Your Internet Business Can Only Succeed If Your Mind is Behind It

Your Online Business Needs Your Brain

 Setting up and running an internet business requires an E-ntrepreneur to do so many different things it is not funny.  In fact it can be terrifying.   It can't be done unless your mind is working for you and not against you.  And that means setting great goals and sticking to them!

Setting great goals is more complicated than just saying "I want to own an online business" or "I want to be a millionaire". Our subconscious brain needs things to be specific. Oh and it needs things to matter as well.

SMART Goals

Lets look at SMART goals briefly first. All goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time bound. Breaking this down a great goal would be "I want to earn $2,000,000 dollars by 12 Dec 2014 by running a successful business selling nappies online".

It is Specific in that it says exactly what will happen, it is Measurable – a certain amount of money by a certain date. It is Achievable, it is Relevant to me and it is Time bound. (12 December 2014)

The terrible version would be "I want to be a millionaire" that is a dream, not a goal.

Driving Your Subconscious

When you are driving a car it is not enough to decide where you are going to go. There also has to be fuel in the tank, oil in the engine, air in the tyres and a host of other things going on that you are generally not aware of if your journey is going to be as successful as possible.

It is much the same with us. A huge amount of our activity is controlled by our subconscious. We need to help it product the activity we want.

That is why when we write our SMART goals it is important to write them in a way that will motivate us and drive our subconscious in the direction we want to go. Each of us has different priorities in life and if we try to copy someone else's goals and their priorities are different to ours, "the result", as Mr Micawber said in David Copperfield "is misery".

Five Categories of Priorities

When applied to our goals these priorities can very generally be put into five main types:

• Having or getting
• Doing
• Knowing
• Relating
• Being 

For example going back to my online nappy business.  My reasons for starting a business might be that I don’t want to work for others. But why is this important to me?  If I look deeper I might find that I want acceptance from the type of people that own businesses (relating). I want them to see me as a fellow business owner, not an employee (being). I might want the kudos of being known as a business owner (being). These things might be more important to me than making money (having or getting)

So once you know what is really important to you, you can use that to motivate yourself, to get your subconscious working for you. Think of the type of things we can do on autopilot when that old subconscious is on our side – drive a car, clean your teeth, garden, cook, manage projects and thousands of other things

How do We Get the Subconscious Into Gear?

Once you have worked out what order those priorities are in for you, you should always, always phrase your goals so that they reflect your priorities, not your partner's, your parents' or your society's.

Remember my business selling nappies online? Well when I set goals for the coming year, my primary goals was

‘To become the primary online supplier of nappies in Texas by 31 Dec 20XX’.

This means being (primary supplier) doing (I'll have to do a lot to achieve that), relating (my relationship with my customers and competitors), knowing (that I will have to sell 15% more nappies than I did last year and I will have to learn new ways of marketing) and finally having or getting. These result from the extra sales I will have to make.

If having or getting were primary motivators I might have written my goal as follows:

"To increase sales by 15% in the next financial year "

However that would not drive my subconscious. It would not have me straining at the leash to get to my computer, doing a whole pile of useful things on autopilot and dreaming, sleeping, waking, living and eating nappies. Hmm. I am glad I am not in that business.

I was just reflecting on the fact that this is another job squaring technique. Writing goals is one thing – a job. If you put a tiny bit of extra effort in (understanding your priorities) and word you goals in line with those priorities, you get at least four times as much out – because your subconscious is now working for you instead of against you.

Ever onwards and upwards – squared of course!