Whenever this question shows up in almost any forum the OP will get a range of answers mostly from people who are either not making a living as a marketer or not making ANY money as a marketer.
Most of the advice given will range from “Hang in there, you’ll get there” to well-meaning but erroneous advice about buying traffic and offering a product for the new subscribers to buy to cover the cost of the traffic, or some equally fallacious hack to get free traffic using YouTube, Facebook etc.
WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!
This is what they should have said to him.
“Time for some tough love: Yes. You made a stupid decision. You read three books, made a website, and “applied” some of what you learned before deciding to quit? In the face of a monstrous global recession? Instead of sensibly gritting your teeth, sucking it up, and saving at least six months’ cash expenses to tide you over, while staying up late each night to establish a working side hustle before you bailed? Yes, that was a mistake. You’ve put yourself under serious pressure. If possible, you should do everything in your power to get yourself a stable job back while you work at this. And next time, don’t quit till you have a better plan than “hope”.”
Now …
There are things he can do to improve his situation.
Nor is it to say he’s totally screwed, just that the statistics say he is in a bad place.
However, he might get lucky, or work really hard, or both, and have it work out for him.
On the face of it though, he made a bad decision.
Just because a decision works out well doesn’t make it a good decision. Some people get rich from buying Lottery tickets, statistically it’s not a wealth management plan.
OK, while it’s his responsibility it’s not really his fault.
He’s been lied to by people pushing products that claim that Internet Marketing is easy and anyone can do it.
The quicker you learn this the better.
There is no shortcut
to Internet Marketing Success.
For every person who succeeded quickly — and might have had an above-average helping of mentoring, talent and luck — 10,000 people crashed and burned.
You know what’s taboo in this industry?
Talking about “talent” or “luck”.
It’s politically incorrect to say talent or luck has anything to do with success. Everyone else wants to say “oh, yeah! I SUCK at <insert required activity here> yet here I am! If I can do it, YOU CAN DO IT TOO!”
But here’s the harsh truth:
Half the people reading this will
NEVER make it as marketers.
I know. I read all the email replies I get.
I have some sharp people on this list. But I also have a lot of people saying things like “Hi Brent please I am new to this marketing thing and I want a clientless business, what do I do?”
Seriously, in what other freaking industry do people think “oh I just started doing this for a month and I think it’s fun, if I just back myself and quit my job it’ll pay off for me!”
Can you become a doctor that way? An engineer? A football player? A CEO?
It boggles the mind.
And so right now — as we face what will possibly be the largest recession in history — it is NOT the time to be doing risky, stupid things like quitting your job to “FOLLOW YOUR PASSION!”
So if you are an aspiring marketer, this is my commitment to you:
I will guide you as best I can.
I will continue to send you free tips that make you better at marketing.
And when I ever sell anything (and ho, ho, ho, I will), I’ll be darn honest about whether I think it’ll actually help you achieve your goals.
But I’ll never lie to you.
And that might mean being very blunt that I don’t think you have it in you.
Call it shaming. Call it tough love. Call it what you want.
But I’m genuinely concerned at the storm clouds on the horizon. And I don’t need anyone’s livelihood on my hands right now as they wail “but you promised I’d make it as a marketer!” when the crunch hits.
No, I didn’t. And I won’t.
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Regards,
Brent.