Every month I put put a business development newsletter that features jobs, tools, articles, and the fan favorite “BD Tactic of the month”….

Since putting out my last one, 3 business development jobs and one internship have been sent my way that I thought people would benefit from knowing about. They are:

Skillshare – Business Development Manager (New York)

Awe.sm – Manager/Director of Business Development & Sales (SF)

Flurry – Senior Director Publisher Relations West (SF)

If you want to check out some old issues of BDNewsletter that 500+ others have enjoyed, feel free to check them out below:

BD #7: A Better Way to Ask for Meetings, Channel Partnerships, and 2 BD Jobs

BD #6: A Better CHECKING IN email, 7 BD Jobs, and Using “Just So I Know”…

BD #5: Business+Startup, 3 BD Jobs, and The Power of Photos for BD…

BD #4: Sales Triggers, Disarming Questions, and 3 BD Jobs

BD #3: How to Hire for BD, One Way to Get Facetime, and 5 Biz Dev Jobs

BD #2: The Good Cop, Bad Cop Technique and How to Write Kickass Sales Emails

BD #1: The Secretary Technique, Newsle, and 3 Searches You Should Do Before Every Call

A quick way you can help – one of my 2013 goals is for this newsletter to reach 1000+ people. If this happens, hopefully more people will improve their craft and land jobs they love…

If you’ve enjoyed receiving this content, I’d really appreciate if you could help me out by telling one friend to sign up for it. Big thanks!

In this edition of the Life-Long Learner Show (that’s right I’m calling it a show now), I sit down with Jason Shen, Co-founder of Ridejoy and The Art of Ass Kicking.

Jason is an accomplished dude across the board: National Champion Gymnast, Y-Combinator Alum, Stanford Grad. The guy has done some cool stuff which made this interview really fun to do.

In this interview we talk about:

• Some surprising benefits of being authentic about your self-improvement journey
• A primer on rejection therapy: what it is, why he did it, and how to get started if you want to push your comfort zone
• How evolutionary biology plays a role in human behavior
• The power of branding a “habit change” and how this can actually make behavior change easier
• A compelling argument why willpower is more challenging today than ever before
• Why “trying harder” when attempting to accomplish something is almost never the answer
• Details on his new book “Winning Isn’t Normal”

Jason also tells a bunch of awesome stories which include writing mission statements at 13 years old, asking some guy at the train station for a bite of his croissant, and some interesting learnings from teaching a class at Stanford. Enjoy…

Just in case you prefer audio and want to listen to this on your commute, you also also access this full interview here on SoundCloud.

If you enjoyed this interview with Jason Shen, make sure to check out his awesome blog The Art of Ass Kicking as well as his upcoming book Winning Isn’t Normal.  You can find him on twitter at @JasonShen

All 7 other interviews from the Life-LongLeaner Show can be found right here on YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to me on YouTube so you don’t miss new episodes.

Also, I just realized I’ve only interviewed guys. If there is a kickass girl out there you’d like to hear from let me know in the comments and I’ll try to get her to come on the show.

As much as I love the crisp taste of a Hefewiezen, a few months ago I finally came to terms with the fact that continuing to indulge in alcohol was preventing me from becoming the person I want to be.

I’ve never had a drinking problem….but like a lot of people in their early to mid twenties, I’ve formed a habit of sometimes drinking more than I should, especially when going out.

For the longest time, it didn’t seem to be like a big deal to me. After all it’s what practically every person I hang out with does.

We’re going out? Let’s have a few drinks (to be more fun)!!!

But amidst the crazy next day stories and contrived “we’re having so much fun” moments, deep down I knew that this habit wasn’t a good thing. It wasn’t until my friends Charlie and Ben told me that drinking like this was actually propelling me backwards that it hit me…“holy crap, they’re right.”

I decided it was time to face reality and be brutally honest with myself.

I wasn’t drinking because it was great for my health, finances, spiritual life, productivity or general wellness.

Most of the time I was drinking was to blunt my immediate and passive anxieties. I guess the fact that I love the taste of beer doesn’t hurt either.

On top of stifling my health, finances, and faith, I was stunting my personal growth by avoiding direct confrontation with things that made me uncomfortable. I know that if I continue to do this I’ll never arrive at the place I want to be: an inner-state of complete comfort with myself that’s unshakable by external forces.

So for the past two months, I’ve been trying to give up drinking with a varying degree of success. I thought I’d share what this journey has taught me about goal-achievement, habit, and how the heck a 25 year old single guy in New York can pull this off.

Tracking

The first thing I did was start a google doc where I tracked whether I had a drink and if so, how many drinks. I also tracked my weight, bodyfat, and % muscle because I was curious about the correlation. I’d be lying if said I’ve never thought “I’d be so much more jacked if I didn’t drink!”

Observations

Month 1 – Holy crap. I drink way more than I thought I did. As I started racking up Y’s (yes, I drank), the mere fact that I had to acknowledge this inspired a stronger “don’t do it!”

Month 2 – My goal for month 2 was to drink at least 1 day less than last month. It looks like I’m going to end up drinking 3 less days (with two trips this month!). Overall consumption volume (# of drinks) went down as well.

You may be thinking, “Boy Scott, drink 1 less day? Really shooting for the stars…”

Here’s the thing. I originally tried to go cold turkey on this habit and failed miserably. Apparently breaking a habit you’ve been accustomed to since your junior year in high school is pretty damn hard.

I’m now comfortable with the fact that cutting this out of my life is going to be a slow climb. I’m cool with that. So long as I make progress each month I will eventually get to where I want to be.

Another benefit of the “slow climb” approach is that consistently achieving a positive trend is more conducive to sustainable behavior change than. a fleeting purge (i.e. absolutely no drinking for a month). This is about my life, not checking off a yearly bucket list item.

What this helped me remember:

People always say “you can only manage what you measure” because it’s true. If you’re serious about changing a habit start tracking it. Landing pages aren’t the only place metrics can help you iterate.

Affirmations

Post Cinco de Mayo I went on a 6 day hot streak where I only drank 1 time (2 drinks) despite being in a drinking environment every night. After the failure instanceI abstained one day and then slipped back into old habits that weekend.

I’ll get to the failure point later, but I want to talk about the driving force behind the 6 day streak which I stupidly abandoned for a few days by straying from my morning routine.

In the aftermath of Cinco De Mayo I was frustrated. I decided that I was going to remind myself everyday why I was giving up drinking. So I started writing this affirmation out each day into a notebook. This practice became part of my morning routine.

I couldn’t believe the effects this had on my behavior. My desire to drink was far diminished. I think this is due to the greater salience around why I was fighting the temptation.

“I am not the man I want to be when I drink” would just hover in my brain when I’d be with a friend at a bar…

“I’ll do a club soda…with lime!”

The Failure Point (Dating!)

I think it’d be a whole lot easier to give this vice up if I didn’t live in New York. Whether we’re talking about dating or professional networking, everything is centered around “grabbing drinks.”

Initially this frustrated me…now I’m stoked because I realize that if I can beat this on hard-mode, I’ll be even stronger.

As long as I’ve been in New York, my go-to first date has been drinks. It’s a low commitment way to get to know someone and that provides optionality – If it turns out I’m hitting it off with someone, enter a multi-venue adventure; if our conversation feels like work, you can politely part ways.

When I originally embarked on this stop-drinking journey, I left the first date stronghold in the “exception cabinet.” Just like pigging out when I go to my parents’ house, I gave myself permission to drink on first dates.

Thankfully my friend Steph helped me realize this crutch was total B.S.

Allowing this exception was weakening my discomfort muscle…conveniently, this realization occurred to me after I had just set a first date for drinks. Sick.

I could fall back again on the exception crutch…but I knew that that would just perpetuate the cycle of “just this one time.”

So I shot her a text admitting my slip up and offering a warning / alternative.

When I sent this text I thought she was going to think I was a total weirdo.

“I barely know this guy and he’s telling me he’s ordering a “club soda” before we event hang out. What the hell?”

Instead, she eventually commended me and agreed to meet me for a walk on the highline. Win!!

The next night we met. She looked amazing and we were having a great time on our walk…

Then about 15 minutes in it hit me. It was Thursday night and the highline was less than 2 miles long…either this was going to be the shortest date since MTV’s Next or I needed to come up with a next move.

Fight the urge, fight the urge…..sigh. Whatever.

Instead of just owning my no-drinking agenda, I reverted to an old habit…drinks?! And drink we did.

Despite breaking my streak, we ended up having an awesome time and we’ve been hanging out since despite my club soda proclivities.

I wanted to share this experience because it taught me a few valuable lessons about habits / goals.

• I would have had an easier time resisting temptation if I had taken the time to play out the scenario in my head before and planned accordingly. I’m talking about literally visualizing what I was going to do. This yields a far higher likelihood of successfully performing the desired action than leaving any decision up to my willpower in the moment.

• If you really want to create habits, you need to either eliminate exception scenarios or be completely firm and comfortable with a small number of them. The reality is that a “just this once” rationale is lurking around every corner. When you let this dictate your behavior, it’s much harder to actualize sustainable change.

Routine Adjustment

If you’ve read Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg this is nothing new…but I thought I’d share my personal case study in case anyone else is trying to lay off the suds.

Before this journey, every time I went to a bar (or restaurant) with family or friends, the first thing I’d do was “get a drink.” God forbid we enter a bar with people we don’t know and actually engage someone without first getting an alcoholic companion!

Cue = Enter / sit down at an establishment

Routine = Get a alcoholic drink

Instead of ordering something alcoholic right off the bat, I’ve been starting with a club soda. Sometimes even Diet Coke if I’m feeling rogue.

New Routine = Order a club soda

The amazing thing is that after the initial soda, my urge to have a “drink-drink” becomes far subdued compared to when I first get there…

I hypothesize that this is because of the realization that despite the fact that I just broke a habit…everything is okay. This causes my craving to subsist and I can go about my business.

Month 3 outlook:

My goal for this month is to drink less than I did last month.

I’m going to Princeton Reunions and then China to see one of my best friends with my roommate so I’m going to be drinking. That’s okay. If I keep doing this I’ll eventually get where I want to be.

Other coolness: last night I did an interview with Jason Shen from the Art of Ass Kicking. He taught me two new things about mastering willpower and how to change your behavior that make total sense. Make sure you subscribe to my weekly updates so that you don’t miss out on these awesome tips

Be honest with yourself – why do you want to make A LOT of money?

Is it because you want to:

• gain acceptance from peers?

• have total autonomy over your time?

• be more attractive to the opposite sex so you can find your ideal mate?

• have really nice things?

• to travel to really epic places? (so you can post the pictures on instagram!)

• create the biggest impact possible?

• feel like you’re successful? (You’ve made it baby!)

I challenge anyone reading this to take a moment to be 100% honest with themselves and answer this question – why do you want to make a lot of money?

If people without families to support are brutally honest with themselves, BTW sadly few are, and they juxtapose their life with the answers to this question, I think there’s a lot of inefficiency going on here. And by inefficiency I mean wasted life.

Most of the things that people think require a lot of money can actually be achieved by taking a much more direct path [sans mucho dinero]…and the path I’m talking about is often more enjoyable as well as yields more certain results. Oh an P.S. -

“A lot of people spend decades chasing something that someone convinced them they should want without realizing it won’t make them happy” -Derek Sivers

 But first…here’s a story:

Guy decides he wants to be a tech entrepreneur. He tells people “he likes building things” because that seems to be a publicly acceptable rationale for building a tech company…but super secretly he just sees starting a tech company as a means to generating an inordinate amount of wealth quickly in a way that’s more enjoyable than playing excel like a keyboard. He never asks himself why he wants a lot of money, but thinks the amount of optionality it will provide him will eventually propel him to happiness.

—fast forward button—

He spends 3 years working 12 hour days on his company (though tells people he’s working 90 hour weeks…12×6 = 72?). The company never hits it big, but they have a soft landing that results in a 500,000k landfall for him if he stays at the company for an additional 2 years.

For that 500k he’ll have put in a total of 5 years on top of his 70k founder’s salary.

The journey was fun, but it was also hard as hell. He’s definitely a better person for it…but is he closer to his end game? (which is happiness BTW)

• He’s locked up for 2 years and since the earnout isn’t enourmous, he doesn’t really have autonomy anytime soon.

• He has less friends because he didn’t really have time to see much of anyone while he was building his company unless they were sporting a MongoDB hoodie.

• He didn’t spend a ton of time dating during that time period and actually got worse with women due to the lack of interaction – “OMG you’re from Texas too!” (psst…no one cares)

• He doesn’t really have nicer things outside a sweet [X Ventures] Northface.

• He’s taken 10 vacation days over the past 3 years (he tells people less than a week though just to seem hard)

• He’s only volunteered twice over the past 3 years because he “never had enough time” while he was building his company. He has however made an impactful difference on display advertisers’ ability to generate a .2% higher clickthrough. Sick!

• His friend in the startup game just sold his company for $38 million. This coupled with his lack of ego diversification (success with friends, women, health etc) make him feel far from successful.

He looks in the mirror and realizes that 3 years later he’s strangely further from happiness than when he started. Crap.

Chasing money is not usually the most efficient or enjoyable route to happiness. So does it make sense to waste our lives doing things we honestly don’t love to make it so we can eventually.…uhh [insert something that will eventually make you happy here]???

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately….and then I read Derek Sivers’ awesome book “Anything You Want” which resoundingly resonated with all my hazy conclusions…

I think a better framework to establish how you spend your time when you’re young if  don’t have a family to support (kids or your parents) or enourmous college debt, is to start with the end game of determining what creates enduring happiness in your life for yourself and those you care about.

Specifically, ask yourself:

How would I consistently spend my time if I didn’t have to worry about money ever? Not sure…ask yourself what activities excite and fulfill you? I’m talking about the stuff that raises the hair on your arms and leaves you walking away on your toes with a racing heart.

Then I’d ask:

What areas of my life do I wish were different in the realm of health and relationships? i.e. I want more close friends, a fulfilling relationship with a member of the opposite sex, to be healthier etc

Once you establish these things, then ask yourself how can craft a life which eventually embodies all of these things 85% of the time without a lot of money being involved in the equation. Is there a more direct path to your aspirations that supersedes obtaining massive wealth?

Here is some commentary on what I perceive to be a more direct and guaranteed way to arrive at happiness reviewing the common aspirations people want money for listed above:

How to achieve the things people want a lot of money for…without a lot of money.

Is it because you want to gain acceptance from peers?

• Become a really cool, interesting person whose constantly enjoyable to be around because they live a life they love…not because they have bottle service  on the reg or a nice car.

It is because you want total autonomy over your time?

• Find a career that is already what you’d consistently be doing if you had total autonomy or build a small side business that manifests your passion which you can eventually go full time on

Is it because you want to be more attractive to the opposite sex so you can find your ideal mate?

• Work on becoming a really cool, interesting person who embodies attractive qualities. I’m not talking about having a six-pack, I’m talking about becoming someone with strong moral fiber, a zeal for life, and complete comfort in who they are and what they’re all about. Our behavior and personality is malleable if we choose to accept the challenge of shaping it.

Is it because you want really nice things?

• Ok you need money for this…but in my experience this is leads to a hollow, fleeting happiness.

Is it because you want to travel?

• You can travel pretty cheaply in across the world if you’re resourceful. The barrier to entry to traveling for extended periods of time is far lower than you think, especially if you know how to make $$ online. If you have 10k right now you can  pack in more travel in the next year than most people will dream of in a lifetime.

Is it because you want to create the biggest impact possible?

• Does this sound familiar? “If I’m super rich, I can create a bigger impact ipso facto I should just focus on starting a huge company right now!” Be real - is this a self-fabricated rationalization to justify action rooted in more selfish desires (it’s okay if it is). The focus of this post is on an efficient path to happiness, not moral high ground. Just know what really motivates you and own it.
• Starting a multi-national company is only one way to achieve impact that a small subset of people can accomplish. Note* take a look at what true impact these people achieve and ask yourself if that’s really the impact you’d find fulfilling – “I created sooo many jobs…and toxic waste!”
• If impact vs. personal gratification is really your desire, you can probably already start guaranteeing impact today through volunteering, creating some type of group or organization, or helping fuel an existing rocket-ship that’s in direct alignment with your passion. For most people*, starting to focus on creating the impact your passionate about today and building upon that will probably yield a greater amount of fulfilling impact over the course of a lifetime than gunning for uncertain success that you hope you will be able to channel toward a mission you’re passionate about “one day”.

Is it because you think it will make you feel like you’re successful? (You’ve made it baby!)

• Money alone is a hollow surrogate for success. This is why you need to redefine how you measure it. Look deeply at what will truly make you feel successful and run towards accomplishing those things and becoming that person. I personally believe “feeling success” is much more about becoming the person you want to be vs. accomplishing specific things. If you become the person you want to be, the accomplishments will follow.

The Purpose of This Post

1. The goal of this post is to spark introspection around what makes you happy and why you want money.
2. Then to prompt you to ask yourself if you can already achieve those things without an inordinate amount of money…hint – you probably can.
3. Then ask yourself if you’re spending your time in the optimal way.

*I do not think your sole intention in life should just to be happy. I think it should be to be a productive member of society by leaving the world and those  you interact with better than you found them. Because happiness fosters continuity in our work and life – I do think if you can derive happiness in a productive work life, you’re more likely to achieve an optimal output.

If you’re interested in this type of stuff and by stuff I mean your precious life, I encourage you to come check out the New York Personal Development Meetup. We’ll be posting a new one soon.

As for me, I’m still trying to figure this out. Though I’ve never had a ton of money, I’ve also never been incrementally more happy with a deeper pocket – so this is merely a hypothetical rant. Still, I figured others could potentially benefit from someone else’s perspective by stating what’s going on in my head after calibrating my thoughts with Derek’s book. Long-live authenticity!

This post was inspired by Derek Sivers book “Anything You Want” – big ups to Jerry Colonna for getting it on my radar. You can find my notes on it here.

I recently had the chance to chat with Andrew Dumont, director of BD at SEOmoz.

I’ve been following him from a distance after discovering his blog so it was awesome to get some facetime to rap BD, life, and other coolness.

In this interview we talk about:

• His introduction to working in tech at the ripe age of 18 years young and various startup experience since then (Tatango -> Seesmic -> SEOmoz)
• How to manage business development relationships when you’re company pivots…a lot
• What the heck business development at SEOmoz actually means
• How he evaluates channel partnerships and the expected conversion rate he anticipates for channel deals. A lot of startup founders need to understand this if they pursue this distribution strategy
• The greatest learning he’s had from bringing his side hustle Stride to market. Stride is simple sales CRM optimized for a small number of high value deals vs. a ginourmous funnel fest – perfect for BD people
• How he manages all of his projects/ambitions while still maintaining balance. I appreciated this insight mucho.

If you prefer audio so you can download this onto your phone and listen to this in transit like a productive little bee head, grab the interview on Soundcloud here…

Andrew is a great dude and definitely someone to watch (hopefully from NYC in the next couple of years). I highly reccomend you check out his blog AndrewDumont.me, Stride, and find him on twitter at @andrewdumont

Psst…if you enjoyed this interview, you can find all 7 other interviews I’ve done on this youtube playlist where I plan on posting all future interviews including one I’m really excited about in the next few weeks ; )

Show notes:

1. Avoiding Burnout article

2. Techcrunch Article about Seesmic

A lot of people in my Skillshare classes ask me whether you should send LinkedIn messages when reaching out to prospects?

Short answer: avoid this at all costs.

In this video below I discuss WHY reaching out someone on LinkedIn hurts your chances of getting a response and the framework I use to determine which method of communication is best for engaging prospects.

In general, I almost always approach people via email because that is where people I do business with interact with contacts they know and trust. That’s the bucket you want to be in – not the random people from Indonesia asking you to join their mastermind group of 28,678 “strategic consultants.”

Using one of the methodologies in this post on how to find email addresses, I’m able to figure out someone’s email 98% of the time.

Again, it’s not to say that I haven’t had any success with sending a LinkedIn message, I just think it’s a suboptimal channel.

If anyone has any other thoughts on the efficacy of LinkedIn messages, please feel free to share in the comments. Also curious to hear if people like video (more vids here)…I’ve been experimenting with delivering content in this form a bit more lately.

I recently talked lifehacks, BD, WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER LINKEDIN MESSAGE SOMEONE etc at the New York Lifehack Meetup. Thanks for having me Sam Hysell!

Below you’ll find some video fun where we talk about:

• How I got involved with SP
• How to take the 80/20 approach to hack networking (shhhh…don’t tell anyone)
• Ways to “create value” for people when trying to network with the big boys
• The art of “creating serendipity” and how I got Keith Ferrazzi, author of my favorite book Never Eat Alone to buy me dinner
• How to give people a personal update on your life without it being a “ME, ME, ME” fest
• What the law of reciprocity is and how to leverage the heck out of it to convince someone to meet you for coffee
• The value of building a portfolio of assets
• How you can use yearly goals to structure each day (warning, To-Do lists are flawed!)
• Some baby steps on sleep hacking

My virtual assistant Josiah (love you dawg) helped break it up into the questions that Sam asked which can be found  each video link so that you don’t have to pan through 1.5 hours of me blabbering.

Note* I originally had all the videos embedded on this page, but it lookkkeeedddd really tacky / toolish so you’re going to have to click through to the YouTube for most of them [insert online marketer cringing here].

Heres’ Johnny…

How’d you get involved in Single Platform? Why do you love business development?

Video: How I Got Involved with SP

You brought up an interesting point at the class I went last week of yours, where with networking you’ve taken a lifehack approach and applied the 80/20 principal to developing your network. Can you tell us a little bit about how you’ve gone about developing your network and meeting people like Charlie O’Donnell?

What are some other ways you create value or sustain that creation of value aside from the content, maybe more on an individual level?

Video Fun: Ways to Create Value for Others

I remember in your class you mentioned an example when you went down to a conference and you staged a random shoulder bump with someone you wanted to meet and you already had a speech prepared for what you wanted to talk about. What are some of the key elements that make a strong first impression that’s going to make a sustainable lasting relationship? (Includes storytime: how I met Keith Ferrazzi)

Video: The Art of Creating Serendipity to Meet and Impress Awesome People

Yeah Keith!

How do you give a progress update to someone you want to maintain a relationship with, without it being “me, me, me?”

Video: How to Give A Progress Update Without Being Me Me Me

How do you go about creating the sense of serendipity when reaching out to somebody online? A.K.A How do you network with someone online to get a coffee meeting offline (hint: the law of reciprocity)

Now that we’re talking about creating this rapport before reaching out to somebody, what are the other reasons aside for creating that need for reciprocity that people won’t always respond to a cold email that I send out? (A hitch-hiker’s guide to writing BAD cold emails and what a bar interaction can tell us about writing emails)

Video: Never Write Cold Emails this Way

Are there any other things you’ve realized that are constant across people that have changed the game for how you deal with your business or personal life? (WARNING – Contains psychological hacks like how to bring up competitors without being a doosh)

Video: Psychology + Engineering Words and Copy

It seems like you have built up a nice portfolio of assets. The book you wrote and classes you have online. How have you gone about spending some of your time on tasks at hand and at the same time delegeting time to build up this portfolio of assets? This is all about blogging and audience building and why I spend a TON of time on it.

So do you wake up everyday with a list of tasks you want to do? Blog posts, send emails – are you regimented or how do you spend your days? This outlines how you can use yearly goal setting to devise a framework to structure each day.

Video: Using Yearly Goal Setting to Structure Each Day

I know you’ve been giving pretty awesome sleep hacking information, everybody wants more energy and get more stuff done without chugging more coffee, how have you gone about doing that and how can we do the same?

Video: A Primer on Sleep Hacking for Newbs (baby version)

If you enjoyed these, I reccomend following me on YouTube for more video fun. I’m going to be putting a lot of cray new stuff on there soon…it’s gonna be good.

Also be a sport and follow some other people who consistently put out excellent content: Noah Kagan, Ramit Sethi, Neville Medhora

Read this quote and tell me you’re not compelled to evaluate your life…

“Your willingness to look foolish is a small price to pay to get everything you ever wanted”

WHOWZERS…..The crazy thing is it’s true. 

In this post, I’m going to tell you how to overcome fear so you can get the things you want…

I strongly believe that the biggest thing that holds us back from getting everything we want is fear. Fear to look dumb. Fear to fail. Fear for retribution. Fear to even ask for what you want!!!

You know what’s weird? I bet 99% of the time your fears are completely irrational and self-fabricated. Most of us create justifications not to do things in order to protect ourselves from vulnerability…

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

•  You don’t talk to that beautiful girl or guy on the sidewalk..because you think you’ll look stupid.
• You don’t ask for that job you want…because you assume you won’t get it.
• You don’t reach out to someone you admire or look up to…because you think they probably won’t write back.
• You don’t start that project…because it will probably not work out anyways

What do all these scenarios have in common?

YOU DON’T GET WHAT YOU WANT.

The second commonality is that fear is what holds us back from action and ultimately knowing whether our inhibitions are actually true or some B.S. we tell ourselves to self-justify our failure to act.

So…how do we overcome fear to avoid this?

The most scalable way to conquer fear is to develop a tolerance for discomfort and rejection. The only way to acheive this is to intentionally displace yourself so that you encounter a ton of discomfort and rejection throughout all areas of your life…and come out alive.

Intentionally doing this exercise helps you realize that your fears are irrational and obliterates them. You’re left empowered to chase your desires with less hesitation (sometimes none at all!)

Ok Scott, so how the heck do I actually do this?

Here’s 10 practical things you can do  TODAY to work you’re discomfort muscle that will eventually help you overcome fear.

1. Consistently talk to strangers on the elevator for a week

2. Ask for more food as a quick serve restaurant (clip of how to do this I recorded today – go to 1:00)

3. Cold email someone you don’t know that you aspire to be like

4. Build a habit of saying “no” to things you don’t truly want instead of non-confrontational compliance. Examples: unnecessary coffee meetings or calls

5. Ask for a discount at a store or restaurant (another clip just recorded today on a way to do this – go to 0:20)

6. Ask someone senior in your company for lunch and their advice (clip explaining this)

7. Approach and talk to strangers you find attractive in public places…DURING THE DAY. (for super secret clips email me)

8. Aggressively jam out a.k.a dance/headbob on the subway by yourself while you listen to your tunes. I love this!

9. Stand in the open of a large public place for 10 minutes by yourself without using or looking at your phone, wallet, notes etc. Simply be…

10. Do 20 jumping jacks in public place where everyone can see you for shits and giggles

By consistently “doing the work” to intentionally stretch your comfort zone, you will gradually improve your tolerance for discomfort and rejection. You’ll become more fearless enabling you to aggressiely pursue the things you want instead of hoping you fall into them by virtue of circumstance or convenience. NEWSFLASH fellas – Mrs. Right isn’t going to ring your doorbell anytime soon.

Think of these as fear-ercises and focus on the process, not the outcome. 

When you frame action through the lens of an ultimate goal, you’ll detach yourself from immediate outcomes which fosters continuity. A.K.A. When I don’t care about the result and see everything as practice, I’m much more likely to do stuff that scares me.

If you’re into this stuff, as much as I am, I want to let you know about a sweet new meetup I’m starting with some buds called The New York Personal Development Meetup.

The goal of the meetup is  to develop a community of like-minded individuals to help encourage accountability and personal growth. Our first event will be on maximizing Health, Wealth, and Relationships and takes place on Thursday May 16th at The Alley in New York City.

You should definitely come…unless you have rippling abs, money is an afterthought, and you have countless members of the opposite sex vying for your attention.

For more details check out the link here and please share with friends who you think might be interested. It’s going to be saweet!

P.S. If you find yourself  thinking really hard about this and are serious about making a change in your life, you shouldn’t be embarrassed. Your friends who are too cool to work on themselves probably aren’t happy with their lives and never will be. Email me if you want to get serious (find email address here). I promise I won’t “probably not respond” ; )

I have a dedicated virtual assistant who helps me out for 10 hours a month through an awesome company called Zirtual. For the next 6 months I’m getting this service for free…

My virtual assistant’s name is Josiah and he’s an absolute stud. Today I want to tell you how I’ve leveraged existing assets to get this service for free for ATLEAST the next 6 months (retail value $1200 bones!). If you discount a crap ton of existing work on building a platform, this took me less than 2 hours accomplish. Time to explain…

Today, the only way you can get access to Zirtual’s network of U.S. based, dedicated virtual assistants is through a Zirtual referral from an existing customer. As a reward for a referral (literally sharing a hyperlink), customers receive a $100 credit for every new member they refer.

Because I absolutely love the service, I realized there might be an opportunity here to make (or save) some moula…upon realizing my unique leverage point, I did some research using the Google Keywords tool on search volume for Zirtual.

It turns out 1900 people a month searched explicitly for “Zirtual.” Obviously, Zirtual.com ranked #1 on google.

Using my available resources, I tried to identify what the second ranked search query mentioning Zirtual was. I stumbled upon the fact that “Zirtual Review” received about 90 exact queries monthly…aha! I then did an incognito google search and saw that the  top result for “Zirtual Review” was some random guys blog that I could probably conquer with intentional promotion.

Next Step

I wrote a blog post optimizing on the keyword “Zirtual Review” on my experience with Zirtual (which has been awesome). I knew that what most of the “outsourcing curious” wanted to know was what I actually had my virtual assistant do, so I literally listed everything I had him do that month. It was a big hit.

Due to the number of shares and keyword optimization, the post has received a good bit of traffic. In just 2 weeks, I was the top search result for “zirtual review.” Kobe!

I made sure to use Zirtual referral link throughout the post in order to capitalize on customer referral opportunities. To my delight, there’s been over 12 referrals through these links which equates to over $1200 smackeroos in credit. For the record, I also promoted these through a follow up email to a few Skillshare classes.

Once I realized the arbitrage opportunity, I decided to get fancy and do some google adwords. After all, if my blog post was converting and the bounty was $100 per conversion, I might as well throw some paid advertising at it. No one was bidding against “Zirtual” which meant there was a great opportunity to placate organic search with my referral engine…or so I thought.

I’m midway into a $100 adwords campaign and nothing has come of it. Of the 33 people who’ve I’ve driven to the article with adwards no one has clicked a hyperlink. Sigh.

Anyways, what can you take away from this post:

• If you put the time in, you can make or save thousands of dollars having an audience 
• If you’re blogging, you should spend time learning SEO and practice it!
• There’s plenty of opportunities to take advantage of high referral bounties if you have a destination site. Whatup PointsGuy!
• Only try paid advertising if you know what you’re doing or it makes sense given your margins/price point

Anywho, I hope you found this interesting. If you’re really good at SEO and reading this from NYC, I’ve been trying to step up make game. If you’re interested in potentially meeting up for a jam session hit me up in the comments…

Note* all Zirtual hyperlinks within this article are affiliate links. Yes, I do get a referral fee for this. But hey, it’d be way worse if I told you how sweet something was and then you couldn’t have it!

Also random thought: an opportunistic guy would probably also write a post optimized for “zirtual referral” ; )

Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing my buddy Max Altschuler, VP of business development at AttorneyFee and previously BD at Udemy. Max is a GTD type of dude.

In this interview we talk about:

• How he started a business making American $money$ abroad right out of school before joining education marketplace Udemy
• Insight into creating a process to build out the supply side marketplace for Udemy (hint – they leveraged outsourced labor!)
• Critical elements to successfully managing a pipeline and the “apology technique“
• Ways they compelled teachers to take action on their verbal commitments to teach courses
• Advice he’d give anyone whose looking to land a startup job
• His new gig at Attorney Fee and what he likes about the business (profitable and bootstrapped anyone?)

If you’re like me and prefer audio so you can listen to it on your phone we can do that here too…

Soundcloud link

If you know anyone interested in creative partnerships that appeals to the vibrant audience of lawyers that work with attorneyFee, definitely hit Max up.

I also highly recommend you check out his great blog MaxTalksHacks and follow him on twitter. Till next time.