Hi! Welcome to the Content Academy. This community helps entrepreneurs in the content era get the tools and resources needed to generate sales and make an impact on the world. Step 1: Introduce yourself below! (✄ copy/paste template 👇) Where are you from? What are you working on? What immediate help do you need? Step 2: Discover How to Unlock all the Classroom Resources ------------- Best practices in this community: • Level up by posting insights and thoughtful comments. • Help others level up by liking 👍 good posts and comments. • Be kind • If you need help, just ask the community 💪

In 2020 I was broke and owed my parents $1000 after trying to start a business. I had to drop my ego and apply for a job. I sent over 60 applications and got one in a media business in a sales position. The first 3 months were brutal. I made over 500 cold calls and made zero sales. I got rejected left and right until it became the norm. My confidence was low and I started to doubt myself. I was on the verge of being fired. I had to change my situation, or things would get very bad quickly. In desperation, I searched for a solution. As I was searching, I realized that I had the solution at my fingertips the whole time. But I couldn’t see it. Because I was lost in the daily grind of making my first sale. I forgot what I learned in being deep into personal development since 2016. I got reminded of the power of mindset but somehow forgot to use it in making sales. I went back to the mindset programs that I’ve invested in back then. And looked at my notes. “Reframing! Exactly!” How could I miss techniques like that? Before that realization, whenever I didn’t make a sale, I doubted myself more. Because I let my negative thoughts dictate what not making a sale meant. Instead, I started to use the reframing technique in every sales situation. From there, I still got rejected on some deals, but things started to change quickly. Now not making a sale meant “This is good feedback. I’ll get better at sales. I’ll close big deals soon.” At first, it felt weird saying things like that in my mind. But I was committed to changing my mindset. And honestly, I had no choice because I was forced to change. And it worked. Just as the 3rd month was about to end, I made my first sale. $15,000! I broke through a big limitation in my mind. From there, I stopped doubting myself as much. And started gaining confidence. Did more outreach. Did more meetings. I made more offers. Closed more deals. One month later, I made my first $50,000 sale. Then the sales started pouring in.

Fellow content creators, What is my exact purpose in life? This question haunted me for years. I was always very ambitious. All I wanted was to live a life of total freedom with a business that I love. Deep inside, I always knew that I could pull that off even when my reality suggested otherwise. Call it overconfidence or being delusional. I always thought: “Once I know my exact purpose, I could unleash my full potential and live my dream soon.” But the strange thing was that I never seriously tried to find my purpose. I thought I was doing the right things by reading books like The Alchemist, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Think & Grow Rich. But I was still stuck in finding my purpose. Then 4 years ago, I found the Japanese concept of IKIGAI. From then on my life changed. I went from being lost and making zero sales in 2020 to selling over $2,300,000 worth of deals in my sales career. And I attribute a lot of my transformation to finding my exact purpose in life and business. There are 4 steps to your purpose. If you ignore one step, you won’t find your exact purpose. Trust me, I tried skipping steps and it is not worth it. ----- # STEP 1 - WHAT YOU LOVE (PASSION) List out all the things you love. No matter how trivial it seems. Think about your hobbies, interests, and obsessions. A good way to do this is to ask yourself: “What are the things I can’t stop talking about?” For me it is personal development, business, philosophy, psychology, and history. Look at your YouTube history – what content are you consuming most? There are patterns that give you a lot of clues about what you truly like doing. ---- # STEP 2 - WHAT YOU'RE GOOD AT (SKILLS) List out all things you think you’re good or passionate about learning. Ask 5 people who know you well about what you’re good at. You will be surprised by what they will say about you. This is crucial because how you see yourself is often different from how other people see you.

If you want to grow your business, stop managing your time. Manage your energy instead. Have you ever had time to do an important project but no energy? So, what was the point of having all of this time when you can’t use it to grow your business? Think about old people for a moment. They usually have a lot of free time. But what they lack is the energy to make the most out of their time. Same in your business – you can have all the time in the world, but it is useless if you don’t have the energy to do the things that grow your business. The better mental model is to think of your energy levels, instead of how much time you have. When I started to plan my days around my energy levels, my productivity tripled. I tend to be most productive between 6am - 12pm. This is where I feel I have the most brain power during the day. Now, yours could be different. But for most entrepreneurs, it is around late mornings till lunch. If you want to get the most out of your days as an entrepreneur, block 4h for your most important tasks. This is how 99% of the most successful entrepreneurs do. It only takes four focused hours to get more done than most entrepreneurs in a week. I’m not exaggerating. It’s not about how much you get done, it is about what you get done. When I started off in my YouTube journey, I used to operate from the old paradigm of time management. So I would plan my days around how much time I had left to produce one YouTube video. I followed best practices in productivity and broke up the project into smaller tasks. Researching ideas, writing the script, filming the video, editing the video, making the thumbnail, and then uploading the video. And then I would start executing the tasks. But then something strange happened. I realized that each task would not only take a different time but also energy. For example, coming up with the idea and writing an outline for the video would take more mental energy than filming the video. With that realization, I optimized my workflow around my energy levels.

10 Steps To Maximum Productivity: 1. Clear Your Mind. You can’t achieve peak performance if your mind is full. Take a sheet of paper and do a brain dump. Get the enemy out of your head. 2. Define Your Values You can’t achieve peak performance if you are not clear on what you truly value in life. Clarity breeds mastery. Make a list of your top 5 priorities in life. For me, it's faith, health, business, knowledge, and freedom. 3. Set Specific Goals You can’t achieve peak performance if you are not clear on what you exactly want. Set specific goals: - 5-year goals - vision - 1-year goals - long-term - 90-day goals - mid-term - Monthly goals - short-term 4. Reverse Engineer Your Goals. You can’t achieve peak performance if you don’t have a clear plan. Break down your goals into projects and tasks. Think like a general – map out your plan on the battlefield. 5. Set Priorities You can’t achieve peak performance if you don’t know what to do and what not to do. Identify your tasks based on importance. What moves the needle? Do this task first. Delegate tasks whenever possible to focus on high value activities. 6. Manage Your Time Effectively You can’t achieve peak performance if you don’t manage your time effectively. Time-blocking is your friend. Block 4 hours of deep work every morning for high-leverage activities. This ensures laser focus. 7. Use Less Productivity Apps You can’t achieve peak performance if you are using too many “productivity” apps. G-Suite can do 80% of most productivity apps. Use a simple productivity stack. - Planning: Google Calendar - Tasks: Google Calendar - Notes: Apple Notes - Messaging: Slack/WhatsApp  Simplicity scales, complexity fails. 8. Prioritize Your Health You can’t achieve peak performance if your health is suboptimal. Focus on basic biological needs. To perform optimally you need: - Good sleep  - Daily exercise - Clean diet - Nature - Good people  9. Implement Good Routines