Watch the video and let the community know what path you're on? Let us know in the comments! 👇

There's so much online noise in online marketing via social media and email that people are ignoring or blocking a lot of what you send. It's time to return to growing relationships and trust and the key is personalization. Now its easy to do just that in LinkedIn, Facebook and more. People do business with those who they "know-like and trust" and now its been made easy.

I was chatting with my Dad last night and he made the most interesting (and correct) observation. "When I was in business, it was like getting into a competitive landscape." "It was everyman for himself, fighting for clients. Working against your competition." "Now business is all about helping as many people as you can." "The one who wins is the person who helped the most people." It's true. He's retired now, but he can see it too. Can you? You never need to worry about your competition. In fact you should help them win too. You never need to worry about them. You never need to look at them at all. You don't need to study their products, their messaging. It's wasted time that you could be impacting the world. You just need to help the people you can, without holding back. You only need to study your audience and what they want. Give, give, give, give. Focus on who you can help, potential clients, everyone, even the competition. That makes you the leader in the space. If you look at the competition, you're behind them, you'll hold back, you'll withhold, you'll fall behind! Instead, let them copy you, let them follow you! Innovate faster by opening up and being free with your knowledge. Move at light speed! It's OK if they copy you, word for word, what better confirmation that you're on the right track? Sometimes people DM me, "Stephen, I saw [INSERT PERSON HERE] copy your video almost word for word". I appreciate them looking out for me, I do. (thank you for letting me know) But I don't care. "Good" I think, I put it out there to help people anyway. Not just my potential clients, everyone! So I know it's working, and I've copied people too. I'm not sure humans were meant to copyright everything they touch or create. It holds us all back. Deep inside, I know I'm leading the pack. Just help as many people as you can as fast you can. Everything else will fall into place. It takes a deep faith in your own ability and insight. But it's the way modern business is done.

All the hype that you can scale a business out of nowhere with little experience does a lot disservice to people. There are a few rare folks out there that can talk and market there way to success with no real product that works, but most of us can't. I think it takes a hackers mind and maybe a lack of ethics to do that. But the problem is, if you go online you'll see all these people with success, telling you what to do, how to do it, you just need this ONE thing. It's super confusing honestly. For myself I've turned off a lot of that noise. I don't really listen to all the get rich schemes. I have learned a lot online from people, but I build my own unique path. I used to save all the strategies and tactics I saw in an Airtable database (of course =). It was overwhelming to say the least. I would have to spend HOURs just sorting through it all. And I mostly never to use any of it. Now I don't write down all the ideas I hear, or save posts, none of it. I keep my mind free from all that. I only keep track of my goals, my current blocker, and I only try and solve that one blocker. I don't create 10 other things to do tomorrow. I started to develop this awareness personally when I started to develop a mission and vision for what kind of world I wanted to help build. A mission and vision gives you a clear set of values and boundaries to live your life. They don't always give you the perfect answer to every question, but in the beginning they surely help you avoid a lot of the noise, and it immediately eliminates all the things people say you need to do. You ALWAYS can check the information that comes into your brain against that mission, and start to discard 99% of what you hear, because it just doesn't apply to you. Even still, every successful business owner says you need one (a mission and vision), but to me it still felt quite vague. Or it felt manufactured when I tried to build one. So for a long time I never put much effort into it. It started to change when I met someone really passionate about building a vision and we got to crafting one for myself.

I'm about to sit down and record a YouTube video. I don't want to do it. Maybe that's why I'm right here writing this post instead? Maybe you want to record a video and instead you're reading this post. Sometimes people tell me I make it look easy—recording videos. And while I'm not terrified like I used by be (see screenshot of my first LinkedIn video), I feel all sorts of resistance, probably every time I do it. I get anxious, I doubt my idea, it never fully goes away. At least not yet. And guess what, sometimes I screw up, I have to re-record. It often takes me more time than I want. I hate that feeling, all that wasted time... (though of course it's not truly wasted because I always learn something new in the process) But regardless, it's hard, so naturally I come up with all sorts of distractions. The best way I've been able to combat this is to try and make a quality video. Sometimes I have to focus on a script (or at least an outline) and write it out. I have to clarify all my thoughts, and I rework and synthesize my thoughts over and over to refine and articulate my thoughts into simple powerful ideas. It's all about creating value, articulating powerful points in simple terms. The better you can reduce the learning curve for someone the better your videos will do. That process while not always fun reduces the anxiety I feel because I know the video will be good. I can actually feel it inside my gut. Sometimes people are trying to build all these complex systems that make things easy—but they never actually hit record. Or it zaps the life from their videos. That might sound counterintuitive coming from me giving the products I sell. But truthfully my systems work best automating good content. Not helping you avoid the creation process. You can use ChatGPT but if you don't know what a good video is, if you don't know what a good script is, you won't be able to push back and modify the script to make it better. So, don't be afraid to put in the time. The obstacle is the way.