This past Saturday, I was in a working session with a friend of mine where we were pairing on a project he’s super passionate about. About midway through, he paused the conversation and started asking about what I’m doing. He lobbed some questions at me that really caught me off guard…in a good way. I’d go so far to say they hit me in a GREAT way.
I’ve been working with him in a consultative role for a few weeks now. The focus has always been on his product (which is really cool and shaping up quite nicely), but he had picked up enough about my personality, my motivations, and my blind spots that he was just as an effective pair for me as I am for him. It was one of those little magic moments that really highlights the power of being connected with stellar humans.
I won’t share the details of the conversation, but here are my three big takeaways:
I have the tools and knowledge to do what I want, but I lack the system and structure to do them.
I’m spending too much time doing things I don’t want to do. I’m gonna talk more about this one later in this post.
Teaching and enabling others has to be at the core of what it is I do. Ultimately, that’s what I enjoy doing.
The Passive Income Trap
I’ve established in the first weekly post that I’m looking to create additional revenue streams without quitting my full-time job. There are hundreds of ways to do this. I had settled on teaching what I know via online courses as an “easy” starting point. Truthfully, it is easy to build a course. It’s not easy to build an audience. A course with no audience is less valuable than an audience with no course.
I’ve been so laser-focused on trying to come up with something to sell and make available that I started working on something I didn’t really care about. Let me remind you that the side-project work takes place after 8-10 hours of my lovely (but intense) day job. I just don’t have the energy to force myself to sit down and work on something I’m not pumped about…yet that’s what I was doing. Would it be valuable? Sure. Did it meet the “passive income” goal? Probably. Was it worth it? No.
When Everything is the Top Priority…
A big part of my day is helping people prioritize what to do. I lead workshops for this, I build strategies to do this, and I’m constantly expanding my toolkit with new ways to think about impactful prioritization.
For other people.
Turns out, I’m pretty crappy at applying these things to my own side-projects. I let the non-valuable, non-fun things creep to the top of my personal backlog to “get them out of the way.” That’s not a good reason to do anything, and it’s definitely not a good way to spend the 1-3 hours a night I have to focus on my business. Without a clear sense of meaningful priority, I’ve been running around scatterbrained and, if I’m being honest with you, I’ve been pretty dang ineffective. Whoops.
Refocusing
I took a few simple steps to help me refocus. I looked at my personal roadmap, suppressed the urge to throw up, and got ruthless with my prioritization.
I rallied around a core outcome I want to achieve for the world. I cut the things that didn’t align. (I kept them in a safe place for later, but out of sight for now.)
I went from 6 different projects to 2, and that same night, I finished one of them. For those of you not keen to do the math, that means I’m focused on one thing right now…just as I would recommend for others!
For my One Project, I set a target date for a “launch” and built out an initial development backlog.
It feels good, and working on this doesn’t feel like a thing to endure. The point of this endeavor is not to replace or quit my job, it’s to augment my income and have fun doing it. I was doing neither! The refocus has at least allowed me to resume the fun.
My big bet looks like this:
If I have fun doing it…
I will craft an excellent, authentic experience.
If I craft an excellent, authentic experience…
My target customers will get extreme value.
If they get extreme value, they’ll tell others.
Next Thursday, I’ll write a bit more about the One Project I selected. I’ll also share the event calendar for my upcoming “Live Class July.” I’ll be teaching 12 different sessions on 6 different topics live via Zoom.
If you’re interested in seeing the project I finished and got off my plate, you can check it out at www.betterproduct.co. If you find this interesting, please follow me on Twitter and share this with your friends using the button below!