Online Entrepreneurship 101: How to Become an Online Entrepreneur and SUCCEED

Students and senseis alike - line up. Today, I'm going to teach you exactly how to SUCCEED as an online entrepreneur.
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So you want to know how to become an online entrepreneur? Well, amigo, you’re in the right place!

This post right here is my free MASTERCLASS to entering and scaling up in the exhilarating world of online entrepreneurship. 

Will being showered by money that he's made online working as an entrepreneur
Let the good times roll.

It’s also the gateway drug to Ditch Your Desk: once you’ve powered through this post and seen what other content I have on this site, as well as the journey of financial independence and self-sustainability that lies before you, I guarantee that you’ll be HOOKED.

Becoming an entrepreneur, mastering your burgeoning online businesses, and ultimately becoming the master of your own destiny is a lifelong journey. We never stop moving forward.

And we never stop learning.

That’s why I’ve packed as much tasty wisdom into this post as I can; pearls for the Padawans and much more for the Jedi Masters of the world of online business. Everybody has something to gain from delving into this guide.

By the end, I’ll teach you:

  • What an entrepreneur is and why you’d want to be one.
  • The basic steps you need to start your online journey!
  • How to make money online and what my personal favourite revenue streams are to start TODAY.
  • And my TOP TIPS for all entrepreneurs looking to balance their life and maximise their productivity.

Well, time is money and time is a wasting and that means we’re wasting money! Prospective ditcher of desks, your new life starts RIGHT NOW.

What Does an Online Entrepreneur Do?

Basically this:

IASIP meme of Charlie representing the life of an online entrepreneur
Online entrepreurship in a nutshell.

This picture pretty accurately summarises my life these days.

In case you weren’t aware, I have a number of online business ventures. I do many things and wear many hats. A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away (in a much simpler life), I was one man with a (slowly) blossoming travel blog pouring his heart into writing EPIC content for budget backpackers.

Writing was, and is, my passion. And my drive and my dream was to inspire other travellers to go out and have the same thrilling adventures and life-changing experiences I was.

From little things, big things grow. Before long, I had a whole team of swashbuckling adventurers working on my blog – The Broke Backpacker. I’d also started several other smaller-scale sites, experimented with producing my own travel products, and even co-founded an adventure tour company – Epic Backpacker Tours – specialising in tours to Pakistan. The point is, I do many things and learning how to manage my time so I was as efficient and productive as possible has been a big part of my journey.

Over time, the writing of content took a backseat as I became more of an overseeing coordinator of all these projects. Managing teams of top-notch humans, a constant line of communications, scouting out new talent as well as exciting new investment opportunities, and propagating and implementing new business strategies: these things became my daily workload.

Will playing chess symbolically representing the world of online business
There a a lot of moving parts and someone has to play them right.

I believe that these days the actual practicalities of what online entrepreneurs do gets lost in the romanticised hogwash of the lifestyle. We’ve all seen those Youtube and Insta videos where some “entrepreneur influencer” is plugging away on their laptop on a beach… For fuck’s sake, people, there’s no power on the beach and nobody wants sand in their god-damn laptop!

Entrepreneurship has picked up a LOT recently, and the game gets confused with being an influencer. There’s some crossover, sure, but many influencers are shoddy entrepreneurs purely because they are unable to manage their time effectively on account of being addicted to their phones…

Posting pretty pictures all day on IG? I guarantee you, that’s NOT what most entrepreneurs do.

Personally, it has been my work ethic and my ability to spot opportunities that made my online business ideas a reality, however, these days I spend heaps of my time generally just touching base with all the people (in all their respective timezones) who were working while I slept.

An entrepreneur is the captain of the ship (and the canny crew you choose). It’s the head of the snake. The brains and the coordinator; the component that instructs the body where to go.

At first, you might be the brains, the brawn, and the everyman who is doing EVERYTHING. This is your most important and crucial challenge as a manager; if you can’t be tough with yourself and manage your own time and skills well, it’s hard to ever get to a point where you effectively direct other people in the future.

Is Being an Online Entrepreneur Worth It?

Yeah, it is. If you’re looking for a life that challenges you, rewards you, and drives you every day to be better than the person you were yesterday, it’s absolutely fucking worth it.

BUT if you’re looking for a job where you make a bunch of money quick, rest on your laurels, and then eat potato chips off the supple naked frame of a Colombian, you’ll need a different career. (And probably one localised to Colombia.)

An internet entrpreneur focusing on his wall of post-it notes
You have to maintain focus on why you do this.

Being an online entrepreneur requires dedication, and the root of dedication is PASSION. It’s good to make some extra potato chip money for those days where the skies are rainy and you’re feeling a touch snacky, but it’s your passion that will see you through the days where all you’re feeling is gloom and hunger.

Some days are shit. Some days it all goes wrong. Some days you want to load up a campervan and flee to the northernmost sectors of Alaska. You may feel like you are spinning your wheels and getting nowhere.

And on those days you have to remember why you’ve chosen this road and what it is that drives you.

But to answer the original question, yes: being an online entrepreneur is absolutely and without a shadow of a doubt worth it. Not a day goes by where I wish I’d taken a different road in life instead.

And to me, that’s the sign that says you’re on the right path.

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To CRUSH the competition!

Because that’s something I haven’t mentioned yet in all the flowery admonishments of snakes captaining ships… Your competitors. You may court your friends with only the finest winery and dinery, but your competition?

Yeah, nah, fuck those guys! (In a professionally respectful capacity, of course.)

It’s business – it’s online entrepreneurship; you still need to be on your A-game. You still need to BRING your A-game.

If your competitor is doing something right, then do it better. CRUSH THEM INTO DUST AND THEN SNORT THAT DUST TO ABSORB THEIR SOULS.

My point is, be ready to smash like hulk.

Will - green like the hulk - smashes his computer and online business competitors with a hammer
This is my BUSINESS FACE!

Believe it or not, you don’t have to have a website to start making money online (although, if you’re serious about becoming an online entrepreneur, you will want to know how to start a website eventually). There are lots of ways to make money online, and these are the 4 SMASHING methods I’ve used over my long journey to become an online entrepreneur.

A successful online entrepreneur!

1. Affiliate Marketing

The one tried and true method that I’ve consistently used to make money online is affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is when you direct a customer to a third party; by generating the lead you get a cut of the sale (if one is made).

It’s real simple – you visit Google and type in ‘best butt plugs for nervous poopers’, you land on one of my sites (all thanks to my serious SEO skillz meaning that I appear at the top of the SERP), I advise you on buying the Gold -Plated Multi-Vibration Butt-Master 5000, you click through to Amazon and make your sexy purchase, I get a cut of the sale. $$$ achieved!

In the online space, one of the most powerful ways to set up passive income is through affiliate marketing.

This right here is an example of an affiliate link -> CLICK ME!

It takes you to an Amazon page for an anime-themed bootyriffic body pillow (if any of y’all buy it, I’ll know). Say you did buy it though (ya weirdo), then I would earn a commission. A small commission usually – Amazon are tight-fisted motherfuckers, but you can make up to 30% of the sale on other platforms too.

Now imagine a whole site with affiliate marketing integrated into it at every possible, tasteful, opportunity – a reader finds your site and follows some of your suggestions, clicking on a few links, scoring you a couple of different tracking cookies from your affiliate partners. If the clickee (your reader) then goes on to buy anything from the platforms they clicked through to (within the time parameters of the cookie), BOOM – you are making money. If you have a site that is consistently generating traffic, the easiest way to turn that traffic into tasty moolah is, without a doubt, affiliate marketing.

But now, let’s take it one step further. Imagine, if you will, a whole goddamn empire of those sites. The sky is the limit, my friends.

Affiliate marketing is great as a passive income stream – it can be a lot of work to set up and implement in the beginning, but once it works, it WORKS. That means moolah comes rolling in while you don’t lift a finger. Sometimes it’s big amounts, sometimes it’s more like a trickle – and it’s also heavily affected by your traffic – but hey, that’s the world of affiliate marketing!

So, that’s just the bare bones of affiliate marketing. But affiliate marketing is a big topic. I’ve written a much more in-depth post on how to unlock the power of affiliate marketing which I urge you to read.

It’s the 101 of How to Become an Online Entrepreneur and an integral step in the journey.

And besides, whilst you work on building up your passive income stream through affiliate marketing, you may also be working on bringing in extra beer money through the tried and tested glories of…

2. Copywriting: It MATTERS

Yes, it matters – prepare to get good at writing copy. Not only is it the most nutritious food source to feed to your majestic behemoth of affiliate marketing (om nom nom), but it’s going to help in sooo many more areas if you can write appealingly:

  • Marketing channels eg. emails
  • Writing content
  • Freelancing (A good way to bring in beer money)
  • Socials
  • Interviews
  • Networking and communications (with anyone really)

Jeepers, Will, I can’t write well. I’m not good enough.

Shaggy going Super Saiyan as he trains for making money online

If you flex your kegel muscles a bunch, do you get better at holding in your pee? Of course you bloody well do!

What I’m saying is practice, practice, practice. (Which is also really just a basic tip for becoming an online entrepreneur in ALL areas.) Tackling new situations and adopting new skillsets is all part of the parcel of becoming an online entrepreneur. But having the dedication and patience to keep chipping away at something until you truly understand it… that’s what distinguishes the truly great entrepreneurs from the lesser.

Put yourself out there, freelance, and find some gigs. You’ll make some spare cash (while setting up a website and web of affiliate marketing sources, I hope). But the skills you earn through practice will be indispensable down the track.

When it comes to developing your copywriting, there are two elements to consider…

The Copy: 

It’s gotta stick, man. Its gotta bounce. It’s gotta flow. It’s gotta make me be like:

Look, this may be something you never truly excel at, but you don’t have to be the best writer in the world. You probably won’t ever even be in the top 1%. Bu all you need to know is how to speak one-on-one to an audience and capture their attention.

The style of copywriting varies from need to need, however, there’s one tip that always remains universal: imagine you are speaking directly to your audience. Writing engaging copy isn’t about writing verbosely or even writing well; it’s about writing in a way that speaks intimately to people. It’s a casual and friendly conversation – the kind you’d have over a beer at the pub.

You won’t become a fast and furiously enthralling copywriter overnight, however, you can start with my guide to writing EPIC copy (coming soon). And then, somewhere amongst writing the 30th article, 60th Facebook post, and 4000th email, something will click into razor sharp focus – I promise.

SEO:

Ohhh, snippety snap – we haven’t even touched on SEO yet, and that’s a whole other ballgame – both a powerhouse and a madhouse in one. The forever-shifting scripture that the internet and search engines run on.

To become an online entrepreneur, you ARE going to have to wrestle with Search Engine Optimisation and the fell beast that is Google.

Google decides where your content ranks in its searches. Google’s mythical whims decide, in a large part, how much traffic you get. And 99% of any and all ideas that you may have for a profitable online business are subject to those blasted whims.

But you have SEO, and SEO is the weapon with which you smite the fell beast.

Google does not fuck around.

SEO-friendly copywriting is copywriting armed and attuned with SEO-best practices to please the almighty and all-powerful Google.

But listen, that’s like the tl;dr of the tl;dr of SEO. Believe me when I say that it’s something you MUST get an understanding of if you’re serious about making money online. Becoming an online entrepreneur means doing a lot of research and learning a lot of new techniques.

And in order of how I think about the, admittedly, rather fucking cool journey of mastering SEO:

  1. START HERE: With the rather appropriately titled ‘What the Fuck is SEO?’
  2. THEN READ: The BEST Damn Guide to Keyword Research Ever (coming soon).

One way or another, you can’t start asking how to become an online entrepreneur and not start asking what the fiddlesticks SEO is. Google sees all.

3. The Exciting World of Cryptocurrency

Really, cryptocurrency is an adrenaline-fuelled rock ‘n’ rollercoaster of deeply alluring twists and curves. Just look at this graph! Look at these curves!

Graph of Bitcoin's value - ways to make money online
*flagpole rises*

Investing in cryptocurrency has been a game-changer for many budding online entrepreneurs. Crypto is hands down the single biggest money-making opportunity out there, and more than that, it’s where the future of currency is heading: into the matrix.

There are several ways to make money online through cryptocurrency. You have to spend money to make money which is certainly an adage you’ll adopt quickly in your personal journey of online entrepreneurship.

Throughout the course of any devilish crypto-career, you may…

  • Invest: Much the same as traditional finance (stocks and shares), you find a project that you believe in the potential of and you buy in (by buying the associated crypto tokens). Hold your tokens or sell them off when they’ve increased in value – it’s just that simple!
  • Trade: Crypto for crypto transactions. Again, it plays into that insane constant flux of crypto’s value, but trading one crypto for another at the right time can net you some tidy profits.
    Much like traditional finance again, this can be a consuming game of cat and mouse and a surefire way to insanity. But there are different levels of trading and different methods all requiring different levels of dedication to the cause.
  • Earn Passively: The deeper into the ensuing crypto-world we get, the more other forms of finance start appearing in their new cyber-setting. Yes, you can even borrow, lend, and EARN INTEREST on crypto.
  • Mine: Yeah, this is another world again and not for the uninitiated. But it’s how you actually earn cryptocurrency (as opposed to buying it with traditional currencies).

Have I got you excited yet? Maybe not; it’s a bit of a complex world filled with lingo that sounds like a sci-fi edition of Dungeons and Dragons. However, I assure you, it’s worth getting involved.

And for an online entrepreneur seeking fresh ideas, more online earning methods and tactics for generating income – especially passively – is absolutely necessary.

If you’ve ever even so much as briefly pondered curiously about crypto, I urge you to follow that train of thought. Crypto is BOSS. (And dangerously addictive so be savvy!)

In my opinion (remembering that I am not a financial advisor), everybody should have 5-10% of their savings, as a minimum, in cryptocurrency. The easiest course of action is to buy 2 or 3 different tokens with money you can afford to NOT touch (because it all goes tits up if you suddenly HAVE to take your money out of crypto and the market dictates that not being the right time). Hold them on an external wallet for additional security too.

Here are my top 5 coins to invest into in 2021:

  1. Solana
  2. Matic
  3. Bitcoin
  4. Ethereum
  5. Sushi.

One way or another, cryptocurrency is something you definitely want to get in on. As of writing this, Bitcoin is currently valued at $70,000 a token… Imagine if you’d gotten in when it was $7.

4. Dropshipping: Hit or Miss?

Dropshipping works, however, it’s a tough game. You gotta be on point. It really helps to know what you’re doing (and to have some leeway to make mistakes too).

At its core, dropshipping is selling products online EXCEPT you use a middleman for the logistical component: storing and shipping your products. That stuff is handled by a third party.

Infographic detailing the dropshipping process - a trickier way to become an online entrepreneur
Basically.

There are essentially two ways to go about this:

  1. A customer buys a product on your site and then the details of the order get sent automatically via a plug-in to your supplier (probably in China). The caveat to this is that shipping times for this are looonnng; customers could be waiting up to 4 weeks (or even more) to get your product. HOWEVER, you also don’t spend any money covering the logistics and paying for the item until the purchase is actually made.
  2. You pre-purchase a bunch of products that you want to sell and send them to a ‘fulfilment warehouse’, which is usually managed by Amazon. As your items are sold, Amazon handles the logistics with significantly lower shipping times. There are also two caveats to this, however.
    Firstly, there’s a rather large initial overhead even BEFORE selling – both on purchasing your supply and the storage costs associated with the fulfilment warehouse. And secondly, Amazon (being the infinite beacon of virtuous behaviour that they are) have found methods of consistently undercutting third-party sellers on their site and instead promoting their own products.

I have experimented with dropshipping; I had a semi-brief foray into the market with my own backpacking gear company.

Did I make money? For sure!

Was it a lot?

Picard facepalm meme outlining Will's response to his dropshipping efforts

Like I said, you need to know what you’re doing. A strong niche and a product that sells consistently is a MUST. But you can make it work for you (plus it’s another tasty source of passive income).

I wrote a rather extensive case study on my experience dropshipping with Amazon. If you’re keen to embark on the life of a Starfleet captain, guiding and maintaining your own dropship, then definitely give it a read. You may well be able to learn from my mistakes and take a better swing at it than I managed.

Other Ideas for Online Entrepreneurs

The above four strategies are ones that I’ve implemented at various points and to varying levels of success. With the right moxie, I can tell you from first-hand experience that they work.

But the exciting world of online business doesn’t end there! There are countless methods to make money online; lots I bet you haven’t even thought of before.

For a few extra bonus ideas to kickstart your career as an online entrepreneur, try…

  • SEO Consultation – SEO doesn’t just stop at copywriting. It’s deep man. Fucking deep.
    Businesses regularly need help plumping up their rankings; being a respected consultant (even with your own SEO firm) can be extremely lucrative. Plus, you’ll just be applying all that SEO knowledge on your own ventures too, right?
  • Social Media Management – Love it or hate it (definitely hate it), social media is here to stay! This behemoth of an industry is sticking around, so learning the ins and outs of social media and then putting that knowledge to good use assisting people with deeper pockets can serve to be very profitable.
  • Business Coaching – Make a business that helps other businesses be a business. Hot damn, that’s meta! And just think of the networking opportunities…
  • Start a Blog – To be totally candid, making money in the blogging space is seriously difficult. It’s a highly competitive industry (especially the travel blog space) with a lot that goes on behind the scenes. However, it’s also a rewarding field – there are a lot of good reasons to start a blog even this late in the game! Just… steel thyself for a long journey to the top.
  • Run a Box Subscription Business – This one is kind of left of field, however, the box subscription business has EXPLODED. You know the monthly care packages you subscribe to and get sent all manner of goodies? (Think Lootcrate or Dollar Shave Club). Yeah – there’s a lot of money in that.
    And you get to combine your efforts with dropshipping too. That’s a twofer!
  • Sell a Course Online – Bleh! Sorry – I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.
    Right, you’ll never catch me selling a course, however, the online entrepreneurship space is positively booming with this. Influencer-types are selling courses on self-development, SEO, copywriting, and even online entrepreneurship left, right, and centre! It might be a bit of a gross-out way to become an online entrepreneur, but, well, hustle is hustle.
An online entrepreneur visualisng his steps to success as literal steps
It all starts with the first step, and the first step is to hustle.

My 10 Top Tips for Budding Online Entrepreneurs

Having the right strategies to maximise your productivity is so damn critical to your success as an online entrepreneur! We can take a few jabs at the pumped-up pretty boys promoing conscious entrepreneurship while posting six times a day on Insta about their new favourite quinoa bliss balls from Wholefoods, but they all tend to preach the same information for a reason.

It works.

Steadfast routines, a healthy lifestyle, meditation, and all the little self-management hacks: these things DO work. They won’t all work for you, but it’s important to trial them, experiment, practice, and find a system that works for you. That’s the absolute best tip I can give to the upcoming wheelers and dealers of the online entrepreneurial space.

Well, that and these 10 others!

1. Have a Business Plan

When you travel, it’s good to have a direction and no plan. And when you do business, it good to have a plan and then be able to quickly and adapt and if necessary pivot to a completely new direction if the whole thing goes tits up!

Will with a sword showing off his prowess as an online entrepreneur
You need the right tools with the right ideas behind them.

As an online entrepreneur engaging in business, you need to always be generating new ideas WHILE executing the old ones. And you need to have the right tools for your business to execute those ideas.

To put this in a real-world context, when the pandemic first hit, The Broke Backpacker took a totally expected but nonetheless MASSIVE hit. Traffic, income, morale – all of it. And it was only through smart and strategic pivoting and planning, followed by the actioning of those ideas, that kept us afloat.

If we’d just kept doing what we’d been doing, we’d have died. And if I’d gotten spooked like a deer in headlights, we definitely would have died too (splattered across the windshield of the runaway road train that was 2020).

But we didn’t. And that’s the power of planning: it gives you a place to aim at.

2. Work With the Right People

All the plans in the world ain’t gonna do you much good if you haven’t got somebody to do them with! You need a team – a tribe.

Tribes coexist. They work together to a shared goal. They stand stronger as one than they do as individuals. And that’s what anyone becoming an entrepreneur NEEDS.

3. Have a Morning Routine

Really, just have routines period. Routines serve a lot of functions:

Saitama telling you the best routine to become an online entrepreneur
Something like that…
  • They cultivate willpower (a crucial trait for anyone trying to make money as an entrepreneur).
  • They carve out sections of your day for the things you want to prioritise, both in work and in your personal endeavours.
  • They help balance your life and take the edge off the dreaded workaholic tendencies that plague many entrepreneurs and online workers.

But of all routines, true POWER is found in the morning routine. Wake up, fuck that snooze alarm right off (denying the urge to snooze the alarm is the first act of willpower of the day), and do the things that put you in a productive and positive headspace for the day (exercise, journal, meditate, pat a doggo, etc.).

If you start the day right, it doesn’t matter what can go wrong. At least you had a wicked morning.

4. Meditate Like a Mothertrucker

You don’t have to be a guru of the art of meditation; five minutes of focused breathing is enough. Meditation is not about opening your chakras or ascending to the Avatar state. Meditation is simply about checking in with yourself, or at the very least it can be a useful exercise in simply showing up – making sure you carve out 5 minutes per day to do something that can be boring and frustrating is a good act of discipline.

When I first started meditating, I had to focus on being super kind to myself because I was honestly annoyed that I was distracted so easily: my mind would wander, I would fidget, I would question why I was not ascending to a blissful place of peace… It’s honestly hard – or for me it was anyway – to build up a meditation practice.

So at first, just SHOW UP. Consistently. Every day, and at the same time each day if you can.

Be kind to yourself, focus on your breathing… Are there thoughts or feelings that you’ve been neglecting? Is your body in the state you’d like it in? Can you feel any tension in your body you can locate and release (pro tip: foam roller, buy one – I’ve got a mad collapsible one).

Online entrepreneur jobs and work keep you constantly on the grind. Learning how to meditate – even as a beginner – is how you balance that life of constant movement. Meditation is a chance to take a moment to slow down, listen to yourself, and then…

5. Journaling: It Also MATTERS

It really matters soooo much. You SHOULD journal. You SHOULD journal anything and EVERYTHING.

Work notes, random thoughts, what you’re grateful for, what happened that day, what you want for dins that night. Even if you’re in a bad headspace, braindump that crap right onto the page! It is fast and easy therapy.

Journalling, just like meditation, is an act of checking in with yourself and being able to let go of what needs to be let go. It tracks the daily changes in your state and the endless conversation in your brain. And even if you never re-read it, one day, someone who loves you will.

And they’ll be grateful you wrote it.

6. Travel. A Lot.

A lot of successful businessmen, women, and entrepreneurs may not prioritise this, but I do. Travel is what made me the man I am today. Travel is the ultimate act of self-development.

Travel teaches you about yourself; your strengths, your weaknesses, passions, values, and who you want to be. It also teaches you about the world – both the light and the dark.

The lessons I learnt from my many years of budget backpacking across the continents are what allowed me to become a successful entrepreneur. Both the lessons about myself and the skills I gathered along the way.

Will Hatton travelling in a rickshaw in India long before becoming a successful online entrpreneur
Levelling up!

If you haven’t travelled yet, pause your online entrepreneurship ideas (after reading this article), GO TRAVEL: see things, have experiences, push yourself out of your comfort zone, find inspiration. And maybe, even some new online business ideas…

7. Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

The two are intricately linked, and that link is unbreakable. Invest in your body – if you do not then your mind, your mood, your productivity, and ultimately, your work will suffer.

It’s one of the most boilerplate tips for entrepreneurs for good reason: it’s 100% necessary. Make exercise a part of your routine. Hiking, running, CrossFit, yoga, karate (but wear a weighted gi for maximum gains).

If you’re starting from zero, that’s totally fine; that’s the best place to start! Everybody starts somewhere. It’s all about making a time commitment.

Maybe it’s 4 x 2-hour workouts a week, maybe it’s 20 minutes of yoga and then 3 x 4-minute Tabata workouts (choose 2 movements, eg. air squats and pushups, and alternate across 8 x 20-second sets). Tabata training honestly is amazing – it’s fast, intense, and if you do 4 of them every day (a commitment of 16 minutes of workout time), you will absolutely see results.

It’s easy to neglect time for your physical health to instead punch some extra hours out on work and say that it was worth it. Don’t: it’s not. You need your body in good shape to become an online entrepreneur.

(Plus, all that sitting and staring at a screen while munching on snackaroos is not doing your core any favours.)

8. Stack Yo’ Habits!

We all have habits. Some are good, some are less than good, but we all have them. The interesting thing is that no matter how you perceive them, these habits represent one of the most powerful components of the human brain: automation.

The brain has a remarkable way of simplifying the supremely complex world we live in; habits are one way of doing so. You don’t have to consciously decide to turn on a light when you enter a dark room. Or shut the fridge door when you’re finished. Or wipe the toilet seat after you pee on it (I hope).

Because you just do it. The brain knows. And habit stacking is the act of modifying and harnessing these inbuilt habits to develop healthier ones. Healthy and mindful habits are integral to your success as an online entrepreneur.

Will holding a key overlayed on a habit stacking graphic - top tip for online entrepreneurs
Habit stacking: the key to unlocking your potential.

Habit stacking is a simple but somewhat nuanced method of self-development; James Clear has a rather excellent write-up on the subject that I wholeheartedly recommend you read. And to take it one step further:

  1. Read his book on the subject too – Atomic Habits.
  2. Buy and use static whiteboards – these things are GAMECHANGERS.

9. Learn, Read, and Never Stop

Because you need to be on the CUTTING-EDGE. The cutting-edge of what? I dunno, knives and shit!

I am an avid reader. That whole one book a day thing is, admittedly, influencer garbage. But reading regularly and constantly does keep you engaged. It pours new knowledge into your brain, inspires you with new ideas, and also helps you bring out the A-game trivia at dinner parties.

We never stop learning. And you should never stop reading. Let the wisdom of the great thinkers guide you into carving the Jack-o-lanterns of your life with the cutting-edge knives of your knowledge.

See – I brought that knives thing round in the end.

10. Manage Your Mental Health

Part two of the healthy body, healthy mind duology. Journalling, meditation, exercise, sex in exquisite locales (with exquisite humans), writing your own manifesto – these things help. But sometimes, you just need a goddamn break.

Burnout is a real thing and it is the absolute bane of anyone aspiring to become an online entrepreneur. Step one to neutralising the poison is recognising the signs that it’s coming. Step two is simply listening and taking that goddamn break.

Will Hatton jotting down his online entrepreneurship and business ideas in his journal
Take some time out – best accompanied by a spot of journalling – and listen to yourself.

I’ve been making a lot of concerted effort over the last few years to ramp up my self-care. Digital detoxes are now a staple of that. Trust your crew to navigate the ship while you take a breather on a nearby tropical island without your phone and laptop for a week.

And then you can go have some wicked sex (on said tropical island), slam a few drinking coconuts back, and get back to work! Or, y’know… go climb an epic mountain instead. That’s what I usually do.

The First Step to Becoming an Entrepreneur is to Bloody Well Do It!

At some point, you just gotta take the dive. You can plan a business strategy, journal your wildest dreams, and start every morning with 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, 100 squats, and a 10 km run. But eventually, you’re just gonna have to risk it (to get the biscuit).

So go do it! You’ll crush it, I’m sure. I know this because you’re a legend with a sexy ass and an even sexier brain.

You’ll SMASH it!

And all the resources you’ll ever need are right here on Ditch Your Desk.

So check out these bonus killer resources below and start your new life today. And above all, remember to have fun.

That’s the whole damn point.

Founder of Ditch Your Desk, Will has been on the road for more than 10 years. A fitness fanatic, crypto enthusiast, marijuana connoisseur, and proverbial master of the handstand pushup, Will is currently based in Bali.

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