As you know it’s Mindset Monday and so today’s lesson is going to focus on the over-hyped dream of becoming a millionaire in 24 hours. If you don’t already know it – there’s a reason we made this a “90 Day Plan” – that’s because it takes time and effort to reach those goals. We can’t teach you to make millions without first teaching you to make your first dollar. So today’s lesson will be one of the first goals – which is to teach you to make your first dollar – before you can make your first million. Now in order to make that first dollar you need to set some realistic goals for this challenge that will keep you motivated when times get tough.
Here is a video on goal setting with George Dans that I liked to help you realistically set and achieve your goals during the 90 Day Challenge.
I really liked this video for a few key points that go along with my message today. The first is that you should go into this challenge with a purpose. Not just the purpose of “I want to be a millionaire and quit my job”, but with a true purpose – what will I do with the money I earn from this new venture? Will I retire my parents? Quit my day job? Pay off my mortgage? The first step in reaching the 6 figure goal is to set a specific purpose for the outcome – this will keep you motivated and passionate throughout the 90 day challenge.
The next tip I really liked and haven’t heard before was that you need to F.O.C.U.S – not just focus on your daily tasks and your purpose. George Dans used it as an acronym; Faithfully On Course Until Successful. I loved this because so many people started our challenge last year and as soon as they hit an obstacle they were deferred from the end goal. I don’t want this to happen to you. When you stay on course faithfully knowing you’ll reach your goals – then you start to actually reach your goals without realizing it.
He mentioned a few other things, but the real purpose for today’s Mindset post comes from the last objective of goal setting and that’s to make it realistic. Becoming a millionaire by the end of this challenge is possible, but it’s not realistic. SOOO many people (even Justin and I) have our down days when we’re like, “this is impossible” or “I can’t believe I haven’t hit 1 million yet”, etc. However, what you should realize is how far you’ve come since you started.
This summer marks my third year of working from home fulltime. In that time we’ve traveled the US, taken 30 day vacations, I completely support my family, I am able to help out family members when I need to, I get to plan my own hours, not only that – I know how to build websites, makes sales, build a subscriber list, rank my site in the top of google, – I can accomplish all these things that so many people wish they could do and I want you to be able to do the same.
So I challenge you today to think about where you realistically want to be in 30 days. Set your “Goals” – not resolutions that will fade away over the next 90 days. If your goal is to become a millionaire – fine, set it as your long term goal. But also set up a list of goals that you want to accomplish in the next 30 days. Here’s a few I could think of:
- Learn to build a website
- Learn to drive traffic to a website
- Make my first sale
- Create my first product
- Build a list of 4000 subscribers
(pick a number that is realistic but also a stretch so you challenge yourself to try hard). - Increase the conversions of your current website
- Learn to scale your current business
- Increase the monthly value of my affiliate program
- Earn $100/day
- Earn enough to pay my rent each month automatically
My final take away for you today is that if you set these goals and don’t achieve them all – don’t scrap the plan, Just adapt it to reach them with your next set of goals.
Have a great day! See you tomorrow for this weeks lesson with Justin!
Chaunna
PS. If you’re wondering how we jumped to day 8 – we count Friday – Sundays as your catch up days since most people that are following along need some additional time due to holidays, family responsibilities, and full time jobs 
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome advice (no surprise there). Roaring for week 2. Found an awesome niche
Hi Marc, Thanks for sending me the link for Site Fling.
You Rock!
Hey Marc,
Thanks for the compliment
I love motivating people to reaching their goals. I’m looking forward to seeing your success over the next few weeks in the new killer niche!
Have a great day!
Chaunna
This is really good! And wouldn’t you know it, just earlier today I wrote a post on my blog about setting goals in order to overcome procrastination…
Coincidence??
BTW, I usually like to break down big goals into smaller milestones…and milestones into tasks that I know can be accomplished in certain time frames.
For instance, say my goal was $285/day from a website,
I’d break that down into milestones…like:
a. Find a niche
b. Build a site
c. Promote
d. Optimize
Then, I’d break each milestone into tasks, like:
a. Find a niche
1. Follow Justin’s niche discovery from the 90DC day 2 (2 hours)
2. Find possible triggers (3 hours)
3. Test triggers (5 days, 30 minutes per day)
b. Build a site
1. Keyword research (2 hours)
2. Find & purchase domain (20 minutes)
….and so on.
What do you think?
That’s a really good point… Justin and I used to have a thermometer written on a white board in our office. We wrote the goal 10,000 at the top, then each day we’d track how much came in and how close we were getting to our goal… that way we’d see that we were actually achieving it or that we needed to work a little harder to make it to the goal within 4 weeks. Then the next month we’d start all over again.
It was a big motivator and also helped you realize that the work you’re doing is getting results!
Another great post! My first goals have to be learning how to create webpages, driving traffic to those pages, and making my first sales!
My larger purpose is first to help with my mother’s retirement. Second, building
Great goals Stephen!
I’m sure you’ll achieve the first set over the next couple weeks. Which will set you up to accomplish your long term goals soon.
I love this lesson! Got my goals written and I think their pretty realistic with just a pinch of push and a dash of dream. Thanks!!!
Excellent Dolly! I can’t wait to see you crush them and set new ones at the end of this.
Sometimes when i get bummed out, it doesn’t happen often because i’ve been selling junk for along time and i kinda like working for myself, but when i’m feeling down this helps me to feel better about what i do and where i’m going:
Hey Wayne,
We’re all down some of the time. I just read a quote that just might apply to you. I know it does for me.
You can’t hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have.” ~Zig Ziglar~
Best wishes this next 90 days and beyond,
Stephen
You mean I’m not gunna make a million this week!! What have all of those other gurus been telling me all this time.
haha
In all seriousness I think there is a great message in this post about setting realistic goals and staying focussed on them. Thanks Chaunna
I have found my niche. Kind of fell in my lap. Have a very good friend of mine that approached me last week with a product that he wants to sell online. Was a bit sceptical to start but when I started looking into it it looks very promising.
Even managed to get myself banned by Google yesterday for a few hours yesterday while I was doing some keyword research!! Apparently I was being too automated.
Working like a machine!!
I don’ have problems setting goals or seeing them through. The problem for me is when there is a bump in the road, I have be unable to know who to go to that will help me see all of the options. So after seeing something through, the results seemed to be lacking because if I just would have had some advice along the way, the outcome would been much better. That’s why this program is so appealing to me. Thanks for post Chaunna!
Faye
Hey Faye,
I know what you mean about not knowing where to go to get the help you need. That’s one reason Justin and I do a challenge each year. We remember how difficult it was to get started (or I should say Justin remembers the confusion… i got to jump in after he was already finding success
Keep moving forward and ask every question you have. My favorite saying is, “the only ‘dumb question’ is the one not asked!”
Hey great post, Chaunna!
I love the F.O.C.U.S. acronym and will most definitely be stealing it
I’m a real buggeer for not sticking to one thing. One thing that has helped me stick to my plans despite distractions and obstacles is this:
From the moment it takes off to the moment it lands, an aeroplane is OFF-course about 98% of the time.
Various challenges such as wind, storms and turbulence affect the course of the plane, but they don’t take off unless they have a clear destination in mind, and that is where they’re headed, despite this issue of being off-course 98% of the time!
You don’t see the pilot giving up and abadoning the flight – they simply take it in their stride, get back on course and perhaps even learn something from the experience
Good luck everyone!
Tony.
great lesson in the airplane story.. however I’m fliying this weekend out for vacation and now I’m a little nervous. lol
Chaunna: Thanks for some great information. All to often people set too high of a goal! They want to jump right in and be famous and rich without actually taking the time to do what is necessary to achieve that goal. You have to build a solid foundation first. David
Hi:
Great post! Points four and five are my biggest obstacles. You see, some years ago, when I first became involved with affiliate marketing, I’d had a mentor who “taught” me that I should avoid email marketing like it was a plague, and now I seem to have become so programmed with that belief, I “can’t see the forest for the trees”. The big question I have with having a subscriber list is how are you supposed to build personal relationships with the people on those lists? You don’t “know” who those people are – they are just emails in a database – or am I making too much out of it?
On point four, how exactly does one create a product? Don’t you need some specialized skills, or software? To be sure, one could write stuff in PDF format and market them, but what about digital products? And with so much competition in Internet Marketing, how does one find a marketable product that hasn’t already saturated the market?
I realize that this post is public, but I am going to lay something on the the line here: my one goal is not to become a millionaire in IM, but I just want to make enough so I don’t have to live off government disability. I have five blog sites I am trying to run, and a sixth one in development; I have been working with these blogs since around March, and I haven’t made my first dollar with them yet. I need help big time, but the help I truly need costs thousands of dollars, which I don’t have (or so I’ve been led to believe).
Mistake, after mistake, after foolish mistake has been the theme for me, ever since I lost my mentor years ago, and honestly, I am feeling quite hopeless. As a matter of fact, my thoughts this morning have more or less been centered around “throwing in the towel”……again. There is so much about IM that I either don’t understand, or cannot accept, and this is most likely what is keeping me from true success.
Alright, enough said. Suffice it to say that your post did sort of redirect my thinking a little bit, so maybe I won”t throw that proverbial towel in today.
Thank you, and best regards,
Dave W Earle
PS
I don’t know how I missed the first week of your ninety day challenge, but I did…..
Hey Dave,
Thanks for sharing all of that with us. It’s great to see that you’re being honest with us and yourself – that will help you go even further in this challenge. Here’s a few answers to your questions – though I’m sure Justin will probably add many of them to this weeks Q&A
With your subscribers you should build a relationship. I don’t think of it in the sense that I’m in a relationship (like husband and wife) however, when I write on the blog, or an email I like to think of a friend that I’m writing to – one of my college buddies or a family member that’s just starting out in this niche etc. This automatically helps you to write more personable – it also helps you to let some of your personality shine through because you already “know” the person.
You’ll notice that Justin always mispells certain words – he used slang often, and shares some of our life experiences with our subscribers. Each of these things shows his personality and people start to relate to it… not everyone is a perfect speller, not everyone graduated highschool or went on to major in english, and most people can relate to vacations, favorite movies, having kids, etc. These are all things that help people relate to you. You do start to get to know your subscribers as they post comments and reply to your emails which helps you help them more
(I’m sure we’ll go into a LOT more detail during the week that we teach listbuilding)
We don’t suggest going into an IM niche. In fact we HIGHLY suggest doing something you love. Justin is really big into card games so he has a side website in that niche, I am an ex teacher and LOVE helping parents and teachers so I have a site in that niche… these are where we focus when we’re not teaching people how to work from home. Our IM niche site is another passion that both Justin and I have to help people move out of paycheck to paycheck and living the life of their dreams – something both our parents still struggle with.
It’s good to see you continue to work on niche sites to reach your goals. I highly suggest you making it to one of our live shows (in july we’re on break right now) – we can take a look at yours sites and give you some feedback). You can also use one of those for this challenge and then duplicate your success on the others when you’ve finished the challenge.
Don’t worry about past mistakes – we’re going to focus on moving forward and progressing now. Since you missed last week – take some time to try and catch up. Here’s the link to that lesson: http://sitefling.com/blog/category/challenge/page/4/
Stay Strong!
Chaunna
Hi Chaunna:
Thanks so much for that inspirational reply
I get so worried about exposing myself in that manner, as I am afraid of what other IMer’s might think of me; I may be getting confused on terminology, though. I was under the impression that any kind of work done on the Internet was pretty much “internet marketing”, whether its working with affiliate programs, blogs, articles, etc., etc.
However, after reading the page you sent me to with the link in your comment, I may be “beating a dead horse” after all
. You see, I am not “working” in any of the niches I am marketing; I simply provide the information to those who ARE working in those niches. I had read about “auto-blogging”, and that is what I was attempting to do with my blogs – automate the info content from a syndication service.
The one thing I do love to do is PC building, repair and maintenance. I have discovered over the past 10 years of experience with working with them and on them, that there are so many errors which crop up with PC’s that the ordinary home user could fix on their own, if only they had the right tools or knowledge; but what ends up happening is that they are so uninformed due to the nature of the PC industry, that they either spend hundreds of dollars to some “highly trained” technician, or they trash the PC altogether and spend hundreds of dollars buying a new one, when in reality, they could have corrected the errors on their own and saved the $$ and frustration.
Perhaps THAT is my niche
Your thoughts??
Hi Chaunna
Very motivational post and great video.
Can’t wait to learn from you… and participate in the 90 day challenge…
I loved the video too.
I wrote up the focus acronym and posted it on my monitor before reading on and seeing you had already noted it!!
Thanks Guys!
I think you nailed it on the head, Dave.
You have to do something that is inspirational to you. And If you like PC Repair and Diagnostics and your passion is in it. This is what you should be blogging about. There are alot of people that will spend hundreds of dollars on the internet for Spyware and Adware. If you just google this you will find hundreds of results. AVG Virus Spyware, SpyBot and SuperAntiSpywareFreeEdition To Name A Few. It is easy to market to people which you have a passion about then trying to market to people niches that are boring to you. If that makes sense.
Always Remember,
“Garden of the mind: The Mind is a fertile garden, it will grow anything
you wish to plant-beautiful flowers or weeds.”
-Bruce Lee
Take care,
Ray Gollis-Official Internet Marketing Expert
Wonderful choices/examples of goals! Mine is no 9. Earn $100/day that will bring me freedom, time for my family, lot of travel and the oportunity to do what I love to do.
Hmm a song springs to mind….
I wish I was little bit taller,
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a girl who looked good
I would call her
I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat
and a ’64 Impala….
i guess Ca$h rules everything around me….
ok $10,000 a month 3 months from now….
$3,000 a month 6 weeks from now
and a blog up and running, with content, SEO’d and listed in the top 10 with my fishing poles over the next 21 days.
Good?
haha i dont care i want it, i want it bad
Dustin and Chaunna,
I love the F.O.C.U.S. acronym. Oftentimes, we find resistance and don’t evaluate what we could improve (and just quit instead). You are great examples of what plugging away can do. You will be a part of my success. Thank you for freely giving what others charge a premium for.
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