Given your goals for your business model, you’ll want to look for people/sites who are successfully doing what you want to do. So you might see that they blog, contribute articles to certain niche publications, have a discussion forum on their site etc.

This will give you some starting points to ask the question “Should I incorporate these too?”

But you need to make sure that your decisions are right for your business model, not just because you see them doing this. Because from the outside looking in, you never really know why they are doing a particular thing.

And you also may like the way they communicate with their market. Maybe they have a lot of spirit or zest or an tough love or go get ‘em approach. Then say to yourself – how do *I* want to communicate with my customers. Let’s say your message is “go get ‘em, you can do it”. THEN you can look at other business owners and learn from how they communicate this message BUT you put it through the Tina filter so it becomes you.

But let’s say that you don’t like the “go get ‘em you can do it” message, you have more of an encouraging empathetic message – then forcing yourself to talk in the “Go get ‘em” talk will not feel right to you, nor will you be successful at it.

So while you can and should learn from others you admire or aspire to achieve something similar to – always preserve what’s unique about you.

And about hanging out with the people who don’t value or appreciate you for who you are? In business and in life – that’s a no win situation. Because there are people out there who will resonate with you and visa versa. And those are the best connections in the world!

-Lisa

But it’s true – creating an independent stream of income makes you ask yourself questions that you wouldn’t normally ask of yourself in a day-to-day job.

When I came online, I had an idea of what I wanted to do/who I was. But it was based on the information about myself that I had at the time.

And what’s happened over the past 8 years is that I have changed and grown as a person, and my business has grown too. Sometimes the business has grown ahead of me and I have had to grow to catch up!

But, when I got started, I was very nervous about being myself. In fact, I was convinced that I needed to “be” a certain way in order to be successful. Part of that came from being in corporate America where image is important. So for example, in my previous jobs, I would not show my silly side as much – I would be very professional.

Having the courage to take bold action was another big change for me.

But the only way you will find out who you are online is to focus on immersing yourself into one Internet income discipline and see if it fits for you.

Let’s take blogging for example. You might see successful bloggers and think – “Wow, there’s a way to make money! I’ll do that.” But you don’t like to write or do video blogs.

In this situation, blogging would not be the right business model for you. I was talking to a very successful Internet marketing friend of mine and had noticed they’d removed their blog from the top level domain. I asked “Was that a strategic move?” They said “I switched it because I don’t like to write/blog and so it wasn’t the right fit for my business model.” They drive traffic in completely different ways.

George in your case, you’ve tried a few different types of marketing and have realized that physical product sales is the right fit for you.

Now, we need to take that one step further and dig into what niche/product line is something that you can sink your teeth into (like we’ve been talking about on the Business Growth Group coaching calls.)

And of course, the first place to start is with your interests and hobbies and experience. There may not be a market there, but you need to rule that out first, before looking elsewhere.

One thing is for sure – as long as you know that you don’t have to be a carbon copy of someone else to be successful, you’ll start to recognize the unique things that you bring to your business.

-Lisa

That’s a great point…be yourself. However, there are those who haven’t discovered who they are online as of yet. Unfortunately, I’m one of them.
I’m still working at finding myself & getting focused. I know with your help, I’ll get there one day.

Best regards,
George Nieves