Afford Anything - Why I Quit My Job with No Savings When My Wife Was Five Months Pregnant (and What Happened Next?!), with Grant Baldwin

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

#244: Grant Baldwin felt burned out. He worked as a youth pastor, which felt like a 24/7 profession. He had to attend student events held late into the night, which left him exhausted. One night, he came home to find his wife crying. She told him that she felt like she had a roommate, rather than a husband, because he was gone so often. So Grant did something drastic: he quit his job, with negligible savings, when his wife was four to five months pregnant. For the following year, he waited tables and worked odd jobs, cobbling together gig-economy money while raising a newborn. During his rare unscheduled moments, he started crafting a new career for himself as a self-employed public speaker. Today, Grant Baldwin is a speaker, entrepreneur, coach, and author of The Successful Speaker. He’s earned multiple seven-figures in speaking fees and has helped over 2,000 people become professional speakers. He shares how he made his dream a reality in this episode. For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode244 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything, but not everything. Every choice that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that's true not just of how you spend your money, but also how you spend your time, your focus, your attention, your energy, any limited resource in your life that you need to manage. That leads to two questions. Number one, what kind of life do you want? What matters most to you?

Number two, how do you take daily actions that reflect that? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice. And that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. And today, Grant Baldwin joins us to talk about how he quit his job, even when he had zero money in the bank and his wife was four or five months pregnant. And then transitioned into a brand new career in which he became self-employed and turned into a creative entrepreneur. The reason that I love Grant's story is because I hear from so many people who want to quit their jobs.

They're burned out, they're over it. They think their talents and skills would be put to much better use somewhere else, doing something else, possibly even working for themselves. But they're scared to make the transition. And Grant's story where he was broke, his wife was four or five months pregnant, and he was like, you know what, I'm done, can't do this anymore, I'm out. With basically no savings, I mean, it's an incredibly scary step to take. But he felt that it was right. He trusted that things would work out. And he hustled and worked odd jobs, worked bridge jobs when he had to in order to live his best life now and create his best career in his best company now instead of deferring his best life 10 years into the future. So I think there's a lot that we can learn from Grant's story. In his particular case, he wanted to be a speaker. But the broader lessons of his story are applicable to anyone who's interested in quitting their job.

transitioning into something else, particularly anyone who wants to become some type of creative entrepreneur. So with that said, here is Grant Baldwin sharing the story of how he quit his job at the worst possible time. Oh, one more thing. Before we get to today's interview, I want to make a note that at the end of the episode, starting at roughly around the 65-minute time stamp, I'm going to talk about some of the current events that are happening right now. We're recording this in February of 2020. The stock market has just taken a 13% plunge. A lot of people are asking, should they buy on the dip? And so we'll talk about all of that at the end of today's episode. So with that said, here is Grant Baldwin discussing career change and creative entrepreneurship. Hi, Grant. Hello, Miss Paula Pants. How are you? I'm excellent. How are you doing? It is great to talk with you. And I know we've crossed paths over the years and we see each other at conferences and that sort of thing. But I'm excited to chat today. Absolutely. I've known you and known of you for many years. And today, Grant, you're a successful speaker living in Nashville, living the dream with your family and a great career. How did all of that begin? Take us back to college age grant.

My first career after college was working at a church as a youth pastor. And so I did that for about a year and a half. Parts of what I like, parts of I didn't like. One of the things I really enjoyed, though, was speaking. And one of the things I didn't like is it was difficult in the sense of like I felt like I was always on. Like it wasn't like I clock in and then I do my job and then I clock out and I go home. It was a lot of just time demand. And my wife was pregnant with our first child and nothing like bringing a kid into the world that just causes you to question everything. So I really just tried to figure out like, okay, is this what I want to be doing with my life? Or if this is not it, what would I rather be doing? And so after we had left that position, let's see, when we left, my wife was four months, five months pregnant with a first child, didn't have any like big savings, didn't have a big career thing lined up. And so naturally, I had like a lot of people asking me like, hey, have you thought this through?

The timing of this doesn't seem great. And hindsight, yes, it was bad timing. And so for the next several months, those next nine months, I was literally just kind of like, what am I doing with my life? Like, what is it that I really want to do? And I think that's important for, you know, anyone to think about because whatever, I kind of felt like, all right, I could find another career thing and just keep going down that same path.

But is that really what I want to do? And so kind of thinking there's some of those bigger questions of, you know, assuming time, money, location, we're all irrelevant, assuming you were guaranteed success. Like, what do you really want to do? And that's where, like, speaking was the thing. that kept coming up for me on my radar is something I wanted to do. So I think it's, again,

one of those questions that is valuable for anyone to think through is like, if you don't enjoy a lot of what you're doing, there's always going to be parts of it you don't enjoy, it's just part of it. It's nature of the beast. But if you don't like get excited

about Monday mornings and you're not just looking forward to it, then what would you rather be doing? Thinking about that and really asking some of those bigger questions led me to get into doing more speaking. Let's pause on that decision to quit your job.

job with very little savings when your wife is four or five months pregnant. Tell me about your mindset at that time. What were the weeks leading up to that? So I can tell you where, ultimately, where I felt like part of the decision was made, like I'd been having this conversation with my wife. Like, I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I'm worn out. I remember one time I came home. I was gone a lot of nights, you know, as a youth pastor, I was like attending a student's sporting events or various things. There's some type of function or something I had to be at a church or just various things. I was just gone a lot. And so I remember I came home and my wife was just in tears. She's like, I just feel like I have a roommate. I don't have a husband. Like I barely see you. You're gone all the

time. I was just tired. I was just mentally fried. And I was like, yeah, like something's got to change. And I think that's really key for a lot of people because people may be listening going like, yeah, I get that. I've been in that part. And you just kind of suck it up. And that's the way it is. And I'm just, I was kind of like, but is it? Like, is that the way it has to be? Or is there a different way or better way? And so the timeline of what ended up happening was I ended up going to my boss and saying, like, man, listen, like, you know I'm not slack and you know I'm bust on my butt.

You know I do a great job. But I'm exhausted and I'm dying and I'm not alone here. Like I know the rest of the team runs like this and it's tiring. It's not sustainable long term. And to his credit, like he's like, yeah, you're right. Let's make some changes. And made some changes. And ultimately things pretty quickly went back to status.

quo. And so I was attending a conference at the time the church we were at where we lived was in Missouri, had grown up there. All of our friends and family were there. Like you mentioned, we live in Nashville now. So coincidentally, I was attending this conference in Nashville. And I remember sitting in this session, and I don't even remember who the speaker was. I don't remember what the point of the workshop was. But I vividly remember him saying, if you don't enjoy at least 80% of what you're doing, you should quit. And I remember thinking like, wait, what? Nobody enjoys 80% know what they're doing. Like, that's not realistic. But I remember thinking, I remember, I still remember like leaving that room and calling my wife and saying, because we'd already been having the conversation

and saying like, okay, I think I'm out. I don't know what's next and I know you're pregnant, but I know we're going to figure it out. So that's ultimately, and I came back and a week or two later, it turned in my resignation. And so I'd say my mindset was probably a mix of like scared and anxious and confused and overwhelmed and frustrated, but also like hopeful and optimistic that working a job or doing a career just because people think that that's what you're supposed to do or that's the path that you're supposed to be on and just staying trapped there because, you know, we can all make the excuses of it safe, it's secure, they have health insurance, I have a 401k, I have fill in the blank thing, you know, it's like, that's not a good enough excuse.

Like I wanted, when I decided I was going to pursue this speaking thing, I felt like I would rather this be a train wreck and know at least I tried than to get to the end of my life and be like, man, I think I could have given that a shot. I really, I think I could have made that work, but I'll never know because I didn't try. So in that sense, I was, I was optimistic. I was hopeful that we're going to figure it out. Tell me about that first day that you woke up now newly unemployed. What do you do? What's the first thing that you do? And how do you start structuring your days from that point forward? Very quickly just had to find income, right? Because like you said, like wife's pregnant, baby's coming, whether we're ready to not.

And, you know, fast forward today. It's a very healthy, beautiful, awesome 13-year-old daughter who's amazing. But at the time, like, okay, I'm not getting a paycheck this week, so I got to do something. And so for a little while, I worked a couple different odd jobs. I worked at a security company doing like residential home security systems like sales. And so did that for a little while. It was 100% commission job, no guarantees or anything. But it was just kind of like feast or famine, got to make this work.

I worked at a couple different restaurants, like fine dining restaurants as a server, which I really enjoyed. It was a lot of fun. I felt like I made decent money at and had some flexibility. And so I was doing a couple of just like hodgepodge things that were not at all like, these are my dreams, these are my aspirations or career goals. It was just like, I'm going to give myself a minute to lick my wounds and also like a minute just to figure out, all right, I just need this to pay the bills for now.

So got these things going. I'm doing these things. But this obviously isn't what I want to do. What do I want to be doing? said. And so those jobs were just to really buy me time, you know, just to figure out what it was that I wanted to do. Like I still to this day, I look back on like those several months of working all those odd jobs, new baby, financially is pretty thin, figuring out how to become a speaker. Like, I was really, really tough. But at the same time, like, that was incredibly, it was an incredibly

pivotal period of life for sure. Did you find that the experience of having odd jobs required less of your time and energy than having your previous career? Well, it was different in the sense of like, you know, like I mentioned as a youth pastor, it was, I felt like I was always on versus like as a server at a restaurant, I would clock in, I would go wait on the tables, I would do my job, I would clock out, I would go home. And that was it. Like, I did not go home thinking about the restaurant. I did not think about, you know, the unhappy customer or the big tip I got or whatever, like whatever happened on that night shift. Like I just, it was out of sight, out of mind. And so from that standpoint, it was really, really good because I was able to just, I go in,

I do my job, I leave, I disconnect, I go home. And so it gave me kind of that mental break versus because I was still like, I was working a lot of hours. I was working kind of a couple different jobs. So it's still like a lot of hours, but I think like mentally, mentally I had more space. And I knew mentally, I knew this wasn't permanent. I knew I was just buying myself time to figure out what I wanted to do. And so you'd reached burnout with your previous job and you had this, this dream of pivoting into a new career that would be more meaningful, but you had no experience in it. How did you get started and what issues came up? I'm assuming imposter syndrome probably hit you hard. What else was that experience like? I had done a lot of speaking as a youth pastor.

While I was kind of in that season of working a bunch of different odd jobs, one of the organizations I worked for was a company doing school assemblies for them. And so they would book school assemblies. I would go around and do that. They paid me peanuts to do it. There's a bunch of different, like, independent contractor speakers around the kids. country and there's just thousands of assemblies that they would do and a bunch of speakers that would go out and do those. And so I was one of those and I'd do a handful assemblies a year for them. I worked for a seminar company doing seminars on for like again just kind of, it was all their content, all their material. They'd book everything. I'd show up and just do the thing. And so I had a lot

of speaking experience and I just felt like I really enjoy this and I just want to do more of this. But to your point, I had never really been paid on my own as someone hired Grant Baldwin to come in and speak and do the thing. And so I remember one big aha moment for me was there was a speaker I looked up to that I admired that I think it's always like is a pause in the story there for a second. I think it's always helpful to look for people who are doing something similar to you and doing it in a way that you want to do it who are a step or two ahead of that. So let's break that down. People who are doing something similar and doing it in a way that you want to do it, right? So if I said, okay, I want to be a speaker, well, there's a whole bunch of different speakers out there

on a whole bunch of different topics, doing it a whole bunch of different ways. So if I said, you know, someone who's speaking a hundred times a year and they're doing the, they're hosting their own events. And I'm going like, ah, I don't want to do that many of gigs. And I don't want to host my events. I'd rather just be a hired speaker. Okay, so let's look for something more along those lines. And then the last part of it is looking for people who are a step or two ahead of you,

not people who are light years ahead of you. So if I said, all right, I want to be a speaker. Who are some speakers out there? Let's see. All right, Tony Robbins is a speaker. Let's see what Tony's doing. Like, we're not comparing apples and apples there. So we're talking about two totally different things.

So I wanted to look for a couple of people who were speaking at similar type of thing. So for me, as a former youth pastor, I had a lot of experience speaking to students. I wanted to keep speaking to students, high school and college students. And so there was a couple of speakers who were doing that and one in particular that I'd emailed a few times and said, hey, I want to do this. How do I do this? And he mentioned, hey, I'm going to be speaking at some conference that was about two and half, three hours away from where I lived.

He's like, you ought to just drive up and see it. I was like, okay, I'm in. I'm going to do this. And so I remember driving up. We had dinner beforehand. and then watching this. It was a big conference. And I remember watching the talk

because I just wanted to try to get a sense of like, what was he talking about? What's the interaction like? And how does this work? And I felt like if I could see it, I think that would make sense. It's almost like if you wanted to be a blogger

and you're like, I think I could be a blogger, but if I could just follow a blogger around just for a day, I just want to just eavesdrop and watch you type and do the thing. And then it helps me to connect the dots. Like, oh, okay, yeah, I could do that.

And so that's kind of what I felt like at this event was hanging out with him forehand, talking with him backstage, watching him do a great job, hanging out with him afterwards while he was interacting with the client. And I immediately just felt the sense of confidence, like, oh, yeah, I could do that. Not in a sense of like, oh, yeah, I'm perfect. I've got it all figured out. But like, no, no, like I'm realistic and self-aware enough to know that it's going to take work and effort, but I know I can get there. And so having that self-awareness of, I know I'm not the world's greatest speaker, but I'm confident that this is something I'm decent and something

that I think I could do. And so seeing an example of it gave me a lot of confidence that this is something that is realistic. Seeing someone who, again, who's a step or two ahead and helping me feel like, no, this is a realist. This is a thing. You know, I didn't see this on the menu. I didn't know that like being a speaker was a real thing. But now that I've seen some people doing it, not just looking at websites, but actually like meeting them and kind of seeing behind the curtain and seeing how the sausage was made, it kind of feels like, okay, I actually feel like this is a realistic thing that I could do. And so that's really what going to that first event, just being behind it, like I didn't speak at all, but just seeing him do the thing was

like, yes, that's it, and I can do that. That makes absolute sense. It's a role model. It's proof of concept. It makes sense on many levels. Totally. And like, fast forward, I did that exact same conference a couple years later. I was hired to speak at it.

And so I kind of came full circle of like, I remember being here and feeling like, I can do that. And then I did it. And I was like, I knew I could do it. And I think like having the self-awareness is so important of being realistic. You know, it's one thing. You know, like you and I were talking a little bit about realistic. earlier, you know? So it's one thing to geek out on real estate and be like, I'm going to own the biggest portfolio ever in the world. And it's another thing to be like, I can buy my first rental

property. Like, okay, I get it and I can dig into that. And it seems intimidating. But then you do it. And like, no, okay, I got this. I can figure this out. You know, it's like when you bought your first one, it feels crazy. And then you're like, oh, well, that wasn't so bad. And then pretty quickly you buy your second, your third and you start to build a little bit of a portfolio and this self-awareness of like, I don't have to build the biggest thing, but I'm realistic and self-aware enough that, like, I can do this and I can do it on my own terms and in the way that makes the most sense for me. Like, that's the thing, whether it's real estate investing or speaking or whatever type of business or thing that you choose to do, you get to make the rules for the game.

You get to decide what makes sense for you and what winning looks like. So as a speaker, there's speakers that I know that speak a hundred times a year, and that's what they want to do. And there's going to be people listening right now. They're like, I don't want to speak 100 times a year, but I wouldn't mind. mine speaking five times a year. And it's not that one is better or worse than the other. It's just you decide what winning looks like for you. For, you know, like when it comes to real estate, there's people who are like, I want to own a thousand properties. I want to have a thousand doors.

And that's fine. And others that say, I want to have one. And that's plenty. And that's also fine. It's not that one's better or worse. But again, you have to decide what makes sense for you and what it is that you're trying to accomplish, you know, professionally or personally. At the beginning of the journey, do you have enough knowledge to be able to make that decision? not just you, but any person listening who's thinking about making a career change. I think about it this way. I remember seeing this analogy. I think this is in, there's a book called Bird by Bird by Anne Lamont. Yes, I've read it. It's about writing. And one of the analogy she uses, it's kind of like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as the headlights

will show you, but you can make the entire journey that way. And I think that's no different than in writing as it is for entrepreneurship or just life in general, that the reality is is like, we're recording this on this certain date, and we, I can tell you what my calendar looks like for the next, you know, a couple days, couple weeks, can I have a sense of what things look like? But like a year from now, a couple years from, I have zero clue. I can only see as far as the headlights will show me, but I know that I can make the entire journey that way. And so you are, you're never guaranteed success. Like, I think that's really important to note is some of it. It's like you're figuring it out as you go. Like, here's a quick example. A story. This happened a couple

years ago. You mentioned I live in Nashville. There's this entrepreneurial like breakfast meetup that happened. And so I attended this and went to this and several friends that were there. And there's this one guy that I knew there who he had kind of this side hustle he'd been working on for a while. And he had just quit his corporate job. He had gone all in on the side hustle. So this was one of the, his first days being self-employed doing his own thing. And so I remember asking him, I said, dude, you're doing it. Like you're all in. How do you feel? How are you doing? And I remember him saying like, I am excited. I'm anxious. I'm nervous, I'm scared, I'm thrilled, I'm overwhelmed, I'm all of the above, right? The huge gamut of

emotions there. And I remember telling him, I said, I said, listen, I mean, at this point, like, I've been self-employed for like 13 years. That doesn't go away. Like, I feel pretty confident in what we're doing. I feel like we have a really solid business, but I still feel the same doubts and fears and insecurities. And like, you're just, those never fully subside. Hopefully they get a little quieter, you get a little more confident. But you still, like, every entrepreneur, every person is making it up as we go. We are doing the best we can with what we have at that moment. But we are not guaranteed success at all. Like my whole business, my whole life could come crashing down at any moment for things that were way beyond my control that I had, it wasn't because

a bad decision or anything happened or didn't happen. It's just like things happened that were outside of my control. And so just recognizing that again, you can only see as far as the headlights will show you. You're not guaranteed success today or any days into the future. but that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try and you shouldn't at least start to take some steps toward where it is that you want to be versus just staying comfortable with where you are. There are many people who want to transition into some type of creative career like being a writer or being a speaker or being a musician or an artist. How did you, in your story, how did you know what to speak about? Yeah, I think some of it is, again, going back to like the models piece of looking at, for people who are already doing something similar.

Just because you're passionate about something or just because you want to speak on something or write on something or do some type of art or a creative endeavor around something, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's an actual market for that. And so that was really helpful to find other speakers who, again, were doing something similar. And not just, again, generic speakers,

but look for people who are doing it in a way that I wanted to do it for the type of audiences. Because it just, again, validates to me like, okay, this is actually a thing. right. And so let's go back to the real estate example for a second. I remember talking with our mutual friend, Brandon Turner, who helps run bigger pockets and is the voice of the podcast over there. And I remember talking to him at this conference you and I attend on an annual basis. And I remember talking to him like, okay, this couple years ago, I was interested in real estate investing. I wanted to get started. And I remember asking him, I was like, okay, if I want to get into real estate investing, you have single family, you have multifamily, you have apartments, you have storage units, you have Airbnb, you have, you have, you have, raw land, you have commercial unit, you have like all these different things. And I remember asking him,

which one is best? And I remember him saying, yes, they all work. He's like, you can find an example with all of them. So if you said, okay, I just as a real estate person, all I want to do is I want to focus on, you know, this, I don't know, some type of obscure type of thing. Well, then one of the things you want to do is like browse around and see, can you find anybody that's doing that? Because if you can't, that's probably a bit of a red flag. Right. So like for speakers, what I always say is, look for other speakers who are doing something similar. And if you can't find anyone, the mistake that speakers make is they think like, oh, that's awesome. Like this is an untapped need. I'm going to be the first. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. If you can't find anyone, there's a reason for that.

So look for existing opportunities in the marketplace. Because if someone's already being hired to talk on a certain thing or create a certain art or deliver a certain service, then there's probably more customers like that out there in the marketplace that you could potentially solve their problem. So I think that's one of the best things to do is just look for other people who are doing something similar. And if they are doing something similar, then again, that gives you at least some level of validation that this is an actual thing in the marketplace people are willing to pay for. That there is demand. Totally. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors.

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Yep. Tell me about your thoughts on that and what your experience with that was like. Yeah. You know, I hear people who sometimes say like, oh, you should never do anything for free. That's a horrible idea. You know, you're setting the bar. This is what it's like to work with you, yada, yeah. I actually disagree with that.

What I would say would be it's okay to speak for free as long as you know why you're doing it. Don't just speak for free. Don't just deliver your art for free out of the good. of your heart. So I think about it like this. There's a good book you've probably read called the E-Mith by Michael Gerber. And so he uses the analogy of someone running a bakery. And he says, just because someone is really, really good at baking pies, and they're a great baker, being a great baker and running a bakery are two different skill sets. And so the mistake that a lot of artists make, and I use artists just, you know, big picture and air quotes, we just, we want to give our art

away. We just want to help people. Like, my pies are the best. I just, and I just like, speaking, speaking is fun. So I just want to do all the things for free. But the reality is, is if you just give all your art away, if you just speak for free, if you give everyone your pie for free, you're going to be out of business. And you can no longer afford to speak. You can no longer afford to bake pies. You can no longer afford to make your art. So you have to charge for the value that you receive. Now, having said that, the value that you receive can come in a lot of different forms. So as a speaker, if you are providing value, you need to receive value in exchange for that. Now, let's talk about some of the different ways that you can receive value

that go beyond whether or not you get a check. One of the ways that you get better as a speaker is that you speak, and this is no different than anything else. The way that you get better as a writer is that you write. And so it may make sense for you to speak at something just for the practice, just for the appbats. It may make sense for you to speak for free if you have some type of product or service to sell on the back end, if you offer some type of coaching or consulting or if you have a book

to sell or something like that, maybe you speak for free, but you pick up some clients from that or a bunch of people buy your book. And so you're able to point to revenue that was generated because of you. speaking. So you have that side of it. It may make sense for you to speak for free if you know that there's going to be people in the audience who are looking for speakers who may be interested in what it is that you have to offer. If the event planner will introduce you to other event planners who may be interested in hiring you to speak, maybe it's just a cool location that you want to visit. Like my wife half joking, half serious, always just kind of ponds me off and farms me out and says,

hey, Grant will speak for free in Hawaii if you'll pay for the family to come along, right? So, for example, a buddy of mine, he last year spoke at something in Europe and the budget was a little bit lower than what he would have liked. He doesn't speak at tons. He's kind of asking what to do about it. I said, you need to ask if they can give you some additional nights at the hotel and if they can pay for your wife to come along. And they did. And he's like, I ended up turning it into a European vacation. Like, that's something of value to me.

So I'll give you a concrete example of this. There's a conference again, we've kind of been alluding to you and I attend on an annual basis. the first year I attended that, they did not pay me at all. In fact, most years they have not paid me. So I go and I speak at it. I had to pay my own way. They did not pay me anything to come. So immediately, as soon as I show up, I have lost money to be there.

But because of that, I do a workshop talking about speaking, some of the stuff that we've covered here, and ended up having, you know, several people who bought our course and people who joined some of our programs. And I can point to, and in fact, that workshop went really, really well. and the event organizer heard about it and said, hey, we want you to come back next year and do the keynote where I was paid to come back. And so I can point to that free workshop

and say, I can attribute thousands and thousands of dollars in revenue to that one speaking engagement. Yet, the event planner did not give me a dime for that one particular event. And so again, the point being that you are providing something of value, and so you need to get something of value in return. And sometimes that comes in the form of a check,

and sometimes that can come and other forms of value. Right. And that applies to anybody who goes into any branch of creative entrepreneurship, whether it's speaking or writing or art or music or baking. Absolutely. Because you're right. There are people who will say, well, you're going to get a lot of exposure. And 90% of the time, that's baloney.

But there are times for like, that is true. Like you are going to get exposure. But like if someone says that to me, I have to know that, A, that's accurate and they're not just blowing smoke. but be it's exposure to the right type of audiences that I'm looking for. So if they said, hey, there's, if I knew for a fact that like there's going to be a bunch of event planners, if I'm trying to book a bunch of gigs, speaking gigs, and I know at this one particular event, there's going to be a lot of event planners in the audience. And I know that if they see me

and they're looking for a speaker like me, which I think they are, there's a good chance that some of them are going to book me. That may be very much worthwhile for me to go speak at that for free because at that point, it's less about, oh, I did my art for free. No, no, it's more of like a marketing expense, so to speak, marketing investment that I'm going to do this with the intention that I'm going to generate additional business out of this. You can't just go for free, go for free, go for free, and hope it magically works out. Like, that just doesn't work. You've been doing this now for 13 years, and one of the themes that you've talked about quite a bit is how to deal with burnout and with feeling like you're always on. In your early career, you felt like you were always on. And of course,

now that you're self-employed, you run your own company, the burden that a lot of entrepreneurs face is that same feeling of always being on, never being able to turn it off. Let's talk about some ways in which you handle that. Yeah, so one thing I'd say was going back to one thing we touched on earlier is that you get to design the rules for the game. And so I think that there is kind of this misconception that in order to be successful as an entrepreneur, be successful in your career and whatever facet that it looks like, that you have to work 80 hours a week or you have to sell your soul to be able to do this

and you have to make all these sacrifices. And sure, there's like some sacrifices you've got to make along the way. But again, you get to decide what makes sense for you. A good example of this, like a good company that I really look up to and admire is a company called Base Camp. And those guys, Jason Freed and his business partner, David Hansen, have written a couple books on the topic. One of my favorite books is a book they wrote called ReWork.

And they talk about how we're going to do things unconventionally. Like, we're going to do 40 hour work weeks, and that's it. And we're going to take a lot of vacation. And we're not going to work Fridays. and like we get to design the rules of the game. And so I really, really resonate like that. And so I tell our team all the time, like, I want our business to keep growing. I want to keep helping as many people as possible.

I want to keep making a lot of money. I want to keep doing these things as long as, and this is the big caveat, as long as we get to keep playing by our rules. So for example, for me, our family and I, we love freedom and flexibility and autonomy. And we love trips and experiences. And I love working from home. don't want to go to an office so all of our team is remote. We don't have an office. I don't never want to have an office. I prefer to work from home. And I get to decide the rules to that.

And if all of a sudden it's something other than that, then I'm doing something wrong. It's slightly different. If you are, you're the entrepreneur, you're the one that's in charge. And you are, you're the one that's calling the shots versus if you're in a career and you're going like, good Lord, I just feel like I'm burning the candles at both ends. I'm exhausted. I'd go back to what we talked about at the beginning. Like, I was in that spot and I ultimately walked away. So I get it that there's like, and my wife was, uh, was four or five months pregnant. So I don't have any issue with saying like if things are that bad and you're considering like, you need to evaluate if it's worth sticking around for. And if it is worth sticking around for and you've kind of got these golden

handcuffs, you have to recognize like that's a decision that you're making. Another good question I would challenge anyone to think about is if you're in the thick of it and you're starting to feel some burnout, I would ask, is this a season or is this the way it is? Is this a season or is this the way it is? Because you think about in any industry, there's going to be seasons. At this moment, at the time of this recording, I'm in book launch mode. And so I have been doing a lot of podcast interviews and doing a lot of things and activity to promote the book.

But I also recognize this is a season. I've been telling myself, I've been telling my wife, I've been telling my kids, I've been telling my team, this is a season. It's not always like this. but at this moment, it's a little hectic. But it's not always like this. If you're an accountant around tax season, it's just busy. Like, that's just the way it is.

If you're in retail, November, December, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, it's just busy. But you know it's not always like that. So you always have to ask yourself, is this, is this a season or is this the way it is? Because if it's a season, you can write that out. But if this is the way it is, then you need to evaluate. Like, something has to change. Something's got to be different here. Otherwise, like, this is not sustainable.

This is not something that you can keep doing long term. You've talked about setting boundaries and writing the rules for yourself. How do you enforce these? I think I've gotten really good at saying no. Like I have no problem saying no. Like as entrepreneurs especially, I think it's easy to want to chase opportunities and shiny objects. And there's no shortage of things that we could be doing. I can think of a dozen ways that in our business right now at this moment we are leaving money on the table.

But again, if we go back to, but we're going to play by these rules. And if we're going to play by these rules, then that means we are going to inevitably, there's an opportunity cost and there's things that we're not going to do in order to play by these rules. And we're okay with that. Well, I'm totally good with that. I'm going to sleep just fine tonight knowing that we say no to some of these things. Also recognizing that by saying no to things, you're going to disappoint people or you're going to let people down or you're going to have some fomo that, oh, man, if we did this or I see that person over there doing that and, man, if we did that, but just recognizing, no, no, they're playing a different game. They design the rules to

game, you design the rules for your game, I'm going to design the rules for my game, and that all works. It's all fine. It's just really, really important to, if you create those boundaries, to follow those boundaries and to say no to things and say no even to good opportunities. There's no shortage of good things, but you have to learn to say no and be okay with that. What about mental energy and attention? How do you keep from thinking about or ruminating on your work while you're away from work? I would say, like I just, I genuinely enjoy what it is that I do. And so because of that, I do spend a lot of time thinking about it.

And so I do find myself at times like, I'm just going to check this email. Or I'm going to, there's something the team's discussing in Slack. I'm just going to poke my head in here. So I'd go back to one of the things we touched on was there's seasons where it's more of that than others. And I also recognize, like, okay, at this very moment at the time of this recording, like I mentioned, we're in a busy season. But I also recognize in another few weeks, we'll probably be back to regularly scheduled programming. And things will subside a little bit. and it'll be okay.

And so I will probably have a lot more mental energy then on the business than I do now. I also recognize as a CEO of the business. And we don't have a huge company, our huge team. But I recognize like one of the best things that I can do is to think and just create white space on my calendar, which is hard to do because I don't know about you, Paula, but I operate off of list and checking boxes and like I did things. And so whenever it comes to something like thinking, it's hard to quantify, right?

You can't just put like, or it feels weird to put like two hours on the calendar or 30 minutes on the calendar just for thinking, thinking about what? But also most people recognize like some of your best ideas happen or some of your life-changing decisions happen when you are taking a shower

or going for a walk or driving the car or just thinking. And you're just pondering stuff and just kind of like letting something marinate. So things taste better that are marinated. And things taste better if they're in a crock pot versus if they're in a microwave.

Because they're just sitting there. They're just stewing. And I'm just, they're just kind of kicking it around. So I try to spend, I know one of the best things I can do for our business is just, just to think.

And again, that's not always in the form of, you know, I'm just blocking out tons and tons of time, just to think. But I just want to figure out where we're headed, how we keep playing by these rules.

What are the rules of the game that we want to be playing by? How do I keep creating this mental white space so that it prevents burnout? And it prevents getting to a point of just like, man,

I've created this thing that like, check some boxes but like, I hate it. Like, I don't want to do that. If I'm going to design the game, I want to make sure that it's still like a fun game that I enjoy playing. Assuming that you're not in a particularly crunch time season, how would any person listening to this be able to distinguish between when they're burned out

versus when they're just frustrated or bored? So I was trying to think back to that YouthPatch role I was in, where I talked with a couple other people internally that were on the team. I was like, hey, I feel like this. Am I the only one or does anybody else feel like this? I remember having some of those conversations. But I also talked with some other people outside, like some buddies of mine who worked at other churches and I'm asking them like, hey, here's kind of how I'm feeling.

Is this normal? Is this? Am I weird in this? Am I alone in this? And I would say even fast forward to today, even though I'm an entrepreneur and work for myself, there's two or three really, really close friends that I have that we talk on a daily basis, just comparing notes and asking like, hey, here's kind of how I'm feeling and like, things are really, really good or things are not, or things are not going the way I hoped,

or I'm frustrated or I'm discouraged, or I'm stressed, or I'm worried, or I'm anxious, or whatever the feeling may be, and trying to balance and determine, like, is this a season? Is there something that's causing this that I can address or be aware of? is this like, man, you know when I stop back and think about it, I've kind of been in this perpetual funk for a long time, in which point, like, something has to change, like, whether it's something in a career or something different that you just like, I got to, I got to do something different because what I'm doing now is getting me the results that I have at this moment, professionally and personally, and if I don't change, then nothing's going to change about those

results that I'm getting. And so I found that that has been incredibly helpful just to have those trusted people around me that I can talk to. There's one guy I talked to. entrepreneur, similar type of business model, different kind of industry. And we talk constantly on a daily basis. I was looking the other day. We will have days where we exchange over 200 text messages in a day. He lives 15 minutes away from me. We see each other multiple times a week, but we just text each other constantly. And a lot of times it's just thinking out loud or kind of venting, having someone like that that can be a cheerleader for you, but also can just shoot straight with you and say like, what you're experiencing or what you're feeling right now is not normal. Or

it is normal and you're fine. Hang in there. It's going to be fine. You got a couple more weeks of this and then you'll be all right. Hey, you seem out of sorts for a couple of months now. You know, let's talk this through. So having some of those trusted friends or colleagues or family members that just they can call your bluff and they can see through the crap and really challenge you on how you're doing has also been incredibly valuable and helpful. In the time that you spend away from work, do you find it to be more refreshing to spend that time engaged with outside interests or hobbies or to spend that time completely unscheduled, like blank. A little bit of both.

Like one of the things I really enjoy is I really enjoy golf. I'm fairly introverted in general. So I like people, but I also don't mind not being around people at all. So golf is one of the things that I can go out and I can, you know, sometimes people do it from like a social standpoint. Like I want to go play with a bunch of buddies or hang out. Like I just enjoy going to play by myself, actually. I also just enjoy experiences and travel and trips with my family.

I have this conference that we keep talking about. that's a favorite of both of ours. This past year was in Washington, D.C. I brought my wife and my daughters with me. And so daddy spent part of the time working. But then we also did the sites and museums and that sort of thing. And so that's one of the things that's really fun for us. But then there's also us thinking about like this past weekend. I didn't do anything and we didn't accomplish anything. And I didn't check any boxes. And we were extremely lazy. And that's okay. I'm a very motivated, driven, ambitious person, but I also recognize I'm not designed to go and go and go and do and do and gain and accomplish and achieve. Because I know, like, that's not sustainable.

That's not healthy. And that's not how, you know, we were designed to operate. I understand, like, when I drive my car down the road, there's a gauge on the dashboard that goes from an F to an E. And that gauge keeps dropping. If I don't do something about it, the car stops. I have to refill it. The same thing is true with a laptop or a cell phone. I got to charge my cell phone every single night because the battery is going to drain down.

And so I've got to have some white space where I'm doing a hobby that's just that's fun. That's just for me. That's just some alone time like swinging a golf club and playing this game. That's so fun and so frustrating at the same time. Or just being with my family or watching Netflix or vegging on the couch of the family or being lazy or any number of things. And recognizing like all of that stuff, it may not always check a box, but it's also incredibly valuable for recharging and refilling the tank. How do you think about the trade-off between doing more work versus making more money? Like, how do you weigh the relative merits of each one?

And does it depend on which one of the two feels more crunched at the time? Given the choice, I would rather make more than less. And given the choice, I would rather work less than more. I enjoy work. I never want to get to a point like, I just want to retire and move to the beach and not do anything. And, like, I genuinely enjoy what I do. but if I'm going to work, I would prefer to make more than less. And so it's always just kind of this battle.

I think this comes back to the thinking piece and the strategy piece, but also just the saying no, there's plenty of things that we could do that would make more money, but may require too much work that makes it no longer worth it. And so you have to being able to weigh those things out. So one thing I'm really conscious about is what are things that our business or company can do that doesn't depend on me for the fulfillment. For example, we do a lot of teaching and coaching for speakers and those that are interested in speaking.

We teach people how to find a book speaking gigs. And so we have multiple coaches on our team. We have multiple people on our team who do different things because I know I can't do everything on my own. And so I want to make sure that we're building something in a way that is not the grant show. I tell our team all the time, like this is not the grant show.

And if the business is just dependent on grant showing up every day, then we're doing something wrong. And so, I guess a quick example of this, this past fall, at the time there's recording, it's past fall, I took a one month sabbatical. I hear sometimes people who take, you know, a week off, a couple weeks off or a month off or whatever, and they're thinking, like, man, I'm just super burned out. I got to get away from the business. I didn't feel like that at all.

I felt like we've had really good work-life balance and really like the work we're doing and the team that we have. But part of what I wanted to do was to do kind of a stress test on the business and say, okay, if we pull grant out for a minute, a month specifically, let's see. how did things work? What breaks? What are things that fall apart? What are things that we crap? We got to think this part through. We didn't think that part through. What are those type of things that happened? And so that was really helpful to do that kind of stress test. Again, kind of a look at it through the lens of, all right, it's one thing to say, I don't want to build

a space on me, but let's take me out of it and see what happens and figure out how do we continue to build something that's just not dependent on me so that again, I can focus on the things that I do best that I think help ultimately drive and build the business. We'll come back to this episode in just a minute. But first, in the early days when your team might have been either just you or maybe just you plus one person or just you plus two people, when that staffing is a lot smaller, how at that time were you able to start transitioning out of everything depending on you? Yeah, so I think you have to be really, really clear about what are the things that only you can do. So I'll give an example. Like one of the first hires that I made was a guy that was just a part-time contract. His name was Jeff. He lived up in Canada. He reached out and said, hey, I've got a lot of technical

skills. And at the time, I think I was putting together like our first course. And I was like, I don't like, I don't know how to make all these tools talk to each other. And, you know, the different tools between like email marketing or we were doing some webinars at the time or like setting up a webinar and someone buys the course. And so they go to this link and then it triggers this, this, this and this and they buy this thing. And then it causes this to happen. And they get this email. I was like, I could probably figure it out. But I know that like, that's probably not the best use of my time. So hired him just to help make all of the things work and make all the tools play nicely together. That was an incredibly helpful and valuable hire that just freed up a lot of my

time and mental bandwidth. Again, there's stuff that I knew that I could do or could potentially figure out, but I knew it wasn't the best use of my time or the hundreds of support emails that we get. I don't have to answer all these. 80% of these, 90% of these are the same questions or the same things that we could probably train someone to help us with. And so just finding like what are those things on a regular basis that don't depend on me that we could have someone else do and start to have people help in those positions. And I think that part about hiring is that people assume that, okay, if you're going to hire that, you know, you have to hire a full-time employee and how are you going to pay for them and how are you going to find enough work for

them to do. And the reality is I didn't need full-time employees for a long time. It's only recently that we've started adding a couple of full-time employees and we're at multiple seven figures in business for a long time we've got to this point with a bunch of part-time contractors and no full-time employees because we just didn't we didn't need it like I need this one person to do this one specific thing and that's it and so don't feel like you know have to have an employer have to do this has to be this overly complicated thing like it doesn't just figure out what's this one specific thing that you need and hire specifically for that role and exactly what you need versus feeling like you know you got to bring on people to do things like I don't

even know if I need this but I just I need to hire someone like don't don't do that because that creates a big mess financially. And you just don't want to be biting off more than you can chew. And how do you know the difference between pursuing growth versus biting off more than you can chew? I think of this comes back to the being clear on this is how we're going to play the game. Sometimes I look around and I see friends or peers or colleagues who are building businesses who are going faster than we are. And so they're hiring more or they're growing more or they're doing more. and I just try to think about, okay, but that's the game they're playing.

That's the race they're running. Just because they're running that race doesn't mean I should be running that race. I've done a couple of half marathons and a couple of full marathons. One of the things that's really important when running is to pace yourself. Because especially at the beginning of a race, you can build up a lot of adrenaline and a lot of excitement. Everybody's running fast. And so it's important to just say, no, no, no, let all those people go. Those people are running fast.

That's good for them. But here's the race I'm going to run. and I'm going to run this race, I'm going to run this pace, and I'm good here, and I'm fine, and they can go faster, and they're going to beat me, and that's okay, but I'm going to do this because this is what I define as winning. And so I think we've done a good job with that. I think we've been really intentional about that of saying, okay, here's an opportunity that makes sense that's not going to be biting off more than we can chew, and we're going to hire this person to help with this thing, and we still have a dozen other things that we're not touching,

that we could do, we're not trying to pursue all those things. We may get to those someday, we may never get to those things, but that's not what I'm worried about. I'm looking at strategically at this moment, right here, right now, here's our next logical step that someone's going to take over. As entrepreneurs always think about it, if we're going to add something new, who's going to own that on the team? So if we're going to do something, like, who's going to wear that hat? It's more than just like, all, we're just going to do a bunch of stuff.

We're all just going to figure it out. Like, that doesn't work. Like, if we're going to add something, then you got to think it through. Like, there's going to be some ramifications of that. And is someone going to own that? And if they do own that, are the things that, are the things that? they're currently owning that they will no longer be able to own and just being able to take inventory and evaluation of that and make sure again that you're not biting off more than you can chew and

you're not just doing things for the sake of doing things or you're not just doing things because you saw someone else is doing it and it worked but you're focused on like I know all those people are running fast and all those people are past me and that's okay I'm good with that I'm going to sleep just fine tonight knowing I'm running my race and that's okay well grant I know we're coming to the end of our time are there any final snippets of wisdom any final takeaways that you'd like to share with the people who are listening. You know, we've touched a little bit on speaking. We've touched a little bit on entrepreneurship.

We've touched on, you know, just kind of designing a life that makes sense. So what I would say is kind of an overarching idea is that everything we've covered and talked about is simple, but it's not easy. It's simple, but it's not easy. And what I mean by that is, you know, if I said, what do you got to do to lose 10 pounds? Well, we all know in order to lose 10 pounds, you got to do two things. You have to pay attention to what you eat and you have to exercise. And that's it.

it's very simple, but it's not easy. Like it still requires work. It still requires effort, just realizing, all right, those are the two things I've got to do. It still is so difficult. It still requires so much work to do. And so the same thing is true with everything we talked about. If you want to be a successful speaker, if you want to be a successful entrepreneur, if you want to design a life on your terms, you can do those things.

It's really simple what you need to do. But it's not easy. It still requires work. It still requires effort. It still requires commitment. It still requires dedication. But you can do it. Well, thank you, Grant. Where can people find you if they would like to know more about you?

Yeah, everything that we do is over at the speakerlab.com. The speakerlap.com, the new book is the successful speaker. Five steps for booking gigs, getting paid, building your platform. And yeah, if anything I can do to help and support people, I'm always happy to do so. Thank you, Grant. What are some of the key takeaways that we got from today's conversation? Here are eight. Number one, before you make a career transition, look behind the fiends because the grass is always greener until it isn't. So, Look at people who are doing the thing that you want to be doing or doing the thing that you think you want to be doing and observe them closely. See if you can follow them around for a day or see if you can take them out to lunch. Take a close look at what the day-to-day reality of their life is like for two reasons. One is so that you can be realistic about your expectations and also on the flip side so that you can assuage your fears. People are often scared of the unknown so you can take the uncertainty out of it by seeing how it's done. I think it's always helpful to look for people who are doing something similar to you and doing it in a way that you want to do it, who are a step or two ahead of that. Grant also makes the point that you shouldn't seek out examples of just anybody in your profession.

He didn't look to Tony Robbins as a role model because Tony Robbins is playing on a different field at a different level. He decided to look for role models who are a step or two ahead rather than light years ahead. He also decided to look for people whose work was similar to the type of work, the specific type of work that he wanted to be doing, people with a similar message, similar tone, topic. And by virtue of finding these role models, he took away the fear and uncertainty and also developed realistic expectations and also started forming a roadmap for how he would do it. So key takeaway number one is to look behind the scenes before you make the transition. Look for those role models, one or two steps ahead of you. Key takeaway number two, write your own rules and decide what game you're playing. There are a lot of entrepreneurs who get swept away by thinking that they, quote, unquote, need to do X and Y and Z.

Like, there is no shortage of advice out there about ways that you can optimize and make things better and you're leaving money on the table if you're not doing X and Y and Z. And that is the business equivalent of keeping up with the Joneses. Like, just because somebody is on periscope doesn't mean that you need to be. You get to make the rules for the game. You get to decide what makes sense for you and what winning looks like. As Grant said, if you're interested in buying real estate, you don't need to jump in and buy 20 doors immediately. You can start small. If one or two rentals is good enough for you, then that's cool.

You don't have to keep up with the Joneses. The same can be said for any other type of business. Do you want to grow a business to the point where it's getting outside capital and you're managing 100 employees? Or are you happy with a team of four or five people? There's no choice that's better or worse. You write the rules. You do what's best for you. You decide what game you're going to play.

That's key takeaway number two. Key takeaway number three. Quit your job if you don't enjoy 80% of what you're doing. What? Yeah, there are a lot of people. who I think might fit this bill. Because, sure, I mean, there's always going to be like 20% of your job, even your dream job. There's always going to be the 20% of it that's paperwork and admin and it's the drudgery and the

But if you're not loving 80% of what you're doing, well, I mean, why are you spending a big chunk of your waking hours doing it? There are a lot of would-be entrepreneurs who don't know when is the right time to make the leap. And so this 80% idea, it's a good litmus test for do you like your job enough to stay? Or is it time to seriously think about making a switch? In Grant's case, he didn't think that making a switch was realistic at that time. I mean, his wife was pregnant. They didn't have any savings. But still, he decided to go for it because he knew that he was meant for something that was bigger

and that was different. And he knew that staying in the status quo carried a massive opportunity cost. That's not a good enough excuse. When I decided I was going to pursue the speaking thing, I felt like I would rather this be a train wreck and know at least I tried than to get to the end of my life and be like,

man, I think I could have given that a shot. Like I really, I think I could have made that work, but I'll never know because I didn't try. And so that is key takeaway number three. Ask yourself if you're enjoying 80% of your work. And if you're not, that might be an indicator that you should make a change sooner rather than later. Key takeaway, number four. Find a bridge job.

There is no shame in working odd jobs if you have to while you are making some type of transition. Grant was in a situation in which the status quo was no longer acceptable. His wife felt like she had a roommate rather than a husband. He didn't want to live like that anymore. And so he waited tables. He quit his job and he waited tables and he worked a bunch of odd jobs with a new baby while he was figuring out what he was going to do next

and while he was starting his business. Those jobs were just to really buy me time, you know, just to figure out what it was that I wanted to do. Like I still to this day, I look back on like those several months of working all those odd jobs, new baby, financially. it was pretty thin, figuring out how to become a speaker. Like, I was really, really tough. But at the same time, like, that was incredibly,

it was an incredibly pivotal period of life. If you listen to our interview with Ash Amberghay, she was our guest in episode 242, she said that when the chips are down, when you are forced to either sink or swim, you will swim every time. Grant has a similar message. You're smart.

You're a hard word. worker, you'll figure it out. And so don't get stuck in all or nothing mode. That's the real takeaway here. Get rid of that all or nothing thinking. Get rid of that it's got to be perfect or I can't make a change type of thinking because it's never perfect. It's never the right time. And if you think it needs to be, then you can waste a lot of years in the process. So that is key takeaway number four. Key takeaway number five. If you are going to work for free, make sure you're getting some type of value in return, there are a lot of creative entrepreneurs who are often told to work for free for, quote, unquote, the exposure. As a writer, I've experienced this many times. And of course, there are

creative entrepreneurs in a huge variety of fields, illustrators, graphic designers, photographers, video editors, voice actors, all kinds of creative entrepreneurs are often given the quote unquote opportunity to work for free. This is a very controversial issue. There are some people who say, hey, never work for free. Grant's approach, again, rejects that all or nothing thinking. It rejects the use of the word never and says, instead, only work for free if you are genuinely getting some alternate value, some non-monetary value in return. It's okay to speak for free as long as you know why you're doing it. Don't just speak for free. Don't just deliver your art. for free out of the goodness of your heart.

The key here is to make sure that you're genuinely getting value and not just being told by the organizers that you will have some type of ambiguous, quote unquote, exposure. The value that you are getting should be specific. It should be high. And it should be so good that you would have actively sought out this opportunity. In fact, here's a litmus test. would you pay a babysitter so that you can have the time to pursue this opportunity? And you can ask yourself that question hypothetically, whether or not you have kids.

Is this opportunity so good that you would pay a babysitter out of pocket so that you have the bandwidth to be able to pursue this? If the answer is no, well, that answers your question right there. And so that is key takeaway number five. Key takeaway number six, be aware of burnout. It's easy for anyone to head straight for burnout if you're caught up in projects and deadlines and there's a huge imbalance between your work life and your personal life. That imbalance can trash both. So how do you know when it's time to quit because your position is unsustainable? Well, Grant has a great question that you can ask yourself.

If you're in the thick of it and you're starting to feel some burnout, I would ask, is this a season or is this the way it is? Another way to conceptualize this is, is this a sprint or is this a marathon? And it's almost everyone experiences sprints that are temporary. You know, there are certain seasons that just might require more work than others. Like Grant says, if you're an accountant, April is probably going to be a pretty busy month for you. So is March. So it's okay to temporarily have a season in which your work-life balance is untenable as long as as that project has an end date in sight, an end date after which you can rest.

And if you don't see that end date in sight, then you may want to reconsider what you're doing. So be aware of burnout. And if you find that your life is too imbalanced, ask yourself, is this a season or is this the way it is? So that's key takeaway number six. Key takeaway number seven. Stick to your boundaries. One of my favorite quotes, this comes from James Clear, he was a guest on this show in episode 156. James Clear is an expert on building better habits.

And one of my favorite quotes that comes from him is, the best productivity hack is saying no. And Grant, in our conversation today, reinforces this idea. I think I've gotten really good at saying no. Like, I have no problem saying no. As entrepreneurs especially, I think it's easy to want to chase opportunities and shiny objects. And there's no shortage of things that we could be doing. Grant said there are dozens of ways that his business is leaving money on the table. But he's fine with that because he only says yes to opportunities that align with his boundaries and his values and the type of life that he wants to be leading.

So stick to your value, stick to your system, stick to your boundaries. You may experience FOMO, remember the entrepreneur equivalent. of keeping up with the Joneses because that person is getting so many other cool opportunities or maybe I should be doing X or Y because that's what so many other people are doing. But you know what? It's okay. Other people are playing a different game. Don't compare yourself.

Finally, key takeaway number eight. Hire an amazing team. If you decide to go the entrepreneurial route, remember that behind every successful entrepreneur is an amazing team. Nobody can do all of this by themselves, nor sure. Could they? There are going to be many things that you need to do in your business that either don't grab your interest or don't match up with your skills. And in these cases, hire it out. I can't do everything on my own. And so I want to make sure that we're building something in a way that is not the grant show. I tell our team all the time, like, this is not the grant show. And if the business is just dependent on grant showing up every day, then we're doing something wrong. If you've already hired a team, consider taking some time off or taking a sabbatical to see how well the business runs without you.

At that point, you can identify different points of failure, in what ways were you still needed, in what ways does everything still rely on you? And then you can address those failure points and keep iterating so that the business becomes more systematized, more streamlined, more of a scalable and sustainable enterprise. And so those are eight takeaways from this conversation with Grant Baldwin. If you want to read a summary of all of these key takeaways, plus check out all of the resources mentioned during this conversation, like the book The E-Mith or the book Bird by Bird, you can get all of this at the show notes, which are available at Afford Anything.com slash episode 244.

That's Affordanything.com slash episode 244. While you're there, sign up for our e-notes. email updates so that every week you can get delivered to your inbox a summary of that week's episode. That way, you'll essentially have notes on what you've just listened to, and you can archive these, you can search your inbox. If you're trying to remember like, oh, hey, what did that guest say in that one interview that happened about six months ago? You'll have notes for all of it. So sign up to get the show notes delivered to you. You can sign up at the show notes for this week's episode, afford anything.com slash episode 244.

Okay, now let's turn our attention to something I almost never do, which is let's talk about current events. Let's talk about what's happening in the market right now. All right, so there's been a big stock market decline. All of the headlines are screaming worst decline since 2008. We've just seen the worst one-day drop since 2011. The headlines are screaming fear. Fear, fear, fear. Let's all go cower in our bunker and be terrified. Let's put this in perspective. Number one, the market took a 1600 point plunge, the Dow took a 1600 point plunge in February of 2018.

Do you remember that? No, nobody at this point remembers that. Because that was two years ago, and at this point, it's a non-event. And so when you see headlines that are screaming about a thousand point drop in a day, remember, February 2018, we had in one day a six-point, a six-point, point two percent decline. And now that we are two years removed from that, we have collectively lost our memory about it because over the quote-unquote long term, and by long term, I mean, two years, it was ultimately really a non-event. That's point number one. Point number two, the market right now is where the market was in October of 2019. So right now, as of the time of this recording, one share of the Charles Schwab broad market ETF, which is a fund that tracks the total return of the Dow Jones

U.S. broad stock market index. One share of that, as of the time of this recording, is $70.58. When was it last at that price? It was last at that price October 10th through 11th of 2019. I know there were a lot of people who threw out all of 2019 kept saying, hey, I'm getting nervous. The market has been high for a long time. We haven't had a recession in a long time. Should I keep my cash on the sidelines? Because I think the bull market has been going on for too long and I have a fear of heights. Right? I got a lot of questions like that throughout 2018 and 2019. To be perfectly honest, I've been hearing questions like that since 2014. They've just intensified in recent years. Because as the bull market has reached a decade making steady gains since 2009, a lot of people, you know, a lot of people. ask, well, aren't markets cyclical?

Aren't we due for a pullback? But the thing is, markets don't die of old age. And if you keep your money on the sidelines, if you sit it out because you're afraid of a pullback, then when that pullback happens, it might pull you back to a point in time that is still ahead of where you would have been. And so right now, one share of the Schwab Total Broad Market Index Fund is price. at where it was priced in October of 2019. So if back in January, February, March of 2019, you said, hey, this bull market has been going on for a decade, I'm afraid of a pullback,

I'm going to just keep my cash on the sidelines, well, if you had said that, then you would still be behind because you would have missed all of the gains that took place from January, February March 2019 through to October 2019, which is the equivalent of where we're at right now. And that brings me to my third point, which is that many people have asked me, should I buy on the dip? In fact, on Friday, both my dad and my best friend from college were both blowing up my phone with text messages saying, hey, I'm super excited to buy on the dip. This is an amazing buying opportunity. How much should I put in? To which my reply is, well, hey, I'm happy that you're so excited about investing.

But remember, we've rewound the clock by four months. It's currently February 2020, and we are at the same market levels that we were at in October of 2019. So the level of enthusiasm that you should have for putting money in the market right now, rationally, should be the same level of enthusiasm that you had for putting money in the market in October of 2019. We've round the clock by four months. That's all we've done. Congratulations. You've gotten the opportunity to do. travel back in time by four months. And so all of that is to say that when you see these big

headlines of thousand point plunge or 13% pullback, this stuff happens all the time. Don't sit out of the market because you're worried that it might happen in the future. And conversely, don't become too irrationally exuberant about buying on the dip. And that's not to say that I'm opposed to buying on the dip. I'll talk more about that in a minute. But don't become too irrationally exuberant about it if you do happen to have a large cash position right now because the dip isn't as dippy as the headlines might suggest. And that leads to my fourth and final point, which is I've had a few people ask me, buying on the dip is

inherently a form of market timing. And most of the long-term financial planning advice out there states that market timing is a bad idea. So how do I reconcile these two concepts? My answer to that is, have a steady, fixed amount of money that you invest per paycheck or per month, that you invest in a fixed periodic increment. Do not change that. That is your dollar cost averaging into the market. And those are the investments that you plan on making. That's how you put money into your 401k, into your IRA, into your 529 plan, into your HSA. And that is the sum total amount of money that you plan on investing over the span of the year. That stays steady.

That doesn't change. But if something like what happened last week comes up and there's a big pullback and you feel excited like, woohoo, I get to turn back the clock four months. if that excitement leads you to investing more money than you otherwise would have so that you can make an additional contribution that you otherwise would not have made, and that additional contribution is the money that you use to buy on the dip, right? If that's money that you had previously planned on spending at restaurants this month, but you decide that you're so excited about this, that you would rather pull this money out of your restaurant budget and use it to make. make an additional contribution, that is the appropriate way to engage in market timing. That's the appropriate way to engage in buying on the dip because you're not disrupting your stable strategy. You're not disrupting your dollar cost averaging. You are simply making contributions that you otherwise would not have made. You are picking up an extra bartending shift above and beyond

one that you would have worked and using your income from that. to make extra contributions, or you're selling the junk that's in your garage on Craigslist or on Facebook marketplace and using that money to make extra contributions. If that's the approach, then I fully support it because ultimately your contributions, not your timing, are the single biggest determinant of your investment success. And so if your enthusiasm for buying on the dip leads to additional extra contributions, then I'm all for it. so long as it doesn't disrupt your dollar cost averaging strategy and so long as you're not

leaving cash on the sidelines in anticipation of the next recession, which unfortunately is what a lot of people have done over the span of the last five years. And that loss aversion has cost them the opportunity of months or years of compounding gains. So those are some thoughts on the stock market craziness of the past week. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or a family member. If you know somebody who would benefit from hearing anything that we've talked about on today's show, send this episode to them. They can play this episode directly from our show notes, which are at afford anything.com slash episode 244. Or they can, of course, find this podcast on any major podcast player.

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101. You can download that for free at Affordainthing.com slash VIP list. If you want to chat about today's episode with other people in the community, you can find them at Afford Anything.com slash community. Thank you again for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I will catch you in the next episode.