Dan Norris - Create Or Hate: Successful People Make Things

Copyright 2016 Dan Norris

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorised reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

Reviewers may quote brief passages.

Published by Dan Norris
http://dannorris.me
The moral right of the author has been asserted.

First Printing, 2016

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the National Library of Australia.

ISBN: 9780995404441 (paperback)
ISBN: 9780995404458 (ebook)

Front cover design by Camille Manley
Internal design by Brett Geoghegan

Create something today.

There are people who make things happen,
there are people who watch things happen,
and there are people who wonder what happened.

Jim Lovell

I had a dream last night. In my dream, I was a stick figure in a black-and-white story. Not a story in a book, but on a large canvas. The kind that could go on forever, as long as someone kept adding to it.

Luckily for my stick figure self, that was my jobto go around, painting sections on the canvas around me, keeping it going.

I was holding a bright flower and walking around the off-white surface. As I walked into a new area, the lines of objects magically appeared underneath me, ready to be colored in. I could touch my flower to any of these sections and, in an instant, a burst of orange or other vibrant color would magically fill the space.

It was wonderful and exciting. Anything was possible, and it was all up to me.

I walked around filling the spaces between the lines with color, gradually making a beautiful masterpiece.

After a while, a shadow appeared. It was a grey-colored version of me that followed me everywhere I went. He held a grey flower and every time I tapped my flower on the canvas, he tapped his flower on my flower, causing it to become less vibrant.

He wasnt aggressive and he didnt show emotion; it was just like he had a job to do.

From then on, whenever I tapped my flower onto the rolling canvas, the resulting color was less vibrant. Every time the shadow tapped my flower, the color would fade even more. I continued around the story, tapping the sections and watching the colors from my flower fade.

Eventually my flower turned completely grey and no longer painted color into the story. Since everything I painted was dull and colorless, I just stopped.

Making art hurts. But its better than the alternative.

Seth Godin

Most of us have always wanted to make something, but for any number of reasons havent.

What is that something for you? Writing a book? Creating a blog? Learning photography? Building a house? Painting a canvas? Starting a podcast? Launching a business?

There must be something you want to make, or else you wouldnt have picked up this book.

This book exists for only one reason. I believe that the world will be a better place if you create what you want to create. I believe you will be happier, more fulfilled, and maybe even more successful if you create something.

The problem is that there are forces working against you. Barriers that are stopping you from breaking through to the creative side of life. If this wasnt the case, youd already be creating.

This book exists to help you remove those barriers, or at least temporarily lower them.

This book exists to help you create something TODAY.

Everything around you was created by people
who were no smarter than you.

Steve Jobs

Theres a reason I wrote a book about how to create more, instead of a book about how to be successful.

Success is random and unpredictable.

Even successful people dont know how they became successful. Most of them say its because of hard work. They think they work harder than others who arent as successful. In truth, they probably dontyou are probably working just as hard.

I left a good job at 26. I owned a house in the best suburb in the city, I was in love and about to be married. I was on a pathway to entrepreneurial riches. I was so confident, that when I left my job, I actually told my co-workers that I would be a millionaire by the age of 30.

By 33 I was broke, owned nothing, had no business, was soon to be divorced, was diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and had been prescribed three different meds for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Now I just call it being an entrepreneur, but at the time, it was pretty scary. What was worse, I found myself applying for jobs at companies similar to where I used to work!

Id risked it all and worked my arse off for seven years chasing the dream of entrepreneurship.

Everything Id done had failed; I was a joke. My friends from my old job, who were younger and less qualified, had earned more than me every year since I had left. My entrepreneurial friends were no smarter or more experienced than me, but they were firing solutions at me like I was a kid.

They were right. I was trying everything and working on three things at once, desperately seeking that elusive key to success.

In the three years that followed, I kept to the same strategy, even though everyone told me it was wrong. I worked on a bunch of things at once, launched different businesses, created a lot of content, and tried to make entrepreneurship work.

By 36, I was a millionaire off the back of one of my entrepreneurial projects, a WordPress support business called WP Curve. I launched it in seven days because that was all the time I had left before I ran out of money. Id been writing blog posts the whole time, thinking that one day my content would build enough trust to get the attention I needed to make it as an entrepreneur.

It turns out I was right.

Within two years, WP Curve was turning over one million USD a year and had become a leading example of how to productize service businesses around the world. My co-founder, Alex, suggested I write a book about it, so I got busy and wrote it.

Its called The 7 Day Startup. It was a #1 Amazon bestseller, selling 30,000+ copies, and was translated into six languages. More importantly, it started a movement that encouraged other entrepreneurs to launch their projects instead of procrastinating. It inspired many to build what are now 6-and-7 figure businesses. Because people wanted to learn more, I created an online community. Within months, I had hundreds of people paying me a membership subscription.

Id built WP Curve without spending a cent on advertising, using content marketing alone. Because of the businesss success, I was now considered an authority on content marketing. Brett, who worked in the office next to me, said I should write a book about that, so I did. Its called Content Machine, has sold over 15,000 copies, and has been translated into three languages.

Between the books and the online community, I had built another six-figure business on the side.

Then, I started getting interested in craft beer and, because of my business smarts, my mates wanted my involvement in an idea they had to make an Eggnog Stout. We made it and turned that into a business as well, becoming Australias first brewery to launch via crowdfunding. We also worked with the