How The Barbell Strategy Can Help You Win Big!

Welcome to another pop-up edition of Creative Our Purpose Live. Today's topic is the bimodal decision-making strategy known as the barbell, or sometimes called Seneca's barbell. I'm going to broadcast on this today based on a question that came in from one of our circle subscribers. That's a paid subscriber to the Purpose Driven Prosperity model, which recently just got titled Transcended Solopreneurship and moved the Purpose-Driven Prosperity model to the subtitle. Still the same publication, still the same focus: helping solopreneurs build a better business by becoming a better person. A business that requires the least amount of effort, the least amount of time, so that you can build a business that funds and fits the lifestyle that you actually want to be living. Bree is a member of the Circle community, and when I put out, uh, a call for questions in our subscriber chat, she came up with the following: How do you continue to use patience in the process of waiting to get something across the barbell? Waiting is slow and difficult sometimes, even when you see positive data. I want to start something just to spark it up a bit, but I know that's not exactly wise. Waiting is hard indeed. So before I speak directly to Brie's question, I'm going to start with just a brief description of what the barbell is. So the barbell strategy, what's sometimes called Seneca's barbell, is a strategy that the Stoic philosopher, Roman statesman, playwright, investor, financier, Seneca created as a risk mitigation strategy for his financial investments. It was a way of reducing risk in his core investments so that he had some money that could be risked in opportunities that had an asymmetrical upside advantage. So oftentimes things that will pay off big, uh, do have a lot of risk involved with them. And so it's not a good idea. For instance, if you want to win the lottery, you could spend your life savings on lottery tickets. That's a high-risk proposition that may, may pay off big. It's not a proposition I would recommend. Um, but instead, if you have 80% of your income that is secure and recurring and something that you have certainty that you can count on, it can be okay to invest 20% of your income, 10% of your income, 5% of your income into things that are a little more risky, say Bitcoin or some other kind of crypto project or any kind of startup investment and so forth. So Seneca had this approach called the barbell because it looks like a barbell. You have on one side something that has a very safe, certain, reliable outcome, and on the other side you have something that's very high risk but also very high turn, and there is a bar connecting those two ends of the barbell. So, that's where it comes from. If you want a more modern reference, Nassim Taleb writes about this initially in his first book, Black Swan, but he speaks— it's his book Antifragile is actually kind of all about the barbell. In fact, I believe that book has a barbell on the COVID of the book. So both Seneca and Taleb are sometimes considered to be controversial figures. I mean, Seneca is not my favorite of the three ancient Stoics for sure. You know, he's Someone whose actions did not always align with his philosophical principles. And Taleb has a reputation as being kind of acerbic and cranky. He's also highly successful, very intelligent, and I think his books are loaded with insight and inspiration. And quite frankly, I like to follow and pay attention to people that are a little on the prickly side or the curmudgeon side of the spectrum. It not only can be really informative, but it can also be kind of fun to watch and read and listen. So if you're interested in learning more about Seneca's barbell, I would start actually with Nassim Taleb's book, Antifragile. So what is— fundamentally, what is the Barbell? The Barbell is a bimodal strategy for getting clear about resource allocation. It can be financial resource allocation, it could be time resource allocation, effort resource allocation, attention resource allocation, reputation resource allocation, whatever resource you are interested in protecting., but also exploiting can be put on this barbell strategy to make sure that you are maintaining security and reliability on one end while you risk some of those resources for upside gains on the other side. It's also a system reliability strategy. It's a way of thinking about, and this is I think speaking to Bree's question, how are you moving a tactic or a tool or a strategy for your business across the barbell, something that has possibility of upside outcome to something that is proven to have upside income. And, you know, another way to think about this is explore, exploit. You know, there are these things that you want to explore because they sound interesting. They sound like they have potential to help create a more reliable business or a more profitable business, prosper business, and business takes less time. And you want to move them across the barbell so that they are a proven tool, tactic, or strategy that's earning you money, saving you time, boosting your reputation, and so forth. And it's, uh, the bimodal barbell strategy also can be thought of as a goal achievement strategy, which is just a variation on what I was just saying. But, you know, you want to— if your objective is to create, uh, to leverage a tactic or a tool so that it becomes a proven asset that helps you earn money or saves you time. You want to move that all the way across. The core idea, regardless of how you think about this, is you want to avoid the middle. Okay, so for instance, uh, if you are building a business You want to make sure that you start with first principles thinking. What is it? What's required for me to have a successful business? Well, I have to have an offer that is irresistible enough to an audience that is eager enough to purchase it or invest in it. And I have to have some sort of system to get that offer in front of that audience. Fundamentally, That's all you need to have a successful business. From a principled level, from reasoning from first principles, the three irreducible components of a business are irresistible offer, eager audience, and a system for getting that offer in front of the audience. So you can think of that system as your marketing and sales strategy or your client attraction strategy. I prefer client attraction to client acquisition. Acquisition sounds like very imperialistic. So if you are thinking about that from a first principles level, you will decide like, where do I want to start? Do I want— do I start with an offer that I know I can deliver on and then go look for an audience? Or Do you start with an audience? Maybe the audience that's already part of your network, already part of your circle of connections, people that already know, like, and trust you. That's the best audience to start with because you don't have to waste a lot of time earning awareness, attention, permission, and trust. You should already have that if they're in your email address book or if they're, you know, in a group that you're a part of. What have you. So I personally love to start with the audience and through conversation find out what their dreams and aspirations are, what their problems and challenges are, and create offers that will help them identify their most immediate constraint, overcome that constraint, and reveal the next constraint that they'll need my continued help with. So I prefer to start with audience and then the offer becomes something that serves that audience. Um, and then Once you have dialed that, so again, from the point of view of the barbell, I'm gonna find an audience. That's the possibility side. There's potential in this audience. Through conversation, I can move that audience across the barbell so that I now have a clearly defined market with a specific aspiration they want to achieve, a specific problem that they want to solve. And once I have that locked in as a proven asset, here's an audience that has a problem or an aspiration I can help with, then I can move to the offer side with the potential or the explore portion. What are the kind of offerings that I can bring, bring to these people that will help them identify and resolve their most immediate constraint? Which will by definition help reveal the next constraint that they need help with and the next and the next. And I can create an offer. Maybe, you know, it's a product, maybe it's a service, maybe it's a community or a mastermind, maybe it's a Substack publication. But I want to make sure I get that offer dialed in and moved across the barbell. With the Purpose Driven Prosperity model, we use something called a forever offer, which is Basically, just what's the way that you show up in the world based on your personality, your preferences, your skills, your talents, your resources, your assets that allows you to be useful and helpful to people that have a specific aspiration or problem that they want help with. And then you can create offers pretty much on demand or a menu of offers, but you start with What's— how do I like to show up in the world? How do I like to help people? What can I help them with? And what is the most effective and efficient way for me to serve that audience, knowing what I am the best in the world at and doing the way only I can do? So once you have an offer and an audience dialed in on the right side of the barbell and the exploit, these are proven assets that are reliable and you can put— there's a component of this called maximum recoverable volume and minimum effective dose. I'll get to that in a minute. And this next piece got my audience and my offer dialed in. It's on a minimum effective dose. It's reliable, it's proven. And now I'm going to create a system for putting that offer in front of that audience. And so I might decide that I want to, you know, use Russell Brunson's funnel hacking strategy. I might decide I want to use Joel Erway's power offer strategy. I may decide I want to use Alex Hormozi's no-brainer offer strategy and/or marketing to get people across. I might— this is where people really get hung up because again, the core The core most important piece of the, of the barbell is you have to avoid the middle. So most people know who they want to serve or have a good enough idea. Most people have a good enough offer already established. What they don't have is a good enough marketing or sales system. So what do they do? Well, they usually will start with, oh, I need to have a website, I need to have a logo, I need to create a lead magnet and an email sequence, need to build a funnel that gets people to the lead magnet. I need to have a blog and a podcast or a broadcast and a social media presence on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and TikTok. I need to have a YouTube channel. They start putting— taking all of these tools that can be used as a client attraction tool and they kind of get them started and they're moved to the middle of the barbell, but they've never moved them all the way across so that it's a proven asset that's bringing in customers. And so what you have in effect done is made your job not helping people achieve the aspiration or solve the problem that they want to solve through your offer. You've made a full-time job out of taking care of the homework of maintaining a social media presence, a YouTube channel, a blog, a broadcast podcast, etc. So that's the danger, right? You haven't— you have to take your assets, your marketing and sales assets, each one, and move them across the barbell and put them on what's called minimum effective dose because when something is on the explore or possibility/potential side of the barbell, where there's a lot of risk and certainly the possibility of high return, you are going to be investing a lot of resources, a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of attention, a lot of your reputation, and potentially a lot of money. Into developing those assets, whether it's social media presence on various platforms, a YouTube channel, a podcast broadcast, a blog, a website, what have you. If they haven't moved all the way across to be a proven asset that is reliable, you've created a full-time job of just managing all these things that are halfway across the barbell. And Therefore, you cannot put them on what's called minimum effective dose. So, what you want to do is— what I would do and what this is what I most often do with members of the community and clients is let's take an audit of where you're at and what you have. Where do you actually want to end up? What's the ideal— the vision of the ideal lifestyle that you want to live? Just to use myself as an example, I was one of those people that had a full— created a full-time job for myself just managing social media, YouTube, podcast, blog, website, et cetera. And when my purpose emerged as being a full-time grandpa, taking care of my grandson 5 days a week, 9 hours a day, I realized I couldn't have a full-time job where I was just managing social media, YouTube, podcast, blog, website, etc. So I did an audit. How, how much business, how much clients are being attracted to my offer and to my audience through these activities? And what I discovered was I was getting almost zero return on investment from social media, from my podcast, from my blog, from my website. Where I was getting business was from the people who already knew, liked, and trusted me that were subscribed to my Substack. So essentially, I abandoned all the things that I was doing, and I just concentrated on delivering value to my subscribers on Substack, moving some of them into my paid Circle community, and then over time, some of them into my Inner Circle community, which is the powder level of the Substack. So by simply showing up every single day and helping the people that had already raised their hand and said, I know you, I like you, I trust you, and I need you to help me, I was able to diagnose the problems that people had or help clarify the aspirations they wanted to achieve and provide them with a roadmap that would get them there. And I did all of that for free. And the people that were ready to invest in their success and catalyze their ability to leverage that roadmap and meet the inevitable opportunities and obstacles that would come up that we couldn't foresee when we created the roadmap, I was able to generate business that sustained me through backend offers created more or less on demand for those people. So again, let's just review what you need to do with the barbell is like recognize that it is a bimodal decision-making strategy, a way of making better decisions around resource allocation. Are you invested? Are you overinvested in high-risk things, or do you have 80 to 90% of your investment of time, attention, money, and effort, reputation in reliable things? Are you overinvested in all the things that you're exploring that have potential to help you but haven't been proven, or do you have a little bit of your time and attention, money, and effort, reputation invested in things that you can explore that have potential while 80 to 90% of your time, attention, money, and effort is invested in things that are bringing you a steady return on investment. What is the reliability of your system? Have you distilled your system down to the 2 or 3 things that are— that need to go right for your business to succeed with the least amount of effort, the least amount of risk? The least amount of time while earning the most amount of revenue possible? And have you achieved the goal that you had with each thing that you're putting at the explore end of the barbell? And again, anything that's on the explore end of the barbell that has potential, that is high risk and possibly high reward, that's going to be where that, that all requires the maximum recoverable volume of your most precious resources: time, attention, money, effort, reputation. Tamer. And so you want to be strategic, judicious, and disciplined about moving one thing at a time across the barbell, because if you get 2 or 3 or 4 things in the middle, You just created a full-time job managing things that haven't been proven to work, that are just bleeding your most precious resources of time, attention, money, and effort. And you're also a solopreneur. Like, you don't have venture capital that you can draw on. You don't have a good year blimp that you can float across every stadium, every event across the country to earn attention and awareness and then try to somehow use that to earn permission and trust. You have to be very strategic about all this. So know the two ends of the barbell. Understand what the barbell is for. It's a process for making decisions better, decisions around resource allocation, system reliability, goal achievement, so that you can take things that have that you're exploring that have potential, that require the most investment of resources, that are high-risk, high-return possibilities, and move them all the way across to something that is an asset you're exploiting, that's proven, that's earning you money or saving you time or earning you reputation or saving you effort, that is on a minimum effective dose. You have the minimum amount of time, attention, money, effort, and reputation necessary to keep that flywheel spinning. And you have safe, secure, reliable income. And by keeping the middle clear, you will have more discretionary resources—time, attention, money, effort, reputation—to spend. So getting back to Bree's question, how do you continue to use patience in the process of waiting to get something across the barbell? That's the ticket right there in your question, Bri, is you don't wait for something to get across the barbell. You pay attention to what's being moved across the barbell. You collect the data. You had the conversations that are necessary for you to get the feedback necessary to collect the data necessary to optimize that system.— or that element of your system or that resource or asset that you're moving across the barbell. Do not wait. Be disciplined and judicious. Pay attention to what's in the middle of the barbell and what are you doing today to get it moved all the way across so that you now have a proven asset, resource, investment that is earning you money, saving you time, saving you effort. That you don't have to pay that much attention to. That is only enhancing your reputation. Yes, as solopreneurs, we can be dogs at the park that are chasing after every shiny squirrel that comes by. We love new ideas. We know our ideas are brilliant because we've come up with them. We love to learn. All these things sound like they are virtues. Oh, I love to learn, so I'll take another course. I'll follow another guru. I'll watch some more YouTube videos. I'll try this new strategy, this new program, this new blueprint that some digital marketer or online guru comes up with, and all you're doing is bleeding your precious resources of time, attention, money, effort, and reputation on something that has no way of being measured in terms of how it can help you build a more optimized, better business that is going to earn you more money in less time with less effort, with less attention while enhancing your reputation. So my core strategy for how do I stop myself from diving into every new Substack publication that I would love to read, every new course I would love to take, every new book I would like to read, YouTube channel I'd like to binge is I just put it, put it aside. Not now. I've got other priorities. I'm going to take care of my priorities. I'm going to let this other thing that I'm interested in in the moment, this potential distraction, just sit. Now, if it keeps coming back over and over and over, it might— I might decide it's something to put on the explorer side of the barbell, and I will move it all the way across. But most of the time all those shiny new ideas and all those shiny new strategies and tactics and tools that the gurus and the marketers come up with, they're just shiny distractions, and they're just preying on your proclivity to be dull and to keep doing yesterday what you did today and settle for the same results that you've always gotten by consuming another product, purchasing something, um, because it makes you feel the the act of purchasing and learning makes you feel like you've accomplished something when it hasn't, unless it's proven to become a valuable asset or resource that is earning you money, optimizing your systems, and helping you earn more revenue in less time with less effort, with less attention, but while boosting your reputation. So, Bri, I hope that that is all helpful and useful, uh, and that I hope everyone that's tuning in live or, uh, in Replay understands better now this whole idea of Seneca's Barbell, also just known as the barbell. It's a bimodal strategy that you can use to make decisions better by paying closer attention and doing a better job with your resource allocation, time, attention, money, effort, reputation, by paying better attention to your system reliability and how you're raising the floor on the least effective components while you prune away any unnecessary components, achieving goals, objectives, making sure that every new tool, tactic, or strategy that you launch gets moved all the way across so that it goes from something that's being— that has potential that you're exploring to something that's proven and reliable that you can start to whittle down the amount of time it takes, money and effort it takes. So moving it from maximum recoverable volume, the maximum investment of assets that you can invest, to the minimum effective dose of assets and resources that are necessary to keep it going. And if you have any questions, you're free to reach out to me anytime. I dropped a link in there to the Purpose-Driven Prosperity Model, the Transcendent Solopreneurship publication. I encourage you to go ahead and subscribe to that. And, uh, since, uh, we don't have any questions coming in, I see our Circle member Alice, who is currently a client in the Inbox Catalyst program, is here. Great to see you, Alice. Sandra and Don, great to have you jump in. And this will be available as a replay in the podcast at some point, but there will be a YouTube video that's posted sometime in the next 24 to 48 hours if you'd like to see the replay. Just make sure that you subscribe to Transform— I'm sorry, excuse me, Transcendent Solopreneurship, which is where we talk about the Purpose-Driven Prosperity Model for building a better business by becoming a better person, a business that funds and fits the life that you started your business for in the first place. All right, until next time, be well, do good, have fun.