Hey! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps! Now today, let's
talk about why you should never start a project when you're absolutely desperate!
Last week I was in a conversation with someone and we were talking about
passive income. I was talking about apps as a passive income stream and how it -
how it works for me. It's not a great amount, but it's, you know, it does pretty
well. And he was talking about how he had run like a an eBay business in the past
and he's looking to get into Amazon FBA so they fulfilled by Amazon,
dropshipping type of thing. I mean, it seems to be really popular at the moment.
A lot of people getting into it. In fact, I think it must be just as bad as apps
is to just get people to notice your products because everybody seems to be
going to Alibaba and everybody seems to be doing the Amazon FBA thing. And even
I looked into it this a little bit in the past, I just never really
started down that route. I thought that sounds like it sounded more
difficult to me then than the Guru's make it sound. And I just I didn't
really want to go down that route. But anyway, so what we're talking about the
passive income, I said I asked him if he'd started the Amazon thing yet and he
said - he said no. Because the problem was, he doesn't have a lot of drive to do it.
Said, "Y'know, I've been reading a lot about it. I just don't have the drive to get started." And
the problem is ithat he's doing pretty well with his job and
there's other side business that he doesn't really - he just doesn't have
the drive to get started. I could totally understand that. But the thing
was, because I could - because I could remember being an employee or
working in a contract and thinking I hope I lose this contract. When I was
an employee, I can remember thinking I hope I lose this job.. Well,
I didn't want - I wouldn't publicly admit this to anybody. I wanted to keep
the job. I wanted to have the income. I was really miserable at that
job and this little voice in me, one it was hoping that somebody would make
things happen for me by firing me or letting me go or making me redundant or
anything like that. Because then, I would have the excuse. Then I would have to
drive to get started with a with a business or doing something on my own or
being a contractor all this, you know, all the things I thought about doing but I
was too afraid to start. And I just thought, if only something happens to
give me that drive to do it. I know exactly what that's like. In fact,
when I started the app, it was - I think one of the things
that was really hard with starting the first app and actually going out -
because I started doing it myself and when you do it yourself it's a lot
easier because you're just wasting your own time but, you know, I would get to a
certain point where I think - just two other things get in the way and I just
didn't have time to complete it. So, I invested some money in hiring somebody -
to hiring some developers to do the code for me. And then I checked over the code
made sure everything was right. That was my first outsource project. And the
scary thing about it was, it was not something that I needed. It was
something that I was spending money on and everybody - and everybody
was saying the same kind of thing. "Why don't you just hold off? Might
just hold off and wait." And everything like that. But the thing was, I
didn't want to wait until it was absolutely necessary. There's one thing
that I've learned over the years is that when you're absolutely desperate for
something to happen, things never go the way that that they're supposed to.
There was a book, uh, it was a - it was an OK book with a really good title by
Harvey Mackay. I read about ten years ago. It was called "Dig Your Well Before
You're Thirsty" and like said the best thing about the book is the title. So, you
save yourself some time. And basically it was - the Dig Your Well Before You're
Thirsty," it was about networking. The book was about networking and he talked about
how the fact that the time to build your network is before you need
your network. You don't build your network when you absolutely need sales.
Or you need a job or something like that. You sort of build it as you go and then
it's there when you need it. And you see this all the time. You see people
who update their LinkedIn profiles when they they think their jobs in
trouble. Or when they're looking at moving jobs. But when they're in a good
job, then they don't - they don't touch it because they don't feel like they
have the need then on the drive. They don't have the thing and you can
tell with a - like they say, the best time to look for a job is when you
already have a job because you just have this confidence, you don't have that
desperation in your voice and like when you go to interviews. And the best time
and when you're like - if you're dating now - I remember when I was dating as a
teenager, when you had a girlfriend everybody fancies you and when you don't
have a girlfriend then nobody fancies you. Thereis a sort of
this desperation and everything like that and I find this to do a lot with
apps. If I've done the apps when it absolutely needed it to happen, I think
everything would have gone wrong. It's just - it's just - there's something cosmic
at play. And in fact, I had a client once who - and this might sound a
bit sad but like we're working on the project and we're about halfway through
the project. I told him I was very upfront about the fact that the app
market is very difficult , you know, building the app is the easy part of it.
Getting people to download it - that's the hard part, all that kind of stuff that
I'm very open and honest about that. But then, one day he said to me, said
"Eric, I sure hope this works, cuz I bet the farm on this thing. And it was not a
lot of money. I guess, it was like - it was like 3 grand. I mean, it was a really
small project, but he was very, very nervous about it. And then the, you know,
and in a way, it made me very nervous to. Made the developers very nervous.
And then we got this perfectionism seeking in and we didn't want to go live.
And it went way too far in developing all this kind of stuff because
of desperation. So, for those of you who are thinking about doing it - if I know
most of you, guys, have already done an app and you're already doing that and
you're learning as you go, the same way I do. But for those of you who haven't yet got
started the worst time to get started is when you absolutely positively need it
to work. The best time to get started is if you already have - if you have a job,
you've got a very good source of income. You can get started on this kind of
stuff. You could play around a little bit, make things work, don't wait.
Don't wait like I did. Like just waiting for the excuse to get started.
Because sometimes, you have to be the person who gives yourself who pushes
yourself to make it happen anyway. I hope - that hope that makes sense today. Hope
you guys had a really great weekend and I'll talk to you tomorrow!