People think it’s awesome that I get to earn a more than decent living working from home… and it is. But getting there is the tricky part and there are far more people who fail than there are success stories.

Why?

There are obviously lots of reasons but I think it’s primarily a matter of knowing how to deal with failures.

If you’re discouraged by your incompetence or give up after your first failure, you probably won’t succeed online.

I got the idea to write this post after fixing my second laptop. Something I’ve never done before, it’s the first time I took a laptop apart but I figured it would be fun (especially since I got a wisdom tooth removed and this semi-permanent dull pain keeps me from doing something truly creative like working on my new book or writing scripts for my YouTube videos) and hey, if end up ruining the laptop… c’est la vie!

I watched tutorials and was bewildered by my incompetence.

At the beginning, it felt like I didn’t understand a single thing the guy said but after letting the information sink in, it all became logical. Ok, then I went ahead and started taking my laptop apart. I always had this lingering fear that I’d break something but I did it anyway… and failed miserably the first time.

I didn’t manage to fix the problem and as a “bonus”, the built-in mouse stopped working.

But then I tried again and ultimately managed to fix it, including the mouse 🙂

It was scary at the beginning, frustrating throughout the process but ultimately gave me great satisfaction. Which is why I did it in the first place, I like being a “hands on” guy even when I’m ridiculously incompetent.

The parallels to earning a living online are obvious to me and after this post, I hope you’ll consider them obvious as well.

Too many people give up after screwing up that first time.

And I’d say even more are too scared by their incompetence to try something in the first place. That’s even worse!

I wish I could tell you that making money online is all sunshine and rainbows but it isn’t.

Just like fixing the laptop, it will be:

1) scary at the beginning (venturing into the unknown, knowing you’re currently incompetent)

2) frustrating throughout the process due to many failures

3) ultimately ridiculously rewarding once you get it right

I wish I had a way for you to get to #3 without dealing with #1 and #2 but I don’t think there is.

Which is precisely why so many people fail.

Before launching my hosting businesses, I was a complete Linux beginner. Now I’m churning out commands like a boss.

Before launching a YouTube channel, I wasn’t even a YouTube user. I was subscribed to exactly zero channels, my wife has always been a lot more active on YT than me. Yes, I watched videos but I never commented, never subscribed and so on. You must realize how incompetent I felt when launching One Minute Economics but I did it anyway because I believed in the concept and wasn’t going to let something as mundane as my incompetence get in the way.

Before writing Wealth Management 2.0, I was scared that writing a book would be too much of a challenge for someone who was used to just blogging rather than writing something extremely long and complex. 457 pages later, Wealth Management 2.0 turned out awesome.

… and so on.

Please, just remember this one thing: never let your incompetence discourage you.

Just don’t.

You’ll be and feel incompetent. You’ll fail. I can pretty much guarantee this.

So what?

Just keep working hard, keep doing your thing and don’t take no for an answer!