10 things I've done "WRONG" with Limitless Mindset

As I shared in a recent newsletter...

Earlier this year I was reading this entrepreneurship book, 10x Is Easier Than 2x, about exponential growth hacking in business and life. And I was getting really uncomfortable as I read it because it was calling out all the things I've been doing wrong with Limitless Mindset. All the ways I'd been limiting myself and the good I could do for you. It showed me how small I've been thinking. I've long prided myself on being a rule-breaker, a dissident, and an innovator but this book showed me how I'm falling far short of my potential because mostly I'm unoriginal in my endeavors. This book reminded me that I must find what I can do uniquely well that virtually no one else on Earth is doing.

After closing 10x Is Easier Than 2x one night, as I was going to the bathroom before bed, it hit me in one moment! In one of the few epiphany moments of my life, I knew how to align my strengths with my mission in life - which is to give individuals the means to reclaim their divine right to free will. Free will is that spark of Promethean flame in us all and the one thing that makes us really special as a species on this planet. Yet so few truly yield it! And so much about modern life deprives us of our free will, that the only way to truly take it back is by Biohacking; using the kinds of transformative tools that I've obsessively studied and self-experimented with for over 12 years now. That's my mission, and in that instant, I knew how to take it to the next level by combining my strengths to offer something truly unique to a small number of very special people - to you perhaps!

For the longest time, I have wanted to introduce something new and innovative in the Biohacking/Anti-aging/Personal development space, and I have figured that out this year. But first, I'll share...

10 things I've done "wrong" with Limitless Mindset

12 years ago when I first created the website and wrote my first few articles, I showed it to my brother, a very sharp businessman - he's done better than me in some ways as an entrepreneur. He told me "The website looks great" but asked, "Where are the ads?" Especially at the time, the internet was clogged with banner ads and white-box-with-blue-links Google ads. I explained to my brother that I only wanted to advertise or promote things that I had tried and could honestly recommend, but my website didn't look legit to him without a bunch of ads.

Not getting into the expert interview podcast game. Of the +500 podcasts I've done, about 30 are expert interviews, while the majority are MP3 presentations of articles and research I've done. Expert and author interviews are the best "growth hack" for podcasts and the dirty little secret of the podcasting biz is that they are often low-effort content for the podcasters themselves. The expert or author delivers the majority of the content, the podcaster just sits there and asks them a few leading questions. The way I did it was dramatically more labor intensive; research and write an original article, fact-check it, cite sources, then record and produce a podcast. This became even more time-consuming when I would produce it into an animated-vlog style video, I cringe at the amount of time I spent slaving away with the video editing software to produce videos that weren't all that great. Instead of doing formulaic author interviews, I actually read the books, took notes, and wrote +4000-word book reviews. Ultimately, though, I don't regret this because what I really value is originality; coming up with my ideas based upon my research.

Saying "no" to midroll ad sponsorships. Listen to the most popular, chart-topping, health and personal growth podcasts and you're listening experience is going to be interrupted by A LOT of midroll ads for VPNs, e-commerce stores, BetterHelp.com, Audible, food delivery services, and coaching programs, along with health products and supplements unrelated to the theme of that episode. You would think that the interruptive, century-old business model is on its way out and that listeners would converge on shows that didn't do this, but the most popular shows in the space remain clogged with midroll ads. And those midroll ads are what's making the Mercedes' payments for the biggest gurus in the space. I'll continue to leave this money on the table because it wastes the listeners' time and distracts from the content they've actually tuned in for!

Saying "no" to stories and short-form content. A few years ago the Silicon Valley elites decided that the collective attention span of humanity was far too long and decided to cut it down to under about a minute with short-form video "stories." Stories are a great way to hack subscriber growth on mainstream social media platforms, but I refuse to get into the "story" game because I don't want to participate in the race to the bottom while harming the working memory of my audience.

Not buying followers on social media. As an internet entrepreneur/"influencer" you're looked down on if you have less than 10,000 followers. In fact, once upon a time, I proposed a micro-collaboration with one of the bigger Biohacking influencers (someone you've almost certainly heard of), and his assistant told me that he wouldn't even consider a 30-second contribution to my 500th podcast episode because I ONLY have (legitimate) 12,000 social media followers, their minimum for collaboration consideration was 100,000. I argued that the number of social media followers is not the most meaningful metric and the one that many influencers are faking, and they did not respond.

Not launching a "how to get rich selling Nootropics" course. It's well said that "the easiest way to get rich on the internet is to teach people how to get rich on the internet." I don't feel qualified to do this because I didn't get rich selling Nootropics, and if I did I wouldn't want to increase my competition by spawning an army of avaricious pseudo-experts doing whatever I did.

Not launching a "lifecoach certification" program. These were all the rage a few years ago, every big health or personal growth guru was offering, for a few thousand bucks, entry into an illustrious career of coaching. It might make some sense to sell a new generation of entrepreneurs on lifecoaching as an opportunity if it were a growing market, but sorry, the market for coaches is shrinking thanks to the great job our neoliberal political elites are doing destroying the middle class. I didn't do this because it would entail hawking a pipedream that 90% of my students will fail with, I don't see how it creates much value for the end consumer, so I've stayed focused on trying to solve problem people have in the real world with my Biohacking and lifehacking tools.

Focusing on researching Biohacking and anti-aging instead of SEO. To my dismay, my organic web traffic has slowly shrunk over the years as the quality and quantity of my content have increased dramatically. I think this has something to do with Google's centralization efforts trying to kill off the long tail of the internet. The adage, "Build it and they will come" has been proven false for me. If I'd put in less time doing the research I need to do to live up to my job title, Applied Neuroscience Strategist, I may have devoted that time to the SEO game; ranking for more of those prized keywords.

Not being more extreme to play to the audience on alt-tech. When I was censored by YouTube and shadowbanned on other mainstream social media channels, I didn't have many places to turn other than the burgeoning alt-tech pro-free-speech platforms. And you can build an audience on these platforms but only with extreme content; unhinged conspiracy theories, extreme fearmongering, racial identity politics, Trump worship, depressive red-pill content for angry men, etc. I'm certainly a dissident thinker, but I didn't get extreme enough to blow up on these platforms.

Spending a MASSIVE amount of time updating and refurbishing older content. I've been writing, podcasting, and vlogging for 12 years now and I never know which piece of my content people will find on the internet so in the past couple of years, I've spent metaphorical eons updating and improving my older content. Correcting things I was wrong or changed my mind about, improving audio on older podcasts, creating better images for articles, and correcting the grammar of older articles (writing two books made me a real stickler for good grammar!) With the Internet's harsh recency bias, I would have seen greater growth if I'd simply unpublished everything past a particular date and focused my efforts on new content, but I guess I've got a sunk cost bias in the work I've done and this year I anticipate having it all polished and up the standards I now hold.

The bad news

As I've learned, the internet really doesn't reward integrity and originality, or maybe it does but over the long term of decades instead of years.

The good news

Does this mean I'm going to get more formulaic with Limitless Mindset? No. And I don't regret running my business as I have. It's been an odyssey that rewarded me with a platform to speak the truth as I find it, brilliantly good health, meaningful work, a life mission, adventure, a great sex life, a happy marriage, and the pinnacle of freedom as I define it.

The book I read, 10x Is Easier Than 2x, showed me how I haven't been original enough and that's what I'm going to be doubling down on in 2024. Back in 2016 when I brought to market an innovative, never-before-seen, smart drug, I was on the right path. But since my thinking "inside the box" is what's limited my success and the good I could do for you.

So soon I'm about to unveil something not radically different but an innovative pivot on everything I've been doing for 12 years.

It's not merely another supplement, gadget, app, or AI thing. It's going to be a strikingly beautiful and enduring thing that a select few of you will proudly display in your homes. My crafting and production of this for a small, special group of people will entail a shift in how I spend my time and energies that will allow me to better serve all of you. 

Stay tuned for that and I'm sure I've still got blindspots, feel free to respond with thoughtful criticism about what I might be doing wrong with Limitless Mindset.