Calsoft Systems

@torreydawley @tigerjvideo DM with your bean supplier please! Aldi grounds can't do this

@tigerjvideo It's the 8 cups of coffee per day.

This from my Design & Brand Strategy business's About page. Why this tagline? Because my audience despises the typical Agency games as much as I do. So I make myself repulsive to anyone who wants the stupid Agency dog-and-pony shows. And fresh air to those I want. Easy.

@torreydawley The power of juxtaposition! Anything that helps pre-firing the clients who wouldn't like you anyway--avoiding all that wasted time and emotional energy--is great

@dereklwalker May it stop in our generation!

It’s easy to tell someone else to get over or let go of something when you hadn’t gone through it. Black people can’t get over what hasn’t stopped.

@SteveTimoney Part of it must have been highlighting the -, even indirectly, versus centering on the + (right?) @KateBour would approve!

This time two years ago… I had the worst few months in my business. In fact… I almost quit. I left group chats. Removed myself from communities. Wrote an email to an old boss asking about positions in the company I had left the year before… which I never sent. But what happened? Well… I learned a painful and valuable lesson about offers… expectations… and choosing the right avatar. Let me explain… In October and November 2021… I signed several clients each month to my coaching programs. I thought I had cracked the code. I also noticed all of my clients kept mentioning the word procrastination. I thought… if all my business owner clients have this problem… others will too… right? So… I launched a new offer in December called… The Procrastination Eliminator. My Calendly slots for late December, January, and early February of 2022 filled up fast. Back in 2021… I had a 40% close rate with my sales… the new offer was $5K for one-to-one coaching over 90 days. 20 people booked calls… I thought I was walking into a $30k+ start to the year. This is where it gets interesting… Call after call after call… people said NO… everyone wanted to think about it. Everyone was procrastinating over making a decision. My new offer based on eliminating procrastination was attracting procrastinators. I don’t know if that is ironic or just common sense. Emotionally this hit me hard…. 20 calls and 20 NO’s. I spiralled for a few days… I was angry… pissed off… it felt unjust. Then… I took control of the situation using a mental model and tool called Mental Dumping. What is Mental Dumping? It’s an exercise where you dump everything about a situation on paper… the good… the bad… the ugly. Then you ask yourself… what you do and don’t control. Doing this changed my perspective. A few of the things I realized… my expectations were too high for an untested offer… that general offers don’t work… offers need to be a specific tool that gets a job done for someone… and I needed to have a defined avatar and filter out those who didn’t fit. All of those things were in my control. In fact… there was little that went wrong that was not in my control. With one exercise… I felt completely different. New ideas started popping up. I began to build new projects. From the embers of this horrible period, I built my new offer. That has brought me close to $200k in business over the last 24 months. Learning the lessons from a dark time and failure led me to it. The thing is... You can only do that if you have the right tools and mental models. Without the right tools... I would have quit. This is why I built the 7-Day Performance Booster Program. It has 8 of the best mental models I use... including Mental Dumping. If you’re interested in finding out more about it... shoot me a DM with the word Mental Dumping... I'll share the info. Big Love, ST Fan of using failure to succeed.

@TheSebasHidalgo Now think like a Japanese visitor to the closest big city and swap this vista for one of fast food chains in a foreign language with 1 Japanese-language sign for udon noodles...where are you gonna eat? A crowded, undifferentiated landscape makes a good marketer see bags of cash

@itschadjordan @TheSebasHidalgo Lame icons should

@TheSebasHidalgo Icons never leave.

@torreydawley Your returns are directly proportional to your investment (not always true!) in both business and most relationships. Some of us here need to similarly invest time, $$$, focus and heart in community/hobbies/other support so our marriages can survive until we're both in our 90s!

Business is fire. Listen to me: A successful business can keep you warm and cook your food. It can sustain you for life. It can melt iron if that's what you want. That's precisely what it does if you’re one of the 10% of the founders who succeed. If you’re in the 90%? It engulfs you in flames. It reduces you and everything you own to ashes. Then it scatters into the winds of oblivion. This is not a game for the faint of heart. It’s not for those who lack grit. Nothing about it is easy. You better know what it takes and be brutally honest with yourself about every signal. A negative revenue month? This is the fire spitting hot embers onto your living room floor. Two negative revenue months? You’re frantically putting out the small fires popping up on your rug, your furniture, and your clothing. Three negative months? It’s all burning down, and you’ll burn with it if you don’t escape. I’m not exaggerating. There’s a high likelihood you know exactly what it feels like when this type of panic sets in. You cannot rest in business. That old saying “If you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward” is as true as ever. If you’re serious about being able to play the game of business for life - the one that warms you and lets you harness the power of the fire for your own aims… Your best bet is to work with people from the 10% who can help you. In fact, that’s the secret of the 10%. They all had powerful people around them to help stomp out the embers quickly and keep them on the right track. The 90%? They just watched the panic sink its teeth in as their reserves dwindled and they could no longer afford to call in help. It’s one of the worst feelings you can experience in life. And, yes, I’ve experienced it. Which is precisely why I’m telling you to do these things long before you need them: Hire powerful mentors. Build a powerful network. Join powerful groups who build and grow together. At this point, I assume anyone who isn’t willing to make these investments routinely isn’t serious. They cost a fraction of what traditional businesses spend on their success each month. And they’re way cheaper than the stressful hell of losing it all.

@Samuel4Christ @torreydawley The Charles Darwin/Herbert Spencer force is strong with this one. Also, with that kind of attitude...if you're up ahead in a dark alley, we'll reroute the GPS! 😉

@torreydawley No rest in business. Kill or be killed.

@calebmatthws @torreydawley On the whole I [prefer] Philadelphia...oops, the "fire" analogy. No disrespect, @calebmatthws--less macabre ones tend to travel better internally at the company--and I'll use your idea (with attribution) in personal conversation

@torreydawley Digging deep into your pockets to invest in the present is much better vs Digging your business into a grave in the future by not investing now.

@chris_boreteen @torreydawley You are likely a fantastic (if insecure?) storyteller in person. Writing can lead to 'paralysis by analysis' because of the possibilities, while conversation is thankfully nonreversible

@torreydawley Oh the stories I could tell, if I was any good at telling stories lol

@JunaeBrown Happy happy birthday, have a blast in Bali and look forward to the best 2024 possible :) girleatworld.net/bali-travel-gu…

@JunaeBrown Sharing for the song alone (no other parallels--you are the hero helping other heroes!) youtube.com/watch?v=D7MIYR…

Heard it’s my birthday. Run me my balloons Mr. Tesla! But seriously Really grateful for another trip around the sun. This will be my best yet I fear. 🥂🤎🎉

Being able to redirect your attention effectively is such an underrated skill. Marketers constantly switch between a wandering mind and a focused mind. Separating the good from great requires knowing when to stop creating and start shipping.

Life hack: just do that thing you wish "someone" would do.

@heyblake 1500 years ago, this is all we had...and what do you know: it still works and is now counter-cultural :)

Don't create an online course. Create a way to learn 1 important thing. Don't create a community. Create an easy way to build good relationships. Don't create a social post. Create a bookmarkable resource to help someone. Make things based on outcomes, not formats.

No strategy is ever perfect but it is better than starting without one.

@allicovington Somewhere, somehow, Garfield is chuckling and saying, "I told you so." Raising a glass of tea to your hopefully much-improved Tuesday...and the hope that Teslas will no more steal power from the rest of us

I’m living the purest definition of irony today: A Tesla ran over a major transformer knocking out power to an entire block of residents It’s raining cats and dogs today, but I can’t take a shower after cardio because I have no hair dryer Life is crazy sometimes

@bcmerchant Everyone relies on technology every day. The breakdown isn’t between people that are pro or anti technology, it’s between people that will accept exploitation in the development & use of tech, & those of us that believe we can do better. That demand we do better. #Luddite

@gmiller That's it! Even the original Luddites were ok with 99% of technology — it was the stuff that was 'hurtful to commonality' they opposed. People are going to have a different sliding scale of what and how much they oppose, but the opposing of harmful outcomes is the important part

A great question, and I've met tons of tech workers who are similarly looking for answers And, imo, there are many: There are lots of ethical companies, research institutions, tech gigs at nonprofits etc etc — or! start organizing at the tech giant or corporation you work for