✴️ How I'm Making... #9

✏️ Personal Note - lowering standard of living

It’s not comfortable to admit that I’m not where I want to be, and figure out what to do about it.

The latest decision? Moving in London. I’ve been pretty good about finding living situations that are relatively “cheap” but still allow me to actually work and live.

My current flat costs me 1150pcm all bills included (high, but not in central London), which leaves me the majority of my monthly paycheck to invest in my earning capacity.

It’s so tempting to spend a little more, for 1600 I can find a studio that I can live in “comfortably”…

But that is not the goal. I’m not optimizing for comfort. I’m optimizing for bullets. Rounds in the chamber that can be deployed for growth.

I’ve been having to admit that I am not where I want to be yet - and decide to sacrifice in achieving my goal.

📈 Lesson: The Single Greatest Superpower.

There’s a certain level of intensity that comes with new projects.

In the beginning, there is zero proof, zero capital, no customers, no process, no expertise, no skills.

If you’re smart about it, you start with an industry that you know intimately, with capital from yourself or an investor, a list of customers from your decades of experience in the industry, a process you lifted from the top competitor in the market, and get off to a swimming start.

I am not smart like that 😎 (the glasses hide my tears)

That’s where the intensity comes into play. When you’ve made a dumb decision, you need to decide that you will do whatever it takes to make the thing work.

The greatest power is being willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of my goals.

The way that I’ve been allocating resources got me to where I was a year ago. So the only way to get a different outcome is to allocate them differently.

This took me a long time to learn, and was incredibly painful to implement at first. In the past year, I had to give up sleeping in, weekends, drinking, playing video games every night, eating out, a social life, comfortable living situations.

Saying “no” has allowed me to pull myself forward, beyond what I thought I was capable of (who knew I could wake up at 4am and cold call strangers in India before heading off to work?)

Saying no gave me the time to learn, practice, and fail,

It gave the money to buy lessons, experience, and leverage,

Without these two factors, I would still be where I was at a year ago, wishing I could start a business and making excuses about why I can’t.

The question is simple. Are you willing to do what it takes to get to where you want to go?

🔗 Service: Discord server setup

If you are working on a web3 project, and thinking about setting up your Discord server, get in touch!

I will set it up for you for free 🙂 

What’s Next?

I have started messaging people to ask if they would be interested in a Discord server setup - this is what I use to get testimonials! I am also working on a Discord server guide that lays out everything I know about service based businesses and community building.

That’s all for now!

Thanks to everyone that has been enjoying the weekly updates. Hopefully this will be something we can look back on and think “oh yeah there was a time when…”

Cheers,

Ben

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