I’ve been hearing a lot of chatter lately regarding “Getting Rich Quick” due to the high profile success (at least within the search world) of characters like Jeremy Shoemaker (ShoeMoney) and others like him. He even posted a video on his blog where he appeared agitated while addressing the countless questions he gets about how others can “Strike It Rich, Quickly.”
Let’s get one thing clear. There is absolutely no way to GET RICH QUICK. No one has ever done it. No one has ever made a ton of money without putting in time, or at least a great deal of thought, before the so-called overnight success. But I know the problem and why people look at the success of someone like ShoeMoney as Getting Rich Quick, and I’ll explain why it stirs the pot.
I’ve always been somewhat of an intelligent fellow. Even dating back to my high school days, everything came easy. Fast forward to my professional career as a freelance web designer, ecommerce developer, and search engine marketer, and I’ve still kind of been able to coast through, absorb material like a sponge, and have a great deal of success. The problem is that when I get forced into discussing my career with others, I often give the impression that my job is easy, that my work is easy, that there isn’t any stress, and that I make easy money. We in the industry know this isn’t the case, but when you work from home and are able to pick and choose your clients and how much you get paid, you tend to have a “this grass is pretty damn green” type attitude. I’ve taken the “work smarter, not harder” philosophy to the next level here.
This is where people like Shoe and I (not that I’ve had anywhere near the success he’s had) run into trouble. When we explain to others what we do and how we make our money, we tend to play our efforts down a bit. We tend to take all the hard work we put in for granted, because quite frankly, my job doesn’t always feel like work. It sometimes feels like we’re playing office. So when Shoe is on his radio show kind of in awe of himself amazed at how quickly and easily he has achieved this great success, it sometimes comes off like he made all this loot overnight and with little effort, because the process with which he succeeded made so much sense to him that it’s hard to articulate for others.
The fact is, there is no such thing as a true overnight success. No one said one day, I’m going to do THIS, the next day did THIS, and on day three had THIS make them $3,000,000. It takes a lot of brain power, intelligence, a ton of your own time and effort along with a little bit of luck (or God or whatever you believe) to make money on your own. I slaved for 3 years 10-12 hours a day to get our company to where it is now. Towards the middle of year 3, our business blew up. It could have been looked at as an overnight success because one day we were a network of run of the mill designers/developers and the next day we were for some reason getting calls from all over the country. However, if I looked over my shoulder at the trail that I took to get here, it is riddled with blood, sweat, tears, a ton of empty Dunkin Donuts coffee cups, some candy bar wrappers, a ton of beer bottles from the late nights when I could barely keep my eyes open, and countless empty cigarette packs (although I quit smoking more than three years ago).
The road to success is never easy. If you want to have a successful business, you will ALWAYS have to put in a lot of your own time, or at least throw some money at it. And the biggest surprise to most people is that having money isn’t easy. If you’re making a lot of money, that comes with a price also.
A wise man once said: “Mo Money, Mo Problems.” Actually, the Notorious B.I.G. said that, but it is a cold hard fact. The more money you have, the more problems you’re going to run into. There is no easy way to make money (although some methods are definitely more ideal than others), and there is no easy way to possess money. It’s all hard, and if you’re looking for a quick and dirty way to get rich, forget it. You’re never going to pull it off without putting in the hard work.
