Controlling Your Own Destiny.

Today let's discuss a reoccurring theme you hear me talk about in all these videos about being self employed and why I believe that. So today we'll call this controlling your own destiny. Being self employed isn't for everybody. This is my 28th year, next month of being self employed. Two of those years I work concurrently for another big company and just worked evenings and weekends building my business, planning my escape. Two years worth saving vacation, saving money. So when I pulled the rip cord and burned the boats, as I'll say, talk about that later, I was ready to go. I had backup money, I knew what I was doing, I had a small book of business. But being self employed isn't for everybody. It's tough. It's one of the toughest things you'll ever do. But also it allows you to control your own destiny. Working for a big company can be great, great benefits, you learn a lot, maybe a paper education. I had my master's degree paid for by the company I was working for. But they control you and your fate is up to them. So if someone comes in and says, well, this department's not doing so well, we need you to cut 10% of this department or 20% or 50% in the future with as AI progresses. Guess what? It's just what they say is business, not personal, which is bullshit too. Everything's personal generally. So why not control your own destiny? I mean use and leverage working for companies to gain education, to gain experience. Because that's where a lot of times you're going to get it. And you can as following what I'm talking about in these videos, being the guy that excels, the girl that excels, the person that can say, hey, this kid, you give them a task, they do it 110%, they're going to do it right. You're going to get the ability to gain knowledge well outside of where you should be at your age, working for a big company if you are one of those people that excel because they will pick people who get stuff done. So that's a good way to learn. But for your future, at least from my belief, you would want to control your own destiny, owning your own business. And sometimes it's going to be hard. Riley's chosen to be a teacher and a coach. Kind of comes with an organization, but he still has the ability to have baseball lessons, summer teams, leagues being part of leagues, and have separate side hustles after he gets out that he can do or can leverage that into doing his own thing. So there's Opportunity there and again. He's learning and getting experience working for a larger entity that he can use himself. Sydney stays in the medical profession the same thing. You'll learn a lot and be able to see where you might want to land in the future. And who knows, sometimes you guys might want to do something completely different. It just depends. But you know, again, learn everything you can. But being self employed allows you to do things that working for a big company can't. Quality of life Spending time with your family like I was at, I was able to coach you guys. I just made the time up myself. I worked nights and weekends whenever I was out coaching. But I could be there to coach football at 6am in the morning for Whittier Junior High or your sports teams. When I was coaching all three of you boys, I went to every doctor's appointment with mom for every one of you. I was the only guy there. I got to be really good friends with our baby doctor as a matter of fact, since he saw no other man. And we would talk about guide things like technology and tools and stuff. But I made that a priority because I was self employed and I could exchange my time somewhere else. Or you can leverage your business to allow you to do that. And we'll talk a little bit in another video about when it's enough enough. It goes kind of congruently with this, but again, I think being self employed is great. Like I said, I choose what I want to do, where I want to live. I've been working from home now for the last few years. It's great. Some people don't like it. They get jealous I think. But it's great. It allows me great freedom to do what I want to do, to live a better quality of life. So that again lets you choose that. I know people that I have insurance reps that have gained multiple states. They're on the road three weeks out of the month. They tell me, you know, I used to be a traveling salesperson driving every day, putting 50, 60,000 miles on a car. I hated it. So I changed my life. And that's what we've talked about that as well. If you don't like something, you don't like where you work, you can fix it, you can change it. When you're self employed, if you don't like your boss, you're kind of stuck. But you can make him a better boss and you learn things as you go along. But again, that's why I mentioned this so much is having the ability to control your destiny, to control how your family will grow and work in your relationships. And also you're generally going to be able to make more money working for yourself that hard work where you work. Just last night Riley was. He left yesterday at about 6:30am and he had a scrimmage. He came in over to the house about 9, 29 30, starving, ate some leftovers and he's got a turnaround. He gets a little time off today, but he worked, you know, basically left the house at 6:30 and got home at 9:30 and he gets to go in about eight instead of his normal seven where he's going to be on the field because it's film day. So he's working a lot of long hours. He gets a little stipend for being a coach. But in the long run when you measure that up monetarily, it's not a lot of money. A few bucks an hour probably for the time he puts in coaching junior high and high school. So that's when you work for yourself. Generally those long hours pay dividends in the future for you. And sometimes you just have to do that too. I worked seven days a week for five straight years before I took a vacation really besides our honeymoon, a couple of days in Vegas. But that's what I did to build up my business to where later in life I could work a lot less and coach everybody. Now we're at the point where we're able to go to. We've gone to Europe for a couple of weeks last year, we're going to go a couple of weeks next year. I still check in. You can do a lot with technology these days and I have staff that I trust after building systems. But again, to truly control your destiny, I would encourage everybody to look at being self employed at least trying it. Sometimes it's scary but the benefits and the rewards can really outweigh anything else. And again, like I said, when you work hard and you know these long hours, you know it's paying yourself back and building your future. Not for corporation who could, you know, care less. You know, just a little analogy on that. What made me go to be self employed was grandpa worked for a large company, R.J. reynolds, for 32 years in total. At about year 30 they had their third restructuring in probably five or six years. I worked there then too. He bled for that company. We only ate products if possible that that company owned. So they owned 30% of the grocery store at the time with Planters, Nabisco, Chung King. So if we bought or someone at the office bought something that RJ Reynolds could sell like chips that they owned and someone bought another brand of chips, he literally would throw that shit in the trash or banish you to the parking lot. Everything he did. So he bled for that company. And that's kind of what used to people used to do a little bit more. But they had another restructuring and said, hey, you're an old guy, you make a lot of money. We can hire somebody in and half what you make. So here's your severance package. Pack your shit Skippy, and get out the door. And that's about how it happened. Took his car, you know, just told him he's done. It was devastating to him. It made me think. And he told me not to quit. I worked there too. Then he's like, don't just quit. Luckily our regional manager was a good guy and he talked to me because I was an up and rising guy. By the time I left, I did the same job as eight people, eight sales reps before from all the downsizings. But I leveraged that into my master's degree and I knew without a shadow of a doubt I did not want to work for another big company the rest of my life because I wasn't going to be 55 years old, have given my soul to a company and have someone pull the rug underneath my feet. You're still always even being self employed. You have, you know, vendors and brokers and stuff like that, legislation that comes up. But I have the ability and I have done this for, like I said, going on 28 years in a couple of, in a week. I control what happens in my household, how little or how much I make, depending on how much I want to work at this point, which I still enjoy it. And usually when you work for yourself, it's not quite work. There's days, it's stressful. I don't like problems anymore. I'm getting too old for that. But I have a nice staff, I have systems in place and it creates a nice life for me, mom, and for you guys and all the things we've done and still do and will do going forward. So always think about that. And that's my kind of reason why I was seeing my dad let go after just being a hundred and ten percent in for his company. They didn't care. It was all about what was good for the company or they thought was good for their company. Pure finances and the people don't matter. And that's unfortunately how companies are. And that's another one of those things like we talked about Sometimes you put on your big girl panties to get the shit. You know, get over that shit. Because it is how things work. You're one of many in a lot of these companies, even a small company sometimes. So controlling your own destiny is one of the ways that you can change your life, your family's life, have a better relationship with your family, your husband. It'll be tough and you'll need to have a good spouse going forward. But to me, it's one of the best things I ever did, best decisions ever did. It's changed how our family works. It's changed me and mom's life. Mom was able to stay home. So think about that as you hear me talk about being self employed and some expectations or hopes I have for all you guys. Just because of the ability that it gives you and the quality of life that it gives you and you know, the personal, you know, how it builds up yourself to think, I created this company, I have all these people I support, which sometimes can be, you know, it's a bit of a burden being responsible for six or eight people's livelihoods. But again, it's also a sense of pride that knowing you've built this and you do it by your own hand. So think about that.