EPISODE 12
How to get off your butt and start pursuing your own thingDO YOU HAVE A DREAM OF GOING OUT ON YOUR OWN OR STARTING A BUSINESS?
How do you actually go about doing that? Do you just burn the boats? How do you decide what to do first? How do you get your first clients?
That’s EXACTLY what I talk about in this solo “Fan Question Friday” episode. I share some details I never have before when I took the leap into “entrepreneur-land.” It can be an intimidating thing.
I hope this episode helps you along your journey 🙂
(PS., this episode is brought to you by the Amplify Tour—which I’ll be speaking at in Tampa Florida next month. To catch an awesome special and to see me speak at this event, go to calvinwayman.com/amplifytour
Transcription:
Preview:
Did I know what I was gonna do next? I didn’t know what business I was gonna start or anything ,but if I knew, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. What the hell I was doing being an employee ?
( INTRO MUSIC PLAYS )
Yoyoyo! Good Morning ladies and gents! I am coming to you here in Austin Texas, still happy Friday. It’s been a good trip I came here just to check out the vibe of Austin and it’s been a lot of fun. One thing though is it’s freaking cold, it’s so weird. I thought it was gonna just be 60’s and 70’s and earlier this week it was like in the 30’s. But anyway I hope you’re having a blast thank you for coming on this podcast episode of fan question Friday. We have some awesome questions, but before I get into the questions. A big day today! we have our first ever sponsor for the podcast kind of well .What I mean by kind of is I kind of created the sponsor but kind of not at the same time so I’ll tell you what I mean this sponsor for this show for this episode is sponsored by the amplify tour so the amplify tour is an awesome event that’s happening in Tampa Florida and I’m speaking and it’s legitimately kind of a sponsorship thing because I’m an affiliate for the event and the organizer for the event who is a really good friend of mine Yasemin who happens to be a certified coach certified coach into his programs and stuff like that is giving the podcast listeners an amazing deal so I’m gonna give you that in a sec but you guys know if you’ve followed me on social media for a while I’m a big fan of events. Events have changed my life and when it comes to reaching higher and going after the things that you actually want because it’s one thing to listen to a podcast like this well listen to books and or read books but what’s really cool is when you can get around other high achievers and other people that think similarly than you do and I talked about this massively in my book I have a whole section on this in my book fish out of water called “GET SCHOOLED” and the main point of “GET SCHOOLED” is to get around other people like you and one of the fastest way get around other people like you is to attend events so it’s a big thing for me I believe in a big time and so that’s why I wanted to have amplify tour on here as a sponsor because we worked out a deal that you can attend this event and what would be really cool is I mean come say Hi if you’re in the Florida area or if you want to travel to Florida again the amplify tour event is going to be in Tampa Florida March 9th through the 11th and here’s the cool deal so tickets of this on this are normally$300 a ticket but if you go to Calvinwayman.com/amplifytour then you get $100 off the regular price ,if you do VIP which is something I highly recommend because you get to hang out with the speakers you get to have I think a gourmet lunch on both days on two of the days not just one but you get $200 off the ticket and here’s where it gets bonkers crazy not only do you get the $100 off general admission or the $200 off VIP you also get what’s called a “BOGO” deal “BOGO” buy one get one free. So that’s what’s really cool about this so if you go to Calvinwayman.com/amplifytour then you can get your ticket at a discount and you also get a second ticket for free just make sure in the check out that you mentioned that you got the BOGO deal through the Podcast Curious with Calvin Wayman because literally nobody else has this deal it’s only you guys that are listening to the curious with Calvin Wayman podcast so thanks for listening.
And hey! it’d be awesome to hang out and to say “Hi” come see me speak I’ll be speaking at the event probably on the one on the first or second day I’m not sure but it’s going to be a ton of fun there’s going to be a lot of cool people there, again go Calvinwayman.com/amplifytour and get your discount plus get buy one get one free mention in the comments when you check out and come say Hi in Tampa Florida March 9th through the 11th.
Okay! let’s get into this episode of fan question Friday so we have a few questions on this episode and they’re all related which I like so I’m gonna dive in and I’m in a kind of paraphrase based on what people asked, so the first question comes from Daniel Fortune and he’s asking a question like ;
What to do when you’re getting started on your Entrepreneurial journey and you’re kind of in a tight spot? So when you’re a tight spot he’s wondering to do, should I take a marketing job for a little while to get by, should I just burn the boats and jump all in on my own thing. So this question is a little bit interesting and it depends on your level of not just fear tolerance but how serious you are in creating the life that you want, so when I started my Entrepreneurial journey like three years ago I actually was trying to do a mix of this I was in my day job and trying to do a side hustle on the side I guess that’s why it’s called a side hustle because you dude on the side very funny, but anyway it was I was doing a side hustle I was doing network marketing or at least attempting to do network marketing alongside my day job and I had varying levels of success and I had this plan of once it got to a certain point.
Then I would quit my day job and then I would go out and be an Entrepreneur and I would pursue my dream, but then I noticed that every year new year that passed by I would look back and didn’t have much to show for it I realized that yah! was making maybe little tiny bit see parts of progress but it wasn’t actually just having a breakthrough and I then did something really freaking scary I had the realization that if I had to figure it out like if somebody had a gun to my head or I burned the boats then I probably would really figure it out and what I mean by figuring out it’s figuring out, how to live an entrepreneurial life, how to create my own business, how to do my own thing, so what my advice here is if you’re listening to this and you feel like that it’s like if it’s been kind of dragging on that like you know you’ve known for along time you want to do your own thing ,you know that you have this fire and desire to create your own business or to make an imprint on the world if it’s happened for a long time and you’re serious hands down burn the boats just freaking, burn the boats and what I mean by that is make sure you don’t have any other option make yourself uncomfortable so uncomfortable that the only thing to do is to move forward and just as a sidebar for anybody that doesn’t know that burn the boats reference its referencing an old story where these conquerors went to an island and for many years the island was trying to be conquered by a lot of different people and they all failed and then this one captain or Conqueror had a great idea he was like we only have one option to conquer this island we’re not going backward retreat is not an option so when he arrived to the island he ordered his men to burn the boats that they used to get there so all they had as one option is to conquer the island or die well they ended up conquering the island ,so that’s what it means to burn the boats and again you just have to decide how serious you are, if you’re serious burn the boats so what I ended up doing is just quitting my day job just kind of randomly except it wasn’t random because I had been thinking about it for a long time, but yeah! I had a wife and I had a one year old and I had credit card debt and student loans and all this stuff but I knew that time was slipping by a year turned a two and then three and I didn’t want it to turn to ten so I quit my day job and I had to freaking figure it out and when I had to figure it out that’s what put my ass in gear yes it scared the living hell out of me but it’s what got me moving and progressing so that’s my answer if it if times been slipping for a bit and you know that there’s something that you’ve been wanting to do for a long time and it’s and fear has just been holding you back ,burn the boats ,commit first , and then figure it out, Cool! So that’s question one. Second question comes from Jeremy Brown he says: How do you decide on what to do first? So I’m gonna assume that this has something to do like let’s say you’re trying to like you don’t know what project to do or you have multiple passions , so this question is also rooted in a little bit in fear like because I had the same thing I wondered like even when but when I was in my day job still I wondered like which network marketing company should I join like which one had the best compensation plan or even when I was starting my Entrepreneurial ventures like which venture should i do first, should I get into sales, should I get into social media, should I get into such and such like I didn’t know and what I ended up realizing is, what I was really fearing is messing up I was really worrying like picking one thing and going down a path and then wondering like if I end it would like just waste my time because I was going down the wrong path and what I realized and actually had a lot of guidance on this with one of my mentors Nick guns worth one day Nick Unsworth told me that the thing that separates people that are floundering and super successful people that have made it is how quickly they can make decisions and I was like well what about making decisions like, what if how do you know it’s the right one? And he said successful people don’t worry if they made the right decision or not instead they just make the decision and then they make it right that was like are you kidding me what did you just say successful people make a decision and then they make it right so you don’t worry if you make the right decision or not you make the decision and then you make it right that. What is to say is it’s not the point of decision that is the end-all be-all we get hung up on this like crazy it’s in this the same people that think that the idea itself is gonna make you freaking rich but how many of us have had multiple million-dollar ideas didn’t do a damn thing about it and then we found I saw that idea in the reality at some point in like” Hey that was my idea” so it’s not the idea itself that makes it work and it’s not the decision itself that makes it beautiful it’s what you do about it it’s what you do after the decision is made that makes it actually work, now you need the idea to start building it and you need the decision to get moving but the decision is not the end-all be-all it’s the attention the focus the energy that you put on after the decision is made that matters all of this is context to say just freaking pick there is no right or wrong here’s the only guaranteed wrong move decide nothing, indecision will kill any progress way more than anything like there this guy Tom Bill you of impact theory he says something that I don’t know if he talks about this often in his in his show he might but he and I had a conversation at an event in California last year that was super interesting around decision we were chatting about it and he said that it is better to decide on something and run a hundred miles in the opposite direction that you should be going than to do nothing that’s how important decision is, but the problem is that we’re afraid that it’s the wrong decision get rid of it the decision is not the point it’s what you do after the decision is made that is the point and I have a corny example of this in my book to kind of show the how like just a ridiculous example that shows how it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy let’s say two people get married Bob and Sally if Bob and Sally get married but let’s say Bob that’s a decision marriage is a decision right but let’s say Bob is not sure if he made the right decision or not if he’s unsure what is he gonna do he’s probably gonna look at like Rachel or Michelle or all these other people and wonder like maybe she should have been the one I should have married her maybe that girl from high school is the one I should have really picked and he’s probably gonna notice all the things about Sally his wife that annoy him and really focus on the nitpicky stuff and then over time what do you think is gonna happen with that relationship, chances are over time it’s going to deteriorate the relationship will die and he could say you know what yeah I made the wrong decision but let’s go back let’s say that he took a different approach after he married Sally he said well I made the decision so I’m gonna make it right it was the right decision so he behaves as though it was the right decision so he notices all the great things about Sally he doesn’t nitpick he looks at the reasons why it was the right one and over time the relationship naturally flourishes so here we have two completely different conclusions one where the relationship falls apart one where it flourishes, now here’s the point the point is going back to the point of decision the point of decision was the same right at the point of this the decision it was the same so what makes the different conclusions it’s what you do after the decision is made the focus and energy and attention you put on after it that makes it its own self-fulfilling prophecy this is a huge idea because we get so caught up in the decisions we make and think that it’s the decision self that’s good or bad there is no freaking good or bad do it decide and then start taking action on it and behave as though it was the right one if you do that man progress will happen again we also worry about it being perfect and that’s one of the things that holds us back to if you worry about it being perfect then it’s just gonna keep your idea on the Shelf done is better than perfect as I always say, so to Jeremy how you decide is you just freaking pick and here’s one other thing I want to say this but on this question before I leave, I think what also holds people back in this area of fear and decide and and whether wondering what direction they should go and they have a feeling of indecision it’s not actually that they’re trying to do next they don’t know what to do second, third, fourth or fifth how many times do we like try to plan out everything we know the general direction we want to go like we know that we want to have our own business or we know we want to write a book or we know we want to become financially independent we know we want to go on a vacation or whatever that big goal is we know kind of the end goal atleast generally we also know where we are in relation to that goal and we probably could pretty well guess something to do to take a step towards that but the thing that really holds us back is wanting to have a perfectly laid out plan on how to get there let me tell you something that most people that have books and courses online like will not tell you and it’s this there is no freaking perfect plan there never has there never will you can go by somebody’s 15 step process or 67 steps to something great but there is no perfect formula so what you have to realize is there that if you can do with these three things these three elements with the perfect step take care the with the process to get to where you want to go the steps are a B and see not the full alphabet not all the steps to get to Z all you need is a B and Z I’ll explain, Z is your end goal where you want to end up a is where you are now and B is your next step if you just have the courage to take the next step you will win that’s all you need take the next step you will win know where you want to go know where you are and take the next step how this worked for me this actually relates to the first question I knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur three years ago I knew I wanted to start my own business but I was at a freaking employee job that I wouldn’t like what was well overdue I did not want to be there so what was the next step? Quit that was it I burned the boats I quit, did I know what I was gonna do next? No I didn’t know what business I was gonna start or anything but if I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur what the hell was I doing being an employee so I quit so it can be that simple and it can be scary but one thing that can calm your mind down is to realize the answer to the decision thing and that is it’s not the point of the decision that counts don’t worry if you make the right decision or not instead make a decision and then make it right and just take the next step and you’ll progress is key progress not perfection so I hope that gives you some insight there Jeremy because I I think this is a big deal that a lot of early entrepreneurs and creatives and people deal with I know I certainly did and still do on some levels when it when it’s all about going to that next level so I hope that helps, now we’re gonna go deeper into let’s say you have you know what your business is, so Lloyd Dajin who’s also ask questions before on fan question Fridays so thank you Lord for asking another question; He said how did I find my first clients ?when starting my business, so I’m gonna ask to answer this generally so let’s say you know what your business is and how do you start finding your first clients one of the very best things to do is to start meeting people ,but when you meet new people there’s a formula to introducing yourself that makes you referral and what I mean by referral is people know who you are enough it’s specific enough that they will either want to hire you right then and or they will be able to recall you if they bump into somebody that needs your services , so I’m going to give you the same formula I use , so the formula works like this I call it the WHO WHAT and WHY so that result, that’s the formula who you are .what you do, why you do it and so that what’s the result the person gets so let me give you an example of ,what I did when I first started my social media management company and you can apply this to whatever it is that you do, so when you meet someone for the first time then you can say” Hi I am Calvin Wayman I’m a social media manager” and then so that was let me let me back up the step so the first thing the first step is the WHO, who are you? I’m Calvin Wayman , the second step is WHAT, like what do you do? I’m a social media manager, WHY, why I do? And I’m like everybody knows that they should be on social media but they don’t have the time to create consistent content and so and then you be like so what I do is I create social media content so that and then I give the result that the person gets so that they can have consistent content without spending a whole lot of time so let me back up on that WHO, WHAT and WHY ,so that result I’m Calvin Wayman what I do, is I’m a social media manager and everybody knows that they should have social media they should be on social media but they don’t have the time to create consistent so I as a social media manager create content for them so that they can have awesome content consistently without spending a whole lot of time so if you work with that formula WHO, WHAT and WHY so that end result like just fill in the blank with whatever you do let’s say you are a web developer you can say “Hi I’m such a web developer “a lot of people know that they need to have a website so what I do is I create awesome websites so that they can have presence online whatever that result is or maybe you are ghostwriter” Hi my name is such-and-such” what I do is ghost writing a lot of people want to have a book but they don’t know how to get started so I write people’s books so that they can be a best-selling author whatever that is like you can fit whatever you do inside that formula you do that and when you meet people you tell people that thing then you will you can get clients from that literally when I decided I was going to be a social media manager this is how quick it happened I did not even know I that like how to even do what I was doing I just want to tell you that quick story on it like I was coaching with my mentor Nick Unsworth and I went to his house one night and he was having a little bit of a networking party and I was like, hey! I’m moving in a couple of months and I’m moving to the middle of nowhere in Northern Arizona so I need to make sure I’m doing something with my business that’s more virtual than just what I’m doing now and he was like well based on your skills and everything yeah you should totally be a social media manager and it was like awesome and then literally five minutes after we had that conversation we went into the living room and everybody that was in the room witness circle and said who they were and I literally just used this formula right then I was like I’m Calvin Wayman I’m a social media manager everybody knows that they should be on social media but they don’t have the time to create consistent content so what I do is I create social media content for them so that they can have awesome content without spending a lot of time you can get it under 20 seconds and people then knew right then oh dude I want to hire you or I know someone that does that your referral now here’s a bonus on that step of being referral if you are serious with like growing your business you can start calling people that you know and telling them the that same thing like people that you know you can call them and by the way you’re not calling them to sell them you’re calling them to ask them for referrals so you can call people and let people know, hey I’m a social media manager a lot of people know they should be on social media so but they don’t have the time so what I’m doing right now is I’m creating content for people so they so that they can have awesome content without having or without spending a lot of time and then you say who do you know that fits that category right and their wills can start turning and then you can get referrals from people that’s already in your warm market so just an extra bonus on that so I hope that helps you Lloyd I know you’re working on getting some newer clients so start meeting new people you can go to something called B&I BNI is something in any local city or any city that you’re in you can just Google like I’m in Austin Texas right now I could Google Austin B and I it’s like a business networking group and you can practice this and they kind of teach you this at B and I and so you go in the circle with your business cards and you say who you are like what you do ,how you help people so that and the result and you start getting that practice down then people know that that’s who you are you do that thing and you can like solve some problem .The key is at the end there that’s so that and the result because that’s what people want people want the result so again I’m just going to do it one last time so that you get it and you can insert it in anything that you do so.
I am Calvin women what I do is I’m a social media manager everybody knows that they should be on social media but they don’t have enough time to create consistent content so what I do is I create consistent social media content so that they can have an awesome presence online without spending a lot of time cool again insert whatever your name is whatever your profession is, whatever result that you get for people you meet people you say that over and over people are generally gonna say so who are you or what do you do and you can work that in and that’s how you can start getting your first few clients cool! So we’re gonna wrap it up their gang this was an awesome fun fan question Friday hope you had hope you got value out of this episode if you’re somebody that is going after something bigger you’re an entrepreneur or a create ever want to start your own thing these are great things to think about to move in that direction so just wrapping up I want to say first of all going back to the sponsor for the amplify tour if you want to come see me speak in Florida then go to Calvinwayman.com/amplifytour again you get the $100 discount on the general ticket a $200 discount on the VIP you also get the buy one get one so your second ticket is free it’s gonna be March 9th through the 11th go to Calvinwayman.com/amplifytour and also if you want to be in the next fan question Friday if you want to have a question answered at Webb maybe there was something in this episode that made triggered a question for you then please send me your question and I’d be happy to answer it on the next fan question Friday you can email me just to my direct email Calvinwayman@gmail.com and you can just type it out or if you want to do a video question then I’ll put your video question in the next episode, so thanks for listening and if you send a question by the way you also are entered to the raffle to win the car that I’ll be giving away and you will also be entered to win a prize that I give away in every episode.
So thank you! Guys so much for listening and I will see you on Monday on the next curious with Calvin Wayman episode peace.
video version of the Episode