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The skill every Gen Z needs to develop

I there is one thing our generation suffers from most… I could argue it’s a severe lack of patience.

This isn’t our fault; this isn’t your fault.

We have been conditioned since birth to lack patience due to rapidly changing technology. Our generation is blessed with technological advantages that allow us to skip years of learning and get information at any time we want.

BUT… Technological change presents us with disadvantages as well. We can get anything we want at the swipe of a finger. If we want food but can’t be bothered to cook… Uber eats.

We can watch almost any movie at any time, we no longer watch T.V. shows one week at a time. We binge them in a week.

  • Movies 
  • T.V. shows
  • Porn 
  • Food
  • Information about anyone 

So you can see what I mean when I say its not your fault. And if you had terrible parents, that might have just thrown an iPad in your face whenever you winged or moaned, contributing to your lousy patience every more.

Graeme Cohen

-RUOK-

  “We have lost the ability to daydream, to sit still.”


Having our phones in our pockets at all time has completely squashed our ability to be alone. To sit still and be with our thoughts. The second we are alone we pull it out and start scrolling or messaging.

I know this because I do It as well. And it is something I am continually working on improving. 

So PATIENCE:

 How does this affect us long term?

Unicorn companies like Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Google ect have lead us to crave instant business success.

How many people have the goal “be a millionaire but 25, be a millionaire by 30”. Why? And More importantly, how? 

Building a business, a personal brand or climbing up the ladder in business requires time. It requires patience and a lot of learning. You can’t just start something and expect it to grow to a million in 6 months.

Two of my best mates started a company in January 2020, and they hit $1m in revenue in August 2020. But let's look at what it took to achieve $1m in 7 months.

They have been in small business and marketing for over a decade. They have started multiple companies and failed. They have gone through business training programs and worked for top marketing companies in Australia. They also spent a year before launching developing, creating and designing their product whilst still working part-time jobs to survive.

Their rapid success looks rapid on paper, but when you analyse it deeper, you will see it actually required a lot of patience and lots of learning.


”

“It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success”

- lionel messi

All these “Tik Tok Entrepreneurs” and “gurus” online selling you course that claim you will become financially free or instantly successful make millions of dollars scamming people because everyone wants instant success and instant wealth. They prey on that factor.

Lets take BITCOIN. 

Or Crypto currency, When Bitcoin blew up, people made millions seemingly overnight. This lead millions of people to invest into crypto and bitcoin, which meant that price of these currencies decreased. Everyone invested because they wanted instant results and wanted to double their money now.

The S&P 500 is a very safe place to invest your money. It is a low risk low reward scenario. But it is low reward short term… The S&P500 has increased consistently by 10% over the past 100 years. Meaning long term you can make a lot of money.

Patience…

So if I could wish one skill on young people it would be patience, followed very closely by self-discipline, the two are tied together.

Start analysing yourself. Every time you are alone, do you pull out your phone?

Can you sit by yourself and be comfortable?

Are you chasing an instant money opportunity?


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You can make money from literally anything

Please pay attention to this.

I genuinely believe that in today's modern world you can make money from anything.

So what does this mean?

I am saying, whatever you love, whatever you are passionate about, whatever excites you… You can make a living doing that. It does not matter how obscure that is.

Gary Vaynerchuck wrote a book called "Crushing It" where he explores the stories of people making a living doing the most bizarre things. He interviews YouTubers, content creators, men, women, boys and girls all doing something they love.

Now there is one skill you need to make this happen. That skill is marketing.

If you can develop your marketing skills, you can build an audience around anything. There are people making millions a year through dungeons and dragons. Their job is to play dungeons and dragons every week with their friends.

There are people making money selling slime, people selling their handcraft jewellery; there are even people selling "terrible" paintings that you or I could make in 10 minutes.

How could someone sell a painting that looks like it's done by a kindergarten? Marketing.

The world we live in is overwhelming, and we are faced with thousands of job choices. It can be challenging to choose from. This is creating massive levels of anxiety and stress for younger people, but on the other side, it means we can do whatever we want in life.

We aren't trapped like previous generations—my grandad since birth would either be a builder, farmer or a carpenter. My Mum, admitted to me she didn't even consider studying medicine because back then it was very rare for a woman to become a doctor.

Our generation doesn't have these obstacles and thanks to social media and the internet, we can create a living doing literally anything, if we put in the work and leverage online marketing.

So start thinking about what it is you love and what excites you.

It might be elephants?

Let's say you love elephants, you start an Instagram page "the_elephant_girl" and post content every day about elephants. You post strange facts, and you repost cute and funny viral videos you find online. You stay up to date on all elephant news, when one is poached in Africa, you post that and demand justice.

Over the next 12 months, you build an audience of people who love elephants just like you. You then get invited to speak on animals rights podcast; you get asked to be interviewed on other small shows.

Twenty-four months later you have a large audience of people online and a community of elephant lovers. You create bracelets and sell them for $15 each.

Anyone who wears this bracelet proudly supports elephants. Suddenly you get an email. It is someone asking you to be interviewed for an upcoming David Attenborough documentary.

You are now making a full income selling items and doing brand sponsorships. All because you love elephants.

So if you are reading this thinking you have to be a lawyer, or you have to be an accountant because you need to be financially stable, I would encourage you to reconsider it is what you love and what excites you. And even if you work as an accountant now, you can be building this audience and brand online for the next 24 months in your spare time.

Because it isn't going to come over night...

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The White Village Analogy

I want you to imagine you live in a beautiful village with your family and friends. The village is relatively peaceful and surrounded by a massive white wall.


For generations, the villagers have lived here hunting deer and pigs. The only two animals that exist within the village walls. They eat the same berries and fruit as they always have and live very safe, predictable lives. Many of the villagers love living this safe life as it gives them security. But the ones who don’t have been told since birth to stay away from the white wall.


The white wall is forbidden to go near and forbidden to climb. Nobody knows why. This has been the rules and passed down each generation.

They say a man who climbed the walls created the rule and refuses to tell anyone what he says on the other side.


One day a boy decided to climb the wall...

He doesn’t understand why the wall is forbidden, and no one can give him a straight answer “it’s just the way it is”.

The boy climbs higher and higher, and as he does, people start yelling at him from the bottom to stop. They tell him how dangerous it is and how he might miss out on his chance to live life in the village.


The boy keeps climbing regardless of what everyone is saying.
He finally reaches the top of the wall.


As he does he stands up and looks around, he cant believe what he sees.
A village ten times larger with hundreds of different animals and plants. No walls are surrounding this village. The boy can’t believe his eyes. Is this what we have been missing out on all these years.

He looks down, this village seems much more unsafe, but there are so many animals and opportunities here. He looks back down at his safe village, there is beauty in safety and knowing what your life will look like for the rest of your life.


If you haven’t picked up on it yet. The village within the walls represents the “traditional pathway” we have been told to follow since birth. Go to school - high-school - uni - work - retire - die. This is within the village thinking. It is pretty safe, yes. Because you have a clear trajectory to follow, but we are missing out on so much by not climbing the wall.

Understating that there are SO many options and pathways outside of university or outside the wall and although it might be riskier, I think everyone needs to climb the wall at least to see what’s on the other side.

Even if you decide to go down a traditional path and go back into the village at least, you are aware of what's on the other side.

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Jump off the Cliff & Build Your Plane on the Way Down

Something I hear a lot between a variety of entrepreneur groups I am part of is is “jump of the cliff and build the plane on the way down.”

So what does this mean?

It means start. Whatever it is you want to do, whatever project you would love to do, just start.

Everyone gets caught in this trap.

How many people do you know who have been having some good banter then go “we should start a podcast”. But very few start the podcast.

Everyone has a good business idea, but very few people have a profitable business.

Every second person had the idea for Uber, but there are only two people who actually started it.

Don’t sit around planning for months and months because you are probably never going to launch. As soon as a mild inconvenience shows up in your life, you will use that as a scapegoat to get out of it.

“How is that podcast coming along?”

“Oh my dog passed away last week, so I am putting on hold for the next few months, I have a lot going on.”

​In reality, your dog dying shouldn’t really affect the launch of your podcast or whatever project it is you are working on.

You need to just start, stop waiting for the perfect time. Because the perfect time is never going to exist. There is no perfect time to start.

If you have read the stories of any successful entrepreneurs, every single one of them wasn’t ready when they started, but they learnt along the way and built their plane on the way down.

I am not saying don't plan or prepare, but don't get caught in the preparation trap. Don't over plan and try think of every single detail that could go wrong.

In business we call this the MVP (minimum viable product)

​It basically means, what is the simplest version of this product we can make, so we can get it out to the world to see if they like it and if there is a market for it (we discuss this in the video above).

Because if you spend years preparing and planning, then you launch the perfect product... but there was no demand or need for it in the first place.

You're out a-lot of money and time.

​​​

Some practical advice for you:

 Set a launch date and launch on that day no matter what. Announce to the world this is your launch date. Tell your friends and family, put it on social media.

​This will mean you are now accountable and have to launch. If you don’t have a launch date, you might never end up launching.

I was not ready to launch my podcast when I did back in October 2019; I feel like I was ready a few months ago in about Aug 2020.

But now I am on episode 31 and not episode 6.

​This concept can be tough for “perfectionists” to grasp. Because I agree, you should prepare and do your research, but there is a point where you need to launch and stop preparing.

So jump off the cliff and build the plane on the way down, you will make mistakes, you will fail. But that is part of learning.

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Stop Starting and Start finishing

If you are anything like me, you might be a victim of starting but never finishing.

Why??

Because it is so exciting to conceptualise a project, to sit down, brainstorm and come up with all these fantastic ideas. But when it comes to actually implementing them over a long period, we get bored and give up or simply stop.


I used to do this in school. When a teacher would read out a new assignment, I would get excited and think about what I can do, which subject I would choose and how I could make mine different from the rest. But when it came to actually do it, I would get bored, tired and leave it to the last minute.


Probably the BIGGEST example I see of this is starting a podcast. As someone who has been podcasting for nearly a year and done over 32 episodes, I see this way too often.

Starting a podcast is such a fun idea. But when it comes down to implementing it, getting the equipment and coming up with new ideas for a show each week, that excitement dies and turns into repetitive annoyance. 

It's commonly said that if a new podcast series reaches 7 episodes, this is the magic number where the show is more likely to keep going.

- thepodcasthost.com -


If you are reading this and think you might be a victim of this then good. Now you are aware and can catch yourself out whenever you start but don’t finish.


Seeing that well-designed book cover is exciting, reading the first chapter is exciting... But many people will start a book and won’t finish. If you aren’t enjoying it, that’s fine. But don’t jump between book after book never finishing one.


You need to stop starting, and start finishing. Don’t give yourself permission to start a new project until you have completed the first one.


By focusing on one project you are able to have laser focus on that, instead of distributing your focus across many projects, so you end up giving up on them all and start a new exciting one.

Very VERY few people in the world can properly multitask on multiple projects at one. Most will end up giving up on them all and find some new projects to work on:


This is a dangerous loop to get caught, almost all entrepreneurs get caught in this. Entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs because they wanted to start something.

We are the biggest victim of starting but never finishing. I have seen this SO many times with people I worked with and the events I attended.


So if you catch yourself continually starting, but never finishing. Step back and remember.


Stop starting and start finishing.

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The Curse of Technology for Gen Z’s

The hidden side of social media older generations are unaware of.

Everyone knows social media is a dangerous tool for young people. On one hand it is full of opportunity but on the other it is a cancerous parasite eating into our brains.

The problem is kids who are growing up with social media haven’t built up the walls to block it out and not become reliant on it. Technology is changing so fast our brains havent adapted to this monumental shift.

Older generations suffered from sexism, racism, war and so on.

So to say social media is bad for young kids almost sounds trivial and insulting to older generations. But this is the problem. They are so unaware of how damaging it is.

Let me give you a VERY common example everyone in modern high-school experiences.

You are sitting at home on a Friday night after a long day at school. You open up your phone and start scrolling through social media. You see a bunch of stories from your school friends.

You open up one story. He is drunk at a party filming everyone else drinking and having fun. You aren’t super close with these people but are still hurt you wren’t invited.

Here is the dangerous part… I mentioned “a bunch” of stories. You know what all those stories are going to be but you click on them anyway. You watch 3 minutes worth stories showing every angle and every highlight of the party whilst you lie in bed doing nothing.

 Want to know the kicker? The next afternoon you get to see a photo album of professional edited images captured from the night. All the bad moments have been kept out of course.

You never really cared about this party, but now you have basically seen the entire party and everyone who was invited you feel like crap because you were left out.

This is what young people are facing. Breaking up is hard right?

Imagine breaking up in the world of technology. Guys and girls are talking to each other EVERY single day. Unlike "back in the day" when you have a boyfriend or girlfriend, you might see her once a week, maybe talk to her on the phone when you could.

Kids are speaking 24/7, seven days a week. So when the breakup happens it is similar to quitting a drug. He/she stop messages you all of a sudden. You go from having someone you can message at any point about anything to nothing. No late night messages before bed. Nothing.

So many kids can’t even deal with this and often end up getting back together because they can’t handle the change. They are addicted. Not to the person, addicted to the attention.

I could go on for pages about the dangers of technology, but let me tell you as someone who has experienced both of those scenarios it is incredibly harmful.

Gen z suffers from the highest levels of mental health problems ever in a generation. In my opinion it is because of social media and the expectations we now have for our life. We are constantly comparing ourselves to others whether we do it consciously or subconsciously.

Please be carful with social media.

Why are you on there?

Business or personal?

Who do you follow and why?

If you are just following influencers or celebs then your feed id just going to be constant comparison. If you use social media as a way to stay connected with friends and family then great!

It is something to think about….