Internet Marketing Street Smarts

The Self Help Industry Is Killing True Entrepreneurship!

Posted on 29. Oct, 2009 by Sasha in Entrepreneurship

Nothing against the self help industry, I myself read lot’s of personal development books and am a self professed Tony Robbins addict. So why do I think the self help industry is killing true entrepreneurship one manifestation at a time?

It all begins with the principle of modeling. If you want the same result as someone else – find out what they do, do what they do, and you’ll achieve the same result. Very logical, very effective. After 4 years of following the modeling principle blindly, I realized: IF YOU DON’T HAVE STRONG ENOUGH SELF TRUST, modeling can kill true entrepreneurship because it restricts creativity and innovation.

What do I mean by ’self trust’? This is having enough confidence that your business idea is good enough and can be successful. People who don’t have self trust either don’t believe in their ideas, OR don’t have any ideas. This leads people to Internet Marketing communities (eg. warriorforum.com – great forum) where they discover eBooks, videos courses and seminars with all sorts of money making systems they can model.

Nearly all these IM products instruct the student to follow the instructions exactly as they are, step by step to achieve a successful result of earning money. As a newbie, you immerse yourself with IM information and you begin to absorb one must follow rule after another. eg.

1. Never target to the masses. Only build a business around a very specific niche and go deep.
2. Use the Google search network only because it has very targeted traffic. NEVER use the Google content network.
3. Don’t enter the Internet Marketing niche it’s too competitive.

BS! BS! BS!

Don’t worry, I too blindly followed these rules from IM gurus for years! After being in the IM game for 3 years now, I now understand that RULES ARE THERE TO BE BROKEN. Most of the time these rules are there for a reason, but if you follow them blindly you may be holding yourself back from maximum potential.

Look at some of the most successful companies online like YouTube, Twitter, Amazon, Facebook, iTunes, eBay, WordPress, Wikipedia – none of these businesses read a ‘how to make money online’ eBook. The founders of these companies had an INNOVATIVE idea and had the self trust to just go with it.

I myself for a long time was stuck in the mind space of thinking the only way I can make money online is if I make a ‘how to’ eBook in a certain niche and put up a sales page like a typical info product such as TruthAboutAbs.com (nothing wrong this model btw, that Truth About Abs website makes $10M/year). What I now see is I can make money online 1000’s of different ways and in ways that haven’t even been done before. If you have an idea, just do it. Just because you’ve never read about it in an eBook or seen a big guru talk about it doesn’t mean it won’t work.

The key is to stay open minded so that you can be receptive to innovative ideas and creativity that comes your way. This is what true entrepreneurship is about, INNOVATION.