by Dan Meredith
In this chapter I want to share some of my insights on how you need to master your skills and identify your weaknesses to scale up your business pursuits.
No country was conquered by one person, it takes armies. So become the general and strategically recruit people to your mission. It’s the best and only way you’ll be able to scale up and become totally awesome.
Did you go to school? I am assuming you have experienced formal education to some degree. Whether you left in your teens, twenties or later, how much time, money and effort have you invested in your skills since you left the formal structure?
Put it this way. I did my A-levels in Double Maths, Physics and Design. I wanted to be an engineer. As you can see, I didn’t end up being one.
Then I wanted to be a personal trainer, so I spent my student loan on the relevant qualifications. Although I wasn’t the prettiest of the bunch (I didn’t walk around with a six-pack, tanned orange and squeezed into Lycra so tight that quite frankly you could see all my junk), I was a big, strong bearded lump, and I did pretty damn well.
After I’d opened my facility, next on the agenda was copywriting. Now I certainly wasn’t trained in this world, but I found those who were, went to seminars, watched online trainings, bought courses and went in balls deep, putting in five–seven hours a day on top of my day job to get as good as I could, as fast as I could.
This has continued as I have grown my businesses. In fact, I invest all my time and a small bastard fortune on my skills to make sure that I serve my clients to the highest possible levels. That and develop as a businessman and person as a whole.
Which brings me to my next point, and something that I find rather silly: if you are a twenty-year-old life coach, you can, quite frankly, fuck off!
If I want someone to life coach me in this instance, I would want them to have – well – had a life.
This reminds me of someone I heard about a while back who was marketing themselves as an ‘Ultimate Man Coach’ (whatever that is). Really?
If I was to invest in someone with their shit together, I would want them looking good, with multiple successful businesses, life on their own terms, a great social life, hot-as-balls wife, cool kids and generally living the dream. Except this prize plum was earning barely a grand a month, had no missus and still lived with his mum.
Lol!
See what I mean?
A lot of people want to launch a business, go online, pitch some amazing product and make all the monies. I’m all for that, and history of society is littered with many examples of relatively young people who have absolutely killed it. But what is wrong with finding something you are good at, have a talent for, and then getting really fucking good at it?
We all want instant success, fast results, quick fixes – we are human, after all. But you know what? The people who end up being really successful in the long run spend a lot of time honing their craft, learning, adapting (just because something worked yesterday doesn’t mean it’s going to work tomorrow), investing in themselves and failing over and over again. With time, these people become bloody good at what they do and can then charge premium fees.
I see a lot of advertising about people offering training courses for selling high-ticket, big-package items (I have one too, but I’ll come to that in a mo.), but have they really got the skills or talents to warrant charging monstrous fees? Or are they just screwing folks over?
Now they might be a prodigy who has some crazy skills for whatever it is they are selling. But, most of us aren’t fucking Mozart. Most of us maybe have a knack for something, or may like something enough to get really good at doing it, but it takes time to get really good – like mastery-level good.
With my courses, I teach people to get paid what they are worth and position themselves as the premier option in their niche, but not at the expense of quality or service. We all start somewhere. When I was a PT I started off charging £15/hour; when I last did it, I was around the £100 mark. Same with my coaching. It started off roughly around a few hundred a call. Now I can command four-figures for half the time because I actually have the skills to deliver a result worth that sum.
I could not have done this at twenty, fo sho.
There have been multiple books and studies done on the subject of mastery and the ‘10,000 hour rule’. And I am all for that. I did several thousand (I think it was around 13,000 in the end) hours of personal training, hence I felt I was pretty damn good and justified the prices I charged at the time.
When I went into copywriting, I didn’t have that long. In fact, I first started charging after almost five months. I came out the gate with a pretty robust price too. Why? Well, I had been writing sales emails and adverts for years with my recruitment and advertising jobs, and I literally lived and breathed the copywriting world for the months I was training.
Really, I was a proper weirdo about it.
I was honest with my clients. I was confident in my abilities but I never positioned myself as the best. Just really good. And, if it didn’t work or convert as planned, I would work my nuts off until it did.
Again, honesty for the win!
Which brings us to a topic that is often bandied around: the concept of ‘faking it till you make it’.
In part, I agree with this. You need to adopt the mindset, behaviour and attitude of those who are successful until they become ingrained. But, as much as you can roll a turd in glitter and put it in a box with a bow around it, it is still a turd. You have to have skill or talent for something before you can charge people for it, otherwise you are just a con artist peddling snake oil.
You can definitely position yourself in a way so as not to come across as desperate for business – and you can do that with a variety of application processes, not being needy and at the beck and call of your customers or prospects. But you have to invest in your skills and continually develop them if you want to make it.
Dan’s rule of making it. Two years minimum. Two years of continual hard work, education, trial and error, networking, a degree of sacrifice, focus, discipline and drive towards your end goal.
I worked for free for Ryan Levesque for nearly a year on top of my day job, delivering coaching and personal development. I did this because he was a true master, was several years ahead of me in his craft, and I had a chance to learn at his feet. As a result, this sped up the time it took me to be pretty good at stuff.
I was anything but polished (I am still not, ha), but he saw a raw skill in me and pushed me – literally – to my limits to help me level up my skills. I did the jobs no one else wanted to do, as I’ve said before, but I got a first class education in copy, marketing, funnels, business and team building in the process.
I don’t know if I could put a price on it, because if it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t be here now. It was, in fact, my tipping point.
Don’t get me wrong – my two-year rule can be bent. If you look back at my journey, when I decided to go online, the first thing I wanted was to be a badass copywriter. Then I wanted to be an expert funnel builder. Then I got kinda good at coaching in this space. In turn, I developed that skill to the point I am at now, where I am not too shabby at it.
Am I the finished product?
No.
Far from it. At best I’m half way; I still have a lot to learn about growing businesses (so I can one day sell ’em), management, finessing my copy and coaching. Hence, I spend thousands each month on courses and coaching for myself and my team to try to get as good as I/we can.
Which leads me on to my next point:
Be a producer, and not just a consumer. There I go with the contradictions again. Of course you have to invest in your education and skills, I’m not saying don’t do that. But there has to be a point where you go from consuming the information to actually putting what you know into practice by producing something of value.
Which is where most people fuck up.
They buy course after course, and they have a product, their ow
n course or system – whatever – that they want to get out there in the world. And guess what?
It stays on their desktop.
No one sees it.
No one buys it.
No one benefits from it.
Pretty sad, really, to have invested all that time and effort into creating something and not getting it out there in the world. Criminal, but that’s the reality.
So, I’m going to introduce you to two concepts I have lived by, and a little dirty insider tip which will probably surprise you, but you should embrace it if you wanna get ahead.
The first concept is: speed to market beats perfection.
The second one is: it’s OK to be shit at stuff.
Let’s start with the first one. There is a reason I have achieved a degree of success pretty quickly. I didn’t know I did this, but after reading the book Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson, I realised this was exactly what I had done.
Essentially what I do is have an idea, do my research, see if there is a market for it, if I can deliver it and if it will be good. Then I go ahead and launch the fucker.
I am a huge fan of crazy arbitrary deadlines, leveraging social proof (and the fear of looking like an absolute tit if I don’t do it) and pushing limits, boundaries and expectations. Mainly because I enjoy it. But secondly, because I know it trumps perfection and consuming content. Every. Single. Time.
Most people spend so long trying to make their thing perfect, they never get it out there. Me? I aim to get whatever it is 60–80% perfect, and as long as the customer is happy and they get the desired result, I’m happy. Then, as time goes by, I refine, tweak, adjust and, if needed, completely redo whatever needs attention. Hence the order of the words ‘ready, fire, aim’.
Whatever you want to create, launch or show the world, if you have it, get it out there now. If you don’t have it, get ready and tell the world you are going to get it out there by X date. And then fucking do it!
Seriously, I have had hundreds of coaching calls where this is exactly the problem. So what if it’s not perfect? So what if it’s not exactly how you envisioned it? If it helps people, solves a problem or makes a difference, get it the fuck out there.
I hope I have made my point clear.
So earlier on I promised you a dirty little secret.
Now, bear in mind I have hung out with authors, product creators, and online course experts – you name it. And not everyone does this, but you know what?
Some people sell you something that doesn’t even exist yet!
That’s right: you are buying something that isn’t actually there.
This is brilliant for you to understand.
Let’s say you have the skills and talents to teach/create something, and you have an audience you know would like it. Wouldn’t it be easier to find out if people want what you are selling before going to all the trouble of making it? Damn right, it would!
So, you put it out there. If no one buys, or just a handful of folks buy, no drama. You refund them. But if enough people invest, to the point where you think, fuck, this could be a thing, then you know full well that you have to get it done now. Or, you will look like a dick.
And you don’t want to look like a dick, do you?
Course not.
If you go this route, write some sales copy, get it out in the world (social media, your local community, paid advertising, etc.), tell everyone when it will be ready – that’s your thing – and make sure you work your balls/ovaries off to deliver it. Like I said, if not enough people buy, just be honest. There wasn’t enough interest to run it this time, so here’s your money back. No harm done.
Or, if you are smart, and you have a few folks who really want it, you could ask them to try and recruit a few more folks to make it viable.
Just a thought.
I want to make something very clear – you will never be perfect. You will never be good at everything. There are some things that you will simply suck at.
And it’s OK. To be shit is A-O-K.
I did OK across the industries I worked in, but it wasn’t until I dropped the ego and realised I was utterly dire at certain things that I was finally able to experience the crazy business growth I have now.
I am really good with people.
I am really good at sales.
I am really good with words.
I am really good at building tribes and getting people together.
I am crap at systems.
I am crap at organising myself.
I am crap at long term (past 3-6 months) planning.
I am crap at singing.
As I have said before, it makes sense to work on your weaknesses, but only to a degree. Me, personally? I prefer to know my strengths, get really good at them and then find someone else to handle my weaknesses.
And if you really analyse some of the big shots out there in the world, that’s exactly what they do too. You can’t build empires if you keep doing everything yourself.
The reason to work on your weaknesses a bit is so that, when you recruit or outsource stuff, you know what’s good and what’s bad. So for me, to start with I got a PA to organise my life day to day, an operations manager to take my crazy ideas, make them reality, and kick my arse so I didn’t miss anything, and a personal trainer/cook to make sure I didn’t turn into a fat mess again.
It may sound easy for me to say this now I have a few pennies, and it’s very easy to say, ‘Get stuffed, Dan, I don’t have money for things like that!’ Well, I didn’t either when I started.
But I had skills, time, energy. So, I swapped them. I would either partner up with someone (in a business capacity) who complemented me by having the skills I was rubbish at and create a joint venture, or I would offer my skills (at points sales, marketing, copywriting and personal training) in return for their expertise.
It’s only your shame that will stop you doing this. Like anything in life, you have no idea what you can get unless you ask.
I know it seems like a lot, but it boils down to finding something you are good at, getting really good at it, using that skill to get something to market, then finding folks who complement your lack of skills (pay ’em or swap stuff for ’em). And there you go.
Job done!
BE VALUABLE TO DO/ACTION STEPS
Fake it till you make it – a bit. You’re going to need to adopt the mindset, behaviour and attitude of those you look up to and who are successful until it becomes ingrained.
You have to have a skill/talent. Find out what you’re really fucking good at. Invest your time and energy sharpening your skills before you charge people for them. If you want to make it, you’re going to need to be continually investing to develop your skills.
But there comes a point where you need to stop consuming and start producing something of value to your audience. Ask your audience if they actually want what you have before you create it to save time. Get something of value the fuck out there even if it’s not perfect.
Work on your weaknesses (just a little bit). Figure out where your strengths and weaknesses are. Don’t try and do everything yourself. Whatever you know you aren’t that good at, outsource it and find someone who is the dog’s bollocks so you can focus on your strengths. My bat shit talent happens to be coaching, so I outsource most other things.
6
BE INTERESTING
You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people, than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.
Dale Carnegie
Seems like a bit of an odd concept, doesn’t it, ‘be interesting’? But bear with me, this is really bloody important.
In this chapter I want to share why to be interesting, you have to be interested, and answer questions such as: ‘Dan, how can I come across as a well-rounded, interesting guy/gal who people want to be around?’ or ‘I’ve been wanting to get X client on board. How can I get him to cave in to my product/service?’
I’
ll show you exactly how you can do that in a bit. But first, take a look around. The people who have the most friends, a huge network, or own successful businesses are in fact extremely interesting. They know how to start and keep a conversation; they are well-rounded individuals, and they can talk on various topics. But most of all, if they don’t know something, they will become interested. They will ask you; they’ll probe and really try their best to become interested in what lights your fire.
In such a crazy, fast-paced, hyper-connected world it is getting harder and harder to stand out. In fact, with thousands of contacts across all manner of platforms, it’s really easy to forget about people. And be forgotten, full stop.
Which is why being a) interesting yourself, but more importantly b) interested in others is crucial.
I’ll show you how to do that shortly.
As I mentioned earlier, people have lost the art, or even concept, of figuring shit out, seeing how things work or questioning the status quo. I see people who are quite content to talk about and use stuff when they have no bloody idea what they are talking about.
Makes me sad.
We are, by our very nature as humans, inquisitive buggers, and although I’m not saying you have to know how everything works, having a broad understanding of the world and what’s in it will do wonders for you.
I used to be very closed minded to things. I had, in my mind, what I thought was right/wrong, good/bad, interesting/dull all figured out. And that is what we call a ‘fixed mindset’.
Aka – a shit mindset.
Now? I have what’s called a ‘growth mindset’. In the real world that means I have my own ideas, values, interests and thoughts, but I am not averse to modifying or changing them.
I said earlier that I have truly embraced the fact that I am not cool, and if not being cool means I am who I am now – fuck, I’m all for it. I learn from a variety of sources; below is just an example of the things I consume, places I go, and stuff I do:
