Wading into a cold sea of indifference
Image created with Midjourney
Prompt: middle-aged man poised to dive into a cold sea of indifference --ar 16:9 --s 50 --v 6.0
Folks, I am bracing for a tough winter. I live in Southern California so it’s not the weather that’s gonna be tough. It’s my professional life. Here’s where I’m at.
If you don’t believe, why bother?
In the spring of last year, I officially pulled the plug on my old career. The business model for that era was this: make the best videos I could, give them away, money happens. That method worked extremely well for me once, about a decade ago, but it was in terminal decline for a while before I finally let it go.
For the rest of 2023, most of my income was generated by awesome freelance projects for people like Sysdig and Sandwich Video, Generation Genius, Nick Milo and Linking Your Thinking, and Bloomberg Law.
But alongside this work, I was creating impressive growth selling educational products through the Everything is a Remix site. My first little hit was a downloadable guide to writing in ChatGPT. I followed that up by selling pre-orders for an on-demand video course about creating content with ChatGPT. That course is by far the most successful product I’ve ever created.
Even though my educational ventures did well last year, it was still a minority of my income and nowhere near being a livelihood.
My objective this year is this: turn my educational work into a real business. That means it entirely provides for me and my family.
And I don’t have a full year to prove this is viable: I have one quarter. If the metrics aren’t good enough come April, it ends there and I look for in-house opportunities.
One of three futures will arrive come spring.
This attempt fails utterly.
I land somewhere in between and have to make a judgment call.
This works well enough to continue the pursuit.
You won’t hear me say this again, but number 1 is the most likely outcome. That’s the reality for all businesses – they mostly fail.
But I’m putting on the blinders… now. I am going to run at number 3 with all my might, with moronic optimism. If you don’t believe, then why bother? I believe.
Weathering my winter of suck
The product that will decide my fate is Creating Content With ChatGPT and AI 2024. If it can generate the right revenue this quarter, then the journey continues onward into the spring. If not, the path ends there and I move on to something else that is not running my own business.
I am by no means a master of online sales, but I’ve done enough to know this: launches are the easy part.
I have loyal fans and this product had a good launch. But I am now leaving the warm confines of my fandom, you guys, the people who know me and like me and trust me. This winter I am wading into a cold sea of indifference.
I will be doing sales and marketing all day, every day, for three months straight, weekends included. And I’ll be doing it to people who don’t know how I am and don’t care. Rejection and above all, indifference will be constant. Every day I’ll need to generate momentum and sales.
This winter is gonna be challenging. Here’s what will help me weather it.
I am extremely fortunate to otherwise have an awesome life. I will be grateful for it throughout.
I’m gonna celebrate every little win, every click, every newsletter subscriber, every sale.
Above all, I’m grateful that I get to give my all and try. I’m prepared, I’m ready, I’m gonna give this everything I’ve got and the chips will fall where they may.
How can I help?
Some of you might be wondering how you can help. Here are a few ideas.
Buy the course (you can still save $50!)
Share the course on social media
Talk to your company or organization about taking the course or bringing me in for instruction, either on-location or virtual.
Every little thing you can do to help spread the word means a lot to me, folks.
Lastly, if you’re still not sure if you think the course is for you, check out this free chapter which I’m sharing with you guys first, My Journey With ChatGPT.
50 free book summaries on Blinkist
I have a playlist of 50 awesome book summaries on Blinkist, and they’re totally free. They’re mostly about personal improvement, productivity, creativity, and business. Complete list below.
The Female Brain - Louann Brizendine
Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman
Expert Secrets - Russell Brunson
Traffic Secrets - Russell Brunson
The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding - Al Ries and Laura Ries
Design for How People Learn - Julie Dirksen
How We Learn - Benedict Carey
Testing Business Ideas - David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder
Daring Greatly - Brené Brown
Burn the Boats - Matt Higgins
From Strength to Strength - Arthur C. Brooks
Hyperfocus - Chris Bailey
ReWork - Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
$100M Offers - Alex Hormozi
Focus - Daniel Goleman
Life in Five Senses - Gretchen Rubin
How Minds Change- David McRaney
Discipline Is Destiny - Ryan Holiday
Think Again - Adam Grant
Chatter - Ethan Kross
Where Good Ideas Come From - Steven Johnson
Messy - Tim Harford
Thinking in Systems - Donella H. Meadows
Nonviolent Communication - Marshall B. Rosenberg
Mindfulness - Mark Williams and Danny Penman
Wherever You Go, There You Are - Jon Kabat-Zinn
Full Catastrophe Living - Jon Kabat-Zinn
Flow - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Building a Second Brain - Tiago Forte
The Willpower Instinct - Kelly McGonigal
Indistractable - Nir Eyal
How to Grow Your Small Business - Donald Miller
Atomic Habits - James Clear
The Male Brain - Louann Brizendine
How to Raise a Wild Child - Scott D. Sampson
The Myth of Normal - Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté
The Extended Mind - Annie Murphy Paul
Effortless - Greg McKeown
How to Begin - Michael Bungay Stanier
Building a StoryBrand - Donald Miller
Late Bloomers - Rich Karlgaard
Ultralearning - Scott H. Young
The 1-Page Marketing Plan - Allan Dib
Life Is in the Transitions - Bruce Feiler
This Is Marketing - Seth Godin
Hooked - Nir Eyal
Hacking Growth - Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown
Make Time - Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky
Build - Tony Fadell
Exactly What to Say - Phil M Jones
How to Reverse Aging. For a Bit.
In my mid-thirties, I got really into an intense, aerobic form of yoga called Ashtanga. The tougher the instructor, the more I liked it. I’d be sliding around the mat in a sweat puddle just midway through class. I lost weight, gained muscle, felt great.
One day, I ran into a friend I only saw occasionally. She said, “You look younger every time I see you!” Even better, I felt younger.
As positive as these changes were for me, that lifestyle didn’t stick. I’d get on track for a few chapters, but then I’d revert to my old ways.
I've been overweight most of my life. It’s the kind of minor heaviness that basically everyone has nowadays. I'm always strong and sometimes in good athletic shape, but I generally carry around an extra 10 or 20 pounds of fat.
A couple of years ago, I thought I’d finally fixed the issue once and for all. I ended bad habits, started good ones, and reached a healthy weight. Then we had a baby and that went straight out the window. Life became so impossible that I couldn’t cope with not drinking Coke on top of it all.
Folks, I think I’ve finally fixed this, and I think it will hold. Here’s what happened.
Creating the game
In spring of this year, parenting life became more manageable, and my willpower returned. I dropped from 210 pounds to 200 quickly and easily. All I did was moderately improve my diet and exercise.
Then I plateaued for months. Partially, it was because it was summer, and I wanted to have good times with my family. But it was also because a higher level of discipline is required for me to get below 200 pounds.
I needed to change the game—or rather, create a game. I devised a little challenge for myself. I intentionally chose an aggressive goal. I’ll explain why in a bit.
The goal: lose 10 pounds in 5 weeks. That’s 2 pounds per week, which is the maximum considered healthy. The goal was a weight of 190.5.
I set the following rules targeting my worst habits.
No eating whatsoever after 8 p.m
No burgers and fries
No chocolate, cookies, cake, or ice cream
No cola
No lunchtime pizza
Underlying this were some additional informal rules. I would eat healthy and increase my exercise.
Here’s what happened each week.
Week 1
Week 1 was a breeze. I exceeded the weekly goal and lost 2.5 pounds. At this rate, I’ll be done a week early!
Week 2
Yeah, that didn’t happen. Getting the numbers to drop got tough. I also got a cold, so I couldn’t exercise much. I only lost one pound.
Week 3
Week 3 is when shit got real. I got lodged at 195 pounds. Nonetheless, progress was evident. It was just slower and harder. Then, I traveled to a video shoot in San Francisco for a few days. Despite eating well, those days didn’t burn many calories. I came back about a pound-and-a-half heavier.
Week 4
I was slowly losing weight this week but still stuck at 195, the same weight from two weeks ago. Nonetheless, I noticed my appetite feeling lower and my midsection feeling tighter.
Week 5
In the final week, I break through and drop overnight to 193.5.
Final weigh-in!
The goal was 190.5. I got to 193.5, 3 pounds shy of my goal. That’s 7 pounds lost in five weeks. My goal was 2 pounds per week; I got 1.4 pounds.
Even though I missed my goal, this is a huge success. Not only did I shed 7 pounds in five weeks, that weight puts my BMI within the healthy range. At the very top of that range, but still in range.
It’s now been a month since I completed this challenge. I’ve kept up my good habits. There have been some food indulgences, but they’ve been moderated. I still haven’t reached my original target weight—and I’m not even sure I will! The goal now is to continue to lose fat, but I also want to gain some muscle, so who knows what my weight will be. The scale might not be my primary metric going forward.
What I learned
Set the bar too high. Making the goal harder is more fun. If you pull it off, it’s a huge win. If you fail, you still win as long as you make some progress. My goal was just a round number, a direction to head. After the first couple of weeks, I knew I wouldn’t make it, and the challenge became to see how close I could get.
Don’t consider the challenge a permanent commitment. All you have to do is five weeks or whatever schedule you set. If five weeks feels impossible, do one week. After that, you’re free to do what you want. But I bet once you get to that point, you won’t want to lose your progress.
Keep the time frame short-ish, like six weeks or less. It’s easier to stay motivated. If you can’t reach your goal that quickly, break it up into a series of challenges, with good breaks in between.
Weigh yourself every day. In the past, anytime my weight has gotten well out of range, I’ve stopped getting on the scale. No news is good news, right? If you know you’re gaining and gaining, you’ll do something about it.
Lifestyle goals are fun! It makes ordinary little choices challenging and rewarding. For most of us, the only goals we regularly have are projects, primarily for work. Lifestyle goals are less life-and-death than work goals. If you don’t hit your work goal, that could be a severe problem. Lifestyle goals are lower stakes. And when you fail, you can just regroup and try again. If you keep trying, you will succeed.
I got what I really wanted
I don't know if I look younger, but I'm entirely certain I feel younger. I'm lighter, bouncier, and have more energy. I take steps two at a time. Not having that extra weight jiggling around my midsection feels great. And I can now do a proper finger-roll layup in basketball. I couldn’t elevate enough to do that just a few months ago.
Minor health issues have vanished or improved. Knee aches are gone. Backaches, worsened by parental lifting, are markedly better. I have a skin condition called rosacea. It's improved, and a related condition, a form of eyelid inflammation called Blepharitis, has disappeared. Most of what’s going on in these cases is inflammation. I wonder what unseen inflammation has also lessened.
My mental focus has improved, though that may be because of other recent changes. I’m also less irritable, probably because my blood sugar is more level.
But here’s what I really wanted from all this.
High blood pressure and high cholesterol increase your heart attack or stroke risk. I’ve only had normal blood pressure and cholesterol levels when I have weighed less. Before this challenge, my blood pressure was markedly high. Now, it’s only slightly high—or maybe not high at all, depending on which country’s guidelines you subscribe to. I just got a physical, and I’ll know my cholesterol soon. There’s no doubt that it’ll be better.
Of course, I did this for myself, but above all, I did it because I don’t want to be debilitated in old age because of my choices. I don’t want to be compromised in my golden years because Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Butter Cup was just so delicious. I want to be healthy for Nora and Little Kirby, as well as for myself.
This is a permanent change. There will be some lapses in the future. Life will get in the way. But I’ll get back on track.
Ripple effects
Just as importantly, this little health challenge has had ripple effects beyond my health. It’s given me a feeling of effectiveness and competence during this fumbling chapter of my life. Getting wins, even when they seem unrelated, helps you gain momentum. I chose a goal, had success, and that inspired me to try new goals.
Reader, create a lifestyle goal for yourself. They’re fun and rewarding. It doesn’t have to be about weight or health. Want to read more books? Get more chores done? Make more memories with your loved ones? Give yourself a challenge. I guarantee you won’t regret it.
P.S. Here are the books that inspired me to get into lifestyle goals.
P.S.S. I’ve got an awesome new morning coffee recipe. Try it!
My morning coffee recipe
Photo by Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash
I’m not one for sharing recipes because I’m not very good at cooking or making drinks. But I’ve stumbled onto a morning coffee recipe that I think is delicious. I’m not a coffee nerd, and there’s nothing fancy going on here. It’s a version of Bulletproof Coffee, which accounts for the butter and oil. It also contains LMNT, a salt supplement that I love in coffee. There’s no sugar and no cream!
Not only is this delicious, it provides nice, even energy for the morning and it’s even a bit filling.
Ingredients
16 ounces Four Sigmatic Coffee (or whatever you choose)
.5 tbsp MCT Oil
.5 tbsp Unsalted butter, like Kerrygold
LMNT Chocolate Salt Electrolyte Supplement
Directions
Brew up 16 ounces of coffee. I drink it in a big travel mug. I drink Four Sigmatic coffee, like every other tech douchebag. They’re right—it’s delicious! I buy it pre-ground cuz I can’t tell the difference when I grind beans myself. Again, not a coffee nerd!
Add about .5 tablespoon MCT Oil
Add about .5 tablespoon unsalted butter. Kerrygold is good for this.
Add half a packet of LMNT Chocolate Salt. If you like it salty, a whole pack is great too.
Froth for about 10 seconds. (I use this frother.)
That’s it, enjoy!