The crazy thing is that it seems like people actually believe in me. By the way, whoever recommended that I create a Discord channel is a straight up genius. Best thing I ever did.
I mean, I thought it was an ego boost BEFORE when people just left comments telling me how great I was. Now they actually come to the Discord and tell me in real time. Like a dream come true.
Insane really. I wrote my first rants on here because I was sick of writing crypto posts. If you had told me back then that I would be leading a group of almost 100 people who seem to genuinely want to improve their content and marketing skills, I would have told you to go fuck yourself.
In retrospect, despite the fact that they had no direct connection to my current income stream, writing those posts was genius. Has nothing to do with the STEEM/SBD that I made from using the upvote bots, either. That was just a bonus.
When you plant your flag and establish yourself as the leader of a community (especially one that you created), you automatically give yourself authority. I don't know if it's human nature or what, but when you claim to have a "vision" for how things should be, people are compelled to follow you.
Shit, you think I have any idea what I'm doing? I don't. Literally none. Never done a writing course before. Never taught marketing before. I rarely even got anyone to read anything that I wrote before coming on here.
But the mere act of publicly stating, "Hey, this is what I believe. Here's a group where we can all talk about it," is all it takes to attract people who share your views.
I'm not an expert. I just wrote a few blog posts and started a group.
Sometimes I wonder if people are too scared to express themselves freely or if they're just too stupid to have any original thoughts.
Seriously, I used to think it was the former until literally 5 seconds ago. I had this whole section written about how you should go buck wild and say whatever you want, completely disregarding the people who would inevitably disagree with you.
But now I'm starting to think that people are just so brain-dead that they don't actually have any original viewpoints in the first place. It's not that they're not capable of expressing themselves honestly, it's just that they have no depth as a human being. Even as I write that I find it hard to believe that's the case, but I so far have found little proof to the contrary.
"Let down your golden hair," is an expression from a book called The Story Of Iron John by Robert Bly. I'll spare you the details of the story, but suffice to say that a young boy has fabulous golden hair but is ashamed to show it to anyone because it's so eye-catching. He doesn't want the attention because he feels that he doesn't deserve it.
The book is more social commentary on modern-day masculinity than a self-improvement book, but this phrase is something that many of us could stand to remind ourselves of frequently.
Like I said though, I'm beginning to wonder if all of us even have golden hair to begin with. In the story, the boy is born with it. But in real life, the only way to get some character is through years of prolonged, unbearable suffering. There's no substitute for that. No Discord chat or conference call is going to give that to you. You gotta earn that shit.
Maybe your hair is fucking ugly as shit and you shouldn't let it down. Maybe you should go shampoo that shit and get a haircut before you think about showing it off.
Actually, nevermind. It takes time to get good at something. Don't listen to me.
I'm going to assume that most of you know virtually nothing about Jewish history, Judaism or Israel aside from what you see on the news and some racist memes on the internet. So let me educate you:
After WWII, Jews who survived the Holocaust had nowhere to go. After being forced into ghettos, concentration camps and killed en masse in most of Europe, they couldn't go back to their home countries.
So Britain stepped up and "created" the State of Israel. It was under British rule for several years until the country gained independence. That's a whole 'nother can of worms that I don't want to get into right now. Just giving you some backstory.
The effect was that for the first time in thousands of years, you had a country with a virtually 100% Jewish population.
I'll be the first one to admit that the stereotypes about Jews have some truth to them. Yes, we are focused on money. Yes, we do manage to worm our way into high positions in companies/governments. Yes, we do give preferential treatment to each other when possible.
But one thing that few people grudgingly admit is that we're smart as fuck and have a natural tendency to try to use every system to our advantage. We want to be the ones pulling the strings, not the other way around.
This works great when you're in a place where nobody else thinks the same way. But how do you think it works when everyone wants to be the boss?
Well, look no further than the State of Israel for an indication of how that would work. Here are some stats for those of you who have no idea where I'm going with this:
What do you think leads to this level of ingenuity from such a small number of people?
Do you think it's because they think small? Do you think they like to just accept what people tell them is possible and play by the rules? Do you think it's because they're content to work for someone else instead of creating something of their own?
Anyone who has ever met an Israeli knows the answer.
Having lived there for years and worked in an Israeli dominated industry for nearly a decade, I can tell you that these people LIVE to find better ways to do things. Every conversation is an argument. That's just our mentality.
People like to talk shit about Jews/Israelis and say we control the world, that none of our gainz are based on merit but result from some elite Jewish cabal, that what we've earned despite thousands of years of persecution is somehow ill-gotten.
Sorry people, that's not the case. It's because we're fucking smart. Deal with it.
So for those of you who are somehow unaware of my rise to fame here on this wonderful platform, let me take you through the timeline:
Once I learned that most exposure on here is purchased, my little Jew brain went to work to figure out a way to use that to my advantage. I figured that with enough visibility, I could expose people to my work and deliver my message.
Sure enough, it seemed to work. Some people liked what I had to say, others didn't. I gradually felt more and more confident in my posts and gained enough momentum to drop the bomb: that I was going to start #sharkschool - a course teaching people how to be entertaining and informative while promoting themselves in the process.
The shitty part was that after I made that post, I actually had to start doing the work.
Not gonna lie, I was tempted to be like, "Okay sorry guys, I don't have time for this shit. I got shit to do. Peace."
In the comments, someone suggested that I start a Discord chat. I'm like alright, sure why not. I was more of a Telegram man myself, but whatever.
Anyway, I create this Discord chat and people actually start joining. Not only that, they seem genuinely excited to be there. Now, I've never run a chat like this before, so I literally had no idea what to do. I was so busy that I would only check in for a few minutes a day, thinking that it would just kind of run itself.
Nope. After a few days I realized that if I wasn't there making things happen, nothing was going to happen. These people joined the group because of me. They joined because they liked my style. They liked what I had to say.
Fuck, I don't know what they liked, but for some reason they started spending time in there instead of doing something else.
I can also honestly say that I'm surprised with the quality of people that have joined the group as well. I normally think that everyone is an idiot except for me and a few of my friends, but I've actually met some intelligent people in there who seem to know what they're doing.
And because I set the proper tone for the group as a place with high standards for quality, a constant drive for progress and improvement, and an emphasis on monetizing content - it attracts the right people and fosters conversations around topics that I am personally interested.
I'm not going to lie and say I want to make the world a better place by helping people. Or that I want to make Steemit the best gosh darn way to kill time on the internet since 8 Bit Theatre.
Nah. I'm doing it for my ego, my bank account, and the hope that someday I'll be able to leverage the community for some kind of tangible gain. It's 100% for 
But what people don't seem to understand is that the nature of a successful business is that both sides win. I am not forcing these people to spend their time there or tag their posts with #sharkschool. I'm not making them volunteer to be mods or promote the group on their own time.
They all want to do it because they see the potential of the group. And I'm sure if you ask them why they're doing it, they're not going to say because they want to be my friend. They're there because they feel they believe in the direction the group is headed, or are at least curious enough to keep an eye on it.
When I started freelancing just under three months ago, I had literally no idea how I would get clients.
I knew I wanted to do social media marketing and I thought ICOs would be a good place to start. But other than that I was clueless.
Crypto was booming and blockchain startups were flush with investor money. Plus, your average startup CEO is fairly young and understands the importance of having a positive digital footprint. I headed to Google and searched for a list of upcoming ICOs.
First result: ICOAlert.com - A goldmine of fresh ICO leads.
I spent the next two weeks manually scraping email addresses off of websites of upcoming ICOs. I'd sent 20 emails one day, 30 another and eventually worked my way up to 50. As time went on, I would add more detail to the email until it grew to just over 700 words.
That's pretty massive for an introductory email. But people responded. Some of them even paid me.
Now that the crypto market is bleeding out, I'm recruiting new clients from other industries. But now that I have a sizable web of influence on the web, I don't need to try as hard to sell myself to clients.
Most of them probably have no idea what Steemit is, but when they see the posts that I've written, it proves to them that I know what I'm talking about. I've said many times that I doubt any of them even read any of the posts. But just the fact that they skim through and see the work I've put into them is enough for them to believe I can do what I say I can.
And since I am selling social media marketing, I also show them some of the bigger pages that I manage. I show them my personal account that's almost at 50k followers. If they bother to click on any of my pics to read the caption, they'll see that I push the limits of Instagram's 2000 character restriction on picture captions.
The cherry on top is this Discord chat. Think about it: this guy who runs a fucking dry cleaners in Houston can either hire some Indian guy from Upwork to handle his Instagram or he can hire me. Who is he going to choose?
I don't even subject them to a 700 word email anymore. I just attach a PDF that explains what I do and write one line telling them to read it. Easy peasy.
The above quote is by a woman named Helena Rubenstein. Here's the Wikipedia info because I'm too lazy to write it in my own words:
Helena Rubinstein (born Chaja Rubinstein; December 25, 1872[2] – April 1, 1965) was a Polish American businesswoman, art collector, and philanthropist. A cosmetics entrepreneur, and was the founder and eponym of Helena Rubinstein Incorporated cosmetics company, which made her one of the world's richest women.
Doesn't matter what you're doing in life, if you want to do a good job then you must put in a massive amount of effort. I don't think there are many people who would try to argue with that.
So then why is it that everywhere you look, people come up with literally every excuse in the book to validate their laziness?
Look, if you live in Sudan and spend your time trying to stop people from ethnically cleansing you, then you get a pass. Everyone else that has a computer and working internet connection, what's your excuse?
I'm not saying this as some internet millionaire who bangs five thousand dollar escorts every night in my Ferrari. I'm a loser just like you. But I BELIEVE that I have the capability to change my loserness through nothing more than sheer effort and creativity.
Regardless of whether or not that belief is based on reality, the fact is that the belief ITSELF influences my behavior.
Because I believe that I have the power to change things for the better, I choose to spend my time in a certain way. I don't waste time coming up with rationalizations as to why I'm in the situation I'm in, but instead work on ways to improve it.
And let's not kid ourselves - it takes a massive amount of work to get notoriety and the money that comes with it. You have to work on it every single day, regardless of whether or not you see any immediate results - until one day you do.
Or maybe you don't. But that's the chance you take.
I'll admit, I started out with a lot of advantages compared to a lot of people. I'm a white American from Los Angeles, and a Jew to boot. I speak fluent English and by chance benefited from the discipline and "character" that results from the soul-crushing tedium of military service.
Most people don't have those advantages. Fine. I get it. You can't control the color of your skin or the family you were born into.
But you know what you CAN control? The effort you put into the things to which you commit your allotted 24 hours. You can control how much you exercise or which hairs you pluck from between your eyebrows. You can control the amount of time you spend on writing a blog post or prospecting for new clients.
And not only that, but nobody is going to do it for you. Whether that's having the body of a Greek God, becoming a pro athlete or even just making a few grand per month so you can fuck off to Thailand - it's all up to you.
It all depends on the amount of effort you put into your work. Even if the odds are stacked against you. Even if you don't have the means to take advantage of whatever system(s) you're currently participating in.
You need to believe that you are the one who controls it, even when it's obvious that you don't even have the ILLUSION of control. That's the only way you'll even have a chance to get to where you want to be.
Without that, you might as well not even try.
