My Dream and the Truth About Coffee Shop Millionaires

By Jonathan Goodman | Follow Him on Twitter
May 18, 2013 32 Comments

“How many hours a week do you work?”

I sat for a minute before responding.

“Do I give the short or long answer to his simple question?” I thought. This past week I moved and, as a result, worked a total of 5hrs. Everything got done, 426 new email subscribers were added, thePTDC Facebook page reached 100s of thousands of people, books were sold, and more than enough money was made.

So on one hand I could work 5hrs every week. My jobs would be:

  • Performing 1-2 30 minutes strategy calls per day. (apply here)
  • Checking in to ensure my coaching clients are doing well.
  • Touching base with my social media managers, administrative assistants, and content manager.

The reality is quite different.

I could work 5hrs/wk but I don’t. I freakin’ love working. The truth is that I was miserable this week because I couldn’t find the time to work.

I should start by admitting that I am not a millionaire. I’ve created a life of personal and financial freedom and my businesses grow each month but I’m not putting on my swim trunks and flippy floppies just yet (sorry T-Payne).
coffee shop millionaire

But Didn’t You Go to Hawaii for 6 Months? Wasn’t That Chill?

Yes. Many of you know that I recently returned from Hawaii. I was there for 6 months working remotely. What few people know is the reason why I decided to go.

I wasn’t happy.

Shutting off from the World and becoming a vagabond in tropical locations was never my goal. I didn’t start a website because I wanted to quit my job, make people jealous, or give a giant FU to “the man”. I did it simply because I felt like it and It appealed to me.

But as the website grew I became obsessed and, in that process, a jerk. I didn’t become a jerk in my online persona. I become a jerk to my friends and family. Suddenly everything was about me, my business, my success, and my interests. I forgot how to interact with others or support and make time for people I cared about and caused irreparable harm to relationships I held dear.

So I ran away because it was the only option.

In order to take back control of my personal and professional life that had spiraled out of control I isolated myself. Purposely I took myself to a remote region of Oahu and shut off contact from the rest of the World. In my notepad while listening to the waves I wrote everything down. It took 2.5 months for me to dump every thought out of my head onto paper. I had one rule: Everything had to be written down.

Before long I learned what was important to me and what wasn’t. There’s so much bullshit in our World that can be ignored but in order to do so you must train yourself. Like everything else worth having, this takes concentrated effort, hard work, and sacrifice. Nobody else can influence you in your decisions to be honest with yourself and, for me, the only way to make sense of what I really thought was to run away.
coffee shop millionaire

I know it sounds exotic. A single 27 year old guy sitting with a notepad writing down his thoughts on the beach, but it wasn’t. For 6 months I had no social or romantic life. Have you ever gone 5 days without speaking to another person? It’s petrifying. But silence is special, silence allows one to be honest with oneself; moments of silence ———————— are part of the music.

“Silence is special, silence allows one to be honest with oneself; moments of silence ———————— are part of the music.” – Click to Tweet

 
The first 5 days of silence were horrible, the second was bad, third was manageable, and the fourth was a life-changing experience.

Now, let me be honest and tell you why I do what I do and why I’m Just Now living My Dream

Oratory is empty if it has not been field-tested on the battlefield of experience. And I have little use for those who write beautifully and live sordidly; or those who withdraw from the world and issue instructions for how to live in it[...] – Robert Fulgum

 
Get rich quick schemes only make the person selling the scheme get rich. Social media success and online business success takes time, hustle, and endless passion, patience, and persistence.

My dream was never to quit my job–I loved personal training. I cried when I quit.

My dream was never to move to Hawaii–I love the sun and hate the cold but the real reason was to isolate myself so that I could finally focus, gain perspective, and have some serious introspection.

My dream was never to make a lot of money.

My dream was to create the life where I had the freedom to read and write all day

There have been ups and downs and, although I would have never admitted it at the time, I teetered on bankruptcy for months. Maybe this isn’t true about everybody in my position, but my dream was to create a life where I could read and write 10hrs/day. Without interruption, I wanted to be able to explore whatever crazy idea enters my mind before it has a chance to leave.

That’s the dream that I’m living. It’s not full of lavish vacations, sports cars, and multitudes of women. Maybe that’s a dream for you, but me, I’m happy with what I’ve got.

My reading room. No electronics at all. This is a place to sit for hours on end with a cup of coffee.

What’s your dream? Be honest and tell me in the comments below why it is that you work so hard.

Social Media, Implicit Egotism, and Why You Don’t Have as Much Control Over Who You Marry as You Think

By Jonathan Goodman | Follow Him on Twitter
May 9, 2013 5 Comments

I dated a girl once because her name was Jasmine. Something told me that any girl named Jasmine had to be beautiful and exotic. So I asked a friend if she knew one and the introduction was made.

It wasn’t the magic carpet ride I hoped it would be; we broke up after two comically awkward weeks. Since then I’ve noticed a trend: I tend to date girls whose first name starts with “J”. This isn’t a coincidence. In fact, I later learned that there’s an underlying reason rooted in psychology at play and it can be applied to give you an extra boost to your social media attempts.

Do you think the decision of who to marry is your own choice?

What about where you live or what you do for a living?

In 2004, John Jones and colleagues examined 15,000 public marriage records and discovered that there’s a tendency to marry somebody with the same first letter of a persons first name. 1

Pelham et. al. found that people born on Feb 2 (2/2) are more prone to live in cities with names with Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. Is your birthday on June 6 (6/6)? If so, there’s a good chance you’ll be visiting Six Mile, South Carolina.

Pelham et. al. also found that people whose names are Georgina or George are more like to be geologists. Heck, even people with roofing companies are more likely to have first names that start with “R”.2

You can’t make this shit up. While slight in some cases, the differences are statistically significant.

Let’s play around with this concept

Good information isn’t enough anymore. People’s purchasing habits are changing and they’re deciding on what to buy based on who they like, connect to, and feel comfortable with. Faceless companies are being forced to adapt and to succeed moving forward you’ll have to become comfortable with the concept that people buy based on the 1% that makes them different, not the 99% that makes them the same.

If you want your social media to make an impact, you’ve got to connect with your user on a deeper level. They need to feel like they know you and implicit egotism may be your answer.

What is it that makes you different or unique? Build it into your status updates or tweets.

Here’s an example:

I wanted to write a status update as a response to multiple emails I received in a short period of time. These were from people who had followed my work that had reached a tipping point. For as long as two years they studied social media, slowly built up their pages, offered extraordinary value, and, at times, had become frustrated in the return. Within two weeks, 3 different readers had a flood of new users to their page and their businesses began to flourish.

This is common pattern. No matter how good you are at it, social media takes time and is unpredictable. All it takes is one big success–a contest, a promotion, or a viral post–to take your page to the next level. It might happen after 3 months or a year or more. But if you keep hustling with integrity and implementing the right habits that moment will come.

I could have written about the pattern in a similar fashion on the Viralnomics Facebook Page to the above two paragraphs but instead decided to go back to my embarrassingly nerdy days of trying to catch em’ all with my Poké Balls. So I wrote a story about a Pokémon named Magikarp who went through a similar evolution. Below is the picture I used and the entire text from the status (typos included):

psychology of social media

Magikarp was the most useless Pokemon. So useless, that, upon putting your old rod in the water and having one appear, you simply needed to throw a regular Pokéball to catch it.

Forever, or so it seemed, Magikarp just splashed around not making an impact. He was simply biding his time getting experience.

Then one day, after hours of mind-numbingly repetitive game play, Magikarp reaches level 20 and evolves into one of the most fierce Pokemon in the game–Gyarados.

Why do I tell this asinine story other than to admit that yes I played Pokemon, and yes I did, in fact, catch them all?

I tell this story because it closely mimics your social media evolution. There are no magic tricks, potions, or secretzzz you can buy for $27.

Building up a social media network takes time. It takes strategy. And it takes, what may seem like, mind-numbing repetitiveness.

Then, and you don’t know when it’s going to happen, a switch will get flicked, and your accounts will “tip”. Your reach will expand and you’ll start to be viewed as an expert.

Trolls come out from under their bridge and start to point their insecure jealousy at you and people will be asking you how you popped up overnight. “What’s your secret?” they’ll say. “Because I just heard of you and you’ve got such a great network.”

It’s at that point that you deserve you take a vacation, put your feet up, watch the ocean waves roll in and out, and reflect on all that time when you put Magikarp into battle just to get experience remembering the day you caught him with an old rod–no matter how mind-numbing it was.

For all of you working day and night, frustrated that, despite your best efforts, your networks don’t seem to grow, know that if you keep at it, no matter how frustrating, no matter how mind-numbing, no matter how much it breaks you down that if you keep at it you will reach level 20 and, when that happens, you’re going to use your Hyper Beam and dominate.

Implicit egotism is real and it’s powerful. People like people who are similar to themselves even down to the name they are given that they had no input into how it was given. Be personal and be yourself. Why fight with everybody else when you can break through the noise and appeal to those who are similar to you?

References

1Jones, J., Pelham, B.; Carvallo, M.; Mirenberg, M. How Do I Love T? Let Me Count the Js: Implicit Egotism and Interpersonal Attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 87(5), 665-683.

2Pelham, Brett W.; Mirenberg, Matthew C.; Jones, John T. Why Susie sells seashells by the seashore: Implicit egotism and major life decisions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 82(4), 469-487

Eagleman, D. (2012) Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. New York: Penguin Publishing.

Are You Using the Most Powerful Word in the English Language?

By Jonathan Goodman | Follow Him on Twitter
May 8, 2013 21 Comments
Untitled-1

Moving into my apartment two years ago was a horrible experience. In a building with 22 floors, one of the 3 elevators was out of service that day and one was earmarked for me. This left 22 floors of people 1 elevator. When the day to move came, … [Continue reading]

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How Many Apples Have Fallen on Your Head Today?

By Jonathan Goodman | Follow Him on Twitter
April 27, 2013 8 Comments
gravity2

"Apples have fallen on peoples heads since man first stood upright on two legs and walked under apple trees. But Isaac Newton was the first one to perceive the significance of this event." - Rollo May Newton lived in a simpler time. It was … [Continue reading]

Should You Create a Fan Page for Your Business on Facebook?

By Jonathan Goodman | Follow Him on Twitter
April 14, 2013 11 Comments
Photo on 2013-04-13 at 3.24 PM

The answer changes depending on your business model. There are some psychological and technical considerations to consider when you're deciding whether or not to create a fan page for business. I'll go over them both and, by the end of this … [Continue reading]

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Help! My Outbound Links Don’t Get Seen on Facebook Anymore.

By Jonathan Goodman | Follow Him on Twitter
April 9, 2013 12 Comments
get facebook post seen by more people

Running a Facebook page can be more frustrating than trying to kill that last annoying little pig when all you have left is a useless green boomerang bird. Seriously, that bird makes me want to throw my iPad against the wall. Apple should thank Roxio … [Continue reading]