Rewire Your Brain For Online Success: 5 Essential Mindset Shifts

You are scrolling through Instagram and you see yet another person who’s made it online they’re travelling the world launching their dream product or living in a fancy house with a Lamborghini in front. you get jealous and think ‘I want to be them.’

I had an export company in the Philippines which built and exported millions of dollars worth of products. I created a network of websites that was earning $2400 a day. And I created stock images and videos which have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars.

None of it was easy. But it was all due to one thing: starting out with the right mindset.

You’ve got an amazing online idea. It’s exciting. It keeps you up at night. It’s worth $1,000,000 easily.

But then reality sets in:

  • I don’t understand all this tech stuff
  • I can’t even build a website
  • I don’t know how to market it
  • How do I take payments or deal with customers?

Ecommerce sales are over $6 trillion a year. And all you want is just a small slice.

You have to start by realising that any business is a marathon not a sprint. It takes time. That’s why they call it building a business. It’s brick by brick.

Every successful business I had took at least a year to start earning money. You probably don’t want to hear that. There are a lot of YouTube videos that say “just do this and you’ll be rich.” But it’s not true. Could you imagine starting a supermarket or a shoe shop in the local shopping mall in a few days? Online is no different.

To run the business marathon you need the right mental shoes and that’s your mindset. If you were going to climb Mount Everest and you were wearing flip flops you wouldn’t get very far. You need the right tools and the right knowledge, but most importantly the right mindset.

Let’s look at the mindset shifts you need to turn your dreams into reality:

1. First – You need a Growth mindset. Growing yourself.

We all think “yes I’m good at one thing but I’m not good at another.” For example you’re good at math but you’re no good at sport so you don’t bother doing sport. That’s a fixed mindset. A growth mindset is “I’m going to learn. I’m going to improve my skills and be persistent. Until I can do it.”

I’m good at tech stuff but I’m useless at anything that needs to be built by hand. But I still went ahead and converted the car I have in England into a camper van. I embraced the challenge.

When I built the factory in the Philippines I had no idea of the machinery we would need, of how to make moulds for the resin parts, how to cast metal, the employment laws or how to create a database to do the payroll. I had to learn and learn and learn.

It wasn’t about being good or bad at it. It was about getting on and learning it. Think of your brain like a muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets!

So the shift to a growth mindset helps you embrace the challenges as an opportunity for learning, to improve your expertise, rather than thinking you’re not good enough.

“It’s not that I’m so smart it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein

2. Second – Action Over Perfection

Raise your hands if you’ve ever spent hours tweaking something to make it perfect. Maybe in your house deciding where the cushions should go or how much stuff to put on the mantelpiece. I know I’ve done that many times with websites. On the colors or the layouts. It’s called analysis paralysis.

But with online business there’s a lot to do. The website, a blog, the email list, social media marketing, YouTube videos, making logos, deciding a business name and more. So it’s better to just get something up and worry about perfection later.

Here’s a website I made in 2002 for quilts we were selling from the Philippines. By today’s standards it looks awful. But it did the job and we had many customers.

Launch something, learn, get feedback and improve as you go. Don’t let perfection stop your progress.

Think about when you learned how to ride a bike. I’m sure you wobbled, fell off a few times and maybe even scraped your knees. But you didn’t give up. You got back on and went a few yards. Then a bit further until you finally got the hang of it. Online success and business success is exactly like that. Keep going and you’ll learn.

So just get on with it. If you want to create a YouTube channel, think about a topic, get your phone out, record yourself, and upload it. If you want to build a website just buy some hosting, learn the basics and build one. It doesn’t matter if they’re no good because you’re just practising. You can just delete the website or YouTube channel and make a better one later.

3. Third – Think Long-Term (REALLY Long-Term)

Rome wasn’t built in a day. A successful online business isn’t either. Think years not days. That’s where the real magic happens. You start learning techniques and creating systems that build a real foundation. You get better and better.

I was exporting from the Philippines for 13 years. I made stock photos and graphic design images on and off for 20 years. It doesn’t matter that it takes time to start because you’re building something for your future that will last.

I watched a video recently where the guy was talking about having a 20-year business plan. The main guy I follow for making YouTube videos – Ed Lawrence – talks about having an attitude where you don’t expect to make a living until three years in. It’s not that it will necessarily take that long but that takes the pressure off. You start thinking about how you can make a useful channel, that will help people, rather than how to make money out of people.

I’m talking about building a legacy. Where you can look back after 5 years and see all that you’ve accomplished.

“It takes 20 years to make an overnight success.” – Eddie Cantor

It’s not about success overnight; it’s about showing up, putting in the work, and building something that will stand the test of time.

Statistics show that businesses that focus on long-term goals are much more likely to succeed. Think Amazon and Google.

4. Fourth – Failure. It’s a FREE Lesson!

Miles Beckler, a guy I used to watch on YouTube a lot, had a saying: “Success isn’t on the left or on the right it’s in front of you. It’s just that there’s a lot of hurdles in the way.”

In other words, a lot of failures and hurdles to get over.

Nobody likes to fail. It hurts and it’s frustrating. But truly successful people understand that they’re going to fail hundreds of times. And more importantly that it teaches you a lot. Consider failures as stepping stones. What did you learn, what could you do better next time, what do you need to study. Each failure gets you closer to winning.

We had a massive failure with the export business. When a container got to the US the varnish on everything had cracked. It looked ugly. We’re talking several hundred thousand dollars worth of goods. Not only that but we were in the process of making products for another two containers. It was a disaster. We had to take everything apart, strip the varnish and reapply it.

It cost us over a year’s profit to fix everything and we had to give the customer a big chunk of money. It also cost a lot of stress and lost sleep.

In the end we found a better technique for applying the varnish. It even reduced costs. But it was a massive hurdle. Stressful but in the end the kind of lesson that makes you better than your competitors.

“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.” – Michael Jordan

5. Lastly – Be Like Water: Adaptable and Flexible

The Internet is changing all the time. What works today might not work tomorrow. So being flexible and able to adapt is crucial. It’s good actually because if you keep on top of the latest technology you’ll have an advantage. I’m using a lot of AI even to produce this video.

People are slow to change. I still hear people talking about search engine optimization for their websites, looking for the right keywords. But as far as I’m concerned that’s dead. Back in the day keywords could get you to the top of Google but nowadays it’s different. The top is full of AI results, adverts, Reddit posts, suggestions and videos. I just did a search for “make money online” and the regular results weren’t until the fourth page down. Yet people are still teaching and using it.

So if you stay curious and open minded you can get ahead of others. Think of yourself like water in a stream finding the best way to flow around rocks.

Nothing I did was conventional or just following old tactics:

  • With the export business I took a product they were making by hand and sped it up using machinery.
  • With my affiliate websites I took a format that worked and had a programme made that would create hundreds of similar websites. That worked back in the early 2000s as no one else was doing it but it wouldn’t work now.
  • With the graphic design stock images I outsourced parts of the images then multiplied them together to create more images.

Once you have learned the basics, start thinking outside the box. How can you make things better, easier and more efficient?

OK, let’s step back a bit. All of this sounds good but very confusing when you haven’t even created a website. All I’m talking about here is starting off with the right mindset.

Don’t expect to be making millions overnight and don’t fall for these get-rich-quick schemes. They don’t work.

A successful online business is about:

  • Learning
  • Taking action
  • Thinking long term
  • Trying out new things
  • Understanding that you will fail many times before you succeed

By having the right mindset you can build something amazing, lasting and a thing that makes you feel really proud.