Episode #23 - Expectations vs. Reality
The passive income episode — what it really means, how long it actually takes, and why it costs more than most people expect. Dale breaks down the step-by-step process of making business functions passive one piece at a time, and why the biggest bottleneck is almost always the operator, not the market.
Hello and welcome to the Sequoia Project podcast. Episode 23. We are talking about expectations versus reality — the things that people expect business to be like, and it's fucking not.
Coby: I think what expectation I had was actually the fact that you start a business and you're going to make so much more money faster. Which I think that's something that everyone had. And you'd see anything online that'd be selling courses and it's like, within six months, you're going to be making six figures a month. You're not, unless you get super lucky.
Dale: I think a lot of people also — I think it's because when you're not paying attention to something, it seems like it happens overnight. So for example, if anyone's listening to this and they have like a friend that has a kid, they'll call you and they'll be like, we're pregnant. And you'll be like, that's awesome. And then it'll feel like two weeks later, they're like, just, you know, when the baby's here, like come and meet the baby. And you're like, what the fuck? When it's not happening to you, it feels like it happened overnight. And what you see is you see someone who's done all the hard work for 10 years behind the scenes. And then suddenly they're a millionaire.
Coby: I started off with a goal of making a million dollars within two years. And I think — I think it's just your failure in teaching me. That's the reason I haven't. There's no other reason. But yeah, two years in, there's so much that you need to set up for it to be passive. Like you need to do everything yourself first.
Dale: The expectation is all right, cool, I'll just post it on social media and everyone will call you and want your stuff. That's not gonna happen either. That's not gonna happen either. You're gonna need a good offer. You're gonna need a good personality. You're gonna need something that people want to buy and you're gonna have to get it in front of the right people as well.
Coby: If literally hard work equals guaranteed success — I think that's what people think, if you keep grinding it's just going to work. But that's not how it works. That's a big expectation, but you need to grind doing the right thing and you need to keep doing the right thing. You need to keep growing. You can't just keep working your ass off and hoping that it's going to work. By testing. And by setting a time frame.
Dale: Hustle culture has merit, but it only has merits to the individual. Work out how you will get the best out of your version of hustle culture, do your version of it. Take something you already know, and you can already measure — I'm doing this much and getting this much. I think if I tried something else for this period of time, I could get enough data to suggest if it's better or worse. If it's worse, dump it, try something else. If it's better, continue on with that.