Sometimes you have to break your rules

Sometimes you have to break your own rules to get to where you want to go. Sometimes you have to abandon all the things that got you to where you are now in order to get you to the place you want to be. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and I believe that hungry entrepreneurs deserve help. And I recently broke one of my rules and wanted to share the story with you today. One of the things that I believe in to my core is that you should be making money before you're spending money. I hate spending money before I'm making money. It's easy to spend money. Anybody can spend money. If I gave you dollars, you could find ways to spend it. The hard part is making money. And so I'll invest my time and my energy into new projects to try to make money, but I won't put my dollars in. And I recently broke that rule. So what happened was a company came to me And what they do is they help turn guys like me, they help turn thought leaders and experts into brand names. They help give them a media spotlight, help close deals for them. And I was intrigued. I'd never heard of this kind of company before. I didn't know it existed. And it came highly recommended. It came to me through two people who I knew who were using it, who had success. And so I met with the two owners. We had a great call, it looked like things could happen, and the sticking point was gonna be the price. You know, they wanted some upfront dollars and I didn't want to spend the money. So where do we go? We started negotiating, they came down a little bit, but we got to the point where they hit their cutoff. They said, "We cannot go below this dollar amount. It's either pay this much upfront or there's no deal. And usually I'd walk away, usually I'd find an alternative. There's always another way to make something happen with a different company, different way to structure it. But these guys weren't backing down, and there was no alternative to go to that I knew of. This is the only company of its kind. And so it was a big gut check for me because this went against what I believed in. I didn't want to spend money before I was making money. But it came down to the fact I slept on it, and what stuck with me was I would regret this decision if I didn't make this investment, which wasn't a huge amount, but it was still an investment. If I didn't put the money in, I would regret it. I knew I would regret it, regret not trying this thing. And I didn't want to live the rest of my life having regretted making that decision. So I decided to break my rule and pay them the negotiated fee that we came up with. And I was happy that I did. I just came back from New York City. We lined up our first radio show. I don't know if you guys had a chance to listen in or not, but it was a big success. We're going to be doing a regular radio show. This is all done thanks to this company. We're lining up a book deal, we're lining up a webinar series, we're lining up partnerships, all happening through this company. They're giving me some awesome training that's making me better at what I do, and it wouldn't have been possible if I didn't say yes to that deal. And so as much as it tore me apart that day, and I've struggled with it as to whether I should do this thing or not, I gained the confidence in knowing that at least I put my balls on the table here. At least I would find out if this would work or not. I wouldn't have to live with that regret for the rest of my life. And so the rule that got me here to the success that I've had so far, I had to break. And I'm not going to make a habit of it, and you shouldn't either. But every now and then, certain opportunities come along that you have to really do a deep gut check on. You might have to break one of your rules. Spend the time, think about it, sleep on it, see if it's really something that you want to do or not. Sometimes you do have to break the rules to get to where you want to go. I'd love to hear what you have to think. I'd love to hear your story. If you've broken your own rules or you're thinking about it, Feel free to leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you, and I also always love seeing those thumbs-ups come in. So thank you. Please give it a thumbs up below, leave a comment, and I'll see you on the next episode.