online business mindset Archives - Affiliate Marketing Mentors

To have an online business mindset is to be the visionary and not just the technician. Many who transition to online businesses make the mistake of bringing their old employee mindset with them. In Michael Gerber’s The E-myth Revisited, he points out the difference between the mindset of an employee and that of an entrepreneur who owns an online business.

The employee is told what to do in order to play a “part” in the running of a business or company. So often, an employee decides to jump ship because they imagine how nice it would be to not be told what to do, to make more money and run the show. When things go wrong they don’t see themselves as the problem. They’ve been “programmed” to think that working as a technician gives them the result. When in fact as a business owner, a different mindset is required.

Online Business Mindset – Limiting Beliefs

All sorts of factors are at play when someone shifts from employee to entrepreneur. But as an employee, you get paid whether a company is profitable or losing money. So as you become accustomed to working in a certain way, you imagine that’s also how to run a business. This can work against you, especially if you’ve been working a certain way for some time. As a business owner, you need to lift your vision and see how you can acquire more customers and drive your business forwards. A technician’s role is much smaller.

A technician’s job might be a smaller part of the business as a whole. If you’re in the habit of working for a pay cheque, you’re all the more likely to fall into this trap. Working on the business, and in the business is the role of the entrepreneur. The technician only works in the business.

Online Business Mindset – Job Vs. Business

When someone transitions from a job to a business of their own, all sorts of problems can surface. Many of these are old thinking patterns and limiting beliefs.

In a job, you get used to a pattern of behaviour which serves you. In a business, this doesn’t serve you! How you think of yourself, and your role in your business can be very limiting. If you don’t become aware of your limiting thinking, this can ruin your personal and business growth.

An online business, for example, is global. Most people are not used to thinking in global terms. We think locally; especially if we have previously worked for a local business or even owned one.

If you’ve owned a small local business, you will likely be in the train of thinking about using advertising on a small scale. An online business is globally scalable, and so such thinking will dramatically limit the growth of your business.

The Upper Limit Problem

In “The Big Leap” Gay Hendricks talks about the upper limit problem as a self sabotaging mechanism which stops us attaining our largest goals. “When we exceed our inner thermostat setting, we will often do something to sabotage ourselves, causing us to drop back into the old, familiar zone where we feel secure”.

This can be a big problem for online business owners. Their very beliefs will often sabotage their own success. If they are doubtful that they deserve success, or uncomfortable with some element of building an online business, they will use it as a reason to quit or limit their business growth.

Unconscious beliefs can act as invisible barriers to success. Just when things seen to go well, something happens which halts your progress.

Unfortunately our beliefs are often hardwired into us as small children, without our conscious control. Elements from our childhood are embedded deep within our unconscious minds and they still control us, even decades later.

An example of an upper limit problem is feeling guilt over success. If you carry any limiting beliefs over having too much money, or feeling too good, you’ll self sabotage when guilt raises it’s head and stops you from feeling good for wanting more abundance.

Online Business Mindset For Success

The entrepreneurs who succeed online don’t do much that is different from those who fail! Those who fail online just give up before those who succeed. A successful online entrepreneur has failed many times. The difference being is that they look upon their “failures” as feedback and part of the entrepreneur’s journey. See also affiliate psychology for more on this.

An online affiliate business takes time and effort before it produces the flowers of your efforts. Many quit before they see even a bud!

A good analogy for an online business is the Chinese Bamboo Tree. In a six-week period the Chinese bamboo tree grows to a staggering ninety feet tall. However, the tree takes apparently 5 years to emerge from the ground, and only if it’s well nurtured.

Most people who know nothing of the Chinese Bamboo would do the same as those online business owners who quit after 6 months. They would give up on the tree, if they didn’t know it’s gestation period.

Start With Why

In Simon Sinek’s book “Start With Why”, he points out that the greatest business owners and entrepreneurs created amazing businesses because of their “why”.

If you look at top companies such as Apple and Microsoft, you’ll see they will have a mission statement. Apple’s is “to bring the best personal computing products and support to students, educators, designers, scientists, engineers, businesspersons and consumers in over 140 countries around the world.”

Microsoft is a technology company whose mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. We strive to create local opportunity, growth, and impact in every country around the world.

Starting with “why?” is powerful because it’s a big enough reason to keep going despite whatever amount of success you can achieve in monetary terms. In Start With Why, Simon uses various examples of why companies overshadow their rivals.

In all cases, a clear and concise mission and purpose was the driving factor which propelled businesses and individuals to overcome the odds. Without a mission, bigger than your own self interest, it’s much more difficult to sustain an online business, or any purpose driven idea to fulfilment.

Summary

Having the mindset for an online business is pretty important if you want it to succeed. All manner of things will get in your way: well meaning friends and relatives, your own unconscious bias and habits and underlying beliefs which stop your from progressing.

Having a clear and meaningful objective, mission statement and vision is clearly something which matters. Top businesses and companies have them. Without a clearly defined goal it’s impossible to hit it! But it’s also important to have a “why” which is greater than your own self interest.

Most online business owners who succeed have worked for some time and overcome many of these obstacles. See also super affiliate mindset for more on this topic.

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Many affiliate marketers fail to create the success they desire because the affiliate psychology isn’t geared for success. There’s many reasons why someone’s psychology gets in the way of their business. It could be a sense of entitlement, fear of success or a poor self image which doesn’t allow for growth. Or perhaps you’re repeating unconscious behaviour patterns which don’t support your business.

The technical problems associated with building an online business can be easily overcome; especially with available software which takes most of it out of the equation. It makes an online business very accessible to everyone. However, someone’s psychology isn’t as simple. The invisible enemy of an affiliate marketer is their affiliate psychology.

Affiliate Psychology – Time For Money

Most affiliates come upon affiliate marketing in a bid to escape some job or career role which doesn’t suit them. In a job or a career, you trade time for money and get paid for your time. You’re therefore accustomed to getting paid for turning up. An online business, or affiliate marketing is very different. You get paid for the results you create. So if you’ve been used to getting paid for your time, it’s an easy assumption to make that by sitting in front of your laptop, you’ll start earning money from it. It’s not a correct assumption, but an easy one!

“Here I am working on my internet business”, you say. But in reality, you’ve poured 7 cups of coffee and browsed the internet for a while, chatting with friends on social media. Here lies one of the main problems when transitioning into an online business: being a “busy fool”.

Time on the laptop should be given the utmost importance when you start out as an affiliate marketer. You’ll likely spend time doing tasks which aren’t getting you paid, too. Time management is a skill and knowing how to spend your time with affiliate marketing is a hugely important skill.

Of course this all depends on your situation. Maybe you work really hard because you’re desperate to leave your job and want your affiliate income to replace that of your career. Your “why” is very compelling and you’ll do anything to escape the 9 to 5.

Affiliate Psychology – Affiliate Mindset

If this is the case, it leads to another potential problem – rushing in too quickly. You’re desperate to succeed so you work really hard and for long hours – but you work hard at the wrong activities.

Again, you take the strategies which have worked in a job or career and apply it to your affiliate business. It doesn’t! You’re not impressing anyone and if you’re in the habit of doing so, you’ll likely take that habit with you to your affiliate business. The “work hard play hard” mentality can apply to an online business. But you’re wasting your time working at some activities if they aren’t moving your online business forward.

Affiliate Psychology – Playing A Technician’s Role In A Business

In the book The E-Myth Revisited, Michael Gerber talks about this problem. As you transition into a business from the role of a technician in a company, it’s an easy mistake to make. You think you have a business, but you repeat your role as an employee and wonder why your business isn’t working. That’s because a business requires a different mindset to an employment. In an employment role you get paid to turn up and play a small role in a bigger picture. In a business, you must learn the role of the entrepreneur. You need to have a vision of where your business is going. You need to learn new strategies to drive your business forwards – marketing.

Are you playing a technician’s role still in your affiliate business? Do you favour activities according to how much you like them, or according to how they will grow your business?

Affiliate Mindset – Fear Of Success

Do you have a fear of success? “Of course not”, you say! But think for a minute how your life will look like once you have “made it” as an affiliate marketer. Where will you live? What will your typical day look like? Imagine making tens of thousands of dollars/pounds every month.

What will you do with your new found freedom? Is this hard to imagine? If so why is it? In many ways it’s difficult to imagine your perfect life because you have already identified with your struggle. Who are you to be so successful? Does money even matter? Your affiliate psychology determines the upper limit of your business and this also comes down to how you see yourself and how you relate to money.

If you have any issues with money and abundance, they will likely surface to sabotage your business in some way – even if it’s only to limit its growth. Have you noticed how when a successful actor reaches the pinnacle of their career and then self sabotages by getting into a fight? Or they get involved in drugs.

How can someone so successful, and which such a (perceived) wonderful life fall so bad? It’s the upper limit problem and it’s not uncommon. In “The Big Leap” Gay Hendricks talks about this in detail. It’s a great book if you’re interested in affiliate psychology and overcoming the upper limit problem.

Affiliate Mindset – Comfort Zones

If you’re a struggling affiliate it could be for several reasons. Perhaps you haven’t found the right help yet – get an affiliate mentor. You are promoting the wrong products and using a bad marketing strategy – use the SFM digital business system. Perhaps you’re losing focus or working too hard in the wrong areas. There’s many ways to do affiliate marketing and if you’ve been working for some time without results, it could be time to shift.

I worked for years in the wrong areas, doing the wrong things. Blogging was comfortable for me. I wanted to make money without spending anything. This was partly through necessity, but also because I had a poverty consciousness. I was afraid to spend money and trapped by only spending time in my comfort zone of writing content. Are you stuck in a comfort zone desperately trying to prove yourself right?

Wanting to be right about something is another mindset trap of the affiliate marketer. Do you want to be right or do you want your business to be profitable? Which do you want more? Investigate your affiliate mindset and you’ll discover that resistance to change will be based in fear. What actions are you avoiding to remain in your comfort zone?

Do You Have A Vision?

Having a vision for your future is a good way to look at what you want from your affiliate business. If you can’t see that far ahead, you may be too focused on the tiny details of your business. Work on your life, not just in your business. Ask yourself whether your business is working you, or whether you are working your business? Do you own the business or does it own you? A business is a tool to take you somewhere. If the business is only to help you feel better about yourself and keep busy, you may be thinking too small.

This is why many entrepreneurs have a vision board. A vision board is a notice board where you put up your dreams and aspirations which you want to create in your life – cars, houses, relationships, children etc. Whatever you want to create in your life, put it on your vision board. It will remind you why you’re working in your business and your reasons for doing what you’re doing.

Taking Responsibility

Are you putting the responsibility onto someone else outside of you? Are you plodding along expecting something external to save you? A victim mentality is another thing which will work against you in your own business. For a long time I was creating content (like this article) in a bid to build a six figure business from nothing! I was deluded and as much as I did, and as hard as I worked, this strategy was flawed. Google didn’t reward me, or at least not as much as I expected or hoped.

Are you taking full responsibility for all your outcomes in life? Who are you shuffling the responsibility towards? Your spouse, your parents, the internet? Once you get this, and accept full responsibility for your online business, you won’t accept failure and you’ll start making bigger steps towards the life you want.

If you’re in the habit of idling along, hoping things will eventually come your way, you may be in victim mode. Are you a passenger in the car of life or are you driving?

If you’re serious about building a long term sustainable online business, checkout the free video series available by signing up on this website. Or access one of my personal mentor’s (Stuart’s) webinar here.

Entitled Attitude

An attitude of entitlement seldom goes very far in a business like affiliate marketing. Affiliates get paid when they do the work and make sales. You can float about in a job without doing much work, at least for a while. But this kind of work ethic doesn’t work well in an industry where you’re paid on the basis of your results.

I’ve fallen into this camp too when I started learning affiliate marketing. I expected to get easy results – in part due to the advertising at the time when I got involved. Many marketers were pushing the idea that making money online was easy. You could just set up a push and play system and sit back raking in all the money. I fell for this complete lie and expected to earn money from little work. I did work, of course, but it wasn’t enough or at the right activities.

If you have an attitude of entitlement, you’ll easily give up too, or you’ll blame affiliate marketing instead of taking responsibility for your lack of results. I spat my dummy out a number of times when affiliate marketing wasn’t working for me too! Fortunately I was able to see my failures as stepping stones to success.

Poor Self image

A poor self image will always perpetuate results which reflect this back to you. If you have a poor self image and are building an affiliate business, your affiliate psychology can be a massive drain on your resources.

The reason self image is so important, in any aspect of your life, is that you take it with you wherever you go. It’s your constant companion. A poor self image will tell you that you can’t do it. It’ll tell you there’s no point in doing it anyway, and that you’re worthless even if you “make it”. But you’re much less likely to be successful in any business with a negative voice in your head 24/7.

See law of attraction self esteem for more on self image and how to improve it.