Entry – 005
I was brought up the same way that most people have been. I was told to go to school, get good grades, go to college, graduate and get a good job. I did the process, and although that works for many people it left something inside of me empty.
I graduated college in 2001, not the best timing, .com bubble burst, and a recession didn’t leave my career opportunities very abundant.
At the time, I would claim a victim mentality. It was all that I knew. I would find out later in life (and admit) that I was the one who choose to put my future in another’s hands.
I wish I knew then what I know now. I guess you have to go through soemthing that seems insurmountable in order to learn what you need to learn to defeat the enemy. During that time period I felt so empty, after following the program, and having such high hopes for something more, that result was brutal. Up until my late 20’s I just lived with it. I didn’t know another way.
At 26, a college graduate, mind you, I was slinging pizzas at a pizza chain making $500-ish a week. I was the manager, short for the guy who works all the time, like he owns the place with no real shot at getting paid more than a few pennies over minimum wage. $500 a week, some weeks 80 hours a week, EQUALS $6.25 an hour.
My breaking point from being content was when I asked the owner for a $20 a week raise. His reply, “I’ll give it to you but it’s your last raise.” I cracked!!!! Any last chance for growth was squashed from this path. For them, that was the totally wrong thing to say a guy like me. For me, it was totally the right thing to say, the thing I needed to hear.
At this moment I believe I started to attract the right circumstances into my life. I didn’t know what, where or how to transition from the trap I found myself in, in order to get to the freedom, I believed existed. My mind went to work. Still half broken, yet revived, I would just stand behind the counter at work and look out the window dreaming of something more. I didn’t know it at the time but I was casting out a signal so strong that the universe would put into motion a series of events that would lead me to the spot that I’m at today.
My path changed sharply, I met a man in the financial business that introduced me to another man in the financial business and within a year I found myself with multiple licenses in the financial industry chatting with people about how they could win with their finances. I was an independent contractor and in business for myself.
The entrepreneurial spirit was alive and in full force.
You can have a decent job, a decent income, a decent life—and still feel that gnawing sense that you’re leaving something on the table. That feeling isn’t greed; it’s a calling. It’s the conviction that you were built to make something, to build something, to carry more weight than the average person will ever be willing to pick up.
When that fire blazes within, feed it by pursuing something bigger than you can imagine.
One of the things I learned was that the more you want to change your life, the less you actually control the timing of your results. You can decide to start the business, make the call, launch the offer. You cannot decide whether it lands today, next month, or three years from now.
I was doing so much, and I was working so hard. There was no overnight success in my story. At times I felt like I had jumped out of the kettle and into the fire. My first few years I made very little. I think my first year I made like $5000-ish. I don’t really even know how I survived. I just remember every morning I filled my tank with the most power fuel that ever existed: BELIEF! and somehow I made it to the end of the day.
I just had to keep going.
Can’t Go Back
The belief was so strong I was willing to fight through anything in order to not go back.
I couldn’t go back to the old way of living and spending the next 30 years on autopilot.
I saw the status quo, I couldn’t do it.
– Clock in, clock out.
– Annual 3% raise.
– Two weeks of vacation if you’re lucky.
– The unspoken expectation that you should be grateful for it.
Meanwhile, there’s this voice in your head saying:
– “I’m not okay with just getting by.”
– “I’m not okay with letting my potential sit idle.”
– “I need to do something that has higher impact and higher upside.”
But that higher upside comes with a cost: higher risk.
This is the arena entrepreneurs live in—higher risk, higher reward, and the chance to call our own shots. The trade‑off is real: no guaranteed paycheck, no HR department managing your career path, no safety net beyond the one you build.
And if you’re like me, you didn’t enter that arena with everyone cheering you on.
The People Who Love You (And Want You Safe)
Most of the people around you want to protect you. They love you, but they’re not wired the way you are.
So they say things like:
– “Why don’t you just get a good job?”
– “Think about the benefits.”
– “You’ve got a family to support.”
– “Is now really the best time to take that kind of risk?”
From their perspective, they’re right. They see risk; but you see possibility.
Where they see the comfort of a 401(k) match and a predictable paycheck, you see a ceiling you can’t live with. You’re not willing to sell out the upside—the top‑side potential of your life—for a safer version of “good enough.”
That doesn’t mean you’re reckless. It means you’re unwilling to wake up at 60 and realize you never really tried.
So you start.
You register the business, build the website, talk to prospects, post the content. You expect the world to respond quickly because your effort is sincere and your intentions are good.
And then reality hits.
Misguided Expectations
In the early years, here’s what happens to most entrepreneurs (it certainly happened to me):
– You underestimate how long it takes to gain traction.
– You overestimate how quickly people will trust you with their money.
– You assume that massive effort on Monday should show up as visible results by Friday.
When it doesn’t, you start to question everything:
– “Maybe I’m not cut out for this.”
– “Maybe the market is saturated.”
– “Maybe I’m just unlucky.”
The truth is usually simpler and much more annoying:
You are still in the foundation phase.
You’re judging the house as if it should be finished when the concrete is barely dry.
I heard something early in business that stuck with me: “It would be insane to judge a house as finished when the foundation has just been laid.”
That’s entrepreneurship in the beginning. You lay footings in the mud. You spend time, energy, money. From the outside, it still looks like a vacant lot. From the inside, you know you’re pouring everything into a structure no one else can see yet.
That gap between the effort you’re putting in and the visible results you’re getting out can break you mentally if you let it.
The Only Thing You Control
After enough cycles of:
– attempt → fail
– attempt → nothing happens
– attempt → minor progress, major disappointment
I realized something that genuinely changed how I operate:
I cannot control outcomes in the short term. I can only control my actions.
That’s it.
I cannot force a prospect to say yes.
I cannot force a market to move in my favor.
I cannot force referrals to appear on my timeline.
But I can:
– Make the call.
– Send the proposal.
– Refine the process.
– Learn the skill.
– Show up again tomorrow.
So the philosophy became:
Urgent with my actions. Patient with my results.
It didn’t start as a cute phrase.
It started as survival.
It was all about surviving the mental game. Urgent with my actions, patient with my results.
Urgent with my actions means I treat today like it matters, like its the last chance, the opportunity disappears if I don’t go all in.
Patient with my results means I treat the next 3–5 years like they matter even more. I keep going every day until I build up enough in the pipeline so that the work only has one option and that is to eventually explode out the end of the pipeline.
As a bit of a control freak, this was hard to accept. I wanted to control everything: the timeline, the conversion rate, the outcomes. Letting go of that illusion of control felt like weakness at first. In reality, it was the thing that allowed me to stay in the game.
My sprints for instant gratification had to evolve into urgent hustle with a marathon mindset.
Urgent With Actions: Building Pressure in the Pipeline
Urgency in entrepreneurship is not about panic; it’s about intentional pressure.
Urgent with my actions means:
– Building the pipeline even when there are no immediate leads.
– Making follow‑up calls even when I feel like “they would call if they were interested.”
– Refining systems even when there’s no client asking for it today.
– Creating content and educating even when engagement is low.
Picture an old‑school water pump.
At first, you push the handle and nothing happens. You push again. Nothing. You start to wonder if the pump even works. But if you keep pumping, you build pressure. Eventually, the water breaks through. Then, for a while, a small effort keeps the flow going.
That’s what urgency does: it builds pressure in the system until results break loose.
Most entrepreneurs quit before the pressure builds enough. It’s not that they lack talent or ideas. They lack a certain kind of faith—the kind that fuels patience.
Patient With Results: Faith in the Process
Here’s the painful part: you can do the right things, in the right way, for what feels like a very long time before you see meaningful payoff.
That’s where patience comes in—not passive, not sit‑on‑the‑couch and wait, but taking active patience.
Active patience says:
– “I will keep doing the work as if the breakthrough is coming, even when I don’t see it yet.”
– “I will measure myself by the actions I control, not by the scoreboard I can’t fully control.”
– “I will build like a bad winter is coming, and I need this foundation to hold when it hits.”
You stay patient not because you’re naïve, but because you understand compounding. You know that consistent, aligned effort has a delayed reaction. The results compound later than the work, not alongside it.
Why So Many Entrepreneurs Burn Out
Most entrepreneurs who quit don’t do it because they suddenly hate their vision. They quit because they can’t handle the emotional gap between their effort and their current results.
It can feel like this:
– You’re working harder than you ever did in a job.
– You’re thinking about the business 24/7.
– You’re sacrificing evenings, weekends, comfort.
– And the scoreboard still doesn’t show what you know you’re capable of.
That gap can drive you crazy.
Day after day, you put in the work and the world responds with a whisper instead of a roar.
If you don’t have a philosophy to anchor you, the default reaction is to back off—to slow down, to “take a break,” to distract yourself. But backing off exactly when you should be pushing through is how pressure dissipates. It’s how you end up with years of motion and not much progress.
Urgent with actions, patient with results is what keeps you from doing that.
It says:
– “I’m going to keep applying pressure.”
– “I’m going to keep building this pipeline.”
– “I’m going to keep sharpening this offer.”
– “I’m going to keep showing up, even when it feels like no one is watching.”
Because someone is watching: the future you, the version of you who either gets to enjoy the compound effect of that pressure—or has to start over from zero because you let it go.
Keeping the Fire Lit
Here’s the hard truth: the world will not constantly motivate you. Clients won’t clap for every silent grind session. Your friends won’t always understand why you’re still at it. The results won’t always arrive when it would be convenient for your morale.
The only way to keep going is to keep stoking that internal fire.
That means:
– Feeding your mind with people, ideas, and stories that remind you why this path matters.
– Re‑reading your own reasons—your “why”—when you’re tired.
– Surrounding yourself with doers, not just commentators.
– Taking care of your body so your energy doesn’t collapse before the business takes off.
– Staying brutally honest with yourself about where you can improve.
You have to keep throwing fuel on the flame:
– Wins, no matter how small,write them down.
– Lessons from failures, capture them, don’t just endure them.
– Evidence that you’re getting better, even if the numbers aren’t there yet.
Urgent with actions, patient with results isn’t just about revenue; it’s about character. It’s about who you are becoming as you build.
The Round Up
If you’re reading this as an entrepreneur in the grind, here’s what this philosophy might look like, practically, in your life:
Urgent with actions
– You set non‑negotiable daily metrics: outreach, follow‑ups, content, learning.
– You treat time with the seriousness when others are playing.
– You move quickly on decisions that align with your vision instead of staying stuck in endless “planning.”
Patient with results
– You stop refreshing your metrics every hour looking for validation.
– You commit to a 12–36 month horizon for your strategy, not 12 days.
– You judge yourself by whether you honored your process, not whether this week’s numbers hit an arbitrary target.
The world is full of people who want the reward structure of an entrepreneur with the emotional comfort of an employee. That combination doesn’t exist.
You chose this path because you knew you had more to give.
You stay on this path by accepting that you can’t control when the payoff shows up—only how hard, how smart, and how consistently you show up.
Urgent with your actions.
Patient with your results.
If you can live in that tension—day after day, month after month—you don’t just increase your odds of success.
You become the kind of person who deserves it.
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