shortcuts to life

Good afternoon!

Today’s email will help you get whatever you want out of life, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Are you a dreamer? I am. When I was evaluated by a psychiatrist for ADHD at age 21 she wrote a report about me that said I had “delusions of grandeur.”

As Michael Jordan would say, “And I took that personally…”

I really did though, it put a chip on my shoulder. Plans of grandeur and delusions of grandeur are not the same thing.

She basically said I don’t have ADHD but that I did have unrealistic expectations about how my life would turn out. At the time I was married to the best woman on earth, had just spent 2 years knocking doors in post-communist Europe, had just read a ton of business books and I was ready to take on the world.

OF COURSE I WAS HYPED ABOUT LIFE!

In our evaluations I distinctly remember telling her “I KNOW I’m going to be successful but I just can’t focus and I don’t know how to fix it without help.”

She took that to mean “Arrogant college student wants to be prescribed stimulants so he can probably sell them to his college buddies.”

Her report on me was scathing, and I read it sometimes for motivation.

I didn’t end up getting prescribed Adderall for another decade, when I next tried again. That prescription changed my life, and man I wish I’d have tried harder at 21.

Anyway, I’m a dreamer. And everyone reading this has a dreamer inside of them, whether or not they’re ready to identify as such.

Today I’m writing to the dreamer in all of you, whether it’s 1% of your personality or 100%.

Here’s a question for you: What if you stopped asking for permission?

Now I’m not suggesting you do anything shady or unethical, but what if you just did things for the story? Even if they weren’t normal or conventional.

These “things” I’m referring to will change your life if they go as planned, or they’ll provide some amazing stories if they fail. Amazing stories make for interesting people and interesting people are magnets for success.

As the song says “A hundred bad days made a hundred good stories, a hundred good stories make me interesting at parties.”

I talk about A similar concept (YouTube - Apple Podcasts - Spotify) in the context of finding a white whale customer, partner or vendor, but today I want to talk about permissionless marketing.

Permissionless is such an obscure word that my newsletter platform is telling me its spelled wrong. That’s how early we are with this concept!

I recently made a new friend named Jordan, and he is the king of permissionless marketing. He describes permissionless marketing as such:

1. Creating value upfront without asking for permission.

2. Bypassing traditional gatekeepers.

3. Solving problems they don’t even know they have

4. “Do the thing before you get the thing.”

"Forget cold emails. Forget begging for a meeting. Just do something undeniably valuable, put it in front of them, and watch what happens."

Here’s how Jordan eats his own dogfood:

Jordan’s favorite NBA player is Mike Conley of the Minnesota Timberwolves. He wanted to hang out with him, but who does that? How is that even possible?

One of Jordan’s hobbies was making custom shoes, so he flew to NYC and paid $3k for a custom shoe-making class.

He then used those skills to make these shoes for Mike:

These took him over 40 hours. So all he had to do was tweet about it and then he was set, right? Wrong. He still had to slang a ton of DMs and partner up with a broadcaster that was trying to get Conley’s attention as well, but it worked!

He ended up spending the whole day with Mike and some other players.

Did he do this to get rich? No. He did it because it was awesome, and when you do awesome things you turn into an awesome person, and awesome people get rich.

Another example of permissionless marketing? A story I’m sure you’re sick of hearing about by now, me walking into Buc-ee’s to buy one of everything and launch a store for me. Or me partnering with John Mcafee after a cold email and spending the day at his house.

Right now Jordan is partnered with the legendary Greg Isenberg on several things he’s working on. This started when Jordan took one of Greg’s tweets and turned it into a cool infographic. Minutes later they were FaceTiming, and today Jordan works with Greg full time.

So how can YOU do these awesome things?

Well lets revisit the 4 bullet points above:

1. Creating value upfront without asking for permission. Instead of pitching or requesting an opportunity, you do the work first and make it so compelling that the person or company can’t ignore you.

You may have noticed that my old Google Doc toolkit is now hosted on a sexy website. That happened because an awesome guy named Taylor just reached out and did it! Now we are working on cool stuff together!

You see, there’s a selection bias at play with the people that do this permissionless stuff. They are usually pretty dang good at their craft, and have confidence in that skill, which is why their efforts are rewarded.

That’s an important part of all this: The effort and skill should precede the outreach. If Taylor reached out with a crappy Squarespace site, I wouldn’t have responded favorably (or at all).

Do you HAVE to wait to have skills before going full permissionless? No, but the more skillful you are the higher the likelihood will be that you have success.

2. Bypassing traditional gatekeepers. You don’t wait for approval, formal applications, or warm intros. You go directly to the source with a creative, undeniable offer.

This guy Lukas landed a senior marketing role by disguising himself as a Postmates drive and delivering donuts to his dream job with his resume attached.

Permissionless marketing doesn’t have to be within entrepreneurship.

This guy Matthew paid for Google search ads of the names of the top 5 people he wanted to hire him. Every time those people googled their own names, Matthew’s landing page wouyld pop up, asking them for a job.

3. Solving problems they don’t even know they have. The best permissionless marketing anticipates needs and fills gaps before they become obvious.

Sometimes this can be a guessing game, and sometimes your prospects will openly talk about what they’re needing on social media.

4. “Do the thing before you get the thing.” Instead of waiting to be hired, noticed, or asked, you act as if you already have the job, connection, or deal and put something into the world.

You can just do things, remember?

The hardest part about this whole permissionless thing is simply rewiring your brain to thinking this way. Most people want to do epic stuff, they just don’t think to what it counts.

Here’s a good framework for overcoming that:

1. Get your reps in. Do 1 permissionless thing per day, even if small. This is no different than going to the gym or brushing your teeth every day - you’re building a habit to rewire your brain.

2. Instead of asking “How do I meet person X?” ask “What problem can I solve for X?”

3. Instead of asking “How do I get a job?” ask “Who can I make look amazing?”

4. Remove “What If” thinking. People don’t act because they overthink worst-case scenarios, so just reframe them:

   • “What if I get ignored becomes “what if I land a life-changing opportunity?”

   • “What if this flops?” becomes “What if this becomes a viral hit?”

   • “What if they don’t respond?” becomes “What if they love it and reach out?”

5. Get to 100 “Nos.” Getting rejected is a blessing, it gets you closer to a yes.

6. “You either win or your lose?” No, that’s stupid. You either win or you learn or you walk away with a great story. So it’s impossible to lose.

Make these above bullet points your default setting.

If you want to dive even deeper into these principles, watch or listen to my interview/presentation with Jordan about permissionless marketing here:

YouTube - Apple Podcasts - Spotify - Other Podcasts

If you already heard this episode, then this newsletter was somewhat redundant. I’d love to know if you already watch/listen to my podcast so I can avoid sending you recap emails like these in the future. Please vote here:

Thank you for reading!

Thanks for reading!

Chris Koerner
TKOPOD.COM