Hey ,

Zach here…

This issue was supposed to go out one week earlier but life got in the way…

And that’s why this week I want to make it up to you.

I hit a record month in April and I just want to share some of my reflections with you.

Let’s dive in…

1: Most of your Limitations are Self-Imposed…

In essence, this means that a lot of the inner demons holding you back are actually BS…

I don’t mean it in a disrespectful sense…

Ah… it’s best I explain this through an example.

In the past, I’ve always thought that my copy chops weren’t good enough…

Or I haven’t generated enough results for my clients…

Or I haven’t worked with the biggest people in the industry yet…

These are the reasons I tell myself whenever I don’t do well.

And since I’ve graduated from engineering school, I’ve more headspace to reflect on my business and career trajectory.

The more I sit on this… the more I realize this “Inner BS” problem is holding me back.

Because though I was making more sales since March and April…

My copy wasn’t exceptionally better than last year.

And my rates are pretty affordable (I’ve raised prices lately) so it doesn’t make sense for people to turn me down because of price.

This month, I wanted to hack my Self-Defeating Psychology so bad because once I know what my mistakes are… I can be more aware and conscious of them.

Which is why I started reflecting on the dry months I once had…

The scarcity of clients led to all sorts of negative emotions like fear and anger.

I also started taking on all kinds of weird projects which weren’t relevant to what my focus was.

Thankfully, I still had my steady and reliable monthly retainer project which helped me pay the bills.

But more importantly, I started looking like a “Out-of-Form” Athlete.

If you watch sports like basketball or soccer… you might have heard of the idea of “Form”.
If an athlete is “In-Form”… they’d usually be winning games and every single shot they take is likely to score.

Because of this, they’d usually appear to be more alert, confident and prepared.

They’d tend to have better self-talk too which affects their performance indirectly.

The tricky thing in business is that as much as we can control our efforts…

We can’t control our results directly.

In other words, it’s actually possible we fail even if we execute every single step of the process correctly…

Which is why it’s so important to not allow certain outcomes or results to affect our emotional states and actions… because they’d indirectly affect how we perform which will influence the result.

If you’re a believer of Energy, it’s important that we try to stay in higher vibrational states of peace, joy and gratitude as long as possible rather than lower vibrational states.

So be more conscious of your Self-Talk and beliefs the next time when you’re “out-of-form” or if you’re going through a rough patch.

2: Having a Process to Learn-Think-and Do

Most of my friends who are working in a job right now don’t really have to worry about this…

Why?

Because they have a stable income – a big, fat paycheck which goes into their bank at the end of the day.

In a job, we’re also more often than not told what to do…

And so we just focus on the “Doing”.

Which is a lot simpler.

But this is not sustainable if you want to be an online entrepreneur.

I learned this from Ian Stanley’s 3M Money Matrix a while back.

And here’s the gist of it…

1.    Maintenance Money: The task you do, the things you do in your work which keeps the money coming in every month. 

2.    Money Now: The money that’s going to come in for you in the next one to 30 days.

3.    Money Later: This is the money that’s going to come in within the next 30-90 days. 

Now if you’re spending most of your time executing in your business, you’re spending most of your time on 1).

And this means there’s actually a cap to how much your business can grow…

You don’t want to be exhausting yourself and burning yourself out because entrepreneurship is more of a marathon than a race.

So spend more time reflecting on your Learn-Think-Do allocation.

If you’re spending too much on the “Doing”… you might want to hire more, outsource the work or take on less clients.

If you’re learning or thinking too much… then you’re not taking enough action.

And with that… I want to talk about Point #3.

3: Learning To Say No

If you’re constantly overworking and taking on more clients than what you can handle… then this would be an awesome learning point.

The idea is we want to say “No” to the scope of work we don’t offer or don’t want to offer.

Kenneth mentioned in the Harpoon that certain work deliverables do not command a higher pricing perception (e.g. Blog Posts, content).

E.g. A very good example is actually content writing.

Because you can spend 5 hours writing a blogpost for $100…

Which isn’t too shabby if you’re living in Bali or The Philippines… but if your goal is to earn more and optimize your time, effort and energy…

You have to start turning down and streamlining work you don’t want to do. (Unless if you need “Money Now” that is).

I hope this helps. 😀

Alright. That’s all for this issue of WYODC Confidential #17.

Cheers.
Zach