MBA2734 Must Read: Turning Pro By Steven Pressfield

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There's a moment in every meaningful career, especially in business, where talent stops being the problem, ideas are not the problem, access is not the problem, and the real issue becomes something much harder to face. You're still an amateur and that's what this episode's all about. That's why today's must read episode is Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. This book is not about tactics. It's not about hacks, it's not about a fast track to success. It's not even about creativity. It's actually about identity. And once you understand what Pressfield is saying in this book, you'll never look at your work the same again. Today I want to share with you the core idea from this book, my favorite takeaways, and why you should read it. I find that Steven Pressfield's work in general is very thought provoking, but this book in particular, especially if you've been at this online business thing for a couple of years and you're kind of stuck, you're going to find a lot of value in it. So let's get into it. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host Omar Zenholm where I practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way. It would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. The core idea of this book is that Steven Pressfield draws a hard line between two identities, amateur and professional. This isn't about skill level. It's about how you show up to what you do. The amateur, for example, waits for motivation, works when they feel like they're inspired or feels right. They get derailed by something that happens in the day. Their mood, a fear, a distraction. They treat their work very closely to like they treat a hobby. The professional, on the other hand, shows up no matter what. They work on a schedule, and they treat their craft with the utmost respect. They do the work even when it's boring, when it's uncomfortable, and when it's hard. And they do the work especially when it's scary. Professionals, in my opinion, don't wait for confidence. Confidence comes after action. And this is why I love this book. It really drills this home. This is why so many people feel stuck for years. They keep trying to feel like a professional before acting like one. That's backwards. You gotta act like a professional, and then you'll start feeling like a pro. One of the most powerful ideas in this book that I want to share with you is this idea that turning pro is not something that happens to you. It's something that you decide. And once you make that decision, from that moment on, you're a professional. This is not a ceremony or some sort of promotion or external validation or some sort of award you're given. No, you wake up one day and say to yourself, this matters enough to me to take it so, so seriously. I need to be pretty much obsessed with what my work is all about, with my craft, with my business, with what I'm trying to build. From that moment on, you stop negotiating with yourself. You stop waiting for permission. You just start doing, because that's what you decided to do. You stop dabbling and you start focusing. You don't need to be perfect, but you do need to be committed. And that's the big differentiator here. You're committed for the long haul to do what you want to do, to do this pursuit, to build this business, to create this product, to build this brand, whatever it might be for you. This is why people can be working on something for five years or so and still be in the same place. And they never turn pro. This book really resonated with me because I saw my own journey as an entrepreneur in the early days when I was really just an amateur thinking I was pro, but really I wasn't committed. I wasn't fully 100% making it a part of my identity. And the funny thing is, is that I'm finding that every 10 years or so you evolve to a different level of pro. So even now I am making the decision to go pro in a new endeavor that I'm doing here in my business, like going pro on video, making sure that we're creating incredible video content for our audience. So this is something that you have to consider and do over and over in your career. It's not just once and done. Now, Steven Pressfield in this book talks about the concept of the resistance. And this is something that he mentioned in his other book, the War of Art, which I did a must read episode on as well, because it's just a great book. But the concept of resistance is so important. It's the real enemy that's standing in your way of your success. Resistance isn't just procrastination. It's actually quite sneaky. It shows up in different ways that you might not recognize. And at the end of the day, what it does is stops you from progress. So what are some ways they show up a sneaky way? Number one, resistance can look like perfectionism. It could also look like over planning, over researching, endless learning without execution. I just need one more course before I get started and start building. I'll start when things start to calm down in my life. This is the resistance. This is the stuff that stops you from moving forward and being a professional. The funny thing is that the resistance is super, super sneaky. Like I mentioned, it doesn't tell you to quit. It actually tells you to delay. It distracts you. What I learned from this book is that turning pro means recognizing that resistance exists and you see it for what it is. And you work anyway. You take action anyway. Professionals don't eliminate fear, they work alongside it. They use fear to take action. So what I like to do is when I feel scared and I don't want to do something, I ask myself, what kind of regret, what feelings will I have if I don't do it right? And that fear of regret, that fear of resentment, that fear of what if is actually bigger than the fear of doing the actual thing. So I actually try to use fear to my advantage as much as possible. So I move forward and do the work, regardless of how I feel about it.

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The other insight from this book that I really love is that professionals rely on structure and not passion. This part is absolutely crucial because amateurs, they really rely on passion. They rely on their mood. Professionals rely on systems. They just follow the script so that they can see progress. Steven Pressfield recommends that if you want to be professional, then you should work at the same time every day. You should have boundaries. You should protect your energy. You should take your work seriously. Take pride in your work, even when no one's watching, even when you're just writing a draft or planning something out just by yourself in your own office. This is why productivity frameworks only work after you turn pro, after you actually commit to doing the work before that. You're just sabotaging every system you install in your life because you're just delaying and you're not really moving forward. Once you actually turn pro, systems become leverage. Instead of pressure, the systems actually allow you to move forward. By the way, this connects directly with something I see people struggle with all the time, and that's once you start showing up consistently, once you start taking your work seriously. The next question a lot of people ask is like, okay, I'm getting some momentum. I have a little bit of an audience on social media and on my email list. Am I allowed to sell now to my customers? And that's exactly what we're going to tackle in an upcoming episode. Actually have been planning this episode for some time. It's a Q and A episode where I answer a question from a listener where the question is, is it too early to sell to my followers? If you ever felt awkward or hesitant or guilty about selling, then you're going to love this episode. Make sure you hit subscribe so that you don't miss that episode because it ties beautifully with what you're learning with today. So when I was reading this book, Turning Pro, I wanted to find out how can I take this information and apply it to business owners like you? And because Steven Pressenville is a writer and he talks about creativity and art and he talks about business as well. But how does this actually apply to you as an entrepreneur? Well, when you start turning pro, you stop treating your business like a side project. This is what I found. You stop trying to to make it happen. You just start operating. You start experimenting. You start just moving forward. You stop asking, what if this doesn't work? You start asking, what's my next move? Okay, let's see what happens when I take action. Let's see what happens when I make this move or try this or that strategy. What I find is that when you turn pro, you stop worrying so much if you fail and start seeing things as an experiment. Everything is an experiment. Business. We don't know until we actually try. And once we try, we learn. We either succeed and we learn why we succeed or we fail, quote, unquote. It doesn't work. And we realize, okay, that doesn't work. Why didn't it work? Let's try something different so that it can possibly work the next time around. It also means accepting a hard truth. If you want different results, you have to become a different person. That's just the truth. That includes how you spend your time, who you listen to, who you hang out with, who you say no to, how do you handle discomfort? Entrepreneurship isn't just a business journey. It's a personal development journey. Because at the end of the day, where are all the ideas are going to come from? Who's going to lead the team? Who's going to do the work? You are right. And who you are is going to manifest in what you do. Okay, so if you want better results, become a better person and change who you need to be. Right? Change into who you need to be to get the results you want. That's what I've learned. It's actually the beauty of the business journey is yes, it's great to be successful and make lots of money and to be impactful and help the world. And that's great. But the biggest gift of all is who you become in the process, because you have to transform and become something better than you were yesterday to get the results you're looking for. So that begs the question, why do most people never turn pro? And by the way, this is what I've seen in my own career and the people around me and all the people I even help and teach and coach inside the 100 MBA press field is blunt about this. Okay? In the book, he says that most people don't fail because they can't do it. They fail because turning pro requires them to give up something. They got to give up a piece of who they are. They also got to give up comfort. They got to give up their own excuses, right? They got to give up the identity of the potential. Because when you don't actually take it seriously and you're like, oh, this has so much potential, is this going to happen? This could be amazing. But when you actually go for it and you realize, oh, maybe I need to change things or it didn't work out, that potential goes, goes away. You know the reality of the situation. Now they have to give up their ability to blame their circumstances. I used to be one of these people that used to have a huge, blameless, used to blame my, my personal circumstances, the fact that I grew up in an immigrant household, that I didn't have a capital or any money. I wasn't around a lot of entrepreneurs. There's not a lot of entrepreneurs in my life or in my family. All these excuses, right? I had to give them up once I turned pro. When you turn pro, you own the outcome. You take responsibility of the outcome. And that's pretty scary. And that's why people don't go pro. But it's also an incredibly freeing feeling when you know that, hey, I can make things happen. It's up to me to change my life and change my world and start that business and do what I want. And those who choose to turn pro, not only do they see the results, but they also get to live a true and honest and authentic life. So what does turning pro look like in practice? Well, turning pro looks like publishing consistently, even when engagement is low, even when you're posting on Instagram or posting on Facebook or whatever it might be or your newsletter. And you know, the open rates or the click rates or the likes are just not there. You're working through it, shipping the product, getting the product out there in the world before it feels perfect so you can get feedback and you can mold the product to your customer's needs. It looks like blocking time on your calendar and honoring that time on the calendar. It's saying no to things that don't move you forward or get you closer to your goals. By the way, it's easy to say no to things you don't want to do. It's really hard to say no to things you want to do that are not going to help you move forward. It also looks like doing the work when you don't feel like it. And that's really the truth of it. You got to do the work regardless of how you feel. You got to stay consistent. So why do I love this book? Why do I think this book matters so much? Turning Pro by Seaman Pressfield well, we live in a very interesting time in our world today. Everybody's distracted. People are distracted constantly. They're always looking for novelty. They have short attention spans. Okay? But when you turn pro, you have a competitive advantage. You can focus. You know how to commit. You show up daily. You immediately get ahead of most people. And this is what I love about the message of this book. You can advance and become much better than your competition. Not because you're smarter, but because you're serious. Because you're focused. Because you're committed to Before I go, I want to leave you with this. What I got out of this book, Turning Pro, is that it means that you are going to stop waiting for something to arrive. You are going to start taking action. And you're going to take action regardless of how you feel. And it doesn't mean you're going to lose your joy in your life or your business. It just means that you're going to be committed. If you feel stuck, if you feel like you keep starting and stopping and you're not really making the progress you're looking for, then you know in your heart of hearts you are capable of More. This book will call you out on your bs. It will be a mirror for you. And once you start seeing yourself clearly, you can't unsee it. And that's really the power of this book, Turning Pro. And that's why it's a must read. If you found this episode helpful and useful, then I highly recommend you check out another episode on the podcast that is titled why people turn against you when you start to succeed. Because when you turn pro, people start to change. Once you really start to committing, your environment starts to change. Your relationship starts to change. And not everyone's going to be comfortable with the new version of you. So this episode, we're going to help you understand why that happens and how to handle it without slowing down your growth and out without being a jerk or being rude to your friends or family. So check it out. It's called why People Turn against you when youn Start to Succeed. I'll see you there in the episode, and I'll see you on the next one after that. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast, Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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