7 Key Actions That Will Help You to Succeed in Anything with Marina Barayeva | Ep 14

When you grow in business, learn to celebrate your milestones. Take some time to reflect on what you have done before and what’s going to be next. Take time to rest, to enjoy the moment or just do something different.

And that’s what we’re going to do with this episode. It has been a month since this podcast was launched. In this episode, I’m going to share with you my experience and my mistakes.

In this episode, we will cover:

• [00:28] Learn to celebrate the milestones
• [00:57] About this episode
• [01:17] Pick one main thing that you want to work on within next 3 to 6 months
• [01:55] How Marina learned the Chinese language within 7 months
• [03:27] Spend at least 15 minutes a day every day on working on your stuff
• [04:10] Start doing as soon as possible
• [04:40] How another person created almost the same online course as Marina and sold it a week before she launched her course
• [05:59] Let yourself make mistakes
• [06:26] Marina was so afraid to start blogging in English
• [07:00] Her first blog post is still on the site marinabarayeva.com, and it was about… traveling even if the blog is about marketing
• [08:00] Nobody cares if you make the mistake
• [08:30] Surround yourself with supportive and like-minded people
• [09:15] If your relatives don’t support your ideas, talk to them or find other people who will support you
• [10:30] If someone criticizes your work listen to those who tell you what you can improve and ignore the rest
• [12:19] Find the person who is the best in one thing that you want to work on and learn as much as you can from him/her
• [13:34] Marina multiplied her sales by 3 times by learning from Sue Bryce and Brian Tracy
• [14:28] Don’t be afraid to ask questions
• [15:17] How to ask the speaker on the conference about the advice
• [17:22] If you have any questions about the episode or want to share what you’re working on now go to marinabarayeva.com/14 and leave the comment on the blog post
• [17:51] For the show notes go to marinabarayeva.com and subscribe to the Marketing for Creatives show

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Download podcast transcript [PDF] here:

• 7 Key Actions That Will Help You to Succeed in Anything

Resources from this interview:

• Check resources for photographers from Sue Bryce on how to build a business suebryceeducation.com
• Check resources and blog of Brian Tracy
• If you want to increase your sales read the book The Art of Closing the Sale
• Follow Marina on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn

7 Key Actions That Will Help You to Succeed in Anything – Transcription

We’ll talk about seven key actions that will help you to succeed in anything. You may think “anything?” Well, basically in many things. I tried it on learning languages, learning new skills, growing business and it helped me. I’ll tell you how it works and what you can do too.

1. Pick one thing that you want to work on

So, the step number one – pick one main thing that you want to work on within the next three to six months.

You may want to do many things, but just pick one which you want to focus on, which you really want to improve with. Basically, within six months you can be good in many things in life. You might say how it’s possible because you spent 10 years in school, then a few years in college or university and you got your skills, but this is what I practice on myself.

For example, many years ago I said to myself I want to learn Chinese language and if I will be able to speak Chinese in 6 months, I can do anything. That sounds crazy.

How long time it took it to learn the second language and how good you are in that? Maybe many years and you’re still… who knows, maybe you can speak another language, maybe not. Anyway, it took me three months to learn it by myself, and that was crazy.

Because when you learn Chinese, that’s not English. It’s not Spanish. It’s not Russian. You need to memorize how to say the word, how to write and how to read it. You need to memorize the character. That were three months by myself and four months in the university. Then, little by little I could communicate. I could speak the language, and I could stay in China for already seven years.

You might say “Oh, genius.” Not really. Or like my friends like to say “Marina, this is you and what about me? I cannot do it.”

You can. The only difference between me and you is I do things. And you can do that too.

2. Spend at least 15 minutes a day every day on working on your stuff

So, this is the step number two – you need to spend 15 to 30 minutes a day, at least 15 or 30 minutes every day on learning or working on one thing that you want to achieve.

That’s how it can take you only half of the year to be good at the things you want to learn. The key point here that 15 minutes it’s not too long. In the beginning, you may want to learn more. You may want to spend one or two hours. But the more time passed you may want to leave it. In a week or two, you might say “Oh, yesterday I studied this thing for two hours.” Or “I was working on my business for 3 hours, and today I would just pass on that. I’ll do it tomorrow.” Nope. At least 15 minutes. You need to develop a habit of working on it. No excuses.

3. Start doing as soon as possible

Then the step number three – once you start learning, start doing stuff as soon as possible. Because when you do stuff, you memorize things, you learn from your mistakes or your achievements. Then you can learn more because you already know what’s the process. You know what works and what doesn’t work and you grow faster.

There was my huge failure many years ago when I was working on my online photography school. I had an online photography school before, and I was creating my first online course. It took me three months to record the audios, then create content, the images, to organize everything. I was ready to launch it. So, I set the date. I talked to other people who were willing to promote me with their email subscribers, and I was waiting for that day.

A week before my lunch there was another guy who launched almost the same course. I felt horrible. I felt like he was standing behind of me when I was creating my course and just copied everything. Because 80 percent of his content was like mine.

I don’t know how it happened, but when I launched my course (of course, everything was ready already) I got 3-4 sales in that time, but I could get more if I would lunch it faster, earlier. I could get more money, and maybe I could grow my authority in that area.

4. Let yourself make mistakes

But anyway, here’s the step number 4 – let yourself make mistakes and learn from that. Start doing stuff as they are. Stop being perfectionist. You need to start doing things. When I started writing in English, I had my blog in Russian before. Then I left it, and I wanted to write in English.

I was so afraid “How come! I will write in English. I can speak English, but I know that sometimes I make mistakes and when I write something it’s going to be online for forever.

“What I’m going to write about? How it will look like? What if I make mistakes there?”

I was so worried there. So, I told myself “I’m going to start with something, which I feel comfortable with.” And I wanted to write about business and marketing because I like those things. I created the website, I was thinking about content, but I had to write the very first blog post.

You can go to the website marinabarayeva.com and look at the very very first blog post. It wasn’t about business. It wasn’t about marketing. It was about traveling.

That time I lived in Buenos Aires and I took pictures, and I wrote sort summary because I had to start with anything to overcome this fear of doing new things. Because when you do a second time you still worry, but it much less than the first step. When you repeat it, first, you learn how to do it. You see when you do the first thing, and you make a mistake, any way you make a mistake. And then, when you do the second and third time you already have you experience, and you do it better. Don’t think about how it will look like. Just make a mistake.

But you might think like “OK, what if I will screw up there and my neighbors will tell me: “I told you, you cannot do it. Who will read it? Who needs that?”

Come on. Think about this. Who cares? Nobody cares if I will stop this podcast next week. Maybe you will miss one more podcast, but actually you’ll forget about me in a month. And that’s OK. I will start the new project. So you can do.

5. Surround yourself with supportive or like-minded people

And the step number five – surround yourself with supportive or like-minded people offline and/or online. This is the very important step if you want to speed up your growth. You need to find people who do these things like you do or who will understand what you do.

Sometimes even the word of encouragement can help you to move forward with your stuff. Those are going to be your friends, your family, or you can look for the person online to follow his or her blog, or you can find a Facebook group, or you can organize meetups. It’s very important.

Then there may be a problem which you can face. What if your relatives or close people do not support you? There was a post on Facebook another day, and the girl wrote that “I want to start a podcast, but I talked to my friends and I was preparing everything for a few months, and I’m ready to post it already. But they said: How does it work? What will you get out of it? How are you going to make money out of this?”

And she was OK. She was pretty comfortable with everything till they told you that. Think about the person who tells you that. More likely this or those people didn’t do what they are talking about. In her case those people who told her that never done the podcast.

They have no idea what it is. They have no idea how it works. Then why will you listen to them?  They have their opinion. OK. They told you. Forget about them. Find those who know what they talk about. And if someone criticizes you, this is what I usually tell my students if I teach photography:

“If someone criticizes your work if they can tell you how you can improve or they can help you with something then listen to this point. But if people tell you “oh, pictures are bad” or “who will listen to your podcast?” Come on, they have no idea what they’re talking about. Forget.

Find those who know that. If your relatives do not support you, you need to sit with them and talk to them: I’m going to do this podcast. I’m going to learn the new language. I’m going to travel the world for half of the year, one year.

They may not understand that. Talk to them, explain and tell them that you need their support. If they will accept you and they will support you it’s big personal support. But if they still will not understand that, they will still be against that, or just they can say “do whatever you want.” Well, this is a quite easy step. But what if they will say “No. I don’t like it” then that’s your choice either you do things or not. You need to decide for yourself.

If you still want to do it, look for people who will support you. Even if your relatives will not do that you need someone because if your relatives will not support you, they will discourage you. You need someone who will give you a positive emotion to you. Who you may ask sometimes questions or maybe you can just talk.

Sometimes you need to talk about your ideas to organize your mind. And when you talk about them then you see things that you work on from different perspective. Look for people who are into the things that are you going to learn.

6. Find the best person in what you want to achieve and learn from him/her

And there is this step number six – find one person who is great in that one thing you want to learn or achieve and read his/her books, watch their videos, take masterclasses if you think you need them and can afford.

Because you may learn from different sources but in every area, there are a few the best. Like really really best people. Find the person who achieved what you want to achieve, who has the lifestyle you want to get to, who good in that skill that you want to learn. And often the experts share a lot of their content for free. So you can just look through their materials and learn.

Why would you learn from someone who just tries little things and do not really know what they’re talking about?

How many people you saw like this on the Internet rather than you find one or maybe two people who you look up to. Then you’ll learn everything you can from this person. And then you can find another one and learn everything from that person too. Then you do your mix, and you bring your perspective and your skills to that.

When I was learning how to sell stuff, how to sell my photography, there were two people who I was following. One was Sue Bryce. She is very good in speaking about sales in photography. And number two was Brian Tracy. He is really good at selling stuff. His book is brilliant. His content is very good, so you can check those people if you want to increase your sales.

I learned a lot you. I searched for the material, I got to their master groups, and I increased my sales within a few months by three times. Wouldn’t you want to multiply your knowledge by three times? To increase your sales by three times? How good would it be?

7. Ask questions when they come up

And the step number seven – when you learn things, you will have questions – ask them.

Ask questions which bothers you. Find the communities. You can even write those people who are you followed. Refer to what you learned from him or her, what you tried, what results you got and then ask your question. The chance that the person will reply to is a very high.

The person who achieved something in life knows what it cost to get there. People often respect those who try stuff. And they are willing to help those who also put an effort. This is a good practice because if you have a question in your mind and you keep it for a long time you cannot solve the problem, or you don’t know, you still think about it. But when you ask, and someone will help you just move on.

And when I have the questions I look for people who know that. I can ask on Facebook. This is what I like to do if I am, for example, on the conference and there is a speaker who gave a good presentation but I still have questions, or if you go to the conference and you attend the workshop there which you are interested in, maybe you had the questions before. So, when the speaker finished their speech. If they Q&A section you can just ask there. Or you can come to the person after that and just ask:

“Hi, my name is Marina Barayeva. I like your presentation, and you talked about this, this and that.”

Or if you knew the person before: “Oh I read your book. I followed your blog, and I tried these things, but it didn’t really work. I don’t know why. Like, I still do not have many clients, and I don’t know what to do.”

More likely those people will give you some tips and maybe that will help you to improve your stuff.

So here are the 7 key actions that will help you to succeed in anything:

• Step 1. Pick one main thing that you want to work on within the next three to six months.
• Step 2. Spend 15 to 30 minutes a day every day on learning or working on one thing that you want to achieve.
• Step 3. Start doing as soon as possible.
• Step 4. Let yourself make mistakes. Start doing things as they are.
• Step 5. Surround yourself with supportive or like-minded people offline and/or online.
• Step 6. Find one person who is great in that one thing that you want to learn or achieve and read his or her materials or take their master classes.
• Step 7. Ask questions. Whenever and you have the questions find the person who can answer it and ask.

Now, I always interesting in how things work for you. What worked and what didn’t work and if you have any questions you can just go to marinabarayeva.com/14. That’s the number of this episodes. Just leave me a comment.

If you have any questions left for this episode or just let me know about those things which you’re working on now if there’s anything I could help you with and let me know what you think about this episode. That’s all for today. And I see you next time.

Marina Barayeva

Marina Barayeva is an international speaker and coach who helps women entrepreneurs become recognized experts and confidently sell their services. She is also a TEDx speaker, has presented to audiences in Asia and North America, and has been featured in such media as ArtPeople, CCTV, China Radio International, and others.