Let's face it, whatever you do, if you don't have the right perspective on it, you will feel like a failure.

Once I ran a campaign with a client and it went really well beyond our imagination.

A while later we did a new campaign. And it did go pretty well. But not as well.

My client wasn't happy at all, because it didn't go as well as the other time.

For the client, we failed. For me we succeeded without a doubt.

We generated profited on the front end of the campaign and more profit will come later.

Many leads were generated too. It raised her brand... All that with a few hours of work over two weeks.

But I realized that I had failed my client.

Because we didn't sit down and defined success. We didn't set our expectations correctly.

She didn't know that most campaigns like that get way worse outcomes.

As a result we were sitting there holding a silver medal feeling defeated when we should be celebrating.

That happens all the time. If you get into business with the wrong expectations, you will suffer on every turn.

The other day someone was upset because she was having 30% open rate on her emails.

When I told her sometimes I got 20% and the industry average is even lower, she became happy.

Same event, different interpretations.

Points of Awareness is my way to calibrate your expectations.

Let’s go through a few important concepts underlying the strategy.

They are all equally important.

Point of awareness 1: Timeframes

How long does it take to launch and grow my business?

Fair question. The question that kills more businesses than anything else.

Answer: It can take you from a couple of months to a year (or more).

The answer is as bad as the question.

Now please consider this because that’s critical:

It usually takes 4 years to get a university degree (that doesn’t guarantee much these days).

It takes about 10 years to get a black belt in martial arts.

Multiple years to create a feature movie.

3 years to profit from a crop.

You get the idea.

Good things take time. Mastery takes time.

And that may sound like a long time, but considering what we are aiming to achieve, it’s nothing.

Maybe hustling a bit of money online can happen in a few weeks.

But do not expect that building a business that will afford you so much freedom will happen in a couple of weeks.

Unrealistic expectations are what kills most businesses.

That’s a basic fundamental that a lot of smart people miss.

I know I’d make more money if I said it’s a quick 6-week-to-6-figure process.

But I’ll say expecting it to be longer than expected is the right move.

A better question is, how can I make the journey fun and rewarding from very start?

Point of awareness #2: Everything is a skill.

You may be the absolute best in the world in your craft as a teacher.

But if you are lacking business skills, you won’t likely succeed with your own venture.

You can be a 10 out of 10 in teaching. But if you are a 2 out of 10 in business…

That’s the first key point of awareness.

Some people talk about marketing like it’s an innate talent.

“I don’t know how to market” like it’s a curse.

Of course you don’t know. Nobody knows. Until they learn.

What are business skills exactly?

For a teaching business these are the relevant skills:

• Marketing

• Sales

• All the tech, design, and organizational skills that will help you with the above.

People with an educational background tend to be particularly detached from the business world.

Well, it can be easily corrected. I’ve come to meet hundreds of high-agency educators who are excellent in business.

So fear not. We are good at learning.

The second key point of awareness is this: everything is a skill.

Not only copywriting or how to change your logo on your website.

Character traits and belief systems are also skills.

It’s tough for some to swallow this because those are pillars holding our identity together.

And somehow we are wired to be consistent with our identity, and we'd rather suffer than change, instinctively.

Character traits like discipline, charisma, and coachability can be trained.

The same with beliefs that might be holding you back: pessimism, scarcity mindset, cynicism, self-sabotage.

We may have proclivities, but none of that is set in stone. They are skills. We can make gradual and consistent progress.

Point of awareness #3: Agency and taking responsibility vs passive and entitlement.

The only way to operate in business successfully is the way of agency and responsibility.

When something doesn’t go according to plan, you are better off assuming it’s your fault.

Regardless of the objective truth.

When you think it’s your fault, you can improve and make it better.

Power goes to where the finger points.

When you say “it’s my fault,” you are empowered to fix it.

• Post didn’t get likes? Let’s improve our writing.

• Client didn’t renew? Let’s make the product better.

• People don’t understand me? Let’s become clearer.

Is it always fair? It doesn’t matter. It's a a winning position to believe it’s fair.

Most of the time, the market rewards the best.

That is an empowering belief.

God only knows what is truly perfect fairness. For us, humans, it's better to error on the side of being humble than on the side of being cynical.

At the same time, be kind to yourself and know that some things are out of our control.

But embracing responsibility for what we can control is the winning stance to take.

Point of awareness #4: You can’t succeed alone.

I hate the term ’solopreneur’. There’s nothing ‘solo’ about running a business.

Not when you do it successfully.

In fact, you will need people all the way, all the time.

You win when you are able to have a conversation with your market.

When you align your sensitivities and your interests with your market.

Concrete examples:

No one really knows what other people want. We may have an idea.

No one knows how they want, and when they want.

You can spend your whole life trying to figure it out.

Or… you can ask them!

When you drop an offer you finally get real feedback.

The same goes for the skills you need to learn.

You can spend years reinventing the wheel or you can learn from someone who’s just walked the path you are about to walk.

The idea of being a smart lone wolf, Rambo, cowboy can only harm your business.

It may sound strong to some, but it’s usually just very weak.

People learn from people, no idea is 100% original. If you don’t ask, you stay dumb.

People buy from people. If they don’t like you, they won’t buy your stuff.

Now, what happens when people like you?

What happens when you have a network of people collaborating with you?

Your business flourishes.

Point of awareness #5: Urgency

We started with time, and will finish with urgency.

Some people accomplish in a week what takes others months.

I’m being generous. The reality is that the majority of people consume a lot of information, but never go for it, ever.

I personally can track that it took me 4 years from the moment I wanted to start a business to the day I actually started.

Partially because I didn’t have information and couldn’t distinguish noise from signal.

But mainly because I didn’t have any urgency.

Unfortunately, most of us need a moment of crisis to obtain that urgency. I won’t wish a crisis on anyone.

But I’ll say, one can easily spend years looking for the perfect time and perfect opportunity.

That will never happen. Opportunity is not something you can spot from shore.

It’s something that happens in the open sea.

It’s something that happens after you took the shot.

It's path dependent.

So when I say a person can achieve in a week what others will do in months…

That has nothing to do with speed, productivity, or competence.

It has something to do with positioning yourself to take opportunities.

When in the right position, you see things faster and you decide faster.

That’s it. The ability to see it before others. The ability to decide before others.

The more you keep going, the more you can experience the blue ocean and the opportunities in the blue ocean.

Joining me in the Academy in Launch is a fantastic opportunity.

But what’s even more exciting is the opportunity that neither you nor I can see yet.

These are the 5 points of awareness. The thing about awareness is not always have or not have. It's the depth of our awareness. Just like you, I'm working on it understand it a little bit deeper every day.

Let’s sail away! Together! Taking responsibility! Building skills! Forever!