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
I’m very much enamored with the idea of changing the way I work in this new world of contracting, freelancing, and entrepreneurship.
In this new world, the certainty of your career and job is no longer there – leaving both an opportunity and a problem depending on how you look at it.
The certainty that was filled by your job needs to be filled in some other way – and I propose that way is via a strong system of habits, routines, and mindsets that lead to strong health (both mental and physical) leading to high energy, happiness, and peace.
I like to think about this as the perpetual retreat – my ideal vacation or workshop where vast amounts of work is done not at the expense of one’s happiness or physical well being.
What I would love this perpetual vacation to look like:
Ideal working conditions (lots of light, spaces, nice temperature, comfy seats and pillows, people with common values)
Constant personal growth (always learning and progressing in areas I care about)
Strong support system (therapists, coaches)
Physical training (swimming, running, martial arts, weight training)
Natural sleep when possible (wake up when I feel like it, nap when I want to)
Next questions to figure out:
How will I balance naps with working enough hours?
How do I balance free methods with paid assistance?
How will I find the kind of coworking/community you would find at a retreat?
What do I bring more learning type energy out of meetings and working on projects that aren’t personal to me?
The initial thought I have about paid assistance is that if it enables me to earn more, then its a no brainer to get it. If it simply makes my experience more vacation-like, then it must fit into a budget.
Today I feel tired. My kidneys ache. They feel bloated and stagnated. My stomach feels slow. My head iches on the top. My eyes are dry. I feel burning inflammation up my back and spine. My skin is flaking on my face.
These past few days have felt exhausting, extremely stressful, and demoralizing. Last night, I asked myself the question, how do I get out of this.
I didn’t know the answer then, but my answer today during my walk was to take my stress seriously.
And just now, I had a realization that I have the systems developed to do extraordinary things. I just need to utilize them and follow their principals.
Systems in place:
Daily walk to ponder questions I am stressed about
Daily workpost to grow myself, plan for greatness
Clean space to deal with stress, clean place = clean mind
Meal prep strategy for healthy cheap meals with little stress – fridge containers, tacos, lettuce wraps
Whiteboards to write strategies
Off computer working systems (working while walking, running errands, working out, eating out)
Todo list strategy – focus on one thing at a time, prioritize
Clean after working hours to transition, decompress
Crawling to get cardio in small space
Walking backwards and tibialus for knee
Hanging for shoulders and posture
Working out after and before meals for better absorption, muscle growth, and recovery
Journaling to ask myself questions at night
Walking with no effort
I have absolutely everything I need to build a life where I can do almost anything I want, achieve anything I want.
Right now, I want to focus on two things: recovery and priming
Priming are stuff like cleaning, wiping off my whiteboards, clearing out tabs, filling markers, mealprep, todo list grooming
Recovery means lots of sleep, rest, hydration, and exercise. Specifically paying attention to anytime I want to game to see if I feel stressed or uncomfortable, taking a break when that happens.
To top off this post, I want to attach something that I want to erase from my whiteboard, but want to save forever:
Reasons Why I’m Ready
I’ve developed very deep and powerful life theories (flow, connection) → these theories can give anyone direction in darkness, I forget them but they come back when I need them
When faced with pain I’ve always come out stronger (ACL) → pain is the greatest teacher
I’ve proven that I can complete hard challenges (knee, sova) → I can achieve the challenges I set my mind to
I can solve problems few people can solve (triage, nikola) → normal rules don’t apply
I’m deeply attuned to emotions (coaching, art, philosophy) → makes it much easier to connect with people
I used to walk up to girls on the street → Nothing is something I can’t handle. There is nothing that I can’t ask for
No matter how badly I fail there are people who still love me
The point is not to get there, be productive or succeed, the point is to find a meaningful problem, problems we want to solve → we will never have no problems but we can choose which problems we want to contend with
Happiness doesn’t come from acing the past but seizing the now → its never too late to be happyIt’s near too late to fix it with a degree in engineering and parents who don’t mess with me
I have lots of assets and saving and a degree in engineering and parents and a sister all with money saved
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:
Practice acceptance of where I am. Give myself permission to be bad
Reprogram the idea that I will be rejected if I am not perfect
Look for ways to make my job extremely easy
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.
As Alex Hormozi said (or am I just saying this?) everyone needs to know sales. Because sales lead to money and everyone needs money. If you don’t know how to sell, then you end up working for someone who does.
Before I try out the leads techniques on my coaching business, I am using it for my AI company.
And for that company, I’ve been feeling extreme pressure and stress around talking to my warm and lukewarm or cold leads.
I’ve processed some of these emotions and came up with some of a process:
Accept that I cannot control how someone sees me and even if I could, I don’t want to. Everyone’s mind and thoughts are sacred and my freedom is sacred as well. Both would be violated if I were to control how people saw me because I have to put on a mask and deceive people.
If I’m not trying to control people then the point is just to engage with my network. Talk to people, have a good time, make some jokes.
Anyone who doesn’t respond is an opportunity to process my feelings around rejection because that is the most important thing to me – not trying to change their mind.
The other part of this equation that I still am scratching my head about is delivering fast and big value. Alex talks about that but I don’t know what that value means, and I don’t know if I am allowed to give away things. I need to think about it some more and come up with some ideas. Perhaps my time can be split between developing value and content and reaching out.
I’ve been thinking of way to provide people value and the only thing I can really think of is having some time with me.
Maybe one way to think about it is I need to establish myself as an AI expert or someone with a lot of prior success. Perhaps one helpful detail is that I’ve worked with companies where we saw a 10x increase in efficiency in specific areas.
Maybe it would be helpful to show them the website as well for use cases or a list of ideas for their specific area.
So I’m most of the way through my second part of my challenge – Week 2: Big appetite (increase hunger throughout day) and I’m having a huge amount of issues.
I try to eat a lot but I don’t seem to be able to find a way to digest the food.
Several things seem to be standing in my way:
Extreme chronic stress
Lack of exercises and energy
Poor sleep
I’m going to do what I always did in these situations of great stress. I’m going to simplify and try to find something very small to focus on. And that thing will be breathing.
Whether or not I feel full, hungry stressed, tired or anxious, I am going to strive to do only one thing. To breathe. I find that breathing has tremendous effects for all the of things I listed above as obstacles standing in my way.
