There’s no “secret” to building a successful online business.
You need to consistently hustle and put in a lot of hard work.
You need to build the right relationships.
You need to find a great business idea.
You need to dream BIG.
You need to work with the right clients.
And more.
But EVEN if you do all of this, your business might not grow as fast as you would want it to grow.
You won’t see the breakthroughs that you see other people have.
You might feel like all of your hard work just isn’t paying off.
If you feel that way, I have good news for you.
There’s no secret to skyrocketing your online business… But there is a fast-track for it.
There’s one thing that you can do that will make EVERYTHING 10x easier.
There’s one thing that you can do to stand out from all other businesses in your industry.
There’s one thing that you can do to grow your online business way quicker than everyone else and become the person that everyone looks up to and wants to talk to.
– Also learn: How To Become An Internet Retailer With Drop Ship Lifestyle.
It’s something that only a fraction of people do.
But it’s also something that ANYONE can do.
And it’s something that a lot of the people in the business world that you admire are already doing.
The “star students”. The “rising stars”. The “future influencers”. They do it.
And even the top influencers in your niche do it ALL the time.
By using this technique, you can:
- Attract a following of thousands of raving fans who will want to read, share and buy anything you create for them
- Build relationships with top influencers in your niche
- Establish yourself as a go-to expert in your niche practically overnight
I know this because I’ve done it myself.
I used this technique to…
- Build relationships with people like Ramit Sethi, Selena Soo and Derek Halpern
- Get a position with Ramit Sethi’s company where I worked for 2 years
- Get published in publications like Business Insider, Entrepreneur.com and Yahoo Finance
- Spread the word about my business to well over 700,000 people
- Go from an an idea to a $36,318 product launch in 3 months
And more.
Now let me warn you.
This isn’t a quick fix. This isn’t a magical solution. You won’t be able to do it if you don’t put in the necessary hard work.
But if you are willing to work for it, it works.
In fact, it works every. Single. Time.
Ready to learn what it is?
The fast-track to skyrocketing your online business is going “above and beyond” in everything you do.
By “everything you do”, I mean…
- You need to go above and beyond for your audience.
- You need to go above and beyond in connecting with influencers.
- You need to go above and beyond for yourself.
It’s literally that simple.
Going “above and beyond” in everything you do will allow you to stand out from everyone else.
And when you stand out from everyone else out there, people will notice it.
They’ll talk about it. They’ll want to connect with you, learn from you, and work with you.
You’ll be able to grow your email list faster than you ever imagined. You’ll be able to connect with people that you just admired from a far. You’ll have more people waiting in line to work with you than you can actually take on.
The question is: HOW do you actually go above and beyond in everything you do?
In a way, it’s really simple.
You do the things that have never been done before.
You do the work that other people aren’t willing to do.
You put 10x more effort into everything you do than anyone else.
But that’s kind of vague, right?
Well, let’s get into more details.
I’m going to show you 3 specific examples of how I go above and beyond for my students, to build my business relationships, and for myself.
Then I’ll show you how exactly YOU can get started with going above and beyond as well.
Ready to dive in?
Let’s do it!
3 ways in which I go above and beyond for my AUDIENCE
Going above and beyond for your audience might is the MOST important thing about skyrocketing your online business.
This means going above for your free readers, students of your online courses, attendees of your events, listeners of your podcast, or your 1on1 coaching / consulting / freelance clients.
If you ever want to help or work with someone, my mentality is always to go above and beyond in helping them.
Let’s look at a few examples of how I do this (and how you can do it too).
EXAMPLE #1: I write EPIC posts and Ultimate Guides, rather than regular blog posts
You know that I never really write “regular” blog posts that are 500 or 1,000 words long.
Whenever I write something, I try to make it EPIC.
Whether it’s a blog post, an email to my readers, an online course or an Ultimate Guide, I always try to make it the BEST piece of content on the internet about a certain subject.
I always include plenty of personal stories, specific examples, scripts, examples from the industry, screenshots and other things that make it easy for my readers to put my advice into action and grow their online businesses.
It usually takes a lot more work than it would take me to write a regular blog post about the topic. It might take me days, weeks, or even months to create an incredible piece of content.
But all of that hard work is totally worth it.
For example, I created the Ultimate Guide Checklist in February with the goal to establish myself as the go-to expert on creating Ultimate Guides.
When I created it, I decided I would create the BEST piece of content on the internet on creating Ultimate Guides, that would be 10x better than anything else out there.
I didn’t just create a simple 1-page checklist with the exact steps to create an Ultimate Guide.
I talked about 9 different ways in which you can use Ultimate Guides to grow your online business:
I covered each of the ways in great detail and included case studies from my own business, as well as other businesses to give my readers plenty of ideas for putting the advice into action:
In the checklist, I also covered the biggest mistakes with creating Ultimate Guides and how to avoid them:
I talked about some of the mistakes I personally made with creating past Ultimate Guides (and how I would fix them today):
And of course I also included the actual checklist for creating your first Ultimate Guide, as well as specific strategies and tactics that you can use to go through each of the steps:
I spent 2 weeks putting the whole e-book together, and it ended up being 13,000+ words long. Nobody else has written a piece of content that was as detailed and as comprehensive as this e-book about creating Ultimate Guides, and people noticed.
20+ people shared my guide:
Some of my readers wrote really nice things about it:
And even top experts in my industry began referring to me as the “go-to expert on creating Ultimate Guides”:
Since publishing the guide in late February, I’ve already collected 500+ email subscribers just through this guide through different places where it’s available on my website.
None of these things would have happened if I would have just created a simple blog post about creating Ultimate Guides.
My email list wouldn’t have grown as much.
I wouldn’t become known as the go-to expert on creating Ultimate Guides practically overnight.
And I wouldn’t have had a $36,381 product launch of Ultimate Guide System in March:
Creating incredible content like Ultimate Guides is one of the best ways to establish yourself as a go-to expert in your niche, attract a lot of people to your website, get them to talk about you, and ultimately buy your products.
And it’s a perfect example of going FAR above and beyond for your audience and adding more value to them than anyone else out there.
If you want to learn more about creating Ultimate Guides, definitely check out the Ultimate Guide Checklist (it’s free). You’ll love it.
EXAMPLE #2: I created the BEST course on creating Ultimate Guides, rather than just a regular course.
A big mistake I’ve made in the past was that when I created an online course, I just made it “good enough”.
I created courses like Success Systems, which was my first online course about productivity systems.
It was a good course, and many of the students who went through it told me they loved it.
Still, it wasn’t a course that everyone would be talking about and promoting FOR me.
It never had a super engaged community.
I also didn’t feel like it was the best course on the internet on the topic, so I never went out of my way to publicly promote it.
It was a “good enough” course to get started with my online business… But it wasn’t a course that would really put me on the map.
With Ultimate Guide System, things are completely different.
I’ve had countless people publicly rave about how good the course is:
And even my students have already given me crazy testimonials about it without ever asking for them (like “Ultimate Guide System is kicking other $997 courses I’ve taken in the face”):
It was the course that REALLY put me on the map in the online business world.
It was also the first course I was really proud of, that I can wholeheartedly say is by FAR the best course on creating Ultimate Guides out there, and that I’m always happy to talk to people about.
So how did all of this happen?
It all started with a decision and a commitment to not just create an online course about creating Ultimate Guides, but to create the BEST online course on creating Ultimate Guides.
In my mind, I wanted to create a course that…
- Really covers EVERY step of creating Ultimate Guides in great detail
- Consistently brings my students more happy clients
- My students actually follow through
I wanted to make sure that the techniques in the course actually worked for my students, and not just for me.
I didn’t want there to be any holes in the course where students would get stuck and not be able to follow through.
I wanted to make this course 10x better than anything anyone else would ever be able to create.
That was my dream. And once I committed to doing whatever it takes to make it happen, the dream quickly became a reality.
To make it happen, I put in A LOT of work.
- I revisited all of my 100,000+ words of past Ultimate Guides and broke down what really worked for each of them
- I talked to experts, friends and pretty much everyone who has successfully created an Ultimate Guide to figure out how they did it
- I exchanged hundreds of emails with my readers and did tens of hours of Skype calls to figure out what people struggle with when it comes to Ultimate Guides
- I took on 5 1-on-1 coaching clients for Ultimate Guides to work closely together with them on creating them
- Overall I spent well over 3 months doing the research and putting the program together before ever releasing it
I did all of that BEFORE ever launching my course for the first time.
Even though I knew I would make the course even better in the future, I wanted it to become the BEST course on creating Ultimate Guides with the first launch already.
When you’re designing an online course or a program yourself, you have a choice to make.
Either you can create “just an online course” that will make you some money, that you can launch every once in a while and run a nice side business…
Or you can create an INCREDIBLE course that will be 10x better than anything else out there.
A course that really puts your students first. That helps with every possible problem they might have. That helps them solve problems that nobody else is solving for them.
It doesn’t even have to be a HUGE online course like I created.
You can create a smaller course that covers a smaller topic, like…
- A beginner WordPress course for online entrepreneurs
- An online course on Facebook Ads for fitness entrepreneurs
- A step-by-step parenting course for new parents
And even if you create a smaller course on a smaller topic, you can look at what’s already out there, do the work and make the course 10x better than anything else out there.
This way, you can create a course that will absolutely blow people away, that people will love and talk about for years to come.
Example #3: I built an online course that 50%+ of the students will actually finish
A lot of online courses these days have an extremely low follow through rate.
They might sell a lot of copies, and they might even have great advice in them…
But with many online courses, only a few % of students actually follow through, and a fraction of them become case studies.
When I designed Ultimate Guide System, I said things would be different.
I didn’t want to create just another course that people would take, then forget about.
I thought about how to create a course where it would be harder NOT to follow through than to follow through with it.
I thought what would make it EASY for my students to follow through with the course.
I thought about what I can do to make it IMPOSSIBLE for them to fail.
Here are just some of the ways in which I went above and beyond for my students in Ultimate Guide System:
- I made the program a 1-year program, rather than a standard 8-week program. I want to fully support my students in creating their first, second and third Ultimate Guide.
- I’m ALWAYS there for my students. I either find a solution to their problem or point them to someone that can do it for them.
- I offered EVERY student that’s in the process of writing their guide to jump on a 1on1 call with me to help them finish their guide
Here’s what the program “roadmap” looks like:
In short, I’m putting the success of my students first and I’m doing everything I can make sure they’re successful with my program.
I have their back.
Most people don’t do this.
They create a video course without any live support.
I hosted 14 weekly live 90-minute calls where we not only talked about how to create Ultimate Guides, but also gave them direct feedback on every step of creating their guides. And they have 9 more months of live calls they can attend to do just that.
They create a community that they pop into once in a while.
I make sure that every student gets their questions answered in the community / parts of their guide reviewed, so they can move forward with it.
They create a course that has holes in it that don’t really work as advertised.
I’m already working on the 2.0 version of Ultimate Guide System that will make the course 10x better and easier to go through (more on that in the last example of this email).
I wouldn’t NEED to do any of these things.
I could launch a course without all of these components. It might still be a good course. The information would still be there.
But I know that if I did that, most people would never follow through with it.
And that’s just not a game I want to play. I don’t want to run a business where 3% of my paying clients are successful. I want to run a business where 50%+ of my clients are successful, if not more.
That’s another way in which I go above and beyond for my students in Ultimate Guide System, that you too can apply to your own business.
Think about how YOU can make sure your paying clients are successful.
How can you run your online courses differently?
How can you work with your coaching clients differently?
How can you go above and beyond for everyone you work with?
If you have some ideas, write them down now, before we move on to the next step.
3 ways in which I go above and beyond in CONNECTING WITH INFLUENCERS
Creating incredible content is the first and most important part of running your online business.
If you don’t create incredible content that’s 10x better than everyone else in your industry, you’ll never become an industry leader.
If you do create incredible content, other industry leaders will notice you, want to talk to you and work with you…
IF you know how to approach them in the right way and spend time building authentic relationships with them.
And once you have those relationships, they can be like putting gasoline to the fire.
They can help you spread the word about your business and brand like nothing else.
They can bring opportunities your way that you never imagined.
They can even be the thing that turns a business that’s doing OK to a business that’s growing faster than you ever imagined.
Building authentic relationships with industry leaders has been crucial to my business success.
Having mentors like Ramit Sethi, Derek Halpern and Selena Soo by my side allowed me to learn how they run their businesses, soak in the information from them like a sponge, and get business breakthroughs I would never get on my own.
So what was the “secret” to building those relationships?
Well, you guessed it – it was constantly going above and beyond for them.
Let’s look over some examples.
EXAMPLE #1: How I started building a relationship with Selena Soo
I first heard about Selena when she was a fellow beta student of Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch course.
At that point, she was already running a very successful online business, and Ramit would help her take her business to the next level.
For a long time, I followed and admired Selena from a far, because I didn’t quite know how to connect with her or add value to her.
It was more than a year later when I finally made the first step of building a relationship with her – and at that time I wasn’t even thinking about building a relationship with her. I just saw an opportunity to help her out, and I did.
At the time, I was already working as the Accelerator coach for Ramit Sethi, and I was a bit more confident in my abilities to help other business owners with their businesses.
When Selena asked for feedback on one of her product launch emails in a community I was a part of, I was excited to help her out.
She made a thread in the community where she shared one of her emails, and asked the community how she could make the email better.
When I saw the thread, there were already quite a few comments on it.
A lot of other people already gave her some good feedback, but I noticed that a few things:
- Some of the feedback was good, some of it wasn’t and kind of missed the point of the email. There were potential improvements I noticed about the email that nobody else shared yet.
- The comments overall were a mess – 10 people were commenting in the Facebook thread, while 10 other people were commenting in the google doc.
- I knew Selena was busy, and I thought I could save her some time by working through the comments for her and filtering the good stuff from the bad stuff.
To address all of that, I decided to go through all of the comments that were already there, made a mental note of the good ones, and thought about how I could further improve the email.
Then I did the most important thing of all. I didn’t just add 10 additional comments to the google doc.
I thought it would be fun to go ahead and try to rewrite Selena’s email keeping all the possible improvements in mind, and I did just that.
Below her email in the google doc, I wrote a completely new version of the email.
Then I told Selena that I looked through all of the comments, added my own and drafted up an example of what an improved email would look like:
I did this because it was fun. I didn’t look for anything in return. I really just genuinely wanted to help her out.
So what happened?
Well, Selena loved that I helped her out and went above and beyond for her:
And a few months later when I was in NYC and I reached out to her if she wanted to grab lunch, she said yes – and this the beginning of a great friendship that we now have:
Funnily enough, Selena mentioned this story in her INFLUENCE program, and shared it as a great example of going above and beyond and building relationships with influencers.
And years later, she told me: “Primoz, one thing I love about you is that you always go above and beyond for me. That’s what makes you stand out from everyone else”.
Just like I went above and beyond for Selena, you too can go above and beyond for people that you want to connect with.
It’s just so much more effective than just “sending influencers articles they might enjoy” and stuff like that, because it really makes people remember you by being so much different from everyone else.
Now let’s look at some more examples of how you can go above and beyond in your relationships.
EXAMPLE #2: How I built a relationship with Derek Halpern
I first met Derek years ago at a conference called Behaviorcon, where he was a speaker.
Ramit Sethi introduced me to him as “one of his top students, who just takes whatever I throw at him, puts it into action and gets awesome results”.
Derek’s response?
He gave me his personal email and told me to share with him how I implement the advice from his speech.
So I did.
A few months later, I sent him an email about how I used one of his techniques for my product launch and make 19k? in revenues.
Then I sent him another email later where I shared a story about how I used the technique to help my friends start their businesses.
Both of those helped me get noticed by Derek – he even featured me on a sales page on one of his courses.
But the thing that I’m most proud of is something that I did much much later.
In January, I bought Derek’s course called Sales Page That Converts.
I did that because I wanted to create an incredible sales page for Ultimate Guide System.
I went through the course, wrote one of the best sales pages I’ve written to date and successfully brought in $36,318 in revenues.
Not only was I super happy with the results from my launch, I was also completely blown away by Derek’s course.
It was hands down the best course I’ve ever gone through on creating sales pages and it was a complete game changer for my business.
I finally had a framework that I could use over and over again to create mouthwatering sales pages, with every future product I created.
At this stage, I could’ve done one of the 3 things:
- Not let Derek know about my results with the course, because “he’s too busy and probably doesn’t care” (which is the worst option)
- Send him an email with the results I got from the course and let him know he can use it as a testimonial (this would be a better option, but I’m sure he gets plenty of those)
- Do something completely different that would really do his course justice, spread the word about it and help him get more people into his awesome program
Of course I went with the last option.
In the past, I’ve written a super detailed review for Ramit Sethi’s Zero to Launch course, which I knew helped Ramit bring a lot of new students into his Zero to Launch program.
Because I knew that I could write a great course review and because I knew how powerful having an independent review can be for your business, I decided to write a review of Derek’s course too.
Not only that – I decided to write the ULTIMATE review of his course that would be the best, most comprehensive and most detailed review of his course that anyone would ever write.
So I did.
Over the next few days I wrote an 8,019 word review of his course, and I’m confident that this is the best review anyone would ever write.
And Derek loved the review (his first reaction was “now I need to figure out how to promote this”):
This was just one of the many ways in which I’ve added value to Derek, and to this day I continue to think about how I can stand out from everyone else and continue to build a relationship with him.
Of course you don’t need to spend days writing reviews like this to add value to influencers (although you could).
I know writing super long reviews isn’t easy for everyone – it’s easy for me.
Whenever you’re trying to add value to an influencer that you want to connect with, think about how you can go above and beyond for them in YOUR OWN WAY.
Are you really great on video? Record a video testimonial for them.
Are you great at giving gifts? Send them an awesome gift.
Are you great at writing long posts? Write a really long post about the lessons you learned from them.
For more ideas on how to go above and beyond and start building relationships with influencers in your niche, check out this amazing article from Selena Soo:
Ok, I have one last example for you, which I know you guys will love.
A lot of you know that I became one of Ramit’s star students, and even ended up working with him for 2+ years in his Accelerator program.
So how did I get there? How did I even get Ramit to notice me in the first place?
I don’t want to give you just ONE example, so I’ll give you a few different examples to help you spark more ideas for how you can go above and beyond in your business relationships.
EXAMPLE #3: 5 things that helped me build a relationship with Ramit Sethi
When I was preparing to meet Ramit Seth in person for the first time (I attended his live event called “The 100k Summit”), I asked one of my mentors, Naveen Dittakavi from NextVacay how I could make a great impression on Ramit.
He told me that I could record a video testimonial and send it to him, as very few people do that. You can learn all about how I did that in my Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People.
So I did. I recorded a video testimonial, and stood out from all the other people that would just create written testimonials for Ramit:
The other piece of advice I got from Naveen (that I also write about here) is to prepare really well for the conference in advance.
I spent a whole MONTH preparing for the conference.
I watched his 8-hour creative live class. I wrote down tens of really good questions. I created notecards with them. I completed every single piece of homework that Ramit gave us before the event.
I ended up being BY FAR the most prepared person at the conference, which made a great impression on Ramit.
I constantly asked well thought out questions – during the breaks, during the Q & A sessions and during the hot seats.
I made sure that Ramit would remember me next time we met.
To this day, I’m surprised how few people do something like this.
Whenever I meet people in person or go to live events, VERY FEW people come prepared for them. And almost no-one comes SUPER prepared.
So if you want to stand out at a conference and make a great impression on the speakers, being the most prepared person in the room is the simplest way to do so.
It’s time consuming (which is why nobody does it), but if you put in the work, you really can’t leave a conference unnoticed.
Let’s go to the third example.
At the 100k Summit, someone took this photo of me and Ramit:
I like to joke that Ramit didn’t like the fact I was wearing the same outfit as I was… But here’s what really happened.
On the last day of the conference, I told Ramit that I would implement everything I learned from it over the next month.
To get a little bit of extra accountability, I asked him to “make a disappointed face that he would make if I told him a month that I didn’t take any of his advice”.
With a disappointed Ramit photo in my pocket, I was ready to completely change my business.
And I did.
Over the next month, I used 3 of Ramit’s techniques to DOUBLE my monthly revenues from my business.
Nobody else at the conference got results like that so quickly, because they weren’t as focused on taking massive action immediately as I was. This again allowed me to stand out from everyone else at the conference and make Ramit remember me.
I met Ramit again at his conference called Behaviorcon.
As he was one of the organizers, he was absolutely swamped during the conference, and I didn’t really want to bother him throughout the event.
On the last day of the conference, I went up to him and casually mentioned that I used his advice from the 100k Summit to double my monthly revenues.
He was so blown away that he pulled me out from the conference room into the hallway and recorded a video on his iPhone to capture my results:
I felt like that was the tipping point where Ramit REALLY noticed me.
A few months later, he invited me to grab lunch with him in San Francisco:
And his team even invited me to become one of the beta testers of the Zero to Launch course because they knew I was an action taker.
I never expected or planned on any of those things to happen.
All I wanted to do is add value to someone who I really admired and go above and beyond for them.
But this goes to show you the awesome opportunities that can happen if you DO consistently go above and beyond.
I have two more examples for you.
After I took Ramit’s Zero to Launch beta course, I wrote a review of Zero to Launch.
Just like with Derek’s review, I wanted to make this the best review of Zero to Launch anyone would ever write.
And then, as time went by, I thought about how I could make the review even better.
After one and a half year of taking Zero to Launch, I went from just having 500 emails subscribers (at the time I wrote the first version of the review) to having 2,000+ email subscribers and my first 5-figure launch.
I took everything that I learned and wrote two detailed updates of the review (that you can read here), which is what nobody else did.
I felt like this would be an awesome opportunity to show people how powerful the course can actually be in the long run for their online business, and it was another way for me to stand out from everyone else and go above and beyond for Ramit.
The last example of how I go above and beyond for Ramit is a bit different, and it’s something that I still do to this day.
I go above and beyond for him by adding massive value to his Zero to Launch community.
Ramit has helped me so much over the years that I love giving back to his Zero to Launch students.
And the way that I stand out from everyone else is by writing the most detailed, comprehensive posts in the community. Nobody else does what I do.
For example, I recently wrote a super detailed post about how Ramit taught me to to choose excellence over mediocrity when I worked with him for 2 years:
Then I wrote a super detailed post about how I went from an idea to a $36,381 product launch in 3 months:
And on the plane during my recent trip to NYC I hosted an “Ask me Anything” in his community where I answered the questions from his students about online business for 4+ hours:
And gave super detailed responses that could very well be blog posts (this is just a PART of one of my responses):
Nobody else does this, so this allows me to stand out from all of his other students.
As you can see, there are many different ways in which you can go above and beyond to build relationships with people you admire.
You’ll also notice that plenty of ways in which I go above and beyond is by writing really long, detailed stuff – whether it’s course reviews or posts in online communities.
That’s because that’s what I’m good at and it works for me.
But the underlying principle here is to always think about how you can be different from everyone else. What can you do that nobody else is willing or is too lazy to do?
Going above and beyond for people you admire consistently is a sure way to start building lasting, authentic relationships with them.
Now you know how to go above and beyond for your audience, as well as in connecting with influencers, which are two crucial skills to help you skyrocket the growth of your online business.
But there’s one more thing that very few people talk about, and might be the hardest thing of all.
Going above and beyond for yourself.
3 ways in which I go above and beyond FOR MYSELF
So what does “going above and beyond for yourself” really mean?
I see it simply as pushing yourself beyond the limits of what you’re capable of right now.
Just like a marathon runner constantly tries to beat the best time in which he can run a marathon, we need to think about how we can constantly improve ourselves and accomplish more than we accomplished before as business owners.
If we don’t do this, we’ll end up coasting and resting on our laurels. We’ll live a good life, but we won’t live an exceptional one. We’ll create a business that makes money, but won’t become industry leaders.
This is the hardest thing of all to do because it doesn’t just require effort or following a script.
It requires being brutally honest with yourself, making an honest assessment about where you can improve, and letting go of some habits that are making you comfortable, but prevent you from unlocking your full potential.
Things like spending too much time on Facebook. Checking emails multiple times a day. Responding to every message you get immediately. And so on and so on.
I want to share with you 3 examples in how I’m going above and beyond for myself and pushing myself beyond what I’m capable of right now, which will help you come up with some ideas on how you can go above and beyond for yourself too.
EXAMPLE #1: I’m writing 100,000 words this month
For the last few months I’ve felt a little bit frustrated with myself.
Specifically, I was frustrated that I was spending more time THINKING about what to do, rather than DOING the things that were really important for growing my business.
I thought about writing 5 different Ultimate Guides, but I didn’t even write one.
I spent months trying to figure out “where to go next in my business” and running small experiments, rather than going all in on establishing myself as the go-to expert on creating Ultimate Guides.
I spent a lot of my time tweaking the copy on my website, and very little time spreading the word about it.
Two weeks ago I finally had enough.
This wasn’t who I wanted to be. I wanted to stop being the worst version of myself and become the best version of myself.
So I picked things that frustrated me, and said to myself I’d get rid of them one by one.
The first thing I wanted to change was to CONSUME less and CREATE more.
I knew that if I just let all of my thoughts out on paper and created some epic blog posts and Ultimate Guides, my business would take off again.
But just “writing more” wasn’t exciting for me. Neither was writing 1,000 words / day. I know I can do that, and it’s not a challenge for me.
I wanted to do something BIG. Something that would really push me over the list of what I think I’m capable of. Something that very few people have done before.
So I decided to take on “The 100k Challenge”.
I committed to writing 100,000 words / month, which is roughly 3,700 words / day if I wrote for 6 out of 7 days a week.
Now THAT’s a challenge that’s exciting for me, and a way to go way above and beyond for myself.
This challenge is the main reason why I’m even writing this post, and if you’re curious I’m just over 40k words out of 100k words after the first two weeks.
I wrote these posts as a part of the challenge:
- 10 Powerful Lessons From Selena Soo’s Life-Changing Mastermind
- 100 Happy Clients: The ONLY Goal You Need to Grow Your Online Business This Year
- 7 Mistakes to Avoid While Writing Your First Ultimate Guide
And there’s a lot more awesome posts coming VERY shortly.
Since I started the challenge, working on my business feels so much different. It feels like I’m actually working on things that matter, rather than just doing “busy work”. And I’m just focusing on ONE thing, rather than trying to grow my business in 10 different ways.
I know that once I finish this challenge, I’ll feel like I have accomplished something I didn’t think was possible for me before – and that even after the challenge I’ll create a lot more awesome content because I’ll already have the right habits put in place to do it.
The side effect of doing this challenge is that it won’t just help me push myself to the limit, it will also be incredibly valuable for my business.
I know I’ll be able to write about the challenge once it’s finished and spread the word about my work. “What I learned from writing 100,000 words in 30 days” is just not something that you hear every day, and I know that a lot of online entrepreneurs will be interested in reading about it and talk about it to other people.
I’ll also be able to help my Ultimate Guide System students create more Ultimate Guides by teaching them how to write more consistently with the lessons I learn from the challenge – plus they’ll be able to say to themselves that if Primoz can write 100,000 words in a month they can write 10,000 words too.
There’s so many good things that come out of doing challenges like this to go above and beyond for yourself – and they make building an online business a ton more fun too.
So think about it. Is there a challenge that you could take on as well to push yourself beyond what you’re capable?
Could you challenge yourself to do something amazing within a month? Or maybe even a week to get started? One of the future things I’ll probably do is have a challenge to write an incredible Ultimate Guide in a week, which is a smaller commitment, but will still push me out of my comfort zone.
Think about it. It doesn’t have to be related to writing. It can be related to doing customer research. Getting clients. Going above and beyond for your existing clients. Getting more publicity for your business.
Do any ideas come to mind? If yes, write them down.
Now let’s look at the next example.
EXAMPLE #2: I’m working with a high performance coach to think bigger, accomplish more, and take my business to the next level
Taking on the 100k Challenge already helped me feel like I’m moving my business forward way faster.
But I didn’t want it to just end there.
I feel like for a long time, I’ve been running my business like a hobby.
Because I consistently went above and beyond for my audience and for the influencers I wanted to build relationships with, my business grew well,
But it didn’t grow as much as I would have wanted it to grow. And I didn’t feel like I was really doing my best to grow it.
I saw myself spending way too much time just randomly browsing through email, Facebook or Instagram. I hate to admit this, but I could spend hours and hours each day just doing that.
I could get away with it because nobody (apart from my girlfriend) could see it, and because of all the work that I already put into my online business.
But deep down, I knew that this is not who I wanted to be.
I don’t want to just run a 6-figure business that allows me to live a comfortable lifestyle.
I don’t want to be someone who just follows the top experts in the industry and follows what they tell him to do.
I want to BECOME one of those experts that other experts follow and ask for advice.
I want to go far beyond building a 6-figure business. I want to take my business to 7 and 8 figures over the next few years.
And not only that. I want to create thousands and thousands of happy clients while doing it, and reach millions of people all over the world with my message.
I want to stop being just a “star student” and become one of the industry leaders of the online business world.
And for that, I need to stop doing what I’m doing. I need to think differently. I need to spend my time differently. I need to act differently.
And I know that I can’t do all of this by myself. I need help from people who already know how to do that.
As soon as I had that realization, I knew EXACTLY who to turn to for help.
You might not have heard of him yet, but over the next few years you will definitely hear a lot about him.
His name is Allon Khakshouri.
Allon used to work as a manager of some of the world’s best tennis players, including Novak Djokovic who has absolutely dominated the tennis scene over the past few years.
Allon’s superpower is turning the top 100 tennis players into top 10, and eventually #1 tennis players.
He knows everything there is to know about high performance and the mentality of the world’s top athletes, and now he’s taking his knowledge to the business world.
He’s focused on working with online business “underdogs” and turning them into absolute superstars, like he did with the tennis players in the past.
He recently wrote The Ultimate Guide to High Performance where he shares some of the best strategies that high performers use to become the best in the world at what they do, and if what he teaches resonates with you, I definitely recommend you to check it out.
I turned to Allon because I know that he can help me get from the top 100 online business expert to top 10, and in the future become the #1 online business expert out there.
I knew that Allon wouldn’t go easy on me, and that he would tell me exactly what I needed to hear to push myself to my limits, even when I didn’t want to hear it.
Here’re a couple of changes that we’ve already made to the way that I run my online business over the past few weeks.
#1: I need to get two “power blocks” of writing time in every day.
This means I go to a coffee shop where I write for 60-90 minutes twice a day – once before and once after my workout.
This was hard for me because I needed to completely clear out my schedule in the mornings, make sure I go to bed by 11pm every day, and actually make it to the coffee shop without any excuses.
During these power blocks, I can only write or not do anything else, which can also be hard sometimes when I feel tired and I really just want to go through some emails.
#2: I only have 90 minutes a day of “online time” a day.
This includes working through all of my emails, being on Facebook, helping my students through my communities, etc.
This was hard for me because I’m used to being on my phone WAY more than that, including the first thing in the morning to “wake up”, on the toilet or in the evening once I’m done with working.
When we started this habit I felt like an addict who just got his drug taken away… It wasn’t a fun few days, but now I can’t imagine going back to my old ways as I get SO much more work done, and I don’t feel the need to check my phone every 2 seconds.
Plus, to my surprise, it doesn’t even take me 90 minutes to work through all of my online work. I’m usually done in 60 minutes or less because I actually spend the online time in a smart way, not mindlessly scrolling.
#3: I need to have 15 minutes of “thinking time” a day.
During this time, I can only think, or take notes of what I’m thinking. I’m not allowed to be on the internet, consume content or anything else.
This concept was weird for me at first. How am I supposed to just think and not do anything?
The Allon told me that I can use this time for planning out parts of my business. So during this time, I started outlining my future emails and blog posts, which made writing them so much easier.
This is another thing I wasn’t doing before, yet it helps me function so much better now.
Now I feel like I’m actually making progress in my business, and the results have been HUGE already.
For example, here’s what I accomplished last week with my new approach:
- I wrote well over 16,000 words last week
- I reviewed 3 guest posts for my website, and edited a guest post I will get published on a big website soon
- I created a launch plan for Ultimate Guide System 2.0.
- I got 18!!! 1on1 and group client calls done. That’s not a typo.
- I created a presentation for the second to last week of Ultimate Guide System
- I reached out to 3 of my mentors and got incredible feedback on my product launch plan
- I got 10 hours of workouts in in the gym
- I spent two nights hanging out with friends, went to a BBQ party over the weekend, and had 5 guilt-free date nights with my girlfriend, which is how many I usually have in a MONTH
And I know that all of this is just the beginning.
That’s the second way in which I’m going above and beyond for myself – working with someone who’s the best in the world at what they do.
Now you might be thinking to yourself “well Primoz that’s great for you, but I don’t have the access to this kind of people myself”.
First of all, that’s not entirely true. Now that you know how to go above and beyond in connecting with influencers, you too can build authentic relationships with people like Allon, Derek Halpern, Selena Soo and Ramit Sethi.
It takes a lot of time and effort to do it (usually it takes years to build a really strong relationship), but if you really want to do it, now you know how to make it happen.
The other thing that you can do is use what you DO have already. For example, you could read Allon’s Ultimate Guide. He shares some of his best advice right there in the guide!
You could also hire a coach, join an online course, or read a book, an e-book or an Ultimate Guide to improve your current skill set.
Then all that remains is really being true to yourself, and committing to taking action and making those changes actually happen.
It’s not easy (and it shouldn’t be), but it’s not complicated either.
You think about something that you need to get better. You think about HOW you can get better at it and find the right resource to do it. And then you get over your excuses and get started. It literally is that simple.
Now I challenge you to think about one thing that you KNOW you need to get better at, and think about how you can get started with it TODAY.
You don’t actually need to do it – for now just write it down.
Ok, one last example of how I go above and beyond for myself.
EXAMPLE #3: I’m creating Ultimate Guide System 2.0 only 3 months after launching it for the first time
As I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m committed to making Ultimate Guide System the BEST course on creating Ultimate Guides that anyone will ever create.
Part of that was doing the customer research and working with my 1on1 clients up-front to develop a great system, which I’ve already talked about in this post.
The other part of it is improving the program based on the feedback of my first customers.
You see, most people don’t collect feedback about how to make their online courses better. Many of the ones that do never actually implement the feedback and leave “holes” in their programs where people get stuck and fail to follow through. There’s plenty of online courses out there that only a few % of people finish. And out of the people that do take the feedback, most of them create a 2.0 version of the program after a whole year.
In fact, I’ve never seen anyone do it faster than that.
And yet, here I am, thinking to myself… Why not?
Yeah, there is an argument for having a lot of people go through your program before making changes to it… But if I already tested the program and worked closely together with my students to see how they’re doing with it, and I see ways to make it 10x better, then I don’t WANT more people to go through a program that is NOT 10x better.
So I said to myself that I’ll just create the Ultimate Guide System 2.0 right now.
I thought about different ways that I know I could make the course 10x better. I asked my students what would make the course 10x better for them. I ended up with 5 game-changing features for the program that will take it to a whole other level.
And I know that it’ll be a lot of work to implement… But the best time to do that is NOW. I don’t want to wait another year and “coast”. I want to make this program even better right now, and make even more of my students successful with my program.
This makes me go above and beyond for myself because I’ve never actually done something like this. I never approached any of my online courses with such a commitment to rapidly improve them and make them bulletproof. Especially not in such a short time frame.
But I know this is totally possible to do. All it requires is a decision to do it, to delay some other less important projects, and make it happen right now.
As I said earlier… Why not?
So what can you take away from this example?
Well, if you do have an online course or a coaching program that you’ve been thinking about improving, one way to go above and beyond for yourself is to give yourself a few weeks or a month and actually make it happen.
But even if that’s not what you want to do or if you don’t have a program you’re selling yet, there’s a lesson here for you.
And the lesson lies in the “why not?”.
If there’s something that you’ve been thinking of doing for a while, but never quite got around to it, you could start working on it today and making it happen.
Maybe it’s an epic blog post or an Ultimate Guide you wanted to write. Maybe it’s an online course or a coaching program you wanted to launch. Maybe it’s that first email that you wanted to send to one of the leaders in your industry to start building a relationship with them.
You could start working on one of those things today… I mean why not?
If any things come to mind that you’ve been putting off for a while and you could get started with, write them down. Again, you don’t need to act on them immediately (we’ll get to that in a second), but I do want you to have plenty of ideas in what you could do to go above and beyond for yourself, for influencers in your niche or for your audience. It’s better to have too many ideas than too few.
Now it’s time for some cold hard truth.
In this post, I’ve shared 9 (actually 13, since I shared 5 examples in the chapter about how I built a relationship with Ramit Sethi) examples of how I go above and beyond in everything I do.
And I showed you how going above and beyond can help you grow your online business so much faster as you’ll be able to get more done for your business, make a bigger impact on the lives your audience, and build business relationships that will bring you business opportunities that you’ve never even dreamed of.
Now you know the theory. You also have plenty of ideas and examples for going above and beyond in your own business.
And yet, none of this will help you out UNLESS you do the following two things:
- Get started with going above and beyond in everything you do (and stop doing things in a half-assed way) today
- Keep going above and beyond over and over and over again in all the important areas of your business
It’s literally that simple… And that hard.
Going above and beyond over and over again isn’t easy. Because you’ll have times when you procrastinate the big projects that you have in your mind. Because you might be surrounded by people who don’t believe in you or support in you. Because you’ll say to yourself that “this will never work” and never test your ideas out.
The good news is that this happens to ALL of us (and I shared quite a few examples of what I’m working on right now to improve myself).
The difference between the people that never build an online business, people who build a semi-successful online business and the people who build an ultra-successful online business is pretty damn simple:
- The people who never build a successful online business never actually go above and beyond on anything. They take small steps here and there, but never do anything that really goes above and beyond that people would notice and remember them by.
- The people who build a semi-successful online business have bright moments where they go above and beyond, which leads to their business breakthroughs. But after they get these breakthroughs, they plateau because they rest on their laurels and aren’t hungry enough to keep going and pushing themselves further and further.
- The people who build an ultra-successful online business CONSISTENTLY go above and beyond for themselves, for their audience, and in connecting with influencers in their niche. It’s not that they don’t have all the mental blocks and challenges that other people have… They just don’t let the challenges stop them. They know they are meant to do big things in life, and they repeatedly mess up, get back on their feet, and keep going to matter what.
If you want to build an ultra-successful online business and grow it faster than 99% of the other people out there, that’s what it really is all about. Going above and beyond, and doing it consistently day in and day out. The more consistent you can be, the more you go above and beyond, the more you’ll accomplish.
Remember that. Remember that there’s no “secret” to building an online business. You really just need to cut out the stuff that isn’t getting you anywhere and do what you know is important 10x better than anyone else. As long as you do that and stick with it, it’ll be harder for you NOT to be successful than to grow it.
There’s no better time to get started with going above and beyond than today
Okay, enough talk. You’ve read this 9,000+ words into this article, so I know you’re not one of the people who will never have a successful online business.
Most of them dropped off when they saw how long this post is, gave up in the middle of it or sent me an email about “how I should write shorter blog posts”.
Those people will never make it because they don’t have what it takes. If you can’t spend 20 minutes reading a blog post, then how could you possibly have what it takes to build an ultra successful online business?
Now if you have read this whole post, I’m sending you a high five.
You’re already different than most other people. You’re already going above and beyond for yourself.
If you took notes while reading it, even better (most people didn’t). That’s another way in which you’re standing out from everyone else.
Now, there’s just one thing left to do – often the hardest one of all, and what will determine whether you make it in your business, or if it’ll just be a dream that you never made happen.
It’s time to take action.
As you might have noticed, I already went above and beyond for you. I didn’t just write a blog post with the idea of going above and beyond and tell you to magically “do more of it”.
I showed you HOW I do it and how you can do it too. I’ve shared more examples with you than most people do in their paid online courses.
Now if you’re serious about seeing your business grow like wildfire, let’s put this stuff into action.
Here’s what I want you to do:
Pick just ONE of the things that you wrote down while reading this long post. One way in which you can go above and beyond for yourself, your audience or for the influencers you want to connect with.
It doesn’t matter what it’s about. Just pick something you are actually EXCITED to work on.
Did you pick one thing yet?
Good.
Now think about how you can get started with it RIGHT NOW.
What can you do to put the wheels into motion?
What is one small step that you can take that will take this idea from your head and start making it a reality?
Did you write that down?
Good.
Just a few more things to do. Yes, I’m making you work your ass off, because rapidly growing an online business IS hard work.
- Leave a comment below this post with (1) your one way of going above and beyond and (2) what you’ll do to put it into motion today.
- Let me know that you left a comment by replying to the email in which I sent you this blog post. If you’re not on my email list yet, you can subscribe here.
- Get started with putting your one thing into motion NOW. Not in 5 minutes. Not in an hour. Not tomorrow. Make the first step right now, even if it’s an insanely small one.
And that’s it.
I gotta say – I admire you for reading all the way through this post. It took me days to write, and I appreciate you sticking around long enough to actually read the whole thing.
I love working with and helping people like you, because I know that you’ll make it incredibly far in the online business world.
And if you’re ready to change the world and start going above and beyond in everything you do, I have the perfect thing to help you get started.
Remember how I said that the MOST important thing in which you should go above and beyond is for your audience?
And remember how you can get started with that by creating incredible content that’s 10x better than what most people create in your industry, like Ultimate Guides?
Because you read this long post, I know that you want to do something more – and that you have what it takes to create something as big as an Ultimate Guide – that will change your online business forever.
I know that because my Ultimate Guides have been a key strategy for growing my online business – because they go far above and beyond the regular blog posts.
If you want to get started with creating one today, get hundreds or even thousands of email subscribers to your online business, bring in more paying clients to your business and establish yourself as an industry leader, then check out my FREE 47-page Ultimate Guide Checklist below.
It’s just the thing you need to get started with making a bigger impact in this world and skyrocketing your online business – and I guarantee you that it’ll be the BEST e-book you’ve read in a while.
Just leave your name and email below and I’ll send the free guide straight to your inbox.
Thanks again for reading, and don’t forget to leave a comment below with one thing in which you’ll go above and beyond.
Talk to you soon!
-Primoz
