Strengths, Weaknesses & Internet Marketing
Many of us have been taught as we were growing up that we must always strive to improve our weaknesses, we need to work on our weaknesses.
The implication here is that we must strive to be good at everything if we’re ever going to amount to very much in life.
Now I can see where this idea might come from, after all we are all learning from the day we’re born. I mean, let’s face it if we didn’t learn anything we would wouldn’t even be able to walk. That’s a pretty difficult job to learn right at the outset.
But do we really need to become good at everything? Is it even possible to become good at everything? I’m sure you would agree with me that for the biggest majority of us the answer to both of those questions is no.
The problem I see though is that if we’re being encouraged to concentrate our efforts on improving our weaknesses, because by implication we are somehow sub-par if we don’t, we are likely focusing our attention on what’s wrong with our life rather than what’s right or good with it.
Bob Proctor, who I have gained many insights from over the years, has a different take on it that I also agree with.
His philosophy is that there is more benefit to be gained from developing our strengths and managing our weaknesses.
This makes a lot of sense to me. Developing our strengths, those things that we are already good at, can only fill our lives with pleasure. Our strengths are probably our strengths because we enjoy them.
They probably became our strengths because since we enjoy them, practicing them was fun and so we did more of it.
I can think of several renowned musicians who, when the other kids were outside playing football or some other game, were inside practicing their instrument because for them that was play. That was what they wanted to do more than anything else.
When we examine those that have achieved greatness in their lives we find that pretty much without exception, they became great from doing something that they loved.
So make it a habit in the future to encourage those around you to work on developing their strengths and managing their weaknesses.
OK, so how does this have anything at all to do with Internet marketing?
Let’s examine what life is like as someone trying to make money online – I’m thinking particularly those trying to make it in the ‘make money online’ niche.
On any given day we are hit with a long list of launches for all sorts of products that we must have if we’re to succeed online. And these products cover every facet of marketing online today.
Here’s an image from Rich Schefren’s Internet Business Manifesto that highlights the enormity of the problem. If you haven’t taken any of Rich’s coaching you’re missing out on the joy of learning from a master.
Those are just some of the tasks we have to become expert at when we follow the develop your weaknesses approach. I say only some of them because each one of those items opens out into another list of tasks to learn to do.
This is why I believe that it can have a lot to do with Internet marketing and why so many people fail online.
For most people coming online this is unfamiliar territory, there is a whole new language to learn, and as we get bombarded with product after product that we ‘can’t succeed without’ we quickly become trapped in the habit of buying every new product that comes along because we have to develop our weaknesses and these are skills/techniques that we are weak at.
The fact is we can’t become good at all that lot – it’s impossible. That’s why the majority of people coming online to make money are drowning in overwhelm. They are on the hamster wheel, getting deeper in debt buying products that they don’t have the skill to master and because if the sheer volume of them, don’t have the time to even try to master most of them.
That’s where the philosophy of developing your strengths and managing your weaknesses comes in.
If you’re completely new to online marketing my advise, before you buy any of the products that you receive everyday, is to find a mentor who has good reviews for creating successful students in the area that you want to work in.
Then, identify those tasks that you can develop your skills even more to do yourself, based on what you’re good at from whatever else you may have done in your life, and find someone else to do the other things.
Now I accept that this is taking a very simplistic view and there is a more to it than that which I don’t have room to go into in a post, but the basic principle still holds.
Trying to master every technique for marketing online will only make you miserable, disillusioned and broke.
Develop the things you love, your strengths and manage your weaknesses.
(Information about Rich Schefren can be found at his site http://www.strategicprofits.com/about-rich-schefren/)
