Time Investment Now, BIG Payoff Later.
Time, it is something that we all have but we view it much differently. This is based on perspective, on our history within the working world, and in many cases our experience being an entrepreneur.
I remember back when I started out within the online world, over 20 years ago. I was in college full time when I came across the concept of affiliate marketing. I started out with NO expectations, other than the knowledge that others were making money doing it. In fact, I knew and heard of people that were "full-time" within the online world.
That alone gave me more than enough momentum to get rolling. I didn't have expectations of success right away, and I didn't have an explicit time frame that I needed to create success by. Rather, I just knew that is was "possible", and that was more than enough to motivate me to figure it out.
Fast forward a few months later and a few months of heavy learning (and lots of fumbling around lol), and I made my very first sale online. It was around the 3-month mark. I believe it was around a $30 affiliate commission, if I recall correctly.
In all reality, I worked THREE entire months to make $30. I probably invested at least a solid 20 hours per week into this, if not more including all the research and extra-curricular learning I was doing. That works out to pennies an hour I was working for, pretty crazy right? Was I insane working for what amounted to less than $0.12 per hour? I certainly didn't feel that way.
The question is why? Why didn't I feel like I was wasting my time when I could be working somewhere else for $20-30 per hour? The answer is actually quite straightforward. WORK for hourly pay is entirely different from building a BUSINESS, and if you treat them the same you will never be all that successful within either environment.
Let's have a look at the key differences between "work" and "business":
Work. We go to work, we collect our hourly pay, we go home, we collect our paycheck every two weeks. Easy to understand, and we are conditioned to think like this from the moment we get our very first JOB.
Business. We work on our business, we don't get an hourly pay, we work when we want and often times more than a regular job, but there where is the paycheck? A little more difficult to understand, in particular if you are new to the entrepreneurship world. We get paid as a result of our business, which takes time to establish.
The problem I see is people that are conflating the two styles of income.
People that anticipate they can earn an entrepreneur salary within a job environment, are setting themselves up for disappointment. You will eventually reach an upper plateau of what you can achieve, how many raises you can get, and the level of seniority you can achieve within a corporation.
Those that want to earn regular hourly pay within the entrepreneurship environment, are almost certain to fail. You have to work NOW, without any direct revenue correlation. Sometimes you work for months or even years without your effort translating into wages that surpass that of a job.
But When it "Clicks" in the Entrepreneurship World...
...the rewards are much, MUCH greater.
I think I can speak for all online entrepreneurs that have seen it "click", that the time and effort you put in when it feels like no financial results are happening is more than worth it. We get our businesses to a state of success and they start working for us 24 hours a day, every day.
An online business will produce income when we are not there, but not just that. We can increase the income of our business typically through doing more of what we are already doing. That is called working at scale.
An example of effort now, pay off later is easily explained through content creation. If you are just getting rolling, it may feel like you are writing articles for the sake of writing articles. There is no immediate reward. The thing is that once you start to get rankings in Google, a SINGLE article can pay massive dividends.
Over the years I have had single articles pay $10,000's income. Yes, an article that may have taken me an hour or two to put together, led to almost a full-time yearly income for most.
That is the reality as you start to see traction on your business. Sure, not every piece of content you create will be a huge winner, but over time and as you start to see some better rankings,
And of course this is just an example of the SEO side of your business. There are paid traffic angles. Your brand that is growing in value as an asset. There are social media and influence you can start to accrue on those networks. You can build a list of potential customers, and actual customers. You start getting word-of-mouth reach. You can do so many things to scale and grow.
But, you need to give yourself TIME.
If you don't, you will never get to see that exciting side of the entrepreneurship world. You will be in a perpetual state of bouncing around from idea to idea, trying new things, but never giving ONE thing enough time to produce the results that true, focused entrepreneurs get to experience.
Give your business time. It will pay dividends.
Recent Comments
149
This is the picture that makes me propelled to move on. I remember when doing research for a PhD: the number of experiments that failed was more than ten thousand and my dissertation was written based on those very few that worked! How many years rolled? More than four years!! I take this learning process seriously and diligently push on in both directions i.e. research and studying.
After understanding well the concepts, my writing will become faster. Thank you Kyle for this motivational and educational post.
That is some real life experience right there that will help you appreciate how the business world works. Not everything we do will work, but it leads to a better skill set and knowing what works. When you figure out what works for you, you can do it over and over again to scale and grow.
This is how business works. Aim to build with each day that passes, knowing full well that success is going to come down the road as a result of these efforts.
Thank you very much, Kyle. I do treasure all the pieces of advice I receive from you and indeed all members of the community. Thank you once again
Hello Kyle! Thank you for this message. This was exactly what I needed now. I am entering my 4th month at WA and am amazed at what I have learned so far. And this tells me there's a lot more to learn!
I will keep up my momentum and continue to push. I cannot imagine doing anything else.
Looking forward to years with WA.
Regards, Corinne
Keep the momentum going, keep pushing. The reality is that education is worth a lot, and this comes down to your own valuable skill sets that you have acquired so far that will end up paying dividends in your business (and is actually highly valued to other businesses).
Looking forward to seeing your ongoing progress Corinne!
Good morning Kyle,
I hope you are all doing well. Thank you for another very encouraging and informative blog post, it's appreciated.
I hear you big time, when we potentially work for a company, we can only go so far, in normal terms! I have heard far too many people saying that they put everything they could into working for a company only to lose their job a few years down the line!
Working for ourselves is a much better option! I have been self-employed since 1983, I think I'm probably unemployable now! Although I have been working online for a long time part-time, I will never give up! I can see the potential and how I can multiply my online business! Once my offline business is sold, I plan to move quickly forward with my online business. I know that it's possible, massive time!
Have a great day.
Roy
Haha, I am the same way. Unemployable, well, maybe not. You are likely willing to work harder and think with a lot more creativity as a result of your 30 year run in the world of entrepreneurship.
The potential within the online world is vast, we have never seen the likes in our lifetime as more and more people come online. A potential audience of 5 BILLION, just need to put in the leg work now within any direction that you head, for the pay off down the road (and the consistency).
Thanks for sharing your experiences and insights Roy!
Good morning Kyle,
Thank you for your reply, it's appreciated.
I believe that self-employed people or people who have been in business have a much better work ethic. I always like to think when I'm carrying out a job for a customer, are they getting value for money. I also like to take great care and respect when I am on their property.
I couldn't agree more, Kyle, the power of the Internet and its potential never fails to amaze me! It really is a wonderful invention when used for the right purposes. A potential audience of 5 billion is staggering!
I agree, I definitely need to put the work in now. One of the issues is that when I should be writing for my online business I'm busy working the off-line business. Hopefully, this will change in the near future! I definitely believe that consistency is key.
Have a great weekend.
Roy
This is motivational because paying money and spending time without any yields is so draining.
At one time i told myself, if only i can get a single sale and at least know this thing works, but for now, nothing still, yet it is soon clocking a YEAR.
I am imagining the energy to pay the next annual premium!!!! I do not know.
Well your education is a BIG yield. You are learning lots on your way to success, and that is often times as valuable as the monetary success you need up achieving. That is from experience.
See more comments
The ending, where you mention staying forever in a state of bounce, going from idea to idea, never giving yourself time to perfect one thing before moving on to the next. That is a very common state of being for me. I almost always have a list of things that need to be done, which get interupted occasionally by things that I want to be doing, which in turn will get interupted by the things that I NEED to get done. Which I must admit, does effect the quality of the outcome of both the needs and the wants.
So how do you do that? How do you develop the habit of sticking with somthing until it is the best that it can be before trying to improve upon something else? It's a lot like trying to get the dog to stop chasing the cat. How do you do that before the the two go barreling through your house breaking your lamps and spilling your coffee?
There are two things that I have learned. First, I no longer worry about getting something perfect. I work at something until it is good. Secondly, I made a small list - usually 4 things that I needed to get done. When those 4 things were done, I gave myself some kind of reward. The time frame was generally broad like morning or even the whole day. After I got used to actually accomplishing 4 specific things in a given time frame, I increase it to 6. At this point, I have 8 specific things I want to get done in a day. My focus has improved so I can usually get them done.
Jim
It comes down to how passionate and genuinely interested in your chosen path. How well you want to achieve and really what is your WHY?
I think being aware and conscious of where you are at in business, and pulling back whenever you feel the urge to give up a project half way in to start something new.
The thing is, once you get the formula for success down (which we teach here), at that point you can scale and grow your business to any level..and even start new niche businesses at that point. The key is getting to that point.