by Dan Meredith
When you know what your strengths and weaknesses are, you can leverage them, weirdness and all! Want some simple advice? If you are quiet, great with structure, very organised, partner up with someone who is outgoing, social, gregarious and a natural people person. It works well.
I will talk further about how to get your message out there later on, but before I sign off this chapter, I’m going to suggest you ease into it. Learn how to write compelling copy, how to tell a story, and possibly how to convey your message via video/camera. Take your time; it feels like you are getting a rectal exam to start with – very uncomfortable – but as time goes on, you will find your confidence growing and your message reaching more and more people.
Cool, eh?
Oh, and don’t be one of those ‘woe is me/my life is so shit/give me sympathy’ people. Nobody likes those people. Use your sorrows and pain as your strength, because that’s exactly what they are. You’ve come out a better human. Embrace the new you and share with the world your weird but wonderful tales of bravery and triumph. (OK, sorry to go slightly Game Of Thrones style there.)
BE WEIRD TO DO/ACTION STEPS
Figure out what your strengths and weaknesses are. Play to your strengths and find people who can help you with your weaknesses. By doing this you can leverage your time and what you’re amazing at. Don’t be the person who tries to do everything and spreads themselves so thinly they become part of the noise.
Start living the genuine you. Don’t try and fake who you are. Spend time figuring out and getting to know who the real you is. Start being that person – the person inside of you. The person you’ve always wanted to be. Your uniqueness is what will draw people to love you (or hate you).
Stop right now trying to be the person you think people want you to be. Take the time to figure out who you are, why you are here and what your purpose is. And yes, it’s an absolute bitch.
4
BE BRUTALLY HONEST
As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself first…
NELSON MANDELA
This perhaps is one of the easiest chapters to write, but I guarantee you that this is one of the hardest things to actually do.
Unfortunately, many of us say that we are honest with ourselves, but really? As in proper really?
Most people are full of shit.
We aren’t honest with ourselves. And hence, when we have our legs hanging in the grave, we realise, ‘Shit, I lied to myself my whole life.’
What a waste.
I’m also going to show you why the ‘follow your passion’ advice can sometimes be a load of bollocks. Not that many people have a true passion that can be monetised (some rare cases, but very few). They may be interested in something, or like doing something, but passion? Well, that’s too much of a strong word.
And that’s exactly why it backfires. People use it as a crutch and excuse as to why they haven’t done anything with their life.
‘Oh, I haven’t found anything that I’m passionate about so I’m still looking.’
Fuck that! There’s no such thing.
Work with your interests and things you like, observe whether the market wants what you have and put it out there. The passion will come later. You’ll start loving what you do once you’re good at it and it makes you feel good to be contributing to people.
Now, I’m essentially going to beat you down with two exercises, and if you have the balls/ovaries to do them, you will probably hate me for a bit. The first exercise is going to help you understand your situation right now; the second is going to put it all in perspective.
I’ve said it before: if you are 100% happy with your lot in life, I really am happy for you. But I’m guessing, as you’re reading this book, that you’re probably thinking there could be something more to life.
I will bring you back up, but this next bit might hurt a little. In fact, this chapter is a down right beat down. Soz.
But it’s really very simple.
The now. Take a look at your bank balance, savings, investments and assets. That is a direct reflection of how successful you are financially.
Take a look in the mirror, in your smalls. That is a direct reflection – literally – of how well you take care of yourself (obviously medical conditions excluded).
Take a look around you when you go to bed at night. Is there anyone next to you? Do you have kids in the house? That is a direct reflection of the investment in your personal/intimate relationships.
Please note: not everyone wants a partner, to have a family and so on – but if you do, I am just highlighting the fact.
Take a look in your inbox, text messages and social calendar. That is a direct reflection of the time you have invested in your friendships.
How did that feel?
I’m sure some of you reading this will think, ha, you bearded twat, I’m awesome in all those areas. If you are, good for you! I know I’m not, but I also know the areas that I am weak on now.
There has been more than one occasion when I have got to the end of the day of work with a newly acquired gut hanging over the sides of my jeans, gone to bed totally alone, having no one to ask me out for a pint or simply to hang out, with maxed credits cards and just the cash in my ‘oh fuck, you really have messed up now, Dan’ stash at home. So yeah, I have been there. I’m still there in some ways…
But every day I look at the above list (I really do) and try to move the needle towards what I see as my ideal life. Is it quick? Is it balls! There is only so much time in the day, but not knowing (and we’ll come to that in a bit) is a bugger. Painful as it is, it’s better to have a completely clear – albeit possibly shitty – picture of where you are right now.
I mean, how can you expect to achieve anything if you have no idea where you are starting? Trust me, I kidded myself for far too long. It is painful, but I know for a fact it’s the best thing you can do. Not knowing where you stand and where you are coming from is a sure fire way to wither away into oblivion. And that’s not what I want for you. Heck, that’s not what you want, I’m guessing.
You wanna be awesome, build a great business and have the freedom to do all the things your heart desires. But it starts with being brutally honest with yourself. We can lie to the world, but never to ourselves. So don’t be a douche and skip this; give it time, and slowly make a plan to change those areas of your life that you’re not happy with.
If you want a truly brutal version of this exercise, go online and download one of those form builders. Make it so the replies are anonymous and send the link to your partner (a bold move!), friends, exes (argh!), colleagues and associates. Ask them to tell you a) what they really think of you, and b) how you could improve.
Ouch!
I did this once, and if my balls were digitised, they would be flat as a pancake from the kicks. It was brutal! But, it gave me the feedback I needed to make the changes to be a better version of myself.
It comes down to the concept of ‘unconscious incompetence’. If you don’t know what you don’t know, how can you improve?
Food for thought.
The future (and putting it all in perspective). (I believe I learned this from a Dan Kennedy piece, but I can’t be sure as it’s been with me a fair while.)
You will need some squared paper for this – or you can print out some boxes on a spreadsheet. You then need to partition off a number of boxes.
As I am a Brit, the number that I will be using is eighty-two.
What is that?
Well, it’s the average life expectancy of a person living in the UK right now.
Next thing you want to do is colour in as many squares as you are old.
Done?
OK, what isn’t coloured is a rough estimation of how long you have left on this planet (assuming you survive all the other stuff life throws your way in the meantime).
How many have you got? As of writing this I have forty-
seven squares left to play with.
Let’s knock off, say, seventeen, which takes me to sixty-five (if I was to retire, as it were). And at that age, I imagine I won’t have the energy and drive I do now. So with that in hand, I currently have thirty squares.
Thirty squares to make a difference.
Seems like quite a lot, right?
Well, I can remember going to watch Short Circuit when I was eight, then my birthday party at eighteen, dancing quite drunkenly to ‘Tequila’ by Terrorvision at twenty-one, moving to London when I was twenty-seven, moving back home when I was thirty-one as a personal trainer, opening my gym at thirty-three and being on stage in NYC at thirty-five.
Those are all the things that I can remember. (Lol – I had a lot of head trauma when I played rugby, ha! That and, you know, vodka.)
I’m being a plum, of course, but shit! I genuinely remember being a teenager, and now I’m on the wrong side of my thirties writing this.
Time. Goes. Faster. Than. You. Think.
And I swear it speeds up as you get older. One thing I have learned from speaking to old folks (and you really should spend time with people in the seventy+ bracket; the advice you can get from them is gold), is that those who worked really hard usually wish they’d spent more time with their loved ones and not worked quite so much. Which is why in the previous chapter I stressed how important it is to schedule that in.
However, regret for the things they didn’t do was equally massive.
Don’t go to your grave with regrets!
It’s already a dark fucking place. You don’t wanna add more doom and gloom to the mix, you know. I’m serious. You are only here – relatively speaking – for a very short time. In the grand scheme of things, we are gone in a blink when you compare our life to how long the universe has been here.
Now, this may all seem a bit morbid. For a long time I had a real crippling fear of death. I have found – with those who are open enough to share it – it’s quite common. If you are religious, that’s awesome; you know what you have in store. But for the rest of us? It’s a great big bastard unknown and that can be truly terrifying.
Until you accept it, that is.
When you realise no matter what you do, it’s going to happen eventually, it’s liberating. You may be able to make your life last longer by keeping yourself fit and healthy, but one day – that’s it. Time’s up.
When I finally thought, fuck it, and accepted that I have just one roll of the dice, I realised I had better make it count. And finally I started to experience the success I had always wanted.
My philosophy? We started off as a bunch of atoms. We are, one day, going to end up as a bunch of atoms. So why worry?
Really, worrying about what people think, if you fuck up, if you look stupid, if it doesn’t work, if they say no, in the grand scheme of things is pointless. Honestly, you have so little to lose. Let go of all the bullshit stories you are telling yourself about why X or Y won’t work and give it a fucking go! We’re all gonna end up a decomposed mush underground anyway (or burned up in smoke for the fire loving peepz).
Look, not everyone can change the world, right? But can you make a difference to a handful of people, or 100, or maybe 1,000? Of course you can. If you better yourself, do good work, help people and take chances, one day you will get there.
That’s the thing. I speak to people who want to help a million people, break a new country, change the face of whatever thing they are into. But what’s wrong with starting small? Help yourself first, then try to help a few more people, and go from there.
In life you don’t get a trophy for taking part (which I think is a pile of wank anyway). Humans evolved with rather awesome brains that made us pretty smart and good problem solvers. Why have so many people seemingly lost the art of discovery? Of wanting to know how things work? Of simply looking at stuff and thinking: I can do that better?
If you think you can make a difference, have a great idea or have something awesome that you want to get out there, then let me tell you something. This could be one of the most important things I could ever tell you, and something I wish I had twigged earlier:
‘You need no-one’s permission’ (with the caveat that we ain’t here that long). So why are you waiting for someone to tell you it’s OK to do the thing?
Just fucking do it!
It is your life. It is yours to do with as you damn well see fit. You don’t have to be a crazily driven nut bag like me, but if you are feeling unfulfilled, or that you either want or deserve more out of life, then go get it, bulldog!
As I have said before, I have been blessed to spend a lot of time around some very successful and smart people. People I look up to. Not that much different to you or me, except they’re geniuses, as in proper ones. They are from another planet, I think.
They had an idea, a vision, a dream, a goal…and they just went for it.
Really, that’s the difference I found between them and me when I was looking for the answer. That, and work.
A lot of hard work.
Again I come back to the fact that I am selling some very unsexy ideas with this book. The fact is that there’s no easy way out, no short cut, no ‘push button here for money’ system. You are going to have to accept the fact that, if you want to change any part of your life, it is going to take hard work and a degree of sacrifice on your part.
Now, this next section is in direct contradiction to a lot of the wispy nonsense I read online:
Follow your passion. Yawn. Look, my passions are eating pizza, watching cartoons, sleeping and being naked with the opposite sex. Is anyone going to pay me for that?
Are they bollocks. (Besides, there is a lot of hair…)
You need to be real, especially if you are dipping your toe into the entrepreneurial world. In fact, does anyone even want to buy your shit? Just because you can make amazing cakes out of wasps (no idea where that came from) or have a ‘revolutionary’ new system for something, does anybody actually want what you are putting out there?
I am not trying to dissuade you from going for whatever it is that you want to do, but bear in mind it would be nice if people actually wanted to buy it, right?
There are lots of ways you can find out: hanging around on the forums of your target market, Facebook groups, web searches, surveys, in-person chats, Google hangouts – you name it. Sometimes you have an amazing idea and you can knock it out of the park, make all of the millions and live the dream. Sometimes you come up with something that is OK, makes you a living, and that’s fine too. Sometimes you come up with an idea, and it’s utter crap. But without testing, you’ll never know.
Being brutally honest with yourself as you go through this process is key to not ruining yourself, your life or your reputation. I am all for giving it a go – I mean, I have built my career on that – but just because someone says, ‘Follow your passion’ doesn’t mean it has fuck all to do with real life.
I shared this in my private membership group the other day and, considering how many comments I usually get on my posts, this one was ‘meh’ at best. It was the world’s simplest business plan (and FYI I hate business plans, but that’s for another time. Useless things as a rule!):
Find a group of people who are in pain (physical, financial, mental – basically people who have a need of some description).
Spend time interacting with them, find out exactly what that need is, and then research the crap out of it.
Go away, create a product, system or solution that serves the need.
Sell it to them.
Hardly rocket science, hardly tricky, not sexy, and I can’t turn that into a course worth thousands, can I? But if you want a profitable business that has an impact, makes a difference and serves people – see those four points?
Go do that.
End of.
BE BRUTALLY HONEST TO DO/ACTION STEPS
Figure out where you’re at right now. Take a look at aspects of your life (bank balance, the mirror a
nd how you take care of yourself, relationships and friendships) and do an audit on yourself. You need to figure out where you’re at right now. Be brutally honest with yourself.
Make a plan to change those areas you aren’t happy with. Again you need to be brutally honest with yourself, and you’re going to have to give this time. For the truly brutal version, download an online form builder. Set replies to anonymous and send the link to friends, partner and work colleagues. Ask them to tell you what they really think of you and how you could improve.
A fast way to see how long you have left on this planet (and it’s nowhere near as long as you think). Grab some squared paper, or print similar off. Partition off a number of boxes. Use eighty-two as an example (average Brit life expectancy). Next, colour in as many boxes as your age. What isn’t coloured is how long you have left. Time goes faster than you think.
You need no one’s permission. Whatever it is, if you’re waiting for someone to tell you it’s OK for you to do something, fuck it and go and do it. Accept you have one roll of the dice called Life and I guarantee you’ll start to experience success in ways you never would have expected. Do not give a fuck about what others will think.
THE WORLD’S MOST SIMPLE BUSINESS MODEL (DO THIS):
Find people who are in pain: people who have a need.
Interact with them and find out exactly what the need is.
Go and research it.
Create a product that serves the specific need.
Sell it to them.
5
BE VALUABLE
Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make. It will not only improve your life, it will improve the lives of all those around you.
ROBIN S. SHARMA
Why do people baulk at the suggestion of investing in themselves and their skills, but are perfectly ready to smack down £10k+ on cars and material things?
It’s funny how we stop learning and making ourselves more and more valuable as soon as we hear that last bell ringing in the school hallways. But then we expect to have the same luxury life as the big, successful people of the world who, to be frank, are always investing in themselves to improve a skill, learn something new, or even get one nugget of info which will keep them progressing in their game.
