Adland friends,

It's been coming up time and again, this idea of Success.
Is it a funny coincidence, or is it a result of a decision of mine a few years back that led me to select a user name like A24ksuccess, or a domain name WAY back when http://total-life-success.com/ 

At the time my purchase was a typical one. It was suggested that I come up with a domain name for the company I was promoting at the time, and this was what came to me. I liked it, but had to hyphenate the words because the other un-hyphenated set was already taken. 

I think many people make a similar mistake when selecting a domain, but that's another topic for another post (or you can come to a Success Patrol conference and you'll learn what I mean there)

Let me ASSURE you that choosing the name of my NEW entity SuccessPatrol was entirely by design and selected only after careful research and planning.

But my topic today is something very important to me these days.
You see, it was quite some time ago that I got involved with internet marketing, but it wasn't until I made a DECISION to find success, that I actually started to generate it.
Believe me, in my early days, success seemed to be so hard to come by, and the harder I tried it seemed the further away success seemed to move. Little did I know I was trying too hard and in all the wrong ways.

"Marketing Molesters"

You know what I mean. It's that guy standing out in front of a store hawking his wares loudly, so loud in fact that you can see the people taking an extra wide detour around him as if to avoid the sales pitch. People probably complained and that's why they regulated that TV commercials NOT be increased in volume over the transmitted shows (although they still seem louder to me ;-) )

I finally learned to stop being a "marketing molester" because I truly began to apply what I was learning as a result of my decision to seek success.

My point here is that a decision is ONLY worthwhile if acted upon, otherwise it's JUST a thought, and my decision required that I learn NEW things, and apply those things in my marketing efforts. LO AND BEHOLD, when I did.. SUCCESS was the result!

In fact it's SO easy these days, that I simply apply a little of what I've learned and success just happens for me as if by "magic".
Imagine in your daily activity placing a simple post, and as a result of your efforts you are rewarded with money in your account and more members in your list. It truly is an amazing feeling over the previous experience!

Don't get me wrong by the way. For me, success is STILL hard work, but it's not as hard as it USED to be, in fact these days it almost feels easy in comparison. But it ALL begins with the decision and is followed by the application of that decision.

For most of us it requires a decision to LEARN.

The easy way is to do what has always been done. Blast the ad out to as many as you can... to everyone within earshot...and hope someone pays attention and buys from you. I suppose in the early days of online Marketing this must have worked, because it was what I was taught early on.
Likely having someone stand in front of your store loudly hawking the wares worked too. Probably they started blasting TV commercials at a louder volume than the shows because it WORKED!

Not any more.

Success will never come to you by using the tired old methods. In fact it seems that we chase success away by making that mistake.

We have to decide to learn HOW to engage our contacts, and how to develop relationships with large numbers of people, sometimes at the same time, but without slipping into the OLD forms of communication.

Why do people continue to believe that Ad Blasters work? Because they've made another kind of decision. That of taking the easy way over the hard way. But the easy way BECOMES the hard way when you have to look at $0 income balances, miniscule lists, and bulging credit balances.

Funny enough..the hard way becomes the easy way because of the exact opposite of results.

Decide to seek success by learning what works, and after you learn, APPLY what you've learned on a consistant basis, and stick to that decision.  
I say stick to the decision because in choosing the "hard way" you won't get to see immediate results. It's like building a tremendous structure. It seems that they spend FOREVER on the foundation before you ever get to see the building start to take shape.

And that's what you're doing. By making the more difficult decisions you begin building that foundation, and the more complete and solid that foundation, the more solid, stable and better your building is going to be!

So, I hope you'll make the RIGHT decisions my friends and join me

In Success!

Copyright - Tim Southernwood - Apr/08

Hi Tim...hmmm am i following again?


I liked that title...Success is a Decision  because it says so much to so many!

You have shared with me and others about what success means to you not only in business, but in your views on life.

What I am finding is that to make a good decsion you need to have the knowledge, the mindset to look at all options to really succeed.

I think many come onto the net to become rich..because we are hyped and brainwashed into that thinking.  People just do not really understand and alas do not want to understand that yes we need the postive thinking of "success" but we also need a realistic plan of action armed with the tools to carry through to make that work for YOU not someone else.

All to often, maybe because we live in a world of everything being so automated, we fall into the easy way of doing things  and as we both know so well, it rarely if ever works.


Its funny you are talking about adblasters and just last night I was reading about these blog blasters...just to make things easy for people.  Amazing!  Blogs are all about communicating in meaninful, relevant ways to create a relationship with another person and yet..no we have to blog blasters.  What is really sad is many will spend their money on this and lose so much more.  The reality to these particular blog blasters is that they are  do I even dare say the word Spammy not to mention defeating the purpose of what blogging, especially niche blogging is all about!  OOPS...I guess that is my RANT for the day!

My personal descion is simple....I look at the facts, I do my research and I will take the quote hard way of doing things...why because I want my success to be long lasting not a one hit wonder!

Success Patrol fits that to a T!


To Our Success

Diane

Hi Tim - I have read your post with interest.

Success is a very emotive word in this day and age, as the opposite of "success" is that dreaded word "failure". This can and does have quite a devastating effect on many people. I have witnessed this regularly when teaching disaffected teenagers, who would rather "give up" or "drop out" of High School rather than risk failure. In fact many of those children were very talented. Some where superb artists, others where very skilled footballers, but their lack of self esteem prevented them from seeing it. Much of this is the fault of our divisive education systems and the constant need for children to perform in tests, resulting in comparison with their peers.

The desire for success can become too important, and can blur the benefits of trying our best and learning from the process. Success is all in the mind. What is success to one person is failure to another.

However all that said, perhaps the most important thing to remember is that, like beauty, success is in the eye of the beholder. We can learn to measure our own success not by comparing ourselves with others but by knowing that we have tried and that we have put in our best effort.

As you know I have joined Success Patrol and I have found the level of help and support second to none. I have no doubts that it will go on to be a very popular and "successful" business.

I have also started my first blog with Success Patrol that I have called Live for a Change. Essentially for me this about learning to know and understand oneself, and as a result of that, making the necessary changes to enable us to live our lives to the full and make the most of our talents and abilities. I believe that this will inevitably lead to success whatever the outcome.

Hello Tim,

You are right, the TV ads still are louder than the films or programs (here, at least, that is the case).

It is for the very reasons that you have outlined above, that I joined Success Patrol.

I look forward to learning with you. I have made the decision to obtain success.

It is true that hard work brings good results. I'm a happy bunny today. My forum won the BFA for April.

In my forum I've shared what I am about. I have built up some great relationships with some of the visitors to the forum.

I've tried to do the same outside of the forum too. Now I've found something interesting (to me anyway).

It concerns an opt-in list. I know that people join them to be able to advertise and to grow their lists, but as you have said, methods are changing. I have been trying  to build relationships with the people on a particular opt-in list. It seems that most of the people didn't mind me blasting them with ads (old method), but when I tried to change direction to relationship building, the number of "Delete me from your list" messages increased dramatically.

Did these people just join the opt-in list so that they could get a list of addresses to blast with adverts? Do they accept me blasting them with ads, because that's their policy? In the long run that won't work terribly well because you need to find people to target with particular mutual subjects, interests, niches etc.

If you think about it too long, it can be hurtful because these people are saying: I'm not interested in you or what you are about; I just want your money or to make money through you. Come to think of it, why would I want to build a relationship with that sort of person? It's probably best that they request to be deleted.

Anyway, I hope you can see my points here. I'm tired and need to go to bed now, so I'll say goodnight.

Here's to our success!

Angel cuddles,

Sarah

Thanks Diane,
A very thoughtful post.
Indeed you've made a valid point regarding the original and I believe continuing purpose of Blogs, and that is as a way of ordinary people being able to exchange ideas and information freely and easily.
of course anyone using a blog blaster is completely circumventing the purpose of blogs and no doubt will experience the wrath of the blog owners they spam.
The beauty of Wordpress blogs is the moderation capabilities, and real posts will be easily spotted vs the spam posts.
I for one will not hesitate to ban the spammers, and if need be to report them to their ISP's.
No matter what though..I suppose it's human nature to try and find an easier way to do things.. and for others to find ways to take advantage of those who look for that "easy way".

Thanks again!