7 Ways To Tell If You’re An Amateur

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Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Jonathan: Welcome back to another edition of List Builders with the King of List
Building, Mr. Igor Kheifets. What is up my man?

Igor: All is good, brother. All is good. And really excited to get back into the
studio after my European trip.

Jonathan: Yeah, I wanted to talk to you and I’m sure that the List Builders would
like to hear a little bit more about that trip. Was that your first long term
speaking engagement?

Igor: Yeah, it was a bit of a speaking tour if you will because I got to speak at
three different cities across Europe over two different countries in just 72
hours. So it was literally get in the room, speak, stay there for a couple of
hours, and get out to kind of rush to the train station and grab my first class
ticket and travel to a different city. So I went to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam I
went to London, and then to Manchester so it was a hell of a trip.

Jonathan: No kidding and I didn’t know trains had first class, I’m a little
jealous about that. I would like to try that one day. [laughter]

Igor: Oh yeah for sure, the best one by far was the EuroStar Train, the one that
takes you from Belgium to London. You kind of feel like flying business in a plane
because you get served a meal and everybody is nice to you and it smells well and
the toilet is clean so you feel good about your investment and it feels like
you’re flying but you’re not really taking off the ground which is the part that I
hate the most about flying.

Jonathan: Really? That’s interesting. So you’re not a fan of getting up in the air
then, huh?

Igor: Are you kidding me? I’m like petrified. Every time I get up in the air I’m
like holding my wife’s hand like a little sissy girl, like shaking. [laughter]

Jonathan: [laughter] That is funny, I didn’t know that about you. So talk to me a
little bit about the tour. What was the tour about and how did it turn out for
you?

Igor: Well, it was about Solo Ads of course and I was invited to speak about paid
traffic because as it turns out Europe is mostly full with people who are still
building teams and building down lines the good old fashion way. They do hotel
meetings. They do cold calls. They make a warm list of friends and family. While
there are some big team leaders out there, people who build teams with tens of
thousands of people, most people are still struggling. They have no idea how to
get leads. They have no idea how to get customers. They don’t understand how paid
traffic works. It’s funny because I noticed that the same questions people used to
ask me like 10 years ago or 8 years ago when I started with Solo Ads, I was asked
during those events like it’s as if these people kind of climbed from under a
rock. They haven’t been paying any attention at all which then lead me to
recognize the following fact and that is that most people out there, our market
place if you will is still clueless about the internet. They still don’t
understand how it works and they still are sort of unaware of the potential and
that means that there is so much opportunity out there right now for you to make
money even if you’re brand new, right? There is so much untapped territory, so
many untapped groups of people that it is just ridiculous and that’s one of the
biggest lesson for me during this trip because I was like, man, everybody already
knows, Igor Solo Ads is the best traffic source where else can we go and here I am
recognizing that there is a whole continent full of people that have no freaking
clue.

Jonathan: That is nearly unbelievable. If you weren’t telling me, I wouldn’t have
thought that was possible. So anyways, that’s for my own personal curiosity but I
imagine you have a topic for us today, right?

Igor: Oh yeah, of course, I always do. One of my all time favorite books is “The
War of Art” by Steven Pressfield and it’s a book about how to beat
procrastination. So if you ever found yourself with a big to-do list or maybe that
to-do list has just one or two things that you got to do and you found yourself
procrastinating about doing those things. You definitely want to pick up “The War
of Art” and see what Steven Pressfield has to say about it. I mean the guy is just
incredible the way he kind of breaks down procrastination and labels it and helps
you overcome it. But recently while I read “The War of Art” a couple of years ago,
recently I picked up a copy of “Turning Pro” which is the next book in the series
by Steven Pressfield. In this book, he describes the differences between the
amateur and the pro so today I wanted to take the lessons I picked up from that
book and share the seven ways to tell if you’re still an amateur and just define
what an amateur really is. An amateur is a person that will never succeed. It’s
not that this person is still unskilled in a craft that’s not the meaning of
amateur. Amateur is the way you approach life, amateur is basically a way of life,
it’s a way of being that gets you no results and that really creates incapacity in
all areas of your life. The seven ways that we are going to be talking about in
just a bit are going to help you identify if you’re acting like an amateur and
basically give you a couple of pointers how to change your behavior starting today
to start getting better results in your life.

Jonathan: Alright, I’m looking forward to it and I haven’t read this book yet so
it’s going to be a lesson for me too.

Igor: Alright, cool. The first way to tell if you’re an amateur is basically the
amateur you know she believes that before she can act she must get permission from
the omnipotent other or some kind of figure of authority even if that figure of
authority is your spouse or your brother-in-law, you know just society as a whole
or tribe of some kind or maybe your school teacher or something like that. Most
people are kind of wait for permission. I see this all the time in our industry.
People ask me how to become a leader or how to build big teams or how to succeed
and then when you give them the tools, when you give them the blueprints, they
don’t act and so while most people will never tell you why I recognize that it’s
because they wait for permission to be eligible to act. You know it’s like I can’t
be making money online unless I can prove that I’m making money online kind of
thing, like the Catch 22 thing. Like how can I get someone into my down line or
how can I sign someone up into my business if I’m not making money right now. So
they are like waiting for the money to suddenly appear out of nowhere and that
sort of makes them qualified to go and sell something. So that’s the classic
amateur behavior which you got to eliminate and you got to start basically giving
yourself permission. At some point say, enough is enough, I’ve waited long enough,
I’ve studied enough now I give myself permission to go and sign someone up.

Jonathan: Oh man.

Igor: Yeah, it can be tremendous. It can produce incredible results for you in
your life just not waiting for someone else to tell you, you can do something.

Jonathan: You made me feel bad there Igor because I was waiting for your
permission. One time we talked about positioning and I was waiting for your
permission to call myself, The King of Podcasting and when you finally gave it to
me, you know I went out there and started using it. I’m already an amateur.
[laughter]

Igor: [laughter] We all got to start somewhere, man but trust me too
many people out there, they wait their entire lives and act like amateurs. So that
was the first one, the second one is the amateur has a million plans and they all
start tomorrow.

Jonathan: Oo-huh.

Igor: Yeah, we know that one, right? It’s not something that we didn’t know
before. All amateurs, they have a million things they plan to do, they got tons of
crazy ideas, they got tons of things up in the air in the works, they are spinning
lots of plates, but nothing really gets done. So the key difference between
amateurs and professionals that I was able to spot early on and then sort of adapt
the same behavior is to apply the imperfect action strategy to my life and just
say okay so I may not have the best ideas, I may not have crazy, crazy plans but
what I do have is my work ethic and I recognize that I got to do something first
before I can implement other ideas so I would grab one idea even if it’s a weak
one and I would start doing things to implement it. Specifically with offers for
instance I’m very quick to put together an offer and release it to the marketplace
if I see a gap in the marketplace that offer can fulfill. That alone has been
tremendous for the growth of our business because while most people out there,
they kind of wait for the time to be perfect and for the offer to perfect, for the
product to be perfect, we are off and running testing the product, making money,
improving it, getting people on board, you know streamlining the system by the
time like they are releasing anything we are already miles ahead.

Jonathan: You know that is one of the things when I met your mentor, Tom Beal,
that was one of the things we said about you was like gosh darn I never met anyone
that takes action so damn quickly. Somebody tells you something and it’s done
before they finish their sentences.

Igor: You kind of have to man, and this is sort of like a super power for me. I
don’t see it with a lot of people but trust me the people who I do recognize this
quality in, they are like unstoppable. They might not be the most creative people
in the world, they might not be the most amazing and interesting people in the
world but dammit if they sit down to develop an idea, they just become profitable
with it very quickly.

Jonathan: No doubt.

Igor: So the third one is counterintuitive. To most people especially to most
amateurs it’s not going to make any sense but the amateur is addicted to failure.

Jonathan: Ooo.

Igor: Yeah.

Jonathan: [laughter]

Igor: You’re probably thinking like yeah but how can you be addicted to failure
because nobody like to fail well, here is the thing. Failures sort of get you off
the hook. Fail is that get out of jail free card that allows you to say my life
sucks and it’s okay because I tried and I failed.

Jonathan: Ahh.

Igor: I mean this is probably the easiest way to piss me off is to complain to me
about trying and failing at something. But this is a classic amateur behavior and
amateurs do get the sick twisted satisfaction out of failing at something. In fact
they sort of hope they will fail even before they begin because again that just
gets them off the hook and it allows them to say, “Well, I tried and it doesn’t
work.” So that’s number three. Number four …

Jonathan: You know what I call that Igor? I want to share this with you, I think
you’ll get a kick out of it. I call it a case of the “It’s nots”. I ask people if
they have a case of the “It’s nots”. They are like “It’s nots”, yeah I tried this
and it’s not working, I tried that and it’s not working. Oh you go the it’s nots.
You got a problem.

Igor: Absolutely man, that’s a really cool name for it, “it’s nots”, sound like
chicken pox. [laughter] So number four, the fourth way to tell if you’re an
amateur is if you’re addicted to distractions. Here is why this is interesting.
You see most of us are addicted to distractions at this point like Facebook,
Twitter, the phone is going off all the time like recently I was just forced to
just put my phone down next to me on the table, I used to just put it next to me
on the table but the screen like glows so often that I have to turn it down now
and put the screen to the table, you know what I mean? So I see the back cover.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: Because it’s just impossible to get any work done this way. And if you let
it the distraction will take over. Here is the thing about distractions, they too
sort of get you off the hook because you know the number one enemy of progress,
success of achievement is distraction because in order to achieve, in order to
produce, in order to create you need concentration and depth. Right?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: You have to be concentrating, you have to go deep into something to really
make things happen and if you’re getting distracted every two seconds for the
latest Tweet or news article or whatever, you will never get deep into something.
So the amateur is using the distraction of any sort as an excuse not to act even
if that means like taking their kids to soccer practice, even if that means using
their weekends to paint the fence rather than a write a new piece of content or
whatever that is for that particular person. My best friend for instance, he’s a
good guy, he’s implementing but he has a little bit of an amateur still in him
just like we all do, it sort of lives within us so his amateur, it’s all about
building stuff. So rather than implementing a marketing strategy, he will go and
build a new thing into his store like put a new shelf on or put a new billboard,
you know what I mean?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: Like he will build something rather than go and promote his business and so
I pointed this out to him several times and I said, “Dude, if you want to build
stuff in your store and get someone pay them money to build it, you’re job is to
go get new customers.”

Jonathan: Igor I have a quick question for you here, of course this is my personal
stuff. So do you still buy info products or do you just invest in getting
mentorship, what’s your angle on that these days?

Igor: Well, that’s a great question. I think the last info product I purchased was
a year and half ago, it was a product by Dan Kennedy called “The Money Pyramid”
ever since I have only been getting one info product and that is Ben Settle’s
newsletter.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: For which I’m paying other than that no it’s pretty much been just
mentorship.

Jonathan: I thought so, man. That’s one of the things I’m trying to do for next
year is just forget all those distractions and just pay for people.

Igor: Exactly.

Jonathan: Thank you.

Igor: Exactly and we have been hiring like crazy too. I think we hired five new
people in the last three months which you know for me I think I’ve hired five
people in the last three years collectively.

Jonathan: Wow.

Igor: So we have been putting money towards other things and the reason, you know
I think we did an episode about this is the information diet is like stop
consuming go create. Right?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Igor: Consume less, create more. Now number five, the fifth character trait of an
amateur is the amateur is just terrified, petrified, you know just pissing their
pants with fear because they say fear is the primary color of the amateur’s
interior world. I’m quoting the book here by the way. Fear of failure, fear of
success, fear of looking foolish, fear of underachieving and fear of
overachieving, fear of poverty, fear of loneliness and fear of death pretty much
fear of everything but mostly what the amateur fears is being excluded from the
tribe. Right? It can be the gang, the posse, mother and father, religion, nation,
race whatever that is. The professional on the other hand, he too is terrified
don’t get me wrong. I mean professionals get scared just as much as amateurs do
but they like Doberman Dan said once in his newsletter is they piss their pants
but they then take action with wet pants. That’s the difference between an amateur
and a professional.

Jonathan: [laughter] Nice.

Igor: So you know fear will always be there. Fear, it will always be there kind of
waiting for you by the time you decide to take on another challenge but you have
to recognize it for what it is just an emotion and then act in spite of it if you
are to turn from amateur into a professional. Now the other thing that an amateur
does a lot is that she lives by the opinions of others. The amateur continuously
rates herself in relation to others becoming self-inflated if her fortunes rise
and desperately anxious if the stars should fall. So in other words, amateur will
always be living a world where comparison is the number one activity so if they
make X they will look for somebody who makes X+10 and feel like crap about it or
they will see somebody who makes X-10 and they will feel great. So the amateur,
their emotional state is constantly being controlled by an external set of events.
Maybe somebody drives a nicer car, maybe someone lives in a nicer house or in a
better country, you know, I used to be an amateur in this regard for years. That
was the number piece of mind stealing activity I indulged in and I’ve held myself
prisoner to just be miserable because of it. I constantly compared myself against
other bigger gurus and against my competitors, against people in other businesses
that did better than me. The first time I went to the United States of America, I
looked at these giant houses people lived in. I looked at all the cars they drove
like the Corvettes and the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris and I was just –
especially in Orlando where the gated communities and stuff. I was just – that was
just devastating to my self-esteem. I came back, I worked really hard, I kept
working even harder to achieve more but I was driven by this superficial bullshit
more than by the internal desire to make lasting change or make a contribution or
perhaps just hit the next challenge in my business or in my personal growth. You
know what I mean? Like I was a true amateur.

Jonathan: Yeah, well one of the things about that when you’re comparing yourself
to other people is kind of puts you in a bad position because you can I both know
that hanging out with people who are more successful than us is going to raise our
level of success but if you’re always comparing yourself you’re not going to be
able to hang out those folks because you’re going to feel inferior.

Igor: Exactly. You know the mastermind principle of think and grow rich, you know
surrounding yourself with people who do better than you do in order for you to
grow. I mean, you’re sort of depriving yourself of that possibility if all you’re
doing is comparing yourself? Right? If you feel bad about being standing next to
somebody who makes more money than you do or drives a better car or has a better
looking wife or something. Not to sound chauvinistic but I will be honest with you
girls listening, we guys, we compare each other by how beautiful our wives and
girlfriends are. It’s just a bit of a truth, just a fact of life for you. So if I
see a guy whose wife is hotter than my wife, I just hate the guy. It’s like
mrrrrr. It’s like he is driving a better car or something. It sounds chauvinistic
but that’s exactly how men think. That’s just DNA man.

Jonathan: Cat is out of the bag. [laughter]

Igor: [laughter]

Jonathan: What do you have coming up for us next time?

Igor: Oh dude, come one we are only down to six. We got to do one more.

Jonathan: Oh shoot, I lost count, my bad.

Igor: Yeah so the last but not least, it’s actually not the last one, there are
more of these in the book so I recommend you get the book which is “Turning Pro”
by Steven Pressfield. But the last but not least that stood out for me was the
amateur seeks instant gratification and I mean which couldn’t be truer for our
industry where everybody is chasing shiny objects, right? But with this
realization, there is a great quote that Steven shares in the book, and it goes
something like this, “Too much ain’t enough and too soon is still late.” Which
basically kind of sums up exactly what our prospects are these days, you know,
they want everything, they want it yesterday, they don’t want to work for it, they
want results to happen overnight and if they don’t happen overnight, they complain
and they leave and they go and try to purchase another shiny object that promises
the results but they don’t get the results either and so they are stuck in this
loop going around and buying and buying and buying until some point money runs out
or patience runs or both run out and they either quit the business or finally come
to grips with the reality and recognize that it’s not going to happen overnight.

Jonathan: Now we are there. [laughter] Good stuff, Igor. So what is coming up next
time? Now at the correct time.

Igor: [laughter] Well next time, I started studying Bruce Lee which surprisingly I
never had the interest to study before but I discovered a bunch of things about
his philosophy that allowed me to better understand success because it turns out
Bruce Lee was a philosopher just as much as he was a marital arts teacher and
instructor. So on the next episode, I would like to share a lesson that I learned
from Bruce Lee’s philosophy by reading this books that explains in a big way how
come some people struggle for years and how come they are still chasing shiny
objects from a different perspective something that I didn’t see or didn’t hear
about or hear discussed on any other media at least to my knowledge.

Jonathan: Damn, I didn’t even know Bruce Lee had books. Now I will have to go and
look for those. Alright so that is a wrap of another List Building Lifestyle, we
will be back in your earbuds next time, thank you for tuning in.

Thanks for listening to The List Building Lifestyle Show, make sure to subscribe on iTunes
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we share on the show might double your list and double your business. Download the
transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at listbuilderslifestyleshow.com and
don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy of “The Wealthy List Builder’s Survival
Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival . This is Igor Kheifets until next time we talk, have a good one.

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