Week 25 - Turning feedback into an asset 🤗

On Friday, somewhere around 2 pm, I downloaded the Inside Out Thought Bubbles game that I played a looooooong time ago just because I remembered it was fun, and still not very stupid 🤓

I played a little while having lunch, went through like 13 levels, they were rather easy, but still fun, and I had the urge to continue playing it. So I stopped and continued my working day.

In the evening, after spending quality time on our mobile phones, my wife and I watched TikTok together while I played a game. After an hour of this, I felt tired, my brain was like, “Wtf is that? What’s going on?”, and I felt kind of addicted, because I still wanted to continue playing, but I wasn’t learning anything, and I wasn’t having fun 😲

That moment I deleted this game right away, and after I’d read 10 pages of the book, I felt so much better 🤓 so, yeah, now you can officially call me addicted to knowledge 😅

Reflecting on my professional journey, this week I received homework from my amazing coach - to ask people I know well if I had helped them with anything and how they felt about it.

I even went an extra mile to collect those answers in one place, where I can easily check them whenever I need a motivation boost, and, I won’t be lying, I also wanted to share them with others to show how I can potentially help them.

So after folks answered me in DM, I asked them whether they would be open to making it kinda official and turning it into a LinkedIn recommendation.

And the thing I was afraid of the most happened, one of the folks recorded me an audio message telling how they feel about LI recommendations, that it’s kinda BS, how it felt transactional to them, and how busy they are to spend time on this.

Of course, I was sad because I kinda suspected it might go that way, but, on the other hand, 7 other folks told me “Sure, I’d love to do that”, and gave me LI recommendations. Also, I didn’t ask about this feedback from everyone, I asked only people I knew for a long time, and when I did that, I asked myself the question: “If this person asked you about a recommendation, would you do that?” And my answer was “Of course, yes!”

That’s how I learned that, first of all, not everyone thinks about you the same way as you think about them, and secondly, even if it feels transactional to 1 person, 7 others would be happy to help you, so just keep going 🤓

So, in the upcoming weeks, I’ll keep asking folks I know rather well about feedback and recommendations to both build my personal confidence that I bring value to the world, and also build my social proof for people who don’t know me yet. And, as a bonus, I’ll also see who’s ready to go a small extra mile for me 🤗

And, one more thing I’ve tried: during the week I received 4 questions about a community from my friend in a personal message, and instead of answering fully in DM, I turned it into a LI post so that more folks who’re dealing with the same situation could get value from it. So afterwards I’ve shared the link to the post with a friend, and told them that if they have any questions, just continue asking, and I’ll be happy to elaborate on that!

Also, I’ve got an idea to try Ask Me Anything event, where I invite everyone who wants to learn about the connection between community and business, and ask me all the questions they have so I can help them on scale plus it’ll give me ideas of what people are really interested in, and afterwards I’ll use this information to create interesting and valuable videos about community ROI!

And yes, I’ve created a second motivational video! 🤓

Yes, this time with fewer views and likes, but I’m not stopping anyway, will analyze it, and will record more videos next week, so stay tuned! 🤩

Thoughts of the week:

• “Every technology that was ever made is magnifying human abilities” - from DOAC podcast

• “Be specific - we can visualize 6 eggs, we can’t visualize 423 calories” - from Nudge podcast

• "Don't think. When you're at 0, you have nothing to think about. You have to create noise first, then you can think." - from Indie Hackers newsletter

• “Find a tech problem developers hate dealing with and turn it into a business they'll happily pay for” - from Indie Hackers newsletter

• “I’m a fucking human, a real living person” - from Stans movie by Eminem

• “If you can’t kill them with kindness try lethal injection.” - Wednesday Addams

Song of the week:

Book and quotes of the week:

Mindset - Changing The Way You Think To Fulfil Your Potential by Carol S. Dweck

“Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.”

“If failure means you lack competence or potential—that you are a failure—where do you go from there?”

“John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren’t a failure until you start to blame.”

Daily actions:

• invite 5 people to give feedback about how I helped them

• tell 5 freelancers about the Freelance Foundation course

• participate in a secret LI support group

• train my idea muscle - come up with 1 idea about smth

• read a self-development book/listen to a professional podcast for 15 minutes

• make a valuable post/comment on LinkedIn

• work 30 minutes solely on my business 😎

Weekly actions:

• transcribe one new episode of the Creator Spotlight podcast and learn something from it

• transcribe one new DOAC video and learn one thing from it

If you have any thoughts, ideas, or questions, please 👇

And if you’d like to walk The Road To $1M+ Freelance Business with me 👇

See you next week! 👋