Eric Nagel

I attended Jim Kukral‘s session at Affiliate Summit entitled, “How to get Motivated for Success” only to hear Jim speak. He has a natural stage presence, and I was going simply to listen to a great public speaker. I didn’t expect to get anything out of the session, but Jim definitely proved me wrong.

Jim’s first shot at the audience was: get over yourself. Lose your ego. The reason I’m bothering to bring this up is because that’s how I found my success in the affiliate industry. For years, I thought I knew how to be a successful affiliate, and I didn’t listen to anyone. Then, frustrated with my failures (more on this later) and presented with a training opportunity with Jeremy Palmer, I left behind everything I thought I knew and followed Jeremy’s training. 1-1/2 years later, I was a full-time affiliate marketer.

Next, you need to produce, or perish. Get rid of distractions: turn off Twitter, Gmail, and your phone and get some real work done. Stop reading my blog (when you’re done with this article & left a comment) and get back to work! A tool I use for this is online-stopwatch.com. I tell myself, I’m going to do “X” for 20 minutes, and that’s all I do. When something else pops into my head, I write it down, and get back to the task at hand. Focus.

You need to get out there & do something. Don’t worry about what others are doing – worry about what you’re doing. You need to work your butt off. At this part of the session, Jim called me out, but in a good way. Yeah, I work hard. I’m up between 4:30 and 5:00 in the morning, I hit the gym (while listening to GeekCast.fm on my iPod), then come home & help get the kids off to school, work hard all day, spend some time with the family in the evening, and often get back online to answer some emails or plan tomorrow’s to-do list. Even right now, I’m writing this blog post while flying home.

Doers get what they want, everyone else gets what they get – Jim Kukral

What’s your goal? Write it down, and work on it every day.

Besides being hard workers, Jim and I have something else in common: we’re failures. But, we’re not losers. Failures fail hard, fail fast, and try again. Losers give up.

Get rid of the negative people in your life. It’s hard when they’re family, but believe me, you’ll feel better about what you’re doing, you’ll be more focused, and you’ll get more done.

Jim ended his session by asking the audience what they’re going to do in the next 6 months. He challenged people to come up to him and tell him what they’re going to do. And at Affiliate Summit East in New York, Jim wants to hear back from them.

I’ll be at ASE10 in NY, too – what are you going to have done? Tell me in the comments, or send me an email if you don’t want to share with the world. How can I help you get there?