Darren Hardy's Compound Effect & Habits that Shape Your Affiliate Business
Just take a second and ponder this...
“It’s not the big things that add up in the end; it’s the hundreds, thousands, or millions of little things that separate the ordinary from the extraordinary.” “Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE” - Darren Hardy
Powerful, huh?
Darren Hardy is the owner of Success Magazine, a multimillionaire, a sought after speaker, and the author of the book Compound Effect. His life is full of accolades now, but it definitely didn't start out that way.
He had a borderline abusive dad, a step mom that called him, "the other woman's son", and lots of turmoil that left him saying he had a horrible childhood. Despite his trial-stricken upbringing, he became a multimillionaire with many people who attribute their success to him or the inspiration he's given thru his company, Success Magazine.
How did he make the shift?
The rags to riches story he has would make you wonder, "How did he go from horrible childhood to a successful adulthood", right? Well, he attributes his success to something called the Compount Effect.
He says that the compound effect can work in your favor or in your demise.
“In essence, you make your choices, and then your choices make you.”- Darren Hardy
The Bad Compounding
When you boil down the compound effect, the most basic ingredient is our choices. Every day we make choices. We can choose to:
- Wake up late
- Take lots of naps
- Eat lots of sweets and salts
- Spend more than we make
- Waste time
- Avoid exercise
- Smoke, drink, or indulge in choice "privileges"
- Speak without consideration
- Sell by manipulation
- Have sex frivolously
- Scam people out of their hard earned money
- Lie, omit information, or exaggerate
- Make purchase after purchase; spiraling from program to program like a gambler but claiming to look for a way to "grow our businesses" (aka. Shiny Object Syndrome)
- and the list really goes on and on of the choices that could trigger that compound effect against our favor
Each of these choices probably won't show much of a countereffect the first time we attempt them. They may even feel good (or GREAT). As a result, we try again and again because we think, "Maybe we're exempt from the consequences of these" UNTIL they've become a habit, and the consequences start rearing their ugly heads!
You may know an addict, a person who seems to always struggle financially, a person who struggles with obesity, or a person with a sexually transmitted disease resulting from promiscuity. You may struggle with steering clear from some of these choices.
You're not alone. I'm sure not exempt.
The temptation is so sneaky. It says "Try me. It won't hurt", and it doesn't hurt the first time, the consequences pile up after continued pursuit: maybe 6 months down the line, maybe 1 year down the line, or who knows. No one is exempt from the compound effect.
“Your biggest challenge isn’t that you’ve intentionally been making bad choices. Heck, that would be easy to fix. Your biggest challenge is that you’ve been sleepwalking through your choices.” - Darren Hardy
The Good Compound Effect
In contrast, you can have bad habits and choose to replace them with different ones. Maybe you decide to...
- Switch out some sugar with a fruit
- Switch out wasted time with productive time
- Switch out consumption with creation
- Tell your abuser "I mean something" and stop putting up with their nonsense
- Switch TV time with blogging time
- Or, switch out movie money with investing money
These switches may not show results overnight either. Just like the negative compounding, the positive compounding may take 6 months, 1 year, and Darren Hardy says it usually takes two years! Over time, you'll start seeing results like what I'm seeing with my case study after 15 months of compounding effort: blogging until my back hurt, my eyes wouldn't stay open, and my bed seemed to call my name! Haha.
You may even see better results than me if you just focus on changing your habits: replacing old habits with new habits that build your business.
Habits that Compound into a Successful Affiliate Business
After having studied several different successful affiliate marketers, these are the habits I believe are most important to focus on to compound your way to an affiliate marketing business:
- Creating content aggressively
- Empathizing with an audience
- Finding a solution for the audience
- Presenting the solution to the audience
- Networking
- and, Continuing to grow and improve
Now, it's your turn...
- What stories can you share about how the compound effect has manifested in your lives?
- Do you believe it's compounding effort that brings you to or away from success?
- What habits did I exclude that are required to run a successful affiliate marketing business?
Leave your comments below. Engaging with you in the comments is one of my favorite parts of writing these posts, so I want to hear from you!
Recent Comments
29
Already changing my diet, exercising more and consuming far less coffee. Working on "LEARNING INTO EARNING$", not listening to the naysayers and other positive compound effects.
That's the way to go! I'm glad to hear you're making changes that will make you compound in a positive direction. I look forward to seeing your success.
You always have such great advice. I really like this and it's funny how much I have changed over the past three months since starting here at WA. I had a lot of those bad compounds in my life and now I have just about all the good compounds.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I will keep this in mind as I build my business.
That's so good to hear. It's amazing how many people say WA inspired negative spirals into positive ones. It's ones of the reasons I love this place so much!
I'm so glad to hear about your shift and I'm also excited to see how the positive compound effect will play out in your life. I really hope you stick with it and accomplish the goals you're trying to compound towards and more!
Thanks for sharing and for the compliments.
I still like my afternoon nap but then I usually get up at 6 am. Time wasting TV went a long time ago. I love a glass of good red wine with dinner but that treat is becoming increasingly rare.
Alister
We all like our afternoon naps, and who wants to wake up early?!!! That's for the birds! Haha. It compounds positively though if you use the time wisely. Thanks for sharing. You're so funny!
Brilliant, thanks for sharing. One of my good compound effect is, I used to come home after work about midnight, and switch on the Television and watch a movie until 3-4 am, and my wife used to get very angry and tells me off, it went on for two years or so, then one day I said to my self, enough is enough, I need to stop this stupid & waisting my valuable time like this, and stopped this bad habit for last two years, I thanked my wife and told her that she is right. I felt much better in health, because I am sleeping in bed than waisting my time watching TV.
That's a great turnaround story. Sleep is definitely good. We all need it. Thanks for pointing that out. Wives can be that positive nudge sometimes.
Really fun to read and I recognized myself in a bad habit I have... When I'm too lazy to prepare something to eat (it happens often) either for lunch or dinner, I go to the restaurant. I know I really need to work on this because that is not a good habit for my health and my bank account ahah!
That one catches me too from time to time. It can creep up on you. Haha.
I just ordered my grocery delivery as a result of falling into that habit this week! You should definitely check out my video case study if you haven't.
I'm saying that because I've been promoting WA for 15 months now, so it might be nice to see how it looks over time especially since you're 3 weeks in. Maybe it can help you outdo my milestones!
Here is goes: 60 Referrals in 30 Days: 15-Month Old Site Case Study with Comparisons I also have a Youtube case study as well you can see when you go to my profile and case study tab. I plan to keep updating those and you can ask whatever questions you want. Best wishes.
I really enjoyed reading this post. It's so true how the habits compound and become the a way of life that seems legitimate to us. The compound effect catches up and we have to live with the results until we realize it and do something about it. I was one of the negative habits type until recently. Thanks for that insight !
Pilly
Thanks so much Pilly for stopping by. I'm glad the post was helpful for you. Thanks also for your humility in sharing that you made a recent shift in habits. Can I ask...what was the "aha" moment for you that made you switch from the negative spiral into the positive one?
See more comments
Thank you for this article. Very inspiring.
You're welcome. I'm glad it was helpful for you.