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The reason why you're doing this matters more than any strategy. This is what matters the most. When things were the hardest, the thing that kept me going was not the strategy. The business plan, products, the services that I was selling or building. It doesn't matter. But what didn't change was the reason. The reason why I was doing it all. And for me, I wanted to be the guy that someone called when something went wrong health wise and insurance wouldn't cover it. I want to be that person that made an impact for people. That was important for me. I wanted to have my kids see what's actually possible when you actually commit to something. Not for a month, not for 30 days, not for six months, not for a cute year, no for we're talking decade. What happens when you commit to for 10 years, 20, a lifetime. Okay, so if you don't know your reason, find it before you quit. You're going to need that. The one that's strong enough to hold you up when everything else is crumbling and shaking and unclear. You're in need of it. Hey there. I'm Cody McGuffey. I'm a husband dad of three. And I'm the founder of Everbee. Everbee. Everbee, Everbee. Where we serve over a million creators across the globe, helping them grow thriving online businesses. I believe every single human is a creator. And I believe every single creator should own a business. A business that gives them the freedom to build the life that they dream of. Built online is where creators, entrepreneurs and leaders get real insights, real stories and the edge to build something that's actually lasts. This is where next generation builders get built. A while back I quit my job to go all in on building Everbee. I didn't have a plan B. I didn't have a bunch of Runway or cash in the bank that made everything make sense. I, I was married. I, I had a wife, I had kids on the way. I think my wife was pregnant with, with our son. I had a mortgage. And I had a lot of belief that something was going to work. That somehow I was, I was called to do something that was different than what I was currently doing now I wasn't. Did have some sort of belief, you know, subconsciously and I think you probably do too. You can relate to that. That's why you're listening to this. Unfortunately it did work. But there are seven things that I wish that someone would have told me before I jumped all the way in. Things that would have saved me a lot of stress, a lot of money, probably a few years of My life before we jump in. As a reminder, the Built Online podcast is more than just this podcast or more than just this episode. It's part of Everbee, which is an e commerce tech company serving over a million digital entrepreneurs across the world, helping them generate over $3 billion of revenue for their online. Which is insane to say and I'm so proud of this. Our team is so proud of this. Everbee has two main products. Everbee Research, a product research tool that helps you find the best products to sell on the Internet. Whether you sell on Amazon or Etsy or your own site, own store. Ever BE Research helps you understand what to actually make and sell, what's in demand. And the second is Ever Be Store, an AI native e commerce platform that you describe what you sell and it generates your storefronts, your marketing flows, your, your funnel, analytics, everything that you expect and need to actually operate an online business. That's what everybee Store does. Physical products, digital products, subscription products. It really shines with print on demand and digital first type of businesses with no inventory. This is what we do, right? Our mission is to democratize online business, entrepreneurship, capitalism, help you get those freedoms of your life that we're all chasing. So. All right, enough of that. Just wanted to make sure that you always know what Everybee is. And let's jump back in. Today we're talking about seven things that I wish that I knew before I quit my job to build this thing that we're doing now, right? So quick context before I get into it, before ever be. I, I had a job, right? And I had a decent one. It was a pretty good one. Steady paycheck, benefits, making well over six figures a year plus stock. Kind of like the whole thing, right? 401k, seemingly successful. And it, and it was depending on the life that I wanted to live. But this for me was a big win for me and my, and my family. And at the same time, I was also building e commerce brands on the side. I was drop shipping, I was doing Amazon, fba, I was owning my own sites, I was playing with things. I was even doing a little real estate investing. Some of it was working and, and most of it wasn't, to be honest. But I was learning a lot. And at some point I knew that I had to go all in on this thing that I was building or something that I was building. I couldn't kind of just be half, half in it, right? I'm either all in or all out. That was kind of like a principle that I kind of believe In I needed to stop splitting my brain, basically. Long story short, Covid happened. Ended up kind of losing my job, actually, kind of me forcing a decision. And then I purposely chose not to go back into the workplace. I decided to kind of go all in on. On myself. And. And it was tough. It was a tough decision for my wife, for me, but it was one of those things where we had to give it a shot. And I wasn't sure. And honestly, the first year was harder, harder than I expected. Way harder. Like, way harder in ways that I wasn't really prepared for, in ways that I didn't really see, see coming. And so here are the seven things that I wish that I knew before I made this actual final decision. It wouldn't have changed my decision. It just would have helped me. And again, none of these are really tactical stuff. They're, they're, they're, they're. There's the stuff that actually, actually matters. Okay? So, number one, the emotional cost is higher than the financial cost. Emotionally, it is way more challenging than the financial bus. Financial stuff. Okay, I prepared for the money part. I had savings, I had Runway. I'd done the math. I had spreadsheets. I had all this st that I prepared for. That's pretty objective. But what I didn't really prepare for was the emotional weight of going all in, the loneliness of this thing. And I think you probably can understand what I mean by this, because you're listening to this. You've experienced this in some way. You've experienced some of that, like, loneliness of entrepreneurship, that loneliness of going all in on yourself. And this is a spooky and a weird feeling. The 2am moments where you wake up, kind of look at the ceiling, and you're sweating, and you're kind of just maybe having a little anxiety, maybe you're having a panic attack, wondering if you just made the dumbest mistake of your life, you know, and it. Sometimes it's six months later, a year later, you're kind of still thinking the same thing. Sometimes the conversations with your. With your spouse, your partner from. With my wife, for example, where you kind of had to convince yourself and also convince them that, hey, it's going to be worth it. We're going to make it through. Like, we're going to. We're going to do it. It's going to work. Watching all of your friends watch all of your. All your peers pass you up, seemingly pass you up to buy houses, to buy cars, to go on this vacation, do this. Those. Those were the real things. And Then you're looking, you and your, you and your spouse are looking at each other like, huh, I guess we could have had that. But we don't have this. We definitely don't have more flexibility also. And you have more flexibility when you had a job, you know, so these are the things that I wasn't quite prepared for. And the money runs out slowly. The mental energy kind of just slowly runs out. And if I would've known that, I would've built in more recovery, I would have built in more support. I would have been built in more conversations with other founders who have been there and done that before me. I would have probably leaned into mentorships of some sort. Whether they're paid or free doesn't really matter. But I would have leaned more into those relationships because the money, you can, you can replace the money, but the burned out mental health, it takes, it takes longer to actually bring that back in. And so if you're feeling this, let me know. First of all, and I, and I, I empathize with you. It will, you will get stronger, your capacity will grow, but it is not easy to do. So that's something that I wish that I would've known a little ahead of time. Number two, nobody is coming to save you. Nobody. When you have a job, there's always someone. A boss, hr, a team, someone above you who's responsible. There's a CEO, there's the board, there's someone always responsible if things actually go sideways, okay? And when you go all in on your own thing, you are all those people. There is no one. You're the boss, you're the team, you're. You're the CEO, you're the person who has to figure it out. One, figure out the problem and then figure out how to fix the problem when it's broken. And it will be broken. It will break constantly. The first time something genuinely went wrong and I realized there was no one there to escalate. It's to there. That was a weird moment, right? I had to sit with the fact that I was the only person who could fix this thing. And that never, that feeling never really goes away. And it's actually one of the most empowering things that you probably experienced in your life so far. Maybe if you're listening to this, I know personally, it's one of the things I'm most proud of. And I've gotten more comfortable with it. And I know that you will too, if you're not already. And if you're someone who needs external validation, external direction, External structure, you need someone to tell you what to do. This will be the hardest adjustment for you. It won't be the work itself, it won't be the creativity itself. It'll be the fact that you're the source of all of it. It all stops with you. Number three. The first year will look nothing like you planned. I had a plan when I quit. I had a specific plan. I had spreadsheets, I had milestones, I had revenue projections. I thought this stuff through because I believe that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And almost none of it played out exactly the way I thought it was going to. Some things worked out way faster than I expected, which is amazing, right? It was easier than I thought. And some things took five times longer, ten times longer. And sometimes they're still not done, they're still not correct, they're still not the way that I expected it to. There's times where I thought the side thing or the main thing was gonna be, you know, the main thing. And turns out the side thing became the main thing. But I will say I'm happy that I planned. Plans are useful, but mostly it's about the planning, the exercise of planning that it's actually the most useful. Right? That's. Do you understand what I'm saying about that? Does that make sense? Have you, have you experienced that? Because for me, it was mostly about the person who actually sits down and actually starts does the plan. That is a very useful tool. The actual plan itself is usually not as useful. Okay. The skill isn't really sticking to the plan either. The skill is kind of. The trick is to kind of use a plan as a guide and to update the plan very quickly when reality contradicts the plan and not being attached to being right always. Okay, so number four, your spouse, your partner, your wife, your husband is in this with you whether they signed up for it or not, whether you plan on that or not. This is one that I think most people miss and I personally wish that someone had told me this directly. When you go on all in on building your business, building your company, changing your life in this way, your spouse is in it with you. Even if they have a career, even if, even if they're not involved in the business, they feel every single up and down that you feel. They absorb your stress, it radiates off of you naturally. Even if you try to hide it, it doesn't really matter. They make the trade offs because you're making trade offs, they're sacrificing right there with you. They give up on things they wanted because you're trying to build something that does happen and vice versa. It goes both ways. That's a reality. And I'm grateful every day for my wife when she backed me, when it would have been completely reasonable not to. And she underestimated. I'm sorry, I underestimated what I was actually asking of her and how much, you know, of the anxiety was actually bleeding into our house. I underestimated how much of the family load she was quietly absorbing while I was heads down on the business. So if you're gonna do this, you need to talk to them. And I don't mean just one time. I'm talking at the beginning, all throughout the middle, all the way through, constantly making sure that they know what they're signing up for. Making sure you know what they need from you while you're doing this. Do not assume, okay? This is why we're building this business, right? Is to improve our life. I'm building this business to, to crush our life. You know, get one thing, but, you know, get the, like lose the other thing. No, we're trying to have the cake and also eat it too. Okay, here's the opportunity. But you can't lose sight of the priorities and why you're doing this. Okay? Number five, you don't need certainty. You need belief. I waited a long time to quit. Months, years. I was looking certainty and I wanted to know that it was, it was going to work before I jumped in. Heck, I even wanted it to be working before I quit. I wanted to replace my income fully before, Before I quit. Tell you what, that didn't happen. That did not happen. Now, I like that I planned on that happening and I like that I worked towards it, you know, that happening. That was the goal. The reality was, man, you need to go all in at some point. As soon as you have that confidence, as soon as you have that clarity, you go all in. You will never have certainty. The certainty does not exist. What you need is belief. Belief that you can figure it out, you can do hard things, you can overcome anything. Belief that you, that thing that you're building is worth building. It's worth it all belief that if it doesn't work, it's okay. You'll learn enough from the attempt to actually make the next thing work. Belief is different than certainty. Certainty is that feeling that, that the outcome is guaranteed. And belief is that commitment that you make in the absence of, of, of, of any guarantee. If you wait for certainty, you'll never go. If you have belief. You can go now. That's the power. Number six, the job that you're leaving was teaching you more than you realized. I left my job thinking I left behind a bunch of stuff that I'd not need. It wasted my time. It didn't serve me. The bureaucracy, the meetings, the politics. And what I didn't realize until later, especially now, is how much that job was actually teaching me. How to work with people, how to operate inside of a system, how to think about scale, how to ship things on a deadline, how to manage a team, work together. When I started running my own thing, I leaned on every one of those skills constantly. And I'm sure you do too. Do you understand what I'm saying with this? Like whether you're working in a coffee shop, whether you were working as a delivery person, like there are things that you're. You get to watch and witness around you of how the world works that will serve you in your business. Number seven, last but not least, the reason that you're doing this. The why. I know it sounds fluffy. The why, the reason why you're doing this matters more than any strategy. This is what I think about the most. This is what matters the most. When things were the hardest, when there. And there were a lot of hard moments. And like the thing that kept me going was not the strategy, the business plan, it would. Those things can't change constantly. It wasn't even the products, the services that I was selling or building. It doesn't matter. Plans got rewritten every quarter. But what didn't change was the reason. The reason why I was doing it all. And for me, a lot of reasons. But for me, I wanted to retire my mom. I wanted to help retire my in laws. I wanted to be the guy that someone called my family that when something went wrong health wise and insurance wouldn't cover it. All right, I wanted to be the guy to write that million dollar donation check. I wanted to be. I wanted to be that person that made an impact for people, that was important for me. I wanted to see my. I wanted to have my kids, see what's actually possible when you actually commit to something. Not for a month, not for 30 days, not for six months, not for a cute year. No for. We're talking decade. What happens when you commit to for 10 years, 20, a lifetime? Okay, so if you don't know your reason, find it before you quit. You're gonna need that. Not the surface reason, not the Lambos, the cars, the house. Like those are all great things. I love all those things. You should go get those things. Okay, but I'm talking about the one that's deeper than that. Okay? The one that's strong enough to hold you up when everything else is crumbling and shaking and unclear. You're needed. Okay? So that's it. I wanted to wrap up with that. So if this was helpful, let me know. I don't have any feedback loop other than your. Your feedback to me. So send me an email. Drop the comments. Wherever you're watching this or listening to this, leave a review. Even if it's a bad one, I want to hear it, right? I do not know how we're doing this podcast unless in this YouTube video, I guess, or whatever. Wherever you see this, unless you share it with me. Okay? And if and if you are building something right now, happens to be an online business, you feel like everyby could serve you if you want, check it out with the tools that would help that we built to help you with that. That's everbe link is in the description. One of the. One of the show notes description where wherever you're watching this, listening to this so you'll find it cool. Thank you very much. See you in the next one.