Taylor Emails (1/1/24)

Email 1 Subject Line: The Golden Sin Of Optimization There are a whole lot of natural laws out there which I’m sure you’ve heard of before… * An object in motion stays in motion * For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. * You cannot create or destroy energy. Stuff like that… Want to hear another one? If your kids get sick, you’re also getting sick. You have a little booger terrorist holding everyone hostage with sniffles while running around your house touching everything, coughing in your face, and then sneezing on you while you take them to bed. It’s extremely enjoyable. All jokes aside, I found myself feeling a bit under the weather the past couple of days due to this and it was quite nice to have time off paired with the holidays wrapping up. While I was focused on “not working” I listened to this podcast with Lebron James’ trainer and I wanted to share my takeaways with you. This guy, Mike Mancias, talked about how Lebron invests $1,500,000 every year into his rest and recovery. It sounds crazy, but when you think about it, Lebron’s body is literally his entire livelihood, he’s investing into it to get the most out of it. Because when you go into the process of building your body, you're actually participating in a dangerous and destructive activity. You're breaking down the musculature, you're hurting the body. If there’s not an intentional effort to help heal and rest the body, it dramatically (and obviously) increases the likelihood of an injury. Our minds are no different, but I think most entrepreneurs seriously struggle with this. They don’t take time to rest, because they see no point in it. “Why rest when I can work?” And this right here is what I like to call, “The Golden Sin Of Optimization” This is the belief that we must always be pushing forward, grinding, and hustling without end to fully optimize ourselves or our business. However, just like how muscles are broken down from exercise and need recovery time to rebuild and become stronger… Your mind needs to rest too, otherwise, there’s no room for magic. Your best “optimizations” are going to come while you’re at a farmers market ordering a cup of iced coffee… They’re going to come after a brisk walk outside while recording your thoughts… Heck, they may even come to you while you’re watching Disney movies with your little booger terrorist. Sure, the constant push, push, push can lead to a very bright flame… But is it going to last through the night? Or will it burn out and fade away? My point is this, the Golden Sin is about valuing short-term gains over long-term sustainability. One of your highest ROI activities will be having some “off time” where you’re not in front of the computer, you’re not working on your next promo, and you’re not building out systems. I’d argue that the pocket of “off time” or “recovery mode” is where you’re going to find your best ideas… It works for me, and if you’re a normal functioning human (and not a booger terrorist), I’m pretty confident it will work for you too. - Taylor Email 2 Subject Line: Cocaine, Train Tracks, and STDs Quite the subject line, yeah? I promise it will make sense in a second. So there was a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in 2004, where a young guy asked a broad question to Charlie Munger… "What advice do you have for someone like me to succeed in life?" Munger responded with: "Don't do cocaine. Don't race trains to the track. And avoid all AIDS situations." While it’s definitely funny, his whole point was that being successful is not that hard. Just don't be an idiot. He didn’t say “Invest this, spend this amount, don’t get into debt, etc.” He said don't do things that are going to kill yourself. But outside of that, all is fair and love of war. Success can often get misconstrued as a complex maze of decisions and strategies… But it really just boils down to avoiding fundamental mistakes. Let’s say you’re an offer owner who wants to hit $100k a month consistently this year… What are the BIG mistakes you can make that would personally screw you over? 1. Become a raging alcoholic 2. Sleep 3 hours a night 3. Disregard everyone in your life and isolate yourself 4. Spend every dollar you have and keep nothing in reserves 5. Develop an insatiable craving for heroin I’m obviously having fun with this, but you get the point. Everyone wants to focus on the little problems that can lead to some form of failure… (For example, “What type of Lead Magnet should I use?”) But oftentimes we don’t realize that handling the big problems will do a lot of the heavy lifting. Everything else past that… Like I said earlier, just don’t be an idiot. Now, what’s cool is that this style of “inversion thinking” can be applied on a micro level too… Let’s say we needed to come up with a list of smaller mistakes that would prevent you from effectively marketing your offer… 1. Ignore your customers 2. Don’t listen to the market 3. Never promote your products 4. Don’t bring in any new traffic 5. Underdeliver to everyone who buys from you 6. Don’t demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about 7. Use ineffective monetization models Simply don’t make those mistakes either. When you look back at the past year, I guarantee you that most of the mistakes you made were because you were doing something you shouldn’t be doing. And it’s not that I’m some sort of genius psychic wizard… That’s just basic common sense. Do the things that help you, don’t do the things that hurt you. Keep it simple and you’ll likely win. - Taylor P.S. A great book to read on this is The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham… It talks a ton about “Thinking Time” and how simply spending time with pen and paper while doing nothing else but thinking can help mitigate bad mistakes. Highly recommend giving it a read. Email 3 Subject Line: Don’t Shoot Paul Revere It was April 1775. Dusk had come and you could hear a bell ringing in the distance with faint shouting. Stepping outside of your house, you look in the distance and see a pale light getting brighter and brighter as it comes closer to you. The noise gets clearer and clearer… Something about “The Finnish are coming”? Who knows what this idiot is blabbing about, but it’s clear by now that it’s a man on horseback riding towards you. It’s time for bed and it’s dark out. Can you believe that guy making all this noise? So you adjust the sights of your rifle, aim, and fire, taking this messenger right off of his horse. Just think for a second if that happened… Imagine someone shot Paul Revere before he made it to each town to let Americans know that “The British Are Coming”... The Revolutionary War would’ve been completely different and we would probably be living in “The United States Of The United Kingdom.” So we can both agree that shooting a messenger is never a good idea, right? Well chances are, you keep shooting your own personal messenger over and over again. Here’s what I mean… How many times have you felt like you’re in a funk? You’re spending an ungodly amount of time “doom scrolling on social media”... You’re taking longer than normal to get your day started… You're ignoring all the signs that you're burning out, but you keep pushing through anyway. That little voice inside you, your 'messenger', is trying to warn you, but you're not listening. Instead, you're effectively shooting it down, just like our hypothetical scenario with Paul Revere. (Wasn’t that metaphor clever? I’m patting myself on the back right now for that one.) When you're in this state of denial, you're not just ignoring a feeling; you're ignoring a crucial message from your mind and body. This messenger is trying to tell you that it's time to pause, reevaluate, and perhaps change course. It's signaling that something isn't working, whether it's your approach to work, your lifestyle, or your habits… Essentially, it’s trying to tell you… “Hey, something you’re doing is completely out of line with the beliefs you hold for yourself and it’s causing cognitive dissonance for you which is creating avoidance and triggering coping mechanisms for you.” And rather than listen and take that feedback into account… You’re shooting the messenger. Chances are, you probably weren’t even aware that you were doing that, I don’t think people go around in life WANTING to ignore their intuition… But, it's a common trap many of us fall into. Your personal Paul Revere has important messages to share with you… And it’s up to you whether or not you’re going to listen. - Taylor