These 3 things cause all your failures

I’ve been in the online business space for nearly 4 years now.

And I’ve failed a tonne.

More than most people even try.

Whether it was with dropshipping, copywriting, Facebook ads, white label, a lead gen agency - you name it, I tried it, and I failed at it.

But the funny part of this looking back is that if I tried any of these businesses again, I would be able to succeed with them.

Why?

Well because of the knowledge and skills that I’ve gained over the past 3 and a bit years of trial and error.

I have every bit of skillset I need to get almost any online business up and going - combined with my audience, I have the traffic source as well.

So if I would be able to succeed with these businesses now, did I really fail?

Well, yes, I did fail.

But it’s a good question to ask yourself because all failure is, is not achieving something you’ve set out to achieve.

It’s me 4 years ago setting the goal of building my copywriting business but not signing one client.

Failure isn’t some massive black hole that sucks everything out of your life and brings an end to the world.

It’s quite simply you not achieving something, but yet it feels scary.

It’s intimidating and nobody wants to fail.

Because think about it…

When you don’t achieve something (failure), your ego takes a hit.

You’ve set out to get something and ended up lacking in a certain area which has caused you to not be good enough to achieve what you wanted to achieve.

And nobody wants that.

Nobody wants to be told they’re not good enough - especially by the rest of the world, which is essentially what happens when you don’t achieve your goal.

Back in the day when we were hunting mammoths and being chased by saber tooth tigers, if you weren’t good enough you risked being killed or ostracised by the tribe.

This same need to be good enough is still engrained in our DNA today.

If you’re good enough, you’re respected.

You’re known as competent and able and you don’t risk being ostracised by the tribe.

Luckily, these days we don’t risk being thrown into the wilderness if we fail.

In fact, these days failure can be used as a positive.

Take me.

If I never failed at the countless businesses I tried to build in the past, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

I wouldn’t have my audience. I wouldn’t be running a multi 6-figure business.

Because with each failure, you learn something.

With each business I tried to build, I learned something.

And each bit of knowledge and skill I learned was something I could bring into the next business and increase my chances of succeeding until eventually I had learned enough to not fail.

Failure is an opportunity to learn, so it’s not all bad.

But, the risk of judgment and losing respect, and therefore status - something all people, especially men crave - is still there, it’s still alive.

And the falling down the status hierarchy is as painful as it’s ever been.

We still have the same operating system as our mammoth hunting ancestors did.

The last thing we want is to fail.

So how can we prevent failure? How do we stop failing?

Well, first, what is failure?

We’ve covered this.

It’s you not achieving something.

Which creates the question:

Why do you not achieve something?  

When you think about failure, it’s pretty simple.

It’s rarely that complicated and always comes down to 1 of 3, or a combination of the 3, reasons.

Mindset 

Likely, if you’re new to the area you’re trying to succeed in, you’re going to suffer from all 3 of these reasons.

But this is going to be, for most people, the biggest reason.

You fail because you have a mindset that limits you and stops you from learning.

For example,

Maybe you thought the best way to get clients for your Facebook ads agency that targeted plumbers was through cold DMs.

When in reality, your target avatar - plumbers - are rarely on social media and never check their DMs.

If your mindset was in the wrong place and wouldn’t let you get past this belief or learn a more effective way of targeting your ideal clients, you’d never succeed.

Or maybe, you start a copywriting business and can’t get any clients because you don’t believe you’re good enough to get clients so you constantly self-sabotage yourself and never allow yourself to practice enough or learn enough to actually get good at the skill of copywriting.

Whatever the example is, this is something we all have to get over at some point if we want to succeed, if we want to stop failing.

Your mindset CAN’T be getting in your way, because if it does, you’re screwed.

If your mindset doesn’t let you learn, you can’t get good enough.

If your mindset thinks something isn’t possible, you won’t even try.

Understand this;

Your mind dictates your actions.

Your actions dictate your results.

Your results dictate your damn life.

So if your mind is the bottleneck, everything else falls apart.

Now, how do you fix your mindset?

Well, it’s a slow, but simple process.

1. Identify the limiting belief

To fix the problem, you have to know what the problem is.

So start by identifying what is holding you back, what belief is sabotaging your progress.

There’s no easy way to do this but the best way to do this is to look at how you talk to yourself or look at opportunities you consistently shy away from.

2. Stack evidence against the belief

A belief is formed through repeated experience.

Something happens repeatedly that tells you this is how the world is.

If you want to break a belief, you need to create evidence against it, that proves it’s wrong and note it down.

You can do this by actively creating evidence in your own life or by finding evidence in other people’s life

3. Repeat

This isn’t overnight.

Some mindsets will take a long time to break, some might happen in a week.

Either way, you need to find and stack evidence daily.

4. Fail more

Yes, failure is scary.

But one of the best ways to remove any mindsets that hold you back is to fail more, not on purpose, but by the nature of trying things.

This way, you’re showing yourself, okay, whatever I believe and whatever I think works, clearly doesn’t - I need to change how I view the world.

This is exactly what happened to me.

I failed, I failed, I failed and eventually, I realised how I view the world and the skills and knowledge I have clearly aren’t working.

Understand that you cannot act outside of what you believe to be true.

So if the results you’re getting aren’t what you want, you need to change how you view the world and yourself so that you can change the actions you take and the results you get.

Lack of effort

Another reason you fail, and the one most people don’t like to admit to because it’s actively their fault, is that you half-assed your work.

Most people underestimate the amount of effort that’s required to get the results they want to get.

It’s not easy.

And you CANNOT half-ass it.

If you think you can sit there, work when you feel like it, with your phone beside you and a podcast on, and do high-quality work - you’re wrong.

High-quality work that creates high-quality results requires your all.

Fully focused. Fully committed. Professionalism.

You show up at the same time each day.

Your phone turned off.

And you work.

0 distractions.

What most people do is lie to themselves.

They think they’re working hard until they see what someone who works hard looks like.

I’m not saying you need to work 16 hours a day, you can work 2, 4, 8 or 20. 

I don’t care.

All I care about is that when you’re working, YOU’RE WORKING.

Because otherwise, you’re going to fail.

The world is competitive.

If you’re not fully committing yourself to the task at hand, you’re competing against someone who is - and you will lose.

And think about this…

It’s your duty to do this work to the best of your ability.

When you set your goal, when you defined the thing you wanted to achieve, you took on the responsibility of achieving it.

Of doing whatever is required of you.

If you’re half-assing your work, you’re not rising to the level that you set for your damn self by setting your goal and you’re damaging your self-respect.

Because you know deep down if you’re doing what’s necessary.

If you’re not, it’ll eat at you from the inside and drag you down into a mental pit of nothingness.

So rise.

Rise to the damn challenge, give your all to your work, and make yourself proud.

You Quit 

One of the most common reasons for failure.

Quitting.

And ultimately, this is the only true way to fail.

Because if you didn’t quit, you would eventually realise you need to fix your mindset and learn new knowledge and skills and you would do it.

If you didn’t quit, your half-assing of the work would eventually eat up so much of you that you would have had enough and started doing what you know you need to do.

Ultimately, you only fail if you quit.

If you decide you’re not worthy of the challenge of achieving what you’ve set out to achieve, or if you decide the challenge isn’t worthy of you and the goal’s not worth achieving.

But quitting is a funny concept.

Because the line between quitting out of fear of an inability to rise to the level required of you and quitting because the path isn’t right for you is blurry.

In fact, it’s so blurry and worn out that it’s almost impossible to see.

Quitting can be the right option so long as it meets 3 criteria;

1. You quit because you weren’t enjoying the path

2. You learned something from your experience

3. You are quitting with the intention of trying a different path

Yet, at the same time, you don’t want to make a habit of quitting and quit because it’s what you always do.

In the end, I believe there’s only 1 reason to quit something;

You wake up hating the idea of doing the work you have to do.

This doesn’t mean that you don’t have bad days where you don’t want to work, that’s normal.

This doesn’t mean you’re not seeing results.

This means that you despise the work, every single day.

That is the only acceptable reason to quit.

Everything else is resistance.

Everything else is the inner bitch trying to get you to quit because of the work and responsibility that’s required of you and the effort it takes.

So, my friend, don’t quit just because it’s hard and don’t quit just because progress is slow.

Because if you keep going, as you increase your knowledge and skill level, the work gets easier and your progress gets faster - but if you quit, you fail, and well, quitting is forever.

If you want a curated, step-by-step program on how to rewire your mindset, stop half assing the work and stop quitting, I teach you the exact steps to mastering yourself so you can become all you could be in MasteryOS.

Click here to join over 600 students.

- Ross.

PS: I’ll be releasing the updated curriculum for MasteryOS in around 3 weeks. With it, the price will increase. If you want in, now is the time.