Workpost 52: Logistics Done

So the groundwork is essentially laid for a lot of things.

I plan on investing $600 into the AI coaching business.

60% of revenue will go to my living expenses

10% will go business expenses

30% will be held in a high yield savings account for taxes

I plan on investing $5000 for the creation of the funnel for my art coaching business. It is already set aside for that purpose.

When I get to the 3 month mark (and I run my businesses full time) I will dip into the savings I have set aside in my emergency fund.

To make things simple, I just decided to funnel all business expenses through my AI coaching account. I will keep my coaching income a separate account.

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Workpost 54: Fears

I’m starting work on the new branding project but I’m feeling some fears:

  1. Fear of failure
  2. Fear of being misunderstood and not heard
  3. Fear of being seen as bad, lazy, unproductive, dumb

I feel trapped. Shoulders, fear in center of chest. I don’t know what to do to be seen as productive.

I feel overwhelmed. I feel out of control. Nerves vibing in my chest. Clenched stomach. I don’t know what will work.

I feel like a failure. Pain in my chest. I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’m imagining failing. I feel worthless. Head, chest, cold, numb tingling.

Grounding

I may not satisfy other people’s ideas of productivity, but I can satisfy what I see as productive. I can focus on my personal growth and the growth of my companies.

I don’t know what will work but I know what I can try.

I’m adventuring into new territory – that’s why I don’t know what I’m doing.

This gives me the opportunity to process the I’m unworthy wound.

Reframe

This is my opportunity to help other people grow in what they understand as productivity.

Embrace people knowing what you are working on, practice being proud of your process (like emotional processing). -> Big trigger from dad being skeptical of my process and feeling like I need to justify

Big failure literally always leads to big growth and learning. Let’s chase failure. I shouldn’t feel guilty as failure is all on me.

Ok, that makes me realize a lot of this comes from my dad constantly being skeptical, not trusting me, and dismissing my process. I feel always I need to justify myself.

It leads to a very strong I am trapped wound. Shoulders compressed and pain in chest.

Also some I am misunderstood, I am a failure, I am not trusted.

I wonder if that’s how he was treated? I wonder if he has those wounds too.

To grow from it, it occurs to me that he needed an explanation, a justification, and was skeptical because of his own internalized judgement – not because there was something wrong with me.

His comparison of me with other people was all due to his own shame.

Demanding an explanation is from own lack of trust in himself, he can’t understand my trust in myself.

Additional processing:

I did some more processing later in the day. I felt super tired but I kept feeling pressure to work. I feel fear that if I don’t get a certain amount of work done, that I will be rejected.

My dad would say that I didn’t plan the day out well enough, I was not efficient enough, or that I need to work harder.

I felt that fear in my chest as a I am not good enough wound.

In reframing I came to the conclusion that even though my dad had no boundaries around the amount of energy he could put into work, doesn’t mean I cannot.

I choose to put boundaries around my work, and to stop working or move on when I feel I’ve given as much as I can give within the course of the day.

AI Consulting – Day 1/21

Some more thoughts about my brand for AI Consulting:

  1. I want it to have a Youth Venture feel
    • Anything is possible
    • Warm and supportive and inspiring community
  2. I want to incorporate these ethe:
    • Never compromise on your vision
    • Move humanity forwards
    • Be science fiction (either in philosophy or technology or both)
  3. Inspiring thoughts:
    • Make every business like a Youth Venture business
      • Social enterprise
      • Founders feel purpose in what they do
      • Dream big, prioritize vision
    • Ship fire manual
      • AI that pushed the limit of what is possible
      • Creates our science fiction

Workpost 53: Time to Kick Into Gear

It’s time to think through the plan for each of my businesses a little more carefully.

I want to spend 3 months setting up the funnel for each of my businesses and 3 months trying out and running the funnels.

Let’s breakdown what that looks like.

Art Coaching

Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total

What needs to be done for the funnel:

  1. Payment/banking systems
  2. How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business
  3. Website
  4. Business cards
  5. Calendly
  6. Client contracts
  7. Mailing lists/CRM

General Aim: To make a beautiful creative world on my website, business cards, social media that reminds me of adventure, magic, and dreams

Next step for MVP…

3 day challenge – Make a mess

By the end of the challenge:

  1. Print out business cards
  2. Have a WordPress website with basic information on it
  3. Figure out how to do scheduling with Calendly

AI Consulting

Start: 7/12 | End: 9/12 | 63 days total

What needs to be done for the funnel:

  1. Payment/banking systems
  2. How much to pay myself vs save for taxes vs reinvest into business
  3. Website
  4. Business cards
  5. Calendly
  6. Client contracts
  7. Mailing lists/CRM
  8. Branding
  9. New contract for funnel

General Aim: To create a place where business owners with the talent and potential can go to unblock their problems

Next step for MVP…

3 day challenge – Create website

By the end of the challenge:

  1. Website that clearly shows brand and services
  2. Clear way to schedule a consultation with me
  3. Be able to talk to local meetups

Workpost 52: Exhausted

I’m so tired from being sleep-deprived for a few days now.

Today I want to focus on a couple of things:

  1. Completing all the hours of work I want to get done
  2. Focusing on my health
  3. Get screws from Home Depot

Workpost 50: Fundamentals

Today is kinda busy and I want to focus on fundamentals – clearing out my todo list, getting all the UNIT ONE things crossed off my list, editing my interview with Danuta Hinc etc.

I also want to focus on the thing that I’ve put off for months, setting up my black out curtains. If I can get that set up today, then I will have accomplished something big.

If I’m able to sort out all the fundamentals. Then the next things to focus on for my business are the following:

  1. AI Consulting mood board
  2. Art coaching sketching
  3. Hubspot and CRM exploration

Workpost 49: Onwards

Make up something for the answers to each of my questions:

  1. What are my target audiences and how can I reach them in a way that is consistent with my vision?
  2. What is a way that my funnel will achieve my mission and vision in some way?
  3. How do I make the funnel effortless and almost self-perpetuating somehow?

AI Consulting

  • Target audience is startup or small businesses
  • My vision is to help them reach their full potential
  • I think the best way to reach them is probably through a facebook funnel
  • That means walking them through some free content, free newsletter, and possibly free community
  • Maybe 3 offerings: strategic consulting, innovation project, business overhaul
  • Strong brand on brighter future
  • Once funnel is created, should be able to just talk to consultations, maybe live streams

Art Coaching

  • Target market are people who are looking to or about to retire
  • My vision is to foster the creation of more masterpieces
  • Best way to reach them is to hand out business cards at conferences
  • I think the best way to achieve my mission is by having some content on a website that is inspirational for artists, magical, fun, simple way to book a free consultation
  • Create a business card that is magical and artsy
  • Strong brand around dreams
  • Once funnel is created, just go to conferences and hand out business cards

Ok, now that I worked through all of that, time to go through the same stuff as yesterday:

UNIT ONE: Logistics

  1. Log the new DBA documents
  2. Switch Epiphany AI over to a new account
  3. Switch expenses that are related to business over to new business bank account
  4. Apply for a second business credit card

UNIT TWO: Longterm planning

  1. Answer the question, how much time and money do I want to put into each experiment?

UNIT THREE: Business planning

  1. Finish business plans
  2. Finish financial plans
  3. Finish self growth plans
  4. Finish marketing plans

Final Updates:

  1. Brand for funnel of Art Coaching is children’s books, fairy tale, fantasy. The website is an invitation to start an adventure.
  2. Plan for AI consulting is to explore CRM pipelines such as Zoho, Zapier, and Hubspot

Workspace 48: Making Things Up to Myself

Today is the day to make things up for myself.

Reminding myself of the mantra:

  1. This is my house
  2. Take time, patience
  3. Take risks
  4. Be ok with silence

Today I want to establish the finances, goals, and structures of my businesses.

This means finishing the following things:

  1. Business plans
  2. Financial plans
  3. Create all necissary business bank accounts
  4. Move around finances
  5. Reinvest stocks
  6. Answer the question, how much am I willing to invest and for how long?

Here is how I want to divide it up:

UNIT ONE: Logistics

  1. Log the new DBA documents
  2. Switch Epiphany AI over to a new account
  3. Switch expenses that are related to business over to new business bank account
  4. Apply for a second business credit card

UNIT TWO: Longterm planning

  1. Answer the question, how much time and money do I want to put into each experiment?

UNIT THREE: Business planning

  1. Finish business plans
  2. Finish financial plans
  3. Finish self growth plans
  4. Finish marketing plans

UNIT ONE: Logistics

  • Logged the new DBA documents
  • Created the new business account
  • Still need to apply for new business credit card and switch over expenses

UNIT TWO: Logistics

  • All I want to do is to set up the funnels for both businesses
  • I am willing to spend 3 months setting up the funnel for both businesses and 2k for the AI Consulting, and 10k for Art Coaching
  • Then I am willing to spend 3 months working on the funnels to see if I want to do it fulltime

UNIT THREE: Business Planning

  • I’m running into issues deciding how my funnels will look
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Path to Fast Growth

Some thoughts:

  1. You don’t always need or want to grow fast
  2. However, if you do, this is how

To summarize very quickly:

There are two things you can do to grow faster, get more customers, and make the customer more valuable.

To get more customers you need:

  • More traffic → Advertise more/better
  • Higher conversion % → Practice sales/Improve offer

To make them more valuable you need to:

  • Raise your prices → Grow gonads & decide
  • Buy more times (decrease churn) → Reach outs, exit interviews, prepayments, OB, Fast results, Events

Spend 80% of your time doing this.