Welcome to the Unshackled Owner Podcast. Today, I want to talk to you guys about this thing that just drives me out of my mind. Start doing your dream, because you don’t need to wait for years and years and years and tons of experience and so on for most of us to pursue the thing that we’re excited about.
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Go Big Or Go Home With Aaron Young
The Unshackled Owner episode seven. Go big or go home, that’s what I have to say for you guys today. Today, what I want to talk about is we’re coming into the end of the year. I don’t know when you’re actually listening to the podcast. If you’re a subscriber, you’re getting this just a few days before the end of the year. Christmas is over, we’re moving in towards New Year’s Eve and January 1st and 2017.
Today, I want to talk to you guys about this thing that just drives me out of my mind. Here’s what it is. I want you to think about this and I want you to think about this with a learner’s mind, with the ability to go, “I’m going to leave all of my predispositions out of this discussion just for a couple of minutes. I’m going to listen to Aaron and I’m going to just see what he has to say and see if maybe there’s any value there. Maybe there’s some kind of a revelation there, maybe I can see things differently for the first time as I go into this discussion for these next couple of minutes.” Here we go.
I was on an airplane the other day and I was talking to a young lady. She was talking to me about her goals and her big dreams. She was explaining how she’d gone to a couple years of school, she was going to finish her degree. She wants to be a nutritionist. Right now, she’s working in a restaurant as a cook really, not a chef, small restaurant, she’s cooking, she’s been learning, she’s taking this degree in nutrition so she can be a nutritionist.
Once she’s a nutritionist, she wants to go out and work and maybe help develop recipes that will be good for people’s health and so on. From there, eventually, her big goal is to someday be a food critic where she can travel the world and eat different foods and write about them. I said, “Why are you going through this long protracted idea?” She goes, “I don’t think that anybody would ever take me seriously if I didn’t have my nutrition degree, if I hadn’t actually cooked, if I hadn’t been doing something at a corporate level for a while and then I went and wrote.”
I hear this all the time. A lot of the time from young people but not always. I was on the phone with a guy that was almost 60 years old a couple days ago who had the same attitude. Here’s the deal. First of all, if you want to get a nutrition degree, go be a nutritionist. I think that’s great. If you want to work in small kitchens as a cook, that’s great. If you want to try and develop recipes, that’s great.
Go Big Or Go Home: That’s what your goal is, that’s your dream. Get going, start doing it.
If your real dream is to be a food critic and travel the world and eat amazing foods and write about it and that’s what your goal is, that’s your dream. Then for heaven’s sake, get going, start doing it. I said, “If you’re going to go through, if you believe that this is the process you must go through, then fine, do it. But do me a favor and this week, I want you to do something. Maybe it’s you’re going to make something at home and then you’re going to describe what the dish is and you’re going to just do a review of something you made for yourself. Or you’re going to go to a local restaurant and you’re going to eat something and you’re going to do a video on Facebook Live or you’re going to do something.”
But start doing your dream, because you don’t need to wait for years and years and years and tons of experience and so on for most of us to pursue the thing that we’re excited about. It starts off in the school system and that’s why you hear this a lot with young people. They feel that they must go through this. They’ve got to get great grades in high school, they’ve got to get involved in lots of different clubs and so on so that they’ve got a great resume, they’ve got a great SAT or ACT score, they’re going to get into a great school, they’ve got to get a degree without going too deeply into debt, they’ve got to participate in things there so that their CV even looks better.
Their resume will let them leave that college with whatever debt they might have, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe no debt but years of time invested, so they can go out and get a job for 15 or 20 bucks an hour and start paying their dues and working their way up the ladder. I say, if you want to be a lawyer, you want to be a doctor, you want to be an engineer, you want to be a school teacher. I get it. Do that, no problem.
But if you want to be a business owner … You’re listening to this podcast because you want to be in business or you’re in business. I’m just telling you right now, school is useful but not necessary for most businesses that we want to start. Maybe you don’t like that answer, maybe you think that I’m all wet, maybe that school was the best thing that you ever did. If so, I celebrate you and I give you big ol’ high five and big wet kiss on the cheek and good for you.
I’m going to tell you, 80% of the world’s billionaires did not finish college. While I’m not a billionaire, I live an incredibly blessed life, fulfilled life, abundant life. I got one year of junior college under my belt. What I did, even when I was doing that, was started the first business along with a friend. Started the first business at eighteen years old as college kids. By the time it was time to go back to another year of college, I was making so much money I thought, “Why in the world would I go back to college when I can be doing these other things?”
Here’s the deal. The school systems and the traditional thinking and the mindset of most, not all, but most work-a-day people and well-meaning loved ones who want the best for you says, “Don’t get lost in these dreams.” Get your feet on the ground, get focused on trade. Get into something where you can get a job and you can get benefits and you can get maybe some kind of decent company that gives you even a 401K or some kind of matching benefit or something. At least start paying into social security and make sure that you’re paying the MediCare so that someday the government can provide a check for you and you’ll be okay. You’ll be able to get a job and you’ll be able to have some security and all this stuff.
If you’re like that or if you’ve given that advice, I just really want you to think. Now, you’re a business owner, this is going to resonate with you. If you’re an owner, especially if you have employees, this is going to resonate with you. If you’re somebody who’s thinking about going into business but you’re still doing your nine to five job, I want you to think about this. Something my dad told me years ago, when I was still a kid.
Go Big Or Go Home: The business owners, The doors are shut and they’re having discussions and they’re playing with people’s lives.
He said, “People show up to work,” and he was a work-a-day employee. People show up to work, and he said, “But there’s the management people and the owners back there. The doors are shut and they’re having discussions and they’re playing with people’s lives.” That’s how my dad saw it, they’re playing with people’s lives, they’re making decisions behind those closed doors, then result in coming in and letting people go, laying them off, firing them, cutting their benefits, changing their territory, transferring them to a new city, whatever. My dad saw that as a predatory thing. That was an adversarial thing to his safety net.
As an owner and who’s employed hundreds of people over the years, I will say that’s exactly right. I sit in meetings and I make decisions about people’s lives. I’ll tell you what, the greatest way to get out from being underneath my thumb or anybody else’s, under my plans for my business, the best way to get on to a place where you’re in control of your destiny is to start your own business and go for the gold.
I called this episode Go Big or Go Home because here’s the thing, most people that I meet who are starting a business are thinking little tiny thoughts. They’re thinking, “How can I make $3,000 a month? How can I make $5,000 a month? Wouldn’t it be great if I could make $10,000 a month? If I could make $100,000 a year, I would have the world by the tail.” You know what, if you’re making $50,000, jumping to 70 or 80 or $100,000 is a dramatic improvement. I’d say definitely, if you’re at $50,000 a year and you want to get to $100,000, take bold action to get you there.
I want to tell you something else. The people who are thinking in increments of, “If I could make an extra thousand a month, if I could make an extra $25,000,” or whatever you’re thinking, you’ll probably get the thing that you’re thinking about, you’ll probably get to it. If that’s your goal, you’ll probably get to it.
I want to tell you something. In the same amount of time that it takes you to get to that small incremental adjustment, you could also do a gigantic, not incremental but you could have a dynamic growth in your business. Instead of saying, “I want to make an extra thousand a month,” you could say, “I want to make an extra $50,000 a month or $100,000 a month.” Because as our president-elect, Donald Trump says, “If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you may as well think big.” If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you may as well think big.
Go Big Or Go Home: If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you may as well think big.
I look at the people that I know who are knocking it out of the park over and over and over again and they’re not trying to think about, “How can I make a few thousand bucks more? Or how can I make enough money to get that nicer car? What could I do so that I could afford a slightly nicer house?” They’re thinking about, “How do I create tremendous value?” If it’s on a small scale, they might be saying, “How can I make an extra quarter million or half million dollars this year?”
I’ll tell you what, it might be as easy as making one decent real estate investment and flipping it. It might be as easy as jumping into the middle of something that’s an up and coming industry. I have a friend right now who is making a big splash in Cannabis related products because in many states now, Cannabis is legal. He’s not trying to sell Cannabis, he’s looking at ways of how do we create businesses around Cannabis related products, which could be sleep aids, it could be pain relief, it could be an alternative to opiates in traditional pharmaceuticals, it could be any number of things.
Whatever it is, the idea is how can we get in front of a big industry that’s just emerging and make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars or create something that has grounds underneath it so that we’re a good acquisition target where we might make an extra two or three million dollars or more. That’s big thinking, that’s go big or go home thinking.
What I want to suggest to you, as we start 2017, and I’m going to tell you, I think 2017 and 2018 are going to be freaking amazingly abundant years. I’m not saying that because I’m such a big Trump fan, I’m not any of that. I think what we’ve got right now is we’ve got all the players in our politics, the House, the Senate and the White House that are all Republican. They’ve got specific agendas they’ve wanted to get through for eight years and there’s going to be a honeymoon period where good things are going to happen.
I believe that that includes a reduction in corporate taxes, a reduction in personal income taxes, an influx of money that’s going to have to be reinvested. I really believe there’s going to be infrastructure jobs that are going to create lots of blue collar work and opportunities for business owners to jump into the middle local projects. Remember, people get wealthy based on the velocity of money, how fast the money is changing hands. There’s going to be a lot of money and it’s going to be changing hands.
Also, if you’re going into other more traditional investments, even like bonds, the interest rates are going to start to nudge up to hold back inflation and you’re going to see more money coming in from overseas to just sit and be safe because they can get a better interest rate than they’ve been able to get for the last eight or nine years.
There’s a lot of cool things that are going to happen. Banks are going to be relaxing their lending practices. There’s going to be an explosion of new houses being built and there’s going to be a lot of cool stuff happening in 2017, in 2018.
Go Big Or Go Home: The biggest obstacle to gaining real wealth, the biggest obstacle, is fear.
My encouragement for you is how big are you willing to dream? Because if you’re going to be dreaming, if you’re going to be planning, if you’re be thinking, you may as well be thinking big. The biggest obstacle to gaining real wealth, the biggest obstacle, is fear. People are afraid to think big. People think, “Oh, I’m not qualified. I can’t do it. I’ll be embarrassed. What if people make fun of me?”
If you think small, you’re only going to get small results. What I want you to do as we start moving into this year is I want you to write some things down, I want you to write down what would you love to achieve. Not whether you think maybe you can do. I don’t want you to set an intention that’s like a wussy intention that’s like, “Oh, if I could just make five percent more. If we could just increase sales by this much.” I want you to get excited. I wanted to make you tingle all the way down to your toes.
When you look at that goal, you go, “Son of a gun, I could really be on to something.” I want you to set a goal that’s huge. I want you to write it down and I want you to think new thoughts that would make it possible. You can’t use your old thinking to get a dramatically bigger goal. You’ve got to come up with new thoughts, new thinking.
Let me tell you what I’m doing, here’s what we’re doing with my company. We’ve made a decision that 2017, we are going to, at Laughlin Associates, we’re going to help setup 10,000 new companies. Along with that, with every new company that gets setup, we’re going to take a portion of the profits. We’re not raising our prices to do this, but we’re going to provide, there’s a great program out there that I’m getting involved in. I’ll tell you more about that later.
With every single new company times 10,000, we’re going to provide 100 meals through this big worldwide program, 100 meals to people that are in need in the United States and all over the world. We’re going to be part of feeding a billion people, we’re providing a billion meals in 2017. That’s what we’re going to do. Is that so cool?
Guess what? As we’re talking to our affiliates, as we’re talking to our friends, as we’re talking to those that we do programs with and speak on their stages, they’re getting excited. They’re like, “Oh my gosh, how do I get involved? I want to be a part of that. Maybe we can drive leads to you guys, we have all these leads that maybe we can drive …” You know why? People get excited about a big idea.
If I said, “Hey, you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to sell 50 more companies a month than we did last year.” That would still be good. But when I say, “You know what, we’re going to 200 new companies each week and we’re going to help setup 10,000 new companies.” Guess what? Let me give you a little bit more thinking big. I don’t have this down to the decimal point but here’s the deal.
In 2015, 82% of all new jobs that were created, 82% of new jobs created were created by companies of 100 employees or less. 82% of new jobs were created by small business. The Chamber of Commerce calls anything less than 100 employees a small business. 87.6% of GDP was created by companies of 50 employees or less. 87% of gross domestic product was created by companies of 50 employees or less. When we help small businesses grow, we make a giant dent in the economy.
If I can get 10,000 new companies setup, 10,000 and if they can hire one employee, that makes a gigantic difference. Then if we can feed 100 people for every one of the 100 of the 10,000, that’s a million meals. If I do that, think about the difference that makes in people’s lives. Guys, think big thoughts.
Go Big Or Go Home: Being unshackled is cutting the bounds, cutting these tethers, these stupid ropes.
This wasn’t supposed to be about me, but this is about being an unshackled owner. Part of being unshackled is cutting the bounds, cutting these tethers, these stupid ropes, these strings that hold you back from becoming what you can be because you’re afraid or because you’re embarrassed or because you just don’t feel qualified. Let me just give you a hint. Nobody feels qualified. Everybody. The ones that make epic differences are the ones who feel the fear and do it anyway.
I want you to feel the fear, I want you to get the enthusiasm, get excited, write a big goal and go for that big goal and then come up with new thinking that will help you get to the big goal, because people want to follow a leader. The way to get unshackled is be the one with a clear vision, a clear path, you’re the leader, you know where we’re going, people will follow on behind you, they will naturally become infected with your enthusiasm. They will tell their friends. They’ll work harder for a big idea than they ever will for money.
Go big or go home as you go into 2017. Man, I hope that together as we push forward into 2017, you’re going to let me know what your big ideas are, you’re going to write me notes, you’re going to put quotes in the comments section, you’re going to write to us, you’re going to get on the freedom column, maybe you’re going to be ready for The Unshackled Owner intensive program.
We’re going to build powerful companies. We’re going to things that are going to make a gigantic difference in our country, in our world, more importantly in our neighborhoods, in our families, in our churches, in our clubs, in our private relationships, in our marriages, in the way that we help our fellow beings, the way we help those that are less fortunate. We can feed people, we can serve people out of the abundance, out of the overflow.
That comes only when you think big, when you quit thinking small and you decide that, “You know what, as long as I’m going to be thinking anyway, I might as well think big.” That is your message as you set your intentions for 2017 to become an unshackled owner, to kick the butt of anything you’ve done in the past and reach new heights, new excitement and live the life you’ve always want to live.
That’s what we’re excited for and I hope you’re going to join me back, subscribe to the podcast, tell your friends, share it. Let’s build the enthusiasm, let’s build the movement, let’s build 10,000 new companies this next year and let’s change your life and make your life the unshackled life, make your life the one you’ve always dreamed of. I’ll see you next week here on The Unshackled Owner.
