How To Make It Through The Night Of Uncertainty --

by Marlon Sanders, author of The Info Product Dashboard

A message of encouragement if you feel uncertain, doubt if what you're doing
will be successful or sometimes feel like you're on the wrong track.

If you're tired of having smoke blown at, through, under and up every part of your clothing and anatomy, then maybe this article will be refreshing to you.

I'd like to talk to you about what I call...

"The Night Of Uncertainty."

When you go to learn Internet marketing, you experience a variety of times and days.

What I mean is, you have those moments where the sun is shining. Everything looks like it's working.  Everything is all hunky dory, as we'd say in the state of Oklahoma where I'm from.

You wake up. 

The light seems brighter. There's a bounce in your step.  It's all good.

But life has its ups and downs and so does marketing.

There's also this period you go through at times where what you thought was working isn't.  Where you're going through a learning curve.  You put in time and effort and do NOT get the payoff.

Most people quit at that point.

It's the "night time" of marketing.  And night precedes day.

Before things work, they don't work.

It's all part of the learning curve.  And the hardest thing about it is during the night, you doubt yourself and what you're doing. You doubt if it'll ever work.  You doubt if your time, money and effort are well invested or not.

It's one of the reasons I teach and preach to spend a big chunk of your time, money and energy learning marketing methods that will benefit you in ALL of life, and not just in an Internet business.

It's hard to make it through the nights of business.  Everything seems black.  What you thought was working isn't.  You've expended all this effort and the payoff didn't come.

The doubt. The indecision.  The hurt.  The pain.

The only thing you have to go on is your hope and your belief. Sure, there are the successes of others. But there's always a reason those don't apply to you.

So in the nights of business, you're often there alone.

Anthony Robbins said with great eloquence that life is an interaction between pain and pleasure.  People will do more to avoid pain than to gain pleasure.

So the trick is to make it through the nights of business, so your days can outnumber your nights.

I've been lucky in business. Because I've had a lot more days than nights.  But here are some tips on how to get through the night and make it to the morning.

Tip 1:  Keep stacking your know how

The first thing you do is keep stacking your know how.  There's a price tag on success.  And in today's world, a significant chunk of that price tag is information.

Tip 2:  Stop weeping over the know how you bought that didn't help

Not all know how you purchase will help you. I probably buy 10 things to find 1 that really helps me.  Yes, sometimes that isn't cheap.

But it's a lot cheaper than the school of hard knocks.

Tip 3:  Have a propensity for taking action and turning know how
into skill

Knowing HOW to do something has no value if you don't practice. You have to put your know how into action. That is how you turn know how into skill.

You best learn what you DO and mess up on.  You can read theory all day.  Anyone can be a keyboard jockey on an Internet marketing forum and have all the right answers.

But the Game is played in the streets of experience.  And you learn best by doing.  Then, when something doesn't work, you go back to your info products, back to your ebooks, back to your forums and find out why.  Then you go DO again.

Tip 4:  When the chips are down, find your sticking point and
blast through it.

A lot of times it's just practice.  It's a learning curve.  You simply need more reps, more repetition, to increase your skill level.

Your SP (sticking point) may be that you don't feel confident enough to create your own info product.  Or you aren't comfortable doing 12-product surveys.  Or you can't come up with product ideas.  Or you don't know how to position products.

Whatever your SP is, FOCUS on that and get through it and over it, even if you muck up everything else in the time being.

Tip 5:  Keep adding action to your know how

You want to increase your know how. And you want to increase the percent of your know how you turn into action.

Look at it this way:  You are building your ARSENAL.  If you aren't winning the battle, you need more weapons in your arsenal deployed into the field.

Add more know how, more weapons.  Deploy more weapons into the field, into action.

Tip 6:  In any system, there is only ONE weakest link. 

Find your weakest link and bolster it.

I've known great triumphs in business.  I've traveled the world. I've met the most amazing, incredible, wonderful people.

I legitimately work less than just about anyone in this business (with the help of talented team members over the years.)

I've also had a few nights that were hard to get through.  I mean nights that were long and painful. When I barely had a penny to my name.  And when I hardly knew enough to know what it was I didn't know.

I remember when I thought, "How could anyone DARE charge $100 for an info product?"  ... Because I never could envision myself having $100 to buy it.

In the "nights of uncertainty" it seems like you have learned and worked, done and applied, and you STILL aren't getting the results you want.  You wonder if maybe somehow it just won't work for YOU.

You wonder if maybe the "other people" are somehow special and have a magical wand you don't possess.  You blame yourself.  You feel angry at yourself.  You feel hurt.  You feel disappointed.

I've been there.  I've felt the bitter sting of hopes and dreams that seemed like a rainbow I'd never touch.  I've broken more things in my life than I've fixed.  More things have NOT worked than have worked.

That's called the "night of uncertainty."  It's part of life and business.

And you wanna know what?  Anyone who has made it over a long period of time in business will tell you the same. And anyone who doesn't either isn't being honest or hasn't tried many things.

You always hear about the days.  You seldom hear about the nights. They aren't sexy. They aren't fun. They aren't enjoyable to talk about.

But life is a combination of pain and pleasure. I'm NOT here to pull the wool over your eyes. Or pretend it's all fun and games.

What I CAN tell you is if you follow my 6 steps above, you'll make it through the nights of business and the sun will rise again.

The answer is really simple:  You gotta get BETTER at your Game. That's it. That's the miraculous answer.

You gotta get BETTER at knowing how to target an audience, come up with product ideas, do 12-product surveys, create info products, do upsells, do back ends, promote your affiliate program.

If you compare YOUR Game to the Game of highly successful people, you'll find out their Game is better.  They have more tools in their woodshed.  They have more know how. They execute better.

The answer is to keep getting know how and keep applying it. Keep adding tools. Keep sharpening your weapons.

And somewhere along the way, you WILL get lucky.  Luck is when opportunity meets preparation.

Marlon Sanders

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Marlon Sanders is the author of "The Info Product Dashboard."
If you want to create your own info products, go to:
http://www.productdashboard.com

Reprinted with permission