by: AskPat 527 Episode Transcript
Pat Flynn: Hey what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 527 of AskPat. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Thanks so much, and here's today's question from Jae.
Jae: Hi Pat. My name's Jae, calling from Vancouver, British Colombia. I want to thank you for all the work that you do, I'm a big fan. I'm a father to a three-year-old daughter myself, and it's inspiring to see how you emphasize being a family man and also have this successful online business going and willing to help millions of other people. My question today comes from discouragement, from my heart.
When I first encountered this idea of passive income and online business, I was really excited. I even have a good idea that I feel like I can pursue. However, I think the momentum has slowed down. I'm starting to realize that there's a lot of work involved and a lot of obstacles that I need to go over. I'm starting to feel a little discouraged. I'm starting to dread being at work, which I didn't really before. I feel like I'm not getting anywhere. I'm starting to get a little impatient. I think this all leads up to being discouraged. After work, I'm tired, I don't have energy to play with daughter, or as much energy as before. I feel like I really want to hustle and keep going, but I feel like I'm losing a little bit of energy and momentum.
I just want to ask you how you dealt with these type of emotions and roadblocks in your entrepreneurial journey. Thank you for all you do. Hope to hear from you soon. Thank you for all the extra email efforts that you've been putting in, I really appreciate that. Thank you so much!
Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, Jae? Thank you so much for the question. I really appreciate it and your honesty, and of course all your supportive words for what I do. But let's focus on you and what you're going through. I just want to let you know that you're not alone. There's a lot of people who are listening to this right now, who are in the exact same boat as you, who have something worth fighting for, obviously, and a lot more than just your daughter. We have these big goals and aspirations and things we want to do in our lives. We try to do things to allow us to make those things happen and passive income is definitely one of those ways to obtain those kinds of freedoms. But, it doesn't come easy.
That's one of the things that I do in my site is I definitely tell people that this is not easy, this doesn't happen overnight. Hopefully, I've been able to at least put a little truth behind what it really takes to build a successful online business, but of course, as we all do and want, we want things to happen sooner than later. And as we put in a lot of hard work and effort into whatever we do, on the side or in our new gig that we try to do as an entrepreneur, it's tough! It's real tough! At first, I remember wanting to give up, so many times. I'm rewinding back to 2008 when I had gotten laid off and had just proposed to my girlfriend and she said yes, and then I got told I was gonna get let go, moved back in with my parents, and I just wanted things to work.
I think part of the reason why it did work, I had a number of things working in my favor. One of the big things was I actually had gotten laid off, so I had a lot of free time, which was definitely helpful. I'm not gonna try and avoid the fact that I had a lot of time to figure this out, at least more time than a lot of people do. Even though I still had some work hours left until my final termination date, I wasn't working on architecture stuff, I was trying to figure things out. One of the things that excited me most was internet business, which I had heard about at that time through a podcast called Internet Business Mastery.
So that's the first thing I would mention. Just try to get inspiration from wherever you can get inspiration, whoever seems to inspire you. I don't know if that's SPI, or other success stories on SPI. What really helped me was understanding that this stuff was possible. It just made it . . . when you're in it, it almost seems impossible, but when you see other people who are honest and are telling their story, who have gone through those same struggles and you see where they're at now, you know that you're just in it. You're in that part of the journey. Yes, it's gonna take time, it's gonna take hustle and it's gonna take patience. You're going to make mistakes. You're not gonna see results as soon as you want. That's just a part of entrepreneurship. It's almost like a task, like, “Do you really want this? If you do, then you're gonna do what it takes.” That's just the truth.
And that's why not everybody can become an entrepreneur. I don't say that 'cause I don't think you won't become an entrepreneur, but because I want you to have the mindset that you will be an entrepreneur and that you will make this work. In terms of the energy levels, that's one thing that I know a lot of people struggle with. They don't have much extra time, and when they do have time, it's after they're coming home from work and it's either spend time with the family or work on this side hustle, but they don't have any energy for either, so none of them gets full attention and just kind of is not all good from there.
What I would recommend is if you're working on something on the side and trying to build something new, I would wake up earlier. This is, by far, the best advice I could give you is to . . . and I learned this from Hal Elrod, from The Miracle Morning, and by listening to several other entrepreneurs, I think Richard Branson actually just recently said or there was article on entrepreneur.com or Ink magazine, I can't remember which one, where he was talking about why everybody should wake up at 5 or before 5. He says because that's time for you. That's you waking up because you wanna wake up, it's not wakinG up for somebody else, it's you wanna wake up because you wanna wake up. You wanna wake up because you wanna live a full life. You wanna do things to develop personal-wise. That's what I do in the morning, and that's what Hal teaches in The Miracle Morning, you wake up for you. You wake up before everybody else wakes up and you get stuff done for you. That way, you're paying yourself first.
The reason I mention that is because there's a big popular financial piece of advice that people give in the personal finance world. That is, “Pay yourself first.” This is very much “rich dad, poor dad” kind of strategy. When you pay yourself first financially, this is . . . you're giving yourself, you're putting some money aside to build your nest egg. You're putting money aside in a savings account or some investment of some kind, when you get your paycheck, first, before you pay your bills or your mortgage or your car payments or whatever. The reason that's so important is because, if you get into this habit of paying yourself first, you aren't even really gonna notice that this money's going where it is going, then over time, it's just gonna build and build and build and you're gonna have this amazing nest egg over time.
It's the same thing with your time and where you spend it. Most of us wake up for somebody else and devote our time and energy to them first. Think about the alarm clock. Who are you waking up for? Are you waking up for you or are you waking up for somebody else's dream? So if you wake up even an hour earlier every day, and I know some people are like, “No I can't do that,” and you know what, I thought I couldn't do it, too. But after I tried it out and read The Miracle Morning and learned how to do it and meditate and journal and actually get work done in the morning before my kids wake up, it was a life-changing thing. I thought I was pretty productive as a night owl, because I have this ability to stay up late and stay energized at that hour. But man, my life changed when I started to change and shift those hours of work into the morning hours.
That is how I've been able to write my book, Will It Fly? It was written between the hours of 5:30 AM and 7:30 AM in the morning. Yes, it was harder, yes I got less sleep, and yes it was difficult. But totally worth it, because I really wanted it, I really wanted this book to be in the hands of people, that's what I envisioned. Visualizations, that's one part of the six-part process that Hal teaches in The Morning.
The point is, Jae, and the thing I want to give to you to walk away with in terms of advice is that you are not alone. I know you're impatient, but oftentimes people quit right before that inflection point happens. I've been told that so many times. That's why I don't quite. A lot of times, that moment when things just start to take off is often right at that dip. Right after that dip, as Seth Godin says. You may be in that dip right now. What I would also mention is to try and realize what your priorities are in terms of the work that you do do. So if you have however many hours or minutes a day to work, make sure it's being spent on time that will be moving the needle. You need to take bold actions, especially. If you give yourself an hour a day, you want to make sure that hour is well-spent.
There's a book I would recommend called The One Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller. It's amazing, it helps you determine what that next thing you should do is, moving into the next day, you should know what that is so when you wake up for yourself again, you're gonna be motivated 'cause that's your time, for you. Before you give it to anybody else, even before you give it to your family, you gotta take care of yourself first in that way. It's like on the airplane, when they tell you to put your mask on first before you help other people, you need to have that on you first, before you can help other people out, too. This is kind of an example of that.
So, Jae, I hope this answers your question or at least gives you some encouragement moving forward. I'm pretty sure a lot of the people who are listening to this are right there with you and actually, if you wanna give Jae some words of encouragement for those of you who know exactly what Jae's talking about, which I'm sure we all do, hit him up on Twitter. Use the hashtag #askpat527. Jae, we're all here for you, man. We're a community, SPI community. We're all in this together.
I struggle. When I was writing this book that I have coming out February 1st, I wanted to give up. I was impatient with it. I was staring at a blank screen for hours, and I felt like I was wasting time. It really wasn't until I got encouragement from others that I knew that this was going to work. People who I'd connected with. That's the last piece of advice I want to give to you. If anybody wants to connect with Jae, #askpat527. Talking with other people about this, just like you've talked about it with me today, is a great thing. To get it off your chest, but also just realize that you're not alone. Hopefully, you can hook up with some other people who are going to through this with you, or who are a little bit ahead of you so that they can give you some more specific advice on exactly where you're at and the business that you're trying to create.
Cheers, thanks so much. I wish you all the best, Jae. Keep us posted, please. Feel free to send me an email, I'd love to feature your success story on the show someday. We'll make it happen. Thanks Jae! We're gonna send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. I also want to thank everybody else out there who's asked a question and is asking questions. Just head on over to AskPat.com, you can ask right there on that page.
Thanks so much, I appreciate it. You know, look guys, this online business stuff, it takes work. It takes work, and it's awesome. The fact that we are here, trying to build our own lives and live life in the way that we want to live. We now live in a world, in an age where it is totally possible. We're seeing it all the time. Don't be discouraged if you see other people doing it, you should be encouraged because you know it's possible and because there are people out there who want to help. All it takes is just work andunderstanding what it that you're doing and how it's moving the needle. Really, you need to know what you're doing and how's it helping. If you don't know, you gotta talk to other people.
Cheers, take care, and here's a quote to finish off the day by Coco Chanel. “If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.”
Cheers, take care, and I'll see you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye.
