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One Year Ago Today, I Was Going to Quit · The Daily Writer

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hey my friend, I hope you're doing well and having a good day.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you've probably noticed that this episode is a little bit different than normal.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um one thing that's different is that there's no intro music, and the reason for that is that my podcast producer always adds the music after I finish recording episodes, but she doesn't even know I'm doing this episode.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing this here at the last second.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't even going to do this episode, honestly, but I decided to go ahead and do it and share with you some things that I just sent out to my email list because I thought, well, maybe this would be an encouragement to you also.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one thing.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just doing this quick and dirty, and I'm going to just post this and not worry about the editing and intro music and all that jazz.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other thing is this is actually going to be the last official episode of the Daily Writer Podcast.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: And strangely enough, I've been doing this episode as a daily show for about three years, a little over three years at this point.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was just going to switch over to the Profitable Rider Podcast and not really do like an ending episode, but you know, now that I've done like over uh well over a thousand episodes of this show, uh it kind of seems fitting that I should um sort of maybe do a little tribute or do something to wrap it up in some kind of official way.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, I used to be a pastor and um, you know, kind of once I was specifically I was a music pastor, and once you're a music pastor and you spend a pretty good chunk of your life uh so from the time I was in high school until my late thirties, I was in charge of worship services either at my home church or in college or at the church where I used to work for many years, or running college chapel services.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And once you do that job, you just kind of get into this rhythm of always thinking about how to start things, how to end things, keeping things on time.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you run you know hundreds or thousands of worship services in your life, you just it's really hard to get out of that habit of thinking, okay, about transitions and making things smooth and wrapping things up and and that kind of a thing.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's kind of funny to me that I hadn't really thought about how to wrap up this version of my podcast, I guess.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing that you might not know, and by and I'll get to the main point of this episode here in a second, but just per me permit me a little trip down memory lane.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So one thing that you might not know is that this is either the fifth or the sixth iteration of my podcast.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: So for those of you who have thought about getting into podcasting, or you currently have a podcast, and you might have wondered, you know, should I change the title or should I pivot or should I stick with this or whatever?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've probably done everything wrong with my podcast.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I've made every conceivable mistake there is to make with podcasting, probably.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, podcasting has absolutely changed my life, and I will go to my grave thinking that and shouting that from the rooftops because it's absolutely true.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Podcasting has done so many wonderful things for my life, but one thing I have not done that a lot of people have done is I have not had the same show all these years.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I started podcasting sometime in 2013, so I've been doing this a little over 10 years at this point.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: I started off with a show called The Artist Suitcase.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was a show about creativity.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: I lasted 37 episodes and then I quit.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then a little while later, I picked it back up and I called it the Born to Create podcast.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna have a whole platform called Born to Create.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I actually was working on a book for a couple years, uh, called that.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I got discouraged, I got sidetracked, I never actually finished the book.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have ever started a book but not finished it, uh you're in good company.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've done that too.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um sometimes the point of working on a book is not to actually put that book out there.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the point of working on a book is just to get it out of your system.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh not every book that you start working on needs to be published.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's okay just to scratch down some ideas and spend some time working on it, and that's all that that book was supposed to do in your life.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't think that you should always get into the habit of doing that.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we need to publish and monetize our books and all that stuff, but sometimes you just go down the road a little ways and then you kind of figure out, you know, I I don't need to finish going down this road, and that's okay.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I had uh the artist suitcase show, I had the Born to Create show, then that transitioned into a show called Um, what was the show called?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was called Smart Business Writing, because um I thought I was gonna be doing a platform all about writing for business.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of when I first got interested in ghostwriting back around 2019 or so.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I transitioned to the current version of the show, which is called The Daily Writer, of course.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And you're a listener of this show, of course, otherwise you wouldn't be here with me on this episode.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it's been the Daily Writer for about three years, and then um about six months ago, something really unusual happened.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Something unexpected and unusual.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: So let me give you a little background on this whole Daily Writer thing.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So when I started The Daily Writer, I anticipated that this was I know this sounds kind of grandiose, and I'm sorry for that, I don't mean it to sound grandiose at all.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: But this in in some ways was kind of like what my life had been building toward because I wanted to do a daily show, and actually I already have written a draft of the Daily Writer book, which is uh Daily Meditations for Writers.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's actually coming out next October.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: I forget the date, but that's coming out next October.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: That is going through rewrites and editing as we speak.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I already already have the cover design, and it's gonna be a really fantastic book.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: And of course I would say that because it's my book, but I legit think it's a really, really good book, and I think you're gonna enjoy it when it comes out.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I thought the Daily Writer was gonna be like the thing that I was gonna spend the next 10 to 15 years of my life really, really doing.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: So because I had invested so much time in this podcast and building an email list and running a group that's called the Daily Writer Club, a membership group, which you've heard me talk about before, um, the idea of stepping away from that or pivoting that to something else was really difficult for me to kind of get my head around.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it became clear to me uh this was actually in a mastermind group I'm a part of.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody asked me this question and it really, really threw me for a loop.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever had this situation where you're kind of trucking along in life, and then somebody, somebody very wise in your life asks you one question that makes you question everything that you've been doing up to that point.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's very disconcerting whenever that happens, because at the same time you're grateful to that person, but at the same time you want to strangle them a little bit.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um or at least give them maybe a really tight hug or something.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of want to punish them because now they have kind of thrown your whole life into disarray because they've asked you a very wise or pointed or insightful question.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what this person basically asked me was actually it wasn't even a question, it was more of a statement.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: They said Now that I think about it, sorry, I'm having a little brain freeze here, the context of the conversation was I was that I was telling them and I will get to the point of this, uh the main point of this episode here in a second, just hang with me.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: So the context of the conversation with that was that I was telling this person that every podcast I had been on recently, people always wanted to talk to me about ghostwriting and how I went from being a college professor to a full-time ghostwriter.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how I didn't particularly think that was an interesting story, but people seemed very interested in me talking about that.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so no matter what the kind of what the topic was supposed to be of podcast interviews, people always wanted to ask me about that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the person said, Well, if people are asking you about that all the time, maybe that's something you should be leaning into.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, Oh, well, I had never really thought about that.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: I just kind of thought ghostwriting was kind of what I'd do for my job, but then I'm really building this daily writer thing on the side.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is what where I really want to put my energy.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this person made the very insightful comment that people seem to be asking you, they were talking to me, people seem to be asking you about how to make money as a writer.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: They don't seem to be asking you about how to build daily writing habits or how to become a daily writer.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: People seem to be asking you how to become a financially successful writer or a profitable writer, how to make a profit as a writer.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that question slammed into my brain and ricocheted around, and it really threw me for a loop because what I realized is that I was answering a question that really nobody was asking.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I love the Daily Writer stuff, I love the concept of writing habits.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I've poured a lot of my heart and soul into this show for the last three years, as you know, because you can scroll down through the uh podcast episode, listen, you can see, you know, you can see all the episodes that are there.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of them.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I've put a lot of time and energy into this, but again, it's that moment where somebody asks you something and you go, oh my gosh, maybe I've been kind of climbing up the wrong ladder a little bit.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: And it's you know, sometimes it's not that we shouldn't have gone up that ladder, it's that we don't need to continue going up that ladder.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a really key thing.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had a college student one time who uh so I taught at a Christian college for many years in North St.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Louis, uh, loved teaching, loved the students, and I oversaw our worship music program for a long time, for about 10 years.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the job there was advising students.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: And one to one time we had this student, this was this was early in my teaching career, we had a student, his name was Wayne, really a great guy.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that students commonly did is they would sometimes take a part-time weekend church ministry.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: In this case, he was a like a weekend youth pastor at a church.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Not really in the area that he was studying.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that he didn't really enjoy doing that type of ministry that much, but he was a really loyal guy, a very uh really great guy, and so he kind of just stuck with it.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember him sitting in my office in our music building.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: I remember this really distinctly for some reason.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And he was really frustrated and discouraged because he was trying to decide whether to quit this weekend ministry because he didn't really enjoy it and he wasn't particularly good at it.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, you know, Wayne, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have gone down this road, it just means you don't need to continue going down this road.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the value you know, sometimes we look at experiences in life that we feel like are wasted, and we think, man, I just wasted two years of my life doing this job, or I wasted this time doing this or that or whatever.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't mean that that was a waste, it just means we needed that thing in our life to point us to the direction that we should be going.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes when you look at mistakes in your life or you look at things that didn't turn out so well, remember that if it wasn't for those things, you wouldn't be going down the correct pathway.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes we kind of look at those experiences and we sort of despise them or we feel like it was a waste or that we screwed up or whatever the situation is, but that's not really the case.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think when you realize you don't need to continue going down a certain direction, you need to have the courage to make a pivot and make a change and go, you know what?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: I learned some things from that, and I'm really grateful for that time in my life because now it's sending me off in a new direction.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I feel with the Daily Writer.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've loved doing the show, it really means so much to me, but I have to confess to you that I had it took me a couple months, I'll be honest with you, to really come to grips with the fact that that I needed to pivot what I'm doing with this part of my business.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that was emotionally very difficult for me because I mean, literally, I've written a whole book called The Daily Writer.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I promise you, I've spent a lot, I've invested a lot of time in that book.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I've invested a lot of time in this podcast, uh, in my membership group called the Daily Rider Club.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in a sense, this was kind of like my identity, as silly as that sounds, and I it's not really my identity, of course, but when you spend so much time doing something and when it's your your own creation, you kind of feel like, man, to move on from this or to pivot this feels like I'm cutting off a part of myself that is kind of like my baby, you know.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I came to realize that I needed to make a pivot to helping writers specifically build a business around their writing because this was the pain point that people kept expressing to me.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: I kept hearing it again and again and again.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a thing that I had struggled with myself a lot, especially in my when I first got started, because I didn't come from a business or entrepreneurship background.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: I came from an education background, from a church ministry background.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was not really kind of prepared for what I what I would need to do as a business owner, an entrepreneur.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was really intimidated by that.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's dawned on me over the last few months that I really needed to pivot my business, this podcast, my membership group, future books, those kinds of things, that I needed to pivot to something that could very specifically help writers with the business of writing.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because the idea is um you could be the greatest writer in the world and you can have the best habits, you can be really creative, but if you can't make money doing what you're doing, then that's a huge frustration.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to have a business or you want to have a job as a writer, and you want to get compensated for that, then you need to have money coming in.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, we we can't just we can't just expect money's gonna magically show up on our bank account.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: We have to do things, we have to create systems and create value for people.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that is a very long explanation of uh this idea that we're pivoting to something called the Profitable Rider.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: So this coming Tuesday, I will launch the first official episode of that podcast.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it's gonna be in the same podcast feed, but the title of the show will change to the profitable rider.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: It may not change on Tuesday because it depends on how fast Apple Podcasts updates the listings and all that jazz.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also changing podcast hosts from Libson to Kajabi.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've got a new website that's about ready to launch on Kajabi on that platform.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I've got a lot of tech changes behind the scenes happening.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: So it might take it a week or so to kind of repopulate on the new platform and for Apple Podcasts to change the title of the artwork and all that jazz.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So just kind of be patient with me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um if the Daily Rider suddenly disappears from your podcast feed, make sure and check the profitable rider because um it's it's all these episodes are still gonna be in this feed.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: It'll just the name of the show will actually change.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a really long explanation for what we're gonna be doing.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm also really excited because on Tuesday I'm gonna be uh letting you know how to get a free gift from Moi from me called the Profitable Rider Pathway.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is a nine-step process that you can use to, it's a very clear, step-by-step process, it's very simple, that you can use to build a part-time or full-time riding business.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's the exact process.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, actually, it's not exact.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've made a lot of mistakes.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the process I wish I would have had when I got started a few years ago.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if I would have had this this pathway 10 years ago, actually, it would have been really good, except I wasn't ready for it.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't I had no plans on building a business.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was gonna be a teacher, maybe forever, I don't know.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: But life kind of took a different turn, and um I don't think I don't think in 2013 I was ready to jump into creating a business.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: I just I just wasn't ready for it then.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: So what I want to do in the the rest of this episode, and by the way, you can shut the episode the episode, the the episode, you can shut it off here, and I hope that you will have gotten some value and some encouragement from this.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I do want to take a little bit of time and I want to share with you some things that I shared with my email list um actually this evening.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that this is gonna encourage you because I just want to share with you a little bit of kind of what's been going on with me the past year or so.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just gonna mostly read this because this is a long email that I sent out.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'll probably pause a time or two to just talk through this if that's okay.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So let me dive into this.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh obviously, you saw the title of this episode, which is called One Year Ago Today, I was going to quit.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: And let me explain what that means.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: So something happened this afternoon, and I'm recording this on December the second.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Something happened this afternoon that was kind of struck me a little bit.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: What happened was I glanced down at the calendar icon on the bottom of my computer, and so I use a Mac, and so you see the calendar icon with the date, and it said December the second.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And over the last few weeks, I had been anticipating this day with a mix of emotions.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: But over the last few days, I've gotten I'd gotten busy with a client project, and I'd honestly kind of forgot that today was December the second.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I didn't even know it was December the second until I like this afternoon, honestly.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of came as a surprise.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might be asking, why is December the second important?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason is because one year ago today, exactly, on December the 2nd, 2022, I was going to quit my business altogether.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to quit everything.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it was the morning of Friday, December 2nd, last year, exactly one year ago, and I was home by myself, and that day I was in a really, really, really bad mood.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've ever experienced this, my guess is so, but have you ever had one of those moments when, or one of those days, or maybe years sometimes, one of those moments when a bunch of unrelated problems they come to a head at once, and you feel overwhelmed by this this equal mix of dread and panic and depression and anxiety.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever experienced that, then you know what I was feeling that day.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what had happened was I was going through a dry spell in my ghostwriting business.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: And after a couple of years' worth of successive wins, when I got going full-time, nothing really seemed to be working now.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I was getting really tired of having conversations with prospective clients who seemed like they were really interested, and we would have these great calls.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: I would take the trouble of like writing a proposal and sometimes even thinking through like book outlines and book titles, and I was trying to really deliver value to these people.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then I would hear nothing back in spite of repeated messages.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: And this happened and this happened enough times where I started to get really discouraged by this.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: And when it came like the beginning of December, I was starting to get seriously worried about what our finances were going to look like in January and February, and I started to get really, really scared.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I actually I didn't really tell my wife this because I never want her to worry, but I was getting really worried.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I was in my in my mind, I was thinking through the scenario.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you've thought about this also if you have your own business.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: You think through this scenario, and for me this this actually never totally goes away.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is you always have this piece in your mind where you think, what if everything tanks tomorrow?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: What if next week, what if next month everything just goes off the cliff and I have no more income from clients or from my business or what if stuff just blows up, then what am I going to do?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's always necessarily a bad thing.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's always good to kind of have a plan B in the back of your mind about what happens if things go south.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: To me, that's that's just a kind of a responsible way to approach life, as you always kind of have a plan B and plan C and D if things go wrong, just so you can kind of know.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: If things tank, here's what I'm gonna do so that you don't wind up in a panic.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was in a panic and I was starting to formulate those plans in my mind.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, and I was like looking up how much do Amazon drivers get paid?
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what kind of businesses could I potentially do?
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: What are some places where I could submit a resume?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh in fact, at that time I actually got in touch with our local community college and I was like, Do you guys need professors?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I did that job for a long time.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so I was I was really getting worried, to be totally honest with you.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um on top of that, though, I was also going through some personal issues that I was not prepared to handle in life.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: These were new things that I had never dealt with before.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh right now on this podcast is not the time or the context to really talk about those in depth.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'll do that another time down the road, maybe.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll see.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I was dealing with that, with those things also, but then I was also kind of dealing with this idea that I just kind of felt really bad about myself.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, my first year or year and a half of being self-employed as a ghostwriter, it was a lot of fun.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: I had regular work, I could make my own schedule, and and I had several really great projects right out of the gate.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: I felt really confident and I felt really strong.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: But a year ago today, as I sat there at my desk at home, I remember it was it was cold that day, but yet it was sunny outside, I felt the complete opposite of the sunshine.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: I I felt weak, I felt discouraged, I felt incapable, and I thought, well, Kent, apparently you're not cut out for this.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I did I did what I do a lot of times whenever I'm feeling discouraged or I need to process, which is I open up my journaling app.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did that that day.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: I opened up my journaling app and I started to pour out my feelings.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: And after about 30 minutes of just like constant writing, you know how you know how it is, like when you're upset, you just like write and you're amazed at how much you've written in a certain amount of time, and you're like, man, how come I can't write that much?
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like whenever I really need to write something that other people are going to read.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: But for some reason, when you're journaling, you can and it just pours out of you.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's amazing how much stuff you can write so fast.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: So after about thirty minutes of doing that, it dawned on me that I hadn't confronted a really important question.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the question it's actually three questions.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Had I really given this my best effort?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Had I truly done my best?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And was it true that I wasn't cut out for this, or was it really the case that I was just making excuses?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I had to admit to myself that I had a lot of room for improvement.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: I had a lot of room for more discipline and more tenacity and more stictuativeness.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth was that I hadn't really given this business my best shot.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I had been kind of coasting along, and now I was paying the price for not doing the proper kind of preparation and book marketing for my business and so forth.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did is I made a deal with myself.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the deal was that I would let myself quit.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was going to quit the business, but only after one more year of really honest to goodness effort.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: And when I came to the next December the second, December 2nd, 2023, which is today, the promise I made to myself was that if I did my best and if I really tried to make this work over the next year and things had not improved, then I would allow myself to quit and I'm going to go do something else.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: The ghostwriting, the podcast, the membership, my own books, I would quit, I would quit it all and I would just go get a job somewhere.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Now today is December the 2nd, 2023, and maybe the question that's occurring to you as well, Kent, how did things turn out?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: Did you turn things around and are things actually better?
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And today, exactly one year later, I'm really happy to report that things are really different than they were a year ago.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: I have a new energy and I have a new focus that wasn't there before.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: And my business is a lot better.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've also worked through a lot of those personal issues that I mentioned earlier, and I have a much better perspective on those those things.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have a much calm uh I have a calmness and a peace that um that was not there before, and no, it has nothing to do with my marriage, by the way.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um just because people always like assume, like, oh, are you getting a divorce or did somebody cheat?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or like what's going on?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was not a marriage thing.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was a family thing, but not a marriage thing at all.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my wife is awesome and uh she is absolutely the rock that holds uh that holds me together.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if something ever happened to her, I don't know how I would function because she's an amazing individual and amazing woman, and I feel so blessed to have her in my life.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, it wasn't wasn't just her though.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've had a lot of help over the last year from key people who have really supported me, they've taught me, and they've encouraged me.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And they've also sent referrals by way, too, by the way.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's important.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: And one more thing, though, and a testament to the power of ghostwriting to change not just the client, but also the ghostwriter.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: I had a client come into my life back in February who has a special kind of wisdom and a really compelling story as well.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like the book is gonna be great.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: I was really excited to work on this project, but this person had a special kind of wisdom that that really has helped me in my personal life as well.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I love working with clients like that.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: People that I can learn from and people who, when we work together, it makes me better.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not just something I do for my business or for income, but it's this person actually makes me a better human.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: I love that kind of a client.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And they have really been a breath of fresh air.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening to this, you know who you are.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the most important thing that happened, though, among all that.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is the thing that really changed.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Excuse me.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna edit that out, by the way.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna leave that in there.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the thing that changed is I started to take responsibility for my own success.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for many years as a college professor, I went to a job that I'm just gonna be totally honest with you, it wasn't that hard of a job.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: I liked my job, I liked teaching, I enjoyed the people I worked with.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there were some bad times, of course, as there are in any job where you work for 17 years.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: But as a whole, I really I didn't have that difficult of a job.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, particularly in the last um probably six or seven years.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: My job got easier every year because I enjoyed my classes more, my role actually shifted, uh, I was less busy.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't over our music program the last six or seven years that I worked there, which was a huge positive switch because uh I wasn't over our chapel services and directing music adjuncts and doing all the stuff that keeps you so busy in a music program.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I liked my job and I got paid on a regular basis.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they paid us once a month.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a lot, but it was very predictable.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and after I quit that job, I was kind of riding a wave because I had several book projects that came right out of the gate.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: And as dumb as this sounds, this sounds really stupid coming out of my mouth.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: As dumb as this sounds, admitting this here on a public podcast, it never really occurred to me that I needed to be more assertive about getting clients.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that sounds crazy.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: But because I had some early successes and early wins, I just kind of thought they would just keep coming.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: Again, remember, I didn't come from a business background.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: This did not really occur to me.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had worked a job for a long time where you show up to class and students are just there.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have to go recruit students, I didn't have to go get business.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just did my job of teaching and creating content and showing up to class and going to meetings, and that was that.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of took that same dynamic, mistakenly so, I took that same dynamic into my ghostwriting business.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of thought, you know, I just kind of clients come to me, they are sent by referral, or they know I'm doing this, and they will just kind of come and then I do the work, and that's that.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, that was a very naive and mistaken assumption, but that's that's what my thinking was.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I quickly learned that I needed to be a lot more proactive with sales and marketing my business and networking and all those things that we all need to be doing when we're building a business, but I just didn't really know it at the time.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the funny part of the funny part of this is that a few months earlier, I had actually released a book called 18 Words to Live By, A Father's Wisdom on What Matters Most.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I released that.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what the first chapter of that book was about?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: The very first chapter of the book was on taking responsibility.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I hadn't even been following my own stinking advice.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, how crazy is that?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did is I started to take responsibility for my own success.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I started to act like an adult and begin to deal with my problems one by one.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And change didn't happen overnight because I still had a lot of growing to do, and I still have a lot of growing to do.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: But let me just let me just be really honest with you.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like last December was um because I don't want you know, sometimes you hear these stories like of how things turned around and people sort of gloss over the really the parts that make them look bad.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I just want to be honest with you, last December was a really rough month for me.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of the worst parts was uh there was one day, I I think I'm pretty sure it was a Tuesday, I don't remember for sure.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe it was a Thursday, I don't know.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't Monday or Friday, I know that.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't typically do podcast stuff on those days.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um whatever day of the week it was, I think it was Tuesday.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Just a few minutes before I was supposed to get on to Zoom and record a podcast interview, somebody was gonna be on my show.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: This was about nine twenty five in the morning, I think is what it was.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: The the Zoom call was starting at nine thirty.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: About nine twenty-five or so, I started to get really, really nauseous.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if you've ever had that experience where the nausea just seems to come from nowhere and it overtakes you like a gigantic wave.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: And within a matter of seconds, and I'm not exaggerating, within a matter of seconds, I was nauseous, my ear started ringing so loud that I couldn't hear anything.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like my heart was beating out of my chest, my heart rate went it skyrocketed up, and I started to sweat, and I'm not exaggerating here.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: I started to sweat so profusely that it was literally dripping off of me, and I had never had that happen to me before.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I'm having a heart attack and I'm gonna die.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, if any of you have ever experienced a panic attack, you know what that feels like.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now I didn't know that's what it was because I had never experienced a panic attack in all my years of being on stage, of performing, of doing different things, of some public speaking.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I had never had a panic attack.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I I thought this was a heart attack, so I I made my way into the bedroom where my wife was.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this was a Tuesday, now that I think about it, because she was off that day.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, at the time in her job, she was off on Tuesday.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I went into the bedroom and I said, I I was like really pale.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like all the blood had drained out of my face.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: She could tell that I something was very wrong.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I think I'm having a heart attack.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: So she sat me down in my office chair, got me what washcloth, and you know, we were looking up symptoms.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she I had her like call and text all the people I was supposed to meet with that day and was like, Kent's really sick.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it turned out it wasn't a heart attack.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh it was just a panic attack.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I had never been through that before, and it was really, really terrifying.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'd always heard of people who had panic attacks, and I just always kind of thought, oh, those are people who were just like always anxious, and you know, we all panic once in a while and we all get anxious and scared, but this was on a whole different level, and I really had no idea.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've ever been through a panic attack, if you've experienced that, then you have my sympathy because I had never experienced that before, and I really did think for a few minutes there that I was dying, and I was really, really scared.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: So when that happened, I I knew that my body was telling me I needed to make major changes in my life.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I I didn't make all those changes immediately or overnight.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, as I became more assertive about reaching out to clients, and as I began to get more rest, and as I began to take more responsibility for my life, things began to steadily improve.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in hindsight, I realized that I was making a lot of mistakes that I wasn't aware of at the time.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, one, again, and I mentioned this already, I was one was that I needed to improve my system of client outreach and selling.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: The money thing was causing me a lot of anxiety, as it would anybody.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I knew I needed to do a better job of that.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: I also knew I wasn't spending enough time on self-care.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't getting enough sleep, I was working too much, I wasn't taking enough time off, I wasn't getting enough exercise, I probably wasn't being hydrated, I was drinking too many energy drinks, that kind of garbage.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was doing a lot of things wrong.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I also didn't realize it.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know this at the time, but uh I didn't realize at the time that I was going through the postpartum blues that authors oftentimes face when you have a big release that comes out.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: And for the the previous year, I had been looking forward to the release of the book, The Faith of Elvis, which some of you have heard of and maybe read.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's called The Faith of Elvis, a story only a brother can tell.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote that with uh Billy Stanley, who is Elvis Presley's brother.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that was my first book with the big publisher.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I mistakenly assumed that when that book came out, it was going to mean a flood of new ghostwriting clients.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: But my assumptions were way off base because when the clients didn't magically materialize, it really knocked me for a loop.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I was really proud of the book.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: The book was getting awesome reviews.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: I right now it's like well over 400 reviews on Amazon, which is awesome.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: It was really fun working on the book, but I had mistakenly assumed that just because I had a major release coming out there and that you could find this book in Barnes Noble and whatnot, I just assumed that, oh, they're gonna see my name in the book and I'm gonna have all these prospective ghostwriting clients come to me.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of them will be celebrities and whatnot.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was grossly mistaken, I just had no idea.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't been around the block enough to know that it doesn't really work that way always.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: So as you hear me tell this story, you might be thinking, Kent, like gee whiz, what's your deal?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: You were really in La La Land there for a while.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you are thinking that, you might be right.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't be wrong, because I was in La La Land there for a while.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is that I've had to do a lot of growing the last couple of years because I've learned some hard lessons.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, why am I telling you this here in this podcast episode that's already over 34 minutes at this point?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I telling you this?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's a couple of reasons.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, I think it's really healthy for people with platforms.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now, by platform I mean people who have podcasts, books, email newsletters, so forth.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's healthy for people with platforms to just come out and tell the honest to God truth once in a while.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is that we're all struggling in some ways, and nobody really has their crap together all the time, and the face that we put forth to the world through our books and podcasts and emails, it it sometimes disguises the fact that we're all just kind of figuring this out.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't have any illusions that I'm like all that.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes when you see people who've got a a podcast or they have books in a bookstore or they've got a business of some kind, it's easy to think that they know something that you don't, that they somehow have have access to some kind of secrets that that have been kept from you and that you don't know.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, certainly there's wisdom that people have and knowledge that they have.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's usually we can find it in their books and podcasts or masterminds or whatever.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: But I've got to admit that um I find it really refreshing when people who I respect just come out and admit once in a while that they're going through a rough patch or they screwed up or they messed something up, but they're just trying to do better.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: I find that really, really refreshing.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope that you do too, because that's kind of what I'm doing here.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you kind of a lot of the things that I have screwed up the last couple years, but how I have tried to address those things and do better.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think that's just the honest to God truth of when people have a business.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_00: We all mess up, we all make mistakes.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: So why not just come at it and admit it?
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Once in a while.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the second reason that I wanted to share all this with you, and this is really much more of an important thing, this has to do with you, not with me.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Second is for those of you who are listening who are going through a rough patch of some kind, I want to challenge you with this.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: Give it a year.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to give it a year.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to commit to working through your problems and confronting the things that you've been avoiding in your life and in your writing and in your business.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: Things are not going to get better if you just keep running away.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: It takes time to make changes.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: It takes time to develop better systems in your business.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: Trust me, I know it's taken me it's taken me a while to get the ship turned around.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it takes time to make things better in your relationships with your kids or with your spouse or with your parents or with friends or whatever.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: And if it feels like committing to a year is an eternity, then I want you to commit to a week or commit to a month, but commit to some kind of time frame that you're not going to quit, you're going to stick it out, you're going to try, you're going to give it your absolute best effort.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because trust me, sitting around and feeling bad about yourself and criticizing yourself is not going to make anything better.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: What does make things better is for you to stop being a passive observer of your own life and for you to do something to actually make your situation better.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Now, let me give you some counterintuitive advice, if you will permit me to.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody likes unsolicited advice, I guess is what I'm doing here.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: I guess in a sense, that's what every podcast is.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like unsolicited advice in some sense, but I want to ask your permission to do that first.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I can't hear you, but I kind of want I want to make sure that you understand that I'm not just giving you advice just to preach at you, but I want to tell you something that I think is going to be really helpful.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And here it is.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: It is, as we're talking about doing things to improve our lives and committing to improving the things that we need to address, you know, many times it's not a matter of adding something to your life, it's a matter of taking something away.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what that might mean for you is leaving a toxic group that you're in, leaving a toxic relationship.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or it might mean just reducing your commitments.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's nothing toxic going on in your life, maybe you're just too stinkin' busy.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you right now, I'm 99% sure that you're probably committed to too many darn things.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: There are too many people who have a claim to your time and your emotional energy.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're going through a rough patch in your life or in your business, you need to have some time to you need to have time and space to think, to plan, to heal, to rest, to sleep, to reflect, probably to journal.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: You need to have some time and space to take some walks.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I would also say you probably need some time and space to get lost in a few good movies, TV shows, or novels.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's funny how oftentimes a good story, no matter what form it takes, a good story can give you the healing that you didn't even know you needed.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the reasons that we have stories.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: Is we find ourselves, we we lose ourselves and we find ourselves in stories.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you to stop doing all the stuff that other people want you to do.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: Learn to say no to things because your own mental and emotional well-being is at stake.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: I promise if you say no to something, the world's gonna keep on turning, things are gonna keep on running, and the world will go on without you having to do everything for everybody.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope that you can see my heart and uh how I want the best for you.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: I really, really do.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, a year ago, literally a year ago today, on December the 2nd, I was really struggling to see the best of myself, and and I was, you know, it's it's like it's hard when you have a podcast and when you when you're trying to be a good ghostwriter and you're trying to be a good advisor to your clients, and when people are coming to you for advice and and you're perceived as uh this person who has expertise in something, that's hard because you don't feel like you can always share what's going on in your life.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I'm not saying that we should all go around and always be talking about things that are bothering us or what's going wrong.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody likes a negative person like that.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it's always healthy to be airing your dirty laundry anyway.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's not a good dynamic to set, particularly if you're trying to establish yourself as a professional.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: However, that being said, I do think it's okay to say, you know what, I'm not perfect.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um it's okay to just to say once in a while, you know what, I made a mistake, but I'm trying to do better.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to clean up my messes, I'm trying to become a more mature person.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to trying to improve in some areas where I'm lacking.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's okay to ask for help.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: So what I did last December, the second, is I decided to stick it out.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: I made a commitment that I would not quit.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was really gonna put in a good effort.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now, have have I put in 100% effort every day?
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Of course I haven't.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have there been days where I have not done a good job at all?
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: Of course there have.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Have I messed up in the last year?
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Too many times to count, of course.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: But for the most part, I've stuck it out.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: I decided to give it a true effort, and I've got to be honest with you, I'm really, really grateful for the problems that I've had the last couple years in my life and business because I have learned from those problems and I've I've learned to be more brave and confront the things that I was afraid of.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a better writer today, I'm a better business owner, I have a more profitable business today than I did a year ago.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh things have turned around quite a bit, and I hope that I'm a better friend and human being because I've had to work through those problems.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get better when you just have success.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like success doesn't make you a better person.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think if you have too long of a string of success without making some mistakes, you're probably not taking enough risks.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think if you have too many wins in a row without something not going well, um we can get a little bit deceived into thinking we're all that and we're great and we're awesome about everything that we do, and that's not usually the case.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think mistakes, mistakes are the places where we learn and where we learn to pivot and we learn some things about ourselves and we grow.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: We grow from mistakes in a way that we don't grow from success.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: Those challenges are what's going to keep you sharp.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: So it's what's going to make you better.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope that you can look at your challenges in your life and your business right now.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: And even if you're kind of you're kind of in the crap, so to speak, there are other words for that, uh, but this is not an R-rated podcast.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, if you're going through the mug and the mire right now, I hope that you can look around and go, you know what?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: These I'm I'm in it right now, but these are making me better, and I'm growing because I'm learning things.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm learning what not to do.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes when we have those problems, we learn what not to do.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: And gosh, that can be immensely, immensely helpful.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I want the same thing for you too.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: I want I want you to be able to look back in a month or six months or a year from now on December the second, twenty twenty-four.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I want you to be able to go, you know what, I'm a better writer.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a more profitable rider.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm more successful and I'm stronger and I'm wiser.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm better at my craft than I was a year ago because of what I've had to face and overcome in the last year.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: So don't despise those problems.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: You need to run toward those problems and face them head on.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you just need to run away from those problems and get out of a situation that you're in.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's the case too.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the last thing I want to mention is um I just want to circle back to the theme from the beginning, which is the profitable rider.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: So again, this is the final official, I guess, episode of the Daily Rider Podcast.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And next Tuesday or so, depending on the cooperation of Apple Podcasts and other things, um, you will be able to see the Profitable Rider Podcast, the Daily Rider Podcast, will cease to exist in its current form and that will pivot to the Profitable Rider Podcast.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh again, all these episodes will still be in the archive.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: They'll be right there in the podcast feed, so you can go back and listen to whatever you want.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I just want to say thank you for listening to this show.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: It really, really means the world to me that you've well, it means the world that you've spent uh like 45 minutes at this point listening to me yammer on, and I hope that I hope that this has been helpful to you on some level.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: And and God bless you for sticking with me for these 45 minutes and listening to these stories.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: I really do hope that uh this has been helpful for some level.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you so much for listening, and I will see you next time for the Profitable Rider podcast.