Consider this scenario…

Your business is humming along, you’re making a solid profit. So you get lazy, you let things run on autopilot.

Then one day you wake up 6 months later and you realize your profits are down by over 50% from what they were 6 months ago. You thought it was just a slow time in the market, and that things would pick up but no you realize it’s something more.

You’ve been schooled by increasing competition.

By the time your realize what’s happened, you’re F’d and might as well start something new.

I’ve personally been in this scenario and seen a lot of people fall prey to this.

So what’s the alternative?

Make consistent improvement to your business on a weekly, EVEN DAILY basis:

SPLIT TESTING

Split test your landing pages until your blue in the face. I don’t care if you can’t think of anything more to test, just make something up and TEST IT.

This is the ONE biggest thing I’ve been doing lately that has skyrocketed my profits and allowed me to blow past my competition.

Now you want to have a SOLID SYSTEM in place for split testing, whether it’s a custom php script or google website optimizer, or whatever. As long as it’s something you feel comfortable with and do NOT have to ask an outsourcer for help every time you want to setup a new split test.

Remember, the biggest key is here to consistently split test. 8 out of 10 of your split test will be duds, it’s the 1-2 that will skyrocket your profits. You gotta keep testing until you find those!

IMPROVE & EXPAND YOUR SITE

You need to be constantly be working on ways of improving your site content, adding more content, working on your search engine ranking and SEO.

It’s important to have a system in place to get these done, you do NOT need to be the person doing these.

COMPLIANCE

This one’s a big deal, that almost NO ONE gets. You have to constantly ask yourself : “How can I make my site and product offerings more compliant?”

and

“What are some of my most compliant competitors doing that I’m not?”

You can do all the split testing in the world and have a massive conversion rate. That’s gonna mean NOTHING if you get slapped by Google.

You MUST learn how to lose, BEFORE you can learn how to win!

I recently started doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Needless to say it’s BRUTAL, especially when you’re first starting out.

After getting my ass kicked a bunch of times, I was discouraged. My instructor, Alex, told me to not to worry. Every one gets beat up in the beginning, and that only by getting beat up will you learn how to win.

And that’s SO true, in almost everything in life.

When I first started affiliate marketing back in 2005, I failed for 9 months straight before I had ANY success.

Problem is most people are too scared to fail. You know who I’m talking about.

If you don’t learn how to fail, how to lose, you’ll NEVER learn to win.

For about a month or 2 I found myself getting caught up in the drudgery of my business.

I know, I talk endless about outsourcing and building systems but it’s often easy to forget that, and get in the mindset:

“I need to this myself otherwise it won’t get done right!”

“This won’t take long, lemme just crank it out.”

etc.

You KNOW what I’m talking about.

Then just this month I got feed up, spend several hours detailing out the processes in my business that I wanted to outsource.

I made jing videos, templates, etc. So that it’s as SIMPLE as possible for my elves to do (I affectionately called my outsources elves! I know that’s WEIRD! LOL)

To my shock and awe, I got 3 months worth of work done in 2 week, thanks to taking a few hours out of my day to building systems and processes that I can hand over to my elves.

So, let me ask you, how many elves do you have working for you?

WARNING: This may go against everything you’ve been lead to believe about health.

Before I get started lemme just tell you that Shilpi and I have tried everything under the sun as far as eating: vegetarian, low-fat, blood type diet, fiber suppliments, etc.

None of it worked for us!

In fact I was afflicted with chronic inflammation, severe allergies, bloating and gas for years. I also had poor blood numbers, indicating I was at risk of getting a heart attach. I also struggled at the gym, would get exhausted very easily. I got sick FREQUENTLY, once I had a 104 fever after coming back from Affiliate Summit West in Vegas.

Shilpi had issues with acne, psoriasis, eczema, hypoglycemia etc.

We were both gaining weight and struggling hard to keep it off.

When we finally made the changes I suggest below, ALL our health problems vanished. YES, including the allergies, and acne and everything else!

Our skin, hair and nails improved. We have WAY more energy. I’ve made HUGE gains at the gym.

The most remarkable change has been mentally. My thinking is a LOT sharper, I mean WAY sharper. I’m coming up with way more ideas to advance my business.

My inflammation and bloating is all gone, I can FEEL the difference in my body, it’s AMAZING.

We’ve lost weight automatically eating this way (and kept it off), specially body fat and kept the muscle.

I could go on with the benefits, but you get the idea.

DISCLAIMER: Not guaranteeing it will work for you, just what has worked for us. So don’t listen to anything I say, do your own research, and do what you find works best for your body.

Few points that may SHOCK YOU:

• Saturated fat is GOOD FOR YOU. Natural saturated fats that is. Eat lots of: grass-fed better and ghee (clarified butter), and coconut oil. Eat hefty amounts of these saturated fats. Cook with them. Olive oil and flaxseed oil are also GREAT, eat lots of that too (but do NOT cook with them).
• Vegetable oils are BAD for you, especially the partially hydrogenated kind. AVOID them. Avoid fake butter, margarine, corn oil, canola oil and all that.
• Too many refined carbs and grains will kill you. Replace your refined carbs and grains with fruits and vegetables. Eat LOTS of fruits and vegetables.
• Limit your intake of processed foods. Cook more dishes from scratch.
• Soy is BAD FOR YOU. If you’re going to have soy, make sure it’s fermented, and having it on occasion, NOT every day.
• Anything with wheat is BAD for you. Avoid wheat (because it contains gluten). If you need to eat grains, go with rice or quinoa (preferably) or really any other grain.
• Eat lots of pasture eggs, grass-fed pasture meats, pasture raised poultry, and wild fish. If you’re a vegetarian, eats lots of dairy (grass-fed whenever possible), hemp, and quinoa.
• Take a cod liver oil supplement daily. (or pop open a can of sardines! YUM!)
• Always eat your fruits RAW. And your vegetables raw whenever possible (salads etc).
• Eat nuts. And yes eat these raw too.

I highly recommend Dr. Mercola’s newsletter for excellent advice on how to eat right.

I told you in an earlier post that I had some health problems, and that I had to radically change my diet.

I now follow something called a paleo diet.

What the heck is that? It’s eating (or at least close to) the way our paleolithic ancestors eat over 10,000 years ago, and hunter gatherer cultures eat to this day.

The basic idea is simple : eat ONLY fruits, vegetables, and meat. Eat local, organic fruits and veggies, and meat that is pasture and grass-fed.

ALSO, cut out processed foods. Which means no more fast food, no more donuts, bread, pastries, cereal, frozen meals or ANYTHING that is processed. No more refined carbs of any sort, all my sugar comes from fruits and veggies (except for the occasional cheat meal!)

It’s not all that bad, I eat everything FULL FAT. But I eat REAL fats such as grass-fed butter and ghee, organic coconut oil, etc. I COMPLETELY AVOID partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

CRAZY, huh?

The health benefits Shilpi and I have experienced are STAGGERING. Not just physically, but mentally as well.

Check out Robb Wolf’s site.

BIG MISTAKE!

Here’s the reality: Success is incremental.

Imagine a someone building up a website or a business over several years, doing a little bit everyday. They may not see success initially but over the course of years they have MASSIVE success because of they’re daily incremental efforts.

That’s how most people become successful. It doesn’t happen overnight. Even in the case of a big real estate deal or product launch, there’s a TON of work over a period of months and sometimes years that leads up to it.

Problem is most people’s mindset is focused on instant, fast success, and so they go looking for ways to have instant success only to face endless discouragement.

You get what I’m saying?

Think of success as analogous to building of house of bricks, ONE BRICK AT A TIME.

That needs to be your mindset.

“What percentage of people succeed in that?”

“What does the average person doing that business make?”

“You gotta be realistic. Only a very small percentage of people doing that type of business make any real money.”

Sound familiar? That’s exactly what my friends (or so called friends) and family told me.

I mean if you look at the statistics, less than 1% of people who do online marketing really make it BIG.

I’m hear to tell you that averages and statistics are a total crock of shit as far as your success is concerned.

You are not an average, a statistic, or a number.

Averages are typically based on bell curve distributions. What you have to do is study and model people who are at the top .5% of that bell curve distribution. If you do that, you WILL BE SUCCESSFUL.

Food for thought.

I’m now on a VERY strict diet, and I gotta tell you the first 4-6 weeks were PAINFUL. I had seriously withdrawal symptoms.

I’ve finally broken past that point and now I feel GREAT. My health has improved dramatically.

What does this have to do with business?

Listen up…

If you want to be successful in business (or most things in life) you gotta be willing to do the things that are uncomfortable, even PAINFUL, in the short term, in order to get results that will make you feel really GOOD in the LONG TERM.

When you get that, and stop thinking it terms of easy money and short cuts, you can start building your foundation for REAL long term SUCCESS.

You can make quick money, and you’ll feel good in the short term, but you’ll be in SERIOUS trouble in the long term.

Just like eating junk.

Are you feeding your business a junk food diet?

If THAT guy can build a billion dollar company, what can’t I, or any of you?

And you don’t even need a 100% new idea (we had myspace and friendster before facebook).

You just need to improving on an existing idea and have the vision to make it BIG.

So what’s my point?

Point is why are we fight for table scraps like mangey mutts??

With the skills, knowledge, and marketing expertise most of you have, you can build something BIG.

Think about that…with the same time and effort, why not shot for billions instead of millions?

Here’s what I’ve seen, over and over again. Someone gets involved with affiliate/internet marketing. They start noticing a lot of people doing unethical things, some are borderline, some are flat stealing from and cheating people.

At first they’re disgusted by it, and they vow they’re gonna do it the right way, honestly.

Then they start going to internet marketing conference, start hanging out with people in the industry.

Slowly, they’re standards start falling. What they thought was unethical a year ago, is suddenly OK to do. (Deep down they feel guilty, but they just bury the guilt in all the money they’re making.)

A year later they’re running acai berry flogs, openly spamming, and snorting cocaine with a room full of hookers.

And there you go, from upstanding citizen to bonified white colar criminal in 2 years.

(Now, I should say, NOT everyone in IM turns into crook or crackhead! But almost everyone has their standards LOWERED.)

So what happened?

If you don’t work hard to maintain high ethical standards, associate with most people in the IM/affiliate crowd will drag you DOWN.

And if you let your standards drop a little bit, and then a little bit more, and then a little bit more again, then before you know it, you’ll be pushing fake new articles and fake blogs promoting bogus diet offers too.

I’m not just talking about standards and ethics because it the right thing to do, but also if you want a long term business you need a build your foundation on integrity.