Day 30 - Continuing Your Education

The Engineer

Aegis Jaeger
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BuSo Pro
Digital Strategist
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Jun 15, 2014
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You've made it. But your journey has only begun.

What the previous 29 Days have communicated to you is that the road is long and ever-winding. Comfort and complacency lurk in every shadow on every plateau. Your task is to burst beyond these glass ceilings.

Those who've gone before you can only lead you so far before paths separate. You now must carve your own trail through the dark forest towards the mountain.

It's scary. The stakes are high. It's lonely. But it's your path and no one else's.​

Fortunately, we can point you in the right direction. There's going to be thieves out to steal what you've already accomplished. There's going to be distractions and temptations of immediate gratification. But you're going to hold steadfast and use your power of discernment to recognize good advice from bad, honest intentions from malice, and mutually beneficial helpers from those who hope to ride your coattail to glory.

Remember that you can always return to this 30 Day Digital Strategy guide to realign your compass, refocus your passion, and help you gain your bearings again.

But until that time, here are ways that you can continue to progress on your path towards the throne...


The Digital Strategy Expansion Packs
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As time passes, we will continue to release more guides to aid you on your quest. Some of the most effective, high performance individuals in our industry have committed to sharing their insight with the Builders. This wisdom has been distilled through years of experience, hardship, and eventual conquest. As these kind souls share with us the knowledge they've earned, please make sure to thank them and respect their offering by engaging them with questions and returning with proof of your progress that couldn't have been possible without them.


Mastermind Groups
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Nothing is more advantageous than having a small group of equally hungry grinders all looking for their next feast. Whether this is a local group that meets monthly for progress reports and accountability, or it's an online Skype group to bounce ideas off of, make sure you're involved with others on the path. Being immersed in the culture will keep your mind sharp when it comes to spotting opportunities and striking while the iron is hot. As has been said, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time around. Choose your fellowship carefully. Hold your cards close until you're assured that there is trust.


Mentorship
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Even Bill Gates has a mentor (Warren Buffet). There is always someone more intelligent, harder working, and with a clearer vision than you. They are critical in keeping you on the right path and helping you navigate the obstacles and opportunities. As goes with the mastermind groups, this person can be someone you meet in person or even online. Someone will be more than happy to take you under their wing. It validates them, gives them an apprentice, and lifts you both higher. Nobody wants to go it totally alone, nor should we have to. But hold your cards close until you're assured that there is trust.


Online Communities
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While we certainly hope you'll always be a contributing member of the Builder Society, you should definitely explore other online communities. The small mastermind groups on Skype are the incubators and laboratories where the true leading-edge progress is discovered. It makes it's way to larger skype groups, then on to forums, and then on to the blogs. Each level is appropriate for us at certain milestones in our career. You will outgrow each until you are the thought leader and industry influencer. That's when it's time to give back and perhaps become a mentor to a promising star such as yourself now.

The heads up I'll give you now is that there are no super secrets that you will discover for the small price of three monthly installments of $5,999.99. You don't need that eBook, expensive forum membership, or seminar ticket. It's all out there for free (as a matter of fact, it's all for free in this growing guide and on BuSo). The personality bloggers and agency blogs are regurgitating information from the forums and Skype. More often than not they're happy to talk about what's safe. The forums will delve into some riskier practices that you can learn from (insulate your business from these methods). There's nothing new under the internet sun, but that's not to say the information isn't of value. Eventually you'll have read and seen it all and be left with no choice but to become an innovator.

Then you'll realize the innovators were gathered where you began... right here at home with the Builders.


Print Books
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Yes, I just said the blogger-style eBooks aren't necessary. That's because they ensnare your curiosity by talking about methods. And they swear there's something new! There's some new angle, they promise! It's not that same stuff you just read in their posts or on BuSo!

Print books are a different ball game. The classics aren't about methods. They are about mindsets. They are about psychology. They don't teach you what to think and do, they teach you how to think and do. Copy the common methods and you get a common product. Market in the traditional form and you find out what ad blindness is all about. Follow the herd and you'll walk right up onto the butcher's block. Don't focus on what to do and where to go. Focus on how to make those decisions for yourself and everything you do and touch will become the signal in the noise.


Classic Schooling
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In some nations, this is still fantastic. The days of a classic education being worth your time are fast dwindling in the United States. It's now a method of indebted slavery, turning your cash flow into your lender's cash flow for about 30 years. And what you're learning is already outdated by graduation, and in some cases replaced by automation.

If you having the inkling that you're an entrepreneur, you might be. Go back to Day 1 in the guide and ask yourself if you really have what it takes. Because you're going to work 16 hours a day for yourself to avoid working 8 hours a day for someone else, and there's going to be long stretches where you don't get paid a penny for those efforts. You're actually going to bleed money with no tourniquet. And that hair-brained business idea might just have to get amputated with no chance of breaking even or profiting.

If that scares you, then go to college, get a degree, become qualified for a high paying day job that'll allow you enough cash flow to still eat after making your loan payment.

The other scenario is if you kept a high a GPA, scored high on the ACT/SAT, and wrote a solid application letter and got accepted into an extremely high profile university. The education isn't what's of value here, but the connections you'll make. You'll be surrounded by some of the highest potential people on the planet due to their intelligence, dedication, and coming from an able and stable enough background to fund the venture. Mark Zuckerberg stole his idea for Facebook from two of his classmates (and was capable of coding it). People wind up in secret societies and end up President. If this is your scenario, remember... you're there to network. Keep your grades up high enough to not get kicked out, and spend the rest of your time greasing people and making friends.


Experimentation
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Tinker, and then tinker some more. Do you have a suspicion about on-page SEO that nobody has ever mentioned? Form a hypothesis, design an experiment, run it, then revalidate it. Maybe you just stumbled upon a ranking factor that's got enough weight to it that you can exploit it without it ever coming under fire. Don't tell anyone unless you want it to end up on the forums and blogs though! Tricks don't last when shared and more often than not destroy whatever they were attached to.

Explore the web, and then some more. Did you just find a platform that has a weak point that nobody has ever exploited? Scrape a list and bot it. You can sell it on forums to spammers and cash out by ruining it yourself, or you can rank for something valuable for a while until other spammers see what you did and ruin it for you. If it's a risky method, cash out and redeploy your money soldiers into your main venture.

Iterate fast and fail fast. When you're first starting out, it's wise to have main project you keep safe as long as you choose a large enough vertical with a brand that's capable of expanding and not being boxed in. But it's also wise to have other small projects. Build them fast and lose them fast. Then iterate again, quickly. Every time you encounter a hurdle or pothole, next time you'll be smart enough to walk around it or choose a different road. You will not, and I repeat will not, choose your forever destiny the first time out of the gates. So don't get attached. Gain experience, learn what to do and what not to do, and apply that to your main, safe project. Eventually it will all click and you can go nuts with a head start.


Conclusion
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These are the weapons in your arsenal. They will be your companions until the end.

But beware. Don't become the guy who continually polishes and cleans his weapon without ever having fired it. Don't become the bookworm who's perpetually almost ready. Don't become the professional student. You don't need a master's or doctoral degree in business. You don't need a high school education.

You need execution. And that's what weapons are for. They are at your disposal. They will help you fend off the enemy and cut through the brush and thickets as you pave your own path towards your goal.


We thank you for caring for yourself and your aspirations. Thank you for having dreams and the will to pursue them. Thank you for having read and applied 30 full days of information. It's a lot to soak in and definitely not all immediately actionable. That's why we recommend you revisit this guide as frequently as you feel the need. It will always be here for you, free of charge, with nothing asked in return.

If you want to structure your new journey to match these 30 days and beyond, we'd love it if you journaled your adventure here on Builder Society in the Laboratory. This way other Builders can provide feedback and guidance and you can teach the rest of us a thing or two as we read along. It's a great way to give back to the community, and in this way all of us grow together and come closer to our goals.

Thanks again.

P.S. Don't forget about the Expansion Packs, coming soon...

P.P.S. You read every day. Pat yourself on the back. If you feel our efforts have helped further you in your career, consider saying thank you buy picking up a BuSo Pro account upgrade as a way of saying thanks. It's cheap and helps the forum keep it's own lights on. We appreciate it.

Make sure you come back in the future when you hit millionaire status and beyond. We definitely want to hear your story and find out how much this guide influenced you along the way. Thank you for reading along. Best of luck on your adventures.

Additional Day 30 Study Materials:
 
Thank you somehow doesn't even scratch the surface of gratitude and appreciation for the time/effort/knowledge you guys have put together.. but..

Thank you.
 
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I'm fiending for more!

Has anyone here had an actual mentor? In the dozens of business books I've read, there's always the suggestion that the most valuable thing you can have is a mentor. I'm one of those people who ended up online and never met people offline who are into SEO and IM. An internet-based mentor would be fine. I've never had anything like that though. For those that have that relationship, is it all it's chalked up to be? What have you gotten out of it? Seems like the fumbling around I've done for years would have had to be done whether or not I had someone pointing me in the right direction. Me, like most people, have a hard time learning from others mistakes. Does it work?
 
@Daquan Yes, I have a mentor, who is also a business partner. What I have learnt in the last 6 months, getting my hands dirty and getting feedback from someone who has already done it, has been amazing.

They can see your blind spots, the thing you didn't know you didn't know.​

I've learnt more in the last 6 months than in all my years when I worked in marketing.
 
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