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:
My girlfriend and relationship – we don’t have much time together and I want to enjoy it
Exploring France – again not much time, amazing opportunity to relax and explore
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:
How much information do I give away?
If I give away tons of free information, what are they hiring me for?
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:
I can give away everything
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)
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.
I can always have more conversations with less prep or even more 30 minute conversations with them.
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).
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:
Having the knowledge
Transferring it to someone
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.
Fly first class to a destination with a plus one, with a nice airbnb every month: 5k
Organic high quality groceries: 1k
Nice quality clothes: 1k-2.3k
Total: 28.2k-41.4k
Per Year: 338.4k-496.8k
If I wanted to save 50%: 676.8k-993.6k
Before taxes that would be: 1.091M-1.601M
Meaning each month I would have to bring in: 90.1k-133.4k per month
I realize that this is more of an end goal. To get to the place I want to be right now, I don’t need to make enough to save 50%. That can come later. I highly suspect that having a great business coach, massages, and a therapist will enable me to double and triple my income.
So lets take another look at the numbers. What is the bare minimum I need to get into this lifestyle?
338.4k per year -> 531.8k before taxes
44.3k per month
If we were to operate on the Parrado Principal just for coaching:
80% from group coaching: 355 group coaching clients | 20% from one on one: 6 one on one clients
80% from art coaching: 425.4k | 20% from AI consulting 106.4k
Questions for myself:
What should I focus on first?
How do I divide what I want to do into steps?
What should I focus on, AI or Art Coaching?
Should I even do AI consulting?
Should I try to find a partner for AI consulting? Should I wait until I find a partner to do anything?
How do I want to legally set up my companies?
How do I make my life easier?
How do I market my businesses?
What is something that I’m missing?
How do I make my art coaching business succeed in a way that doesn’t destroy my peace?
How do I maintain my AI expertise? How do I make progress without being overwhelmed and unfocused?
What will make my life more fun while making big strides in my businesses?
Is there something I can start succeeding at today?
Am I aiming at the right goals? Are they too small? Too large?
What can I do today to rapidly speed up my progress?
If I wanted to make a lot of money, enough to live on in the next year, and I wanted to make this money in a month with my current skillset, what should I do?
Is there a small shift I can make that will have a massive impact on my income/success?
What should I be hiring someone else to do? What things will have a good return on my investment, make me money not lose money?
What should I do today that will make me happier and more successful?
My intuitive answers:
What should I focus on first?
You want to focus on the fundamentals: sleep, meditation, food, emotional processing
The stronger the fundamentals are, the more you will be able to handle anything
How do I divide what I want to do into steps?
Picture some of your immediate goals that make you feel excited, give you energy, make them small enough to understand, and work on meeting those goals first
What should I focus on, AI or Art Coaching?
It depends on what you want to do, to create a large business, AI makes more sense
For creating a smaller business, focus on Art Coaching
Should I even do AI consulting?
Yes of course, there is a really good business opportunity here
If you mean at the same time as Art coaching, the answer is it depends, you will have to pick a priority
Should I try to find a partner for AI consulting? Should I wait until I find a partner to do anything?
No you shouldn’t wait, you can start by yourself
Yes, you should look for a partner while you are looking for clients, you are developing a network for both
How do I want to legally set up my companies?
Depends on how easy it is to change, the benefits of separating them, etc.
How do I make my life easier?
Stop doing everything alone, work with other people
How do I market my businesses?
Ask other people for ideas
What is something that I’m missing?
You are missing a business coach/mentor
How do I make my art coaching business succeed in a way that doesn’t destroy my peace?
You write about your challenges and experiences, to approach the business like an opportunity for personal growth
How do I maintain my AI expertise? How do I make progress without being overwhelmed and unfocused?
The best way is if you could connect the art coaching with AI and AI with art coaching, if you could find a way for them to be symbiotic, that would be the easiest way
The other way is to find a simple and easy way to make money from AI
What will make my life more fun while making big strides in my businesses?
I think maybe posting about your process/journey on social media
Hosting events and meeting people
Speaking at events
Creating strong boundaries for doing other things unrelated to business
Is there something I can start succeeding at today?
Yes, focus on the fundamentals, they are the most important part
Am I aiming at the right goals? Are they too small? Too large?
I think you are focused on the right goals, but maybe it is too early to be thinking about timelines, just create a bunch of attainable goals and work through them with no timeline in mind
What can I do today to rapidly speed up my progress?
Meditate
Sleep as much as possible
Find a mastermind
If I wanted to make a lot of money, enough to live on in the next year, and I wanted to make this money in a month with my current skillset, what should I do?
Teaching people would probably be the best way, that is probably your strongest skillset at the moment
Probably not the best use of your time for your goals
Is there a small shift I can make that will have a massive impact on my income/success?
Yes, write down goals and look at them everyday
What should I be hiring someone else to do? What things will have a good return on my investment, make me money not lose money?
Finding a good video editor or social media manager
Marketing is key and you need to work with people to get good at it
What should I do today that will make me happier and more successful?
These days I feel a bit lethargic. It might just be because I’m recovering from 5ks and need more rest than normal. I also just feel a lot of pressure overall. I see these mornings as a way for me to slowly set up my house, set up my mental space as a good place to work.
I like to go through my to do list, my calendar, and work things out.
On thing that occurs to me when I’m thinking through my to do list is that I’m way to ambitious and unfocused. The point of the to do list is to brain dump and really find the most important high priority thing (using emotional priority not logical priority).
And before I even think about prioritizing, I want to get back to building my house – you are in my house, take risks, be ok with silence, take your time.
Today my main goal is to finish my business cards and website for my art coaching.
Another main system or habit I want to institute, if I miss a time block to do something on my calendar, I delete the event and add it back to my to do list.
This morning I had a very slow start. Seems to be the same for a lot of days.
I really really focused on the idea that everything could be turned into an advantage. And today, I realized that the reason why I have slow starts is because my stomach burns, aches, and has gnawing empty pain. It is so bad, it is hard to focus and feel motivated to work.
The opportunity this morning is to devise some techniques to help with my stomach and be able to test it with the worst possible conditions. In other words, if the techniques work now, they will work anytime.
I tried this video first, and it was pretty helpful.
Then I tried this video which was helpful, but too boring to finish:
Finally, I tried drinking hot tea, which seemed to help some as well.’
And then, even though my stomach starting feeling better, I ran into another problem with avengance.
This problem was simple. Absolutely no motivation to do anything, being that I still felt tired and overwhelmed. Instead, I wanted to play games and watch tv shows.
I’m going to take the same approach here: use this as an opportunity to test out some new ideas with productivity.
So I have many many techniques in this area already, but I want to innovate further today in a different direction instead of meditation, letting go, focus, etc.
I want to look at why, even in my overwhelmed state, do I want to play Valorant and Fallout Shelter, and how I can fundamentally apply the same things to the things I want to do.
Things I Want To Do
Consulting work
Linkedin posts
Coaching work
Working out
Before I forget, here are some additional mindsets I can add the useful pile:
Walking to vent stress, find peace, ask tough questions, get answers
Workpost is to innovate something
Main Reasons Why I Want to Play Valorant
Can work on a specific skill like aim, movement, gamesense
Want to level up really quick and be a top player
Inspired by demon1, tenz, oxy, and aspas – want to be the best as well
Like working with a team, getting clutch plays off, good vibes
Main Reasons Why I Want to Play Fallout Shelter
Get control of my vault
Satisfaction in optimizing my vault
Satisfaction in leveling people up, and getting new weapons
Why It Is difficult to get the same feeling with work?
There is no specific simple skill to work on
Nothing I want to level up in
No one to inspire me
No team to work with
Don’t feel in complete ownership of the project
In a hurry to get it done
What skills am I excited want to work on in terms of work?
Faster problem solving skills
Intuition + precise logic for accurate but rapid decision making
Ability to think deeper with less effort
Memory and recall with less energy
What do I want to level up in terms of rank?
Money
Intellect
Thought leadership
Communication and charisma
Who do I draw inspiration from?
Elon Musk
Alex Hormozi
Khalid Sharara
How might I work off my team more?
Showing off the results of my work
How might I feel more in control of my work?
Understand that charisma, leadership are part of what I need to own and protect my work, just because there are other players involved doesn’t mean I don’t own it
Using all this information, I want to develop a unit of work, called a “game” or “match” to simulate what I do in Valorant. In Valorant you play a match with a clear objective, and you warm up before the game, and take breaks after the game.
Game Structure
Warmup: 15 minutes
Use to do list, practice one skill at a time:
Faster problem solving/solution creation skills
Intuition + precise logic for accurate but rapid decision making
Ability to think deeper with less effort
Memory and recall with less energy
Main game: 45 minutes
Fights:
Capture questions and answers.
Level up in:
Money
Intellect
Thought leadership
Communication and charisma
Result Calculation:
How much do I think this work is worth?
How difficult intellectually was this work from 1-10?
What percentile do I place this work in terms of innovation?
I had a really rough day today. I woke up at 4:30 AM in order to get to the airport and fly to Houston. Coming back I hit so much traffic, my uber took almost 2 hours and I was late for my flight by 2 minutes. Luckily, there was no one in line for security, I blazed through, ran to the gate and somehow they hadn’t departed yet.
While I was in the car for 2 hours seeing the time tick down and knowing that I was probably going to miss my flight, probably get on the next one, be stuck in the airport for another two hours, and get home at around 10 PM, I tried to make the best of my bad situation. I thought about my Instagram page for coaching, specifically posts and videos.
I had some ideas for the posts, having a dark gray background with a simple serif font. Also, I was thinking about doing some digital painting for my posts.
The videos were a little bit harder.
I stopped making the reminder videos because I felt so stuck and frustrated with them and I wanted to use connection theory to come up with some solutions.
I think there are a bunch of steps in the video-making process: shooting, editing, and final polish. Each has its own challenges and solutions that came to me.
Shooting
This is hard because I felt a lot of anxiety and overthinking about saying the right thing, and coming off as clear and interesting. Using connection theory, I felt that what I needed is to focus less on the words that I am saying and focus more on evoking feelings through my delivery (my voice and my expressions). They say when someone is talking, verbal queues (literally what they are saying) is only 10% of communication and non-verbals (your tone of voice, inflection, facial expressions) account for 90%. I want to really focus next time not on what I say, but how I say it. Also, I want to try spending something feeling into the reminder and shooting broll that evokes it in a non-verbal way. In general, I want to focus on non-verbals more.
Editing
This is hard because there is a lot of overwhelming decisions that I face at this stage. I am conflicted with staying true to what I originally shot vs any new visions on how to convey my thoughts. I feel often that I avoid emotions or lose touch of emotions just looking at the transcript without hearing the delivery and when I hear the delivery I am conflicted on what to cut out or change. I often feel the original work is no longer recognizable afterwards. I feeling into connection theory, I felt that fear dominated my ability to think, feel, and be creative and I’m thinking about using the law of contradictory intentions by “trying” to be unclear, trying to make no sense.
Final Polish
I didn’t think about this too much because it isn’t really a challenge except for maybe logistically (takes a long time). i was thinking about using the syllabus method, or batch a bunch of videos for the weekend to finalize and publish.
A quick silly example of what this might look like:
Reminder: Today’s reminder is to eat chocolate
Shooting: Focus on how to deliver the words. “Chocolate…mmmm. We want to crunch it!” Shoot broll of breaking chocolate. Of inhaling the chocolate smell.
Editing: Try to make it a bad video.
Editing: Try to find a song that doesn’t fit.
Polish: Add it to a queue with instructions on what needs to be done to finish it off.
When I left, I made myself a deal. If it was meant to be, she would reach out and try to make it work. If it wasn’t, I would at least set both of us free to pursue our lives.
If it wasn’t meant to be I wonder why. I told her she could be forever for me. When I had her, I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore. But now I feel more alone than ever. I wonder if she can even love a man with her trauma. I wonder if she’s more immature than I thought. I wonder if I wasn’t able to give her what she needed. She wasn’t after all, able to give me what I needed.
All I can do is sit and try to feel the feelings of heartbreak, anger, shame, and fear. And enjoy creating art from it.
Today created a video to myself.
Sometimes we don’t always win. Sometimes we have to be ok with losing. Sometimes we have to be ok with not being good enough.
