by Dan Meredith
You don’t need to make a big deal about it. You don’t need to show off. You don’t need to ring people up and tell them what you have done. Mainly because people are so preoccupied with their own shit, they often don’t remember putting you down, or if they do, they will still tell you what you’ve achieved is not good enough anyway.
So if someone tells you that you can’t do something, you simply need to make a mental note of it, figure out how you can prove them wrong, and – I’m sure you are noticing a theme now – go and do it. Then sit back, smile inwardly and enjoy the fruits of your labour. While they burn with envy or jealousy.
Burn, burn, burn.
Oh, and by the way, those fruits taste fucking good…
BE SPITEFUL (PROVE ’EM WRONG) TO DO/ACTION STEPS
What to do if somebody tells you that you can’t do something. You simply need to make a mental note of it, figure out how you can prove them wrong and go do it. Then sit back, relax and smile. Enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Get it into your head that people will criticise and hate you. There really is no better motivation than a will to prove someone wrong. You have to understand that if you’re going to do your own thing, whatever part of your life it’s in, some people are going to piss on your parade and try to drag you down. It’s your job to realise that they are most likely holding up a mirror and presenting their own insecurities on to you because they are scared of you succeeding.
Keep your antennae up. You want to be listening out for the tiny pieces of truth you may need to hear from time to time. Be wary of what others say to you and what you feel in your life. But sometimes what people are saying may have a grain of truth in it.
There is no greater feeling than proving someone wrong. Spite is awesome. But be very careful never to rub it in anyone’s face. Let your actions do the talking. There’s no need to show off.
8
BE PRODUCTIVE
Focus on being productive instead of busy.
TIM FERRIS
Doing work for work’s sake is fucking stupid. There, I said it.
This chapter will outline the strategies I’ve used to get to where I am today.
You can’t get to this stage (honestly) without being super productive with your time. Otherwise you’ll burn out, lose motivation, give up and head back to the J.O.B with your tail between your legs. And again, there is nothing wrong with having a job. Just if you’re doing one that sucks – I feel for you. I won’t let that happen. You’re here to make your life awesome, so let’s give you the productivity recipe that you need. And it’s one that I’ve used for myself too.
And if you have been in my Facebook group (‘Coffee With Dan’) long enough, you’ll know that I run by the philosophy of ‘getting shit done’. Heck, I even had shirts printed with that statement on, and a lot of CWD loons actually bought them too (with all the proceeds going to charity).
It’s safe to say this is the chapter I’ll excel in. Hence it’s the longest of them all. But what that means is you’ll learn all the nuggets of mine to start implementing in your life too.
So grab a coffee, and let’s crack on.
This is the cornerstone of my philosophy: being productive. Or, more in my parlance, getting shit done. It is a premise that I have built my career on, and quite frankly I know no other way.
This is where – for once – I will be closed-minded.
Why?
Because it fucking works! I’m taking all the stuff I’ve done to get where I am and dumping it on the pages of this book just for you.
You’re welcome.
So, instead of looking up to the sky for answers from the universe, twatting around with vision boards, or simply hoping one day good shit will happen, I finally made shit happen. No chakras and all that bull involved. (But, like I said, if that’s working for you, you keep reaching for the rainbow, OK?)
As I mentioned earlier, Old Dan used to have a rather tenacious drinking hobby. On a hungover Tuesday(!) morning, I realised that, although I was doing pretty well at what I was doing (consulting, coaching and copywriting at the time), I could do so much more if I was a little more structured, disciplined and productive. But, as I can be a bit of a charmer, I had a knack of talking myself out of doing the work (it’s perfectly normal to talk to yourself, I think…), so I realised if I couldn’t hold myself accountable, I needed to get others to do it with me.
I surrounded myself with these others, committed to certain actions and, in essence, took charge of the group of folks so that I had to show up every day. Because I was the leader. I couldn’t let the side down by not showing up.
It started when I put a post up on Facebook. I simply said I was going to be doing an accountability group for anyone who was interested. I then (something I learned from an Australian gentlemen called James Schramko) put up an accountability post at 9am and 3pm as they were my optimal times. The goal was for people to commit to doing two blocks of two hours a day to post up what they intended to do, and then what they’d actually done. I also said I would try and teach them, from time to time, some of the stuff I had learned about sales, marketing, copywriting, creating digital products, networking and so forth.
I had hoped for fifteen–twenty people. As of writing that was less than a year ago. Right now, the group stands at over 4,000, with 700+ people waiting to be admitted.
The group is called ‘Coffee With Dan’. The idea was to create a virtual coffee shop co-working environment.
Mind blowing, right? I mean, really. What. The. Fuck.
So, the group was based around the themes of getting shit done, doing the work, productivity, serving your tribe and having some fun (entrepreneurs can be so bloody boring at times). I will share more on this in a later chapter, but if you want to get more shit done, surround yourself with people who equally want to get shit done.
Again, I know it’s simple, but hardly anyone does it.
I digress.
As a result, I’ve become quite an expert in what makes me productive. Now a lot of my clients and ‘Coffee With Dan’ members have adopted some, or all, of my ideas. And, I hasten to add, they were patchworked together from books, trainings, anecdotal observations and people smarter than me – I will give them due credit at the back of the book. These are things I have tried, adapted and put myself through.
Use these and you’ll be laughing, because they fucking work. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel.
I mentioned earlier that you should factor in stuff like family time, fun, exercise, education, and so forth before you plan your week in a business capacity. This is one of the biggest breakthroughs I have had, and I owe it all to a book called The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, because that is where I first got the idea. I suggest you go and buy it – it’s brilliant. But my version is, like anything I do, far simpler, because I’m a simpleton.
This is what I do. First, I block out all the stuff that’s important to me, so that’s fitness, personal development/education, ‘nothing time’ (I literally schedule an hour a day for nothing. Sometimes I nap, go for a walk, piss around online – whatever I feel like), time with my family, film night, train journeys to nowhere (I’ll explain this genius later) and so forth.
Then I put in time at the start of my week to have a team meeting and get everything planned. This is usually on a Monday, and I have the heads of each of my businesses in on the call, as well as any team members who want to dive in. I then schedule a much shorter call at the end of the week, which is far less formal, where we review how the week has gone against what we planned to do. I also tend to make filthy jokes and say terrible things.
After this, I always have a massage of some form. Sounds odd, but I learned this from people smarter than me. It serves a few key purposes: it not only signals the official end of the week (I still work at weekends, but only on stuff I want to do), it also helps with my stress levels. That, and I have royally fucked my body up with rugby, lifting stupidly heavy things
and falling over drunk in the past.
Plum.
Regardless, it’s my way of telling my body, ‘I’m done for the week’.
Each week, I factor in either a whole or half day, depending on how busy I am, to simply go and have fun. I never plan it. I just ensure it is blocked off in my diary, and I go adventuring. It’s good for the soul. I often tend to find myself in an aquarium or an arcade, or jet skiing or roaming round a museum. Thirty-five-year-old man-child doesn’t do it justice, really…
Only after all of the above have been slotted into my diary do I put in work slots, coaching calls, new business development, ‘dentist appointments’, content creation and meetings.
It’s utterly contradictory to how most people work but, once you try it, you won’t turn back. If you want more of the reasons why it works then go and buy The 12 Week Year. The authors are smarter than me.
But the gist is: you work better and are more productive in short bursts than long stretched out blocks.
Now we come on to some ‘Dan-isms’ and weird things I do that work. These things might seem quite odd, but I have tested them on myself first, as well as willing (and sometimes unwilling) clients. Try them, and let me know how they go for you.
MY SUNDAY BRAIN DUMP AND 3–5 SYSTEM
There’s a story behind how this system came about and I’d like to share it with you.
As I’m a simpleton, I’d get rather frustrated and overwhelmed with all the shit in my head that equated to things I had to do. So I decided to do a brain dump.
This took me, at the time, two hours and resulted in 169 things to do.
Safe to say, I did none of them.
That list was so utterly mammoth and daunting, I thought, fuck it, I’m never going to get that done, and put the thing in the bin. This is what most people do. And this is why most people remain overworked, bitter fuckwits.
You, my friend, are not a fuckwit.
I spoke to a personal training client I had at the time. Back then I was still doing fortyish hours a week of PT, was head of special projects (lol) for a massive gym chain, doing the whole ‘iamthefitnesscopywriter’ thing and trying to get my own facility up and running.
Needless to say, I was busy as fuck.
This chap happens to be one of the most successful people in town, and had achieved everything he’d set out to achieve when he was still in his twenties. He has the best house in the area (it really is; it’s sick), a tall blonde model-esque wife (and she is lovely), his own business (and it’s the best in the world at what it does) and is a millionaire (safe to say he’d have that covered).
He taught me what he had been using, Monday to Friday, for twenty+ years – and as a direct result he had not only removed a metric shit-tonne of stress and ball ache from his life, he was massively productive. Looking back now, it looks so simple – and it is.
He said, ‘Every day I write a list. That list has no less than three and no more than five important things that I need to do for my business. That, Dan, is all I do.’
Eh? Three–five things? Surely not!
Well, one thing I have learned: when someone is more successful than you in anything, don’t argue. Just shut up and do as you’re told. So I did.
I came up with a ranking system, 1, 2 or 3:
= super important, business critical, time/deadline bound, makes money, or only I can do it.
= important, but doesn’t need to be done now: exploratory business meetings, interview/podcasts/guest content – things that need my input, but a team member could handle.
= not time bound, not critical, someone else could do it, whimsical business ideas, ‘busy fool’ work.
I then do the brain dump. I find it easier to do this on a laptop and print it out, but writing it out is fine as well. Basically, I let out all the tasks and dump them on to paper, rank the brain dump with the 1, 2, 3 system as above, then go through, highlight all the 1s, take my diary and put no less than three and no more than five things to do in each day from Monday to Friday. If I have space, I’ll put in some of the 2s and maybe the odd 3 as well, but that, in essence, is it.
Now bear this in mind: really analyse the tasks and see which category they fit in. don’t just put a 1 next to something which can actually be a 2 or even a 3. Be ruthless and stick to the system.
Another area that you might find works for you is themes. I can’t switch very easily from a new business call to a coaching call or writing content. It takes me a while to get out of one mindset and into another, so what I do is this (and you can make your own versions up depending on what you do):
Monday – planning
Tuesday – coaching
Wednesday – meetings (and generally a half day)
Thursday – copy and content creation
Friday – new business development and marketing
Saturday – social media and emails
Sunday – free-balling. Whatever I want as a rule.
That way, I don’t have to flip between one thing and another, and I’m conscientious about putting the right 1s on the right days.
The great thing is, it makes your time very precious, and you know exactly where you stand if you need to slot something or someone in. I used to beat myself up if I didn’t do my full five things. If I do – great, but as long as I do the minimum three my business continues to grow.
As for the 2s and 3s – well, if someone wants you to do something, and they’re not a paying client (who always should come first) or an influencer or someone looking to work with you, if it’s really important, they will chase you.
I know that sounds bad, but as someone who lived to please people, I ended up being a ‘busy fool’. In other words, it looked like I was doing a lot of work, but in reality I was kidding myself. Being busy is not the same as being productive. As I said earlier, a degree of being selfish with your time, and being honest about what you are actually doing, will do wonders for you.
Trust me. If someone chases you, they want you. If they don’t? Well, their task wasn’t that important in the first place, so no harm done.
This is especially true as you get more and more successful and/or well-known.
THE DENTIST APPOINTMENT
This was taught to me by a chap called John Logar. And I totally believe this is where most people fuck up.
A business without sales is just ego masturbation. Sure you can say you have a business, but without sales, you have nothing.
Equally, I have found – as I have done this myself – businesses, especially in the early stages, go through a ‘feast and famine’ cycle. You do loads of marketing and calls and advertising when you start, then all of a sudden you have all these clients to serve. Then, when you have finished with them, you think, shit, I need more clients!
Happens every day.
Which is why I love the dentist appointment philosophy. Simply put in, Monday to Friday, one hour for a dental appointment. When you go to the dentist you usually allow for an hour, right? Especially if you are having work done. Same here, except this time the dentist appointment is one hour, every day, of new business development. That, and nothing else is scheduled for that hour. The hour is taken.
Now, many of you won’t do this. Because not many people like sales or selling. For starters, you need to get over that shit! Cheesy, hardcore, ‘buy my shit’ sales – yes, that is dire. But if you have a product or service that helps people, you genuinely believe in it and it works, then it is your duty to sell that product. (I think this is a Dan Kennedy thing – either way, go buy all his books, now!) If you don’t sell that product and it can help them, you are a fuckin’ plum.
Er, what?
Yes, that’s right – your duty. Plum.
If you have something that can help someone, take them out of whatever pain they are in, make them feel good, add value to their life, make them money – whatever – why the fuck would you not want to sell it to them? You are being a selfish dick not giving it to them, and
getting them to feel better.
See? It’s all a matter of perspective.
Anyway, I’m getting off topic. One hour of new business a day, every day – especially when you don’t need it – means you have a consistent deal flow and pipeline of prospects.
Don’t question, just do it.
THE TRAIN RIDE TO NOWHERE (AKA THE SOCIALLY AWKWARD SITUATION)
I like trains.
I used to hate them when I had to commute, but now I think they are awesome. I get so much work done on them. I think most people, when they get on public transport, have their own stuff to deal with, and as a result they want to be left alone.
I love this.
If I have to crank out a stack of work, I plan a trip to somewhere around two hours away – with no changes – and make sure I book a table seat. I commit to two hours of extremely focused work, get off the train – have lunch, go shopping, potter around – then get back on the train home for another two hours of extremely focused work.
By doing this, I end up being super productive and doing (as I know I only have two hours each way) more than a day’s work in four hours. Give it a punt if you need to get shit done in a hurry. It’s awesome.
ONE BAG PHILOSOPHY
I have a lot of time for people who serve their country. Whether you agree with it or not, they do a tough job that I don’t think I could do, and they do it well.
A good friend of mine once told me how he lived while in the military. Essentially he had everything he needed in one bag. If he needed to get the fuck out of dodge, the bag was ready to roll.
Now, I don’t tend to find myself in combat situations, but I did, at one point, realise I had accumulated so much crap over the years that the idea of moving out filled me with dread.