Last week, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net published 9 Unsexy Truths About Making Money Online. Here they are:

1. It Takes a LOT of WORK
2. It Takes Time and Starts Slow
3. The Sexy Moments Happen – but are Often Few and Far Between
4. There Are No Guarantees
5. You’ll Fail More than You’ll Succeed
6. Some People Just Won’t Make It
7. It Can Be Lonely
8. Increased Success Can Bring Increased Critique
9. Scaling it Sucks

And I will just go on record and say right now: “Amen, amen, AMEN!”

If you haven’t read the post, go on ahead and click the link above and read it now. It will open a new window so you don’t lose your place here. I’ll wait…

If I were Ruler of Heaven and Earth, I would command everyone trying to make a living online read that post. Read it and believe it. I would also add the following:

10. DIY Sometimes Costs More Than Paying a Professional

No one is more a fan of DIY (Do It Yourself) than me. I am blessed with a wide variety of skills and talents and a healthy willingness to try just about anything once. I can build you a website, sew you an outfit, cook you a meal, replace your ceiling fan, run a chainsaw and split firewood, change your flat tire and drive you from NYC to LA without a map or directions – just to name a few.

But I can’t do everything and neither can you when it comes to making money online.

See my caricature up there in the header of this site? I paid for her…almost what I charge to build a small website, in fact. And I will admit that a part of me had a small stroke over that. But I’m glad I did it because she’s great and I couldn’t have done her (or anything close to her) myself.

If you are unwilling to pay someone for services s/he can do better than you, why should anyone pay YOU for your services?

The DIY attitude and spirit is alive and well, and I’m glad, but don’t be short-sighted. Doing some things yourself actually COSTS you more than paying a fellow professional to do it for you…like when your website looks amateurish and unprofessional because you built it yourself using free resources or you when accidentally delete it because you don’t know what you’re doing.

11. Hard Work and Spinning Your Wheels Can Look and Feel the Same

If I had a nickel for every wheel-spinning minute I’ve spent with my nose to the proverbial grindstone since 2002, I’d have $157,680 in an interest bearing account somewhere. It’s easy to be busy…more difficult to be effective in moving toward your goals.

Related to #10, this is one area where hiring a coach has made a big difference for me. And yes, I have my story of spending $3K and getting diddly of what I was promised and none of my money back (see #’s 4 and 5.) But persistence beats resistance every time.

There Is No Secret to Making Money Online

Sorry, but it’s true. There are simply a lot of different strategies and tactics others have used to successfully make money online, myself included.

As stated in #4, what works for me might not work for you, so you can’t take what I’ve done and apply it to yourself and expect my results. That equation is flawed because you are not me and I am not you.

But what you can do is get really good at #5. Try stuff. Learn when to bail, and do it early. But stick to it long enough to give it a real shot. Sound like a paradox?

That’s only because it is one.

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1. The Paradox of Authenticity in Marketing Online
2. 2 Sure-fire Ways to Lose Visitors and Prospects

Today is one of those days.

And because I know that my current trauma is only an illusion, I find this Lynn Anderson song from way back stuck in my head:

I beg your pardon,
I never promised you a rose garden.

I could sing you a tune or promise you the moon,
But if that’s what it takes to hold you,
I’d just as soon let you go, but there’s one thing I want you to know.
You better look before you leap, still waters run deep,
And there won’t always be someone there to pull you out,
And you know what I’m talkin’ about.
So smile for a while and let’s be jolly:
Love shouldn’t be so melancholy.
Come along and share the good times while we can.

I beg your pardon,
I never promised you a rose garden.
Along with the sunshine,
There’s gotta be a little rain sometimes.

Little did I know, all those nights I laid awake as a kid, listening to the only radio station my little transistor radio could pull in at night after my mother threatened to take me out if I didn’t go to sleep, would have any kind of positive effect on me 35 years later. It was a country station, and to this day, I can sing along with just about every Top 40 country song from the late ’60s to the late ’70s. (Which is why I sometimes go to sleep with my MP3 player playing audio training calls I’ve recorded – the information still goes into the ol’ gray matter, whether I’m “paying attention”, or not. Weird how that works.)

The point is there are going to be days when you call up your coach and say, “Please remind me again why it is self-employment is better than a job. Why is this better than going somewhere, doing my thing for 8 hours and collecting a paycheck? Because you know everything else I’m responsible for will still be there waiting on me…I just wouldn’t have all the responsibility of an entire business piled on top of it all.” (Note: this is one very good reason – of many – to have a coach. So you have one to call up to talk you down out of whatever tree you find yourself in.)

Every successful entrepreneur you have ever looked at and thought, “I want what s/he has,” has had days like this…and likely still does. I do. Some of you out there look at me and think this very thought. (That realization still surprises me, by the way. Because, you know…I’m just me, after all. But I know some of you think it because you’ve said it out loud to me.)

So, if I’m sitting here thinking it about the people I admire and aspire to be like, and you are sitting there thinking it about me…guess what? There’s probably someone, somewhere, thinking it about you. (Gasp!) But it’s very likely true.

Now, does just knowing that someone else has a really crappy time of it in their business on occasion really make me feel any better? Should it, you?

Yes. Here’s why.

Bad days are just part of the deal. It’s not just me. It’s not just you. Along with the sunshine, there’s gotta be a little rain sometimes.

Some days self-employment sucks the big one.

But – by far – most don’t.

And in the words of my most excellent coach, “…But mostly self-employment is better because you get to do your own shit in your own way.”

Amen.

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I, like Tim and many others, do what I do because I love it. While I’m lucky enough to create my income doing what I love, I do still ‘have’ to do it.

Ok, that’s a lie, too. I don’t ‘have’ to do it, but I choose to because the consequences of choosing not to are not attractive to me. (I’ve grown accustomed to my home, my car, among other things and Lord knows I’m not trying to live without my computer and Internet service!)

However, I think you made a very good point, Tim, when you said that when employers are yapping about work/life balance, most of the time it’s because they don’t want you to have any. I agree. But I think the bigger point is when you find yourself worrying about work/life balance, that means it’s already out of whack…like noticing you’re thirsty means you should have had a drink hours ago.

I think there are as many ways to get out of whack balancing work and the rest of your life as there are people on the planet. Loving what you do for ‘work’ doesn’t automatically make you immune to imbalance. On the contrary, I think it sometimes makes you more susceptible.

I don’t think Tim’s wife, at least on the evening mentioned in his post, thinks he’s got the balance figured out anymore than my kids did last night when at 9:30pm I was still absorbed in a new site I am building…lost in the bliss of “ooohh..I wonder if I can make it do this…oooh, I can!…then, I wonder if I can make it do that…oooh, yes, I can…so does that mean I can make it do this, too?…OMG…yes, I can!…”  I finally stepped away from the computer at 10, and that completed a 12hr stretch of design bliss.

Granted, not every day is like that for me. Not even most are…but enough are. My 16y/o cooks dinner more often than I do (like…a LOT more often!) And no, that won’t kill him, and yes, it’s good that he’ll go out into the world knowing how to cook…but it’s kinda not the point.

Of course, this example may not be the best one to use, because I abhor cooking dinner with a vengeance. I’d do a whole lot of things I don’t love to do to get out of daily chef duty.

Maybe I stress too much because now that I work at home, I get wrapped up in the illusion that my kids should get ‘more’ of me than they did when I was in the corporate world. Where’s the logic in that? I traded doing one job – granted, away from home and for extended hours each day – for doing ALL jobs related to my business.

I will say this: It’s a whole dang lot easier to keep track of them and be where they need me to be when I’m my own boss. And often, they’ve lamented that their mom is ‘all up in their business all the time’ because I’m not stuck somewhere downtown at an office all day long. Other times, and especially here lately, I think I’d be a whole lot less stressed if I didn’t have such a front row seat to what they’re up to.

So if I’m still working a lot of hours, what’s changed about the balance in my life? Am I still out of whack?

It’s all relative. My kids think it’s just fine if I spend 24 hours a day on the computer, unless and until they want something. Then I work too much.  What they’re really wanting to is to dictate even more of my schedule than they already do. If it were my attention they were craving, I wouldn’t get turned down for movie nights or family outings as much as I do because they’ve got ‘other plans’.

Even as I write that, I realize that what’s really different today (as opposed to the corporate days) is that when I’m not ‘working’, I’m not in a bad mood.  Used to be, I’d come home all jacked up about stuff at work and it took more than the drive home to decompress. The mommy time they got back then was polluted, if you will, with leftover work garbage.

Another thing that’s really different today is the quality of my life. It’s gone way up. WAY up. It’s filled with far less of the stuff I don’t want in my life and far more of the stuff I do.

For me, the work/life balancing act was made exponentially easier when I engaged in work I love versus the kind that made me want to stick needles in my eyes. But it’s still a balancing act.

But then, isn’t every aspect of life a dance in and around a proverbial sweet spot?

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photo credit: meemal

Not a particularly “sexy” topic, I grant you, but no one among us is immune to adversity. Being in business for yourself – by yourself, as many of us are – leaves you a bit more vulnerable, a bit more exposed, maybe a little more quickly overwhelmed, and quite possibly a lot more prone to indulging in the freak-out dance when adversity shows its face. Going to the balcony to get a little space and practice detachment is your best preventative and also your first line of defense.

Today I want to share some observations and realizations I’ve made this year from my own balcony and I invite you to chime in with your own in the comments below.

1: “I get by with a little help from my friends.”

I can’t stress enough the importance of building a support system for yourself. No successful person ever got that way alone.

I have my assistant, Tracy, who not only helps me with the workload, but she is my biggest cheerleader and reality check. In other words, she keeps me on an even keel. I have Tony, Tom, Karen, Lisa, Deborah and Pam – all people I’ve met through my business whose services I use personally. I have Marty in my corner, too. We are working on some projects together, both of us realizing the advantages of partnering up – sharing the work, the angst and the rewards.

Each of these people (and many others) have challenged and supported me when I needed it most. While it’s the rubber of MY sneakers that meets the road to my success, any success I enjoy has all these people’s footprints all over it, too.

2: Crap is the Great Clarifier

Looking back over 2009, I’ve taken some fairly big kicks in the pants, both personally and in my business. Each of my kids have presented me with multiple, big, life-changing situations or events to navigate, some of which are on-going. You know – the kind of crap we parents dread, that make us wonder why we had kids in the first place, make us question our ability to cope, and leave us fantasizing about running away from home our-damned-selves. To add to the fray, the year has been peppered with some really wrong people showing up as clients, one of whom filed the very first complaint against my business to the Better Business Bureau (that’ll knock you on your butt, let me assure you), and all contributed to the chronic stress and general joy-sucking that goes hand in hand with working with the wrong people.

The good news is you are the creator of your life and business. When crap shows up, you can treat it as the opportunity that it is to get really clear, to make changes based on what you do want, instead of giving in to its drama and giving up. Easier said than done, maybe – but that’s another reason to continually be building your support network – you don’t have to do it alone.

3: The Stronger Your “Whys”, the Better Your Odds

Let’s face it – when things get tough, what gets us through to the other side are our motivators – our “whys”. Sometimes we feel those motivators as the heat on our hind ends, pushing us forward. (The things we don’t want, the things we want to avoid.) Other times, our motivators are those carrots dangling in front of us, pulling us forward. (The things we do want, the things we want more of.) The clearer you are about your “whys” and the more they mean to you, the more stick-to-it-ive-ness you have. The more committed you are, the more willing you’ll be to hang in there and find the solutions you need to move ahead.

This is why it’s so important to do the inner work – the get your head straight and personal growth work – of growing a business. And it never ends, folks. Change is our only constant, remember, so this work is never actually done.

4: Investing in Yourself is More Than Buying the Latest, Greatest Training or Information Product

If whipping out the ol’ credit card was all that was required to succeed, I’d be a billionnaire by now. Investing in myself requires more than money – it requires time, attention and commitment. I actually have to read the e-book, login to the membership site, watch the video. Then I have to apply what I’ve learned to my own situation and adjust from there.

Doesn’t seem like it ought to be such a “V-8″ moment, does it? But, it is, and this one, in particular, seems to repeat itself, at least for me. I’m not any smarter, more capable or successful just because I paid money to add yet another download to my hard drive.

More information is not always (or even most often) the answer. Informed action usually is. Particularly when facing adversity.

5: You Have to Risk Being Wrong to Get it Right

The process of getting from where I am to where I want to be will take forever if I wait until I know everything I think I need to know to get it “right”. Every time I’ve been knocked on my butt, I’ve learned really valuable lessons. I sure didn’t set out to get knocked down, but sometimes it happens.

Adversity has a way of showing you what you’re made of, and I’ve surprised myself this year. I’m a lot stronger than I knew. I’m a lot more willing to take risks, too, because I’m a lot more confident that being wrong isn’t the worst thing in the world. Being stuck is.

What observations and/or realizations have your trips to the balcony given you?

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1. Can You Say the X, Y and Z of Your Business in One Sentence?
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In part one, Andrea said her favorite definition of being an expert was being someone who knows a little more about something than everyone else in the room.

I agree. Expert status is relative.

This is HUGE, folks. Particularly in terms of determining your target market. Whatever you do, there is a group of people who would consider you to be an expert. Yes you. Who you are – what you know – right now: an expert.

For all of us, for any given topic or activity, there are people ahead of us on the path, and people behind us on the path. There are always people who know more or are more skilled than we are. And there are always people who know less or are less skilled than we are.

You are an expert to those behind you. You are a member of the target market for those ahead of you on the path. So, when it comes to you being an expert, it depends on which direction you’re facing.

Turn to those on the path behind you and you’ll find people who’ll value you and what you have to offer. You’ll be able to help them solve problems with your knowledge and experience and they’ll pay you for it.

And it’s not that those ahead of you on the path don’t value you – they do, but for different reasons. To them, you are someone for whom they can solve problems with their knowledge and experience and you’ll likely be happy to pay them for it.

The bonus, if you’re facing the right group, is confidence. So, even if you’re just starting out, you can start out with confidence if you choose the right group to market your products or services to.

Remember – you don’t have to be (and really can’t be) the expert for everybody. But for your right people? You can be a hero.

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But, is it happening – either part of it – for you? Are you doing what you love? Is the money following the way you want?

My coach, Tom Volkar, is holding the first ever Big Link Rally in Pittsburgh on January 2nd, with the expressed purpose of helping you discover, validate or evolve your true calling by connecting the link between your authenticity and abundance.

• If you have no idea what your true calling is, he can help you discover it.
• If you think you know what it is, but you’re not sure, he can help you validate it.
• If you know what your true calling is and you’re doing it, but the money is not following, he can help you evolve the expression of your true calling so that it will.

How do I know? Because it is HIS true calling. And he’s helping me.

Tom is holding a free teleconference call, “Awakening to Your True Calling”, on Wednesday, November 18th, at 4:00pm ET. Request the dial-in details here. If you’re not doing what you love, or if you are and the money is not following, you definitely want to be on this free call.

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1. The Paradox of Authenticity in Marketing Online
2. Great Marketing Makes You Lose Your Natural Mind

Those of us in business online (and offline, too, I’m sure) are pressured to “become the expert” in our fields. Our marketing is designed to portray us as experts, as the “go to” person for what we do. We work hard to plant the seed of that idea in our target market’s mind and even harder to nurture and grow it.

Yet, at the same time, we battle the nay-sayer voice in our heads. The voice assures us we don’t know enough, we’re not good enough, others will see through our bravado (and it is bravado a lot of times…the ol’ “fake it til you make it” routine…) and tells us we’ll be exposed as the frauds we are.

Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary defines “expert” as:

expert: one with the special skill or knowledge representing mastery of a particular subject.

Doesn’t say anything about knowing everything

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1. On Being an Expert – Which Direction Are You Facing?

On the other hand, if you think you can do something, you’re probably more than willing to invest the time, effort and energy into it because you’re pretty sure you’ll get the result you’re after.

So what makes the difference between thinking you can’t and thinking you can do something? For most of us, it’s proof. Proof in the form of results, past results, most likely. Where does that leave you if you’re looking at trying something completely new? Empty-handed? Not necessarily.

Just because you’ve never done a particular thing before does not mean you lack proof of your ability. All you have to do is rewind back to the last time you had to do something you thought you couldn’t do, but did. Guess what? There’s your proof. We each have things in our past that we thought for sure were going to ‘eat our lunch’, but didn’t.

There was a time in my life that I thought there was NO WAY I’d be able to earn a living from home without a job. I have three kids, a mortgage and a car payment, for crying out loud, plus I’m single with no other income to rely on! Well, guess what I’ve been doing since December of 2002?

Maybe for you it’s your managing your website or blog, or writing effective marketing copy, or picking up the phone and reaching out to a prospective new client, or any number of other things that loom over you.

Matters not. You’ve got proof. And the really good news is that “proof” from one area of your life transfers over to any other area of your life, because the proof is really about all the times – in any situation or context – that you did something you didn’t think you could do.

What can you change your mind about today and think you can, instead?

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1. I Beg Your Pardon, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

We are responsible for the messages we send, but we are not necessarily responsible for how the message is received, particularly given how many ways and reasons there are for a message to be misconstrued. But in being responsible for the messages we send, we can’t turn a blind eye to the likely perceptions of others. And certainly, our words are not the only vehicle by which we send messages. We are responsible for all of the messages we send.

Are you skewing the messages you send verbally with behavior that says the opposite? Do your words say one thing while your actions say another?

Try stepping outside your own skin and seeing yourself through the eyes of others. Is the message you send the message you intend?

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photo credit: pdxjeff

What is the purpose of a lighthouse? Webster says a lighthouse is:

a structure (as a tower) with a powerful light that gives a continuous or intermittent signal to navigators.

According to Wikipedia:

Lighthouses are often interpreted in dreams as beacons of truth.

In my business, my “job” is to be a lighthouse, as opposed to being a search light. My job is not to chase after the folks who need my services, but rather to be that powerful light that gives them a sense of security in the world of entrepreneurship. I like the idea of being there to guide them and navigate unknown waters.

Again, I defer to my favorite quote:

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate,
but that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us.
We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous?”

Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us.
It is not just in some; it is in everyone.

And, as we let our own light shine, we consciously give
other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

- Marianne Williamson, from her book, A Return to Love

The idea of being a lighthouse is certainly not limited to business. We can be lighthouses in all areas of our lives.

What makes our light shine brighter and brighter is learning who we really are and living that in this life. Living in the present moment makes our lights stronger, too. Being authentic (not the same as one another, but true to who we each are, individually) and fearless about shining our light is the best contribution we can make, in my opinion.

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