Let me address the huge elephant in the room… why am I sharing this?

Couldn’t someone copy my techniques?

Won’t people steal my amazing business strategy?

Yes, that’s possible, but I can almost guarantee you that no one will.

Most likely, you’re going to read this article, get all jazzed up, and then in a week’s time, be right back in the rat race.

You’ll be back to numbing your brain with TV or late night YouTube vids, hoping that your financial situation will change.

The reason I’m not scared of sharing my strategy is that I don’t think you have it in you to quit your job, strike out on your own, and take a HUGE pay cut during the early days of your business.

Most people don’t have the emotional fortitude. It’s seriously hard.

I don’t say that to dissuade you from taking the chance. I’m just being real. There’s a REASON why most small businesses fail in the first year.

You need a ridiculously high level of commitment.

In this article, I’m going to share some of the key lessons that I learned building my business, along with some wisdom that I’ve gained.

Keep in mind that this is $116,424 in aggregate sales from the time I started my online business until age 24. Looking back, it surprises even myself. What’s more, my business is still growing and I’m excited about the years ahead.

1. I didn’t value my time. I tried A LOT of things.

The reason that most established young professionals don’t see success in the early days of their business is because they put too high of a value on their time.

In the case of blogging, most people aren’t willing to write 100 FREE comprehensive articles until they get to the 1 that really resonates and goes viral, or sees massive traction in search engines.

Compared with a healthy $50k or $70k per year salary, that seems like a ludicrous notion. A regular paycheck is like crack cocaine. You’ll quickly get addicted and wonder how you lived without it (haha, not from personal experience – just an analogy).

Since I started at such a young age, I had no concept of the “value” of my time. Up until that point, I think the most I made at an established job was $10/hour.

I didn’t mind writing articles that no one would read, or trying out gigs that might not have any longterm promise. It was actually a step up from doing the work I hated, which paid very little.

Because I came from this mindset, I tried a lot of different things that didn’t work out. Eventually, a few things did, which paved the way for more success.

2. I admitted I knew nothing and turned my life into a learning center

You can talk to some of my friends during the early stages of my business career and they’ll tell you that I was ALWAYS reading books on business, talking about business, and watching YouTube videos on business topics. I now listen to a lot of podcasts related to marketing, business, and life.

But, I wasn’t just learning ALL THE TIME. I was also trying out the things I learned. I was taking action. Some of the things I learned weren’t applicable, but other things were.

When you first start out, many entrepreneurs come from the mentality that they are “managers” and they’ll just hire the people who will do the heavy work at their company.

I think that’s the wrong mindset to come from. You have to be familiar with all aspects of the company, even if it’s only at a basic level.

Make a commitment to master every area of business, from accounting to marketing. Then, you can outsource the areas that you’re not good at.

Where will you find the time for all this?

It’s simple. Make time. If you’re on the subway, listen to a podcast. If you’re chilling in bed, watch a YouTube video. If you have a free weekend, go to a cafe and read a book. Make the time!

3. I discovered my growth engine

For me, my growth engine is content marketing. That means, putting out free blog posts, podcasts, and YouTube videos to generate leads for my business or direct traffic to particular websites.

Recently, podcasts have seen a massive spike in growth and are a new hot topic.

I quickly learned that I was better at this than people with decades of business experience. Also, I learned that I have a high level of stamina when it comes to creating this type of content.

For example, for some people, it will take them three days to write a 2,000 word article, and they’ll be completely exhausted afterwards.

I found that I could put out 3 blog posts per week, 2 podcasts, and 2 YouTube videos and actually find myself MORE energized. I like producing content.

Because blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos exist online forever, I slowly built up a war chest of content that is guaranteed to continue to deliver me free traffic. I can re-purpose that content, re-promote it, and get a ROI out of it for years to come.

I can also produce this content from anywhere in the world and schedule it ahead of time, meaning that I don’t have to be working every second of every day for traffic to keep coming in.

4. I only focused on recurring revenue.

Most people thought I was crazy when I’d give up the opportunity to make $100/hr consulting some client and instead spend that time on a piece of content or a digital product that’s worth a fraction of the revenue that I could make with that client.

I have a rule that I only focus on producing recurring revenue. I can put out an ebook that can continue to sell copies two years from now. It costs me $0 to make a copy of that ebook, even though it has immense value.

I’d rather spend three hours writing a killer blog post that will deliver traffic years from now than making a quick $300 with a consulting client.

It’s all about the long game. What is going to produce the best ROI in the longterm.

When you build up a stash of products and content that will continue to produce revenue, whether or not you’re there, you’re creating a passive income machine. You don’t have to be there to make the money. It’s immensely powerful.

5. I observed, but ignored all mainstream thoughts

Mainstream thoughts produce mainstream values, which lead to mainstream actions, which yield mainstream RESULTS.

Take any area of your life, and pretty much the “mainstream view” of that area is horribly incorrect. This applies to fitness, financial planning, happiness, and it also applies to business.

Therefore, you need to find the people who are actually getting results and replicate their mindset and strategies. More often than not, their way of thinking is anything but mainstream. It’s usually quite counterintuitive.

When making decisions about your new business, begin to ask yourself “why” five times in succession. Examine where you actually formed your beliefs around this issue. It’s easy to say, but hard to do. I still struggle with this concept.

6. I helped other people make money

Realize that you’re never going to capture 100% of the value that you create in the world. If you’re lucky, you might capture 10%.

The easiest way to make $5 million is to make $100 million for someone else. If you help 1 million people for FREE in the course of a year, and 5% of them become customers, that’s 50,000 people, which is far more than enough to build a business off of. In fact, you really only need 1,000 core customers.

I just started to ask myself how I can help people make MORE money. I knew that if I added enough value to other people’s lives, I’d be able to capture some of that value.

This is a completely different mindset than the one I had when I was first starting out. Then, everything was about me. How could I make money? How could I do well? When I started to focus on improving OTHER people’s lives, my life eventually improved.

7. I developed multiple income streams

My income streams include direct advertising, digital products, sponsorship, affiliate marketing, productized services, and programs like Google’s Adsense.

It’s extremely important to diversify your income streams if you want to make a career online. You never know when Google could change their ranking algorithm, when a social network goes away, or if your site is hacked.

By having multiple income streams, you’ll make sure that you don’t go out of business. If one income stream decreases, it will be supported by the other streams.

My goal is to continue to diversify my income streams, while devoting my attention to growing the largest ones.

In fact, that’s part of the reason I write on this blog. In case something tragic happens and my other sites go down, I’ll be able to fall back on this website and build up a community here.

8. I kept a sense of urgency and kept leveling up

A sense of urgency is a huge reason why startups are able to achieve so much in such a small portion of time. To most everyday workers, this level of urgency seems ridiculous.

You need to act as though each year is your first year in business. You’re going to work fast, try things out, and keep cranking out new product iterations or content.

Once you “level up,” don’t rest. Leverage that new level of success to make it easier to reach the next level. Just keep pushing beyond your limits and keep going.

If you don’t have a sense of urgency, your business is not going to be your priority. You’re not going to have enough commitment to do what it takes to be successful. Your business MUST be your #1 priority in your life, at least during the first year.

9. I ignored my emotions, at some times to my detriment

In other posts, I’ve written about how this year I’ve been working on growing my emotional intelligence, but for a very long time, I quite simply ignored my emotions.

It led to success in business, but it definitely hampered my overall growth and interfered with my personal life.

Ignoring your emotions is helpful at certain times, but it shouldn’t become your north star. For example, if you’re trying to complete a project and you’re lazy or tired or whiny, it helps to be able to just tune out all those emotions and focus, like a robot.

However, that mindset will hurt you in the long run. Happiness doesn’t come from money or achieving arbitrary financial goals. The process of growing has led to most of my happiness.

What I’d like you to take away

My story isn’t yours. I’m not good at the same things you are, and vice versa. Maybe you’re an amazing designer or engineer. We all have our own skills and inclinations.

If you take away one thing, it’s this… Find someone to model who is MOST similar to you.

Learn what mindset it took for them to be successful and how they drew on their skills, which are similar to yours.

That will improve the chance that you’ll successfully grow an online business.

Hope this helps!