Ten Steps to Succeed in all you do

I saw this post a couple of years ago, and it challenged and help me with what I do. i will to share them with you as well. happy reading.

Ten steps from Michael

1. Take the first step immediately
Michael is a master at this.  He really taught me how to think straightforward and just act on something. To give you an example, I was pitching him the idea and he asked me, “Yeah man that’ sounds cool.  What would you call it? What would you want to call the product?” I was like, “Masters Blueprint.”  He’s said, “Well that’s a cool name, let me see if that’s available.”  He checked and he immediately registered the domain and set up a blog on it.  It took him 5 minutes and it would have taken me 5 minutes as well but the difference is he just did it and I didn’t.  I would’ve probably gone like, “Yeah man why don’t we think about the name a little bit more and make sure that it’s right for the product.”  He just did it and I loved that about him because it was really easy to take my crazy perfectionist brain out of the game sometimes and it was truly necessary. I learned a lot through that and I aim to take the first step immediately.

2. Focus on your partner’s benefit and how solving your pain point will help you both.

The second lesson was especially important when I was pitching Michael because I approached him and said, “Yeah you know Michael you have this great knowledge, you have this proven system that works and you can replicate.  A lot of people would be interested in it yet I know it also takes you a ton of time and it takes you a lot of effort to do it. That’s where I come in. I always wanted to create a product but never got myself to follow through.”  I can create all of this for you and I think because I’m working with you and your reputation I will get myself to follow through. At the end it will help us your both because we will leverage your network but you don’t have to do a whole lot of work.

I think it was truly instrumental that I also put my pain point I there because if I was going to be, “Yeah man that’s so awesome for you. These are all the results you’d get.” Then at the same time he would be suspicious asking himself. “Why would you do that? Why are you offering this to me?”  I also aim for always saying your pain point and how it will help you both because it will give them a reason to say yeah man I see why he’s approaching me.  At the same time he’ll also know it will help people.  Most people are really willing to help especially Michael.

3. Make an irresistible offer.
The next lesson I learned was to make an irresistible offer.  Always think of the things that the people care most about. Michael cares most about his time because he already has enough money to fund his lifestyle. Make an irresistible offer that won’t take them a lot of effort to say yes to. Get rid of the objections. I said I was going to cover the production costs; I was going to fly over to your place and shoot it. You don’t have to come to me I’ll just chill out with you.  All these things make it easy for him to say yes.

4. Be brutally honest and hold yourself to high standards.
I’m from Germany as I said and we have a very direct standard of approaching problems, so I really liked that he just said straight out, “I like this, the header is great. This cover sucks it doesn’t look very nice. I know what you can do; you do what you did with the other website that looked brilliant.” He held me to high standards and pushed me to do better, which really allowed me to give my best.

5. Don’t BS yourself! It may not be complex but it’s not always easy.
We all know this, yet I went into the project thinking I know web design, I know how to cut videos, I know how to shoot videos. I know all this stuff that we need to do so it’s going to be easy…

 Then again even if you know all these things, it still is hard sometimes because there are days when you just don’t want to anymore.

It’s like “oh my god another error, another video to cut, another thing to do.” Even if it’s nothing spectacularly difficulty or complex and you even know how to do it.  You’re annoyed, sometimes you’re not motivated and I think it’s not always easy but you really need to focus on the right things, push yourself through. I listen to a lot of great entrepreneurial books and listen to a lot of great speakers, motivational stuff and also talk to Michael and my other mentors through it and just did that. It truly helped me but just be aware of it don’t go in with the expectations that it’s going to be very easy because then you’re going to bump into the first road block. I think for the next project I will definitely keep that in mind and go into the expectation knowing that it will suck at times. At the same time I know I have the ability to push through and it’s well worth pushing through.

6. Strategize everything on PAPER.
Lesson six I strategize everything on paper.  This was huge for me because while I love technology and I’m quite a tech geek. I love hanging around on all the forums and all of the blogs, and just reading what people say and learn a lot of things from technology- there is a time when it’s better to be off line. I surprisingly found that the longer I spent off line strategizing everything I wanted to get done on the day or in the project or the weeks on paper, the more effective I was.  Way more effective.

What I do now is every day I journal on things and prepare my actions. It may just be some simple things like the layout of the website, or where a button should be, or which colour something should be.  It’s just amazing what paper can do for you if you just get off the computer for a while and go back in with a lot more clarity.

7. Schedule your time wisely and embrace RULES.
Even though we all want to have the freedom and lifestyle to be able to do whatever we want, I think what we ultimately want is still have some sort of freedom to choose but set rules ourselves.  We ultimately don’t want to live without rules. They may work for a while, while you’re on vacation or something but ultimately you need rules especially if you want to be productive and get something done.

I always had a pretty tight schedule some weeks it was more planned out than others but in general I set a schedule and I have my rules.  For example the biggest rule for me was no e-mail prior to noon and to that day I still keep that rule and because it just helps tremendously to get things done before you check your e-mail.

8. GET a Mentor! BE a Mentor!
Then number eight, get a mentor and be a mentor. As I said I worked together with Michael and I also worked together with Clive our copywriter. Both of them are tremendous mentors of mine. They helped me a lot on various aspects of the project. Also they keep you not only accountable but they really can give you feedback and perspective on a lot of things.  You can just bounce back ideas from them, but at the same time you need to remember that all of these people, as amazing as they are, they all have their challenges. They all have their imperfections and don’t know everything. They need some advice as well.

This works for everyone because no one is perfect.  Once you understand and accept that then you also know that everyone can need help and that you always know something that will help them because they don’t know it. It could just be a fresh perspective on something, but really make sure that you embrace that and help them out.

9. Set 2 deadlines.
Lesson number nine, set two deadlines. This was something that came across more or less by accident. Michael wanted to set a deadline roughly four weeks prior to launch we set a deadline. I was pushing for the quick deadline because I know that I get myself to follow through a lot better when I have a short and really tight deadline.

He came up with the idea of, “Well let’s do an internal launch first without a lot of affiliates or no affiliates at all, and then push out to the official launch.” I pushed for having another deadline way earlier and I think that was great, because now I got myself to follow through a lot better and pushed hard and worked a lot of hours to get this done. Ultimately what ended up happening was that we missed the internal launch deadline, we missed it completely but we were ready for the official launch.  I think if we wouldn’t have had the first deadline in the first place, we would have just missed both deadlines.

It was great having the second deadline where you have to deliver but it’s without a huge risk. It would just have a benefit. It would have been cool if we would have been able to launch earlier but at the same time now there’s no real risk involved. That was tremendously helpful and I aim to use that in other projects like my study papers at the university or other things as well.

10. Do it once and you can do it forever!
Then the last lesson, do it once and you can do it forever.  The project was so worth it for me just as a personal experience, because I’ve grown so much I think throughout the whole project. I’ve proven to myself that I can do it and that is the biggest aspect of it. I’ve learned a lot, I’ve honed my craft in design and it all came together nicely. I’m very proud of the product and I also think I’ve done a great shift in my mindset.  Because now I have a new belief that says that I can freaking do it.

Before it was like you know whenever I wanted to do something my mind would like “yell yeah remember the time when you screwed up this thing? When you procrastinate when you said you would do this and you had this great idea but you didn’t do anything on it?  Now I say, well you know when you did that that was really cool.  Like you finished it and you did a great job on it and I think that was so helpful.  Now with that new belief I can build on this and I can push through much more easily on new projects because I have completed it.

This were some of the biggest lessons that I learned from Michael over the past months, I hope they’ve been helpful to you.  It has definitely been a great experience so far, I am proud and really excited about how the product is going to do in the long run. I have learned a tremendous amount and…