5 Steps To Help You Succeed

This is probably going to end up being a fairly long post so get ready for a long read.

I thought I'd share what I've learnt over the past few years and how it's helped myself and how it can help you make money both online and offline.

1. Never Stop Learning



“The best investment you can make is in yourself. The more you learn, the more you earn”

Warren Buffett once told students in an investing class "Read 500 pages...every day...That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest."

Mark Cuban says he reads "more than 3 hours almost every day". Most CEO's read about a book a week.

If you look through BHW you'll find a wealth of information. Take a look through the forum and the top first post and read anything that interests you even in the slightest. Once you get a grasp of something research more. Read articles online and keep learning. If you don't understand a method or technical aspect research and read more.

Even if you think you know everything about SEO carry on reading articles. There is always new information to learn.

The more you learn the better equipped you'll be to beat your competition.

Here are a few of my many favourite books of all time:

• Rich Dad Poor Dad
• The Four Hour Work Week
• Beating the Street and One Up On Wall Street (value investing)
• Traction

You don't have to limit yourself to books. I enjoy listening to podcast, watching YouTube and documentaries and films.

Podcast I enjoy:

• How I Built This
• We Study Billionaires
• Entrepreneur Stories Inspiration: Millionaire Interviews

YouTube Channels I enjoy:

• Valuetainment
• Ahrefs
• CNBC Make It
• FAST Graphs (investing)
• PolyMatter
• Business Casual
• Doug Cunnington (Affiliate Marketing)
• Kurzgesagt
• Wendover Productions
• The Infographic Show

Documentaries and Films I have enjoyed:

• The Founder
• The Big Short
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• Margin Call
• Inside Job
• War Dogs
• Wall Street
• Boiler Room
• Rogue Trader
• Trading Places
• ......

2. Think Big



I find setting very high goals drives me and motivates me to work hard. There's nothing wrong with setting a goal of making $100 a month but why not $1,000 or $10,000 or even $1,000,000 a month?

I like to use a similar format to the Dream Line method from the Four Hour Work Week.



I essentially think about what I want to achieve and reverse engineer it backwards. So, for example, let's say you want to make $1,000,000 a year. What does that break down to per month or week or perhaps you know the $ you make per sale (as an example) how many customers do you need?



Here is a great video from Valuetainment (one of my favourite YouTube channels).


Lastly, one of my favourite quotes from Richard Branson



3. Find Out What Motivates You

Motivation can be tough. You need to find out what motivates you so you can push through the tough times. To help me motivate myself on difficult days I'll take some time off and go onto a real estate site like Rightmove or on a subreddit such as RoomPorn and browse at nice apartments or homes.



Why? Because it helps motivate me and reminds me of what I'm working towards. Owning a nice apartment or home is one of my motivators so when I'm having a tough day I find this to be a good motivator.

Now, this is just one of my motivations and you could apply this to anything that motivates you or that you aspire to have.

4. Get Involved/Network



This is probably the biggest point that has helped me in business. I've made some amazing partnerships here from BHW and recently on Reddit. How? Because I got involved. I try and answer all the questions I can find here on BHW and Reddit (that are relevant to my ares of knowledge and experience). For me, I enjoy the satisfaction of helping others and hope that they will do the same in the future when they are able to help others. In addition, you never know who you talking to or helping. You might answer a question from someone who has got a big budget or projects that need help on and you taking the time to answer even a simple question might lead to them getting in touch with you. I've been very grateful that I've had people recommend me for projects/JV or had random people reaching out to me for help. I wouldn't be in the position I am today if I didn't get involved.

This links to networking also. The more people you know the better. Being able to ask others in my network questions on areas I'm not strong on or answering questions for others have given me great partnership opportunities. I can refer people to others I know could handle a project/work and I get people referring others to me for projects.

Take the time to get involved. It's worth it. Everyone has their own area of expertise and there's always someone who will be grateful for your time to help them.

5. A Few Quick, But Important, Points



I'm not going to write a whole load more because most of the points are explained very well in this post.

• Don't spread yourself too thin. I learnt this the hard way. Once you've started a project, stick with it! I suffer big time from shiny object syndrome. But over the years I've learnt to get focused. Results don't happen overnight. Don't expect to get rich quick.
• X Method is not saturated. This is aimed at IM mostly. I see lots of post complaining that the x method is saturated. It's simply not true. You just need to find your own angle to it. Take affiliate marketing and in particular Amazon Affiliate websites. There is still plenty of money to be made with these websites. Despite there being possibly hundreds of thousands of these niche websites out there people still make very good money with it.
• Diversify. Don't rely on one source of income or one website or one method. If something happens (you lose your rankings) and you have all your eggs in one basket (SEO for example) then you're going to suffer. Over time you should look at diversifying your streams of income. That's why in the future I'm looking at offline businesses, stocks and real estate as well as online projects.
• Learn about personal finance. I'd highly recommend everyone reads Rich Dad Poor Dad. Be sure to check out r/personalfinance and for the UK r/ukpersonalfinance. They have some great flowcharts to follow which show you what you should aim to do with your money (USA, UK).

Amazing thread, @Holzr!

A nice little thought booster! Thanks

Excellent post OP!

great tips.

I would also add that one should not act on behalf of their ego in business or at least when starting out. If your client is an asshole towards you one should learn how to work with assholes instead of not working with them. I have seen and personally experienced that ego can be a big factor in decision making and many times disrupts good decisions.

Great one!

Point 3 is interesting. From now on I will watch the Nissan GT-R every time I lose my motivation

Motivation is the key.

Good topic, the community need such threads

Nice one for the new year!

Nice post
Some good info there. Not all of it works for everyone. But its universal. Everyone is different , so different approaches work for different people

I guess not always motivation and good will will get you there, you must be clever and focused.

One more thing to add: Stop watching porn, it's a big distraction and waste of time!

I would change "Never stop learning" by "Constantly build."

georgeD215 said:

I guess not always motivation and good will will get you there, you must be clever and focused.

Click to expand...

I don't think you need to be clever and disrupt an industry etc. Hard work, a vision and focus are key. Finding what makes you happy is key. I enjoy doing what I do, working for myself and growing a business, so much that I don't feel too much that I'm working. I can easily work a 12 hour day for myself but if I was to do that for someone else I'd struggle a lot.

I'd like to add an update to the list and add a few points

6. Do What Makes You Happy

It ties in with point 3. I know everyone says it but it's got a lot of truth behind it. It doesn't matter what makes you happy whether it's mowing lawns or doing SEO or being a CEO for a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. It's important to try and not compare yourself with others. If mowing lawns makes you happy then that's great, so what if you're not making $10M a year? You're happy and that's key. A lot of high profile/big earners are not happy despite making big money. I think a lot of people nowadays worry about comparing themselves to others and think that people have an expectation of them so they do things that are for others and not their own happiness.

Add thinking big and I think these are the two biggest factors to help anyone succeed. It doesn't even have to be "I want to make $10M a year" it could be as simple as I enjoy doing SEO and would like to build a portfolio of websites to earn money passively so I can quit my job.

What makes you happy and motivated?

What's your big picture and how are you trying to get there?

Great post.