Meta, Marie and a Mistake

Happy Monday your side of the world! 🙂 
 
It’s Monday morning, the 1st November as I write this, and a day closer to summer here in NZ – yay! 
 
Though I’ll have to stock up on sun cream soon for this english white skinned chap…
 
…but I’m not here to talk about my white-to-pink-back-to-white inability to tan –
 
No, today there’s a few important things I wanted to share with you, that could be useful both short and long term your side…

1. The Facebook announcement of Meta (and why should you care)
2. Everything is figureoutable (a great book and mantra for life)
3. Putting yourself out there (a mistake i’ve made, that I’d love you to avoid)

Let’s talk first about Meta and Facebook

If you missed it, and you want to spend 90 minutes watching the presentation from Mark Zuckerberg on what Meta is, the link is here for you. 

Why should you be interested in this?

Well, do you know when you talk to the older generation, and they say: 
“when i was young, i never had that”
Or
“I don’t understand that, that’s what i have my daugher/granddaugher to help me with that beepy thing!”

Well, understanding Meta today can do two things for you:
1. help you understand it, in case there’s an opportunity for you to be involved, and
2. means when you’re older, you can join in the conversation, and not defer to the younger generation! 🙂

If you remember, last week I said i believe my kids will be using cryptocurrency as day-to-day money to buy things – and I stand by that.

I think Meta (or something similar) is going to be a big part of my kids lives when they’re older – whether its them using it, or their kids using it, but being part of a ‘virtual, more connected world’ will be much more commonplace than it is today.

Think about it this way:

A couple of years ago only a small percentage of people used (or had heard of) zoom.

Thanks to Covid, zoom is something most people talk about for work. Facetime for families to keep in touch. Messenger video too.

These are all ways we’ve adapted, to stay connected to those close to us.

Meta wants to take that a step further.

“To feel more connected in a virtual way”.

One of my favourite audio books is “Ready Player One”, written by Ernest Cline

In Ready Player One, almost everyone in the western world spends their days inside the “Oasis” – an online platform, accessed via a virtual reality headset, with haptic gloves (so you can touch things in the virtual world), a haptic body suits (so you can feel things), and for those who can afford it, an omni directional treadmill, so you can move throughout your day (virtually) whilst standing in one spot.

I know, stuff of fantasy!

But, not now.

Not with Meta…

Throughout the entire presentation on Meta, the voice in my head was joining in:

Mark: You can exercise in Meta
Me: Yep, that’s in the Oasis,

Mark: You can buy art to decorate your house, or design a fantasy avatar to represent 
yourself
Me: Oh, that too

Mark: And people will design worlds you can live in
Me: Yes, and that…

And as he continued, giving example after example, I thought:

They should have called it the Oasis, but then maybe they would have had to pay royalties for the name??

Whether its through a virtual headset, or augmented reality glasses (like where the raybans I shared a few messages ago will be heading), this “living in a more connected world” is coming, and it’s good to start to understand it now, in case there’s an opportunity for you to be a part of it.

If you have the time, watch Mark Z’s presentation (above).

And if you want to have a picture of what the future can really look like, do read the fictional book, that’s getting closer to reality! 

Audible link for you – Ready Player One.

The book is more fun if you grew up in the 80’s btw 😉

And there was mention too in the Meta presentation about people being able to buy things using crypto…

…So a future that’s more virtual, and buying with crypto…

That’s why I’m personally paying more attention to these things, so when i’m “the older generation”, I can say “yes, i saw that coming, and i was part of the early stages of it”

Instead of:

“that wasn’t in my day: can someone phone one of my grandkids??”

Talking about books, another one i really enjoyed last year, but it keeps popping its head up is this one:

Everything is Figureoutable

Everything Is Figureoutable, by Marie Forleo

Out of the six million, five hundred thousand, nine hundred and forty two self help books that are available to inspire us today, this one has two good things going for it (but one bad thing):

1. The title sticks with you (possibly forever) as a cool mantra, because whatever the universe throws at us, the statement of “everything is figureoutable” is true, and you should always remember that!
2. The book is a good read (or listen), as Marie asks very simple, but effective questions to help you think through whatever is going on in your life today

Though the down side for me is there’s quite a bit of swearing in it, which i’m not a massive fan of, and it means i can’t listen to it when the kids are around 🙂 

(I know, first world problems right?)

But if you get nothing else from this little tid bit, apart from: Everythings Figureoutable, then I’ve done what I wanted to do today!

Audible/Amazon link here for you: Everything Is Figureoutable

And lastly, how you can learn from my mistake…

Learning from my mistake

And what was my mistake?

Not recognising, and then telling other people, about a very important asset I have in my business:

Repeatable success.

Let me ask you this:

Is there something that you do, on a regular basis, where you get results for people, but perhaps you’re too busy helping others that you don’t take the time to capture that, to be able to tell others, which would help you attract more business your side?

Perhaps it’s numbers of positive testimonials you have? Which if you serve an audience that a mass of testimonials is important, you’re missing out on?

Or maybe it’s the number of times you’ve done something, and that by itself is a very valuable marker you can share in your marketing?

For me, I’ve said for quite a while: “We’ve helped in more than ten launches, but I must count to see how many we’ve done…”

That is absolutely true.

Word for word.

Just in case you’ve not heard the term:

A “launch” is an online summit or online docuseries – they’re both very similar in how they’re setup – and they’re a series of 7 to 9 days of content, delivered to an audience, usually driven by a huge number of affiliates.

These events will usually have hundreds of thousands of people sign up to watch them, and our job is to make sure all the technology works.

That’s the simple version 🙂 

And then I got a bit of spare time, and asked my team to go back through all our projects, and count how many launches, we’ve been a part of – 

whether we’d:

• Architected the launch
• built it from scratch, 
• ran the conversion optimisation, 
• quality assured other setups, or 
• consulted to support the business owner and the tech team they were using

…And do you know how many we’ve been a part of??
 
54.

Fifty four!!!
 
🙁
 
And why do i do a sad face when i say 54?
 
When I should be happy – knowing that many launches (54) means my team and I are likely in the top 1% of companies that help run launches in the world?
 
And yes, the 1% gives me a very happy (and proud) face – especially for what my team have acheived!
 
But the sad face is because I’ve missed out on so many opportunities to share that experience with potential new clients, 
 
Which means we could have used our experience (that we always knew we had), to help someone’s launch be more successful!!

And when i talk about success, it’s not just levels of income that comes in, or the numbers of people who are part of the event, but a really important piece of the puzzle that normally causes burn out for business owners and their tech teams:
 
The high levels of stress when things go wrong.

And yes, our very first launch something major went wrong, and we learnt from it…

Then the next launch something smaller went wrong (that we couldn’t forsee), and we learnt from it…

And in our current launch (the one i shared with you last week – The Blood Sugar Revolution), we’re now spending our time improving our blueprints and templates even more, to optimise them as much as possible, whilst the client is getting really good results, AND (most importantly for me), is quite relaxed (which is a shocking thing to see in a launch!! how dare they be so relaxed??? 🙂 )
 
That leads to me sleeping very happily each night, whislt our clients do too….
 
So let me ask you:
 
What is the main things you’ve done a lot of, that you really should go back and take a measure of, so you can use that better in your own marketing?
 
You can go from:
“We’ve helped more than 10 launches, I must count some day”
To
“We’ve helped in 54 launches so far, which puts us in the top 1% of providers anywhere for launches”
 
Quite a difference don’t you think?
 
So how can you do that your side?
 
I’ll leave that with you to ponder, 
 
And in the meantime, I’m heading off to use Apply Fitness + – this lockdown should be over soon, but whilst I’m stuck inside, I may as well make the best of it…
 
Wish me luck!!
 
Jamie

p.s. going back to ready player one – the film tried to recreate the book, but did a really bad job – i strongly recommend the will wheaton narrated audio version, and then if not that, just read the book 🙂