College Didn’t Teach Me How To Make Money Online

I was a little shocked this week when someone flat out told me that my college degree is why I am able to make money online.

The truth is, my college degree didn’t teach me anything about making money online. When I was in college, the internet was still very young. People making money online were few and far between. We still had shopping carts with clunky systems and never dreamed we could get notifications on our smartphones the minute we made a buck.

Everything I learned about entrepreneurship, websites, apparel, products, sales, marketing, making money, writing books, building websites, design, email lists, juggling motherhood with entrepreneurship, niches and so on – I taught myself.

You see, while the average person enjoys a hobby or gets lost in Netflix, I am reading, building, exploring, trying, considering, selling, promoting, testing, listening. Heck, I don’t even work out to the music on the video, I put in ear buds and let Gary Vee kick my ass while I’m kicking my own. The minute my kids are happily playing or asleep is filled with this pursuit.

Your Misconceptions Give You Tunnel Vision

If the first thing that pops into your mind when you see a successful work at home mom is one of the following, you need to get your misconceptions in check…

• She has a college education, so that’s why she’s successful.
• I don’t have a college education, so that’s why I don’t make as much money as I want.
• I never expected to be able to make money online, build a drop ship store etc, so even though I want to make $x each month, I just can’t because no one taught me.
• She pretends to have an amazing business when in reality she probably doesn’t make much.
• She must put her kids in daycare so she can build her business.
• She has more help than me.
• I don’t have time.
• Her husband must help her.
• Her husband probably gives her money for her business.
• She knows more people than me.
• She has a huge family or a large number of friends.

I could go through and answer where I am with each of these bullets, but the truth is that if you have caught yourself thinking ANY of the above listed, you’re trying to make excuses for yourself. Until you can deal with yourself and stop trying to excuse yourself from being successful, you’ll fail.

Stop Making Excuses

My take away from the whole thing was that the person who said I was only able to make the amount of money I make is because of my college degree hasn’t met their personal goals. In fact, I know they haven’t because they told me.

Can you imagine if that person would step back, look at what they are doing that works and doesn’t work so they can reevaluate and really dig in?

I know that there comes a time with every business that there’s a feeling that you’ve done everything you can. I know what it’s like to feel as though you’ve put so much skin in the game that it should be profitable. I know it’s easy to look around and see income reports and business ideas and kick yourself for the next week. I also know that sometimes it’s easy to get so lost in the comparison of it all that you decide to just stop trying all together.

The truth is that while you may have a goal or a certain income amount you want to make, you’ll never make it if you don’t try. You’ll never make it if you give up at the first opportunity.

Stop Lying To Yourself

If you start each new day off with an excuse as to why today is not the day you can crush it. If you start each conversation with yourself or others with an excuse as to why they are successful and you aren’t. If you won’t set goals for yourself because you’re to afraid you won’t reach them. If you won’t push yourself because you have a fear of success….

Stop lying to yourself.

You do you boo. Your mindset is what is killing the whole thing for you right now.

I want you to do me a favor. I want you to FIGURE OUT how much money you want to make each month to be successful.

I want you to comment on this blog post with that number.

I want you to check in each month with your actual number.

And then I want you to be prepared to write a blog post on my blog when you hit that number.

Setting goals isn’t about reaching it right out of the gate. It’s a GOAL. It’s a measurement. It’s something to WORK TOWARDS. It DOES NOT mean you’ll get there today, tomorrow or even this year. It means it’s where you WANT to go. For me, GOAL really stands for GO ALL – go all in. And, if you’re not doing that you aren’t getting there. Period.

Try a Different Route

If you feel like your business isn’t going anywhere, you need to ask yourself what you’re doing wrong. You can’t put up a website and expect people to find your business in the sea of businesses out there today. You need to put in work on your SEO, products, content (not just blog content here people!), social media and overall vibe of your company and with a little help from sites like Shibga Media you can take your business to the next level.

Be honest with yourself about what you’re offering.

What is selling and what isn’t?

Let’s be honest here. Why do you think the grocery stores pull brown banana’s off the shelves?

You probably thought to yourself “EWWW!!! Who buys brown rotten banana’s?!?!?”

Well the truth is that sometimes your services are products ARE those rotten brown bananas.

Sometimes you need to try a different route. Put out fresh bananas.

One of the things that I do that sets me apart in the apparel industry is I offer products no one else is offering. For years people have said that apparel is saturated because anyone with photoshop can design a shirt. The truth is that while it may be harder to sell t-shirts, there are still a thousand other unique products that most people are to scared to offer. I talk about those in my apparel mastery course.

I put out fresh bananas. I don’t make excuses. I thrive on competing – WITH MYSELF.

I hope you’re headed that direction.