So yesterday I was actually revisiting some of my old podcast episodes.
And I believe it was episode seven.
I was listening to it.
It was titled, I Will Be a Millionaire, Follow My Journey.
And I was just listening to myself make some pretty bold claims.
Some very like crazy claims.
Like for example, I said that within six months I'll have a hundred K.
A hundred thousand dollars.
Now it's been seven months and I barely have a hundred bucks.
So what's the lesson to learn?
I completely overestimated or actually underestimated time and I underestimated actually using time
intentionally.
Because I was doing a lot of reflecting after I realized that, wow, I really thought that
I would be in a completely different place right now.
Yet now when I look back I'm proud of the progress that I've made.
So I think that it's really just about intentional use of time because I was actually recently
reminded by a friend how time flies by.
And if you aren't careful with it, it'll slip away from your fingers.
Like these past seven months, ever since I started the podcast, ever since I started
the YouTube channel, completely flew by.
Like absolutely just, like it just left.
But I think that it was good use of my time that I spent because I've actually improved
a lot.
But I was kind of a little shocked and I was a little nervous because I was thinking about
kind of like my future and how things may play out if I allow time to slip by way easier.
So I kind of sat down and I reflected.
I literally just wrote out all my goals and I was just like, well, what needs to be done
for this?
So then I wrote down literally all of the things that needed to be done, like all the
skills and traits that needed to be built or developed.
And then I was like, okay, and I remembered the 80-20 principle, Pareto's law.
And so I was like, okay, because I had a list of probably like 10 or 12 skills or traits.
And I was like, okay, some of these are kind of linked together.
And then some of these are way more important than others.
So I'm just going to pick three.
So I'm like, okay, I'm sitting there for like five minutes trying to contemplate which three
are the most important.
And actually it was pretty easy to decide which three.
So I decided the three that were most important.
It was influence, patience, and what's the word for?
Oh, what's that word?
It's basically where you're like extremely excited about what you're doing.
Passion.
Okay, it's influence, patience, and passion.
Those were the kind of the three biggest, most important traits to develop for my goals.
And so I'm thinking like, okay, what's going on here?
I think that, and then I kind of work best when I draw images out.
So for example, in order to discover these traits, I actually literally drew three pictures
of myself.
One picture was myself when I began the podcast.
So literally seven months ago.
And that was like a tiny little stick figure that I just drew.
And then the next picture was me right now, seven months into the podcast with 92 subscribers,
seven months into YouTube channel, because I'm focused on the YouTube, but 92 subscribers.
And so I wrote that down, and I drew a picture of myself just slightly bigger with like biceps.
Because I'm focusing on the work goals and not like the physique goals, but it's easier
for me to kind of visualize the work goals through physique, if that makes sense.
So like I see my, if metaphorically speaking, my body represented how skilled I was at my
work, then I would literally just be a tiny little stick figure when I started.
And then right now I kind of see myself as a little bit better.
Like I'm starting to grow some muscle.
So I see myself as a slightly bigger stick figure with some like bicep starting to grow.
And then I drew a third picture, which was a much bigger actual representation of a real
looking person that is jacked.
That's like kind of the representation of where I'm like the goal.
And so I'm thinking like, what needs to be done?
What skills need to be cultivated in order to get from here to there?
So I list all of the skills, came up with like 12, and I picked the three.
Patience, ambition, passion, okay, patience, passion, and influence.
So patient, passion, and influence were the three that I chose.
And then I kind of drew another picture because I was like, okay, well, how can I represent
this?
Like what do each of these represent?
So I was like, oh, let's just draw a house.
Because lately, like over in the past, I've had like some pretty good success describing
things using a metaphor of a house.
For example, one of my best podcast episodes that I recorded at the time was when I was
at Florida at Funnel Hacking Live, which I was actually listening to like a couple minutes
of that yesterday.
I didn't listen to this part exactly, but I remember talking about this how I described
like worldview tactics and strategies as a house.
Like your worldview is the foundation.
The strategies are like the pillars, like the actual house support beams, all that.
And then the decoration, like the windows, the grassy, like the moss, the vines, all
the decoration is the tactics.
So that's kind of what I described a long time ago.
And so last night I was sitting there, I was thinking, oh, I kind of like the house metaphor.
And I decided to draw a house.
So I was like, okay, how can I draw a house describing these three skills, these three
traits?
And so I was like, okay, well, patience is obviously the foundation.
Like everything crumbles if you don't have patience.
And then I was like, okay, what is the walls?
The walls are either passion or influence.
And I'm like, okay, I don't really know.
So then I asked myself, I remember back to learning in science class, independent relationships,
like independent variables, I never understood that.
And I never really understood how to figure those out.
But I kind of like was like, oh, I can use that kind of strategy to figure this out.
So I was like, okay, which one is the independent variable?
Passion or influence?
And then I didn't really know, and I was like, okay, which one is kind of more important
or which one is, which one helps grow the other?
And so I was like, oh, well, influence is kind of like the base.
And then passion helps grow the influence.
You can have a lot of passion, but if you don't have any influence, it's not going to
really do anything.
So I saw influence as the main skill, and then the passion is kind of like the multiplier.
So like in video games, sometimes you get like multiplier scores.
That's kind of like that.
You have to get a score first, and then you multiply it.
So I'm like, okay, I finished showing my house.
Patience is the foundation.
And then I have influence as like the actual walls, and then passion as the roof.
So that's kind of like the three skills represented an image that I got to focus on.
So then I'm like, okay, what does this mean?
And then I'm kind of like getting a little nervous.
I'm like, okay, well, I've definitely displayed patience because most people don't even make
it past episode 21.
Like I'm back.
It was a huge milestone for me when I made it to episode 21 on my podcast like six months
ago or seven months ago, because 99% of podcasters drop out of the race before they reach their
21st episode.
So it was a huge deal for me to make it to episode 21.
Huge deal.
And now I'm on like episode 100 something.
So well, not like actually episode 100 something, but I've posted like over 100 videos.
So that kind of proves to myself that I have patience.
Like I'm willing to endear through this with I was looking at my YouTube analytics.
This morning and I saw I was looking at like the subscriber count over time, the lifetime.
I endured through like it wasn't until October.
I started the podcast in July or the YouTube channel in July, July, August, September, October,
four months.
I had zero subscribers.
Zero subscribers in four months.
And then even then I only got like one or two subscribers every other week or something
like that.
So I proved that I can do this without any results.
So I'm like, okay, patience is kind of like on locks.
And I am still like, I still know that I'm going to be doing this even though I'm still
not really getting like huge results.
I'm getting more results than I have been, but I know that I'm going to be doing this
no matter what, no matter the results just because I got patience.
So I'm like, okay, the foundation is set.
I've laid out the foundation.
So then kind of what, what do I need now?
Like what's what's like the next obvious step is influence, right?
Building up the walls of the house.
Yeah, I agree because I've been studying storytelling, trying to like cultivate better stories,
build like, learn how to tell stories better, all this stuff.
I've been practicing my storytelling, all this stuff.
And I'm planning on learning more about influence in the future.
But then I was kind of still a little nervous about like my future because I was left a
little uneasy about how it's been eight months or seven months and I haven't really had any,
I haven't made any money in seven months.
And then I needed something to kind of calm my mind.
I needed something to cling on to and remind me of what I'm actually doing.
So I was like, okay, I can do this.
So I wrote, took out an, I went to the next sheet of paper on my journal and I was like,
okay.
Let's draw the path of a YouTuber.
And I am like a mathematical type mind.
So I can visualize graphs pretty easily.
So I was like, okay, let's draw a graph of the path of a YouTuber.
So I drew the like the axis, x and y axis.
And I was like, okay, on the x axis, let's say time.
And then the y axis is just like results.
And then results could be like subscribers, views, money, whatever, any results that comes
from your input in a YouTube channel.
And so I'm like, okay, let's draw the graph.
And I have a good idea of what it looks like because I've seen it.
I've, I've studied a lot of like stories from other people and just learned a lot about
how to grow a YouTube channel and how to become a YouTuber.
And I have this like mindset right now, or I've been having this mindset where pretty
much if you take a YouTuber, already successful YouTuber and strip them of your brand, of
their brand.
So let's say you take Mr. Beast and you completely strip him of his brand, his money.
You basically take Mr. Beast and put him in my situation.
No brand, no name, nothing, but he has his knowledge.
He has his skills.
And no one knows that he's Mr. Beast.
He changes his name.
He changes his like face.
So if you, if Mr. Beast, basically if Mr. Beast's mind was implanted into me, then there
would be no issue.
Like Mr. Beast in my shoes would literally succeed fairly easily because he's already
got the skills.
He's already got the skills.
He wouldn't need very long to actually figure out how the YouTube system works because
he already knows, he knows how to succeed.
So Mr. Beast would succeed because he's got the skills.
So I'm like, okay, well, that makes sense.
I won't, I'm obviously having succeeded in seven months because I don't have the skills.
So that's why I'm cult fading the skills.
And so I kind of visualized the graph as an exponential graph.
So it's pretty much like literally just a line like this.
And then it tiny, tiny, and then all of a sudden it just explodes.
So it's like literally straight line horizontally.
And then all of a sudden it just goes vertical.
That's kind of how I visualize YouTube success.
And then I was like, okay, so what does that mean?
Like, what does that mean for my three skills?
Influence, influence, and passion?
Well, I circled the actual like the horizontal line part, the one where you're going through
a bunch of time, but you're not getting much results.
So I circled that and I was like, okay, well, that's obviously patience.
Like you got to actually have patience to build up your influence.
So you're actually, so that's like you using patience while building your influence.
That's like the first stage.
And then the second stage I circled was like the turning point where it actually began
to curve.
So I circled that and I was like, okay, well, that's kind of where like your skills have
kind of finally caught up.
And it's kind of like how your skills become presentable.
So if you go back to like, maybe even this episode, like this episode may not even be
presentable to the public, which like that definitely is probably the case because I'm
still getting not that much views.
So like this episode is a good example, but also go back to my first episode, like that
was terrible.
Like that's not presentable to the public.
So this entire period of time that you're spending not getting any results, but you're
putting a lot into it, building your skills.
That is a like that period is just you trying to catch up your skills to make it make your
content presentable to the public.
And then during the turning point, like when the shift starts happening, you actually start
to get results.
That's when your skills have finally started to caught up and then now your content is
presentable to the public.
And so people start to notice you.
That's when you start to really grow.
And then the next phase was where your like growth absolutely skyrockets is when you start
to like and passion was already like throughout the entire process.
But once you once your skills actually catch up to your passion, that's when passion actually
begins to make an impact to make a result.
Because now instead of because passion, I see passion is kind of like a multiplier.
If you're like, if you multiply zero with anything, it becomes zero.
If you multiply one with anything, it becomes that thing.
So passion could be maxed out from the beginning, it could be 100 times.
But if your skills are garbage, that's zero, then that means 100 times zero is zero.
Like you're nothing like you're terrible.
So then once you actually start to grow your skills, let's say they're at one, well, then
that means you have 100.
And then the more you catch up your skills with passion, that's where the actual exponential
growth becomes because the difference between one times 100 is small.
But then are the difference between one times 100 and 100 times 100 once passion and skill
is equal.
That is absolutely immense.
So that's where like the exponential growth, that's kind of like how I visualize it.
And that's this is all my theory.
I don't actually know if this is actually how it is.
But it's just kind of like my theory, my working theory on how I'm moving forward with my thought
process.
And so just to review the initial period is where I'm at.
That's where I got to exercise extreme patience and catch up my skills to be like on par with
my passion and then make my content presentable.
And then during the turning point is where people actually start to notice.
People actually start to be like, Oh, this guy is actually like producing pretty good
content.
I'm going to start watching him.
And so that's when people start noticing.
And then the actual like extreme growth, like literally the vertical line of like you are
literally sending your channel to the moon.
That is all about passion.
That's like once your skills have caught up to your passion and now your passion is actually
amplifying your skills a lot.
So that I was sitting there last night, I was like, Oh, well, that is exactly how I'm moving
forward.
That's kind of how I've like subconsciously been moving forward over the past seven months.
But now I've put words to it.
And I've actually created like a metaphor for myself to refer back to and remind me that
this is kind of like what I'm doing right now.
Like I'm not going to get any results for a little while until my skills have caught
up to my passion.
So that like going back to like the beginning of when I talked about your like the time
literally slips away from you.
You gotta make sure that you're filling your time with the right skills.
So a huge reason why I listed all of the skills that I like needed for YouTube success and
only chose three was because of the 80 20 principle.
Like if you focus, okay, so three of those, excuse me, three of those skills were gonna
produce 80% of my results.
And then all the rest of the skills would take the same amount of time to cultivate,
but they're only gonna like give me 20% of the results.
So just completely ignore all of those other skills and only dial in on the most important
skills so you can get the most results so you can kind of get to that turning point
quicker.
And then in the future, you can go back and start doing those other skills or outsource
them like that.
It's kind of like my thought process right now.
And you just want to get out of that like that like dead period of no results as quick
as possible by literally just focusing on your your own skills, which I'm very grateful
for because I haven't really been looking at my analytics that much.
Because I know that I'm just in that dead period where analytics aren't going to be
showing me anything.
It's just it's all gonna be like garbage until I finally catch up my skills.
So that's why I focus all in on your skills because that's like the really only thing
that matters.