Hey guys, Dan here and I want to share some personal things in this video and
address the topic of big change and taking a risk and really putting you
back up against the wall, if you will. Ever since I can remember I've been
encouraging people to do this. I can remember back in Vancouver over a decade
ago going on a date with this girl and the date didn't go anywhere fun but it
did lead to her quitting her job and starting her business and all that sort
of thing. I've always encouraged people to go for their dreams and take a big
risk and in my own life and I want to share some of those details about the
risks I've taken in my own life but in my own life that's what I have done a
lot and here I am, you know, with this audience talking to you now and whether
or not you know what I do a lot of work one on one and with group training with
aspiring entrepreneurs with entrepreneurs and with ENFPs and and
other people about their personality type and living a better life and all
that sort of thing and sometimes I find it harder now to give people that real
push in terms of taking a massive risk and making a big change and it's not
that I don't end up encouraging them to do it but I find that on my end I'd hear
this I don't know old Canadian play it safe retire voice sometimes where it's
someone else taking that risk where when it's me I like I just go for it
whatever worst case I'll become a male prostitute in Costa Rica figure it out I
didn't for the record at least not for that long
20 bucks it's 20 bucks but when you're advising someone else it's like a
responsibility you take on and I guess that's why I'm filming this is I want to
put it out there my own risks I've taken and and bring that into sort of a
conversation if you will so long story short and then we'll have a long story
long is I've never had a safety net when I we go back to kind of my
entrepreneurial journey in my location-independent live around the
world journey looking at about a decade here that's been going on when I started
copywriting so the last year I was in Canada I had no money like and I told
the story before it the reason started it is I had no money I owed a
friend some money that she had lent me being the angel he is and he'd said okay
well you haven't paid me back in a while and I'm managing this bar and we need
someone basically to clean the toilets like I was the assistant to the
assistant to the bartender and I was you know in my mid-20s at this point and the
assistant to the assistant part owner was like 19 and all the people from
college that I knew came into the bar that night as well so that's really
awesome I did that for two nights and it actually wasn't too bad there's a really
cute bartender we kind of got along that was nice but nonetheless is at the end
of it I got sick I was exhausted and I made a couple hundred bucks it was like
this is not how I can really live this is a terrible way to be doing it so I
decided I would start copywriting and jumped right in put up a note on
Facebook got a few clients early on and just started doing it and the whole time
like I would decide whether or not I ate based on getting clients and getting
business and that was pretty much my whole first year of copywriting there
were some ups like some three four thousand dollar if I'm remembering right
at least contracts but generally those were few and far between and it was like
struggling and whatever I earned is how I forded to to keep living and all that
there was no you know safety net with any of it then I decided I had to make a
change and I had to do something different this wasn't working I was
massively stressed if you've seen the video I made on the ENFP dark side
that's where I first came across that where I was just like overly stressed
accusing my friends of some conspiracy theories and all this sort of stuff and
I knew I needed to make a change and decided I would make this move to Costa
Rica and I can't claim to remember all the details of my thought process at the
time like I'm probably reimagining some of it right our memories are pretty
flawed as people but basically I decided like I need to do this one way or the
other and if I keep waiting until I have the money or things are perfect it's
just not going to ever happened so I bought a ticket that got me to New York
and then from New York I think I got that on points and then from New York I
bought a one-way ticket to Costa Rica and had like a four six-week window
something like that before went between when I bought it and when
would go and I just thought hey I'll find a way to make it work and I I sold
some furniture and some things before I left I had a couple of nice stereos I
bought and things like that so by time I got to Costa Rica I had about two
thousand twenty five hundred dollars something like that if I remember right
if anyone really cares you can hack my bank account and find the records but I
think it was something like that and got to Costa Rica and that was it like that
was the money I had if I survived and or not was based on getting clients and
making it happen and the thing is in this particular case and this video is
going off on a tangent but you could kind of tell from the beginning it was
just gonna be like a Dan talk video and that's what we're doing so when I got
there I realized Costa Rica was way more expensive than I thought it would be
like you're thinking yeah Costa Rica it'll be cheap but live on a few hundred
dollars like my rent when I finally found a place was like a thousand or
twelve hundred dollars US dollars a month it was more than what I'd been
paying in Canada and a lot of food and groceries and that was not cheap
ultimately though despite some stress I made it work and actually my income went
way up and then I moved to New York and yada yada yada seven years later Here I
am still living abroad living in Europe and the thing is is it worked I think
partly because I did have my back up against the wall because I did have to
make it work and when I think back like the what if on one hand you could say
like wow it was a really big risk like I had no extra savings I went down there
are so many things could have went wrong maybe but even looking back and like
what's the worst that really would have happened I ran out of money
I was totally screwed I either sucked it up and got a job somewhere down there
like a hostel or it's a tour guide or doing something or begged someone back
home to send me money and flew back home okay it still wouldn't have been the end
of the world that wouldn't have been that bad you know it can look like it
will be the end of the world when we're doing these things but the way I always
looked at it is okay if I make this move you know maybe I end up like in debt in
that case it would have been end up and or debt but maybe I end up in debt or
maybe I missed some kind of income I could have made maybe I don't
right but it's probably still better than the regret of going or not going
for it I should say right the regret of thinking oh yeah remember that that time
and the funny thing is when I was going to make that move I was supposed to do
it with a friend and we were going to share an apartment down in Costa Rica
and that kind of thing and I haven't been in touch with him a lot recently I
have no clue what his life is doing I'm sure it's amazing or whatever else but
what I do know is he kind of bailed at the last minute and that's what he
really wanted as well was to go live somewhere awesome and and be location
independent and I as far as I know was still kind of living in his hometown and
all that and I don't know again I haven't been in touch but there's
probably some regrets there on his end as well and that was one of the things
that always drove me is giving value to regret when you're working out that
equation so if I'm looking at okay worst case scenario if I go for it okay you
know a week of prostitution at Central America whatever it happens to be beg
some friends for money come home get it on the other hand is if I don't go for
it sometimes it's hard to quantify that because we're like yeah if I don't go
for it life just stays the same it's kind of okay in this little boring and
stressed or I'm unhappy but on top of that I like to add the regret like I
like to do that whole Braveheart grandparent and the wheelchair acts
there's not wheel chair rocking chair exercise we were looking back at your
life and saying like what would I really have wanted to do if I'm looking back
what would I prefer I did and whenever I did that there was never a time when I
look back and said like definitely when I'm 80 looking back on my life I would
say yeah yeah I wish I had a just stayed put and taking the safe route when I was
you know 27 28 that's that's what your 20s are for taking the safe route so
glad I kept it that job I didn't like or whatever like it's not gonna happen and
so I always like that now this whole point of the video when I started it
again this is a little throwback to some of the videos I first was putting up
when you - totally not thought-out just like hey
I'm gonna turn on a camera but the original point when I turned it on was
to talk about not having that safety net and you know getting into that story
there and the truth is that was not the only time many times when I made big
moves I have not had a safety net you know some people talk about okay I'm
gonna go for it when I have 12 months of living expenses in the bank and all that
and that might be the right move for you but it may not be personally on the coax
and as I've worked with more and more people more times than not the you know
having a big safety net kind of being able to step in and out of a job like
okay I'm gonna try my own business and after two months if it's not going
really well then I'm gonna go get a job I haven't really seen that work out for
people whereas not having a safety net and just going for it to make it work
tend to get better results from what I have seen here's really the bottom line
with it is whatever it is you're thinking of doing that you want to do if
you go for it you're going to be better off no matter what maybe you'll hit the
wall and it will totally fail and I've had that happened plenty of times but
when that happens you're gonna learn something you're gonna be closer to
where you want to be and usually it's not nearly as bad as we think it is if
you're someone who's debating between like leaving a job first and doing your
own thing you can go back to the job if it's not a job that you really like that
much and it doesn't pay you millions of dollars a year it's probably not gonna
be hard to find that job again a year from now so what are you really risking
by going for it and doing your own thing not a lot at least by the math and at
least not emotionally it might suck and it might be super stressful for a little
bit but I'll tell you when you go for it it will be exciting it will be actually
fun more times than not and it will be something like you're never going to
regret doing it and that's if it doesn't work if it does work well we know where
that goes right you take that risk you get rewarded for it and you end up
trading a life that you actually want probably not gonna regret that either
the main thing I want to share here is just with my own experience I
never had that safety net I never had kind of a plan B I love that Will Smith
quote oh I have a plan B it distracts from plan a I never have a plan B so
true for me in my own life and sometimes when I may be in the comments with
people on that I might play it a little safe because I almost feel this
responsibility like I don't want to push people too much to just like jump into
something if it really might be disastrous but what I realized
reflecting on it is in my own life that was the only way I ever succeeded at
things and most of the time it works out for people when they really go for it do
things right and and give it a chance and when I've done it I've never had
that safety net I've never had that plan we take that into account when you're
making your own decisions I do realize as well that when you're coming to me
whether it's in the comments or working with me as a coach you're probably
working with me because you do want someone to say you can do it take the
risk you know if you wanted someone to tell you to play it safe and sit back
and never go for it then you would probably not work with me so that's it
thank you for watching subscribe to the channel give it a thumbs up all that
kind of good stuff and thanks for putting up with the rambley long gist
you know kind of video catch you in the next one soon
you