Myth 1: You Can Make Money in Your Underwear
The first myth is the dude in his early twenties, in his underwear, beer in one hand, telling everyone how he makes money while he sleeps. Even if you have the most amazing product or service that ‘sold itself’, there is still customer service that needs to happen, in order to keep that business.
And, you need to continue to market the product or service. I also believe that you cannot really make money completely virtually. There is some advantage to getting out and meeting people in your area who are doing things similar to what you want to do.
If not in your local area then at least in your particular field—at conventions, etc. Interactions with other like-minded individuals are inspiring and motivating.
Another version of this myth is the ATM or Automatic Cash Machine. Just send out an email and money will magically appear in your bank account. Often promoters of this type of system will show you an image of their latest bank statement (which is illegal by the way). However, what they don’t tell you is that most of the internet marketers who have this sort of ‘cash machine’ have spent years perfecting it and have probably soaked up most of the best market. Many have a full-time staff to help with technology and marketing… which brings us to Myth #2…
Myth #2: Making Six Figures All By Yourself
The first online marketers you come across are people who are already pretty successful. They are ‘visible’ precisely because they are successful. These people are making at least six figures—and some are making seven. Some of my clients are making half a million dollars a year in this model of business. You see their marketing, you see their emails and you see their face all over everything. Perception may lead you to believe that they are, by themselves, behind their computer, making all of this stuff happen. Everybody has the same 24 hours and I can tell you that those people are not making everything happen in their businesses. They have a team! They have a team of probably a minimum eight to ten people who are working almost full time to make this happen for them. This brings us to Myth #3…
Myth #3: Making Six Figures Means You Are Doing REALLY Well
When the ‘gurus’ talk about their revenue—they are giving your their overall gross revenue numbers. This number is what they made before they paid out any expenses in their business. In actuality, they could be making hundreds of thousands in income but pocketing less than minimum wage. Don’t let this scare you off from starting a passion-based business because it doesn’t have to be like this.
The nice thing about virtual and online businesses is that your expenses should be on scale with your revenue if you manage it correctly. In the beginning there may not be a lot of expenses, but because you are not putting a lot of money into your business you are not making as much revenue. As more income starts coming in you can plow more money back into your business, which in turn helps you to make even more revenue.
Our E.S.C.A.P.E. Plan shows you how to scale up and expand your business when you reach the point where you are ready to do so (and before you reach the boiling-over point).
Myth #4: The Overnight Success
I have been in business for over eight years, and I have yet to meet a true overnight success.
As an example, it is a myth that you can put out an e-book and people will start buying it and you will make a $1000 dollars a day on sales from your $27 e-book. In order to achieve that level you would need to sell 500 e-books a day. That’s a lot of e-books! You will be doing very well if you sell a couple hundred a month!
We’ve interviewed almost 100 entrepreneurs on our Paycheck to Passion Podcast. We asked them how long it took them to start seeing success. Want to guess how long they said? The answer is 18 months to 3 years. And that is not even how long it takes to reach a six-figure revenue. Eighteen months to 3 years to where they could comfortably quit their day job and feel like they were not going to be homeless in a box on the street. This isn’t a quick and easy thing. Your business, just like any other business, is going to take time to build.
Take the case of Garrett Robinson. Garrett is an author who sells fantasy fiction books. He expects to make about $200 a month from selling one of his titles on Amazon. Obviously, $200 a month is certainly not enough to make a living. However, when you have 30 book titles each bringing in $200 a month then making a living as a writer suddenly becomes a lot more viable. You can’t write
30 books overnight but possibly you could write 30 books in a year which could generate enough income to make a living.
Myth #5: All the Good Niche Markets are Gone
The next myth is that every good niche market is taken and that it’s too difficult to break through all the noise of people vying for those niches. The reason this particular myth just is not true comes down to the sheer size of the internet market base. There are billions of people on the internet from all over the world. We have a very big international client base in Solo Biz Hacker. We have people from everywhere—the United States, Canada, Great Britain, France, Bahrain—taking our classes and being a part of what we are creating and offering.
The people who participate in our programs could choose from hundreds of others who teach the same information but others won’t be teaching in quite the same way. Our clients choose to work with us because there is something about the way that we teach that resonates with them.
No matter what your niche market is, even if it is something really competitive like weight-loss, if you are authentic and true to yourself then there is no competition because nobody can be YOU but you.
We find this is especially true for artists, because your art is completely personal. You are selling yourself, your process, your story—it is not just art you are selling. Finding and connecting with people that ‘dig’ what you are doing is what will create your success.
Myth #6: You Need to be a Tech Wizard to Have a Business Online
The next myth is that you have to know how to do everything technical yourself. You may believe that it is your job to create your website; to set up an auto-responder; to set up selling with an e-commerce storefront; to figure out how to hook PayPal in with your auto-responder; to figure out what kind of merchant account to get; to figure out how to put Facebook pixels on your page in order to retarget your ads and even how to run the Facebook ads in the first place!
Fact: you don’t have to know how to do anything online to be successful. There are people skilled in each of the tasks above who provide services and who specialize in every area of technical support you may need. If you’re not technically adept, you can easily hire someone who is.
I spent the first seven years in my business doing precisely those technical kinds of things for people. It was something I enjoyed doing. To expect that you, personally, as an online business owner, have to know every little in and out, is like saying that you have to know how every little bit of your car works in order to drive the car. This is simply not true and a lot of people feel discouraged because they feel intimidated by the technological aspects of running a business.
The sheer volume of ‘stuff’ that there is to learn can be overwhelming. One of the best insights we had was from an interview with British entrepreneur, Andrew Gunn. As a film director, he found that he was no longer getting enough work to sustain his family and he was forced to find a new way of making a living. That’s when he discovered internet marketing. Andrew had to learn everything from scratch.
Andrew’s interview really shows you that it can be done. Listen to Andrew’s interview at http://bit.ly/1F00Miy
Myth #7: You Need to Spend Most of your Time Working ON your Business not IN your Business
This is the belief that you need to be spending 100% of your time ON marketing your business and making sales. Our problem with this statement relates to the issue of making sure you are doing the work that you want to do. If you didn’t like your business and if it were not your passion you would not be doing what you are doing in the first place.
The key is to find a balance between being the ‘artist’ of your business, and being the ‘business person’. It doesn’t really matter what you are making or what you are creating. You can be making products, or creating coaching programs, it’s all the same. That core creative work HAS to come from you. It is the stuff that makes your business YOUR business. You can hire support staff to do all the necessary tasks that you totally hate doing. Think of an artist who has an apprentice—the apprentice prepares the canvas and palettes, the apprentice rinses out the paint brushes; the artist might also have a marketing person who does all his marketing for him, but what it does is allows the artist to create the art that makes the money.
One of the first things many business owners outsource is bookkeeping. It is a task that is very easy to delegate to someone who specializes in finances and keeping everything financial straight. It is important though to at least understand the basics of what you are hiring a bookkeeper to do—so you don’t get ripped off. Take some time to understand which tasks related to bookkeeping you may not want to do yourself. Once you know, then you can keep an eye on what is going on even as you delegate it to somebody else to actually do.
Myth #8: You Need to Spend a Lot of Money to Succeed
It is very easy to spend money in a business. People talk a lot about ‘investing in your business and the money will come to you—take out that second mortgage on your house—spend that money and things will start to happen’. To some extent this may be true. Having spent the money you may certainly be motivated to get your investment back!
But you really don’t need to spend a fortune (and you shouldn’t be taking out second mortgages on your home), to get the support and knowledge you need to get your business started— especially in the beginning. Try to keep your business in the black and refrain from spending money that you don’t have. Be sure that you can see the path for quickly recouping your investments. Another place where people spend too much money in the beginning is on their website. People spend $5,000 for a brand- name, handcrafted website—when what they really need is a simple WordPress site that can be created for less than $1,000.
The same thing applies with coaching support. You can spend $100,000 a year on a business coach very easily. You WILL get results, for sure, because you will be very motivated to recoup your investment. In addition, your coach will hold your feet to the fire to make sure that you do!
Alternatively, you could join our Solo Biz Hacker or similar type mastermind group and get some good beginning support at a reasonable price. Lean on the club to get the basics and spend the money later on for coaching when you are ready for the more advanced strategies and tactics of your business.