January 9, 2024 • 31 mins
Ep. 147 Necessary to start your year off with this episode; 'A life worth living is worth recording'. These are words to live by, from a great entrepreneur and speaker. On this episode, Will Lucas, Brand Manager for AfroTech and Black Tech Green Money discusses why you should put in the work to document your journey via a personal journal, blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, and how your story has value to both your audience and future-you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Do you believe that you are really going to make it?
You've got dreams, You've got goals. You see these images
in your mind of you with the trophy, with you
with the humongous company, with you, with the investors, you know,
hanging out, you know, chasing you down, trying to invest
(00:23):
in your thing. Do you believe that you are really
going to sell a million of your widgets? Do you
believe that you can be a billionaire? I get you, know,
if you talk about making it, because that's what we
do as a culture. But deep down inside, so many
(00:43):
of us don't actually believe that we're going to make it.
I get it because I speak to people all the
time who talk about how big their business is going
to be, what they're going to buy when they quote
unquote make it, or how people who doubted them will
eat crow, but their actions don't actually line up to
(01:05):
what they say they believe. In truth, many of us
are just only fooling ourselves. We're not fooling anybody else
but ourselves. And see, it's one thing to talk about
how you're gonna make your dreams of reality, but it's
another thing to get to the gym. It's cool to
talk about how dope it's going to be when you're
(01:27):
a millionaire, But it's another thing to learn how to
save and invest with the little income you have today.
If you say you believe, but your actions are not
in sync with what you're talking about, then you've got
to check yourself. Now. Look, we can talk another time
about how to actually be about it, but today's conversation
(01:51):
is not about that. Today's conversation, here's what I'd like
to talk about. When you are actually determined that you're
gonna make it, and you know the success you're after
is only a matter of time, you need to document
that journey. What too many of us think erroneously is
(02:14):
that success is a destination, like one day you're gonna
wake up and suddenly be successful. Nah, So if you
wake up, you're getting after it. Every day. You are successful.
Every week you squirrel away one hundred dollars to buy
your first piece of real estate, you're successful every one
(02:37):
of those weeks. Everyone that you've dedicated yourself to achieving
the thing, and you've done the work, you've put in hours,
you're successful getting to the closing table when you're buying
your first piece of real estate that's a chapter in
the story of success. But you were successful. In fact,
(02:59):
you had to be successful to even get to the
closing table. We got to give ourself some credit along
the way. So what we're gonna talk about today is
first prescribing the journey, like writing it in advance. These
are like goal setting sorts of things. Then capturing the
(03:19):
process of achievement, failure, even redemption, all of those things.
We want to capture these things. Here's why we're talking
about it. There's a quote that I love, and it's
attributed to several people, but I'm gonna give the credit
to the legendary entrepreneur, author and speaker Jim Rohn, who said,
(03:43):
a life worth living is a life worth recording. Let's
say that again, a life worth living is a life
worth recording. You could have just rewound to hear that twice,
but I wanted to say twice because it was hard
to me. So me myself. I have young kids, right,
and so for the most part, unless I'm traveling, I
(04:06):
see my kids every day. And since we live in
the day of ever present cell phones, I have a
lot of video and photos of them since the day
they were born. And the reason why I bring up
how often I see them, which again is like every
day unless I'm on the road, is because being so
close to the situation, being so close to them could
(04:28):
have me confused about how much and how fast they're growing.
So it's really only when I'm out of town for
a few days or i look back at footage of
them where I can actually see how much they've grown
in so little time. And the same goes for you
and your journey towards your business success. You can be
(04:50):
so close to the daily operations, the struggles, the heartache
that goes along with entrepreneurship and running a business, that
you don't even see how far you've come. And this
is natural, you know, when you're doing the thing, you
don't realize. Hey, you don't realize often that the problems
you're dealing with today you prayed for, you worked for
(05:14):
a year ago, five years ago. You don't even realize
it because you're so consumed about the issues and the
successes even and the blessings, the whatever you're dealing with today.
You don't even think about what you dealt with yesterday
because you're here now, and it's so easy to forget
(05:35):
that it wasn't always like this. And so when I
talk about documenting the journey, and we're going to talk
today about how to document the journey, the several ways
you can document the journey based on your personal you know, proclivity,
like the things that you are naturally drawn to. So
we're going to talk about those things. But documenting the
(05:57):
journey is not just for you. Documenting the journey is
about two people, future you and the people coming behind you.
The people who will look at your story and say,
I think it's possible. Look at it. Somebody did it.
(06:18):
Here's what they learned. Here's the things that they went through.
I don't have to go through. And it's for future you.
It's for you five years from now, it's for you
ten years from now. It's for future you and your family.
Who's your grandkids. One day, your great grandkids will read
those stories, will listen to those stories, will watch those
stories of you present day and your YouTube videos, you know,
(06:43):
your blog posts. They will watch those things. They will
read those things and they will say, look at what
granddaddy did, look at what Grandmama did. In future you
get your future you gets reminded that it wasn't always
like this when you're driving around in that thing that
(07:04):
you dream today about driving around, because that thing is
coming one day, you're gonna you're gonna have a day
where you're like, goodness, gracious, like I'm getting here from
all sides, like could anything else go wrong? And then
you get a chance to go look back at you today,
which then would be history, and say, you know what
(07:27):
I remember when I begged for the problems that I
have today, when everything seems good, you get a chance
to remember and be grateful. So I wanted to spend
just a few minutes here just an effort to convince
you that documenting the journey again in any way that
(07:50):
seems best fitting for you and your style, is worth it.
So several years ago it had to be you know,
five or six years ago. I started journaling. And I
don't do it religiously. I don't do it nearly enough,
but I did start journaling. You know, there's probably you know,
(08:10):
blank pages between entries that you know, days that I missed,
probably weeks that I missed. To be honest, there are
weeks that I missed, but they are journals that I've kept.
You know, I have friends who journal and then they
throw out the journals, and I'm like, why do you
throw them out? Like I want to keep the record,
so I don't throw away like journals that have been completed,
(08:33):
like done with. I want to keep them because one day,
and this is happening, I look back at those journals
that I wrote, those journal entries that I wrote from
five six years ago, and I'm like, who is that guy?
I don't even recognize myself because that guy from five
six years ago was complaining about things that I like
(08:58):
meaningless to me today. The guy who was journaling about
things that he wanted five six years ago, those things
I have now, and I'm like, they mean nothing. The
guy five six years ago who was journaling about the
(09:19):
businesses he wanted to start, I don't even have an
interest in so many of those things anymore. And also,
to be fair to myself, the guy who was wishing
for the things that I have today, Reading those things
back caused me to say, you know what, it's really good.
(09:40):
I'm living out what I prescribed. I get a chance
to reflect and have a moment of gratitude, like, look,
you know, while I'm talking about how many issues I've
dealt with today, how many people's attitudes I had to
deal with today, how many financial decisions I had to make,
the ones that aren't easy, and many of them are
(10:02):
not easy, the ones that I have to deal with
every single day. I look back at the guy six
years ago who goodness like, had no idea he would
ever how he would get to them. Knew I would
get there, but didn't know how. And I'm dealing with
those things today, wishing five years ago, six years ago,
(10:25):
that I had this sword of problems, and now that
I'm in the problems, they are problems for real, but
you get the chance to look back and just like wow,
like I'm actually living them out. This is what it
feels like to have those dreams. I asked for it
and should have been more careful, but I'm living it.
(10:49):
The same is true for you if you actually did
the work to document the journey. So today, and we're
deep into this conversation already, but I want to talk
to you about three separate ways that you can document
your journey. Now. For me, I have I use all three,
(11:10):
so but not everybody has that particular band like this is.
These are things that work for me, but you don't
have to do all three. Pick one if you're okay,
Pick two if you're good, pick three if you legit.
So first one up writing and this is privately via
(11:32):
a personal journal or publicly via a blog. There are
benefits and you know, downsides to either. The personal journal
is like my my journal. I use the full Full
Focused Journal by Michael Hyatt, and I also have the
(11:53):
Growth Notebook by Debonne and Co. And so either of them,
like they have, They're completely different in so many ways,
but they both have triggers, things that help you to
you know, inspire you to figure out what to write.
And so often we sit down to write and we
don't know like how to get started. It's like writing
(12:13):
like songs, like writing a rap, Like if you've ever,
like have been a songwriter, if you ever tried to
write a song or a poem or whatever, it's like
the first line is like sometimes the hardest part because
if you can get the first line down, if the
first line is fired, then you can keep going. But
that first one has gotta be the banger. So anyway,
the I use the Full Focused Journal most frequently, but
(12:37):
I also have the Growth Notebook. But the personal journal
is for you and this this is the one where
it's you know, almost and just be honest, like's it's
like a diary. It's like, you know, the diary used
to be, like, you know, have a negative connotation for
males and for men. But the journal, the diary is
(12:58):
a way for you to document what you're feeling, when
you're going through what's happening in your life. And it's
a way for you to kind of just exhaust all
of that stuff onto paper. And I save allnine so
I have, you know, in my library, I have several
there's probably eight or nine of them by now, journals
(13:21):
that I've completed because particularly the full focused ones, they
are dated and so like money through Sunday, every date
has a page and so when I complete it, I
put it away and there are some that I haven't
looked at in years. There are some that you know,
(13:41):
I'm sure have things in there that I would look
at myself and like, what in the world were you
talking about? But that's the whole point. I'm getting a
chance and opportunity to recognize my growth. So the personal
journal is something that really only you get the benefit
of those learning experiences, but it's still valuable because you're
(14:03):
still on your journey. Blogging, on the other hand, is
something that you get all those same benefits, all those
same things, but also other people get an opportunity to
learn and to to oh, this is so cool. They
get to learn from your journey, but they also get
(14:24):
to just watch it. And so there's somebody out there
who I'm not necessarily on a similar path that they're on.
I'm not necessarily, you know, like taking specific nuggets that
are applicable to my life. I'm just enjoying the show,
and that has value. Also, I don't want to discount
(14:46):
that part, because not everything has to be so deep.
I just get to watch the homie win. I get
to watch the homie grow, I get to watch him
like level up, get upgraded. I get to watch that,
and that's inspiring. And so while I don't particularly have
anything directly relevant to my journey, I get to cheer
(15:10):
for you. I'll get to clap for you from a distance.
And so the personal journal is for you and you alone.
The blog is for you, but it's also for us.
It's also for your community, for the people who are
learning behind you, and for the people rooting for you.
So if you don't have necessarily a proclivity for video.
(15:32):
You don't like the way you talk or look on camera,
that's completely fine. You don't like your voice, and you
don't want to podcast, you don't want to do audio recordings.
You just like to write, and writing comes naturally to you.
I would recommend finding a personal journal. I've already mentioned
the two. I use the Full Focused Journal by Michael
Hyatt and the Growth Notebook by the Bond and Code.
(15:54):
And you get to writing, and you make it a
point and again I can't I'm a preacher to choir here.
You make it a point to do it regularly. You
make it a part of your daily routine, or at
least weekly routine, because I mean, I'm talking to myself
and I suck at some of this, but you need
to document it because you will look back at yourself
(16:17):
a month from now and see stuff and you'd be like, yo,
I was tripping thirty days ago. Next up, audio recordings.
Audio recordings. Are you taking your iPhone I'm an iPhone
user and you opening your voice memo app. And let's
(16:37):
say you have a ten minute commute to work, right,
or a ten minute commute to the office. To your
office and you just on your way. You just kind
of unload all the things that you're thinking about. They
don't even have to make sense. Here's the part that
I had to learn about documenting journeys. I wanted them
(16:59):
to be organized. I'm a producer, so I do I edit, video,
edit audio, I can write. I can do all of
these things. And so to me, my natural bend was
to have things that looked good the minute they were
laid down, that read well the minute they were written,
that were beautiful and listened like, they sounded great the
(17:23):
minute they were recorded, the minute the vokes dropped. So
to me, it was difficult to get past it was.
It was more challenging than it might be for others
to get past the idea that it didn't have to
sound good, it just has It didn't even have to
be clear. It could be a word I was thinking
about even, like like when you're writing in a personal
(17:45):
journal and you just thought of a word that has
been bothering you, like just I'm gonna I'm gonna make
this up. So let's say you're writing about, you know,
a relationship you have, and in a moment, the word
cash for comes up, and your cash flow has been
bothering you. You can write the word cash flow in
(18:06):
the sidebar of your journal and then go back to
the whole idea about the relationship. That's completely fine. It
didn't make sense to anybody else reading it from the outside,
but for some reason to you, it needed to get out.
And then a month from now, a year from now,
(18:28):
two years from now, you'll remember when you're reading the
thing about the relationship, and you'll see the word cash
flow over there on the sidebar, the edges of the paper,
and you'll be like, well, I remember what I was
going through. Oh, it's all starting to make sense. The
same thing with audio recordings, you don't edit yourself. You
(18:48):
just talk into this recorder and you just say what's
on your mind. You say what's going on, you'll say
what you've learned, you'll say the mistakes you made. Because
this is for you. That's your recording. It's the personal
journal version of an audio recording. You just talk, and
then one day, a year from now, two years from now,
(19:11):
five years from now, you have all these recordings. I
have recordings from six years ago in my voice memos
from iPhones I've had in days before, because they all
just poured over when I buy a new phone, and
then I go back and I listen to those. I
also like produce music, so I have like voice memos
(19:31):
that are like just like melodies and like drum rhythms.
I'll go back and listen, like, Yo, that's fire, Like
I need to put that down for real. But your
voice recording is a way of documenting your journey. If
you want to go public with it, let's take it
a step further. You do the same thing and you
make a podcast. Today's your day to think about consider
(19:57):
considering making your own podcast. Guess what. Your podcast does
not have to be the biggest podcast on the planet.
You aren't striving for that. You're striving for documenting the journey.
Have you guys watched Kanye West documentary Genius on Netflix.
(20:19):
It's an appropriate time to talk about this if you
watch that documentary, because I may bring this whole documentary
up a couple of different times. The documentary, any documentary
I've ever seen, was not necessarily designed to be like
the most beautifully shot. It's not supposed to be like Avatar.
(20:40):
It's not supposed to be like some eight K because
four K is so like twenty twenty. It's not supposed
to be eight K like, it's supposed to be raw
and real and all of those things. It's not supposed
to be just some beautiful cinema production. We want to
get in the trenches, we want to see, we want
to feel something when we're watching this thing. And so
(21:05):
when you are podcasting for the sake of documenting your journey,
the only goal you should have is not numbers. The
goal you should have is what is recorded? Is it real?
And does it feel authentic? Is it authentic? Forget feeling?
Is it authentic to where I'm at? Because if the
(21:26):
content is there, the whole purpose is to make a
historical record. That's the whole purpose. Because it may have
three listeners today, but when you finally hit your thing,
god knows how many people will clamor for that content.
(21:46):
I read the guys who produced that content got twenty
million dollars from Netflix, and it was like raw footage,
stuff that was sometimes out of focus, stuff that was
like grainy, stuff that was like the audio wasn't always good,
but it was this moment in time that was non fungible,
non fungible. Oh, so we'll talk about NFTs with regards
(22:08):
to your documentation, but it was these moments that you
can't get back. They were one of ones. They were
you can't trade them for anything else that those were
times that came in times that have gone. So think
about that as you're documenting, like they don't these things
the video recordings you might make. Because we talked about
(22:28):
personal journals versus blogs. We've talked about audio recordings versus
audio recordings for your personal use and podcasting video recording.
You could just prop up your camera and just talk
to your phone and record it and save it in
your photo album, or you could put it on YouTube,
and it doesn't matter what looks like. The purpose here
(22:52):
with regards to this conversation is documenting it, putting it
down in the historical record. And so when you're documenting
your journey, the content is supposed to be you, not
the filtered version. I believe this. I believe we are
(23:12):
because the way we're doing this is playing out. This
is why I believe it. We're increasingly moving towards a
version of the Internet where flaws are valuable. We had
this several year moment in history where when Instagram launched
and you could put filters on when photoshop people really
(23:34):
got good at that and you can take away all
the blemishes like those days are those days are numbered.
In so many ways, we are moving towards a day
where people just want to see what's real. We've been
spoon fed stuff that's not real for so long, and
at some point we want some nonfiction. That's what we're
(23:59):
moving to. And the things that actually look manufactured, the
things that look like they've been cleaned up and plastic arised,
they don't even get the engagement that something that is
completely organic would get. Something that was shot on the fly.
The thing that's shot on the fly actually gets more
engagement because the thing that's cleaned up and made perfect
(24:20):
looks like an ad to the average consumer. The average
person who's just flipping through the timeline gets less engagement.
So the content should be authentic. You should strive for authenticity.
You should work because really the only reason you're not
(24:40):
authentic on social is because you believe you have to proceed.
You have to show something to the world that is
not you. But it's you on steroids. So it's really
you that has to work through those issues, not us.
I said I would come back to this and I've
already touched on it. Actually pretty good about I wanted
(25:00):
to put a staple here because I talked about NFTs
very briefly. And when you're documenting your journey, imagine if
the producers of Genius, the Netflix documentary for Kanye West,
instead of putting it on Netflix, they took each of
those clips and they put it on Open Sea and
(25:21):
they made NFTs out of it. And they took those
early Kanye beats and instead of you know, just showing
them or distributing them in a different way, they made
each of those beats available for somebody to own. Some
rapper out there, some upcoming artists say, you know what,
I'm about to buy this MP three and I own
it on the blockchain. I'm talking about you. I'm using
(25:45):
Kanye as an example. But again, we believe you believe
you're gonna make it. And since you believe that one day,
your early iterations of your product one day, the early
drawings of your idea one day, the business plan you
roll on a napkin one day, the early versions of
(26:06):
your prototype will be valuable to somebody, why not make it.
That's all that exists is the ideas that came out
of your head. The ideas evolve over time. But what
if those early ideas were documented and made into non
fungible assets on the blockchain, made into NFTs. So not
(26:27):
only do you get an opportunity to realize the rewards
of the ultimate thing, but you also get to realize
the rewards and engage your community with a one of
one asset that is out there for the world to
enjoy in the form of a non fungible token. The
(26:47):
early pictures of you and your garage office, of you
and your apartment office. You know, when you and five
of your friends, or you and two of your friends
were in the early days of building your startup. Like,
imagine what it looks like ten years from now when
you guys hit the billy and you've got these images
that the world has never seen. But now you're the
(27:08):
rock star tech founder. You're the rock star, you know
crypto whale, You're the rock star, you know speaker, You're
the rock star entrepreneur, You're the next Jeff Bezos, and
you are displaying these images, displaying these early days, these
video clips, these audio recordings of the early days of
you building your thing. It has value to the people
(27:33):
coming behind you has value to the people who are
cheering you on. So what should you document? As much
as you can? I guess a better question is like,
what do people want to see? Don't think about what
people want to see. Document You don't know what people
want to see. You don't have a crystal ball. People
(27:55):
want to see more than you think they want to see.
Too often we talk ourselves out of documenting content because
we believe nobody cares about a particular moment. We believe,
for whatever reason, that some things are just insignificant to
other people today. The truth is they may be, but
tomorrow they may be everything. Imagine this. Imagine having an
(28:21):
early version of a Pierre Moss sneaker. Imagine what that
would go for if it was the production sample and
the sample had a mistake in it, he had to
send it back. Imagine what that goes for versus the
one that he finally perfected and is a thousand of
(28:42):
them on the market. Which one do you think would
be more valuable? The one that is a one of one?
The mistake Because you can't get this, this is the
this is the this is the prototype. I got the
early I got the stuff you can't get it's rare.
You got to know somebody to get this. You got
to know somebody who knows somebody to get this. It's exclusive.
(29:05):
Only so many people have this. A thousand people have
the production model, one person has the sample. The production
sample value scarcity. What I want you to come away
(29:26):
with this after listening to this episode. What I want
you to leave with is a renewed desire. First, because
you won't do it if you don't have the desire,
but a renewed desire to be inspired by your own story.
If you believe that your story ends with you victorious,
(29:53):
why would you not record the journey, the ups, the downs,
the tragedies that try. Why would you not record it?
Why would you not have documented history of it as
it develops, as it evolves, the good and the bad.
(30:14):
Because there's things for you to learn there. There's things
for the other people to learn there. There's things for
future you to be gracious for. I admonish you. I
desire to see your content. I want to see what
you come up with. I want to see your story
as you're building your thing, and as you're building, share
(30:37):
with me, send it to me. I'm at will lucasow Ig,
drop me a DM and say, you know what, will
I listened to this podcast episode. You've convinced me to
document my journey. Whether you're going to do it via YouTube,
whether you're going to open up a new blog, whether
you are going to start podcasting, whether you're going to
(30:57):
record personally and not share with the world, old start
recording it regardless, because you never know what that content
could end up being as part of your larger narrative.
Do you believe that you are really going to make it?
You've got dreams, You've got goals. You see these images
in your mind of you with the trophy, with you
with the humongous company, with you, with the investors, you know,
hanging out, you know, chasing you down, trying to invest
(00:23):
in your thing. Do you believe that you are really
going to sell a million of your widgets? Do you
believe that you can be a billionaire? I get you, know,
if you talk about making it, because that's what we
do as a culture. But deep down inside, so many
(00:43):
of us don't actually believe that we're going to make it.
I get it because I speak to people all the
time who talk about how big their business is going
to be, what they're going to buy when they quote
unquote make it, or how people who doubted them will
eat crow, but their actions don't actually line up to
(01:05):
what they say they believe. In truth, many of us
are just only fooling ourselves. We're not fooling anybody else
but ourselves. And see, it's one thing to talk about
how you're gonna make your dreams of reality, but it's
another thing to get to the gym. It's cool to
talk about how dope it's going to be when you're
(01:27):
a millionaire, But it's another thing to learn how to
save and invest with the little income you have today.
If you say you believe, but your actions are not
in sync with what you're talking about, then you've got
to check yourself. Now. Look, we can talk another time
about how to actually be about it, but today's conversation
(01:51):
is not about that. Today's conversation, here's what I'd like
to talk about. When you are actually determined that you're
gonna make it, and you know the success you're after
is only a matter of time, you need to document
that journey. What too many of us think erroneously is
(02:14):
that success is a destination, like one day you're gonna
wake up and suddenly be successful. Nah, So if you
wake up, you're getting after it. Every day. You are successful.
Every week you squirrel away one hundred dollars to buy
your first piece of real estate, you're successful every one
(02:37):
of those weeks. Everyone that you've dedicated yourself to achieving
the thing, and you've done the work, you've put in hours,
you're successful getting to the closing table when you're buying
your first piece of real estate that's a chapter in
the story of success. But you were successful. In fact,
(02:59):
you had to be successful to even get to the
closing table. We got to give ourself some credit along
the way. So what we're gonna talk about today is
first prescribing the journey, like writing it in advance. These
are like goal setting sorts of things. Then capturing the
(03:19):
process of achievement, failure, even redemption, all of those things.
We want to capture these things. Here's why we're talking
about it. There's a quote that I love, and it's
attributed to several people, but I'm gonna give the credit
to the legendary entrepreneur, author and speaker Jim Rohn, who said,
(03:43):
a life worth living is a life worth recording. Let's
say that again, a life worth living is a life
worth recording. You could have just rewound to hear that twice,
but I wanted to say twice because it was hard
to me. So me myself. I have young kids, right,
and so for the most part, unless I'm traveling, I
(04:06):
see my kids every day. And since we live in
the day of ever present cell phones, I have a
lot of video and photos of them since the day
they were born. And the reason why I bring up
how often I see them, which again is like every
day unless I'm on the road, is because being so
close to the situation, being so close to them could
(04:28):
have me confused about how much and how fast they're growing.
So it's really only when I'm out of town for
a few days or i look back at footage of
them where I can actually see how much they've grown
in so little time. And the same goes for you
and your journey towards your business success. You can be
(04:50):
so close to the daily operations, the struggles, the heartache
that goes along with entrepreneurship and running a business, that
you don't even see how far you've come. And this
is natural, you know, when you're doing the thing, you
don't realize. Hey, you don't realize often that the problems
you're dealing with today you prayed for, you worked for
(05:14):
a year ago, five years ago. You don't even realize
it because you're so consumed about the issues and the
successes even and the blessings, the whatever you're dealing with today.
You don't even think about what you dealt with yesterday
because you're here now, and it's so easy to forget
(05:35):
that it wasn't always like this. And so when I
talk about documenting the journey, and we're going to talk
today about how to document the journey, the several ways
you can document the journey based on your personal you know, proclivity,
like the things that you are naturally drawn to. So
we're going to talk about those things. But documenting the
(05:57):
journey is not just for you. Documenting the journey is
about two people, future you and the people coming behind you.
The people who will look at your story and say,
I think it's possible. Look at it. Somebody did it.
(06:18):
Here's what they learned. Here's the things that they went through.
I don't have to go through. And it's for future you.
It's for you five years from now, it's for you
ten years from now. It's for future you and your family.
Who's your grandkids. One day, your great grandkids will read
those stories, will listen to those stories, will watch those
stories of you present day and your YouTube videos, you know,
(06:43):
your blog posts. They will watch those things. They will
read those things and they will say, look at what
granddaddy did, look at what Grandmama did. In future you
get your future you gets reminded that it wasn't always
like this when you're driving around in that thing that
(07:04):
you dream today about driving around, because that thing is
coming one day, you're gonna you're gonna have a day
where you're like, goodness, gracious, like I'm getting here from
all sides, like could anything else go wrong? And then
you get a chance to go look back at you today,
which then would be history, and say, you know what
(07:27):
I remember when I begged for the problems that I
have today, when everything seems good, you get a chance
to remember and be grateful. So I wanted to spend
just a few minutes here just an effort to convince
you that documenting the journey again in any way that
(07:50):
seems best fitting for you and your style, is worth it.
So several years ago it had to be you know,
five or six years ago. I started journaling. And I
don't do it religiously. I don't do it nearly enough,
but I did start journaling. You know, there's probably you know,
(08:10):
blank pages between entries that you know, days that I missed,
probably weeks that I missed. To be honest, there are
weeks that I missed, but they are journals that I've kept.
You know, I have friends who journal and then they
throw out the journals, and I'm like, why do you
throw them out? Like I want to keep the record,
so I don't throw away like journals that have been completed,
(08:33):
like done with. I want to keep them because one day,
and this is happening, I look back at those journals
that I wrote, those journal entries that I wrote from
five six years ago, and I'm like, who is that guy?
I don't even recognize myself because that guy from five
six years ago was complaining about things that I like
(08:58):
meaningless to me today. The guy who was journaling about
things that he wanted five six years ago, those things
I have now, and I'm like, they mean nothing. The
guy five six years ago who was journaling about the
(09:19):
businesses he wanted to start, I don't even have an
interest in so many of those things anymore. And also,
to be fair to myself, the guy who was wishing
for the things that I have today, Reading those things
back caused me to say, you know what, it's really good.
(09:40):
I'm living out what I prescribed. I get a chance
to reflect and have a moment of gratitude, like, look,
you know, while I'm talking about how many issues I've
dealt with today, how many people's attitudes I had to
deal with today, how many financial decisions I had to make,
the ones that aren't easy, and many of them are
(10:02):
not easy, the ones that I have to deal with
every single day. I look back at the guy six
years ago who goodness like, had no idea he would
ever how he would get to them. Knew I would
get there, but didn't know how. And I'm dealing with
those things today, wishing five years ago, six years ago,
(10:25):
that I had this sword of problems, and now that
I'm in the problems, they are problems for real, but
you get the chance to look back and just like wow,
like I'm actually living them out. This is what it
feels like to have those dreams. I asked for it
and should have been more careful, but I'm living it.
(10:49):
The same is true for you if you actually did
the work to document the journey. So today, and we're
deep into this conversation already, but I want to talk
to you about three separate ways that you can document
your journey. Now. For me, I have I use all three,
(11:10):
so but not everybody has that particular band like this is.
These are things that work for me, but you don't
have to do all three. Pick one if you're okay,
Pick two if you're good, pick three if you legit.
So first one up writing and this is privately via
(11:32):
a personal journal or publicly via a blog. There are
benefits and you know, downsides to either. The personal journal
is like my my journal. I use the full Full
Focused Journal by Michael Hyatt, and I also have the
(11:53):
Growth Notebook by Debonne and Co. And so either of them,
like they have, They're completely different in so many ways,
but they both have triggers, things that help you to
you know, inspire you to figure out what to write.
And so often we sit down to write and we
don't know like how to get started. It's like writing
(12:13):
like songs, like writing a rap, Like if you've ever,
like have been a songwriter, if you ever tried to
write a song or a poem or whatever, it's like
the first line is like sometimes the hardest part because
if you can get the first line down, if the
first line is fired, then you can keep going. But
that first one has gotta be the banger. So anyway,
the I use the Full Focused Journal most frequently, but
(12:37):
I also have the Growth Notebook. But the personal journal
is for you and this this is the one where
it's you know, almost and just be honest, like's it's
like a diary. It's like, you know, the diary used
to be, like, you know, have a negative connotation for
males and for men. But the journal, the diary is
(12:58):
a way for you to document what you're feeling, when
you're going through what's happening in your life. And it's
a way for you to kind of just exhaust all
of that stuff onto paper. And I save allnine so
I have, you know, in my library, I have several
there's probably eight or nine of them by now, journals
(13:21):
that I've completed because particularly the full focused ones, they
are dated and so like money through Sunday, every date
has a page and so when I complete it, I
put it away and there are some that I haven't
looked at in years. There are some that you know,
(13:41):
I'm sure have things in there that I would look
at myself and like, what in the world were you
talking about? But that's the whole point. I'm getting a
chance and opportunity to recognize my growth. So the personal
journal is something that really only you get the benefit
of those learning experiences, but it's still valuable because you're
(14:03):
still on your journey. Blogging, on the other hand, is
something that you get all those same benefits, all those
same things, but also other people get an opportunity to
learn and to to oh, this is so cool. They
get to learn from your journey, but they also get
(14:24):
to just watch it. And so there's somebody out there
who I'm not necessarily on a similar path that they're on.
I'm not necessarily, you know, like taking specific nuggets that
are applicable to my life. I'm just enjoying the show,
and that has value. Also, I don't want to discount
(14:46):
that part, because not everything has to be so deep.
I just get to watch the homie win. I get
to watch the homie grow, I get to watch him
like level up, get upgraded. I get to watch that,
and that's inspiring. And so while I don't particularly have
anything directly relevant to my journey, I get to cheer
(15:10):
for you. I'll get to clap for you from a distance.
And so the personal journal is for you and you alone.
The blog is for you, but it's also for us.
It's also for your community, for the people who are
learning behind you, and for the people rooting for you.
So if you don't have necessarily a proclivity for video.
(15:32):
You don't like the way you talk or look on camera,
that's completely fine. You don't like your voice, and you
don't want to podcast, you don't want to do audio recordings.
You just like to write, and writing comes naturally to you.
I would recommend finding a personal journal. I've already mentioned
the two. I use the Full Focused Journal by Michael
Hyatt and the Growth Notebook by the Bond and Code.
(15:54):
And you get to writing, and you make it a
point and again I can't I'm a preacher to choir here.
You make it a point to do it regularly. You
make it a part of your daily routine, or at
least weekly routine, because I mean, I'm talking to myself
and I suck at some of this, but you need
to document it because you will look back at yourself
(16:17):
a month from now and see stuff and you'd be like, yo,
I was tripping thirty days ago. Next up, audio recordings.
Audio recordings. Are you taking your iPhone I'm an iPhone
user and you opening your voice memo app. And let's
(16:37):
say you have a ten minute commute to work, right,
or a ten minute commute to the office. To your
office and you just on your way. You just kind
of unload all the things that you're thinking about. They
don't even have to make sense. Here's the part that
I had to learn about documenting journeys. I wanted them
(16:59):
to be organized. I'm a producer, so I do I edit, video,
edit audio, I can write. I can do all of
these things. And so to me, my natural bend was
to have things that looked good the minute they were
laid down, that read well the minute they were written,
that were beautiful and listened like, they sounded great the
(17:23):
minute they were recorded, the minute the vokes dropped. So
to me, it was difficult to get past it was.
It was more challenging than it might be for others
to get past the idea that it didn't have to
sound good, it just has It didn't even have to
be clear. It could be a word I was thinking
about even, like like when you're writing in a personal
(17:45):
journal and you just thought of a word that has
been bothering you, like just I'm gonna I'm gonna make
this up. So let's say you're writing about, you know,
a relationship you have, and in a moment, the word
cash for comes up, and your cash flow has been
bothering you. You can write the word cash flow in
(18:06):
the sidebar of your journal and then go back to
the whole idea about the relationship. That's completely fine. It
didn't make sense to anybody else reading it from the outside,
but for some reason to you, it needed to get out.
And then a month from now, a year from now,
(18:28):
two years from now, you'll remember when you're reading the
thing about the relationship, and you'll see the word cash
flow over there on the sidebar, the edges of the paper,
and you'll be like, well, I remember what I was
going through. Oh, it's all starting to make sense. The
same thing with audio recordings, you don't edit yourself. You
(18:48):
just talk into this recorder and you just say what's
on your mind. You say what's going on, you'll say
what you've learned, you'll say the mistakes you made. Because
this is for you. That's your recording. It's the personal
journal version of an audio recording. You just talk, and
then one day, a year from now, two years from now,
(19:11):
five years from now, you have all these recordings. I
have recordings from six years ago in my voice memos
from iPhones I've had in days before, because they all
just poured over when I buy a new phone, and
then I go back and I listen to those. I
also like produce music, so I have like voice memos
(19:31):
that are like just like melodies and like drum rhythms.
I'll go back and listen, like, Yo, that's fire, Like
I need to put that down for real. But your
voice recording is a way of documenting your journey. If
you want to go public with it, let's take it
a step further. You do the same thing and you
make a podcast. Today's your day to think about consider
(19:57):
considering making your own podcast. Guess what. Your podcast does
not have to be the biggest podcast on the planet.
You aren't striving for that. You're striving for documenting the journey.
Have you guys watched Kanye West documentary Genius on Netflix.
(20:19):
It's an appropriate time to talk about this if you
watch that documentary, because I may bring this whole documentary
up a couple of different times. The documentary, any documentary
I've ever seen, was not necessarily designed to be like
the most beautifully shot. It's not supposed to be like Avatar.
(20:40):
It's not supposed to be like some eight K because
four K is so like twenty twenty. It's not supposed
to be eight K like, it's supposed to be raw
and real and all of those things. It's not supposed
to be just some beautiful cinema production. We want to
get in the trenches, we want to see, we want
to feel something when we're watching this thing. And so
(21:05):
when you are podcasting for the sake of documenting your journey,
the only goal you should have is not numbers. The
goal you should have is what is recorded? Is it real?
And does it feel authentic? Is it authentic? Forget feeling?
Is it authentic to where I'm at? Because if the
(21:26):
content is there, the whole purpose is to make a
historical record. That's the whole purpose. Because it may have
three listeners today, but when you finally hit your thing,
god knows how many people will clamor for that content.
(21:46):
I read the guys who produced that content got twenty
million dollars from Netflix, and it was like raw footage,
stuff that was sometimes out of focus, stuff that was
like grainy, stuff that was like the audio wasn't always good,
but it was this moment in time that was non fungible,
non fungible. Oh, so we'll talk about NFTs with regards
(22:08):
to your documentation, but it was these moments that you
can't get back. They were one of ones. They were
you can't trade them for anything else that those were
times that came in times that have gone. So think
about that as you're documenting, like they don't these things
the video recordings you might make. Because we talked about
(22:28):
personal journals versus blogs. We've talked about audio recordings versus
audio recordings for your personal use and podcasting video recording.
You could just prop up your camera and just talk
to your phone and record it and save it in
your photo album, or you could put it on YouTube,
and it doesn't matter what looks like. The purpose here
(22:52):
with regards to this conversation is documenting it, putting it
down in the historical record. And so when you're documenting
your journey, the content is supposed to be you, not
the filtered version. I believe this. I believe we are
(23:12):
because the way we're doing this is playing out. This
is why I believe it. We're increasingly moving towards a
version of the Internet where flaws are valuable. We had
this several year moment in history where when Instagram launched
and you could put filters on when photoshop people really
(23:34):
got good at that and you can take away all
the blemishes like those days are those days are numbered.
In so many ways, we are moving towards a day
where people just want to see what's real. We've been
spoon fed stuff that's not real for so long, and
at some point we want some nonfiction. That's what we're
(23:59):
moving to. And the things that actually look manufactured, the
things that look like they've been cleaned up and plastic arised,
they don't even get the engagement that something that is
completely organic would get. Something that was shot on the fly.
The thing that's shot on the fly actually gets more
engagement because the thing that's cleaned up and made perfect
(24:20):
looks like an ad to the average consumer. The average
person who's just flipping through the timeline gets less engagement.
So the content should be authentic. You should strive for authenticity.
You should work because really the only reason you're not
(24:40):
authentic on social is because you believe you have to proceed.
You have to show something to the world that is
not you. But it's you on steroids. So it's really
you that has to work through those issues, not us.
I said I would come back to this and I've
already touched on it. Actually pretty good about I wanted
(25:00):
to put a staple here because I talked about NFTs
very briefly. And when you're documenting your journey, imagine if
the producers of Genius, the Netflix documentary for Kanye West,
instead of putting it on Netflix, they took each of
those clips and they put it on Open Sea and
(25:21):
they made NFTs out of it. And they took those
early Kanye beats and instead of you know, just showing
them or distributing them in a different way, they made
each of those beats available for somebody to own. Some
rapper out there, some upcoming artists say, you know what,
I'm about to buy this MP three and I own
it on the blockchain. I'm talking about you. I'm using
(25:45):
Kanye as an example. But again, we believe you believe
you're gonna make it. And since you believe that one day,
your early iterations of your product one day, the early
drawings of your idea one day, the business plan you
roll on a napkin one day, the early versions of
(26:06):
your prototype will be valuable to somebody, why not make it.
That's all that exists is the ideas that came out
of your head. The ideas evolve over time. But what
if those early ideas were documented and made into non
fungible assets on the blockchain, made into NFTs. So not
(26:27):
only do you get an opportunity to realize the rewards
of the ultimate thing, but you also get to realize
the rewards and engage your community with a one of
one asset that is out there for the world to
enjoy in the form of a non fungible token. The
(26:47):
early pictures of you and your garage office, of you
and your apartment office. You know, when you and five
of your friends, or you and two of your friends
were in the early days of building your startup. Like,
imagine what it looks like ten years from now when
you guys hit the billy and you've got these images
that the world has never seen. But now you're the
(27:08):
rock star tech founder. You're the rock star, you know
crypto whale, You're the rock star, you know speaker, You're
the rock star entrepreneur, You're the next Jeff Bezos, and
you are displaying these images, displaying these early days, these
video clips, these audio recordings of the early days of
you building your thing. It has value to the people
(27:33):
coming behind you has value to the people who are
cheering you on. So what should you document? As much
as you can? I guess a better question is like,
what do people want to see? Don't think about what
people want to see. Document You don't know what people
want to see. You don't have a crystal ball. People
(27:55):
want to see more than you think they want to see.
Too often we talk ourselves out of documenting content because
we believe nobody cares about a particular moment. We believe,
for whatever reason, that some things are just insignificant to
other people today. The truth is they may be, but
tomorrow they may be everything. Imagine this. Imagine having an
(28:21):
early version of a Pierre Moss sneaker. Imagine what that
would go for if it was the production sample and
the sample had a mistake in it, he had to
send it back. Imagine what that goes for versus the
one that he finally perfected and is a thousand of
(28:42):
them on the market. Which one do you think would
be more valuable? The one that is a one of one?
The mistake Because you can't get this, this is the
this is the this is the prototype. I got the
early I got the stuff you can't get it's rare.
You got to know somebody to get this. You got
to know somebody who knows somebody to get this. It's exclusive.
(29:05):
Only so many people have this. A thousand people have
the production model, one person has the sample. The production
sample value scarcity. What I want you to come away
(29:26):
with this after listening to this episode. What I want
you to leave with is a renewed desire. First, because
you won't do it if you don't have the desire,
but a renewed desire to be inspired by your own story.
If you believe that your story ends with you victorious,
(29:53):
why would you not record the journey, the ups, the downs,
the tragedies that try. Why would you not record it?
Why would you not have documented history of it as
it develops, as it evolves, the good and the bad.
(30:14):
Because there's things for you to learn there. There's things
for the other people to learn there. There's things for
future you to be gracious for. I admonish you. I
desire to see your content. I want to see what
you come up with. I want to see your story
as you're building your thing, and as you're building, share
(30:37):
with me, send it to me. I'm at will lucasow Ig,
drop me a DM and say, you know what, will
I listened to this podcast episode. You've convinced me to
document my journey. Whether you're going to do it via YouTube,
whether you're going to open up a new blog, whether
you are going to start podcasting, whether you're going to
(30:57):
record personally and not share with the world, old start
recording it regardless, because you never know what that content
could end up being as part of your larger narrative.
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