What do you do when it rains success stories in your life?

What do you do when it rains success stories in your life? Do you make lemonade or do you suck on the bitter lemon? What is wrong with doing both?

My new reason why is Cream Teas

I recently returned from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Isle of Man and Northern Island. I went there on holiday with my mother and younger sister.

It was my 24th trip to England and I wasted no time in trying out those things I missed most about England. It is called cream tea.

Everyone knows that the British are obsessed with tea. They drink that stuff like Americans drink Coke. Even during World War II, the British General Monty stopped fighting with the Germans in Africa one afternoon so his soldiers could have tea.

Well if you are going to have afternoon tea, you have to have some sweets to go with it. I don’t know if the British invented scones but they have perfected them.

A scone is key to a great cream tea. You cut the scone in half and that slather outrageous amounts of clotted cream and jam on it.

There is even a national debate on whether you put the cream or the jam on the scone first. Personally I don’t care but I am a cream first person. I like to think it doesn’t matter because it is all going to end up in my stomach so the fastest way to get it there is how I take my tea.

I have an unadulterated love for the cream tea. One day we stopped for lunch and I noticed this place served tea also in the afternoon. Screw lunch let’s go straight for the cream tea. That is what I ordered for lunch. For desert I had another cream tea. Eating 2 cream teas in less than 30 minutes is what heaven must feel like.

It was at that lunch table that I realized that cream teas were my new WHY. Why I pick myself back up when knocked down after losing my 2 biggest affiliate programs. I explained to my very skeptical mother why I get  up at 5 AM to work on my online business for 2 hours before going to work. Why I keep working on it when I get home from work in the evening.

I just soaked in the experience I was feeling at that moment. I looked around and memorized everything that I saw, felt, smelled, heard and touched. That moment is locked in my memory and I refuse to let it go.

Today is Saturday. College football. It is a religion in the South. My religion is University of Georgia football.

I am sitting in the living room in my mother’s house in Athens, GA. The only light on is the lamp on the table next to the sofa. It is 5:07 AM. Nobody is up.

I swear I can smell those scones and cream teas. That is why I am sitting here crossed legs on the sofa with my laptop working on my online business before I leave at 10AM for a football game that doesn’t start until 4:30PM.

If you are going to succeed at reaching a goal you have to have a big enough WHY. That WHY has to drive you and motivate you to do things that others will not do. For me I can literally taste my WHY!

My trip to England is the first of many success stories.

Ranking my way to my next success story

I love and read the blog of Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income. It is one of the few blogs that I read religiously.  He recently started Niche Site Duel 2.0.

I created a new website iHvacZone to participate in the niche site duel 2.0.

I hired multiple writers to write me content for the website. Once I got the content back I put it up on the website and drip feeded  the content.

I have Jetpack installed on the website to grab stats of my visitors. Stats show how many visitors a day I get, what are the most popular posts they read, where did they come from and what keywords did they search for that brought them to my website.

If you have a website then you need to capture stats. That is invaluable advice that everyone should listen to and follow.

My website is little over a month old. There are 18 keywords that people have used to find my website.

Yesterday I spent some time going through those keywords to see if my website was ranking for any of them. My next success story is that my website is already ranking somewhere in the first 5 pages of Google for 7 keywords! Here they are:

Keyword Search	SEO Rank	Page
best hvac books	16	2
traits of a great technician	21	3
what tools does an hvac technician need	25	3
must have hvac tools	26	3
hvac nate study guide	33	4
nate hvac study guide	35	4
background check, hvac applicants	44	5

My SEO Ninja Success Story

Ninjas are known for their stealth and their prowess. They succeed and you never know they were there. I am making the bold claim that my learning how to do SEO is equivalent to a Ninja.

I don’t know if what I have learned about SEO is a success story or not but being in control and taking action is a success story in my brain. So I claim it to be a success story.

I did some research and learned that you can can create videos and powerpoint presentation and PDF documents and put them on video and document sharing websites. In the documents and videos you can include a link to your website. The more links then the higher you rank in the SERP.

At least I think that is what makes good SEO. If not or you have a better plan then email me or post your suggestion in the comments below. I will add your input as a future success story.

I created two videos about best hvac books. This is my highest ranking keyword. I created a PowerPoint presentation and a PDF document. I have posted that video on YoutTube, Vimeo and Metacafe. I put the documents on docstoc, scribd and slideshare. I now have 12 blacklinks that I created that point to my best havac books post.

The taking action and learning a skill that I need to know is my success story. The fact that one of my videos is already ranking on the second page of Google is yet another success story!

I am the Master of my Fate

Even if you spend 8 years 4 months and 6 days in prison, your mind is still free. How you chose to use your mind determines your fate.

I am taking control over my fate by creating my own products. I recently created custom Facebook Timeline Covers that I sold on the WarriorForum.

Thank you to everyone that took the time to post on my thread. You help is another success story. I sold $120 which is yet another success story.

I do not have command enough of the English language to tell you how empowering it feels to have struggled through learning Adobe Photoshop and then see a product that you created.

I almost cried when I got my first email that said you have money. I got many more emails like that.

People do not change. Their values change. When your values change then that changes the person. My new value is that I control my destiny. This has been a soul touching success story.

I already have designed out my next product which will be product review videos. When I release this product it is going to be a future success story.

Hard Work rewarded Success Story

Several months ago I joined up as an affiliate for Blonyx and Rogue Fitness. I see them as another stream of income.

A few days ago I received an email with a subject line of “You’ve got money.” Of course I quickly opened up that email. I received almost $50 in commissions from Rogue Fitness.

Hell Yes. I did a warrior victory dance that scared the crap out of my cat who felt it safer to be behind the sofa than in the room with me doing my warrior victory dance.

I had multiple orders that combined totaled right at $1,000.00. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Well my success story began with $1k in sales.

You better believe that crating my articles to promote their products has worked its way on to my to do list.

If it makes you conflicted, it can still be a success story

I learned about values and being conflicted from Tony Robbins. As I mentioned earlier people have values that they cherish. If you do something that is contrary to your top values then you find you struggle or it pains you to do it or it just doesn’t feel right.

That process is summed up in one word and it is conflicted. There is a conflict between what you are doing and your values. That describes how I felt about solo ads.

The solo ad business is based on a burn and churn business model. You get people to opt-in to your list by offering them a freebie. Then you burn them by sending them email after email after email. Eventually they opt out of your list which is the churn forcing you to keep adding more and more subscribers to replace them.

I had no problem in learning how to build squeeze pages. Or writing a report that you give away. Or buying solo ads to drive traffic to your squeeze page. Or getting people added to your list. None of this conflicted with my values.

When I got to the point where I was ready to start sending email after email after email, that is when I got conflicted.

I started this blog the end of January or the first of February in 2013. In a little over eight months I have built this website to where I get over 3,000 unique visitors a month.

I think I got them because I was delivering valuable content and not trying to sell my readers something at every possible opportunity.

Sending those emails went against my values. I would find myself sending at the computer wanting to do it but not being able to click the send button because it did not feel right.

In fact I felt conflicted enough about it that I seriously thought about removing solo ads from my 2013 goals. I felt that I would never be able to use solo ads as a source of income.

I hated missing out on an opportunity to make money but it just didn’t feel right.

I never gave up on it. I kept thinking of what i could do different from the traditional solo ad business model that would not rub my values. Well that option came.

I decided to partner up with a guy that is building his solo ad business. He works from home so he has the time during the day to sit in Facebook and Skype groups to sell solo ads.

I am turning over my list that I built to him. I am going to start selling solo ads. Once I get an order then I am turning it over to him to manage sending the emails and building the list. We are splitting profits 50/50.

It opens up an income stream for me. I can concentrate on selling the solo ads and he runs the backend.

As I mentioned before it is Football Saturday in Athens today. Tomorrow when I return home I will start working on my sales page for my solo ads. I encourage everyone to purchase one of my solo ads!!!

This is clearly my biggest success story.

It is possible to take something that is against your values and mold it until you are able to succeed. That is why I have just written this 2,000+ word post sitting in the dark before anybody else in the house has even woken up.

The best ending to my list of success stories is to find a place that serves cream teas at 8 AM in Athens, Georgia on a football Saturday so I can have the most perfect breakfast. Unfortunately there isn’t one which is where sucking on the bitter lemon weaves its way into this blog post.