The screenshot below is from May 27, 2009.
The post below is one I made about 6 months after that, for Copyblogger.
I was 10 months into my first ‘real’ blog, 3 years into blogging and being online. 3 years … 3 years not making money yet! So, y’know … quit whinging 
😉
EVERYBODY started somewhere.
You see me now with a multi-million dollar online business, ‘leading the leaders’.
Well, back in May 2009 I was a frustrated blogger with 109 subscribers and feeling like I was just about ready to give up.
Jon Morrow was a key person in my life who helped me to regain belief in myself that had always been there …
I remain so grateful to him for this influence to this day, and every day I seek to pay it forward and empower at least one person that they have what it takes. This is my greatest mission … to empower those who know they have something special to share with the world to ‘press play’ and let it out.
I know from firsthand experience how much you sometimes just need somebody to say – “hey … yes. What you feel inside of you is real. You DO have it”
If you’re reading this – let this be that voice for you today.
I loved re-reading this post just now as I dug it up while putting the finishing touches on an article James Altucher asked me to write.
Who would have thought …
Pay close attention to the actual missing link I share in this post.
It is everything.
===
– The post I wrote for Jon, late 2009 –
In the past 6 months I’ve created an additional 25,000 in income from blogging, and I’m well on the way to exceeding that figure over the next 6 months. Starting a blog has been one of the most lucrative endeavors I’ve ever embarked upon.
If you’re thinking I seem a little smug about my success, well – you’d be perfectly right 
🙂. But before you write me off as one of the lucky ones to whom overnight success just ‘happens’, let me take you back …
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 3 years it’s that blogging success depends on staying power. When I started my first ‘real’ blog in August 2008, I made one very deliberate commitment to myself. I promised myself I would never, never, never quit. After all, my dream was to be a writer and to make an income from doing so, and blogging seemed a smart path to take. Perhaps, I thought, I might even grow my then fitness business along the way.
The first few months saw me wading through various blogging mentoring courses which, while full of great advice, frankly just overwhelmed and even depressed me. Keeping up with the weekly tasks would have equated to 40+ hours, and I was already working full time for myself as a personal trainer. On top of that, I liked to keep busy with a little exercise, plenty of socialising, and – of course – the requisiste ‘me-time’. Occasionally I even liked to get a good night’s sleep!
If burning myself out doing tasks I didn’t really want to do was what it was going to take, then I wasn’t really interested. I decided to do things my way, posting consistently 2-3 times per week but otherwise throwing ‘the rules’ out the window.
Looking back, it wasn’t my best choice …
After blogging this way for 10 months, I had an impressive 109 readers. I knew that the definition of madness was to keep doing the same thing repeatedly and expect a different outcome, but I really just didn’t know where to start. It was all so overwhelming (and still can be!) – perhaps I should just admit defeat and move on.
everyone deserves a break now and then
I’d been thinking that way for a while when I came across a Copyblogger post called ‘Screwed up your Blog? Here’s what to do.’ It was written by Jon Morrow, a blogger and Associate Editor of Copyblogger. The final paragraph had me nearly jumping off my chair:
“Over the next few weeks, I’m going to do around 20-30 telephone consultations. I’ll get on the phone with you for 30 minutes, and you can tell me what’s troubling you about blogging. I’ll then give you advice specific to your exact situation.”
What an awesome opportunity! I scrolled past 164 comments and made my entry:
I know you can imagine how over the moon I was when I received an email from Jon saying I’d been chosen. I felt like I’d won the lottery, and literally counted the days until my consult! Looking back, I am convinced that this was the turning point for me. That 30-minute consult is the reason that today, when I release a full-day event at between $200 and $500 a ticket I sell out in weeks. It’s the reason I’ve been able to sell 161 copies of my US$37 e-book, and fill a 12-week telecoaching program in days. Indirectly it’s even how I’ve ended up writing for national publications like The Australian Women’s Weekly! And it’s allowed me to forge some pretty amazing connections with other bloggers and writers. I still have Jon’s advice saved on my computer. In a nutshell, this is what he told me:
writing guest posts is the best way to build a relationship with another blogger and broaden your audience
comments can work as well; best to include a personal life experience
I should come up with a list of 10 blogs relevant to mine, and seek to link my subject matter to theirs when guest posting
stop writing 3 posts a week for my own blog, and instead write 2 plus 1 guest post
Jon also taught me how to properly pitch a guest post, and gave my confidence a boost by telling me my writing was good enough to pitch to blogs with 30,000+ subscribers!
back to the grind
So it was back to the grind for me, but with a real vengeance! I could do this. I would do this! And the best part was I could do it by employing my existing skills, not by figuring out every in and out of online marketing or blog design!
As you can see, the key piece of advice Jon gave me was to broaden my reach by guest posting weekly and leaving regular comments. I certainly implemented Jon’s advice to the letter, and when I tallied the outcomes in the above article half a year later I was convinced that my traffic growth and resulting financial success was due entirely to these two weekly or daily actions.
It wasn’t until years later that I realised it was the less strategy-based side of my conversation and follow-on email and Skype communication with Jon that was the real key to my success. In fact, the true gift that he gave me was something I now consider to be one of the top 2 overall reasons I’ve reached the heights I have after now 7 years online …
In the meantime, I did attribute my somewhat rapid growth to my relentless pitching of my work. Through 2010 I wrote many guest posts, some of them for major blogs like Dumb Little Man and Pick the Brain, some for smaller and lesser known sites.. I pitched everyone, and sometimes I wasn’t answered, but most of the time the response was encouraging.
A key lesson from this period was how important it is to persist even when you’re not getting the results you want. Sometimes I’d find myself knocked back weeks in a row – it would have been easy to give up but I kept my eyes firmly focused on just continuing to put one foot in front of the other. I had my confidence back and was newly convinced that if I simply refused to give up I would succeed.
Really, and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you – what Jon had taught me wasn’t rocket science. I just hadn’t heard this stuff specific to me. I hadn’t been told ‘you can do this; you’ve got what it takes’, and I think that’s what made the difference for me.
I felt empowered and it gave me the energy I needed to keep going. Jon’s advice – and the results I got when I truly took it to heart – gave me the motivation I needed to spend 2010 building a blog with close to 2000 subscribers and getting my name out there as someone to reckon with.
I remember proudly the day one of the ‘net’s biggest regular bloggers at the time Ali Hale commented to me that “you’re everywhere at the moment”. “Yes I am!” I thought. “And this is just the beginning”
–
turns out –
I was right.
Don’t forget to stay the course …
Don’t forget to press play in the first place.
Kat x
PS
MONETIZE THAT SHIT NO MATTER WHAT
{AND DO WHAT YOU WANT ALL DAY}
A One-Time Live Online Workshop with Katrina Ruth, on How to Make Money Anywhere, Anytime, With ZERO Dependance on Any One Platform, Program or Tool … Aka JUST BECAUSE THAT’S WHO YOU ARE … AND – With the Greatest of Ease
Okay. Imma gonna get straight up on your ass about what needs to be said here, because obviously SOMEBODY needs to hit the damn truth button on this shit!!
Straight up from the gate up, you do NOT make money because of Facebook.
Because of Instagram.
Because of email.
Because of ANY of this shit.
You make money because of who you are and what you decide and make NON-NEGOTIABLE, period, The End!
As you may be aware, in the last day or so Facebook and Instagram went down down down OH so far down.
After a few obligatory ‘stop the world!’ messages to my team and friends (which resulted in a serious convo with one of my soul sisters as to whether we’d now have to become porn stars instead), I got back to business.
The business of posting and selling shit on Facebook, which is admittedly a big part of what I do each day???
Nah … the business of being ME, because THAT is what I actually do each day, and also?
It’s what gets me paid.
Funnily enough, as is often the way with these things, just yesterday somebody was making smart-ass comments to me about how all the coaches would survive if there was no Facebook or Instagram.
“How would they survive?”, I asked myself.
“Well, I have no idea how THEY would survive but I sure as shit know how I would survive:
Very fucking well indeed, thank you very much, because that is who I AM”
Word to the wise:
A) I was making serious money long before I used Facebook for it.
Allow me to say it again for those in the back: YOU MAKE MONEY BECAUSE OF WHO YOU ARE AND THE LEVEL YOU VIBRATE AT.
Vibrate?
It’s an energy thang baby, a frequency shiz niz, it’s just who you ARE and how life works for you.
Handy hint —> the level of wealth you enjoy or moan over now is already just a direct reflection of your frequency, and expectations. It ain’t got jack shit to do with what you do, and it certainly is not a product of which tools are available to you.
It is a product of YOU.
When the socials went down today it was FASCINATING to me to observe the response that came through in the in-between-y bits when people managed to post something.
People worrying about how it would impact their business, or feeling in some way handcuffed.
This is crazy! It’s fear-mongering at its worst and it’s an absolute SHITTY mentality as far as belief systems around where results come from.
Do you know what I felt, when I realised we couldn’t use Facebook as normal for our biz stuff?
EXCITEMENT.
It took a minute to click in, but I found myself getting all wriggly and lit up with excitement.
I love a damn challenge 🙂
And since I also choose to believe that everything is happening FOR me, I also took personal responsibility for this occurrence.
Obviously FB and Insta had gone down in order to force me to finally pull my finger out and learn how to go live on YouTube.
But mainly – hell YEAH to the opportunity to get creative!
Probably taking the whole thing a little bit too far, as I worked my way through some sprints on the rower post HIIT weights session, I started to imagine what would happen if Facebook was TRULY GONE AND NO LONGER OF THIS WORLD.
I got MORE excited with each second that passed (which makes me remember how damn BORED I get as soon as I know how to easily do something aka make money all day err day on Facebook), and I also found myself AUTOMATICALLY GOING INTO ZAG MODE.
Zag?
You know, like ‘When They Zig you Zag’. A classic, if ever there was one!! Thank you Dad, for always having all the BEST books on your bookshelf for me to start reading from 10 or 11 years of age!
See, I have a belief system which works rather well for me and I guess is just part of who I am –
I believe that things ALWAYS work out perfectly for me, and are always done FOR me …
I believe I am always on path …
I believe I always make the right decision, so therefore I never have to beat myself up, I just wait for the lesson –
AND
(drumroll)
I believe that my outcomes are predicated only by my choices, and that there is nothing I EVER need in order to get or maintain or ONLY improve on an existing outcome.
It’s this mindset that causes me to wonder what TF it has to do with anything when people say things like they can’t be in shape ’cause they have kids or just had a kids … or ’cause they can’t get to the gym (for example)
And it’s also this mindset that causes me to KNOW that the money I make and the impact my soul work has in the world has NOTHING to do with what tools or platforms are available to me or working.
I programmed myself a long time ago to IMMEDIATELY swerve if something was no longer serving me or working for me. It’s this part of my mind which therefore right away started coming up with creative and imaginative solutions for how business would OF COURSE carry on (and improve!) with or without social media.
And it’s also this part of my mind which of course right away finds a way to monetize the damn thing and turn it into epic and highly helpful content for you, aka this workshop!
It’s just how I think, and who I am. I am simply unavailable for NOT moving forward, and nothing will ever ever EVER make me believe that I have to depend on anything outside of me for my results.
So why a whole damn workshop on the concept?
Well, it’s more than that, isn’t it?
It’s a mindset of believing that you always get what you want.
It’s a mindset of believing that everything always works out for you.
It’s a mindset of believing that NOTHING can stop you.
That everything is working in your favour.
And?
That you can monetize ANYTHING, any time you choose, and with no ‘requirements’ in order to do so!
I don’t have to tell you that obvs the outcomes you get directly follow and reflect your mindset and your beliefs!!
Here is what else, as well:
This is not just about making money any time, from any thing, and knowing that even with challenge or things going wrong you only THRIVE and EXPAND!!
For me this goes hand in hand with duh – I get to do all of that on my terms.
By having FUN, and being in FLOW, and with ease.
In fact, the more money the more ease!! #justhowitis
That I can literally click my fingers and money shows up for me, meanwhile I’m just over here doing ma thang.
Speaking of which –
I think it’s about time I shared exactly what I currently DO all day, yeah? And how I do it / fit it all in / honour ALL the areas, PLUS manage to spend so much time sitting on my ass doing sweet FA!
In other words … !
Let’s hang out together this weekend!!
Introducing:
MONETIZE THAT SHIT NO MATTER WHAT
{AND DO WHAT YOU WANT ALL DAY}
A One-Time Live Online Workshop with Katrina Ruth, on How to Make Money Anywhere, Anytime, With ZERO Dependance on Any One Platform, Program or Tool … Aka JUST BECAUSE THAT’S WHO YOU ARE … AND – With the Greatest of Ease
> It’s happening Thursday March 21 at 11.30am Brisbane time (Wednesday 9.30pm NYC / 1.30am London, UK)
> All fully recorded if you can’t attend live
> ALL your questions answered (either live during the workshop, or afterwards in the group if you can’t attend live)
> KILLER bonus content on Top 11 Most Effective & Proven ‘When They Zig You Zag’ Sales Secrets
> Live support from meeeeee in the group afterwards for anything extra you want and need to know!
> Free Bonus Entire COURSE for Everyone! My $197 Alignment & Asskickery Toolkit, a 14-Day Smackdown to Bring You Back to YOU, and Into Massive Aligned and Result Based Action! Yes, that’s an entire $197 course and you’re paying less than half of that for this entire workshop!
> All content yours to keep for life!!
What We Will Be Covering!
1) How to Monetize ANY Situation, Including But Not Limited To:
* When social media or any typically depended upon platform goes down (including examples of how I have down this several times, to the tune of tens of thousands)
* Hater situations (including examples, again multiple times, again tens of thousands of dollars)
* When you make a fool of yourself / something embarrassing happens or you screw up (also examples! also lots and lots of lovely moolah)
* When people ‘screw you over’ (ahem, we will talk about this) or desert you (also examples! more money!)
* Basically how to turn any and all life situations, moods, changes of the moon, emotional ups and downs, real life SHIT, to money!
2) Why the ‘When Shit Happens’ times are often the BEST times to make money, aka this is where I teach you what it really means to understand human psychology in terms of SALES, and the mindset of being an actual IN THE FLOW entrepreneur, who ALWAYS sees opportunity and jumps straight on it
3) When NOT to Monetize (okay that one you can have for free – never!!)
4) Understanding Where Money Really Comes From – and aligning yourself TO the frequency of wealth, such that you can literally NOT.BE.IMPACTED by anything that 99.99% of people think will cost them business
5) Money Vibration Principles Revealed (… my own personal philosophies and things that I live by / instil into my being around this, including my own daily practices)
6) Coding For Success
* How to ALWAYS have an endless stream of ideas
* AUTOMATIC continual unleashment of creativity and imagination, especially in so-called times of struggle
* Seeing past problems and accessing higher self in order to always know the answer, and how to move forward
7) Programming to Upgrade – the beliefs, energetic states and emotional patterns you require in order to be this person, have all this work for you, ALWAYS see and have the ability to act on the shit that will most pay off
The ‘Do What You Want All Day’ Bit:
* Exactly how my typical day flows and how I operate for maximum efficiency of time, energy, mental acuity, soul connectedness, etc
* Getting it all done as a busy entrepreneur (and single Mum, in my case) who also refuses to operate at anything less than EXCELLENT in terms of self-care, fitness, fun, playtime, etc
* Exactly what I do all day, broken down to the detail, to helm this becoming-8-figure-empire
* Exactly what I do NOT do all day, either it just gets ignored (hint: a LOT that most online marketers think matters!), or I let other people do it for me
* Calling in soulmate support, even long before you are ready to afford it
* Optimizing energy, focus, personal power, happiness, general flow. Aka mindset and also brain / nutrition hacks and so on
* TIME MANIFESTATION. OH YES IT IS A THING.
AND, while we’re at it, we will also be talking INSTANT MANIFESTATION. The exact process I use to bring the future into the NOW, by clearing all blocks existing between its reality in the quantum and its physical manifestation in the now!!
PLUS!
I’ll be doing this ‘Rapid-Fire’ Session at the end!!
1) What it really means to be magnetic online – hint: it’s not about having a pretty and polished website or online presence!
2) Bringing the ‘in private / behind the scenes’ version of you to the public
3) Unapologetic messaging and soul baring to call in your true #soultribe
4) Audience quality vs quality, and active elimination of those who don’t ‘HELL yes’ on your content
5) People don’t buy your products, they buy you. No – people don’t buy you, they buy your energy!! What that means and how to let it out
6) Being real about where you need to take care of YOU in order to be able to show up and shine fully
7) Keeping a laser-focus and tunnel-vision on your own path, and having the courage to pave the way that feels right for you even if it’s not been done before
8) Discernment to walk the line between being polarising and positively outrageous as opposed to just a hot mess 🙂 Scaling and magnetizing FROM the chaos of creativity and following the true artists way!
9) Knowing which ideas to work, what will sell, and how best to sell it so that the entire launch and selling experience is fun AND rewarding for both your audience and you
10) Creating hell yes offers that make them scream yes!
I know!
This workshop is off the HOOK already, and we haven’t even accounted for all the random shiz which will be coming out of me!!
Don’t forget the bonuses >>>> !!!
> KILLER bonus content on Top 11 Most Effective & Proven ‘When They Zig You Zag’ Sales Secrets
> Live support from meeeeee in the group afterwards for anything extra you want and need to know!
> Free Bonus Entire COURSE for Everyone! My $197 Alignment & Asskickery Toolkit, a 14-Day Smackdown to Bring You Back to YOU, and Into Massive Aligned and Result Based Action! Yes, that’s an entire $197 course and you’re paying less than half of that for this entire workshop!
> All content yours to keep for life!
What are you waiting for? You KNOW that if you apply even ONE tip of the approximately gajillion I’m sharing here you’re going to 100x your investment back! Which is why I am even EXTRA excited to be able to give this to you at such a low price, as per the commandment of my soul!! Plus it’s fun 🙂
Okay then! See you IN there baby!
