MTF needs a slumpbuster: Too many swings, no hits.

[MJ DeMarco]

I completely lost any belief in my business skills. I feel like all the success I have I owe just to luck and the right timing. Without it, I'd be nothing.

These days, I'm just a cynical hypocrite. Friends ask me for business advice but honestly what the F*ck do I know? Just the shit I read online since I've been unable to make any business work for the past 4 years.

I just can't find any energy anymore to keep trying to figure it out. Little things overwhelm me. I've lost that resolve and the entrepreneurial spirit of figuring things out.

Not sure what to do about it other than rant since trying just doesn't work and leads to even more failure and disappointment.

From my POV, you unnecessarily complicate things, combined with what @Kak said with all of these "won't dos" and unmovable beliefs.

Every time you post about a different idea, I'm like, "WTF? I don't get it!?" And then invariably, those ideas are always based on some hot trend you read about. More irony: Your avatar is about giving up 3 feet from gold, which you seem to do as soon as the struggle hits. Dig, no gold, go dig somewhere else: Yet, you never dig deep.

Again, your idea of business and collecting a profit is "X = Y + A + B + C + D" followed by all kinds of dilly-dallying with A, B, C, and D where your focus needs to be only X and Y. . . . "Well folks, if I create an optimized website and drive traffic there with expensive Facebook ads and then those people click on my ads then Google might pay me 12 cents for my effort, but only if the Google algorithm doesn't F*ck me this month."

Jesus Christ, if this was the best idea I had for delivering value (and making money) I'd feel EXACTLY the same as you.

Frustrated. Depressed. Miserable.

My idea of business?

Results = X + Y.

Not "Results = X + Y + A + B + C + D" where you pretty much ignore X, spend a fortune on Y, focus on A, spend time optimizing for B, hope for C, test for D, and then "maybe" get RESULTS.

Your struggles reminds me of the person who continually claims they can't lose weight, but also refuses to focus on what matters: diet and exercise ... or, Results = X + Y

As I wrote in my last X post, when you continually knife yourself in the back and bleed out, the answer to your problem isn't better bandages, the answer is to stop stabbing yourself.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

I completely lost any belief in my business skills. I feel like all the success I have I owe just to luck and the right timing. Without it, I'd be nothing.

These days, I'm just a cynical hypocrite. Friends ask me for business advice but honestly what the F*ck do I know? Just the shit I read online since I've been unable to make any business work for the past 4 years.

I just can't find any energy anymore to keep trying to figure it out. Little things overwhelm me. I've lost that resolve and the entrepreneurial spirit of figuring things out.

Not sure what to do about it other than rant since trying just doesn't work and leads to even more failure and disappointment.

The truth is that starting a business in today’s age isn’t easy, especially not an online business. I’ve done very well the past year for which I’m very grateful but there definitely are a lot of problems on the horizon and there’s always the question of how far you can go.

For one revenue isn’t profit, and even profit isn’t profit unless you take it out of the business and don’t invest in its development.

Most entrepreneurs, even the very successful ones, are always on the brink of failure. Sure, maybe someone who has $10M in the bank has escaped that rat race — maybe.

But for me, sure I can take $200K for myself but all the other money HAS to be reinvested to keep growing. And the choice isn’t between growth and stagnation, it’s between growth and bankruptcy. There is no stagnation.

My advice for the newbies is sell sell sell, bring in the dough, and figure things out once that’s happening. Most people severely underestimate the amount of sales activity and marketing they’ll need to do to stand out from the noise.

I recently calculated my time… I spent an average of 20 hours every week on sales calls with people last year. Can you imagine? 20 hours, every single week. And that’s not counting time spent on anything else, including marketing to generate all those calls.

In my biggest month last year I spoke to 124 people over Zoom in a month. Can you imagine yourself doing that?

My advice for you is just get paid dude. You spend so much time building, but where’s the money?! It’s like trying to put together a brothel you got all this nice furniture and it looks amazing but where are the hoes?!

Stop trying to do complicated things and start asking yourself how you can get your hands on $$. That’s your priority numero uno as an entrepreneur. No $$, no nothing. You can’t even be an entrepreneur without money. It’s like saying you’re a general without any soldiers. The general is defined by his soldiers. What will you do without resources? These days even going to a public toilet costs money. Maybe you laugh, but it’s true!

I think what “broke” you is market timing. You had the bad fortune to time the market perfectly so you made a lot of dough, without many costs at all, and wothout even the need to reinvest in the biz. So that gives the appearance of success, but you haven’t gone through the absolutely gruelling pain of doing 12 sales calls per day, or testing thousands of creatives on ads, and so on. Most of us who didn’t get timing right and were successful had to do that. You don’t have that experience so when it doesn’t work, you stop pushing, thinking that if you have a good idea, it’s supposed to be easy.

You may have a good idea and make a ton of money. Hell, even with a bad idea you could get lucky and make a ton of money. But don’t count on it. There’s 1000 and 1 problems in business.

Let me tell you a story — last year early on we got hired by this agency. They were 3 guys, relatively early stages, they basically had 3 clients paying them $10K/mo in total. We helped them cross not 6 figures, but 7-figures.

Guess where they are at now today? Down to $20K/mo and looking to quit. They quickly discovered that the biggest problem, once you know wtf you’re doing, isn’t making sales. That’s something we can iron out quite quickly. It’s building a sustainable company. Most agencies will never tell you this, but their churn rates are 70%+ on average over a year from what I’ve noticed — especially true for advertising, SEO, PPC and marketing agencies.

Can you imagine? Bring in $1M worth of business, and 1-year down the line you just have $300K worth of business left. 2 years down the line and you just have $90K left. It’s like the sales have to keep ploughing in or you’ll go bankrupt. Is it any wonder that even if they cross 7-figures they’re not rich?

So there isn’t just ONE problem you have to solve in business. There’s many many different problems that you need to solve.

Maybe you have a physical product biz. Easy to scale. But your profit margin is just a measly 10%. You have to bring in $1M worth of sales just to be able to pay yourself a meagre $100K salary… which still leaves the business with no money to reinvest in growth!

 

[MJ DeMarco]

So after 120+ posts, here is a summary in case someone wants to see it...

User: You should try X...
MTF: But I don't like X...

User: You should try Y...
MTF: Yea but, Y don't work because it has low probability...

User: You should try Z...
MTF: I don't like Z...

User: You should try A...
MTF: Yea, but A doesn't work in my experience...

User: You should try W...
MTF: But W requires me to be part of the Twitter country club...

User: You should try B...
MTF: I tried B for 3 days and it didn't work...

User: You should try C...
MTF: I don't like C because it involves X and I hate X...

User: You should try D...
MTF: I looked into D and didn't like it...

User: You should try E...
MTF: I won't dare do E because...

User: You should try F...
MTF: F is not an option because...

User: You should try G...
MTF: G requires A and B and I won't do A and B because...

User: You should try H...
MTF: I refuse to do H because....

User: You should try J...
MTF: My personality won't allow J...

User: OK, then how about JJ? ...
MTF: My identity is THIS and THIS won't do JJ...

User: You should try K...
MTF: I can't do K because I travel...

User: You should try M...
MTF: M is for low-wage 3rd worlders...

User: How about Q, could be fun...
MTF: Yea but, Q is saturated so my chances are really low...

User: How about R...
MTF: R is too slow and what if it don't work?

And this my friend, is why nothing changes.

In fact, I think we went through a similar conversation like this 5 years ago.

And here we are again.

It is very hard to change your results when you refuse to change yourself.

I meant that content, in most cases, takes way longer to work. Unless you can crack the algorithm, you won't get 1,000 visitors within 24 hours of posting an article (and you can do that easily with an ad).

Again, what's the freaking point unless its part of a content marketing strategy with a legit product/service?

If I post an article about goals at GoalSumo.com, its to attract visits which attract trials which attract subscribers.

Article = Visitors = Trials = Subscribers.

Posting articles for visitors with no end game other than hoping Google pays you 9 cents for a random click is the dumbest "entrepreneurial" idea ever.

Why does every business model you pursue involve some circuitousness business model where sales and profits become this nebulous concept?

What ever happened to creating value and selling it?

 

[Kak]

I appreciate this a lot, Kyle. I know we have our differences (with @Antifragile as well) but I always imagine you two guys as people who have it all figured out, absolutely love your businesses, and never really struggle much.

This is very important food for thought for me so thank you for that.

I haven't tried to hide this fact.

I do love business, in general. All business is the same to me. Sell and distribute chemicals, own a lawn mowing empire, use technology to solve a problem for government... Whatever... They are all just systems to me. I enjoy general business. The point of a business is to create value, not entertain my desires. I'd have a business that cleans sewer lines (or insert undesirable activity) if it made more sense than my current business.

What I don't enjoy is specific problems thst rise up. They needle at you and make you feel like a POS failure if you let them.

If you add up all the failures and bullshit I've waded through, I'm probably in the running for the biggest POS failure on this forum. But then I start to realize what all that glowing failure (mixed with the "dull" successes) somehow did for me. I'm incredibly and unnaturally blessed with both time and resources.

Failure and mental health is the ugly side of entrepreneurshup and I've tried pretty hard to be an open book on this, particularly on my radio show where we did some deeper dives. What you are experiencing isn't unique to you. Some days I still fall and drive to the gas station to bathe my brain in nicotine.

But what choice do I have? I chose entrepreneurshup as a career path. I'm completely unemploy-able at this point. No one will pay what I think is necessary to sell them my hours.

I'm pretty convinced, the most successful entrepreneurs are also the biggest failures out there. I have even said it before on my show, the more success someone has, the more they have likely failed.

Success is directly correlated to how much failure we are willing to endure.

Thankfully, as you continue to fail, the failures seem like less and less of a big deal and you can start to enjoy what you built. So, there is some light at the end of the tunnel.

 

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[Andy Black]

@MTF

Good for you posting. I think that's a good sign. I didn't want to say yesterday, but now you've opened up I'll post and try to help.


We're all the biggest limiting factor in our own businesses. I feel a lot of yours stems from beliefs and mindset.

You also seem bitter about putting in work and not getting results. It seems to permeate your mindset and responses at the moment.

I replied to one of your posts yesterday with a few podcasts that might inspire or help you. You keep saying you don't listen to podcasts (which I find weird if they might help you) but I made the effort. Yet you came back with comments about the people on the podcasts having success because they belong to "the right Twitter country club". I suspect you didn't listen to the podcasts. I also suspect if you did listen to them you'd find something wrong with them rather than just one nugget that would inspire you and nudge you in a slightly different direction.

So I think your main problem is your mindset at the moment. You seem to constantly throw the baby out with the bath water.

You've also said you don't want to do the marketing and sales. You just want to put your head down and produce content. That's you "following your passion". It's like the Karate instructor opening a Karate school next to 20 other Dojos who doesn't want to think about marketing and sales.

It's admirable that you can churn out 150 articles/newsletters, and that you then put your head down and create X number of videos from those articles. You can certainly ACT. I suspect you'd do better if you focused equally on ASSESS and ADJUST.

Marketing isn't complicated, or sleazy. It's a process of figuring out what people want to buy, and how to sell it to them profitably. It's not "running ads", sleazy promotions, or whatever else you think marketing is.

ACT. ASSESS. ADJUST.

What's your assessment of where you're at?

How will you ADJUST?

 

[Kak]

I completely lost any belief in my business skills. I feel like all the success I have I owe just to luck and the right timing. Without it, I'd be nothing.

These days, I'm just a cynical hypocrite. Friends ask me for business advice but honestly what the F*ck do I know? Just the shit I read online since I've been unable to make any business work for the past 4 years.

I just can't find any energy anymore to keep trying to figure it out. Little things overwhelm me. I've lost that resolve and the entrepreneurial spirit of figuring things out.

Not sure what to do about it other than rant since trying just doesn't work and leads to even more failure and disappointment.

I think this is less about your business skills and more about what you demand of a business.

You usually have a LONG list of "I don't want to's"

Unfortunately, the vast majority of opportunities require doing at least some things you don't want to do.

The more things you exclude, the narrower and narrower the likelihood of success. Being open to feeding a business what it needs helps a lot.

At this point you know what you want to do and what you don't want to do... And you have the luxury of saying no. You're just trying to find something that fits that criteria. Do I believe you can? If you keep at it you'll probably find something, but it's going to be harder than being game for whatever, if only temporarily.

Trust me, I'm the guy that IS open to mostly whatever the business requires of me... And I've still metaphorically beat my head against the wall plenty.

I'll always scrub the proverbial toilets to make things work.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

@MTF your post had 18 responses so I moved it to its own thread.

I had this in self-publishing. Write X books combined with a (repeatable and predictable) launch strategy, make money. Writing was like 95% of the job and that was great while it lasted.

Yes you did.

1. You wrote a book that had tangible, monetary value.
2. You put that value in front of people.
3. People bought, and you made money.

1 + 2 = 3

The Amazon ecosystem simplified the process (namely step 2), but it all is still the same.

For example, every book I write applies to 1 + 2 = 3.

Also, GoalSumo.com is a business I've cofounded and help grow— and the same thing applies:

1. Create relative value, in this case a SAAS platform that will never stop in its evolution, and upon its initial launch, was horrible, even embarrassing.
2. Get that value in front of people and adjust accordingly. While having country club connections help, people will not buy something that isn't valuable.
3. Earn profit.

In our case, we're continually iterating with 1 and 2, but the process remains relatively simple...

1 + 2 = 3.

Now, I can't make sense of anything you're doing because you've gotten away from 1 + 2 = 3 and everything is always so indirect and convoluted.

Create value and sell it.

Iterate through 1 and 2, and 3 will come.

And no, writing 100 articles for Google and hoping people click to your ad-heavy website is not value, it's just a dumb arbitrage game that is a waste of your talent. And if you insist on dismissing people due to a survivor bias (But S. Bloom can sell anything and make money!) then why can't you also dismiss the person who makes a killing doing these stupid arbitrage games?

The same skills that made you a great free diver is the same skills that will make you a success in business. Again.

 

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[Antifragile]

I completely lost any belief in my business skills. I feel like all the success I have I owe just to luck and the right timing. Without it, I'd be nothing.

These days, I'm just a cynical hypocrite. Friends ask me for business advice but honestly what the F*ck do I know? Just the shit I read online since I've been unable to make any business work for the past 4 years.

I just can't find any energy anymore to keep trying to figure it out. Little things overwhelm me. I've lost that resolve and the entrepreneurial spirit of figuring things out.

Not sure what to do about it other than rant since trying just doesn't work and leads to even more failure and disappointment.

I scanned all the replies and my thoughts aren't duplicated, so here it goes... hopefully it helps get you going.

The internet businesses life has been changing at a rapid pace. The issue is well documented on this forum, internet is no longer decentralized. The giants like FB, Amazon, Twitter, YT all took over "consumers" and there are very few remaining avenues to truly get excited about building when creators get no control.

OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration. We know that newsletters are based on Email and it's not owned by anyone, so there is a pump in the number of newsletters.

But lets face this one simple fact: doing small business on the internet has been centralized with punitive actions by the giants. CENTS is now ENTS. And how can you get scale without control? So maybe it's just ENT.

Your "swings and misses" are perhaps just part of the cycle of the very niche part of businesses you've qualified as to your liking. And that niche is getting hammered.

How many times does one have to hit a brick wall to start losing enthusiasm? Maybe, just maybe, it's not really your fault. Maybe it's not your mindset... maybe it is just the sandbox for business you chose that isn't stable enough to build a castle.

Food for thought...

 

[eliquid]

I have a lot of thoughts and opinions on this for @MTF. I can't share them all here, but I will share 10 or so.

Specific to his business and books in particular.

I've actually bought several of your books and went through your funnel and been on your email list. Back in 2016 we even talked on DM here at the forum in exchanging some ideas and business advice.

This is going to be really hazy and hard to type, because I am mostly working off memory here. I am positive I will get some things wrong, but if you can bare with me and go with the flow while I shoot from the hip:

1. I think with any success, once you learn and become smarter from the success.. you can start to doubt yourself. There are many people under you, less talented and younger making more only because they haven't learn to doubt themselves yet. I would learn to control that doubt. Yes, it is hard, it will always be with you. I struggle with the same as well but I have learned to somewhat control it.

2. Knowing what I know about your books and funnel and emails, I do think a major part was timing. That is NOT to discredit your talent or work. It's not. But from memory, it seemed things start to maybe go downhill when Amazon reduced or removed the bonus payout from the Audio portion of it's sales. I maybe have this wording wrong, but didn't Amazon pay out money for those that joined via or joined into the audio portion of their program? Once that hit, i think it was a slow slump in revenue for you. I think as an early pioneer, you got in and dominated a niche that had great payouts multiple ways, and over time competition came in and payouts changed.

3. In reference to the above ( #2 ) I went through the same things. I was an early pioneer in paid ads. With GoTo in 1999, Google Ads in 2000, and FB/Meta Ads in 2007. I was also a pioneer in affiliate marketing. Each of my biggest gains were from the fact I was one of the first to do paid ads in certain platforms with payouts and little to no competition. I still make a lot of money today, but the easiest and largest gains in any 1 time frame where those dates of 1999-2000-2007/8. When things got crowded and rules/laws changed, I had to adapt and change. Even with SERPWoo in early 2015, it was a pioneer first and all the easiest and largest money gains ( the upward movement ) was in the beginning. Things got harder and slower as time passed ( acceleration ).

4. It's no different with SEO. I was one of the first people in SEO back with Yahoo Directory and DMOZ. Even made one of the first SEO plugins for Wordpress on my own. SEO changes though and competition creeps in. I had to adapt.

5. I feel like we have seen you do this on the forum before. It seems a lot of highs and some lows. I feel like in other threads you have mentioned this at least 2 other times where you were down about business and your abilities at different points in time over the years.

6. Weren't you selling a service to help people write or publish their books? Wasn't this how @Fox got his book up? Why are you not doing that service?

7. I think you are a great writer, but I think what failed was you didn't adapt to the changes in the industry. I think you tried to, but never really did the change. Maybe you gave up early in the changes to be able to adapt.

8. I've noticed too, like others have mentioned, the giving up early or frowning down on advice given to you in the past about things on the forum here from others.

9. It's going to be hard to compare everything to what it was before. You need to adapt to new outcomes and just realize if $2.5k is all you can get from the email list of 20k people.. it's not a failure, its the new normal. And you just need to improve the new normal to $4k... instead of thinking it's failure and giving up.

10. You need to break out of the niche of book you write, or provide different value if you keep writing the same niche going forward. You maybe have different niches and pen names under your belt, but I'm talking about what was ( and maybe still is ) your main niche and pen name. Once someone like me has 2 or 3+ of your books, a lot of the same info is repeated in all the books with just a little difference it seems in the new ones. The stories may be different, but the main points and takeaway are often the same as prior titles.

 

[Kak]

I want to echo what both @Antifragile and @Black_Dragon43 have said here...

Business can really wreck your mental state if you let it. It's not sunshine and unicorns for me either. I mentally struggle over losing battles, frustrating setbacks, and uninspiring wins almost constantly. There is no relief from it either because once you solve or settle one thing, it's on to the next.

I could very easily slip into some seriously ugly mindsets and attitudes. For me it's not about staying positive or any stupid new agey things people tout. It's just my responsibility and I deal with it. When I solve it, it creates a new lesson that makes me stronger to tackle the next problem.

Not a single successful business person I know had it easy. Any entrepreneur could, if not careful, spiral into a depressive mindset.

God help DJ Kalhed if "all I do is win" isn't bs. If all someone does is win, they have learned very little and on a long enough timeline are absolutely screwed.

 

[Fox]

Can we have a new thread for @MTF's post and the responses.

He is well capable of succeeding again and it would be great to have a dedicated forum thread to help make it happen.

 

[Antifragile]

I appreciate this a lot, Kyle. I know we have our differences (with @Antifragile as well) but I always imagine you two guys as people who have it all figured out, absolutely love your businesses, and never really struggle much.

Show me one person who "never really struggles much" and I'll show you a lier.

We all have our battles in one way or another.

Why do you think I was a fan of your Discomfort Club? Because my life was all sunshine and roses comfortable?

No. Because I could relate to struggle and that success was only possible through discomfort. As in, it was a prerequisite for growth.

There is no success without growth. Personal, spiritual, financial - all of it.

This is very important food for thought for me so thank you for that.

Good luck. I really mean it, hope you get a few wins soon.

 

[Panos Daras]

It’s like trying to put together a brothel you got all this nice furniture and it looks amazing but where are the hoes?!

That was deep.

 

[MakeItHappen]

I don't know about your last business ventures. But how many of them were in industries similar to the Kindle trend of Amazon a couple of years ago?

I know quite a couple of successful entrepreneurs. All of them made their wealth in industries that have been around for decades and will be around for decades (if AI doesn't get involved ) None of them founded a start-up with an unproven idea and non of them jumped on a hot trend in a new industry. I think the highest likelihood of success in entrepreneurship is to go into a proven industry, get very skilled at it, and then show up with persistence and a value skew.

Example: Let's say someone wants to start a business with an almost guaranteed success rate. I would guess that if you decide to become a skilled plumber and start your own business, learn something about digital marketing and just show up long enough, your odds of failure are slim and you will become a multi-millionaire within 20 years. Now does that sound exciting? Maybe not... but what I am trying to say is that if you keep failing at business, maybe it's the industry and your skill level that decreases your odds of success from the beginning.

 

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[Ravens_Shadow]

I believe it and I 100% agree.



Good suggestion, I like it. Thank you.



I do focus on freediving and language learning in my free time. Once the spring finally arrives I'll do more stuff outside and that, hopefully, will help me recover.

I like your idea and I like the bluntness of the last sentence.

As for learning new skills with my hands, I don't think there exists anyone as terrible at it as I am and anyone that gets as frustrated as I get while doing it. I can't drive a nail straight. I can't assemble any furniture. I can't use any tools. I gave up a long time ago on anything related to DIY.

That could be a cultural difference as I know that most people in the US are great at all this stuff.

Something DIY is probably a great place to start then. There was a government official I helped out some 10 years ago who was trying to put air in a tire that was clearly completely ruptured. He spent around $20 at the air machine scratching his head why it wasn't filling up. I was going out to go some where, saw him, drove back by 15 minutes later and he was still there. I stopped and pointed out that the tire was ruptured and I asked him if he could change a tire and he said no, so I did it for him, then pumped the spare up. Ultimately I felt pretty disappointed in him and I'm sure he was embarrassed.

Being able to DIY something goes a long way toward being fulfilled in my personal opinion. Pre-internet, building something physical was probably the ONLY way you could really get fulfillment and say "I made this!". It's a primal thing and helps when you can do things yourself. There's nothing you can't do. People take far more pride in a craft done right. My girlfriend isn't very good at assembling furniture, but i'm teaching her how because I want her to be able to do that sort of thing independent of me. Believe me, it is frustrating building furniture, but the reward is huge!

My recent hobby of fulfillment has been restoring a classic ferrari. Starting out, I knew absolutely NOTHING about restoring a car. The throttle cable (the wire that goes from your gas pedal to the engine) was sticking while driving so I had to figure out how to replace it. No manuals, no books, no videos, or anything else related to how to do it. I just had to figure it out. It was by far the most infuriating physical task i've ever done in my life. I sweat, i cried, i bled. And once I got the new cable in, i felt like my brain was 100x bigger than it was and I learned some pretty extreme problem solving along the way.



Go find your throttle cable mountain, climb that shit. And feel the joy coming out on the other end with a job well done. And even if you fail, you now have 10x more experience on that subject than most people.

 

[Ravens_Shadow]

MTF, I'm not sure what the books you wrote were about, or if the content websites you were trying to flip, or buy in the past contained much of value. Believe it or not, the internet probably doesn't need much more content and being a content machine doesn't sound very fulfilling.

Sit down and think about something far beyond yourself that could be interesting and then pursue that without the worry about making money for now since you already have money. This sort of meandering path on a niche idea can take you to big places and you get to decide how big you want something to be. I'm not saying I have mastered the path of fulfillment, but I'm on a pretty steady path and have a lot of the successes people would want and that's at least moderately fulfilling.

As @million$$$smile told me, sometimes you just have to go out and drive nails into wood with a hammer to be fulfilled. In his case he was building houses for those in need in south america. Go do something with your hands. Get off the F*cking computer and go learn a new skill with your hands (pottery, wood working, metal fabrication, etc). And direct your energy into things like that for a while. Once your mental foundation is setup again, build a business of actual value, that truly helps people, vs bullshit content.

And finally, find a really good therapist if you haven't. I've been in therapy for a few years and it's been awesome for my mental health.

My 2c without much context into your life, struggles, mental state, etc.

 

[Antifragile]

Do you feel like a worthless piece of shit, hate yourself, and don't want to do anything productive and just rot?

If so, how can you expect to accomplish anything in a state where you exude self-doubt and pessimism? How can any client trust you're going to deliver good work? How can you do anything well? How can you interact with your employees and not be a giant red flag that the ship is about to sink?

Not sure who needs to hear this…

When you take a lot of swings & keep getting misses, mood goes to shit, energy gets depleted.
Before you know it, yeah, it’s not hard to get into feeling worthless. When at that bottom, it’s hard being productive.

Scratch that, it’s hard everything. Even hobbies that seemed like super fun before can look like too much effort.

Humans need small wins to feel good. It doesn’t matter what, just better than before.

And BUSINESS is that crazy roller coaster of emotions. Everything is amplified. Downs are profoundly crushing, highs are euphoric.

You go for something big, you miss and regret, defeatism hits you like a ton of bricks. “Why even F*cking bother?”crosses your mind. But if you get some mojo back - try again, then again and again, then boom a little win! It feels like someone turns on light in a dark room. It feels like morning sun after a week of shit weather, gloomy rain etc. That spring in the step thinking “yeah, I F*cking got this now, I always knew I could” but you didn’t. Just moments ago you felt defeated! It all disappears and appears.

I’ve never had it easy in business. Lately I think that those who claim ‘easy’ are lying, that everyone faced a lot of hard. And the difference between those who make it is that they hang on longer than those who don’t. They try more things and get those little and big wins just often enough to keep going.

After a decade or two, maybe it’s brain scar tissue that numbs some of the lows enough not shrug them yet the highs tend to stay high.

@MTF I can see how having “retired” and having not had any wins is F*cking with your brain. I’ve said it in this thread once already, I don’t think your “misses” are your fault when your specific work… odds are just against wins. But stacking misses on top of each other is indeed depressing as F*ck. I’d know... So you just need a few wins.

Catch-22: can’t win without trying, can’t ry without a win to lift you up.

No idea what you can do from here. But I know it’s all just in your head, so theoretically, you should be able to just change your mind.

P.S. @biophase example of doing it for others is great. I relate with my kid, I can be sick, exhausted whatever… if my kiddo needs me, I’ll stay up all night and it’ll be just fine.

 

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[Andy Black]

Last year we created landing pages and Google Ads campaigns for 30+ different carpet cleaning businesses in the US, subcontracting to an agency.

Every last one of them churned - because they weren't getting good enough results.

I could have beat myself up, except:

1) They might not have churned if I had a direct relationship with the clients and structured the deal differently with each.

2) I've campaigns working great for a carpet cleaning friend in the UK.

3) We're getting 6,500+ 3c clicks a day for a different client who's delighted we're smashing Q1 targets.

4) We've other delighted clients.


If I didn't have other wins going on at the same time I might have felt low mentally. I might have felt I need to get out of whatever I'm doing and switch to something else.

If I switched to something else and didn't get any wins (quickly or otherwise) then maybe I'd question my abilities and myself.


I deliberately go for quick wins @MTF. I've mentioned this already and I think you've agreed it's helpful but I just want to back up what @Kak and @Antifragile have said.

I started a new personal project a couple of weeks ago.

I want to see if I can grow an email list/newsletter with Google Ads, and make it self-liquidating so immediate revenue covers ad spend and I'm effectively growing the list for free.

I broke it down into steps and milestones.

1) Can I get ads to even show? The first domain I tried seems to have issues and all ads were disapproved. We switched to another domain I have and started getting impressions. Time for a wee fist-pump.

2) We started getting clicks with 50c bids. CPCs were way higher than I wanted but new milestone achieved. Another moment nodding to myself.

3) We had search results on the landing page and I'm supposed to get a bit of revenue if people click through and take action. Apparently no-one clicked through. Dammit. I don't believe the vendor's stats so switched after a few days.

4) Switched to a lead capture page and immediately started getting email signups. Woo-hoo. That's a step in the right direction. They're not added to an email list yet, and I've no revenue, but the little email capture machine is setup and working. 25+ visitors a day for 18c each and €5/day spend. Simple landing page with headline, sub-heading, button. 4-8 email signups a day, just ending up as rows in a Google Sheet.


Next steps:

Add Sparkloop newsletter referrals as the final step after signing up.

Get a first bit of revenue from someone signing up to another newsletter.

Get emails automatically added from Google Sheets to an email service provider.

Send a first email automatically.

Get a first email opened.

Get a first click of something in an email.

Get a first Like or Comment on a social media post I sent an email about.


Each of these are little wins @MTF. I'm deliberately focused on solving one problem in a day or two, and I feel I'm making progress by solving them one at a time.

They're also meaningful steps, that are a cause for a mini celebration.


Whenever I read your new projects @MTF, I always pop in and try to nudge you towards making faster progress. Your steps always seem along the lines of "let's spend 3 months creating 100 articles and then hopefully X will be achieved".

No wonder that's getting you down.

Consider this:

We make progress by putting one foot in front of the other.

Every. Single. Day.

We make progress by solving the problem directly in front of us.

Problems are actually stepping stones in our path. We overcome them them one at a time, and that's how we progress on our journey.

Realise that, if you're still talking about the same problem a month later then you're STUCK.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

I eventually made enough money to buy a big lot in the countryside. We searched for it for almost 2 years. In the end we bought by far the best land possible that wasn't originally for sale. My parents moved there after about 2 years of construction and have enjoyed their retirement since then.

This is incredibly impressive. I have even more respect for you than before, and yes, I already had immense respect for you despite your struggles.

But more so, this little story identifies your core issue is that you are driven by purpose, specifically, a purpose that is derived from being helpful and caretaking to others. That type of purpose compels you to work through problems and struggles.

This is also why if you were working for someone, but still on your terms, you follow through and do great work. I think Fox mentioned you worked with him and did great work.

Everything points to helping others and being accountable to their outcomes, which in effect, will make you accountable to your own.

Without a defining external purpose, it's easy to abandon a sinking ship (or any semblance of trouble on the ship) and climb back aboard your comfortable yacht.

 

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[ZackerySprague]

Keep going man, don't give up. The journey is no hard no doubt. You got this. Keep kicking, something will happen.

MJ told me once in a video last year. Life is not all about suffering. He knew there was light at the end of the tunnel and that is suffering will end.

I've been on contract jobs since last year October. Though I feel as if my career is at its end. It's not, but with a little perspective shift. I have skills that still keep me employed.

I hit a rough patch. Was out of work for 3 months (almost) tapped into some credit cards and used the savings I had. I wasn't expecting the layoff. Almost has the chance to payoff an entire loan. I will be able to soon now.

I've been in the recovery process since October last year. I have paid off all of the credit cards, I've used. And now the loan I was focused on paying back is back on track and has $2,044 dollars left.

I had a Window of opportunity to create something for 3 years. I can have regret and be sad about it, wallow in self pity. But we can always look at it a different way. I get the chance to start again, learned the lessons.

You can do it, I believe in you. Keep swinging harder, and harder everytime. No matter the foul balls, no matter the mistakes, or choices you've made. Keep swinging, until one day something will work. Something will and you will be glad you kept swinging.

Keep swinging even if you are tired, one day in the end it will all be worth it.

I've paid 16 debts since the end of 2022 when I almost filed chapter 13.

The Puzzle pieces will eventually align.

Something has to give! Keep fighting!

 

[Black_Dragon43]

What is it about Google Ads that makes me, personally, feel like it's a donkey business?

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s very similar to a job in a way — your time is still tied to your income.

A service-based business that requires intellectual skills to perform the service is harder to scale and outsource than a service-based business that just requires physical skills to perform.

Also — when you sell a digital service you sell an intangible. You can’t touch it, it has no value in itself, its only possible value is as a vehicle to get you to what you really want — more clients etc.

Whereas if you sell a physical good for example, say land in the case of someone like @Antifragile , even if the said land ends up being a dud and doesn’t get you closer to your goals it still has some intrinsic value.

I've clients who prefer paying for ads than paying for content and getting it SEO'd.

Free isn't free. We always pay in time, effort, money or some other way.

I'm not saying NOT to do organic strategies. Heck, I don't run ads for my own business but instead bounce around online helping people and leaving breadcrumbs all over the place.

The trouble is that paid strategies don’t work for many industries. The most obvious are the ones where you can’t really advertise because the platforms don’t let you — say if I were to sell an anxiety cure, it would be pointless to run ads because they’d get shut down.

Then there are not so obvious ones. Take my industry — agency owners looking to grow via LinkedIn. Those who are at a solid level, let’s say ideally doing $300K+/year in revenue, are unlikely to be out there Google how to get clients from LinkedIn. Not because this isn’t a concern for them, but they wouldn’t expect to be able to find an answer on Google.

I’ve spent about $10K over the past 2 years on ads, across Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google, with virtually no results. Even the meetings we did book tended to be with for lack of a better word “low quality” people.

Some examples: broke guy who worked as a freelancer, someone just trolling, and so on.

My only question is: what if your unfair advantage is no longer that useful? Because that's how I see writing. It's a cheap skill, soon to be even less important.

Writing isn’t an unfair advantage in our positions. Maybe if you’re a broke working a minimum wage job, good writing and communication skills will help you get out of that. But we’re at a different stage now. The guys and opportunities we pursue are already above that — now everyone we compete with has a minimum level of competence on these skills.

I think the big issue here MTF is that despite what you say, you don’t really want to change. Which is fine. So just stop hating yourself and accept that. I feel that your lack of self-acceptance is the cause of both your misery and your supposed faux problem. Wouldn’t it be nice to be someone else, eh?

That’s sort of what you’re doing here. You’re latching onto a false problem to have a reason to hate yourself. But you don’t truly want more money — sure, would be nice to have more, but you’re fine the way you are.

—— AS A GENERAL NOTE ——

Look here: State of the Industry Report 2023

Empire Flippers is one of the biggest digital business brokerages. Naturally if you want to see what digital businesses are doing well, this is the place to look.

If you look at the results over the past 5 years you will notice several trends:
• eCommerce businesses account by far for most of the value of businesses sold.
• Content businesses account by far for the MOST businesses sold, but generally at a lower overall value that eCommerce.
• Service businesses are nonexistant, almost. Same as SaaS.
• Content businesses monetized through display advertising are growing in popularity esp. with the rise of ChatGPT and the possibility to create content “en-masse” using something like Make.com, Airtable and ChatGPT
• Content businesses generally don’t produce BIG revenue or profits, but they have the higheat multiples because they take little to no work to manage once set up.
• The emphasis is on building traffic, not great content. Mass produced content to build traffic. If you listen to interviews with these owners none of them care about quality of content — get cheap freelancers or ChatGPT to do it for you.

So having reviewed this data, my personal conclusion is that if you want to 10x your current wealth, start an eCommerce business selling a physical product. Those are the kind of businesses with overwhelming success rates, which can also generate the kind of value you’re looking for.

Rather than go for content business, where most even if they are successful make $10K/mo and sell for $400K, you go for a massive ecommerce business that makes $5M/mo with $500K profit and sells for $15M.

Don’t forget, these are the cold hard numbers. Me, you or anyone here can have our own opinions, but those are irrelevant to the reality. And you may as well choose a business model that typically produces high value, than one that typically doesn’t. Go where lightning is most likely to strike you.

 

[MTF]

I completely lost any belief in my business skills. I feel like all the success I have I owe just to luck and the right timing. Without it, I'd be nothing.

These days, I'm just a cynical hypocrite. Friends ask me for business advice but honestly what the F*ck do I know? Just the shit I read online since I've been unable to make any business work for the past 4 years.

I just can't find any energy anymore to keep trying to figure it out. Little things overwhelm me. I've lost that resolve and the entrepreneurial spirit of figuring things out.

Not sure what to do about it other than rant since trying just doesn't work and leads to even more failure and disappointment.

 

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[Black_Dragon43]

You usually have a LONG list of "I don't want to's"

Unfortunately, the vast majority of opportunities require doing at least some things you don't want to do.

This reminds me of what Kyle said to me when I told him I don’t want to go fit an $8K water filter at someone’s home

It’s true — if you’re willing to do anything, making a lot of money gets a lot easier!

 

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[Andy Black]

Oh, and get quick wins @MTF.

Noah Kagan has a good little book on getting started in a weekend. Whether you follow his blueprint or not isn't the point. You should be able to make a sale in a weekend.

A sale means getting revenue.

A lot of your current activity seems very long winded and you'll only find out if you'll make any revenue in months.

That feedback loop is too long.

Echoing what MJ said, your steps seem very convoluted.

Want to get somewhere quicker? Start as close to the end as possible.

Your goal is to earn money (by providing value).

How can you do that quicker? How can you start as close to the end as possible?

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I wasn't sure whether to post it but I'm glad to hear it resonates with others as well.

I think every single one of us has dealt with some manner of what you're feeling, just might not be all business related.

None of are strangers to frustrations and feeling injustice or unfairness in market interactions.

For me personally, I have an "injustice" gene in my DNA that infuriates me when I see people get away with bullshit, or in your case, you see people with garbage content/products that have 100X success than you and then say, "Oh just post on Twitter every single day and it will happen!" Problem is, 1000s of people do, and they still don't have a massive following.

 

[machinistguy]

But if your products are good and there's demand (you need both, not just one), then it'll sell. You don't need an audience or a bajillion followers.

Yeah I don't know why there's so much talk on this thread about needing connections, marketing strategies, competition, or other nonsense. The 20% of work that gets you 80% of the result comes down to this, giving customers who have money what they need better than they can get it from somewhere else.

If a girl is struggling with weight loss and you write a book that actually gets her to lose weight you don't think every other girl around her is going want that book too? If you create a component that makes HVAC systems 5% more energy efficient, you don't think HVAC vendors will be fighting each other to get an exclusivity deal with you?

20% of the work is building an amazing product with a strong need. Do that and 80% of your problems will take of themselves.

 

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[MTF]

@MTF -- thanks for being authentic in your struggles. Like many other threads you start, they always prove valuable not just in business, but just for life. Thread upgraded to GOLD as any of us struggling in a rut can leverage the advice here, now 80+ posts strong.

Thanks, MJ. I'm very thankful for all the responses here. They've helped a lot, more than I thought any response could help when I posted that initial post. The community here is like in no other place.

 

[Antifragile]

I don't know your business, but you mentioned earlier it's PERE. So your commercial loans were collateralized by real estate though right?

Yes and no. All loans are always backed by underlying RE but you need additional collateral for construction loans.

Think 10 to 30% of your costs is land. That leaves 70 to 90% of other costs, which leveraged far exceed any value of land itself by a 3x factor or more.

Where do you get this extra "coverage" for the loan?

Outside of that, pretty difficult to get non-PG corporate debt with business under a certain size. Or have you found otherwise?

Bingo. You need scale, deeper pockets. But who said it has to be YOUR pockets?

You can pay groups to guarantee your loans (expensive but possible).

For us, I felt that partnering with the right capital sources was the best formula and that's how we did it.

It's also why hating on investors seems so foreign to me. They are part of someone's business model. @Kak and I discussed it in great depth, that to one person 8 figures is an exit number, others can cut that $ cheque in a heartbeat.

And with that, I agree with @MTF that having investors adds responsibility. With my own money, it's 10x easier to "let it go". The minute I am responsible for someone else's money, I can't do anything less than my absolute best and there is no quitting.

But here's the thing. People who have capital often don't have the desire or other needed resources to build yet another business. Why would they? Some have very successful businesses that are fully functioning. Investing with others is a solution for them to get bigger yield AND it's a solution for people like entering a mega capital intensive industry with skinny pockets.

Whereas if you sell a physical good for example, say land in the case of someone like @Antifragile , even if the said land ends up being a dud and doesn’t get you closer to your goals it still has some intrinsic value.

This is off topic tot his thread ... but...

"Land has intrinsic value" is a very common misconception that I try to correct whenever someone joins our business. We are not in a tangible business. Sure, we produce tangible products, but their value is based on future use/cash flow.

Put it another way, I know some people who think you buy RE because it has intrinsic value and therefore will always have some value (or worse, It will always go up). Nonsense, just see the graveyard of those who went bankrupt thinking that way. The value starts with a NEED, just like every single other business out there. If no one needs office today, the office building that you can buy for "cheap" may actually be worth less than $nil - as you need to pay interest on debt, property taxes, insurance and other costs to keep that empty building. Let that sink in...

I am convinced that all businesses are basically similar. All fail for similar reasons, and all succeed for similar reasons. And there are no easy businesses in existence. Some people just make it look easy. And yet it's the only reliable method I know to get to financial freedom.

 

[Fox]

Just based on us working together before you could easily...

- Work with creators and influencers
- Help them write a book based on their skills/story
- Could be sold directly and/or a lead magnet
- Easily could charge $10k-$50k+ per book to do this

And you already have all the personal experience and a case study (my book) to back it up.

Also, you don't have to rely on any algorithm, platform, or outside system. That is all the creators problem.

It is a massive growth industry and people highly recommend people who do good work. Once you landed one big name you could easily get a bunch more.

Maybe not the dream business... but 100% doable and 100% would be profitable.

 

[Black_Dragon43]

Yeah my experience has been the opposite of yours. I've never worked that hard and never struggled as much yet retired early. I know it's still possible to do it because I know people who are still doing it. It's not an irrefutable fact that every business owner has to be a step away from bankruptcy.

It could be because you're in a different industry and selling services or because you have employees. If every business was like that (always at the brink of disaster) then I wouldn't do it at all. I value my personal life more than business.

Of course it's possible. It's possible to win the lottery too – that doesn't mean it's a good strategy. And maybe a step from bankruptcy is an exaggeration, but knowing that things could fail even while you're growing fast – that's a constant anxiety for most entrepreneurs. I think you've read Phil Kinght's bio – he too was a step from bankruptcy even when the firm was making millions in revenue.

The truth is you live in a very competitive world. Competition eats away at profits. The only way you can make outsized profits is either be bigger and better than everyone else, OR have some advantage that no one else has, usually in the form of connections. Are you connected to billionaires? Are you a phone call away from the President of your country? If you were, then yeah, you could very well set up a web design company that hosts the Presidency's website and the mayor's website or whatever and makes $1M per year with 0 hours of work every week for you.

Everyone who follows your path at best gets lucky once and "retires" just like you. Then they end up being back to broke 20-30 years later. Because you cannot escape the fundamental reality that competition eats away profits, and your golden opportunity is BOUND TO fail given sufficient time. It's by definition unsustainable, otherwise you would not be able to make such large profits so quickly.

If you want to do something sustainable, then you must put in hard work and expect it to be slow at first. It's the tortoise vs the hare all over again.