How Did I Start An Online Business And Lose $60,000?

Yesterday I was reading back… If you use Facebook, you’ll know on Facebook it does this thing where it shows you certain posts that you made like a year ago, or five years ago.

And I was looking at some of them yesterday, just thinking back on some memories of when I posted those things. One of my posts was about, or had mentioned, my ‘startings’ in the online marketing world.

Basically, in the first four years, I lost the equivalent in UK pounds of over $60,000, just slightly over $61K. And I read a comment on that post from a few years back, and somebody said,

“How Did You Manage To Lose So Much Money? What Went Wrong?”

And so I thought, “You know what? This is probably a valuable thing for me to share with you right now on this Drive.” Because, obviously I don’t really know you personally right now. So I don’t know what kind of situation you’re in.

But if you’re in the early stages to start an online business, the statistics tell me that there’s a high probability that you’ve probably spent a considerable amount of money, and you’ve probably not yet attained the goals that you’re looking for, or the results you were looking for.

Or if you’re later on in your business, you’ve actually got a business that’s producing revenue and you run your business full-time, chances are that you probably went through some struggles in that journey as well. So I thought, what the heck, why don’t I share this.

So the discussion of the day on this journey to the Internet Profits offices is,

“How Did I Start An Online Business And Lose $60,000?”

Here’s one thing I always used to say; that I “got scammed by the gurus!” Like it was the evil gurus fault that I lost all that money, and failed for so long, and reached the rock-bottom in my life by my mid-twenties… Because it was everyone else’s fault but me!

And you know what? I can look back and I can say there were some terrible, terrible things that I purchased. And some of them indeed were scams; meaning products that didn’t work, courses that didn’t do what they said they would. Miss-sold, uninformed, false promises. There was a lot of that, yes. And I definitely attribute tens of thousands of dollars to being ripped off.

But – and here’s a big ‘but’. Here’s the honesty of my experience, now being 13 years on from there, 10 plus years on, is that…

Really? Truthfully? You Want To Know The Truth?…

I let myself down. Because looking back to how many products, programs, courses and opportunities that I bought, that I just didn’t see through, is astonishing.

However I would definitely say that I lost more money by not following through, than I did at the wrath of poor ripoff products and opportunities that I purchased. And so now all these years on, I take full responsibility, even for buying the rip-off products. Because at the end of the day, I was the one that believed them.

You don’t know what you don’t know, right?

So How Did I Lose $60,000 Really?

Well a lot of bad decisions, a lot of inaction. And actually, looking back, I never for a long, long time looked at online marketing as a business. I viewed it as just a way to make some extra money.

But at the end of the day, here’s the reality, right? Whenever money is exchanging hands, online or offline, it is a transaction. And I think the problem with the internet is, you actually forget.

Because you’re not face to face with your customers, it can be somewhat easy to forget sometimes, that there is another person the other side of that screen somewhere around the globe, making a purchase.

There is an exchange of value happening. And I think that was one of my mistakes as well, is not viewing it as a business. Just trying to make money online, instead of building a business online, centred around helping others and giving value to other people.

My Four Big Mistakes!

So mistake number one; buying into a lot of bad decisions and making a lot of bad choices.

Mistake number two; my lack of action – of following through.

Mistake number three; not viewing it as a business and treating it as such and approaching it adequately as such.

Mistake number four; believing that I could just figure it all out on my own. And that’s probably one of the silliest mistakes of all, looking back.

But you know what? At the time, I just didn’t even conceive this right. I believed that, by just picking up a video course, or e-book, or software, that I would be able to make money online.

And whilst I’m sure there’s people that do do that, I would say the overwhelming single biggest reason for the serious failure rate in the online marketing world, is because far too many people are trying to go it alone.

2004 to 2008=No Sales… 2009=Left Day Job! ~ Here’s How…

From 2004 to 2008, I lost $60,000+ and I didn’t make any money, not a single sale, not a single cent. The end of 2008 in October/November, I got a mentor – I joined a coaching program – somebody that was really doing what I wanted to do. Five weeks later I was making sales online.

Eight or nine months later, I quit my full-time day job in 2009. And here we are in 2017, and the business is scaling and growing. We’ve generated millions and millions of dollars in online sales. Helped tens of thousands of people with our products, programs, and services, and opportunities that we offer.

And one of the single biggest reasons, I believe, that I’ve got here today, is that I…

Continually Seek Out Experts

…in the fields that I want to learn more about, and invest in their help. One of my mentors right now, Russell Brunson, I pay him $25,000 a year. Over two years in, about to be in a third; that’s $50,000 paid already. Why? Because of the ROI (return on investment) that help produces.

So there you have it. Four big mistakes that I made in starting an online business, that led me to losing over $60,000. Bad choices, inaction, not treating it as a business, and trying to go it alone. Now you have it. Have a great day my friends. Talk to you in Testing Facebook Traffic With Facebook Live Ads tomorrow.