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Accelerating something that doesn't exist doesn't work

I've written and published five books. No one read them.

A few months ago I started shooting videos. No one watches them.

A few days ago I started a podcast. No one will listen to it.

At least not now. Or tomorrow. Or the day after tomorrow.

Maybe never. Probably never..

Michelle Phan published fifty videos on YouTube about putting on makeup. Barely anyone ever watched her videos.

Fast forward a few years. Michelle has published 350+ videos on YouTube, has a follower base of 7mn+ people, 1bn+ lifetime views, she has her own makeup line and is making millions.

Michelle knew one thing. She knew that all she could do was to create her own luck. To create opportunities for herself. She created her own luck by being persistent, by constantly showing up and never giving up. By working on the foundation.

While shooting her videos she was working a shitty day job.

There was no overnight success. There was only hard work and persistence. And no guarantee that it might ever work out. For most people it never works out. It might never work out for you. For me. For all of us.

The only thing we can do, the only thing that Michelle did was to work on the foundation. Just like when you build a house you start with the foundation. Or else your house might collapse or it might get blown away by the wind.

You don't start with the fancy interior of your house. You don't start with hiring an interior designer and buy all of the fancy furniture before you worked on the foundation.

Working on the foundation is hard. And ugly. You'll have to get your hands dirty. You'll have to work many months without ever seeing any results. Mostly years..

And what you're seeing once the foundation is done... is nothing. Just some plain and ugly looking pieces of concrete.

That's why most of us try to skip the hard work. The foundation. It just takes way too long. And it looks ugly. We still need to use our imagination. We need to be able to imagine what it might look like in the distant future.

So we start with hiring an interior designer instead. We buy expensive furniture instead.. We try to accelerate things without having worked on the foundation.

That's why most of the things don't work out.

That's why self help books don't work. You have to work on the foundation first. You have to work on yourself first. And the only way to do this is to take time to be with yourself. That's how you can see what you really want in your life.

That's why growth hacking your life your company, your education, your relationship or what not doesn't work.

You need time to understand the underlying logic. The system. You need to understand how it works. And this takes a hell lot of time. Starting from scratch always takes time. Working on your foundation takes time. Without a foundation your house will collapse like a house of cards.

Is working on your foundation a guarantee for success or a happy and fulfilled life? No, it's not.

But it brings you one step closer to overnight success. It brings you one step closer to being able to leverage momentum. When you have a foundation you might be able to leverage momentum. 

Momentum that might maybe one day build up to a big enough wave you can ride.

But there's no guarantee that this wave will ever come. There's just getting ready for it.. one piece of ugly looking concrete at a time..

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  • Ideas on entrepreneurship, seeing & believing. Established 2013. Daily since 2015. Start here...
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