How to Beat Procrastination with Andrew Warner, the Founder of Mixergy - Hustle Con 2015

How many of you guys are getting the Apple Watch? Yeah, it just went on sale today, and all over San Francisco, developers are sitting around thinking about, how do we send them more messages on another device and get them back into our apps? And that's fantastic for them, but every one of these little alerts and messages is another distraction away from our personal mission, our vision, our goal. And if we're coming to conferences like this and taking notes the way I've seen so many people do, or reading books and really absorbing everything and making those connections that we need, and we're still not building a business that's as big as we want it to be, and we're still not making the kind of progress we want to make. I'm here to tell you that the problem is the distractions that we have in our lives, all those distractions that are taking us away from our mission. And my goal here today isn't just to tell you how to get through that, isn't just to give you a superpower, but to get you to use it right here in the room in the next 9 and a half minutes that Sam gave me. Right here, we're going to do it and use it. And I know the problem, because I felt the problem. I lived the problem. A few years ago, after having interviewed hundreds of the best entrepreneurs on the planet, I sat down and I had to admit to myself that I was failing. I was a failure, I thought. And I said, "Why? All I'm trying to do is, since I've done all these interviews with entrepreneurs, I want to start selling some interviews and, or more importantly, courses with them." to my audience. They're telling me my audience is, I should start selling to them. But why am I not even able to implement the plugin on WordPress to get started? Right? You know the problem, right? They're so easy, but sometimes they don't work. Or worse than that, why am I not starting to actually make some sales to people before I even get a plugin? Why am I holding back? What's the problem? And when I finally got real with myself, what I realized is that I had some problem, and many problems that some of you guys might identify with. I was sitting down and then email called me away and I had to go handle email. You know what I'm talking about. Or my IM would go off, or my cell phone would buzz. All these distractions taking us away from our mission. But I had worse distractions than that. Those are external distractions. Tell me if you can identify with this. I had internal distractions that were way worse. Because I would sit down, and you know how Sam told you that I had a business that did over $30 million in sales? I thought, well, this next thing, even if I install a simple plugin, it's not gonna do $30 million after I install the plugin. Maybe guys like Sam are gonna see it and they're gonna think, Andrew's really gone down, right? He took a big step down. So that was in my head. I also thought, well, people pay to go to conferences, but No one pays for content online. By the way, that's a lie. Of course they do. Linda, one of my first interviewees, sold her company, Linda.com, for $1.5 billion, right? People pay for content. She was able to generate revenue. But that's a lie that was distracting me. And then I thought, well, you know what? My friend has millions of dollars in sales. He has thousands of people who are members of his site paying him every single month. I can't compete with that. I can't do that. By the way, another lie. It's not something I wanted to do from day one. I just wanted to prove that people wanted to buy my stuff. I just wanted to prove that I was doing quality work that people cared enough about to buy it. I just wanted to get started. I didn't need to build a multimillion-dollar company right away. But all those thoughts, all those lies were distractions, and that's what kept me from producing. That's what kept me from using these simple plugins, kept me from selling, kept me from doing what I wanted to do and use all the knowledge that I worked so hard to get. And the experience too. So I finally said to myself, if my head is just focused on all those frickin' lies and that's what's keeping me from moving, where is the truth? What's the truth that I should be focused on? And the truth was, I didn't need thousands of members right away. I just needed 200 members, 200 people to say, Andrew, I like your work enough to pay you for it. Andrew, I'm gonna be here, a member of your community for the next few months. All I need is $200. And the truth was that my customers, my audience was telling me, "Charge us." They wanted to support us, but I wasn't listening, right? The problem was I had all these truths that I wanted, how big I wanted to build my business, and instead of focused on them, being focused on them and going towards my mission, I kept getting distracted by email and getting distracted by the junk in my head. So I finally just sat down and I said, "What is true for me?" What's true is I want to build a legacy business, and only ideas will do it the way that I want it, not software. And people will pay for it if I do a good job with it. The truth is I wanted 200 members. The truth is my audience loves my work. I want to do more. And so I picked one of those, and I said, I'm going to focus on one, 200. And instead of walking into work every day thinking how someone else was doing better, I would walk in thinking 200. In fact, You guys see I'm wearing some of these beads. I'll explain them in a moment. I would just walk in. I use these. All over the world, people have them. So when I was on a trip somewhere, I bought a set, and I started to use them. I would say, "200," and I'd move that big fat bead right there, the one with the knot. And then I'd say, "200.

Yeah, I could do 200." Then I move the next one.

I go, "200. If I get 200, I could get started, and I could start really paying money for advertising. 200, yeah!" Right? And I just say, "200, 200, 200." And within a few weeks, first of all, I started actually implement what I needed to do. I installed the plugin, but I got 200 members. And they were all paying month after month after month, and they love the work. And then soon after that, I got over 200 new members every single month, and the thing started to really take off. And today, there's a whole organization there at Mixergy that helps me do my interviews and create my courses. And there's a community of people who are there who are members to listen to it because I focused not on the junky email, but on the mission and what I wanted and what I knew was possible. 200. Do you ever find yourself getting distracted from your mission? I wanna show you how to get back into it. There's something called, in cognitive psychology, called target fixation. I never understood it until my brother took motorcycle safety lessons when he got his bike. He said, "Look, watch these videos they gave us in class. Everyone's gonna crash." I said, "Michael, you're getting a bike. Why do you need to know this?" And he said, "Look at that." And sure enough, just before the crash, all of them did these two things. You could almost see that their attention was going over towards the wall. And you could almost see them saying, "Don't hit the wall." And then they would ride and hit the wall, right? It was target fixation. You— whatever you fixate on, whatever target you fixate on is what you're going to hit. And so when I was fixated on the target of email, and when I was fixated on the target of my friend doing better, I was hitting walls. But once I decided I was going to fixate on my own target, things started to actually happen towards it. So that's me. My goal here isn't to tell you my story and to have you guys just hear and learn what works for me. I want you guys to try it with me. And so we— I went to a factory in China. I called them up, and I got 500 beads just like this to pass out, and the team here is gonna be handing them out right now. I wanna make sure all of you guys get it, and we're gonna try the exercise right here together. And I want you to have something that you can take with you when you go home, because I've gone to conferences, learned something good, written it down, said, "I promise I'm gonna use it," and I never used it. And while they're passing it out, I'd love to get a couple of people up here to help out. Corey, do you want, do you guys wanna help? Do you wanna come up here? The idea is this. We're going to have our word, just like mine was 200. We're all going to share the same word. And then we're going to start with this big— do you guys see that big fat bead? It's called the guru bead, the one that has a knot on it. We're going to start by putting our thumb and index finger on that. And we're going to touch it and move it. And then we're going to use our index finger to touch the next one and the next one until we touch every single one of them. And this holds you accountable. It's so easy to say, ah, you know what, I got it, and do it one time. And then get sucked right back into your rut, which is, "Oh, I've got to answer email, I've got to do this other thing." No, we're going to focus on what we want, not what other people are telling us to focus on, not on those distracting lies in our minds. I call it "true mind" because I'm going to find something that's true, useful, and wanted to focus on. It looks like everyone's got it, right? All right, let's try it together. For a focus exercise, I'd love for us, instead of using 200, that was mine, I want us to use one word. Like a mantra together here. So put your thumb and index finger on that guru bead, that fat one with the knot. Let's hold it up or somewhere that you can see it. And actually, what we're going to do is put it on your thumb. And we're all going to hold with the index finger. We're going to tap down that big one. And we're going to use— and we're going to say the word focus together. Ready? 1, 2, 3, focus. Yeah. Now let's move over to the next one. This is reminding us to focus. 1, 2, 3. Focus, yeah. Next one, 1, 2, 3, focus. Let's say it louder. Let's make sure that Sam, who's in the back there, probably worried about what his next speaker is, and if we're all on target, let's make sure he even hears it. Go to the next one, 1, 2, 3, focus. Yeah, Sam. He can hear us, he's saying, good. Now let's try it now internally. I wasn't walking around on the subway on my way to work going, 200, 200, 200, right? I was just mentally going in saying, yeah, I could do 200. I'll do it. So why don't we try it all together, but privately, quietly. Try to do a full round. And as you say it, remember to bring back your focus. Focus is so important. There's a story about how Warren Buffett and Bill Gates met at dinner for the first time. And Bill Gates' mom was there. And she asked everyone around the table, what's the most— if you could sum up what got you here in one word, What word would you use to sum it up? And Warren Buffett and Bill Gates both used the same word, which was focus.

They're just so focused, right?

And we're gonna get back into focus here together. So why don't we start with the guru bead, and we'll do it again, just mentally think of the word. You know what, actually, let's stand up and do it. We shouldn't have to sit down the whole time. Let's stand up. You could keep it anywhere by you. How do you guys feel about it? Good? Jack, you're a product guy. Is this clear enough? Am I doing a good job explaining how to do it? All right. Right? You guys all see him on Product Hunt with one eye out and a tongue out? Yeah, that's the look. All right. So let's try it. Let's start with the first one.

Just think focus to yourself as you move that first one. Then go to the next one. We're going to touch each one of these. Make sure to keep thinking about focus. If your mind starts to wander, don't worry about it because your fingers are going to move over to the next bead. And your mind will remember, hey, I've got to bring it back to what I'm doing here, the word focus, and move the next bead. Hold yourself the way you would when you're really focused. So you want to feel it as you're saying the word, as you're thinking the word. Feel focused and reconnect. And when you've got them all, just grab a seat.

So focus is a good word to keep coming back to, and I wanted one that we'd all have together. But as you're trying this yourselves, now that you've got this, come up with a word or a really short phrase that has more significance to you personally, that's much more connected with your personal mission, that's much more about what you wanna do, and use that word. And as you're walking around and you're tempted to just check your phone for one more time, I love it, or check your Apple Watch, which mine is coming in a few days, I'm— got nothing against it, but spend some time just bringing yourself back to what you want, to your own personal mission. Everyone else is gonna get you distracted. These True Mind beads are going to bring you back to what's true for you. I could do 200. What could you do? I truly wanted to do 200. What do you truly want to do? Keep bringing it back to that. All right. Thank you guys for trying it. I'd love to hear how this all works out for you. I'm going to be here to say hello. And let's give them a big round of applause for jumping up here. Thank you. Cool.