How to Overcome Your Weaknesses

“Craig, what attracted you to Early to Rise?” people often ask me, “Of all things you could have done with your life, why did you want to run this business?”

Great question. There’s only one problem.

Every time someone asks me that, I have to give a damaging personal admission.

The reason Early To Rise (ETR) means so much to me is because out of our hundreds of thousands of readers, I am the one that needs the information, the help, the wisdom, and the advice, the most.

I have more weaknesses than Santa has toys. My father was bitter and jealous and, through either genetics or general behavior, he passed those faults on to me. Growing up I was scarcity minded. I was selfish. Some say I still am.

But wait, there’s more! At least according to my mother. When I joined the Big Brothers program in Toronto, I was required to have three references vouch for me. I picked my mom as one, and she was asked to fill out a questionnaire that included, “What is the applicant’s biggest weakness?” Her answer, “He’s impatient.”

As a young man I was quick to anger and prone to embarrassing outbursts and I’m ashamed to say this continued even in the early years as editor of ETR.

But it’s because of ETR that I’ve been able to change and overcome my weaknesses. I stopped swearing because of my responsibility to you, my reader. (You can read how I did that here.)

One thing that I’ve learned over the years, through both my quest for personal development and in reviewing the thousands of success stories we receive from ETR readers, is that motivation is critical to making lasting change.

Take dieting, for example. Eating for weight loss isn’t exactly rocket science, but it takes extraordinary amounts of motivation and self-discipline to make the right choices in the face of temptation everywhere you turn. It also takes motivation, even for people like me, to get off our behinds and exercise.

The same principle applies to every change we seek in our lives. It takes a tremendous amount of motivation and self-discipline to get up early each day and to work on your business or to get into the office early to get ahead of the game.

But it’s all worth it. Disciplined commitment to personal development allows you to live the life of your dreams.

Maybe you have a great idea for a book, or perhaps you want to launch a new business capitalizing on the expertise you’ve built up over your decades of experience, or maybe you want to finally start implementing the great investment advice you’re learning from Mark Ford and his team at The Palm Beach Letter.

But life is full of distractions. And as human beings, we are full of flaws. Nobody is perfect, and we all have to overcome our personal weaknesses to become successful.

It took me many years to fix my faults and build a successful online fitness business and to earn the right to run ETR. I had to overcome the weaknesses listed above, and many others that I’m almost too embarrassed to admit.

But it’s important for you to see examples of what other people have fought through. It inspires you to overcome the struggles you are dealing with right now. I’m going to be candid with you about the demons that I have beat in the course of building my business. I know it will help you. (It better, otherwise I’m embarrassing myself for nothing!)

Weakness #1 — Addiction

My father was an alcoholic, and his brother was an alcoholic, drug abuser, and cigarette smoker. Both had their lives shortened because of addiction.

I have no intentions of going down that road, but if there really is a gene for addiction, then I guess I have to be addicted to something, right?

If so, then I’m at least going to pick my poison. So I choose information and knowledge, and an insatiable appetite for learning.

It can be a double-edged sword. I have to fight not to read newspapers or magazines that other people leave lying around. I’m serious. I’m irrationally driven to read everything I can get my hands on.

But if I can tame my desire to read everything and focus on information that is relevant to my goals, then I can channel my weakness into a strength.

Now, given the opportunity, I’d surf the web all day reading various websites, but that behavior, while not destructive, doesn’t further my business. Instead, I force myself to seek productive knowledge, such as reading books like Ready, Fire, Aim by Mark Ford, and courses like the Ray Edwards Copywriting Academy that I am currently studying.

That’s how my weakness becomes strength.

My Weakness #2 — Laziness

My next biggest weakness is that I am lazy. I’ll do almost anything to avoid manual labor. I’m also mechanically inept, which doesn’t help. This isn’t something I’m proud of, but I realized early in life that if I wanted to be successful, I had to figure out a way to channel this weakness into a career based on the labor of my brain.

That’s why I’ve worked for 18 years to build a business that makes money selling my knowledge, not my labor. I turned my weakness into strength and designed a lifestyle based on working how I want, when I want.

My Weakness #3 — No tech skills

I can barely figure out how to use iTunes, download files, or create webinars. And I have no idea how to create websites or connect my sales pages to digital shopping cart systems.

While some look at that as a weakness, I see it as a strength.

You see, the money is not made through technological knowledge. You can hire that. Cheap, too. So the simple solution to this weakness is to outsource.

Do NOT spend hours and hours figuring out how to create websites. In fact, I’d say that having superior tech skills will HINDER an online business because you’ll get too focused in the technical weeds.

Instead, you should know WHAT you want, and hire someone else to figure out HOW. Focus on the big ideas that will make you money, let others sweat the small stuff. You can find cheap website help on these sites:

Odesk.com
Elance.com
Guru.com

So turn your technology weakness into a strength by learning how to delegate the tech tasks to someone else. That’s what I did.

Bottom line — there’s no weakness that is insurmountable. Any weakness can be turned into a strength if you have the proper mindset and motivation to do it.

If you’re interested in changing your situation in life…

And want to start an online business but don’t know where to start, let me show you how to create your BIG idea, write great sales copy, produce the perfect product, and create an incredible offer. We’ll spend the day together in Miami, working with my friend Bedros Keuilian and 8 other guru’s like yourself, to do all of this and more.

Reserve your spot at the 1-day Mastermind in Miami

And we’ll turn all of your weaknesses into strengths.