Find Me At LeeKariuki.com
Posted on: May 17, 2017
Hey Everyone,
We frequently get magnetized by the “new” shiny object and forget about all the blood sweat and tears we had already put in. Or better, we think that they don’t count for something and maybe they don’t as the future is not determined or influenced by the past or is it?
This is a brief notification to all followers of “theunemploymentdojo.wordpress.com” blog that to reach a grander audience and impact deeper obstacles at scale on the pathway to becoming masters at entrepreneurship, disruption, and change, I have transitioned to a more robust platform.
A platform that I can have more say in how I structure content. Kindly find me at leekariuki.com.
I look forward to serving you just as passionately as I had in the past.
Sincerely,
Lee Kariuki
Like it or not, there’s is a part of your brain called the hippo-campus that upon instant “optical facial collision” with someone, it tries to determine familiarity to someone stored in memory. Next, to reserve energy, he brain will group them based on similar appearances and experiences. The hypothesis here is that similar appearances produce similar experiences! Synapses then fire with a familiar pattern that had been placed in memory. Mark you, this process happens in less than 20 seconds!
So as an effective communicator, your first statement should “shock” and disrupt this process so quickly that the brain has no alternative but to allocate resources to paying attention.
Now this is done by being “fresh” , new and vibrant. Short of doing this, you are just another__________!
Ok you have the attention. What next? There are two main opposite and competing hormones at work. Dopamine( the happy reward excited drug!) and Epinephrine(the adrenaline combative fight or flight restlessness drug!) To maintain that same level of enthusiasm and interest you must grab their attention by giving them something new fresh and vibrant then, you must take something away so that the epinephrine is activated!(Fear of loss!, Panic mode!)
This is very very manipulative!
Now here is the kicker! Every piece of communication is manipulative! Some are more powerful than others in the sense that they illicit a faster response. For the record, if you are saying or doing something to illicit a verbal response or an action, then you are manipulating and it wouldn’t be communication then. It would be banter where you talk for the sake of vocal chords vibrations!
Steps to make communication Meaningful
- Start with a controversial statement or question! example :” Did you now that you are now trying to figure out if you should allocate your resources to listening to me?”
- Open a loop and don’t close it yet! Example: “More on that later…….”
- Start a parallel conversation by admitting something you wouldn’t tell anyone random but not scary enough yet!..Example ” I have been having issues with boosting my productivity for years! In between marriage,work and finances, i cant concentrate to get my projects of the ground…” (The sole intention here is to build trust!)
- Then ask a question (handing power back to them!) example: Do you experience the same challenges too?
- Share a quick tip of how you were able to solve the problem! Make sure the focus is on the issue! NOT YOU!
- Ask them how they were able to resolve the issues!(trust and sharing!)
- Inspire them with words of encouragement! (Everyone desires validation!)( Just don’t get cocky and tell them…”I’m validating you…” fastest way to create an enemy.)
- Close the opened loop in 2.
- Activate the epinephrine by cutting short the conversation as you have to go because your time is limited!
Depending on intensity and depth of the conversation, there is a trade of between interest and memory activation with the dependent variable being time. You can have someone’s attention for maybe 45 to 90 minutes if your really good!(average time for a good movie) Know your trade off and pay attention to the subtle times. The above steps may deviate depending on individual and topic, but your best strategy will be to adapt to the feedback being provided in real time from gestures,facial expressions and body language!
Cheers!
Lee Kariuki
Words To Avoid When Pitching
Posted on: September 4, 2014
If you’re going to pitch and give results that are measurable, then give the actual results. If you can’t provide exact numbers then don’t use this angle. Statements like “sold like crazy”, “made millions of dollars”, “made ridiculous sales” don’t excite the brain one bit. It puts your credibility on the line. We made 124 sales. We earned £24, 370 or we saved 52 jobs. The idea is to get specific without getting too bogged down. The brain wants to be WOWed but not bogged down. Clean up your pitch and add precise numbers.
Lee
Now when i was in college, i came with one philosophy on reverse engineering any result that you want to attain and jokes aside, it worked pretty damn well. If your going to copy anyone,(which is the layman term for “reverse engineering”) in the bare minimum, copy from someone who has achieved what it is you want to achieve. (Pretty obvious eh..but you will be surprised at how many people listen and take advice to anyone ready to give some!)
Now here is the kicker and what separated me form everyone else! I only copy stuff that i have a thorough backbone and solid foundation on! Too many times we copy from :-
- The wrong person.
- The right person but have no idea or understanding of what it is we are copying.
To get the optimal results to your situation you must inject your personality and DNA to whatever you plan on copying and if you are blank about what your copying, it is very likely you may even copy stuff that is specific to the person you are copying from e.g. their name!( This really happened to someone i know!!) and that is the fastest way to instantly loose credibility.
Copying they say is the sincerest form of flattery so without making this post any longer than it needs to let me give you the exact steps to follow to “reverse engineer”that optimal result you desire. It could be loosing weight, getting a good grade or dating a model!
- Have a thorough understanding of what it is you intend to copy. This is the only way you will know if what you are copying is garbage or crap!
- Choose the person you are copying from very selectively. Do a background on his background….then do a background on the person doing the background…you get my drift!
- Test the advice given and first see if it makes sense to you! Test the logic! If it doesn’t sound logical to you then more than likely you won’t attain the optimal results you’re seeking.
- If you don’t understand something ask or do your research.
- Implement in bite size operations. That way you have your own quality assurance feedback system implemented to correct whatever it is your copying.
- Every sophisticated event action has a simple component to it and a complicated component to it! Focus on the complicated part first!
This was the exact same strategy that i used to always get higher grades than the people i “reverse engineered” from and you can too!
You really don’t have to get constipated and sweaty over a result when there are 7 billion people on this planet ! Somewhere, somehow, someone has already achieved the exact result you are seeking! Yes it is simple as that!
Enjoy your week and make it count!
Lee
The Secret To Creating Art
Posted on: May 5, 2014
You have no authority over the performance of your art and no one ever will. Rather than have nightmares over something you have little control over, the most humbling epiphany is the realization that true art has everything to do with it’s creation. The more you create it, the more it charts a pathway of it’s own, complimentary to your existence! No one really knows the formula! The fact that you’re looking for a formula means that you are not looking to create art!For art, has no formula! Art is like a river, it meanders to the curves and calling of the moment! Create it, then right before you become constipated about it’s performance, set it free! It was never yours in the first place and if you do get rewarded for it, distribute the rewards or they will come back to haunt you! This is the greatest curse of the gift of art! Let it go!You were never the creator,just the platform for it’s creation! This is my greatest secret to the creation of art!
Lee Kariuki
- Dark days…
- Uncertainty
- long hours
- miserable pay
- abandonment
- skepticism
- negativity
but the most heart breaking of them all, continuous failure day in day out! If you have worked as a research scientist, entrepreneurship doesn’t prepare you enough! Then the one idea out of all the fifty something you tried finally catches momentum! Then it all makes sense! All those dark days, all those tears, all those long hours finally finally make a difference to your clients in a major way, which in turn impacts your life in a major way! Then you say to yourself my nerves can’t stand the uncertainty again! My nerves can’t stand the thrill. Then deep down you know it’s a lie! You do it one more time! When you taste that drop of making a difference, it’s like an athlete with lean muscle on anaerobic respiration, the fat keeps on burning way after the exercise has stopped! This is my message to you….START now! Get that adrenalin rush! It is therapy, It is life! It is “effin” aaamaaazing!
Lee
I was trying to shoot a piece of paper in to the garbage can. I thought it was going to be a clean shot. I aimed, pitched my arms and like a pro released the paper with no attachment to the outcome. It missed. It’s OK i told myself lets try it again my brain told me! Again i aimed, pitched and released on second try and this time something amazing happened! I still missed but touched the edge of the can! It’s OK i my mind repeated, try again! Picked up the paper went back to my position and tried again! Aimed, hands pitched and elevated a release again with no attachment to the outcome and this time, this time it finally went in! There is a huge fundamental lesson to learn here!
- It was just a game.
- It didn’t matter that i had to collect the paper from the floor every time i missed, i was having too much fun being challenged to get the paper in! Almost pissed it went in!
- I was not attached to the result of the paper whether it went in or out, there was an intuitive lesson i was acquiring along the way!
Here comes the analogy! In life, you will try many things like taking the paper and dunking it in a waste basket. Some will work(very few) majority will not work out! What matters are 3 things,
- Fun-is the path fun.
- Lesson-what are you learning?
- Where are you now and what is the end result or the destination?
- What is the control?
Are you having fun if you have a check mark we are good if not find something that is fun. When i say fun i am referring to how the activity and the result are challenging you! If they are not challenging then it is rare you will have fun! What is the lesson you are acquiring. The truth is activities teach us more about ourselves than about the people or the end result. Be keen to the lesson. Just like with every activity there is a start point and an end point Where are you currently? It doesn’t make sense to want the moon when you have no idea where you are! In thermodynamics, a compound’s state can be completely defined by any 2 of the three properties. Pressure, volume and or temperature. In strategy a persons vision can be defined by two properties current position(financial,emotional…etc) and intended destination!(financial,emotional….etc) The work of the strategy is to bridge the gap! Finally you will need a control whose sole purpose is to define how we will know that we are at the end! A lot of times at least in science we compare the end with a control which is parallel state of the same start point that did not go through the operation. It is mostly used for comparison sake!
One thing that i learned can’t remember for where is that the mind on first try is doing all kinds of calculations without your consciousness! Length, projectile, energy involved etc on first try. On second try it is doing some adjustments and that’s why the second try is called train up because it is usually better than the first but not as good to be the end result. Finally the third which is well adjusted to reach the end result is usually the optimized one for the result. In statistics, it is said that the more the iterations the closer you are to the true value! This of course is assuming that you have the right test and the right measurement! Anyway, the lesson to learn here is that sometimes before you wash you hands try anything at least 3 times and make sure you are having fun, you are learning a lesson, you know where you are and where you want to go and you have a way of knowing that you have reached your destination!
Enjoy the weekend!
Building A Business In 2014( The 3 Pillars To Owning The Real “Real Estate”!)
Posted on: January 25, 2014
As conventional employment becomes a less desired model for earning a living, more and more people are looking for alternatives. For starters, time and freedom are the two assets that most people value and appreciate and for some reason most jobs seem to rob them both. The time to do what you want and the freedom to do it! One way to earn them back is by creating a business. Unfortunately when i started, there were countless mistakes i made along the way! Heck i’ll be darned if there was anything i was doing right! In 2003, I had an idea! I found a t-shirt manufacturer in Pakistan and ordered 800 pieces with photos of hero’s that had inspired me!Created a website and was going to sell them at $20 a piece! That’s $16,000 for a deal that i had projected on a business plan to grow 10 times that in a year based on what successful companies were doing! How naive! The website was up, the t-shirts were on their way and i was going to make tons of money, right!WRONG!
Mistakes I made and the lessons i learned!
- First of i had never ordered samples from this manufacturer! The fabric was so bad, i had to pay a homeless guy to even consider wearing the t-shirt! (That’s how bad they were!) Goodwill rejected them and even tried to sell them as mopping fabric! After 3 years of emotional drain, I left them in a dumpster in Cary, North Carolina and never looked back! Lesson 1. Know who your supplier is! If the business model gravitates around that supplier know in the bare minimum who they are! Heck if your going to build a business, own your real estate or build it! Real estate or leverage is having the 3 pillars, the factory, the client acquisition process and the clients! If you don’t have at least the clients and the acquisition process, then you don’t have a business!
- Pillar Number 1. The factory comes after the customers! This should be the first lesson of business! The truth about customers! Chant this even in your sleep! Clients are not looking to make you rich, they don’t care about you starting your business and at every turn they are looking to run away from any offer you have UNLESS (and this is the only exception) it benefits them way more than it benefits you! This was the meanest ugliest calm your nerves down experience that humbled me more than sleeping on my friends couch in college with no where to go! Facebook, twitter, Youtube those are channels to acquire real estate pillar #1. Clients! The greatest challenge has been to answer these two questions! Do we start by selling what the market wants (“sell out”) or do we innovate and do what we want with respect to the market? (authentic to self!) The best answer i know how is to have the interest of the market first! That means do whatever it takes, to get the market and I don’t mean light a fire on a cold winter evening outside you’re prospects house awaiting them to come home from work to sell them a product! Use a bit of finesse! Think about all the things they worry about, going to work, dropping the kids at school, paying bills, cooking, loosing that 20 pounds they gained during the holidays, and still finding the time to chit chat with Aunty Jemima who wasn’t feeling to well three weeks ago! What can you do to make these activities less daunting! If you have to ask them, please do, they won’t hesitate to tell you and when they do, implement in to the product! Acquiring this real estate is using your skills (authentic to self!) to sell what the market wants. (“sell out”)
- The 2nd pillar of this Real Estate is the process! If the process of moving clients from where they are to where they want to be is complicated, then you don’t have a business because your loosing real estate #1. Can you imagine yourself building a house on Mount Rainier or Everest and the truck that is carrying the bricks has to go up the mountain with steepness of 60 to 80 degrees from the ground? Every time one truck of bricks attempts the climb the elevation causes all the bricks to come tumbling down! What if you could chart a pathway that is slightly steep but spiral that reduces steepness by going round the mountain to the top rather than up the mountain in one steep climb? That’s exactly what you do when your process is undefined. Chart out the process by answering these questions. How will the client move from A to B to C? What experience will clients attain while on the pathway? What is cost effective to you? How can you WOW your clients while they take the journey?
- The last pillar to real estate is the production! Mark you i said production. If someone else owns the production that means at a drop of a dime, they can steal your business from you! They can switch their algorithm and your customers go unfulfilled which in turn makes you go unfulfilled! If you don’t own the production, make plans to do so in the near future! Own the client acquisition process, own the client database and then finally own the product/service production process! I had outsourced the t-shirt production to someone else who didn’t care about my “potential imaginary” clients(the ones who were going to make me a fortune without them even knowing! Mistake #1) like i did! I hadn’t met them and i didn’t even have backup manufactures and the worst thing i did was pay them upfront! Never ever pay the whole amount upfront even if you have it 10 times over! Learned that lesson again during my wedding!(Another story!)
- Finally the idea here isn’t to sell the product only, that’s short term and very temporary, the long term strategy is to add so much value to client’s lives that they would give you money to make sure you don’t ever have to do anything else(career wise) but what it is our good at! If your clients want you that bad, then you have a true business!
It’s not easy and it’s very very doable!
Make 2014 the best year possible!
PS: If your comfortable with what you do for work, stay happy, don’t start a business! If you’re seeking a thrill and heartbreak and tears and joy, very polarized, conflicting extreme experiences and challenges, then a business may offer you that alternative with ease! All in all there is no guarantee that a business will make you anything and if I insinuate that in anyway with this article, please correct me! This disclaimer has not been bludgeoned out of me by the FTC. I am doing it just to inform you that before you make any kind of investment please seek sound advice! It will be in your best benefit!
PPS: I’m not selling anything!
Cheers!
Lee Kariuki
To all fans, readers and followers i would like to wish you a happy happy 2014 and a prosperous one at that. Now i should have written this post prior to the New Year but a had a family emergency to handle over the break. Anyway, i won’t take anymore of your time but will be brief and specific.
Time awaits no one and if there is something you want to do, do it. You will regret what you didn’t do than what you did! When you fail or experience a catastrophe it is one small bump relative to the other experiences in your life. Don’t put too much emphasis on it! Speak and negotiate from a position of strength and value rather than from fear. Now with that out of the way here is the strategy of setting goals.
The Strategy for setting goals
- When setting goals, start from where you are right now……that should be your start. I see people stating that they would like to loose weight in 2014 but that means nothing at all. Before you set that goal you need to measure where you are, then determine where you would like to be. The relativity aspect is always skipped and a goal without a reference point is no goal. It’s just a statement.
- Get specific. I am going to make more money in 2014. No sense in that either. The brain whether you know it or not is laughing at you as there are no specifics to it. So what does it do…Nothing! You haven’t inspired it to take any action yet due to your non specificity! I want to make 20,000 dollars extra in 4 months by writing a $ 23 book and then selling consultation at $ 247 in 2 hourly sessions. Very specific.
- Start with your values. When setting goals if your values and what you believe in are a disconnect with what you think you want to accomplish, you will fail miserably! I want to get married because Nancy and Judy are married is not a reflection of your values. I want to get married because i believe i have a lot to share, a lot to offer and would love to have a life long companion who will grow with me and have children together. Success is doing what you want to do not because you don’t want to be left out by Nancy and Judy.
- Map out a reverse action checklist. Start with the big goal, and work backwards all the way to the daily goal or even hourly goal if possible. The brain loves structure and the more structured you are the more likely you are to accomplish your goals.
- Write your goals out of power and creativity. Most goals are written from an egocentric standpoint of “need to”! Very very wrong attitude when writing goals. The goals that you write should be from a place of child like enthusiasm and “let see what happens….” after a huge suspension of disbelief. Remember the main secret of accomplishment is compounding action. If you start with a “need to” attitude, very soon your “why” will burnout and you will be abandoning goal after goal right smack in the middle. Get a good solid “why” and then set the goal and release a let see what will happen attitude with enthusiasm drive and happiness.
- Set goals that are actionable with plenty of verbs. Write 10 pages a day. Bench 3 sets of 150 pounds every alternate day. While writing your goals if you don’t feel like doing what your writing at that exact time, then you will have a hard time accomplishing your goal. The secret is to use verbs that signal action when you read them.
- Have a daily checklist and preferably look at it the previous night right before you go to bed. That will put the goals in to your subconscious so that the next day when you wake up you already know exactly what to do. Your deeds should be leading to your becoming and what i mean by that is that what matters is not what you are doing, but who you are becoming by virtue of compounded action. It is the compounded action that makes a difference. The beauty of the checklist is when you cross out accomplished tasks……the dopa-mine release is amazing!
- If for some reason you are not able to accomplish all your goals on a certain day, do the one that will reinforce the feeling of “This day didn’t go to waste because i accomplished……” and that has the same impact as the cross out dopa-mine release.
- Review your goals every 7 days. This is what bridges the gap between “woo woo out there goals” and “goals that are actionable and making sense” You may need a partner or a guide who will sit with you and see what you can’t see or “normalize” he set goals to your abilities. A lot of times we set goals that are too out there or are too safe because our brains are filled with fear of failure or fear of accomplishment.(yes there are many people who are scared of accomplishments!)
- Have fun. Lots of it. The journey must be as equally exiting as the destination. Most goals are set from a destination delayed excitement once goal is met mindset. That will drain you besides who wants to wait for the excitement at the end? I wan’t mine now while setting the goals!
Follow these rules and i can give you my word, you will not be disappointed at all. Yes eve if you work for the FTC.( I know how much you love disclaimers!)
With that Happy happy new year and go set a goal or something!
Lee Kariuki
What seems unrelated always couples up in the end with profound meaning intensity and purpose. The law o counter intuition states that things we expect to happen rarely happen as planned with a sense of questionable logic! Experiments that become wildly successful are the ones that no bias or preconceived knowledge was accessible. There were no assumptions. If an assumption has to be made, then a bias has been introduced.
The most complex of problems are solved when one is not really proactively thinking about the problem. The discovery of gravity was accomplished by sitting under a tree to to discover gravity but to take a power nap under the shade. All those unrelated “useless” endeavors that you encountered or pursued while growing up merge in a beautiful collage to create one of your greatest creations and only at the merging point do they all make sense.
It is pointless to follow or listen to people who advise you to stick to one thing when your hearts fulfillment and passion are not up to the task! It is also pointless to choose one thing when we internally are the embodiment of many minute independent systems that work together for the overall goal of the larger picture, the body.
When faced with a dilemma, don’t dwell on it! Instead do the most counter intuitive thing and there lies a solution. Henry Ford one of Americas great entrepreneurs solved a auto supply pipeline problem by observing a complete unrelated industry, the meat industry! If you have a business problem, go study biology! If you have an emotional problem, go study mathematics! The more polarized the better that is the more left and right brained apart, the better to finding the solution!
Test and Enjoy!
Lee Kariuki
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