Welcome to episode number 110 of The Growth Booth where today I want to talk about seven secrets that I believe could help you break the shackles of whatever it is that's been holding you back and help you hopefully make this your best year yet. Now, as always, you can watch this on YouTube. In fact, it's a benefit to watch the video version of this episode here today, instead of just listen to the audio because I do have slides, I am sharing my screen. So to watch the video version, you can do that over at YouTube, just head to youtube.com, look for The Growth Booth, episode number 110. Or you can head over to thegrowthbooth.com and navigate to episode number 110. If you go to thegrowthbooth.com, you'll also be able to get the transcripts and links to anything that we mentioned in the show here today. 

So, how to break the shackles that are holding you back? Before I get into that I want to give you some quick background. I want to start by just saying that what I'm going to be sharing here today is based on my experience. I definitely don't have all the answers, but I have been in the trenches for the best part of two decades now. I started my first online business in 2005. I've built six different multimillion dollar businesses since then, I've done over $100 million in sales through my businesses over the years and have helped thousands of people get started, you know, to earn their first dollar online. And I do believe that success leaves clues. I feel like there's a series of things that you can do to stack the odds of success in your favor. I'm going to be talking about those in this episode here today. I should also add a little bit about my backstory. 

For those of you that don't know my backstory, I got started online, almost sort of, just by chance really. I met my wife in Lake Tahoe, California in 2003. I came to Argentina, a year or so after that. And I was on a tourist visa, I couldn't speak Spanish, so I started researching online ways that I could build online businesses and I fell into the rabbit hole very much by chance. In fact, I would say it was a stroke of luck because it opened my eyes up to a whole world of possibilities where I could get lifestyle freedom beyond my wildest dreams. I'm incredibly thankful for that. And then over the past almost two decades, I have learned an enormous amount. What I'm sharing today are things that I wish someone would have shared with me, way back when I was getting started on online. I also want to say that we've been around the block a few times – when I say we, I'm talking about me, my business partners, my team, and everyone in the background here. We've seen people in all kinds of situations from all corners of the globe who have got past obstacles to succeed online. I think what I really want to talk about today are a series of foundations that I feel like absolute keys, cornerstones to success, and the secrets to help people have been able to succeed, not just my own business, but also the people that we've helped over the years. 

Now, I want to share how to break the shackles, I want to talk about seven simple shifts that I think will force you towards this path of success and the number one secret to seeing online success in my opinion, and then I'll finish up with a simple lesson that I think will serve you well as you build any business, online, offline, or anywhere else for that matter. 

So why do some people achieve massive success in business and in life, while others seem to sort of aimlessly be blown through life or sucked through life and the current? My feeling is that has to do with your current reality. And what I really mean by that is your mindset. Your current reality is what you expect of yourself. It's your state of mind, and it will make or break your success in every aspect of life. Let me give you an example. If you expect an average result and behave in a way that average people behave, then you will ultimately become and be average. And that might be absolutely fine. There might be nothing wrong with that. However, if you want to raise the bar a little bit, and achieve something truly extraordinary, then you need to expect success and behave in ways that are congruent with getting that success. So that's where we say success leaves clues, and if you behave and take actions and can sort of reprogram your thoughts to think in the way that the world's most successful people think, then guess what? Ultimately, at the end of all of that, it tends to lead to more success. So that's what I mean when I talk about your current reality. 

Now, onto seven important mindset shifts that build upon this foundation of the current reality, things that could set you up for success this year and into the future beyond this year. So the first one is to actively seek radical change. If you want something different in your life, then you have to do different things. If you keep doing the same old thing, year in, year out, and guess what you're going to get more or less the same results year in, year out, when you try something radically new, that's when you're going to get a different kind of result – doesn't always mean there's going to be a better result. But it does mean normally that it's a different result. One of the easiest ways to achieve something new is by doing something different, and something radically different is a good approach to get a radically different result, nothing rocket science there, but something that I think is worth reiterating. Along with that, getting outside of your comfort zone, this is where the magic tends to happen. So if you're watching the video version of this, you'll see a nice little chart graphic on the screen now. On the left of it, we've got the comfort zone, and this is the area where as humans we like to stay. It's where we feel safe, it's where we feel in control. When you leave that you venture into what's called the fear zone. And the fear zone is typically where you're going to push back a little bit, you're going to find excuses, you're going to be easily affected by other people's opinions. The fear zone is sort of designed to push you back into your comfort zone to stop you doing something new. 

If you can get beyond that, though, that's where you get into the learning zone. This is where you can acquire new skills, extend your comfort zone, and eventually get to the growth zone, which is where a lot of the magic happens, where you're able to conquer new objectives, where you're able to live out your dreams, find purpose set new goals, and much, much more. This ties in with doing things differently, because when you do things differently, the more different it is, for the most part, the further outside that comfort zone you're going to go. Not coincidentally, that is often, you know, related directly to getting different kinds of results. If you can find something, a blueprint or plan of some description, or coach, someone who has achieved what you want to do, and you're able to implement a plan that they may be using, then that's a great way to blast outside your comfort zone and potentially get new kinds of results. 

The second point that I want to mention out of the seven here today is to embrace failure. I mean, most people give up on their online business dreams before the magic happens. I've seen this over and over again. I think the easiest way to get past this is to understand that failure is just part of the journey. I've failed way more times than I have succeeded, but the successes have been so much bigger than the failures that one success can dwarf maybe a dozen failures. This is because the types of businesses that we're building online are often asymmetrical, and that the upside is so much bigger than the downside. Sometimes you'll start a new business online, and there's really not that much to lose, but there's lots to gain. That's what the asymmetrical risk is all about. I think the big takeaway here is that if you've failed in the past, that is fine. Just don't let it stop you from trying again in the future. Otherwise, your hopes really, really are doomed at that point. So don't give up on your dreams. The things that you have or haven't achieved in the past have no bearing on what you could achieve in the present or the future. They are in the past, and it's what you're doing today. That determines what you're going to get or what you're going to have tomorrow. So focus on that. If you do have some baggage in the past with failure, then try to use that to your advantage. Try to learn from anything that has happened in the past and make sure that doesn't happen again. Most importantly, focus on the here and the now. 

The third point here is to understand your why. This may sound a little bit airy fairy, but I think it's critically important because if you don't have a really strong reason why, then your business plan is more likely to get derailed at the first challenge that comes along. Inevitably, there are going to be multiple challenges, multiple hurdles that you're going to have to get through. So if you've got a really strong reason why, that's the thing that's going to keep you going, keep you pushing forward through those tough times. In my mind, this is really, really important. I learned a method must be a couple of decades ago about really drilling down deep to find out what your reason why is, and that method talks about going 7 layers deep and getting to the real heart of why you want to do something. So there's a little chart here that you'll be able to see on the screen. We'll also be able to put a link to this or include it over at thegrowthbooth.com in episode number 110, where it's an example of drilling down. So oftentimes, when I asked someone why they want to start an online business, they might say, "Because I want to have financial freedom." And then I'll ask another question, "Okay, why do you want to have financial freedom?" And they might say something like, "Because I want to be able to give my kids the things that I never had." 'Okay, why do you want to give your kids the things that you never had?" "Because I want my kids to have more opportunities in life." "Okay, why do you want your kids to have more opportunities in life?" "Because I want my kids to be able to control their own destiny," and so on and so forth. 

Ultimately, you get to the point, the root of what is driving you, and there's no right or wrong to this. I see a lot of people get to the point where they're doing it for their loved ones, maybe they want to their spouse to be able to give up their day job, maybe they want to be able to focus more on their health, rather than working for the man 60 hours a week. For a lot of people with children, and not just children, but parents that they're looking after, they are the reason why as well. So there's no right or wrong here. I just think it's very powerful to know what your reason why is and keep that at the forefront of your mind when you are going about building an online business, because that'll help drag you through the tough times and the challenges which are absolutely inevitable. 

The fourth idea that I've got for you here today is what we call the soccer analogy or the football analogy. What we're really talking about here is putting yourself in a position where you can score as often as possible. Another way of thinking about this is putting yourself right in front of the goal, where you can get the ball and get a goal as often as possible. And in the business sense, we have regularly tried to do this. I think we've regularly achieved this over and over again, over the past decade plus. A couple of examples that come to mind are the office that we opened in China, we opened an office and warehouse in China must be about a decade ago. At the time, that was a pretty bold move. We didn't really know what was going to happen. As a result of that. However, it opened up all kinds of new possibilities and ultimately led to us massively expanding our e-commerce business in ways that probably wouldn't have been possible if we didn't have the warehouse and the office and a team and China. So that was an example of us putting ourselves right in the middle in front of the goal and being in a position to be able to score. We've done it more recently with setting up a massive warehouse facility in Texas. And again, when you're just starting something like that, you don't know what it's going to turn into, but you know that it's going to stack the odds of success for something good happening in your favor. Investing in coaching, investing in training, is another way of doing this. Associating yourself with successful people, make sure you're building connections, these are all different ways that you can actually do this. So that's the soccer or football analogy of putting yourself in a position to win. 

The next one I've got here is a clear vision and focus. And I think the people that sort of drift aimlessly along, giving a half-assed effort to sort of build a business, tend to get those mediocre kinds of results. If you've got clarity around what you want to achieve, where you want to be, and you've written it all down, or at least have it crystal clear in your mind, you're so much more likely to get there and the tactics that you use, the strategies that you use, they might change, but that doesn't matter because the endpoint where you want to get to remains the same. In an online business standpoint, it might be that you want to build a passive income of $10,000 a month, I don't know, whatever it may be, and you might start off down and affiliate marketing business model track, and ended up changing course moving towards e-commerce or something else. Now, the strategies changed, the tax tactics have changed, but the objective has remained the same. And that's really the important part here. 

I've got a good friend of mine who has sailed across the Atlantic a few times. And he said to me that it was very rare when his ship was pointing in the direction that he needed to be going. But by continually course correcting, eventually, he got to the destination. This is the perfect analogy for what we are doing online: you don't always have to be pointing your ship in the right direction, but it pays to know what your progress is, and to be able to change tactics and strategies along the way, but it starts with having clarity and focus around what you want to achieve. If you don't have this, then it's a little bit like trying to, you know, drive from the East Coast of the United States, the West Coast, you know, with a blindfold on and no GPS system. It's much easier when you've got a clear objective of where you want to go and a way of tracking how you going about that. 

The sixth tip that I've got here is to build an inner circle. What I really mean here is to surround yourself with people who believe in what you're doing, and going to help sort of spur you on to motivate you. This can be hard to do locally sometimes, but thankfully, in this day and age, you know, there are more and more online groups and communities that can be fantastic for this: online courses, online communities, attending live events is another good, online conferences, either virtually or in person, and in-person is really where it's at, in my opinion, but the next best thing is online. I've made lots of online friendships over the years. They say that your network is your net worth. And I think there's a lot of truth to this, if you can surround yourself with like-minded individuals, then that rising tide raises all boats. So I think that's definitely something to consciously think about. 

There are different ways to do this. You can buy into coaching, for example. We've had the blueprint Academy for the best part of, I guess, like a decade now. That has got a pre made in a circle, not just with me and the coaches, but also with the group of people that are there. So this way that you can, buy into an inner circle and reap the rewards of doing that. But there are lots of free ways that you can do it as well through different communities. So building an inner circle, I think is important. 

The final tip that I've got here from the seven, to adopt a, there's-no-tomorrow attitude, stop with the procrastination once and for all. If you want to get something done, then you just got to buck up, and actually do it. Take massive action. That's what moves the needle. That's what gets you moving forward. Procrastination doesn't get you anywhere. You've got almost the entire year ahead of you, if you're listening to this podcast, when it's just paint release. But if you're listening to it later, that's okay. Because this is something that you can use and adopt as part of your identity, a person that just gets something done in the now. Because otherwise, a year goes by in the blink of an eye. I mean, we've seen that happen. It's time to understand that miracles happen in the now they never happen in the laters. The things that you do today that ultimately dictate what you have and what you get tomorrow, it's simple cause and effect. But many people tend to forget this. I love the Nike slogan of "Just do it." Just do it; take massive action. That's what's going to help lead you towards the metric. 

So to recap on this quickly, we said seeking radical change, embracing failure, understanding your reason why, putting the ball in front of the goal as often as you can so you're in a position to be able to score, having a very clear vision and focus, building an A team and a network by building that inner circle, and adopting a there's-no-tomorrow attitude. Now I do have a couple of final things to leave you with here. The first of those is the big secret, which is to keep it simple. This is probably the most underrated piece of business advice or life advice that I've ever got, but it seems to be the one that I keep coming back to. I've seen people far more successful than me say the exact same thing, so keeping it simple is huge. "What's the easiest way that you could achieve what you want to achieve? What's the simplest way to start taking action today?" and then just do it. 

I want to also leave you with something that I call the math of money formula. And this is a formula that will help you measure different opportunities and gauge different opportunities against one another. The math of money has essentially four different levers, four different inputs, if you like, and the way that these interact with one another, ultimately determine how much money you're able to make from an opportunity. So the different variables here, traffic, conversion rate, profit per sale, and the number of repeat sales. Let's say you're setting up a lemonade stand right in front of your house, and you're going to get some traffic coming past, and let's call it, let's say, in a day, you get 100 people coming past. Let's say that one of those people, 1% is someone that converts into buying your lemonade. And let's say you're making $1 profit per sale, and you're not getting any repeats. So you're just having one sale, if you do the math on that, you would get $1. That's the amount of money that you would make from that poor little lemonade stand over the course of a day. 

Now, where this gets really interesting is when you start tweaking some of these levers. So if you double, just one of the things, let's say you're able to double the conversion rate from 1%, to 2%, that doubles your bottom line. So you've gone from $1 to $2, and everything else remains the same. Now, if you're able to double each one of the four different variables, what actually happens is you 16X your results. So maybe, instead of putting the lemonade stand right outside your house, you put it on an intersection near your house. You're now getting 200 visitors coming past today. Maybe you are able to set your daughter up as the key salesperson for the stand instead of you, and you're able to double your conversion rates, and now you're getting two out of every 100 people purchase. You're able to raise the prices, because your daughter is the key salesperson, so you're making $2 per sale. Maybe you can put some kind of loyalty plan in place and you're now getting 2 repeat sales. When you do that, you end up with $16, you're 16x with what you started with. So understanding the math of money is something that has really helped me build my businesses over the years, and I wanted to share that with you here today. 

The other thing that I wanted to share, which has helped me with my businesses, and my investments is what some people have referred to as the eighth wonder of the world, which is, of course, compounding. Compounding can help you in a positive way or a negative way. If you make errors day after day after day, then that results in negative compounding: things get worse and worse and worse. However, if you're able to make incremental improvements day after day after day, in any area of your life, it could be financially, it could be in relationships, it could be in fitness, then you're able to get a compounding effect working in your favor. Compounding is really about how small, consistent efforts can lead to monumental achievements and is the ultimate accelerator in my mind for growth and success. When you're looking at opportunities, business opportunities, or any anything else that you're working on, think about how compounding can impact what you're doing there, and I think you'll put yourself in a position to be able to win more regularly, and to cash in more, whatever the currency is, maybe it's health, maybe it's your relationship, maybe it's money, if you're not aware of how you can get compounding to work for you. 

So just to sort of wrap things up here, I believe that in life, you have opportunities to go with the current or against the current. As regularly as possible, you want to put yourself in a position where you can go with the current. If you are thinking about starting a new business of some kind, then what's the best business model that is going to allow you to go with the current? If you're starting a new fitness regime, how can you work with the factors of your life that are going to impact what you're doing? There's always a way to make it a little bit easier, and I think that's what you need to identify so that you're working with the current instead of fighting against it. 

I want to mention very briefly, briefly, something called The Three Door Theory Of Success. This is something I've seen over and over and over again, online in particular where people start an online business and they get some kind of obstacle or some kind of roadblock and then they give up. They've hit the first door and they haven't passed through it and that's the end of that. Some people push on though, and they get past that first door one way or another, and they get to another door, another obstacle, and they're like, "Oh, man, I wasn't expecting this obstacle, what am I going to do now?" Some people will give up at the second obstacle. Some people, the people that really persevere though, will break through that second door, and they'll get to a third door. And then they'll be like, "Ah, man, I wasn't expecting this. This is not what I signed up for. There's too many obstacles, I'm going to give up, go and do something completely different." But the people that persevere and get through that third door often then unlock the magic of the business that they're trying to build, but it comes with perseverance. It comes with never giving up. 

I think that with online businesses, and it doesn't really matter what the model is, there's massive potential there for the people who have that stickability and that persistence to overcome obstacles. So use this to your advantage next time you are pursuing something new. And again, it's not just something that you can apply to online business, but really to anything in life. You never know how close you are to your breakthrough. Never give up on your dreams – you don't want to be like that guy that is millimetres away from tapping into the mother lode of diamonds. You want to be like the guy who doesn't stop until the magic happens. And don't give up on your dreams. You know, it's never too late to be able to crack the code here. I feel like in this day and age where there's so much information out there, you need to align yourself with a good coach who can help you a good training program, someone who has been there and done that. Over at thegrowthbooth.com, you'll find out about ways that you can do this. We've also got the Blueprint Academy, as well, and we've got links to that over at thegrowthbooth.com where we can provide you with mentoring and coaching. 

Look, it doesn't have to be my mentoring and coaching. There are lots of other good coaches and programs out there, but I think it's just really important that you figure out what you want, and then you go out there and get it and never give up on your dreams.

This is episode number 110. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you've enjoyed this and taken some good tips away from it. As always, you can get transcription over at thegrowthbooth.com, navigate to episode number 110. We'll also include links to some slides as well which you'll be able to download the slides that I've used here today. So check that out, and I'll see you on the next episode of The Growth Booth. Bye for now.