{Enter Brandon – the content and community manager for YoPro Wealth. You’ll be hearing a LOT from Brandon soon. He’s on his path.}

Hey everyone, I’m Brandon. I’ve been stuck for 7 years…

Until now, that is, and I’m pumped to share my 7 Simple Steps to Get Started.

A little about me:

Since my sophomore year of college, I wanted to figure out a way to get out of the rat race. I could see debt piling up. I felt like my degree, mechanical engineering, was going to sentence me to a life of desk jockeying.

That fear pushed me to find something that paid well and got me on my feet, manufacturing. I, like Austin, started a climb on the corporate ladder.

I got accepted into a prestigious operations leadership program for a major aerospace company. I traveled around the country and the world, networked, and built my corporate resume.

It was all part of the plan, but it wasn’t my passion and I felt caged. I came from poverty and the fear of being poor led me to do good in school, get a great job, and follow the “path” to a so-called good life. This life, I found, was full of student loan debt, a schedule I couldn’t control, and capped income that left me wanting more.

This was worst than poverty; it was the middle class.  When I was a poor kid I had nothing, but when I was an indebted 20 something I had no FREEDOM.

I thought it was more money I wanted, but getting raises and saving 80% of my income didn’t make me feel alive.

I thought that being debt-free would fix the trapped feeling, but after paying back $50,000 of student loan debt in 4 years, I still felt like a zoo human.

I thought it was title, but promotions only made me happy for a few months. Looking back, I know now I was craving something bigger than all of this.

It was freedom.

Freedom to fail. Freedom to learn. Freedom to earn what I wanted.

In short, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I had wanted this, I realized, for 7 years.

What stopped me?

MYSELF…

And all the stupid excuses I came up with why owning my own business was not possible. 

1. I didn’t have enough money
2. I didn’t know how to run a business
3. I don’t have a product or service
4. I don’t know how to make a webpage
5. I don’t know blah blah blah – garbage for seven years

See a theme? I held myself back and I’m here today to tell you that…

You are holding yourself back, too.

You want more money? Prove it. Take action.

Learn from those that have succeeded at something and get into motion.

Nothing changes until you do.

And let’s face it: it’s hard to get started. Very hard, in fact. We all want the easy button. I wanted a business to fall into my lap. When work appears in front of us, we ignore it like we do ads on a webpage.

The two most challenging times are:

1. Getting started
2. Pushing through after it starts to hurt or after we fail the first time

Let’s consider working out. The hardest part is just getting to the gym, right? Once you’re there, it’s not that bad. The thing that sucks is getting up off the couch and getting dressed.

As Tony Robbins says, “Motion creates emotion.” So, the key with anything is to just get started.

So, let’s talk about exactly that. Here’s my:

7 Simple Steps to Get Started Doing Anything

The entire reason I’m posting on Austin’s site today is because I followed these seven steps and took a chance.

I still don’t own a business but I’m finally on the path to becoming an entrepreneur after seven years of being stuck and taking NO action. Follow these steps and I’m confident your own path awaits you.

Step 1: Put Your Money on the Line

First and foremost you need to have a dog in the fight. We’re driven by two things: pain and pleasure.

Often times, we’re more driven by pain than we are pleasure. So, you have to add some “pain” if you don’t do what you tell yourself you’re going to do.

How can you put some money towards your goal?

• Sign up for a master class. Spend some money – the more, the better (I’m serious).
• Start your LLC – Make it official!
• Put money in an investment account and buy stock in just one company

Or maybe this example is more realistic…

When I was in college, I estimated that a typical 45 minute class would cost me about $90 all in.  That’s tuition, housing, books, food, beer, everything – all in.

When I felt like skipping class or going out the night before an early morning lecture I would ask myself one question:

Do I have $90 to throw away right now?

Once I figured that out, I stopped skipping classes and my grades topped out as some of the highest in the department.

What money have you ALREADY spent on your goal that you are sitting on?

• Education?
• A bookshelf full of advice?
• A website that doesn’t have any content?
• An investment account that’s holding cash or some investments you don’t even know of?
• A business that’s failing?

Whatever the goal: MAKE IT REAL.

Unfortunately, to make it feel real for most of us, we need it to go straight into our checkbook to get started.

Step 2: Make it Public

Sharing your goals with people is the hardest thing to do.

As soon as Austin took me under his wing, I sent my first article to 30 people in my network that I look up to most.  I told them about my dreams and why I was writing, I made it public.  It was easier than I thought, pushing send was a moment of pride, not fear.

When Austin started YoPro Wealth he was terrified, he wanted to hide behind an alias and he definitely didn’t want to put his face on the site.

BUT doing this was the biggest motivator to succeed and now AustinNetzley.com is the flagship of his brand.

Use your network and social media accounts to tell people about your new goal or new project – put it out there for the world to see.  Some might hate it, some will love it, but it’s out there and it’ll motivate you to overachieve.

Step 3: Get a Partner or Coach

Having a sounding board or someone with the same goal is infinitely valuable. It comes down to one idea: accountability.

When two people or a group of people get started, it’s hard to stop the momentum. When a teammate falls behind the rest of the group can pick them up.

While being in Austin’s court I’ve learned that in each of his businesses he has a partner or a team of people that share the exact same goals he does for that particular venture.

These people help guide him and his guidance serves them, we are able to bounce ideas off of each other and pick each other up after a big loss. Of course, having people to celebrate makes those wins even sweeter.

If you can’t find a partner or want to go it alone, get a bad-ass coach, a mentor.

Someone who has been there and done it, someone with success. Pay for their time if you need to.  

Success begets success.  Once you have that first breakthrough doors will open.

The secret is to break into the success club. The top players want to partner and associate themselves with other successes. This is when opportunities flood in. It wasn’t until Austin had some online success of his own that his online businesses took off.

Get a partner, get a team, get a mentor and get started on the first big success.

Step 4: Go to where the cool kids hang out

Come here often?

Since you are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with, you need to take a hard look at who you’re spending your time with.

Becoming a member of a group of like minded people will change your life faster than anything else. Being able to brainstorm and share experiences with people that get you is powerful.

Positive energy breads action, when you see others with the same goals winning, you’ll believe it’s possible for yourself.

You can find new groups of people on forums, comment sections in blogs, Facebook groups, LinkedIn group, attending conferences and seminars, and joining master classes.

Find a group you want to be a part of and join, if it costs money then pay it, it’ll hit on the first step.

The more of these steps you can combine, the more likely you will be to get started taking massive action.

Step 5: Eat the Elephant

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

If you’ve invested your time, money and now have a support group in place it’s time to set up some actions.  Break your goal down into a step by step process. I’m talking about small, easy, winnable steps.

Make it so simple that you CAN’T fail. Tim Ferris uses this exact process to ensure an early victory in everything he starts. Early wins lead to more wins, again, success begets success.

When you start the snowball of success it’s hard to stop.

If you need help getting started use an action list, not a to do list.

What’s the difference?

If you’ve been around the corporate world long enough you’ve probably run into lean or continuous improvement. Even if you don’t like corporate, there is one undeniable fact:

Corporations work because they have systems.

The action list is a beautifully simple system.  It’s in essence a spreadsheet and I made one for you to use. You can use this sheet to help you eat the elephant and get started.

• The first column is the date you start
• The second column is the actual problem or opportunity you need to work on
• The third column is the action itself
• The fourth column is who this action is assigned to (if you’re just motivation yourself and not a team don’t worry about this column)
• The fifth column is the DUE DATE
• The sixth column tells you the status of the action: 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 100%
• The final column is for rewards, type in a reward that is equal to action
  • Wrote a post? Go for a run
  • Saved $5,000 last month? Go out to dinner with your spouse
  • Made 15% on a trade? Treat your to a cookout at your place
  • Launched a book? Go on a month long vacation

Can you see the power of this tool for driving you to get started? You can even post this somewhere to make it public and double down.

The action item list will show you the original problem, issue, or opportunity that drove the action in the first place, it’ll tell you when you realized you had the issue and what needed to be done and by when.

That’s a hell of a lot more information than that piece of scratch paper you are doodling on today.

I use this on every project and when I deviate from it I often fail or spend too much time working on things that don’t matter.

Step 6: Reward yourself

Touched on above in our action item list, when you get started and get that first win celebrate. Get together with a group of friends, your significant other, or go do something for yourself that you’ve been putting off.

When I wrote my first post for Austin, my wife and I went out on a date. It was a simple win but a milestone on a seven year journey to becoming something other than an employee. I’m learning about the online world and I’m taking action.

Bask in the glory of taking action and use the past rewards for future motivation. This will help you in the lows and give you something to look forward to when the work gets hard.

Plan your rewards.

Everything in life feels better when it’s earned. This step is short and sweet and often overlooked. We tend to be such task masters that we forget to do this.

Combined with eating the elephant you need to celebrate every win.

Celebration is key to future success and motivation.

Step 7: Face your Fear (and Get out of Your Head!)

If you’re like me, this is the biggest thing keeping you from getting started.

Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of success?

Everything else above will not get you anywhere until you finally face your fears. Most of these are human nature and some were learned at a young age.

These fears haunt us and send us back into a time when we didn’t have the confidence to win.

Fear of failing? You already failed to get started – I failed for 7 years.

Fear of rejection? Most people don’t have the balls to speak out against you – the people that responded to my first post did so with praise, no one said anything negative.

Fear of success? Are you actually happy doing what you are doing now? – No, and I’m finally going to Take Control and get started.

Negative head speak is a major contributor to not getting started.  Learn to argue with the voice in your head, I promise you won’t get locked up in the loony bin.

If you’ve ever been on a long run, or about to go into an interview, you know this voice.  It’s the child, the lizard brain, in us that keeps us from taking action.

This fear is left over from days when we had acute dangers threatening our existence. This reaction kept us safe.

The only dangers we face today are the dangers associated with meaningless lives, financial servitude, and not becoming the best possible people we can become.

Take this system and own it, it serves me in everything that I do.  I took me seven years to figure this out – you now have the tools and the resources get started TODAY.

“There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth…not going all the way, and not starting.” – Buddha

Do or do not. The choice is yours.

So, tell us. Where are you stuck at, and what are you committing to?

Get unstuck and your life becomes limitless.

Take control.

-Brandon