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I’m not 100% sure how I will take my dream about doing this and make it happen. Today I feel very tired and less motivated. I enjoy dreaming about it and I enjoy imagining the benefits of it but I’m not yet ready to start the work. Or at least I’m pushing that away. Yesterday I spent most of the time fantasizing and then 1 hour actually planning this challenge.

And maybe that’s okay right now. Maybe I need to give myself time to get into it. Maybe I need to clarify the vision for this challenge and get really excited about it BEFORE I start planning all the details and todos.

Good question. How do I envision this process? How do I envision this project? I know there’s an outcome, at least for now, with 300 In-Depth Interviews Challenge… So that’s good but not really exciting. 100 beans. 100 cups. 100 people. 300 In-Depth Interviews Challenge. Doesn’t say anything. 100 problems captured. 100 ideas generated. 100 business ideas. 100 problems to solve to make money. 100 opportunities to empathize and be creative about something someone cares about.

How I want this experience - The “HOW” to the “WHAT”

I want to experience my ‘ONE Thing’ in work. I want to focus and know and feel absolutely right. I want to work on it every day and see progress and results and changes and improvements. I want to become an expert in listening. I want to become an expert in generating ideas. I want to create what Dane M. created but even better and bigger and more exciting. I want to be the person that people think of when they think of profitable business ideas. I want to be desired and asked to help and asked to join teams in amazing companies. I want to start and focus on the most important part in work, the problem and pain that people face and figure out ways to solve those in exchange for money. I want to connect with those I interview. I want to make them feel special. I want them to feel safe and cared for. I want them to unlock their potential and creativity safely and with joy. I want others to see that process and begin themselves. I want to share the interviews and help business owners build better products that actually help people. I want to OWN this part. I want to unearth, discover the gems that are hidden. I want to bring those gems to the surface. I want to help 100 people solve their biggest pain in business and life. I want to feel success in conducting these interviews. I want to talk to amazing people. I want to connect with amazing people. I want to build a portfolio site and channel and following that is the foundation for my work. I want to start at the core source of energy and drive incredibly successful business from it. I want to help and co-uncover ideas that are so simple and so clear that it’s completely obvious and doable to build a solution and make money immediately. I want to be sought after and courted by companies and venture firms and start ups and businesses to help them unearth gems. I want to experience work as a joyful and incredibly fun experience that uplifts me and those I am in connection with. I want to experience connection and joy and fun as part of work. I want to build a new life for myself that works for me and that feels right and good. I want this to be my project, my focus, my source of motivation. I want to feel excited and amped up and curious and surprised and connected and referred to and I want to publish and spread and impress and have a portfolio and content and a clear stance.

I see myself contacting amazing people and getting their yes and sending them the invite and starting the session and recording the session and kicking off the conversation and feeling great and focused and connected and asking and listening and taking notes and reflecting and probing and making them feel good and confident and creative and digging a little more and being careful and respectful and finding an idea and polishing that idea and getting excitement and feeling relief and feeling a sense of liberation and clarity and gratitude and recapping and finding an actual price and feeling good about it. And then slowly finishing off and getting a referral to the next IDEAL interview partner and hearing that they’d love to talk another round because they got so much out of it this time.

And I see myself finishing the zoom call and feeling really good and excited and inspired and I see myself taking a few more notes and organizing the note and the follow-up and the referral and the recording. I see myself editing the recording and uploading it and getting the transcript for it and publishing it on my site and on Facebook and on Instagram and LinkedIn and getting amazing responses and feeling an immense sense of success. I see myself adding one more interview to my list and looking forward to the next one.

Reflection

Yes, this feels much better. Much more in tune with actually doing it. This feels like I’m already doing it. This makes so much sense. I believe that focusing on the feeling and the experience as I want to have it is good. I’m definitely more amped up than I was an hour ago.

Having a vision of “HOW” is super important. The “WHAT” has been clear (300 In-Depth Interviews Challenge) for a few days and I can get excited about that as a challenge but it’s also important to get emotional about it to have the energy and the vibe and the creativity that’s needed to make it happen.

I’ve also done the “Why do I want this?” and “Why do I believe I will get this?” and I guess the “How do I want this?” is another part in this process to give it color and dimension and emotions.

I’ll let this sink in for a little bit and then decide on what’s next in this process.

Now for a little break.

• 100 Interview Challenge 15.6.2020

Tags

• #100daychallenge
• #interviews
• #abrahamworkshop

• Did a Retrospective 3.7.2020
• Sent out the complete LifeScan Phase Two Interviews – First Impressions as PDF to my team…
• Still got to edit my own rent contract
• Print it out

• Buy stuff for tomorrow:

  • Fennel Salad #done

    • Fennel
    • Lemons
    • Parmigiano
  • Burger buns 3 x 6 #done
  • Iceberg Salad x 1 #done
  • Tomatos x 1 #done

  • Once I get there:

    • Ice cubes
    • 2 x six-packs of american beers

Learned a little more about Obsidian, enabled the daily note plugin since I’ve been creating a daily note already by hand most days. Got the $25/life license to get beta builds (worth it already because backlinks were broken and CPU used 100% by the graph renderer.)

Talked to Jonathan Najarian on the phone for a bit; we did a quick check-in because he was headed to a gig and I had to go buy stuff. Printed out the rent contracts before. What else? Got all the stuff for the grilling tomorrow. I’m not sure if I want to head back to What I love about Franziska Krüger tonight after 10pm. I kind of feel like spending some time with myself. A lot has happened this week and I’m exhausted. I spent a lot of Money. I didn’t make that much Money in return… But in the idea of expanding, I feel good about spending money on myself for myself. And most of it was Food-related anyway, which I think is good and worth it.

I’m good sitting around right now. Maybe watch Notes on Dane Maxwell’s video about Pick a Niche Article later.

Read the article, overall good, just not feeling particularly marketing-y or sales-y right now. I just want to chill and maybe eat something later and then go to bed and start the weekend tomorrow.

Woke up tired, got out of bed at 9. Feeling like shit. Feeling exhausted and incredibly sad. Sat on the couch yesterday all day. No Dopamine-hits, no scrolling etc. I think that’s the right decision. Same today. I have two interviews. The one I did yesterday was the highlight of my day. Other than that, I didn’t do much. I went shopping and cooked chicken. That was good.

For right now I’m glad I went out for a walk through the park. I wish I could cry it all out. I wish I could cry so that this pain and suffering has a place to be. I looked at that tree that reminds me of me. It has a vine plant creeping up and someone other than me cut that vine. And now there’s a skeleton left of that vine and the tree is growing much better now than last year. I identify with the tree and hope I am in the process of cutting my vine off.

I feel slow and sad and heavy. At least allergies are back to a manageable level. This month sucked ass. It was basically 4 weeks of not sleeping because of allergies, becoming aware of how bad my early “work”-experience was and that I’m a survivor. No one really cares even if I tell them. I have to pay too much money that I don’t have. I feel small and hurt and sad and alone and broke and broken.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been Broke so much. I’m just a nobody with nothing of value. I’m just someone you pass on the street, a somebody who serves you dinner. My life has no meaning anymore. Twenty years of living a lie, lying to myself just to survive. That’s what they call a survivor. I haven’t thrived once in the last Twenty years. I’ve been on the edge of failure, ruin, heart-break and death and I managed to never fall off the rails. No wonder I smoked like a chimney. No wonder.

It wasn’t my fault but it still happened to me.

And now I know why nothing ever worked out for me in the last fucking Twenty years. At least I know now. Getting glasses when you’re short-sighted is great because you start seeing the world clearly. It also shows you the stuff that’s wrong and broken or where you suffered. Clarity sheds a light on everything, the good, the bad and the ugly truths. And so, finally, I’ve been in a position to look at the ugly truths in my life. And the ugly people in my life that made my time miserable and maimed me for the rest of my life. What happened was not okay. It was not appropriate. It was completely inappropriate and wrong. It was wrong.

So, for today, what’s my plan?

• Interview #2 with Dr. Moaz [DONE]
• ???
• Interview #3 with Annika [DONE]
• ???
• ???
• ???
• Call with JN at 6pm: Interview
• Head over to What I love about Franziska Krüger’s at 7pm for dinner
• Get an overview of current finances/expenses

I don’t know yet what comes after the interviews. Gotta make sure I write down my first impressions again. That seemed to be valuable to me and the client.

Worrying about money. 40 and Broke. 40 and Broke. 40 and broken. 40 and worthless. 40 and nobody. 40 and survived. 40 and… ?

Dopamine Fast Day 2

I’m supposed to focus on what I want. I want to focus on what I want. But it’s hard today. It’s hard when you’re depressed.

I should keep moving more.

• I will not check my phone.
• I will not go on social media.
• I will not read news.
• I will not eat sugar.
• I will not eat fast food.
• I will not watch porn.

I will not get high on bullshit, low-value, high-dopamine hits to avoid difficult feelings anymore. I’m doing this for ME. Instead, I’ll do stuff that’s good for me and that will feel good when I don’t baseline myself with those drugs!

And I was successful there yesterday. No random dopamine hits throughout the day.

No mindless scrolling to ease the pain.

No coffee or nicotine! (Non-smoker for over 4 months now!)

Instead,

• I will move my body
• I will eat good food
• I will read good books
• I will exercise my body
• I will meditate
• I will allow difficult emotions
• I will allow difficult conversations
• I will write

And I don’t need to stress out that I’m not yet the productivity-machine reading 3 books every day on day 2 of my dopamine fast. If I can avoid the brain-sugar bullshit, all other productive things will come back one by one.

Maybe I’ve been so hooked on that shit is because my trauma was so big as well. Where others just dipped their toes once in a while, I was fully invested because it gave me relief from my pain.

Interview #2 Preparations

Anyways, the interview is coming up in 25 minutes. I don’t have much more coherent thinking available at the moment. And that’s okay. Just kept writing and got some ideas out of it. I wonder how air conditioning works in the new place on Alexanderplatz Apartment?

Still got 5 minutes left on my tomato timer. What else can I write about that’s relevant and interesting?

How I want to feel

I want to wake up in the morning full of energy and feel tirelessly motivated to live my own life. To work on something that fulfills me and that lets me enjoy success and financial independence. To have a loving relationship with my partner and my family and my friends. To be free of worry about money. To choose experiences because I want them, being certain that all resources like money will be available to me. To be full of energy and focused. To be alert and “there” and flow effortlessly through my day from one activity to the next to a different place, in and out of conversations etc. Free of feeling hurt and sadness. Full of positive, hopeful, optimistic feelings.

After Interview with Dr. Moaz

Super nice, learned a lot. Had fun. I think she enjoyed it as well. Good intuitions on what she said. Good training for my own interviews. Good probing, good memory on what was said. Good notes. Good first impressions. Overall a success! Time flew by, I asked mostly open-ended questions.

Now, I have one hours to spend before the next call. That’ll be at 1:30, then I’ll have a longer break until talking to Jonathan Najarian at 6pm. Feels crazy that the day is already that far ahead. But I slept in until 9am, so…

Idea Regarding “Interviews”

“Start with ONE” - Marketing course that starts with ONE customer that gets interviewed for problems and solutions. Find a really painful problem, then come up with solutions until a paid solution is found and that pain is solved.

1. One Person that I like spending time with
2. One Problem that they seriously struggle with
3. One Solution that they’ll pay for

Use interview to come up with a “Person(a)” like Jonathan Najarian, 30 years old, lives in Boston, works with his girlfriend as wedding-photographer, 2-person team, city-wide booking. Could even be a friend, because it’s about their problem and their solution and not some random idea I’ve come up with. Maybe. This needs to be seen.

Use interview to capture emotionally charged problem description “XYZ fucking sucks, man. If this doesn’t go away, things’ll get fucking ugly.” This can be used directly in sales copy for this one particular person. A sales-letter for ONE that basically recaps the conversation and the idea/offer that was created together.

Use interview to create product/idea/offer in a way that it’s valuable to them and they’re ready to pay for it. Using quotes and the feature-list, build a landing-page (could be email) to presell the service.

BOOM!

Deliver the service as discussed and promised and paid for. Ask for feedback, improvements.

Get testimonial, referrals and introductions.

Scale business system slowly.

“We’re all just walking each other home.” – Ram Dass

Thought: Would any of these notes I’ve been writing be worth/useful to others?

Just thought, I could publish this on a site so that at least What I love about Franziska Krüger and my dad would have an idea of where I’m at…

Where is freeisaverb.com hosted actually?

Requested account deletion on HostGator, BlueHost, Medium, Twitter

Should make my LinkedIn profile private!

Should probably cancel Clickfunnels…

Related

• Daily Journaling
• Regular Journal 23.6.2020
• Abraham Workshop
• Build a Biz in 2 Hours Course

Tags

• #regularjournal
• #iwanttoknowwhatiwant
• #dopaminefast
• #100daychallenge
• #interviews

Uff, ja, also heute ging’s nochmal richtig um’s Eingemachte. Und ich bin froh, dass ich gerade die Zeit und den Kopf dafür habe. Ich kann mich relativ fokussiert daran setzen und da irgendwie durch arbeiten. Es muss raus. Es geht hier um MEIN LEBEN. Und erst jetzt, mit Medikament, kann ich erst damit wirklich umgehen. Was ein Glück, dass ich das für mich entdeckt habe. Schreiben scheint ein guter Weg zu sein, das zu verarbeiten. Ich weiss nicht, was da gerade noch besser wäre, aber ich fühle mich wohl hier am Keyboard, in Ruhe. Ich hatte mir gewünscht, dass ich irgendwie schon weiter bin in meinem Leben. Dass ich mich total auf Jobsuche und Beziehung und Wohnung und Spass und Freunde und Berlin konzentrieren kann. Aber ich bin da einfach nicht. Und ich werde da auch erst dann sein, wenn ich das hier heile. Und ich bin so froh, dass mit der Hilfe von Psilocybin und Ritalin ich das Problem erkenne und es aktiv lösen kann, weil ich mich fokussieren kann. Alles, war in meinem Leben in den letzten 20 Jahren los war, war in direktem Bezug auf das Traumatic Experience at Work, das ich momentan bespreche. Es ist irrsinnig krass, was damals passiert ist, wie rücksichtslos mit mir umgegangen wurde. Wie krass, dass es den Tätern nur um Macht und Geld ging und ich die Geschichte vom Weltverbessern geglaubt habe.

Ohne da jetzt wieder einzusteigen: Ich sollte nach dieser Runde etwas leckeres Essen, eine Pause machen und mich auf das konzentrieren, was ich will. Das tut mir wirklich gut und es macht Sinn und wenn ich mich mit dem Scheiss beschäftigen muss, dann ist es immer in Beziehung zu meinem besseren Leben in meiner nahen Zukunft! Diesen Fokus auf die guten Dinge zu halten ist jetzt noch viel wichtiger als jemals zuvor! Denn so kann ich mein Leben zurückgewinnen und meine Stabilität und meinen Selbstwert. Ich bin stolz darauf, hier und jetzt genau diese Arbeit zu machen. Ich bin stolz darauf, denn ich stehe hier und jetzt für mich und mein Leben ein und setze Grenzen und schaffe mir meine Zukunft in der es mir gut geht, in der ich aufblühe, in der ich und mein Leben und meine Arbeit und mein Geld und meine Beziehungen gedeihen. Genau so wie damals, 1999 in New York, und noch viel besser! Und darum geht es. Es geht um mich. Es geht um meine Bedürfnisse. Es geht um mein Leben. Um meine Zeit. Dass es mir wieder gut geht. Dass ich mein Leben lebe. Ich bin stolz, dass ich es bis hier her geschafft habe. Dass ich nicht aufgegeben habe. Dass ich mich nicht umgebracht habe. Dass ich andere so gut es ging vor diesem Problem geschützt habe. Dass ich an mir selbst gearbeitet habe. Dass ich mir selbst zugehört habe, dass ich meinem inneren Klang gefolgt bin auch wenn es schwer war. Dass ich mir selbst Stufen in den Stein gehauen habe um aus dem Loch herauszukommen. Ich finde, ich mache das sehr, sehr gut. Ich finde, dass ich jetzt schon, im Verarbeiten und Heilen dieses Themas einen Riesen Erfolg schaffe. Ich fühle mich jetzt schon besser und größer und stärker und fokussierter als jemals in den letzten 20 Jahren!

Also, daher die abschliessenden Worte…

Das ist die richtige Arbeit, die ich hier mache. Es ist die wichtige Arbeit, die mich dahin führt wo ich es mir wünsche. Es ist ganz schön harte Arbeit, aber ich habe sie gemacht. Es ist härter, nichts zu tun und sein Leben kaputt gehen zu sehen. Daher ist diese Arbeit und diese Zeit und diese Herausforderung die beste Investition in meine Zukunft. In meine Arbeit. In mein Vermächtnis. In den Spass und die Freude, die ich in meinem Leben erleben will. Dieses Thema, diese Befreiung ist die wichtigste Arbeit, die ich in meinem Leben jetzt verrichten kann. Und ich bin unglaublich dankbar, dass ich körperlich und geistig und seelisch dazu jetzt in der Lage bin. Und vielleicht kann ich irgendwann jemand Anderem helfen, sich so zu befreien.

AR

Noch ein weiterer Eintrag für heute…

I did 2 hours of Deep Work – got the funnel ready and even found a good name for the overarching brand: MindSky Academy. Nice! Got the domain, that’s verifying, but once it is, I’ll finalize the Google Suite thing and then head over to mailerlite to verify my account with my fancy alexis@mindskyacademy.com email address. Pretty cool!

I’m happy it’s the end of the week, I’m not that sharp anymore after working every day since Monday but I feel like I’ve pushed myself forward and kept good records of every amount of effort I put in. In total it’s 14 hours of Deep Work (not counting work for C Space) working on my MindSky funnel and products and copy and videos. 14 hours I’ve invested in myself and my future and that worked. I need to eat more throughout the day, that was the only issue I haven’t tackled yet. I’ll try HUEL to make sure I eat something until I have the time to cook a meal.

So yeah, I’m pretty stoked about this week! I bought myself flowers that I put on my desk and that makes it nice to sit here. They have a calming effect and are beautiful to look at. I think they’re enjoying their stay. I hope.

Since I cleaned up my desk last week and continued to remove anything that wasn’t essential from it I like working here much more. It’s the bare necessities I need to work and no distractions. The checklist above the table has also helped tremendously. I don’t yet know how to ensure 100% that I start a timer before I go into work but it’s working. I’m missing 20% maximum of sessions from my timer this week. That happens when I’m just in the zone I think. The little triangle stars I’m using to reward and celebrate are cute. I wish there were more of them. Or different stickers. And those that I don’t know what it’s going to be ahead of time (like a variable reward kind of thing) – I’ll look into that next week. Maybe Modulor is open again or that toy store down the street.

In either case, I feel like I’m developing, rapidly, a way for me to work hard and long and feel good about it. This is a major progress for me from staring into space or sleeping to working and getting things done consistently. I am proud that I’ve found a solution to my problem (Ritalin) and am excited to be ABLE to shape my life the way I want it to.

YES!

Montag, 18.5.2020 – Irgendwie fühle ich mich seit Freitag komisch. Also auch schon davor, aber heute bin ich erst um 10:00 aus dem Bett gekommen. Irgendwas stört mich oder macht mich traurig. Ich glaube, es hat mit What I love about Franziska Krüger zu tun. Dem Streit von letztens. Und das hängt mir glaube ich noch nach. Also, den Elan von den letzten Wochen habe ich gerade nicht. Vielleicht bin ich auch enttäuscht, dass das mit dem OFAC Projekt doch nicht, gar nicht, hinhaut und ich da so viel Arbeit reingesteckt habe. Vielleicht auch das. Die Bewerbungen gehen eigentlich ganz gut. Aber heute schon mit Oleksii zu sprechen wegen einer Position geht mir etwas schnell. Also, wenn ich mich frage ob es mir gut geht muss ich sagen nein, ich fühle mich irgendwie off oder daneben. Sehr komisch. Könnte auch vom Essen letzte Woche kommen. Und dieser Fokus Mode hier geht auch irgendwie nicht so wie er sollte. Das der gesamte Text immer gehighlighted wird ist doch nicht die Idee, oder?

Was gibt’s denn sonst so? Fühl mich müde und umfokussiert. Vielleicht hat das auch damit zu tun, dass ich am Samstag nicht dosiert hatte. Oder, dass ich jeden Tag dosier und das zu viel oder zu oft ist. Ich weiss es nicht.

Zumindest habe ich für die Woche noch keine gute Vision.

Also, irgendwie ist da der Wurm drin gerade.

Erstmal habe ich schlechte Laune, bin frustriert, bin traurig. Fühle mich alleine. Fühle mich schwer.

Das ist echt komisch weil es mir eigentlich gut geht!

Ich hatte ein tolles Wochenende. Hab gut geschlafen. Hab hier gerade meine Ruhe… Also an sich passt doch alles.

Was kann ich tun, damit ich mich irgendwie besser fühle? Welcher Gedanke macht da gerade für mich Sinn?

So. Today was a good day so far. I finally broke my own record of working 4h straight (with pauses every 30 minutes) on my Deep Work – specifically building my funnel following the OFAC framework. I’m proud because I still have time and energy to write about it now and I feel like I can do this again. I crossed the 4h mile! And yes, the Ritalin is definitely helping with this, especially in the moments where there’s a distraction and I’m able to ignore it and re-focus. I also made myself a first draft of a checklist before getting to work. Here are the check-marks that have to be answered with ‘yes’ before I actually start the work:

Do I have…

1. A goal?
2. Taken a break?
3. A plan?
4. A good task?
5. A reward?
6. Removed distractions?
7. Water and snacks?
8. A timer set?

So far, through 8 sessions of 30 minutes each (a longer pomodoro) I used the checklist to make sure I could fully focus on the task before me.

One task, setting up the email integration, took much longer than expected because I wanted to use a service that doesn’t cost anything (yet), works with CF and allows for automations in the free tier. It took me an hour of trying different services out until I settled on MailerLite with Zapier. It’s a little hacky but it works as much as I need it to. The only thing missing is getting the MailerLite account verified for which I need a custom email address like alexis@mindsky.com – Which prompted me to (capture the need for) brainstorm a company name/product suite name. Something like MindSky is really nice… But that will have to wait until tomorrow, that’s the next task at hand to finish up my email system: A verified MailerLite account. It’ll cost ~$5 per month for the Google business suite which I wish I didn’t have to pay for (didn’t they have a free offer as well??)

Anyways, yes, pretty excited. Implemented the opt-in page, the responder (including a fresh account), the sequence of 5 emails, the 5 pages that belong to it. I’m so fucking glad to use PLR.me templates instead of having to come up with all of that on my own. For training purposes, this is really helpful. And I used FunnelScripts to write a good headline and sub-headline and the CTA for me. If anything, If I can really, truly stay to be the CONDUCTOR/COMPOSER focusing on the offers, the story and the hook and leave EVERYTHING else to someone or something else, would be tremendous.

In other news, I got a mouse, a bluetooth one and I like it a lot. It does need a mouse pad on my table which is unfortunate but I think that would’ve been the case with any mouse I buy. Other than that it works really well! I haven’t had a mouse in a decade I believe. But with my table/seat/keyboard set up this makes a lot of sense. Like right now, I’m using my external keyboard to type and if I need anything I can just lean right, grab my mouse instead of having to completely shift my body to reach OVER my keyboard and use my trackpad on my laptop.

Oh, this reminds me, I still get to do my prosperity game today (and yesterday’s) which means I have a lot of money (play-money for now) to “spend” on something I’d love. Like a enormous display and/or fully loaded iMac. Maybe that’s the idea. The fully loaded iMac and a long trip to Paris.

You know what? That’s what I’m going to do now to make sure I’ve spent good time on it.

Here’s a little case study I’ve put together based on a project I recently worked on. It shows you the process on how you can “Reality Check” what you know about your market and customers in order to build better products.

I’m showing you a step-by-step process that has radically transformed how I approach a new idea or venture by de-risking my time and energy by building on facts and not clichés.

It involves…

• Hard Lessons Learned
• Facebook Audience Insights Hacking
• Market Reverse-Engineering
• and good ol’ Copywriting

I’m stoked about this process because it has worked like a charm in my ventures.

The other week I helped two friends with their health-related startup. The slideshow will show you the exact steps we used to arrive at a valid customer persona and a relevant value proposition that we tested the same day in the market.

You can also download the full deck here.