Secrets To Success: Do What You Love Is The Worst Advice You Ever Got

It is the worst advice. It is the most stupid advice. And it will likely lead you to failure. Why? Because all successful people never became rich, successful or famous by doing what they love.

Any person who tells you that the secret to their success is “doing what you love” is simply telling you a lot of bull shit. He is telling you that because that is what looks cool and good. He tells you that because that is what success pop candy looks like. What is sad is that the majority of people get foolishly sold on this idea. They believe it and that is why there are so many miserable people in the world today.

Bill Gates did not become the richest man by doing what he loved. He loved math and he wanted to be a math professor. What led to his immense success? He stumbled upon computers, and suddenly he realized that he could do it better than most people. And with time, he ended up building a billion dollar empire. Not because he did what he had a passion for. Not because he ended up doing math all day!

George Soros, one of the most successful investors had a dream. He wanted to be a writer and a philosopher. So when he entered into the field of investing, his goal was to simply make $50, 000 so that he could concentrate on what he loved: writing and philosophy. He ended up sticking to investing because he discovered he was good at it. He also ended up making over a billion dollars in the process. And he ended up becoming one of the most successful investors of our time.

Mark Cuban started out as a computer salesman. He had been fired from several jobs before he discovered that he could sell computers and make a few dollars from them. Did he have a love for computers? Nope! He had a love for the freedom that came with money. He knew he had to work hard, and he worked hard. He learnt to code, to train and all those things, not because he had a natural love for them, but because it was at first necessary, and along the way, he discovered that he could do it better than most people. He ended up building his company into a multimillion dollar business: from ground to the top. He sold it. Started an internet company, not because he had a fondness for the internet, but because he saw an opportunity. Broadcast was born and he eventually became billionaire.

What about the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos? Did he love selling products? Did he naturally fall in love with the internet? Was his love for books so immense that he ended up forming Amazon? Absolutely not! He made a cross-country trip, discovered the increased use of the internet, heard about a Supreme Court ruling and then decided to leave his well-paying job to go to his garage and try out this little project he had. He was good on Wall Street, he loved science projects as a child, he was a good programmer and he must have had a love for these things or at least one of them. Were they the key to his success? Definitely NO!

Doing what you love is the key to success? Bullshit!

Do You Have The Balls To Do What It Takes To Write Your Success Story?

Do you have the balls? Do you have the balls to take the jump? Do you have the balls to continue rolling despite the punches that life lands on your face? Do you have the balls to continue pounding? Do you have the balls to be the hero that has the happy ending?

Do you?

In life, fear plays the antagonist in the story of success that you write each and every day that you are alive. It’s just that it is up to you to decide whether you are going to let it win, or whether no matter what, you are going to ensure that the hero in the story gets the happy and glorious ending that he or she deserves.

If you haven’t yet started to push the boundaries; If you haven’t yet started to go beyond the miserable comfort zones of your life; If you haven’t yet put in motion that great idea that is in your mind; And if you haven’t done or said something because of “what Ifs” and “Not Nows”: then you are wasting away a good success story – your success story.

Everybody wishes. Everyone has dreams. Everyone in the world today aspires. But simple wishing, dreaming and aspiring gets nobody anywhere. In fact, all it does is to add you to a long list of: So What!?. It just makes you ordinary. Nothing more!

Are you really going to let yourself be the everyday average pedestrian in life who was too afraid to go after what he or she, wanted? Are you going to be among the masses who never had the balls to stand up and be counted? Are you going to be the potential hero in your life who never had the guts to see things through? Are you?

Jeremy Schoemaker (Shoemoney) Success Story: Pushing The Boundaries For The Extra Mile

He was once the high school 300 pound 14 year old that got teased for his weight, but over the course of his career as an internet marketer, Jeremy Shoemaker has not only grossed millions of dollars, but has also received accolades from across the industry. 

He has been named by Fast Company as its “Most Influential Person on The Internet”; by Business Week as the “Top Money Making Blogger on the Internet”  and currently serves as Facebook’s Board of Monetization and as an advisor to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! This is in addition to being featured in over 50 print newspapers, 20 Magazines and television shows. He is a success and although the journey to the top was not always easy, he credits his mentality with being the major key to success.

As he tells it in his autobiography, Nothing Has Changed But My Change, he always had an entrepreneurial spirit from an early age – something which sometimes got him into trouble. His ever enduring search for “an angle” to “exploit people’s passion” and “leveraging his position” saw him engage in “insurance fraud” and also take advantage of BestBuy’s program which landed him in court.

His brushes with crossing the legal line aside, he went on to found NextPimp.com and ShoeMoney Media, companies which ended up generating millions of dollars. He however gained a lot of fame, and traffic on his Shoemoney blog when he posted a $130,000 check from Google, which was a one-month Google Adsense earnings. He also later went on to found AuctionAds, an eBay marketing affiliate service that he grew to a multimillion dollar company.

Jeremy Schoemaker mainly credits his success to his ability to do what others were unwilling to do. His success with AuctionAds came as a result of being able to deposit $5 immediately someone signed for the product and being willing to pay people monthly instead of the 60 day wait that other competing services subjected their users to.

“I started with 1 website in 2002ish that grew to be the biggest mobile community on the internet and learned how to monetize it. I shared my journey on a blog and built a pretty authoritative site in the "making money online" arena. I leveraged that into starting my own advertising network and growing it until we sold it.”

“In the case of the husker football quiz it seemed pretty simple. In Nebraska all we have is the cornhuskers and people are die hard fans always debating stupid facts about former players. So making a site where people could test their knowledge to "win" something just made sense. Most people never know they can get a free subscription (to Netflix) just by going to the site or that I get $30 if they sign up.”

His ability to walk on the brink of the grey areas is also a key to his success with other advertising programs. As he admits, most of the things he did with Facebook adverts and programs he ran on Adwords were what most of his friends considered “illegal”. He tried them out and the two companies ended up making him a consultant. The same also applies to Microsoft and many other things he has dabbled in. 

J.A. Konrath Success Story: The Journey Of Indie Publishing’s Most Vocal Champion

“In the ten years I was legacy published, I made about $450k. In the four years I've self-published, I've made over 1.1 million dollars.”

J.A. Konrath is one of the most vocal advocates of self-publishing. This is no surprise considering the frustrations that he encountered while trying to chase his dream of being a writer. His publisher even cancelled his contract for his books supposedly not “having promise”. Most of these books ended up on bestseller lists. Here is J.A. Konrath’s self publishing success story.

“ Those novels garnered over 500 rejections.”

During the ten years that Konrath was trying to jumpstart his career as an author, he wrote over 10 books. This is in addition to investing a lot of time and money not only to get his stories published, but also to promote them.

Years of struggle to make his dream to be a published author finally bore fruit when his first novel was accepted by a publisher. He signed the deal in 2002, but it was not until after 16 months that his book finally got published.

He had finally got published but the J.A Konrath success story had not yet really taken a positive dive. A few stores ordered hardcover copies of his work and given the pricing and the little support he got from the publishers, sales never really took off. This is despite Konrath dropping in on signings, hand-selling his hardcovers and using a big piece of his $33,000 advance in writing conferences and book fairs around the country.

He however continued writing in between. By 2005, he had finished another novel and was ready to get published. He however didn’t sell a lot of books and so there was really not a lot of support from his publishers. In an attempt to earn the trust of his publisher, he visited over 500 bookstores in 29 states just to prove that he could make the sales happen.

His efforts to make his self publishing success story complete prove futile. In fact, by 2007 when he gets out his fourth novel, his contract is cancelled. As he admits, that was a devastating blow to his writing dreams since it meant that there would be no more support from his publisher.

“But I soldier on”

With his contract cancelled and with no support from the publisher, Konrath’s success story went to a new level. He now had to rely on reorders from faithful fans and on sales that he did personally. His efforts bear fruits as he manages to get his books into multiple prints. This is however not enough to get his titles to be picked by another publisher.

He finally decided to change his name to Jack Killborn in the hope of attracting a new fan base. All the while, with the money he had spent on self promotion, his writing career seemed to end…

“Then this Kindle thing comes along.”

When the Kindle came and the opportunity to self publish came along, J.A. Konrath jumped at it. This is so because it simply meant that he not only had complete control over his work, but also that his work could get maximum exposure without necessarily spending a lot of money.

Self-publishing on the Kindle saw his sales go through the roof. It finally made his self publishing success story go a complete circle. He says:

“I got all of my rights back, and my six week Kindle total is $116,000, which is more than the first three-book deal I signed. For those same books.”

“Don't write hoping to quit your day job. Don't compare yourself to me, or anyone else. This is your journey, and it will be unique to you.”

“So far this month I've sold over 10,000 copies of Whiskey Sour. That was legacy published in 2004. From then until I got my rights back, Whiskey Sour sold about 35,000 ebooks. So in 24 days, on my own, I've sold about 1/3 of what my publisher took nine years to sell.”

“Read my blog, going back to 2005. I worked for twelve years and wrote a million words before making a dime, and it took another ten years for me to be making this much money. I've got over fifty ebooks. And I'll cop to a bit of egotism and say I've never met anyone who ever worked harder in their career than I did. So the snide answer would be: Bust your ass for twenty years, with very little reward.”

(J.A. Konrath Quotes)