“It doesn’t take you a long time to build a successful business.  It takes you a long time to become the person to be willing to do it.”

-Myron Golden

Don’t you just love in cinema when the caterpillar becomes a butterfly?

Like when Luke became a Jedi in Star Wars.

Or when Harry was ready to fight Voldemort.

Or like how Neo figured out he really was The One in the Matrix.

That stuff only works in fiction because those same rules apply to us in REAL LIFE.  Your life changes when you BECOME the new version of YOU.

The problem is most people look for evidence of their life improving with their five senses. 

I’ll be happy when:

I SEE the new Lexus in my garage.

I TASTE  great food at a Michelin Star Restaurant.

I TOUCH a new MacBook Pro instead of my old clunker.

We can’t help living in our 5 senses because our 3D world is REAL.  The problem is focusing only on what we can perceive with our senses often keeps us living in The Gap.  

We end up staying overly consumed with what we CAN’T see, smell, hear, taste and touch.  To manifest, we need to use our imagination and feelings to see and feel what we want.

This may sound weird but this is how the universe sees it.  If you’re looking for it, that means you’re separated from it.  

And if you’re separated from it, the Law of Attraction can only bring you more of the same.  

Which is you not having it…

Check out this blog passage from Benjamin Hardy, PhD:

“Here’s a painful but liberating truth:  

Whatever you see in the outside world is a reflection of you.  

You can know who you are by what you’re seeing in the outside world.  

The food in your pantry is a reflection of you.  

The apps on your phone are a reflection of you.  

The content in your newsfeed and on your social media is a reflection of you.  

Becoming aware of these things, and then shifting them, will change your life.  

Asking the hard questions of these things will enable you to make MASSIVE leaps and bounds in your life.  

You’ll completely transform.”

I know what you’re thinking…

“Ok Adam, so how do we BE more clients?”

“How do we BE more money?”

“How do we BE more love in relationships?”

You get clear on who you want your future self to be and then live your from that perspective.  

For example…

In Natasha Graziano’s book Be it Until You Become It, she talks about how she finally attracted the mate of her dreams. 

At first she had a laundry list of qualities and attributes she wanted.  She eventually  realized she needed to BE those things on her list too.  As she became what she wanted (e,g, more loving, giving, etc.) *poof* her perfect partner showed up.

When I think about my future self I think of me traveling, drawing for hours, or maybe doing Mixxedfit. Those things require clarity, energy, and vitality.  

When I’m debating on what to eat for lunch, do I want junk food or do I want the smoothie?  I still eat junk sometimes but my point is that thinking about my future helps me make better choices today. 

We have thoughts like this everyday.  It’s not about controlling your thoughts.  That’d be about as practical as herding cats.  We don’t control our thoughts, we guide our thoughts.

And when you do that you’ll live in The Gain more of the time.  You’ll get rid of that cognitive dissonance and you’ll get closer to the you YOU want to be.  

And then you’ll get more of the stuff.

Adam

When I started offering live digital caricature as a service, I did NOT want to.

I didn’t talk about it.

I didn’t put the service on my website.  

I just didn’t want to do it.

I kept it a secret like a Code Red in the movie A Few Good Men.  I only did it because I was tired of saying no to requests and leaving money on the table.  

So… I sold out.  

Keep in mind I draw with a Wacom tablet daily so it wasn’t anything I wasn’t already doing.  I just had a sh-tty attitude about it.

Over the course of a year or so I couldn’t help but notice something always went wrong.  Usually something I could control.

I’d forget print paper.

Cords.

Hell, one day I even forgot my whole printer!  

It was ridiculous!  But that was the day I realized it was my crap attitude that had me attracting such nonsense.  And as Wayne Dyer said, when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.  

In my last post I quoted Regan Hillyer who said, success is 20% strategy and 80% psychology.      

I agree with the ratio but I wanted to break down my “psychology”.   And how to change YOU to get you more of what you want.

“Fundamental to our work is the idea that your personality creates your personal reality, and your personality is made up of how you think, act, and feel. Thus, in order for a person to create a new life and a new reality, they have to change their personality.”

-Joe Dispenza

And the by the way, you can be a great friend, son, daughter, parent, etc. and have  crappy cash flow.  When I say you need to change your personality, I’m talking about your personality with…

MONEY and business!

This is why artists, accountants, plumbers, etc. do their art for 5 10 or 20 years and then they leave their ‘job’ to do what they are already great at and fail.  

If you think, feel, and act from the wrong place with money, your business will always be a struggle.  It’ll feel like you’re swimming with a 50 pound weight strapped to your leg.  

Here’s one of the easiest ways I found to change your results and get more money in your pocket. 

You need to understand The GAP and The GAIN.

Dan Sullivan, the founder of Strategic Coach has a philosophy called The Gap and The Gain.  Dan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy have a book (by the same name) and it drills down on this beautifully.

As entrepreneurs we’re all about checking boxes and getting what we want.  “I’ll be happy when…”

I hit my money goals…

I have time for…

I achieve…

When your happiness is tied to something in the future you can’t be completely happy NOW.  Your faith and confidence is as dry and bland as old used chewing gum.  

They call this, The Gap.  

When you live in The Gap, you’re comparing your end goal to what you’ve achieved.  

For example…

Let’s say I make $50,000 a year but I wanna make $100k.  Let’s say at the end of the year I bump it up to $60k I’m still $40k away from my goal and that sucks! 

Then you tell your colleagues or husband how you didn’t hit your goals.  Or complain how it was the market, or government, or whatever! 

That’s The Gap at it’s finest!

But if you turn it around and look at it from The Gain’s perspective, you’d look at it not from your goal, but from where you started and what you achieved. 

You look backwards.

That means you’ll focus on and appreciate how you earned $10k MORE.  Two totally DIFFERENT energies!

The Gain gets you out of The GAP.

The Gain creates immediate happiness.

The Gain gives you power over the direction of your life.  

Living in The Gain will up your vibration like a credit score.  And that will give you everything you need to change how you think, act, and feel.

“I don’t think we set and achieve goals in an effort to become happy.  We do it because we are happy and want to expand our happiness.”  

-Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Keep in mind, I could have just said, ‘be grateful’.  ‘Gratitude is everything’.  Appreciate what you got. And THAT, would be TOTALLY TRUE. 

But when you approach your life from The Gap and The Gain perspective, you have more of a blueprint on how to reprogram your mind.

Think in THE GAIN.

FEEL in GAIN.

BE in THE GAIN.

And you’ll be that much closer to getting what you want.

Adam

Got any money goals for  2024?  

I bet you do.

When I first started blogging about entrepreneur stuff, I really clenched on to copywriting.  How to tell a better story and write it so you can get people to buy your stuff.  

I thought that was the most important thing for me to master and teach.

But in the end (and plenty of frustration later) I realized success isn’t just “marketing” or “sales”.  Or “positioning” or “influence”.  None of that crap.

Well…

Those things are super helpful but if you’re not repeatedly hitting home runs in work and life, they’re going to be about as helpful to you as a book on how to peel oranges.

You don’t need a new business tactic you need a new YOU.

It’s called personal development for a reason.  YOU need to work on developing YOUR person. 

Regan Hillyer said, success is 20% strategy and 80% psychology.  

If 80% of success happens between your ears, that means who YOU are determines how much you earn.  

Don’t think so?  

Imagine this…

Ray owns a house in Des Moines and his home yard is stuffed with Republican voting signs.  He has a banner in his window that says Trump 2024.  He even has a life-size cut out of The Don and Melania on his porch.  

What if the chief of staff at the Biden administration called Ray and asked him to be on stage with President Biden in Iowa.  You think he’d go for it?

Um, hell no.

But what if they paid him $1000?  I’m guessing, still, a resounding hell no.

But what if President Trump’s staff called him and asked him to be on stage, at the exact same place with President Trump.  You think he’d go?  

Of course he would.  

Now, here’s the rub…

They didn’t have to get Ray on their ‘list’.  

They didn’t have to work on a minimum viable product.

They didn’t have to figure out the best e-mail sequence to deliver to Ray.  

The only thing that changed is… the person who did the asking.

“Grow so fast that your friends who haven’t seen you in a month have to get to know you all over again”

-Vischen Lakhiani, The Buddha and the Badass

Make your growth your number one goal and be the highest expression of yourself.

Adam

PS  I wanted to talk about money and there was no way I could do it in one email so I’m breaking them up. This is part one.

I haven’t been a new year’s resolution kinda person in a long time.

I’m not much of a goal setter writer-downer either.  I have goals, I just don’t feel the need to write them down all the time.  

Some people teach that is wrong.  You’re supposed to write your goals every year.

Every month.

Every week.

Every day.

I’ve even seen some wack-a-doodles who write down their their goals 3 times a day.  To each their own, whatever works for you sweet cheeks.

I’m carrying at least 60 extra pounds on my body right now.  I don’t need to write that down twice a day.

It’s self evident.  It’s my intention to change and it’s gonna happen.  

Admittedly, that’s my style though.

As you enter into 2024, take this advice from Dan Sullivan.

“The present you is always better than the previous you, and the future you is always better than the present you. Compare yourself to no one except who you used to be and who you want to be.” 

The Business Paradigm loves goals because it can pay very well.  Brian Tracy wrote a book on goals and according to his publisher Penguin Random House, it’s sold  640,000 copies.  

Rest assure there’s plenty of other books, courses, and stuff to buy too.

People love goal setting because it’s SO sexy.  

I’m gonna double my income!

Fit in my skinny jeans again!

Trade in my Bronco for a Range Rover SV Carmel Edition!

Look at your goals like a NBA player.  From Magic Johnson to Lebron James, the great players of my generation always talked about championships.  

Why?  Cause championships are sexy!  

But how did those players get there.

Exercising.

Running drills.

Shooting hundreds of shots a day. 

Being the first one to the gym and being the last one to leave.  

Those things are NOT sexy.  You’re never going to see that stuff in the “we’re going to Disneyland” commercials after the championship is won.  

The discipline to be better than you were is what connects you to your future self.  This is why the best time to be a better version of yourself is right now.

Cause the world doesn’t need a successful asshole with a Land Rover.  It needs the best version of you.

Today and tomorrow.

Adam

I have always loved bad guys.  

I was upset when Hans Gruber fell off Nakatomi Plaza.

Darth Vader scared me as a kid, but I was fascinated by him.

Aside from Thanos from the Avengers being an imperialistic murderous scumbag, you just know he’d be fun to have a beer with. 

Well, as long as you don’t ask Nebula or Gamora….

I’m far from a bad guy, I like being nice.  But this Mark Twain quote comes to mind…

“I oppose dictatorships, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position”.

As I got older I realized why bad guys can be so cool to me.  It’s their sense of this one thing.

PUPROSE.

In movies the good guy has to evolve to get what he wants.  The bad guy knows what he wants and he’s determined to get it.  

RIGHT NOW.

As you think about your goals, themes, and wishes for next year.   Remember to think like a bad guy.  

What do you want?  And how can you get it?

RIGHT NOW.

What was the number one thing that drove Voldemort?  

Death.  

He feared it.

He did everything in his power to make sure it could NEVER happen to him.  It took years of planning but his biggest fear was death but it was also his greatest teacher.  

Why? 

Because the goal determines the process. 

If you’d like to make 20% more income next year.  You can do just about anything—including cutbacks.  

If you wanna double your income, that’s a different process.  It forces you to look at the unknown.  What you are NOT doing right now.  

I like to keep it real so here we go…

We’re going to die.  And in 2024 you’re closer to death than you were a year ago.  

But don’t let fuel your fears and head-trash, let it propel you forward.  Allow it to give you the drive to make it happen bigger, better, and faster than you could imagine.

“I found drive in my own insecurities.  That’s the most powerful thing in the world.  When you can find drive in your own doubt, fear, insecurities, you become very unstoppable.” 

David Goggins 

In 2024 figure out what you want?  And how can you get it?

And do it.

RIGHT NOW.

Adam