Issue #350
Self help distractions
A lot of entrepreneurs and internet marketing people have made things pretty complicated for themselves. And a lot of it comes down to all the hype over self help.
Now, I realize I’m about to crap on the bed for some people here. I know I have a lot of personal development people here. But, hear me out.
Self help isn’t bad at all. However, I think a lot of people have gotten too worked up over it. It is stockholm syndrome. There’s a whole market out there that tells people they’ve got all these issues and then proceeds to sell the solutions.
So, a lot of entrepreneurs end up mistargeting their energy. Thinking they’ve gotta read a thousand books, attend masterminds, optimize everything, do yoga, meditate, cold showers, drink butter coffee, have fancy morning routines, vision boards, yada yada.
That’s a lot of complexity. But…
Doing a vision board isn’t going to make you successful. And neither will reading a bunch of books or paying for some high-ticket retreat where people will walk over a fire or some other weird thing.
Never forget that self help is an industry. It is a big money-making industry. And for it to succeed, it needs life to be complicated. It needs people to look at achieving what they want as hard and complicated. It needs that problem… so it can proceed to solve it.
The self help industry is every bit as money-driven as you would ever think the internet marketing industry is. And a lot of it is a big facade.
But, it won’t make you successful. In fact, it’ll get you focusing on everything else EXCEPT being successful.
There’s nothing wrong with working on yourself. AT ALL. But, don’t confuse that with actually building a business.
There’s a lot of whacky people running great businesses. 😇 They’re nuts, but they’re successful. Great business, but screwed up personally. The two things don’t necessarily go hand in hand.
Building and growing a business is, at the core, pretty simple. It basically comes down to:
- Solving a REAL problem that people actually have and offering that solution to them.
- Solid marketing and positioning
- Good financial management and effective systems to make the business run
- Focus
You can be mediocre at those things and still do fairly well, but you gotta focus on those things.
How you FEEL about it doesn’t matter as much as you think. Napolean Hill was full of crap when he said you can think and grow rich. Nah, doesn’t work. A whole lot of people have distracted the hell out of themselves trying to visualize their way to money and it just doesn’t work like that. It is window dressing. A distraction.
You can visualize all you want, but only ACTION makes things happen.
Your vision board isn’t going to fix a product/market fit problem. Law of attraction is not going to fix your business strategy.
Action is what matters. And how you feel about it doesn’t.
Get in there, build a practical business that is well positioned and has a killer product that solves a tangible problem.
Period. The end. 🙂