Posted by The “IT” is whatever you want bring into reality. For our purposes, we’re going to talk about how to “Make Your New Business” happen, but you can use this knowledge to create almost anything from scratch.
Without permission.
Without bosses.
Without someone telling you no, no, NO you CANNOT do that.
Without the roadblocks you’ve come up against before.
And without that monkey voice in your head telling you that you’re not good enough, that people will judge you, that you need to just keep your head down and be a good little worker for someone else.
We’re going to flip that nonsense on its head once and for all.
We’re going to blow through obstacles and get you on the path to exceeding your wildest expectations in 2022, inflation and viruses be damned.
Ready?
First, the reality check: You’re going to experience some failures along the way. Failure is part of the process of taking an idea and turning it into a six, seven or eight figure business. You find out what doesn’t work when you fail, which gives you important clues on what does work.
You’re going to need guts to turn your idea into a business. People will tell you a bunch of rubbish about how you can’t do it. Your brain is going to try to stop you from moving forward, too. But I’ll show you how to blast through both of these roadblocks in a moment.
Reality check over, I want to give you something.
Permission.
You hereby have permission from me, from God and from the Universe to build your business.
YOU HAVE PERMISSION TO GET STARTED RIGHT NOW.
Since we were kids we’ve been taught we need permission to do things.
First from our parents.
Then from our teachers and professors.
And finally from our bosses.
Forget that. You hereby have permission to do anything and everything to start and run your business.
Absorb that for a moment. I’ve seen people cry when they were told they had permission because that was the moment they realized they’d been waiting for someone – anyone – to give them that permission to move forward and live their own lives.
Some people wait their entire lives for permission to just be themselves. But the only permission you need is your own.
STEPS TO MAKING IT HAPPEN
Step 1: Get started
Step 2: Finish
Step 3: Ship
Let’s say you want to create a course and sell it online.
1: First you’ve got to get started building the course. Not just talking about doing it, but actually creating the outline, filling it in and building that course one lesson after another.
2: Then you’ve got to finish the course. Starting to create the course is useless unless you finish it. No, it won’t be perfect. Perfection is that thing people use to put off finishing, because they know that once it’s finished, it’s time to release it to the world. So screw perfection. Make it less than perfect and just get that beautiful course DONE.
3: Finally, it’s time to ‘ship,’ and in this case it means having a way to send that course out into the world. Maybe you put up a website with a sales letter and drive traffic to it, or you use one of the course portals online like Udemy. There comes a point when you have to let your ‘baby’ go into the world, and this can be the toughest step of all because there’s only one way to find out for sure if people want your product, and that’s to start selling it.
Let me whisper something into your ear…
Your ideas are important,
And bringing them to life means everything.
You can either bring your ideas into reality or die with them still inside of you. And frankly, I can’t think of anything sadder than a life full of regrets of all things you could have done, if only you’d made them happen.
When you decide to make it happen, you set in motion the progressive realization of your goal – something you thought you’d never be able to do.
When you combine your desire with your effort, anything is possible.
Anything.
Bring your idea to life.
For you.
For me.
For everyone. Even for those people who say you cannot or should not do it.
How to Handle the Naysayers
There are two types of people in the world:
The first type is the status quo person. These folks live by ‘the rules.’ They will tell you ‘how it is.’ Anyone who doesn’t follow those rules is ‘foolish’ or worse.
They will tell you to get a job, put your head down and stop dreaming. They’ll say, “If that was a good idea, someone would have done it already.”
Status quo people perpetuate the current system and do not want things to change. Everything must remain ‘normal’ to them. When things change (like a pandemic) they want to ‘get back to normal.’
But remember, there is no universal ‘normal.’ Normal is simply a perception people have based on what they are used to. It’s an illusion and you, the creator, know that you can shape your own reality and even change the way others perceive what is normal.
Look at Bill Gates. Was Windows ‘normal’ before he invented it? Heck no. And your business can change the world, too.
The other type of person is the rebel. The entrepreneur. The artist. The person who reads the rules and decides they were written for someone else.
This person goes another direction from the status quo. They take risks. They see possibilities and potentialities. They are bold in their ideas and actions. For good or bad they disrupt. They sometimes break things. They create change through their creativity.
The rebel challenges the status quo. They’re prone to questioning and challenging authority. And status quo people hate this. They don’t want questions; they want people to fall in line.
We need the status quo people to keep day to day things operating. But we need rebels to advance us to new levels. Both are essential, but for obvious reasons they don’t get along all that well.
What can you do when your status quo spouse tells you to stop dreaming and stop building your business?
Thank them.
Thank them for all that they do to keep your household and family running smoothly. For getting the kids to school, for working their job or taking care of the house.
They are the rock on which you can build your business. You know they are scared. They’re frightened. Your dreams and your business scares them. Be understanding. Show them that you could continue to earn that $50,000 a year salary, or you could build a business that brings your family 500,000 a year. And you choose the latter because that’s who you are.
You might not change their minds. You might not get their full support. But if you understand they come from a place of fear, and that their way of thinking is actually providing a solid foundation from which you can launch your business, and that you love them all the same, then you don’t need to think of them as the enemy. They’re not. They simply think differently than you do, and that’s okay.
Love them as they are, and odds are they will reciprocate. You can disagree and yet still love each other.
The same goes for your friends. When they push back against your dreams or business goals, treat them with kindness. If they continue to give you grief, make an appointment to get together with them in a year. By then your business will be off the ground and maybe even bringing in a good income.
Most people said that man could not fly. Then the Wright Brothers flew, and people had to admit that yes, people could fly.
It’s the same with your business. They might tell you that you can’t do it, but once you’ve done it, they won’t be able to deny that yes, you have a profitable business, and btw, could you give them some advice on how to start theirs?
Reality check: Making IT Happen will take time, effort, focus and energy. And you might also need thick skin.
Use your passion to get yourself through the setbacks and failures. Learn to take the blows and just keep going. At each setback, ask yourself, “What’s good about this?” Guaranteed there is always something good about it.
Your first course didn’t sell? Find out why and you’ll be much closer to making your next course a success. Your best friend is being a total jerk about your new business? Use their negative words as a catalyst to make yourself work even harder to prove them wrong with your success.
Wait, If It’s Hard Work, Why Bother Building a Business?
Because of leverage.
Set aside for the moment that you have a dream of building your own business or writing a book or whatever it is that you want to do, and think about this…
An employee gets a fixed wage in exchange for not having to deal with problems, setbacks, naysayers, overhead and so forth. They give up 40 hours a week plus travel time for a wage and peace of mind.
The entrepreneur, on the other hand, gets not just the setbacks, headaches, challenges and so forth. If that entrepreneur is successful, they also get the lion’s share of the profits.
Let’s say you’re creating that course we talked about earlier.
If you price it at $100 and you sell 100 copies, that’s $10,000. If you sell 1000 copies, it’s $100,000. And if you sell 10,000 copies, that’s $1million dollars.
Regardless of how many you sell, the work is still the same. And if you hit it big, the upside can be enormous.
But there is something BIG standing between you and success…
The Enemy Within
Whether you’re 20 years old or 80, you’ve unintentionally accumulated a lifetime of bad habits.
And the worst of these habits might be the habit of safety.
Your primitive brain, known as your brain stem, controls all of your important bodily functions like breathing and heart rate. It wants to keep you alive. And it believes that anything new is bad. That’s why it does everything in its power to keep you sedated with activities that are safe, like watching television, playing solitaire, watching sports and so forth.
Your brain stem tells you that these safe activities make you feel secure, and that trying new things is life-threatening, even if it’s not.
The primitive brain knows nothing of lofty dreams and goals. To it, survival is everything, and the familiar means survival while anything new is perceived as being a threat.
You might schedule out time to work on your course or build your business, but your brain stem will steer you towards other activities that it deems to be safer like cleaning the kitchen or taking a nap.
Your job, if you want to ‘Make IT Happen,’ is to reprogram your brain. The good news is it’s easier than you think. All you need is a healthy dose of persistence and consistency to do it.
Reprogramming Your Brain for Success
Every time you repeat a habit, whether it’s a good habit or a bad one, it strengthens the neural trench network.
Imagine a pristine field of knee-high grass. If you walk across that field just once, it barely shows. Take the same route several times and there is now a path. Walk that path hundreds of times and you have a trail. Walk the trail thousands of times and you have a dirt road.
The more times you repeat an action, the faster your brain will guide you back to taking that same action and the easier it is for you to take it.
But if you stop walking that path, the field will eventually heal itself. And if you stop doing bad habits, you will reprogram your brain to stop guiding you towards those bad habits.
How do you reprogram your brain?
1: Discipline. Studies show you have far more discipline in the morning than at any other time of day. That’s why, if at all possible, you should start a new habit first thing when you wake up, when discipline is the highest. For example, if you’re creating a course, work on it each morning for 30 minutes before you do anything else.
2: Focus. Instead of attacking your work haphazardly, focus on just one thing at a time. For example, one video in your course, one chapter in your book, one page of your website and so forth. Don’t try to break every bad habit at once, or create every new, good habit at the same time. Focus your efforts and build on that.
3: Be Bold. Don’t strive for a little goal when a big one will make you more passionate. Do what they say cannot be done. What goal will get you out of bed at 6am with the enthusiasm of a child on Christmas morning?
4: Manipulate Your Environment. Clutter is not conducive to getting work done, nor are distractions. Create a space that is used only for your work.
5: Take Consistent, DAILY Action. Without exception, take action every single day for the next 6 weeks. Better still, take daily action for the next 52 weeks until the habits of starting, completing and shipping are so ingrained, it’s nearly impossible for you NOT to do these things.
6: Habit Stack. When the brain learns a new song, it will not simply link together the notes already in your memory. Instead, it will develop a region that encodes the entire song. In the same way, you can stack one new good habit on top of an existing good habit to develop an entirely new brain region dedicated to this habit stack.
For example, if you already get up early in the morning, stack a new habit on top of this such as writing for 30 minutes as soon as you wake up. 3 weeks later, stack the habit of taking a 5 minute break and then writing for another 30 minutes. Or add the habit of going for a run. Each time you add a new habit to the stack, the entire stack is rewritten in your brain, making the entire stack of habits automatic and requiring virtually no discipline to accomplish each day.
Distractions Are The Enemy.
Any distractions are the enemy to Making It Happen. No, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have a life. But when it’s time each day to work on your business, that is all that you should be doing. You don’t pick up the phone to have deep philosophical talks with your bestie. You don’t clean the house. You don’t go for a walk or do anything other than work on your business.
Repeat to yourself: Distractions are the enemy.
In the beginning your primitive brain will send all sorts of distractions to stop you from working. You’ll suddenly remember that you need to put something on your shopping list, make a phone call, answer an email and so forth.
Do. It. Later.
When these distractions appear, write them down on a pad of paper and then go back to work. Do not attempt to do them, no matter how quick they might seem.
If you need to research something online, make a note of it and do it when your work is done. You already know about the rabbit hole called the internet. A 30 second search can easily turn into a 3 hour foray that accomplishes nothing and leaves you wondering where the time went.
Feed Your Brain
When you’re not working, read challenging books and articles every day. Feed your brain with new ideas and ways of looking at problems. Have conversations with people who are in some way intellectually superior to you.
Avoid or limit the time you spend on television and movies. Your brain is literally better off sleeping than passively watching television. If you must watch your favorite show, keep a notepad handy and challenge yourself to come up with 10 new ideas based on things you see and hear in the show. That’s 10 new ideas for every 30 minutes of air time, so a two hour movie should net you 40 new ideas.
Start now.
Just… start. I’ve been flapping my fingers here for some time and it’s possible you’ve missed or forgotten the fact that none of this will matter if you don’t get started.
Maybe you don’t know where to start. Just start.
Or maybe you don’t know every step of the journey. Who does? Plans change as you move closer to your target, and sometimes targets change completely. That’s okay, as long as you just start.
No one has it all figured out before they begin. If they think they do, they’re deluding themselves. Not every obstacle or opportunity will be foreseen.
But taking action NOW is something you must do, because actions repeated consistently over time create habits, and habits create momentum, and momentum can take you all the way to your goals and beyond.
The Hidden Killer of Projects
Even if you do everything we’ve covered so far, you still might not succeed if you’re not ready to deal with the Killer of Projects.
This killer is sneaky, sometimes killing your dream without you ever knowing what happened. Or worse yet, you’ll think you’re lazy because you never shipped your products.
Yes, you had a great idea and you built a product or service around that idea. But then… nothing.
Everyone who has ever made something important happen has had to overcome the fear of what others will think.
Fear of exposure causes people to procrastinate and never finish. Here’s what it looks like on a personal level:
- You question whether or not your work is good enough.
- You worry about how others will react.
- You fear people will make fun of you and your work.
- You wonder if you’re a fraud.
- You think of scrapping the project entirely.
- You procrastinate because your project isn’t perfect yet.
- There’s always something delaying you from shipping your product.
Sound familiar?
If this is you, then STOP.
There is no angry mob with pitchforks waiting outside your window, nor will there ever be.
Nor is there an angry throng of critics salivating at the thought of tearing your work to pieces.
You worry that your tribe won’t like your work, but what you don’t realize is there is no tribe. That group of people you imagine are going to hang on your every comma in your work don’t actually exist. They’re not a tribe at all, but a group of individuals with their own problems and their own challenges. They are just as fearful as you. Each person is so caught up in their own life, that they don’t have time or inclination to worry about yours.
Your product is there to help them in some way, to give them a benefit, and it’s only for those who want and need it, so everyone else doesn’t matter. Customers by definition will love you and your work – that’s why they’re your customers. And no, they won’t see the imperfections that kept you awake at night, either.
There is no group of people watching over your shoulder, so relax. Did you get 20 positive reviews and 1 negative review? I don’t have to ask which one you’re thinking about. Stop stressing. Some dope is crying into the void that they don’t like your product? So what? Who cares?
Any publicity is good publicity. The best movies and books ever produced have negative reviews. The most beloved people in the world have critics.
Who cares?
The vast, VAST majority of people who see, purchase and use your work will like it or love it.
A tiny minority won’t like it. It’s clearly not for them, and yet they bought it. Their mistake. Why didn’t they read the sales letter properly? No product ever invented in the history of the world is for everyone.
Some dope voices a negative opinion. Encourage your customers who love your work to voice their opinion, too, and they will drown out the trolls.
The point is, you’ve got to dig deep down inside of yourself and decide, DECIDE right now that YOU DON’T GIVE A FLYING FLIP WHAT OTHERS THINK.
Anyone can be a critic – ANYONE.
But it takes guts to be a creator and to Make it Happen.
Don’t let the possibility of some tiny little squawky troll who just wants attention ruin your dreams.
Your project will always be stupid for the handful of negative ninnies out there.
But the rest of us will think it’s great, so just stop worrying and GO DO IT.
Desire, Commitment, Passion and Focus
To succeed you need desire, commitment, passion and focus.
That’s it.
You don’t need anyone’s permission or love.
You don’t need a cheering section.
You don’t need to be ordained by the almighty status quo people.
You simply need desire, commitment, passion and focus. An attitude of, “I don’t give a damn” towards what others might think doesn’t hurt, either.
This is the Part Where I Remind You About Cortez
How many times have you heard the story of the explorer Cortez?
500 years ago, Cortez and his army of 600 soldiers crossed the Pacific Ocean and landed on the shores of Central America. Their job was to conquer an empire of over 5 million people.
If you were Cortez, how would you motivate your army under odds such as these?
Cortez ordered the ships burned. His army could now only do or die because there was no turning back.
If you’ve got a dream that’s keeping you awake at night, then maybe it’s time to hit the shore, burn the damn boat and make that dream a reality.
This kind of commitment isn’t for everyone. But it is how the true creators and entrepreneurs of the world succeed.