The 3 Mental Hurdles That All Entrepreneurs Must Overcome

Hello my friends and welcome back to another episode of the Modern Mastery podcast where we help you build yourself, build your business, and join the new 1% of individuals that are living a meaningful, free and fulfilled life through self development and online entrepreneurship. My name is Dan Coat and today I have my good friend and business partner Joey aka the Cyprenor with me on this segment of the Modern Mastery podcast that we call Lifestyle Mastery. Where we dive deep into a specific topic about how you can master your mind, body, spirit, or business along with discussing what we've learned this week and our personal struggles so you do not have to repeat our mistakes. But before we get into it let's talk about Modern Mastery HQ. MMHQ is a tight-knit community of creators, coaches, freelancers, and any other ambitious individuals that want to grow themselves and their businesses. You get to steal the proven systems, strategies, and processes from myself, a marketing consultant, and Joey, a performance consultant to build a predictable and sustainable income source as an online entrepreneur through both tangible and intangible skill acquisition. This success is a result of becoming a high-value individual. This is what we help you achieve. The information inside is responsible for making members tens of thousands of dollars and drastically improving their quality of life. From monthly trainings, weekly action articles, 30 day habit challenges, monthly live calls, real-time help, and much more it is the all-in-one solution for growing yourself and your business. As an entrepreneur, your business growth relies heavily on your personal growth. In Modern Mastery HQ, we nearly force both of those. If you absorb the information and do what we say, it's near impossible to fail. Our processes are time-tested and we hold absolutely nothing back in terms of the information we provide. If you want to join 450+ members in accelerating their journey to a sovereign and free life, go to join.modernmastery.co and join for less than the price of a night out. With that said, I have a few favors to ask that cost $0. If you enjoyed this podcast, subscribe, or follow depending on which platform you're listening on. It's just one button click away. It takes one second to do this. It costs nothing. And it truly helps support the growth of this podcast and get more organic listeners. The next thing you can leave us a rating and review, letting us know what you thought or just leaving a comment if this is on YouTube. Or you can tag us @modernmastery on Twitter or @modernmastery HQ on Instagram with a link to this episode and some kind words. And if you do all three, send us a DM and we have something special to give you. Without further ado, let's dive right into this episode of the Modern Mastery podcast. Take off. What's up, Joey? How are you today? I'm good, man. How's the weekend? The weekend was kind of uneventful. I mean, we'll start off with this, but it was mostly just building out the landing page for the Mastery program. And for those that don't know what the Mastery program is, it is Joey and I's both of our consulting programs, so performance and business built into one with the price slash and half because it's a group. Coaching ish environment, but it's better than a group coaching environment because there's growth incubators. So we put you into small little mastermind groups that you get to connect with and learn what like in all honesty. This is how Joey and I met and look what we're fucking doing now. Joey and I met in a small mastermind group that was put together by someone else on Twitter and we're pretty much doing that for you along with the curriculum. And the mastermind and all this other shit that goes into it and we get the main selling point here and what you should actually listen to is that we guarantee your money back on your investment. So for the master tier of the program, you have the highest guarantee and we work with you until you make your money back, the money that you invested into the program. That's the main selling point. So if you are a creator, coach, freelancer, high level nine to five or that just wants to get out of their job and has some skills they can use. If you just have an interest and you want to build an audience and start selling digital products or create a high ticket offer around that, it's pretty much like really the foundations, the advanced foundations of building an online business and then Joey's performance side helps you overcome the mental hurdles. A lot of what we're talking about today, some but overcome the mental hurdles that come with entrepreneurship getting into flow state so you can knock out that deep in juicy three to four hours of focus work a day and live that lifestyle like Joey's the key to that people don't understand like it's not it's not an amount of work problem. It's a amount of structuring that work and actually lasering in on it and getting it done within those three to four hours and so many people think that they're doing that because everyone posts about it on Twitter. But I guarantee you're not I'm sorry. Here's just not following the structure. I struggle with it myself and that's all Joey quality over quantity when it comes to hours worked. So, okay, here's what we do we install a purple brain inside of you and then what would what's something cool about me oh and we'll send you a free chip holiday bowl. If you know you won't you won't get it's probably well Joey. Oh so that is launching that early bird launch in MMH Q happened yesterday per when this podcast is going live after that it will go to our email list and then it will launch on Twitter but it goes out in phases and after each phase the price increases by 500 bucks. So, keep that in mind you want to get in on it early rather than later Joey do you have anything to add on top of that I think that was very business heavy on my head. No I mean I'm extremely excited for the mastery program I know that I mean your coaching definitely changed my life in business and I've gotten good feedback from well you of course but other people on the work that I've done with people performance I've helped people. Be able to leave their job and go full time on what they actually want to be doing and I'm really excited to be helping more people soon. It's fucking go yeah this is just like a way to mass impact a good amount of people it's going to be fucking insane if you have some form of an online business and you want to increase your monthly revenue by like 10 20k a month that's top end like if you actually do the work it's more than possible. But if you want to do that consider there'll be oh there's a link now so join dot modern mastery dot co slash program that's join dot modern mastery dot CEO slash program and then run through that fill out the questionnaire to see if you're a fit and then you should get accepted and then you can watch a video go through the page. Check out there or ask us questions if you have anymore after that but let's dive into the topic of this episode with Joey and I which is the three most common mental hurdles that entrepreneurs or online business owners have to deal with and the first one this isn't even a mental hurdle. I mean it is one it's not one that we're going to talk about but it relates to our program as well in that I personally think a lot of business problems that people think they have like that they think it relates to business it's really performance it's performance based right like oh what what do I work on next to boost my monthly revenue that's a performance issue not a business issue like you you know what you need to do is just a matter of. Doing it and that's where the performance that comes into play so this is very very very important for the entrepreneurs out there we're not going to tell you oh here's the here's the road block in your client acquisition funnel that could be a problem but actually going about fixing that as a performance problem so that's my preface of this is that all of this is extremely important and you may not realize it because you think it's just a matter of learning more business. When that's not the case so the first one one of my favorites and one that both Joey and I still struggle with I mean we struggle with it a few times building out this program even though we have like massive testimonials and have had have made like massive impacts on people's lives is in posture syndrome. So Joey you want to start off with this one totally so imposter syndrome is essentially the feeling that you're not actually good enough to be doing what you're doing or not good enough to be at the level that you're at and it's typically followed along with the feeling that you're going to get caught. or you're going to get discovered or called out as being a fraud. So you're kind of always on edge feeling like people are going to figure you out. And what's interesting is that over 70% of people estimate, of course, but over 70% of people experience imposter syndrome at least once in their lives. Now, it's even more interesting is that imposter syndrome is something that's experienced typically by higher performing people or people at a high level. So it's a common misconception that people like Michael Jordan, LeBron James, guys like that, Michael Phelps, don't feel any of this imposter syndrome because, well, you know, they're the best at what they do. But they actually experience it even more regularly, which I find very interesting. But the thing is is they have ways of dealing with it and reframing it. So that come game time, it doesn't actually impact them that bad. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even like when I face it, it's like, if someone, like I know the answers to most things, like if someone could ask me a question, this is something that I need to improve on is giving like concrete advice, right? I'm good at it on Twitter, like putting out something polarizing, but when it comes to like one on one stuff, it's like, Oh, you could do it this way, but you know, some people also do it this way. And I mean, I've seen other people get success this way. When in reality, it should just be like, go and smash your head into a wall with this way that worked for me. And I know it's worked for others. And then like if that's a failure, we can iterate from there rather than giving them too many options. And then them having to come to you to see which option to fucking pick. So that's something I'm not good at because it's like when people ask me a question, and I know like I've done this before. I've like have an answer I can give you. But my brain naturally goes towards like, Oh, what if that answer isn't good enough? Like I have high level people following me. And it's like, would they say the same thing? Does it matter if they would say the same thing? And so I dance around it, right? I'm afraid of what other people are going to think of me when I give that advice. When in reality, I've seen results with it and should just be confident in it. But that's the brain for you. Yep. The brain is kind of a dick sometimes. So a common solution or solution that I often advise people to use to reduce their imposter syndrome is to look back at the things they've achieved and the success that they've had, the people they've helped. You need to be intentional about that because I've noticed with clients of mine and peers of mine and even myself in my own life, is that even if we examine those things, we play it off like, Oh, I got lucky or something like that. Words just so I looked into it and it wasn't really my doing. But typically that's bullshit, right? So for example, those who don't know my story, I'm probably going to write another thread on it soon or maybe I'll write an article introducing myself formally on circle, not formally, but with more detail on the MMHQ circle platform. But long story kind of sort of short, I was unofficially homeschooled before college, meaning I didn't have any kind of schooling at all before I started school or started college rather. And I went to a community college for a couple of years, but then I wound up transferring to Georgia Tech here in Atlanta, Georgia, which is one of the best engineering schools in the world. You think that that would make me feel really good about my intelligence and my skills and my potential as an engineer, but every time I thought about that, I wrote it off as, Oh, I got lucky. I don't know why I got accepted. I don't really belong here. I'm going to fail out stuff like that, but that's not realistic. So an important key to overcoming and posture syndrome is to realistically examine the things that you've achieved in the past and the things that led to those achievements, right? Like, yeah, I mean, of course, luck is a part of anything in life. But if you just sit in your bedroom and play video games all day and you never go try to do anything, you're not going to get lucky. Right? So the more things you try, the luckier you wind up becoming or seemingly luckier, you wind up becoming because you just put in more reps. So if you're experiencing imposter syndrome and you're really doubting yourself, again, like write down stuff that you've recently achieved that you're proud of or that are meaningful to you, no matter how small it is, like if you care about it, consider it. And go through each one and think about the role that you played in achieving those. And I bet you that you'll start feeling more confident and therefore feel less imposter syndrome. But that doesn't mean that imposter syndrome is something that will definitely go away and especially entirely. It's something that you'll probably contend with for a long time to come. But you can kind of reframe it in a way, right? Again, one way of reframing is to look at where you are now and what you got, what got you to where you are now and think about your role in that. But you know, this, this kind of relates to being nervous before a big moment or a big test or before game time or something. I think back to a story I write about Michael Phelps where he gets really nervous before a lot of his competitions. But what he does and what a lot of pro athletes do is they reframe that nervous energy, which is typically negative. They reframe it into excitement, which is more positive. They're excited to be competing. They're excited to be in the game. They're excited to be learning how to be an engineer. They're excited to be building a business online. So if you start thinking about that energy from a different perspective, that will usually shift your mindset as well and reduce that negative and post-ser syndrome voice in your head. Damn, that was good. I don't know the way that I really go about it is the same thing. It's like, okay, I think back to what you accomplished. And really, that's my only process. I'll have to steal from yours. Or I just talk to you. And I'm like, hey, help. But the next one slash two mental hurdles that entrepreneurs deal with is overwhelm and burnout. And I already know the answer to this one. Like what I don't know about burnout, but for overwhelm. So things task and easily, easily, easily stack up, not even tasks, but like projects and things that you want to do. Because as an entrepreneur, it's not like it's drip fed to you, right? When you're at a job, it's like, okay, yeah, you have you get assigned a project. You have a deadline. You have a specific process that you need to go through in order to complete that task. And then of course you can bake in your own little task management system if you want. But as an entrepreneur, it's like, oh, I have the mastery program. So like we're starting the mastery program. So let's mesh it all out, determine the launch dates. And then it's like, okay, now I need to have this funnel done within a week. And I also need to have launch emails, launch threats, launch posts, all this other stuff done. And I got extremely overwhelmed because I mismanaged it. But it's the thing with entrepreneurship is that there is always something to work on. If you don't have anything to do and you're an entrepreneur, that's your fault. Like that's your choice. Not I'm not saying it's a good or bad thing. Like if you want to take a break and not want something or not write an email or do other things, you could load up your day. You could load up months like for 12 hours at a time of deep focused work. If you wanted to have just things to do, things to build, things to launch. Different ways of growing your accounts and networking and branching out to other social media platforms. And getting a process for that in place. There's just so much fucking shit that you can't do. It's very, very easy to get overwhelmed if you're not prioritizing and breaking things down. Like, okay, what's going to bring me the most money, satisfaction and mental clarity at this time? Right? And so a personal experience of mine is when I first started on Twitter, I immediately wanted to branch out into other social media platforms, even though I didn't have a lot of money. a product. I didn't really have a direction for where I was going with my Twitter account. It was just web design stuff. And so I started on YouTube. Like I started making YouTube videos again. I started on Instagram and all of it was all over the place. Like I had no structure, no system. Nothing in my calendar. It's like, okay, yeah, I need to create a YouTube video this week. And then that would get pushed off because I had nothing to make a video about. And then I'd also start pushing off Instagram posts. And then it would be like, oh, fuck, like I'm a week behind. Like I need to get this done when in reality. And what I did is just take my focus back to Twitter because that is going to bring me the most leverage and like ability to branch into those things over time. So it's like picking one thing, sticking with that. And then having a few different projects that you're building alongside that in my case. And being able to bring your focus back to that because at that time, like I had made YouTube and Instagram a huge priority in my head. It's like, okay, I'm going to stay consistent with this. And then when I miss the first video, it's like, oh, fuck, like now I'm extremely overwhelmed when in reality, it's like, if I just put off Instagram or YouTube until I have things systemized and ready to go at products that are selling and I want to drive more traffic to that. I could focus all of my attention and quality into Twitter. Then like that's when the overwhelm just disappeared for me. But I guarantee Joey has a step-by-step process for actually overcoming this when you deal with this overwhelm because it's going to happen a lot. You're going to see an opportunity and this actually ties into the next mental hurdle. But you see an opportunity, you go after it, it aligns perfectly, you're like, yes, this is exactly what I was looking for. And then you get overwhelmed and everything else slows down. Yeah. So what was it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two points. One, what you just said was a perfect example of how business and performance are intertwined. Right? Because that's, well, I think all three of the things that we're talking about today are we're presenting them in the context of a business for the most part. But really they're not actually business problems that they're core. They are performance problems. Right? So I think that's a very good example of how important improving your performance is to improving your business. And a thought, a seed of a platitude that I got while you were when you started talking was if you have a business and you're bored, something's wrong. Like you should not be bored. You should not be in the mindset of killing time. Like it's just like once you, and this relates to the third thing that we're going to talk about with the shiny objects syndrome. But when you're building an online business and you're learning more, you're doing more, you're making more connections, you're growing your network. There's going to be a lot of opportunities pop up. Right? And that's something that relates to what I was saying a minute ago where if you put in more reps, if you're taking more action, you get luckier. Right? Like, yeah, luck is a factor. But when you're doing more, more opportunities come up, some of them, like when you approached me last month with the idea of creating the mastery program, some of them are an amazing fit and something that you want to go all out into. Some of them aren't. And that's perfectly fine. But you need to stay on top of the opportunities and put yourself in a position where you can say yes to the things that make sense, which sometimes involves saying no to the things that don't. I think it comes from a book. I don't remember. But the further I get, the more I agree with the sentiment of, if it's not a hell yes, then it's a no. Right? Because I need to put my time and focus and energy into the things that align with my purpose, my passion, my mission, all the above. And also my responsibility to my community, and my clients, and the people that I could help. I need to focus on the things that will best support all of those. So that's one way that you can start overcoming overwhelm is to use the brain dump strategy that I constantly talk about all the time, which is always my advice to you when you say that you're overwhelmed or anybody really. Simply write down all the stuff, start figuring out which of these is something that you're actually really interested in, which of these don't really feel right. If something doesn't feel aligned with you, even if it would make you a lot of money, you're not going to be motivated to do it. That's just basic psychology and neurobiology. If something is aligned with you, even if it may not make as much money on paper, you're going to be vastly more internally motivated to do it because it's aligned with you and your values and your mission. So hopefully if somebody's listening to this and they've been feeling overwhelmed, they can relate to what it is that we're talking about, that's a great starting point is to write down these things that are overwhelming you so you can at least strike some things off of that list, like literally write them down and cross some things off as a way of just letting them go. If they're coming from someone else, just let them know, don't be afraid to tell somebody no politely, don't be a dick. But don't be afraid to tell people no, you don't have to take every opportunity that slides in your DMs, right? You need to protect your time, your energy, your focus, your mindset, your cat, like all these things. So that's a good way to start is just write stuff down, figure out what the most important things are, and then you'll have a shorter list. But overwhelm a quick sidebar tangent, whatever, another thing we were going to talk about today, but it's really related is burnout. And overwhelm is a major cause of burnout because you feel like you're just going nonstop all day long from the time that you get up, the time you go to bed. That's a quick pass to being burnout. And I know that there are some people who say, I can think of a few specific people off top of my head. And then there are a few people who say that they can go 16 plus hours a day and they're fine, they're not fine. The performance doesn't work that way. You can probably get away with putting in a few hard days, but if you're doing that to yourself every single day, you're just going to be burnout and the quality of work that you're producing is going to be shit. So the people who say that they can work 12 to 16 hours a day every single day and are also simultaneously complaining about how their projects aren't really getting anywhere, aren't getting any results. There might be something to do that. There might, there just might be something related in there, but that's maybe a topic for another podcast or an article I could do that too. Yeah, that's something I've noticed a lot. Like I haven't seen too many of the people, like the hustle cult for people recently, but the like, man, when I have to work outside, this is, I've noticed two things. So I've started, I see this as a bad thing, but I've started to like get kind of upset when I have to work outside of like my morning, four hour focus work. It's like, "Oh, I shouldn't have to do this." Like why am I not saying this, but it's in my head. I don't normally work during these times. Like why am I doing it? And sometimes I have to, so I sit down and I end up just starting it, getting somewhat focused on it and work for a good amount, but then when like days after days after days of that past and I'm working like eight plus hours, it's like, "Fuck, man, like I can't keep this up." And then that creates more and more problems and it's like, "Okay, like something needs to change here." And it's the weirdest thing. The instant where I'm like, I'm just going to focus on doing x, y, and z in the morning and let everything float out of my mind. Like that's my focus, that's my priority. And for like some reason, the next day, within those four hours I get everything done. It's like, even if I dick around, it's weird. I don't know how to explain it or how it works, but like time moves slower when I'm not worried or like there's still a bit of urgency there to get things done because it's like, "Okay, I have to finish x, y and z within this time, but the stress is much less when I'm not overwhelmed about what I have to do throughout the day or the next day or the next day or the next week or the next month." And things just flow smoother. Like I had been avoiding getting on Twitter for like a week to knock all this stuff out and then like two days ago I woke up like an hour later than normal, didn't get upset about it because I usually get upset about waking up later because I have less time to actually work on the stuff before or have calls or have to go to the gym. And then like that, It's just like, okay, I'm gonna get up, go on my walk, get to my desk. I even fucked around on Twitter for a bit. And then I got into the main task that I had to do for the day. And what do you know? I knocked it all out before like 10, 10, 30. So that's just a personal experience I've had with it, which was kind of interesting to me. And it's giving me like an anchor to go back to when I do get this overwhelmed again. Yeah, the thing with the brain is it's really good at coming up with ideas, but it's not very good at, it's really storing or sorting through them. So the common thing that I've noticed with a lot of my clients is when they first start working with me, they're overwhelmed and they're trying to work through it just internally. And it's extremely difficult to do that. That's why I always talk about writing stuff down or type it out or writing is better. But just start getting stuff out of your head or talk through it with somebody. I mean, the person doesn't even have to have any context or knowledge about what it is that you're talking about. Like, I joke about this all the time, but I could literally go like, just talk at my cat about something. I mean, I talk to my mom all the time, so she knows a lot about what it is that I'm doing because I like talk through stuff to her. It doesn't have to be talking with somebody exactly. But when you're communicating something, whether you're writing it down or talking out loud, talking to yourself, your brain thinks about it in a different way and it helps you get the stuff out. It almost forces you to put things somewhat in order. And that starts making you feel a little bit better and starts bringing you clarity as well. And then also when you're talking to somebody else, then or when you write stuff down either way, if you're talking to another person, they are going to be able to see the bigger picture. Because you're like lost in the details, but they can see the higher view. And then when you write stuff down a similar thing, you're able to just quickly scan what it was that you wrote and then see the bigger picture of how certain things connect and how maybe some other things don't. But trying to figure it all out in your head is just a recipe for disaster, really. Yeah. Do your brain dumps. Yes. Okay. So the next one, shiny object syndrome is the next mental hurdle slash block. And I dealt with this a lot. I don't know if I would consider this shiny object syndrome or more so like finding what I actually wanted to do with all this shit. Because a lot of people know my story where it's like I started, I tried multiple different skills for freelancing. I tried creating digital art. I started a dropshipping store. I started two e-commerce stores. I wasted a lot of money, but I also learned a lot along the way and ended up doing web design and then transitioning into funnels and then building an audience based off of that. And then I could truly pursue what I wanted to do and create my own message of mastering yourself and your business because they go hand in hand. Right. Mastering yourself is kind of like performance and then asking your business goes hand in hand with that. I truly think that entrepreneurship is like a self mastery accelerator in a sense because you get to have autonomy or free. And be able to manage your time and energy and yourself as a whole much quicker when you report to yourself instead of a boss and you're doing things and you have complete control over the projects that you pursue and how they align with you. So that's my main message, but Joey, do you think what I did would be considered shiny object syndrome, like not just committing to one? Or do you think that's more so a problem with people that do commit to one and then have like projects or different things coming into play that would create that overwhelm? That's a good question because I don't really consider it shiny objects syndrome anymore. I consider it like that was absolutely necessary to get to where I am now and have those little micro experiences where I learn like, okay, here's where I went wrong the last time. Here's that one little trick that people actually need to make this work and I've been over complicating it this whole time. And so now I'm going to make web design work and then it's like, oh, Twitter seemed like a good opportunity to hop on. So I did there and made that work and now we're fucking here. Yep, two years later or so. So yeah, here's I wouldn't really call that and shiny object syndrome exactly. I would say that if you look at the bigger picture, you committed to a path. I wouldn't say you committed to one thing exactly you committed to a path and all the things that you tried before you had taken away lessons and you know positive and negative experiences from each of them and that helped you on this path. Now if it was two, four years later since you began to have a link with all this stuff and you still hadn't committed to any path long enough to really made any actual progress. Then that would kind of be shiny object syndrome like a big side effect of shiny object syndrome is holy shit like I've been busy for the past year to three years and I haven't gotten anywhere. Because I haven't stuck with one thing long enough to get to a high level in it. That's that's shiny object syndrome. And I think while I don't think I know a big I need stop saying that all the time I know that a big cause of shiny object syndrome is kind of sort of a lack of patience. But to put it a better way, I feel like we humans often expect results too fast sometimes. Right. I know a lot of people get kind of frustrated when they first get on Twitter because it feels like they're not getting anywhere. And so people give up really fast. Like it took me a bit to figure out like how to tweet and how to network and stuff like that. Like I took myself way too seriously when I first started on Twitter. And it makes me sad because every now and then I'll go through the list of people that I follow on Twitter and I'll find people who haven't tweeted in three months. And it's like it's it's always makes me sad because if people just stuck with it longer, they could be having, you know, similar success that we've had because we've been consistent with it for the past. You know, year plus. So the one thing I would advise people to do as kind of a preventative measure for shiny object syndrome screwing them up is when you consider dropping something. Ask yourself is it really because you lost interest in that thing or found something better or is it more so because you're impatient and you haven't put in enough time. If you put in a week or two on Twitter and you want to give up because you haven't gotten anywhere or any social media platform, that is nothing. That is not. Any reasonable amount of time same goes for weight loss, you know, something that I've written the rollercoaster on throughout my life takes time it takes consistently consistency. We talk all the time about the importance of consistency. So whether you're being consistent with one thing one platform, one business or your. And switching between different things your adapting I would say right like I've adapted over the past three years with my brand and my business. And I've still been ultimately all about scientific self improvement from the time I made my first ever piece of content three years ago to when I. Now right like I've adapted so if if you try to be more adaptive rather than I'm going to completely drop this and burn it and go do something entirely different. You're going to see better results over time. Yeah that's 100% what it was because when I first started freelancing it was with web design or web death right because I learned to code. And that was like the first thing is like oh sick I can build websites for people like I'm going to go into this because that was very aligned with me right. And then I went different routes it's like I was still freelancing but it's like oh I could do Facebook ads because I. that seems super lucrative, or I could do SEO because you can pull more tangible ROI for your clients, which you can. But then eventually after multiple of those, it's like it's all about offer creation. And since I had those complimentary skills, I could create an offer that nobody else could. That was my X factor is, while these people only understand web design for a specific niche, like, let's say, creators, or you understand web design. But I understand web design, sales page copywriting, and social media growth. So I can get you more followers to that landing page and close them better on your deal, as opposed to someone who's like, oh, I'll create your website. And so-- And I guess you have to be very careful with what kind of shiny objects in the room. You are faced with, and what you actually commit to. As Joey said, very much, much earlier, has to align with you and fuel that mission in the sense. Yeah, and it's totally fine to go at something from a place of, oh, I'm kind of interested in this, and check it out and see if you like it, see if you're actually as interested as you thought you might be, if there might be spark a passion or purpose in there. Maybe you could help somebody help people solve a problem with that skill. Or maybe you don't. Like, I've done that. I thought I wanted to be an engineer. But then I got-- I went through six years of school and got a job. I got a career in engineering that looked really good on paper, and I hated it. So if I had the attitude of I should never adapt or switch gears ever, then I'd be working a job that I hated and I'd be miserable. But instead, I looked around and I thought, OK, well, what's something else that I'm interested in that maybe I could make something out of? And that turned out to be brains. So that's why I'm here. Yeah. I mean, that's the beauty of the personal brand, right? Is like, if you have shiny object syndrome with a personal brand, that's actually kind of lucrative. Not like super shiny object syndrome, but it's like, you see all the big name ones in there. Like, oh, here's my crypto course. Here's my econ course. Here's my productivity system. Here's my training program. It's like, whatever your interests are, and if you have results in the space, you can really just create something out of it and sell it on your personal brand. And talk about whatever interests you. If you have idea of shiny objects in real words, I want to learn about this and teach it to my audience, you can't. It's so funny. I think it is. Just mention that because that's really relevant to one of the questions we got today. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, let's dive in. So the first one, this is easy to knock out. I write-- so Aditya, what's up, man? Hope I said that right. I've seen you around. I appreciate all your interactions with us and modern mastery. But he said, I write Twitter threads for clients. Should I charge money first? Or should I give them the dog file first? Charge money first. Money up front. And unless you're doing free work, free work, you just give it to them in exchange for a testimonial. But in terms of the actual work, especially this kind where you can't split it up or do half payments, and you're just giving it to them. Yes, they have to pay it from. And then from Devon King, how do you guys come up with and finalize your offers? Is it based off the previous offers you guys have created? Or is it something where you see other offers and kind of go off that? So it's a culmination of all the above. It's like you see what's working. You know what's working? You have studied and experienced something enough to have the skill level in that area to actually provide it as a service for someone else, or create a product for someone else. But it really all starts with market research. You may have an idea, but it has to be based off market research. And my favorite method of market research is just getting on a call with your target. So that's the first step in this whole market researching is like your ideal customer. Literally just listing out every single quality about them. People call this a customer avatar, like where they work, how old they are, how many kids they have, what problems are they experiencing, what they struggle with in whatever area you're helping them with. And then you reach out to them. Now you're on Twitter, and it's like your niece should actually be in the place that you're trying to either grow on or reach out to people on. And then you just ask to give them actual steps to increase their progress in XYZ area. So whether it's fitness, marketing, performance, whatever, you get on a call with them. And you have a set amount of questions that you ask them that will help bring their problems to surface. And once those problems are at surface, then you can create a product that will actually solve those problems. Because it's a thing with web design. It's like, let's say you get on a call with a personal brand, a fitness coach. You get on a call with a fitness coach. And you have web design as a skill. And you're like, all right, man, how do you acquire clients right now? And then they're like, OK, well, we DM people. We walk them through this process. And then we get on a call. And then we close them on a call. And then you think of it. And it's like, OK, well, I understand web design. How is that going to help their client acquisition process at all? And if you don't understand marketing or client acquisition or sales for any of this, it's like your website isn't going to fill a hole in that business. You have to add something to that or use your web design skills in a completely different way that will actually get done results. So a way that they could make that better is you could create a landing page with some sales page copy, display their testimonials, and have a link to book a call. So they don't have to really go through all those DMs. They can send out more straightforward DMs or just plug the link under their products or in their emails or something like that. And it really all starts there. It's like, what exactly does this niche or customer avatar need in order to get better results than what they're doing in a sense? So there's a bunch of other stuff for like offer creation, just like things that you need like a risk reversal and like what will actually get them from point A to point B. And the pricing, like bonuses you can throw in, there's ways to make it seem much more valuable. Perceive value is a big thing, right? That's what an offer is. It's like perceived value of a product or service and how you can add to it or make it more specific in order to increase that. So I have a lot of offer creation stuff inside modern master HQ for those that want to join and just create better offers and not basic or commoditized products or solutions or services. So do you have anything to say about that, Joey? Yeah, my answer to that question is, I stand. Ah, yes. Yeah, there's a lot that can go into it like it. I mean, that's what like courses and one to one coaching is for is because like a 10 minute segment on a podcast can help explain it. But it really, it depends on like your level of marketing experience and willingness to learn about offer creation and then actually implementing that for your offer. So the next time how to make it from Vlad, I love you, bro. I appreciate all the conversation we've had. So how to manage your time while you are in high school or college, but still want to hustle on the side. Joey, I think that's the perfect one for you. Yeah, so I did it the wrong way. I just didn't go to class. I didn't go to class. I got like shitty grades and just worked on my own thing all day. But probably not the best route to go. Maybe, maybe not. I mean, it worked out. So for this, what I recommend is definitely use a calendar app and maybe a planner as well. So if you're in MHQ, I believe you have access to the power planner, which is an awesome tool. I would say use both, but definitely get time on your calendar for structuring your day. Now with that, you also want to make sure that you are keeping track of your tasks and managing your tasks, so that, but for both school and business, for your side hustle, so that you're aware of everything, because the last thing you want to do is have like a surprise exam come out of nowhere, or accidentally miss a class or something like that because you didn't keep track of it. And I say that if somebody used done that a lot. But to start there, make sure you're putting time on a calendar and/or a planner that's dedicated to either schoolwork, like studying for an exam, or working on something for your side hustle. Now from there, to get a bit more advanced, what you want to do is work. I would say if you're trying to do a side hustle and you don't want to use that degree to get a career and like the career, but your main thing, if you want your side hustle to eventually become a full-time business, and that's like what you want to do long term, then I wouldn't say skip class. I mean, you can, if you can like get away with it as far as your grades, but what I would say is be aware of when you have exams and projects coming, and when you hit a point like right after an exam, say where things are a little bit easier to handle as far as school goes, then make sure you're putting time on your calendar earlier in the day when you're more energetic and focused for working on your business. And when you get up to another exam or a project, flip that so that you're putting that quality time into the exam or the project, right? Basically summarize what I'm saying is make sure that you're using that time that you have when you're feeling your best and you're focusing your best. Make sure you're using that time appropriately because when you have something going on with school, obviously that has a deadline, so you need to prioritize that. But when you don't have anything big happening in a week or two out, then utilize that time to work on that side hustle because really kind of the ideal way to do it is to start your day off with a couple, like depending on how early you get up or when your classes are, starting your day with a couple, maybe two, three hours of focus work on your side hustle, and then going to class, going throughout your day and then maybe studying a little bit later on. You typically want to be doing your hardest work earlier in the day when most people are more focused and energetic. Yeah, that's actually one thing that I helped with on the performance side with one of my clients is just like he was trying to do like two hours of work after his night of five when I was just like, "Are you opposed to waking up two hours early and just going to bed a bit sooner?" And then he woke up and on the next call he was like, "Yeah, that was life changing. I enjoy it so much." That's one thing is you could wake up earlier, but you're a young dude and I know how much young dudes hate that. You seem to be managing it pretty well already. You're doing very well for yourself. Another thing that I consider or thought about is like, it's just a lack of, for some people in college, this was me. It was a lack of priority and understanding what those priorities should be because it's like, "Oh, yeah, I want to start a fitness YouTube channel." And so we have fun. It was fun and we were recording these gym workouts or these outdoor workouts or food challenges and other things and it's like our main thought of how we would actually monetize that YouTube channel was just like, "Ad sense." Getting enough views to monetize off-ad sense. When in reality, we could have made much more niche YouTube videos, had those planned out, structured, created, well, created a either coaching program or some form program to drive traffic to that and actually start monetizing. And I think what a lot of people in college do and they mistake is that they don't understand marketing and sales. Right? They're just like, "Oh, yeah, I want to do this cool thing. I want to be like this guy that I see online and create content for a living." But you don't understand what goes on to fuel that content creation. If they didn't understand marketing and sales or hire someone that understands marketing and sales to help them with their offers, their funnels, everything that goes into a business, then they wouldn't be where they are now. They would have quit. Like some, yes, they can live very well off-ad sense, but that's not the majority. And you could actually make a lot more than them with only a few thousand subscribers or followers if you do things correctly and focus on your priorities. Like, if you have a good offer and you haven't quit, if you have a good offer, you have to know it's a good offer. If you have a good offer and you haven't quit your job yet, that is completely on you. Because you can reach out to people and close clients fairly easily if you have that process down. At that point, it's just completely on you. If you have a good offer with good results and that haven't quit your job yet, that's completely dependent on how many people you're getting in front of, how many people you're closing, how you're delivering, and just getting paid for that. And making that your full priority at the time. And it's the same thing with digital products, just like launching and setting up a funnel to keep sales coming in from that and then possibly paying for social media promotions to just get people into that funnel. That's really it. And so, so, so, Alex, Alex Lathry, what are some of the best businesses to expand into once you have built a profitable income, yet agency freelancing or coaching, teaching what you know, info products or something similar or a SaaS for that specific agency or freelancing or coaching, whatever niche you have leverage in, you can or you can just scale that agency. I mean, there's no limit on how big you can scale it to if you get things right or what I would say is just use the leverage that you have and go into another area. So let's say you do a web design for, I don't like web design, but I do like web design, but I want a different example. It's like SEO. If you have, if you do SEO for local businesses, then it's like, okay, you can either teach people SEO, you can either create an SEO SaaS that's complementary towards that niche. Or you can start a personal brand, which you already have web flow wizard building websites for digital creators. So for you, why don't you teach web flow? Great web flow tutorials for just that, like teach people a skill. And that's really the main thing that would bring you one more leads to your freelancing or agency because buyers, you're getting buyers into your funnel. And if you create a good product, then you can run ads to that and you don't market it well, become the authority in the web flow space and just have it become a top selling course. And then you can scale that as much as you want. And then from there, it's really, I like the personal brand method because as we said earlier, you can create whatever you want. If you don't want to do web flow for the rest of your life, but want to dive into marketing or other things, you can tweet about anything, right? That's the beauty of it. But I'm just a big fan of social media businesses in general because that's what I do. That's what I can talk about. So in terms of other businesses outside of that that use different client acquisition methods, like I personally can't recommend any, I don't know what the best is. But personal brand is definitely the most enjoyable because it allows you to do whatever you want. What's a yee joe? I completely agree with that, man. I felt much better having a personal brand than when I was the anonymous improving geek way back in the day. All right, last one from CRN, what's up, man? I always see you in MMHQ. Cool, dude. What's your favorite method for pre-launching a digital product to make the most sales? So I'm not the best at this. I'm okay at it. I'm not good at the pre-hyping. But the first thing is pre-hyping, like starting and you need an audience to do this just to be quite honest, like I wouldn't recommend hoping for a very good launch until you and your network are like all above 10,000 followers, just because you're leaving money on the table and like you can launch. But at that point, it just be better to like launch, make some money, get some results, get some testimonials, build some authority, but then eventually repurpose the product into something else you can launch again when you actually have an audience. So method for pre-launching, okay, pre-launching, not just launching. It would be hyping it up, showing people what you're building, possibly giving them like sneak peeks into little sections that you're building and you won't get much engagement on this. You just won't. see it and you will start to open them up to the idea of it and you just start tweeting about that subject more as well depending on the product you're creating and the different angles that go into that. So if I was creating a web design product again I would start tweeting about here's how you can make a website for $100 without any coding experience and just create a bunch of tweets based off of that that's one angle. Here's how you freelance with web design. List list list list list. That's another angle. I want to learn a high value skill that you can get a job with or freelance with. Web design is that skill or you just tweet or post about different angles that warn people up to the idea of whatever product you're creating so that when you present them with a solution like here's the all-in-one solution to everything I've been tweeting about so far then more people are likely to buy. So that's kind of the pre-hype and then just yeah documentation like this is an authenticity thing too it's just showing people what you're building out what you're creating why they should be excited how it's going to help them all of that good stuff so that's pre-launch and then I know you're in MMHQ so you have like my launch strategy for after all the pre-hyde stuff but that's the main thing for pre-launch that I would recommend is just tweet a lot like once a day minimum about the subject that you are creating the product on and show people like give people sneak peek into the product and what you're building and your progress on it and who it'll help why it'll help them you know who what where when how all of those questions just I would do a massive like brain dump on what you could talk about relating to your product and then just make tweets about it. I love hearing how useful brain dumps are so best. I know they just supply to everything. We need that I I hard brain dumps sure but the heart is the brain your purple brain yeah that'd be sick sell it instantly. It just uh I I emoji heart emoji brain emoji poop emoji. Yeah. Okay I just refresh the tweet we don't have any more questions so I'm gonna delete that tweet so nobody expects an answer but uh that that's all we got. So we got homies so first thing join the mastery program for guaranteed fucking money and uh just like the only thing that you'd need for the lifetime of your online business. It's like we were talking about overwhelm and I consistently actually go back to my own program and I'm overwhelmed. It's like okay what do I need to do now. So it's it's literally like something you'll have to go back to at any time throughout your entrepreneurial journey to get your performance or sales or social media growth or client acquisition back on track and know what you actually need to do to make more money and have more mental clarity and overcome all the obstacles that you face as an entrepreneur. So all in one fucking join it and also join MMHQ via link in the show notes because great place to be and we do drop a lot of uh game in there as well and it's that's much more affordable and you can get a lot out of it. It's not like it's not like if you don't join the mastery program you're not going to get a lot out of in an HQ it's not like that at all um but yes Joey any last words and shameless plugs. While my shameless plug would be join the mastery program so I can level up your brain but other than that yeah I think it was a great talk today and I look forward to seeing people in the program. It's fucking get it oh yeah uh three spots I said four spots last time or another promo maybe the next promo but three spots have been taken so far uh so for early bird there's only a few spots left and yeah go to join.modernmastery.co/program to one see if you're fit and to to join the program if you are fit and that's it for me. Tell us that you've enjoyed this podcast on twitter, tag us, tell us what you like most, we'll retweet you, start your personal brand off to a good start. Exactly and yeah we'll see you in the next one. See y'all. Peace. My friends thank you so much for listening to that episode of the modern mastery podcast. I have a few favors to ask you. For a whopping zero dollars you can support this podcast by following rating and subscribing on whatever platform you are listening on and for an additional zero dollars. You can share this podcast on your social media accounts tag me in it at the Danco and I will share you on the community page. 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And the second favor which costs money is joining modern mastery HQ the only platform you need to master your mind body and spirit while building a five to ten k a month online business as a creator coach freelancer or entrepreneur you can go to join dot modern mastery dot co to join 350 plus members and gain instant access to information that has the potential of making you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your lifetime as a business owner with that I hope you enjoyed this episode of the modern mastery podcast and I hope to see you in the next one peace.