It felt like deja vu.
I found myself in a place I didn’t think I could return to.
I was lost. I didn’t know what to do next.
The deja vu feeling appeared when I realised I was making mistakes I had made before. I was jumping from idea to idea, creating new businesses and projects only to kill them and start something new days later.
I was making beginner mistakes, which normally would be okay because as a beginner it’s good to learn from these experiences. The problem was I was no beginner. I knew better.
To make things significantly worse, this time I had the resources to spend money on my mistakes. I had capital built up from my previous online success.
With the belief that I could speed up the process by hiring help to do multiple projects at once, I dived in, paying contractors to design graphics, set up websites, write emails and create documents for me.
I spent thousands of dollars on projects that I ended up closing down due to lack of focus. It was not a good pattern.
How Did I Get Here?
As I have documented on this blog, the last few years were rough.
With my mother and her mother (my grandmother) passing away, and two years spent on a software startup that did not become a profitable business, I found myself starting the year 2013 ready for a change.
My experience with a tech startup showed me how amazing I have it as a blogger. Writing, podcasting, doing youtube videos, and helping others to create blogging businesses is personally gratifying, financially lucrative and truly a “lifestyle” business.
Prior to the startup, I had reached a point of burnout as an information marketer. I still enjoyed the blogging process – it wasn’t exactly hard to keep up when I only needed to publish once a week – but the idea of updating old courses, creating new courses, coaching people, and writing email sequences, did not excite me.
One silver-lining after two years spent with my startup was a renewed desire to get back into information marketing. I was excited about blogging, prepared to create training courses and coach people again.
Unfortunately, there was a problem… my confidence was gone.
The Next Generation
While I was going through a period of burnout, starting a tech company and looking after my mother in hospital, there was a changing of the guard occurring online.
New leaders emerged in my industry and were gaining incredible amounts of exposure.
Pat Flynn rose to fame off the back of his booming podcast and seriously compelling income reports.
Derek Halpern burst onto the scene, dissecting data from psychology experiments and applying it to the world of blogging and internet marketing. He cleverly offered to review many top blogs to help them with conversion, which in turn resulted in significant exposure for his brand and blog.
Jon Morrow parlayed his involvement with Copyblogger to start his own blog training business and has become known as a blog traffic guru.
Then there are people like John Lee Dumas and Lewis Howes, who thanks to podcasting have reached brand new levels of online fame (and significant money too as John’s incredible income reports show – surpassing the numbers reported by Pat).
Other niche experts have emerged, with Amy Porterfield securing leadership as a Facebook marketer and James Wedmore taking top spot for YouTube marketing.
The old guard that I “grew up with” in the blogging space, guys like Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, John Chow and Shoemoney, are all still doing well. Not to mention the internet marketers like Eben Pagan, Frank Kern, Jeff Walker, Rich Schefren, Mike Filsaime and Andy Jenkins, are also working hard creating new products and still making millions online.
To put it simply, everything got bigger and more sophisticated. There are more experts today, more people succeeding, larger audiences being reached and more money being made.
Thanks to the power of webinars as selling tools, the resurgence of podcasting in part due to the proliferation of iTunes and smartphones, the sheer volume of traffic on YouTube, the incredible segmentation abilities of Facebook advertising, the addictiveness of Pinterest and the addition of mobile applications – the opportunities are endless.
Where Do I Fit In?
Although I did something to contribute online and continued to publish what I was doing on my blog, behind the scenes I wasn’t certain what the future held for me.
The problem was I didn’t know exactly where I fit in anymore.
People knew me as a blog trainer. I was one of the originals, the old guard, a person people used to follow and still remembered.
This was nice from a notoriety point of view. It was good that people saw me as representing something, as being good at something, but I wasn’t sure if I could still be that person.
One of the big problems was a lack of confidence in my own blogging.
My blog, EJ that you are reading right now, went through a period of slow gradual traffic decline.
By the year 2012 my traffic had halved, from around 100,000 visitors a month down to below 50,000. I didn’t get nearly as many comments as I used to on blog posts, which I believed was partly because discussions now occur on social media. Given I had somewhat neglected social media, that wasn’t a good thing either.
On top of this, I had deliberately cut most of my income sources. My courses were outdated so I pulled them from the market. I removed almost all the advertising from my site to see if that might help improve my traffic. I stopped doing affiliate marketing because I was tired of writing emails to sell other people’s products.
It’s hard to feel confident teaching others about blogging when your own blog is not exactly a shining beacon of success.
This sense of insecurity is what led me to make beginner mistakes and start looking for new opportunities.
I thought if I did enough new things, throwing money at projects, something would emerge to build on.
Of course, nothing did.
I killed all the projects before they even started because of one simple reason – my motivation was wrong.
I was doing things just because I could. I had the money and the knowledge. What I didn’t have was the heart or the desire, and I was diluting my efforts across too many things at once – a classic beginner entrepreneur mistake.
Finding My Clarity
After wasting a whole bunch of money and making the same mistakes several times in different projects, I came to my senses. I realized I needed to just stop.
My blog business was still successful. Even if my traffic had halved, I still had a lot of people on my newsletter and more signing up every day.
I also had a lot to teach. Many years ago I had set aside plans to create a series of training guides, and there was plenty of demand for the courses I had closed down, Blog Mastermind and Membership Site Mastermind, which I could teach fresh.
The most important thing, however, was where my heart was. I realized that what I enjoy the most is blogging, writing, creating multi-media content, teaching others how to break free from a job and interacting with the online community I am a part of.
While all of this was going on I was testing different ideas to bring my blog traffic back up to where it was. Perhaps it was the universe telling me something or just a coincidence, but around the same point that I found some clarity about my direction, my blog traffic tipped upwards, a trend that continued.
I can never be certain of course given the nature of Google’s algorithms, but the changes I made to my blog I believe worked. Within two months my traffic was back to where it was two years ago.
I took this as a sign.
Finding My Confidence
Although I felt more clarity about what I wanted to do, I still felt lacking in confidence.
You might find it hard to believe that someone who had so much success online before could find themselves lacking in confidence. I pride myself on results. I want to be able to show people tangible outcomes based on things I know and do that work. If I’m not walking my own talk, so to speak, I don’t feel confident.
If I needed money I could simply put ads back on my site and start promoting affiliate products again. However I didn’t want to return to that strategy, I felt pulled in a different direction.
It was clear that the world of blogging had changed and become crowded with many very successful people. As a result, I felt my positioning needed to be refined. I had to narrow my focus and stand for something that I was confident in.
The answer was simple…
I’ve made most of my income selling digital products. I know a considerable amount about creating and launching courses, membership sites and coaching programs. I get the most personal satisfaction as a creative person selling my ideas.
I also consider digital products and services as the best model for bloggers to adopt today, especially if you are new.
Many years ago I studied the ‘Sales Funnel‘ model for selling digital products and services. I was excited by it back then, but as I mentioned earlier, had reached a point of burn-out, so had no desire to build out a complete funnel.
In 2013 I made the decision to return to the subject of funnels. I dug up and studied my old funnel training materials and joined a new $1,000 course from Todd Brown (Todd used to work with Rich Schefren as his funnel man, and I have to say he’s really good at what he does – his course was brilliant).
I began planning a range of products I wanted to create. For the first time in a long time, I felt utterly excited by how much work was in front of me.
More Fun Than You Can Imagine
By mid 2014 I completed my fourth and final (for the time being) front end product, and also opened up the EJ Insider, my coaching community, which in 2016 became the Laptop Lifestyle Academy. It took me over a year to do it, but I successfully executed the first phase of the plan I put into place to build my new blogging business.
The next phase was to completely recreate my flagship courses, starting with Blog Mastermind.
I’m convinced that the best form of marketing is proven success stories. Your own success story is a great start, but when you can demonstrate others have achieved results thanks to your advice, then you have something special.
We all know the power of before and after shots. If you can show potential new clients the equivalent of a before and after case study (ideally several), that’s all you need. When you have a great product and it’s clear it works, you don’t have to do any hard selling.
With this in mind, I decided to showcase my previous graduate members as the centerpoint of my marketing campaign. However, I didn’t want to produce just short case studies solely for the purpose of promoting my products. I wanted to create valuable content that would help people in and of itself, which happened to be great case studies showing that my products worked too.
This was not hard to do. In fact, I had already done it.
I’m talking about my podcast interviews.
I’ve interviewed many people over the years, including a handful of graduates from my programs, who are great case studies. They started from zero, took my program, worked hard, made life changing money, and we then share the entire story in an interview.
Podcasts are inspiring and educational and a great way to connect with your audience. I had a few podcast case studies ready to go, but having never actually asked my graduate members to see if there were any good success stories worth sharing, I figured there could be a few more.
I’ve had literally thousands of people take my coaching programs. I started teaching in 2007. That’s a lot of years, and a lot of members.
The advantage of this is that my graduates have had time to build amazing blog businesses. Despite this, knowing that it takes hard work, great execution and a dash of luck to succeed, I was honestly worried if there were any more success stories to share!
I wrote an email and sent it to the list of people who had taken my two flagship courses in the past. I had low expectations. Maybe there were no success stories. Maybe people didn’t want to talk about them publicly on a podcast… who knows!
Within a few days I was blown away by the responses I received. Email after email came through from people writing such amazing things about the blog businesses they were running, the kind of money they were making ($20,000 a month, $30,000 – even half a million a year!) and how my courses had been the start of everything for them (and some of these people are very well known today).
I booked each person in to do a podcast interview and then began one of the best months of my life.
I can’t even begin to explain how amazingly uplifting this experience was.
I got to sit in and listen as people explained how my programs had helped them, how I had personally inspired them, how they had applied exactly what I taught — and it worked! — and how they were now living these amazing lives, earning such good money.
I then spent another couple of weeks re-listening and editing the interviews, getting them ready to publish and taking samples out as testimonials.
If you want to feel good about yourself, teach a course, get people results, then spend a few weeks listening to them explain how you changed their lives for the better. It’s powerful stuff!
It didn’t even stop there. Over the months and years since I began interviewing my graduates, more and more people surfaced as having taken part in one of my coaching courses, including some well known people like Hal Elrod, Natalie MacNeil, Jessica Nazarali and Kat Loterzo — and I interviewed them all!
From Clarity To Confidence To Purpose
Two years ago I was lost and making beginner mistakes. Then I found my direction and gained clarity about what I want to do. As I began implementing the new plan my confidence grew. Then after completing the case study interviews with my wonderful graduates, I truly found my purpose.
I’m a good teacher and I’ve been doing what I do long enough to reach the point where my subject has become second-nature. I’ve done my 10,000 hours and seen the industry evolve. My members actually get results and I’ve got many success stories to prove it.
I’ve come to realise thanks to blogging that my greatest strength as a writer is my clarity of style. I can collect and communicate ideas clearly and pass them on to people who are still learning in a way that they comprehend.
And the big one – the core motivation that drives everything I do – is how much I hate that people spend so many hours doing jobs they despise, when they have so much more to offer the world, if they just built the platform to share it.
I Know What You Are Feeling Right Now
One very powerful side-effect of going through this period of confusion as an entrepreneur is once again tasting what it is like to lack clarity about what I was doing with my business.
When you don’t have the self-esteem, the confidence, the direction and the clarity of purpose, you run the risk of floundering around, jumping from project to project, wasting time and possibly money.
Worst of all, the continued disjointed efforts lead to no results, which makes you feel even more lost, confused and tired.
It’s important for me to have felt this feeling again because it makes me a better coach. It’s a long time, over 15 years, since I first got started as an online entrepreneur and I felt these things. My beginner phase was a long time ago.
I feel rapport with all of you who are still out there trying to build your first successful business, when you are not certain what that is yet. When you don’t know what your niche is, or how you could become an expert at something (what on earth is that something!), or how exactly the process goes to create a website that generates an income.
There’s a lot to learn and a lot to do, and if your feelings are not positive and motivating you, you’re going to struggle.
Clarity Is The Answer
Looking back over periods when I’ve been very successful versus periods when I have not, I now realise there is one ingredient more important than any other for success…
Clarity.
Clarity is your power, your center from which to draw energy from, to guide your day-to-day decisions and where you derive your vision from. Everything is born from you knowing with utmost certainty what you are doing and why you do it.
The more clarity you have, the better you perform. This is why as you grow and start to master what you focus on, your sense of purpose and confidence increases. When you have clarity, you know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and what order to do it in.
Without clarity, everything becomes confused. You make mistakes, you don’t know when to do something or what path to follow.
When you lack clarity, information just confuses you. When you have clarity, information solves problems.
I suspect people who suffer from information overload, at the heart of their problem, suffer from a lack of clarity. When you have clarity, you don’t get information overload, because you only seek out what you need right now.
It might seem so simple, but as we all know, clarity is not always easy to obtain. It takes time, practice, experience, moments of awakening, successful outcomes and failures too, to help us find our clarity.
Without it, you are lost.
I’m Your Clarity Coach
I’ll end this article with a final invitation for you to join me and the rest of my small and growing coaching community, in the Laptop Lifestyle Academy.
It’s not a course, or a guide, it’s a support group, accountability club, and of course, access to me as your coach.
I can help you gain the clarity you need in order to feel the confidence that comes from knowing what you stand for and how you can serve the world.
Whether you need help with…
- topic selection
- mapping out a strategy for your overall business
- determining the right next step for your unique situation
- planning a traffic campaign
- or a sales funnel
…whatever stage you are up to with your blogging and information marketing business, I can help.
The Laptop Lifestyle Academy is a 24-hour accessible community. It’s like a forum with social tools built in. I check in every day, offer my advice and work with the members to take steps forward towards an income producing online business.
The community is made up of people at different levels of progress. Some are still figuring out what topic to focus on, others are building their technology infrastructures like their blog and landing page, some are focusing on traffic, conversion or product creation.
The one binding ingredient is that everyone is there to help and support each other.
If you sign up now, you lock in the charter group price for the life of your membership. Here is the link –
Beyond the community interaction, I also have many resources coming to members, including 50% off my courses, access to some members-only training programs, the option to join me on all my live members-only coaching calls, plus preview interviews not released anywhere else and other special training content.
All of this is only for my Laptop Lifestyle Academy members, and I’d love to have you as one of them.
That’s it from me. I hope sharing my own experiences and insecurities of the last couple of years helps you deal with your own challenges.
Good luck with your blog.
Yaro Starak
Blogger
Hey Yaro,
I have always thought of you as the “Blog guy.” I appreciate this post as it hits home with me. I have had a lack of clarity for the past year, and it definitely keeps you stuck. The idea that we can find our purpose, help others achieve results, and make money doing it sounds great. I don’t believe their is a better business model than the “information business model.” It appears to be the most secure model as you will always have clients willing to learn from you.
Hey Yaro, thank you for this post. It motivates me more to pursue my desire to make a living as a blogger. Recently, I’ve been moving away from blogging and looking into email marketing and setting up an inbox business, but that only led to confusion. I’m sure there are a lot of great ways to make money on the internet, but that’s the problem; there are a lot of great ways and it is so easy to get sidetracked, jumping from one to another.
I had this moment of clarity a few months back to write kindle books and sell them, because I have a passion for reading a lot of nonfiction books regarding a variety of subjects. I figured I would just constantly read, and reword what I read.
I guess I have to figure out how that will play into my blogging business.
Thanks again for the work that you do!
-Mick
Thank you for being so transparent, Yaro. I only had to read the first couple lines of your email and I knew I had to leave all distractions and read it in full. I’ve been on the same path and only just coming through the other end. I’m absolutely clear now, but knowing that someone like you went through a similar transition period made me feel a whole lot better I can tell you!
All the best in your future endeavours.
Hi, Yaro,
As you know, I’m a member of EJ Insider and consider you my mentor.
You ARE the clarity coach! I’ve had incredible insights about my business & blog since being a member of your newest community.
Not only do I get insightful comments from you that keep me focused & give me direction, I also get great ideas from the other Insiders.
I HIGHLY recommend bevoming a member of EJ Insiders! It’s worth 10x the investment.
Thanks for all you do!
Sue
I believe that Clarity is only one of the problems any entrepreneur faces this days, especially if you are dealing with information products.I’ve been an entrepreneur for 30 years,had 4 businesses throughout those years,and i have learned that if you do not see the changes coming you will not do the appropriate changes in your business,it used to be that a business online or offline used to go forever without course correction,now it’s a must to adapt depending on what the variables indicate, if you do not you will be in trouble.
I started reading about blogging as a business back in 2007 , read many of your blogs and many of the blogs of the big names you mention, but saw that after a while i was not getting anything new, same information just re arranged,i was overloaded with so many info. i just stopped reading blogs i had enough,i tried to go into the blog business and write like crazy
trying to do the same and i found out that it was very hard to put something new out there that was not out there already, not worth the investment in time,i was used to invest time and get return in investment almost instantly and not maybe some time in the future, plus the information that i had put out there after a year was outdated thanks to Google changing their ways.
So in conclusion, i believe that nothing is forever,but there is always something new to be tackled,so i think that what happened to you was that you stopped looking for new things and adapting to the changing times,i follow Pat Flynns blog and he is one of the few that is always changing and innovating, he now has a section called ask pat which i think is great, and i can see that after a while he probably is going to take that a step further and have a live one hour show questions & answers. Just like in talk radio,i don’t know if there is one yet but i would certainly tune in .
Thanks
Hello Yaro,
Thank you for sharing this! Hearing your honest struggles are encouraging as I’m currently in that place of searching for clarity. I’m glad you’ve re-found your purpose; I love your teaching style, and you’re right- you have fantastic clarity in your writing, and you’re also very approachable.
Take care and best wishes!
Great piece Yaro. Your ability to re-invent yourself so to speak and have long term staying power is very impressive. I definitely “found” your blog again at least in part to this. Loved the stuff about using the success stories of past customers. I am going to go see what I can do about that right now.
Nathan
Great post! On of the problems when you work online is that everything moves very fast and you have to perpetually refine your focus. I thought your honesty was very refreshing, Yaro.
Yaro,
I am really inspired by your success and you have a very great success story.
The thing I love about your is you are very friendly and very polite towards your followers.
Thanks for giving us this much inspiration 🙂
Cheers,
Hamza
Hi Yaro,
I have been reading and following this blog of yours on and off for years, – maybe since 2008? something like that. I used your free videos back some years ago to create my first WordPress blog, and it also opened me to the whole world of online marketing. Frankly, because you are so open and transparent about your journey and your ups and downs, I feel like you are a friend, like I’ve known you personally for years. 🙂 Frankly, I thought from the very beginning that that startup idea was no good. 🙂
So happy to read that you are finding your passion again!
Dude, don’t have any confidence issues! You have HELPED SO MANY PEOPLE! (I am one of them!)
Hey Yaros, im gratefully humbled by your experience at this point in your blogging life as you are my first teacher and encouraged me in the internet marketing life 7 years ago.(Blog Mastermind) Although i have not made a lot of money on blogging, for what i am today on the internet are due to you.
You are a bloody good teacher, no doubt about that, but its good to know that we are all human beings and we all have weaknesses. Now from that time on the Gold Coast to now i have moved to a tropical island in the Pacific called Rarotonga and working full time on Internet Marketing, sir, that,s all due to your teachings. I know in my heart that you will come out on the top on this one cause i have proven it to myself. I thank you and encourage you to keep going because that’s what you taught us when i was starting with you. Its heartening to see that you mentioned Pat Flynn as he is one my best mentors online.
Great post, very motivational,Yaro. I agree clarity with confidence gives strength to overcome challenges.
Hi Yaro, I have always loved your blog writing style (since 2009)! While there are lots of new bloggers and experts in the online sphere, the ability to write engaging articles that are well structured, personable, genuine AND informative is still very rare. Plus I like reflective insights and personal development content thrown in the mix – they resonate more with me coming from an online entrepreneur than say, a life coach. I look forward to hearing how the rest of your story unfolds 🙂
Thank you Yaro for being who you are. I certainly can relate to the confusion, the jumping from one shiny object to other. What I learnt from you way back I still use today. I have no idea if blogging is as relevant anymore as you can use google as a website, facebook as a website, youtube and other social media as a way to get communication out there. Clarity that is the path that I am want to stay on and are greatly encouraged by your blog post. Thank you Julia
That’s very interesting Yaro, we shared similar experiences. I too experienced a burn out with blogging and information products. switched to software. In my case however, my old business was in worse off shape so there was no going back.. We now have 3 SAAS products including a helpdesk system and niche website builder. Plus, we also have our own affiliate network. Not bad I guess as I am not a programmer and we started from scratch..
Gosh, so so so have just been through this confusion stage too. If you know what it’s like to be focused on your own projects and know what it feels like to be on fire with them – then the day (weeks and months) you don’t have that you flounder about, confused, jumping about doing all the things you KNOW deep down ‘isn’t you’….been there and you wind up burned out, frustrated and utterly confused and that’s when you question your abilities and start to lose confidence.
1. What I did was I stepped back and closed the laptop and went back to getting the enjoyment back in my life. This was the turning point, even though I was still continually ‘thinking’ in my mind..’what next and HOW’, but I gave myself space.
2. I realised that, how ever much I start chasing shinier ideas, unless I AM PASSIONATE about it, it is NOT going to happen. My biggest mistake was to move from focus and contribution TO CHASING MONEY and getting would up in that vicous circle…I realised I’d made the classic mistake (even though I knew never to do it) I was in it. It’s a mistake because if you’re not passionate and ON FIRE with your projects – for me that’s changing peoples’ lives, then you won’t have the zest to see it through and so focus will NOT be there.
3. The projects I were chasing were not using my strengths: writing and helping others…so I as soon as I started the projects I felt this weird feeling of being restricted cos I couldn’t use my strengths fully.
So the upshot is – YES, if you need to move on then do so, but make sure that whatever it is you go for, it is still truly aligning with your core values AND your passions – AND critically uses your strengths. ONLY THEN will the real fire return…and money is simply the byproduct of these things.
Super post Yaro – so pleased to see you’re ‘back on track’ with what you know you do best!
1.
It’s amazing how big some blogs have gotten. But it’s also interesting to see big blogs just disappear.
I think we’ve got to seize the moment when times are good, b/c times won’t always be as good.
Best,
Sam
Yaro.
As entrepreneurs we sometimes fall off the horse. But we get back on and try again. Its what we do. Its in our DNA. Failure only sharpens the resolve to do better next time. You were off your game when your mum passed. Happens to the best of us. Chin up.
Damon
There may be new players on the scene, but people like me are really put off by their aggressive marketing style. I just read your Blueprint again and love the way you write – information without the bullshit!
Keep at it, you still give hope and encouragement to thousands of people who need it and there will always be people who prefer your style of teaching.
Yaro,
My blog recently reached its 10th birthday, and I, too, am going through a rough period of upheaval. It really hits your confidence in the gut. I found myself making beginner mistakes and lacking any sort of focus or clarity. Financial trouble hasn’t helped, either.
I’m going back to basics and back to the beginning to refocus and find some clarity. I hope to join the group soon, when I can afford it.
It’s a relief to hear I’m not the only one who is out of step after a long period of seeming to be on the right path.
Sherri
This one is a classic Yaro.
Hi Yaro,
Amen. Not only do I agree, I had a similar experience not even 2 months ago.
I was doing fine on the financial front and saw success with my old blog but I lacked blogging confidence. I never felt “good enough” blogging-wise to reach out to you or other authority bloggers 3 months ago.
I was unclear on my niche. Hell, I had no niche. So again, even though I had some success I needed to kill many income streams to get clear, and to focus on one idea.
2 months ago to the day, I launched Blogging from Paradise. I opened zero income streams through the blog for about 2 weeks. None. I recall Sean Parker’s advice to Mark Z in the Social Network movie; don’t monetize through ads yet, because Facebook isn’t cool yet.
My blog was new, and I was fully clear on my audience, and I had income streams in mind, but it wasn’t cool. Again, I trashed all former income streams barring my freelance writing business, writing for my clients.
Then after a few weeks when the blog was gaining traction fast I added my freelance writing services page and 1 affiliate opportunity but only because each stream was fully aligned with my blogging from paradise brand.
Then I got busy with writing an eBook. I felt clear while writing it because it aligned with my brand. Then I was blessed with your endorsement, and Chris Brogan’s endorsement, and guys like Matt Capella, and Marc Andre, and Adrienne Smith, and Andrew Spencer, and Kevin Duncan, all endorsed the ebook.
I added a third income stream through my new blog by selling the eBook but only because once again, it was clearly aligned with my blog and my brand. I went from unconfident blogger to a guy who got your endorsement and Chris’ endorsement; the shift in a few months was beyond miraculous and I had to let go almost everything, trashing 3400 blog posts from my old blog, to see this level of success and to find this level of clarity in weeks.
Loving the message here Yaro. To grow, let go that which weighs you down. Once you see greater success and attract more money be disciplined in applying greater clarity to all you do. I still have a boot strapper’s mentality and will do so if I make a billion dollars online and offline.
Not because I’m cheap, but because I go over each income stream, each investment, and each opportunity in my life with a fine toothed comb these days, because NOTHING is more important than having full clarity that some venture aligns purposely with your one core purpose.
Thanks so much for sharing your story Yaro.
I’ll tweet this in a bit.
Signing off from Fiji 🙂
Ryan
Loss of clarity is a casualty of a somewhat confused state of mind (not that I’m saying you’re a full-blown example of that Yaro). I responded recently to a person on a Facebook Group; she appeared to be in a desperate state. Desperate for money. Wanting quick cash. This morphed into fear and procrastination. It is all so prevalent with people seeking an online income. So they lose focus, and they ignore the one thing that can build them a business – their own skills and knowledge. And as Yaro said, all they need is the platform to do it. Simple.
Yaro’s example is about getting back to what he does best … and enjoys doing. These are two critical states that underpin clarity. Never lose sight of that.
Great story Yaro, and it is very pleasing to read that you have found your mojo again.
I went through something a little bit similar when I had over 26 websites and was completely burnt out trying to run them all myself, because of that they went months without being updated. Thankfully it did not cost me as much money as it could have and I have now cut the amount of sites down to 6 and I’m enjoying writing again. 🙂
Thanks for keeping it real Yaro. It really opened my eyes to the dangers of jumping from one thing to another. If there’s one thing that held me back, that was it!
I really appreciate your honesty and humility.
Thanks for sharing your own experience. It inspires me to do all the things I wanted to do and see it all in the future. Keep posting and inspiring.
Very well written and inspiring post, Yaros. Have Bookmarked this post for further reference and inspiration…
Yaros, you hit the nail on the head “literally’ regarding the confidence or lack of, issue…
A lack of confidence can, and often does, “snatch failure from the jaws of Victory”….I think that’s how it goes…
I have seen a lack of confidence or, low self esteem, turn people with massive potential, into people who can sometimes reach the point of just wanting to give it all up….they became totally defeated….and could not find that “second wind” that often comes to our aid in dire moments in our lives…
Great post,
I landed on your site when Ryan from bloggingfromparadise.com mentioned you in one of his post. The first thing I did was to sign up for your newsletter. You have some really good information on your blog.
I have been your situation before. I shut down my software company in 2013 that never really took off after loosing a couple of thousands. Then I started another company but had gone from consultancy to become a SAAS. In 2014, I started writing and have published 3 books so far. Sometimes, I look back at my life and think of all those major I have made. It hurts to loose money on a company but it’s always better the right decision before it’s too late.
I am with your what you said about clarity. Right now, I am finding it difficult to have a clear goal with my blog. Trying to find that one core reader! Any tips ?
Hi Yaro,
I really like the way your blog posts always have a personal feel to them. You write as though we are having a conversation. You’re open and discus your ups and downs.
All of this makes you come across as a very honest person. And who doesn’t like honestly!
Naomi
Really like the post Yaro, it’s brought some clarity on what I need to do to start building a real business online.
P.S. what’s that little FB popin plug-in, it’s pretty neat.
Dwight Anthony
FinanciallyEliteBlog.com
Glad you liked it Dwight. The FB slider is a little custom addon we made for EJ borrowing the initial idea from Daily Worth.
Yaro
Hello Yaro,
One thing is of course clear, information overload is indeed clearly evident in his blogging world of ours. Everyone has something different to say on the same subject matter and that is when we need to be discerning and I do like the point you raised with respect to having clarity and purpose.
Thanks for this and do have a great week!
Hi Yaro,
Thanks for making me motivated to do activities where my heart is. I had a blog before but I had lose my passion because of my work. Now, I’ll try to update my blog again. It is when you do what you want, earn a living from it and then, helping others to achieve what they want.
I think killing all the income streams would have helped in thinking and creating the core business model that you liked most, but it might have the most risky decision of your business online ?
Hi Yaro,
Great post here. I’ve been following you and your stuff for a while now, but have neglected to be active when it comes to commenting. You are truly an inspiration and really a person that I and many others look up to … and just to reiterate what someone said, I do look at you as the blogging guy.
“Clarity is your power, your center from which to draw energy from, to guide your day-to-day decisions and where you derive your vision from. Everything is born from you knowing with utmost certainty what you are doing and why you do it.
The more clarity you have, the better you perform.”
This is 100% true. And without a good sense of clarity, you are lost. I think I’m going through that right now and I’m just trying to find my clarity in terms of my business. But your words on that matter has certainly inspired me.
Thank you for this.
– Andrew
Confidence is usually a trait that fuels our desires in achieving our objectives in life, may it be personal, business, or social. That’s why we mustn’t loose our confidence, there may be challenges in every part of our life but those are just only tests and may be concidered as “coaching” that life is teaching us, let us embrace those challenges and use it as our stepping stone in becoming a succesfull and wise person. 🙂
Without clarity you never know where you are going. It took me several years of kicking the can attitude while dreaming big to finally focus on what I wanted to do.. Getting that focus allowed me to find my passion. Just like pat Flynn I post a monthly income report on my website so everyone understands how I am doing with my passion. It is good to know the big guys like yourself struggle with finding your passion. It makes me forgive myself for all those years I wasted kicking that can around until I found my passion.
Hi Yaro Thanks for sharing your valuable advice.
Hi Yaro,
I just found your blog again. And I can see that we went through similar things in 2011 and 2012.. Im glad to hear about your thoughts and to know that you are back on track.
Yaro this was a super post. You certainly have a gift of sharing in a way to really understand. As reading through your eyes could see my own setbacks and challenges. Clarity, confidence and purpose are really the keys to many of our worlds challenges. As a holistic life and business optimization coach myself can tell you first hand that what you share was spot on. Too many people suffer in life as a result of lack of clarity and understanding why they are on the planet. They are being drowned by media programming to just live a life of existence and not substance. The some how believe they have nothing important to offer and that life is about lifestyle and consuming. Once they catch a vision and become clear of why they are here and begin helping others with the gift only they can bring, they become confident and powerful in making this world a much better place than the one that is created with empty media voices. Thanks for sharing such a great journey with us and remind us of these powerful lessons.
Thank you for your kind feedback Roger, I appreciate it!
Yaro
Thanks for your honesty. Your thoughts and situation are common in the human psych. Many readers can relate I’m sure.
To be frank, gurus come and go. It is rare that one person stays top dog in any industry, *especially* in the internet arena.
Even Pat Flynn, who I respect and follow, may not be up there forever.
I used to follow financial gurus on Wall Street. They rose and fell like leaves of the season. There are exceptions (Warren Buffet, etc.) but they are rare.
good luck with your new direction
Yaro
I have just read your post and honestly, it’s like reading my own thoughts.
I started reading your stuff back in 2007 (I think) and I have been online since 2002.
I have over 60 domain names, 43 websites of which only 7 are active and I am lost. Truly, truly lost.
I had a brain tumour last year from which I have recovered and it has made me think. I work for a corporate firm and I earn about 70,000 GBP pa which sounds good but I am leveraged so highly because of cars and mortgages, my disposable income is the same as my 21 year old daughter.
Anyway, my online efforts were parked, simply because I was bored doing them. All posts were finance specific (because of my day job)and I wrote a lot. My one real attribute is that I am a prolific writer and often write 10,000 words a week, whether that is one sitting of 4,000 words or 2,000 words a day.
I am gradually getting rid of my material posessions, I am starting a new blog (in finance because it’s what I know but with a personal angle which I have never done before)and I will continue with my day job for however long it takes me to replace that income with my new blog/site income.
Finally, just wanted to say that this post of yours is an Epiphany for me. Now I know others feel like me and this combined with your brilliant post on living a minimalist lifestyle, has been truly eye opening for me.
Thanks and hope to be around a lot more.
That’s great to hear Harro, I feel a change is coming to how you live your life, a positive one!
Good luck!
Yaro
I particularly appreciate the humility the way you share your experience. I too went through some major lack of confidence following a personnal drama (not huge but powerful enough to affect my desire to continue my web businesses).
I discovered you many years ago and downloaded your free ebook which inspired me a lot. And now discovering your post makes me feel like … well, a normal person after all.
Keep it up Yaro and thank you again for sharing your experience.
Clarity is power! I also went through some tough times where I lost the clarity and my goals and I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I gained back the clarity and purpose and everything went smoothly again.