Chasing the Dream, by Ryan: Recent Episodes
Ryan
Hate your job? Not feeling fulfilled? Hesitate to chase your dreams? I was in the same boat. Then I quit my job and started a barbershop with my brother in 2020. And COVID followed soon after. Every fear I ever had, happened. Hey, I'm Ryan, your host of "Chasing the Dream", a short Q&A style podcast where I answer your questions about Chasing the Dream.
Every entrepreneur goes through the entrepreneurial cycle.
Enthusiasm.
Anxiety.
Despair.
Hope / Quit.
Hope leads to the world's best CEOs.
Quitting leads to starting all over again or getting off the path entirely.
Think on this.
The world's best CEOs climbed from the very bottom. I always wondered how average people become industry titans, and now I realize it's one problem at a time.
Staying in the problem and with the problem, until the answer becomes clear.
Then they have an answer to a question that people either never face (because they never started a business) or never answer (because they quit).
This means they have more experience which allows them to start playing the game with more zeros.
But, it means hitting the valley of despair, dealing with the hatred, and anxiety and worry and fear and panic and sadness, and yet keeping up hope and searching for answer.
If I were to evaluate why I would quit in the valley of the despair (and why I almost did)...it would be because I stopped searching for an answer.
But, if I'm desperate to find the answer, then I will get out of the valley.
As all founder CEOs have done.
Don't quit in the valley of despair.
As Muhammad Ali used to say, "I only start counting the reps when it hurts."
Costco is an inspiring company to study.
It's predictable, and yet you're always surprised by what you find. Underpromising but overdelivering.
It's operating at a level that delivers value without breaking the bank.
It meets me where I am. I'm not intimidated to walk in.
But, there is a difficulty with it. It's inconvenient dealing with the distance I have to drive and the line ups.
For us small SMEs, it's important to be predictable, operating at a level that doesn't break the bank while still delivering top notch service, and meeting our clients where they are...all while walking in their shoes to ensure that the experience is always a wonderful one.
The Golden Formula is a simple description of what defines success.
Simply put, the person:
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who has a clear vision of his future
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who serves others
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and who strives to build up his network, mindset, knowledge, health and deportment
Is a success.
Notice that money is not in the equation. Money comes after the person believes in their mind that they are a success.
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I imagine a day when all of us can do the things we love to do, that we were gifted to do, as the primary source of our income.
That day will one day come.
It happened in the past. Master craftsman would train journeymen and apprentices towards become masters themselves.
That was a small business with an owner-operator and various levels of subcontractors. It was a business where everyone was their own business owner even though they were working under one roof.
Put another way, that was an example of a business that was made up of many small businesses.
So, everyone can be an entrepreneur and yet there can still be businesses with employees.
When that day comes, everyone will finally lose the desire to retire and go on vacation and do the things they missed in life, and actually live a life where they get to do everything they always dreamed of.
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The simple act of grooming lends authority to your words and confidence to yourself.
If we want people to take us more seriously, they must stereotype us as someone to take seriously.
And that happens when we appear to them as people to be taken seriously.
Haircut, deportment, car cleanliness all point to that.
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Health is true wealth.
Wealth is simply a state of being able to engage in any experience you want.
But health is the only means to actually take advantage of those experiences once you get it.
Don't burn your health to get wealth. Otherwise, later in life, you'll have to burn your wealth to regain your health.
Health (nutrition, activity, and sleep) is necessary for making the best decisions possible and to operate with total confidence in life.
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The only reason we are not where we want to be is a lack of knowledge.
Confucius said, he who knows and does not do does not know.
When we want to get somewhere and are unable to, we simply lack the knowledge.
The easy part is that knowledge is free and does take up physical space. It only takes sacrifice to acquire.
So tap into books, your own experience and your network to gain that edge to go to where you want to go.
There's no need to procrastinate.
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I one day imagine a world where everyone loves the job that they do. And I think the only way this can happen is if everyone becomes an entrepreneur, marries an entrepreneur, is an apprentice of an entrepreneur or works directly for an entrepreneur.
That said, to make this happen, you need to cultivate a good network and a strong mindset.
A good network pressures you towards success.
A strong mindset keeps you playing the game until you figure out all the pieces. The process is painful, often daunting and will expose you to depths of sadness few can share. That is why a stronger mindset is needed to stay in the game.
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The economy is not meant to produce more.
It's not meant to fill up gaps.
The economy is there to gainfully employ human beings so that we're all making a living doing what we love day after day.
The reason for landfills and depression is that work has shifted from humans to products.
For us entrepreneurs, may we create that beautiful future where everyone can work doing the job they love with a wage that never lets them worry.
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The more service you render, the greater the number of transactions.
In a weird way, business is institutionalized assistance.
You can do something for a low price, someone else can only achieve the same thing for a high price - so you help that person at a price that is higher than your cost but lower than their price.
They get a bargain, you get a profit, both parties are assisted.
Business truly is an institutionalized method of helping others.
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The first element of success is Vision.
Unless you can see what you want as if you came back from the future, no one else will be able to help you.
They may try to, but they cannot help someone who cannot see where they're going.
An architect designs, an investor finances and a builder builds only what the visionary can see in his / her mind.
SpaceX was seen in the mind's eye of Elon Musk before he committed his resources to building that company.
The 747 was seen in the mind's eye of the CEO before he commanded his business to design the plane.
The first plane was seen in the mind's eye of the Wright brothers before they committed their resources to taking flight.
You must SEE with clarity what you want to achieve that it becomes obvious what you must do next to get there.
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You are the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with.
If you're around 5 buckets, you'll be the 6th.
If you're around 5 CEOs, you'll be the 6th.
And even if you can't surround yourself with those people, if you can at least surround yourself with the audio of those kind of people, you'll still be part of the group.
Why?
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You will be peer pressured to succeed.
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You will change your internal dialogue from self-limiting to self-motivating
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You will gain access to the very information that made them successful.
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I know everyone is pushing for AI and I know everyone is saying if you want to become richer than the rest of the population, you need to leverage AI. But, I'm not going for it, not as far as everyone is advocating for.
We delegated our ability to source food and water and shelter to society. We delegated our ability to write and navigate to computers.
But at least this whole time we had our intelligence.
Are we now going to delegate our intelligence?
This is the one thing that makes us human and we need to be pro-human.
When we start working for AGI CEOs and report to AGI bureaucrats and stand trial against AGI judges, then maybe we'll reconsider what we created. Or maybe it won't be interested in us and will just leave the planet.
We don't know. But what we do know is that, in the end, we are human and we need to create a world that is proper to humanity (plus all of God's creation).
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Introverts might be terrified of sales, but what if there was a way to sell without selling?
When we buy our friends a meal and they pay us back, that's a transaction. But, it doens't feel like sales. When a family asks us to make a website, and we do, and they give us $200, that's a transaction. But it doesn't feel like sales.
So, reverse engineer that and you can sell without selling.
When interacting with people we love, 3 things happen:
1. We trust them and they trust us.
2. We are doing something that's easy for us and hard for them to do.
3. We are agreeing to the transaction and we trust each other to honor it.
Now, if you do the same thing for your clients, the same results happen.
- Build a relationship with a certain audience by delivering value to them for free.
- Determine your talent, experience and skill that is easy for you to do but hard for them to do and make that your value offer
- Keep doing this until the product / service they need that they will pay for will become clear.
To this last point, as you deliver more and more value, the cost to do so increases. There comes a point where the value you offer is so great, there must be a cost associated with it.
That's when you can charge and that's when you can sell without selling.
Wouldn't be better to know your customers better than you know your suppliers and landlords? But, that's often the first people we skip over.
Instead, as business owners, we should go and become a familiar face to our target audience. That may mean joining the same recreational clubs they are a part of, sending them weekly emails, or giving away value through podcasts or social media.
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To manage multiple projects, always start by writing down your tasks, breaking down everything into projects that you manage ONE AT A TIME, and then splitting them up into a kanban board with 3 columns: To Do, In Progress and Done.
That way, you won't get stressed, you won't forget tasks, you won't develop a bad reputation of forgetting, you won't be overwhelmed by the number of projects you're working on and you won't be overwhelmed by the number of tasks needed to make them happen.
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Why do we want to earn money? Because we want to provide and spend time with our families.
But, how do we measure success? Shouldn't it logically be by how much we can provide and spend time with our families?
Why then do we measure success by the amount of money we earn?
Money is a means to an end, the end being to take care of our loved ones. But, when we measure ourselves by our income, we sacrifice our end on the alter of our means.
We sacrifice our families to achieve more money with the hope that one day, we will achieve enough money to spend time with our families.
How backwards! How tragic! That's a terrible way to live life, because in the end, when we do achieve the wealth we were always aiming for, we no longer have anyone to share it with.
You are valuable not because of your income, but because you are you and because of the relationships you have maintained over the course of your life.
80% of our attention is spent on dealing with 20% of our worst customers.
80% of our revenue comes from 20% of our best customers.
By spending that much time on bad customers, we rebuild our business to cater to bad customers - thereby attracting more bad customers, and leading to our inevitable downfall.
But, if we spend most of our time on good customers, so much so that the 20% of our best customers became 100% of our customers, then our income would quadruple.
You are valuable as a person and as a business. There's no reason to put up with other people's bad energy.
People who win championships have the same kind of past. They did focused-perfect-practice over an extraordinary amount of time.
If you then do focused-perfect-practice over an extraordinary amount of time, you will have the same future.
And so, a winner is not one who wins, but one who practices a winner's schedule.
Meaning you can be a winner today - just by managing your time better.
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If you're dealing with doubt, it's because you're dealing with new information that's not sitting well with the plans you made based on old information.
Everyday, we learn something about ourselves, our goals or our processes of getting from where we are to where we want to be that needs to be incorporated into our plans.
Once, we incorporate that information and we recalibrate our plans, that doubt goes away. And, in it's place, there's peace.
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Persistence is the quality of winners. It helps you stay in the game, take the steps that lead to success, get better, get smarter, and find luck. Persistence is the reason anyone wins.
Don't go at success alone, join the Mavericks: https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/
A national army runs differently than a guerrilla group. It runs on discipline and therefore can achieve more for the country than any other kind of force. This applies directly to business, investments and careers. Be disciplined and build steady habits that will work for you in times of peace and times of conflict.
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There are four factors involved in getting attention:
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consistency
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value
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humanness
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authenticity
So, simply deliver value as an authentic human being to your market consistently and you will get people's attention.
I cover these in detail in today's podcast episode.
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You might think it's hard to influence people, but with psychological leverage, that process will be easier. And remember, if you're a Maverick, join our group: https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/
Doubling your income is as easy as focusing down on your sales process and doubling it's effectivity at every step. In this episode, we cover various examples! To join the Mavericks, sign up to our page at https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/
In this episode, we cover how learning how to delegate makes you more money. And remember, you can't be rich in your pocket until you're rich in your mind. I have a PDF that outlines the mindset requirements to perform exceptionally well in business. Sign up to https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/ to get that free PDF.
We are inherently afraid of nicheing down because we think it'll reduce our cash flow. In fact, nicheing down actually increases our cash flow! Find out how in this podcast episode.
In this episode, we cover the fact that you're in the marketing business, no matter what business you get into. Marketing is the reason you can get leads that give your business a chance at success. The more leads you get, the more chances you get at winning.
In this podcast episode, we talk about how to overcome the dreaded imposter syndrome by understanding what it is and then breaking us from its grasp. If you like these episodes, please sign up to our newsletter at https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/
In this podcast episode, we talk about how to use our most powerful asset (our brain) to zone in and achieve our goals. If you like these episodes, please sign up to our newsletter at https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/
In this podcast episode, we talk about how be more productive than the average person without getting stuck in circular work. If you like these episodes, please sign up to our newsletter at https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/
In this podcast episode, I explain the results of my triathlon and why it is important to slow down instead of quitting. This essential truth will help you navigate the hurdles of any major project you are pursuing. If you like these episodes, please sign up to our newsletter at https://mavericks.goldwynandsons.com/
The right team makes the dream come true. The wrong team makes the nightmare come true. It's as easy as that. Here are all the details.
Based on my experience of starting a few small businesses, here are a few methods of achieving the financing goals you need to start successfully.
In this episode, we cover the major reason no one starts a business: the fear of financial failure.
Sound Effect from Pixabay and Music by Daddy_s_Music from Pixabay.
In this episode, we go through how to build out the cash flow analysis and touch on the super critical topic of projecting sales and risk. It may seem conceptual, but if you have any questions, email me at hello@goldwynandsons.com.
Stress is perhaps the one thing that separates the leaders from the followers. Leaders look into themselves to remain calm in any situation. Followers look outside to others to find calm in difficult situations. In this episode, we cover everything needed to remain calm under pressure.
In today's episode, we're studying the importance of SHOWING UP and the steps necessary to ensure that you are DAILY climbing closer towards your goals.
Today's podcast is about the most important concept in business: simplicity - that ever evasive state of understanding where experience becomes wisdom and swings at the tree become decisive movements towards victory. Simplicity spells success, but it takes experience to get there. Today, we will explore the business journey of reaching the state of simplicity.
You hear about business plans a lot. But, this is different. This is a success plan for business - a SUCCESS plan. That's what we'll be covering in this episode.
As a first-time small business owner that started my business right before COVID, I've learned a bit about what kept us alive and what almost killed us. This my first episode of my first podcast, and though my delivery is not as good as more experienced podcasters, I promise you the information I present here is invaluable to your success. Don't start a business without hearing this message. To your success!