From Bankrupt to Wealthy in 6 Steps

Brian and Carrie
Sep 1, 2018 · 4 min read

Seven years ago, Carrie and I nearly had to declare bankruptcy.

Last year, our income put us in the top 1 percent of Canadian households.

These are the six strategies we used to make that happen.

(1) ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA

Is using your profile page as a means to build your business the best long-term strategy?

No.

But do WAY too many entrepreneurs waste money (and time) on paid traffic then they should?

YES!

This is the basic gist of what could be an otherwise lengthy lesson.

If your content sucks on basic social media, it’s going to suck on fan pages, group pages, and ads also.

Speak to the ambitions that people have for their lives every single day from your profile page.

Do it through words, visuals, and videos.

Become an advocate for people and help them solve the problems they have.

When you find your voice on that level, create leverage by investing in paid traffic so more people gain exposure to you and your message.

Too many entrepreneurs treat Facebook ads like a magic pill that will lead to buckets of money being dumped into their bank accounts.

It doesn’t work that way.

And it’s costing them time, money, and a TON of frustration for no reason.

(2) PICK ONE THING.

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

You Tube

Instagram

Blog

The general consensus seems to be that, as long as you’re flinging poop at a wall, something’s gonna stick.

Again… it doesn’t work that way.

Use a single medium and get really good at it.

We used Facebook.

Exclusively.

Because it gave us creative freedom to speak our message through a variety of different means.

Having lots of things won’t EVER out-perform being great at ONE thing.

(3) FIND THE GAP

Every time we see a personal trainer talking about hardcore science in their statuses, we chuckle.

Every time we see a video of “push-up variations” scroll down my newsfeed, we cringe.

And every time we see posters or videos about cute kittens, we suppress laughter.

Because no one cares.

If you’re posting that stuff because you want to, because you like to, or because it makes you happy… that’s cool.

But if you’re doing it to build a following or help prospects decide if you’re their solution…. That’s silly.

“The Gap” is the heartbeat of what people ACTUALLY need.

It’s the 1 percent angle that every other lemming in your industry ISN’T talking about.

It’s the difference between what YOU think matters and what your PROSPECTS think matter.

It’s you being DIFFERENT.

Unafraid to say the weird, odd, off-the-wall, crazy shit that everyone else is too scared to say…

… but every prospect on the planet WANTS to hear.

(4) MORE PREPARATION, LESS HUSTLE

We’re not trying to punch a hole in the one mantra everyone seems to love these days:

“YOU GOTTA HUSTLE”

Because yes, hard work is beyond important.

But Gary V doesn’t do it for us as much as Seth Godin does.

And we’ll take the cerebral nature of Wayne Dyer over the rock concert thudding of Tony Robbins any day of the week.

So in the interest of matching Seth’s philosophical wisdom on business development with Dr. Dyer’s spiritual approach to life efficiency, let us say this.

Taking the time to prepare will enhance your productivity and yield faster results than spending twelve hours cranking it out each day ever could (and you’ll live longer, also).

Carrie and I learned to stop DOING all the time and, instead, really understand what we were doing, how we were doing it, why we were doing it, and how we could do it better.

Truth be told, it became our favorite part of the day.

We were both recovering “HUSTLE” fiends, so the transition wasn’t easy, but it became one of the most important strategies in our business life.

Every morning, we would go to our favorite local coffee shop with a notepad, pen, and agenda of things to discuss.

Over coffee, we would brainstorm.

Consider.

Talk about what the most ideal vision of what we were creating would look like, how we’d want to create it, and what the reverse engineering process would involve.

Three hours later, we’d have our plan.

The take down (i.e. actually getting shit done) would take less time, have fewer snags, and be way more simple to execute.

(5) WHO > WHY > HOW

We stopped asking ourselves “how” we were going to turn our passion into profits.

We stopped trying to figure out our “why.”

Instead, we put “who” we were on center stage.

Publishing our thoughts on life, love, and happiness was a challenge for us at first.

Talking about our fears and perceived shortcomings wasn’t easy in the beginning.

But it all happened because we realized something that so many entrepreneurs still haven’t figured out.

People buy you.

They buy your energy.

They buy how you make them feel.

They buy how much they can relate to you.

They buy how much they feel they can trust you.

They don’t buy your tagline.

They don’t buy your logo.

They don’t buy your information.

They don’t buy your “why” and they don’t buy the “how” of your marketing funnel.

They buy you.

(6) NET-WORTH AND SELF-WORTH ARE CONNECTED

We won’t belabor this one.

Because we hope you already understand the point.

How much you earn is DIRECTLY related to how much you feel you’re worth.

You can learn as many marketing strategies and business systems as you want.

None of it will work or matter if you don’t eliminate the limits of your own self-worth.

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