Welcome And The Big Question

Yo, yo, yo. Welcome back to the Fill of Your Lifestyle Podcast. Conversations on lifestyle, passions, and hustles. My name's Chris. I am your host, and I'm super excited to be back here having the conversation with you. Episode 284 today. And I'm answering a question. I actually had one, two, three. I think it was four or five questions come through. They didn't really want credit. They just said, hey, look, here's some really good topics that they've asked me to talk about. And I love when I get these. And we've had a bunch already come through previously that we had been doing. So these ones are a little bit more in-depth and a bit more in detail. And that's why I love having these conversations. Now, I just want to be frank, like I don't have all the answers. I'm going to just answer based on my experience, my understanding, my knowledge, and what I've gone through or how I've handled this kind of situation. Of course, don't take what I'm saying as this is the only way to do it. It's always good to get perspective. And that's why I'm providing my perspective. So please take that into account because it's a very, very big question. And it's a very serious question as well. The question is this: when building a side hustle or changing paths, there is a dangerous middle phase where you're working twice as hard but haven't seen the financial or the lifestyle pay off yet that you're trying to work towards. How do you maintain personal accountability and avoid burnout when the old life is drowning you and the new life isn't fully supporting you yet? What a banger question. We're going to roll the intro and we're going to get into it. But first, if you do enjoy these episodes, make sure you do hit like, subscribe. You can also leave a comment down below or ask a question yourself. But yeah, let's get into it.

Leaving Security For A Plan

So I think I think there's a lot of lot of things I need to make sure I'm careful with this because when I when I started building my business, I was working full-time. And that was number one, was sure, I was always working on something, but it was actually knowing that I didn't want to be doing the full-time job that I was working at. I didn't want to do that as my career. Now that that's a very scary thing to do, is to walk away from a nine to five job that's has a secure income. But ever since I joined that company or worked corporate, I knew the long term is that I wanted to have my own job, my own business, my own. I was an entrepreneur by heart. I kind of always wanted something else. I just didn't know what it was going to look like. And I think that was the first thing was like, well, one first knowing that's what I actually wanted. I think the second thing was sure, I was doing all these side hustles. I was trying to make it work and I couldn't because the main job kept taking over. And I wasn't able to make it work because I didn't actually have a sure thing yet. Now that I knew what I now that I now that I know what I know now, if I had this information, I probably could have done my side hustling a lot better because I had something that was actually working. But at the time of me working full-time, I was trying, I was throwing things against the wall, trying to make them stick, and things weren't really sticking, and I wasn't actually getting anything that was giving me the result. And then I did start doing a little bit of the flipping and reselling on the side, but that was more so because I started to think about, well, I want to get out of this job. I want to go build my own business. How am I going to do that? And so I did start doing a little bit of the side hustling for about three months before I gave my notice. And I figured out that this could work if I had more time. Now, back then things were a lot different. We didn't have half the tools we have now. We didn't have half the YouTube experience of people sharing their ways of how they're doing things. It just didn't exist, right, compared to now. And that was then the point where I decided, you know, I'm going to go cold turkey and I'm going to just leave my job and go do this. So that's point number two, right? Was actually going all in and having an intentional plan with it. But I didn't really then tick off until I was willing to actually put my money where my mouth was and really actually invest in myself at a whole capacity. I was kind of just doing it thinking that it was going to get the results that I wanted based on just, okay, well, I've listed 10 things that are worth, let's say they're worth $1,000, they're all going to sell. That's not the point, right? I had to continuously keep going out to get more stock. And it wasn't until I moved from a working part-time mentality to going all in in my business is when we started to see the payoffs happen. Now, the question here is yes, that middle phase, but that middle phase also exists not only when you're trying to do it as a side hustle, but also when you're actually doing full-time and trying to build it into something great. Because I think I can't speak about me doing it as a hustle while working full-time because obviously I didn't do it. But what I can speak about is I've been doing this journey for six years and there has been so many challenging times. The the dips, and I have a big dip every year, cover a couple of dips every big year. And even though we've got through them, they never get easier because we have more at stake, we have higher risk, we have more challenges, and I've got more to lose. But I think if we start tip tapping into the question where it says you're working twice as hard but haven't seen the financial lifestyle pay off yet, how do you maintain personal accountability and avoid burnout when your old life is draining you and your new life isn't fully supporting

Purpose Beats Passive Income Myths

you yet? I think this comes back to first thing is purpose, like an intention and goals and ambition of understanding is like, well, what are you trying to achieve here? A lot of people think they're going to build a side hustle and it's going to solve all their problems and become a passive income and they can retire and never have to work again. I mean, that's the dream, right? I mean, we don't want to have to work again. We want to be able to do what we want to do. But I tell you, I probably work way more. I work way more than a corporate gig. And I know a lot of people find that ironic because it's like, oh, why would you leave a job and go do this yourself when you're probably getting paid less than I am? Because my ambition for what I want to achieve is not based on one year, two years, three years, five years, six years even. I'm looking at it like, well, I'm I'm ready to invest the rest of my career into this. Because if you think about it, that if I was working somewhere else, I'm going to do the same. I'm probably going to be working for 20, 30 years. And sure, I could probably move up into some pretty cool roles. That's assuming that I was staying on that same path, maybe get into a more m bigger management leadership role and maybe have a $250,000 wage or something like that. When I left, I was on about 160. And that's that's great. But it didn't give me the flexibility of being able to build a lifestyle that I wanted and have the different types of things in my life because I was always on and always demanded by someone else and controlled by someone else's expectations and someone else's requirements, whether it's being a client or being my boss or bosses. Now, in this case, working for myself, sure, the only person I'm accountable to is myself and the results that are giving me, that are coming out of the work that I'm doing. And I'm not, I don't have to be doing what other people tell me. Now, it's not about that I don't want to be getting told what to do. It's more so if I if I have an ambition here, no one else is going to be as more motivated to achieve that than myself. But I know that's what I want. And I'm also willing to spend the time to figure that out, be patient. Now, when it comes to personal accountability and avoiding burnout, it is very hard to get stuck in obviously sticky situations where things aren't working. The one thing that I've realized when building a side hustle or changing paths or building a business or anything in life, really, a lot of the time it just comes down to problem solving and working out, okay, is this going to get me closer to where I want to be? How do I make this happen? And whether it be you're you're forced into a corner or you're under pressure or something unexpected has occurred, it's in these moments where you can either give up or you figure out a path forward. And that path forward might mean you have to go like this a little bit and then like this and then like this, like and swerve and pivot and adjust, but you're still moving to the direction that you want to go. When I first started, we were doing books, media, collectibles, pop culture. Didn't even touch clothing, and now it's the opposite. Now we do clothing and now we're looking for new categories to add to that machine. And we're still moving towards where I want to be, growing something bigger and greater than beyond myself. And that's that's all that matters to me. But at the same time, there's this risk of obviously we're earning more money than we've ever earned before. But am I actually walking away with huge financials and you know that I can go do this and go do that when I want? No. Sure, I have the freedom of time because I'm my own boss and I obviously have staff members, which means, like, for instance, I'm going to Japan, that gives me some time off. The business is still going to run. That's a beautiful flex in my head because it means the business can keep running, I can have the lifestyle I want, and things are going well. But it doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about, I'm constantly on. So you do need to build in those boundaries of like, how do you manage building something which might not give you the money that you're expecting and is going to require you to be constantly working on it? Because when you're a business owner, there's things always from an external factor point that are changing constantly. And I guarantee you there's a new thing that you haven't planned for or haven't expected that means you need to obviously address or fix

Grounding Habits Plus Business Data

or take control of and manage. And you're constantly doing that. So for me, it's it's actually knowing, going back to the roots of why I'm doing this, and then having something that keeps me grounded. So the grounding between, okay, if things aren't going well, what do I fall back on to kind of get my head straight? For me, that's running. Also, my wife, and just being able to make sure I'm pulling myself back to reality of like, okay, I'm doing this because I want this. Are we doing that still? Yes, we are. Okay, so we need to trust the plan. But then with those two things combined, it's actually also then looking at the data that is before you and the information that you have. And it can be draining, it can be exhausting, but if things are working towards where you want to be, then it's basic math in terms of like, okay, well, for uh, for instance, for us, we've grown on average 18% top line every single quarter for the last six years, which is huge growth. Now, the bottom line in some stages has grown bigger, but we're continuing to retain about that 10%. And which is which is not too bad because if we're growing 18% top line and the 10% remains, well, if you're doing $100,000, you're going to do 10 grand profit. If you do a million dollars, you're going to do obvious $100,000 profit. So sometimes it's a matter of like, okay, well, how do we if we can master the top line and master the sales, masters the volume, but the bottom line is staying the same or going up, well, then it's a win-win. But that still becomes a challenge because every year profit profits are challenged by higher expenses, things going up, new requirements, having to put on more staff, training, learning, etc., etc. So I think my my quick answer to this is really making sure you understand what where the roots are here, why you're doing it, where do you fall back to, having something that grounds you, keeps you honest, and but also having a system that gives you the results so you can actually check in and have data points around is this actually working? What is the data telling me? We are still moving forward so that you can make sure that you're framing it. But it is, it's a very, very tough thing. I've seen so many people try and get into building a business and it's not working out and

When To Jump And How To Balance

had to jump. Now, fortunately for me, I did have savings. I had the ability to be able to live off not having to earn a big wage or anything like that because I had saved. So I've invested a lot of my own time and money into the business to be able to get it to where I want it to be. And not everyone has that ability, right? So if you don't have the ability to go cold turkey and go full time, then if you want to hustle for it, it's about how do I do as little as possible and get the most out of it as possible with the time that you have. And obviously, now in this day and age, there's so many tools to be able to help you with that, and then being patient. If I knew what I knew now, I would have probably done it different. But what I knew now didn't exist unless I had done six six years worth of experience. So it's not that simple, but because now I know where to get stock, now I know how to sell the stock, now I know how to process the stock, now I know the systems and the processes and the front end, the back end, my customers, my understanding of my customers, why these items sell, how can I get more of these items, etc., etc. And if I could do that now, I would be able to do it while working another job. But the beauty, the beauty of all of this is it wasn't necessarily about having that business just for the sake of having the business. It's because I didn't want to have to work for someone else. I wanted to create my own legacy. I wanted to create my own something that I'm proud of. And you can't, it's very hard to be able to be working for someone else and give my 110% while managing my own business at 110%. It just would not work. So I think you do need to find a point in which you need to make the jump. But at the same time, if you're working part-time and a full-time job, meaning a side hustle and a full-time job, being able to bring that balance and that compartmentalize between the two is very difficult. It's a challenge. It's possible, 100% possible, and there's plenty of people doing it. But again, it's coming down to what do you want. Maybe you don't want that business your part-time, your hustle to be your main income. And that's fine. That's how you balance it. But it still comes back to why are you trying to do this? What are you trying to achieve? And what is your long-term outcome? And I think by doing that, that will keep you honest around what is the next decision you need to do. And when you do feel drained and when you feel not

Listener Challenge And Wrap Up

motivated, when you feel like things are going to plan, that's how you pick yourself up. That's my thoughts, my honest thoughts on this one. Great question. Let me know what you think. I'd love to hear it from you. I know there's a lot of people doing side hustles while working full-time, et cetera, et cetera. And that's great. Like, I mean, I've I did that for years. As I said, a lot of things I tried, they did not stick. This one has stuck, but I was going into it intentionally, regardless if I was staying or going, working in a career in the project management space and tech consulting. So yeah, appreciate you being here. Feel free to jump down below. As I said, you can leave a comment, ask a question, or if you did enjoy this, please like, subscribe, and I can even share it with someone else as well. But we'll be back here again next week, doing it all again. Ciao