What’s up y’all,
My fingers are tingling in a weird way because I just did the Wim Hof breathing routine. I do this every other morning right now and kinda love it.
The all access pass is meant to show what we do to launch new ventures. Showing it all means showing the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Well ladies and gentlemen - this week is the ugly.
It was one of those weeks where everything we tried didn’t work, and things just kept going wrong.
First - the context for our free members.
This week - Ben and I started working on launching project #2 - a $1M+ online course.
Courses are great because:
- Free/cheap to make
- Super high margin (you’re selling information)
- Scalable
- Fun to do (I love teaching)
The topic I chose was one I’m obsessed with right now: learning how to buy a profitable business (with almost no money down).
I’ve had several friends on the podcast who have built $100m+ empires doing this (Andrew Wilkinson, Brent Beshore, Xavier Helgessen etc..).
And I think a lot more people should be considering buying a business that’s already running instead of building from scratch.
So I thought OK - before we launch the course, let’s create an email list of 1k+ people that are interested in the topic. Give em some free content, then upsell the course. Easy Peasy.
Except it totally didn’t work.
Which was an odd feeling because up until this point of the All Access Pass - we’ve had the midas touch. Everything we touched so far has turned to gold.
“I want to raise $1M from investors for a fund” → boom raised $2.5M in 11 days.
“I want to source this ecommerce product” → met the founder of Sourcify who connected us with the perfect supplier in china.
Etc..
So, actually I’m happy that we ran into a wall this week. This is normal. Shit doesn’t just work right away. There’s usually a lot of trial and error. The All Access Pass was giving a false sense of ease. This stuff isn’t easy.
So this week, I’m unlocking Day 22 - about how I deal with these types of plateaus when I hit them in my projects.
Check it out and let me know what you think. I think this is one of the most important skills to develop as an entrepreneur
Weekly Recap:
- Day 21: Setting up Facebook Ads to Grow the Free Newsletter Audience
- Day 22: Dealing with Plateaus
- Day 23: We’re not Selling Saddles Here
- Day 24: AMA about getting over the plateau and growing!
For free followers of the all access experiment, I’m unlocking Day 22 below, so you can see how I handle when things don't go exactly as planned!
Unlocked Post – 🔓 Day 22
We’ve been making this shit look easy so far.
I wanna raise $1M from investors for my fund?
Bada-bing-bada-boom. We raised double that within 10 days.
Every experiment we tried worked so far:
- The Twitter thunderclap
- The Brex followup technique
- The job search to find the perfect operator to run the fund.
It’s like we were fishing with rigged bait. We threw it into the ocean and were catching 90 lb marlins on our first try. (I’ve never been fishing, so I apologize if that makes no sense).
Anyways, you get the point - everything was working. It was almost working too easily.
And it was giving you a skewed perspective of what I was trying to provide with the All Access Pass (a real world view into the day-to-day of starting things from scratch).
Well this week, that streak of everything hitting on the first try came to a crashing halt!
So what exactly happened this week?
- Monday - Okay, let’s kick some ass this week. I’ll spin up a landing page and make some facebook ads and everything will work no prob... I’m a growth god.
- Tuesday - Hmm.. email list isn't growing. I’ll just tweak a couple things and then it'll work
- Wednesday - fuck. still not growing.
We have all kinds of words for shit like this. “setback” , “obstacle,” “wall”, etc..
It feels like you hit a wall. You can’t move forward. You got blocked.
But in reality, it’s not a wall. It’s a plateau.
When I was younger, I used to overreact to these types of situations. Whenever I'd hit a plateau and we weren’t making progress...I’d feel so worthless. Like why can’t I make this work?
And the more successful people I surrounded myself with, the more worthless I felt when this would happen.
As I’ve mentioned in the Master, Stresser, Dabbler framework (thanks to tony robbins for this). I want to be a Master. And a master expects plateaus to occur (they always happen when pursuing growth), and greets them like an old friend.
Ah, mr plateau. I thought I’d be seeing you soon!
Over time, I’ve programmed my brain to react to certain situations. I think of these like tiny recipes. If my mom wants to make peach cobbler. She doesn’t sit down and try to figure it out every single time. She goes to her recipe, adds the ingredients, and boom she gets a predictably delicious result.
That’s how I want my brain to work. I want recipes to get the results I want.
So when I wanna “break through a plateau”, I go to my recipe:
The Plateau Breakthrough Recipe
- First, relax. Plateaus are always a part of growth curves. This is normal.
- Start with getting in the right “state” of mind. I make better decisions, and am more creative when feeling loose, confident, happy. Not frustrated, tired, or stressed.
How to change my mental state? The Three M's
- Music - duh.
- Movement - pushups, run, swim, jumping jacks etc.. for 2-5 mins. The fastest way to change how you feel is through rapid physical change (eg. ice plunge, windsprints, etc..)
- Meaning - rather than "shit this isn't working," reframe it
For example, I could reframe the meaning behind what’s not working as:
- This is an opportunity to try something new
- This is pushing me to get more creative
- This is a chance to sharpen up my skills and learn more
..and my personal favorite because it works no matter how bad the situation:
This is going to make for a helluva story later.
For movement, I can go outside:
My trainer calls this being in a phenomenal state of mind. It takes < 5 mins to make that shift. I can do it in less than 10 seconds now because I’ve done it so many times.
Here’s me doing a quick 1 min state change today in my backyard (click the image below if you wanna watch me do some pushups haha)
Once I’m there, I start asking my brain questions:
- What does the data actually say is happening?
- What is the stupidly obvious thing I haven’t tried yet?
- What would a friend or mentor of mine do in this scenario?
- If I was going to make a simple tweak to the current product, what would I change?
- Let’s look at the first-mile of the product with a fresh set of eyes, what 10% tweaks would make this 200% better?
- Who’s already successfully doing this? What the heck are they doing differently?
- Who are 3 smart people i can talk to on the phone to help me problem solve this?
Then - take massive action on the 3-4 answers that seemed most promising.
If you’re here, you’ve done 99% of the work. The last piece is the hardest one. Patience.
I’m an impatient motherfucker in general. And I used to take pride in that.
Patient? Who wants to be patient? Patient people just wait around and do nothing all day.
I’m not patient! I take action!
^ you see - I viewed action taking and patience as opposites.
But then one day, like the modern day buddha I am, I figured it out.
A new operating philosophy: Impatience with action, Patience with results.
This is the yin and yang of entrepreneurship.
Never wait to take action. Jump right in. Have impatience for action.
But then, be very patient. Play the long game. Do not expect/hope for instant ramen results. Patience with results.
This combo is unbeatable in entrepreneurship. Winning is just a matter of time.
Alright, back to it.
-shaan
