Being relevant in these interactions is an innate human need and it’s not really that hard, just have an opinion. Even better still, have a contrarian one — or a negative one.

That pushes the conversation forward, it elevates you to higher status at that time and it keeps you comfortable. You get to leave those interactions feeling good about yourself. Feeling relevant.

These interactions reward not taking action. They breed cynicism.

Cynicism is a toxic cancer that feels comfortable.

A lifetime of comfortable cynicism, is a lifetime of not taking action.

Cynicism would have been very easy for me. It came naturally. My household was naturally cynical, cynicism was beloved and confused with intelligence because it won conversations.

It took a lot for me not to be cynical, even when I took the plunge and started a business. I fight against it every day.

A cynic would say that our business has gotten this far because of luck or timing, and it’s true.

A cynic would say our competitors have gotten ahead because of unfair advantages and exclusive access, and it’s true.

A cynic would say “x company” is not going to make it for “x reason”, and let’s be honest, there’s a very good chance it’s true.

That’s the problem with being a cynic, you are always relevant and more often than not, right.

But the biggest problem with being a cynic is the one that’s not so obvious.

Some people, do create a business that does really well.

Some people do get rich.

Some people are inspired by how good their competitors are and use that as fuel to do better themselves.

Some people back companies to make it and don’t back them to fail.

Some people choose to make things even though they are up against all the cynics in their comfortable conversations.

These people are creators.

A lot of creators fail, they end up with a life of trying a lot and not making it.

Some creators make it. They are unfairly rewarded with way too much success. The kind of success that the cynics absolutely hate.

A cynic ends up with a life of not trying anything and still not making it.

What would you prefer?

Create something.

Image credit

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel a fair amount of pessimism and fear when this was all happening, as I’m sure was the case for every business owner and all of their staff. Our friends were losing their businesses, other friends were losing their jobs, anyone who wasn’t, was living in fear of that outcome.

Without making light of some absolute devastation for people across our industry, and the obvious health outcomes that this crisis presents, I wanted to spend some time on the case for feeling some optimism (which I have been feeling for the last week or so).

In the last 2 weeks I’ve seen businesses completely change their business model, introduce brand new products that they’ve never released before and work 16–24 hours a day to save their businesses. I’ve seen entrepreneurs lose 100% of their business and keep hustling, keep innovating and keep fighting to keep things moving and try desperately to keep people employed. The rate of innovation has been staggering and inspiring.

I’ve seen scrappy entrepreneurs completely stop making what they were making before, and working day and night to release products they’ve never sold before. Products that are well designed, well executed and would be perfectly in place in calmer times after months of preparation. And they’ve done it in 3 and 4 days.

I’ve seen entirely new ways of doing business adopted and rolled out like they’ve been planned for years. And the crazy thing is the government and other independent supporters have stepped up their support and they’ve backed entrepreneurs to do these things.

It’s been a renaissance of entrepreneurialism from the exact people who you would expect to step up in a situation like this, and supported and backed by the exact people who you would want to support it.

This is what entrepreneurship should always be like.

Entrepreneurs routinely risk everything to open a business, employ people and deliver customers something they wanted in a unique way. With the right support and government regulation, magic can happen. And it’s happening.

This is great for founders. When things are going well the entrepreneurial tendencies of founders lay dormant as work becomes work. What we are seeing here is a great re-awakening of entrepreneurship and a showing of what we as business owners are here for. It’s entrepreneurship at full throttle, and that is cause for optimism.

Not just for the entrepreneurs.

I don’t know that many super rich entrepreneurs. I know business owners who do the only thing they know how, and in the process employ a lot of great people, serve great customers who all combine to create great industries.

When business owners step up, their teams step up and that is happening in spades. Employees who have had their job change overnight to a job they’ve never thought they would ever do, are stepping up and getting it done. Social butterflies are working from home using Zoom and Slack, weird work hours, weird working conditions in households where people are losing their jobs, and they’re doing great work. These are big changes for a lot of people and all I see are people doing their best to adapt extremely quickly, under extremely challenging circumstances.

All of that flows onto customers. I’ve seen enormous support for local businesses in an effort to keep their favourite brands in business. New business models are being adopted instantly, social media support and sharing has skyrocketed, people are busting their arse to keep the brands they love alive.

This is cause for great optimism.

I have a few final thoughts:

If you are an entrepreneur whose business is not going to make it out of this, that is devastating. You will be back. On the other side of this is an economy begging for people as crazy as you, to risk everything to follow your dream. That never changes, and you are the best person to be taking this up again when you are ready.

If you are an entrepreneur battling through this situation, this is an opportunity. And there’s nothing that entrepreneurs love more than an opportunity. This is an opportunity to show what you are, when faced with an extreme challenge. It’s an opportunity to work and think your arse off to keep your staff employed and keep your customers happy. It’s an opportunity to be generous, scrappy, resilient, ambitious but grateful that you still have the chance to be any of those things.

Great companies are forged in crisis situations like this. Some of the great companies that we know were launched at the time of major economic downturns: Disney (Great Depression), Google (2 years before the .com bust), Facebook (smack bang between the .com bust and the Global Financial Crisis), Apple was started during a stagnating economy in the 70’s and Apple as we know it boomed after the .com crash in 2000.

There are many more examples and it’s no surprise to me that when you put entrepreneurs under pressure, opportunities emerge and they respond.

If you are a staff member working for a small business owner, back them in to get you through this. Do everything you can to support them and the business and be part of the dream team that gets through a seemingly impossible crisis.

If you no longer have a job, trust in the fact that you have an army of savage entrepreneurs, ruthless staff and viscous customers who will do anything to kick this off again, and get you back on the team.

On the other side of this is an economy that will be begging to get back into action and we entrepreneurs are the people that are going to make this happen.

I couldn’t think of better people for the job.

Cheers to the entrepreneurs who are going to stop at nothing to get their business through this. Cheers to the staff who are going to back their founders and be the people who make the change. Cheers to the customers who will back their favourite businesses in difficult times and see this through to a much brighter future.

• 2014 wrap up and 2015 goals
• 2015 wrap up and 2016 goals
• 2017 results 2018 goals
• 2018 results and 2019 Goals

So let’s do it.

2019 results vs my goals

Release my 5th book — Pass

This one was a win. I released This is The Answer my 5th book on Amazon in April this year and on Audible a few months later. The book got good reviews but didn’t sell as well as my other books. Still it was great to release the book, especially since it was the book I wanted to write all along and I was personally proud of the book. I don’t have much of an audience with my personal content anymore so it feels like writing these books has diminishing returns so maybe that was my last for a while. We’ll see.

Top 10 Hottest 100 Craft Beers — Fail

The annual vote for the best craft beers in Australia happens each year at this time (you can vote check out the link here!). This year I had the ambitious goal of having one of Black Hops’ beers coming in the top 10.

We were able to get 87th, 43rd and 14th which was a pretty awesome result. Not the top 10 result we hoped for but for a small brewery, mainly locally distributed we were still stoked with the result.

Win AIBA Champion Medium Brewery — Fail

Australia’s most prestigious beer awards happen every year in May, and this year we had the ambitious goal of following up our Champion Small Brewery Trophy with the Champion Medium Brewery Trophy. Unfortunately we didn’t come home with the trophy but we were very close, and were able to come home with a Trophy for our Mid Strength beer Mid Range, which was an awesome effort. That made it 2 straight years of trophies and 3 straight years of Gold Medals.

Distribution in NSW, VIC and SA — Pass

This one we get a tick for. We were able to launch Black Hops in NSW, VIC and SA and later in the year Tasmania and WA as well.

Hitting production targets at BHII — Pass

We set some pretty big targets for production at our new brewery, and we’ve been able to hit those. When I wrote the goals we still were yet to receive our equipment and we had to build a brewery and double our production in the 7 months since, which we were able to do. No small feat!

Beer Cartel survey top 5 — Pass

I set a target to make the top 5 of the Beer Cartel survey for Australia’s favourite breweries and this is one we achieved coming in 5th. For a small brewery like ours even being considered in the company in that list was pretty epic. It’s a good sign that we’re doing something right with our product and our marketing.

Our first Beeries Award — Pass

The final goal was to win our first Beeries award and I’m happy to say we were able to achieve this as well with AliCat taking out the best beer tender. It was so epic for her to win and one of my highlights for the year.

So overall 4 out of 6 isn’t too bad, probably a higher strike rate than I’ve ever had for my annual goals.

Other highlights

As years go on I realise more and more that these things aren’t that easy to predict. The highlights for the year are often things I hadn’t even possibly considered when I wrote the post. This year is no different, I’ve had an awesome year and there have been some epic highlights. Here are a few:

• We became Australia’s first brewery to close a crowdfunding campaign, and Australia’s first company to hit their maximum target (doing it in 6 days).
• We opened our second brewery, a $3m plus site, one of the biggest of its kind in our state.
• We grew every part of the business, doubling most metrics including overall turnover.
• We were involved in one of Australia’s most iconic sporting events the Sydney to Hobart yacht race, with our logo on a Spinnaker of the oldest and one of the smallest entrants, KatWinChar.
• In my last year of qualifying for the Gold Coast Young Entrepreneurs awards we were able to win it in the category of Food and Beverage to follow up our win from last year in the category of Manufacturing.

2020 Goals

Here is what I’m aiming for in 2020

Successfully complete another crowdfunding round

We would like to complete another crowdfunding round in 2020, and become Australia’s first brewery to close 2 campaigns.

Release 1 major creative project

In past years it’s been a book but I’m not sure if it will be next year. But I don’t want the year to finish without me doing at least one personal creative project that I can be proud of.

Top 10 Hottest 100 Craft Beers

This elusive goal is still on my list. If you like Black Hops beers, please vote here!

Win AIBA Champion Medium Brewery

After narrowly missing out this year, this goal is still high up my list!

Win our first Indie Trophy

This year was our first year in the Independent Brewers Awards and while we were awarded some Gold Medals, we weren’t able to win any trophies. Next year it would be great to pick up our first one.

Win Champion Qld Brewery for the second year

This year the Royal Qld Beer Awards were revived and we won 4 Trophyies including Champion Brewer. Next year it would be great to back that up, with another win.

Make the list of Australia’s fastest growing companies

One thing that I would like to achieve but never have is to make the BRW list of Australia’s fastest growing companies. Next year will be the first year anything I’ve worked on will be eligible, and I like to think we could do well on that list.

Launch a new drink brand

Next year I’d like to launch something new, so I’ve got this on my goals list.

Better serve the community

This year marked the first year I’ve had any kind of active community program in any of my businesses. It’s only small but we were able to do a community-related activity each month and raise over $10,000 for charities around Australia. I would love to do at least twice as well on this front in 2020.

I wish you all the best for 2020, bring it on!

I’ve heard many times from business experts that it’s a great idea for entrepreneurs to “scratch their own itch”. In other words, solve problems that you are uniquely positioned to solve because you have a great understanding of the problem.

I think this is generally a bad idea. Here are some of the reasons.

Entrepreneurs are very good at making up problems

In the many years I’ve been doing this, I’ve made up lots of problems in my own head that desperately need to be solved. A big one in my story is my idea to create an Analytics dashboard for online startups. The idea was it would collate data from various web apps and present it in a really neat and simple fashion. I felt I was solving my own problem, because at the time I was trying to build a company through content marketing, and I was logging into lots of apps to see how things were going. Google Analytics, Xero, Klout (don’t ask), Twitter, Facebook etc.

Do you see the problem here? I actually didn’t have a major problem with the multiple systems, I had a major problems focusing on meaningless shit!

Related: It Doesn’t Fucking Matter

But I’d done a great job at manufacturing this problem in my head to a point where I thought “This is a huge problem, it would save me so much time to only go into the 1 system and then I could spend all of the rest of my time making money”. And guess what, since I have this problem, I am the best person to solve it!

Of course I wasn’t spending ANY of my time making money, so the 30 seconds saved really wouldn’t have helped me at all.

The irony of the whole situation is these days I am the perfect candidate for an online dashboard. I pay staff thousands of dollars to write custom reports for me on a whole range of areas of my business, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly. I spend more time looking at reports than doing anything else, yet I still to this day have not signed up for a software app that simplifies reports for me. These days I have much bigger problems to solve and finding a slightly more efficient way to do reports isn’t registering on my list.

Turns out it wasn’t as bit of a problem as I thought. If I wasn’t my own customer I probably would have worked that out sooner.

We already have too many jobs

Entrepreneurs have a hard enough job as it is, without adding in the need to be a customer. We need to harness our energy and excitement for what it’s useful for, creating great products for customers.

We get excited about solving problems which is great but if you are the one making up the problem? Not so good.

The customer’s job is to pay for a solution when they have a problem. They are very good at their job. Leave it to them.

These days I rely on other people and some evidence over a reasonable period of time to make decisions. If I think it’s a good idea I’ll either make a note of it for the future, or if I feel really strongly about it, tell my co-founders or team about it and see how it goes. We can’t be the people coming up with the ideas and paying for the solution to the problem. It’s just too many jobs.

External evidence is powerful. For most Entrepreneurs it’s not a great idea to think too deeply about the problems you are solving, rather gather some kind of external evidence that it actually is a problem (and I don’t mean approval-seeking on social media) and it’s a problem big enough for people to pay for a solution.

On that topic….

People vote with their wallets not their words

OK let’s put aside the fact that you are an expert at making up problems (that aren’t real) and you are simply far too busy to be a useful customer. There’s a far more serious problem to consider.

The big problem with scratching your own itch, is that you are signing up to pursue a product where you have no ability to gauge demand. One of the biggest lessons in my entrepreneurial career has been to not listen to what people say they will do, but instead watch what they ACTUALLY do.

I learned this the hard way in 2012 and haven’t stopped giving this advice since. Please do not ask people “would you pay for this…” ever.

Someone saying they ‘would hypothetically pay for something’ is not demand. You know what else is not demand? You saying ‘yeah this sounds like a good idea, I’d pay for this’. That’s even worse! Trust me, you don’t pay for anything until you HAVE to, or you are skilfully coerced to. I’m not personally that keen on coercion so the only option left is to build something that people need.

So if you’re building a product to solve your own problem (scratch your own itch), how are you going to know if it’s needed?

Sure you can say that you can just put up a link and try to sell it to people. The problem is, to do that you’d also have to be ignoring a whole lot of other commonly-held entrepreneurial advice around building a great product and ignoring the haters and doubters and hustling and grinding. You’ll find yourself in a situation where you can see so many things wrong with your product, that you’ll double down and hustle hard to try to get it 100% right. And maybe that’s not what the business needs.

I’m all for making a great product, but any cent you put into the product before you know whether or not you can build a business around it, is money wasted. The highest priority for a bootstrapped entrepreneur trying to launch a new idea, is always to find customers who will pay them. Sometimes that means trying to sell something you aren’t 100% proud of. This is a tricky situation, but the bottom line is if you can’t sign up customers, it’s probably not a good idea for you.

Forcing yourself to get out of your own head, and stopping trying to solve your own problems, might bring you to the harsh realisation that I got to eventually. And that is that this might not be the right idea for you.

Related: Perhaps you should give up

I’m working with a company right now who are building brewery software called Beer30. They are a new company and they are doing a great job. It’s been awesome to be on the other side of a software startup as the customer, not the person building the company. They have a lot of expertise in the industry but they aren’t operating a brewery, trying to build software for a brewery. They’ve gone out on their own and they are signing up paying customers (like us), and building features around their needs. It’s an awesome approach because from day 1 we’ve paid for this software and if it wasn’t doing a great job at meeting our needs we would stop paying. We’ve given them hours and hours of access to our team to discuss features and updates and they’ve built loads of features into the software that are great for us, and will also be great for their other current and future customers. I’m sure they will have their challenges, but to me this is a great way to build a business.

I realise none of this can be perfectly planned but if you can choose, I would recommend choosing to build a product for other people, not for yourself. There are far too many traps to fall into if you build something for yourself. Find some real, legit paying customers who will pay you and work with you on making a great product. That’s a better option than scratching your own itch.

Check out Amazon for my latest book This Is The Answer for discussions around other common business advice. The audiobook will be out soon.

When I was starting out in online entrepreneurship, there was a very popular phrase around the community, Be Everywhere. It was coined by Pat Flynn, a super nice guy and one of the early poster boys for Internet marketers. I thought a lot about this advice. I recall it kind of made sense for Pat Flynn because he was, well — Pat Flynn. Everyone knew who he was, so it made sense to spread that as much as possible. But he wasn’t giving the advice to Pat Flynn; he was giving the advice to every other new entrepreneur who followed him.

One of my favorite things to do is to review websites. I’ve reviewed thousands of them. The most fun I ever had reviewing websites was when Pat Flynn and I crossed paths. He was generous enough to have me on his podcast, and at the end of the episode, I thought it would be cool to offer a website review to everyone in his audience. I ended up doing hundreds just from that one post!

It was a lot of fun, but looking back, I’m a bit regretful at never offering potentially the most useful piece of advice to offer on someone’s website. That is, to delete it.

Distraction is the enemy of any kind of progress as an entrepreneur. Not only is your limited time, energy, and money wasted, but so is the opportunity you gave up for working on the wrong things.

In this day and age, distractions are at an all-time high. We are bombarded with thousands of messages in dozens of formats in every aspect of our lives. When it comes to business advice, the idea of “be everywhere” has consumed new entrepreneurs to the point of stagnation. With limited resources, you cannot possibly be everywhere nor should you be.

Social media platforms are coming and going at a pace that has never been seen before. And with each emerging platform comes a tidal wave of advice that says “you must be on x”. At a recent business event I was at, one leading entrepreneur proclaimed, “I’m creating hundreds of pieces of content per day. I should be creating thousands, and so should you!”

This entrepreneur is very good at social media and always has been. His business relies heavily on it, and it’s his main source of marketing traction. So for him, it’s good advice to do more of what’s working and what’s always worked. But what about for everyone hearing his advice? It’s a huge leap to assume that what’s right for someone who has proven they can make tens of millions of dollars from their online content, is also right for a new entrepreneur who has no proof.

The problem is that not all work is recognised. Great work is often recognised, but it’s not always recognised, and it can take a long time.

I say be nowhere. Trying to be everywhere is damaging and stressful and setting you up for failure.

Be nowhere unless you feel like it’s a place you can do your best work.

It’s not possible to be good at anything while doing everything. Or said another way, it’s not possible to do great work anywhere while being everywhere.

This requires some serious self-awareness. I will tell you right now, no one is going to tell you that you suck at a certain type of marketing. You have to figure that out for yourself.

If you are a boring and nervous speaker, you shouldn’t take up public speaking because your business coach says it’s the best way to build authority. Being a shitty public speaker is a great way to lose credibility. You have some soul searching to do. Anyone can speak at an event, but at every event, there are one or two speakers who stand out. Just like in business, a few stand out, and the rest are mediocre.

How can you stand out? For starters, you want to do some speaker training, probably weeks’ worth, to really understand the complexities of public speaking. You want to learn about NLP and the best way to communicate to influence. You want a great design brain to make sure your slides work. Not just slides filled with info but a clean, crisp design that matches the presentation and doesn’t distract from it. On that point, you want to study stand-up comedy because timing is everything. Figure out what individual words to use instead of others, group things in threes for maximum effect, and time slide transitions for a reaction.

You want to consider your place on the stage and limit the number of unnecessary movements. You want to position yourself at certain places on the stage to reflect your story. On that point, you want to learn the art of storytelling, writing, and marketing to refine your message into something people will believe in.

You have to dress right; I suggest small amounts of dark red. Make the audience feel like you’ve got the answer.

You want to know what position to hold your hands in depending on what topic you are discussing or what interaction or response you are expecting from the audience. You want to learn to stand without being aggressive or submissive or too relaxed but confident.

You want to learn where to place things in the room and where to signal when you make points to subconsciously drive the audience behaviour. You want to work out what words to put around the room or on your slides to hone in your message. You want to learn the best microphone and stage setup to use and what words to use when you test them to show you are relaxed but confident and an authority.

You want to learn the right words and approaches to use for audience interaction to make sure people are encouraged to ask questions but not to expect their life to be changed by your answer. Don’t get me started on how to change up presentations between events or how to manage tech failures or what fonts to consider for your slides or how to subtly sell from stage or what colour outfit to wear or what supporting stories to add or how and when to use swearing or shock — the list goes on and on and on. And believe me, those one or two speakers at your next event will know all of this stuff and a lot more.

I’m not trying to scare you into not creating things. My last book, Create or Hate, is there if you are in a creative rut, and it will motivate you to make things because ultimately that’s what successful people do. However, don’t make all the things. Make things well. If you are up for the challenge of public speaking well or podcasting well or making YouTube videos well or writing books well or running an Instagram account well, then go for it. Put the time into it, expect to fail for a long time and be prepared to be a rookie and learn as you go. It’s going to take time to get good at something.

But you cannot do everything well. You can not “be everywhere” well.

So be nowhere; delete everything. Do nothing unless you can do it well.

As usual, I’ve failed virtually every goal I set, but the most interesting thing is as I read my ‘career vision’, I give zero fucks about any part of it.

2018 was no different, except perhaps the magnitude of few fucks to be given about year-old goals and the drastic underachievement of said goals. But I still feel compelled to write these posts, even just so I can look back in 12 months and see how far off I was. Here are some older ones:

• 2014 wrap up and 2015 goals
• 2015 wrap up and 2016 goals
• 2017 results 2018 goals

Let’s start with 2018 goals and how well things went

Dan Norris Author

1. Release my 5th book — FAIL

Between 2013 and 2017 writing books was a pretty big part of what I did. I wrote 4 books and through my personal brand I built off the back of the books, enabled me to earn over $100,000 a year. By 2017 I had more or less given up on the personal brand but I did still recognise the possibility of writing another book. I had a goal to release my 5th book. I haven’t done that :( however in 2018 I did quietly work away at a 5th book.

I really lost a lot of motivation with writing in 2017 and 2018 I found it very hard to write. I tried often but just didn’t get into the flow. I did eventually though, through a string of many efforts get the beginnings of a book going. And by the end of the year the word count was almost complete. The book is now with my editor. I’ve lost a lot of interest and motivation in writing and in particular promoting books, but this book is the book I’ve wanted to write since the beginning so I somehow finished it and I’m happy it’s done.

This book will be different. It won’t be heavily marketed and won’t be written because people want it. This book has been written because I wanted to write it. I don’t imagine it will break any records and I don’t have any goals set around it, but I’m looking forward to putting it out.

NOTE: I wrote most of this a few months ago but I’m reviewing it and publishing it in June 2019, and the book This Is The Answer has been published. It was well received, although not a huge seller.

Pass 100,000 in all time book orders — FAIL

I had a goal to pass 100,000 in all time book orders. I also failed this one. By the end of the year I was at just over 70,000. Long way to go.

So that’s 2 fails so far.

Black Hops

3. Build a new brewery by the end of 2018 — FAIL

This was an exceptionally ambitious goal after deciding at the midway point of the year that were were going to build another brewery. We had no money (literally) and the scale of the brewery we wanted to build was going to be in the $2m to $4m range. We like to set ambitious goals but I think we all knew it wouldn’t be possible to have that done by the end of 2018. Having said that, we did build a brewery. At the time of me originally writing this, our plan is to get Council approval tomorrow (Monday), Liquor License and first big system brew Tuesday, Food license (required for a brewery) Wednesday, soft launch with friends Thursday and full launch to the public Saturday. It’s late February so I’m tempted to give myself a pass on this one but I must be honest and say I failed this one as well.

Note, again I’m reviewing this in June and I’m happy to say that we did indeed launch Black Hops II that weekend

4. Make Black Hops one of the most recognisable craft beer breweries in Australia — FAIL

Again I’d have to give myself a fail on this one. It was an epic year for Black Hops there were so many amazing moments and achievements but we still aren’t quite there at the top of the recognisable craft beer brands. I’ve always thought the hottest 100 beer list is a good indicator of your relevance in craft beer. In our first year we entered in 2015 we came 118th, in 2016 we came 113th which was very disappointing to me personally given we had our own brewery by then and had done a lot of marketing for the brand. In 2017 we made the list for the first time at #55 and #20 which we were absolutely stoked with. In 2018 we came in at #77, #43 and our highest position of #14. Again this was an amazing achievement but I still have to give myself a fail for this goal. We are still mainly sold in our home state and we haven’t cracked the top 10 of the industrial recognised count down. Again I think the goal was a little bit ambitious here and again I’ve come up short.

Other

Don’t launch another business — PASS

This goal I am happy to say I successfully achieved. My career as an entrepreneur is littered with so many failed ideas, I just wanted to go a year where I didn’t launch anything new, and I just focused on something that’s already good. This one I achieved. I have still been tempted quite a few times to start new projects and I still find it very hard to resist. But I’ve been able to do so and I believe it’s important to have focus once something is working.

2019 Goals

This year again for me is all about Black Hops. I haven’t discussed these goals with my founding mates or anyone else in the business, so keep in mind they are just my personal goals for the year. They aren’t an exhaustive list of outcomes, if things are going well in an area I haven’t included them here. They are more like challenges and indicators that things have gone well.

Release my 5th book

This one is back in the list. It isn’t the most ambitious goal since the book is already written but I want it in here because personally writing a book has always been an achievement for me and writing a 5th book is pretty cool. I haven’t got the time or focus to market the book so I suspect it’s not going to go very well but let’s start the year with a win. Launch the book, get the tick.

Top 10 Hottest 100 Craft Beers

With the new brewery up and running (fingers crossed), we should be able to send our beers interstate and with extra distribution I’m hopeful we can crack the top 10 in the hottest 100 beer comp. All of the beers in the top 10 are very good, very well known, widely-distributed craft beers in Australia. For a business started by 3 mates over a beer, that would be a very significant result.

Win AIBA Champion Small / Medium Brewery

In 2018, our second year at Australia’s most prestigious beer awards the AIBAs we took out 5 gold medals and the trophy for best Belgian Style Ale and the Champion Small Brewery. Winning the champion trophy was an amazing experience and one I will remember forever. This year I think we might be in the Medium brewery category although I’m not 100% sure. Either way it would be a huge effort to win the champion trophy again given the other pressures we have as a business.

Distribution in NSW, VIC and SA

At the time of writing we have a small amount of distribution in NSW but nothing in VIC and SA. In 2019 I would love to have a decent distribution in the southern states and even be seen as a relevant brand in those regions. That is an enormous challenge moving out of a place where people know you to a place where they don’t and trying to become relevant. Lots of work to do there.

Hitting production targets at BHII

Our second brewery cost a lot of money to build, and all of the money put into the project is done so on the idea that we can hit targets around production. We need to make a shitload more beer, of a very high quality level and sell it to a lot more people. We haven’t published our targets so I won’t put them here but they are a very big jump from where we are now.

Beer Cartel Survey

Last year we were listed as 10th in Australia’s favourite craft beer breweries. This year I would like to be in the top 5. It would also be awesome to have both venues in the top 5 Queensland’s favourite brewery venue.

Beeries

The Beeries is one of only a few ways for our non brewing-related team to be recognised. I’d love for at least one staff member to win one.

There’s something so primitive and aggressive about advertising that appeals to such a minute fraction of the people who see it. Haven’t we moved past this style of advertising?

The last episode I listened to required me to skip for 10 full minutes before getting into the episode. I skipped not because I hate ads, but because I’d heard the exact message 2 hours earlier when I listened to another one of his episodes. At that point it just became a bad user experience and the message felt less genuine.

Everything you consume is content, and just because it’s an ad, it doesn’t mean it has to be bad content. When I occasionally take a break from intellectuals like Sam Harris (i.e. most of the time), I tune into podcasts like The Fighter and The Kid, 2 blokes talking about dicks for 2 hours straight. I often listen to their ads — especially if it’s the first ad they’ve done for a particular organisation. Turns out talking about dicks and ads can both be quite engaging!

But this post isn’t really about dicks, or even engaging content. It’s about how to make money from content. Most people in my circle of entrepreneurial friends are creating content, ultimately to make money in one way or another.

Selling access to free content has always been something that hasn’t sat well with me, because people don’t like paying for something that they know they can get for free. It turns an otherwise legitimate commercial operation into a charity exercise.

Even businesses like the local paper who’s entire business is publishing content, still struggle with the idea of how to charge. Every 5th link clicked on Twitter goes to a pay wall. That doesn’t really seem to be in the spirit of modern content sharing!

In the intro message of Sam’s podcast he uses words like ‘fund the podcast’ as if it’s some kind of altruistic effort. And the rest of his business (app, membership, books, live events, shirts, mugs, lightbulbs etc), happens completely independently.

In fact what is happening is there is a business and that business is pushed forward by marketing, in this case, Content Marketing. I suspect he’s not making enough money from his business, because he has been putting most of his effort into his content. So he thinks it makes sense to try to “monetize” the content itself. I believe this is a mistake.

In my 2015 book Content Machine, I defined Content Marketing as:

releasing something interesting that grabs attention for a business and builds trust.

I also introduced the idea of monetization logic — that is, do you have a nice neat link between your popular content and some kind of product or service people can pay for. In other words does it make sense that someone would consume your content and then to dig in further, purchase your products or services.

Sam Harris is releasing a free podcast, which quite often grabs my attention and as a result he has built a trusted following. He has figured out the content piece. Don’t mess with that content, it’s not broken!

Every business has expenses and Marketing is one of them. I think Content Marketing is one of the best expenses you can have in a business, because not only does it build your business, it also helps people and it’s fun! But it’s still an expense, it’s not a charity donation. Sam’s podcast is a marketing expense and unlike the vast majority of businesses around the world, Sam has marketing figured out!

Over years of being involved in the online world, it’s always amazed me how everyone just follows one of a few standard approaches when it comes to monetizing content (affiliate links, donations, info products, memberships etc). I’ve seen a lot of dishonest activity. I’ve seen industry leaders spruiking web hosts that they don’t even use themselves. For many years there was an almost blanket approach to promoting a particular email marketing software that was nowhere near as good as the competition. They had better affiliate payout rates!

Like Sam I get a visceral reaction to this type of stuff and in the past I’ve taken his response, which is to not do any of it. I could have made tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars over the years in affiliate links in my content but I’ve never used them because the whole thing feels yuck to me.

Selling ads also has it’s ethical challenges and can be difficult, although there are plenty of people doing it well in the podcasting world. A few I listen to like The Fighter and the Kid, Startup by Gimlet, This Week in Startups, You’re Welcome by Chael Sonnen, The Adam Carolla etc do advertising really well. It’s not new, it’s old school radio host-style ad reads, but with a bit of flair, they are effective.

The truth is, with things like affiliate links and ads, there are ways to do it well.

Sam’s main point is what happens if he finds himself in disagreement with an advertiser, he doesn’t want to feel like his opinion is compromised. People have had this issue for years and years and have been able to navigate it. The solution is not that complicated.

You find a new advertiser.

Sam’s argument is akin to never entering a romantic relationship because it might go bad. Sure it might go bad and if it does there’s some pain and there’s a breakup, and you move on to another relationship.

His approach of spamming his most loyal listeners with identical content each week and attempting to guilt trip them into paying him, will weaken the value of his content and erode his brand further than just having ads that are done well.

That said I don’t believe things like affiliate links or ads are the best way for entrepreneurs to monetize content. Nor do I believe selling access to it is the best option. Norms have developed that make things like podcast episodes, blog posts and the like be accepted as free. It would be like starting a search engine or social network now that users have to pay for, it’s too late.

There is however one very effective way of monetizing content that allows you to keep it 100% free. It’s called Content Marketing. Sure it’s not perfect, but no Marketing is.

There’s something people forget when it comes to marketing in business and that is that almost all marketing is money wasted. And the marketing that does work, you rarely know why.

I think this is actually a good thing, it gives you some license as an entrepreneur to experiment with content ideas knowing that some may work, most probably won’t. That’s the case for any marketing. At least with this, you’ll create some value in the industry as opposed to spending your money on running clickbait ads with your competitors’ keywords.

The absolute single biggest challenge in business is to get some kind of momentum or attention for what you are doing. Once you have it, you need to treat it with gratitude and respect.

If you have a good stream of content that people are offering their attention for, then you’ve successfully mastered marketing. Now you need to focus on your business and aim to get some level of momentum and attention for your products.

Create something that people are happy to pay for. Create a book, or a service business or an app or a piece of software, or a physical product, or a marketplace, the list goes on. That’s the business, and the content just becomes the way you market the business. Link them together neatly and it’s game on.

I’ve written 4 books and am currently working on a 5th. My first book was written by pulling together mostly pre-written and published articles on my blog. My last book was released word for word on my Instagram page before the book came out. This article you are reading will most likely appear in my next book. Books are something people pay for, blog posts and podcasts episodes are not.

Once you have some momentum and attention for your marketing as well as your business, affiliate links, ads and donation requests will seem like a waste of everybody’s attention.

I hope you like this post, of course it was free because Medium posts should be free. If you want to dig into the topic further I wrote a book on it called Content Machine, you can grab it here, it will cost you money because it’s a book. I’m writing a new book, if you want to stay up to date jump on my email list here.

Photo by Kat Yukawa on Unsplash

This month signalled the start of my 13th year as an entrepreneur. In that time I have had one hell of a journey. From buying a whole garage full of Chinese balance bikes I couldn’t sell, to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on failed software apps. Starting a business on a whim out of desperation late at night and going on to sell it to one of the biggest Internet companies in the world. Turning a passion home brew project with my mates into Australia’s Champion Small Brewery and an insanely fast-growing 7-figure business in the process. Losing a house and 100% of my net worth from failing at one particular business in my early 30’s. Entrepreneurship is such a crazy ride that I’d never say I’ve seen it all, but let’s just say I’ve seen a bit.

I’ve also done a lot. I’ve done a lot of ‘work’. Early on I worked tirelessly on my business plan and idea. I documented my competitive advantage and slaved over a marketing plan. I’ve built hundreds of websites, just for myself! At one point I owned 200+ domains all with live websites that I held for ‘SEO purposes’.

I’ve scrapped 50+ business ideas and names, and hundreds of logos and design ideas. I’ve written hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of words on my blogs and in my books. I’ve spent so much goddamn time on Facebook it should be considered an addiction, spent hundreds on automated SEO software and automated Twitter follower software, years posting and trying to grow my Instagram following and even more trying to grow my email list of 17,000 (which I recently scrapped).

I’ve lived in entrepreneurship forums, and attended events and meetups. I’ve done hundreds of podcast interviews and been in some sort of press hundreds of times, tried and failed to get into hundreds more.

I’ve never really stopped to think how much of this ‘work’ was actually useful.

I’m active in the entrepreneurship space, particularly among new business owners, so I see entrepreneurs every single day doing the same things. It’s a constant barrage of ‘what should I call my business?’, ‘how do I get more followers on Instagram?’, ‘which design do you like better?’, “how do I rank in Google?’ and the list goes on.

Out of all the work I’ve done, and all the ideas I’ve come up with and businesses I’ve started, I’ve only done 2 things that have ever worked. I started a WordPress support business offering unlimited support to people struggling with their website for a fixed monthly fee. No such service existed in the world and it took off.

I then started a business making beer that wins national trophies for its quality.

Those 2 acts of creating a business off the back of a great product have transformed my life and turned around my otherwise extremely successful career as an entrepreneur. Almost everything else did not matter.

Out of interest just for this post, I dug into one Facebook group and pulled out the first 5 first questions I saw:

• What gets more reach on Facebook, pages or groups?
• What accounting software should I use?
• What’s a free / cheap way to manage leads in your business?
• What software should I use for invoicing?
• Does anyone know of how I can find some more information on financial planning?

I guarantee I could continue on scrolling for hours and hours and get more and more questions like these. ‘Which design is better?’, ‘Which name is better?’, ‘How do you get leads on LinkedIn?’ ‘Should I be on Facebook or Instagram?’ ‘How do I rank higher in Google?’ ‘Which colour should I choose?’.

Yes these “Entrepreneurs” are a bunch of permission-seeking pussies and it really troubles me. I will cover that in a future post but for now, someone needs to have the courage to say this. It doesn’t fucking matter!

None of these questions relate to the one problem that I would guess every single one of these entrepreneurs have and the only thing that is going to make a significant dent in the trajectory of their business — a great product.

Uber did not take off because they chose the right invoicing software. It took off because there were millions of people frustrated with a shitty Taxi service, and Uber did it cheaper, more reliably, more efficiently and more elegantly.

Netflix didn’t replace Blockbuster because they had a better logo. The Netflix logo is shit, it’s red letters. It took off because it provided a much better product. More convenient, more engaging, cheaper, higher quality the list goes on.

The same is true on a smaller scale. I ran my agency for 7 years and it failed every year. I had hundreds of websites and at least 5 or 6 brand names for it. It did not matter. The agency failed because it offered a shit product. I built websites for people. Big deal. So did 1,000 other agencies in my city. It wasn’t until I re-thought the agency model from scratch and came up with the unlimited support idea, I all of a sudden had a better product. It was interesting, safe like insurance, no one else was doing it. It became newsworthy and simple and scalable and it took off. In hindsight the name meant nothing, the logo meant nothing, the design meant nothing. It grew because it was a great product and customers raved about it.

You can go back as far in history as you like and every successful business had this one thing in common. Yet now we have all the technology in the world and no one wants to use it to figure out how to make a great product. They all just want more likes on their Instagram post.

No business ever failed to take off because they used Quickbooks instead of Xero, or because they chose the wrong free CRM or because they chose chose logo A instead of logo B. The reason your business is not taking off is because your product is not good enough. Period.

It’s not interesting enough, or it’s not cheap enough (yes this obsession with raising prices is a huge pitfall), it’s not different enough, it’s not useful enough, it doesn’t solve a big enough problem for enough people (niching down is another huge mistake), it’s just not good enough.

Focus on making a better product for your customers. All the other problems you’ve distracted yourself with DO NOT FUCKING MATTER.

Photo by Ehimetalor Unuabona on Unsplash

p.s. If you are interested in more like this and to keep up to date with a book I’m writing, you can join my new email list of a few hundred here.

As usual, I’ve failed virtually every goal I set, but the most interesting thing is as I read my ‘career vision’, I give zero fucks about any part of it.

This is what is written in that field:

Become Australia’s leading online entrepreneur and inspire millions of people to start businesses.

As 2017 draws to a close, I realise that I’m nowhere near Australia’s leading online entrepreneur. In fact I’m no longer an online entrepreneur at all. I’m no longer spending any time trying to ‘inspire’ people to start businesses. I don’t want anyone to start a business who doesn’t want to start one or who isn’t cut out to do it.

Things change so much in 12 months that you wonder why you bother setting goals. In any case I do enjoy writing these yearly posts, so that is enough motivation for now. So here’s the progress vs the goals on the year that was, followed my my goals for 2018.

Dan Norris Author

From 2012 to 2016 writing books was a big part of my life and career. I wrote 4 books in that time (2 in 2016) and had built up a decent income and side business off the back of them. The plan was to continue that in 2017. The specific goals were to:

• Launch another book.
• Get 10,000 free downloads in the free period and #1 in the paid listings in its category.
• Total of 100,000 books ordered by the end of 2017.

I failed on all of them. I didn’t even really think about writing another book until the last few weeks of the year. I had started a book when I wrote the goals and written 10,000 words but realised it just wasn’t that interesting to me anymore (a book about online services). So I decided to wait until I had a decent idea or a burst of inspiration. All of my other books have resulted from busts of inspiration that led to what I thought were pretty good book ideas.

I didn’t have any this year until a few weeks ago. I went to see Gary Vee live and was there for 2 hours. The first hour was listening to a revolting pitch from a so called professional business coach and the next hour was pure inspiration and epic charisma from the king Gary Vee. Those 2 talks kicked me into action to start writing my 5th business book. I won’t say too much now but the book is my original business book idea, and the one I’ve wanted to write the whole time.

I’ve made a very small amount of progress but as for the goals above not even close. Not close to releasing a new book and book sales are sitting at about 67,000 which isn’t that much more than last year.

I did manage to release all books as audio books which wasn’t a goal, but not a bad effort.

For Dan Norris Author, I give myself an E for 2017.

One time in school I cheated on an essay, didn’t get caught but still got an E. That one hurt. Let’s move on.

Personal brand and mastermind

I have a personal mastermind which has around 200 members and it brings in a decent side hustle income for me. But it’s mainly just a cool group of people that all help each other out with business challenges.

The goals I had for 2017 for the personal brand and mastermind were:

• Do another 7 Day Startup Challenge and get great results for participants.
• Earn $100,000 AUD between my personal brand and books.
• Reach 250 members of my community.

Again here I really didn’t do that well. I didn’t even think about doing a challenge, didn’t do much at all with the 7 Day Startup brand and didn’t really grow the community.

Revenue from personal brand was about $70,000, which was about 30% less than 2016.

Where I am at now is a very different place and I’m around very different people. My personal brand has taken a backseat and the mastermind is just a good stable group, it’s no longer something I really spend much time growing. I still love the group itself I just don’t really have the motivation to focus on making it bigger. I kind of like it the way it is.

I think part of it is I’m not really around people who are pushing me to focus on this part of what I do anymore, and it’s also just getting over the whole personal brand idea and online marketing space. There’s really not a lot about that whole world that interests me anymore. At least not right now.

For my personal brand for 2017 I also give myself an E.

At this rate it’s going to be a fun year! EEEEEEEE……

Black Hops Brewery

For a long time now I’ve believed that the biggest ‘hack’ of business is to just focus on whatever has momentum. For a while it was my WordPress business WP Curve, and for a while it was my personal brand and books. Since 2015 it’s been my brewery Black Hops. And this year I decided to focus 100% on this business, working full time in the business for the first time.

The one thing I can say I did reasonably successfully in 2017 was continue focusing on Black Hops (as planned), which in the past has not been easy for me. My goals at the start of the year clearly show how focused I wanted to be on Black Hops in 2017.

There were 9 goals for Black Hops.

Remain profitable (not as easy as it sounds).

It’s not quite as simple as it sounds to be ‘profitable’ when you have so many competing factors in growing a business like a brewery. You have the need to invest, the need to build the team for the future, founders who need to be paid, Council restrictions to deal with, I could literally go on forever.

For 2017 we probably won’t quite be profitable but given how much we’ve grown and how much of our expenses are geared towards future growth, I think we have done quite well on this one, although I accept defeat on being profitable the whole year.

Pass $83,000 / month to become a million dollar business by increasing keg sales and Taproom sales

We’ve smashed this goal and are well beyond 7 figure run rate. In the next few months when we raise money via crowdfunding, we’ll publish our financials in full. For those interested, you can check this link out.

Double capacity by taking over the space next door.

This was also achieved this year with the next building taken over and new tanks installed and currently filled with beer. This also meant raising money, which we were able to do in about a week.

It more than tripled our capacity and we also took over the building behind us for storage and cold room space. It’s been a big year for signing leases!

Increase the size of our Taproom.

Achieved. The taproom is unrecognisable from what it was 12 months ago. The goal of increasing the size seems silly now when you go to Black Hops. The place is a completely different place and a completely unique place on the Gold Coast. This was probably our most significant result of 2017, we’ve created something great with a lot of restrictions and a lot of challenges. Although I confess I’ve had almost nothing to do with it.

Win Gold at the AIBA’s

We achieved this goal with 2 Gold medals and some silvers and bronzes. This was a huge highlight of the year, especially for Govs and Eddie who do all the work in the brewery and with the beer ideas. It’s pretty epic to be recognised at this level from a quality standpoint.

Make the top 5 at GABS (we’ve come 13th and 9th the last 2 years)

We failed on this one. I think they only announced the top 10 and we weren’t in it.

Make the Hottest 100 Craft Beer list (we’ve come 113th and 148th the last 2 years).

This one I care about a lot more. We haven’t made this list before and after failing last year it really lit a fire under me. This is a list that every relevant brewery is on, so I think with some very big changes in 2017 we are in a good shot to make this list. We won’t know for a month, but I’ll come back and update this post. Out of interest the big changes were our release of our Pale Ale in cans, which was a new beer and has become by far our biggest seller.

If you’ve tried our beers, you can vote for the Pale Ale in the awards here.

Start a new line of physical products under a new brand owned by Black Hops

With this one I decided to not start a new brand just to keep it Black Hops branded. The plan was to release a cooler bag and I put in quite a lot of work into it and got it to prototype stage and kind of dropped the ball on it, because of budget reasons and the whole thing kind of ran out of steam. I need to pick this one back up when I get time and kick it off again.

Still be friends at the end of the year.

This one was achieved. We are doing great as founders and we have the most epic team in the world and while we’ve had our ups and downs, I think we are all pretty solid.

Overall for Black Hops it’s been a bloody epic year. As good as it’s been though, I think 2018 will be our year.

Other businesses

BoredAF

I also had 2 other businesses I put some serious money and effort into in 2017. One was my business animation startup BoredAF. This one had some ambitious goals most of which I failed:

• Launch! (managed to do that).
• Become profitable in the first month of launching (my definition of profitable is covering costs). (I was pretty close to covering costs but probably not completely).
• Turn it into a 6 figure business ($8,333 AUD / month) by the end of 2017 (not even close).
• Build up a decent social media following (500,000 views total on YouTube and 5,000 likes on Facebook, and create at least 1 video that is viewed more than 100,000 times. (fail).

For this one I had some decent social media traction, particularly on YouTube. 700 subscribers, one video that actually did pass 100k views and over 229,000 total views across all videos. Not too bad, but in the end I really didn’t have the energy to focus on making company videos and with my focus purely on Black Hops, I decided to shut this one down. I tried to sell it, but wasn’t happy with any of the offers so I just closed it off and kept the domain name (boredaf.com).

RevCart

I also started an ecommerce software business called RevCart and that also failed badly. Again lack of focus was a problem, I really didn’t want to be working on it in the end and I was just pouring money into it. I spent a lot of money trying to get it up and I did launch it, but I realised about a week later that I had no desire to keep it going and without drive, funding or good developers, it would fail even worse.

It took me way too long to shut it down and I made all the mistakes that I have spent the last 4 years telling people not to make. I felt like a complete idiot and lost a lot of money.

Summary

So all up, 7 goals achieved out of 22. 70% failure rate. Slightly better than my ‘worst’ year 2013 (What I learned Failing at 83%).

Not that it’s been an awful year, it’s mainly that things have changed so much in 12 months that the goals are no longer relevant. However I won’t lie. There have been some massive failures this year that have been hard to take and I’d love to say I’ve learned lessons but really they are lessons I’ve leaned years earlier and preach to others about, so I’d be lying if I said I’ve learned new things from the failures.

One thing I know is that failure fucking sucks, and I’m no longer anywhere near as excited about the idea of failing as a lot of other entrepreneurs are.

Related: Can we at least admit that failure isn’t the goal

2018 Goals

So what for 2018. Given how crazy half of my 2017 goals feel like right now, how do you even start to put down some goals for 2018? Here is my best guess at what the year might look like.

Dan Norris Author

I would like to finish the book I’m currently writing and keep some action going on my Author status, as opposed to just letting it die off completely.

Goals:

• Release my 5th book
• Pass 100,000 in all time book orders

Black Hops

Black Hops will be the clear focus for 2018 and we have a few very big and ambitious goal in 2018:

• Build a new brewery by the end of 2018.
• Make Black Hops one of the most recognisable craft beer breweries in Australia.

A few more notes

Crypto

Crypto didn’t make it into my 2017 goals but with the year it’s had it’s worth a mention. This year I’ve spent quite a bit of time messaging mates and just generally talking and ‘investing’ (more like gambling) in Crypto Currencies.

Financially if I was to sell my holdings now, I would earn more personal profit in Crypto than I have from any of the businesses mentioned above. But it’s the amount I’ve become interested in it, that is the real surprise. Cryptos have become ADD tech geek heaven because of the constant change and surprise and of course the gigantic implications they could have.

I just wanted to mention that in passing because I have a feeling Crypto will play a decent role in my 2018 and beyond, but I don’t want to set specific goals around it just yet.

New businesses

I want to set myself a challenge for 2018 to not start any new businesses or projects. I’ll allow myself to plan new projects / businesses for 2019 but no focus on new businesses in 2018.

2018 is the year of Black Hops. At the end of the year I want to feel like I’ve done everything I can to make Black Hops everything it can be.

Conclusion

I know these posts are very self centred but I also know people don’t mind seeing in behind the curtains on some of this stuff, so I hope it was interesting. if you have any questions please let me know below.

Here are a few links to things I’m working on:

• Black Hops Brewing
• My personal mastermind group
• My books
• Free 7 Day Startup Facebook group

I say unexpectedly because I never thought I would be here. I never really had a girlfriend before I met the first love of my life at 21 (yes you can have more than 1).

We fell in love for real, like in the movies kind of love. She was my boss (oops) so it was forbidden, she had a boyfriend (who became a Fiancé), so it was super forbidden! But it couldn’t be denied. It was just there. It was out of our hands. Sometimes that happens with love, you try to push it aside but it just keeps coming back because it’s stronger than you.

First we messaged and emailed constantly all day during the day and hang out as friends at work events and social events. When we finally got together we continued our non stop messaging, talking & calling. At night, we’d either stay at each others’ houses every night or spend hours on the phone, until we’d fall asleep talking.

Then we moved in together.

Then we got married.

Then we had babies.

We were in love.

But somewhere along the line we fell out of love.

Unfortunately, at no point until it was over, did I ever think that I would have to somehow figure out how to find love again. I just kind of assumed it would always be there.

Hence ‘unexpected’.

These days I seem to have a lot of single friends. I feel like I see a whole lot of people trying to convince themselves that ‘focusing on being the best version of yourself ’ is the key to happiness, and being alone is a gift that allows you to become strong and resilient and independent, and to not ‘wait for love’ etc etc.

Maybe I follow too many motivational Instagram accounts but it seems to me like a whole bunch of people who aren’t in love, who want to be in love, convincing themselves that they are actually better off not being in love.

But are they?

What exactly is happening here other than fooling yourself and using it as a strategy to get over a breakup or ongoing heartache. I’ve been through breakups and it’s fucking awful and by all means do what you need to do to get through it.

But is fooling yourself really the best way to approach it? What if it’s actually doing more harm than good? What if you become so attached to the idea of being the most epic individual not in love person you can be, you convince potential lovers (and yourself) that you don’t actually want it.

And are all the people and motivational Instagram accounts around you, just brainwashing you to be more like them — most likely people who don’t really want what they have?

It reminds me of when I used to work for myself and there were big communities of ‘solo entrepreneurs’ who would preach the virtues of ‘working from home’, and having ‘freedom’ etc. After 7 years of that, I realised, it’s actually not that good. Working from home sucks gigantic balls, it’s lonely and depressing and working by yourself all the time will make you crazy. Crazy enough to believe the people around you who tell you that you are actually winning by being alone and not being around and working with other people.

I think self awareness over ignorance is always a better approach.

I’m willing to admit that when I’m not in love, I’m not winning. I spent most of 2017 not in love, and guess what? It wasn’t that great!

Because by brain works in blocks not curves, I’ve even done happiness quizzes at times in my life when I’m in love and when I’m not. And surprise surprise, I’m a fuckload happier when I’m in love!

Don’t get too carried away with being strong and independent at the expense of the opportunity to fall in love. Because if you are honest, you will probably admit, that you are at your best when you love someone, who loves you back just the same.

Photo by Christopher Burns on Unsplash