List Building: One Sure Way to Become a Successful Entrepreneur

by Tellman H. Knudson

Published on this site: October 18th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

I have an extremely important point to share with you today. I'm successful online, but I had to learn, just as you may be learning now. I did a few things that didn't work. I had no list, couldn't build a list, and then, I made a decision.

Here's the way it worked for me, and I'll leave it up to you as to whether or not you want to apply this. However, I had the exact same issues as you may be having now. It was, "Okay, what should I do first, what should I do second? Who should I listen to? There are all these different ways of doing things and I'm so confused. I'm going to learn all these different things," et cetera.

I said, "You know what? I'm going to follow a home study course to the letter without reinventing it and without saying 'No, I'm going to do it this way instead.'" I think my idea is better than what the home study course is saying.

But then, I said, "That hasn't worked for me so far to achieve the level of success that I want to achieve." So, I made the conscious choice to blindly follow someone else's advice and to see what happened. I blindly followed someone's advice that I trusted.

Guess what happened? it worked!

Every single time thereafter that I've blindly followed someone's advice that I've trusted it hasn't always worked, but about 85% of the time it does. In my experience, when you're following someone's advice that you trust it works 85% of the time.

What I'm suggesting to you is that you might want to have my advice be the advice that you follow-that would be great-but if not, that's okay. I'm not going to take it personally, but I do recommend that you do follow someone's advice in their home study course and just do it so you can learn how to do everything. Experience is much better than conceptual understanding in this kind of a game.

My best advice to you is to concentrate first and foremost on list building. Don't build a site. Don't do anything, until you have your list, and there are many ways to accomplish that. Try a list-building course like MyFirstList. In nine hours, you'll know all you need to know to get that accomplished. Or try someone else's list-building course. It's up to you.

If you already have a list and already have something going, that's fine-you probably understand some of the basics of it. But study the process and be sure you're building your list the quickest way that you can. You know the old saying: "The money's in the list." That statement is absolutely true.

But you'll have plenty of time to think about buliiding your list as you learn, and you'll make improvements to your list-building strategy as time goes on. That's the best habit that you can possibly develop in my experience if you tend to think about stuff and analyze stuff-you're already good at that and you don't need to practice anymore. You need to practice on the implementation piece of the puzzle. Implementation is very, very important. You can study and have all the knowledge in the world about list building or anything else, and if you don't implement what you've learned, what good is it?

You have to study one person that can teach you to build a strong list, and then, put what you've learned into practice--immediately. Don't wait. Just do it. You won't really learn how to do things, until you actually do them. Don't be afraid of that. Jump right in, right or wrong. The more you do something, the better you'll be, the bigger your list will be, and the farther along your business will be. Procrastication and fear will only stunt your growth.

Learn from someone you trust, do what he or she tells you to do--to the letter, whether you agree with it or not. Chances are that you'll find the success that you're looking for.

Tellman Knudson - is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. and a master list-builder. With http://myfirstlist.com, he can show you how to build an incredible list in about nine hours.