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Profit in Peace 6: Day Two

Byjack

Today is the second day in the Profit in Peace Challenge live sessions. I feel really tired. I was dreading this so much.

Questions/thoughts:

  • Calling Amazon a startup sounds like a scammy thing to say
  • I’m so tired of forced enthusiasm
  • I like this analogy
    • If you and your friend start a hot dog stand, and your friend is better than you at cooking, beat him by finding a starving crowd
    • The right bait for the right fish
  • Knowing your customer is about knowing your customer like you know your loved ones when buying Christmas presents
  • Introvert advantage is knowing yourself and knowing what you want
  • Become aware of your own patterns
  • Go to your favorite room in your house, pretend you have 100,000 dollars. Do a window shopping spree.
  • Think about how to create words that describe the whole niche but not specific, hard to find results
  • Pinterest is where people look at what they want to buy, amazon is where people search for the actual item
  • Pinterest > Etsy in 6 months > Amazon 6 months
  • Pinterest extra is an extension that you can use to see the number of saves
  • We are looking for at least 40% margin
  • Six Ps checklist
    • Popularity
      • Look for search volume on amazon (at least 20 thousand)
      • Cerbro reverse product search to find searches
    • Powerplay
      • How much of a difference can we make in this niche
      • Do we have a unique product
      • Is there a dead end search?
    • Persona
      • Do we understand who is this for?
      • Pinterest and internal research
    • Profit
      • Helium10 x ray tool
      • Find supplier on alibaba
      • Look and see how much it takes to manufacture
      • Then do a profitability calculator on a product with a similar size and weight since amazon charges based on size and weight for shipping
      • Need at least a 40% margin because other costs will bring the margin down to 25-30%
    • Practicality
      • Is it practical for you to pay for the costs of sourcing and making your product
    • Powerhouse
      • What is the second and third idea and are they cohesive ideas?

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Valorant 25: Blunder Chess

Byjack

So today, my girlfriend and I were discussing how to make better decisions in Valorant and it made me think that we are playing low level blunder chess. Blunder chess at 200-800 elo is simply playing chess with these main ideas:

  • Check for blunders (hanging queen, bishop, knight or rook)
  • Check for checks on king
  • Look only one move ahead
  • If no clear threats, work on positioning

The idea behind blunder chess is simply that people at low elo will make a lot of mistakes and you can simple wait for them to make a mistake.

I strongly believe my elo (below diamond) that “blunder chess” is highly effective since a lot of simple mistakes are made.

I wonder if I can do the same simple ideas in Valorant where I don’t strategize too much, but check for very simple positioning and big mistakes:

  • If I pull my util or knife out, can I be shot?
  • Am I under time pressure?
  • Positional advantage:
    • Taking space or map control
      • In order of lowest to highest risk
        • Utility/teammates
        • Shoulder peak
        • Jump peak
        • Jiggle peak
        • Wide swing
    • Defending map control
      • In order of lowest to highest risk
        • Utility/teammates
        • Hold and fall off method
        • Spraying
        • Jiggle peak
  • Treat teammates as utility
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Profit in Peace 14: Looking For A Solution

Byjack

Ok, it has been three days and every single day this week, my peace has been disrupted. Things are blowing up at work yet again and I don’t have the space and time that I need to think and introspect and work on my own things.

A couple of big wins:

  1. As per my sleep challenge, my sleep routine has never been better. I’m sticking to the 11 PM bedtime and go to sleep before 11:30 PM. I enjoy the nighttime winddown with journaling and cupping.
  2. My morning routine remains steadfast and strong. Even though sometimes I only have 30 minutes, or I have to get up at 4 AM, every single morning, I get up and check in with my emotions. I’ve added the breathing, I love you, and left handing brushing routine and it has been going well.
  3. I have a pretty clear boundary where I end work around 5 PM, and I don’t really stray very much from that.

So today’s challenge is not about working to further my coaching practice in any way, to work on reviewing VODs or editing my Instagram page or Instagram videos. It is simply about how to transform the chaos and stress that dominate the middle of my day and transform it into peace.

I have the French challenge coming up, and I want to be able to reliably work on that without being pulled all sorts of directions.

A little of introspection and meditation about it reveals to me that the reason why I’m so stressed is because I’m trying to control things that are out of my control. However, I feel the need to control things because I feel that there are many things threatening my boundaries.

The key maybe to have strong clear boundaries and needs, and to work on communicating them and to let go of controlling everything else.

Boundaries & Needs:

  1. I need my own time, I do not want to work any later than 5 consistently or earlier than 9 consistently.
  2. I need to be treated with respect, for my time and opinions to be valued, my accomplishments and skills recognized.
  3. I want to be honest to myself and others.
  4. I want to work with integrity and empathy.
  5. I want to operate with the idea that anything is possible.

What I would like to do today, is before going into any meeting, remind myself of these boundaries and needs and ask myself, what is out of my control, what is within my control.

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How To Charge Money As A Coach

Byjack

I’ve been struggling with an idea recently, the question of how and when to charge for coaching services and when to propose coaching to someone.

The way most coaches approach this is by simply thinking about every hour they spend with someone as a billable hour. They do a “free” intro or demo sessions. I find this approach problematic for numerous reasons:

  1. I love solving problems and delivering value. The reason why I think coaching is the right career is that I would do this stuff even if it was for free.
  2. I hate thinking of every hour of my time as billable. Does every conversation that I don’t get paid for mean that I’m bleeding money everywhere?
  3. I don’t know how to propose coaching, what will the difference be from talking to them? Won’t they feel like I’m charging money for something that should be free?
  4. I don’t see why I shouldn’t prioritize my friends and help people for free? Why should I prioritize only people who pay me money?

 

I thought about it a lot and I realized that when I want to pay for a coach is because I want to be able to take it seriously. I don’t want a friend, I want someone who can help take me to the next level (emotionally, career and success-wise). 

I realized that I can help as many people as I want to for free. I can prioritize friends and spend time with them without thinking of billable hours. But coaching is different. It isn’t just about brainstorming solutions to problems or being an empathetic ear. It’s about taking professional responsibility for someone’s success. The difference between a friend who hired you as a coach from an ordinary friend is that by hiring you they are asking you to meddle with their life!

There are three questions I can ask to see if they would be a good client:

  1. Should they invest in themselves?
  2. Are they doing something that requires coaching?
  3. Do I feel confident that I will be the best coach for the job?

 

If the answer to all three is yes, I will push to sell them on coaching. If they are friends, I can tell them I will help them and give them advice for the rest of their life for free, but it wouldn’t be coaching until they invested in it.

The price of coaching is a mix of what would be an investment for the client, what would make ME invest, and what value I would be delivering.

In terms of differences in details:

  1. Much more structure (cadence for meetings, methods, note-taking etc.)
  2. Different mindset (clients’ goals are my goals, not my friend’s goals)
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Financial Software

Byjack

I want to do some planning to work on a software that will help me keep track of my financial situation while also taking far less of my time.

What I want the financial software to help with:

  1. Verify credit card transactions
  2. Make me aware of money in vs money out
  3. Make me aware of potential savings strategies
  4. Ideally teach me some javascript
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Valorant 13: Advice From My Brother

Byjack

Today I had a strategy session with my brother who is almost at the rank I want to be (Plat) about major mindset shifts I need to do to get out of Bronze and Silver.

Here are the main areas we came up with:

  1. Learn to play off of contact better: 
    • Swing when you see teammates swinging
    • If you see someone holding, pre-aim and get ready to trade
  2. Crosshair placement and preaiming
    • Holding for wide swing vs close
  3. Methodical clearing
  4. Ability usage
    • Have gameplan for ability usage for the beginning of every attack and defending round
  5. Map awareness
    1. Look at minimap more
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Knee Strength 2: Standing Exercises

Byjack

New knee exersises:

  1. Warmup: Single leg toe point
    1. All weight on big toe, quick heel raise, raise whole body upwards
  2. Main Exercise: Rolling single leg squat stretch
    1. Stretch on leg in front, squat forward and down, roll backwards and up
    2. Repeat with both legs
    3. Repeat with stretching leg in back and to the side
  3. Mobility: Gentle leg swing bend
    1. Slight bend in one leg while other leg slightly swings forward
    2. Repeat with both legs
    3. Repeat swinging back and to the side and bending up and back
  4. Stability: Pronated squat
    1. One leg squat while weight on outside of the sole of the foot
    2. Repeat with weight on inside, toe and heel
    3. Repeat with both legs