no one is coming to save you, this is what finally woke me up

Summary

there’s a moment in every entrepreneur’s story where the rescue fantasy dies. mine happened in a hotel room. I was on travel for a job I hated, sitting there with my wife, and I finally said out loud that no one was coming to save me. no promotion. no boss. no event. nobody was going to walk in and fix this for me. if it was going to change, I was changing it.

I quit shortly after and went all-in on the side hustle. that was the inflection point.

afterwards I built what I now call the comfort assessment. six life areas: finances, spiritual life, health, relationships, business, personal life. for each, you ask one question. am I content or am I complacent?

contentment means you’re satisfied with where you are while still moving. complacency means you’ve stopped paying attention.

then you project each area ten years out twice. once if you keep ignoring it. once if you give it daily attention. the gap between those two futures is the price of complacency.

the lesson I keep coming back to: things don’t get easier, you get better. no one is coming. you’re the rescue.

Transcript

the hotel room moment

We work jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. It’s one of my favorite quotes and it wasn’t all that long ago I was in a job that I hated telling myself to suck it up because this is what men do for their families. You don’t have to like your job you just have to do it to provide. So today I’m going to take you through something I call the comfort assessment.

So the comfort assessment is something I developed originally years ago just to kind of assess where I was at in life when I realized something was off something wasn’t right. And now I have used it with thousands of entrepreneurs to help them assess where they might need to work and where things might be okay.

So if we rewind back to 2014 I was in a job that I truly hated I mean every single Sunday night my wife would ask me like what’s wrong why are you in a bad mood like what’s going on and it was because I was about to have to go to a job that I really did not enjoy and I had a side hustle at the time that I was building it was making money but it wasn’t enough for the family so I had to take this other job and I was on a business trip and I was sitting in this hotel room and I just had some space to finally think.

And I was just thinking like when is this going to happen when do we go from side hustle to full time like when is this possible. And I was just I had just been introduced to my new boss he was 22 years old he had just graduated from college and he was blood related to the owner of the company that I worked for nepotism at its finest and I just wasn’t happy with it that was the

triggering mechanism I had been a military officer for years I had flown airplanes I had led dozens of dozens of teams to be high performing I had done all these things but now all of a sudden I had some new college grad who happened to be related to the owner who I’m now supposed to report to and I just told myself you know what this is how the civilian world works this is just how things need

quitting the job and going all in

to be don’t worry about it but when I had that space to think I sat and I realized I was waiting I was waiting for someone to save me I was waiting for someone to give me an olive branch I was unknowingly waiting I was just waiting so I grabbed my journal when I grabbed my journal I started to write out all the areas of my life that mattered to me health and fitness spiritual life family

life relationships business all these different areas and then next to each one I wrote whether I felt like I was content in that area or I was complacent in that area and I’ll go over how to kind of define each one of those once we start going through the exercise but long story short I had way too many complacence in areas of my life that I deemed very important so let’s jump into the comfort assessment because

I really feel like it could help you make some progress so I’m going to pull it up on my screen if you’re watching the video version of this if you’re on you know YouTube you can check it out and then also the audio version I’ll make sure that you know you’re getting everything and you can hear it but here’s the deal if you want to download this comfort assessment it will be the in the link of

the description of the video on YouTube also wherever you get your podcast you should be able to get it in the show notes there as well and if you’re struggling to get any of these I have a lot of systems and resources you can get if you just sign up for the newsletter so sign up for my newsletter also link in description and you’ll get access to all these things as well so let’s jump right in

the comfort assessment, six life areas

here is the comfort assessment so the first part of the comfort assessment is just to see where you are and I’ve deemed six different areas that I like for people to kind of put some sort of weight to or thought to when they’re thinking about whether or not they’re content or complacent in the areas I have deemed important for most people finances spiritual life health and fitness relationships business and personal life now in each one of

these areas you’re just going to sit and think for a few moments on each do you feel like you’re content in these areas or do you feel like you are complacent in these areas so I have the definitions of content and complacent content is you are happy with things where they are currently content does not mean there is no room for improvement okay yeah I don’t want you to act like oh I’m not happy with anything

everything needs to get better unless that seems to be true for you but it doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement it just means as of right now you are satisfied with where things are maybe you’re actively trying to earn more money so you want more you want to improve that but you’re saving you have a good budget you’re doing all the things that you could so you’re content but you’re not necessarily complacent now the definition

of complacent is you know you need to devote more time and attention to a specific area you’ve not given enough effort or you have stopped trying to improve complacent sneaks up on you complacent is I’m not paying attention to this but it’s still happening in my life all of these areas of our lives are happening one way or another so are you content with where they at or are you complacent this shouldn’t take you more than

contentment vs. complacency

a few moments to decide whether you’re content or complacent in each area after you do that you have to jump to the projection part and this is the more important part in the time the one that should take more time so after you’ve kind of assessed okay I’m content or I’m complacent in each of these areas you’re going to ask yourself two different questions and you’re going to write out paragraphs if needed so the first thing

you’re going to write out is what does this area of your life look like if you do nothing so say with your current habits your current routines let’s just jump to health and fitness if you do nothing you just keep the status quo things just keep going how they’re going what does that look like in a year two years three years five years ten years it’s pretty easy to see where the trajectory is if you’re like

well I work out one day a week or zero days a week or I used to work out seven and now I work out two where do you think that trajectory is taking you that’s just in health and fitness so what does it look like go ahead and future cast that write it out what does it look like if you just keep things the way they are you don’t do anything now the second thing you’re going

to do that for every single area doesn’t matter if it’s content or complacent how you rated it every single area you’re going to write out both of these so what does that area look like if you do nothing now on the flip side future casting again what does this area of your life look like if you give it some attention daily over the next decade so going back to health and fitness what if I were to

projecting ten years out, both directions

pay attention to that every single day for the next 10 years I’m more mindful of what I eat I’m mindful of my stress I’m very disciplined with my training and how I work out what does it look like if you were to pay attention daily over decades or at least for the next 10 years what does that look like and you can do it for all of these health and fitness is a very easy one to

see and assess but if we’re talking about your business what does that look like if you if you do nothing you just keep things how they are okay now what happens if you pay attention to it daily over the next decade same with your personal life or your relationships more importantly your relationships it’s so easy to get complacent in all of your relationships what are you doing how are you actively trying to improve them what if

you were to pay attention to your relationship with your spouse or your kids each and every single day you pay daily attention to that to improving that thing over the next decade where would you be and what could you become and that’s it the first part of getting better in anything is going to be an assessment and this is the assessment of comfort for you where are you at are you content or are you complacent now

I don’t want to leave you hanging on the story for what happened after that night in the hotel room where I looked at where I was content and where I was complacent and ultimately I wasn’t happy with how complacent I was so I did something about it and what I did was I quit my job and I immediately went all in on the side hustle and that’s everything the side hustle needed to go full time was

things don’t get easier, you get better

my daily attention over decades and it didn’t take decades to go full time but I quit I went all in on doing the thing that ultimately moved my life forward and changed my trajectory for me and my family forever I went all in and it was not easy the first week after I quit my job and I went full time as an entrepreneur I thought things are going to be great and I made two hundred bucks

two hundred dollars I had a family of four at the time have a family of five now and my wife was like two hundred bucks like what are we going to do and I was like you are right so going all in wasn’t just like okay I’m going to pay a lot of attention to my business I went bananas in every way shape or form I started journaling every single day I started working early hours and

as long as it needed to get everything finished I was reading books I was taking courses I was hiring mentors I was doing each and every single thing that I could because I never wanted to mark the complacent box ever again I didn’t want that to happen in any of these areas now it can sneak up on you and I’m not perfect you’re not perfect but I never wanted to see complacent again and here’s the biggest

truth I learned in all of this at the end of the day things never get easier you get better so let’s get better together