Summary: Andrew and Daryl Grant are Internet marketers and educators with a long history of success online. Coming from a business consulting background, Andrew and Daryl turned to the Internet and were able to create a passive income stream to leave their consulting business behind after making $250,000 in sales in their first 12 months online. Greg: This has now grown to be a multi-million dollar business, and has positioned them to enjoy two to three months’ international travel a year with their family. From coaching so many students, what are the traits that you’ve seen consistently in your students who are successful online? Daryl: That’s really interesting, and it happens time and again. We can give exactly the same message to two different people and they get completely different results. A lot of it comes down to mindset, and we’ll cover more of that in a moment. In terms of what the successful people do, for me it comes down to just a few things. First up, they follow a proven system. They don’t try and reinvent the wheel, they don’t try and take something and go, “Oh, I can make it cleverer.” They just follow the bouncing ball. The other problem that people sometimes come up with is they learn from a number of different mentors, and they try and cobble together a few different things. They end up creating what we call a Frankenstein business, which is a little bit of everything and none of it works. Whoever’s system you’re following, make sure you follow it through. That’s probably the biggest factor in creating success. The second one is where the focus is. The most successful people focus 90% on their marketing, 10% on their product. Most people don’t have the courage to do that, they actually spend a lot more time fiddling around, trying to get the product absolutely right, or spending months and months building the perfect product, forgetting about the fact that that’s only a tiny part of the job. The key to success is actually getting out there and marketing it. The next success factor is avoiding the ‘BSOs’. Bright Shiny Objects are plentiful online. Internet marketers are particularly good at selling Bright Shiny Objects too. It’s about applying the 80/20 principle, knowing that 20% of what you do will get you 80% of the results. Also being able to recognize what is a Bright Shiny Object and what is something that is going to make you successful. Bright Shiny Objects tend to be the next cool marketing strategy that’s come along that someone’s trying to flog you. If you spend all your time just chasing the next promotion, then you’re never really going to create a stable business. A stable business is built on a solid ‘want’ that people are passionate about, that they’re prepared to pay money for, and where you have a unique solution. Andrew: When I first started doing this I used to think mindset was an important part of it. As I’ve become more successful in what we’re doing, and as I talk to other successful people both online and offline, I’m more and more of the belief that mindset is about 80 to 90% of the game, it really is. I don’t underestimate strategies and tactics or the actual doing of the stuff, but unless you bring the right mindset to your efforts - you can have the best efforts in the world, but the mindset is like the magic sauce that makes it all happen. Greg: You teach a concept which is ‘fail like a champion’. Why do you believe it’s important that entrepreneurs fail sometimes along the way? Andrew/Daryl: The ‘fail like a champion’ is that you have to understand that in whatever it is that you’re doing, particularly online, that you will do stuff which will not work. You will try a marketing campaign, you’ll try some ads, you’ll do an opt-in page or whatever it might be, headline, and it will not work. You won’t get it right 100% of the time. In fact, you’ll probably get it wrong more than you get it right.
