The Genius-Idiot Roller Coaster Of Business

At first you were really excited about the idea of running your own business and entrepreneurship, and now you are confronting the reality that running a business is stressful and full of uncertainty. So what, what, what about that do you, do you want to dig into?

So I, I knew as I was writing it today that it's a, it's a common question. It's all even like a broad question, but you know, I was running this weekend and all of a sudden I had this legalization in my mind that like, you know, it was a week where my LinkedIn post had almost no engagement, very few leads answering my DMs. So this is going to be, you know, I really need to build this from scratch. And I already know also about all the things, you know, just focus on the inputs and, you know, the volume and the quality of the volume and all of that. But I was also wondering, you know, I am already doing all of that. I certainly can optimize a lot of things in my routine, but I also wanted to know, like, I was just curious to know from you, how did you make the transition and whether I am— you know, there are some things that I could go even a little bit more extreme on, you know, as I'm building my life my daily life as an entrepreneur. And, um, uh, and so yeah, maybe, you know, I mentioned like dropping, uh, the Wi-Fi at home, uh, the various, uh, subscriptions, Netflix, etc., uh, because I'm at that point where I just really want to make sure that I'm getting this straight from the get-go. So I, I, I really wanted to like level set, you know, my routine against whoever else is doing this, starting to build a business. And yeah, basically a lot of insecurity. I already knew a lot of your answers because I've been in PGA for like 2.5 years, I guess. But now I am in the situation, so I guess I need to think, uh, to, to, to hear it again, uh, but applied, you know, to my case.

Okay, so there's like 3 different topics that I, I think are worth covering. And I think this is going to be, uh, really helpful for a lot of people here, because even if you're not at the point where you feel ready to start your own business, or you don't feel ready to, uh, make the full leap and go, I'm going to go straight full-time, I find that these, uh, these mentality issues are things that every single person struggles with. People even struggle with this in a full-time career. You know, everyone struggles with this. So I kind of want to walk through each one. The first is that whenever you find yourself fixated on an output or a result, you have to remember that when you fixate on results, that's not what creates a result, right? Like if you wanted to put on a bunch of muscle and lose a bunch of weight, You staring at yourself in the mirror and obsessing over the result and going, I don't understand why I'm not more fit yet. That doesn't do anything, right? You're just staring at the desired result. Desired results do not happen on their own. Results happen because of inputs. Inputs are what create results. Okay. And so if you like, if you wanted to land a client, well, if you just sit there every day and go, I need to land a client, you're not going to land a client, right? Because landing a client is an output. It is a result. Instead, you have to ask, what are, what are the inputs that lead to landing a client? Well, the inputs are I have to do a certain amount of outreach. I have to do a certain amount of follow-up. I have to book a certain amount of sales calls. I have to, you know, educate them sufficiently on those sales calls. I got to follow up with them after the sales calls. And if you do something over a prolonged period of time, you learn, okay, in order for me to land one client, I need to send 100 messages. I got to follow up 50 times. I'm going to book 3 sales calls. 1 out of 3 sales calls I can close. So the reason that's, that's so important for everyone here, the reason why we stress actually gathering the data on each one of these steps is because it is one of the easiest ways to navigate uncertainty. When all of a sudden you feel uncertain, all you have to do is go back to first principles. What are the inputs that create the outputs? Now I want to ask a little challenge question for you, Giovanni, and for everyone here. Does anyone think that that this problem goes away the more that you scale?

No. No.

Do you think that if your business was 5 times bigger that suddenly the outputs just magically create themselves?

No. No.

Okay. Does anyone want to guess? This happened like a year ago. So, I'll tell everyone a little story. About a year ago, everything in our, like, our entire business was just growing like crazy. Like literally every day I woke up, it was like, it's growing more, it's growing more, it's growing more. And the reason was because we had started moving from writing on LinkedIn to starting to copy paste a lot of our content over to LinkedIn, or writing on X and starting to copy paste a lot of our content over to LinkedIn. And at the time, LinkedIn's algorithm was very, very forgiving. It was, it was similar to X back in 2021. And so we were getting a lot of leads from LinkedIn, a ton. And then all of a sudden, like all of a sudden, they changed something about the algorithm and the amount of leads that we were getting from LinkedIn fell off a cliff. Does anyone want to guess what happened when that input changed? What do you think happened to our business? When all of a sudden the input from LinkedIn goes down by 80%. Yeah, things slowed down dramatically. All of a sudden we are in uncharted territory. All of a sudden we're like, whoa, this thing that we were relying on doesn't work anymore, or doesn't work, but like, you know, had changed.

Okay.

Does anyone think that in that moment me and Dickie, we sat there and we were just like, "Yeah." Yeah, yeah. No, no, for like 3 weeks we were like, I was sleeping like 5 or 6 hours a day and like couldn't chill out and super stressed and being like, "Well, we have this huge team now and one of our biggest traffic sources just fell off a cliff." The problem never goes away. This, this is a really important thing for everyone to understand is like the problem never actually goes away. There's a faulty belief in business where people think I'm at this level and there are problems, but if only I get to the next level, then all the problems go away. No, they don't. The problems stay there. And if you're, if you are growing and if you are scaling in any capacity, it's the same problem, magnified. So, so right now, if in your business you're feeling a swing of like, oh, last month I made $10 grand, but this month I made $8 grand, you feel like a $2,000 swing in revenue, that problem doesn't go away. You just add more zeros. All of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm swinging from $800,000 in revenue in a month to $600,000 in revenue in a month. Oh, now I just— that's a $200,000 swing. And so my point is, my point is the roller coaster, like, you, you're on the roller coaster and actually the roller coaster is like a little bunny hill right now. But, but the more that you grow, it's the same roller coaster. It's just the hills get bigger. And so that's why it's a really important idea is that the problems never go away. Your skill for dealing with the problems increases. You become more equipped to deal with the problems. You become more equipped to manage your psychology when the roller coaster goes from, oh, I did a little bunny hill up and down to I just went, you know, all the way up to the Tower of Terror and came crashing back down to the ground. I share all of that because I think it's important for you to go into this, you know, eyes wide open, Giovanni. Where it's not that, you know, it's either exciting all the time or dismal all the time. It's that you will have moments where you feel— I call it the idiot, the genius-idiot rollercoaster. You will have moments where you feel like a genius and everything's working and this is the best thing you've ever done ever. And then the very next day, something's gonna change and you're gonna feel like an idiot and you're gonna be like, why did I ever do this? This was so stupid. And the skill to build is recognizing that neither one of those extremes is true. You are not a genius and you are not an idiot. You are just operating a business. And a business has inputs that lead to outputs. And so whenever you're fixated on an output, you have to ignore the output and you have to go back to the inputs and go, what are the things that I need to do that lead to the desired output? Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, it does. And thank you, thank you so much for helping me a little bit. At least, you know, put down— put me through that stage, you know, at least ease a little bit my thought. And I think that the very first thing that I need to do is, as you said at the very beginning of the answer, is to track the numbers a little bit more closely because now I'm like, you know, using Ghostface for all the other ways to follow up, etc. But I still don't have the numbers, like the rates from one step to the other throughout the funnel until the the sales flow and the conversion. So I need to have that number in mind and on their side. Uh, but then, yeah, I mean, I guess it's really, yeah, a matter of, as you said, like managing my psychology. I, I— it's a new skill that I need to build. Uh, it's already a good thing that I am aware of it. So, uh, I will get into this, you know, eyes wide open, as you said, and, um Yeah, I wanted to say another thing, but I just forgot, so I'll stop here.

Yeah, all good. The last thing that I want to just double-click on for everyone is I often find— because, you know, we run these various writing programs, and so I get to interact with lots of different types of people, and I get to see lots of different types of people at lots of different levels of experience, and I often find that most people tend to ask the question, what do I need to do to be successful? Through the lens of what is the least amount that I need to do? What is the minimum amount of effort that I need to do? And I really encourage everyone to recognize how flawed of a mindset that is and instead adopt a mindset called What do I need to do and how do I do 3 times more all the time? Because, because the reason people find themselves in quote unquote stressful or uncertain situations is, A, they fixate on the outputs, not on the inputs. And then second is they ask, what's the bare minimum of input that I need to do? And if you're doing the bare minimum of the input, well, then the— that is like the the way that you make the output as questionable as possible. It's like, yeah, maybe it'll work, maybe. But you know how you practically guarantee that it works? You, you take whatever thing leads to the desired output and you constantly do 3 times more than it. The metaphor I like thinking about, or analogy I should say, is marathon runners that train with ankle weights. Why does a marathon runner run with ankle weights? They They run with ankle weights to make it harder for themselves so that when they run the marathon, they take the weights off and all of a sudden they're faster and it's easier. And I find like it's almost as if everyone has it flipped where they're like, oh, I'm actually going to train without ankle weights. And then when I get to the game, I'm going to try and play with the ankle weights. Why would you do that? You should make, you should make the training harder. You should make the inputs harder. So that the output is easier. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Also perfectionality because I actually ran a marathon just the other day.

So there you go.

Message received. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, I guess that's also why I, you know, at the very end of the question, I was like, okay, you did, you know, you canceled the Wi-Fi, no distraction. So I also need to like get to that point, right? And now I have an idea. And yeah, just to conclude, I think that I heard a quote like in the podcast from Formozy and he said like, just work yourself out. And yeah, now I, okay, I connected the dots and it's, I have a clear idea of how to go from here. So Awesome. I'll keep you posted next week.

Please do, please do. You'll be great, just trust the process.

Thank you, man.

All right, thanks, Giovanni. Hey, by the way, if you're brand new to the world of ghostwriting, maybe you've heard the term but aren't really sure what it is or how it's different from copywriting or content writing, check out premiumghostwritingblueprint.com. It's in the description below, okay? This is a free masterclass that I've put together for writers who want to monetize their skills and love for writing. With ghostwriting. This is what I did, and ghostwriting completely changed my life. It's how I quit my job. It's how I quadrupled the amount of money I was making. It's how I've gotten to work with so many smart, amazing people, but also have time for my own writing, like writing this book, The Art and Business of Ghostwriting. Anyways, check it out. If you're at all interested in making money from your writing, I would really encourage you to get into ghostwriting, and this free premium ghostwriting blueprint in the description below is the best place to start.