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Yesterday I suggested two steps to overcome this problem:

1. Identify What You Have - don’t focus one what you don’t have but instead focus upon what is at your fingertips that can be the foundation on what your future lies. I suggested 11 questions to ask yourself as a blogger to help you work out what you have.
2. Build Upon What You Have - starting with what you’ve got - begin to build from that place rather than being distracted by what others are building in their blogging.

Today I want to suggest a final step - one that comes out of my own experience as a blogger and from watching others succeed in blogging also.

3. Build upon what you Build

Here’s a ’secret’ that I think sets highly successful people apart (in all walks of life) from the rest of us. They don’t just take what they’ve got and build upon it. They then build upon what they’ve built upon and then build again upon that…. and so on.

Many people get to a point with what they do where they become satisfied, content and where complacency sets in. They rest upon their laurels and stop pushing forward. I’ve seen this with a number of bloggers who quickly rose through the ‘ranks’ of blogging to build blogs that began to get attention and notoriety. But then they began to get comfortable and lost some of the drive that they may have previously had and pull back on the level of work that they were putting in - content just to enjoy the success they’d already had rather than to push into new ground.

The key is to push forward and ask some of the above questions on a regular basis. Here’s how it worked for me (this builds upon what I shared of my own story in yesterday’s post):

After six of so months of blogging on my first photography blog I sat down and looked at what I’d built. I realized that despite making some mistakes I’d covered some ground and what I DID have had grown.

I remember making a list of what I’d achieved at that point. The list included:

• I had a blog on photography that was paying me enough to start to think about going full time on the project.
• I had a new laptop that didn’t crash every hour (I was still on dial-up)
• I had gathered some knowledge and experience of making money with blogs
• I had some new blogger friends in my niche (and outside it) - some were beginning to talk about working together
• I had a little more profile in blogging
• I had the possibility of a little extra time on my hands as I’d completed my study

I looked at what I’d built and decided to bounce off that in a couple of directions. Firstly I decided to put my extra time into blogging more on the photography blog. I also decided to start a few other blogs on technology related to cameras. In a sense I used what I’d already build as a springboard or leverage to the next thing.

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I also decided to take my experience of making money from blogs and start blogging on that topic (at first on my personal blog).

Then began another phase of grow and building.

After another 6 or so months I made a similar list of what I’d achieved and progressed to have.

Out of doing that I decided to shift all my archives on blogging about blogging from my personal blog to a new blog here at ProBlogger.

The process has continued over the last couple of years (ie every 6 or so months pausing to identify what I’ve got and where the energy was and then building on that). This resulted in a number of new things and continued growth of existing projects.

For example:

• out of having built a little credibility and profile with ProBlogger I was joined with other bloggers to build b5media
• out of 2 years of blogging on digital cameras and growing an audience in that field I decided to launch Digital Photography School
• out of reaching a point where I earned six figures in a year from blogging I joined with another blogger to launch Six Figure Blogging
• out of all of these experiences I took the decision to write the ProBlogger Book with Chris Garrett.

Now I don’t want to use my story here beat my chest and grow my ego but as an example of the principles that I’m talking about.

I didn’t start out to build what I’ve built - I started out, looking at what I had and determining to build upon that. That’s all I wanted to do at every step along the journey.

If I’d looked at the big picture too early or compared my meagre efforts with others in my early days I would have become overwhelmed and disillusioned.

Instead I focused upon what I had and what I could do and grew from there. Then I’d repeat the process.

The results have been an evolutionary growth in my own personal development as a blogger and that of my business.

Let’s Revise

1. Don’t define yourself by what you’re not
2. Start with what you have
3. Build upon what you have
4. Build upon what you build

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