The phone bleeped in the middle of the night as I groggily awoke from ym
I thought this would be a fun, insightful, and very useful post to write.
We’re often taught about visualization.
But how many of us think about it a great deal?
Over the next 2 emails, I’m going to run two visualizations -
One of them will be my plan to become worth $100 million within five years.
This one - will be the absolute opposite of that.
Let me set the scene; and let’s imagine for one second:
‘Deepak you’ve lost all of your money in Forex trading’ (£263k at one point) - all gone
‘Those mortgages you ‘thought you had’ have just disappeared - there’ll be no rentals and no nothing’
‘Pearl Lemon has just been deleted from Google’
‘Anything you did to build up your personal brand - your YouTube, your interviews, your podcasts - they’ve all been deleted
‘In fact absolutely everything - it’s 100% ALL GONE’
‘Your bank account has been wiped clean your internet has been cut’
‘Your family isn’t around to help you, you don’t have credit cards, you can’t ask your friends for support
‘You still have Daniela and your cat Jenny and all to support
AND RENT IS DUE. NOW.’
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Ok - so this is the scene that’s set.
I have Amir, my landlord, whatsapping me saying
‘where’s rent mate?’
I have my read receipts turned on so I know he knows that I’ve seen his message.
£1,600 rent costs. Then I have £132 in council tax, then I have another few hundred in bills’
So that’s basically £2,000.
I shut my phone off for a moment and breathe.
I’m nervous and panicked because everything I used to rely upon has just disappeared.
My businesses, my money, my network, my family, my reputation - it’s all gone sideways.
In fact, let’s imagine it’s even worse.
Let’s imagine I have a series of negative press written about me covering page 1 of Google:
“Deepak Shukla fraudster - don’t trust him with your money”
‘Deepak Shukla digital con artist - loses all his wealth”
“Pearl Lemon goes into liquidation as founder Deepak Shukla found embezzling funds”
So I DO have a reputation…
It’s a negative one online so if anyone looks me up…..this is what they see.
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Ha, I’m going to continue with this post a little later - because I actually need some time to think about what the actual plan of action would be...
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First of all, I’d figure out how much money I need to make without dropping my standard of living - not for me really but I have my partner and wouldn’t want to compromise upon our life
So:
- £2,000 per month on rent
- £2,000 per month on food
- £1,500 per month on leisure
- £1,000 per month on Daniela's university fees
So that’s £6,500 per month to cover
At a minimum to cover everything.
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Just thinking in these terms is very powerful.
I mean - in this situation, how would we recover from such a place?
It’s a powerful consideration that really gets you thinking about how you’d combat this.
The most important thing to resolve in any situation is cash flow.
Cashflow still is truly king and without having actual pennies and pounds in your bank account - everything else can become overwhelming.
And actually, in my opinion - this is where all entrepreneurs should start.
Solve your short-term money problems.
With myself, I would look at exchanging my time for some income.
And there are myriad ways to do this:
- Sell tutoring services? - no not enough money quickly enough
- Sell digital marketing services? - most likely as I’m doing this now
- Sell a product? - unlikely I’ve got no experience or track record doing this
But there are two critical components to any journey I’ve been on.
Taking action - no matter what that action is.
And then selling.
These are two skills that are vital to anyone’s success.
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Beyond the panic.
Beyond the gut-wrenching fear of not having an income and having to cope with rent being due and all…
It’s important in moments like this you maintain your clarity and keep driving forward.
The most important thing you can do in a situation like this is actually take action - and figure out what it is you’ll be selling.
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This desire; this burning desire to make things happen is perhaps something that comes from my family history.
Being the son of economic migrants - I feel a great sense of responsibility to succeed - from seeing that my parents’ life was about raising their children (i.e my siblings and me) - I feel I need to do right by them and demonstrate what’s possible.
So practically speaking now - here’s a breakdown of what I’d need to do:
Spend a morning preparing responses to these types of questions:
- Deepak, what is all this stuff on Google on page 1?
- Deepak, you’re a con artist?
- How can we trust you?
Building really strong rebuttals around this would be vitally important.
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Building out a brand company perhaps separate from my personal brand would be useful as well - i.e a media agency that’s branded under someone else’s name.
I’d need to be cognizant of the fact that whatever else I do could generate further negative PR.
The separate brand would need to be prepared, setup, and built out over the next 3 months.
Whilst rent was due however I may need to look at getting any jobs I could by running various direct response outreach campaigns to win clients:
This could be:
- LinkedIn Lead Generation
- Cold Email Outreach that’s personalized
- Facebook messaging in various groups
- Responding to jobs on Upwork
- Responding to jobs on Angel.co
Ultimately the overriding challenge I’d have if building out on the basis of my own name - is that it’s like walking around with a business death sentence that would stop me from getting many many jobs.
Therefore creating counter PR would be a very important part of this process.
With this in mind, I could perhaps write up a ‘response’ of sorts encompassing a commentary upon all of the negative press I would have received and facing it head-on.
Whether constitutes ‘setting the record straight or ‘apologizing and seeking atonement’ or being the ‘reformed man’ - all of these could potentially work as a vehicle to start rebuilding trust modicum by modicum.
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As you can perhaps see - I have a ‘throw mud at the wall’ approach that has been an insight into how I’ve built my career.
Pearl Lemon’s pivot into SEO very much came upon a whim through the conversation I had with George of Go International when he told me that has was in it for the long-term
Since then I’ve run with the idea of growing an agency and it has spawned into Pearl Lemon, Pearl Lemon Leads, and more since then.
In the instance of having lost all of my money and reputation - I would seek to produce a significant body of content ‘responding’ to the negative press I’d received in a great amount of depth and then go head-on into a selling services approach
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In situations where you’ve been let down and depleted - then the best approach would be to find my way forward through all of the above methods and see where it takes me.
And this approach I’ve taken in the last few years is one I’m continuing as I’ll share with you in the coming email where I’ll walk through some insights into how I plan to make $100 million within 5 years.
You might be in for a surprise I warn you :p
