Monte Carlo

On August 18, 1913, in the Monte Carlo Casino, something incredible happened.

At one of the roulette tables, the ball fell in black 26 times in a row.

That impossible streak of black destroyed many gamblers that day. The odds of hitting black 26 times in a row are a staggering 1 in 66.6 million. As the gamblers at the table continued to see black hit, they bet on the odds that a red streak would follow. It never did. So they kept losing money.

This event is the most famous example of the Gambler’s Fallacy. The Gambler’s Fallacy is the incorrect assumption that if a particular event occurs more frequently than normal during the past it is less likely to happen in the future (or vice versa). The ball lands in black 26 times, it has to land on red for a streak next, right? Wrong.

Humans look for patterns, streaks, signals and cues to help them make decisions. But here’s the thing, we are shit at recognising our own bias in relation to the streaks or patterns we see.

Do you remember taking your final year multiple-choice exams? Do you remember thinking to yourself: The last four answers were “A”, I know it. The next answer cannot be “A”. It can’t be. They’d never create a test that way. Never! So you chose “B” even though you kinda knew it was “A”. That’s the Gambler’s Fallacy at work. People believe that a short sequence of random events should be representative of longer ones when in fact this is not true.

Tossing a coin and seeing heads land 10 times in a row does not show that the next toss is more likely to be tails. It’s still a 50/50 shot that it’ll be either.

This fallacy exists everywhere. The more you think about it, the more you’ll realise how little control you have over your decisions. You’re gambling every day with every decision all the time and you don’t even know it. Your brain is hunting for patterns, sequences, cues and signals. We're hunting without even knowing it. These perceived patterns are screwing with your ability to make good decisions.

Life is not balanced. It is not fair. It is not sensible. It’s random but humans hate that. Humans hate to admit that life is random. We despise the idea that we have no ability to predict what is going to happen next. No real ability to give ourselves even the slightest of advantages.

Gambling is not fair but gamblers have a false belief that it is or they wouldn’t gamble. Chance itself is not fair or just or balanced. It’s chance. But we want it to be a fair process that balances out in the event of streaks. Life is the same. It’s not predictable, it’s not fair, it’s all over the place, random, fun, exciting, strange and intense. It can’t be any other way.

Pattern recognition is an important tool in your arsenal but it’s only one tool. You need more than patterns to make decisions or you’re gambling with your future.

Start looking for facts. Look for the cold hard truth about your situation. Look for the things you can control, not the probabilities of the things that may or may not arrive. It’s comforting to think that what worked for us in the past will work for us in the future but it’s naive. The world is different today, you are different today. Millions of variables are different today and need to be considered

Your life is more than a series of streaks, patterns and events that repeat themselves to give you an edge.

Stretching is Useless

Do you ever stretch?

I remember rugby practice at school, we used to stretch a lot. From grade 8 to first-team rugby, we would stand in a circle around the captain or coach and they would guide us through a 15-minute body stretch. We were taught that stretching is good for your muscles and prevents injury.

When we stretch before we exercise we think we’re loosening up the muscles to prepare them for what’s coming. We’re wrong. The science just doesn’t support the theory that stretching prevents injury.

A doctor recently told me that our muscles can only extend as far as they can extend. We think that we’re stretching our muscles before we start our exercise, but we’re not.

WE ARE STRETCHING OUR BRAINS!

When we stretch and then repeat the stretches day after day to increase how limber we are, what we’re actually doing is teaching our brains the existing limits of our muscles. We’re not increasing our muscles limberness. It’s our brains that are holding us back. Our brains think that our muscles are going to snap if we don’t consistently stretch them.

Of course, there are exceptions that prove the rule. If you are doing an activity like gymnastics or ballet that requires specific types of flexibility (like doing the splits) stretching probably won’t enhance your performance either

What else is my brain restricting? Was I actually like the main character in the film Limitless? Could it be possible that a single change could unlock my brain’s full potential?

Of course, I had to stop writing this newsletter immediately and watched Limitless for further research.

The main character takes a pill that unlocks his the full potential of his brain. It turns him into a genius in every aspect of his life with obvious Hollywood side effects.

I don’t think there is a pill that does this yet (cocaine users might claim this as a side effect of their drug use) but I do think that there is something that we can do to train our brains to embrace crazy limits.

Could it be self-belief? The love of a decent person? Parental guidance? None or all of these? Maybe.

But I think it all starts with curiosity.

Curiosity is your gateway drug to realising the impossible. The more curious you are about something the more you’re going to realise you don’t know and should know. If you believe something with all your might then you should be curious about it, you should challenge what you know about it and you should push the boundaries of what you accept as normal.

Stretching your muscles, stretching your acceptance of ideals and stretching your fundamental beliefs all involve pushing yourself to the limit of what you once held sacred. There is nothing sacred. There are no sacred cows in the world of the curious.

If you truly believe something then the only way to continue to believe it is to challenge it. You thought that stretching was helping you but it isn’t.

What else should you be challenging?

Nothing is Decided For You

When I was seven years old I decided that I wanted to be a war correspondent.

That idea stuck in my head for more than a decade. It stuck with me even when my father and uncle berated me because I would be poor (journalists don’t make a lot of money). It stuck with me even though I barely qualified to go to university to study journalism. It stuck with me all the way up until I started studying journalism.

At some point, while studying journalism I realised that I didn’t want to be a war correspondent any more. I completed my undergraduate degree in journalism and bolted out of the small town as soon as I could. I tried half-heartedly to follow the path set out before me but my heart just wasn’t in it.

It’s a funny thing having a dream and then watching it, letting it, fade away.

I have watched people with lofty dreams, insane goals and wild ambitions achieve the things they set out to do. I have watched as their dreams are realised and turn into nightmares. What the hell do you do at the age of 19 when your dreams have been realised? I have watched as their success destroyed them. I have watched as it dawned on them that money does not make you happy (it makes it easier to find happiness, but that’s a different newsletter).

Conversely, I have watched people dream of something and never realise it. I have watched as they shift their lives to try and accommodate a goal that will never be achieved. I have watched people turn into depressing mush because they believe they are mediocre and always will be. These people refuse to admit that their dreams are passed and that it’s OK to find new dreams, aspire to new things and want a different life.

These people don’t realise that nothing is decided.

There is no predetermined path.

There is always, always, ALWAYS a choice.

You will never be younger than you are today and you have agency. You are allowed to change direction if you choose to do so.

A dish from ONA restaurant

There is a vegan restaurant in south-west France that has been awarded a Michelin Star. This is noteworthy for many reasons, the least of which is that very few vegan restaurants have been awarded a Michelin star.

Claire Vallée is the chef at ONA and the most noteworthy part of this story to me is that she holds a doctorate in archaeology. The 41-year-old chef is self-taught and became vegan after a trip to Thailand. At some point, she decided that her archaeology doctorate wasn’t for her. She took a summer job at a restaurant and 8 years later hadn’t left. She then trained as a pastry chef and on a trip to Thailand became vegan. The rest, as they say, is food in your stomach.

Did you dream of being a painter? Then paint.

Did you dream of being a writer? Then write.

Did you dream of being a guitarist? Then learn to play.

Did you want to be a dentist but your family wanted you to be a lawyer? Then go back to school.

Nothing is decided. There is no predetermined path. There is always a choice and you have the time to be whomever or whatever you always wanted to be. Sure, the choice may be difficult, it may cause pain in the short term, it may leave a wake of destruction behind it, but you still have a choice.

Trying to Be the Best Is Killing You

Very few people in the world become the best of the best of the best in any field.

Lebron James

Lewis Hamilton

Jay Z, Elon Musk

Serena Williams

Taylor Swift

Jeff Bezos

Bill Gates

Warren Buffet

Ariana Huffington

Angela Merkel

Oprah Winfrey

Kamala Harris

Susan Wojcicki

Sheryl Sandberg

Jacinda Ardern

Beyoncé Knowles

Sara Blakely

The above are all astounding exceptions to the very average human experience. Tabloids, the Internet and social media give us unprecedented access to these exceptional people. This access tricks us into thinking we know them and are like them.

We feel connected to them because we can “like” their Instagram photos. We feel like we know them because we can listen to their podcasts. We think they are like us because we see them in the tabloids. We think we can become them if we work a little harder, think a little bigger or do a little bit more. That’s what we’re told by clickbait headlines and listicles we’re fed all day every day. Work a little more and inch closer to billionaire status. Pffft.

Here’s the thing… We are not these people.

I’m not Jeff Bezos (in spite of rocking the same haircut) and likely never will be. There is a not-so-small part of us that believes we deserve to be a billionaire or famous or exceptional in some way. I am sorry if I am popping a make-believe bubble you have created for yourself but it’s the truth.

You are never going to become a billionaire.

I don’t believe that this is a sad realisation at all.

Aspiring to be in the top 1% is what is slowly and consistently driving so many people crazy. We spend our lives trying to be something that we don’t understand and don’t truly want. We don’t understand what it takes to become the best in any given field and we don’t understand what it’s like to be famous or a billionaire. Why? Because we only see the curated results of the most famous and exceptional people in the world.

We don’t see the lost relationships.

We don’t see the pain and suffering required to become great.

We don’t see the anguish, sacrifice and loss that accompanies generational excellence.

We don't see that at some point money stops making you happy.

We see the version that keeps us on the hamster wheel. We see the version that locks us into the doomscrolling. We see the outcome, not the work.

Elon Musk sleeps in his boardroom. One day in 2007, Arianna Huffington was at home on the phone and checking emails when she passed out, fell, and woke up in a pool of blood, with a broken cheekbone and a cut over her eye. She worked herself into collapse.

We don’t see these moments.

We don’t see the suffering but we still want the glory.

What if we stopped wanting the glory of being the world’s best or wealthiest or happiest or biggest? What if we aimed for enough?

Did you know that the ideal income for happiness is about $75 000 per annum? There's research to back this up. A new study takes this even further: "We found that the ideal income point is $95,000 for life evaluation and $60,000 to $75,000 for emotional well-being..." explained Andrew T. Jebb, a doctoral student at Purdue University.

There is even more research involving wealthy individuals that illustrates tiny marginal increases in happiness as you increase your wealth:

Results showed those with a net worth of $3-$7.9 million US were no more satisfied with their lives than those with a net worth of $1.5-$2.9 million US. It wasn’t until net worth climbed to $8-$14.9 million US that respondents reported higher life satisfaction. Lastly, those with a net worth of $15+ million US reported being marginally more satisfied than the lower tier millionaires.

There is a very clear point at which money stops buying you happiness. We aspire to have an insane amount of money because we think that money can buy us happiness but it can’t.

So what’s the point of all this?

Enough.

Having enough is the point.

If you are an unhappy person with enough money you will be an unhappy person with a billion dollars. If you are unhappily above average you will be unhappily excellent. Achieving things does not make us happy indefinitely. Buying things definitely doesn’t make us happy.

I am trying to find enough in life.

Enough time to do the things I love to do.

Enough money to not worry about money.

Enough pain to appreciate the joy.

Enough sadness to enjoy the happiness.

Enough work to enjoy the play.

Enough.

I understand that billionaire status is not for me and becoming a world leader in my field will not make me happier.

I want to do the work that I love and I want enough. If that combination one day helps me reach the pinnacle of my field then so be it.

So, if you’re looking for me, I’ll be right here doing the work.

Be More Like Blue Cheese

I love blue cheese.

That mouldy, funky, pungent smell smacks me in the face when I smell it and the creamy, earthy, luxurious flavour wakes up my tastebuds when I eat it.

I truly do love blue cheese and I know some of you will agree with me.

I also know that many of you violently disagree with me.

I can’t think of anyone who is indifferent to blue cheese. You either love it or you hate it with a passion. It makes you gag or you have dreams about blue cheese pizza.

That’s exactly why you need to be more like blue cheese in your life.

A guy called Derek Sivers wrote a book called Hell Yeah or No and I am in love with this basic concept. Here’s the short version from his original blog post:

“If you’re not saying “HELL YEAH!” about something, say “no”.”

Like blue cheese; “Hell Yeah!” or “No”.

I strive for this level of certainty with everything in my life (except what to order for takeout or what to watch on Netflix, obviously). My friends and family, my business acquaintances and partners, my weekend activities, books I read, shows I watch and everything in between. HELL YEAH or no.

Everyone in my life knows where they stand with me. We’re either friends or we’re not. You like me or you don’t. I spend time with you or I don’t. We talk often or we don’t. There is no ambiguity. Like blue cheese.

Seeking bland is daft.

Hunting for the middle-ground is a massive mistake.

I am not suggesting that if you aren’t stupidly successful or wealthy that you have failed and found the perilous middle, no. I am suggesting that we must always have strong opinions, we must always try to be motivated and moved by the things that we are doing.

Of course, there are parts of life that are never going to be hedonistic like taking a shit or a shower. But why hang around with people who bore you? Why work on things that don’t inspire you? Why live with people who make you worse?

If you love blue cheese, eat it. If you don’t then find the cheese that you do love and eat it.

Where do you stand on blue cheese? Where do you think you stand in life? Middle-ground?

Do plan on moving away from the middle?

The Beauty of Boredom

When was the last time you were truly, deeply, brain-numbingly bored? Take a moment to think about that. It’s been a while since I allowed myself to be brutally bored.

It’s also been a long time since I gave myself 4 weeks off. I’m talking about almost a decade. In ten years I haven’t had a proper break from working and building businesses.

I needed to let my brain recover from an intensely anxious year.

The insanely intense year that was 2020 made me finally realise how badly I needed time off and how desperate I was to be bored. So I took the leap and committed to four weeks off.

What did I do with 4 weeks off?

Nothing.

Not a fucking thing.

I mean it. I did nothing meaningful. I set myself the goal of being as bored as possible as often as possible for four weeks.

For the first 8 days, I couldn’t bring myself to read a book. I couldn’t stop thinking about work. I couldn’t break the cycle of anxiety and guilt from having the luxury of doing absolutely jack shit every day.

As day 9 ended I realised that I hadn’t thought about work at any point in the day and that I had enjoyed 10 hours of nothing “meaningful”. I lay in the sun for an hour. I lay on the couch for an hour. I read a book for a bit. I took a nap. I played with my dogs for a while. I took an unusually long time to make lunch. I watched TV series for a bit and then took another nap. I washed the dishes, swept the house, cleaned the toilets and did any mundane task I could find to engage my boredom. I was actively trying not to accomplish anything and I succeeded.

I repeated the above for the rest of my time off and it was magical.

Boredom is beneficial to the brain, believe it or not. It lets your mind wander into interesting and different places which pushes your creativity into new directions. It allows you to think about the future more actively because you’re not distracted with the rush of everyday life. Boredom is also good for your mental health.

We have been tricked into thinking that boredom is a sin in modern times. We must pick up our phones, browse the TwInstaTokBookTube at all costs and be busy, even on our own, even at home, even when nobody is around. We. Must. Be. Busy.

My time off is over now and I am glad I did nothing with my month. I needed to do nothing. I needed to let my brain recover from an intensely anxious year.

I challenge you to try and be bored for one day. This weekend do nothing of any importance on Saturday. Read a terrible book, walk around your garden, play with your dogs, talk to your kids, wander around the house, go for a walk with no music or podcasts playing. Do nothing meaningful.

Give yourself permission to be bored. You’ll hate it until you love it.

Is life coaching a fad?

In the first Waitroom Session that I hosted, I encountered many interesting people and questions. FIrst up was Lin who asked me about life coacing. Is it just a fad? Is it worth spending time on becoming one if the trend is passing by or should she double-down and commit to becoming a coach?

The answer I gave might surprise you

Waitroom Sessions gives people 5 minutes to ask me anything about their business, startup or side hustle. In this episode, I discuss if life coaching is dyin...

You Are Not OPRAH

There is so much information out there to consume about great people. Documentaries, biographies, TV series, Twitter accounts, Instagram brags, YouTube shows, news articles and on and on and on. Greatness is everywhere and everyone aspires to be the next greatest in a long line of greatness.

Let me be the first to tell you that watching a Michael Jordan documentary doesn’t make you Michael Jordan. Reading the Steve Jobs biography doesn’t make you Steve Jobs. Watching Oprah every day doesn’t make you a world-class interviewer and media mogul.

Nine years ago when I first read Walter Isaacson’s book about Steve Jobs I immediately believed that being like Jobs was the only way to be a leader. I started to act as he did. I began treating people the way that he did. But here’s the thing - I am not Steve Jobs. Not even close. All I did was piss people off by being an asshole.

I’m not Steve Jobs and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever achieve what he achieved in his life. I am not Oprah Winfrey and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever achieve what she has achieved in her life.

I’m comfortable now to admit this but it’s hard in your early 20’s to think that you aren’t going to be great. I have a Greek mother who constantly instilled in me a sense of greatness and I am eternally grateful for that. But it’s also a lot of pressure to believe that you deserve to be great.

Nobody deserves greatness.

Don’t feel the pressure. Don’t try to be somebody else. Don’t try to live their lives and take the same path they did.

Or, feel the pressure and do the work for yourself. Find your own path. Carve out your own chunk of greatness.

We live in a world of misalignment. We see the end results of greatness, the greatness itself. You see Apple launching products that shape the future and define the present. You see Oprah interviewing the most incredible people in the world and growing her media empire. You see Jordan winning championship after championship but you never see (or choose not to see) the work that goes into their success. The sacrifices they make to change the world. The depression, the elation, the turmoil, the loss, the pain and everything in between.

You are not Oprah. You are not Jordan. You are not Jobs. Nor am I.

You are whoever you are and whether you like it or not, that has to be enough. Jobs, Jordan, Oprah and their equals all put the work in for many, many decades to gain the kind of success we aspire to when we see them online or read about their fame and wealth. None of it comes easy. Nobody owes us anything. Nobody handed the greatest people their greatness.

Expectation is the thief of joy and if you spend your life believing that you should be as rich as Warren Buffet, as talented as Lupita Nyong'o, as smart as Oprah or as successful as Michael Jordan then you’re only going to live a life of disappointment. Their lives are extraordinary and the exception.

We all have the ability to live a great life but perhaps expectation is killing our joy.

Laying Foundation

Waiting is an action. These words are a personal mantra of mine because I struggle with patience. I like immediacy. I like frantic. I like working at a pace that others struggle to keep up with.

There comes a time when there is nothing that you can (or should) do but wait. Laying foundation is about doing the work and being patient.

It’s easy to think that plans are made exclusively to be actioned but some plans and strategies require a certain level of waiting.

If you buy stocks and are not a day-trader, you need patience to ride out the ups and downs of the markets. You need to wait to see what happens and have an end goal in mind. If you are impatient you will lose money.

If you are impatient, often you will lose. Not just money but whatever leverage you have.

Was this year a foundational year or a growth year? Was this year one of action and driving forward? What kind of year did you plan on having versus the kind of year you ended up living?

Waiting is an action. Sometimes all you can do is wait.

The Treadmill of Happiness

Here’s how happiness works:

You work.

You earn money.

You use that money to buy things.

Those things cost you money, duh. So you work to earn more money to pay off the things you’ve purchased (because obviously, you can’t really afford the things you want). You then want more things to make you happier and those things cost more money so you work harder to earn more money to buy those things. You buy the things that cost more money and sometimes live in those things or drive those things. Then you want newer, bigger, more costly things so you decide to work to earn more money. You buy those things and then…

Then…

THEN… you are finally happy.

Right?

RIGHT?

Nope.

It’s pretty fucking stupid when it’s written out like that. Expecting happiness to be the outcome of buying shit that we more often than not don’t need and definitely can’t always afford.

I have been conditioned to believe that these things should make me happy. I still battle with this of course, but every day I actively work to want less.

There’s this human tendency called the Hedonic Treadmill (or hedonic adaption). The basic premise is the more you have the higher your expectations rise, the higher your desires rise and the less likely you are to achieve the happiness that you believe is attached to the things you have to buy.

There have been studies done on lottery winners and people who have suffered some kind of loss or permanent injury and in both cases people in the study return to previous levels of happiness relatively quickly. I’m talking about weeks and months here, folks, not years and years. It’s mere months between buying that new house, moving in and treating it like the place where you’ve always lived with no more elevated happiness.

More stuff doesn’t mean more happiness. Sad but true.

Think about your own life and your path towards more. You had a small car and you were happy it took you places. You purchased a bigger, more expensive car and then… you were happy it took you places. That’s it. That’s the treadmill we need to step off of. The world we live in has tricked us into believing that our state of happiness is directly proportional to the things we can buy but the proof of this increase in happiness just does not exist. That’s why we need to buy more things or eat more food or drink more alcohol because we aren’t happier after buying a $500 pair of shoes. That becomes our normal and then we’re sprinting on that treadmill again.

More doesn’t mean happier.

I don’t know what makes everyone happier as a human race but I know what works for me.

I am happiest when I have the freedom to work on the things that inspire me.

I am happiest when I spend time with people who motivate, challenge and push me to be a better version of myself.

I am happiest when I’m not doom-scrolling through social media.

I am happiest when I’m not a slave to my email.

I am happiest when I’m reading my book or listening to music that I love.

Have you given any thought to what makes you genuinely happy? Don’t read past that question. I mean it. Have you actually thought about your happiness and how to acquire more of it?

Is it your new car or where the car is taking you?

Is it your newly laid lawn or what you get to do on the lawn?

Is it the money you spend on eating a ridiculously expensive dinner or the people who you share the meal with?

I don’t have the answers but I really wish more people contemplated the question.

Relationships are choices

One of the major roadblocks that people put in their way when starting a side hustle or business is their relationships.

“My partner doesn’t agree with this business.”

“My husband doesn’t want me to work on the weekends.”

“My father/mother/friends think I should forget this idea.”

Or one of the most popular excuses: “People will laugh at me if I fail.”

Let me get straight to the point: You are using these people as excuses for your own fears.

Your fears are driving you away from the life you want and the side hustle that could change everything. The people who drag you down are pulling you away from your success and you tolerate them. You tolerate them. You enable them. You allow them to belittle you and your ambitions because they happen to be your family, your friends or some random person that you told your idea to. That is batshit crazy.

You can choose different friends. You get to choose your family, especially if they’re assholes. Especially if they’re dragging you down to their level and beating you with experience.

You can choose to stop engaging with your family if they are bad for you. It’s OK to admit they are bad for you. All across the world, there are people who have siblings, parents, friends and extended family who hurt them, disappoint them or damage them. You don’t have to be a part of that.

I have had some difficult relationships in my life; an uncle who turned out to be a child molester and drug addict. Friends who I thought were close to me but never really cared about me. A business partner who betrayed my trust and sold a business behind my back.

These are meant to be relationships that uplift you and make you a better person. They didn’t for me and that’s actually OK.

It’s OK to walk away from relationships that are bad or even ones that are just not good enough.

At one point very early on in my entrepreneurial career, I was 19 years old and at university studying journalism. I started an online student publication with two friends. We slaved away building the site called StudentWire. It was a news aggregator for student news and after about 10 months of building this business, gaining traction and doing the hard work to get it live and get ten university campuses to provide us with weekly news stories I realised that my two business partners wanted the business to be a non-profit.

At university, there is always this undertone of saving the world and doing good and this message is often mixed up with anti-capitalism rhetoric that suggests that you cannot do good and make money. I believe you can do good and make money. We were at an impasse. We had fundamentally different ideals and there was really no way around it. I took the lead and decided that I believed the business could go all the way if we made if a for-profit entity. I stood my ground and took over the business from the two partners who were willing to give up their equity for their ideals.

That’s completely acceptable. That’s how things go. You sit down, you have a conversation and you decide if you stay together or move on. In truth, I don’t think our relationships were every the same but that’s also OK. I made a decision based on my world view and I stood by it. Not every partnership is going to work out. Not every friendship remains and not every person in your life is meant to be there forever.

You only have a finite amount of time each day, week, month, year to engage with other humans. You get to decide if you engage with humans that make you better or make you worse.

I choose to surround myself with friends who are the best people I know. They make me better, they support my side hustles, they push me every day to be a better version of myself and they hold me accountable.

Sure, sometimes we get smashed and have a party. Sometimes we talk about nothing and send each other random memes but these are people who I want to be more like and who will help me at the drop of hat and ask for nothing in return.

Everyone deserves this kind of person in their life. If you even have to second guess your relationships then it’s time to really analyse that relationship and decide if it’s more effort to stay in it than to get out. Is it better for you to be involved with these people or to walk away? Do they want the best for you and are they actively trying to help you get there?

Believe it or not, you get to choose. You get to decide who you spend time with. You are not obligated to see people just because they’ve always been around or you share some DNA.

To start a business, a side hustle, a new career or job you need the best people in your corner and if you don’t have them then your task becomes orders of magnitude more difficult.

Find the best people and get close to them.

You don't have to suffer in silence with relationships that are bad for you. Not in life. Not in business. --------------------------------------------------...

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Building A Personal Brand Side Hustle

Authenticity is key. It’s so much easier to consistently be yourself than to try and be someone else. If you think about your favourite celebs, they’re just being themselves - and it’s so much easier to invest in them and like them. 

If you are wanting to start a side hustle, one of the first things to consider is how to position yourself, whether you are the “brand” or your product is the brand. For side hustles, where you are brand, the only way to make it work is to put yourself (and not someone else you are pretending to be) out there.

“Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.”

This quote comes from Jeff Bezos. And as much as he is controversial, he is a business mind and he’s managed to make a pretty massive success, starting Amazon as an online side hustle.

Your personal brand is what you do and how you do it. Since it’s centred around you, it’s not something you can (or should) try and fake.

The best side hustles that pay you to be yourself

YouTube Video Streaming

More and more people are interested in making and consuming bite-sized content. This means authentic homemade videos have skyrocketed in popularity. 

Vlogging and YouTube channels are now sitting on potential pots of gold with niche, loyal followers available for each industry. With a little effort (and a lot of consistency), it’s possible to start a pretty lucrative side hustle with a focus on video production.

Consistency is key if you want video content to be a serious income stream. You also need to be comfortable behind a camera and have some skill editing video (but that you can easily learn “on the job”).

For example, Casey Neistat is one of my favourite YouTube vloggers. His authenticity and consistency won me over completely.

Even though Casey does things which are simple in practice, the fact that he does them daily is what makes him impressive. He often messes up, stumbles over words, slips, slams doors, cuts open packages that end up cutting through his products. Whatever. Push on and be consistent.

Remember, with all content-related side hustles: Done is better than perfect.

With video streaming, revenue is possible through ads (either paid through the platform or by partner advertising), selling products or merchandise or by crowdfunding in your video content.

Instagram Influencing

So many people grow up dreaming of a life of fortunes and fame. It’s what the media shows us as glamorous, so we’re obsessed with the potential of the razzle and dazzle. The hard truth: So many people want A-lister fame, but so few people get it.

Luckily, you don’t need to have to be in the Hollywood spotlight anymore to have a profitable personal brand. With the world living on social media, the stage is set for you to make a profit from your personal brand from behind your screen. Using Instagram to market your side hustle with a business account, you can monetize the platform by finding the right niche, building a good following and creating a consistent strategy. 

Part of the side hustling process is developing the right voice and targeting a loyal customer base or audience, so building (or harnessing an existing) following on the social platform also acts as a great way to focus up and promote your side hustle product.

Blog Writing

Content is king, but it’s not easy to sell, not itself at least. While you might not be able to monetize just the content of your blog easily, you can make use of the platform where it lives. 

If you have a blog which you update regularly with authentic educational, informative, and entertaining content and are able to drive readers to it, you’re already on your way to make it a side hustle income. A blog which gets traffic is a fantastic way to generate extra revenue because there are a couple of strategies you can use to make money with it. There is space for advertising, selling merchandise, books, products, services, and coaching on blog platforms. You can also diversify and have affiliate links to make money if you partner with a relevant company to your industry and offer discount codes on your blog’s site.

Twitch Streaming

Like with all content-specific side hustles, consistency is the key to unlock the potential revenue.

Avid gamer and Twitch streamer Jordan Slavik commented on building a following on Twitch: “Successful channels — like companies — are built up over years, not over days or weeks. The most important thing is to keep producing materials.”

Twitch is a platform which has many supportive fans tuning in to watch their favourite gamers. And that support can come in the form of steady revenue. Starting a side hustle through Twitch streaming requires a niche and consistent hard work, but once you’ve got a loyal following - even if you’re not the best gamer - you’re on the path to profiting from your time. Top tips: Make sure you stream with a regular schedule too, so your fans know when to tune in. Once you have a following, don’t pretend they’re not there for you. They are, so engage with them! Ask questions, make jokes, reply to their comments. Provided you stay consistent - and if you’re authentic, this should be pretty easy - they’ll stick around to watch you.

Entrepreneur Success Stories: 51 Businesses That Started as Side Hustles

51 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money

What is Entrepreneurship: The Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

LEARN FROM MASTERCHEF - Do Less But Better

I am obsessed with Masterchef Australia. If you have never seen it, it’s a cooking show where they take amateur chefs and over the course of a three-month competition pick a winner who ends up becoming a pretty formidable chef in the industry.

The most recent season has given me a lot of pause for thought. One of the main themes that emerge is the young chefs always try to do too much in the time allocated to them for their cook.

They’ll often say that they would usually cook this meal in 3 hours but today they’re going to try and get it done in 45 minutes. And I moan and think to myself how stupid they are.

Then throughout the cook, they keep adding elements to their dish. A crumb here, a tuile there, an extra this that or the next thing and by the end of the cook their dish has more than ten different elements on the plate.

Now, for the absolute masters, this is not a problem. They can make each element perfect and balance the flavours so that the dish sings as you bite into it. But for most of the contestants doing too many elements ends up with them being eliminated and going home.

I recently posted a video about saying no to things more often than you say yes to them and this goes hand in hand with trying to do too much with the thing you’ve chosen to do.

If you are trying to grow your audience, you can either build a social media strategy for one platform and get it right or build a strategy to try and be everywhere. I’d argue that making one platform work at a time is more sensible than trying to boil the ocean with a magnifying glass.

I’m trying to teach myself to do less but better, like the best chefs in the world.

What is Entrepreneurship: The Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

51 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money

Entrepreneur Success Stories: 51 Businesses That Started as Side Hustles

Is Muscle Memory holding you back?

Recently I watched a short documentary about the two fastest speed cubers in the world. If you’re not sure what the hell that is, watch this:

What you are witnessing is a combination of an incredible amount of data, pattern recognition, finger dexterity and algorithms all coming together in under 7 seconds of brilliance.

The documentary tells the viewer that most of the professional speedcubers memorise up to 300 different algorithms that they can then combine to solve any of the 43 quintillion possibly permutations. When you think about it this way it’s quite an incredible achievement but in truth, it really is just about practice and muscle memory.

The concept of muscle memory is often just thought of in a sporting context. You teach your physical muscle to remember something by practising that thing over and over and over again.

I haven’t played the guitar in a couple of years but the other day I picked one up and strummed away. Muscle memory.

This documentary really got me thinking about what other kinds of muscle memory I use and teach myself every day. When I stopped to consider the endless things I do every day it’s actually quite overwhelming.

The one that I want to focus on is the one that we probably think has the least impact on our lives: self-talk.

Self-talk occurs when you tell yourself that you can or cannot do something. When you tell yourself that you do or do not deserve something. When you think you’re not smart enough or pretty enough or that you shouldn’t eat that or you should do more of something because of XYZ. These micro-moments throughout your day are either helping you to become a better version of yourself or they are teaching you to be too hard on yourself, setting you up for failure before you’ve even begun.

If you are considering a new venture or job, if you think you might deserve a better partner or a raise at work and you talk yourself out of taking that first leap you are teaching yourself that you don’t deserve good things.

Your brain remembers this and over time you don’t even have the conversation with yourself, you just stop trying.

The muscle memory we employ every day really does matter and just like any skill, you can teach yourself to be and do just about anything (within the limitations of the natural world of course).

Next time you catch yourself talking shit to yourself I want you to stop and think about why and then I want you to get irritated with yourself and stop it.

Positive self-talk takes a conscious effort to get right but frustratingly negative self-talk is easy to let slide and not notice. Take notice of how you talk about and to yourself because words really matter. But that’s a topic for a different article altogether.

What is Entrepreneurship: The Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

51 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money

Entrepreneur Success Stories: 51 Businesses That Started as Side Hustles

Where Does Your Self-Worth Come From?

Since I was the 16 years old I’ve been building a business as part of my daily life. That’s twenty years of business building. Over the past ten years I have also been a professionally paid public speaker presenting keynotes at conferences and corporate events around the world.

These two things have carried a lot of my personal self worth.

The past 6 months have forced me to reflect on where my self worth comes from and what happens when I can’t feed it in the ways that I have become used to.

Obviously speaking at conferences has completely changed and initially disappeared almost entirely. So I crossed that off my list of ego-feeding tasks.

Then in January I exited a business that I had been building for two years and decided refocus my work on writing my next book and helping people build side hustles through my online courses and content. So that meant that I wasn’t really building a business for the first time in my adult life.

The two main sources of my self worth have evaporated in the space of half a year.

I didn’t realise it at the time but about three months into this new life I had sunk into a slight depression. Mostly the depression had to do with being locked in a one bedroom apartment under the brutal South African lockdown laws but when I discussed it with my psychologist (over Zoom initially) he helped me understand that everything that once made me feel a sense of value was gone from my life.

This got me thinking about how we value ourselves and where we derive our self worth from. More often than not you are gaining your self worth from something that you haven’t spent much time choosing, it just happens. Your house and how big it is, your car and how expensive it is, your kids and how well they perform compared to other kids, how good looking your partner might be, how smart people think you are, how many social media likes and followers you have and on and on the list goes. These are all things that feed our ego and impact our self worth.

With no business and no stage in my immediate future I have had to seriously reevaluate where my self worth comes from and if I like it that way.

I don’t have a clear answer yet, unfortunately, but I do want to keep asking myself if I am happy with the things that I value and how they make me feel.

What is Entrepreneurship: The Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

51 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money

Entrepreneur Success Stories: 51 Businesses That Started as Side Hustles

Your Side Hustle Should Be Additive Not Subtractive

It’s so easy to start something that you end up hating:

1. Start something new without much thought behind it

2. Do it for a short time

3. Watch vanity metrics only and become frustrated with your lack of likes and followers

4. Keep going but hate the work because your goals are not defined or badly laid out

5. Eventually, quit but not after pain, suffering and loss of capital

That’s it, that’s how easy it is to start something and hate it very quickly.

I believe that side hustles are a fantastic way to make some extra money and also live a bit more of life. Find project, problem or business that interests you and then slowly start turning it into something that other people might want to spend money on. That’s the dream but it often doesn’t work out that way.

Here’s a small tip that can make a huge difference to how you build out your side hustle income streams:

Side hustles should be ADDITIVE to your life and not SUBTRACTIVE.

When you build anything of value it should add more to the life that you live, not subtract from it. Yes, of course, it will be difficult but ultimately it should not be bad or subtractive.

If you decide to start a side hustle and you commit the time and attention to do so you should also be patient and consistent without adding negative pressure to your day to day life.

To make your side hustle additive you should consider the following:

How much time do you really have to commit to your side hustle?

Most people believe that they live full lives and don’t have any extra time in their day to allocate to a new project. The litmus test for this statement is to count how many hours of your day you spend watching TV. For the average person, that figure is anything between 4hrs and 8 hrs PER DAY!!!

If you watch two hours of TV a day then you have two hours a day to build a side hustle. If you can only afford two hours per week, that’s great, segment that time out, put it in your calendar and spend focused, dedicated, non-distracted time building that bad boy out! But remember, do this consistently and be patient. Work in the allocated time and don’t let yourself get distracted.

Have you defined your success triggers?

What does success look like for this side hustle? Are you trying to make a shitton of money or just a little? Are you trying to build an empire or a small and steady stream of income? This part is so key to allowing your side hustle to be additive.

If your goals are too lofty and unrealistic then every minute spent on it will seem like it’s not enough and that you’re letting yourself down. Make sure to scrutinize your success triggers so that they fit in with your life.

Do the people in your immediate life know you are starting this project and understand how much of your time it’s going to take away from them?

If you don’t tell anyone in your life that you are starting something new and big that is going to sap your time then they are going to flip out when you disappear. And that’s on you.

Communication is imperative when it comes to your side hustle so do me and yourself a favour and talk to your kids, your friends, your partner, your parents and whoever else you have commitments with and let them know what you’re planning. They don’t have to like it but you do have to talk to them.

Are you mentally and physically fit enough for this new challenge?

Sure, the main reason most people start a side hustle is to make money but that goal alone isn’t enough to drag you through the mental and physical anguish that a side hustle might cause you. There is no quick way to make extra money (if anyone tells you there is then they are probably trying to sell you Herbalife or Amway pyramid schemes) and if you come to terms with this fact then the most important thing you can do to make your side hustle additive is to get your mind right and treat your body with care.

You can’t stay up until 2 am every morning, eat shitty food and never do any exercise but still expect to stay healthy, mentally fit and ready for the stresses of an extra project on the side.

Take care of yourself first and the rest becomes much easier.

What is Entrepreneurship: The Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

51 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money

Entrepreneur Success Stories: 51 Businesses That Started as Side Hustles

Our Irrational Obsession with Billionaires Needs to Stop

Here’s the thing: I like Kanye West’s music (his pre-god music) but I don’t care what he thinks about planned parenthood and abortion. 

I want to drive a Tesla and hope that SpaceX gets humanity to Mars, but I don’t care what Elon Musk thinks about the global pandemic. 

I shop at Amazon, but I don’t care if Jeff Bezos believes that investing in cryptocurrency is a good idea or not. 

I would wear Kylie Jenner’s lipstick before I listen to her opinion on politics. 

Yet when these billionaires comment on anything, we listen. When they announce presidential races, we indulge them. Forbes recently interviewed West about his run for office in the USA and the interview is absolutely batshit crazy. It’s so crazy that the best they could do was quote West in incoherent chunks and avoid writing an actual story, because his meandering smashing together of words was practically unusable. 

Another potential American president who babbles on incoherently. Great. 

As a society, we need to place much more importance on what experts say about topics that they have dedicated their lives to. We need to stop listening to wealthy people about everything. 

I want to hear Jay-Z’s views on the evolution of music. I’m interested in what Kylie Jenner has to say about growing a brand from zero to a billion – that makes sense. 

When it comes to things like global pandemics, medical procedures, quantum physics and international relations, I want to hear from people that have dedicated their lives to these fields… not someone who is dipping their toe in for a lark. 

I do not want to read about Kanye West telling Forbes that vaccines are “…the mark of the beast,” and that planned parenthood has “…been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work”.

Here’s another unqualified rich man who is anti-abortion telling women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies. Why are we indulging his ill-informed opinions and giving him a microphone on some of the most important platforms in the world?

We let these people speak because they are billionaires. We have become obsessed with wealth as an indicator of all-encompassing knowledge and experience. 

I was recently sent a press release that triggered this column. The PR agency pitched this and similar headlines: 

Can Billionaires Teach Us How to Thrive in Crisis? 

No, they can’t. 

They’re billionaires and they live on their isolated islands, football field-sized yachts that float in international waters to avoid the global pandemic, and in mansions that could house hundreds of people. 

They cannot teach me or anyone else how to thrive in a crisis because they don’t live in a crisis: in fact, they barely live on the same Earth as the rest of us. Not any more. To these people, Earth just looks different. 

There are 2,095 billionaires in the world that we know of, but I’m sure there are many more who don’t want us to know who they are. That’s 0.000027% of the population. These people have unthinkable wealth and are only earning more of it, yet now we’re also giving them our minds.

My frustration extends beyond the click-bait headline of desperate PR people. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I support freedom of speech that allows people to say what they want and when they want, and to receive fair and reasonable criticism. But I’m sick of listening to wealthy, famous and good looking people with tens of millions of fans on social media talk about things they know nothing about. 

I believe in democracy but I do not believe in politicians. I am borderline libertarian in my views of governance, but where is the line? When do we prevent crazy people like West, Musk and others from dictating how we see the world and using their billions to win office and change laws?

The unchecked impulse of the wealthy and famous to tweet whatever comes to mind does real societal damage, all in the name of ego-stroking. 

Let’s talk more about Kanye West’s announcement that he’s running for president of the USA. West is a verified billionaire (Forbes calculates his net worth to be around $1.3bn). He has also recently emerged as a religious zealot who believes that the coronavirus can be cured by prayer, and that his god elects the president of the USA (his god, not the other roughly 2,999 gods that humans believe in). 

This same guy is running for president (although it seems his run has come to an abrupt end, thankfully) and has a good shot at gaining votes. HE HAS NEVER VOTED IN HIS LIFE. He is barely equipped to run a household, let alone a country. Yet he has a platform because he sells a lot of sneakers and can rap over a beat. He’s damn good at rapping and he sure knows how to brand himself, but outside of this, he has no qualifications that justify his destructive messages. He is scientifically bankrupt and morally questionable. Have we learned nothing from Donald Trump?

Why are we empowering billionaires? Why are we giving dogmatic nut jobs a microphone? Is it because we are so empty of our own opinions that we need the rich, famous and good looking to think for us? 

Is it easier to allow populists to make decisions for us than to formulate our own views and act accordingly? Or are our democratic institutions ready for disruption? Is this not exactly what democracy is? An individual who believes that they should run for president and can do so without hesitation. 

I believe in democracy but I do not believe in politicians. I am borderline libertarian in my views of governance, but where is the line? When do we prevent crazy people like West, Musk and others from dictating how we see the world and using their billions to win office and change laws?

There is no line here. We have let the crazies run the insane asylum. This is our doing.

As I have said already, I believe that everyone has the right to their own opinions, but outrage is engagement. Social networks, news organisations, YouTubers, influencers and anyone trying to gain traction for their opinions seek to spark outrage. Outrage stems from polarising people, not galvanising them. The middle ground is boring. 

The extremes incite violence, rage and retweets. Sadly, people do not understand the difference between having an opinion and having facts. You can have your own opinion, but you cannot have your own unique facts. Social media and traditional media outlets are rewarded for inciting outrage. 

The old version of this used to be, “if it bleeds, it leads” but we have progressed far beyond this now. Where does the responsibility lie? Is it with our governments? Are the laws ripe for change and ready to be upended? I don’t think so. More laws won’t fix this problem. 

I implore you to read as much as you can stomach. It is your democratic obligation to be informed. Take in opinions that disagree with your own and challenge your core beliefs. Vocally challenge things that you think are dangerous but remove your ego and try to listen and learn wherever possible. 

Is it with our educational institutions? Perhaps. Maybe we need educators to prepare impressionable minds for the onslaught of fake news, made-up facts and wealthy uninformed power-houses pushing agendas to make them richer. 

Or does responsibility lie with the wealthy who should be editing themselves to save the masses? That will never happen. Billionaires become billionaires because they are ambitious, egocentric and mostly selfish. These are not traits that serve a community very well. 

I believe that the ultimate responsibility lies with each of us. It’s our job to know who is talking to us and what has informed their view of the world. It’s our job to question everything we read and question why it’s being said in a specific way on a specific platform to a specific audience. 

It’s our job to challenge politicians, to challenge laws, to fight for change, to openly debate things that upset us and to indulge other people with differing opinions as long as they aren’t causing harm to other people. 

I believe that opinions stemming from the Trumps, Musks and Wests of the world are causing more damage than the world can manage. Social media has made it too easy for unchecked opinions to gain traction and muddy the facts so that most people can’t tell which way gravity is pulling them.

I implore you to read as much as you can stomach. It is your democratic obligation to be informed. Take in opinions that disagree with your own and challenge your core beliefs. Vocally challenge things that you think are dangerous but remove your ego and try to listen and learn wherever possible. 

Finally, do not agree with everything you see online (even this column) just because it has appeared online. Dig deeper, find out who the author is, find out what they believe in, find out why they hold this opinion – and then see if you still like what they’ve said. 

This is how we overcome idiocy and dangerous extremism. It’s on us. No one is going to save us from ourselves.

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This article was originally published in The Daily Maverick.

What is Entrepreneurship: The Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

51 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money

Entrepreneur Success Stories: 51 Businesses That Started as Side Hustles

Three reasons you haven't started a side hustle

Absolutely everyone has an idea that they think could become a side hustle that makes money. Shockingly few people actually take that idea and turn it into a side hustle. Why? What makes us so scared to venture out of our comfort zones and try something new, start something different and potentially improve our financial situations? We seem to have society that scared of starting.

I want to change that.

Over the past 20 years I have built many side hustles, some succeeded and became a fulltime gig for me, many did not but thanks to these attempts I realised that there are three main reasons that I and other people don’t start a side hustle. They are not complicated reasons but they are real and scary for most people.

I want to talk about them so that we can address them and let them go.

1. You’re scared of failure.

Fear of failure is the number 1 reason people don’t start a side hustle. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that fear of failure is the number 1 reason people don’t do anything exciting, scaring, new, difficult or risky.

“What if I fail?” is the question that keeps you up at night, that you wont bring up with your partner or friends and that eventually makes you want to crawl into a little ball in bed, cover your head with the duvet and rock yourself to sleep.

Failure is a bitch. It hurts, it’s a blow to the ego and often you believe it’s the thing people are waiting for or expecting of you. But you’re wrong. As much as it hurts, failure is a fantastic way to learn and if your frame failure as a method of teaching then you never lose! You actually gain. You gain experience. You learn what not to do the next time. You have lived. If you never start then you have definitely not experienced a full life.

I like to ask people to test out their idea in the following way:

If your side hustle fails will you die?

I’m serious.

Will you literally die? No? Then fuckit, do the thing.

If all that happens when you fail is that you feel bad, learn something new and move on then what the hell do you have to lose? NOTHING!

2. You're scared of what people will say.

Do you know how many people are thinking about you right now as you read this sentence? None.

No one is actively thinking about your achievements this very minute. That means that while you sit and worry about other people, they are not doing the same. No one does that. Do you?

Do you sit and think about the people you know throughout the day hoping they’re failing at what they do? Waiting for them to update their LinkedIn profile that they have quit their new side hustle? No, of course not! That’s insane.

When I was running Nic Harry (a fashion side hustle that I started with $350 and turned into a full-time six figure business before selling it) I would tell people that they shouldn’t worry about what people think of their outfit because everyone is only worried about how their own outfits look.

Same thing with your side hustle.

But let’s say that you do actually give a shit what other people say. Why do you think the people in your life would berate you for failing? If you truly believe they would then you have the wrong people in your life. Before you consider starting your side hustle you better get your house in order and find the right people to support you through this experience.

Starting a side hustle is no joke and the people you surround yourself with can make or break your ability to survive the beginning stages of a side hustle.

Take a good look at the people you call your closest friends and family, anyone who would mock you for failing or starting should be gone, soon.

3. You think you don't have enough startup capital.

It’s strange to think that people believe the only way to start a side hustle is with startup capital. There are hundreds of thousands of businesses all over the world that start with a sale, a thought, a product that took years to build because money was tight.

Lack of funding is a roadblock that you put infront of your path to success. It’s strange how much we sabotage ourselves with roadblocks. It’s like we hate succeeding.

Let’s break out some figures:

If you save $50 a month for 12 months you’ll have $600.

At the start of the 13th month you can take $600 and buy product you believe in and then sell it for $1200.

You get where I’m going with this, right?

You need to build something small before you can build something big and we all think too big when we start out.

You don’t need a lot of money and most often you don’t need any money at all to start a business.

What do you need?

A product or service to sell.

A customer who wants to buy.

If the product you want to sell costs money then start saving right now and work out how long it’ll take you before you can buy stock.

There are ways to make it work. Think laterally, talk to people and probe the problem from different angles until you’ve found a way to build the side hustle you want.

But don’t rush.

Very often people want capital because they believe that they need to start TODAY or it’ll never work. That’s bullshit. There are very, very few side hustles that are time sensitive and I am almost certain that yours is not one of them.

Be calm, save money and then get started.

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If you are serious about your side hustle but think you need some help then you’re at the right place.

Click the button below to find out more about my book, online course and coaching. Let’s #StartSomething together.

51 Side Hustle Ideas to Make Extra Money

What is Entrepreneurship: The Characteristics of an Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur Success Stories: 51 Businesses That Started as Side Hustles

No More Blue Ticks - Why I Turned Off All Notifications

For a long time I expected that when I sent someone a message, I was owed a response almost immediately. This caused problems with friends, fights with my partner and frustration with business partners because they were, in my mind, all ignoring me.

Here’s how it went down in my mind: What absolute bullshit! How can it take anyone two hours to reply to a message from ME!? Surely they know I have things to do and their reply is imperative to the continuation of my day. Without this immediate response my day is ruined, don’t they know!? I just spoke to them like ten minutes ago, did they throw their phone over the wall and jump off a cliff? COME ON!

That is how my mind understood communication; I sent you a message, aren’t you lucky, you must respond immediately.

Earlier this year I was working in a high-pressure startup that required a lot of care and attention. The founding team - of which I was a part - was in close communication almost every hour on the hour throughout much of the day and a chunk of the evening. We operated in multiple timezones and even when we were altogether everything was urgent and it was understood that responses were immediate for any and all communication.

Then I left the company.

When my time at the company was over I decided to rethink how I use the communication tools at my disposal. I took a very detailed look at my anxiety levels, stress levels and my expectations of the people around me. I realised that real-time communication was destroying me, my relationships and my ability to do the work that I was most interested in.

Everything is real-time in 2020. News, communication, trauma, success, happiness, sadness, it’s all in real-time and streamed all over the world. You want to watch something else? Cool, pick from Hulu, Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, etc etc. You don’t like what you’re reading? Cool, change it up and read something new on your kindle, phone, iPad, laptop. You want to see your friend a million miles away? No problem, Whatsapp video call, Zoom, Hangouts, Skype, Teams, check their Instagram story, Facebook story, TikTok uploads or anything else. You want it. You got it. No questions asked.

Even email is not perceived as asynchronous any longer. People expect you to receive, read and reply within minutes and if you don’t reply they send you a Whatsapp message and if you don’t reply to that they straight up, old school dial your number and phone you to tell you about the Whatsapp message they sent you about the email they sent you.

There is no escaping it, people expect you to reply to everything immediately.

But before I go on, let’s try to understand what happens to your brain when you receive an email or message.

“I feel tremendous guilt,” admitted Chamath Palihapitiya, former Vice President of User Growth at Facebook, to an audience of Stanford students. He was responding to a question about his involvement in exploiting consumer behavior. “The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops that we have created are destroying how society works,” he explained. 

The above quote is pulled from a Harvard article titled Dopamine, Smartphones & You: A battle for your time.

The article goes on to explain how dopamine engages with our social interactions and causes us to crave “successful” social interactions.

Dopamine is a chemical produced by our brains that plays a starring role in motivating behavior. It gets released when we take a bite of delicious food, when we have sex, after we exercise, and, importantly, when we have successful social interactions. In an evolutionary context, it rewards us for beneficial behaviors and motivates us to repeat them.

We are being “rewarded” for what the world is telling us are beneficial behaviours. Every time you get a “ping” a “ding” a “buzz” or a flash of light about a new message or email you are being rewarded with a dopamine hit that reconfirms you are doing well socially. Social networks and social proof have led us to believe that posting, reading, messaging and engaging on social networks is a “beneficial behaviour”. Work environments have conditioned us to believe that doing email is a core function of our job and work. It’s often how we’re measured subconsciously by our peers and colleagues.

We’ve been tricked by Facebook (which owns Whatsapp and Instagram), LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat and all the others. Even the person who designed the exploitation at Facebook admits that we’ve been tricked. You now even get a little red mark on you browser tab that tries to pull you back into these services if there’s an unread notification. It’s brutal.

So I leave the high-intensity of a startup and decide to try and get to grips with my anxiety and stress caused by communication.

The first thing I did was turn off the blue-tick-read-receipt insanity of Whatsapp. Now I can’t see if people have read my messages and they can’t see if I’ve read theirs.

The second thing I did was activate a permanent out of office response telling people that I don’t do email as my work so they shouldn’t expect immediate replies from me.

The final thing that I did was refocus my work away from communication and towards my actual work.

Initially, I was fidgety and irate, constantly in anticipation of someone reading my message and responding. But then the craziest thing happened after a couple of weeks… I stopped caring about return communication. I stopped expecting people to message me back immediately and that meant I was never disappointed when they took two days to reply.

This is a key revelation. With blue-ticks on, I was constantly disappointed by people who did not reply to me as quickly as I reply to them. That rage and disappointment completely disappeared when I realised that they probably also have a job, emails, work to do, meetings, kids, husbands, wives, parents, stress, anxiety and that I was, SHOCKINGLY, not at the top of their priority list.

Expectation is the thief of patience.

I expect you to reply immediately so I have no patience relating to your day, your life and no respect for your time.

Recently I was contacted on Facebook by someone I used to know and last saw about 20 years ago. He was a kid (11 or 12) when I knew his brother and he had just seen me on a TV interview. He expected a reply and when he didn’t get one he lashed out at me and got very angry. He even sent me the “contact information” of very famous people that he allegedly knew to show me how important he is. Can you imagine being so demanding of someone else’s time that you become aggressive, name call and insult someone over chat when they don’t reply?

I blocked him and moved on with my day but the interaction really shocked me.

Have we become so desperate for social proof from others that if they are busy or just don’t want to talk to you we lash out? I think we have and I don’t like being desperate.

The incredible outcome of turning off read receipts and notifications for all communication is that I do not check my phone obsessively in case someone has messaged me.

My self worth is not directly tied to other people engaging with me in real-time. I have more time to focus on my work and my time is more focused because I’m not constantly distracted.

If you feel frazzled, harassed and are tired of people disappointing you because they dared to respond to you a few hours or a few days later than you expected, perhaps it’s time for you to reassess your self worth and the work you do.

Email is not your job. Email was never your job. Messaging is not a right, it’s a privilege.

You do not own other people’s time or their list of priorities. You have a gift called communication, use it to empower your day not destroy it. Take back control by not replying to every message and email as if it’s all urgent. It’s not.

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Be the Most You That You Can Be

The only way to make it out alive is to live as only you can live. 

There is nothing new about wanting to be famous.

Eighty years ago you would see James Dean on the big screen and idolise him, want to be him and wish you were as cool as him. But you didn’t look like him and you weren’t as talented as him and you didn’t imagine you could be as famous as him by just copying what he did. 

Today, that’s exactly how people believe they can become famous; by copying what other famous people do. The tricky part is how we’re experiencing fame. In the golden age of film and music, there were a handful of people around the world who were considered famous. Today there are literally tens of thousands of people who have bigger audiences than the stars of yesteryear.

Think I’m kidding? Here are just a few to get you thinking:  

• David Dobrik — 16.1m YouTube followers

• Charlie D’amelio — 60m+ TikTok followers and 1.8bn likes (she’s 15 years old)

• Casey Neistate — 11.9m YouTube followers through his daily vlogging

• Lilly Singh — 14.9m YouTube followers

• KSI — 19m YouTube followers

• MKBHD — 11m Instagram followers

• Liza Koshy—18m Instagram followers.

• Jasmine Brown - 2.4m Youtube followers

These are regular people.

There really isn’t anything too unique about them yet these people each have an audience larger than the size of New York. Give that some thought.

We believe that media outlets influence our lives, they do, of coufse but not nearly as much as the famous people on social media these days.

I have been using TikTok recently and it’s been a trip, let me tell you. It’s filled with young people being themselves and getting famous for it. Never before have we seen a platform that can turn a simple 15 or 60-second video into a career of fame and fortune so quickly. You can post something unique and interesting and reach 1 million likes in a day. It’s insane. I posted a video of my one hand washing a tap and it received over 30 000 views in a week. My hand washed a tap for fuck sakes.

The people succeeding on these platforms (InstaFaceTokTube), the ones who are really leading the way, are being themselves. They are being the most version of themselves that they can be. 

Everyone else is following or copying them.

Everyone else is following and copying because social media lets us believe that we are just like Charlie with her 60m followers. She’s just a kid who likes dancing. Young people see her and think to themselves “Hey, I’m a kid, I like dancing, I can do that.” And then get all pissy that they aren’t famous after a single upload. 

There are copycats, of course. And there are people who can dance better than Charlie or put on makeup better than so and so or kick a ball better than blah blah blah. Sure, but if it isn’t your thing then it isn’t the most version of you and you’re fucked. 

Acting like something is not the same as being that thing. 

Faking a passion for dancing isn’t going to make you a famous dancer. Faking an obsession for cooking wont make you a famous chef.

Let’s take a look at Finlidrappermusic’s account. This guy is a drummer and all-rounder musician. He’s incredibly gifted and likes to play songs using glasses of water that are filled up to make different sounds. He could’ve just set up his drumkit and played drums and then posted to TikTok, but he didn’t. He chose to be the most version of himself that he could be. He didn’t look to anyone else, he just did the thing that he was doing and people loved it. 

There are examples of this all over the world and throughout time. Yes copycats exit and yes they can make a lot of money doing what they do (copy) and do it well. But the ultimate question lies in front of them: Are they happy?

Probably not. Acting all day on social media and in life is hard work and tiring work and frustrating work.

Being yourself is not hard work. It’s hard work to get yourself out there and help people discover you. It’s hard work to become the best and refine your skills but it isn’t anywhere as difficult as being a worse version of someone else.

And here’s the thing, the people that I respect and admire the most in the world are not the ones with the most money or the biggest business or the fanciest houses. The people that I respect are the ones who know who they are and live accordingly every single day.

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