UNSCRIPTED: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship

by M.J. DeMarco

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.

nine steps to help you moving toward the process side of the event/process dichotomy: Intelligent Awareness Modify Expectations/Realign Difficulty Identify and Visualize the Change Target Apply Mathematics to the Goal Segment Goal into Its Daily Action Identify Threats to the Target Identify the Right Battlefield Attack Bad Habits with Inconvenience/Pain Act until Echo

STEP #1: INTELLIGENT AWARENESS TO NEUROLOGICAL DEFAULTS

STEP #2: MODIFY EXPECTATIONS AND REALIGN THE SOURCE OF DIFFICULTY

Success is simpler than you think: ax the shortcut, honor the process-principle, and do the necessary work.

STEP #3: IDENTIFY AND VISUALIZE THE CHANGE TARGET What exactly do you want? Envision yourself time-shifting one year into the future at a New Year’s Eve party. Envision yourself celebrating the year that was, the year that changed everything. Take a moment and reflect on the accomplishments you hope to celebrate. Did you win a fitness competition? Did you start a new business and double your income? Complete a full-length novel? Identify EXACTLY what you want to feel and see yourself there. If you don’t identify where you want to go, the road to get there stays hidden.

STEP #4: APPLY MATHEMATICS TO THE GOAL After envisioning how awesome your new year will be, attach a numerical figure to your goal. If “lose weight” is the goal, this would translate into “lose twenty-five pounds” or “get to 12 percent body fat.” Likewise, if your goal is to “start a business,” you would need to identify a numerical number, say sales, profits, or number of customers. The mathematics of change are crucially important

STEP #5: IDENTIFY THE DAILY ACTION TARGET

After isolating the goal and quantifying it, break it down into its core “take-action” component, or what I call “the daily target.” What daily routine will get you there? For example, if your objective is to write a novel, your daily target could be to write 500 words every day, or a minimum of two hours.

STEP #6: IDENTIFY THREATS TO THE DAILY TARGET What threatens your daily target?

In order to hit your targets, identify what will stop you from achieving them. What impedes success and prevents real change? 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.

STEP #7: IDENTIFY THE PROPER BATTLEFIELDS You can’t build new habits without an intelligent awareness appl...

STEP #8: ATTACK BAD HABITS WITH INCONVENIENCE AND/OR PAIN Once battlegrounds are identified, you can attack your bad habits. How? By leveraging your natural human instinct to seek the path of least resistance. Put the shortcut scam in your corner by turning bad habits into a royal pain in the ass. Make them invasive. Inconvenient, and with no shortcuts.

STEP #9: ACT UNTIL ECHO A process modality’s final step transforms actions into habit. Whatever your goal, act until echo. Take disciplined action until a feedback loop kicks on. Vow to work until your first echo occurs and then—and only then—decide your next step. Do I continue? Adjust? Or stop?

Once your effort strikes echoes, it reaffirms your actions, becoming habit, sometimes addictive, and as automatic as brushing your teeth.

The point is, whatever the goal, work until you strike your first echo. And when that happens, notice how you feel. Once you get to that first echo, there’s usually no going back. Even if it’s marginal results, you empower yourself forward.

it’s the little things that cause the big things.

new skills can be acquired and mastered regardless of your current level of talent or intelligence.

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.

First, the only concerning metric is YOU. Have you done something today, no matter how small, to impr...

Second, aim for mastery over performance: be the best at something YOU can be.

And third, refrain from comparing yourself to others, especially rock stars in your field.

Never praise talent or ability, either for yourself or for a

child. Instead, praise the process-principle. Praise improvements, habits, growth, and efforts. Praise how far you’ve come, and one day, you’ll praise your results.

a consumer-to-producer shift means behaving like one. That means: You lead the herd, not follow it. You pave new paths, not harden the already well-worn ones. You create and sell franchises, not buy them. You receive rents or royalties, not pay them. You lend, not borrow. You create and sell a brand; you’re not buying the brand. You hire employees, not seek to be hired as one. You sell products on late-night infomercials; you’re not buying them. You sell on Black Friday, not buying on Black Friday.

Producerism is being a lifelong student of production. Tune your RAS to see what everyone else cannot. And soon you will be doing what everyone else cannot. Effective producerism rarely evolves from trading your time for money, but instead manifests itself from investing your time into a scalable business system.

POLARIZER: THE VALUE-VOUCHER PRINCIPLE 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.

To HONORABLY attract value-vouchers, money bridges must be constructed with these four building blocks: Value (product/service creation) Perceived value communicated to another party (marketing and messaging) A mutual agreement, an equilibrium with that party (closing) Actual value delivered (execution)

As a fiduciary, resolve to be a societal asset, advancing its ease and enjoyment. Resolve to be treated how you want to be treated. Put customers as kings in the stakeholder chain, being trustworthy and honorable to a standard that squashes the villain narrative. A fiduciary mindset is selfless, where an external exploration of needs and problems becomes clear.

If you want to make millions, impact millions.

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.

As you pursue UNSCRIPTED using (TUNEF), there are seven primary brain battles you’ll face. They are: Change Adversity Righteousness Antithetical Apathy Semmelwashing Podium Popping Survivor Spotlighting Momentum Paralysis

Change adversity is your brain’s predilection for comfort and status quo despite being surrounded by change.

Real change comes from identity and self—not from interim motivations jump-started by books or YouTube binging. Basically, you have to BE what you want to become FIRST so the actions can follow. Don’t TALK about it; BE about it. BE. ACT on being. Then HAVE. For

So how do you change your identity?

First, identify what you want to be and label yourself as such.

Second, reinforce and ratify your identity by taking regular action, no matter how small.

aim for the daily action and improvement found within the process-principle. James Clear, author of Transform Your Habits (recommended read) says “prove your identity” daily. This happens with small wins and minor improvements.

If your new identity is “I am an author,” write a few paragraphs a day. Build on your prior effort, where the net effect is an upswing. As I mentioned in the process-principle, once feedback echoes pour in, congratulations. That’s when things get easier, habits dig in, and others take notice. A 1 percent daily evidentiary shift for one year will transform you into a new person, to the point you wouldn’t recognize your current self.

Great results require a great commitment. Commitment fires the process-principle where habits become lifestyle and lifestyle becomes winning results.

As we ascend into the UNSCRIPTED framework, your meaning-and-purpose and its motivation cycle are the catalyst to act, persist, and win. While rewritten 3Bs inspire starting, your meaning-and-purpose and its motivation cycle inspire finishing.

Fiery WHYs overpower expiring willpower and fizzling passion.

Unfortunately, entrepreneurship, along with life and liberty, is a tale of periodic pain now or perpetual regret later. Namely, how bad do you want it? How much are you willing to give up for it?

Don’t confuse a WHY with a DESIRE. DESIRES are often superficial and transient, whereas WHYS are firm and transcendent through time.

When passion doesn’t solve people’s problems, passion doesn’t pay bills.

Followed by strong WHYs compelling ACTION, your FEEDBACK LOOP does the heavy lifting, driving passion and, hence, results. Whenever there is silence, or an absent feedback loop, the cycle sputters out into quitting.