059 What it Takes to be Successful Online – With Tim Conley

Introductions

Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Learning with Leslie, the podcast where you learn, I learn, we all learn about, you know all those things like Internet marketing, online business blogging, traffic generation, social media, all that www stuff.

I started this podcast to share what I’ve learned about Internet Marketing, and what I’m still learning, and to interview other experts that can help us along in our blogging journey. I’m your host, Leslie Samuel, the Internet Marketing teacher from learningwithleslie.com.

I’m excited to bring you another interview today. I’m on the line with Tim Conley, a marketing consultant, who’s been creating marketing strategies and systems for businesses for over 13 years. I know Tim from the popular podcast called Foolish Adventures.

It’s one of the first podcast that I really got into, and one of the two or three podcast that I can actually say that I’ve listened to every single episode, and I’ve been following the Foolish Journey since Day 1. I’m excited to have him on the call today and we’re going to be talking about how he got to where he is, and what it takes to be successful online. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

LESLIE: What’s up Tim?

TIM: Yeah, what’s up Leslie?

LESLIE: Not much. I’m just here having all these technical difficulties. It’s fun stuff!

TIM: All right. Well, you need to try to keep this thing all complicated.

LESLIE: Well, you know, you got to make it interesting. Hey, thank you so much for joining me on the call doing the interview! My audience knows this already, but this is the second time we’re doing this because the first time, I lost my hard drive. So, I appreciate you taking time to do this again.

TIM: Hey, for you Leslie, any time.

What Drives Tim’s Online Business

LESLIE: I appreciate it, man. So, we got a lot to talk about in this podcast. The first thing I want to ask you, when you think about what you’re doing right now in your business, your online business, whatever it is you’re involved in, what is the best part of it all?

TIM: Oh, gosh! I just love seeing people succeed. And, I know that sounds kind of corny, but that’s one of the things that kept me going in consulting was that you have to really enjoy other people’s success, not just your own success. You don’t, as a consultant, become successful unless your clients are successful.

LESLIE: Yes.

TIM: So, that’s something that I’ve always enjoyed like seeing people’s faces light up when they go, “Oh my God! This stuff actually works.”

LESLIE: Oh man, that’s such a rewarding experience. I know exactly what you’re talking about, and I see what you’re doing over there, and I know that you’re helping a lot of people. I can imagine it’s a great feeling for you. That’s awesome. Now, how did you get into marketing?

How Tim Went into Marketing

TIM: The long story is I have been marketing ever since I was a little kid. The marketing and sales started when I was really young. But, I didn’t really get into like real marketing like being a marketing consultant until after I failed in a business.

LESLIE: Okay.

TIM: Back in the early days of the dot com era, I decided with my best friend, he and I were going to create this dot com business based around international travel and we built a business, but had no clue on how to actually get customers. So, I failed in that business, and that’s what drove me to figure out this marketing thing.

LESLIE: Now, is this an online business, an offline business? What was it?

TIM: Well, the selling was going to be online, but everything else was going to be offline. My buddy and I, we love traveling the world, and so we were going to take people on this awesome tours, the kind of tours that we did as backpackers, but with just a step above being me, the grungy backpacker that drops off of some chicken bus in Mexico. We were actually going to take people to have a more authentic cultural experience.

So, I was going to take people to Sri Lanka, and take them to all the places that I thought were really awesome in Sri Lanka, and we had nine guides gathered around the world, and they were also going to take people to these different places, and we built a business, built the structure, built everything except for the way to drive customers through. We just thought, “Hey, with this whole Internet thing, everybody’s succeeding online. You don’t even need customers. You just need a website.”

LESLIE: It sounds like an interesting idea, something that people would be interested in. Did you guys actually end up doing any trips?

TIM: No.

LESLIE: None, whatsoever?

TIM: No, no! We couldn’t! We couldn’t even set up a single trip because we didn’t have enough customers to actually run a trip. So, we had to cancel all the trips that we were going to run in our very first year.

LESLIE: Man, that’s interesting. Because a lot of people have these stories where they try to do something whether it’s online or offline. They’re trying to build a business. They have this grand idea, and it just doesn’t come together. So, it’s interesting to hear how that worked with you.

Now, what kind of planning went into that business at the time? Or, what kind of work did you do to bring it to the point where you felt, okay, now we can get people hopefully, go on these awesome trips and that kind of stuff?

TIM: Well, there was lots of planning, but never really… the customer thing. That was the part that if you’ve ever seen that joke where the gnomes who steal the underpants where there’s this business plan of theirs. Step one is steal the underpants. Step two, big question mark. Step three, profit.

Well, so we figured out what we were going to do for step one, and we figured out that step three was going to be where we’re going to be hugely successful.

LESLIE: Yes, big money, of course.

TIM: Yes, yes. But, step two was kind of fuzzy. We had a big question mark there. We figured out how we were going to do all the operational things. We figured out like all that, like how we were going to pay our guides, how we were going to do our trips, and like every single detail except for how are we going to get lots of customers?

LESLIE: That minor detail, I guess.

TIM: Yes, well, yes. We didn’t know better. We thought we were building a business. We thought we were doing the right steps because if you looked at all these things about making a business plan, doing all the stuff, they talk about you’ve got to have all these things down. You’ve got to have these things figured out. And, then, when I realized after that experience was the only thing you need to be in business was a customer.

LESLIE: Got you.

TIM: Without a customer, you don’t have a business. I don’t care how detailed every other aspect of your business is. Without customers, you don’t exist.

Key Lessons Learned

LESLIE: Got you. I’m guessing that’s the thing that you would say, what you just said just now. When you think back to that time, okay, before learning about Internet marketing, before learning about marketing, which we’re going to talk about, what did you get from that time that you were building that business? Were there any key lessons that you learned?

TIM: Oh, gosh. Key lessons would have been to start off smaller, but if you can remember back to that time, everything was just to be bigger and better. If you were going to do anything online, it had to be gigantic. That’s what we did. We started with gigantic, and it crushed itself on its own weight.

What we should have done was, my buddy and I should have said, hey, you know what we should do? We should just try to find a dozen people who would go with us to, say, Sri Lanka, or Kenya, or Tanzania, or some place in the world, and just say, okay, we’re going to take them on a tour, and have one successful tour. That’s what we should have done. We should have started there, just to prove the model. And since that time, that’s kind of been my mantra is to prove the model. If you think you’ve got a business, well, test it out. See if you actually make any money. See if anyone will actually hand you cash.

LESLIE: Got you. And, you know what? That’s a process that it takes less work than everything else that you guys did because you have this huge vision, and you’re trying to put this massive business. But, if you tested it out, yes, it will… I was going to say take longer, but it never accomplish much or anything at all.

But, if you start small, it takes less upfront, less planning. You can focus on fewer individuals. You can focus on a certain aspect of your business, and then, grow from there. That’s a good insight, I think, that we all need to be reminded of that from time to time.

Okay so, the business was a failure. We’ve established that. You made no money.

TIM: Oh man, it hurts when you say it.

LESLIE: I’m sorry! You’re a failure, Tim! No, I’m just joking. So, the business was a failure. Tim is not a failure everyone, and you moved on from there. How did you move on? What did you do? What was the next step?

TIM: Like what you just said. The business was a failure, but I wasn’t.

LESLIE: Mm-hmm.

TIM: It sure felt like it at that time now.

LESLIE: Got you.

TIM: And, so that’s a lesson that anyone listening needs to really engrave into their brain is that just because something that you tried doesn’t work out, it doesn’t mean that your entire life, your complete future is wasted. Now, just that moment in time, you feel that way. But, tomorrow, it’s going to be completely different.

LESLIE: Now, before we move on to where you went from there, let’s focus on that a little more because like you said, it didn’t feel good at the time. How did you convince yourself at the time to continue? So, let’s not talk about how you continue yet, but how did you convince yourself?

TIM: It was tough. Everything sucked. But, then I’ve realized there is just no way quitting. I mean, this isn’t going to be the end of me. I knew I had success in me somewhere. And, I think that’s an inherent human trait is that we have success built into us. We are built to be a successful adaptive species. That’s what we do.

And, as long as we don’t quit, and yes, even as tough as times were, we moved out of our nice house, and I had my wife, and we had our little baby girl, and we moved into this tiny, tiny two-bedroom apartment. You could call it two bedrooms. It was like two closets and a living room. And, we moved into this tiny place to save a lot of money, so I could keep trying to build this dream. And, everything felt really bad at the time. It felt really crappy actually. Just to be honest.

And then, I just said, okay, this isn’t the end of me. So, what are the things that I need to do? I need to learn how to get customers. That was the thing that I realized, and it doesn’t matter what you do in business if you can’t get a customer, then, you could never truly become successful.

LESLIE: Awesome, awesome. Okay, so, now let’s move on. What did you do?

TIM: Yes, I got a job.

LESLIE: No, no, no! Not a job.

TIM: Yes, I’m the anti-job guy.

LESLIE: I know.

TIM: And we were talking about that all the time. But, what I did was I looked around. I was like, “Okay, I need to learn how to sell. So, how am I going to do that?” And, I looked around, and there was this training program for an insurance company, and I was living in Portland at that time, and they had this five-week training program on how to sell insurance.

And, I thought, you know, if I can learn how to sell insurance, I can sell anything. And, I did this five-week program, hated selling insurance specially the way they were doing it. It was essentially, “Here’s a phone book, open it up, and call these people. And, see if they want to buy insurance.” They’re like the dumbest way if ever trying to sell anything.

Instead of trying to find people who are interested in what this insurance could sell, they weren’t doing that. They were just saying call all these people and see if you can get people to buy.

LESLIE: I see.

TIM: And so, after five weeks of this, I realized they don’t have anything to teach me. All they can teach me is to sit down and learn how to make cold calls. And, I hated making cold calls! It was like, I fought that every single day. So, I quit doing that after the training program, and then, I went over another company who was advertising that they had a sales training program, and that was for a car dealership.

LESLIE: But, before we move on to that, let’s go back to that five-week training sales program. I’ve heard a number of entrepreneurs said that they did things that were similar. And, in that, some of them found it was effective. Others found ways that they can, you know, how to speak to people. They learn different lessons and all that kind of stuff.

Did you get anything from it whatsoever? Did you learn anything from it?

TIM: That it was immensely frustrating. I truly hate numbers games. And, if you talk to sales people, that’s the first thing they say out of their mouth. “Oh, it’s a numbers game.” Like, no! It is not a numbers game. It is a value game. If you can find the people who are looking for the value that you have to offer, then you’re going to close a lot more sales than, to just go and trying to talk to every single human being on the planet.

That approach will sell stuff. It’s just not the… I don’t think it’s the most effective way to sell anything.

LESLIE: Okay.

TIM: The white pages is not the method for selling stuff. You don’t dial and hope you get somebody who’s interested in your product. You actually do marketing. Sales is all about just closing the sale. But, marketing is where you try to attract people who want what you have to offer.

LESLIE: Got you. So, you moved on from there, and you went somewhere else.

TIM: Yes. Because so, I thought, okay, I didn’t really learn anything other than how to do cold calls.

LESLIE: Okay.

TIM: And, I realized, I hate that… Not going to do that again. And, went over to a car dealership, and started selling there, and I stayed there for a month, and the reason I stayed there for a month was not because I didn’t like selling cars. I didn’t like the management of that company.

LESLIE: Okay.

TIM: They didn’t care if the product they were selling solved the problem of the person buying. All they cared about was getting that contract signed so that the person had to make those payments.

LESLIE: I see.

TIM: They wanted to close a sale. They didn’t care about providing value. They just wanted to close the sale.

LESLIE: Got you.

TIM: But, I did well. Out of the people that they’ve had in years, I was doing more sales in like immediately than any of their trainess that they have had before. I was making like $1000 a week.

LESLIE: Now, why do you think you were doing better than the others?

TIM: A hustle and a plan. Everyone else there was just wanting to sell some cars. They just want to make some money. Me, I needed to learn how to sell. So, I was studying how to sell. I would be studying Tom Hopkins training programs on selling, and Zig Ziglar, and I was doing that at night, and then, I was spending like 12 hours a day at the dealership trying to sell cars to people who were walking on to the lot.

So, those two things: Hustle and having a plan. Otherwise, I would just have been standing around just like everybody else.

Willingness to Succeed

LESLIE: Okay. Now, this sounds pretty intense. I’ve listened to a lot of your stuff, and I kind of understand your mentality, and it seems like you’re more of a laid back guy than the amount of time you are spending on that business at the time. Am I seeing something wrong there?

TIM: No, no. I have always been a laid back kind of guy.

LESLIE: How does a laid back guy hustle that much, study that much after going to work all day, and all that stuff?

TIM: Well, because I wanted to succeed. I wanted to succeed in business. And, that was more important to me than sitting around chilling out. Right?

LESLIE: Got you.

TIM: And, because I knew that if I could figure out the skills, what I was doing was I was compressing the learning process that the average person goes through. So, like the average person at say, a car dealership or an insurance company, they would learn how to sell over the course of maybe a year, a couple of years. After a couple of years, they’d be good at it.

LESLIE: Yes.

TIM: Not me. I was going to condense it all into a short amount of time as I possibly could. Because, like I said, my mantra became “prove the model.” I knew people could make money at selling cars, but could they make money quickly? Could you do it really fast? Could you take the things that these guys were doing very well.

And, I talk to every single car salesman there, and I found the ones that were doing really well. Those guys, they enjoyed what they were doing, and they had a plan for how they were doing it. The guys that were miserable, all they were trying to do was make a paycheck. And, I didn’t want to be that guy. Because I knew that car sales was only a temporary thing for me.

What I was going to do was I was going to build a business, and I needed to have the skills that I could learn in an environment where the people don’t like you walking up to them on the car lot. They want a car, but they don’t want to talk to a car salesman. And so, that conflicting environment, I knew that if I could sell in that kind of environment, face to face with someone then, I would have the skills that I could translate those to any other business.

LESLIE: It’s very interesting because I also consider myself a laid back kind of guy. But, I know that in order to accomplish the goals that I have, I’ve got to hustle. You got to sit down, and learn the things that’s going to help you to be successful. And, it’s all about putting in the time up front so that, you can be laid back later on.

At least that’s kind of the way I like to look at it. So, it’s good to know that we’re on the same page where that’s concerned.

TIM: Yes, well, when you have the skills, and you have a system in place, then you can be a little more laid back.

LESLIE: Exactly.

TIM: But, until you build those things, you can’t because it’s like spending plates like those guys who put the plates on a pole, and they get them spinning, and if you stop, then they start falling. Well, that’s the beginning stages of business, where you’re learning how to run all those different plates. But then, eventually, you start building systems, and you get one person who spins this plate, and you get a person here who spins that plate. Maybe you get some software that spins these other plates over here.

LESLIE: There you go.

TIM: And now, you have systems in place, and you’re not the guy running back and forth spinning all those place going nuts, thinking, “Oh my gosh! If I stop, I’m going to drop all these plates, and I’m going to be a failure.”

LESLIE: Yes, but the plates are still spinning.

TIM: Right.

LESLIE: Awesome, awesome. Okay, so let’s transition. Everything I’ve heard so far is offline. How did you get into Internet marketing specifically?

TIM: Well, specifically, I’ve always been kind of a nerd. Actually, in junior high, I started playing with my Commodore 64, and–

LESLIE: There you go! Welcome to the nerd club.

TIM: Yes, yes. I always wanted to be one of the cool kids, but I just never had it in me.

I looked at that, started playing with learning how to code and basic, but I realize even at a young age that I wasn’t a coder, and I didn’t have that in me. I was an artist. I like to draw, and so, I transitioned away from computers, and in highschool, other than to play with them a little bit, with like Compuserve… I can’t remember a couple of the others that existed at the time that allowed you to access what was then the Internet.

I’d play around with that a little bit, but it was super expensive, those long-distance calls, and craziness. But, I was an artist. And so, when along came Mosaic, which was the first graphical interface, it was the first browser that allowed you to connect with the Internet in a graphical way, when that came out, that was huge for me. Because I was like, you know, I can start doing what I do because I love making things. I like to design real things.

But, here’s a way that I can design something that marries all my varied interest from business to design to computers to the whole package was right there in front of me. And, that’s what got me interested in it. So, I started learning how to write in HTML, and making my first web pages, which were horrible, like really bad.

LESLIE: Horrible today.

TIM: Oh, not like even then. They were bad. They were bad.

LESLIE: Uh-huh.

TIM: Essentially, a colored background with colored text in it.

LESLIE: Oh, okay, horrible, horrible.

TIM: Yes, that kind of bad. That was my start though. That’s where I get started, and then, I started doing the dot com thing just kicked off like immediately after like Netscape came along, and everything just like jumped really fast. And, I said, my buddy and I, “We’re going to get in on this. We’re going to take all of our passions, and we’re going to put it into an online business.”

And, that’s what we did. We tried to do that tourism company and that got me into the online stuff.

Tim as a Consultant

LESLIE: Okay, and then, when it comes to consulting. I know you’ve done a lot of consulting. You’ve been doing that for a while. How did you get into that?

TIM: Well, I was living in Portland, Oregon at the time. And, I was networking with lots of people. When I was trying to build my business, and the whole dot com thing’s going. So, like everybody’s into this. And, so I’m hanging out with people who are creating software companies that are a part of all these different start ups. I’m hanging out with lots of people.

And, then, my business goes under. Mine wasn’t the first, but lots of others were going under. And, I was still trying to get mine going. And, so people started asking me like, “Could you come and tell our company how you sucked, so that we don’t do that?”

LESLIE: So, that we cannot suck.

TIM: And, that was the start of my consulting.

LESLIE: Wow.

TIM: And so, at that time, I’m doing lots of stuff. After my company goes under, like I said, I got jobs, I’m studying sales, and I’m studying marketing, especially direct response marketing, the offline stuff, and just like you’ll learn all the skills necessary into getting customers. And so, I knew more than the software companies did, and these web design companies. I knew more about marketing than they did because here I am cramming years’ worth of knowledge and experience into just a handful of months. I’m just packing it all in.

And so, when I’m talking to them, they’re like, “Man, how do you know this stuff?” And, I’m like, “Oh, because I’m awesome!” And, they’re asking like what not to do, but I knew that that’s a one trick pony, and as soon as the economy turned around for the dot com, then they’re not going to want the how not to do something. They’re going to want to know how to do something. And so, I became like the one I’d came, the one I’d man in the land of the blind.

As king, I became that guy because I knew more about direct response marketing and how to get a customer online than they did. And, like I said, I didn’t know anything. But, I knew at the time, right?

LESLIE: Yes.

TIM: I didn’t know what I didn’t know, but I knew more than they did, and that got me initially started, and I would only do like small things. I didn’t do anything big with these companies because I didn’t know anything big.

LESLIE: Okay.

TIM: I did what I could practice on.

LESLIE: Okay. And, you know, we’re going to talk about mindset. And, this is something that I really want to emphasize because I think, this is part of mindset. You knew what you didn’t know. And, you wanted to learn the things that you didn’t know. You want to learn how to market from your experience, you realize that you didn’t even know how to get a customer. So, you wanted to learn how to do that.

So, you put yourself in a place to learn that. You studied, and I’m hearing that over and over again. You studied, you read books. You went through training and all that kind of stuff. And, one thing I’d like to emphasize is that it’s very important to invest in your own training, invest in your own learning so that, you can learn how to do the things that you don’t know how to do.

And, once you’re learning those things, the next step then is taking action. So, it’s awesome to see how that kind of played out in your life.

TIM: Yes, can I… that a little bit?

LESLIE: Yes, go ahead.

TIM: I didn’t want to learn how to sell. I wanted to get a customer.

LESLIE: Okay.

TIM: Okay, and that’s just a slight shift in words, playing semantics here, but I think it’s very important because I see too many people who were buying lots and lots of info products. There are how to make a million dollars on Facebook in three minutes, and all these crazy things that you knew just really can’t be true, but you hand over your cash anyways. And, sometimes, that’s as much as a couple of grand, or even more. I’ve seen people spending five grand on something, and all for the hope of becoming wealthy in a short amount of time.

And, that’s because they’re using event thinking as opposed to process thinking. Success comes from the process of getting there. And, event thinking is like, “Oh, if I could just win the lottery, I’m going to be happy.” That’s not how it works. So, if you’re saying, “I want to learn to do something,” but that’s not really what I wanted. I wanted to be able to get customers.

And so, the learning was just the necessary process to get to the customers.

Foolish Adventures – Teaching People to Make Online Living

LESLIE: Awesome. One more thing I want to talk about before we get into the mindset aspect of the interview. Foolish Adventures, we got to talk a little bit about that. How did that come across, no, first, what is Foolish Adventures?

TIM: Okay, Foolish Adventures is a podcast, maybe a blog, I don’t know. It’s a way to teach people how to make a living online that don’t buy into the I can get rich from some little gimmick kind of concept that exist on the Internet marketing world. I’m immensely against that because it doesn’t work. It ends up taking a lot of money from people that will never get any value out of it.

Foolish Adventures was designed specifically to show people a process of actually making money online, let’s change that– building a business online. Not making money online, but building a business online. And, from that, my ex-partner and I, when we first started this, we said, “We’re going to teach what we know for free, just going to put it out there, and hopefully, people can take that information, and build a business.”

LESLIE: Now, you made a distinction then. I just want you to define what you mean by that because first, you said, make money online, and then, you said, build a business. What’s the difference?

TIM: A lot. I think of it is in mentality, like the mental focus. If all you want to do is make a few bucks online, you’re going to fail. You may make a few bucks online, but you’ll never have a process. You’ll never have a system that will continue to generate money for you, which is what a business is. A business is a conglomeration of systems that provide value to a prospect, a customer, and that customer hands that business cash.

Everything else that needs to happen inside a business all comes down to that transaction. And you need to build that. If all you want to do is make money online, the, you’re always going to be chasing the next lottery that someone else is offering, the how to make money with Twitter or how to make money on Facebook, or how to make money in CPC network. You’re always going to be chasing the next shiny object.

LESLIE: Awesome, now I just want to plug, you don’t have to plug, but I’m going to plug because I love Foolish Adventures. Guys, if you listen to my podcast, you enjoy my podcast, you like what I talk about, and what my guest talk about, you want to go and check out Foolish Adventure. Go to foolishadventure.com. It’s an awesome podcast, awesome stuff over there.

I’m going to tell you the truth. When you guys launched it, I thought to myself, “What are these guys doing? I don’t know that I’m going to learn anything from this podcast.” I never really got into podcast, so I didn’t really know too much about it, but I didn’t think I’d learn a lot from the podcast, and I was proven wrong so many times. I’ve gotten so much value from it.

Some of the value I’ve gotten from it, I share on this podcast. So, if you’re listening to this, and you enjoy this podcast, head on over to Foolish Adventure. Subscribe in iTunes. Subscribe in whatever you feel like subscribing. But, you got to get over there, and you got to check it out.

TIM: Thanks for the plug. Thanks for the plug. I like that.

Mindset: Process vs. Event Thinking

LESLIE: Not a problem. Not a problem. Now, let’s talk about mindset. Because, well, just as an introduction, this month, January, on my podcastm what I’m focusing on is mindset. I’m going to be talking about mindset. I guess, I’m going to be talking about the kind of mindsets that it takes to succeed. And, I want to kind of get your opinion on this, your insight when it comes to what it takes to be successful online. I’m not talking just about what you have to do. I’m talking about what frame of mind do you have to be in? So, go.

TIM: Yes, go. Take this giant topic, and then, sit down.

LESLIE: You can do it. I believe you can do it.

TIM: Okay, I hinted at it with the whole process versus event thinking. This is the very key to your success. And, event thinking will lead to your failure. Process thinking will lead to your eventual success. And, I do mean eventual. It’s not something that’s going to come about tomorrow. You may have some early wins, but that’s not going to be success.

You’ll hear about people, “Oh, yeah! I made $10000 in my very first month.” But, you never hear from this people again because they didn’t ever have a business in place. And, that’s because they were focused on the event. They never built a real system to run these ideas through, and provide value to a market.

And so, I think in your first mental shift is going to have to be, “Well, what’s the process of giving value to a marketplace?” That’s your first mental aspect. Then, the other one, and I think it’s really going to be the key is perseverance. You have to have the mindset that you’re going to persevere through tough times. Tough times are going to happen. And, also you’re going to have to persevere through the learning process, learning things that make you very uncomfortable — things like selling face to face with someone. It was very uncomfortable for me. The one thing I really hated was the cold calling. But, I did it. I sat down, and I made hundreds of calls everyday. I did it. It was uncomfortable for me. But, I knew I needed to learn something.

These successful people who are making hundreds of thousands a year, selling insurance knew more than I did. So, if they said cold call, I was going to cold call. And, I did. So, those are two major things, perseverance and process thinking.

LESLIE: Okay, process versus event, event is where, “Yes, you can make $50 right now.” Process is where, “Let’s set up the processes that we need to set up so that we can have a business that can sustain itself, a business that can survive, and grow, and even thrive.” It’s going to take perseverance, but it’s worth it in the end.

TIM: I want to define the ‘event’ a little more.

LESLIE: Go ahead.

TIM: The event is, “I want to make $100,000 a year online.” That’s the event. If people are thinking that that’s what they’re going to have like they’re going to do something, and then, after they’ve done that thing, they’re going to have $100,000. That’s event thinking.

Process thinking goes, “Okay, my goal is I want to be able to make $100,000 a year by providing a lot of value within this particular marketplace, and I’m going to create the systems necessary to do it.”

LESLIE: Got you. A big difference between the two.

TIM: Yes.

LESLIE: All right.

TIM: One is just like, “Oh, I hope money falls from the sky.”

LESLIE: But, that would be nice, too.

TIM: Oh, yes, yes, except that you’re going to have to pick it up.

LESLIE: I don’t mind. If $100,000 is falling from the sky, I do not mind going down, and picking that up.

TIM: I would rather just show up in my bank account.

LESLIE: That’d be even better. So, but, you know we deal with what we have.

TIM: Right.

LESLIE: All right so, process versus event thinking. Perseverance, very important. Sticking with it through the hard times, through the tough times because the tough times will come. Anything else?

TIM: Oh, there’s so much more, and I don’t want this to just become a complete dissertation on all the things that you have to do because it may feel overwhelming to the person who’s listening. Because if you truly understand what you’re getting yourself into, you’ll keep a job. Truly, if you understood all the things that you were going to have to put up with, the loneliness of being an entrepreneur is no one else in your life is going to understand what you’re doing.

The idea that when something goes wrong, you can’t just say, “Ah, I’ll deal with that tomorrow.”

LESLIE: Yes.

TIM: I’ll come in to work, and I’ll fix that tomorrow, or if it doesn’t or if I don’t ever get around to it, well, oh well, it’s the company’s problem. Well, when it’s your business, all the company’s problems are your problems. And, there’s so many things that you’re going to get into like you need to learn about finances. You need to learn about taxes. You need to learn about government compliance… I mean, the list is endless!

LESLIE: Yes.

TIM: And, it’s never ending and guess what? No one will thank you other than your customers, which is the only people that matter. But, the rest of the world will not thank you, and in some respects will demonize you for being a business person.

LESLIE: I’ll give a perfect example of that. My hard drive crashed a week ago. Right before New Year’s. And, I remember talking with my wife before it crashed, and we were planning on going out for New Year’s Eve to hang out with some friends, an they had a bunch of games that we’re going to do at the church, and all that kind of stuff. But, my hard drive crashed and I had a launch for New Year’s day.

So, what I ended up doing was what? Staying at home, New Year’s Eve while everyone is out celebrating because I wanted to continue building my business. And, for me, that’s a priority at this point in time. That doesn’t mean I don’t do anything at all. But, it was a sacrifice that I needed to make given the circumstances because I needed to get something done for the next day, something that plays a significant role in my business.

And, those are some of the decisions that we have to make sometimes.

TIM: Right, right. You have to do that. And, a lot of people around you are not going to understand. They’re going to go like, “Oh, can’t you just do that tomorrow? Can’t you give that to someone else?”

LESLIE: Yes.

TIM: Like, no. It’s me. The buck stops here.

LESLIE: Yes, and you know, it’s hard work up front. But, if you’re doing it the right way, when you’re building the systems, then, it gets easier. That’s what I found. It gets much easier as time goes on, and I just love that aspect about it. Yes, you work hard, but it’s not always, specially when you’re doing an online business these days. You can set up the systems to take care of things, and over time, it just gets much easier. That’s kind of what I love about it.

TIM: I would say that it doesn’t actually get easier. It’s that you get stronger.

LESLIE: Oh!

TIM: Because just like an athlete, when you first start, or even just trying to get in shape. Say, you’ve been a couch potato for a while, and you decide, you know, this is the year that I’m getting back in shape. You start exercising. “Man, it sucks. It’s hard. It’s difficult.” You’re sweating, you’re breathing really hard, and all you did was put on your shoes!

LESLIE: Hey, those are some heavy shoes man.

TIM: I know, big shoes, they got big feet. But, you’re struggling in the beginning. And, that’s just like business. You start doing this. “Oh, how do I make a website? How do I do this? How do I do that?” And, you’re struggling all the time, and you’re like, “Man, this thing took me hours to do!” Just to get a single page up, it took me hours.

But then, time goes on, and you’re able to do that web page in minutes. And, it’s just like going to the gym. You keep going. You get fit. You get strong, and you’re able to lift heavier weights. And, you’re not breathing heavy when you jog. You have gotten stronger. The jogging is still the same. Lifting 50 lbs is still 50 lbs.

LESLIE: And, it’s still heavy to somebody else.

TIM: Yes, but, so, I don’t think it gets easier. I just think you get stronger.

LESLIE: I love that way of looking at it, and that’s not how I’ve been looking at it, and that’s a very interesting point. And, it’s true because a lot of the things that I do today easily, a year ago, it was not easy.

TIM: You’re pulling out your hair.

LESLIE: Exactly! But, you do it a few times, and you get used to it.

TIM: Think about the very earliest times of when you were getting into Internet marketing.

LESLIE: Do I have to?

TIM: Yes. What would have happened if all your hard drives crashed that time?

LESLIE: Oh man!

TIM: Would you have gone out that night for New Year’s or would you have stayed and struggle through trying to do that?

LESLIE: At that time, I would have stayed and struggled through, but it would have been much more of a struggle.

TIM: For me? I probably would have gone out. I would have just been like, you know, I’ve just gotten started. I don’t have anyone depending on me tomorrow. I don’t have any customers yet. So, I’ll deal with this. I was going to launch, but no one is even paying attention because I’m just getting started.

LESLIE: True.

TIM: I’ll go ahead and go out with my friends. That was me in the early days, the very early days. I would have done that. But then, over time, after I got stronger, and now, if the hard drive crashes, well, I got ways of getting that taken cared of.

LESLIE: Exactly.

TIM: I got backups elsewhere. I’ve got all these different things going on that kind of take some of the weight off of me.

“I can do this.”

LESLIE: Mm-hmm. Last thing we’re going to end on. Someone is listening to this right now, and they’ve been in it for a little while, and they’ve been struggling. They’ve been having a hard time, and even considering giving up. But, they have something in their mind saying, “You know what? Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can do this.” What would you say to that person?

TIM: Change your maybe to “I can do this.” What you think is very critical to what you do. If you are thinking I can’t do it, you’re definitely not going to be able to do it. If you think, “Maybe I can do it,” you probably won’t do it.

The universe is not a benevolent place. It just is. And, of you are not going, and working very hard, the opposite direction of what the universe is pushing on you then, you’re going to fail. So, ‘maybe’s’ seldom ever succeed.

LESLIE: Okay.

TIM: So, you have to change your thinking to, “I am going to succeed,” and I would say the best way to do that is to surround yourself with people who also think you can succeed.

LESLIE: You know what? We’re just going to end it there. I think that’s a good place to end because really, it’s all about mindset, and telling yourself that you can do it, not just telling yourself that you can do it, but knowing that you can do it, and then going out and doing it. That’s really what it’s all about.

Tim, thank you so much for joining me on the call today.

TIM: Thanks a lot Leslie.

LESLIE: Not a problem. Hey, guys, I want to once again remind you, foolishadventure.com. Head on over there, subscribe to the podcast, check out what’s going over there because you will love it. a lot of great free information over there to help you learn about building your business, building your online business. So, definitely check it out.

I also want to remind you that this program, this episode is brought to you by my 7-Day Boot Camp, teaching you how to start an online business from scratch, from doing the research, setting up the website, driving traffic, putting content on there, delivering value, all that good stuff. Oh yeah, and making money too, getting customers. So, check it out. I hope you enjoy it. Just recently relaunched.

I think that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Leave me a feedback, leave me your comments. I want to hear what you have to say. But, for now until next time, take care and God bless!