Hi everyone! Today I was reading The Only Way to Win by Jim Loehr and he was talking about all these successful millionaires who weren’t fulfilled and like most people, I find myself say, “Wah.”

I mean I’m sorry but give me a few mil and I’ll FIND a way to be happy. Right?

Only…it doesn’t really work that way. I made a vlog for today and wrote more underneath:

Thrill of the Chase Marketing

There’s Achievement and There’s Fulfillment

Once you get to that level and have those homes and have a business that got you there, you are SCREWED. You have to keep it up. You can’t all of a sudden abandon the seedy corporate world to pursue your real passions and start all over because you’ll put your family’s lifestyle at risk.

There’s a middle spot – it’s small, it’s not easy to find, but it’s there if you’ll slow down and look for it.

You know John Reese, don’t you? Remember the $1 million in under 1 day marketer? I used to ghostwrite for him – salt of the Earth guy who came out with Traffic Secrets. Loved his ethics when working with me – he paid off another top scumbag marketer’s bill when the guy kept making “pay you on Tuesday” claims.

Well John, not too long ago, decided he’d had enough of the business he’d built and I remember him posting a picture of everything he owned in some backpack now. He was going to travel and then build a business he was passionate about in the gaming arena.

Good for him!

But most people who achieve that level of success would never have the balls to do that – especially not if they’re married, which I don’t think he was but I don’t remember.

John was a great achiever – the man set records. But he wasn’t fulfilled. So when people achieve things, it doesn’t convert into happiness for them.

The Thrill of the Chase Is an Addiction

Whether you’re a brand spanking newbie or someone who has been around the track a few times, you’re probably addicted to the chase if you’re an Internet Marketer.

I’ll admit it – I am too. I am constantly having to rehab myself to stop it.

What is the chase? It all boils down to cold, hard cash – and it doesn’t matter if it’s $1 or $1,000 – you feel a sense of thrill and excitement when it “hits” like a jackpot. And if one product or strategy doesn’t hit fast, we move on to the next slot machine (product, tactic) to try to hit there.

“YES! I picked a niche that converts!”

“YES! I rank #1 for that keyword phrase!”

“YES! I got some big name to JV with me!”

(Okay with all these “Yeses” I’m starting to sound like an inappropriate shampoo commercial).

But we come into this career saying, “I want to make money online.” So we plot it out – step 1, step 2…and so on.

When the step converts and you get an email ding that says, “You’ve got money,” you’re smiling and blogging about it.

I do it! I love it when a Squidoo lens pays off because I found a good product to promote and a way to rank the lens high.

But there is no on-going personal fulfillment in me getting a payment from a Squidoo lens on bike racks. There’s just not.

I’m not helping anyone in a way that makes my heart feel anything. I mean it’s great if I directed you to a piece of metal that you can stick a bike on, but I’m not sleeping better because of it.

I achieved, but I wasn’t fulfilled when that payment came in.

Now can we turn cash from achievements into fulfillment in our lives? Oh sure. I take that lens money and fork it over to my kids’ school to enrich their lives – and YES, that DOES fulfill me.

But here’s the deal…

Achievement Doesn’t Have to Happen in Place of Fulfillment

THAT is the message here. You don’t have to choose one or the other, and you ARE. You’re saying, “Well I don’t really have any passions, so I’ll pick a niche that will make money and then I’ll enjoy life.”

Why are you telling yourself that lie?

It’s totally false. You don’t have to have a passion per se – an obsession – you have to pick something that makes you feel good inside. I feel good helping people make money online.

I have helped abused women, parents of sick kids who need to stay home (like I was), grownups with health problems who can no longer work, and people who just want to follow their dream of traveling or quitting their job. They email me with extreme thanks.

THAT helps me sleep better at night. THAT makes me smile.

Stop chasing the “thrill” of making money.

Here’s what you need to do instead of getting bogged down in the pursuit of specific goals or “achievements.”

You need to think of a niche where you would feel happy helping people. There’s a reason I like to have a broad topic as my main source of income (making money online). It’s because tangible stuff like Amazon items is great, but it’s not something where I feel like I’m personally fulfilled.

Even the toy niche I’m in – I love toys for my kids and all, but as soon as my blog is posted, I don’t think about it a second more. I DO walk around thinking of my MMO audience all damn day and night. And I love that. It means I care. I like caring.

Can the two combine? Yes – you can be in the weight loss niche, feel fantastic and personally fulfilled helping people change their lives with weight loss. And you can also promote tangibles like treadmills, for example. You can have both monetary achievements and personal satisfaction.

Find a niche that offers you both – not JUST the thrill of the chase and saying you did something specific (made your first $100, ranked on page 1 of the SERPs in the first 24 hours).

Show me someone that brags like that versus someone who says, “I LOVE what I do and I wouldn’t change it for the world,” and I instantly know which one I’d like to learn from.

The way you make money from a niche like this is to look at these kinds of things:

1. Who’s my audience and what do they need? (For me, for example, they needed truth – too many scumbags lying to people, so I wanted to jump in and be blunt and honest).

2. How can I deliver that information to them? Well, you can learn the information and share it. Find resources to educate yourself to become a better leader. How can you share it? Use eBooks, podcasts, video, blog, emails, webinars, etc.

You start doing that kind of stuff instead of waking up one day and saying, “I need to make $1,500 by March 15th. Hmmm this Warrior Forum Special says it can teach me how to using a tool that creates backlinks where my PayPal will explode. Sold!”

You’re doing it ALL backwards that way. Keep it simple:

• Niche that makes you happy – and what are their needs, first.
• How can you serve them, second.
• Products that teach you those strategies, last.

Not the reverse method.

Tiff

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