Let’s face it – the goal of many online marketers is to make more money. Some marketers build and leverage relationships to get noticed, some use automation tactics, some throw truckloads of money at advertising, and some people give away stuff. All of these actions have one premise – to make more money.
What if you discovered a few traits that would help you make even more money? What if marketing suddenly became easier? Then your world would become more beautiful, right?
You can then finally buy that big house or nice car you’ve been longing for. Or maybe you can finally go off to the Bahamas and disappear for a while. Or maybe you can donate a large sum of cash to a charity. Whatever it is that you are after, the solution is right in front of you.
The Solution
If you want to make more money, acquire an entrepreneurial mindset.
Having the entrepreneurial mindset is an incredible tool that will pay dividends. Entrepreneurs innovate things – they spot opportunities and create or tweak them as they see fit. They’re visionaries that strive to make the world a better place.
Image via Wikipedia
Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower – Steve Jobs.
Entrepreneurs that I’ve come across don’t have money as their #1 goal. Their #1 goal is to build great things that help solve problems.
Here are some examples of successful entrepreneurs:
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source: tweakmagphilippines.com
Steve Jobs – Steve Jobs was all about creating incredible products. He would spend night and day tinkering every little detail – graphics, design, and usability. He wouldn’t sleep until he thought his creation was perfect. Sometimes he would even scrap concepts his employees spent countless hours on and have him redo them even when he didn’t know what he wanted! He did all this because he was dedicated to delivering a remarkable user experience to all Apple customers. Jobs was world class because he focused on helping other people more than himself. He made a promise to himself to not let money ruin his life. The result? Apple is now the world’s largest company.
Rand Fishkin – Rand is the CEO of SEOmoz, a company that develops tools to make lives easier for SEOs. In addition, Rand helped create an engaging SEO community – which is widely regarded to be one of the best SEO communities online. Rand got here not because he was after money, but because he was passionate about helping SEOs make their daily job easier.
Don’t think he’s about helping people? Try e-mailing Rand Fishkin for any help or advice and he’ll respond to you within a timely manner. Not many CEOs do that. Rand does because he’s passionate about helping people.
Neil Patel and Hiten Shah – Neil and Hiten are the Co-founders of KISSmetrics and Crazyegg, both tools to help business owners optimize their websites. Not only do they create great software, they create incredible content that helps readers increase traffic and conversions – all for free. Like Rand, they’ll both respond to your e-mails. They both follow this philosophy:
If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. – Zig Ziglar
Mario Schulzke – Mario is the founder of IdeaMensch, which is an interview site for ‘people with great ideas’ (a.k.a entrepreneurs). Mario organizes speaking events where entrepreneurs talk about their success. You can see that Mario’s main goal is to help would-be entrepreneur decode the keys to success – money isn’t his main concern. He ran IdeaMensch for two years before deciding to take on a sponsor this year.
Jake Wood - Jake is the founder of Team Rubicon, a disaster relief team made up of veterans, medics, doctors, and firefighters. Jake started Team Rubicon during the Haiti earthquake disaster after he identified a big problem: relief groups were taking too long to provide aid for victims. Jake put together a group of trusted colleagues and deployed into Haiti. Why did he start this group? To solve a problem.
Here are 6 traits that will help you develop that entrepreneurial mindset.
Innovative
Entrepreneurs know how to help others. They’re trying to solve a problem that other people have. Innovation doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to create something brand new – you can tweak something and still be innovative.
Action Tip: Make a list of items that you are passionate about. This can be hobbies or work-related items.
Here’s a video that sums it up nicely for aspiring entrepreneurs:
Passionate
In order to keep any project going, you’ve got to have a burning passion for whatever you’re doing. Passion means waking up in the morning and being excited to do what you’re about to do for the day. If you can’t sustain that burning desire to accomplish your goals, then the chances of your project flaming out increases. Keep the passion up and remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Action Tip: When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself “Do I feel happy doing what I am about to do today?” If the answer is consistently no, then it’s time for you to step back and re-evaluate your situation.
Persistent
Entrepreneurs seldomly get it right on the first try. The secret to their success is persistence. Rand Fishkin talks about how despite all the roadblocks he encountered, he kept pushing and eventually made SEOmoz a success.
One of the most common causes of failure is the habit of quitting when one is overtaken by temporary defeat. Every person is guilty of this mistake at one time or another. – Napoleon Hill
Napoleon Hill, the author of Think and Grow Rich, talks about how a goldminer was literally 3 feet from gold when he stopped digging. His decision to quit ended up costing him millions.
The lesson? Be persistent.
Willingness to Fail
Entrepreneurs must have thick skin because nothing is ever going to be perfect. Sometimes, there will be rainy days. And when it rains, it pours. Failure is okay because every failure yields lessons.
The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, for the more new things he will try. I would never promote to a top-level job a man who was not making mistakes…otherwise he is sure to be mediocre.
- Peter Druker
Ask questions: asking questions is essential to improving your product. Your audience will provide you gold nuggets of information that you can take action on.
A Knack for Testing
You can’t possibly expect to know everything about your audience. Entrepreneurs are methodical about their assumptions and will test things to death.
“As an entrepreneur, you should now consider yourself a scientist. Your job now is to run as many tests as possible, with the least amount of expenses to find mass adoption of your product. The tests should start in the ideation phase and shouldn’t ever end. The single worst thing you can do now as an entrepreneurial is have one idea and do everything you can think of to bring that specific idea to market. Start with a problem area and test ideas around it.” – Nick Hughes
Keep moving: no matter if you’re right or wrong, you have to keep moving. Every day that you decide to put things off, your competitors get stronger. This scene from Glengarry Glen Ross always motivates me again when I need a swift kick in the butt to remind myself to get moving.
Action Tip: always be closing.
Thirst for More Knowledge
Things are rapidly changing in our world. The learning should never stop. Ever. You never know when Google might change an algorithm or a new search competitor has landed in the space. Keep yourself up-to-date so you can know how to better prepare yourself for certain situations. Having a plan in place at least gives you some wiggle room to figure out how to react.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, combining these traits will lead to success. For example: If you’re an SEO, do the hard stuff that matters – build relationships, write helpful blog posts, or try doing some pro bono work. If you’re a paid search marketer – focus on relentlessly testing everything and trying new tactics.. then look at the data and continue to refine.
What’s really beautiful if you think about it is that these traits don’t just apply to online marketing, they apply to life in general!
What other traits do you think are important for entrepreneurs?
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