From Scratch (Ep. 39)

Expectations, Combinations, and Week 39 Updates

What You Expect Is What You Get

Recently, I was helping out a family member with his car and he brought up the conversation of jobs.

I rolled my eyes and looked forward with my best poker face. “Here we go again.”

This family member proceeds to go into a monologue about how his job sucks, he doesn’t like his boss, and how he deserved more of a pay raise this year. But hold on, he’s not done.

He tells me about all these jobs he applied for. Pissed that some didn’t give him an interview. And here’s the kicker…

Of the other jobs, he then tells me how he doesn’t think he’s gonna get them. Listing out reasons why.

How he’s too old now.
How he has such niche and specialized expertise in some prehistoric email software that not a lot of companies use.

Family members get a special deal with me. They get an extra layer of patience and temperance.

So I said nothing. Then he surprised me with what he said next.

He wants to learn how to make sushi and possibly work as as sushi chef at a restaurant.

But also thinks that no one will take him on as a sushi apprentice because he’s too old.

I’m rooting for him though.

I’ll take free or heavily discounted sushi for life. I do have a bottomless stomach for sushi after all.

Anyways, there are mysterious forces out there that no one can explain. I’m not talking about anything religious here.

Synchronicities. Once you focus on something like a new car or breed of dog, you all of sudden see these things everywhere.

Self-fulfilling prophecy. Getting what you expect to happen.

Placebo effect. A dummy pill causing the same physical effects as the actual drug in testing.

I think the underlying theme of these things are expectation.

If you don’t think you can do something or can do something. You’re right.

One of the things you often hear about highly successful business people or athletes is that they have a “delusional” belief in suceeding.

But who is it “delusional” too? The outsiders looking in.

To them, it’s an expectation. Something already set in stone. An event scheduled on the path of destiny.

And I think this is the underlying power of gratitude as well. (We can chat more deeply about this in a future issue)

Maybe this was just natively built in me. But even back when I had pretty low self-esteem…

Everything I did, I still expected to do well. Tests, sports, learning something new.

For awhile, when the results weren’t up to my standards, that would stop me. Cause me to quit.

But I shed that bad habit about 4 years ago. And I’ve seen the power of positive expectation work in my favor if I’m able to be patient.

2 years ago I wanted to work with an NBA team on a book. I expected it to happen, all signs were pointing that way.

It happened a lot later than I expected. But 10 months in, I closed one.

I saw an opportunity to work with fighters and expected that it could work. Again with an expectation of a much shorter timeline.

But 10 weeks in, I got my first fighter signed. And 39 weeks later, we have 4 and working on more.

I guess the lesson is here is that if you’re gonna do something, have high expectations of it working without an attachment to a timeline.

Your brain will continuously look for opportunities to make it work.

And if you don’t think it’s gonna work, why do it in the first place?

There’s a version of this positive expectation effect on people around you too.

Pygmalion was a mythical Greek sculptor who was working on a masterpiece.

After pouring all his time and energy into finishing this work of art, the unexpected happened.

He fell in love with his statue. Literally.

So he begged Aphrodite, the goddess of love to help him out. She took pity on the sculptor and brought the statue to life.

And he and his statue (now human) bride went on to get married and lived happily ever after.

The idea of the Pygmalion effect is that have a higher expectation of people around you will also increase their performance.

There was a cool study done with kids and bucketing them into different IQ brackets. You can look that up on your own, but the kids who were made to believe they had high IQs… ended up performing higher in every category.

So in short, you get what you expect. You are what you believe.

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Using Combination To Create Value

I am going to use my childhood nerd knowledge to get this point across. And if you know, you know.

Polymerization is a famous Yu-Gi-Oh card that combines two monsters to create a new monster. Most of the time, the newly fused monster is more powerful than any of the original individual monsters.

For example, take these two monsters - Black Luster Soldier and Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon.

Use Polymerization and you get one of my favorite cards (although a useless card in actual gameplay)

The Dragon Master Knight.

A more powerful monster with more value. So what’s my point besides teaching you about Yu-Gi-Oh?

You can use this same concept to create an entirely new offer with much more value.

It’s hard to create an original idea, but through combination you can create something entirely new.

Look at me for example. I could write newsletters for businesses. But I brought that skill over to combat sports. Combined with another business model, I’ve created something with a ton of value.

To the point that I’ve come across an agency who feels threatened by what I’m offering and is gatekeeping their clients. Another story for another time. But this person needs to read Jay Abraham’s book.

If you’re having trouble selling a skill, let’s choose something boring like SEO.

You can make it a little more exciting and valuable by combining it with another skill or specific niche.

SEO for AI software.
SEO for e-commerce brands.

SEO + micro-influencers. You find small creators to create a whole bunch of content for your client and rank these pieces of content.

I don’t know, I’m just spinning out ideas here. But the right combination can create an entirely new experience and something even more valuable.

Like dessert and coffee. Or lamb chops and mint jelly (don’t knock it till you try it).

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Week 39 P4P Updates

Still being consistent with everything.

Reaching out, following-up, and working on my craft. Learning how to ask better questions, sharpening my writing, and mastering my circle (another concept we’ll chat about).

This week we’ve got an uptick of positive responses. But as I said in previous issues, responses don’t mean anything. So far, nothing moving forward but I expect this to lead to something.

Of course, we’re still growing:

1,617 (+47) = 1,664 subscribers

I didn’t get to put out a newsletter for one client because it was fight week for him. It’s only the second week I missed (the other time, another client had hand surgery after his fight).

But something even cooler happened.

My client Matt previously held the record for most knockouts in the UFC. It was later broken by another fighter named Derrick Lewis.

As you can see, going with the theme of today’s newsletter, I predicted and expected the knockout.

And one clean right hand later… 👊💥

Matt gets the knockout in the first round. Ties the current record of 13 knockouts. 42 years young and still got it.

I’m considering adding something new to my pitch. If you work with me, your chances of winning skyrocket if I invoke the Pygmalion effect on you.

So far it’s true. My clients have gone undefeated since working with me 🤣

Anyway, that ends it for this week’s issue. Thanks for tuning in.

And as always…

Trust the process, love the process.

Kevin