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M.O.D.E.L. CITIZENSHIP: You unwillingly become a SCRIPTED servant who is (M)ediocre, (O)bedient, (D)ependent, (E)ntertained, and (L)ifeless and who then becomes a seeder, a compromised party propagating the SCRIPTED
If a death clock suddenly became visible and advertised your life rations for easy viewing, say your smartphone, would you spend your time differently?
Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants. ~ Epictetus, Philosopher
you’ve been sold a bullshit story by a bunch of bullshitters whose only goal is to keep you knee-deep in bullshit.
know the difference between the SCRIPTED seeking shortcuts and the UNSCRIPTED targeting those seeking shortcuts.
A true FTE shifts interest to commitment. It pummels excuses into submission. It’s unbalancing where nothing else matters and priorities shift: Xboxes are thrown in the attic; cable TV is canceled; and credit cards are paid. You see, most people are “interested” in entrepreneurship, financial freedom, and success—but most never commit. Why? It just doesn’t hurt bad enough.
A fake FTE has four threats and any one of them will send you right back to the SCRIPT. A real FTE has no threats; to breathe or not to breathe isn’t a conscious choice—it just happens.
is the influence of leisure on consumption which makes the [five day workweek] so necessary. The people who consume the bulk of goods are the people who make them. That is a fact we must never forget, that is the secret of our prosperity.
When you experience how much the system sucks firsthand, the desire appears.
Studying success isn’t very helpful—we should be studying failures.
Real, permanent change does NOT come from event idealism or from shortcuts. It comes from a daily, regimented process woven into the fabric of your life, automatic and nearly instinctual.
if it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth it.
Success is simpler than you think: ax the shortcut, honor the process-principle, and do the necessary work.
Everything significant started insignificantly. Amazon started with one line of code; Harry Potter with one paragraph; McDonalds with one hamburger.
Success is more about what you need to STOP doing versus START doing.
The hardest part of the process-principle is repetition; greatness is a lot of small things done daily.
Take disciplined action until a feedback loop kicks on.
The Kaizen Principle is to endeavor to create tiny incremental improvements in your daily life with an aim for mastery over performance, while forsaking external comparisons, unless such comparisons inspire. The three key operands here are: 1) Tiny incremental improvements 2) mastery over performance and 3) external comparison.
If you want to live well, produce well.
Stop hunting money and start hunting value. Money is not prey. Instead, erase “money” from your vocabulary. Vow to never utter the word again. As a producer, start thinking of “money” as value-vouchers—a store of perceived value produced, communicated, and delivered to the world.
You are continuously unlucky if you do not move probability in your favor.
behavioral modifications are suggestions from Richard Wiseman, the experimental psychologist on luck. His experiments conclude our behavior can change luck if we mimic the traits associated with lucky people while eliminating the unlucky ones. These three traits are intuition, routine, and positivity.
Wiseman explains that unlucky people tend to be creatures of routine, talking to the same types of people, traveling the same routes to work, while lucky people spread variety into their lives.
You choose the interpretation of your life events and then you choose how to act on that interpretation.
An extraordinary life is won on offense; it is then preserved through defense.
Companies held hostage by advertising chain themselves to a push. Companies that grow like weeds and enrich their founders, boast the pull.
am suspicious of any company who advertises heavily because it suggests a product that can’t pull.
The magnitude of the problem solved is the magnitude of the money you can make.
The market is a spoiled brat, narrow-minded and singular in its purpose. It doesn’t care that you shrunk six dress sizes or can bench press 315. Its laser-like focus is centered on one fundamental truth: What value are you to me?
What can I get from you that I can’t get elsewhere, or am not getting well enough? Why do I need you or your business?
I’d sell hundred-dollar bills for fifty dollars. As soon as word spread that this deal wasn’t a scam, sales would explode. Customers would order, over and over. And therein lies the secret to becoming needful (although not necessarily profitable) through the power of relative worth: skewing value.
His competitor's photos did not simulate motion. As a result of this simple change—one attribute improved and skewed—he tripled his sales.
There was no story behind the company.
The crowded-room appears crowded because we don’t typically think from a value skewing perspective. If
For the beginning entrepreneur not named Elon Musk, innovation is the least likely to succeed but the likeliest pursuit. Innovation entails anything new: an invention, a board game, a fashion accessory—any product or service never offered before. On the other hand, improvement is taking something that already exists and doing it better or differently. Improvement is where most new business opportunities reside.
Here are opportunity's code words: I hate… This sucks… I’m tired… I wish… How frustrating… I don’t like… Why do I have to…? Why is this…[dangerous, unhealthy, hard, etc.]?
Idea
My friend takes this a step further. He searches Amazon for products that sell well but have poor reviews. He then dives into the complaints and determines if he can solve those complaints at the manufacturing level. If so, he develops his own products.
The best opportunities rarely come from joining the crowd, but serving it.
Probably the most common false flag is your message. Your offer is weak. Your copy sucks. Your call to action doesn’t exist. Your design and UI look like they were done with GoDaddy’s web tool.
“It’s not WHAT you know, but WHO” is partly true but misleading. Having better WHATs (knowledge and experience) can open the door to better WHOs.
funding typically shifts stakeholder priority from the customer to the investors. If you can finance growth while maintaining 100 percent control over your business, do it.
The incredible life I live today is not because of balance; it’s because I meandered into the world of the obsessed.
truly feel my life did not begin until I escaped dreary Chicago and moved to sunny Phoenix. I needed the environmental shift to succeed.
Find the environment that gives you your best workout. Not just with fitness, but with life. Find that city, country, church, coffee shop, or band of new friends that supports and inspires you.
The strongest brands link into the identities of their target customer.
Selling and all of its cousins (marketing, copywriting, negotiation) are the most important skills, no matter what your business is. These skills can be banked for life.
A powerful story was linked to the objects. As a result, items purchased at an average of $1.25 resold for many times more, nearly $8,000 in total. A one-dollar jar of marbles, storied and sold for fifty dollars.116 A one-dollar wooden apple core, storied and sold for over one hundred dollars.117 And dozens more.
The ultimate consumer doctrine of selfishness is what’s in it for me? The quicker and cleaner your customer learns what’s in it for them, the quicker the sale. Forget features, doodads, and sparkly accoutrements—sell benefits.
A more effective headline centers on self-interest and benefit. Something like: Crush Your Moving Frustrations! Simplify And Speed Your Move With Our Eco-Friendly Rentable Moving Crates!
I always replied with appreciation. However, I’d also PS a favor in my reply: I’d ask the reader if they could take a moment and review my book at their favorite website, which typically is Amazon.
