I’m really sick and tired of seeing my successful friends struggle!
I’ve been fortunate to become friends with many people who have achieved great success doing what they love.
But now there’s a problem…
Many of them are suffering financially. Depending on their area of expertise, there can be several reasons for this:
- The economic recession killed off a lot of their business and they haven’t been able to recover
- Their age or physical condition keeps them from working as often (or from getting hired, at all)
- The internet is taking over a growing share of their market
At the same time, more and more people believe they can be experts simply because they have access to the web.
But information is no substitute for experience. To paraphrase one of my mentors:
“You can learn a lot about a car by reading a book [or watching YouTube videos], but you won’t know how to drive until you get behind the wheel.”
Luckily for all of us, I believe we’re approaching a tipping point where connecting real experts to inspired learners is going to change our society forever.
One of the benefits of the internet is that more and more people feel they can do or be anything they want. Until the internet, that was a mindset only held by a few (entrepreneurs, primarily).
The problem is that there are too many voices vying for our attention… too many pseudo-experts with no real experience.
To paraphrase another thought from the same mentor I quoted above:
“The problem with the internet is that it doesn’t come with a user manual.”
(believe it or not, he first said this in the late ’90s)
What we need now are Wisdom Filters (a term I coined about 15 years ago when I first started thinking about this issue).
We need people who have experience and can on the wisdom that has been gained through years of experience, trial-and-error and hard work.
Yes, people will pay to learn from your experience!
Money is fluid. We can make and spend it as we want. Even in the worst times, we have a certain amount of control over it.
But time is finite. Once that hour is gone, it’s gone forever. You’ll never get it back.
People are starting to understand this. Even if they don’t put a hard number on the value of their time, they sense it when the day is over and they’ve “worked” a lot but not accomplished anything important.
Add up all of those hours watching free videos and reading articles that led to nothing of value. How much is that time worth?
Compare that with paying to learn directly from someone who actually knows the answers because they have done it.
When I started performing magic, my father passed on this quote (apologies for the patriarchal phrasing):
“It is a wise man who learns from his mistakes, but it is a wiser man who learns from someone else’s mistakes.”
It was that sentiment that led me to finding my first mentor (I was 9 years old — Thanks, Dad!).
The good news is that everyone has something to pass on. Regardless of your career or life path, you’ve learned lessons that are unique to your situation. Whether you’re a a stay-at-home parent or a CEO, you know things that nobody else knows.
Here’s my challenge to you for this weekend:
Take 10 minutes to start listing…
- The major events in your life, good or bad, which changed the way you think or act
- All of the “jobs” you’ve had, including non-paid ones (raising a family, caring for a loved one, community work)
- Your top three core values (e.g. honesty, hard work, compassion, etc.)
For now, just get started. Don’t feel like you need to spend hours in a meditative state to create a complete list. Get a few things down on paper, then make sure you put the paper where you’ll see it at least once a day.
If you follow me over the next several weeks, I’ll be teaching you how you can use this list to help others… and create an automated revenue stream for yourself in the process.
P.S. If you really want to commit publicly, post a few items on your list in a comment here.