Become a leader? It scared the hell out of me!

When I decided in 2011 that I wanted to take my online business outside The Netherlands I soon discovered it is different and more difficult as I was used too. It was all very new and confusing for me to say the least.

So like most newbies I joined some stuff. But I also started reading articles on social networks about online networking. 

The quality ones all said basically the same:

• People follow people. 


• Become a leader and create a team


• Teach your team members to become a leader to duplicate your success in business


• 
  

  When you want to become successful in on-line business you need to position yourself a a leader....
  

  
  

My guess is that many people can recognize them self. It is also the reason why so many fail in online business. They see this a hurdle they can't possibly take and do not even try. They post some copied and pasted text from some programs and hope they will make some money.

So I did not want to become a leader. But I did understand that I needed people to get to know me first to have any chance to earn some substantial money from the internet. As you have noticed 90% is promoting the same stuff and most only material provided from the programs they joined.

So I started to read even more and started commenting on postings of other people and I started writing myself about how I do things (dealing with emails, Twitter, etcetera) and I started rewriting the content from provided from programs and added my personal views explaining why I thought it was a good service or product.

Guess what? I still did not earn much money or sign ups!

However I did notice that more people started to follow me and my postings. People said they liked what I wrote. So I kept doing what I did, read, learn and write. Especially through the reading I learned a lot, I gained new insights in many aspects of online marketing (which is NOT the same as social advertising). This helped me to write better comments and articles and to conduct my own business opportunities in a more productive way.

I started to get sign ups and got more followers on several networks. My self confidence in online business grew fast. In a few months time I gained enough trust in myself to start own groups.

I was chosen as business expert of the week on APSense. Wincer chatting with me. Receiving PM's from members asking me to be their Guru. The top of all was that I was installed as an admin on Kooiii  (site terminanted now) where I became manager of all Kart Agents (program terminated). I got the honor of becomming manager of a Dutch APSense niche site HollandSocial.com where the default language is Dutch.

During my journey I had major set backs, I was disappointed in people, I wasted time on certain opportunities, I have made some bad decisions. But I learned from it, I gained valuable insights. But I had some great things happening to me as well. And these things happened because I met online people that were willing to advise me and to help me.

Meanwhile i became partner in some great programs and started my own business: I am now a graphic designer with my own domain where I display my porfolio of graphic designs at http://webmiepgraphics.com and I am owner of manual traffic exchange http://surf-bar-traffic.com and I am confident that I will get to where I want to be.

The reason that I wrote this article is that I wanted to show people that everything is possible if you have the right mindset and if you are willing to learn. Keep in mind that all leaders started small and made some mistakes and misjudgments. But they learned from it and never gave up.