One idea to Build your Business, one idea to Scale your life. Every Wednesday.

Welcome to Winformation Weekly. My 13 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m, and the life that goes with it. All wrapped up, in one winning weekly email.

Business

How to Be Extremely Valuable Without Any Skills, Money or Experience

If you're just starting out or looking to increase your network and your value, then this is an excellent business hack that often gets totally overlooked. It will get you noticed, help build your network, can be done from anywhere and doesn't require you to have any money or business skills. More importantly make you valuable to very successful people. Connecting people. Not just anyone, but people who the majority of us would consider extremely successful. Here’s how you do it.

1. Every great idea starts with a spreadsheet. Am I right? You need a list of 100 successful people. Do your research. Podcasts, Youtube, articles, social media. You are aiming for people that are clearly approaching the top of their field, but haven’t yet hit the 10m follower levels. Your spreadsheet needs to include the following; name, specific business, main achievements, social media handles with following count on each platform (aim for a minimum of 4 platforms).

2. Research, research, research. Follow their accounts, listen to them on podcasts, read the book summaries. What things do they talk about? What business are they in? List the themes on the spreadsheet.

3. Draw comparisons. From your list of 100 people, you can now start to draw comparisons with people on list. Some will share industries, some will have won the same award years apart, some will be regularly posting about the same issues or trends. Write down as many connections using as many themes as possible. You could have 200-300 connections you could draw from a list of 100 people.

4. Reach out. Reach out. You now need to craft a compelling message to both parties in each connection you have written down, ensuring that each person only gets one message maximum for now. You need to reach out on the platform where the individual has the lowest followers and engagement. This way your message is far more likely to be seen. “I have followed you and seen your posts / listened to the specific podcast about subject xxx, I wonder if you would like to opportunity to meet “other impressive person” to discuss this. Maybe you could both collab on a post / project about this topic.” Keep it to 3 or 4 sentences, but make sure those words pack a punch and get to the point quickly.

Successful people lack time. And some of them (to be honest) the ability to reach out to others. If you can provide this value straight away the first time you reach out, then both these people will remember you for doing this and will become part of your network as you grow.

Life

This 350-Year-Old Story Can Help You Find Your Purpose

Mindset is so important if you want to have a meaningful life. Let me tell you the story of the three bricklayers. After the Great Fire of London way back in the 1660s, England’s capital city needed a serious rebuild.

In came a bloke called Christopher Wren, the world’s most famous architect of the time. He was tasked with bringing St Paul’s cathedral back to its former glory.

That’s where he clapped eyes on three brickies, all hard at work. He asked each one what they were doing. Brickie number one said he was a bricklayer and that he was working hard laying bricks to feed his family. Brickie two said he was a builder and that he was building a wall.

But brickie number three had a very different mindset. As far as he was concerned, he was a builder of cathedrals, and he was there to build one for the lord almighty.

This story is very much a story of purpose. Brickie three’s sense of purpose gave his work real depth and meaning. What he was doing wasn’t simply a job or occupation, like his two mates, it was his calling, his destiny, even.

Now, I’m not suggesting you all become bricklayers and then giving it the big one to the foreman that you’re there to build a cathedral. What I am saying is that life is all about finding the cathedral you want to build.

Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!