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The Profit in Peace Challenge

Byjack

So here is the long and short of it.

I saw an ad on Facebook. It was talking about making money as an introvert and making money without giving up your inner peace.

I immediately signed up. It was about 20 dollars.

Now I have done a bunch of the exercises for the prework of the challenge and here are my reflections.

Some major questions that I have right now:

  1. What am I willing to give up and how will I go about giving it up?
  2. How do I live my values every day in a way that is in flow and not forced or mechanical?

I have some initial ideas.

First, I was thinking originally about what I wanted to give up in terms of things like YouTube, or socializing. But recently it made a lot more sense for me to think about time. Specifically, I wanted to dedicate my entire morning to succeeding at these goals.

From the time I wake up, I usually am doing what JT Franco calls “buffalo brain” (the idea of being one of the herd that moves without thinking). I listen to audiobooks, and watch YouTube videos. I don’t eat breakfast or drink water. I keep the blinds closed. I feel awful and I don’t feel the feelings.

Someone once said (might be Melinda Gates) that the first few hours of the day are the most important because they set the stage for the entire day to come. If I want to give up anything, I want to give up my mornings to getting up, drinking water, feeling my body, and going downstairs into the lounge to write on my blog and work on achieving my dreams.

Middle of the day has to be reserved for work and for talking to my girlfriend. End of the day has to be reserved for me time. Being alone, taking time, creating art, and letting the magic of nighttime take over.

This is what I’m thinking roughly:

7/8 AM – 9/10 AM: Dedicated to living the magical life

9/10 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to doing the impossible at work

12 PM – 1/2 PM: Lunch, meditation

1/2 PM – 5 PM: Work, performing at the highest levels

5 PM – 7 PM: Misc time

7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play

During the weekend, work will be removed, leaving more time for dedication to my magical life. I think it will look something like this:

7/8 AM – 12 PM: Dedicated to living the magical life

12pm – 7 PM: Misc time

7 PM – 11 PM: Alone time, creativity, play

With this balance, it seems that my breakdown is this:

Weekday

  • 1-3 hours per day on living magical life
  • 5-7 hours of work
  • 4 hours of alone-time/play
  • 2 hours of miscellaneous time

Weekend

  • 4-5 hours per day on living magical life
  • 4 hours of alone-time/play
  • 7 hours of miscellaneous time

I suspect, I will have to do careful planning during the weekend, in order to perform at the absolute highest levels of work and potentially spend less time there.

In terms of living out my beliefs of empathy, intuition/following feelings, creativity/imagination, and honesty. I’m not entirely sure what actions I need to take to feel that I am in congruence with my values.

My main thought right now is about taking risks, breathing through difficult emotions and sensations, and following connection theory.

The Project Management Crash Challenge

Byjack

It is time for a crash course in project management!

Objectives:

  1. Understand and be able to apply major project management methodologies (PMP school, waterfall, agile project management)
  2. Review other methodologies that I already know (design thinking, OKRs, SRE, DevOps, UI/UX)
  3. Formulate resources and learning into distinct repositories of knowledge and simple shortcuts and worksheets that I can use as shorthand reminders and ways to kick off processes

Total time: 4 hours

PART ONE: Master project management (2 hrs)

  • Section one: Learn, research, and gather (1 hr)
    • Subsection one: Warm up via listening to videos and gathering resource lists (20 minutes)
    • Subsection two: Create own practice scenarios and find questions in them (20 minutes)
    • Subsection three: Consume and build resource repos off of resource lists and answer my own questions (20 minutes)
  • Section two: Create practice scenarios (30 min)
  • Section three: Question and answer (30 min)

PART TWO: Review other methodologies (1 hr)

  • Section one: write down everything from memory basic searching (20 minutes)
  • Section two: watch videos (20 minutes)
  • Section three: search for resources and worksheets (20 minutes)

PART THREE: Create and organize resources (1 hr)

  • Section one: create a structure for folders and docs (20 minutes)
  • Section two: create resources for project management (20 minutes)
  • Section three: create resources for other methodologies (20 minutes)

Here is a video that I started out with:

Project Life Cycle
Project Management Process

Links to the worksheets

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The Sales Funnel Challenge

Byjack

I’ve always wanted to take as many sales and marketing offers as possible. I don’t know whether or not they are scams or not. I don’t know which ones are useful or not. So I wanted to take all of them, and treat them all like challenges.

Today, I started one of the Challenges. I signed up for a book called “Sell Like Crazy” from King Kong marketing agency with founder Sabri Suby. The book is about building clients from facebook ads (something I can already see they are good at and I have an interest in). I want to try this out with my coaching business.

The reason why I started with this sales funnel is that they have a hilarious Facebook commercial and they also had a unique offer – a free (or almost free) book.

My thoughts so far:

  • Really well-shot and entertaining commercial, they are a good marketing agency.
  • Glassdoor makes me think they are legit
  • I’m excited about the free book
  • They are too salesy, they kept me on the funnel for like an HOUR and predictably tried to sell me something immediately afterwards
  • My idea of them definitely soured in the sales funnel because of the endless funnel and greedy money grabs

Excited to see where this will go!

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What I Want My Job To Be

Byjack

I think a lot of people have it wrong when they look to people for guidance. We look for the rich, the successful, the types of people who made a million dollars and are now flaunting it with expensive cars, watches, and parties, and beautiful women almost saying, “you want this? I can show you how to get it”.

But the truth is that no one wants that, even though they think they might want it. People want to know the truth of things. They want to know how to live, how to love, and how to lose. They want to learn how to see beauty, find joy and feel sadness. They want to find meaning, feel like they are special, and that they are exploring the world like we did when we were kids. There is nothing wrong with money, but it was once just a tool, and now it has become the goal.

The people who got the closest to the answer are not businessmen, but artists. Is it not the music of musicians, the books of authors, the paintings or painters, and the films of filmmakers that are often the most profound teachers of life?

This is why I’ve always sought creation, youtube, and art out much more than success. This is why creators like Mr. Beast (though more well meaning than some creators disgust me with their materialism).

I’ve decided that THIS is the job I want. I want the hard job of creating. Creating art, music, writing, and videos. Creating something that will help people reach the deep ideas in life, but also simplify things to the sensations we feel and guide us back to being kids in the present moment.

I’ve always felt like some things in life feel like a damn waste of time. I always wonder what work is worth doing for me, something that I feel I was meant to do, and what feels not worth it for me.

I always knew it was understanding life, working through my traumas and understanding how to make life magic. But I never was so clear on what the work was.

I want to serve as more than just an artist but a speaker, a coach, someone who can explain the art in logical and easily understandable ways. I don’t want to be studying to be a coach. I want to be studying life, living it, exploring it, touching it. I want my coaching to be a collaboration in the enterprise of spreading this practice of understanding deeper truths in life and finding true purpose. The kind of purpose you feel when you hear a song you love, the kind of clarity when you read something profound.

And when I get money. Lots of money. I will just continue to create. Organizations, experiences, works of art.

Elements of my enterprise:

  1. Creating art coloring life (comics, paintings, writings, etc.)
  2. Live streaming/videos on creation/techniques/challenges/stories
  3. Discussing works of art that color life
  4. Creating guides on how to live/succeed/understand
  5. Speaking on practical topics/problems/challenges
  6. Coaching on developing color in life
  7. Creating events that color life

*When I say “color life”, I mean the feeling of deep conversations, connecting with childlike wonder, being in the moment and feeling the feelings, being spontaneous, taking risks, and finding silence and simplicity. But why explain it? Listen to it down below.

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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)