You cannot rush developing online skills.
You cannot force online success.
Even though my blogging gig requires far less skills, being a professional blogger is similar to being a doctor or lawyer except that I am not saving lives or practicing law. I put in the same amount of work to develop a skill to be where I am today.
I get it; I write words and help people. I am not saving lives here. But if you despise your job, read my eBooks, follow the advice for years and retire to a life of island hopping through smart blogging, I provided you with a service as important to you as a doctor or lawyer provides, in one way.
Why?
Who cares if you are healthy and living within the bounds of the law if you feel depressed, angry, miserable and flat out like you are dying a little more daily? I can help you free yourself to live the life of your wildest dreams BUT I can only offer my services, content, eBooks and courses because I spent the 10,000 to 15,000 hours blogging that doctors and lawyers spend practicing medicine and practicing law.
Most online entrepreneurs receive a loud, clear wakeup call early – or well into – their online careers: starting an online business is quite easy but working for 1,000's of hours to develop skills to actually build a thriving business is quite uncomfortable sometimes, challenging other times and seemingly overwhelming in select moments. But the journey is quite fun and freeing mostly, too.
Online entrepreneurs cannot use a time machine to fast forward 10 years into a successful online career because doing so skips the 10,000 plus hours you need to work to gain:
- skills
- exposure
- credibility
enough to profit through the multiple streams of income you opened, to the professional, thriving, freeing level. Most folks online foolishly believe you can become highly skilled, gain massive exposure and develop rock solid credibility in 100 or 1,000 hours but you cannot. There is a good reason for this.
Even if you become reasonably skilled in 1,000 hours you cannot become as skilled as me because I practiced-worked-blogged for 10,000 hours. Even if you have immense natural talent – many bloggers do have more natural talent than I – you have no trust, no credibility and no exposure with only 1,000 hours of work. No one of influence, power of genuine credibility trusts you yet, because we do not know you. We cannot see you; you haven't popped up on our radar screen yet. Not enough work, skills and exposure in your cyber pocket because you are a new blogging kid on the block.
Like me, and every pro blogger, you just begin to pay your dues with 1,000 blogging-work hours. Relax. Slow down. Calm down, Young Blogging Padawan. Even if you have a slick theme, genuine writing voice and dose of confidence, you are not in 100,000's of thousands of places online yet, like me, because I spent 10K hours over a decade building my:
- skills
- exposure
- credibility
- friend network
You cannot force, rush or hack this process because the moment you attempt to speed things up, you drop into lower blogging circles, struggle and fail. Why? Good things require time and generous service. Rushing things removes the 2 requirements – time and generous service – required to succeed online.
My advice?
Learn from pros. Put in time. Generously help people. Hug the fact that thriving online requires 1000's of practice hours over years. Do it the right way to actually succeed online.
