BOM – “Turning Pro” by Stephen Pressfield
Welcome to The Real Estate Express podcast, your morning shot of what’s new in the world of real estate investing. I’m your host, Victor Menasche. Happy first of the month. On the first day of each month, we review the book of the month. In order to be considered a worthy book of the month, a book has to meet a very simple criteria. It has to be impactful enough that it will either change your life or your perspective on the world. Of course, whether it does or not is entirely up to you. If you consume it as a piece of entertainment, you’re missing the point. But, if you internalize its messages and make it part of you, you have a realistic shot at lasting growth.
Our book this month is the second in a two-part series by Steven Pressfield. The first book, The War of Art, is a play on words on The Art of War. The second book, Turning Pro, is what we’re discussing on today’s show. You could regard the first book as a statement of the problem, and the second, as the solution. The War of Art’s primary purpose is to name and define the invisible enemy preventing us from doing our work. Stephen Pressfield calls this enemy, The Resistance. Via various forms such as procrastination, self-doubt, addiction, perfectionism and fear, this universal, external objective force exists to stop us from growing, from creating and from reaching our full potential. The book’s key insight is that our internal struggle is not due to a personal flaw or mental illness, but instead, it’s a fight against an albeit unseen, but palpable force.
Turning Pro, the second book, is a direct, actionable follow-up. It employs the concepts from The War of Art and offers a strategic framework for winning against the Resistance. The book calls on readers to make the conscious decision to Turn Pro. This isn’t about getting paid for your work, it’s about adopting a professional mindset. This is a shift from being an amateur, whose defined by fear and external validation, to becoming a professional characterized by discipline, accountability and an unwavering commitment to the daily practice of their craft. The War of Art explains what Resistance is and why it’s potent, while Turning Pro outlines the practical, behavioural and mental steps needed to overcome Resistance. The choice to Turn Pro is the moment you initiate a strategic pivot from liability to high-value asset.
This shift is not a gentle progression, it’s a conscious, absolute break from the past. It occurs when you hit that psychic bottom, and the cost of remaining an amateur finally outweighs the fear of success. Pressfield illustrates that while this transition is free, it costs everything. It requires you to abandon familiar habits and perhaps even existing relationships that thrive on your previous state of distraction. The professional accepts this cost because they recognize the true reward entails self-respect, integrity, and the reclamation of personal power.
The professional mindset centers on accountability and execution. A professional views creative work, building a business or mastering a craft as a job. This means showing up daily, regardless of inspiration, mood or external circumstance. Pressfield insists that the professional doesn’t wait for inspiration. They demonstrate discipline by sticking to their schedule and thereby commanding inspiration through a sheer volume of effort. This disciplined behavior requires the development of robust, non-negotiable professional habits. The professional’s focus is on the process of execution, not the immediate outcome. The professional doesn’t take failure or success personally; they accept it as a part of the process. Their job is to produce high-quality work consistently, dedicating themselves to mastering technique and accumulating volume.
The concept highlighted by the book Turning Pro is at the foundation of the daily podcast you’re currently listening to. The decision to deliver a show every day was, in fact, a resolution to Turn Pro because amateurs don’t do “daily”. It’s through this decision to produce one piece of quality content every day that’s enabled me to produce 2,816 episodes to date for the podcast.
It might surprise some listeners that I haven’t yet reviewed Turning Pro as a Book of the Month in this podcast. Remarkably, it’s taken almost eight years for me to put it on the list, even though it was one of the foundational texts for the show’s creation. With this in mind, I highly recommend picking up a copy of Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. Have an awesome rest of your day. Go make some great things happen, and we’ll catch up soon.
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