089: How to Handle the Ups and Downs Of Being a Self-Employed Entrepreneur

Robert Plank 0:00 Robert Plank Show, Episode 89 how to handle the ups and downs of being a self employed entrepreneur.

Robert Plank 0:12 Welcome back to the Robert Plank Show. I'm your host, Robert Plank. We talk in this program about how to do this making money on the internet, stuff. Whether, for you that is from being an Amazon seller of physical products, we have a course for you there at dropship ceo.com if for you that's becoming a published author on Amazon, then make a product is the course for you. Or even if you're just getting started, or you're looking to make 500 or $1,000 per month from just knocking out some quick little tasks, then profit dashboard.com is definitely for you. So do you sometimes wonder why the heck it is you're doing what you're doing? Are you sometimes ready to give up, or sometimes feel fed up or burned out, or just lost and confused and you feel like no one really understands you well, if so, if you feel like that all the time, or some of the time, or maybe it's only every once in a while, then today's program is for sure, for you, and I'm gonna give you 12 easy ways grouped in four sections. Don't worry, it sounds like a lot. We're gonna unpack it all really quickly. I'm gonna give you the information you need to power through those rough times and to make the self doubt and to make the setbacks and all those things work for you, instead of it being something where you're trying to either just force yourself through it, which doesn't work, or ignore, and I mean ignoring problems in your own business, especially Money and traffic and website wise, ignoring doesn't work either. Maya Watson says that learning is a gift, even when pain is your teacher. And we're going to share with you in four sections. We're going to talk about the long game with your online business, how to handle setbacks, how to get the right mindset, and finally, last but not least, the actions you should take so that you continuously move forward, because maintaining and treading water, or whatever analogy you want to use, that doesn't work. That's what employees do. That's what nine to five cubicle workers do. And it's there's no shame in being an office worker for a few years. Maybe, maybe you did that for long enough where you just got fed up, or maybe you're in that transition process right now. And you know what? I was in that transition process too, and I look back, and I wouldn't change a thing about the decisions and the actions I've made in my life, especially from age 22 to 25 where I worked for three years in an office at a school, at a college, and at the time, man at the time, so many other entrepreneurs kind of made fun of the fact that I worked a day job only. I found out years later that most of those people made less money than me, any way you slice it, and they kept pushing me to just quit right away. Quit my day job right away, except for the fact that while I was saving up a bunch of money, I was able to use that, that stable income, that job, to get a house and not have to explain to someone. Well, here's my silly, crazy internet business. And then the other thing that I've probably only realized in the past year or so is that usually, if someone is is insulting at you, yelling at you, lecturing you, telling you what to do, 80 or 90%

Robert Plank 3:29 of the time that person is, in fact, insecure about their own situation. And instead of fixing themselves, they go ahead and fix you. And I mean, I think of a couple people in particular who, you know, really had some harsh things to say about me, that I spent a whole three years at a stage job, and why didn't I quit yesterday? Why didn't I quit last year, only to find out years later that well, in fact, one person in particular was still living with his parents when he when he was giving me this advice. So it's really interesting, the the advice people give you, and the the the meaning and the real truth that comes out years later. And chances are the path you're on, you're doing okay. And I mean, I don't really think that you you made any huge mistakes in your life, and if so, you can correct a lot of them. But the point is that you should be excited to get out of bed in the morning, building a business, having an online income. All these things shouldn't be something you dread. It shouldn't be something that you force yourself to do, like maybe you had a day job and not to beat a dead horse on the day job thing. But what was great about those three years was, not only was I getting paid, getting a nice income, getting retirement account, health insurance, all that stuff. But I would say the number one thing from having that day job was it was in a programming field, and so I was being paid money to go off to conferences and go to a learning center and get trained. I was being paid money to learn books and programming languages and take on projects and basically build up my skill set, which paid off in the after hours of building my business, and have paid off even now years later, at the time we're recording this podcast, I've been day job free for seven years. So all these, there's all these things that all these hidden upsides, all these hidden advantages that maybe in the moment you think are disadvantages. But if you look back later on, you'll realize that these were actually blessings in disguise. No matter what your situation is, even if your time is limited, or you're too young or too old or whatever the situation is, most things that you see as a disadvantage is usually an advantage. So you should really be itching to knock out at least 40 minutes of money making tasks on the computer, and then once you've completed those tasks, then leave the computer. There's no point in hanging around on the computer an extra couple hours a day if it's not making you any money. And the other thing about that, the flip side of that, is, if you're sitting at the computer, even right now, if you're sitting at the computer and you're feeling unmotivated, then get off the computer until you do feel motivated. And they might say, Well, how am I going to do that? I'm going to have to turn off your podcast. Well, no, that's the great thing about podcasts, is you can download this episode and burn it to a CD. You can load it up in your car, load it up on your phone or your tablet. But if you're one of the most people who you just stood at the computer for four or five hours a day and say, What the heck did I do? Then get off the computer. And then when you realize, what can you do on the computer that will actually make you money now, then get back on the computer and do that. I'm not saying to take days and days off, but if you're really stuck and you don't know what to do to make money online, that I highly suggest you join our profit dashboard course, and that'll show you how to start making some money online. Because I honestly believe that, I mean, anyone can make money online, but I think that the majority of people right now aren't making money and just are too proud to ask for help. Well, the good news is you don't have to ask for help from me. Just join our profit dashboard. Course, It'll be our little secret. You can set up a a gig on Fiverr and start getting paid for that when people are ready to hire you, and then you can have something where you have some income when you want to collect the income, but you're not locked in to some kind of a job. So anyway, let's talk about how to handle the ups and downs of being a self employed entrepreneur. Now the long game, all right, the the long term plan for you, and this the habits that should just get stuck in you forever, is to treat your business like a real business. This is, this is a idea number one. This is tactic number one on how to handle the ups and downs, is to treat your business like a real business, okay? And by that, I mean that it's frustrating when you consider that, you always hear these things about offline businesses, that the average business takes something like five years to make money. And let you see people go online, and if they don't make money within a week or a month, they just quit. And I'm thinking, but if you were, if you were sitting a McDonald's franchise, you'd have to spend so much money, have so much planning, wait so many months before seeing dollar number one, and yet you don't want to put in even a little bit of energy onto this making money thing and treating your business like a real business. I think the number one part of this is to set boundaries for focused time. Okay? And this means that I'm not saying you have to go and rent office space, but you should have a quiet area even in your home, if you're working from home, or if you're you know, maybe you can't work from home and you do it from like a library or some quiet space, but have some area where you can be shut off from all the different distractions. There's all these studies that say if you get distracted and come back to it. It takes about 15 minutes to get back into that flow state, if not longer. So we don't want you to split your focus, and that also means so that's the external part of it, but from within, we don't want you to have Facebook notifications going off, Skype instant messaging notifications going off, text messages going off. You want to shut all that down and just focus on the the milestones and the money making tasks that you can actually complete and that will go off on their own today. And we call this four daily tasks, which means that every day on a weekday, at least a weekday that I'm at the computer at my home office, is every weekday that I'm here, I complete a 15 minute task and 345 minute tasks, and these might be tasks like recording a podcast for you here now, or sending out an email to my list, or adding features to a software program, or are handling customer service. But. They're all tasks that are proven to make money, and they're all tasks that I can complete. So there's no chipping away, there's no researching, there's no starting on this. There's no complete 10% of that, finishing these small things so that I can actually show that I was productive that day and then be motivated to repeat that over and over again. Now, tactic number two, anytime you're making a decision or deciding to commit time to a task, ask yourself, will doing this really earn me more money? I'll repeat that. Anytime you're making a decision or deciding to commit time to a task. Ask yourself, will doing this really earn me more money? And how about this? If you're not sure about that question, if you say,

Robert Plank 10:47 Okay, well, you know, something I want to do is put a book on Amazon, all right, and I want to do it because I want to have a book out there with my name on it. But that's one of those things. Well, I don't really know how that's gonna pay off, because I don't know if that's gonna make any sales, or maybe I'm just using the book as a business card. So if that, if there's something in that kind of gray area, then ask yourself, is it worth risking an hour or five minutes to find out? And usually the answer is yes. So if you're so, I mean, if you can put together a book in an hour. If you can go back and either speak it out and get it transcribed, or collect some blog posts, toss it into a Word document, upload, boom, it's on there, and that takes you an hour, then fine. It's worth taking the hour to make that risk. As long as you have other proven money making tasks that you complete throughout the day, and if you don't, then I highly recommend you join our profit dashboard, course, because the great thing about profit dashboard and making money on Fiverr is that you see the money first. And I mean, the money does get held in a little holding period for a while, but you know, like, you know ahead of time how much money you're going to get paid for a task it takes you three to five minutes. So think about that. Are the tasks that you're taking and completing? Are the money making tasks or not? So if, if going through and hitting the spell check button on your book or your report or your product for the 10th time is not going to make you any money, then don't do it. That's probably one of those mental roadblocks you put in front of yourself, because you're a little bit afraid of putting yourself out there and seeing what's going to happen. And you're so concerned with making zero sales, and you're so concerned with putting out a product and promoting it and having an affiliate program and having a launch, you're so concerned with it making $0 that you're just going to guarantee that it makes $0 by not publishing, by not completing as opposed to, if you have a sales letter for a product that's either not selling or selling kind of okay, and you devote one hour to sprucing up the sales letter, and you know that the traffic that's going to come to that sales letter is going to convert better if you fix up some of those bottlenecks on your web page, or, heck, if you have a web page but it doesn't have a buy button yet. And you know that if you spend five minutes or an hour, if you're slow to add that button to the web page, well then that is that's going to increase your chances of that web page making money from 0% if there's no button to some percent if there is button. So that is a money making task. So three categories there, right? The money making tasks like adding a button to a web page or sending traffic somewhere. The not making money tasks like hitting spell check for the 10th time, and then the in between, stuff like, maybe I should publish this book, or maybe I should run this webinar, then it's worth risking that one hour as long as you have other money, other proven money making tasks throughout the day. And this works out great for you, because this also guarantees that the very first things you do online are not publishing a book. I mean, you definitely shouldn't publish the book. Your very first day online, first day online, you should be looking to make any amount of money, whether you do it from Fiverr, from Amazon, whatever. Now the third tactic here is something I stole from a Gary Vaynerchuk video. This guy asked Gary V as his latest book, and he says, Look to put yourself out of business, because if you won't, someone else will Okay, look to put yourself out of business, because if you won't, someone else will, and this means to move your business to the next logical step. And this has worked very well for us, where we used to put out high ticket training, when we still do, we put out high ticket training courses, things like webinar Crusher, on how to run webinars make a product, on how to get a book published, membership queue on getting a membership site set up. And then after a while, we decided to throw in some software. We decided to buy the software that runs the membership site for you. We decided to throw in some checklists, some a. Some software, some extra plug ins, some themes, if you know what those are. And the I the mindset to have here is you look at what you're already selling. I mean, the first step here is to get a web page on there. Get a button on there. Have an offer, have a download page. If you need help with all that. Our course for that is income machine, calm. So you have something and it's even making some money, then congratulations, you're in the top 1% of internet marketers. You actually have a successful business. But then when you're looking to what to do next, right? And you're looking to say, Okay, well, I want this to keep growing. I don't want to just maintain, because if I maintain, next thing I know, I'm going to get comfortable and my business will shrink, and now I really won't know what to do so to get to grow and move to the next logical step, think about if a competitor came on your web page, and you can guarantee that your competitors have seen your web pages. If they look at your web page, what would they do to put you out of business? And so the analogy there is if we look at, if we looked at our membership cube, course, and some competitor came on and said, I want to undercut this person, or I want to have a better offer than them, then guess what? Now you become your own competitor, and you say, Okay, well, membership cube has these things in the offer, but if someone were to try to knock me out, they'd have an even better offer like this, and then that would be membership cube, 2.0 and it's the same thing with like our I look at this in our backup plug in, which is called backup creator. Calm, our member ship, plug in, which is member genius. Calm, our landing page plug in, which is paper template, comm. I'm looking all the time at What would someone else do if they were trying to knock out paper template, if they were trying to outsell us or steal our customers? And then I go ahead and add those features or add those things to the offer. So complete what you start. But after completing and getting that low hanging fruit, getting the money flowing in. Don't rely on that income stream to keep paying you for 10 years. Not saying. I mean, definitely keep your websites online. And if your products work, then don't. Don't just take them offline and stop selling them, just for the heck of it. But be very, very careful about being comfortable. I mean, the whole reason why you wanted to become this self employed entrepreneur in the first place was to not be comfortable. Comfortable means being in debt, making 30 grand a year and struggling, and I would rather have fun and go on an adventure and and kind of see what happens, and have that control over my own destiny. But that might just be me. Okay. So the long game, we said, treat your business like a real business. Anytime you're making a decision, ask, Will doing this earning more money, and look to put yourself out of business. Now the next section setbacks, you're gonna have setbacks. That's part of the entrepreneurial process. But what separates us from them? Us being the the action takers, the, you know, the self motivated people versus the employees who were just kind of pretending to be one of us. What sets us back is that? Or what sets us apart? I should say is that when we come up with a setback, that's a challenge, that's an obstacle, that sounds like fun to overcome, especially when I think about a few things I think about, well, first of all, any obstacle that's in front of me. Usually my competitors come across the same thing. So you might not be able to relate to this, but as a as a computer programmer, I put out WordPress plugins and things like that. And sometimes some, some big obstacle will come out of, out of the woodwork, like some web hosts will disable our plugin, or some web host will add a bunch of security features, so then now we'll have to code around it. Well, most of our other competing backup plugins also experience this, but they don't actually know what to do, and we do so now we beat them by default. All right. Anyway, setbacks the first way to handle the ups and downs of being a self employed entrepreneur, especially if it seems like you just got Google, Google slapped or the money from something just dried up, or a traffic source dried up, is to have a support system and a mastermind, basically someone to talk to you, who understands you. And if you're lucky to be in a big city, even a city like San Diego, Austin, New York, places like that. You know, Orlando, Miami, maybe even Seattle, probably. But a lot of these decent sized cities have meetup groups for internet marketers, and you can find these@meetup.com

Robert Plank 19:38 or do a Google search and see if you search like internet marketing your town name, or maybe search the the larger towns near you, if you're in a small one. And so some of these groups are there just to kind of hang out. And every week they just go to the same cafe, same you know, Monday afternoon, same time. And they're not really there to make money or sell anything or even really network, if they're just kind of there to hang out and just kind of there to just to talk things out or solve whatever little problems there are, just because, I mean, it's, it's so easy to forget that there are a lot of people out there who are doing something similar to what you're doing, and some of them are your competitors, some of them are your friends, but then everyone around you in the real world probably goes to a job and just doesn't understand you. Maybe even you know family members and things like that, just don't understand what it is you're doing. And if you tried to talk about it with them, they would just, I mean, their eyes kind of glaze over, right? So find something offline to go and meet and if that, if you even don't have that, then find some kind of a conference, at least one per year. And don't become a seminar junkie and go to a different event every week, but maybe once or twice a year, Be on the lookout for an event Maybe, and maybe you can drive to or you can fly to it, but go to some kind of events in whatever niche you're in. So in golfing and voiceovers and internet marketing, even in WordPress, go to some kind of event where someone can understand you. And on top of that, I would also suggest that you join an online mastermind, and ours is Double Agent marketing.com you can join that site, and once a month we meet. You can send in any question, and we'll talk about what's happening with us in our business, and even just hearing someone else's thoughts and struggles and solutions, I think, will help you so support system and mastermind tactic number five, the light at the end of the tunnel, a really common problem, is to over plan. It's kind of like, I mean, imagine if you tried to plan out your next month, or your next, you know, 30 or 60 days of meals, of lunches, you'd go crazy trying to think of, okay, I'm gonna have this for breakfast, this for lunch, this for dinner. So now I have to go and buy, you know, the ingredients to make 30 sandwiches, and I have to go and buy 20 juice boxes. I mean, it sounds crazy, and the same way that it would be crazy for you to map out every minute of every one of your days. Okay, so at noon, I'm gonna go take a lunch break, and at 1215 I'm gonna go take a bathroom break. The Pro. I mean, that sounds good in theory, but the problem is that if you miss, if you miss one little piece of your carefully crafted schedule, you miss the whole thing, and then you end up ignoring the whole schedule or the calendar, and then it uses and then it's like you just wasted time. So it doesn't make sense to over plan so much stuff. Don't plan world domination. Don't plan your next 10 membership sites. Don't plan your next five sales letters. I mean, heck, usually you shouldn't even be thinking further ahead than the next week or two, because my attitude is whatever it is I'm promoting in my business this month, like, say, for example, that we're running a pitch webinar for profit dashboard this week, and I'm gonna go in and send some an email every day about that, and I'm gonna record a podcast just about that product. And I'm going to be going into the membership site and sprucing it up and making it better, just for a little bit for this week. That's, I mean, I want, I want to throw all my my brain power into the task at hand this week and then next week, or in a couple weeks, when we shift gears to whatever that promotion is. I want to put all my brain power, all my focus, into that. And otherwise, if you're if your your thoughts are split, then you end up, you end up being 5% that's good, right? If your thoughts are split 1020 different ways, then you can only put one or two or 5% of yourself or 10% of yourself into what you're doing right now, and that's not fun. So don't plan any further than your next product or your next book or your next three podcast episodes. You might say, well, but Mr. Robert Plank, like, how can I, how can I have any kind of strategy? Well, the thing is, you can always go back and connect the dots later. So we might put out our profit dashboard, course one week, have it there, sell a bunch of it, get it online, get the traffic going, move to the next project, and then

Robert Plank 24:17 in a month, circle back around to profit dashboard again, and then take some money making tasks to make that make even more money. And then we might say, Okay, well, I'm going to add an upsell to it this week. But it doesn't make sense to, like plan out and map out your whole entire year and map out every single week coming up, because you're just not going to stick to that. You're just not and if you look at all the stuff you have in front of you that you have to do, you're going to get overwhelmed to do lists don't work. I honestly believe that having a list of 50 things you have to do, and then you spend a day knocking out one you say, Okay, one thing done, 59 things to go. I mean, you just drive yourself crazy. Is. And if you think back to when you were in school, they didn't, they didn't treat you that way. They didn't say, Okay, done with week one of school. Just 59 weeks left that week, there would be assignments, there'd be things to do, there'd be, you know, projects and tests and essays or whatever. And you would just throw 100% of your focus into that essay at the here and now and this, this gets back to this connects back to what I was saying earlier. Is that many, many times. And I know this is not, this is painful to think about, and I know that you don't want to admit it, but it's true that many times you're, you're deep down, afraid of putting yourself out there. That's just what it is. You're not afraid of putting in the hours, staying up late and maybe even putting in the money, but when it comes time to putting that fiverr gig online, clicking publish on that Amazon book, on that blog post, on that product, putting up a sales letter, sending out an email message to your email subscribers, all those things deep down, you're afraid of of them, and I mean, and that's understandable at first, right? It's understandable if this is your first information product, your first course, your first app, your first book, or even, you know, your second or your third. But deep down, I honestly believe that many people are so afraid of putting something out there online, putting up a website, that they will literally conjure up any any excuse to not pull the trigger, even if it's something super small. They'll blow it way out of proportion and say, Well, I can't that's preposterous. I can't sell my book because I don't know what to price it. I can't put out a course because, well, I can't decide between PayPal and a merchant account. Well, yeah, you can flip a coin or go with PayPal, and then boom, now it's out there, and you can adjust later. And this leads us to tactic number six, make money. The point of having an online business is to make money. And if you say, Well, you don't understand, I want to change lives. I want to change the world. Well, you know what? You can do a lot more change, and you can put forth a lot faster and better change if you have money. And if you say, Well, I want to get bought out. I want to be a startup, and I want to get discovered. Well, you know what's great to a great way to show that your your business, has some value, if you can show some kind of monthly income coming in the door. So I know that seems like a weird, a weird piece of advice to put in there, but my piece of advice is for you to make some amount of money. Now, the reason for that, other than, you know, pays the bills and all that, is that you'll be more excited about getting back to the computer and getting back to those money making tasks. And you know, what else too, is if you make even some amount of money, if you can show $1,000 in order to worry just yet, if you're still struggling, you're still building, don't worry just yet about how many hours it took you to make that $1,000 or how many weeks it took you to get to this point. The point is that your total lifetime accumulation is 1000 bucks. So even if you can show someone 1000 you know what, if no one in your life is going to be excited about you making $1,000 email me right now at Roberts, at Robert plank.com, and tell me you've made 1000 bucks. And I will reply, and I will tell you that I'll be that I'm happy for you, because that is an achievement. It is an achievement when you look at all the people who who give up and who self doubt, and you overcame that, so make some money, and you'll be more excited, plus you'll have an easier time justifying to Well, whoever, whoever the haters are about what you're doing. So everyone has those haters, especially when you're getting started. And it might be someone in your household, right? Might be parents, family, spouse, neighbor, best friends, co workers, whatever. By the way, don't tell your co workers that you're building an online business. Tell people who actually appreciate what it is you're doing, and people who won't be jealous and maybe in whoever it is. And it might even just be like just some cousin or some brother in law or something, but there's always going to be that hater and if, and I mean, first of all, what they think doesn't matter. What's more important is what you think and what what your thoughts are. But if you're making money from what you're doing, then their opinion doesn't matter, and it's a good way to shut them down. Even if you're making some initial money, I know that some people will still find some fly in the ointment, some way to get negative. And you say, look, I made $1,000 stop making fun of me. And they say, but it's not $2,000 well, you know what it when? Once you get that response, it's easy to see their true colors and see that, okay, it doesn't matter if it was 100 grand, if you bought a new house, if you paid off your house, if you bought a new sports car, they'd still find a way to make fun of what you're doing, because deep down, they are project. Thing that they can't do what it is you're doing. So handling those setbacks, have a support system and a mastermind, a light at the end of the tunnel. So don't plan out the whole next year of your life. Make money, because then you'll be more excited now mindset stuff. So tactic number seven is to take time off the computer to think either weekends or specific days of the week, because we don't want you to just zone out all day and all week staring at the screen. That's what a day job is for. That's what being an employee is for. Man, I mean, I could tell you some stories about being an employee where, I mean, you get paid either way, right? If you get paid hourly or on a sour salary, kind of rate you get paid, and no matter how fast you work at things and so. So the problem there is that everyone who you're surrounded with is is trained to do just enough not to get fired. And then, if you're just a super productive kind of person, then what's going to happen is, well, you have two choices, right? Either you're super productive and knock out what needs to be done and kind of keep it to yourself and wait the weeks and kind of goof off until you deliver what supposedly took you so many weeks to do, really took you a couple days. Or if you were super, super show off and you say you gave me this project, it should have taken me three weeks. Took me three days. Well, guess what? Now you're the person where they'll pile on all the projects on you, and then now you're all getting paid the same, but then you're the one doing all this work and working super fast because you set a precedent that your Mr. Or Miss or Mrs. Productivity. And then now it's, it's socialism, right? Everyone gets paid the same, even if you put in more effort. So that's not fun. So anyway, the point of that is that you're not in a job, right? Even if you're have a day job, a transition, whatever. But when your time is your time, when you are building your own online business, you don't get paid per hour. You get paid for your output. So it doesn't make sense to sit at the computer for 458, hours. You sit down, knock out. What's gonna get knocked out, then you're done. Such as this podcast. You know what I did? I took I was barely on the computer today, but I decided what I was gonna talk about in today's podcast, took a walk around the block, gonna sit down, knock it out, publish it, and then I'm gonna be gone the rest of the day, and maybe even tomorrow, because I'm only going to set the computer when I'm producing things when I'm being productive. So in between those times, do what actually matters in life, and take quiet walks or drives to think and plan your next move and exercise to clear your head and reduce that stress. This

Robert Plank 32:41 leads us to tactic number eight, be an above average person, and that means to actually participate in life. And it seems like a weird thing to say, to be present in life, but most people aren't actually. Listen to what people say in your everyday life. Avoid being that zombie who drifts through things and, you know the type, right? The ones that kind of kind of grunt and don't listen to what you have to say and cut people off in traffic, and they're just not even paying attention, right? There they have. The kids are streaming the TVs on. They're playing on their phone and playing video games, and just completely frazzled and distracted and tired and everything. So actually, listen to what people say. Don't be that zombie. Don't watch so much of the news. Avoid live TV, if possible, quit gossiping and complaining. And it all comes down to things don't happen to you. Things only happen to you if you've decided to become a victim, you are the one that take to take action, whatever your situation is. Right now, if you have money, don't have money, stress, not stressed. It's all a result of the actions that you took and you put yourself in whatever mess you're in. So it's up to you to take some responsibility and either keep going in the direction you're going or make a change. Tactic number nine, have an abundance mindset. So you notice how, like in this podcast and in my blog posts and in YouTube videos, if you follow those, I give away a lot of information, right? I have an email list, and you can sign up to my list by going to my blog at Robert plank.com and there should be a area in the sidebar to enter your name and email address and be kept up to date of future podcast episodes and future things I do. So I give a lot of information away on the blog, podcasts, YouTube, videos, emails, web, free webinars I run because I want to provide lots of help for free to others, and not necessarily to feel superior or to get credit, because it makes me feel good, because I want to get in the habit of being helpful. And guess what? At the same time, I'm also not ashamed to mention. On my name, my products, my URL. I don't shove it down your throat, but if you tune into the Robert Plank show you, I'm hoping that you'll be impressed at what you hear for free here, and that'll get you to go out and buy something, for example, like profit dashboard, or at least sign up to my email list at Robert plank.com or give us a five star rating and review by going to Robert Plank show.com/itunes so provide lots of help for free. And a side effect to that can be that you also have links back to your site, so that way you're someone who's helpful. And if someone's looking to get a problem solved, then you solve the initial problem. Now they can get on your list. Now they can buy other things from you. So mindset, take time off the computer to think be an above average person and have an above have an abundance mindset, okay, kind of little tongue twister there. And now in the home stretch, the actions you should take to handle the ups and downs of being a self employed entrepreneur, because it's going to happen. You can't avoid the ups and downs, the the mood swings, the income swings, the whatever happens going your way. But it's a roller coaster, and it's part of the fun. It's part of the adventure. And I know it's can sometimes be scary, but if you can find a way to enjoy it, that is ideal. Now, tactic number 10 is traffic. So in an earlier stage there, I said that making money is important, but it's really tough to make any money without traffic. And for you, traffic might be the same 10 coaching clients. Traffic might be that you attend offline seminars and network and then you get some buyers that way. Traffic for you might be that you run an affiliate program, you put out a lot of search engine optimized articles, you run retargeting ads or paid AdWords or Bing traffic, or you you sell. And you know what? Early on, I I had traffic and I didn't realize it. So early on, I would put out these things called ebooks, and nowadays you put out membership site courses, but I put out ebooks that said, here's how to make a web page, here's how to add PHP scripts to a website. Here's how to write persuasive, compelling sales copy. And then I wouldn't just set the site up and forget about it, because no one would have found it. Instead, after I set up the site, I would go to a high traffic message board, and it was called The Warrior Forum, and it's kind of it's not quite the same today as it was a decade ago, but, but that is where I got tons and tons of traffic by posting things for sale on these message boards where people were actually looking to buy things. Imagine that. So get lots of people to your site, because most people set up their site hoping that people are gonna find it. They won't just setting up your site isn't enough. That's only 20% the remaining 80% should be getting eyeballs on your site, and it comes down to these three pillars of your list, your traffic and your offers. So have traffic coming in to build your list of email subscribers. So those are free prospects and paid buyers. And then then you can kind of get some traffic on demand that way, and tell them about your latest blog post, Podcast, episode, pitch, webinar or item to buy, and you repeat that over and over again. And to get those three pillars set up, you can join us at income machine.com, to get your website niche domain name, opt in page, autoresponder sequence, blog membership, site, download, page traffic and more that a whole funnel, that whole system set up to get your list traffic and offers Going. Tactic Number 11 is a weird one, but it's really important, and that's to strengthen your content muscle. What the heck is a content muscle? It's something I just made up, which means that if, if you're if you write a lot, then it's easy to write more. And if you don't like writing, then, if you record videos a lot. It's easier to record videos if you do one a day, as opposed if you didn't do one in a year. If you don't like video, then it's easy to talk, for example, like I'm talking in a podcast format here. And if I'd taken a break for a year or two from podcasting, it would be really tough to get back in the saddle. So whatever that means, and it doesn't necessarily mean writing. It can be webinars, podcasts, YouTube videos, products you create, but get used to producing something helpful to others at least every few days. And this could be paid or free, either way, but I would one thing about this, though, is that I would build content on sites you control, and not forums and not Facebook. So I'm not saying that you should hang out on a message board all day and hang out on Facebook all day, but actually create something. Create 110, minute helpful YouTube video every day, and the keyboard here is helpful. Don't just make stuff up. Create. Things that solve people's real problems. And if you strengthen that content muscle, that's huge for your productivity, because then anytime you want to knock out podcast, blog, post, book, whatever product, even you can just do it and not waste six months on it. You just spend a day or two on it. And finally, the last but not least, tactic number 12, minimum viable product. This means that anything you create, it can always get better, but it's what's most important is to have something that's decent, something that it might not be the prettiest product, might not be the best named, might not have the best sales letter, but it solves a problem, and people are willing to overlook all that and pay for it. What's most important is that you take action that and that that action leads you to making more money, and that you actually complete the projects you start and follow through. Because getting it done and getting it 80% good enough is better than getting it perfect and getting it 100% right, because perfect is impossible. 100% is impossible. Do the best you can and set up any kind of a web page, take payments, any way you can and supply our product, any way you know how to make a product and then get traffic, any way you can get traffic build a list, any way you can build a list, and we show you all that and more at income machine, calm. And if you're not quite ready to set up a website of your own, then the the faster method of making money. Now, your results may vary, but the way to make money without an without a niche, a website, a list, or even your own name, is by joining our course at profit dashboard.com, and using Fiverr, that's f, i, v, e, r, r.com, as your traffic source. Anyway, the ups and downs of being a self employed entrepreneur the long game, treat your business like a real business. If you're making the decision, ask if it'll earn you more money. Look to put yourself out of business, because if you won't, someone else will setbacks. Have a support system and mastermind plan for just far enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Make money and you'll be more excited. Mindset, take time off the computer to think be an above average person, have an abundance

Robert Plank 42:24 mindset, and finally, the actions you need to take traffic, because otherwise nothing happens without traffic. Strengthen your content. Muscle for a huge boost in your productivity, and strive for that minimum viable product, whatever gets it done, whatever gets it selling, whatever gets it to some stage where you could stop now if you wanted to, and you can always go back and improve it and make it better. Was this podcast today helpful for you? I really hope it was. If it was then please do two things for me. Go to Robert Plank show.com/itunes, click the ratings tab and please, please, if you can give us a five star review. Thing number two is then go to Robert plank.com and sign up to my list to get notified about future Robert Plank show episodes and future things that I do, because I really want to keep in touch with you, and I want to hear about you and the business that you are building and improving and making money from. I'm Robert Plank, and that was episode 89 how to handle the ups and downs of being a self employed entrepreneur. Go out there, make some money. Thanks for listening. Thank you, and bye. Now.