Are you in the top 1% of Fastlane Forum Participants?

[Deleted21961]

Okay, I may have not too many solutions, but just want to make you guys aware of something. Sorry for the 1% in the title, wanted to grab your attention.

Here's the thing. When I read forums, I see most of the advice is along the line of taking action and it matches general population very well.
Also, the top achievers are action takers.

But you may find yourself, as I do, in the cream of the crop 1% of action takers that are massively failing and are still farther from so called success than those "fat twinkie eaters" spending time before TV.

"What the hell is he talking about", yeah?

I have realized why most of the advice given here is not exactly suitable for people like us. People with "blitzkrieg" in the second name. And "riot" in third.

I am one of the guys with so damn low boredom threshold, so damn high threshold of sensoric stimulation. The guy who needs to read 20 books simultaneously, because THOSE F*KING paragraphs are reading so slow. The guy who has 100 tabs open in browser, because 90 is still too small number to feed my input needs.
The guy who has 50 online businesses going on. The one who thought that online business feedback is just
fast enough to not bore one to death and yeah, just realized it is still not really realtime enough.
The one that have trouble staying in conversation, because THOSE LOSERS often can't respond in less than 3 seconds to my sentences.
If you know what I'm talking about, we are in the same team.

I have realized that
1) We are very violent by nature;
2) We are chaotic and fast adapting to *any* circumstances;
3) We need f*king feedback loop that is updating really quickly;
4) Our capacity to focus is not scaling with our acts.

The reason we fail is because we think of ourselves as of the future of the species and when the world is still lagging behind, we just ignore it. It may not be a conscious thought, but I can feel it deep inside.

What we really need to do to have a success is to find a way to match our internal cycle to lag of external feedback loops, because otherwise, we will always throw opportunities away before they even started to unfold.
Or just do things that are inherently matching our personal qualities, like doing Daytona 500 or something.

REALLY, SOMETIMES "STOP TO ACT" IS AS GOOD AN ADVICE AS "JUST ACT".

I'm introducing now a new system in my life to force myself to throttle down. It's called
SHAVE BEFORE DOING ANYTHING and it is straightforward.

 

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[Imgal]

I am one of the guys with so damn low boredom threshold, so damn high threshold of sensoric stimulation. The guy who needs to read 20 books simultaneously, because THOSE F*KING paragraphs are reading so slow. The guy who has 100 tabs open in browser, because 90 is still too small number to feed my input needs.

Totally get the boredom threshold and feeling you're going at 1000 miles an hour and everyone else is plodding along at 100. I used to think this was just who I was, but I've spent a lot of time in the last 18-24 months developing systems in my businesses, but also in how my mind works and reacts to things, and this isn't who I am when I'm really focused. There are two stimuli for when happens on a big scale - 1) I'm not quite sure where I'm going with a project or 2) I feel trapped by a project / situation I'm in.

With the first if I don't have a clear structure of what I'm aiming for then I become obsessed with finding and learning about every possible solution (even though I'm old enough and wise enough to not know there is one). I replace taking the simple action I need to take, like developing a MVP and testing that with a 1001 other actions that just leave me overwhelmed or hugely motivated, but so overloaded I don't know where to start.

The second is the real killer for me. I'm so much better with this these days, but I have a habit with a few people in my life that I will jump back into the slow lane thinking I'm being helpful (if I'm honest I'm not sure I don't have some weird martyr thing going on) because they want the fastlane life. I get all pumped about how showing them how to tune up their mindset and actions and switching to the fastlane. The truth is though in those situations I'm trying to force my mentality onto others which never works. If they really wanted it for themselves they'd be taking action. Now all that happens is I end up feeling like I've been locked in a car that is plodding along in the slow lane, all the time being able to see the fast lane and not being able to get anywhere near it. The result is I get all consumed with everything I could be doing, eally pissed with the situation, myself and the people who I feel have trapped me in it and caught up in a cycle of "I should be doing this, but I can't because.."

What we really need to do to have a success is to find a way to match our internal cycle to lag of external feedback loops, because otherwise, we will always throw opportunities away before they even started to unfold.
Or just do things that are inherently matching our personal qualities, like doing Daytona 500 or something.

REALLY, SOMETIMES "STOP TO ACT" IS AS GOOD AN ADVICE AS "JUST ACT".

I'm half in a agreement with you on this, but that's more down to the situations I've put myself in. Those moments when I feel trapped I become convinced I'm stuck in a hell hole that has thwarted my whole fastlane future. Honest truth? Yeah, it takes some hours out of my day, but I'm bullshitting myself telling me that's the reason I don't do things. I don't do things because deep down I'm concerned they might not work out and it will be a waste of my time... a fear that is accentuated when I feel stuck in the slowlane and see time just ticking away and that I can't possibly afford to lose even more. Weird thing is the minute I do get out of the slowlane, even for a pit stop, I realise how ridiculous and untrue that is. It's like the slow lane consumes me with as much fear as the fastlane consumes me with passion and motivation.

My two biggest shifts that have made the difference 1) When I have something I want to test I put out the first thing I can. It's that one step forward. Even if it's just a web page with 2 words on, it's progress and moves from a "want to do" to "need to complete" (funny how much of an impact that has on me). The second is walk away from toxic slowlane relationships. Being in the slowlane isn't a bad thing. People can be very happy there. I need to appreciate that, but also realise there are some who want the slowlane life, but the fastlane rewards and they are the ones who will often suck you dry... but only if you let them and I've made the decision not to any more.

 

[Deleted21961]

1) When I have something I want to test I put out the first thing I can. It's that one step forward. Even if it's just a web page with 2 words on, it's progress and moves from a "want to do" to "need to complete" (funny how much of an impact that has on me).

Yeah, but here's the thing with me: I had hundreds of such tests. 5 minutes after they are online, I am already pissed off that there is nothing going on. It's not that I don't understand that it's virtually impossible to get it working that fast, it's just body & mind reaction. So, what happens next, is getting another 10 things online to "test". Next day, they all are so distant past I barely remember them. Isn't THAT a madness?

You also say you *thought* it was who you were, but ultimately it is not. Could you tell more about this? I mean, maybe if the one thing that works is rich enough to provide stimuli in all aspects, then you have a match and have a holy grail, without actually denying thrash metal life attitude?

 

[Imgal]

Yeah, but here's the thing with me: I had hundreds of such tests. 5 minutes after they are online, I am already pissed off that there is nothing going on. It's not that I don't understand that it's virtually impossible to get it working that fast, it's just body & mind reaction. So, what happens next, is getting another 10 things online to "test". Next day, they all are so distant past I barely remember them. Isn't THAT a madness?

You also say you *thought* it was who you were, but ultimately it is not. Could you tell more about this? I mean, maybe if the one thing that works is rich enough to provide stimuli in all aspects, then you have a match and have a holy grail, without actually denying thrash metal life attitude?

What is getting you so worked up? The fact you don't see any immediate result? The fact that you say that the next day they are all so distant that you don't remember then makes it sound (maybe wrongly) that they're not very structured. If I'm running tests on something then I'll keep a really close track on how they are doing - whether it's through the CTR and cost per acquisition on FB ads, how a site is ranking online or whether make any sales on something. Once it's setup I also then move the setup from being the project's task to then moving onto the measuring being the next thing I'm doing. Before I actually got more of a structure to that I would be more like it sounds you are - throwing it up then getting annoyed the minute nothing happened because that was the only task I saw the project having.

It's all an individual things so what works for me might not work for you, but the biggest shift and the thing that calmed me down more was getting focused. I think I'm a pretty intelligent person and could do well at things in a multitude of niches if I set my mind to it. What has not been intelligent of me in the past is to assume I could do them all at once. In the past I'd be running 10 tests in multiple niches which would either do nothing as I wasn't focused enough on any of them or alternatively show potential, but then I stretched myself too far that I couldn't manage to do everything anyway and then I'd just get pissed again and think the world was against me. Now I force myself to get focused and stick to just a couple of niches at a time and build those out. Once those are stable and I understand the systems I can bring other people into manage those while I then look to new areas and repeat the process. This situation keeps me focused and motivated. My past throw everything up in the air and hope for the best well that just created a hard done by pissed me that no-one, including me wanted to know.

 

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[Deleted21961]

This is awesome, @Imgal. It sounds like you solved exactly the problem I have. I want to model it. Though I'm not yet sure what the structure you are talking about is.
Example.
I have this teespring campaign running on. I set it up, put FB ads and so on. Now, two options:
1) I can engage in monitoring it for the whole day, which I don't think is the focus you talk about. I mean, watching FB ads stats every 10 minutes.
2) If I don't engage in watching the stats and force myself to wait 24 hours before analyzing anything, I have 23:55 hours left that I need to fill up somehow. This is where all of the shit happens, i.e. launching another dozen of things, blurring focus to the point of 1/100 of attention on one thing.

So, if I focus on the one campaign, it takes like 10 minutes to get pissed off that nothing happens, which leads to impulsive acting and messing up ads.
If I do other things, I ultimately focus on nothing.

There is something I'm missing here and I'm not yet aware what is this. The word "structure" you use may be the thing, but I don't know what it exactly means in this case yet...

 

[Imgal]

This is awesome, @Imgal. It sounds like you solved exactly the problem I have. I want to model it. Though I'm not yet sure what the structure you are talking about is.
Example.
I have this teespring campaign running on. I set it up, put FB ads and so on. Now, two options:
1) I can engage in monitoring it for the whole day, which I don't think is the focus you talk about. I mean, watching FB ads stats every 10 minutes.
2) If I don't engage in watching the stats and force myself to wait 24 hours before analyzing anything, I have 23:55 hours left that I need to fill up somehow. This is where all of the shit happens, i.e. launching another dozen of things, blurring focus to the point of 1/100 of attention on one thing.

So, if I focus on the one campaign, it takes like 10 minutes to get pissed off that nothing happens, which leads to impulsive acting and messing up ads.
If I do other things, I ultimately focus on nothing.

There is something I'm missing here and I'm not yet aware what is this. The word "structure" you use may be the thing, but I don't know what it exactly means in this case yet...

Glad I can be of some help! I think I was a bit too black and white about it regarding the monitoring part. My bad - sorry! I have to admit I tried to do a Teespring campaign once that failed miserably mainly because I had a bright idea, throw up a quick design then throw some half-hearted ads at it which didn't really do anything because I only spent 30 min at most putting it all together. If I was going to do it again then I'd make sure I developed a stronger system that give me more chance of success, but also was replicable and something I could easily pass onto others. Off the top of my head using Teespring as an example I'd probably set up something like the below.

1. To run a successful Teespring campaign you obviously need to have a good design idea and to get that you need to know what the target market wants so in my case the first part of the model would be to go out and analyse what is working well, whether that's through Teespring's own Explore function and the various other sites doing similar things or doing FB graph searches to see what teespring t-shirts are getting a lot of engagement.
2. I'd note down the pages that these adverts were running on. I'd then go and see what other posts on these page were getting high engagement (it's likely that they would be posting quotes etc as well). I'd start recording links, the amount of likes and shares these posts got etc
3. I'd go to places Instagram and Pinterest to find other similar quotes /designs that are getting a lot of likes and record those
4. Now I know what people are really engaging with and I'd look to filter out the popular ones to those that I could scale. If a popular image is a dog with a blue ear then that's cool, but I'm not sure that I'm really going to be able to scale that very much. Alternatively "I love my family almost as much as I love my beagle" is something I'm going to be able to scale out to target other breeds. Beagle ideas stays, blue ear idea is out.
5. I'd get my design created. I'm willing to invest a bit to do this as I know I'm likely going to be scale it out and just keep replacing one breed with another and then expand into other pets, sports etc.
6. Now I'd go out and research my audiences. I'd look for all the Beagle forums and list them then throw them into Audiences Insights in FB and see who comes up. I'd do the same with magazines, books and authors. I'd divide these down into audiences of around 100,000+
7. I'd put my ad together and then target these different audiences and leave that to run for a day with a budget of $10. I just want to see what audiences get me the best traction. Once I see some engagement I'll start scaling up
8. While FB is kicking in I'm going to go to Instagram and set up a quick account. I'll use my t-shirt image as my profile pic and target people who like accounts about my niche. I'll drop comments on their posts and start liking and folliwn people. If I've got the targeting right they're going to come and click on mine.
9. I'd repeat the same thing with Twitter and even Pinterest if it seems applicable to the niche (For each I'd set up a trackable URL - just in the bio for Instagram) and record what is doing best.
10. This is going to take me a day at least.. so by the time all the above is done I should be seeing traction with my ads. If not I'll shelve it. If I am then I'll boost the budget on the best ones
11. I'll start to dig deeper on the audiences. Find the smaller, but even more targeted Facebook pages that have a strong affinity to the main pages that performed well.
12. I'll start running bots on social media to keep things ramping up. I'll also then move onto research what to then target next and repeat the whole process.
13. As the days go on I'll keep a close eye on the ads and which ones are burning out. I'll get my retargeting ads ramping up to and keep adding more scarcity to the copy

All this is going to keep me seriously busy for a few day, but it's also something that once I've found works for one breed (in the dog example) I can then hand over to someone else to do for the next one I target as I'll be able to point them to the first successful campaign and get them to replicate it.

 

[Deleted21961]

Sweet! Was doing every thing you have described at some point in time, but so haphazardly, I can easily relate now to what structure you talk about really means.
It means: order of actions counts. It's hard to admit (and I am a coder, unbelievable), but I have totally overlooked it.

 

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[Imgal]

Sweet! Was doing every thing you have described at some point in time, but so haphazardly, I can easily relate now to what structure you talk about really means.
It means: order of actions counts. It's hard to admit (and I am a coder, unbelievable), but I have totally overlooked it.

I'm also a coder... maybe that's why we struggle. We're so used to the structure in that world that we just accept it as being there. Out of the coding world we kind of expect to be the same and innate... but the sad truth is it isn't! I actually had no doubt you were doing it all, it just really is amazing how much more focused and powerful it is as having something concrete to work from.

 

[theag]

What the hell is he talking about