Creative Advisor Emails - 4/17

Email 1 Subject Line: here comes the gun… Preview Line: pew pew pew In my living room above my couch there is this famous piece of art by one of my favorite artists, Andy Warhol: INSERT IMAGE Yes, there is a very specific reason why I have a picture of a gun hanging in my living room. It’s actually because of a story that I heard about one of the great copywriters, Gary Halbert. For those of you who don't know, Gary is actually one of the most significant copywriters to come out of the golden era of copywriting. It’s important for you to know your predecessors so you can study them and understand what did and did not work for them. Gary existed in the magical time of direct mail. He would get customers by literally sending you a letter in the mail after finding your address from some sort of database. He would then literally send you a letter very similar to how I'm sending you an email right now… And he would sell the living s*** out of this product So this style of marketing was actually pretty expensive because you have to pay for not only the postage… But also the actual physical mail that you're sending out to people. And here’s the thing, Gary was not the best with money. He was great at MAKING money, but he would almost always find some way to get rid of the money. Making millions, Rolls-Royces being repossessed, and then back to making millions. So there's this one story about a time where Gary was actually really struggling financially… And he was trying so hard to make an offer work with the direct mail campaigns he was receiving. His wife basically told him if this next one doesn't work you need to go get a job because we have kids we have bills to pay, etc. So what Gary did was literally the entire time he wrote the campaign for his offer… He just imagined there was a gun to his head And this is something I like to call gun to your head leadership You see, I think that the unfortunate truth is that humans have a natural inclination to get comfortable And in order to reach the upper echelons of success, you actually need to be really good at being uncomfortable I've just seen this cycle so many times in my life that I had to be smart enough to understand how to prevent it: * I would work really hard * I would make a lot of money * I would then take time off and relax now that I had money * I would start to spend my money * I would then start to see my bank account hit a number I didn’t like * I would restart the cycle Over and over and over again, I pretty much lived this cycle for about 3 or 4 years. And when I really looked at what I was doing…I felt so fucking dumb. I was working my face off, sacrificing everything for what? A Burberry hoodie, a nice car, some cool sneakers, a nice apartment, and the occasional night out with a cutie? This is what I was working my face off for? And I know for some of you it's like, “Yeah that sounds f****** amazing.” But there's this thing called hedonic adaptation. And what it means is that as you normalize a certain lifestyle, it just gets old really quick. I think it's only now in my life that I truly understand that what makes me happy is not all of this shit… It’s having the gun to my head. Not literally. But it’s being able to experience that level of pressure and stress… And then come out the other side successful. It's kind of sick and a little bit twisted, but “gun to your head leadership” and “gun to your head thinking” becomes addicting. Email 2 I was watching this interview with Jocko willink where someone was asking him, “what do people not expect from a street fight?” And his answer was, “the level of violence.” and this “what are people not prepared for” style of question really made me start thinking about… “What are the people trying to transition from a job to a freelancing career not prepared for?” And I really do think that the answer is pretty simple. It’s the level of leadership you need to have over yourself. Most people are just not prepared for that. They've always been told what to do: read this, do this, be here at this time, wake up at this time, follow this, etc. But when you're getting started in the world of freelancing it's on you. There's no one to boss you around Sure, you could join a program like what we have over at the Creative Advisor… But I can't force you to do the work. With a job there's the threat of being fired and not being able to pay your bills which keeps you performing the way you should. But with freelancing there's no one holding you accountable but you. This is what I mean by a level of leadership that most people are not used to. Leadership starts with self. Here’s the thing, a lot of what’s required to go from employee to freelancer is your ability to say, “no” You see, I didn't really live a life for the first three years of my freelancing career I think I maybe saw friends two or three times a year… I worked non-stop all the time. And it didn't help that I was definitely addicted to weed at the time… So there was some added loner mentality that kicked in. I didn't want to see anyone, I didn't want to hang out with anyone, I didn't want to do this or do that… All I wanted was to make money as a freelancer, and that's why I have it. I led myself to that goal. If you can't lead yourself properly… Which usually involves having honest conversations about yourself and where you're not showing up the way you should be… You’re fucked. Some people just can’t handle that level of responsibility. Some excuse will always take priority over what you really want. Some girl will take priority over what you really want. Some event will take priority over what you really want. Some bullshit habit will take priority over what you really want. You see, sacrifice is inevitable. You either sacrifice these things to get what you want… Or what you want becomes the sacrifice. And that's up to you which one you want to choose… Personally I would choose getting what I want. Every. Single. Time. Email 3 You need to be able to lean into your demons. I'm the first one to admit that I'm super fucked up. My mind can go to some very dark places. But I also believe that these forces balance out no matter what. As above, so below. So I definitely have a negative view of the world… But I also have a very positive view of the world. I can have a very positive mindset I can also have a very negative mindset I can have a very growth orientated way of thinking I can also have a self-destructive way of thinking And I look at these two forces as constantly being at war with each other in my own life Now, my job as an individual is to spread that positivity and light to other people. I deal with my negativity on my own. You see, if you look at every single high performing individual… They all have something along the lines of this, “dark side.” Anyone who's trying to act like they don't have that is an absolute fraud But there's a difference between having it and letting it control you. You see, you are not every single one of your thoughts Just because a negative thought comes up…does not mean that you have to identify with the negative thought. You CAN literally just think, “I'm having a negative thought that's all” But I think what's even more powerful is being able to stare at these negative thoughts, and reverse them. Put them to work for you. Use them as a source of fuel You have some level of fear come up in regards to your ability to quit your job and go out on your own Tell that thought, “fuck you watch me do it.” You have some anxiety and overwhelm come up from the fact that you have so much to do. Tell that thought, “fuck you I got this.” You have some level of depression that comes up from a dissatisfaction with life. Tell that thought, “fuck you I can change.” You see the brain is a lot like a radio… And it's constantly receiving frequencies that come from outside influences. Every single thought is a particular frequency. So you see, you’re not a particular frequency… You are what you do consistently. And if you give in to your thoughts consistently, that's just who you are. But that's easy to change, just be aware of those thoughts and what they are. Great book on this topic: Outwitting The Devil by Napoleon Hill When you recognize all of these different thoughts… Are really just an intimation of the devil It becomes a lot easier to say, “no we're not doing this shit right now” Email 4 Yesterday, I sent an email talking about how one of the keys to changing your reality… Is being able to put your demons to work. Being able to use anger, anxiety, and fear as a source of fuel. All of this is possible when you stop identifying with your thoughts… And realize that you are not your thoughts. You can see the thoughts for what they are, which is usually just self-sabotage. The devil works in mysterious ways, my friend… And you need to be self aware enough to be able to recognize when he's infiltrated your paradigm. And all of this talk about dark energy or demons is is great and all… But what about the light? What about positive energy? Well, I also believe it that's an absolute prerequisite to success. When you see me interacting with other people I'm almost always positive because I can handle my negativity. I don't want anyone else to have to handle my negativity I'm responsible like that. But I also fill my life intentionally with a lot of positivity. The other day I was looking in the mirror, I've been working out a lot recently, and my body was looking good. It felt great to give myself some praise and to feel good about myself. We've accomplished some amazing things in the past few months with this business… And I love giving myself some self love and self-appreciation for the fact that I’ve achieved that. Seriously, nobody loves me more than I love me. And I really do believe that this is the balance that must come with the Dark Side of high performance. Because in order to be high performance, you need to be doing a lot of things you don't want to be doing. You have to deal with a lot of stress, that's just what it is. And you're going to cope with that stress somehow… Usually one of your minds immediate ways of doing that is with negative thoughts Some of those you're able to catch, others not so much So if you're not making an active effort to also fill up the ecosystem of your mind with positivity constantly… I just think you're shooting yourself in the foot and waiting for an inevitable collapse. You should be your biggest advocate and your biggest critic. They coexist together. When's the last time you just took 10 minutes to stare at yourself in the mirror… And just show yourself unwavering levels of self-love? When's the last time you wrote down all the things that you've accomplished in the past 6 months? When's the last time you actually thanked yourself for something? You're either not doing this because you're just not doing it… Or because you actually don't have anything to love about yourself Both of which are simple to fix. Email 5 Sometimes I'll get on sales calls with people who are trying to join our program, The Creative Advisor… And all I want to ask them is, “Why are you upsetting God?” But it’s not really my business to ask someone that, so I tend to stay away from the topic of god on a sales call. But we're on the email newsletter right now so we can talk about whatever the fuck we want. There’s very few people that I know who have explored religion and spirtuality to the degree that I've explored it… I've gone to Non-Denominational Christian churches I've gone to Orthodox Christian churches I've gone to Mosques I've gone to meditation retreats I've gone to Freemason temples I've read the Bible I’ve read the Quran I’ve read esoteric books like The Emerald Tablets. I've read Hindu texts like the Bhagavad Gita. And the list goes on and on… I've studied all these different forms of religion + sprituality, and what I've been able to piece together is that… God is everything God made man in his image. And there wasn't supposed to be anything else to the story. But then a fallen angel tempted man into thinking for himself. And suddenly man went from only being capable of good to now being capable of good and bad. So God had to be a judge. And if you look at my previous emails this week (if you do have them in your inbox)... You'll notice I touched heavily on the negative forces of energy that we all experience in our mind (fear anxiety, stress, and anger). While also talking about self-love, appreciation, and happiness This is what I believe the balance of God looks like Fearsome levels of judgment paired with radical levels of forgiveness and love. And I personally feel like not focusing on becoming the best version of yourself… Is taken everything God does for you, for granted. Look I'm not saying that everyone needs to be an entrepreneur Not everyone needs to quit their job, become a freelancer, and make money online. I'm certainly not using God as an argument for you to go and do that But here's the thing, some of you guys want to do that anyways God or no God, that's what you want You want this, yet you hold yourself back from doing it You want this, yet you failed to do the things which allow you to get this You want this, yet you come up with excuse after excuse as to why it can't work for you. Is there any insult greater to God than to squander the potential that he created by creating you? Personally, I don't think so. So when I talk about being able to put my demons to work and work past all of the negative thoughts I have… This is how I'm able to do that, I want to please God. When I talk about being able to fill myself with positive Loving Thoughts… This is how I'm able to do that, because I know God loves me Look at anyone who lives a godless life Almost every single one of them that I know are lost, aimlessly searching for some purpose in life. Men constantly talk about this, “purpose purpose purpose purpose…” What if your purpose was simply nothing more than satisfying God… And knowing that every single day, at the end of the day, you made the most of the day in order to become the best version of yourself. Life would be a lot simpler that way wouldn't it? Email 6 I can’t stop thinking about this interview that Elon Musk did with the BBC. If you haven't seen it yet, I'll be sure to link it for you down below. Overall it's always cool to watch someone logically run circles around a dick head reporter. (That one interview with Jordan Peterson and Kathy Newman comes to mind.) But overall, what really stood out to me is understanding what Elon is actually doing. What you'll see in the interview is the BBC dude saying, “hey this is wrong we can't have this on a platform.” And Elon simply asks, “Well, who's to dictate what's right and what's wrong? Is it the BBC?” This is huge. Because what Elon understands is that really all of social media is just a form of information gathering And what he wants is for information to actually be fact-checked by the truth… Not by biased political sources Twitter would have these misinformation claims that were fact checked on their platforms… But then the fact checking wasn't even right, it was so obvious that it was biased. And so Elon saw a really huge problem in this and decided to fix it. I can't remember the exact number he said… But the company was losing like tens of millions of dollars every single month… Maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars And when Elon came in, Twitter had four months until the company completely collapsed from funds Since coming in and taking over the company, he's gotten it to break even Super impressive. But I think watching this interview along with reading two books currently has really caused me to zoom out and think bigger picture. Those two books are… 1. The One Thing 2. Friction: The Untapped Force And so the cumulation of thinking about this interview… Along with consuming the information inside of those two books.. Really helped me to look at things from the perspective of, “What massive problem am I trying to solve?” And all this made me think was, “Fuck I'm thinking way too small.” For a while I was helping people build out marketing systems to make their business more efficient… That’s a big problem but it's not as big as preserving free speech. Which is why I don't make as much as Elon makes So now I've gone into helping other people learn how to do what I did for 5 years for themselves… Slightly bigger problem, slightly bigger pay raise. But watching this interview made me think, “Let's go a step further.” What's the next level of problem? And all I could think about was: The Education System How many of us believe the education system is absolutely fucked? Pretty much everyone I talk to agrees it’s somewhat a scam. You have these kids that pour themselves into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt… To come out with a piece of paper that is absolutely useless. So they can go get a job from a fuck head corporate company… So they can then get a little bit of money to be able to pay for an overpriced apartment… And you can also go to school for even more time… Spend even more money on your education… Only to be greeted with the harsh reality that once you get out you know don't even have any time to live your life with your insane hours. Let’s not mention that these universities have been corrupted by woke ideology and bullshit propaganda. And you have these absolutely clueless high schoolers who are getting coerced into joining these systems without understanding what they truly are. Yes we need doctors, lawyers, engineers, and architects. Most people are not going to get those degrees Most people go and waste their time and money and ultimately end up regretting college. So the problem is not necessarily at the college level… It starts with these kids at a high school level No one's leveling with them and just telling them the god honest truth. Because if the high school actually did that, they wouldn’t get kickbacks from the universities. So then the question becomes, “Okay, how do you solve the problem?” You have to influence the youth. How do you influence the youth? Well that's a good fucking question. That's the question I've yet to answer… But that's where my head's at. It’s a big problem. The big reward is on the otherside of the big solution. Email 7 Some businesses are just flat out AWFUL to work with. Because what you have to understand is that when it comes to working with a business… You're working with the business owner. And if the business owner is annoying as fuck… Your work will become annoying as fuck. If the business owner is rude, entitled, acting like a soiled cunt... Your work will feel like that. My friends, life is too short for pain in the ass clients. And I think everyone in their freelancing Journey has a Rite of Passage through a few different shitty clients. But I want to tell you a story about a nightmare client… (By the way, I have plenty of stories about dream clients by the way, but those just aren't that exciting…they paid me, we made a lot of money, they were happy to pay me more, it's like a superhero story with no villain) So this one client was someone that was actually a referral to me from another client… We got on the phone and I pitched her a $50,000 package to build out an entire funnel. She closed the next day for two payments of $25,000. So we start on this project and she is kind of chill at first But once we finished everything up and actually launched the funnel all of a sudden she turns into a fucking nightmare. She calls me crying talking about… “I don’t want to run my business this way! I want to be a mom! I’m not going to use this funnel!” And I'm just kind of like, “Jesus Christ, I just don't want to work with this woman anymore she is such a pain in the ass.” So what I tell her is this, “Hey if you're not going to use this funnel I'm not going to make you pay me the other 25k for it, just use that money and invest in some coaching because you need help.” She then comes back to me a few weeks later talking about how she has an idea for a different funnel and maybe what we can do is apply the remaining 25k towards it and that'll make sense. Sure, why not So I go build this new funnel for her… She does one launch with it. Makes $50,000. And then ends up sending me a letter basically threatening to sue me and demanding a refund. So not only did I build out two funnels for the price of one But I put up with all of her bullshit… Wrote all the copy for the shit she needed… And now I'm being told that if I don't send back her money…there will be a lawsuit. So basically, I just responded to her with, “More than happy to have a judge review our contract together and take this to court, let me know how you want to proceed.” Ghosted. She disappears entirely, because she was never going to sue me in the first place… She was just thinking that she can manipulate herself her way into getting a refund. I then get this text from her this week about 2 to 3 months later after this whole scandal… “Hi Nick. Hope you are well. I’d love to ask for the opportunity to have a conversation with you. Looking back, I realize I did not lead with love in our last interaction and I would like to take ownership of my end. If not, I understand and I just want to say I’m sorry.” Do you see how much of a roller coaster all of this is? Look, do I forgive her? Yeah, we all have our moments where we act a bit vengeful unnecessarily. Maybe not to the degree of threatening to sue someone, but still. I have DOZENS of client stories that involve 0.00000000000001% of the drama contained here. Sales call. Paid. Work. Work Complete. Project Makes $$$. EZPZ Lemon Squeezy. So just remember this… LIFE IS TOO SHORT FOR NIGHTMARE CLIENTS. I should’ve cut her off after the first psycho-moment. It was dumb for me to let her back in… But hey, lesson learned.