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Sales All the Way Baby

Byjack

So I’ve been thinking a lot about, well sales. This video sums it up pretty well.

I have been focusing on a lot of things recently, coaching, youtube, France and my girlfriend and on top of all of that, work and my day job in AI consulting. I recently decided to say fuck it for everything but three things:

  1. My girlfriend and relationship – we don’t have much time together and I want to enjoy it
  2. Exploring France – again not much time, amazing opportunity to relax and explore
  3. Going crazy as an AI Consultant and bringing in a crazy amount of business

My relationship is going pretty good, and for France I don’t want to think about it, I just do whatever I want. So let’s focus on the last thing.

I want to do exactly what Mark Cuban said. I want to be the best-performing salesman at my job. I want to take that experience to build my coaching business. I want to use my success to do consulting like I do coaching and have a lot of fun. I want to use my success to request more pay.

I want to learn how to master content creation. Build a social media presence. Build my connections. Get the reputation and respect that I’ve always felt I deserved.

The main conundrum I’ve been facing is this:

  1. How much information do I give away?
  2. If I give away tons of free information, what are they hiring me for?
  3. If I give away free 30 minute sessions, does that mean I will never talk to them ever again?

After some meditation, I came up with the following thoughts:

  1. I can give away everything
  2. For focusing on their specific problem. The most difficult thing is not to come up with a solution it is to come up with a solution to the right problem (just like coaching)
  3. No, I can always talk to them again. In fact, I can give away unlimited 30-minute sessions. However, it isn’t about the 30 minutes in the session that costs me a lot. It is the 30 minutes of research that I need to do before the call. It is the structure of writing out a plan for them that is costing me more.
  4. I can always have more conversations with less prep or even more 30 minute conversations with them.
  5. In the future, if they pay for consulting, they are paying me to invest more deeply into their solution. That means more research outside of the calls. That means more knowledge of their product and aligning my goals with theirs (just like in coaching).
  6. If I wanted to sell educational products, the cost for me and the added value for them would be in the way I packaged the information. Not the information itself. For example, a special website, platform, a book or an app.

There are three parts of a solving a problem:

  1. Having the knowledge
  2. Transferring it to someone
  3. Using the knowledge to solve the problem

When you create free content, you are mostly some #1 and some #2. I use a lot of my current knowledge + a little research + some production (design, videography, writing).

When I get on random calls with people, it is a little #1 and a little #2. I’m using my current knowledge with no research, and trying my best to transfer it to someone on a call.

When I get on “free” high value calls with people, I’m doing some of #1 and some #2 and a tiny bit of #3. I do a lot of research, use my current knowledge, trying my best to transfer the knowledge, and might even implement a small deliverable (like a roadmap, plan, strategy, or diagnosis).

When I’m doing consulting for them, I’m doing a lot of #1 and a lot of #3 with some #2. I’m doing tons of research, using my own knowledge, leading the charge on actually solving the problem (either building it myself, finding the right solution to buy, or hiring the people needed to build it), and doing a bit of education.

When I’m selling an education solution, I am doing a lot of #1 and a lot of #2. I’m doing tons of research, and spending a lot of effort on transferring the knowledge.

Alex Hormozi On Rejection and Failure

Byjack

The first step is to say “it’s my fault”. Second step is to use what you have.

Make the pain in the future worse than what is in the present or you will feel the pain from yesterday because you pushed it today.

Patience is about figuring out what to do in the meantime.

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Workpost 16: Risk and Challenge

Byjack

So I’m pretty frustrated because this is the second time I am writing this blog post. The first time I wrote this blog post, the post was bugging out and didn’t save properly.

Not too happy about that.

In the spirit of growth, I am going to let go of that blog post and focus on creating an entirely new one without losing the essence of what I wanted to say in the first one I wrote.

This morning I was feeling really stressed out and I was really enjoying my walk. I feel like this whole questions meditations thing has really worked out. I really like journaling at night, and walking during the day. Before when I was forcing myself to go outside because I felt like I had to, I kinda hated it. It was nice once I got outside, but before then it was pretty awful.

Now, since I know I’m going use the time to meditate on some of the questions I have in my heart, I feel really excited and motivated to go outside in the morning.

Here are the main things I was stressed out about this morning:

  1. My career, didn’t know where I was going next
  2. My medical bills, spent 8k on a new medical device, hundreds more for my GI doctor
  3. My financial issues, I spent 700 more than I made yesterday
  4. My coaching career, still not anywhere close to making enough money to be self sufficient
  5. I could move back home, but then I’m worried about having a place for my girlfriend to visit me

And through my amazing short 20 minute walk, here are the answers I got:

  1. Acknowledge that you are taking a huge risk by paying 1,700 per month on rent with very little income and building coaching business from 0
  2. Risk is not a bad thing, it is an incredible catalyst for growth
  3. Risk means, now is the time to shine. Focus on the few things that matter most
    • Building an really strong foundation of health, a very strong structure for getting stuff done
    • Changing the lives of my current coaching clients
    • Work slowly towards my career in AI
  4. It’s ok to invest money in the medical bills because they directly help with my foundational health goal. Double down on the investment by focusing a lot on sleep and digestion.
  5. Let go of all other goals and distractions because now is go time. Just work on small projects or really gradual work.

The Perfect Job

Byjack

For the longest time, I’ve thought that my job was pretty much perfect. It wasn’t the highest paying job, or the one that I loved the most, but I think it has many many good elements such as:

  • Good enough pay to never have to worry about money
  • Good work/life balance, lots of work sometimes, little work others
  • Lots of traveling
  • Get to practice speaking and work on fun projects

Obviously, I could find a job even better in every area, but this is quite good already.

I realized recently why I still feel tired and think that it is too much work so often. THE WORK LIFE BALANCE IS HORRIBLE.

Ok, I understand I just contradicted myself there, but the reason why I think the work life balance is good is because on paper, there are lots of downtime where I can do whatever I want. However, because of the amount of emotional pressure that I put on myself, I’m actually always thinking about work which means that there is actually no worklife balance at all.

I worry if I kick back and ignore work for a while:

  • I will not be able to focus when I really need to so I need to get all the work done that I can
  • I will not be able to have enough time to get my work done when I really need to so I need to be working all the time
  • Someone will ask me what I’ve been working on and I will be outed as someone who is not contributing anything

Some of the anxieties I have around actually working:

  • I worry I will create ugly applications and I will come off as bad and incompetent
  • I worry I will not build enough for my application and I will come off as lazy or incompetent
  • I worry that when I go into meetings I will look unprepared and stupid

If I am able to deal with the emotional burden of this job and turn work into something soothing and relaxing for me, I will actually be so happy in this job. This will be the easiest money I will ever make and it will free me up to make money in other ways as well.

I’m going to do this in a couple of ways:

  1. Practice acceptance of where I am. Give myself permission to be bad
  2. Reprogram the idea that I will be rejected if I am not perfect
  3. Look for ways to make my job extremely easy
  4. Find ways to meet my needs through my jobs

So Step 1:

I am lazy, incompetent, unproductive and stupid. I accept myself for it. I give myself permission to be this way as much as I want to be.

Step 2:

The Bossy Man

In the meeting

Which I spent

Almost no time preparing for

He asked me to show

Something

I didn’t want to show

I said no

The meeting

Was under my

Control

 

The Finicky Architect

I created something

That I didn’t think

Was good enough

To stop him from asking question

Yet I showed up not to impress

But to help

And we were both happy

By the end

Step 3:

Where are the hardest parts of my job?

1 – Learning about new technology

  • Takes a long time
  • Hard to know what to focus on
  • Hard to remember

Ideas on how to make it easier:

  • Create materials for myself to make my life easier (cheat sheets, presentations)
  • Look for a way to make my life easier
  • Timebox an attempt to learn quickly
  • Focus on one area that has impact

2 – Building mockups

  • Takes time to understand the customer’s process
  • Hard to formulate what I need
  • Hard to understand how to design it
  • Hard to work out the technical parts of building out a process

Ideas on how to make it easier:

  • Clearly articulate what I need
    • The interfaces
      • What the style is
    • The processes
    • The data structures
    • The priority
  • Get help on the UI
  • Get help on the build itself

3 – Presenting the product

  • Never know what they will ask me to explain or click on
  • Hard to boil down the flow to a few steps
  • People may want to test you on areas that they don’t understand or may be hard to show

Ideas on how to make it easier:

  • Get the clarity I need:
    • Why they are asking the question?
    • What are they testing me on? What is the thing I need to prove?
    • What do they already know or understand?
  • Pause
    • Think about my gameplan
    • Use metaphors to bridge understanding gaps
    • Walk through what I’m about to do in my head before I do it on the screen

Step 4:

The most annoying things at work and how I will meet my needs through it:

  • Building mockups
    • Contribution: Who am I helping with this?
    • Growth: What will I do better with this demo?
    • Significance: What special signature will be mine?
    • Uncertainty: What is it that interests me the most about this demo?
    • Certainty: What do I want to copy? Who can make my life easier? How long do I need realistically?
  • Filing expense reports, doing training and filing quarterly reviews
    • Love and Connection: Who can I have a working/hangout session with?
    • Uncertainty: What time challenge should I give myself?
  • Boring meetings/trainings
    • Certainty: Why am I joining? What questions do I need to ask? If none, make a note of what I need from the meeting and watch the recording.
    • Love and Connection: Reach out to the presenter and tell them what you liked
  • Giving demos and presentations
    • Contribution: How can I be the most helpful?
    • Significance: Why am I showing this? 
    • Uncertainty: Don’t prepare
    • Certainty: What am I afraid of?

Ok, that’s it for now. I will say that writing this blog post has been tremendously helpful. I will be referencing this over and over again it is just so useful. Hopefully after using it many many times, it will be ingrained within me and I won’t need to look at it anymore.

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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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Profit in Peace 11: Moving On???

Byjack

Ok, I decided something weird that I’m not sure is going to work yet.

I decided that I’m going to keep this challenge going on forever and we will have different objective driving it constantly. It will be a sort of daily journal where I get to focus on Profit in Peace, finding my ikigai, tapping into my coaching energy, feeling into my body, working on my challenges, and discovering that the world is a magical place.

It will continue to be labeled like the other challenges, but it is different in the sense that it doesn’t have a specific end date. The end date might be just when this mentality, thinking of this as a Profit in Peace no longer serves me. Which might be never.

You know in a way this should be called Blog Post. Because it is the most blog post of blog posts. The sole purpose of these posts is literally to work on my life through my blog. But “Blog Post” just doesn’t evoke what I need for it to evoke, so we ain’t doing it.

So what is the focus for today?

Today we have a similar bent to yesterday but a little more focused on gaming. In no particular order, I want to:

  • Play lots of valorant and create poems about how I feel about dropping to gold 1 and STILL losing
  • Cook lots of food, be creative and have fun eating
  • Watching another 20 minutes of the VOD review
  • Work on my knee challenge
  • Go for a run

Yesterday, I went for a short run.

Here is a poem about it:

Tingling in My Back

That’s the feeling when I push myself

My knees not ready for the impact

I want to massage my stomach and back

I’m aware of others watching

I wonder if Alice would be embarrassed of me

I want people to like me

Especially the girls

I think about how I learned to control what other’s thought of me

And that’s when everything went to a place

Shaky and scary

I remind myself

What others feel

Is out of my control

I’m proud of my innovative knee exercises

They make my prickly knees

Feel warm and supple again

I just came back from my most recent run. Today I focused on processing the anxiety being surrounded by everyone’s opinions of me. I realized a couple of things.

Dr Bea Mackay

She told me an exercise

The same one

Every session

Breath in breath out

I realized

It isn’t about other people

They never mattered

Neither did their opinions

I’m them

As a trigger for my pain

The sharp inhale

To take the pain

The release of the exhale

Filling me with warmth

From head to toe

The point was never to win their approval

It was to feel my pain

It is so interesting how Dr. Bea Mackay’s exercises are so similar to Wim Hoff’s. And Wim Hoff’s exercises are about enduring and thriving in pain too, just his are about cold and her’s are about emotions. No wonder so many people talk about the Wim Hoff method bringing them relief from chronic anxiety.