One of the hazards of being an Internet entrepreneur is becoming a personal computer potato.
This is better than being a channel-surfing coach potato, but not much.
This year, I made a vague plan to take advantage of some of the amazing hiking near my New York state home – and did nothing about it.
Then I looked at the calendar and realized the summer was more than half gone.
Coincidentally, I just read about a place called the Blue Hole which Backpacker Magazine called one of the 10 best swimming holes in America.
It’s at the trail head of the Peekamose Mountain trail so I thought I’d kill two bird with one stone, get some swimming in and do a “little” hiking.
The swimming hole turned out to be everything Backpacker Magazine said it was – and more. This picture barely does it justice, but the water was cold!
Being right on the trail to the top of Peekamoose Mountain (3,843 feet) I thought I’d hike part way up to a point where I had a view.
I’m not much of a mountain climber but 3,843 didn’t sound very high.
Mount Everest in the Himalayas is 29,035 feet high and Pikes Peak in Colorado is 14,115 feet so what’s a little 3,843 foot mountain in comparison?
Where’s the top?
About 15 minutes into the hike, I thought, this is enough. I don’t really want to climb a mountain today so I’ll just hike a little more, get a view and turn around.Then something happened.
The forward momentum took on a life of its own and then I decided to climb “as high as I could.”
An hour or so later, I was still climbing and I was beginning to wonder, where’s the top of this thing? Am I getting close?
There were no vistas a long the way, just dense forest, so the idea of climbing a little bit of the way up, catching a nice view and climbing down wasn’t working.
Finally, I came across a couple hiking down. Information from people who know. Great!
“You’re about half way there.”
Half way, I thought. I can make it the rest of the way.
Then about five minutes later, the trail started to get harder, a lot harder. Instead of a gradual climb, it started to go straight up.
Can’t stop now
Inertia is an amazing thing.
If you sit around, it traps you, but if you put yourself if motion, motion itself become inertia and it feels right to keep going.
And keep going I did.
But still no vistas and still no feel for how far I was from the top…and the path got even steeper. Crawling steep.
After much climbing, I heard voices.
A man and a woman were resting on a big flat rock enjoying the first view through the trees. And they had a map!
For the first time in over two hours, I knew where I was.
“You’re only about 500 feet from the top.”
It sounded good, but the trail from there on got ever steeper.
“You don’t want to climb 3,000 feet or so and then bail out, just 500 feet from the top do you?” I asked myself. So on I went.
Being there
When I got to the top of the mountain, a man and his son were enjoying the view. These were only the fifth and sixth people I saw all day, but I knew the guy! He runs a picture framing shop in town.
They each had a backpack with water, food, maps and rain gear. I had come up with the clothes on my back and sneakers. Note to self for next time.
I also noticed that no one else was climbing this mountain alone. Second note to self.
The view was stunning. I didn’t bring a camera – because I didn’t expect to be on the top of a mountain that day! – so I grabbed this October photo off the Internet. Imagine this being about 10% of the total panorama and make it all a vivid green.
Was it worth the effort? Yes, in every way.
The beauty, the fresh air, the quiet.
Then the little flies came out. Clouds of them. How they got to the top of the mountain I don’t know, but they did. One of the prices of success.
Getting back
Climbing down turned out to be a little bit harder than I thought.
Actually, make that a lot harder.
One thing I failed to calculate is that if you climb a 3,843 feet mountain that means you have to climb DOWN a 3,843 feet mountain too…Preferably the same day – which was a good idea since I had no tent, no food, no water and it was a bit chilly up there in just a t-shirt.
Rock faces that were hard to climb up were REALLY hard to climb down. Plus I hadn’t really paced myself charging up the mountain and I wasn’t quite as strong.
The trail which seemed pretty friendly coming up was strewn with ankle twisting rocks making it necessary to literally watch every step. These were the same rocks I walked around coming up, but when you come down an incline you come down with a lot more force than when you’re going up.
I had a few hours of this ahead of me so I did the only thing you can do when you find yourself in circumstances you didn’t plan for – or want – I made a game out of it.
I knew if I did make a misstep, it was not going to be fun so I got really sharp. Last fall, I twisted my ankle badly walking on some cobblestone streets in Italy so the consequences of being far from home and unable to walk were fresh in my mind.
When I finally got down several hours later and with both ankles intact, I headed straight to the swimming home and dove straight in. Freezing cold water never felt so good. (This is not me. It’s a picture I grabbed off the web.)
What was I thinking?
What was I thinking about on the way up? Business, of course. Specifically, the process of guiding people in business.
I actually do think about this stuff all the time – when I’m not researching it, experimenting with things, seeking out experts, or working with people.
FIRST, it’s good NOT to know how much hard climbing is ahead of you when you start a project. It’s always more than you imagine it will be with lots of challenges along the way that you could have never predicted before you got on the trail.
Rather than worry about what’s ahead, just start moving forward. Get momentum going and then ride it. Remember the old principle from physics class; “A body at rest tends to stay at rest. A body in motion tends to stay in motion.”Be a body in motion – and stay on a forward course.
SECOND, you can go a long way through the woods with no clear landmarks and find yourself wondering if you’ll ever get there. A “hike without vistas” can last a long time, often a lot longer than you imagine. That’s why it was so helpful for me when I ran into people who knew the way and could tell me where I was in the process.
A few years ago, I started a small Internet video project on the side to test some ideas I had. For the longest time, it seemed to be limping along in the woods. A small trickle of revenue barely worth the effort. Then, suddenly things broke and I had a $23,000 + net month. Not a fortune, but not bad for 20 to 30 minutes of work per day. (The legendary “four hour work week” realized!)
It would have been so easy to stop along the way and just chuck it, but past experience told me that anything that actually makes money and is growing is worth sticking with, especially if there are no big financial risks involved and the time commitment is modest. Why not stick with it, even if the outcome was not yet clear?
THIRD, it helps a lot to get info from people who’ve actually made it to the top.
There weren’t a lot of people on the trail. I counted six all day, but there all shared one thing: They were on the mountain that day and had made it to the top.
This beat any book or any armchair expert. I’m sure many people who had never made it to the top of this mountain would have told me to “be careful” or “try an easier climb.”
But my advisors were ON the mountain and their unspoken attitude was if they could do it, I could too. No big deal.
The right kind of guidance
There’s all kind of “guidance” available these days in the Internet marketing world.
It seems every time you turn around, a new silver-tongued celebrity guru has emerged with a sure fire method for making massive amounts of money while doing next to nothing.
Their emphasis is on making it sound easy and glamorous, as if all you have to do is learn a few “insiders secrets” and you’ll be there overnight .
Insiders secrets definitely help, but only as a SUPPLEMENT to work.
To use a mountain climbing analogy, you can read all the books, attend all the seminars, and acquire all the mountain-climbing equipment you want, but not of that will get you to the top of a mountain.
Only putting your own two feet on the trail and climbing will get you there.
I’ve been pretty strict about the kind of people I allow to get in front of my audiences.
I’m not interested in the platform entertainers and their carefully crafted “subliminal” product pitches. I’m also not interested in the “we’re so cool” Las Vegas rat pack BS.
Business is about getting things done, not acquiring expensive treasure maps or rubbing elbows with “the great.”
Lately, I’ve been limiting the System faculty not only to real do-ers, but also to people who’ve been through our program and know our philosophy about teaching.
This fall, I’m going back to London for a second System UK Intensive. This is like the System Seminar but with a much smaller group and therefore more intense.
After much persuasion, I’ve convinced one of my most successful students to join the faculty for this one. His name is Mark Attwood and in just a few short years he’s brought his business to over 8 million pounds a year.
That’s over $12,000,000 US a year – and he does it by selling real stuff to real people, not selling “gee whiz” how to Internet stuff to newbies.
I’ll also be joined by two Google-certified traffic and conversion experts Ben Jesson and Karl Blanks.
That’s our core faculty and we might have a few surprise guests.
I brought the Intensive to nine cities in 2007 and 2008 and London happened to be the one where it worked best. Several smart Americans made the trip over to catch last year’s event.
The opportunity
I’m approaching my sixteenth year of teaching Internet marketing and with every passing year we get a little better at showing people the way to the top.
At the same time, I’m starting to cut my teaching schedule way back.
The upcoming Intensive will almost certainly be the last one I offer in the UK. (I’ve found that travel is a lot more fun when you just travel vs. traveling and working.)
I’m going to be 50 years old in two months and I’m getting a little less interested in working and lot more interested in all the other things I can do with my time.
If you live in the UK or Europe, this upcoming training is your best opportunity to work directly with real Internet marketers who’ve made it to the top in numerous real-world business ventures.
Though different from the System Seminar we hold in America each year, this format in some ways better because the audience is much smaller and we can therefore cover a lot more ground.
It’s also a lot less expensive and easier to get to Heathrow than it is to fly to Chicago and back.
If you’re in America, or elsewhere in the world, this particular event is one your best chances to work with top Internet business people in a no nonsense, real world learning environment. The quality of the attendees and the expert faculty will be sky high and you’re unlikely to get a shot like this at these guys anywhere else but their home turf.
If you’re interested in more details, click the link below and we’ll send you all the where, when and how much info.
http://www.systemintensive.com/uk/
Best,
– Ken McCarthy
P.S. For over 25 years I’ve been sharing the simple but powerful things that matter in business with my clients.
If you’d like direction for your business that will work today, tomorrow and twenty years from now, visit us at the System Club.
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