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Profit In Peace 19: Taking Charge

Byjack

I’m angry. I feel trapped at home, at work, and in my relationship. I am tired and uncomfortable like I have no personal space. I am taking charge today.

I don’t know what that means, but right now it means, that for the first time since I came back to my parent’s house, I am doing my daily routine.

Nowhere To Go

My parents

Hovering

Watching

Judging

Like glue stuck to my arms

My girlfriend

A ball of frustration and negativity

That I feel anxiety in my core

Every time she pulls at me

My work a clash between

Two fighting parents

With me stuck in the middle

Where is the space for me?

I feel several realizations come to me when I write about these emotions. First, the technique of taking space. I feel all my oxygen, happiness, room, and sanity is taken away by others. I feel like I’m making myself smaller to give room to others. The first thing I want to do is to start taking up space, making demands, and making myself big.

The second thing that I feel is important (and might give me a clue as to how I can make myself big, and not huddle real small), is remembering my boundaries and needs:

  1. Time – I want to be in control of my time
  2. Honesty – I want to be honest with myself and others
  3. Empathy – I want to empathize and others to empathize with me
  4. Possibility – I want to believe anything is possible
  5. Respect – I want others to show respect for me and my abilities

This already gives me a clearer idea of what is happening here.

I definitely feel a lack of honesty, time, and sometimes respect and empathy at home. In fact, maybe possibility sometimes too. In my relationship I feel lack of honesty, empathy, possibility, and time (and sometimes respect). And at work, I feel a lack of respect, honesty, empathy, and time as well.

I also feel that in every scenario, the key is wanting everyone to like me to not feel uncomfortable.

I caused most of these boundary violations to happen, and that is empowering because I have the ability to change them,

One of the things I want to do instead of wanting everyone to be happy and wanting everyone to like me, is approach people with my same values.

For example, if I want to be honest with someone, empathize with them, show respect, but let go of trying to control how they feel. If I want to be respected more, I can do that with empathy and honesty and respect as well.

This is far more empowering and less stressful because I am in control of myself. I can change how I approach situations, but I cannot control others.

Stock Investing

Byjack

I was talking to my friend Edgar and was inspired to do more stock investing.

My new stock investment strategy:

  1. Divest from all unclear funds
  2. Create a spreadsheet for fund allocation
  3. Pick a couple of stocks to focus on for the next 3 years
  4. Write down clear reasoning as to why it is a safe bet, how long I expect it to grow, and what would cause me to sell
  5. Create audit schedules to audit stocks

Here are my current list of Top Picks (high grow, low risk):

  1. Nvidia
  2. Alphabet
  3. Cloud computing ETF

Weak Picks (potential high grow or low risk, not enough information):

  1. Tesla
  2. Microsoft
  3. Take Two Interactive
  4. Meta
  5. AMD
  6. Intel
  7. Apple
  8. Tencent
  9. Intuit

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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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Workpost 3: Pleasant Uncertainty

Byjack

Today I feel a bit like there is a lot of uncertainty. There is uncertainty with my coaching business and with my career as an AI consultant, but there are also lots of opportunities moving forward.

I want to strive to move forwards and not start to distract myself from the emotions via games and videos.

The first thing I want to tackle is sleep. That is my main priority today. I want to understand why I feel unfulfilled at night, like something wasn’t quite done.

My intuition tells me that I desire to create art. I don’t know why.

Perhaps my first step is to start working on art at 9:30 PM.

Before that I want to achieve something in Valorant, so I will need to do some gaming earlier in the day.

I also desire to work on myself more, I think it really helps to think about emotional development as work. When I think about it as vulnerability, it feels not productive. But when I think of it as emotional work, it takes on new meaning and purpose.

Ok so lets take a look at my two projects right now:

So for my AI Consulting plan, I want to stick to the plan, but the timeline has changed a bit.

I wanted this current goal (Be known, give preview of consulting) to finish by Feb 27th. That leaves 7 days to film, shoot, edit and get feedback.

UNIT ONE (ends 23rd): Shoot 3 videos

  • Spend total of 3 hours per video (9 hours total)

UNIT TWO (ends 24th): Write 2 LinkedIn posts

  • Spend total of 1.5 hrs per post (3 hrs total)

UNIT THREE (ends 26th): Get feedback, harden process

Looking at my goal for art coaching, I feel dissatisfied with my current structure on process for that. I feel I need to work on finding more ambitious and exciting goals at every step of the way (even if I have a lot of time to get there). I realized in order for the syllabus method to work, you need to have very ambitious exciting goal…then think about how to make it difficult to expect anything other than success.

So let’s revisit the master plan here.

Goal: Ramp up to an income of 8333 per month (100k per year) within one year

I want to choose a new goal…make 1500 per week in coaching.

I want to achieve this within the next 3 months.

UNIT ONE (1 month): Focus on my craft – become a coach I would hire for 1000 per month

  1. Create plans (10 days, ends March 2nd)
    1. Deeply understanding clients
    2. Creating extreme focus and presence in life and sessions
    3. Developing connections clients need
    4. Materials and exercises to create and track strategy
  2. Execute on plans (10 days, ends March 12th)
  3. Research and refinement (10 days, ends March 22nd)
    1. Interview other coaches
    2. Read books
    3. Further brainstorming

UNIT TWO (1 month): Build 100 hot leads – depends on having free stuff

  1. Random try posting (10 days, ends April 1st)
  2. Get feedback and do networking and outreach (10 days, ends April 11th)
  3. Turn warm leads into hot leads with offer (10 days, ends April 21st)

UNIT THREE (1 month): Meld and combine top level coaching with leads machine

  1. Talk about my clients achievements, use it to push their art (10 days, ends May 1st)
  2. Clients have voice on my platform to talk about concepts in my coaching (10 days, ends May 11th)
  3. Refine call for action to get warm leads to ask for my offer, then turn into hot leads (10 days, ends May 21st)

Okok, I finally have a good framework, but working on this framework makes me realize I really do need to work on free products in the meantime.

Goal: Create free products in 1 month

UNIT ONE (10 days, ends March 2nd): Complete research

  1. Transcribe and think, what is the million dollar problem or breakthrough?
  2. Collate results, come up with solutions
  3. Research competition

UNIT TWO (10 days, ends March 12th): Develop products

  1. Planning and gathering materials doing research
  2. Create products

UNIT THREE (10 days, ends March 22nd): Continue development

  1. Testing and creating more products

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Knowing When You Are in Danger

Byjack

What was really striking about this commentary is about how amateurs play chess vs grandmasters, and how grandmasters play vs computers.

This is interesting because Hans Neiman was accused and proven multiple times of being a chess cheater, someone who uses chess engines to play certain critical moves.

If he actually is, his gameplay is more similar to an AI moving rather than a human.

What is interesting about that is that human seem to react a lot to emotional threats, when they are not actually in danger, thus putting themselves in greater danger.

I can relate to this a lot in Valorant, and I wonder if understanding the greater picture better in Valorant will help me understand how much danger I am in, and not unnecessarily put myself in more danger by peeking just because I feel threatened.

Privilege: The Tale of Two Airbnbs

Byjack

So I just changed Airbnbs in France and it made a massive mental difference.

The first Airbnb was fine. It looked nice and modern and was in the heart of the city. But the bed was uncomfortable and it was small and everything felt dark and closed.

The outside felt dirty and dark and the “main attraction” was the Carrefour (a french grocery that was extremely close by).

Rarely got a full nights sleep
View overlooking the street
Mirror in the back, not as big as it looks
Little bathroom
Door for apartment right window construction frame
The local attraction

The second Airbnb was very different. It was over twice as large (55 m2 vs 20 m2), filled with natural light and greenery and was near a park (Jardin des Arenes de Cimiez) and a museum (Musee Matisse). 

Living room is filled with natural light and interesting interior design and decor
Lots of space to work
Garden outside
More comfortable, though small bed
Outside the airbnb
Local attraction, Jardin des Arenes

The difference in mentality was so massive I was floored. In the first Airbnb I felt:

  • Depressed
  • Unmotivated to work
  • Tired
  • Not feeling like I’m on vacation

While in the new Airbnb I felt:

  • Like I was on vacation
  • Full of energy and enthusiasm
  • Ready to get work done
  • Feeling creative and relaxed

The interesting thing was, that my girlfriend told me that the new Airbnb was in a much much nicer and richer neighborhood and this got me thinking. This is the definition of privilege – the ability to grow up in an environment that nurtures you and gives you energy instead of sucking it away.

I’ve never believed in leveling the playing field for the sake of fairness because fairness is both a subjective and impossible standard to meet. Instead, I’ve been interested in creating a more productive society as a whole and I think that by creating better spaces for all of society people would feel more energetic and productive. I only experienced the change in physical space, in greenery and natural light and calm and quiet. What would happen if you were able to get a better mental environment, with more supportive loving people? This is why children in single-family homes and substance abuse have it so hard in getting ahead. They don’t have the mental environment to live up to their full potential.

This has a couple of implications for me:

  • Money is not everything, but it is important in getting you into a good environment
  • Don’t skimp out on rent or places to stay on vacation, the environment is everything
  • Surround yourself with nurturing people who help you feel peaceful and energetic
  • Take care of yourself and the space around you