Sep 11
Eye of the Tiger
Sometimes when responding to a comment, I tend to get a bit long winded and try to reign it in.
Other times when responding to a comment I find that I need more “space” to adequately address a certain topic. Yesterday, Apex left a comment on Saturday Speedlinkin IV talking about one of Courtney’s posts I had linked to.
I needed more space to adequately address this one.
Apex’s Assertion
I’d like to talk about Court’s post. It’s informative, and I am not trying to say that it’s not good, but seriously, isn’t that common sense? I mean shouldn’t everybody have those traits?
My Response
First, don’t think that I’m disagreeing with you whole heartedly because I think you may be right in some sense. I think a lot if not the majority of us bloggers are in it because we want it to be our job. We don’t want to work in our 9-5s anymore, and we’re willing to make our blog our business to make it happen.
In this sense, serious bloggers and business owners have a lot in common.
Mindset of a Business Owner
When you ask successful business owners how they did it, I think the majority of them would boil it down to what Courtney said, persistence, vision, self-belief, creativity, consistency, passion. Without those things, you’re just not going to make it. Now is that common sense to most of us? Yes. Is that common sense to most everyone else? No.
And I think that’s why so many people “don’t make it”. And I’m not talking about just bloggers. I’m talking about most of the people in mainstream society. If you go up to 5 of them and ask, “Do you want to be doing what you’re doing today or would you rather forge your own path and work for yourself?” Most I think would say they’d like to work for themselves. But because they lack one of those 6 things, they won’t make it.
Audience Targeting
To end this little rant of mine, I don’t think that a lot of people in main stream society know this stuff as common sense. That’s what makes business owners different than everyone else. It’s the mindset and I think often it’s vision and self-belief. Business owners know that to make it, they need the vision and self-belief to see that they WILL make it when others don’t and tell them they won’t. The people who don’t know how to make it think that FIRST other people have to see them able to succeed and others have to believe in what they’re doing.
So maybe this whole discussion should be limited to scope. Even though its unlikely that non bloggers look much at Courtney’s blog, if one does – Maybe they’ll learn something about mindsets if they read that post. *shrugs* I dunno.
September 11th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Agreed totally Mr Bush,
I still need a little self belief and need to commit more to blogging and the technical aspects of it.
I need to target an audience and work out how to keep them coming back.
Only the other day I ranted about the O’Reilly factor and my readers went from 13 to 10 in one day! Was this related? I don’t know but…. I need to get to know my audience.
September 11th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Yep. The Eye Of The Tiger. That’s what you need. Just don’t blink.
September 11th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
Brother B.M., I have a problem ..
You name six things as vital for ..
I look in and out and I have the feeling six is one too long or one too short.
Any of situations, “gurus” allways skip to say something to general public or they say it after is old enough to be unefficient ..
Without any will or intention to make polemics, I see – psihosociologicaly point of view – all six “characteristics” you named are effects and not causes .. And to cure – prevent – repair – develop, is required to know the causes of effects more than effects ..
Personaly, I agree with you that certain characteristics – the six you named, for example – are vital and not generated by commun sense …
@ Forest Parks
OMG, i was almost to confuse your O`Reilly with mine
)
however, a drop from 13 to 10 in a saturday -sunday “age”, is not quite a drop .. actualy is nothing. Even a weekend drop from 130 to 100 (usualy in weekend things going slower) is not significant except if it repeat after certain kind of articles in a row …
September 11th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Let’s just use the example of vision. Say someone at a 9-5 job has no vision, no goal to become wealthy, no goal to be their own boss. If you asked that same person what made Bill Gates so rich, don’t you thin they’d say ‘vision’ or some synonym to that and most likely rattle off the other 5 traits or synonyms of them?
So, while I agree completely that not everyone might have the 6 traits, and it is not entirely a bad thing to remind people of these traits, I also think that when looking at it from the other direction, like my example above, most people would know of them and with that know that successful people most likely have them.
September 11th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Thanks for the mention, and for backing me up. Even though I’ve known for years that those characteristics are obviously necessary to find success, I find that sometimes I am better at applying them than I am at other times.
Everything I post on my site is there because I think it will help someone. Not every post will help every single person, and if it doesn’t help a certain individual I’m sure they can find something there that will.
Since every reader is different you have to post things that some people will need, knowing that others will already have an understanding of those concepts. I don’t for a second believe that every post I write will help every single person in the world. I just try to help out as much as I can.
Thanks everyone for your opinions!!
September 12th, 2007 at 8:09 am
@Forest – Just keep workin’ at it and you’ll get there. And like Valentin said, I wouldn’t worry about the reader drop. Day to day stuff is less important than ongoing trends I think.
@Brown – I have the scotch tape helping me so don’t worry.
@Valentin – It sounds like you wrote a poem or some fantastic prose. Ha ha.
@Apex – I see where you’re coming from, but I think there’s still a good segment of the population that (using your example) would say that Bill Gates is where he is because he’s “smart”. And I think while that’s truuuueish it doesn’t fully encapsulate everything that got him to where he is.
But I see your point. (#):)
@Court – Who would’ve thought that your little post would generate this much interest huh?
September 12th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I just want to say that Court’s blog as a whole in my opinion, is the BEST blog I have seen in this area. I particularly liked that post a lot. I could get similar information from other blogs but have yet to find one which explains things in a way that a beginner, such as my self, can understand.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:40 am
@Bobby – Yeah, and it looks like he’s getting the stats to back that up too. Thanks for reminding everyone that not every blogger is at the same point…Some posts definitely speak more to some than others.
September 12th, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Now that we got everything straight .. it’s time to sing the “Eye of the Tiger” heh. What do you mean I’m crazy?
September 12th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
They are good points but like Apex said that’s common sense. You won’t succeed in anything without doing those things. Well you might if you know someone.
When I worked out of the home I remember one co-worker complained because of the awards I received. What she didn’t want to think about was all the work I did to get to receive them. She wasn’t doing it. I wasn’t just doing enough to “get by”
I didn’t do go above and beyond what I had to do because I was thinking how I was going to be compensated. I did it because those projects represented me and I wanted to do my best. I always do my best. That coworker, and many like her, were just content to get by.
I imagine that is why I don’t actively follow blogs that only talk about how to be successful online anymore to me in many ways, for me at least, its common sense and similar to marketing my own business. Once I realized that it has become very easy.
I finally quit listening to what everyone else said and through trial and error started doing what works best for my websites. What works for them will not necessarily work on my sites.
I always liked that song…
September 13th, 2007 at 7:35 am
@Opal T – As always, you raise some good points. And it’s nice to see you again Opal! It feels like I’ve been going through Opal withdrawal lately!
Oh and what song are you talking about?
September 13th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Eye of the Tiger, lol
Yeah I’ve haven’t been visiting too much the past week so all my regular blog pals will be seeing a lot of comments over the next few days. I have to make up for time I was away. I’m launching another product line so I’ve spent a lot of time on that and haven’t had time to visit as I would like.
September 13th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
The song…Eye of the Tiger was by Survivor