The Curse of The Gurus - Death For Newbies
Group: Better Networker Newbies Guide
Read More: The biggest killer of newbies is the dreaded Curse of The Gurus. Seriously, these guys have a lot to answer for. In their defence, I know they’re trying to help, but when you’re a newbie, it’s the sort of help you can do without.
Or can you?
Truth is, you can’t. And nor should you. I mean they know everything that you need to know. They’ve been there, done that, got the T-shirt and the battle scars to prove it. And now, (bless their little cotton socks), they want to help you by letting you in on their secrets. Worse still, they are going to give you them for FREE!
And so it begins. First, a couple of emails, then a few training videos, a couple of audio files, several e-books, even some physical DVD’s and magazines. Before you know it, your brain is as overloaded as your hard drive.
And once “Information Overload” kicks in, your brain shuts down. Think of it like a dose of flu. The only option open to you is to go away and rest. Come back tomorrow when you’re feeling better.
Bright and early next day, you’re feeling great. Ready to get stuck in to all that fabulous training material. Today is the day you’re gonna rock the world!
Except… you can’t find the piece you were reading just yesterday. In fact, you can’t find any of it. Is it in the inbox, did you save it to your hard drive, was it a physical product and you put it on a shelf somewhere…
Now your flu just turned into pneumonia!
Frantic searching reveals everything BUT the particular piece of information you wanted. Not to worry, while you’ve been busy searching another couple of emails and several video courses arrived in your inbox. You can just get straight into those and not worry about the information you’ve ‘lost’.
Except, these latest offerings are making even less sense than the ones you were reading previously. Why? Because they’re based on the assumption that you managed to get through the first lot. Which of course you didn’t because you got the flu, which went on to pneumonia.
Suddenly, your pneumonia just morphed into the Ebola virus!
Which is fatal in over 90% of cases.
All your wonderful dreams and hard work are now dead as a dodo. And to think, all this could have been avoided if you’d just taken your vitamins. Or got yourself organised before you started signing up for this, downloading that, wondering how you were going to advertise the other..
Getting yourself organised before you do anything else is critical to how far your online business will go.
So right now here is what you need to do, if you haven’t done it already.
Go set up a master folder. Within that ‘master folder’, create several ‘sub folders’, within each of those ‘sub folders’, create more ‘sub folders’. Now, every single time you get a piece of information, or you see a great headline, or read a useful post, or sign up to a new product that you are going to promote as an affiliate, anything that you get, goes into it’s rightful folder.
So within your Master folder, you might have the sub folders, “How to”, Swipe Files”, “Links”. Within the “How To” folder you might have sub folders for, “How to create videos”, “how to create clickable links”, etc.
Your Swipe File might be broken down into, ‘headlines’, ‘ads’, ‘e-mails’, etc.
Your ‘Links’ might contain, ‘affiliate sites’, ‘forum discussions’, blogs, etc.
How you set them up is up to you. But not setting them up is not an option. Unless you want to suffer the Curse of the Gurus of course.
I have wasted more hours trying to find the right product to help people, the right discussion topic that contained just the right link I want to use in an article, the right article that gave the exact step by step instruction guide on using a particular piece of software… AAGGHHH!
Now, even though I’m more organised I’ve still ‘lost’ more stuff because a lot of the websites I visited I will probably never visit again. A lot of the emails I read have long since been deleted. I can’t get them back again. You can’t afford to miss out on the help that’s out there. And you can’t afford to let information overload kill you before you’ve even started. Prevention is better than cure. And being organised is your prevention. Once you have a place for everything and everything in its place, you never need suffer Information Overload again. You will know exactly where to find the piece of information that you want to work on at whatever time you want to work on it. You can pick up and put down as you please. You can work through each piece at your own pace.
So, go get organised right NOW! Before you do anything else. Before you read another post, before you comment on this post, before you sign up for one more training course or e-book.
In fact, you are expressly forbidden from commenting on this post until your folders are organised! I will be including a secret code that will cause your computer to self destruct if you attempt to comment before organising your business! (got it as a ‘free bonus’ with a certain ‘guru’ product).
Ok, so I can’t find the secret code but go set up your folders anyway.
Views: 260 | 
Comments: 15 
Its here somewhere ....
Doh!! I wanted to comment before I lost this thread .. but alas my hard drive is in disarray :(
Best get it sorted before I
Best get it sorted before I find my secret code!!! Or that 'goldmine' we were talking about earlier will disappear into a big, black hole my friend. lol
Organized but geez...
I've got folders upon folders but there's so much reading to find those one or two pieces of actual information, I feel like I should just file it all away and go to town and talk to people. Instead of sitting at home reading. So much talk, so many examples, so many e-books that turn out to be the same thing I downloaded last week under a different name. It's overwhelming. I just want the summary. The checklist. the Cliff Notes. otherwise I'll be so busy with busy work that I won't actually be meeting any new customers or prospects who would really enjoy the business I'm in. It IS overwhelming for newbies. Great idea to get organized, an absolute MUST for me, but still gets overwhelming. (a great tool for this is Office OneNote, it can store, organize and search files of all types, text, audio, video, emails, like a virtual 3-ring binder... and no, they don't pay for me saying that, but I wish they did). When do you stop downloading ebooks and how does a newbie like me sort the fluff from the real gems?
Glad I'm not the only one
Here I was thinking I was the only one suffering from information overload causing action paralysis!! Thanks for the tips. Are you recommending copying & pasting stuff from the websites you find interesting rather than just saving it as a favourite in your browser? Ive lost count of the number of times Ive downloaded stuff then decided I don't have time to get into it right now. Despite excellent intentions I rarely pick up where I left off.
IM Cliff Notes
Hi Michelle,
You never stop downloading ebooks - what you hopefully learn to do is implement as you go. Don't worry about trying to learn everything, just find one idea that you can do and do it. Then read some more until you find another idea that you can do.Sorting the gems comes with a little experience.
As you say you have dozens of ebooks but they are from 3 source files. When you have been around a while you will be able to spot who is giving you fresh information and who is just promoting other peoples products.Short hand cliff notes go something like:
Basically you work on building your identity and as a by-product you will build a business.
Good luck.
Good intentions
Hi Russell,
That is why there is such a large "make money on the internet" market!
All the guru's know that the majority of people who buy their stuff will not act on it. There are hard drives all over the world clogged with good intentions and great tips.
If you don't put it in action it won't do you any good at all :(
But you are far from alone.
Dean.
Info Overload
Info overload is an understatement, everyday I open my e-mail there are 25-30 e-mails from things I've signed up for after getting a free e-book or other info. I've opted for just categorizing and filing away those e-mails for a rainy day, otherwise reading e-mails is all I would do.
Thanks Dean for breaking it down for us. It's time to take the plunge...
Hi Michelle As Dean has
Hi Michelle
As Dean has already pointed out, you never stop downloading because you're never through learning. And yes, you may have to wade through a whole book to find one little gem, which is why it's so important to have them filed properly.
You don't want to spend all your time reading. This is where time management comes in. You absolutely have to prioritise your time and schedule time for learning and time for implementing.
And when you find those 'nuggets' file them separately, along with any ntes you've made from them. That way you don't have to search through the whole book if you're ever looking for the piece you wanted.
Then when you put in your search terms (think of it as your own private 'google') you'll have a much better chance of coming up with the right file, document, paragraph, that you're looking for.
Russell
You may want to store favourite sites in your bookmarks, but if the only thing you find interesting in a particular site is the headline, or a certain paragraph, then I'd be copying and pasting it and putting it into a file. You can't search your favourites as deeply as you can search the files on your computer.
It's much easier to sort through small nuggets than whole sites. Plus with bookmarks you can't just save that one small nugget.
Susan
Take One and Run
Dean,
Thanks so much. I feel like you're right on target there, both with your Cliff Notes (thanks!) and the idea to take one thing that sounds good and try it. Track it. and either try it again, or try something new. It's easy to forget that things don't have to be perfect if being perfect means it never gets off the drawing board. I so easily get caught up in analyzing it to death (green from head to toe for those of you who like colors) that I won't make any progress on the actual work that will help me achieve my goals.
I appreciate you just giving us the info as you see it, minus the 90 pages of stories and examples.
Russell,
I don't save pages in my browser favorites because to be honest, I will never visit them again. Especially if only a sentence or paragraph out of hundreds addressed what I needed. I highlight sections that strike a chord for me then send them to OneNote where I can file, categorize and search them. Makes it a lot easier for me to find the info that I actually want, and it saves a link back in case I do need to revisit the source. It's like tearing an article out of a magazine instead of saving the whole magazine. Probably not for everyone, but it works for me. You could do something similar by copying and pasting into a word processor and saving collections of info under the types of categories Susan suggested.
Michelle
Time to implement
Susan,
Thank you, you've hit the nail on the head. I get bogged down in reading and trying to find the right answer and fail to schedule the "time to implement". My time management has been, well, there hasn't really been any management going on. I know I have a lot to learn and strongly prefer to follow the clues left by others' success, but I will study to the point that nothing gets done.
Tomorrow, I shall pick one thing, schedule the time to implement it and I will do it. instead of reading about it some more and worrying how/where/is this the right thing.... I'll just do it. Ok, maybe I'll read a little more... but I'll do that tonight!
Thanks again.
Thanks guys
Thanks Susan, Dean & Michelle. Your comments are appreciated. Funny how you kind of know a lot of this stuff subconciously but when someone spells it out for you it seems so obvious.
I'm not familiar with OneNote. Sounds like it would be a great tool for this kind of work especially if it automatically saves a link back to the source from whence you clipped the excerpt. Anyone have a link?
Cheers Russell
OneNote
OneNote isn't free, sorry, but I love it. It can be purchased separately or with some versions of the Office Suite. There's a 60-day trial you can check out and if you find it's indispensable, it's $100 (or $80 if you have a product that qualifies you for an upgrade).
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/onenote/FX100647161033.aspx
Russell, The biggest thing
Russell,
The biggest thing holding people back is the belief that there is some sort of 'magic secret' to all of this. There isn't. As long as folks keep looking for it, they aren't taking the action necessary to build their business.
You will not find one successful 'guru' who has a magic secret. Everyone of them puts in the work necessary to do what is required. Their working hours would probably put a lot of us to shame. And that's still taking account of the fact that most of their 'work' is outsourced!
I still recall an e-mail from Mike in which he revealed the 'secret' that he used to create Magnetic Sponsoring, including the community. And that secret was Notepad!
A simple 'to do list' that he wrote every night and went through every day. It was the first thing he opened when he switched on his computer, and the last thing he saved before hitting his cot on a night.
You may very well spend 3 or 4 hours reading in the beginning. But you have to reach a point where you cut off the reading and go take some action. When something hits you, go do it. Right then! Not when you're finished reading the particular chapter, or website, or watching the particular video. They will still be there tomorrow - your inclination to take the action won't be!
The Unsubscribe link is the greatest solution
Yes I have been there but the Guru is trying to market himself. My solution was the following steps.
The results is that I find at any time I have two or three newsletters am reading and they have such great information that I look forward for the next email.
reply to michelle re: busy ness
Hi all
first off - what a storming post !!!! I am from the uk and that means HOT HOT HOT !!
excellent stuff, You should be on the stage - I was laughing my head off - your delivery was brilliant :)
anyway - to get round to it, I just wanted to share something with you all - michelle made me think of it when she referred to being busy as constant busy ness
how many people get business confused with BUSY NESS ??
I read a fantastic book recently, that many may find very helpful in this instant button pushing NOW world - we are all too BUSY to be running our BUSINESS effectively
the book is by Robert Holden phd published by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK
it is called
"SUCCESS INTELLIGENCE"
timeless wisdom for a manic society
- amazon it
anyway, he addresses the problem of living in the busy society, we are all so busy that we don't have time to let our hearts into our business - and so we are being busy doing the wrong things,
LEADERS are not supposed to be busy all the time- leading takes planning, meditation and creative focus ;)
what we need to do is take time out from this constant BUSYNESS and use the time to meditate on our future, our visions, goals and desires, how to develop creativity in our lives, and in our BUSINESS
start concentrating on personal development so that you allow yourself time out - and focus the new found energy into creative marketing, in order that you build your business effectively, and more importantly, whilst you are having FUN :)
you will do half as much BUSYNESS and twice as much BUSINESS development ;)
check the book out - it changed a lot for me - life is too short to be constantly busy - chill out - become your destiny :)
to your massive success
simon