Read time: 8 minutes

#90 – 02 Feb 2024

Welcome!

I had to take a second look…

“What?”

“What is that?”

“How did that get there?”

I’d opened up the Kindle app on my Mac to do some research. A strange book was staring right back at me.

A bright green one with a clickbaity title:

Million Dollar Weekend: The Surprisingly Simple Way To Launch A 7-Figure Business in 48 Hours.

Yeah, right, buddy!

I could imagine a sleazy used car salesman handing me this book with a twinkle in his eye. 

But on closer inspection, this was no used car salesperson; it was Noah Kagan. 

“Oh yeah, I remember this.”

“I did order this!”

I’d pre-ordered it a while back but forgot about it.

Don’t you love it when you get a nice surprise?

Good surprises don’t come around very often, particularly after age 30. They seem to happen less and less. We feel increasingly like we’ve “been there, done that” with everything.

Do you even remember the last unexpected thing you got excited about?

Can you relive that experience?

A warm rush up your body, your eyes gleaming with joy, the smile you can’t wipe from your face.

The beauty of surprises is they are unexpected and exciting to us.

Now, you’re probably thinking:

“This is a measly surprise: a book!”

Sounds underwhelming, right?

But no, my friend, I do get excited by a book.

Why?

Possibility!

A book can change your life:

• If you read it. 
• And if you take action on what you learn. 

The beauty of a book is that someone further along than us can compress 30+ years of hard-won lessons into 200 or so pages. 

Tony Robbins said:

“I’m a strategist, not a motivator. I’m obsessed with finding strategies that create real results in the shortest period of time.”

Tony’s insight led him to seek out successful strategies that other people had already figured out and then apply them to speed up his results. 

You can do this too. 

Back to Noah Kagan. 

Who is he?

He was the #30 employee at FaceBook, who apparently invented “status updates” and developed the FaceBook ads platform. Wow! 

I recognise him as a funny and interesting guy who pops up all over YouTube. But his real cred for writing this book is he has created multiple 7+ figure businesses.

Naturally, I dived into the book.

And soon, I was nodding along and rubbing my hands together excitedly.

I landed on some gold within the first chapter, which I just had to share with you today.

Before I share this gold dust, let’s set the scene:

You have things you want to be working on. You have dreams, desires and an unlived life waiting patiently to jump out of you.

But for some damn reason, it feels like you are making ZERO progress. 

Which is confusing, right?

You’re an intelligent and capable person. 

But you aren’t seeing the results you desire. 

Something is holding you back.

My guess is it’s tried up in these same two fears that Noah uncovered with a group of his entrepreneurial students:

Let’s unpack those.

1. Fear of Starting

Ooooh, I know this one so well. I suffered through a career I hated for years, all because I was too scared to take the leap I knew I wanted to take. 

You think it’s too risky, you think you will fail, you think you’re not good enough, you think people will laugh at you, and so on.

And so what do you do?

This sneaky voice of resistance inside convinces you that you are NOT READY.

It says, “Hey, why don’t you learn a little more first?”

So you dive headfirst into more books, podcasts, courses and whatever resources you can get your hands on. Anything to distract you from the real work of actually starting!

But does this help?

On the surface, it feels like it does as you’re moving. It feels like action.

But what’s really going on below?

You’re becoming increasingly confused and disenchanted as you learn all these conflicting approaches and theories from various gurus.

Pretty soon, you’re drowning in a sea of overwhelm. And whatever thing you were going to start just feels like too much! 

Strange, isn’t it?

Learning was supposed to help! 

Well, it does for a bit. But at some point, it’s just hiding. 

What you really need is ACTION.

Remember our lesson from Tony’s quote above: when you learn those winning strategies, APPLY them. Find what works for you.

Noah hits the nail on the head here:

“But that inaction only breeds more doubt and fear.

In actuality, the best way to learn what we need to know—and become who we want to be—is by just getting started. 

Small EXPERIMENTS, repeated over time, are the recipe for transformation in business, and life.“

Let those points sink in:

Inaction breeds more doubt and fear.

So, by not starting for reasons disguised as helping you, you are actually creating more anxiety regarding your situation. The monsters of fear and doubt only grow stronger inside you, to the point that you just wanna run away and hide under your kitchen table. 

Come on, you’re better than that.

You are courageous and powerful. You know you have it in you. You’ve seen what you are capable of! Reflect on a time when you channelled that inner lion roaring inside of you:

What happened? How did it feel? How did others perceive you?

What’s it gonna take to awaken that fearless warrior within you?

Small experiments, repeated over time, equal transformation

Herein lies an answer to our crippling fears.

You probably know this from experience. 

You conquer fears through increased exposure.

You don’t have to tackle the beast in one gigantic swoop and wrestle it to the ground. No, you can chip away at it, bit by bit.

And as you make progress, confidence builds.

Years ago, I heard Jordan Peterson (love him or hate him, please bear with me, as there is insight) speak of a client from his practice who was terrified of elevators. They feared being trapped alone and dying inside. The danger was invisible, but it was real. 

You know that chilling fear which paralyses you. You feel your feet buried in rock-hard cement. Your breathing is shallow, and your chest tight. 

And so Jordan outlined a way forward as he progressively asked the client: 

“Could you go in an elevator?”

“No”

“Could you look at an elevator from 10 feet away?”

“Yes”

“How about 9 feet away?”

“Yes”

“How about 5 feet away?”

“Yes”

 “How about 4 feet away?”

“NO”

“Ok, no problem. We’re gonna go 4.5 feet away from that elevator, and we are gonna look at the damn thing until your bored of it. You should be bored of the elevator, cause then you’re not afraid of it.”

Jordan continues:

“So this week they are 4.5 feet away from the elevator, next week they’re 1 foot from the elevator, and the week after that, the horrible gates of hell open. They look inside, and they don’t run! 

So hey, they are tougher than they thought they were. And that’s what you’re teaching them, actually.”

“It isn’t really that they get less afraid. It’s that they get braver. That’s way different because brave is alert and able to cope.”

I invite you to consider:

You’re tougher than you think you are. 

All you have to do is get started.

What is one small action you can start with today?

Once you take that action, keep chipping away with the next action. Remember, it is the consistent action over time that leads to the results you desire. 

2. Fear of Asking

So you finally started. Congrats!

But soon after, you run into the next demon on the road blocking your path to success:

THE FEAR OF ASKING.

“You have some impressive skills, an amazing product, every advantage in the world, and you’ll never sell a thing if you can’t face another person and ask for what you want.

Whether you want them to buy what you’re selling or help in another way, you have to be able to ask in order to get.”

Noah Kagan

Ahh, this one probably gets me even more than “starting”.

Why?

See, I’m an introvert by nature. So I’m happiest in my own space. I get drained making shallow small talk with strangers. I notice this most at parties. Rather than being the centre of attention, the life of that party, I would much rather be in an intimate group diving into a deep discussion.

Can you relate?

Secondly, in my household, growing up, I was raised with a self-sufficient attitude. You know the “I get going and I can do it all myself” mindset. Now, this is an excellent conscientious quality to have in the workplace for getting results in a resourceful manner. Still, it can also bring us unstuck if we are not careful.

You know how suddenly your calendar is overflowing, and you feel stuck in a quicksand of “yeses”.

At some point, you realise this suffering is optional. And you have the power to change things:

• You can say no
• You can set boundaries
• And you can ask for help!

But the hard part in all this is that pesky word that many fear:

Asking.

It sounds ridiculous, but the fear of asking has sentenced many to a lifetime of inner turmoil and sleepless nights.

You don’t want that.

So you know what you have to do:

Get over this fear of asking.

And what is the best way to do that?

A reframe, my friend!

“Once you reframe rejection as something desirable, the act of asking becomes a power all its own.”

Noah Kagan

“What?” you exclaim!’

Yes, a reframe.

See, each time you ask, you are one step closer to getting what you want.

I know salespeople use this to their advantage. Rather than getting hung up on sales made, they focus on “collecting no’s”.

It sounds strange, but it makes sense.

This idea connects to another I speak about: “loving the process” rather than focusing on the destination. 

The process is continually connecting, asking, and collecting those no’s. Eventually, the results (yeses) take care of themselves.

So, whatever it is you need to ask for:

How can you reframe it as something desirable? 

Tap into your values and what drives you. 

Creator’s Courage

I’ll leave you with a quote to ponder, to inspire courageous experimentation:

“Take me and any of the super-successful entrepreneurs and side-hustle champions I’ve met over the years.

It’s uncanny, but the one commonality nearly all of us share is the crazy number of seemingly random things we’ve tried to launch—stretching back to our childhoods. Online courses, self-published books, consulting, Airbnbs, affiliate marketing, YouTube channels, a college dating site, and many more … 

And for all of us, almost all of these projects failed!

So, what’s the connection between all these random failures and the success we ultimately achieved?

It’s clearly not our expertise.

No, it’s because of our willingness to run small experiments. That we eventually succeeded is a byproduct of the fact that we just try more things, period.

That’s what I call Creator’s Courage.”

Noah Kagan 

What is that creator’s courage exactly? Noah says, 

“The ability to come up with ideas (starting) and have the courage to try them out (asking).”

Suppose you’re not getting results. Maybe you haven’t run enough experiments.

This isn’t supposed to be easy. It feels hard pushing our comfort zone. But over time, that relationship changes. Remember the first time you drove a car? It was overwhelming and scary out on the open road. But now? It’s a breeze. 

Start building your creator’s courage. Take action by starting and asking.

And that’s it!

Cheers,

Matt 

P.S. 

Here’s something for you to journal on:

What are you afraid of starting? And what is getting in the way?

And if you’re up for a little challenge:

Who is it that you are avoiding “asking”?

Within 24 hours of reading this, call, email or DM that person with your “ask”.

And here’s a “rider” to attach to that challenge:

Make it fun.

It’s easier to do scary things when it’s fun. 

I’m cheering for your success!

P.P.S. 

Still stuck around those fears and your path forward? Ready to change? 

See below to book a call.