I Helped Business Owners Overcome Their Fear of Failure

Summary

• Focus on a goal by controlling the actions you take rather than the outcome you can't control.
• Adhere to the actions you've committed to and measure success by your adherence to these actions.
• Success isn't solely about reaching your set goal, but also about the skills and knowledge you gain along the journey.
• If faced with failure or not meeting goals, assess and scale up what works, and then apply it to your current project or the next one.
• Join communities of people with similar goals to combat loneliness and continue growing.
• When seeking friendship or community, look for those who contribute positively to your growth and align with goal achievement.
• Prioritize advertising and promoting your service by reaching out to people and creating content.
• Allocate time each day, like four hours, to connect with people in your industry, and network consistently.
• Use content as a lead nurturing tool rather than solely for lead generation initially.

How To Take Action

Hey friend, here's a game plan to take the big ideas and make them work for your business or personal growth:

1. First things first, start small. Don't get hung up on outcomes like the number of books sold or clients scored. Concentrate on what's within your control.

2. Commit to actions, not outcomes. Say you'll spend 4 hours daily on networking or creating content to promote your business. That's a goal you can stick to no matter what.

3. Remember, it's not just about hitting goals. Each step is a chance to learn something new and get better. So, even if you fall short, you've gained skills and knowledge. That's a win too!

4. If one strategy doesn't pan out, no sweat! Figure out what worked even a little bit and do more of it. Could be the way you talk to customers or how you're sharing your expertise.

5. Feeling lonely on this journey? Join groups where others are aiming for similar targets. You'll find support and might even pick up a few tricks along the way.

6. Choose your friends and communities wisely. Surround yourself with people who are positive and want to see you grow. They'll be your cheerleaders when the going gets tough.

7. For advertising, reach out, reach out, reach out! Use social media, make calls, send emails – whatever it takes to connect with potential clients or readers.

8. Time block your day. Dedicate solid chunks, like four hours, to just networking or content creation. This focus can lead to big returns with little cost.

9. Lastly, think of content as a way to warm up potential leads. Share your knowledge, answer questions, and when they're ready, they'll come to you.

Stay consistent, stay patient, and tackle these steps one by one. Trust me, put in the work and the results will follow. Good luck!

Quotes by Alex Hormozi

"you're asking the universe for a guarantee that it will never give you"

– Alex Hormozi

"make the big goals that you set things that you could absolutely control"

– Alex Hormozi

"the things that you go through become the stories that you will someday tell"

– Alex Hormozi

"the stuff that you go through become the stories that you will someday tell"

– Alex Hormozi

"strategy is prioritization, it's allocating limited resources against unlimited options"

– Alex Hormozi

Full Transcript

what are you afraid of I'm scared that I'll fail at the goal then you can judge how successful you were by how much you adhered to the actions that you committed to so I run a writing company I write for celebrities and CEOs because I took your advice and I started writing for people that have more money and it's oh gosh solve rich people problems they pay better yes um but I also publish my own books and I traditionally published with Publishers and I've done well but in the future going forward I want to publish my own book self-publish my own books but I have analysis paralysis because there's so many options to execute a strategy sometimes I don't know which option to pick to just execute the strategy for my next book and my first goal is just to sell a thousand ebook copies not nothing even Grand yeah okay then when I settle on a strategy I get scared because I don't know if it's going to work so two questions real quick so when you say you have so many different strategies you can pick from you're talking about different topics for the book is that what you're saying I know the book topic but different options to execute a plan so I could use Quick clickfunnels to execute a plan to sell a thousand cop yeah just selling it yeah just selling a thousand copies that's that that's my goal I want to be able to sell a thousand copies for my next self-published book have you read the book yet have you written the book yet no but the book will be that's the easy part okay I'm a writer so that's the easy part okay okay okay yeah you're asking the universe for a guarantee that it will never give you and you're waiting for a response in order to move forward from a universe that stays silent and so you're just talking to dead people um and waiting for a response so like um the thing is is the person you should be talking to is the marketplace because they will always respond like when you knock they will open the door and they will tell you to [ __ ] off or they you open the door and they'll tell you they'll let you in but either way they'll open the door right let's play this out the other way what are you afraid of cuz like you seem very upbeat and you see like obviously WR this you've written stuff before and so like I'm not worried about your writing skill given what you've said so far so like what are you afraid of okay so let's let's play it out so let's say you you have your book and you pick path one it doesn't even matter what it is pick path one okay so what so what happens so you put it on Amazon you're like I'm just going to put it on Amazon and see what happens all right that's the easy path okay then what yeah I'm I'm scared that I won't reach my number I'm scared that I'll fail at the goal and then then what happens but then I still won't know how to do it like and and I'm also scared because I have self-published a couple books in the past that didn't reach my goal and I know that feels like I don't want to feel like that again yeah so let me so let me do this then let's reframe this because I have a lot of experience with setting goals all right so I feel pretty confident talk about the topic make the big goals that you set things that you could absolutely control like you cannot control how many people buy your book but you can control the amount of actions that you're willing to take that make it unreasonable that you don't sell a th000 copies and so then you can judge how successful you were by how much you adhered to the actions that you committed to and so if I were to say you have to sell 10,000 books not a thousand books 10,000 books you have to or you lose your life in 12 months you just die that's it you die what would you do knock on every door okay you have the leads book right you there all there's eight different ways to advertise right and so you know that the more people find out about your stuff the more people buy it and you know there's only four things you can do right you can talk to people oneone you can make content you can run ads right or you can get other Affiliates you can get referrals once they read your book or you can get agencies or you can get employees to help you out that's what you got yeah okay and so if you know that you have to take those actions then wouldn't success be so let's play this out a year let's say that you did absolutely everything on the plan like your plan of advertising of letting people know about it for a year and you did everything and you sold 999 bucks would you consider it a failure no that would be a win okay now if you sold 90 books I just want to reframe this because the honestly the thing that you're talking about is something that so many people deal with and it's because you want to control things you want to control the outcome and you're saying I'm only willing to pay this price if there's this outcome but you're seeing the outcome as the outcome rather than the skills that you develop along the way as the outcome because I can promise you this this will not be the the last book you write right and so if you get to a hundred sales instead of a thousand mhm then what's going to happen realistically is that you will figure out the one thing or two things that actually work to sell books and then I'll say do a hundred times more of that and you can either choose to do that on this book or you can choose to do it on the next book but the idea of like I have I'm setting this thousand because you could have said a million books it doesn't really matter you're just setting it you're making up a number and saying this I feel is reasonable for me but instead of making the number reasonable make the actions that would lead to that the reasonable like what can you commit to four hours a day of promotion yeah okay then make that the commitment and I will I'll promise you that if you do that every day one at the end of the year you will feel accomplished because you actually did what you said you were going to do and I will tell you that the marketplace will also always recognize someone who puts four hours of work every single day into one thing just what I needed thank you just promise me that you'll actually just commit to doing the work if you do that you do like I have to get sell 10,000 books what would I actually do to do that yeah yeah find somebody who has an audience that is relative to the the topics that you're talking about and reach out to that now it's okay if I got one person they sold 20 books okay how do I reach out to a thousand people who all have my audience if you do that you'll probably sell more than a thousand books but you just got to do it four hours every day thank you thank you good luck with the book I know how much work goes into that so I have two topics that uh I kind of want to you know trade with you and you know you titled this advice for hard days and it's been it's been tough lately about three months ago uh my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer two months ago uh my girlfriend the the girl that I thought with I was going to marry kind of left and then two weeks ago uh I traveled to London to speak at Europe's biggest business event and on the first day of my arrival my granddad passed away and so uh I had to basically uh speak in front of thousands of people and keep my smile and then travel back and bury him so yesterday I I did I did I did all of it and so the question is well you know yesterday everything just kind of hit me because now I'm back in the office and I'm taking the calls and I'm trying to deal with everything but the question is how do I maintain my composure and kind of stay strong right because it's it's a tough period well first off I'm sorry that you're going through that um that being said honestly you've got a lot of good stuff going for you so this is a I feel like almost a relatively easier one for me to take given what you just said like you just asked a question how do I do something I've already done before which is you got in front of thousands of people and gave a presentation and had a smile and you crushed it despite the fact that you had other circumstances right yeah and so you ask the question how do I do something that I already done you've already done it like what you're saying is how do I how do I keep living and you keep living by keeping living it's the same thing with breakups right it's like I I've heard this quote I I heard it from Lea I think the first time like the amount of time it takes you to get over someone do you know how long it is there's a math equation for it there's a great math equation for it you'll love it it's exactly as long as you decide it takes and what I'm going to say is going to sound really dark right now so I want you to take this the right way take it the way I mean it all right which is that you just had you had three deaths right you had death of a life that you thought you were going to have with a girlfriend and then you had the death of uh two different grandparents right you had three deaths but well um on the positive sides my my grandmother is still battling with it oh okay she's still B wait we're plus one all right so only two deaths now but sure we can even play it out all right on a long enough time rizon she will eventually pass away right it's going to happen yeah and the thing is is that you are already standing it like you're asking how do I stand it but you are standing here already like you are evidence to the F you are you you talking to me today is evidence of the success that you're asking asking for you're already one dude you're showing up and you're working every day you're coming here to ask questions to actually still trying and grow yourself like the the stuff that you go through become the stories that you will someday tell and no one likes epic Heroes without Epic monsters and so you have to go through the rocky cut scene you have to have those periods of time where you doubt yourself well everyone else doubts yourself where the walls are crumbling around you because have you ever read shoe dog fil knight story about Nike even if you haven't the entire story is just him getting kicked in the nuts for 30 years that's the whole story and then he's like oh yeah and then I built Nike right and now if he had just said yeah um I started this company and everyone loved it and all my suppliers were on time and I just scaled straight and as the money came in I just bought more inventory and then we just went public no one would care because it's not relatable and the thing is is that when you die the only thing that will remain is the story that people will tell of you and so wouldn't you want that to be an epic story yeah and so the things that you're going through are required for the person you want to be and for the goals that you have and how you are acting in the present already proves the thing that you're claiming that you want tomorrow you're going to wake up and you go to work and the next day you're going to wake up and you're go to work and then you're going to text and it's going to say that your grandmother's cancer is getting worse and what are you going to do you're going to get back to work you're just going to keep doing the stuff like there's no there's no magic bullet you just keep going because either you keep going or you die yeah and if you don't die you succeeded I would just say stop just don't judge yourself on how you feel judge yourself by what you do despite how you feel so you can feel shitty you can wake up and have a terrible day and still show up with a smile in front of a thousand people and so if you can do with a thousand people you can do it with one and that first one is the person that looks at you in the mirror in the morning and and now when it comes to business I just have a real quick question okay uh so I've built an Instagram audience to over a 100,000 I speak about sales and marketing uh I've been doing it for the past two years I've been posting kind of like every day uh I know the content game but the one thing that I'm struggling to balance is you know how you say give give give until they ask and you know I love it but sometimes it takes a while until they ask right and cash flow still needs to come in and I run uh a service based uh business and so how do I balance it out without tiring my audience because I also my community is known for you know really being in the comments chatting with me and being there for me so how do I do it so if you want to have a one step away from like just giving forever right is that you you give in public sell in private which is when people respond to your stories right when people DM you like those are conversations that they're usually asking or they're like they're basically ask when people ask questions there you can still Define a scope and say hey like at at a certain point I have like I've given you all this value use all the free stuff if you want more than that I'd be happy to hop on a call and see if I can help you more right so it's not it's not like everyone buy this thing right now right you're not you're not like getting super aggressive about you still publicly just keep pumping all the Goodwill and the value that you are and that'll grow your audience and it'll increase goodwi and all of those things that's what you want you're going to keep doing that it's just that you could still have a call to action that's just in the in the in the comment section or put a story up that says hey by the way if you need help with that thing I'm I'm happy to help like those are those are very light touch things cuz I understand you got to pay bills I understand that and so you can put those things out without necessarily damaging the Goodwill that I think you're that you're that you're obviously building to hang in there you'll be fine you'll get through it and then it'll be a story that you'll someday tell yeah and thank you for everything that you do not just for me but for everyone else because I think you're marking A New Path uh and that's that's kind of cool I appreciate you br thank you what's the one question that you wish you would have asked yourself earlier in your entrepreneurial career when faced with a little bit of uncertainty and Direction 90% of my business is in person online that's the kind of the the direction of whether or not I really want to go towards um more specifically you know creating almost like a watify version of kettle bells just trying to figure out what the next step is going to be so me asking myself a question is always going to be different than you asking something for you because we're different people right and we have different goals and so everything usually Lads up to like what's the goal what's the why and so like right now do you have like a monetary goal do you have an impact goal and believe me I have no issues if you're like I just want to make a certain amount of money like I get that because any of the businesses that you just mentioned so whether it's the brick and mortar uh business or you want to start doing training for those people online or it's doing the watify version which is basically no service and just providing workouts and whatnot all of those are are potential businesses but pursuing all of them at the same time will virtually guarantee that you don't succeed at any of them and so the biggest issue when you're starting out is just pick the path and being willing to commit to it with the uncertainty that comes with it because like every entrepreneurial path has uncertainty like and that's what makes entrepreneurship hard it's literally the not knowing and the pain of suffering consequences for ignorance for things that you've learned now that you're like if I had only known then what I know now and that's every entrepreneur until the day they die and it's just wishing that it were different that causes a lot of the struggle so which of these things of the three that I just mentioned like which of those is the one that like lights you up the most I mean iners training obviously like we live in a small Beach toown Community where everybody knows everybody and it's fun it's family it's convenient I will say there's that comfort factor that it almost in one scope is very beneficial because it is so comfortable but in reality too like Comfort is the enemy of achievement and growth so it's like I know like the comfortable side is the inperson and it's the community and it's fun it's family friends whereas the uncomfortable more challenging but also very big picture-wise would be the online going Full Tilt that side now i' I've breached into the gap of like three-day launches four day launches of you know small ticket low ticket offers but in terms of you know trying to scale and make an impact on the world the world's really big that so that's always really hard because I remember I had a we had an event with Jim owners and somebody stood up I said what's your mission they're like I want to impact 1 Million Lives I was like dude you have a brck and morar location that has like 200 members like let's like if you really want to do that then you would actually just you would you you would you would approach it very differently or you'd have a Time rise and that's the rest of your life right it's like one or the other if you're like I want to do that in 3 years you wouldn't start with a brick and mor location and so the thing is is that what you said earlier is like you you feel comfortable and it sounds like you want to grow I just want to make sure that's correct before I like keep going okay so there there was like an underlying assumption at least that was unspoken and I just want to draw attention to it which was you're like the brick and mortar thing is comfortable it's family it's friendly it's fun I'm assuming it's profitable I'm assuming you're making some money doing that the thing is is like you could like just doing more of what you're currently doing and saying like how do I open a second location or how do I you know like how do I open like locations over the next 5 years or whatever it is that would produce probably just as much of a challenge as going online would except you already have two years of learnings on how to run that business where you have none in the online space you always just want to Stack knowledge within a specific vertical so that you just go deeper and deeper on it because that's where the compounding returns happen like the richest people that I know have been in the same space for 40 years they just know everything there is to know about the space and like that's how they've made their money you can either open a location that's not necessarily in a beach down and test your metal and see how good you are at actually scaling a team you know hiring somebody else seeing if somebody else if you can actually incentivize people build a culture so that people want to work for you that you can recreate the success and that'll show you whether the success that you had was because of you or because of your ability as a as a businessman right because like you can be a charismatic razzled Dazzle dancing bear in any brick-and mortar business and it will work it'll work surface with a smile always works right and it's just hard to scale because most people don't care as much as owners do but if you can create the model that has the incentives and the training in place and the and the procedures that can consistently create that five out of five experience that allow a second location to have the same amount of success as your first location then you have something that absolutely can scale and create lots of Enterprise Value over time so I would say either scale that or basically dial down your iners to as little ass humanely possible of your time and then go all in on the online thing but uh trying to do both will be very hard because what'll happen is you'll start to do some online stuff you'll start to see some traction your gym will start going down but that's your main source of income then you'll hop back to the gym the online will dip and you'll go back and forth and so that's why I'm so big on just committing to whatever thing is because any of them would work but you just have to be all in on it the one pillar that I guess I failed to mention was the freedom and flexibility this being a seasonal town where I'm at it's like being able to essentially create a life where it allows me to own and be at the brick and mortar for say four months out of a year and then from there being able to live elsewhere and then from there because at the end of the day I don't have much responsibility here aside from the just just the gym I don't have anything else really that's Tim me to home but that's where I guess my my North Star has been for a long period of time let me just give you step one here I own a ton of brick and mortar locations as is like right now I've got 70 stores that I own between different companies that are brick and mortar locations I'm not in any of them and so like the idea that you need to go online in order to not be in person is a fallacy that's not true like you can own your gym because like if you were to open a second location you wouldn't be there either right and so the easiest way to test this 1.0 test is like if you can step out and just not go to the gym for a year then maybe you can do the other thing and if you haven't gone to the gym for a year then maybe you'll do the you'll do a second gym and so I think no matter what path you do this is probably a perfect end for this which is you either are going to do the online thing after you figure out how to Outsource gym or delegate it and hire people who are awesome or you decide you're going to do a second location either way you're going to have to start with Outsourcing the first gym let's say I um I want to start a business I can have a very Grand Vision of the business so like apple or Microsoft they they had this vision of like changing the whole world how do we keep working on this business for years when we're worried that it might get outdated because of a new AI or a technology or in other words what do we do when we think our project might not be useful in the long run I mean what you're talking about is strategy like these are strategic decisions that we have to make like you make a big bet on where you think the market is going to be not where it is today if you're going to go after something that's that big but do do you have investors right now I'm I'm a entrepreneur if you you say that if you look at the companies that you just referenced right like you look at basos with Amazon you look at you know Zuckerberg you look at Microsoft every one of those guys started well off and well capitalized okay so basos was a investment banker from Wall Street Bill Gates parents were really well off and he was well off and whatnot Zuckerberg went to Harvard same deal you if you want to really go after that you would have to try and recreate the conditions and I think that right now the likelihood that that happens given your current situation is low and I'm not saying that to disuade you I'm saying because I want to be realistic with you which is that you need to get your own head above water cuz like right now if you're if you don't have the ability to make money on your own right from a entrepreneurial perspective like you need to get your head above water because the only way that you can stick with something for the required amount of time in order for it to become world changing like we're not talking even a decade I mean those companies they're you know 20 Facebook's 20-some years old right just like context and so the only way to get there uh is be able to breathe while you're going and so I think that from a a one-on-one perspective starting starting a simple business that you can generate income on that you know you can you can learn the basics of business before trying to take on the biggest competitors in the most well capitalized Arena absolutely on your own I see not to say that that's impossible it's just incredibly improbable given the the circumstances that you just laid out it would be really romantic for me to be like dude go chase your dreams go do that but like I also would rather have you in a year making money on your own so that you can breathe because you might find out that if you actually start making on money on your own you might just like that because right now it's just the idea of the status of the dream of that like it's an amorphous idea but the amount of pain and suffering that you have to be able to put up with and not make money through that whole period of time really tough wouldn't that cause another issue where because you you decide to choose a pro choose to solve a problem that is small like smaller than the Grand Vision uh then you won't be able to scale much that's not necessarily true and also every one of those company start small like Facebook wasn't like we want to be the social media platform for the whole world he wanted to map colleges s they start with a niche and then they expand outwards and so you would want to much more narrowly Define your problem before you go attack it because what you're going to try and do is build something that's going to be everything for everyone and it's going to be nothing for nobody strategy is prioritization it's allocating limited resources against unlimited options and so you have unlimited options but you have very limited resources and so in order to be successful you have to narrow the problem that you're trying to solve so you can allocate the small amount of resources you have to adequately solve that problem completely and then from adequately solving that problem completely like Amazon started with books and Facebook started with colleges right you solve and then you can go adjacent right so right now it just sounds exciting to say this but like it's not reality you have to pick one problem that you're going to get really good at solving and that's it and then you can have an idea that in the future but real real so many things are going to change between now and then and there's so much luck that that that has to concur because if you think about this zooming all the way out the biggest companies the world have super well capitalized people who are the best in the world made a good call and had luck because if you're number one you have all the things plus luck like if you're number one at like in the whole world it's all of it plus luck the market moves in a direction that that you never know right and so I would rather you just stick to a problem that you know you can absolutely solve given the resources you have learn the skills make income and then from there you can go solve an adjacent problem or you might decide you know what I like this and I'm going to keep going with it thank you very much that's that was really awesome you're on good luck man all right so my question is basically I've been an online fitness coach for the last like three years now and like even progressing from like the first 10K a month like three years ago and like 25k a month a couple months ago I kind of felt like I got loner the more successful I got even though I do have a pretty big audience now like maybe you went through something that something like that or maybe you haven't in that sense I was just wondering like maybe how you got over that self liim belief because I feel like that's kind of holding me back I want to make sure that I'm I want to clearly understand your question so you're saying that being lonely is the thing that is holding back I know my lifestyle changes oh obviously you're going to lose friends along the way the conversation is a lot different in that sense but just like especially from going in person and being a full-time in person training and going line top of that just like a lot more lonely can in a lot of different aspects of losing that kind of touch you just need you just have to join a community man like just straight up like you just need you just need to get around people who are doing the same thing as you and so that might mean physically moving to a different area cuz right now I'm assuming online pay like pays your bills correct yeah right so if online pays your bills then you can literally be anywhere in the world and so if you where do you live right now I'm Emon Alberta I'm planning to move to Colona it's more of like a fitness town in Canada like two months time I would do that and I would also join a bunch of online communities of people who are like trying to make money in the fitness space because you'll find a ton of other people who are doing the same thing as you that are on the path that are ahead of you they're the same as you that are behind you and you you can get a little bit of some some fulfillment from helping out some of the people behind you but you can also get help from the people ahead of you um who are you know because you show that you'll you'll execute and you'll do what they say um and you'll and you'll grow but this is the nice news is that this problem is super solvable like you just got to get around people and you got to be willing to be rejected I mean it's just like Fitness sales it's just like friend sales it's the same thing you just go you go you go on a bunch of dates they're just friend dates you know go hang out go get a lift in I mean it's Fitness so like just go ask a bunch of people to get a lift in and you'll see who's cool and you'll see who isn't worst case scenar you get a workout yeah have you ever kind of experienced that as a kind of leveled up and leveled up I know you as long as you keep growing this is not going to stop you're going to find new friends and if you keep growing you'll pass them and then you'll find new friends that are above them and you'll pass them and you'll just keep going um and so it just depends on how like what you see the role of friends as in your life and so you know for me I just want my requirement for friend isn't necessarily that they make the same or more money than me at all is do they make me better do they make me better do they have my best intentions in heart which is already two incredibly difficult things to pass but if someone passes both those things then they are a friend and so I would just use that as a limit test like is this person making me better and do they have my best you know incentive at heart yeah and how is making friends I guess now because obviously you're a higher level and things are different with social status and all that I mean vers four it's probably different so do kind of have the same standards now are kind of like what is what is it kind of like dude it's harder for me than it is for you yeah right um no for real it is but the thing is is that uh most of the my closest friends don't live here like don't live in the same physical area that I do most of the closest friends that I have live all over and so I see most of my friends once or twice a year and that's it and I work in the meantime the thing is is that like the higher up you go here like and I'll just tell you something like from My Level whatever you want to call that um all the friends I have everyone completely like there are zero social obligations for anything like none and if I don't respond to a text for 3 days there is zero drama it's not even acknowledged it's just we know that busy people understand that busy people are doing [ __ ] and so if everyone you have everyone who's who's in your world understands that you're trying to take this hill then if they're truly your friend then they want you to take the hill more than they want you to respond to their text or come out with them for the weekend like I just got invited to a 7-Day thing that um with a with a couple friend that Lea and I both really really adore um but we'll probably not be able to do it because we have so much stuff that we were that we doing at that same time and I really want to go but I also really want to do this other stuff and I know that I will feel worse about myself if I don't have this other stuff done and so we're going to say that I can't go and that's going to be it and they're not going to hold it against me and so until you find friends who are 100% aligned with you achieving your goals who are making you better and want you to hit your goals then you just keep looking but the thing is like everybody goes through the period that you're at like I think I I think I made I wrote a tweet about this but like there is this lonely period that always happens when you start growing because it happens is that you're too big for the old friend group but you're not quite big enough for the group that you want to get into right so you kind of have this path in the Middle where you just kind of like keep trudging along but like every single person who's accomplished anything material has been in your exact same shoes and you just keep going and you keep going you keep networking you enter you go into the communities you see the people who are adding value to those communities and you message them you find the givers cuz givers recognize givers almost immediately you can see the people who are always giving more above and beyond and you can understand they get the game and so like in that first meeting if they're like like let me see if I can do this for you let me like take care of this for you let me help you in this way rather than like hey could you help me with this like wrong person but if you just start by giving to a whole bunch of people who are where you want to be you'll get more back even if nine out of 10 don't give you anything back provide shitloads of value people will message you and they be like hey let's hop on a zoom let's grab a zoom lunch whatever and so like you can have a ton of friend dates or whatever that you meet people and see if they have game and if they have game then you keep in touch because you're making them better too I appreciate everything you bet brother kill the content game [ __ ] after doing full-time entrepreneurship for three years right um and you know raising a family I got four four small children all under the age of five I found myself in a very hard position where I had to go back to a 9 to-5 I would say entrepreneurship is like like you said it's hard and and I know what hard feels like but after discussing it with my wife like I felt like this was like the right decision after getting myself into business dead and other things like that and I didn't never have a paycheck to live on you know so how do I know when it's like like how do I get back into entrepreneurship like now I'm just running my stuff on the Sid so for example right when I was laid off uh three years ago I was doing taxes and I just doing like um bookkeeping and then I worked my way up starting to offer accounting services and then I leveled up and I started look going after higher levers like now I started doing CFO services and um I went through that Valley of Despair thing and that's probably why I'm at where I'm at right now you know okay um just being completely honest and I I appreciate you being hand in upfront about it cuz otherwise this wouldn't be very valuable cuz you'd tell me a bunch of fake information and I'll give you a response to fake information it wouldn't matter for either of us so thank you for being honest um that being said you're not honestly you're in a pretty good spot and I'll tell you why so you have a valuable skill set that will always be in demand because a lot of people don't want to do money stuff so people don't do budgets people don't do bookkeeping people don't do CFO work people want to do financials projections forecasts no one wants to do any of that stuff and you do and you're good at it so presumably you're good at it because you keep doing it right I'll just I'll I'll leave it at that I'm going to assume that for for the sake of our call right so um one I think it was wise that you got a job because you have a wife you have four kids I think that was a smart Noggin move okay now that being said there's going to be a conversation that you probably have to have with your wife about what because your nights and weekends either are going to have to go to family or they're going to have to go to the new thing and so I think that you need to have a candy conversation with her and say listen my Prim and I'm I'm put I'm putting words in your mouth here so this is if I were in your shoes I would say as a man my primary drive is to provide and right now I feel like I'm failing you and I want to lead our children by example so that when they are 20 or 30 and they're thinking about making that jump I can speak to it because I wasn't afraid to take the risk again because in gymnastics as soon as you fall off the pommel horse even if you twist or break your ankle you what they do they try and get you right back on the horse again and they do that because if you don't and you take enough time off you start developing these fears around getting back on you never get on again and so they want you to get back on the horse and right now I think you got bucked by the entrepreneurial horse and that's okay it happens it's part of the game right like it's the it's the the scene in Rocky 17 or whatever [ __ ] Rocky it is where he's like it's not about how hard you can hit about but it's about hard you can get hit and keep going forward right and so you got hit big you know big whoop everybody gets hit everyone [ __ ] loses all the time I lost everything twice before this time right and so like you've lost everything once you still you still owe me one you can tell your wife I said that and so let's get into tactics all right so right now the in my opinion the issue that you miss is you didn't know how to advertise you didn't know how to promote and so you have the service you just got to let people know about it and so you were full-time as an entrepreneur but you probably weren't spending four hours a day promoting and so when you are you're 100% correct right and so that's that's what need to do so nights and weekends for you is you log out of work go home kiss the dog high five the kids and then you spend four hours promoting and promoting is you make content you reach out to people or you run ads and given your financial situation it's going to be making content and reaching out to people that's it literally if that's what you're you start your timer four hours you make content you reach out to people and you do that for four straight hours every day you do that you're going to have more business in the next six months than you even know know what to do with that's it that's all you have to do like you the thing is you're in a good spot cuz you have the skill that there's already demand like I don't have to test your idea you're trying to provide bookkeeping services it's a commoditized service like if you do a good job you're on time like you are responsive you deliver things on the first of the month people will want to do business with you and they'll stay with you and so you just got to let people know about it faster because I'm guessing that your rate was based on referrals you had one or two customers maybe three and by the time you get one new referral every two or three months one would drop and you stayed there until eventually you couldn't right I'm guessing that was the story right so you just need to increase your sales velocity which means you got to let more people know about it and you got to learn how to sell because it was just you right did you have any employees no I had a virtual assistant during tax season but yeah it was mainly just me yeah then you have the easiest business in the world because 100% of the revenue is profit right it's just you for now and so you can absolutely get yourself to 10 20 accounting clients and you're going to be working like a dog at this point but you'll be making way more than you are now and then you'll have new problems cuz then your wife's like I don't see you anymore you're like yeah but now we're making three times money and I will find a way to use the money to buy back some time and you can do that but idea like you're you're like you already have the hard [ __ ] done you're like 6 months away seriously like I don't normally say that like you're 6 months away you got to you got to reach out to let's call it let's call it 10,000 people you reach out to 10,000 people you'll have you'll have the business you want because I'm telling you right now as a business owner dude the amount of crappy accountants and bookkeepers that out there outnumber the good ones 100 to one like no one's stoked about their book keeper so like like it's not hard and like think about it those guys don't like those guys suffer the same issue that you have is they don't know how to promote themselves they're not business people they're Bean counters and so like you you've been you've been in bean counter mode and you got to get in you got to get in promoter mode especially as a as a solo entrepreneur it's all promotion in the beginning so would you suggest just mainly cold Outreach or should I try to do content or just go straight cold Outreach you can do both I mean dude one post a day one post a day see who interacts with it so who likes it who comments on it you can message all those people and then you can reach out as well but the thing is is with your profession finding someone who has an adjacent audience so uh you know if someone who's an HR company or a recruiting company right like if you can figure out a way to just work with them they already have a whole engine of people coming in and just see if you can just get off the backside and give them a kickback just for intros like that's a super productive way of uh of leveraging the amount of reach outs like you can just reach out to 10,000 business owners and you'll you'll get your nut but you could probably reach out to a th000 B2B businesses and see if you can structure a partnership with them that they can refer you business and you refer it back to them but yes content and Outreach you and real talk the content is probably not in the beginning where you're going to get the majority of your business I just want to just prepare you for that but the reason that you're going to be making the content in the beginning is that so when you do Reach Out people will go to your page and they will consume your content and then they will decide to respond based on the quality so think about that stuff as lead nurture more than lead genen in the beginning over time you'll get better at it it'll start generating business but it might take you a year or two like it takes time to get good at that you've inspired me and that's the reason why I took the jump in the beginning so I appreciate you well I appreciate you for taking the jump and um I will ask you to trust me one more time which is that four hours a day have the conversation with your wife 10,000 reach outs and let me know in six months she's watching so she knows all right let celese take his 10,000 reach outs that's it like on the other side of 10,000 reach outs is you making the money that you want to make and having the skill of promotion and sales that's it I just want you to know and I and I hope that mation exists here for this one reason which is that like you are not alone there are other people going through it and so despite that it may feel lonely you are not alone keep being one of zero