge pages.

Take your time to start.

Suck before you shine.

Hammer away at it.

Ignore the inner critic, that silly critical voice in your head.

Ignore the outer critic, friends, family or anybody else who have no business in sticking their nose in your business.

Because in time you need to build up your competence to make your online business work.

And while in time you may be able to outsource certain chores in your business, you need to be working towards building up speed with your main tasks.

The longer you work in the online space and the more you gain the help of mentors, the more you will pick up on their “secrets to success”.

And what you will find is internet marketing stars work fast and furiously at the important tasks they have to do on a daily and weekly basis.

After all, if it took them a week to write one email or record one video, they would not be where they are today.

Right?

So get going, stumble and fall, but keep going in order to eventually embrace the need for speed.