My second thrust of the manifesto was is that you still have time to build the business but you had better move quickly.
The Missing C hapter
Then I came out with The Missing Chapter. The big idea there was that your business must be centered on your strengths. It’s not enough to be passionate about something. The example that I gave was I had this client, Jean Carlo. Jean Carlo is a top ranked tennis player. I love tennis. I grew up playing tennis. I started playing tennis when I was four. I was ranked when I was a kid but I’m 40 pounds overweight, I haven’t picked up a tennis racket in ten years and no matter how passionate I am about tennis, I’m not going to beat Jean Carlo. My passion is only going to get me so far. I have to have a strength. I have to be good at it. You need to have a business that you’re good at or you need to have some positioning in your market that allows you to express your strength or you’re fighting an uphill battle all the way through. The concept of this report was building a business around your strengths.
The Final C hapter
The next one, The Final Chapter, was exposing the business models the most successful [in the] market. Business models that most people would never have a chance to see but I had a chance to see because I consulted and worked with the different companies. It was my intension to bring to everyone else so that everyone could see it, could model it, and could follow it. I think that if you haven’t read this report, of all the reports that I’ve written, this probably has the best information in it. Because of the way it’s structured (if we have time, I’ll talk about that a little bit later) the way it’s structured it didn’t resonate as well. It had too many ideas as opposed to one fundamental theme. If you have too many ideas it becomes harder for the reader to grasp as opposed to just one idea and just keep backing it up with example, example, examples. I learned from this one. I never did that again. But I still think to this day, that the information in there is – most people are still missing and this would expose why.
“S tart U p
to
Freedom”
Then I did a series of videos. Everyone was saying that videos were the next big thing so I said, okay, let me do some videos instead of reports. I did this series of videos. The first one was “Start- up to Freedom.” It showed 11 steps on how to go from nothing, no business-no nothing, to being free. This is interesting because I laid it out and I didn’t really appreciate the difference that really was going on in the marketplace. Although I was hip to it, I didn’t realize how important of an issue it was. You would think or I would think that when you get involved in business, your goal is to build a business that can be the most profitable, the biggest, the most successful, etc. I think that was the case but I don’t think that’s the case anymore. I think that, now days, entrepreneurs don’t necessarily dream about making the maximum of money. What they dream about is making a lot of money but also having a lot of freedom. I think there is no better example of that than Tim Ferriss’ book, The Four Hour Work Week, because that book was a phenomenon. Why? Because it tapped into a core desire of a lot of people who wanted to work less and have more freedom. It wasn’t promising you that you’d make a million dollars. It was promising you that you could work four- hours a week and have free time, enjoy life. The more you tap into that core desire in any piece that you produce, the more success you will have. 10210