Our revenue is dropping and competitors are making a killing with special promotions, but we decided to ignore all that and move forward with a $52k investment into a single project. A few friends think this is insane, but I disagree. Here’s why.
Hey gang,
You people are FIRED UP.
Thank you all so much for all the replies and all the love. I think we have hit on a nerve here. You are all very excited about the little guy economy.
In my last two emails, I talked about:
- How 2020 has been an absolute dumpster fire for us. If it has been for you as well, that’s okay
- Why “The Rise of the Little Guys” is going to be the next big thing (and why this is a massive opportunity for you)
- Why an increase in competition (for clients, customers, subscribers, and traffic) will be the biggest challenge for all of us
If you didn’t read them yet, you can check email #1 here, and email #2 here.
Now I want to talk about the end of the world.
More specifically, I want to talk about how legendary people in the past have dealt with, survived, and even thrived, during times of adversity.
The high-level idea: during times like these, it doesn’t pay to follow the herd, it pays to be a contrarian.
Peter Thiel, the legendary billionaire entrepreneur, and venture capitalist said it best: “What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
For the last 6 months, very few people have agreed with me that we should be investing in and upgrading our products and our business.
Most people’s gut-level, instinctual reaction during bad times is rooted in emotional response. Some let their survival instincts take over, which can lead to “hunkering down for the winter” or overreacting juuuust a little bit.
What normally happens during downturns, is that people tend to pull back on investments and bets that they had previously thought were a good idea.
We were at this exact same crossroads at the beginning of this year.
Before everything went nuts and we started getting fire tornados, we had mapped out a plan to re-invent ClickMinded in its entirety.
When the world went into lockdown and we had to re-evaluate our priorities, at the very top of our list, in giant, bold font, was a $50,000 investment for improving our business.
We pulled the trigger and did it, on March 20, 2020.
Our objective: each ClickMinded course needed to become the best in the world. It should be impossible for anyone to find a better place to learn any of the topics we cover.
It took us 6 months of full-time work to pull it off—we didn’t work on anything else.
This was, by far, the biggest, most ambitious update to our courses ever.
There are a number of reasons why normies would call this a dumb idea:
- Our revenue is trending down and, for the first time in 8 years, our business will contract in 2020 (I talked about this in my first email).
This effort was not going to solve our immediate revenue problem.
- While we were busy with this update, a few competitors were running special promotions and capitalizing on short-term opportunities from the crisis.
We were purposely leaving a lot of money on the table. - Our students have rated our courses an average score of 9.2 out of 10 over the last 5 years, meaning users are already super satisfied with the product.
You could argue we didn’t need to do this update.
So why in the world would we spend this kind of money and effort during the end-of-days?
It seems extremely contrarian to make an investment like this while revenue is shrinking and the world is descending into chaos, right?
Making this call wasn’t easy.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t second guess our decisions more than once over the last few months.
There are two big reasons why we did it, and I think they are important for anyone, like you, that wants to position themselves to take advantage of everything that’s going to happen in 2021 and beyond.
1. You’re playing an infinite game
If you’re not familiar with the concept of finite and infinite games, here’s the overview:
- A finite game is one in which the goal is to win. When a player wins (or another loses), the game is over.
Examples of finite games are Double Dragon II, baseball, or beer pong with your friends in their 30s (although you could argue we’re all losers in that last example). - An infinite game is one in which the goal is to keep playing for as long as possible. There’s no way to win, and the only way you lose is if you stop playing.
Life, business, and Tetris are examples of infinite games. The game doesn’t end when you get a promotion, hit your revenue goal, or get a high score—your goal is to continue playing.
That’s what we’re playing here at ClickMinded – an infinite game.
I hope you weren’t planning on saying goodbye to me anytime soon – we’re not going anywhere, pal!
Making a $52,362.11 investment and spending 6 months updating all of our products during a pandemic may not seem all that strategic in the short-term, but it is essential to our 1-year, 5-year, and 10-year plan.
I have a serious question for you.
What would change in your life, if your attitude was: “What if this wasn’t so bad? What if I could leverage the current situation for my 10-year plan?”
That’s the frame that we’re coming at this thing from.
There’s no such thing as giving up in an infinite game. There are only obstacles to be turned into opportunities.
2. You should be focused on building an antifragile life
If you haven’t heard of the concept of antifragility, here’s the summary.
- In a fragile system, your wins are limited, but your losses are unlimited.
For example, you go to a roulette table and bet your life savings on red. In the best-case scenario, you double your money. In the worst, you’ll go broke, homeless, and lose everything. - In an antifragile system, your losses are limited, but your wins are unlimited.
For example, you sign up for classes to learn Portuguese. In the worst-case scenario, you spend a fixed amount of time and money on learning. In the best-case scenario, you can communicate with up to 270 million new people, get access to nearly thousands of new jobs and business opportunities, or maybe travel to Portugal or Brazil and meet your future spouse.
For ClickMinded, upgrading our products and our courses had a limited downside: $50,000 and 6 months’ worth of work (although, admittedly, that’s not that small of a downside!).
But what about the upside?
The upside is massive and boundless. By creating the single greatest digital marketing course and tactics library on the planet, we have the potential to attract an almost unlimited number of new students.
The decision to re-invest in the business became easy once we thought it through.
(We talked about the massive opportunities ahead for us “little guys” in the previous email)
*******
If you don’t believe people like you and I, the little guys, will start more businesses than ever before and that’s a massive opportunity for all of us, honestly it’s time to unsubscribe from our email list. We’re not a good fit for you.
If you’re as excited as I am about the future, look out for my next email, I’m going to cover what you can do NOW to prepare for, take advantage of, and thrive in, the opportunities that are going to emerge in the new world order.
We’re going to do it as a live event called:
A Growth Strategy for the End of the World.
This class will give you the tools you need to get a head start on your competitors in the new Little Guy Economy.
We’re sharing more details about it in the next email, but you can click here to RSVP right away.
– Tommy
PS – Signing up for this event is a perfect example of an antifragile move – it’s all upside.
You have the potential to come out of this thing with a blueprint for growing your business, beating your competitors, and developing new revenue streams. In the worst-case scenario, you spend an hour listening to a few of my terrible dad jokes and you leave early.
Be antifragile and sign up now for free.
