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In June this year.
I started a one-year journey that would see me focus on mastering online sales and marketing.
There is a lot that I can’t share about that journey yet as I want my results to speak for me.
But I am writing this to share some ideologies that have helped me succeed faster in this journey that I find myself in.
Hopefully, you can pick one or two lessons from this article.
In a world that is being actively reshaped by AI, understanding is becoming more and more important.
We have these powerful new machines at our fingertips and yes there is a real threat to the sources of livelihood of Millions of people.
In last week's article, I talked about the things that you need to pay attention to when it comes to AI.
I will link it at the end of this one, so do well to read it when you are done reading this one.
I chose to quickly highlight it here because it has helped me improve my workflow more and more as the weeks go by.
So enough ramblings, let me share some new things that I have learned so far.
More Lessons On Borrowing Brilliance
I was talking some week back with one of the people who is mentoring me through this new journey.
And I was sharing with him something that I need to put out in other to attract certain types of people.
He then told me of the steps he took when he was trying to achieve the same thing.
He then told me that it took home more than 50 attempts to find a highly profitable formula.
Normally that is somewhat demoralizing.
When he shared the results that he is currently getting, it made the 50 + tries more than worth it.
There is something that I have learned;
You don’t judge each day based on what you harvested, you judge it based on the seed that you sowed. - William A. Ward
Doing great things is something that we all seek, but you will need to understand that greatness has a price.
In nature, things like gold or diamonds are not found lying on the surface, or a few feet deep.
You have to do an intense level of digging to get where it is.
So have the same mindset towards what you are building, and be ready to do the digging.
Anyway, a recent discovery has made it clear that I may not have to dig as deep as I thought.
I stumbled across a resource that looks like it cleared over 40% of the roadblocks that I am facing and I believe that it would make me achieve a great level of results at a faster pace.
But getting access to that resource wasn’t also random.
It took me intentionally curating my social media feed over the past few years to push valuable content and resources to me.
Another thing is also being in action mode.
I believe that there are some valuable resources that you have bookmarked over the past few months.
The only reason why you are not using most of them is that you are not actively building anything that requires it yet.
Fortune will always favour the brave and chance will forever benefit the prepared mind.
One of the things that I learned a few years back that changed my life is that money is not the only thing that compounds.
The law of compound interest works for people, resources, and systems.
Especially people.
There is a popular quote that I used when creating related content for years.
The person you will be in five years depends on the people that you meet and the books that you read.
When you strip it down to the fundamentals, it is people who write books, so that quote is only talking about people.
Let me explain how the people aspect works best in this age.
Tribe Of Mentors
Earlier I talked about getting access to a particular resource and how the way I programmed my social media helped with that.
Some years back, I discovered that the fastest way to fight social media addiction is to slowly turn it into a school.
So I had a simple rule, I only follow people who have ;
Achieved something that I am trying to achieve.
Is building something the way that I find inspiring.
Constantly shares valuable resources that help me in what I am trying to achieve.
This rule is very easy to make, but extremely hard to keep.
It made me discover that I am more sentimental than I thought.
Because it meant not following people that I should follow on a normal day.
Acquaintances, certain influencers, the basic follow list that the social media algorithms push at me.
And every few months, I do a following cleanse where I unfollow people who no longer give value.
We have all followed someone because of one sensible post only for them to wake up the next day and see strange things.
The first thing that you should do right now if you want to apply this is to go right to your Twitter/Instagram and review the people that you are following.
Follow and unfollow using the three criteria that I listed above and you can also add or remove any criteria.
It all depends on your goals.
This simple tweak can change your life.
One of the things that will happen often is you coming on social media during work hours and seeing someone who shares that drives you back to work.
So yeah, extra points for motivation.
More Things That I Have Learnt
One of our desires as creatives is to create something that lasts.
Not just creation, but being able to sell it so that we can reap the rewards.
Here are some things that I have learned and relearned lately ;
When you build something that lasts, you won’t rely on hype and manipulative sales tactics to generate demand for it.
The better your product is, the better your marketing will be, promotion is not how things are made great, it’s only how they are heard about.
To be great, one must do great work, and making great work is incredibly hard.
Crappy products don’t survive.
The pre-work matters so much. The conceptualization. The motivation. The product fit with the market. The execution. These intangible factors matter a great deal. They cannot be skipped or bolted on later.
The best way to increase the growth rate of anything that you are building is to make it so great that people tell their friends about it.
You must see it as your calling to make something great. You accelerate your ability to do this by studying the classic work of your field, imitating the masters and the great and what made their work last.
So that’s that for now.
I hope that you have picked one or two things from this episode.
Below is last week's episode where I laid out more thoughts on what your response to the AI wave should be.
Do well to give it a read.
Also, please give this post a Like if it helped you.
It helps more people discover this post on the substack feed.
Thank you
Thank you so much for this.
You're the second person this month who has emphasised on great work being hard to accomplish to me.
The rush and euphoria that comes with dreaming of being great can blind one to the actual work that it involves (which isn't fun at all).
To be great means to accomplish great things. Great things bring value to everyone it encompasses.
The deeper sense of our value and respect for the great amongst us comes from our instinctive understanding of great things being hard to do (not everyone will achieve it).
Whereas, the surface sense dwells only on the glamour that comes after the work is ready or even done.
Thank yooou so much sir Ajulu, this is so insightful ✨ God bless you 🤲