💡Outlast - Ep #16
As I continue to see more and more success in Content Creation, Community Building and Entrepreneurship... I've come to realized that it all boils down to one word...
Outlast
To quote my dear friend Alexander Hamilton, "When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game. But you don't get a win unless you play in the game."
Today's "Sunday Sip" is inspired by Patrice, a Father, Community Growth Operator and 8th Generation Bee Keeper... -> Yes 8th Generation
He recently messaged me...
- "Hey Friend,
Happy Easter!
Would you like to join me and some other friends for the next episode of Skool Friends LIVE"
There have been so many moments where I should have given up... and as I look back over the last couple of years I'm in awe that I'm still here on Skool.
If I had quit, I never would have met Patrice... a truly remarkable entrepreneur and present father building a Buzzing Empire on Skool.
Crossing paths with him has been one of the beautiful network effects of friends bringing friends into The Big Brain Club...and I'm so excited to hop on his Skool Friends Podcast tomorrow.
Amazing opportunities like this open up for folks who outlast and find a sense of staying power in a given context.
So here are four methodologies you can leverage to stay in the game.
1. Recognize The Hard Path... Is The Path
There have been so many moments in content creation where I had been looking for a "hack" to get views and go viral.
Example:
- Posting at certain times
- Only editing in the native apps
- Using "viral" hooks
- Using trending hashtags
- Being who the internet wanted me to be VS being my authentic self
- Leveraging my best protection spells to avoid the "Shadow Ban"
When in reality...
Success in content creation is just a product of getting better...
...and getting better is a product of reps, iterations, failures, and happy accidents.
In the last 5 years, I've done 1,900+ pieces of content... garnering 20,000,000+ views and a following of 40,000 global friend.
That's a lot of reps and I did this... One video at a time.
It's hard, and it's taken an unreasonable amount of time, but I stayed in the game because I recognized that the hard path is the path.
Of all the podcasts I've seen celebrating various content creators and community builders who have achieved great success...
The common thread is that found an unreasonable tenacity to just keep going even if it was hard.
The easy way is not on the path and leads to mediocre outcomes.
2. Fixate on Inputs Not Outputs
One video at a time with an emphasis on Diligent Incremental Progress.
When you come to accept the reality that outlasting is hard... you'll see that success is just a product of many small tweaks.
A beautiful example of this is with my own community.
The Big Brain Club was originally a place to help Engineers, Global Leaders and Entrepreneurs find their way.
Yeah, I didn't really have product Market fit on Skool...
So I started connecting with other community leaders via short Loom videos and creating content on Skoolers.
I controlled the Inputs (Connection via Loom)...
Rather than focusing on the Output (Making Sales).
In the last 2 months I've done over 2000 loom messages to build connections and gather feedback.
This has given me a strategic advantage in how quickly I can iterate and experiment within my community to find product market fit.
Thus the Big Brain Club evolved to be more inclusive of:
💾 Left Brains: Engineers & Global Leaders
🖌️ Right Brains: Creatives & Community Builders
✅ Whole Brains: Parents & Entrepreneurs
Since then, engagement in the community has exploded, as well growth with almost zero churn.
This has enabled us to rank on Skool Discovery bringing in new big brains every week.
If you want to outlast... stay ruthlessly focused on inputs trusting that the outputs will come.
3. Extend the Time Horizon of Success
It took me 10 years to master my craft as a MedTech Engineer and Global Leader at Johnson & Johnson.
And I'm only 10 months into Full Time Entrepreneurship.
I was often surprised that I didn't experiencing success early on...
After all I had over a decade of Global MedTech Innovation experience.
I was definitely blindsided by the reality of Hitting Zero in Tokyo after our revenue did not exceed our high burn rate as expats.
While many of my JNJ skills did give me an edge as an entrepreneur...
...getting better just takes time.
But just because it takes time, doesn't mean that you can't see success in a given context.
If you increase the time horizon with which you expect to see "success" you dramatically increase the probability that you will actually win.
It took me 10 months to completely rebuild my community from the ground up, scale to 120+ members including 5 paying members.
If I open up my time horizon from the order of days/weeks to months/years, I can clearly see that I'm on The Path.
When you make this adjustment in perspective it helps you trust the process and lock in... empowering you to push inputs forward and not spin on outputs.
4. Hills & Valleys
I remember experiencing bizarre time dilation on various R&D teams in Surgical Robotics... Here's my [Baby - OTTAVA]
For weeks it would be all hands on deck: crazy tech sprints, putting out fires, and fighting to shave days off of schedule.
But then on other weeks, full slow down: closing out documentation, team building, summer Fridays off, and personal development.
Hurry <-> Wait
If we're committed to outlasting in a given context, then we must honor both the hills and valleys of the journey.
There will be seasons in the valleys: fighting through unknown unknowns, lost in the wilderness, and pushing hard.
But there will also be mountain top views: moments of clarity to affirm you're on the path, rest, and packing provisions as you see the next mountain to climb in the distance.
To outlast requires you to throttle your pacing up and down as a needed to stay in the game.
There are never perfect building conditions...
...so flow through the highs and lows and keep moving forward.
Benediction:
So may you come to believe...
...that your present doubt and temptations to quit are small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.
Pick yourself up, recognize that your playing the long game and simply get better to win.
And know that your not alone in the climb...
...there's 120+ Big Brains by your side who know You Got This!
And as always friend...
Keep Changing the World!
