How to Triple Your Online Business Profits (In 90 Days or Less)

By Sean Ogle •  Updated: 07/20/15 •  12 min read

Note from Sean

Today’s post comes from Tom McCann – a Location Rebel member who has been making money online for almost two years while traveling to over 15 different countries.

Tom shares daily videos on his YouTube Channel where he shares strategies to help others achieve their goals in as little time as possible, and also writes at his blog, Unstoppable Gainer.

For me personally, I love using games as a way to make progress on your business – or any other goal for that matter.

That’s why I really liked Tom’s approach to increasing business profits. It’s practical and fun, so that’s why I wanted to share it with you today.

Here’s Tom…

—-

As an online business owner, you are like a horse.

That’s right, a horse. . .

In horse racing, there’s a principle called the “slight edge effect”.

The horse that comes first often earns 10 TIMES more than the horse who comes in second.

However, does that mean that the horse who came in first place is 10 times faster than the horse who came in second place?

Does it mean it was twice as fast?

One-minute faster?

10 seconds faster?

The reality is that the horse who wins the race, often wins by a nose. That nose of difference – that slight edge – is the difference between a normal payday, and a fortune.

Your Online Business Is The Same…

In your online business, the slight edge effect is still at play. Using it to triple your profits is entirely possible.

You don’t need to work three times as hard. You don’t need to make your products and services three times better.

All you need to do is get the slight edge – that slight edge allows you to triple profits in 90 days or less.

In this article, you’ll learn how to get that slight edge. It has nothing to do with tactics or business strategy, but everything to do with the supercomputer inside your skull.

How To Get The Slight Edge?

Tell me if you’ve ever had this problem:

You know EXACTLY what it is you need to do… but you just can’t get yourself to do it!

You know that you need to go to the gym if you want to look good in your swimsuit this Summer, but you just can’t make yourself go.

You know that you need to do make those sales calls or get that project done today… yet you procrastinate and waste your time.

You know that if you just worked 30 minutes each night on your side business, that you could quit your job and work for yourself in a matter of MONTHS… but when you come home, you turn the TV on and tell yourself that you’ll do it tomorrow.

Notice the trend here. Obviously knowing WHAT to do isn’t enough. We need to learn HOW to make ourselves do it.

I could give you 739 methods to triple the size of your business, but without understanding what I’m about to tell you, you’d never take any action.

It’s not because you’re lazy. It’s because…

Your 10,000-year-old mind is killing you…

Why do we sabotage ourselves in this way?

Why don’t we do the things we know we should do, to achieve our goals and get new results?

It all comes down to the supercomputer inside your skull.

Our brain is literally perfect in every way… if we lived 10,000 years ago.

That’s so important to understand that I’ll say it again: Your brain is perfect IF you lived 10,000 years ago.

The pace of evolution is such that our brain today is almost exactly the same as it was 10,000 years ago. This leads to something called “cognitive biases”.

Cognitive biases are ways we are fooled by our own brain. They are evolutionary adaptations that allowed us to survive and prosper when we lived in a small tribe of 150 people in the African Savanna.

However, these adaptations no longer serve us – in fact, they can make our lives pretty difficult!

Cognitive biases are why we get frustrated, sad, disappointed, unmotivated and don’t take action towards your most important goals.

However, the opportunity here is like no other. If you learn to overcome even just a few of the cognitive biases, then you can literally master your mind!

[Note: I’m going to keep everything practical in this post. However, if you’d like to learn more about the 10,000 year old mind and the theories and research behind it, Dr. David Buss has a wonderful book on the topic. Evolutionary psychology: The New Science Of The Mind]

What Is A “Growth Hack”?

How do we counteract these cognitive biases? How do we start to do what we know – and take more of the right actions?

We use “Growth Hacks”.

18 months ago, I came up with a framework called “Growth Hacks”. Growth Hacks are simple things you and I can do, to work WITH our mind rather than try and fight it.

We can’t change our brains so the cognitive biases no longer exist – but we can change our actions so that cognitive biases don’t get in our way.

When you use Growth Hacks, you can expect less struggle, strife and frustration, and MORE progress, growth, happiness and success in whatever that means to you

How Growth Hacks will triple your business

Growth Hacks have EVERYTHING to do with your online business.

Success ultimately comes down to what you DO. It’s not what you KNOW, but what you DO.

You already know what to DO, to triple your business. You have the mechanics.

Growth Hacks are how you take MASSIVE ACTION towards your goals every single day and turbo-charge your results.

The first Growth Hack that will triple your business is called the Money Game. It works like this…

Game #1: The Money Game

If you want to triple your business, the fastest way to do it is to triple your number of sales.

To triple your sales, you need to ASK for more sales. However, this opens you up to more rejection- and the 10,000-year-old mind HATES rejection.

If you ask someone to buy from you and they say “no”, absolutely nothing happens. It’s a free lottery ticket! All upside, no downside.

However, our 10,000-year-old mind believes that rejection leads to being kicked out of the tribe!

The fear of rejection we face isn’t the fear of this one person rejecting us, but the fear of the TRIBE rejecting us. If the tribe rejects us, 10,000 years ago this would have meant isolation, hunger and ultimately death…

This is all happening below the level of consciousness, but we can overcome this adaptation with a Growth Hack

How To Play The Money Game

When you play the money game you take your focus off of results (whether you get a yes or no) and put it ENTIRELY on the process. Here’s how it works.

    1. Pick an amount of money you would love to make in sales (Don’t be afraid to be ambitious)
    2. Set a deadline for when you’d like to earn this money – between 30 and 90 days is best.
    3. Whatever number you said, TRIPLE it! If you want to earn $5,000, then your new number is $15,000.

Your ONLY goal for the next 30-90 days is to make your new number in PROPOSALS. If you want to earn $5,000, then your goal is to make $15,000 worth of PROPOSALS. How many sales you make is meaningless. Only proposals matter.

This means, if you want to make $10,000 in new business in the next 90 days, then you win the money game by asking others for $30,000 worth of new business. Even if you don’t make a penny, if you made $30,000 in proposals, you win!

Here’s the beauty of this game: Since your entire focus in on PROPOSALS – on asking for the order – it doesn’t matter if the prospects buy.

All that matters is that you ask! Every time you ask, regardless of the external result, YOU WIN and get one step closer to your goal

When you combine this with David’s advice in this post, you can’t help but bring in more sales.

Game #2: The $1,000 Game

Ever notice how many people with great lives complain about trivial things?

Or how we can’t stop thinking about what Steve said at work or that cashier who was mean to us?

Your brain is wired to focus on the negative. This cognitive bias is called the “Pain-avoiding” bias.

10,000 years ago it was VERY important to focus on the negative and potentially painful things in life.

Wild animals, neighbouring tribes, shortages of food, bad weather – we had to constantly be on the lookout for these things because these things could lead to death.

However, we still have this programming to focus on the negative even though it doesn’t serve us anymore.

However, there’s an opportunity from the pain-avoiding bias. That is…

Pain registers with our mind between 5 and 20 times more than pleasure. The desire to move away from pain is EXTREMELY motivating and we can use this to our advantage!

This is why you will run away from a ravenous dog much faster than you will run towards a million dollars.

How To Play The $1,000 Game

Pick a process goal – something you want to DO, rather than a result you desire.

Just like in the money game, take your focus off of what you want (more sales) and put your focus on the only thing you can control (making proposals)

As an easy example, let’s say you want to go to the gym three times per week.

Call up a friend, and make a bet with her. Tell her that you will go to the gym three times per week for the next 30 days. If you fail and miss even one day, you will pay her $1,000.

NOTE: Make sure you pick someone who will hold you to your deal!

If you can’t get motivated by a long term vision, this will light a fire under your ass like nothing else!

Then, when you’re lying in bed thinking of how painful it would be to go to the gym, your brain will remember that $1,000 is on the line! Watch your motivation and energy soar when you play this game.

What’s cool about this game is that it works tremendously well with even $20. You don’t need to put $1,000 on the line right away. You can use small amounts of money or come up with fun ways you could embarrass your accountability partner in public if they fail.

Game #3: The Goals Game

The third bias and Growth Hack we’ll discuss is “Mis-waiting bias”.

This refers to our natural tendency to “mis-wait” our time.

To explain, let me ask you a question.

Today, have you spent most of your time thinking about your goals and the things you want to accomplish?

Did you spend most of your time thinking about how you’ll improve your health and well-being? How you can make more money or find a job you really love? How you can improve your intimate, physical and family relationships?

Undeniably, health, wealth and love are the most important areas of our life. Unfortunately, we don’t spend enough time thinking about them.

Instead, our thoughts go to the latest celebrity scandal, the gossip in the office and other.

The real question is, “How do we keep our focus on the important few, rather than the trivial many?

Rewrite Your Goals Daily

Trying to discipline yourself to keep your thoughts off of pointless things is impossible – it takes too much willpower.

This is where our final growth hack comes in: Rewrite your goals daily.

When you write something down on paper, you activate your subconscious mind through something called a neuro-psycho-motor-activity.

When you write out a goal, the goal is imprinted into your subconscious. Your subconscious mind then gets to work 24 hours a day to help you achieve that goal.

This is why you’ve had the experience of writing down your goals, losing the piece of paper. Then finding the sheet of paper months later and realising you achieved most of your goals without even thinking about them!

If writing down your goals once year is powerful, imagine the power of writing down your goals EVERY day.

That’s exactly what I want you to do.

How To Play The Goals Game

  1. Buy a spiral bound notebook that you will write in each morning.
  2. Each morning, before you do anything else, write out 10 goals you’d like to achieve in the next 12 months. You can write more than 10 if you wish, but write at least 10.
  3. The next morning, rewrite your goals again without looking at the previous page.

The most important thing here is to write out 10 goals, and to give every goal a deadline. Deadlines act as a forcing mechanism and give you a sense of urgency to achieve your goal.

Also, be ambitious. The rule here is that there are no unrealistic goals – there are only unrealistic deadlines.

Do this exercise for 30 days, it only takes 5 minutes, and watch your life take off. Not only will you achieve your goals two, three or even ten times as fast, but your energy, motivation and passion for life will soar. This is the real benefit.

Did You Enjoy These Growth Hacks?

If you’ve read this far, you understand how powerful Growth Hacks can be.

However, I only had time to share 3 with you in today’s post.

I’ve put together a video, specifically for Sean’s readers, called “5 New Ways To Get Motivated”

In the video, I’ll share 5 Growth Hacks that you can use to get motivated in the morning, and STAY motivated all day.

Sean Ogle

Sean Ogle is the Founder of Location Rebel where he has spent the last 12+ years teaching people how to build online businesses that give them the freedom to do more of the things they like to do in life. When he's not in the coffee shops of Portland, or the beaches of Bali, he's probably sneaking into some other high-class establishment where he most certainly doesn't belong.
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6 comments on "How to Triple Your Online Business Profits (In 90 Days or Less)"

  1. Tom says:

    Thanks for posting this Sean. Hope you’re readers get a lot of value from it.

    Let me know in the comments which growth hack you’re going to start using.

    After all, you can read 1,000 posts like this, but if you don’t take action on what you learn, your life will never change.

    So let me know, which one game are you going to start playing so you can achieve your goals much faster?

    If anyone wants to reach out to me personally (I’m friendly, I promise 🙂 you can contact me at tom [at] unstoppablegainer [dot] com.

    Talk soon!

    Tom

  2. Christian LS says:

    Nice mind hacks Tom.

    I’ve already taken action by making a plan for the MoneyGame, and am gonna start journaling in my goals too.

    Do keep up the videos, your approach to accomplishments is quite interesting too! 🙂 (Ex. Reading Books)

    Christian LS

  3. Great stuff Sean – thanks for sharing Tom’s guest post. I’m definitely digging the whole idea of growth hacks… I especially like the whole idea of putting out proposals (Money Game #1). In order to make more sales, you need to ask for more sales – so simple and true yet so often missed. Just as you said, “how many sales you make is meaningless. Only proposals matter.” Indeed. All three growth hacks are great – thanks for sharing man, cheers!

  4. Thanks for a great post, Tom and Sean. I just LOVED how you point out that you’re not lazy for not taking action. It’s so common that “experts” tell you you’re just lazy and need to get your act together. While the latter is true, blaming laziness isn’t beneficial to anyone. Understanding what it is that makes us behave this way is so much more effective – and as you point out, it’s our outdated brains that make us think in a certain way.

  5. I love this concept: Growth Hacks. Great tips on how to achieve them, Tom!

    I’ll have to try Game #3.

    P.S. That’s a killer post you linked about sales 😉 😛

  6. Aliyyah says:

    This was an extremely motivating post. Since reading, I have started writing my goals down every day. I also am playing the Money Game (#1). It is a totally different way of thinking. But with this thinking, I think I will soon triple my freelance income. Thank you so much!

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