The Desert of Arizona
Clear 61 Degrees
A lot of service providers are surrounded by something I call, “The Wall of Hope.”
The Wall of Hope is a barrier. It is the divider that sits between where you’re at and where you want to go.
On the other side of this wall are very exciting things. Or at least that’s what your brain tells you every time you think about your life beyond that wall.
You end up investing an enormous amount of time and energy planning, strategizing, getting ready for the day you’re going to go over that wall. It’s so exciting!
And then the day ends and you go to sleep. You wake up the next day to find that wall right where you left it. And so you start up again. Getting ready, fleshing out your ideas. You are going to do this. And when you DO finally get over that wall… well, things are going to be great!
The Wall of Hope is a trap. It’s a prison. It’s one you build yourself to make sure you never actually venture outside of your safe space.
I see this fairly often in the world of the media platform. Service providers planning, strategizing, getting excited about client attraction.
I have to admit, all of those ideas ARE exciting… until you start.
And that’s why we don’t. We keep getting ready because that’s the drug our body is calling for. It’s that hit of adrenaline that makes us feel alive.
Breaking your addiction to this feeling is how you allow the Wall of Hope to disappear.
How do you break this addiction?
You realign your expectations about what this journey is going to feel like.
The human brain is wired to get excited when you think about “getting.” It’s not so wired to generate a feeling of excitement when it thinks about “serving.”
So you need to be prepared for this… otherwise it can throw you off track.
Because the motivation to take into the platform thing is not one of getting, it is one of giving… of service.
Planning and strategizing a platform is exciting. Your brain goes wild dreaming of everything that COULD be.
The minute you start, however, that excitement fades. Actually, you can probably just expect it to disappear.
Instead of allowing your brain to tell you something is wrong, be ready to tell your brain this lack of “excitement” is a clue you’re onto something IMPORTANT.
If you want to be an Incomparable Expert, the first step is to start acting like one. This is so important, it’s in the intro music to every episode of my podcast. Behavior is the new sales copy. Just prove it. Then you can say it… if you even have to.
The Platform is the strategy I’ve chosen to “prove it.” There IS a getting ready, planning and strategizing phase. That’s what we do in the Platform Lab. But it’s just a phase. You move through it… quickly. You move through it to the actual things that will build the future your brain gets so excited about.
As it turns out, if you build it, they actually DO come. But the trick is to build something that’s worth coming for…
No one shows up to see “The Wall of Hope.”