5Th Key: Being Passionate about Something
Because of the Industrial Revolution lessons hammered to us in school, you know that you're a tool in the factory of business. You do one thing, pass it on to the next person who also only does one thing and so on. You go home, take measly portion of the company profits and must be happy that you "have a job" and a salary that is more than some, less than your boss and always too small when you ask your union leaders.
We're used to this. Passion is reserved for dancers, artists, singers and Vincent Van Gogh, who grew insane towards his later years (too many visits by the Doctor, I think).
This has got to change. Everyone has passion. Mothers have it built in for the care of their children. Fathers have it built in when their favorite team is winning, loosing or celebrating. We all got it - check out the streets of the Philippines when there's a Manny Pacquiao live event. Most people just need to know that the assembly line (your job) isn't the only place to create income. A lot of people use their passion to earn tons of money - first in bookstores and now - online.
You just need to believe that with the four keys above, if you live your passion you can create and sustain online income sources.
Personally my passion was to change the way I thought from being a negative person who'd always start sentences with "The problem with that is…", to a person who applied Philippians 4:8:
"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."
As the rock band Petra said in their version :
Whatever things are pure and true,
(I want to) Think on these things
Whatever things are filled with virtue
Think on these things
When my mind begins to stray
I want to think the other way
Think on these things
So I used Christian Rock Music as the "soundtrack of my life" the way most people use pop radio as their OST (official soundtrack). For more than 20 years, I shunned pop music (we called it "secular music") and listened and read the lyrics of "Christian Music". Yes, did you catch that? I read the lyrics too. I knew exactly what I was singing. I would go to another country just to zero in - excitedly-to it's biggest Christian Bookstore. They'd have CDs that weren't available in the Philippines. It was like Christmas. I would also order CDs from the US - via my sister or my aunt in groups of 10 or 20 pieces an order.
You can imagine my excitement when I decided to rabidly promote Jars of Clay live in Manila for Bo Sanchez (he's the one who invited them over to sing in the Araneta Coliseum). It didn't stop there, there was Reuben Morgan and Steven Curtis Chapman after Jars. No problem if you don't recognize them. You're not supposed to - they're musicians from my passion.
Because of this dedication to not sleeping and promoting the band's events instead -I was able to do impossible things in 30 days for each concert. Why 30 days? I only had 30 days to promote each event.
It wasn't "chance" that I happened to know the bands when I found out about their first Manila events. It was brewing for 20 years.
But how about internet marketing? I didn't have any experience with marketing, only the internet. I let my passion lead me to do impossible promotion activities online like hiring 10 virtual assistants -before I even knew what they were called -and promoting from an internet cafe during the night because I had a day job.
Filipinos know this well "Kung gusto, may paraan, kung ayaw, may dahilan." (If you really want to, you'll find a way, if you don't want to, you'll find an excuse). So don't pretend that it's strange that I learned online marketing while doing it - because I wanted to promote the bands so badly - I did it while studying how to do it - using free audio interviews on direct marketing.
So you see, the emotional push will start you off, the passion will keep you inventing impossible things to do, the dedication to lifelong learning will let you grow your self and income, the visualizations will help you clarify your goals and the mastery of marketing will help you convert all these into real money.
Five keys to starting and sustaining online incomes and by now I know you've figured out that you can start from any of the five and build up until you have them all.
So which one will you start on today?
P.S. Now, is there a missing key?
