Hey, what's up?
John Sonmez from simpleprogrammer.com.
Today, we're going be talking about balancing your social life and work as if you could.
This question comes from Miguel and he says, "Hi, John.
How do you deal with your social life while pursuing your dream?
Did you go through something like this?
A year ago, I stopped playing video games, TV, cut out all distractions and worked on
evenings on my dream.
Something that I can't seem to let go is going out on Friday and Saturday night.
I really like going out to dance and meet new people, but I hear that entrepreneurs
sacrifice everything and that they don’t have a social life.
Is there a balance?
Maybe cut Friday night?
By the way, I'm single, 25-year-old engineer.
Thank you.
Miguel."
This is a tough one.
The thing is like I'm not going to lie to you.
If you really want to—like if you're working a regular job and you want to pursue your
dream on the side, you want to build a side project, you want to build a business, you're
going to have to give up most of the things in your life.
I'll give you just for an example from my life.
I was working a full-time job.
Was it like—I guess it was 5 or 6 years ago and I got an opportunity to do Pluralsight
courses.
Not only was I doing Pluralsight courses at the time, but I was also running Simple Programmer
blog, doing my blog.
I don’t know if I was doing YouTube videos way back then.
I might have been doing some, maybe once a week.
I was doing a podcast, at least one podcast, and I was doing a lot of stuff: To build up
the Simple Programmer business, to build up my Pluralsight, to do Pluralsight courses.
Mostly, I was focused on Pluralsight courses.
I came to this point where I made this decision in my life where I was like, "Okay, look.
Here's this opportunity that lies in front of me.
It's my dream.
I want to be able to set myself up financially for the rest of my life to be able to retire
and essentially be able to do what I want to do.
I've got the opportunity to do it, but it's going to take a huge sacrifice.”
What I did was I said, "Okay, I'm going to do it."
For about 2-1/2 years, my life was kind of miserable.
I’ll admit it to you.
Basically, what I did—my schedule was this.
I would get up in the morning and I would go run or work out.
Then I would go and work my regular day at my regular job and as soon as I got home from
work, I would go—I guess I was working from home, but I would eat my dinner, I'd play
with my daughter a little bit, spend a little time with my wife or maybe an hour, an hour
and a half and then I would go to work.
I would work from like 7 until midnight, sometimes 1:00 every single day.
Every single day.
Then I would do the same thing on weekends.
Every once in a while, I would go out or do something, but I watch zero TV.
I watch zero movies.
I played zero video games.
I did not hang out with any friends.
I basically just worked my ass off for 2-1/2 years.
Now at the end of 2-1/2 years, I became a millionaire.
No shitting.
No shitting you.
True story.
Okay?
You can see the article that Fast Company did on me talking about me becoming one of
the first online developer training millionaires.
Was it worth?
Hell, yes!
It was worth it.
Would I do it again?
I don't know.
I don’t know if I have the stamina to do that shit again.
I'm still working really hard.
I'm still spending a lot of my time working.
I'm not working as hard as I was then.
If I had to do it over again, would I do it from the beginning?
Yes.
I would have to blink that out of my mind so I don’t remember how painful and hard
it was.
That doesn’t mean that that's the only road.
That doesn’t mean that that's only way you can go.
It doesn’t mean that you have to sacrifice at the level that I sacrificed or that I couldn’t
have been at least 80% successful giving myself Friday nights to go out and dance.
Maybe I could have done that, but are you willing to pay that price?
Because if you're not willing to pay that price, you're not going to make it.
Okay?
That's the thing.
It's like if you're not willing to pay that price, maybe you shouldn’t pursue your dream
because, you know, if you don’t have that level of commitment, when life gets hard,
when things get hard, when you have to make those sacrifices, you're not going to make
those sacrifices.
I tend to think that—I think a lot of people that have achieved high levels of success
what they'll do is they'll go back and they'll write these blogposts or they'll write these
books and they'll say, "Oh, yeah.
If I could go back to my 25-year-old self and tell him something, I would say, 'Don't
work so hard.
You're going to make it.'"
I hate when people say that.
It's like—I understand why they would say that and why they think that when they're
40 now and they're not working as hard, and they're still making it.
They forget that it took those 2-1/2 years, those 3 years of grind, that if they hadn’t
ground it out, if they hadn’t done worked so hard for that time and sacrificed everything
else that they would not have put themselves in the place to have the opportunity to now
relax and take it easier.
They wouldn’t have made it.
They wouldn’t have climbed up that hill if they didn’t put in that work and I don’t
know anyone that's been super successful that doesn’t have a story like mine.
It's just how it is, right?
Now, like I said, some of them will preach to you now and they'll say, "No.
You don’t have to work as hard.
Work smart.
Don't work hard.”
No, you got to work smart and hard.
That's the only way, right?
I'll give you—I think the person who I relate to the most on this, I've been really just
loving this stuff is Grant Cardone.
You can read—there're a couple of books I'll recommend.
I did some reviews on his books.
You could check out my review on The 10X Rule here, which is a book I highly recommend.
Then the other one I'd recommend which might be even better is Be Obsessed Or Be Average
by Grant Cardone.
You could check out the review I did here.
He gives it to you straight like I do.
It's not a popular message, I don’t think, but it's going to take a lot of hard work.
To answer your question, can you dance on Friday nights?
I don’t know.
You tell me.
You decide if you can do it.
If you're making progress, if you're happy with the progress that you're making, if you're
willing to give that up if you have to, then yeah, maybe.
But I can't answer that question for you.
I can't tell you what level of commitment and dedication that you're going to have to
pursue your dream.
I can tell you that if you're not willing to go to the level of giving it all up in
order to do that, you're probably not going to make it because it's going to get harder
and it's going to get more difficult.
Most people don't.
Most people don't make it.
Most people—I don’t advise the path for most people.
I wish more people would do it, but it's difficult.
You decide.
What is it worth to you and what are you willing to pray?
What is the price?
I did this video—I'll give you one more video here which is that you can have anything
you want if you're willing to pay the price.
What is the price and are you willing to pay it?
That's what it comes down to.
All right.
If you like this video, if you haven't been discouraged—I don’t mean to discourage
you, but if you'd like some encouragement and motivation because I also give some advice
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Talk to you next time.
Take care.