Why we shouldn't expect to copy & paste results

In this week's Video I talk about how so many people - from business to personal finances - are looking to copy and paste other people's success when that may not be appropriate for them and talk about what you might want to consider instead.

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Transcript

Hey, and welcome to Mel's Money Musings.

Today I wanna talk about something different. I wanna talk about the willingness of people to copy and paste, to wanna take shortcuts to get to success, whether in business or wealth creation, to want that get rich quick or that silver bullet that will more quickly take me from where I am now to where I wanna be. And I get it. I get that wanting, that just not being happy with where you are. It's human nature, isn't it? To not necessarily be happy with where we are and to want to get there faster, particularly in our current age of instant gratification. I just want it all tomorrow. And yet, when it comes to wealth creation, often that can be a really risky strategy.

So, to set the scene, I wanna talk about something that happened when I sold my business.

So I remember being at a friend's book launch, and her accountant came up to me and said, oh my gosh, I am excited that you sold your business, but where am I gonna get my newsletters from? I went, huh, <laugh>. And he went, yeah. And it turned out for the last 10 years, he's simply been copying and pasting my newsletters and just palming them off as his own.

But before you think what? It isn't just an isolated thing, you know, I know in the last 12 to 18 months, I have seen a copy and paste of my sales page. I've seen copy and paste of my offers. I've even seen someone very recently in their launch, their last three emails were a copy and paste of ones that I did last year.

And it's that thing, isn't it? Where you know it's gonna happen. But here's the thing. I also know it doesn't necessarily work. And again, I was talking to a good friend who's in this space, and she knows people that have tried it, and they don't get the same result. And they say to her, oh my gosh, I did exactly what she did. I basically copied and pasted it. Why didn't that not happen for me?

And it's because a) it's a different moment in time. I change mine all the time, and there's a reason for that. But two, it's a complexity. This is a small part of everything else you're seeing. So if you're just trying to copy that, then chances are you're not gonna get the same result.

But I see it all the time in wealth creation as well, whether someone trying to sell "here buy 20 properties, and that's what I did back in the nineties, and you can do it too". But thing is, it's potentially a different time now. Let's be honest, we need a far greater deposit. Bank's appetite for lending might be less. So being able to replicate that isn't necessarily going to be able to happen.

Or maybe chasing crypto or even chasing your gardener's tip of something that, that they've heard about from their best mate that you're thinking, oh my gosh, that's what I have to put all my money into. It was US tech shares for a while.

And what I wanna come on and say that I understand wanting to quicken your success, but you are not going to do it from simply copying and pasting what someone else has done. Instead, the secret of having a great business is the same as the secret of having great finances. It's understanding the basics. It's understanding how to do those basics so well, that when you wanna layer on those extras, then they are a layer. They're not everything.

For example, I play with crypto, but crypto is not my strategy. It's quite literally, I call it the cream on top. If it happens, great. If it doesn't, so be it. But if someone their only strategy was crypto, that's a really dangerous game to play.

So my question for you is, are you looking for that silver bullet? Are you looking for that get rich quick, whether it's in business or now?

I see it a lot of the time in manifesting, you know, people, it's oh so much easier to hire a money coach or a money manifestor to help with that rather than actually going and facing your spending. Rather than learning about investing and shares and actually doing that harder work of increasing your financial literacy, learning about risk and rewards, understanding about compounding returns and how to invest for the long term. How to set goals you are actually excited about. And then what can you do? Because you absofreakinglutetly can quicken your success. You're just not gonna do it with a silver bullet. You're gonna do it by having a great groundwork laid with great things that are already happening. And then by trialling extras on top.

We're doing it inside the My Financial Adulting Plan at the moment with a challenge for them to find $833 more this month. Because if you can learn to find more income, that's a way to quicken your success.

But you are not going to do it by simply looking over at what someone's doing and then copying and pasting. Sure, it might work for a period of time, but chance's are it's not gonna work for you for the long term.

If this is something that you've been wrestling with, if you've been looking across going, why, why, why is it happening for them and not me? What I want you to do is stop looking in someone else's lane, you know, comparison is the thief of joy.

Start looking at what you are doing. Yes, be curious about what others doing, and ask the question, could that work for me in the goals that I've set for myself?

But if we are thinking that copying and pasting is a secret to success, I'm here to tell you it's not.