So I had a really good session with Jude Charles yesterday.
We covered a lot of ground…
Ranging from my personal philosophies…
To my business model…
To why I do what I do.
And, where I ultimately want to go. 🚩
One thing that Jude was really quick to observe…
Is that when it comes to why I write daily emails and blog posts…
Why I’m so obsessed with providing massive value to people…
And even why I want to build a personal brand…
Is not about money. 💰
There’s something much deeper going on.
You see, my “what”…
Is that I’m trying to share the experiences, strategies, and hacks that have made me relatively successful.
Some of these are copy related…
Others are mindset related.
A lot of them come down to relationships.
There’s a time-management aspect to all of this as well…🕓
And a philosophical component that shouldn’t be ignored.
That’s the “what.”
But, what’s my “WHY?”
On the surface level…
My why is because I want to help others to realize that they don’t have to accept artificial limitations in their life.
I want people to know that following the status quo is a kind of sickness.
Normalcy is the invisi
ble rope that keeps you tethered to the floor…
And that there’s safety in numbers when you follow the herd…
Right up until the herd stampedes off a cliff.
I want people to know that there is a BETTER way to live their life.
I know, because I’ve discovered it..
And this doesn’t mean I’m some prophet or guru.
Rather, through a TON of luck…
Along with some hard work on my end, too…
In the past 8 years…
I’ve gone from never making more than $40k in a single year…
Never holding a job down for more than 6 months…
And occasionally needing to pawn stuff to pay my rent…
And I’m proud of that.
But, much more importantly…
I’m grateful.
I feel like I “got out”…
And I want to help others plan their escape too.
Have you ever heard of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave?
It goes like this:
Imagine there’s a group of prisoners chained inside a cave, unable to turn their heads.
All they can see is the wall of the cave.
Behind them burns a fire…
And between the fire and the prisoners…
The jailors hold up puppets, which cast shadows on the wall.
That’s all the prisoners can see, the shadows…
And so, they go through their entire life thinking those shadows are reality…
When in fact, they are nothing but a vague abstraction.
Philosophical, I know.
But, in the past 8 years…
I feel like I’ve gone from being a prisoner in the cave…
To being on the outside, looking in.
And the reason this happened…
Was because of copywriting, entrepreneurship, masterminds, relationships…
And intensive time spent reading, studying, and modeling off of others.
So, now that I feel like I’m outside the cave…
I’m aware that what I’m writing could be construed as arrogant…
And that’s absolutely NOT my intention here.
Also, I’m not saying that YOU personally are inside the cave.
Maybe you’re outside too.
Which, if so, is awesome.
Because it means we can work together…
To help others get to where we are.
For me, personally, it almost feels like we have a duty to do that.
See, that’s the thing…
I just gave you a big part of my “why”…
But what Jude helped me to do…
Is go even deeper than that…
And to really examine why it is that I feel like I have a duty to help others escape the cave.
To be entirely transparent – I’m still working on figuring this out.
But there are at least two reasons that we uncovered yesterday…
The first is that throughout my life, at pivotal moments, teachers and mentors have appeared.
It started with a drama teacher named Mr. Drogan in 6th grade…
Then, it was a philosophy professor in college named Bobby Johnson…
Next, it was my wife, Laura, at a poker table in Las Vegas in 2011…
And after that it was a guy named YiFeng, who helped me grow exponentially as a copywriter.
Maybe everything would have worked out anyways…
Feeling in my gut that I had more in me…
But not truly realizing I was trapped inside the cave…
Or having any clue how I could get out.
And I think the second reason for why I’m so obsessed with teaching and sharing…
Is an existential one.
The first two mentors I mentioned here were both teachers…
But they also both happened to have terminal, incurable disease.
Mr. Drogan had M.S…
Bobby Johnson had cystic fibrosis…
And both of them died within 5 years of me meeting them 🙏.
It’s heartbreaking…
But I think what their deaths made me realize…
Is that we really do have a limited number of days on this earth…
Tomorrow is never certain.
And, given that our entire existence is an imperceptible blip on the cosmic horizon of time…
We’d be damn foolish not to make the most of every second we’ve got.
For me, making the most means making an impact
And that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing…
Teaching, writing, training, sharing, speaking, and all of that.
It’s why I don’t charge for most of my content.
Why I’ll give away high level strategies in my emails and blog.
And why I try to be as humble, honest, and helpful as I possibly can.
When I die, the money I’ve amassed may live on for a few generations…
But my impact can live for thousands of years.
Especially if even a fraction of the people I’m able to reach…
Decide to pay it forward as well.
All of the mentors I’ve had…
They had mentors too.
And so, there has been this unbroken chain…
Something that’s been passed down through the generations…
That started, probably, with the beginning of human consciousness itself…
And I’d have to be a special kind of a**hole…
To break that chain now.
– SPG
P.S. If you want, I’d love to hear about someone in your life who mentored you. Someone who changed your trajectory. If you’ve got a few seconds and want to share, I’m all ears and I’d love to be inspired.
P.P.S. This post originally came from an email I sent to my private list. If you want to see more stuff like this from me, you can apply to join my list using this link.