Finding Success in Online Business: Lessons from Famous Entrepreneurs [LNIM249]

2024: A Year of Powerful Thoughts for Your Online Business Journey

In this episode, host Mark Mason shares his plans for the year 2024 and offers powerful thoughts to help listeners with their online business journey. The episode emphasizes the importance of taking massive action, overcoming fear and procrastination, and embracing change. Mark draws inspiration from famous entrepreneurs and provides insights on content marketing and the role of artificial intelligence. He also introduces the concept of basing your online business on your eager expertise and highlights the significance of measuring leading indicators for success. The episode concludes with an invitation to subscribe to the podcast for future episodes and a mention of a recommended social media content tool.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Power of Getting Started
• 9:42 Embracing Failure and Taking Action
• 20:08 High School Baseball and Future Plans

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Episode 249.

Speaker 2: 0:03

Late night. Internet marketing.

Speaker 1: 0:08

This week on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast. On New Year's Day, I'm going to give you some powerful thoughts to help you with your online business journey throughout the entirety of 2024. All this and more on the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:26

You can do it right when it's late at night. At the end of the day, your dreams burn in your sights.

Speaker 3: 0:35

Keep it up and you will find that you're building your business one night at a time and now broadcasting late at night from a little studio in the big state of Texas. Your host, mark Mason.

Speaker 1: 0:54

Hey, hey everyone, how are you? My name is Mark Mason and this is the first episode of the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast for the amazing year that is going to be 2024. I hope that you have a lot of exciting plans for 2024. I know that I do and I'm going to be sharing those with you throughout the month of January right here on the podcast. But I'll share one of my own personal goals for you right now, and that is 52 weekly episodes for the Late Night Internet Marketing Podcast in the year 2024. That's the goal. It's do or die, ride or die, do it or bust 52 consistent episodes of amazing content in the year 2024. And that will be the first time, I think, in the history of the podcast, which has been going on on and off since 2009, that I've actually accomplished that. This will be the year 2024. Check back with me in 2025 on the first episode in January in 2025. Make sure I did that, but that's the plan for 2024. So, to get us both that's me and you started off in the best possible way in 2024 here. I wanted to offer you some amazing business quotes that I've dug out and researched in some key areas that will help you with accomplish your goals in 2024.

Speaker 1: 2:31

Now, next week we're going to be talking about my tried and true method, the actual formula that I've used in my online journey and in my 30 years of business outside of Internet marketing to accomplish goals. I'll be giving that to you next week, so be sure to tune in for that. But this week I want to spend some time getting our head right about how to move forward by looking at the wisdom that's come before us, and the first thing I want to talk about is just this whole idea of getting started. In fact, the first quote that I want to lay on you is a Mark Twain quote. Mark Twain said the secret of getting ahead is actually getting started, and I couldn't agree more with that. More often than not, I run into people that want to talk about starting a business online, but for various reasons, they're procrastinating, and oftentimes the reason for the procrastination is not knowing exactly what to do. But really, the thing I run into the most is people have fears that they haven't yet unpacked and they're procrastinating because they don't want to get started. But Mark Twain will tell you that the secret of getting ahead is actually getting started and the way to get started.

Speaker 1: 3:49

According to Walt Disney, the way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. Take massive action. You've heard me say this before on the podcast. Apparently, walt Disney agrees with me. The way to get started is just to do stuff and recognize that you are going to do stuff incorrectly. You're going to make mistakes. That's part of the process. What you need to do is take action, fail and learn quickly so you can move forward. You don't want to have this analysis paralysis phenomenon, where all you do is stand around and plan and you never actually take any action.

Speaker 1: 4:29

And then the third thing I want to tell you about getting started is one of my very favorite Zigg Ziggler quotes of all time, and that is you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great. I can just hear Zigg Ziggler saying that, and what he means is, if you wait until you think you're good at something in order to get going, you'll never get started. In fact, the way to get good is actually start and improve. Whatever it is you're doing on online business, you've got to take action and get going because, as Tony Robbins says and this is the last thing that we'll say about getting started is that the path to success is to take massive, determined action. So it's pretty clear in 2024, if we want to achieve our goals, the thing that we're going to have to do is take some massive, determined action. We're not going to worry about how to get great first. We're not going to be afraid of getting started. We're just going to get started, and I believe that if you're starting an online business, one of the best ways to do that is something that I call basing it on your eager expertise, and that's something that we're going to talk about later in 2024.

Speaker 1: 5:49

It really is the ultimate side hustle. Side hustles based on your eager expertise blend opportunity and personal fulfillment with financial potential in a way that traditional jobs just can't do. You may be able to make a lot of money doing something that you don't really enjoy. You may be able to do something that you really enjoy and not make a lot of money, but if you can find that overlap of doing something that really lights you up, that's something that you really enjoy, that you can figure out how to monetize and build something around your eager expertise, that's a great way and really represents the ultimate side hustle for online entrepreneurs, and around that there's content marketing, and that's something that we talk a lot about on this show, and even if you are in the e-commerce side of things, content marketing is still incredibly powerful, and, in fact, bill Gates will tell you Bill Gates is the guy who often gets credited with saying content is king. There's a lot of great things that come from generating fantastic, helpful content, not unlike what I'm trying to do with this podcast create content that helps people do whatever it is that they're trying to do, whether it's buy a razor or start a business online. Super great, helpful content is always going to benefit you and your business. And I'll say I'll tell you something that one of my idols said one time, and it's something that I have held on to and really fits in this category.

Speaker 1: 7:24

Michael Hyatt once said that marketing is really just about sharing your passion. Whether you're passionate about a particular kind of shovel, or you're passionate about building online businesses, like I am, or you're passionate about coaching, like my friend Cliff Ravenscraft is, or you're passionate about biology, like my friend Leslie Samuel is, or you're passionate about copywriting, like my friend Ray Edwards is, you can really crush it with amazing marketing just by sharing that passion, and you know a lot of people when I talk about content. They they're worried about a I and I think we can. We can worry about that, but I think really honestly Ancient Chinese proverbs about change representing opportunity is really the right way to think about a I. I'm not worried about a I in terms of content, at least not right now. That's not a problem that we're really facing. Ten years from now, maybe we need to have another discussion, but right now it's pretty clear that there's still room for people like you and me to create amazing content that helps people. You know a?

Speaker 1: 8:35

Feifei Lee, a famous artificial intelligence prognosticator, said artificial intelligence is not about replacing humans. It's about enhancing human capabilities and capacity with intelligence systems, and I've certainly seen this in my own content creation instead of looking at a blank page. A lot of times, I can ask artificial intelligence to give me ideas. If I were to ask artificial intelligence to write this podcast for us and speak it with a voice, at least right now, we wouldn't find this very interesting. Charles Darwin said it's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but it's the ones that's most responsive to change, and I want you in your business not to fear the change that's coming with a I In twenty, twenty four and beyond, but I want you to be responsive to it and right now, I think that means using a I to create even better content than you could be for, to offer even better market solutions than you could be for, and to help people even more than you could be for.

Speaker 1: 9:42

And again, you know people that that worry about a I and worry about all these other things, worry about failing because of something that really these are all fears around failure, and I just want to tell you what Henry Ford said. Henry Ford said Failure is just a resting place. It's an opportunity to begin again more intelligently. So if you build something and you find that A I or some other external force like covert or shipping problems in China or whatever have created a problem for you, two things to know. One is that's temporary. You can adjust, start again, learn from that and do something better. Second thing is that's also happening to all your competition and that creates opportunity for you. That's the kind of thing that Henry Ford wants you to do. He wants you to see that failure as an opportunity to begin again. And as you're doing these things.

Speaker 1: 10:39

I think one of the things that you need to do is you need to think about things like what Peter Drucker talks about, and that is that, as you move forward in your business, you need to make sure you have some good metrics, and I love the Peter Drucker quote where he says what gets measured gets managed. And in twenty twenty four, I want to encourage you, as you charge ahead, not to just take massive action blindly, not to fear the things, but measure them and see what kind of progress you're making and make adjustments based on those measurements. And don't just measure Trailing indicators, like how much money did I make in twenty twenty four, but measure leading indicators like how many podcast episodes did I create, how many podcast downloads were there, or how many clicks did I get on my website and how did those clicks convert? How did my ads convert? How many ads did I place? How much money did I spend on advertising All of these leading indicators that are necessary for revenue. Those are the things that you should be measuring, in addition to the trailing indicators that are so easy to measure, like revenue and profit.

Speaker 1: 11:50

But, as you know, none of this is going to be for free. Later in January, I'm going to be presenting to you an opportunity from my friend, aiden Booth, who is teaching a great course on Amazon. I went through it before, seven years ago. He's updated and I sold all kinds of crazy things, including a toilet paper dispenser shaped like Dear Antlers, and I've told you about that on this podcast before. That's going to be an opportunity that I will talk about a little bit on this podcast in late January, early February. But that's just an idea and it's instructions about how to do things.

Speaker 1: 12:30

And what Scott Belsky says is it's not really about ideas, it's about making those ideas happen. Again, it's about taking massive action. Having the right recipe, which is what you can get when you buy a course online, is absolutely critical, but the people that really succeed, like Belsky says, are the people that make ideas happen, that actually do the work. And this is my favorite quote. I use this all the time, actually, in my day job Vidal Sassoon, which is a designer, brand. That a very famous person, very famous when I was a kid, for his slogan if you don't look good, we don't look good, which I love, and they used to say it on TV with an accent if you don't look good, we don't look good. You know something like that. Vidal said that the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary, and I just love that. Right, I mean, really, you're gonna have to do the work in 2024 if you want to be successful. And finally, I get this question all the time, and this is one of my favorite Chinese proverbs I want to address and objection that I hear.

Speaker 1: 13:46

Mark, it's too late for me to start an internet business. There are too many podcasts, too many blogs, too many online stores, too many of this, too many of that. It's too late. And let me just tell you this look, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time to plant a tree is right now, today. Yeah, sure, it would have been great if in 1987, you had started your online business and now you were like Mark Cuban, right, and you had made a billion dollars and cashed out in the dot com boom. That would have been great, but you didn't do that. So what's your choice? Well, you can't go backwards in time. So the second best time for you to start your internet business is right now. Right now, in 2024, and I want to help you do that.

Speaker 1: 14:36

So what do we learn here from these quotes from famous people by the way, all these people are incredibly successful right, we can take what they've said and apply it to what it is that we're trying to do, and what I hear them saying is we need to eschew fear and stop procrastinating and take massive action. If we're going to fail which we probably are we need to not fear that. We need to invite that, because that's what learning is, and we need to not worry. We need to just take action and create solutions and I think, particularly in my case, content that helps people, and we want to help them profitably, and that's the kinds of things that we're going to be talking about on the late night internet marketing podcast in 2024. So here's what you need to do right now.

Speaker 1: 15:27

Right now, if you're not subscribed to this podcast which is free, by the way in whatever podcast listening device that you're using, there will be a button that says subscribe or follow. Punch that button so you will know when the next episode of this podcast comes out, and it will come out on Monday. We're going to have a new episode every Monday, 52 episodes in 2024. That is the plan. That's what we're going to do, and on next Monday I will be telling you about my own special secret recipe. It's like the special recipe for chocolate chip cookies. This is a delicious recipe that only I have, but I'm going to share with you for achieving your goals in 2024. You're going to love it. It's going to be delicious, and what's great about my recipe is that it's calorie free. You're going to absolutely love this recipe and I'm unlike Neiman Marcus that hoards their cookie recipe. I'm going to invite you to share my recipe with everyone who you think it will help, because I know it will help you and it will help anyone that you know that needs to achieve goals in 2024. So look for that next week.

Speaker 1: 16:37

I also wanted to tell you that in my newsletter this week, I mentioned a fantastic social media content tool that you can use if you're looking to Create more social media, but you open up Facebook or Instagram or TikTok and you're just not really sure what to post. If that's you and that's your problem, I want you to go to late night. I am comm forward slash Angie my friend Angie. She has an amazing Tool that she's offered for many, many years running that helps people, just like you know what to post on social media. It's really fantastic and, again, you can get that at late night.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I am comm forward, slash Angie. I've used it myself over the years. She's fantastic, the tools fantastic, and I just wanted to give her a shout out here and let you know that she's got that Up and running and ready to go for 2024. So if your plan is to hit the road running with social media, angie can help you out at late night. I am comm forward, slash Angie. Okay, that's it. One more thing in 2024 we are going to continue the practice of having some you know banter and rep harte after the show, so after the music fades out. If you stick around, I'll be talking about whatever's on my mind. Ciao.

Speaker 2: 18:00

You.

Speaker 3: 18:05

Been listening to the late night internet marketing. Be sure to visit L I am the podcast comm today to leave feedback for mark, download special bonus content, access the show notes and more. See you there. Until then, go and make some great progress on your internet business One night at a time.

Speaker 1: 18:33

All right, we're off with a bang in 2024. I'm excited. I have been working almost non-stop since the middle of December on a plan for 2024 and I present this plan to my mastermind group. I have a hot seat on the 17th of January, so I'm already starting the plan, but I'm presenting it to them for their feedback and you know aggressive suggestions that they will make on the 17th of January. They'll give me a lot of feedback, but I'm also asking them for several things, including some accountability. On the 2024 plan.

Speaker 1: 19:10

I've got a lot of things I want to accomplish in 2024 and and central among them is is getting this podcast to the next level. So you can help me with that If you're interested in helping me achieve my goals in 2024. An easy way to help the show Is to tell people about the show, hit like subscribe, leave a review, whatever it is that makes you feel good, um, and do that when you're feeling like you've gotten some value out of the show. I would love that and it will help me achieve my goal of really Getting this to as many people as possible. It's going to be an exciting year.

Speaker 1: 19:46

My son will be A junior guy on the varsity baseball team at his high school. There are 7 000 kids. Competition for the baseball team is very aggressive. Super proud of him and his ability to get that Accomplished and he'll be working, doing some pitching and doing some work in the outfield. We're looking forward to that. For those of you that haven't been involved in high school baseball, that's a lot of baseball games, so we're really looking forward to that.

Speaker 1: 20:15

In texas we play baseball from february to the end of april For the high school and then, starting in late may, early june, we'll play summer ball through the summer. So we're about to get ready to go and play a lot of baseball. And, of course, as you know, as you probably know, my texas rangers won the world series for the first time ever. That's been a huge big deal, not only in my house but in the community. I got all kinds of cool rangers gear for christmas and it's just been really great had all my family in the house for christmas. It's just been a really good, a good end to the year and I'm super excited and pumped up about 2024, because my big objective in 2024 is helping you and I hope you're excited about that too. So we'll talk to you next week, ciao.