How To Survive The Valleys
This newsletter is officially three weeks old. 🙌🏽
At the risk of sounding like a cliché, I can’t believe how fast the time has flown.
In the past three weeks I’ve added roughly 100 organic subscribers and several hundred others who opted in from an existing email list.
Through social media channels, I calculate that at least 30,000 people either read parts of the issues or commented, liked, or shared posts which pointed to the newsletter.
Wow!
I’m adding followers and subscribers daily from my two favorite social media channels, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
The concept has done so well that I started a separate Business Page for the Newsletter on LinkedIn and as of this writing, it’s picked up 46 followers in about 5 days.
One particular post was a runaway success comparatively. In our last issue (Number 2 – “Life Punches Back”), I wrote about The Dunning-Kruger Effect and how you can use it to your advantage in life and business.
If you haven’t read it, just click over at the end of this post.
(Clears throat). I’ve been told it’s worth the read. 😉
I excerpted a part of “Life Punches Back” and placed it on LinkedIn. Well, it resonated!
At last count, close to 18,000 people saw the post. It had more than 500 likes, comments, and shares. And people are still engaging with the post.
The numbers shown here are from my business page alone. The remainder of the total engagement numbers I quoted were made up by my personal page stats.
Why did this post do so well and why is it still being shared today?
I believe it’s because it touched on something we’ve all experienced as leaders, business owners, and people in general…
Valleys, disappointments, setbacks of all kinds.
Despite what you may have read elsewhere on social media, entrepreneurship is not all sunshine and unicorns.
There are valleys–sometimes persistent, painful ones, and it’s best if you’re prepared to deal with them from the outset, and on an ongoing basis.
Whether you make it out of the valleys is up to you. It’s all in your mind.
Thus, it's incredibly important that you (1) Pay attention to your thoughts (2) Take control of them (3) Guide them in the direction of your goals and dreams and (4) Build mental toughness for the inevitable rough spots of life.
If not, your thoughts will take control of you, and they will guide you in a direction totally inconsistent with your ideals.
They will lead you toward procrastination, fear, laziness, despair, and anything except what you really want.
Your own thoughts will bury you in the valleys if you let them.
The writer, Steven Pressfield, calls this "The Resistance." This is the enemy within. The voice of self-sabotage. The mocker who rises before you every day to try and talk you out of becoming the best you.
To succeed, you must fight The Resistance. You must place structures in your life to beat this foe and free yourself to do your best work.
Over the next several weeks I’m going to share some of the tools I’ve used to create multiple business or social enterprises while walking through my valleys without giving up.
One such tool is to work within frameworks.
I love frameworks. The Dunning-Kruger Effect mentioned above is a framework. It’s a graphic depiction of a Big Idea. It encapsulates a truth that you can easily apply to a daunting task.
In short, frameworks simplify things. They help you to think, plan and take action. A good framework can pull you out of neutral.
I am presently working on a business framework built around this newsletter. A part of my framework is to share my learnings with you.
Starting or running a business can seem like a complicated endeavor. But a good framework will help you to cut through Resistance when it comes.
For example, I've been writing articles and blogging online for many years. Because I had no framework, I was inconsistent. Resistance always beat me.
I would blog a couple times per month, and maybe not the next month ... or the next two months.
I was on.
I was off.
I was up.
I was down.
(Does this sound familiar?) 🤔
People were too nice to tell me, but I imagine my inconsistency frustrated the people who followed me and enjoyed my content. The naked truth is that I didn’t have a plan. I was just throwing stuff out there.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. People go fishing for the health benefits and throw the fish back in. If that’s your approach, the key is not to confuse that behavior with legitimately trying to build a business.
They are worlds apart.
The difference between what I did then and what I’m doing now is … you guessed it. FRAMEWORKS. I’m creating:
· A Viewpoint (The Trusted Advisor)
· A Content Distribution System
· A Lead Generation and Qualification System
· A Client Acquisition and Nurturing System
So, I no longer publish content when I want and how I want. There is an order to things. My framework operates on the mountaintops and in the valleys. It defeats Resistance by creating a method of “boring,” week-in, week-out consistency.
That’s how you win the entrepreneurship game. That’s how you win most things. I can show you how to do the same. Or you can follow me here while I build it in public.
Just remember that in your desire to build anything of value:
1. There will be valleys where all your senses want to quit.
2. The valley won’t kill you, it’s your resistant thoughts that you must control.
3. One way to defeat Resistance is through frameworks applied consistently.
Together, we can survive the valleys!
PS. Let me know if I can help you with any of your goals. Click the links below to check out some of the ways we can work together.
I'd love to see you there!
I'll see you back in your inbox next Monday!