Escaping wage slavery towards an Actualized Life

[Vali2003]

I’ve had an insight into how creative processes work. I got it from listening to Leo’s video about why valuable things require investment over time. True creativity has a lot to do with just being willing to accept uncertainty and risk. And just pursue a vision you have. Now, this isn’t really the insight I had. The insight is more, that most of the time, this vision, you may have, will only be a vague feeling.  A blurry picture of what could be. A good creative has to have immense courage to believe that it’s possible to turn the vision into reality. Then they need to also have the discipline to invest in it every single day. Edging closer towards the vision. The insight is that the vision is vague, and you have to take a leap of faith in trying to realize it. If it isn’t vague, then there’s no leadership, no real creativity. This also relates to what Seth Godin often says. 

[Vali2003]

Tomorrow, I’ll write a little bit more about business stuff. But now is sleepy time .

[Vali2003]

One insight I’ve had about business is, how unnatural the whole process is. Getting people to give you money for something is an immense act of willpower.  I’m realizing now, that my entire life up to this point, I’ve been interacting with a made-up fantasy of what business actually is. It’s not natural. It’s not easy. It’s stressful. It requires creativity. 

A good metaphor is bushcraft/survival. It seems so fun, and cool, and easy, when you look at it from far away. You make some fire, build a shelter, get some fish (maybe you find a pig as a best friend). 

But the reality of it is violent. You arrive. You have to search for a water source for five hours, while you’re surrounded by mosquitoes, everything itches, you’re sweating and you have a headache. Then, the only water you find is dirty, but you drink it anyways, cause you have to, or you’ll die if thirst. You get diarrhea, because the water is dirty. You create a primitive shelter, because it’s getting dark and you need to sleep somewhere. While chopping wood, you cut yourself and — if it’s a real situation — you die. Now, of course, there are some highly skilled people that actually thrive in the same circumstances. But none of it is natural. You have to constantly enforce your will to survive on the environment. Otherwise you die. 

Business is really the same thing. It’s not natural at all. You have to fail, and fail, and fail, and stay persistent and then at some point you may figure it out. But none of it is natural. 

Understanding this has made me respect business people a lot more, and in general, people who’ve built something on their own.

[Vali2003]

My biggest weaknesses are 1) impatience 2) lack of consistency over long time (closely related to no.1), and 3) fear.

1) impatience: I want my results faster than is possible to reach sustainably. Thus I go hard for a bit and then stop eventually… until I start again.  

2) I’m a very creative person. I have no trouble at all finding creative visions and good, original ideas ( IMO at least hihi). But I struggle with the discipline to actually follow through with them. This is critical, since good things take time. I have to consistently work on this business now every single day, for years. I have to get it off the ground, master the base-level. After I’ve done that, I have no doubt that I’ll find innovations in my field. That’s actually not really the hard part for me. 

3) Growth requires us to walk straight into the flames of fear as though our skin was made of dragon scale. And sometimes, I’m too much of a pussy for that. Especially when it comes to things that risk other people’s approvals. I’ll have to become better at facing my fears.

[Vali2003]

Soooo, haven’t written here in a long time… but that’s ok. 

I want to give a small update about how my business is going. I have my first client! (that isn’t my mom)

It hasn’t been easy, not gonna lie, but I’m quite happy now. Note that I’m doing free work for her. So I’m not gonna make any money from this, but I don’t care. Working with actual people will help me learn so much and gain confidence so that’s a big step towards getting paid for my work. 

It’s kind of ridiculous how difficult it is to even get somebody to take something that’s highly valuable (other people charge $5K for the thing I’m offering) FOR FREE. 

But the thing is, as a bare beginner, you have absolutely no social proof, so nobody trusts you. Also, you lack experience and hence confidence in your ability to produce results. 

 

 

[Vali2003]

Here’s how I found this client who I will now be working with: 

I cold-emailed people. Sounds simple enough, but there’s actually a bunch of stuff that needs to be regarded for it to work. I’ll list some stuff:

• Need to have professional emails to improve deliverability of your emails - otherwise they land in spam
• Need to find the right people to contact
• Need to have double-verified email addresses, otherwise you will get too many “bounces” (email addresses not being found), and you address will get flagged
• You need to communicate your offer in a trustworthy but relevant fashion (in 100-150 words)
• Need to warm up email accounts. Meaning start with 5 emails per day for a week and then increase by 5 every day until you reach 40 per day maximum

… there’s much more. 

When I started contacting people I didn’t know jack shit of this. But I kept reading and taking action, so I learned pretty fast. Still, I’m quite shit at it, so I was surprised when one person had answered after I just got out of basketball practice on thursday. 

[Vali2003]

And when I write about these things now, they seem so obvious. But in the moment it’s just confusing and frustrating. This is one thing I didn’t get before I actually did this. It seems easy from the outside. But while you’re in it, things are tough and unclear. Nobody will tell you the exact path…

And even if they do, you won’t really get it. And even if you get it, you still won’t have the skills (I’ll give an example for this later).

The most important thing is just to keep going. Keep going, and the fog will clear up, bit by bit, day by day. Until you walk into the next cloud of fog… (which is ideally the case, because you want to keep learning). And then, if you have the balls to just not stop, then you will reach your goal. You just have to be willing to endure the periods of uncertainty and the failure. Those are growing pains. Embrace them. 

There’s a section from Seth Godin's book "the dip" that I find mightily wise in regard to this:

Quote

 

The Best in the World

Hannah Smith is a very lucky woman. She's a law clerk at the Supreme Court. She's the best in the world. 

Last year, more than forty-two thousand people graduated from law school in the United States. And thirty-seven of them were awarded Supre Court clerkships.

Those thirty-seven finish their year with the Court. Top law firms routinely pay a signing bonus of $200,000 or more to any clerk they are able to hire. Clerks go on to become partners, judged, and senators.

There are two things worth noting here. The first thing is that Hannah Smith isn't lucky at all. She's smart and focused and incredibly hardworking.

And the second thing? That any of the forty-two thousand people who graduated from law school last year could have had Hanna's job. Except they didn't. Not because they weren't smart enough or because they came from the wrong family. No, the reason that most of them didn't have a chance is that somewhere along the way they quit. They didn't quit in high school or college or law school. Instead, they quit in their quest to become the best in the world because the cost just seemed too high. 

 

Of course, this is mainly a message to myself.

 

To just not quit.

[Vali2003]

Just wrote a literal novel here and then the site crashed...