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The podcast for aspiring entrepreneurs who have families. If you're a dad looking to escape the rat and quit your 9 to 5 while keeping food on the table for the family in the process then this show is for you. We discuss the challenges, tips, tricks and hacks to help you make the leap into freedom.
Brendan:
This is the employee to entrepreneur podcast, the show for the family man who's looking to escape the rat race. So if that's you, you're in the right place. I'm your host, Brennan Ryan, and I made this show for you because I am you today. I want to do a brief episode and talk about this idea of never giving up and what exactly that means. And to give you some context, I want to get you up to speed on my own entrepreneurial journey. So I'm a guy that when I go focus on something, I go all in. I give it my all. I get very passionate about it and do everything I can to become great at it, et cetera. And I've said in the past on podcast episodes and whatnot that I have the mindset of making this work as fast as possible. but also I'm willing to go for as long as it takes. And that's an intense stance, if you will, right? Because it means that there's a lot of urgency to get it done as fast as possible, but I'm going to do this forever until I either achieve it or I die trying. And being a dadpreneur, we ultimately have to rely a lot on our lives. on our wives rather, to support us in that. And so I've really quite honestly pushed the limit lately in terms of riding my wife to the point where it's really taken a toll on our relationship, which is not good. When I started this journey because I have so much going on, so many different side hustles, a full time remote sales job, etc. that I knew I needed to sacrifice somewhere. And I was willing to sacrifice in two areas. One is my social life. I've definitely sacrificed there. I don't see my friends nearly as much as I used to. And then secondly, I also sacrificed the gym working out, which is something that was my first love. That was that. That's actually very hard for me to do. I still get there sometimes here and there whenever I can fit it in and between endeavors and whatnot, but sacrificing the gym or even sacrificing my social life is not something that. I ever intended to do for the rest of my life by any means. It's not healthy. I wouldn't recommend anybody do it, but I knew that in the short term I only had so many hours in a day and I needed to prioritize those hours to do things that move the needle with regards to my business. And podcasting actually ended up being one of those things because it helps me network. It helps me grow my brand, get clients and all that kind of thing. But I have sacrificed in different areas of my life, but what I didn't intend to sacrifice was my family life, time with my wife. I didn't want to sacrifice those things. It's actually my why, my whole purpose for trying to build a business that could replace my income so that I can own my own time, so that I can spend more time with my wife and my kids, be able to take them to the soccer practices, to be able to travel and work if I wanted to. And all those kinds of goals, be able to leave a legacy. It's always been about family. My family is my why. And so recently when it started to really affect my family, I've had to reevaluate things and I've really been thinking lately about what can I get off my plate? What can I do less of? I think that, um, Alex Hermosie is a hundred percent right about sometimes success is actually more about saying no. than it is about saying yes. You just have to focus on the thing that you really want and do that and do that only. And I've had a really tough time doing that, honestly. I've gotten involved in e-commerce. I still have my lead generation clients now and doing sales, I have the podcasts, et cetera. So that's a lot. It's a lot when you have a family, when your young dad and your kids wanna see you all the time, it's kind of a very tough balance. I don't really like to use the word work-life balance because I don't really think that there ever is such a thing as true balance in one's life. Even before I had kids and all I had was just my job and my wife didn't even have a house or a dog or anything. Very minimal responsibilities. I always reflected on the fact that it seemed very difficult to do everything that I wanted to do. to be able to get to the gym and go to work and see my friends and spend time with my wife and, you know, be involved in my community, not at church or whatever it might be. It was very hard to do everything. And ultimately I don't think anybody ever can do everything. It's about priorities and it's also about the concept of seasons. There is a season, there is a time to build and there is a time to spend time with family. And Right now in my life, I do really, truly believe that I'm in a season of building. I'm, I'm hustling, I'm grinding every day. But what I have found is that I'm at a spot where I can't keep this pace forever. And so I've had to remind myself that it is a marathon and not a sprint to use that cliche, it is a hundred percent true. But as time goes on, I've also realized how important it is to actually love the journey to actually fall in love with the process of building your business or of becoming an entrepreneur and all of the mindset shifts and everything that needs to occur. And so where I'm at right now is I have tried recently to go all in on sales and have that replace most of my income as a pharmacist. And I did that in early June. Basically, I didn't time things right, got a little bit unlucky with regards to my e-commerce ventures. Those kind of got, those kind of took a hit a little bit when in the prior months, they were actually doing really well. So I figured that this was a great time to try to do that, but it ended up going backwards essentially in June. And so now we find ourselves here in August and I feel like my back is up against the wall a little bit in terms of. I have to make it work soon if I'm going to do it soon, or it's really going to turn into quite the marathon. I will be on a slow track at that point. I might even be in a spot where I'm just stacking cash for the next couple of years with the idea of eventually buying a business or buying a franchise and having that be my exit. But I've wanted to get out of pharmacy now for for a long time. I've been very, very unfulfilled in it. And I've tried all kinds of different things, digital marketing, lead generation, you name it. Right. And now my latest thing is I'm committed to sales and I have been committed to sales. Honestly, I could say that fortunately for at least the last six months and not most of the year. And so I've come a long way. I've gotten a lot better and I've landed great sales roles and interviewed for even better ones. And I just haven't got to the point though that I can consistently make the money that I need to make in order to safely exit pharmacy. And there's a lot that goes into that with regards to health insurance, for instance. That's a major block because you take that for granted when your employer is paying a large part of that. And now once you go out on your own and you're a 1099 freelancer or whatever, you have to pay that. Yeah, it's tax deductible, but it's still an added expense. at the end of the day. And so that's yet another roadblock because we can't afford to not have health insurance. We're not a family that has perfect health, unfortunately. So we really need to have health insurance. And so I've been reflecting a lot on it, a lot on this journey. strong desire that I have to kill my job, to exit the rat race, to escape my nine to five, even though it's not a nine to five, you know, in the traditional sense. And I am going to try one last time here. And if I don't get it, then I'm not giving up. I'm never giving up. Ever. I will not give up. I can't give up. I don't even think it's possible for me to give up. I think I would be a very depressed person if I, if I just gave up, I let my dreams die. I literally don't think that's possible for me to do. So I won't be giving up, but I will not have as much urgency anymore because I won't be able to have as much urgency anymore. There's, there's just too much going on and I'll, I'll be forced to take a slower route. And so part of it is. that I need to use my PTO in order to go all in on sales for a few weeks to try to make it work. And once I get there, then I can exit. But I did that back in June, so I don't have as much PTO as I used to, paid time off as I used to. And so I can probably do that one more time and get three weeks off in a row and try to make it work. And that's my plan. That's my plan. weeks of August to see if I can't take three weeks off, go all in on sales and make it work. And so if anyone out there is listening to this, I hope you guys are rooting for me or praying for me. I really wanna make this happen. I don't wanna have to go on the slow route, but that's where I'm at. I'm at the point where I can't have as much urgency anymore because I... need to be true to my family. I need to be able to be there for them and not be working like 80 plus hours a week. Even though it doesn't, it doesn't, in a way it doesn't even really feel like work to me because I actually enjoy doing it. But it does take time away from my family and that's, I'm not about that. I don't want to be that guy. So that's what I'm going to try to do one last time. And then after that, I'm on the slow track. I'll never give up. Maybe I'll have a different plan. Maybe it'll be something that isn't sales. Even though I really truly do like sales and I think that there's plenty of money to be made in sales and that it makes you a better entrepreneur. I think, you know, I've been beating the drum on that idea for weeks now. You guys are probably tired of me saying all that, but I do believe that. I do believe that sales is the gateway drug to entrepreneurship. And so. I wanted to make this podcast episode to give you guys an update on my entrepreneurial journey, but also to deliver the message of sometimes you just need to slow down when you feel like giving up. Think of that as an option. Can you slow down, especially if you're like me, if you can relate to me in that sense of being a guy that just goes all in and takes max of action, um, slow down, just try to slow down. You can keep going. I had a guest on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, Anatoly from the Ukraine. And I didn't catch it the first time that he said it because, you know, his story is quite wild and long and it's a, it's an inspiring one for sure, but I didn't catch it the first time he said it when he was talking to his wife and he decided to slow down, he didn't decide to throw in the towel. He just decided to slow down and it wasn't until I posted a repurposed preview reel of that episode that I caught that and I was like, huh, that is a timely message for me. So that's where I'm at guys. Please root for me. I really want to make this happen. I'll still be here. Still be producing podcasts. I would do this even if I never made a dime from it because I enjoy it so much. I really, really enjoy doing the. the podcast thing, talking to people from all over the world. And to that point, if you guys know anybody that you'd like to have on the podcast, please DM me, shoot me an email support at Brendan B R E N D A N Ryan.co is probably the best email that you can reach me at. And if you guys are listening to this on YouTube, please give it a like and subscribe. If you're on Apple podcasts, please leave the show review. It really helps me out. And if you are an aspiring dadpreneur and you can relate to any of the things that I'm telling you now, I highly implore you to check out our free newsletter talks about all of these topics comes out once a week. We don't spam you or anything like that. It's completely free. You can find it at employee, the number two entrepreneur dot CEO. And then you can find all of our podcasts at podcasts. dot employee, the number two entrepreneur dot CEO. We also have a free Discord channel. So if that's something that you're interested in so you can get to know other aspiring dadpreneurs or other guys that are into all this kind of stuff, including sales or marketing lead generation, video editing, we got all kinds of guys, we got coders in there. So if you want to meet other aspiring dadpreneurs, shoot me a DM or send me an email. I'll also leave. the links for these things, including the newsletter and the discord in the show notes so that you can sign up for it. And we hope to see you on the inside. So guys, if you're thinking about making a leap from employee to entrepreneur, keep in mind that it's a marathon and not a sprint. Don't be like me. Don't don't sprint too hard for too long and burn everyone else out around you. I didn't even burn myself out by the way. It's a matter when you're a dadpreneur, you can burn you can burn your family out, you know. So keep that in mind guys, but that doesn't mean don't do it. I really believe that we need more entrepreneurs. So if you do want to take the leap from employee to entrepreneur, please do. Please join me. Please make the leap from the employee to entrepreneur. And I will see you on the other side.