SFR 13: ...How I'm Prone To Hinder My Own Progress ...in EVERYTHING! (you too)

I've had quite a few people reach out to me lately. Honestly on average, about one person a day. One new person per day, sometimes two, reaches out to me and they say, "Hey. I've got this sales funnel," or "Hey. I've got this business idea," or "Hey. I've got something I want to put into the marketplace and try and get money for it."

One of the first questions I always ask is, what's your plan? What's your, we call it a value ladder, leading from one product to the next. You just increase value and increase price as you go. What's your offer structure?

I was telling them, remember that the offer is not the same thing as the product. What's the offer?

You don't sell a pile of rocks.

You sell a rock bed next to a sidewalk with bushes in it, next to a rock wall where people are going to admire you as they walk by.

You sell the experience.

It's all about an offer.

I've had quite a few people recently who've been approaching, and I've noticed this trend that I don't know if they're trying to impress me. I don't know if they're trying, it's possible I guess.

They'll say, "Hey. I'm going to go make an e-book, and I'm going to do this and write an actual book, a physical book. I'm going to get it in the stores. I'm going to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this." It's like they start beating their chest a little bit. "I'm the man." They go, and I don't know what it is. I can understand that I guess. I wake up and I'm excited.

It's not even seven o'clock yet, and I am recording a podcast. Yeah, I call it world domination. I want to take over the world also.

The trend that I've been seeing is that a lot of people will compare themselves to an ideal. I've been listening to Dan Sullivan. If you ever listen to his book or his presentation, "Pure Genius," it's very good.

In there he said something, and I was like, oh my gosh, that's so true. He said, "Part of the part of the problem is that we'll get to this spot in our lives, and we've been planning forever to get there.

Say like, well I don't know, we're just going to say a trip. Let's say you're planning on going on a trip. It's a big one. Let's say you're going to go overseas somewhere. You're planning the trip. You're thinking about it and the months are coming. The months are leading up to it.

You're planning out the, I don't know, the meals, places you want to go, people you want to see, the different events you want to attend. You're starting to imagine as you get on the plane what it'll look like.

If you're going to Hawaii, what it'll smell like, what's the experience going to be like. Then you get there, and you're like, "Oh this is awesome."

While you're in the middle of experience, you start planning your next trip. You start saying things like, "Oh man. What would it be like instead of going to Hawaii, what if we went to Spain?"

You start planning in the middle of your trip, Spain. You start going, "Oh, what's it going to be like? What is it going to smell like? Who am I going to talk to?

What events am I going to attend?" You get home, and you immediately get on plan and go to Spain. When you get to Spain, it's like, "Oh this is awesome," for the first day.

Then you turn around, and you're like, "Oh. Let's go visit Germany." In the middle of Spain, you actually get on a plane and just fly to Germany. That's what it's like when I'm talking to a lot of people about their business.

Like, "I'm going for this, and going for this, and going for this." Like wow, that's really cool, but you're not actually focusing on anything.

You're not actually going to win at this. You understand. To a degree, especially at the beginning when you're just trying to get a product out there that actually converts, you have to be a little bit of a monomaniac.

A lot of people won't do that.

I keep trying to explain to some people, you have got to simplify. Probably the number one thing I've learned working for Mr. Russell Brunson, is that, that's my day job and I absolutely love it, but probably the number one thing I've learned from him is that the man simplifies like crazy, and then just executes. It's insane.

We do not get caught up in the details when he and I build a funnel together. I sit next to him all day, every day. He's like, "We're going to go do this." Cool. Then we figure out the details as we go, but it is our only focus until we get it done and it's converting and making money.

Does that make sense?

Because I get these people, and a lot of people that do that. I realize when I was listening to Dan Sullivan's program, he said something in there that was very fascinating to me.

He said, "A lot of times people have," I'm not going to say it exactly or whatever, but the major point was, sometimes a lot of us will just go compare ourselves to an ideal rather than what has actually happened.

Does that make sense?

Here's a scenario, excuse me. Let's say you really want to lose some weight. Let's take someone who's really, really overweight.

They go and they lose like fifty pounds in three months, which is amazing. That's fantastic and almost like borderline healthy. That's a lot of fat loss or weight loss. They get there and they've lost this weight. They get on the scale. They feel fantastic. It's a lot of fun for them.

They're feeling great, but then someone who's really, really, really in shape.

Let's say it's an Olympian, walks in front of them and just keeps going. The guy notices, and says, "Oh, but I don't look like that." They get really depressed.

They bring themselves down. "Oh crap. I can't handle what's happening in front of me right now. I might as well not even try for this. I'm never going to look like that."

That's what Dan Sullivan was saying. He didn't say that example, but he's like, "Look, what happens is that we'll go from our current state to a better current state, and rather than comparing to our own selves where we came from, we'll compare to this ideal."

Every time you compare to an ideal, you will always end up not happy. You'll always end up getting depressed.

You'll always shrink back. It'll take away your steam from wanting to move forward.

I was thinking about that in terms of a lot of businesses that I've done, especially when I was in college and I was just getting into this game.

About four years ago is when I really started doing this stuff. I have to say, I totally have done that. I think we all have. We'll go through, and especially when you see these other internet tycoons, and you're watching their stuff online or just other business people in general.

You go through, and you've got your thing. It's starting to work, and you're excited about it. You've got this inner fire, this drive to go produce it and make it cool.

Then, all of a sudden, someone will walk in front of you and go, "Yeah, but you're not making 100 million a month. Oh yeah, but it's not passive income. Oh yeah, it's not like this opportunity over here."

You look at this greener grass on the other side of the hill mentality all the time, time after time after time after time, and it just wears you down.

You start feeling like crap because you are comparing to an ideal, someone else's ideal, when in reality, it might be this side job that you created that's making extra income that's paid all your bills.

That's amazing, right. They might be right.

Maybe it's time to kick it up a little bit, but when you compare you're person value with an ideal, like you're going to suck every time.

That's when I realized that. I went through and I was making these e-books. A couple of them sold. That was the first time I ever really got in a sale funnel, and I was like, oh man. I'm not good at traffic. That was a good compare. I went and I learned traffic. That ended up me working for Paul Mitchell.

I was working for Paul Mitchell, and I was driving their internet traffic for about eight of them in California and one of them in Idaho. I was like, oh crap. None of this traffic is converting.

That was another good example of personally comparing well that propels you forward. That's a good way to compare. All right, let's go learn how to convert traffic.

Then I learned how to convert traffic.

That's a good way to follow the rabbit holes for whatever you need to do to improve and make your business better. That's been fantastic. When you compare to this ideal and this way, here's a really bad example. When I was doing door to door sales, that was in college.

It's really one of the major ways I started getting into how to drive ads, which was a weird thing to do. My first summer going with these people, I was the number two first year guy. The number one guy had actually been out there two months before me.

I don't count it because he had a two month lead on me on selling. What started happening is instead of just keeping my head down and just working with my pace and working my own speed, I looked up, which was, for me, not a good thing.

When I looked up, I started seeing the other people and what they're doing. Oh they're doing this level. Oh they're doing this level.

When people started looking at me and my work, and they start saying, "Oh Stephen, you're so amazing at what you do. You're so good at building sales funnels."

If I look at that and I allow it as an input, that I actually do worse. I start sucking because I start comparing to an ideal. Oh crap. I didn't realize I was doing so good with this. I just really want to do my own kind of good.

Then I start comparing, and I'm like, oh. Then when I'm on the doors and I was talking to people and starting to, what if this guy's going to say yes. They start to read that on my face like a dog smells fear, and I start losing sales, more, and more, and more, and more and start sucking.

I'm just in this downward spiral. I'm in this huge tailspin.

Three weeks go by and I haven't sold as much as I usually do in one week. That's how it starts to happen, I feel like, for everybody. I had to pull myself out of that and realize, okay, just you were really good at this before.

Stop looking at what other people are doing. Stop caring that people are watching what you're doing because that's what puts you in the tailspin.

That's actually one of the reasons I've been nervous for this podcast. Thanks for being a faithful listener. That's my whole message is I just want to say that remember not to compare yourself to an ideal.

Compare yourself to what you personally can do, and what you're personally good at, and where your own personal history is from. Keep your head down. Just work hard. It's to want a little limelight. That's not bad. It's good for marketing.

It's good to be able to want to be seen, but when it becomes the object and you start saying things like, "Oh but I'm not doing it like he is," you're going to suck. Just the natural, it's going to happen because you start comparing. "Yeah, well that guy over there has a different, unique ability than you do. What's your own, unique ability is one of Dan Sullivan's things also. Just focus on your own thing, whatever you're crazy good at, he's probably not crazy good at.

You're right. He's probably better than you at something, but you're better than he is at this one are.

Go just focus on your one thing, blow it up, make it successful, and keep your head down. Stop comparing to an ideal. Anyways, I've said that like twelve times now. It's a trend we all get into. It's the reason we like pop culture is we're going to look at someone else and compare. Well, I've got to wear what this celebrity's wearing. That's the whole basis of that industry.

Anyways, that's all I got for you. It's a short one. It's a powerful thought. It started changing things for me. It's this breath of relief for me. Oh yeah, that's right. What's my actual one to my actual two, where I started to where I am now and look at the progress. That's amazing.

You failed out of college your first semester, which is true. Then you started getting straight A's at the end. That's true. Look at that personal progression and from where you are.

All right guys.

I'll talk to you later. I actually have a podcast interview very soon with a very cool guy.

He is in the UK. I'm pretty excited to interview him. I love their accents, so I'm actually really excited about it.

It starts in five minutes, so I got to get prepared. All right guys, see you.

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