• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Primoz Bozic

Helping online entrepreneurs build a 7-figure online business

  • BLOG
  • Show Search
Hide Search

Primoz Bozic Blog

Learn How to Use Automation And Dominate Your Work Today + free Automation eBook

By Primoz Bozic 2 Comments

How would it make you feel if you could get work done in your sleep or while you’re grabbing drinks with friends? And what if I told you that that’s actually much easier as it sounds, regardless of whether you’re an entrepreneur or if you work in a 9-5 job?

Hint: It feels awesome when you wake up and there’s already work done and waiting for you. And this doesn’t have to be hard or cost thousands of dollars.

So what is this sorcery that helps us get work done in our sleep and doesn’t require us to own our own team of people or clone ourselves? This sorcery is called automation, and I know just the right person to show you how to learn the art of automation. You will learn the magic of creating systems that run on their own and get work done for you, regardless of what you’re doing and how motivated you are.

This person with a magic wand is my good friend Frank from Amp Your Results. He’s the person I go to whenever I want to automate something or make my systems run smoother, because he has knows exactly which tools to use to create awesome systems that run on their own.

Frank was very generous and agreed to write a very detailed post just for the readers of Skyrocket Your Productivity that will show you the basics of automation and answer these questions:

  • What is this automation thing?
  • How does it look like in action?
  • What can I automate in my own life?
  • How do I even get started with automation?
  • Which tools can I use to automate with very little effort?

So without further ado, I’ll let you read Frank’s post. Happy automation!

-Primoz

Enter Frank:


Don’t work uphill. Life’s already pretty tough, ESPECIALLY for ambitious people.

If you’ve been relying on your discipline to achieve your greatest goals and you’ve failed — there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you. Your approach is what’s throwing you off. You’ve been working uphill. There’s a smarter way.

Take it from the people you know in your life who always seem to be productive no matter what. Isn’t it frustrating? You could be working 100x harder than they are, but they seem to pull further ahead! We can do this too by learning HOW they do it.

It’s not genetics. It’s not money. It’s not the breaks. It’s not even being surrounded by successful people… how do you think they became successful to begin with? It’s their habits and mindsets that got them there.

Here’s what I’ve learned from these successful people:

The only way to make consistent progress on your goals is by building and improving the systems in your life and eventually automating those systems

Take Honda for example. How long do you think they would last if they had every car built by hand? That’d be ridiculous – no two cars would look the same, the workers’ energy would be SHOT after a few months of this strenuous work, and they wouldn’t even be able to get very many cars out the door in time.

So what do they do? They’ve built automated systems to build these cars with precision and very little (human) energy.

If a company has capitalized on systems and automation to make THEIR success easier to achieve with less energy from their employees, why are YOU, the CEO of your life, allowing your “company” to work uphill?

 


It’s just not the way to live.
Here’s what we’ll cover:

  • What systems and automation are and why you should care
  • What your life can look like once you’ve automated the boring out of it
  • How you can ease into your work without scurrying around for what you need to get started
  • The systems and automation mindsets that will help you pave a smoother path to your goals
  • Action items you’ll be taking after this article to get started (you’ll only choose one and it’ll take 5-10 minutes to get started depending on how fast you can click)
  • The tools and services you can start using to get started TODAY

My goal is to give you a few different angles on how to approach your work and your chores. I want you to walk away from this thinking “How can I make this repetitive task easier? How can I automate this thing that I do every day anyway?”

Now we could get started with examples, but I don’t think you’ll benefit long term. Sure, I could teach you how to build specific systems, but then you may not be able to do this on your own. You’d walk away, have a cute little system, but then never know how to REALLY bring home the results. So let’s cover the fundamentals first.

You know the old saying “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day… teach a man how to build an automatic fish snare contraption, feed his entire village for centuries.”

 


Get it together, buddy.

A DAY IN THE AUTOMATED LIFE

“This sounds awesome. But what would MY life look like with automation?”

Let me take you through a day in my life to give you an example.

The other day, I started the day brushing my teeth, shaving, applying deodorant, you know – the hygienic works. Part way into getting ready, I found that my deodorant stick was on its last legs. I snapped a picture of it and upload it to Dropbox, which triggered my IFTTT recipe (more on this later). Later that day, I would get an email confirmation from my Fancy Hands virtual assistant that they purchased the deodorant for me at the lowest price possible online.

I went to the kitchen and prepared some scrambled eggs, yerba mate tea, and vitamin complex. I haven’t successfully automated these yet* but I’m getting there.

I was starting to run low on yerba mate, so I snapped a picture of it and uploaded it to Dropbox, which triggered my IFTTT recipe. It forwarded the photo to Fancy Hands as well as instructions on how to find it for the best price online. They found it for me and sent me the links to it a few days later.


Note: I created this IFTTT recipe when Fancy Hands’ payment processor went down. Since they couldn’t buy it for me directly, I had them price hunt for me, which still saves me time and energy. Their processor is up and running again today, so my new IFTTT recipe will have them buy it for me.
Once I sat down at my computer, my Windows batch script had already activated all the tools I needed before I even sat down – my favorite text editor Darkroom, my Internet blocking software Anti-Social, my timer for a quick burst of writing, and my music playlist on Grooveshark.


A screenshot of my computer before I sit down to write.
I quickly go through my Flow checklist to get into flow and write for an hour. I finally posted my article, which again triggered an IFTTT recipe to have Fancy Hands proofread and ensure my links are working.

This was the email I got from Fancy Hands, with notes for proofreading.

Then it was 8am — time to head out for work.

—

I got to work and sat at my desk. Again, all the tools I needed were already there, including:

– My morning checklist, which reminds me to take some time to set up my workspace before I sit down, which includes sit down

– Anti-Social

– My playlist on Grooveshark – can you tell I love my music when I work?

– My timer program to start the day with a quick burst of work


My morning work script
Sometimes you need to make a system on the fly. After lunch, I read my email and saw many shipping notifications for parts I had ordered. Since these notifications usually don’t require action, I made an Outlook Rule right away.

Essentially, the mindset I use to automate is:

IF <commonly occurring situation>, THEN <pre-determined action>

IF I get a shipping notification, THEN move it to my Order Info folder.

IF I get a shipping notification that doesn’t contain IP, THEN send it to my Evernote.

Now, if my boss ever asks me for the receipts for certain purchases, I can either find it myself or have Fancy Hands find it for me in my Evernote.

Now it may be easy to dismiss some forms of automation as “cute” or “just for fun”. When I tell most of my clients and friends about how I automate buying stuff by just taking a photo of it, they usually say something like: “Well, that’s neat. But why not just write that you should buy it on your to-do list or shopping list?”

First, I personally like to minimize the number of errands I run. I don’t consider myself lazy, but if a task can be streamlined or automated, like grocery shopping, I’d prefer to automate it and spend that extra hour or two doing whatever I want to do. Second, sure, I could’ve added buying my yerba mate on my to-do list. But when you consider all the problems with putting a low-importance task on your to-do list, it’s worth it to automate it instead.

Think about how you work with your to-do list now… or any list for that matter. Have you ever avoided your to-do list just because it looks so intimidating? Tons of tasks vs. one you. If you have, you’re not alone. If you haven’t, you will soon.

Adding low-importance tasks like these “water down” your to-do list, making it more difficult to quickly see what’s important and what’s not. All you get is a long list of tasks. And long lists don’t get done.

Another subtle point is discussed in the book, The Paradox of Choice:

The more choices you have, the LESS likely you are to choose ANY of them (you procrastinate) and the MORE likely you’ll feel unsatisfied with your final choice.

Have you ever stared at your to-do list, knowing you should get started, but then go on Youtube or Facebook instead? Ever had a day when you only got one or two really important things done, but you STILL felt like you should’ve done more? Both are examples of this Paradox of Choice.

By automating these choices, you eliminate these psychological barriers.

 

BUILDING YOU, INC.: PERSONAL SYSTEMS AND AUTOMATION

Now let’s start implementing systems in your life. Before getting started, burn these three mindsets into the back of your mind. They’ll help you save tons of time and energy as you experiment.

1) Use your high-energy times to automate and systematize to make riding out your low-energy times easier.

2) Stop spending time converting bad results from ineffective systems into good results. Spend that time on building good systems and the good results will follow automatically.

3) Use automation & systemization to take advantage of Structural or Digital Willpower, both of which are infinite, instead to your own willpower, which is VERY finite.

 

—

1) Use your high-energy times to automate and systematize to make riding out your low-energy times easier.

Everyone has “on” days, where you’re extraordinarily productive, knocking off long-scheduled to-dos. But sooner or later, we’re faced with the other side of our energy coin, the “off” day. Days when we’re mentally distracted and drained of energy.

The traditional approach to work is to work during our “on” days and feel guilty during our “off” days. This is a shortsighted strategy.

Instead, it’s wiser to spend your high-energy times to make it EASIER to get the job done once your motivation wanes. I write all about this mindset here.

And I promise you. Your motivation WILL eventually drop. It ebbs and flows for all of us. We’re not robots – we’re people. Energy cycles are real and they don’t always work the way we want them.

The graph above shows your day-to-day productivity given these two strategies. Relying on motivation means you only get things done when you “feel like it”, leaving you to begin where you started the next time you “feel like it”.

When you automate, you capitalize on that work for days to come. Think about one thing you’ve done over and over again. How would it feel if that task took HALF the time to complete because last month you made a system? How would it feel if it got done on its own because you automated it last week?

Compare the above graph to where you are right now. How much did last Monday contribute to your results today?

 

2) Stop spending time converting bad results from ineffective systems into good results. Spend that time on building good systems and the good results will follow automatically.

Too many people spend time at work tending to urgent tasks. But sometimes it feels like after you whack one urgent problem, two more pop up.


Now stay down!!!
Sometimes, you have to put down the mallet, get to the root of the problem and determine how you can improve the system that’s causing these problems.

Most times, just like it’s wisest to fix a hole in a ship first THEN bale out all the water, so too is it wiser to improve that system before you fix all the smaller problems. But let’s say you absolutely MUST tend to this one problem immediately.

Here’s what to do: Put a strict TIME LIMIT on how much time you spend fighting fires. Use my Flow Formula to achieve Flow as quickly as possible, set a timer for 25 minutes to work, take 5 minutes to rest, work for another 25 minutes, and let that be all the firefighting you do for the day.

Spend the rest of your day identifying WHY that fire started, identify the system that spawned that fire, and improve that system.

 

3) Use Systems & Automation to take advantage of spending Digital Willpower, which is infinite, instead of your willpower, which is finite.

We have a limited amount of willpower every day to spend on non-routine or emotional tasks. This is why dieters who rely on willpower typically break down around dessert time. They spent most of their willpower throughout the day RESISTING those foods they wanted!

A dieter who systematizes their diet may simply throw away all the junk food in their house, replace them with healthy snacks that they also enjoy, prepare 5 healthy lunches in their fridge, and leave their credit card at home when they go out.

This is “automation” in its purest form — through changing their habits. By taking these steps, they:

– Made it easier to do the behavior he/she doesn’t routinely do (i.e. eating healthy, eating her lunch)

– Made it harder to do the behavior he/she doesn’t WANT to do (i.e. harder to buy junk, harder to cave in the evening)

When you put barriers in place in real life, I call it Structural Willpower. When you use computers & software to accomplish the same thing, I call it Digital Willpower.

Another example: I can’t think of a situation where I wouldn’t want to pay my rent on time. So, rather than rely on my memory to pay that bill AND spend the time writing and mailing a check, I’ve automated my finances. I use my bank’s Bill Payment feature to automatically send my landlord a check every month on the day its due.

My benefits are two-fold: First, I don’t have to think about these payments and can instead focus on other important things in my life. Second, I’ve made it harder to NOT pay my rent. So naturally, I won’t NOT pay my rent.

 

TAKE ACTION TODAY — START IMPLEMENTING AUTOMATED SYSTEMS NOW!

To get you started, I want you to choose ONE of the following and do it RIGHT NOW.

1) Create an account on IFTTT, a service that connects two services together, and use one of my recipes to automate some of your work.

2) Sign up with my favorite virtual assistant service, Fancy Hands, and give them one task to complete for you.

3) Write out one procedure you’ve done at work on a repeated basis and save it to Google Drive or Evernote so you can get easy access to it.

If you’re stuck on which one to get started on, go ahead and start with #1 first. Why? Several reasons:

– I don’t want you getting into Analysis Paralysis by worrying about which one is “best” to get started on. You can always do the other two later – so let’s get started with one first.

– It’s REALLY easy to get started with IFTTT. It’s only takes 10-15 minutes, so there’s no excuse for “not having time”.

– You can get the results of automation immediately with little time invested. Small, quick victories are very important for motivation. And the better you feel about using automation in your own life, the more likely you’ll eventually do all three of the above.

– It’s a gateway into programming for those who have absolutely no programming experience. Writing code is probably one of the highest leverage skills you can learn to make things easier at work.

 

To help you get started, I’ve prepared my Automation Toolbox just for you.

Click the book below to get your own guide on getting started in automation, systems, and outsourcing.

Not only will it go even deeper into detail for each of those steps, but also it will introduce you to some of my favorite automation tools.

Examples include:

  • Where I find contractors to do minor work for $5 per job — tasks like writing code for me, designing logos, and other minor design work.
  • Getting all your programs and apps you need in the morning to pop up automatically before you even sit down, like in my examples earlier.
  • The formatting I use to create Playbooks that not only help me save time and energy on repetitive tasks, but also help me outsource those tasks when I don’t necessarily need to be the guy doing them.

I’m not affiliated with any of the services I’ve shared with you. I’ve just had a GREAT experience using that tool or service.

 


* Fun Fact: I had tested automating my breakfast every morning by using an outlet timer and placing eggs in a water boiler. Later, that was replaced with some Arduino-powered behemoth of a contraption. I really don’t suggest either to anyone who doesn’t want to be awoken by a fire alarm…


 

 

Frank Magnotti is the founder of Amp Your Results, a new twist on productivity where automation and constraints are more powerful than sheer willpower and discipline.

Frank covers topics ranging from automation to psychology in a way that’s fun, easy to take action on, and use to prepare yourself for the next big leap in your life – be it a promotion, starting your new business, or leaping into a new career.

The Ultimate Guide to Surrounding Yourself with Successful Entrepreneurs

By Primoz Bozic 31 Comments

This isn’t just a normal blog post. Oh no. This epic guide is more than 17.000 words long, and it’s packed with specific systems, pictures, scripts, examples… You name it!

I will tell you exactly how I’ve found my first mentor, got invited to grab lunch with Ramit Sethi in San Francisco, created my own mastermind groups and more! I will show you what worked (and didn’t work) for me along the way and the lessons I’ve learned from my mistakes.

I will also give you specific scripts, systems and action steps that you can take to take the knowledge and use it to change YOUR life.

In this guide, you will:

  • Find out how to find entrepreneurial mentors and advisors that will help you skyrocket your business
  • Learn how to get surrounded by outstanding entrepreneurs that will “get” you and help you succeed in business and life
  • Get access to ready-to-use scripts and examples on how to make an awesome first impression, add value to VIPs and build relationships with them, make kick-ass introductions, throw awesome parties and meet ups… and more!


In San Francisco with two people that have had the biggest impact on my business growth: Ramit Sethi and Naveen Dittakavi
Imagine having access to a lot of VIPs, mentors and advisors that will help you take your business to the next level. Talking to awesome and inspiring people every day. Throwing parties that people will talk about for months. Going to a city you’ve never been to before and having people waiting in line to get to meet you.

It’s all possible, and I’ll show you exactly how you can do it.

Are you ready?

Table of contents & PDF version of the guide

It will probably take you a few hours to read this guide and months to implement it. I would recommend you to read it from beginning until the end and do the action steps that make sense to you along the way. I’ve attached a table of contents below so that you can find something quickly later on or pick it up where you left off the last time. You might want to get a cup of coffee along the way…

If you feel like reading this guide on your Kindle or iPad, I have you covered also. I’ve created an e-book out of it that you you can read anywhere you want. Get “The Quick Guide to Surrounding Yourself with Successful People” PDF!

1. The mistakes I made (that you can avoid)
2. How to build relationships with VIPs
3. Who you should be talking to at conferences (but you’re not)
4. How to find a mentor
5. How to get the most out of live meet ups
6. How to get the most out of online mastermind groups
7. How to reach out to people in online groups
8. How to get the most out of meeting awesome people in person
9. How to make a great first impression
10. How to write kick ass introductions
11. How to connect cool people in your city
12. How to run an online mastermind
13. How to get an accountability partner (and get the most out of it)
14. How to throw awesome parties and live meet ups
15. 3 systems that you can start using TODAY to start surrounding yourself with successful people
16. How to put this guide into action and prevent it from being just another thing you’ve read but never implemented

Let’s dive in!

As far as I can remember, I was always sitting alone at school. I was the guy that nobody wanted to sit next to. I was secretly happy when there were too few chairs in the classroom and someone was forced to sit next to me.

All of this began in primary school. You see, my parents had this brilliant idea of enrolling me into a school a few miles away from where I lived. This meant that all of my schoolmates lived next to the school and were able to hang out with each other every afternoon after school, and I was forced to go home.

So what did I do when I was at home? I played video games. I would spend hours and hours living in online worlds when all of my peers were playing basketball outside. I was super lonely, and I felt completely helpless.


Whenever I went out, I did something stupid like this… No wonder nobody ever wanted to hang out with me.
This trend continued in high school and even university. I was so used (and addicted) to playing video games and spending evenings alone that it was hard for me to talk to other people and build normal relationships.

I wondered what it would be like to be a popular person. How would it feel to be invited to all of the cool parties? How would it feel to actually get invited to birthday parties? I would’t know.

One summer afternoon in 2011, when all of my peers from the university were at the seaside and I was browsing the internet at home, I was so desperate that I actually opened google and wrote in “how to be more social”.

Among the sea of useless articles the likes of “10 tips for being more social”, I somehow managed to find a pure gem. I’ve found this article from Scott H Young that was very different from all of the other articles that I came upon. Scott had a very different approach to being social – instead of telling you what to say to impress your friends, he hinted that the people who have the best relationships are actually great listeners.


Reading this article from Scott H Young literally changed my life.
When I read that article, I thought to myself:

“Hmm, I could do that. I’m not that great at making jokes and telling stories, but listening, paying attention and asking a question here and there should be much more doable.”

I tested this out – the next time I spoke to people, I tried to shut up and be genuinely interested in what they had to say. Guess what? It worked.

My quality of 1-on-1 conversations immediately improved, and I realised that building relationships doesn’t depend purely on being an introvert or an extravert. It’s a skill that you can get better at.

“Building relationships is a skill that anyone can get better at”

Many of you who consider yourself introverted might think to yourself:

“Well, I disagree. I have this friend that is super extroverted and everyone loves talking to him – I can never be like him.”.

And you might even be right. you probably never will be able to be as good at building relationships and social skills as those with natural talent.

I want to stop you here for a second.

Let’s talk about swimming. How good of a swimmer are you? Are you as good as Michael Phelps?

No?

Why not? Because he has longer arms and legs? Because he trained swimming since he was a little kid? Probably.

But does that mean that you can never become a GOOD swimmer? Of course not. You can hire a swimming coach and drastically improve your skills.

And it’s the same with social skills and building relationships as well.


You don’t HAVE to win seven gold medals at olympics to get better at social skills.
Just because you can’t be the Michael Phelps of social skills doesn’t mean that you can’t improve your social skills and become the best that YOU can be at them.

In this post, I’ll show you exactly how I managed to improve my social skills and how you can do that too. I’ll also show you the mistakes that I’ve made and how you can avoid them, and in the end I will show you specific systems that will allow you to apply the knowledge from this article into your own life.

After I improved my 1-on-1 conversation skills, my social skills plateaued for almost two years.

In April of 2012, I started my 1-on-1 productivity coaching side-business, and the 1-on-1 conversation skills that I developed over time served me very well. Buy being a good a listener, I could really understand the problems of my clients and develop solutions to them together, which already paid huge dividends for reading just one article on becoming more social.

After a while, I realised that even though I was pretty good at talking to people 1on1, I didn’t quite manage to maintain my relationships. When I stopped working with a client, that was usually it and I would never hear back from them (or get in touch with them). I felt like I was still missing something.

In the beginning of 2013, I said to myself that 2013 would be the year when I would further improve my social skills and learn how to develop lasting relationships.

I started off by reading books – more specifically Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. They served as a great foundation for everything that I did from then on, and if you want to improve your social skills and relationships, I would definitely start there.

As I learned all of this new knowledge, I wanted to put it to practice as soon as possible, so I decided to start going to different events and see how it works in action.

As I did that, I failed many times.

I want to share with you some of the mistakes that I’ve made, so that you don’t need to repeat them.

Mistake #1 – I went to events just because “everyone else” seemed to go there, even if the topics didn’t interest me at all

When I met one of my university friends at lunch in early 2013, he told me about this new community that he has joined. It was supposed to be some kind of a “start up school”. I was very interested in the whole community and I was desperately hoping to connect with some people that would also be interested into business.

I went to a few of these events on various topics – cloud technology, creating mobile apps and other tech stuff.

Truth be told, I wasn’t a huge fan of these topics because I didn’t have a ton of knowledge in them. I might have learned something here and there, but none of it was really actionable and I often caught myself zoning out during the presentations.

Once, I even got invited to have a speech at one of the events. Of course I felt honoured, but in reality my time would have probably been spent much better in front of a crowd that was interested in the things I was interested in.


Speaking is fun, but it isn’t really rewarding if the crowd doesn’t have the same interests as you.
The other problem was that I wasn’t a huge fan of the start up approach in general. I never saw a point in finding investors and spending tons of money on ideas that might not even work. I already knew how to create an income with little to no monetary investment on my side and I wanted to mostly get better at that.

That’s why these events didn’t really bring me any lasting relationships. I put all of my energy to be genuinely interested into what the people were saying to me, but in the end I didn’t really know what to talk about, and I certainly didn’t enjoy these events.

Lesson learned:

Don’t go to “networking events” on random topics just because other people might find them interesting. Find events that you are genuinely interested in instead.

Mistake #2 – I tried to find people EXACTLY like me

Slovenia has a population of only 2,000,000 people.

It’s also a country that isn’t really big on starting your own business.

The people who do start a business in it (especially the young ones) usually want to create a start up.

So, how many 22-year old productivity coaches do you think there are in the whole country?

Probably not many. Yet, I was constantly looking for them. I wanted to find other needles in the haystack, with no success at all.

For this reason, I felt very frustrated – there were no people who were exactly like me that I could talk to in Slovenia, and that made me feel very lonely and depressed and almost stopped me from going to any events at all. I pretty much gave up and said to myself “Hey, I suppose I will never find like-minded people in Slovenia. I’ll just focus on the work instead”.

Within the next year or so, I realised that my thinking wasn’t the greatest. I realised that whereas it IS important to have common interests with the people that you meet (see mistake #1), it doesn’t mean that they need to be exactly the same people as you. In fact, by connecting with people from different industries you are growing your network much faster and you even get new insights and fresh points of view that you wouldn’t get if you were just stuck in your own industry.

The other problem with trying to connect only with the people who are in the same industry as you are is that you can never really grow your network. Why? Because these people will mostly run in the same circles and you will just end up meeting the same people over and over again.


Last summer, I grabbed dinner with two cross-fitters from US. It was awesome to get some fresh insights!
A lot of people that I connect with nowadays don’t have that many things in common with me. Maybe they read my blog. Maybe they’re a part of a mastermind group that I’m in. But they don’t necessarily need to be online entrepreneurs. They can be employees, students, freelancers or bloggers, it usually doesn’t matter that much. Because we have SOMETHING in common, we always have something to talk about and we rarely run out of things to say.

Lesson learned:

“Try to find people with similar interests, but don’t look only for people who are exactly the same as you. In fact, by meeting different people from different industries, you will get many more new ideas and get to know many other people as well.”

Mistake #3 – I focused on getting something from people instead of giving to them

In Autumn of 2011, I applied for an entrepreneurship conference in Budapest.

In order to get invited to the conference, I needed to write an application letter. As I wrote this letter, I thought it would be a really cool idea to make this letter REALLY good, and in order to do that, I decided to send the application letter to one of the bloggers that I was following at the time, Ramit Sethi.

So I wrote him an extensive e-mail where I asked him if he could look over the letter and hopefully give me some feedback on how to improve it. In exchange, he could then use that letter as a case study in case he ever wanted to show people how to get invited to similar conferences…

I never got a reply.

If I reflect on this today, it makes perfect sense. He probably never even opened the e-mail. I mean, if you were a super busy blogger that receives over 600 e-mails a day, would you ever really open an e-mail that says “business management motivational letter” from someone you’ve never heard of?

Probably not.

Lesson learned:

Instead of trying to get stuff from people who’ve never heard of you before, focus on building relationships and adding value to them instead.

Mistake #4 – I tried to connect with EVERYONE at conferences and failed to follow up

In July 2013, I went to my first conference. Ever. It was the “100k Summit” from Ramit Sethi in NYC.

I still remember the morning before the event started. I was driving in a cab from china town with a young Asian driver who I had to persuade to take me to the city centre. I didn’t know anyone at the event, and my legs were shaking because I was so nervous.

I was about to go to an event full of people who were earning a lot of money, some of them even 10 or 20 times as much as me. I had no idea how to talk to them. What to say to them. I didn’t see any way in how I could add value to them.

Truth be told, the event was awesome. It was one of the best experiences of my life. I’ve learned a lot, had lots of fun and met a ton of cool, like-minded people.


We went to the “Hack the met” tour with other consultants in NYC. I never thought you could have so much fun in a museum…
But what I didn’t really do is build relationships with the attendees of the event.

My plan was to talk to everyone and then eventually find some people I would want to follow up with. But you see, following up wasn’t as easy as I thought when I would come up at 5am from a Korean karaoke bar and the next day of the event started at 9am.

When I came home from the event, I was exhausted, jet-lagged and extremely unproductive. In the end, I didn’t follow up with any attendees of the event.

As I go to events now, I don’t try to meet everyone. Even if the event is just 20 or 30 people, it’s extremely hard to build great relationships with all of them.

So now, instead of trying to get to know and follow up and have meaningful conversations with everyone, I rather focus on just meeting a few people and making sure that those meetings turn into follow-up Skype calls later on.

Lesson learned:

Pick a few people and follow up. I mention specific scripts for how to do that later on in this guide.

Now let’s take a look at what DID work for me and the positive outcomes I got from them.

How to build relationships with VIPs

This conference in NYC wasn’t a complete failure though.

By going to a small event of just 23 people, I got to meet Ramit Sethi and his team in person, which was something that I’ve always wanted to do but never thought was possible.


Yes, Ramit totally copied my outfit at the event.
I didn’t want this opportunity to go to waste. So here’s what I did to add as much value to Ramit as possible and hopefully build a relationship with him.

1. I’ve sent a video testimonial to Ramit before the event

When I met Naveen Dittakavi (one of my mentors) in person in Munich, I asked him what I could do to add as much value to Ramit as possible. He told me that something that very few people do but is extremely valuable is recording video testimonials. So I did it. The night before I went to the event, I recorded a short video testimonial and e-mailed it to Ramit. He loved it and remembered me when we first met.

Here’s the process that I used to record the testimonial:

First, I wrote a script where I explained:

  • Who I was (Primoz from Slovenia)
  • The problems that I used to have (Used to work as a programmer in a boring job)
  • Why this was a difficult problem to deal with (Because I felt like I wasn’t making any meaningful difference in the world and I was earning very little money)
  • How Ramit’s product helped me solve the problem (He showed me how to start my own business on the side and eventually quit my job)
  • Specific results that I got using the product (going from $7/h to $165/h at the time)
  • How my life and business changed afterwards (I was able to work less, earn more money and travel more, including the trip to NYC to meet Ramit in person)

I’ve found this to be a great framework for a testimonial, and you can use it to record testimonials for the people you follow as well. Whether you use a script or bullet points doesn’t matter (just use whatever works better for you), but writing your ideas down certainly helps you articulate what you want to say.

Then, I recorded the video using my webcam and uploaded it on youtube via this link: https://www.youtube.com/my_webcam

It didn’t take me one just try to get this right. I wanted to make sure that the testimonial is as good as it can be, so I actually spent almost two hours and hundreds of tries to record a really great testimonial.


Here is the testimonial, in case you wanted to see it.
2. I prepared for the event. A LOT.

For three weeks before the event, I blocked off my afternoons and focused on identifying the weaknesses in my business and preparing questions for Ramit.

Here’s the exact process I used to prepare questions:

The core of my preparation was the CreativeLive seminar from Ramit.


CreativeLive seminar on Money & Business from Ramit
As I went through this seminar, I:

  1. Took notes: In a paper notebook, I noted down whatever I felt applied to me and my situation in business. I focused mostly on the actionable things that I could change.
  2. Thought about how these notes applied to me: Whenever I noted something down, I asked myself: “How can I leverage this? How does this apply to me? What can I do in my business to apply this insight?”
  3. Prepared questions: Whenever I wasn’t sure how exactly I could apply something to my business, I wrote it down as a question.
  4. Tried to answer the questions myself: I answered many questions for myself by asking questions like “What would Ramit do?” and googling around to find the answers.

With the questions that I still couldn’t manage to answer for myself, I used the following process which Naveen taught me to make sure that my questions were really good.

  • BE SPECIFIC: First, I wanted to make sure that my questions were very specific. Questions like “how do I get more testimonials” would just get vague answers. Instead, I focused on being much more specific and pinpointing the parts of the processes that I don’t understand. For example, I would ask something like: “What is the exact script that you would use for asking for a testimonial?”, “What is a good timing to ask for a testimonial on a 6-month project?”, “Would you ask for a testimonial via email, at the end of a client call or schedule a separate call just for that?”
  • VISUALISE: Then, I visualised what the answer to my question would be. I imagine standing in front of Ramit at the conference and asking him the question, and then listening to his response. If my question could be answered with another question, like “what do you mean by that?”, I went and made the question even more specific or added more detail (see below).
  • RESEARCH: To avoid the “obvious” answers and get really personalised answers, I wrote down what I already tried, what worked and what didn’t. I wanted to show that I’ve done my research beforehand and tried the solutions that I could find on the internet before asking the questions.
  • OFFER SOLUTIONS: Whenever I already had some ideas what to do but wasn’t sure which solution to go with, I would write down three solutions, choose the one that I felt is best and explained why. (“I’d like to get your thoughts on X. I’m thinking about doing X, Y or Z. I think Z is better because… [insert reason], but I’d love to hear what you think.


I use a notebook like this to take my notes and write down questions.
Let’s take a look at what a good question would look like:

“Hey Ramit, I’ve really been struggling with raising my rates with existing clients. More specifically, I’m not sure at what time I should raise my rates.

Here’s what I managed to come up with:

  • I can raise my rates after we finish the first project that we do together
  • I can raise my rates after the client gets some really good results
  • I can raise my rates after a fixed time frame like 3 months

I feel like raising my rates after the client gets some really good results seems best because they will be compensating me for the value that I bring to them and they will be happy to pay me more as I just made them a ton of money. What do you think?”

This is how I used the guidelines to form this question:

  • BE SPECIFIC: I didn’t just ask about “how to raise my rates”. I asked about WHEN is a good time to raise my rates with an existing client. There are other things that I could ask, like “What should I say when I try to raise my rates with an existing client?” or “for how much should I raise my rates”.
  • VISUALISE: You can notice that there’s a huge difference with raising rates with new and existing clients. If I didn’t specify what I’m looking for, I would almost definitely get back the question “are you trying to raise rates with existing or new clients?”.
  • RESEARCH: By preparing the three solutions, I already show that I’ve done my research and make life easier for Ramit to answer my question (it’s easier for him to just say “you should do X because…” than to explain all of the possible solutions to me).
  • OFFER SOLUTIONS: By choosing a solution on my own and explaining my thought process behind the choice, I again show that I’ve actually thought about this problem on my own, and I also show Ramit my thought process (in which he might find some holes that I can fix).

Once I’ve written down my questions, I decided to implement a system that will help me keep the questions at hand and keep them neatly organised.

I decided to go with another system that Naveen used in the past:

  1. I bought about a hundred small notecards, in about 10 different colours total. Each of the colours would be for a different topic or a different speaker (there were a few guest speakers that I wanted to ask some questions).
  2. I wrote down the questions that I had onto the notecards on the flight to US. I left about half of the notecards empty so I could write down additional questions during the event. In the end, I split the notecards into two different envelopes – one with the questions that have already been answered and one with questions that I still had to ask.
  3. During the event, I would simply walk around with my questions in the pocket and I could have the questions ready to be asked within seconds. After I got the question answered, I would write down the answer to the back of the card.


Notecards are cheap, simple and effective.
This system worked great for me because:

  • I didn’t have to rely on my memory to remember the questions
  • I could easily categorise my questions with colour coding
  • It showed that I was well prepared for the event
  • It helped me prepare questions that were really good because I could see them in front of me, on a piece of paper and they weren’t just random words put together in my head
  • It made it easy for me to write down the responses to different questions

To this day, I still use the same system when I attend conferences and events.

3. I put Ramit’s advice into action even before the event.

A few weeks before the event, Ramit instructed all of the attendees to track in which parts of the business (sales, creating content, client calls, prospecting…) they spend their time for a week. I’m not sure how many attendees actually did this, but I took this advice to heart and went beyond the task.

Not only did I track my time. I later analysed it, created spreadsheets and charts around it, wrote down my insights and printed out the whole report and brought it to the event. This helped me understand where my business was at the moment and which questions to ask, and it also made a good impression on Ramit.


Click here to see the document I put together for the event.
4. I took massive action

When I came home from the event, I was completely burned out. 16 hours of travel time, a 6-hour difference in time zones and 5 days of conferences, hanging out and partying and very little sleep left close to no time to really recover. After I came home, I slept for about 17 of the next 24 hours.

After I found some time for my family, friends and my girlfriend, I was back on track. The first thing that I did once I came home is that I took some time to deeply think and reflect on what I’ve learned in over the last few days. Then, I made an action plan and started creating systems for implementation.

I knew that I was easily going to implement the things that I was excited and comfortable with doing, like group programs and seminars. But on the other hand, I knew that there were a few things that I didn’t really feel ready to do, like:

  • Hiring an assistant
  • Raising my rates
  • Asking for referrals
  • Asking for testimonials

I knew that I was going to struggle with those things, so I mapped out what was stopping me from completing those things.

For each of the things I wasn’t comfortable with, I asked myself what’s stopping me from implementation and I wrote down the specific barriers.

For example, I knew I would struggle with hiring an assistant because:

  • I was afraid to not have consistent cash flow in the future and would have to let her go
  • I didn’t know which tasks to give to an assistant
  • I didn’t want to spend hours looking for assistants

Then, I systematically demolished each of those barriers. I would ask other consultants from the event which tasks they used their assistants for, how they managed to find quality assistants and how they made sure they would have enough money to have an assistant.

2 months later, I had my first assistant. I also managed to double my rates, got more testimonials in a week than before in a year, and more.

Interestingly enough, my business grew the most from implementing these changes – the ones I wasn’t comfortable with.

5. I “closed the loop” with Ramit

One month after the 100k Summit in NYC, I was in the US again. I was in Marriott hotel in Stamford, CT and I was attending another conference that Ramit organised – this one was called Behaviorcon.

Behaviorcon was a slightly bigger conference, there were 13 speakers and about 200 attendees. I used the same techniques for preparation and notecards and asking questions, although I only spent a day or two preparing for each speaker.

I actually didn’t speak to Ramit much though. I knew he was busy with organising the event and I spent most of the time getting to know other speakers.

On the last day of the conference, Ramit came to me and asked me about the results that I got since the 100k Summit. I casually said that I managed to double my revenue, and this was his reaction:

“Wow, stop right there. I need to get this on video! Let’s go outside.”

So we went outside of the main room, he pulled out his iPhone and we recorded a short video testimonial right there on the spot.


You can find the testimonial that we recorded here.
What did I do here? Well, Ramit always talks about the concept of closing the loop – implementing other peoples’ advice and letting them know about the results that you get. So I decided to use this concept on him.

The opportunities that opened up to me after the 100k Summit

All of the things mentioned above added a ton of value to Ramit:

  • He knew that I was well prepared for the event, so he was happy to answer my questions
  • Out of the testimonials and results that I shared with him, he could create case studies and sell more of his courses in the future

This wasn’t just valuable for him though – by preparing well, taking massive action and closing the loop, I showed Ramit that I would implement anything that he throws at me – and that separated me from many other people.

Because of this, he invited me to join the beta testing of a program that he was developing – Zero to Launch (I wrote a detailed review of my experiences with that program).


I can’t describe how awesome it feels to be able to test a high end product before anyone else has seen it… It almost feels unfair.
This program allowed me to transition from having a consulting business to creating online products and finally making money in my sleep. It also gave me the opportunity to get my questions about building an online business answered directly by Ramit.

On top of that, I also got invited to attend a talk from Ramit at Google in San Francisco and grab lunch with him and some of his other top-performing students in San Francisco.

When I joined his beta testing program, I used the same concepts as I outlined before to take massive action and keep getting cool results. And because I got cool great results, Ramit flew me to San Francisco, recorded a case study for his Zero to Launch program and featured me on his blog and his e-mails. This allowed me to gain credibility and made it easier for me for reach out to other influencers in my field, and it also doubled my email list in the process.

There are tons of opportunities that open up if you follow the advice from people and then let let them know about the results that you get (“close the loop”).

ACTION STEPS: How to build relationships with VIPs

Let’s take a look at what you can do to start connecting with VIPs yourself.

If you’re going to a conference soon…

  1. Take a look at the list of speakers / attendees and identify the ones you’re particularly interested in meeting
  2. Find out all that you can about them. Read their blog posts if they have a blog. Read their book if they wrote one. Check out their interests and accomplishments on their Facebook and LinkedIn profiles.
  3. Prepare great questions for them. You can use the system outlined above for how to do that.
  4. Write down the answers that they give you and implement their advice.
  5. After you see some positive results from their advice, send them the specific results that you got.
  6. Once they see that you’re taking action and implementing their advice, you can start e-mailing them some good questions that you can’t solve on your own.
  7. You can go to the next level and record + send them a video testimonial if you get some really crazy results.

Just by repeating the process above, you will soon be able to meet relationships with these people and many new opportunities will likely open op for you.

If you’ve bought some online products or read some books…

You can use a very similar system to the one above to build relationships with people, even if you’ve never met them in person before.

  1. Send the author an e-mail with some specific insights that you implemented and send them the specific results that you got.
  2. Repeat the first step over time. You might not get a reply immediately. But you will get on their radar and opportunities will open up over time (if they are beta-testing a new product, who do you think they will invite? that’s right, the action takers who let them know about their results).
  3. After a while, try sending them a short question in case you’re stuck on something that they can help you with. Remember to use the framework for developing good questions that I write about above!
  4. Implement their advice and let them know about the results that you get.
  5. Again, if you get some really cool results, record and send them a video testimonial!.

I use the process above to keep in touch with Derek Halpern from Social Triggers. Note that I don’t want or need anything from Derek. I just think he’s a cool guy and I love to let him know about the results that I get from implementing his advice.


Here’s an example of an e-mail I’ve sent to Derek recently.
If you want to take it to the next level…

If you want to take it to the next level, try finding new, creative ways of adding value to them. If a blogger is visiting your city, offer to take him out for lunch or send him a list of cool places and restaurants he can visit. Write a review for one of their products and post it online.


You can read this amazing article from Selena Soo to find more creative ways of getting the attention of your favourite expert.

Who you should be talking to at conferences (but you’re not)

When I was at the 100k Summit, I also got to know Ramit’s team in person. I got to meet his cameramen, his assistant and a few of his product developers. As I was having lunch with one of his product developers, I asked him what he would do to get the most out of the event if he were me.

He said:

“Well, I would look at what everyone is doing and try to do exact opposite. You see, all of the attendees are trying to connect with each other, but there’s nobody really trying to talk to the members or Ramit’s team.”

It made sense – I would be able to build relationships with the attendees at a later time anyway through the online community, whereas I might not be able to talk with Ramit’s team as easily.

I really took this advice to heart. For the remaining of the event, I strived to build the relationships with the people on Ramit’s team. I grabbed lunch with his camera crew. I talked with his product developers during the breaks. I tried to connect with his assistant when she had the time to talk.


Drinking juice with one of Ramit’s copywriters… Yeah, that was fun!
I will be honest – most of those conversations didn’t really lead into anything, at least not immediately.

But it was all worth it because of one gem. I stayed in touch with one of his product developers. I kept him up to date with my progress from the 100k Summit. I let him know about any big wins that I got by using Ramit’s courses. I also started asking him what he would do in certain situations that I wasn’t sure how to handle.

And guess what – his advice was pure gold. He really took the time to write me detailed responses and gave me ideas on how to grow my business. I implemented the ideas and got back to him with the results that I got. In a way, it felt like having access to a mini-Ramit, and these conversations gave me insights that I could hardly reach on my own.

There are a lot of gems like this out there, you just need to be on the look for them.

ACTION STEPS: Who you should be talking to at conferences (but you’re not)

Whenever you go to a conference, make sure you also get to know the people behind the scenes. While the speakers will be swamped with questions, the camera crew, assistants and product developers will probably sit alone and do random things on their laptops. Approach them and start a conversation. Ask about what brought them to the event.

These people won’t be bothered by you. They will love you because you will be the one person who’s actually paying attention to them. Use this to your advantage, build relationships with them and follow up!

How to find a mentor

In April of 2013 (a few months before the 100k Summit), I joined Ramit’s mastermind group called “Ramit’s Brain Trust”.

It was an online community of top-performers (mostly freelancers / consultants and employees who wanted to get the top jobs in the world).

I still remember my first post on the Facebook page of a community. Actually, let me bring that up for fun:


My first ever post in an online Facebook community…
It was a terrible, vague post and that guy Naveen Dittakavi linked me to some feedback on how to improve it. I never did. I clicked on the link that he gave me, saw a lot of resources that I wanted to go through at “some time in the future”, but never really visited again.

As I was overwhelmed by this, I procrastinated posting again. I actually didn’t post in the community again for two months.

As I wasn’t active in the community and was mostly just consuming content, I didn’t get the results that I wanted. I actually sent an e-mail to unsubscribe from the program. Fortunately, Ramit’s support team sent me an e-mail whether I’m completely sure that I wanted to unsubscribe, and I wasn’t 100% sure so I even procrastinated sending that e-mail back.

As this was going on, I noticed that the guy that commented on my post, Naveen Dittakavi, was visiting Munich, Germany and that he organised a meet-up there.

Munich was just 4 hours away by car from Slovenia, and I knew that this was one of the rare opportunities that I could take to meet a successful consultant from the US.

I was on the edge of whether I should go to that meet up or not. I almost cancelled my RSVP, but in the end I manned up and went there anyway.

We met for lunch on a Sunday afternoon. There was Naveen, his fiancee, a friend of mine and another member of Ramit’s Brain Trust.


Meeting Naveen in Munich for the first time
At first, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from that lunch conversation. I’ve never met most of these people before, and I wasn’t very talkative in groups of people.

But for some reason, this time it was different. With Naveen, we talked about things like raising your rates and finding more clients. And copywriting. I even asked him for advice on how to prepare best for the 100k Summit that was coming up in a month or so and about the productivity techniques that he uses to get a ton of work done.

I was finally able to talk to someone about all of the things that I kept inside of me before-hand, and it was awesome.

When I came home, I was eager to implement the advice and see how it worked in action.

As you can see, I used his systems for asking good questions and going through CreativeLive videos in my preparation for the 100k Summit that I described in the previous chapter, and I also joined the copywriting course that he recommended to me – Copyhour.

I then shot him an e-mail with what I’ve implemented so far and how I benefitted from his advice.


Here’s one of the many e-mails I’ve sent to Naveen to close the loop with him.
He was very excited that I implemented his advice and he said he enjoyed meeting me in Munich and that we should set up some calls over Skype to chat more in the future.

As it turned out, we started chatting on Skype every few weeks or so and kept the calls going for a long time. I asked questions, noted down the answers, took massive action and let him know what worked and what didn’t in our next call.

From these conversations, I gained a ton of knowledge and I managed to get un-stuck many times in my business. But most of all, I appreciated that I had a mentor who was really good at what he does. This gave me the confidence that I needed to grow my own business, because I knew that if I messed something up (which I did of course), I could reach out for help and get solutions to my problems.

Of course I also did whatever I could to add value to Naveen – I started sharing the insights that I got from our calls in blog posts like this one, I started posting in the Ramit’s Brain Trust Facebook group and sharing the insights and results there as well.

I was no longer alone in the business world and this was just the first of the relationships that got me to where I am today.

ACTION STEPS: How to find a mentor

Finding a mentor of your own really isn’t that different than getting in touch with VIPs. It’s all about taking advice, implementing and following up. That’s what will separate from all of the other people who desperately want to find mentors. You don’t find mentors. Mentors find you after they see that you are a person who likes to take action and not another guy that would waste their time.

Another mistake that people make when looking for mentors is that they want to find the best people in the field. While that sure sounds like a good strategy at first, let’s think about it a bit more. Let’s say you’re just starting your own business. Will you really benefit the most by going to lunch with Bill Gates? Probably not, and he probably doesn’t have the time to mentor you. Instead, you should focus on being mentored by people that are 1 or 2 levels above you in the skill you’re trying to improve. They can give you all the advice that you need to get on the next level and they’ll be happy to help you out.

To find a mentor of your own:

  1. Find three people that you would like to be mentored by. Pick three people that are one or two levels above you (this can mean in business, playing tennis, nutrition, communication… don’t limit yourself).
  2. Look for advice from these people. Read their blog posts, books, etc.
  3. Implement the advice
  4. Close the loop with them
  5. After you do this for a while, you can start sending them some specific questions and perhaps even ask them for a short Skype call / lunch.
  6. When you do get to talk to your mentor, don’t waste their time by being unprepared. Prepare good questions (you can use the system from chapter on connecting with VIPs) and they’ll be happy to keep the relationship going.

As long as you take massive action and implement everything that people throw at you, you won’t have a problem with finding mentors. Right now, I probably have more than 10 mentors – some of them are amazing at creating online products, others are great at consulting while some of them are good at completely different things like nutrition or communication. I strive to learn, implement and close the loop, and I know that success will come to me.

How to get the most out of live meet ups

After my meeting Naveen, I thought to myself that there must be other people in that online community that are just as amazing as he is.

When I actually made it to the 100k Summit, I made sure to also organise a live meet up with other members of the Ramit’s Brain Trust group. I created an event within the Facebook group and invited all of the members from the NYC area to it.


The first live meet up I ever organised
When I arrived at the event venue, a small bar in manhattan, I was super nervous. I haven’t met any of these people before, and none of the 100k Summit attendees were coming to the event either. I was about 15 minutes early, so I waited outside of the bar while reading a book on the phone. Eventually one of the guests of the bar recognised me and pulled me inside, saying that a few people already came early and that I should join them inside.

I ordered an Arnold Palmer and Buffalo Chicken Wings and slowly started to get to know the people in the group. There was only about 8 of us there, and we mostly talked about the differences between the men and women when applying for a job. I can’t say that I got to know many of the people out there deeply, but there was one guy that I really did want to meet – his name was Frank.

Frank was super passionate about productivity and systems, and I knew that there was a ton I could talk about with him, although unfortunately there just wasn’t enough time to do it at the meet up as I had to leave to the airport. I did ask for his Facebook name and followed up with him later though.


The follow up chat from Frank and I after meeting in person.
After a week or so, we got together for a Skype call and we talked about a lot of nerdy productivity stuff – it was awesome! Now I really felt like there was someone who I could talk to about systems, top performance, staying productive and different tools that would help me automate some of my tasks and save me tons of time. By the way, Frank just recently started an awesome new blog on this subject and you can find it here. Because we both enjoyed talking to each other we decided to schedule another call in two weeks. And another one after that.

Eventually, we simply scheduled a recurring biweekly meeting and kept in touch. Within the next year, I managed to develop a relationship with Frank – when I visited NYC next time I stayed at his place. I’ve recorded a master class together for one of my online courses that you can get access to if you sign up to my email list. And in a few weeks, he’s coming to Slovenia with his girlfriend and I’ll be happy to show him around.


Frank is awesome at building relationships. A few months ago I received this awesome gift from him and it made my day – small gestures can go a really long way.
Seeing how easy it was to start a new relationship, I made it a point that whenever I attended a meet up from the Ramit’s Brain Trust group, I connected with 2-3 people and started a relationship with them.

As you can see, this is a lot different than what I did before – instead of trying to meet everyone up front, I only chose 2-3 people to connect with. How did I find these people? Well, one of the ways was to check out who RSVPed for the event. I went through the Facebook and LinkedIn profile of each attendee, selected the ones that I was particularly interested in meeting and found some basic information about them as conversation starters.

Another way was by getting introduced to other people. As I attended more and more meet ups, I also became more known in the online group community. Soon I would get to know the hosts of the events, and eventually the hosts and the people I knew started introducing me to other people: “Oh Primoz, you should totally meet John. John is struggling with keeping up with his work and I’m sure you could give him some tips on that.”

Whenever I had a longer conversation with someone and I knew I wanted to talk to him more in the future, I didn’t just say “Oh this was cool, let’s talk again sometime.” Why? Because what actually happens when you say that is nothing. You usually forget to follow up with the person and you maybe speak with them again in a few years if you happen to meet by chance.

Instead, I would look at my calendar and schedule a Skype call on a specific time and day right there on the spot and sent the other person the invitation to the event. If possible, I also added the other person on Skype right away. That turned out to be much easier than going back and forth and exchanging e-mails because it’s generally much easier to schedule something while talking to someone than via email.

ACTION STEPS: How to get the most out of live meet ups

Whenever you attend a live meet up, you can use the following the framework to maximise it’s value.

  1. Before the meet up, go through the list of people who RSVP-ed for the event
  2. Select 2-3 people that you would specifically like to meet and research them through Google, Facebook and LinkedIn
  3. Write down some notes on each of those people that you can quickly look at before or during the event – these will serve as your icebreakers and talking points.
  4. During the event, don’t try to connect with everyone. Focus on really getting to know a few people instead.
  5. Set up the next action with the people you meet before you leave the event. Schedule a Skype call or a coffee meeting on a specific date/time/place for best results.
  6. BONUS: If you already know a lot of people at the event, you can focus on introducing them to each other – it’s an awesome value add for the people you introduce.
  7. After the event, within the next 12 hours, send these people a follow-up e-mail and tell them how much you appreciated meeting them, as well as what you’ve learned from them (very few people do this, so you will stand out in a positive way).

How to get the most out of online mastermind groups

Even though I attended a few meet ups in the US, I was still living in Slovenia most of the time. And unfortunately there are no other members of the Ramit’s Brain Trust group.

I had to do something else. I needed to find a way to build more relationships, even if I didn’t meet the people in person yet. To do this, I decided to become more active in the Facebook group. But as my first experiences with it weren’t exactly great, I needed to do something differently.

To prevent another disastrous post that would get no responses, I started to look closely at what other people were doing differently to get different results. More specifically, I looked at the top performing posts in the community, the ones with hundreds of likes and comments.

What I found out was that the top posts usually fell into one of the three categories:

#1 – Successes and big wins from implementing the advice from Ramit

This is probably the biggest thing that gets people recognised within the community. The community after all is based around the people who bought Ramit’s products or services, and by taking action and getting incredible results, you are adding a ton of value to Ramit (because he can use this as a story or a testimonial for one of his new products), and they would also inspire other people within the group to try and get similar results. By doing this, other people will also recognise you in the group, start approaching you at meet ups and reaching out to you.


How I shared one of my big wins. I usually write far longer and more specific posts, but they are too long to fit in here.
#2 – Insights from conversations with other members of the Ramit’s Brain Trust group and closing the loop with them

Another category of posts that were very popular were posts with insights from conversations with other top members of the community. Let’s say I had a conversation with Naveen, the community manager and wrote down the insights from it in a post within the group. Even if the members of the group didn’t know me, they are very likely to read a post where Naveen is mentioned because they knew him and that the advice that Naveen would give would very likely be valuable to them as well. This way of posting also adds value to Naveen because it allows him to share his knowledge with more than one person without having to write a lot of posts himself.


Here’s a part of one of my posts where I wrote about how my accountability partner helped me live my dream life.
#3 – Well thought of questions on specific topics in personal development

The last category are well thought out questions. Bad questions like “can you please give me feedback on my blog?” would usually not get any publicity. However, very detailed questions (like ones that I wrote using the framework I described in the previous chapters) would usually get a lot of very detailed and very useful responses that can be amazing learning experiences for the whole community.


In one of my posts, I asked for help with re-building my old relationships. I got tons of amazing advice out of it!
If you decide to post a question and get some really good advice, I strongly recommend you to implement it and then close the loop with the person that gave you advice. You can do this by commenting on the original post once you get some new results and tagging the people that helped you out the most in your comment, or by reaching out to these people personally via Facebook messages or email and letting them know about the results that you got from their advice.


After I implemented the advice, I went back and closed the loop with the people who’ve helped me.
Closing the loop like this is also a great way to start (and maintain) relationships with other people in the communities because they will love to keep giving you advice and see you grow.

How to structure your posts in mastermind groups

From a structural point of view, the best performing posts were the ones that were based on very detailed stories. If someone just wrote “I just got a $20,000 raise!” without sharing any extra details, he would usually get a few responses with “can you tell us more?” and “congratulations!”, but that’s about it. He would soon be forgotten in the community.

On the other hand, if he took the time to write a story about the struggles he was having, the specific advice that he used to overcome the struggles and the results that he got, that would be a whole new thing. Other members of the community would remember him for his memorable story. Some members might benefit from his advice and would thank him for it. Others might want to get in touch with him to get advice on their own, similar issues.


I love using stories to engage people in my posts. Here I wrote about how I turned my friends into top performers.
Since I started using personal stories in my posts (and also blog posts and guides like this one), I have been getting much better results because people could get to know me more as a person. Being vulnerable, transparent and open (by sharing your weaknesses and failures) also tends to give you new opportunities to get advice on how to improve in those areas, and in a way draws in the readers even more.

Think about it, even this guide is made out of many stories, and you’re still reading it. It seems like this works pretty cool, right?

ACTION STEPS: How to get the most out of online mastermind groups

If you’re already a part of an online mastermind group but aren’t satisfied with the response that you get to your posts, try this:

  1. Brainstorm 10 different ideas for what you could post in the group (keep in mind the 3 categories of successful posts: big wins, insights from other members and good questions)
  2. Pick the one idea that you feel the most excited to share with the group
  3. Use stories in combination with specific results/questions to write a kick-ass post

How to reach out to people in online groups

The biggest value by far that I got from online communities is connecting with people 1on1. Yes, being active and posting in the groups is great. But I have found that live 1on1 conversations with people can be 10 or even 100 times as valuable as just replying to Facebook posts or exchanging some Facebook messages and emails.

One thing that I’ve seen so many people do online is say something like “Oh, we should really connect” or “We should talk about that subject sometime”. “We should really connect”? What does that even mean? That you will add me as a Facebook friend and never write to me or actually get in touch with me? Awesome. “We should talk sometime?” We already know what that means. Most likely we will never chat.

Don’t do this, you’re wasting your time. There is another, better way of connecting with people.

Instead of being vague, I like to reach out to people via Facebook and send them short but super specific and actionable messages that include:

  • Proof that I’ve done some homework (I usually say that I really liked a specific part of a post that the person posted on Facebook)
  • Specify exactly what I want as a result of the message (“let’s get on a 30-minute Skype call” is much better than “let’s connect”)
  • Make life easy for the recipient (I write down a few specific times and dates that work for me and attach my Skype name/google hangouts email. I also send them a google calendar invite to the event once they reply with a time that works for them)

So who do I reach out to? I usually reach out to people that could help me in some way / I could help them. For example:

  • If I’m struggling with writing good blog posts and someone gives me some really great advice, I will likely schedule a Skype call with them to let them know about the results that I got by implementing their advice and ask them some additional questions
  • If I find someone who is doing something similar than what I’m doing but has some unique approaches (let’s say he also has an online blog), I would try to get on a call to exchange ideas about creating content, promoting your content, etc.
  • If I see someone struggling with a specific issue that I’ve solved for myself in the past, I would reach out to them and offer to get on a call with them to understand their issue as best as possible and help them develop solutions

I want to show you a perfect example of how this is done in action. Here’s an e-mail that a reader of mine, Thomas, sent me a few months ago.


I really loved this e-mail from Thomas. Of course I said yes!
In this e-mail, Thomas did everything right. He let me know how he found out about me and established rapport by saying that he’s a member of Ramit’s Brain Trust as well. He told me a little bit about who he is and why I should meet him, and he added value to me by offering to exchange some blogging ideas. Then, he made my life easy by giving me a few times that work for him and writing his Skype name in the e-mail.

Since I got the e-mail, Thomas and I have become good friends. In fact, I’ve just had a Skype call with him to check just a few hours ago!

Another thing that I like to do is to connect with the top 1% of the people in the community (the most active ones and the ones with the best posts). This usually opens a lot of doors because these people tend to know a lot of other people that they can introduce me to, and of course I try to add as much value to them as possible as well by implementing their advice and introducing them to other awesome people.

You can see that I’m striving to add value in all of this situations. When someone gives me advice, I add value by applying the advice and closing the loop. When I exchange information with someone, we both get value from that (and usually implement each other’s ideas to add even more value to each other). When I give advice to someone, that’s automatically adding value.

After the initial call, I also try to keep these relationships going by checking in on a recurring basis. This might mean scheduling by-weekly Skype calls or just shooting an e-mail every few months or so to update someone on my progress or get an update from them.


Checking in doesn’t have to be complicated. This is an e-mail I got from Ramit a few weeks ago.
There’s another rule that help me a lot when trying to reach out to people:

The 3-second rule

If it takes me more than 3 seconds to start writing the message to person, I start overthinking. I say I’ll do it later. I find excuses not to reach out. I forget. Now, whenever I see the opportunity, I reach out to the person immediately. It usually takes about 2 minutes to write the message, so there’s no excuse that there is no time.

Paid or Free mastermind groups – which ones should you join?

Now you might be asking yourself: Where do you find communities of successful people that you can connect with? Should they be free to access or paid?

From my personal experience, paid access groups work better than free ones because there are usually less trolls and more people who actually take action and strive to improve themselves because they have already invested some money into something, which separates them from the masses of people looking for consuming tons of free advice on the internet.

The paid communities are usually:

  • Subscription based communities, like Ramit’s Brain Trust
  • Communities that you can join by buying one of the products (these tend to be more focused on a specific subject).

I am personally a part of a few communities from Ramit (RBT, Zero to launch community and the 6 figure consultants community), and all of them have proven to be incredibly valuable. I’ve also heard great things about the communities based around Marie Forleo’s B-school and Derek Halpern’s Blog that Converts.

On the other hand, I have personally created a few small groups of people myself that work really well. If you actually know the people within your free mastermind group personally, the small groups can work just as good as paid ones.

ACTION STEPS: How to reach out to people in online groups

Here’s what you can do to start building relationships right away:

  1. Go through the posts in the online group and find ONE person that you want to connect with: Someone who gave you advice in the past, someone who is doing something similar that you’re doing or someone who is good at something you struggle with.
  2. Add them on Facebook or find their e-mail address and send them a message using the script that I wrote below

You can use the following script to reach out to other people:

“Hi NAME,

I’m writing to you because… [insert reason for writing this email]

[in one sentence, say something interesting/relevant about yourself]

[write why they should talk to you / what’s in it for them]

What you be up for a call via Skype (my skype name is [insert skype name]), and I’m free at the following times:

[insert 3 times that work for you]

Best regards,

[YOUR NAME]”

How to get the most out of meeting awesome people in person

In November 2013, I was just coming back from celebrating my birthday in Budapest. When I came home, super tired from the long drive in the night, there was an email waiting for me from Ramit. It said “Come hang out in SF Nov 22nd”. I had no idea what that was about, so I opened the email. This is what it said:


Is this the best birthday present or what?
It turned out that Ramit was giving a speech at Google in San Francisco and he had a few spare invitations for the event. As he liked how active I was in Ramit’s Brain Trust and some of his other online communities, he decided to invite me there. He said that he would also like to grab lunch with me and a few more of his top students.

This was awesome. I would go to Google for the first time, grab lunch with Ramit and meet some other awesome people. I was so excited that I called my girlfriend in the middle of the night and give her the news. Then, I quickly booked the plane tickets and the hotel, and in a week I would be in San Francisco.


Grabbing lunch with Ramit was awesome!
I wanted this to be more than just a nice trip though. I wanted to make sure that I build relationships with other Ramit’s students, and I had to figure out a way to make a good impression.

As it turned out, I have just recently bought myself a GoPro camera, a super portable camera that I planned on using for recording cool experiences in my life. But since the camera had a high quality video and sound recording as well, I started thinking about what else I could do with it.

On the first day of my stay in San Francisco, I had a meeting scheduled with one of the attendees from the 100k Summit in summer, Richard. He happened to be in town at the moment and we decided to grab coffee together. During the coffee, we talked a little bit about productivity and top performance, and I thought that Richard had some really cool routines that a lot of my readers could benefit from. I asked him if he wanted to share those ideas with more people, and he was in.

We went to my hotel room in the Hilton hotel where we set up a mini recording studio, put my camera on top of a suitcase and recorded a short interview. I had a really good feeling about the interview, and suddenly I had the idea to do more interviews like this. Suddenly, it all made sense. I could interview the other members of the Ramit’s Brain Trust group and get their insights on how they manage to stay productive and get a lot of work done.


Our improvised hotel room studio
Over the next few days, we recorded 13 interviews. Everyone who I asked to interview was happy to do it, and it seemed like they had a great time.

Then, I took those interviews, uploaded some of them on youtube and shared them with the Ramit’s Brain Trust community, as well as my blog.

Doing the interviews helped me create content for my readers but it also added a lot of value to the people I interviewed (it made them feel important, it positioned them as experts and it allowed them to share knowledge with other people), as well as the other people in the Ramit’s Brain Trust group.


I shared the interviews in Ramit’s Brain Trust group
Overall, this was a huge success and it allowed me to start building relationships with the people I interviewed, as well as allowed me to get to know them better. With some of them, I started doing recurring calls. With others, I just checked in every so often or sent an introduction or two their way.

And with some of them, I decided to take it to the next level. I asked them to be interviewed for the master classes of my online course, and we recorded some really good videos that I probably wouldn’t have managed to create on my own.

ACTION STEPS: How to get the most out of meeting awesome people in person

What I try to do when I meet awesome people in person is two things:

  • Be unique
  • Connect with them on a personal level

You should always strive to do something that others wouldn’t do that will make people remember you and stand out from the crowd. That can mean recording interviews, bringing them personalised gifts, writing a blog post about the insights that you got from meeting them or another unique way of adding value.

Right now, take a pen and paper and brainstorm 10 different ways in which you can be unique and stand out from the crowd next time you go out and meet people in person.

I also try to connect with people on a personal level. I don’t just want to be a person who talks about business all the time. I want to find out about their family, their hobbies and their passions, and see if I can find some talking points for the future so I can stay in touch after meeting them.

Other than that, use the systems from the previous chapters. Do your research. Follow up. Set up a follow up meeting right there on the spot.

How to make a great first impression

From October to December of 2013, I took part in beta testing of Ramit’s upcoming product called Zero to Launch. The product was supposed to help me move from consulting to creating my first online product.

As I managed to get some nice results using the course, Ramit featured me as a case study on his blog. And as a part of his product launch, his team asked me to go on a podcast with Navid Moazzez.


The podcast that I did with Navid Moazzez
I’ve never heard of Navid before, but after taking a quick look at his podcast and his blog posts, I could already see that he’s a really cool guy that I would love to connect with. The interview was done on a very short notice, but I still took some time to go through some of his most popular blog posts and make a good impression. This is the e-mail I’ve sent him:


A part of the e-mail that I’ve sent to Navid (click the image to see a bigger picture)
After we recorded the podcast, we saw that we had a ton in common and that we should talk more often, so we immediately scheduled a Skype call two weeks in advance, and over time this turned into a recurring call.

Many opportunities came out of this: we introduced each other to other amazing people, we gave each other advice on growing our blogs, and we keep sharing each other’s blog posts to add value to each other’s readers and expand each other’s reach. I know that if I ever want to write a guest post or get on a podcast, Navid will be able to connect me with someone cool people.

Navid has also done a really great podcast on “The power of networking the right way” with John Corcoran, and you should check it out at his blog.

ACTION STEPS: How to make a great first impression

If you want to make a good first impression on someone who you got introduced to, here’s what you can do:

  1. Do your research and try to find some advice that they’ve given in the past (reading a book/blog/online community posts or listening to a podcast if they have one works great)
  2. Tell them about some specific articles/chapters of the book that you enjoyed, along with the specific insights that you liked
  3. Try to make their lives as easy as possible: If you’re contacting a blogger or a podcaster, write down a list of ideas that you can share with their audience (I do this with all podcasts that I get on and people LOVE it)
  4. Take initiative and schedule a time for a call, like Thomas did in his e-mail to me above

This framework works every time. If the person doesn’t share any advice online, then try to connect in a different way by talking about common interests like Thomas did in his first e-mail to me.

How to write kick ass introductions

One of the things that I love doing now that I know a lot of cool people is introducing them to each other. I usually do this in one of the two ways:

#1 – direct e-mail introduction

When I see that two people would benefit from each other, I send them a short e-mail intro and tell them that they should connect. I try to mention a couple of things that they have in common, a reason why they would benefit from getting in touch and what makes each of them very awesome. Sometimes I also add some additional details like links to LinkedIn or Facebook profiles. The aim is to make these two people excited to meet each other and make it easy for them to find out more about each other.


This is how I recently introduced two of my friends to each other.
#2 – “you should totally get in touch with these people”

Whenever I’m in a situation where I know more people that someone would benefit from meeting, I send them a list of people that they can get in touch with and their contact details. I tell them that they should mention my name when reaching out. Here are some specific examples of when I do this:

  • When a friend of mine takes a trip or moves to a city where I know a lot of people
  • When a friend of mine is researching a new business idea, I introduce him to the people that work in a similar niche or might be in his target market
  • When I get to know someone new and I see that a lot of people in my network would benefit from meeting him, I tell him to reach out to them
  • When someone I know is producing great content, I give them a list of bloggers or podcasters that I know that would benefit from having him on a podcast / as a guest poster

Here’s a real-life example that I’ve sent to Navid from the previous chapter:


This is how I introduced some cool people to Navid after he joined a mastermind group that I was a part of.
ACTION STEPS: How to write kick ass introductions

  1. Brainstorm 3 possible introductions that you can make. Think about the people within your business network, sports network, current friends, family members, old friends…
  2. Write a short e-mail where you cc both people to the e-mail and give some basic information about each person (Facebook profile, LinkedIn profiles help) and focus on making the introductions as exciting as possible
  3. Send out one e-mail introduction right now
  4. EXTRA CREDIT: If you know a ton of people that would benefit from meeting each other, block out 30min on your calendar each week to introduce awesome people to each other and add constant value to the people in your network

How to connect cool people in your city

A few months ago, I moved to a new city. Soon after that, I got an e-mail from one of my blog readers – his name was Giuseppe. Giuseppe saw that I moved into the same city that he lived in and he invited me out to lunch.

After that lunch, he invited me out to a “mastermind meeting” with some of his other business friends. We did this every week after that and it was awesome. There would always be someone new to talk to and each time we would talk about something different.

Giuseppe was great at organising these events. We always met at the same place, at the same time, on the same day. He also created Facebook events for the attendees to RSVP and take a look at who’s going to make it there next week.

It was really simple but effective, and you could easily do the same in your city. If you feel like your group is too small, you can ask each of your friends to bring a guest with him – and the group will grow in no time.

ACTION STEPS: How to connect cool people in your city

  1. Find a cool place to hang out. You should pick a place where you can eventually bring groups of 5-10 people that has some food and drinks and it’s possible to talk normally there. If it’s a very busy place, make sure you make reservations in advance.
  2. Set a recurring weekday/time so that people can block it off on their calendars. You might need to experiment with this until you find a time that suits most people, but something like a Wednesday/Thursday at 6pm or 8pm worked well for us.
  3. Brainstorm at least 5 people that you can invite to the event.
  4. Create a Facbeook event 2-3 days in advance (you can make it secret if they have privacy concerns) and ask them to RSVP for the event.
  5. If the group seems too small, ask attendees to bring one guest each. When you meet new cool people or have guests visiting you in your city, you can also invite them to these meet ups to spice them up.

Sometimes there will be more people, sometimes there will be less. Make sure you keep the events going consistently if at least two people can make it and turn this into a constant event. If you can’t make it to the event for some reason, find another person to organise it. Just don’t break the chain!

How to run an online mastermind

As I moved out of Slovenia, I felt bad for leaving some of my friends behind. I didn’t want to lose contact with them. Just before I left, we started a mastermind group in Ljubljana, similar to the one that Giuseppe started later on.

I was thinking about what I could do to keep this going, and then it dawned on me:

If I’m able to stay in touch with people from US via Skype, why wouldn’t I be able to get on a video call with my friends as well? And so I told my friends about the idea and got them to attend a Google hangout. It was awesome. We talked a bit about business and job hunting, how things are in Slovenia, and played some online games together.

We still have these meetings on every Sunday for two hours. Sometimes it’s just two or three of us, sometimes it’s up to 5. It works great because this allows me to stay in touch with my friends even while I’m travelling, and it helps them get un-stuck fast in case they run into a problem with their businesses.

We use Google Hangouts and Google Calendar for scheduling and running the events. When I created the event in Google Calendar, I did three things:

  1. I invited all my friends as “guests” to make sure that the event appears in their calendar and they don’t forget about the calls.
  2. I set up a recurring call so I don’t have to schedule calls all the time – if something comes in-between, we reschedule the call or cancel it, but the next call will automatically be there for us next week.
  3. I add a Google Hangouts video call to the event so that people know which call to join.

Here’s how you can do this yourself:


1. Invite friends; 2. Set up a recurring event; 3. Add a Google Hangouts call to the event
I do something very similar with my parents as well. We have Skype calls every few days to make sure that we keep a good relationship going and catch up.

ACTION STEPS: How to run an online mastermind

This is very similar to running a live mastermind, but there are a few differences:

  1. As the call is done online, I make sure that everyone has it in their calendars and gets an e-mail reminder for the call before (this happens automatically when you schedule something in Google Calendar)
  2. The calls work best with 3-4 people. 5 works as well sometimes, but more than that is really too much as people tend to get bored and browse on the internet instead of jumping into the discussion
  3. I usually don’t invite new people to these. Instead, I would connect with other people 1-on-1 or create additional small groups of 3-4 people. This way I can keep the engagement level high and still talk with more people. If I want to introduce two people online, I opt for an e-mail introduction instead of inviting them to these calls.

If you have some friends that you could have an online mastermind call with, then schedule it now. Set up a one-time event and invite people to join in. Have the call and see how it goes. If everyone loves it, then make it a recurring call and find a good time for everyone. But don’t get caught up in those details right now. Instead, just focus on getting on a call once.

How to get an accountability partner (and get the most out of it)

Every Tuesday at 11am, I have one hour blocked off for a call with my awesome accountability partner, Jacqueline. I got in touch with Jacqueline in August of 2013, when accountability partners became popular in Ramit’s Brain Trust.

Why do I have an accountability partner? Technically it’s to have someone kick me in the ass and call me out on bullshit whenever I have some mental barriers holding me back from success. But there’s more.

Having accountability partners is great for building relationships. And building relationships is a great way of getting extra accountability.

For a long time, I thought that having an accountability partner was all about setting up 3 goals for the next week and then following up to see whether you achieved your goals or not. But from my experience, that’s missing the point. It’s not exciting, and often it doesn’t really work unless you have some kind of a connection with a person.

I’ve had accountability partners before that weren’t serious. They wouldn’t show up for the calls. They wouldn’t work on their goals and found excuses all the time. I didn’t enjoy talking to them, and soon we stopped having the calls.

With Jacqueline, things are different. Our accountability calls aren’t super structured. Most of the time, we only talk about our goals for a few minutes or so and spend the rest of the time by sharing cool new insights and giving each other feedback to improve our businesses. And the calls are always fun, so I look forward to them.

Of course from time to time one of us gets stuck, and that’s when having a weekly accountability call really helps and we can help each other to get un-stuck.

We also learn a ton from each other. For example, when I first started having calls with Jacqueline, my life wasn’t really that exciting. She showed me how to live my dream life (she also talks about how to do that on her blog). Here are just some of the things I did since I started having calls with her that I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise:


Now I can actually say that I’m working through my bucket list and it’s not just another document on my computer!
And just for the kicks, here’s what a cabin of a 747 looks like (it’s much smaller than you’d think).


Me in a cabin of a Boeing 747 after my trip from San Francisco to London in Business Class
The cool thing is that once you build a relationship with someone, the accountability will come on it’s own. You won’t want to disappoint them and look bad in their eyes by not doing what you set out to do. Therefore, by having recurring calls with different people that you admire, you will automatically get all the accountability that you need.

ACTION STEPS: How to get an accountability partner (and get the most out of it)

You can get an accountability partner by following these simple steps:

  1. Find someone who has similar goals as you do (this can be in business, sports, relationships…) and you LOVE hanging out with.
  2. Send them an e-mail asking whether they’d be up for becoming your accountability partner. Tell them that it would include weekly 30-minute calls at a time that works for them and help you challenge each other and take your business to the next level.
  3. If they’re up for it, schedule the first call!

To make things even easier for you, this is how you can structure your accountability calls:

  1. Catch up. Don’t dive right into the business stuff. Talk about what’s new, what you’ve learned in the past week, how your family is doing, etc.
  2. After the initial catch up (this might last from just a few minutes to almost the whole call, just go by what feels right), talk about which goals you completed from the past week. Share your biggest insights that you got from completing the goals and where you got stuck. If you’re stuck, your partner can give you another point of view and help you get un-stuck.
  3. At the end of the call, set up 3 goals that you want to be held accountable for next week (I suggest choosing goals that you aren’t comfortable with chasing for the biggest improvement potential) and double-check the date and time of the next meeting to make sure that both of you can make it there.

Know that it might not work out with the first accountability partner. Maybe you won’t feel a good connection. Maybe they won’t care about improving themselves as much as you do. Maybe they won’t be serious and will forget about the calls.

That’s ok. It might take a few different partners until you find one that’s right for you – but all of the hard work of finding one is going to be worth many times over, so keep repeating the process above until you find one!

How to throw awesome parties and live meet ups

In my high school years, I did know one thing, and that was how to throw awesome parties. Despite not having many friends, my birthday parties always seemed to be well received. I tried to make the parties as awesome as possible, and that usually meant cakes, top quality cocktails and disco lights. Along with a ton of cleaning (I insisted on using real cocktail glasses instead of plastic ones… duh).

Whenever I planned parties, I tried to make them as exciting as possible. I would do things that others just wouldn’t. People would usually just get cheap liqueur and some chips. I would make high end cocktails with quessadilias, tortilla chips and many different dips. I turned the small living room into a dance floor. I installed disco lights, got some loud speakers and put on some party music (yes, the neighbours loved me…).

But what I wasn’t really great at is inviting people. I never knew how to write good invitations, when to invite people, who to invite… So I just sent very generic text messages and hoped that people would come.

If you’re anything like me and you like planning the parties but don’t like to take care of the logistics of inviting other people, do yourself a favour: get a co-host. I got this idea from my friend Raj while we were recording a master class for my online course. He said that whenever he hosts a meet up or a party, he always tries to find the most connected person in the city and appoints him to invite the people to the party and make sure they come there.


Raj throws the most awesome meet ups – here’s a photo from our last meet up in San Francisco
Another friend of mine, Marc, is really the master of throwing amazing parties and meet ups. Why? Because he creates the HYPE. He knows how to invite people in a way that they get super excited and can’t wait for the meet up to happen. Here’s a part of one of his event invitations:


How can you NOT be excited to attend a party like this?
Notice what Marc does in the letter. He puts a lot of humour in it. He includes pictures. He tells exciting stories (and rumours…). He makes things easy for people by providing them a place to sleep.

The key to throwing an awesome party is to make it awesome before it even starts. If you don’t know how to do that, that’s fine – but I’m sure one of your friends does! Find that friend and ask him to help you out with organising the party.

ACTION STEPS: How to throw awesome parties and live meet ups

Here are the steps that you can follow to throw the perfect party or a meet up:

  1. Find a way to make the party unique and memorable. It can be a themed party with tons of champagne. It can be at a special location. Think about what you can do differently so that the attendees will remember the party forever.
  2. If you don’t know that many people, find a co-host who does and let him handle the invitations.
  3. Make the party exciting before it even happens. When you write the invitations for the party, make them exciting. Once you write them down, read through them. Do you get the feeling that you just can’t wait for the happen? Good. If not, keep rewriting them until you get them right, or find someone else to do this for you. Do you have someone in your network who tells the best jokes and stories? He’s the guy to reach out to.

3 systems that you can start using TODAY to start surrounding yourself with successful people

In this guide, I wrote about my failures, as well as things that worked out well. But even though I improved my connecting skills a lot during the last years, I still mess up occasionally.

Last December, I got offered an introduction to a super VIP person and I didn’t even get in touch with them. It was during the holidays and I didn’t want to bother them during that time. Then, I thought that they must be busy because the holidays just ended. Excuse after excuse, I kept procrastinating it and never got it done. Sometimes I’m working on a project intensively and don’t manage to follow up with some people that I meet.

But it’s not the end of the world. It’s good that I can’t get everything right because this allows me to keep learning and improving from the mistakes that I make. Mistake by mistake, I get better and better, and that’s what you should focus on. Don’t focus on becoming the perfect connector in a week. It’s a long process that takes time. However, if you just get a little better day by day, you can get so much better in 3, 6 or 12 months.

If you came to me 3 years ago and told me that I would have friends all over the world that I would constantly talk to, I would tell you to stop making stupid jokes. But here I am, and you can be here as well if you only put your mind to it. If a socially awkward kid with no friends could do it, you can do it too!

ACTION STEPS: What YOU can do TODAY to start surrounding yourself with successful people

The way that you can achieve what I achieved (and more) is to focus on the process and not on the results. If you set up the systems that I use and do the action steps from this guide, you WILL get the results that you want. That’s why I want to give you three simple, must-have systems that you can put into action right away and start surrounding yourself with successful people.

Note that some of these systems are created in Google Docs. You can use Google Docs if you wish, but I don’t mind if you use another software, pen & paper or something else – just put them into action!

System #1 – Adding Value to Your Network

If you just implement one of these systems, this should be the one, and it will take you exactly 2 minutes to set up.

  1. Right now, go to your Google Calendar and set up a 30-minute recurring event that happens once each week and name it “Add Value to my Network” (or something sexier).
  2. Add the link to this guide as a description: http://www.skyrocketyourproductivity.com/the-quick-guide-to-surrounding-yourself-with-successful-people/
  3. During that time each week, take 30 minutes to add value to the people in your network. This might mean introducing two people to each other, taking people out for lunch, scheduling calls, throwing meet ups or parties, or something else. You can use this guide to get some specific ideas on what to do (you should put it in the description for easy access when you need it)

The event should look something like this:

System #2 – Managing Your Relationships

Once you connect with more and more people, it makes sense to keep track of them. Here’s a step by step process that you can follow to create a system that will allow you to do that.

Step #1: Go to Google Drive and create a new folder. Name it “Relationships”.

Step #2: Create a Google Spreadsheet called “Relationships” inside of the folder.

Step #3: Save the Relationship spreadsheet as a bookmark in your toolbar for easy access (click the little star in the top right corner of your browser).

Step #4: Save the Relationship spreadsheet as a description in your System #1 for adding value to people you care about (so you can bring it up easily during your weekly review).

Step #5: Copy-paste this template into the spreadsheet. Feel free to change it any way that works for you.

Step #6: For one of your friends, create an empty Google Document titled with their name (I suppose you know how to do that by now…) in the Relationship folder.

Step #7: Copy-paste this template into the document. Again, feel free to change the template in a way that suits you better.

Step #8: Repeat the step #7 for all of the people you want to stay in touch with

How to use this system

Once you set up this system, you should come up with something like this:

Good job! This is how you can use the system:

  1. Whenever you meet someone new that you want to build a relationship with, create a new document with his name for him, add his name to the Relationships spreadsheet and paste a link to his document
  2. Whenever you’re on a Skype call with someone, open his document and take notes into it (this is why you link to the Relationships spreadsheet in the browser toolbar and then link the documents in the spreadsheet – this way, you can find the document from any person in just 2 clicks.)
  3. Before a Skype call or an in-person meeting, you can check the notes from the last call and follow up on what you talked about. People LOVE this because they see that you actually paid attention to what you were talking about last time and care about them.
  4. Be creative! You can use this system to remember peoples’ birthdays. You can use it to make it easier for you to introduce people to each other. You can use it to consistently stay in touch with people by noting down when you were last in touch.

This system will allow you to build better relationships with people, remember what you talked about last time and make a lot better introductions. It will also allow you to stay in touch with people you care about and see when you should reach out to someone (around their birthday or a few weeks after you last talked).

System #3 – Closing the Loop

I developed this system recently because I realised that I had no organised way of tracking the books, articles and courses that people recommended to me.

To create this system, simply:

  1. Create a new Google Spreadsheet in Google Drive
  2. Link the spreadsheet to your browser toolbar and add it in the description of System #1 (adding value calendar appointment)
  3. Add three columns to the spreadsheet: WHAT, WHERE, WHO

This is what my system looks like in action:

I use the Closing the Loop Spreadsheet in three ways:

  1. Whenever someone recommends a course book or an article to me, I put it into this system.
  2. When I want to do some reading or improve a certain skill, I take a look at this spreadsheet
  3. Whenever I finish reading a book or an article, I follow up with the person who recommended it to me and let them know about what I’ve learned/the results that I got.

This system allows me to keep adding value to people and give credit when it’s due, while also keeping track of the resources I got recommended instead of just forgetting about them.

How to put this guide into action and prevent it from being just another thing you’ve read but never implemented

This is a long guide. If you actually read through it, I have to give you props. If you LOVED it and have some friends who might benefit from it, then e-mail it to them or share it on Facebook. Here’s the message that you can copy paste:

“Hey NAME,

I’ve found this awesome guide on the internet that will help you surround yourself with successful people and [grow your business faster]. I think you’ll love it because it has a lot of specific stories, scripts, examples and systems in there that you can put into action right away! Here’s the link:

http://www.skyrocketyourproductivity.com/the-quick-guide-to-surrounding-yourself-with-successful-people/

Enjoy!

YOUR NAME”

Your Roadmap to Surrounding Yourself with Successful People

But just reading the guide won’t be enough. If you don’t take action, you will keep being stuck in the same place all the time and keep hating yourself for it.

Imagine all of the opportunities that could open up to you if you managed to surround yourself with awesome people and stayed in touch with them. How much faster could you grow your business? How would it make you feel if you went on a trip to New York and knew that there are ten people waiting to grab lunch with you? Think about it.

I know from past experience that putting guides like this into action can be pretty hard. They can be overwhelming (where do you even start), seem too time consuming and sometimes it feels like they just don’t apply to your exact situation.

That’s why I’ve put together an implementation guide that you can use to overcome the barriers that would otherwise prevent you from taking action.

Here is what’s included in Your Roadmap to Surrounding Yourself with Successful People:

  • A step-by-step roadmap that you can use to build relationships with your first 5, 15, (and later even more) people.
  • 28 mindset shifts that will help you overcome barriers like: “I don’t think I can add any value to other people”, “I don’t have enough time”, “I get nervous when talking to people and don’t know what to say” (and many more).
  • Specific ideas for putting guide into action if you are student, work at a corporate job or simply don’t meet that many people in person in your business.

You can find the guide below.

Thanks for reading,

-Primoz

Get Your FREE Step-by-Step Roadmap to Surrounding Yourself With Successful People!

How to balance your life, even if you work long hours at your job

By Primoz Bozic 2 Comments

Last week I had a chat with David, who works in a large law firm in New York City.

David, like many other lawyers, is struggling with life balance. He is putting in long working hours, and because of that he rarely has the time and energy to hang out with his family and friends, let alone have time for himself.

And you’ve probably been there as well. You’ve probably spent long hours working in your office, took an exhausting one hour commute home, and then all that you wanted to do was lay on your bed and watch TV.

life balance
After working all day, you probably just want to go to sleep.

But sometimes, that just wouldn’t cut it. There is your wife who wants to go out on a date with you. Your friends want to go get some drinks. And you probably also want to work on your projects eventually. But you just don’t have the time for it.

David said that he wanted to write an e-book to help law-school graduates get the legal job of their dreams. But that was a big project that would require a lot of hours to finish. Hours that he just couldn’t find.

I know that I used to be in the same situation before. I wanted to spend more time with friends. I wanted to have fun evenings with my girlfriend. I wanted to exercise regularly, and work on new projects.

So I decided to make life balance a priority for myself. I promised myself that I would find a way to have a balanced life. I’ve set up a schedule for myself that looked something like this:

7.30 Wake up
8.00-9.00 Gym
9.00-17.00 Work
17.00-18.00 Lunch with my family
18.00-20.00 Spending time with my girlfriend
20.00-21.00 Working on my own projects
21.00-23.00 Drinks with friends
23.30 Sleep

My life finally seemed to be balanced. I had time for everything that was important to me.

But here’s the truth. I wasn’t happy.

Yes, I had the time for everything, but it wasn’t quality time. Everything was very hectic. I often had to leave in a middle of an interesting conversation with a friend. And when I started working on my project and got into the flow, I was frustrated when I had to leave for drinks.

lobster pasta
I didn’t have time to cook an awesome lunch like this. Yes, I can actually make lobster pasta!

It was also incredibly boring to have every day exactly the same, and there was never enough time to do something really exciting.

I started thinking to myself that this just isn’t right. I’ve achieved something what in many peoples’ eyes was perfect life balance, but it wasn’t satisfying. It made me feel frustrated instead of happy.

I didn’t give up just yet though. I wanted to find a way to balance my life without taking the quality away from it. I wanted to be able to work on an e-book without isolating myself from my friends and girlfriend for a month.

Eventually I realized that I was approaching life balance from the wrong perspective. I wanted every day to be perfectly balanced, but there just wasn’t enough hours in a day.

I then switched to weekly life balance. Each week, I would spend 40 hours working, 5 hours at gym, 5 hours with my family, 10 hours with my girlfriend, 10 hours with friends and 5 hours working on my own projects.

From Monday to Wednesday, I would focus on getting a lot of work done. On Thursdays I worked on new projects. On Friday I spent more time with friends, and on weekends I would spend time with my family and girlfriend.

This was much better than the previous solution, but it still didn’t work out. There were just too many random events happening. I couldn’t attend a conference over the weekend, I had to say no to my girlfriend when she wanted to go out on a Wednesday evening, and I couldn’t go to my friend’s birthday on Saturday.

If I decided to break my rules, my whole schedule would fall apart, which would frustrate me again.

So I kept looking, until I’ve finally found a system that worked for me.

According to Linkedin recruiting statistics, people who follow such a system are more likely to be hired and to recieve raises. This system allows me to have an intensive working week without alienating myself from my friends and family. I can work on writing an e-book without delaying client work. And I can take a spontaneous week off and fly to US.

hilton_image
In November, I flew to San Francisco for a week. This is the view from my hotel room.

And today, I’ll share this system with you, together with a worksheet that you can use to create your own system.

The core of the system is long-term life balance.

Yes, that’s right.

It’s not about having a perfectly balanced day, or a perfectly balanced week. It’s about having a balanced life.

Instead of trying to improve in all areas of your life in one week, ask yourself this question:

What is the minimum amount of effort that you need to put into improving in an area of your life if you just want to keep it at the same level?

What do you need to do each week to keep your wife happy? What do you need to do to stay in shape? What do you need to do to prevent your business from falling apart?

Write down the answers, and be very specific about the time it will take you.

For example:

Work: Be at the office for 40h/week (because otherwise you will get fired)
Family: Have lunch with my parents once a week (1 afternoon)
Sports: Go to the gym 3x/week (3x 1.5h)
Friends: Grab drinks once a week (1 evening)
Girlfriend: Go to 2 dates (2 afternoons/evenings)

To make sure that you do these activities, you can create habits out of them, or simply schedule them as recurring events on your calendar.

A week has 168 hours. To maintain the same level in all areas of your life, you will probably need around 60 hours. You’ll also want to sleep for around 50 hours. Some of the time, probably at least 20 hours a week or so, will be wasted on eating, commuting, showering, etc.

In the end, you’ll be left with about 40 hours of free time. It might be a bit more or less, depending on how many hours you need to work on average.

Some of this time, you will probably spend just watching TV and browsing Facebook, and that’s ok. But in any case, you should be able to find 10 to 20 hours a week that you can invest into anything.

And in 10 to 20 hours, you can actually get a lot done. You can take a weekend trip with your girlfriend to another city. You can organize a party for your friends or a family reunion. You can work on a new idea to add more value to your company and get that raise that you’ve always wanted. You can even develop a new skill.

Giraffes
You can take a weekend trip to the zoo and feed some giraffes.

What you will do is entirely up to you, but I would recommend you to plan it in advance and make a project out of it. After a week, you want to be able to say: “In this week, I’ve done X”.

In order to do that, ask yourself this question:

“If I have 10-20 hours this week to get to the next level at [INSERT AREA OF YOUR LIFE], what can I do in that time?”

Once you know what to do, it’s way more likely that you’ll actually get it done.

So, what happens once you do that? What happens once you define your weekly minimums for each area of your life, and invest each week into getting one of your areas to the next level?

You get results.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how many hours you put in each week. What matters is what you get done and what are the outcomes of it.

Each week, you will be able to get something meaningful done in an area of your life. You will be able to grow your social circle by going to conferences and organizing parties. You will be able to have an amazing anniversary trip with your wife. And you will be able to grow your business by developing a new product.

You can even expand on this. If you have a product launch that takes longer than a week, you can take that time to really focus on it. You can always balance other areas out later on once you’re done. You can take a one week vacation, or catch up with your friends.

In the long run, you will actually get your life balance. You will be able to progress in all areas of your life consistently.

And the best part is, that your life won’t be boring any more. Every week, you will have an exciting new project to work on, and every week will be different. Once you look back at the last few months, you will be able to remember a lot of great experiences, which just won’t be possible if you try to balance every single day.

Now, it’s time for you to take action and implement this into your life. Here’s a worksheet that you can fill out:

worksheet 4 steps to life balance

If you don’t want a fancy worksheet, here are your action steps.

4 steps to Life Balance:

1) Write down all of the areas of your life that are important to you
2) Define a weekly minimum for each of those areas
3) Block out some time on your calendar each Sunday evening to plan your next week
4) During your weekly planning, think of a project that you can work on during the week to get to the next level in one area of your life

That’s it!

Now if you liked this article and you know a friend that’s struggling with life balance, why don’t you e-mail it to them? Your friend will love you for it, and I’ll thank you as well.

I have to be honest with you though. When you try to create new habits, especially the ones that include things like exercise, sleep and socialising, we love finding excuses not to stick to them. We say that “we don’t have enough time”. We are too lazy to go there. We ignore our calendar appointments.

If you want to make sure that your life balance system becomes really bulletproof and actually sticks with you, get my free guide to creating bulletproof habits below. It will give you a step-by-step framework to bulletproof your habits and get the results that you want.

-Primoz

Being an introvert doesn’t mean that you can’t have a social life.

By Primoz Bozic 3 Comments

Ever since I learned about introverts and extroverts in my high school psychology class, I considered myself an introvert.

I was always the person sitting in the corner quietly whenever I met new people.

I felt better when I was alone or in a small group of people, and I felt drained if a stranger wanted to talk to me and asked me a lot of questions.


That’s EXACTLY how I used to feel when someone would ask me to go out.

The only situation in which I could really talk to people was with people who I’ve already known for a long time, like my friends and family.

And even there, I would struggle with it unless I got really excited about something.

I still remember when I read my first non-fiction book. It was the book called I Will Teach You to be Rich by Ramit Sethi.

I was very enthusiastic about reading it because it helped me completely change the perspective of how I looked at personal development.

It felt like I discovered secrets that nobody around me knew, and I wanted to share these secrets with everyone around me.

So I did…

And here’s what they said.

“You’re reading a book called I Will Teach You to be Rich? Wow, you’re so greedy, all you think about is money”

When I tried to explain that it was actually a really cool book that will help me save money and consicously spend it on the things I love, they didn’t really care.

“Well, you know, there’s more to life than money. People who earn a lot of money tend to become douchebags.”

It didn’t matter if I talked about specific systems and strategies that could help them save thousands of dollars immediately with very little effort. They didn’t trust me.

What do you think happened when I told them that I went on to spend $1000 on an online course that was supposed to teach me how to start my own own business?

They thought I was crazy, and that I would get scammed and my credit card information stolen for sure.

They just didn’t get it.

Even as I went on, started my own business and began to earn decent money with it, they still wouldn’t support me.

“Why can’t you just finish university and get a job like everyone else? That’s much more secure.”

I was frustrated.

The people who I trusted the most, my family and friends, didn’t trust me and didn’t believe in me.

No matter what I did, I couldn’t change their opinions.

Has something like this ever happened to you? Did you ever get really excited about something, only to find out that the people around you don’t really support you in it and don’t want to talk about it?

If yes, keep on reading.

As I realized that my approach wasn’t working, I decided to try something new.

Instead of desperately trying to change the people around me, I decided to find other people that might just understand me.

So I started looking around to find like-minded people.

I looked for a while, even asking other people around me if they knew where I could find other people who had the same weird ambitions as I did.

I didn’t manage to find anyone.

And even if I did find someone, I probably wouldn’t reach out to them because my social skills sucked and I had no idea how to get them to have coffee with me or what I would even say to them when we would meet.

So I started working on my own business and isolating myself from other people.

In a way, that was a good thing because I wouldn’t waste my time and energy by convincing others to support me.

It allowed me to stay focused and put in a lot of work, which was good, but on the other hand, I always had a feeling that I was missing out on something.

I missed going out and partying and hanging out with friends.


Nobody wanted to drink OJ with me like this.

I wanted to share my knowledge and experiences with others.

I knew that there must be other people out there that were similar to me, but I just didn’t know where to look to find them.

Eventually, step by step, I started to get it though.

I started to understand why I can’t find anyone to talk to.

It was because I made it all about me.

I wanted to learn from others.

I wanted to talk about things that interested me.

I wanted to have someone to talk to when I had a problem that I couldn’t solve.

I, I, I, me, me, me.

I was putting myself in the center of my universe instead of others and they could see right through it.

When I changed my perspective and started focusing on how I can help other people without getting anything back in return, my communication with people started to improve.

I could see that when I stopped talking so much and started to listen to them and pay attention to what they say, I would be able to connect with people much better.

I also stopped looking for people that were EXACTLY like me.

Of course it was hard for me to find another productivity consultant in Slovenia, but it was much easier to find other freelancers and entrepreneurs, as well as people who were at least remotely interested in self-development books.

And I started looking outside of Slovenia.

I started reaching out to other people through the internet as well and scheduling video calls with them.

With time, I met a lot of other people who considered themselves as introverts, but had a lot of friends who they could talk to all the time.

They showed me that social skills aren’t something that’s pre-defined, it’s a skill that anyone can learn and even master, if they put their mind to it.

In fact, here’s an interview that I did together with one of those people, my dear friend Raj Bandyopadhyay where he explains how he moved from being a shy software engineer to leading a meet up group of over 1200 people.

So, after I did the following:

1) Changed my focus from “me” to “them”
2) Stopped looking for a person that was exactly the same as me
3) Realized that socializing is a skill that can be learned, and not something that an introvert can never to

Everything changed.

Now I’m talking to at least 5 different people each week about our new business ideas and the productivity systems that we’ve developed over the past week.

AND IT’S NOT WEIRD.

In fact, they love talking about it. They love sharing their stories and helping each other improve.

They love talking about things like writing blogs or hosting online webinars.

Around them, I can really feel like myself and even if I just met them twice in my life, I can talk to them for hours!

I don’t feel like an introvert anymore.


Having lunch in San Francisco with friends and people who “get” me.

After working on helping others as much as possible, a lot of new opportunities have opened up.

I frequently get e-mails like this where I get introduced to other successful and inspiring people.


An e-mail introduction from just two days ago.

I have mentors that help me save hundreds of hours of figuring things on my own by giving me feedback on my business.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Ramit Sethi actually flew me in to San Francisco to record some video together with him.


San Francisco video shoot with Ramit Sethi.

None of these opportunities would have happened if I kept the “I, I, I” focus.

They all came out of just wanting to help other people in any way that I can.

And the best part is, you can do this too.

You can find people that will help you get that six pack that you always wanted or to run a six figure side-business.

But you probably still don’t have a clear picture how to do it, right?

I mean, I told you what worked for me, but how can you actually implement this by yourself?

  • How do you find the people that would want to talk to you in the first place?
  • When you find them, how do you reach out to them and ask them to meet you?
  • And when you finally manage to meet them, what do you say to avoid the awkward silence?

I use a system that will answer all of those questions and help you find the first 3 people who “get” you.

This system hasn’t worked only for me, it has worked for hundreds of other people that I’ve met in the past.

And a lot of them used to consider themselves as introverts just like me.

If you join me at my upcoming Free 5-Day Success Bootcamp, I will show you the exact system that I used to add massive value to Ramit Sethi and get invited to grab lunch with him in San Francisco. I will also show you the scripts and strategies that my friend Jaka used to expand his network and land a job that he loves.

Join the Bootcamp!

-Primoz

The one thing that you will always regret in your life.

By Primoz Bozic Leave a Comment

It was year 2010. I was beginning my last year of high school, and I was pretty excited to finally finish it and begin my studies of something I was really passionate about at that time – computer science.

In fact, I wanted more than just studying. I wanted to experience studying abroad, and I thought that that London would be a really exciting place to try it out.

I imagined living in a dorm with a roommate, meeting many awesome people and going to crazy parties, all while learning from one of the best universities in the world.

So, I researched which universities I could go to and I applied to some of the best ones in the UK, including Imperial College London.

The application process was pretty long, and I had to take quite a few different tests along the way, including a pretty hard English language test and writing out my CV.

I’ve put a lot of work into researching how to write a CV with no experience and eventually I wrote a very long story which seemed to work pretty well, as I eventually got this e-mail:

I got an official offer to study at the Imperial College London.

There was a trick however – I had to score very high on my final exams in order to get in (I had to get pretty much straight As).

At first, I thought to myself “Yeah, I can totally do this”. Then I spent hours researching cool places around my college, amusement parks, clubs, accomodations, and the time kept running by.

When things got serious and I had to actually start learning for my exams, everything became very real though.

I started thinking about my friends. My family. My cat. Yes, I have an awesome cat.

my cat
I was afraid of leaving them behind and starting a new life. It felt scary.

And because of this, I felt very paralyzed. Instead of studying for exams, I’ve spent hours and hours playing video games to get my mind off my fears.

Eventually I even began to skip school and avoid exams because I wasn’t doing as well as I hoped I would.

I was digging myself a grave. Instead of buckling down and getting serious about studying, and asking others to help me along the way, I chose to just avoid everything.

In the middle of this downward spiral, I decided that I wouldn’t go to London and study there. My explanation for that was that I didn’t want to leave my friends behind and be a big financial burden to my parents (studying in UK is pretty expensive, especially if you live in London).

But honestly, those were just excuses. The real reason why I was doing this was because I was afraid to fail.

I was afraid to give it my all and still not get the grades the grades that I wanted.

I always considered myself a smart person, and getting the harsh truth in my face that I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was was just too painful to imagine.

As I decided that I wouldn’t try to give it my all, things got even worse as I completely lost my motivation for everything. Eventually I got to a point where I couldn’t even attend the final exams because my grades were so bad that I didn’t pass a couple of subject.

Because of this, I had to actually repeat my last year of high school.

Now, I was actually a complete failure.

The worst part about this experience is that I didn’t even try to give it my all.

I didn’t commit to something that I really wanted, I actually disqualified myself.

I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but I don’t really regret any of them.

What I do regret is not trying, and that’s why this is probably the biggest regret that I have in my life.

I don’t want you to repeat the same mistake that I did, so I’m hosting a FREE 5-Day Success Bootcamp where I will show you a specific framework to overcome the self-doubt and move from being paralyzed to taking massive action and getting what you want with no excuses. In fact, I will show you how Jaka used this framework to overcome his own barriers and landed a job that he loves.

Join the Bootcamp!

How to double the value of your time

By Primoz Bozic 5 Comments

A couple of months ago, I was on a call with one of my mentors, Naveen Dittakavi. Naveen is one of the most productive people I’ve ever met – he has a successful software development business, he manages a community of over 1700 people, and constantly works on developing new skills and new projects. All of that while still finding time for his family and friends!

Naveen Dittakavi
 
I first met Naveen in Munich last year. Here he is with his fiancée on the right.

As I was very impressed with how much he manages to constantly improve despite all of that work, I asked him to share his strategy with me.

Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: “So Naveen, you’re working on so many things that it must be insanely draining… How do you manage to find the willpower and energy to keep improving your business and learn new skills like copywriting?”.

Naveen: “It’s actually not that complicated. Of course I have a ton of client work, but I don’t want to spend my most productive hours on that when I can spend them on doing things that will make the biggest difference for me in the long run.”

Me: “What do you mean by your most productive hours?”

Naveen: “Well, through testing I have found out that I am the most productive and focused between 7 and 9 am. It’s probably related to the fact that I wake up well rested, which means that I have a lot of energy and willpower at that time.

This means that if I want to get something, it’s way more likely that I will actually get it done than if I planned to do it in the evening when I’m drained. In that case, I would probably just keep procrastinating it on and on. I also make a point of making these hours non-negotiable.

From 7am to 9am each morning, I’m only working on my projects and growing my business, and never on client work. This ensures that I constantly grow both myself and my business.”

Me: “That’s very interesting. But how do you know what’s worth doing at that time? How do you determine what’s important enough?”

Naveen: “What I like to do is focus on outcomes. Think of it as compound interest – I invest time into activities that will grow exponentially and not lineary in the long run. For example, if I spend 10 hours building a system or a product that allows me to earn $100/month in recurring revenue per client, and I don’t need to put much extra effort in it after the initial 20 hours, this can earn me $1,200 a year per client.

But it’s more than that. I can then offer this to every new client that I work with without any additional work on my side, so in the long run, as my business grows, my hourly rate for those 10 hours of work will be insanely high.

If I would spend those hours simply doing consulting, I could perhaps earn a couple of hundred $ per hour, but that’s where it ends. I would make more money in the short run, but in the long run it’s not even close. I feel like that’s an issue that a lot of entrepreneurs have – they focus on getting results fast instead of building systems that will keep getting them results as the time goes by.”

To sum this conversation up in one sentence, Naveen uses his most productive hours on developing systems that will keep bringing in the benefits for years to come.

As Naveen explained this to me, it struck me – I’ve been using my most productive hours the wrong way, which is why I didn’t see as much progress as I wanted to.

Let me explain. Every day, I used to wake up between 10am and 11am. I would then shower, eat breakfast, read a book and go over the list of the 3 things I wanted to get done the day. I would play a couple of games on Lumosity while listening to calming music. Once I was done, I was in the zone and ready to do the work.

So I started doing the work. More specifically, I would usually have 2-3 hours of coaching between 12pm-4pm with my clients, with some breaks to do in-between. At 4pm, I would go to lunch, and after that I would work on the 3 important things that I wanted to get done for the day.

This was actually going ok for a while, and I felt like I was progressing well. However, with time I saw a pattern occurring. More often than not, I would procrastinate tasks that required a lot of focus. Answering e-mails, working on my blog, talking to people and reading books went fine. However, creating systems didn’t go so well. After 6 hours of work, I just didn’t have the creative power and focus that I needed any more and I would often procrastinate these creative tasks and keep moving them to the next day.

After talking to Naveen, I redesigned my days. I made sure that I had two hours free every morning before my first client session. Since then, I use these two hours mostly for learning new skills like storytelling, writing, as well as revising and building new productivity and business systems. Needless to say, my top 3 things for the day are now getting done way more often, and since I have a ton of energy, willpower and focus while working on them, they get done way faster.

This doesn’t work just for me and Naveen though. Last year, when I attended a conference from Ramit Sethi in NYC, I asked him to tell me about what his usual day looks like. He explained that it varies a lot, but that every morning he goes to the coffee shop for a couple of hours to just write his blog posts and e-mails.

Ramit Sethi
 
Ramit wasn’t very thrilled that I was wearing a similar outfit to his…

The awesome thing about this strategy is that you can use it in various ways – to save time, to earn more money or to acquire a new skill faster.

If you want to save time, you can use your most productive hours to build productivity systems for yourself (more on those in the future posts). If you invest 10 hours into building a system that saves you just 30 minutes each working day like the one that Derek Halpern built to answer 3x as many e-mails in half the time, this can save you 130 hours in a year.

If you want too earn more money, you can use the time to develop products or recurring services like Naveen did, or you can spend the time on improving your business model and strategy.

If you want to acquire a new skill faster, you can use these hours to learn and improve through reading and thinking about what you’ve read. Your reading speed and comprehension are largely dependent on how focused you are, so if you want to learn something rapidly, it makes sense to actually do it when you are the most focused and not when you are tired and almost sleeping, like this:

Feeling Tired

If this is what you look like while learning, you’re probably not learning a whole lot.

With this strategy, it’s very easy to double the value of your most productive time. In fact, usually you can even 3x it, 5x or even 10x it by building systems that will earn you more money or save you time in the future.

Now imagine what it would be like if you actually did this. If you actually spent your most productive time on the high leverage activities, you might very well be making more progress in your business and life than you are right now, even if you didn’t do anything else for the whole day.

Imagine finishing up the two hours of work and creating a nice system that will save you hours of stress and frustration when dealing with e-mails. Imagine finishing a product that will bring you extra $500/month, even while you’re on a vacation. Imagine learning a new skill every 2 weeks. How would that make you feel?

In order to start using this strategy in your own life and reach your own goals faster, you can use the 3 step framework below:

Step #1 – Find out the high leverage activities that will give you the best outcomes

You can do this by asking yourself a couple of questions:

  • Where do I want to be in a year?
  • What do I need to do in order to get there?
  • Which of the things that I need to do will have exponential outcomes, like compound interest?

Here, you really want to be focusing on the activities that you do once and get the benefits from them for months or years. Make a list of at least 3 such activities and use it to determine what you want to be working on during your most productive time.

Step #2 – Identify your most productive time of the day

One of the easiest ways to do this is to track your time (write down everything you do in a day together with times/duration). Here’s an example of my time tracking:

time

You don’t need to make it as colorful and specific, you can simply do this in a word document or even on a piece of paper. If you want to be really sure when you are the most focused, you can also add a grade for focus/energy level on a scale of 1 to 5.

As a rule of thumb, you will most likely have the most energy after you wake up in the morning and go through your morning routine, before you do any work. If you are an evening person, try to identify at which time you usually start being productive in the evening and if there is something going on before that (maybe you come back from the gym or something similar). This will allow you to plan your productive time accordingly.

Step #3 – Make your most productive hours a non-negotiable

This is the key step. Your most productive time should be reserved for the activities that you identified in step #1, without exceptions. I like to make sure that I actually stick to this by putting my non-negotiable activities on my calendar – this way I can’t schedule a client meeting at that time. Below is an example from my calendar:

Calendar
You might notice that I have time off for lunch and recovery scheduled on my calendar. Yes, that’s a non-negotiable for me as well.

If you often struggle with actually getting stuff done, you can also check out my FREE 5-Day Success Bootcamp where I will show you specific systems that you can use to take massive action, including a system that my friend Blaz used to go from being an unemployed student to earning more than $10,000/month as a freelance designer in less than 5 months.

That’s it! Now you have all that you need in order to skyrocket your progress in both life and business. You can get started right away by doing the action steps above, or you can navigate to another blog post, consume more information and never take action – the choice is yours.

If you liked this article and you have a friend who might benefit from it, why don’t you send it over to them? Your friend will thank you for solving their problem and I’ll thank you as well for spreading the love.

And don’t forget to join the Bootcamp.
-Primoz

How to crush your goals in 2014

By Primoz Bozic 3 Comments

The year is coming to an end. You’re browsing through your computer and find a document called “yearly goals”. You open it and think to yourself… “Damn, I totally forgot about my goals again. Why does this happen to me all the time?”. And then, feeling a bit frustrated, you draft the goals up for the next year. This time will be different. But as the year goes on, the document gets lost on your computer and you slowly forget about your goals.

I know how you feel, it has happened to me many times before. I would set a ton of goals, whether they are yearly, monthly, weekly… Only to give up on them when things got a bit tougher, or to simply forget about them.

A year ago I was sitting down and planning my goals for 2013. 2012 was a great year from me, and it was hard for me to expect to repeat the results in 2013. But I did it. And I crushed some of the goals in ways that I didn’t dare to imagine beforehand.

But how do you do that? How do you make sure that the goals that you set for 2014 won’t be just another new year’s resolution that you forget about by Jan 7th?

Today I will share with you some strategies that I used which worked very well for me in 2013.

Setting Yearly Goals, Not New Year’s Resolutions

First of all, why the hell are we setting goals NOW and not on the 1st of January? Well, because around that time, it’s so easy to get lost within all the other BS new year’s resolutions and “trying harder”. Another reason is that if you want to be up and running in 2014, you’ll need to make some preparations first.

The key with setting yearly goals is to make them big, exciting and even unrealistic? Why? Because if the goal is big and exciting, it’s much more likely that you will reach it, even if it is slightly unrealistic. On the other hand, if the goal doesn’t excite you, then it doesn’t matter whether it’s realistic or not, as you won’t reach it anyway.

Another thing that people often forget to do is set up a system to actually review these goals frequently and evaluate your progress towards them. I mean, how many times have you set goals in the past only to forget about them after 2 days and focus on something else?

This system doesn’t need to be complicated. It can be as simple as setting up a monthly calendar reminder in Google Calendar every 1st Monday of the month.

Now let’s put this into action – you can do this NOW, in 5 easy steps.

ACTION STEPS:

  • Write down 10 BIG things that would really excite you in 2014
  • Select the top 3 of those things that are the MOST EXCITING and make them your yearly goals
  • Set up a Google Calendar event on the first Monday of 2014, at whatever time works for you (it’s 1pm for me)
  • Copy the yearly goals in the event description
  • Set the event to repeat 12 times, on every first Monday of the month.

Thinking DIFFERENTLY And Taking Massive Action

So, how did I actually manage to crush my goals from 2013? Was it simply by using the approaches from 2012 and putting in a lot more hours? Sadly no, it’s not that simple. Just “trying harder” didn’t work.

Instead, I was always on the look-out for new strategies that I could experiment with, and whenever I learned something new I would instantly implement it. Don’t believe me? Look at one of the comments on a mastermind group that I’m in – it’s from my friend Jarrett who I met last week in San Francisco:

Everyone can consume information and take advice. But few are the people who actually implement it. It turns out that those are the people that usually excel above the mediocre masses.

And I want YOU to be the next person who snaps out of the reading mode and takes immediate action. If you haven’t done the action steps above yet, do them now. They will only take you a couple of minutes. If you don’t want to do them, or think you will “do them later”, the truth is that you most likely won’t. Later, you will find another e-mail to read and you will forget about this post. And then, you will again see no progress at all.

Once you’re done with those action steps, let’s move on to the new ones (yes, I’ll get you to do a lot of work today. But you want to improve, don’t you?)

ACTION STEPS:

  • Identify ONE thing that you wanted to do recently but just never got around to doing it. It can be a new exercise plan. A productivity technique. Or setting up a party for your friends.
  • Take 1 minute to break down this thing into smaller, actionable steps. What do you need to do to get going?
  • Take a small, quick step towards finishing that thing NOW. You want to host a party? Call your friend if he wants to co-host it. Want to start doing a new exercise plan? Print it out.

The cool thing about taking action is that it gives you momentum. Even taking small steps can translate into soon taking bigger and bigger steps, which eventually lead to massive changes in your life.

There is also a big mistake that many people make when it comes to taking action. Many people say to themselves that “this won’t work for them” in advance. So they don’t even try to implement something new. Or, they try but give up after a few minutes when they don’t see the results immediately.

In order to overcome this issue, you need to shift your thought process from “I’m not sure if I can do this” or “I’m not sure if this will work for me” to “I’ll try it out and to my best to MAKE it work for me”.

Something that worked for someone else might not work for you immediately, but with a few adjustments you can quite easily implement almost any system in your life.

Don’t Do Everything On Your Own

The third thing that made probably the biggest difference for me was connecting with other like-minded people. I joined some mastermind groups of people who were working on the same goals as I was. I’ve found myself new mentors and advisers. And I’ll show you how you can do this as well in a minute.

There were two main benefits from connecting with like-minded people – I would constantly get new inspirations and ideas for my projects from them, as well as a different point of view that would often solve my issues when I was stuck.

When you are reaching out to others, you should focus on reaching out to people who are at least a level above you in a certain skill, whether it’s working at a job, entrepreneurship, nutrition, exercising or productivity. I personally prefer to find people who are the best at what they do, but I know that this might be a bit hard to do at first.

One thing that you need to understand about reaching out to other people is that it’s not about you getting something from them. Of course this might eventually happen, but often you won’t get anything in return immediately. So instead of focusing what you can get from people, think about what you can give to them.

Luckily for you, one of the biggest value adds is in something that pretty much everybody is capable of doing – in implementing advice and thanking people for it. This is because so few people do this. I give out advice to many people, and the majority never implement it. Some implement it but don’t let me know about it. The people who implement it and do let me know about it are the ones that I will always happily help in case they get stuck because I know that they won’t waste my time by not implementing the new advice that I give them.

Let me give you a script that you can use right now to reach out to others. They can be busy people who are very successful, or people who are working on the same goals as you are. You need to be a bit careful with asking for help if you are talking to a super busy person like a very well known entrepreneur, but if you’re just talking to someone who has similar goals to you, you can generally ask for more, at least a short Skype call or a coffee. What the hell, I’ll make your life easier and just give you scripts for both.

SCRIPT – REACHING OUT TO A BUSY PERSON

Hi [NAME],

My name is Primoz and I’m a productivity coach for entrepreneurs. I’ve followed your last couple of blog posts closely and implemented the concepts from them. The concept that I really liked and that made the biggest difference for me was X – I was very lost in those situations before, but since I’ve implemented your advice, I managed to achieve X, Y, Z.

Thank you so much for writing those blog posts, they made my life a ton easier!

I have a couple of questions on topic X – would you mind if I sent them your way to get some feedback on them?

Thanks,

-Primoz

Notice how I didn’t ask for anything committing in return yet. You’re dealing with a busy person here and their time is very valuable. So instead of sending them 10 questions right away, ask them if they would be willing to help out. If they say yes, you can send them the questions and I can pretty much guarantee you that you’ll get a good answer back.

The next step after you get the reply is pretty simple – implement the hell out of the advice and let the person know about how it went. Do this for a while and you’ll pretty soon develop a good relationship, in fact you might even get a mentor out of it.

Let’s move on to the next script.

SCRIPT – REACHING OUT TO SOMEONE WITH SIMILAR GOALS AS YOU HAVE

Hi [NAME],

My name is Primoz and I’m a productivity coach for entrepreneurs. I’ve followed your blog for a while and I really liked the posts on X, Y, Z. I actually implemented concept A from post X and got these results, so that really worked well for me!

Since you seem to be really good at A, would it be possible for us to set up a short 15 or 30 minute Skype call where I could ask you a couple of questions on this subject?

If you’re up for it, my Skype username is: *******, and I’m free at the following times:

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 4pm-8pm CET (use their timezone if you know it)
Sunday and Monday all day
Tomorrow at 5pm would work best for me.

Are you in?

-Primoz

Notice how I used a specific time and made it super easy for the other person to accept this invitation? And honestly, if you were in their place and someone sent you an e-mail like this, would you ever decline it? I don’t think so.

One thing that you can do (if the call goes well) afterwards to build the relationship is to keep scheduling Skype calls. I usually talk with my friends on a weekly basis and after we finish a call we immediately schedule another one (I use Google Calendar for this).

To get the most out of relationships like this, make sure that you are constantly adding value to the other person by actually implementing the advice that they give you, just like you did in the coach scenario.

Now that you have the scripts, it’s time to put them to some use.

ACTION STEPS:

  • Brainstorm 3 people  that you really admire and want to reach out to
  • Send them the e-mails using the scripts above

And you’re done with action steps for today! How does that make you feel? If you actually completed all of them, pat yourself on the shoulder because you deserved it.

Today we’ve covered what you need to do to make sure that you crush your goals this year. If you want to build momentum and start working on your goals as soon as possible, check out my FREE 5-Day Success Bootcamp. In the Bootcamp, I share specific systems that will help you turn your dreams into a reality, including a framework that my friend Paula used to go from an idea to taking action and creating a yoga workshop.

Join the Bootcamp!

-Primoz

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 8
  • Page 9
  • Page 10

Copyright © 2025 · Primoz Bozic