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And even if he did drop you off, even if you're like, drop me off here, you're not gonna like it. You're not gonna like it because you didn't choose it. You don't need a perfect path for this. It does not need to be perfect. There's. It doesn't need to be engineered to perfection. You don't need to overthink this. You need to just do the work up front, which is understanding what you're trying to achieve. Choose the vehicle that, a plot that solves that problem, the best vehicle to get you to that destination. And then you just need to stay in the freaking vehicle and drive the vehicle. Okay, stop jumping out of the vehicle and jumping into a new vehicle. You need to commit to that one vehicle and Dr. Thing all the way to the destination you want to achieve. You need to commit. Don't think in weeks, don't think in days, don't think in months, think in years. 10 years I'm going to be in this business. Maybe it's going to be two, maybe it'll be three, maybe it'll be one. If you commit to 10, chances of your success are significantly higher. 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 creators should own a business. It is 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 actually lasts. This is where the next generation of builders get built. Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Super excited about today's topic. Something that's close to my heart, reflecting back on a conversation that I recently had with a good friend of mine, fellow entrepreneur. It's a very successful person who had a lot of failures, a lot of successes along the way. And so we're gonna be talking about a conversation that I had with him and then related back to so many things that, so many questions that I get from existing entrepreneurs that are very successful. And there are a lot of new coming entrepreneurs that are, you know, that want to be very successful. So. But before we get into that, I wanted to address why you're seeing a little bit different background. And if you're watching this today on video, then you'll see that we have a new space. Yeah, we recently just Moved into a new office. And so I haven't dialed in fully everything yet. I'll get a picture in the background, some artwork. I have to admit, it's not my territory. It's my wife's. She's incredible at that. And I am not. Anyway, it's a. It's a cool spot. You might hear a little bit of an echo because we don't really have much on the walls quite yet. So just bear with me for today. So hopefully it's not too bad, but thank you for being here. Excited about today's episode. So today's episode is as. Again, reflecting back on a conversation that I had with a really good friend, entrepreneur, successful person, from wealth perspective, a family perspective, freedom perspective. And it was just a coffee conversation. Literally was in outside of our home. We're just visiting. We're talking about business and life and wealth and success and failures and all these things. And he is a really incredible question asker. You would ask questions. He'd be curious. He'd be asking me. Typically, I'm usually the one asking questions. Cause I'm trying to pull out all the learnings from someone else. But he was just asking question after question after question. And I loved it personally because most people do not do that. So, by the way, if you're listening to this side note, if you. If you ask yourself if you're the one, the question asker in the. In the conversation, or you the one just like just talking, right? Be the question asker. That's how you'll learn so many things. And also the person listening to that conversation, leaving that conversation, will be very impressed by you too. Not that. Not that. That's not the reason why to do this. But that's just another side benefit, is that the most curious person, you want to be, the most interested person in the room, not the most interesting person in the room. Okay. And back to the point. He was asking me so many questions and about his business, about his strategy, about his wealth, about how to grow it, how to grow his business, all these things. And without getting into too many specifics about his business. Cause I don't think that would be as helpful. He would often ask questions like, what do you think I should do? Which is a good question. And it's the right question to ask, but it's not the right. I didn't have enough information. And I fired back with a question that was, well, what's the goal? And paused. He paused. And he didn't understand what his goal was. So he was asking me to solve a problem that he didn't even know what the ideal outcome would be actually to be. And I wanted to make this episode specifically for this because I find that so many folks do this day in, day out, including myself in the past, that we are chasing stuff which. And we're achieving these things. We're doing these things with no end or no outcome. Ideal outcome in mind. That's silly. Think about it for a second, right? You could spend your entire lifetime building a business, building, getting successful, just sacrificing after sacrifice, right? But if you don't know why you're doing it, then you're literally. It's. It's a fool's. It's a fool's game. You have been tricked by society, by the right, by. By. By culture in order to. You're supposed to just do these things. You just do them because you're supposed to do them. And I. I don't blame anyone for doing this, but I'm giving you right here an opportunity to pause for a second and, and ask yourself, why am I doing this, though? Why? What is the problem I'm trying to solve? What is the outcome I'm trying to achieve? Right? So in his context, I asked, hey, so what are you trying to do? Because he's like, I. I want to do this. I'm gonna grow the business. I'm gonna double the business, right? So I'm gonna go from 5 million to. I'm gonna go to 10 million. And I said, okay, cool. What's the main goal, though? And he's like, well, to get to 10 million. I said, okay, cool. Why, why. Why are you trying to double the business? Well, because, you know, I'm gonna kind of go on a tangent. Cause I'm not gonna share his personal stuff, but because I want to have more freedom. I want to be financially free. I want to have more time, freedom with my kids. I want to do all these things. Okay, cool. All that is great. Cool. But this doubling actually gets used to that, or is there another path? Okay, well, he had pause again to. To think about this question. He said. He said, well, actually, I want to be financially free. Okay, got it. That's a different game, right? Could be correlated, could be related, but that's a different problem to solve. And so I said, okay, well, if you're trying to be financially free, then what is the definition of financially free for you? And for him, it was like $20,000 a month in passive income. Okay, so is that the main. Main objective? Is that the goal he Said, well, yeah, that, that's, that's something that I would want. I said, okay, cool, well then you can sell the business today, have enough cash to have $20,000 in passive income. Mission accomplished. He's like, ah, interesting. But I should, but I should grow the business. Well, not if you should only grow the business if it's, it's helping you achieve a specific outcome that you want for your life. You shouldn't just grow a business just because you grow a business just because you're quote unquote supposed to, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna solve a certain problem or you know, have a certain outcome for your life or your family's life or whatever it is, your community's life, doesn't matter what it is. And it just dawned on me that a lot of times people are not slowing down to just ask themselves, what is the main mission here? What's the main mission I'm trying to achieve? So with that being said, I, I put together like a quick, you know, framework, right, to, to maybe give yourself a moment to reflect on what you're trying to achieve. Okay. So it's, it's a three step framework that I feel I find is useful, right? So take it, take it for whatever it is. Use it, don't use it. Doesn't really matter to me. But I hope you do. And I hope you think about this question first. Before anything, you need to define the outcome that you're trying to achieve. Okay? Most people skip this. Most people say, oh, I'm gonna go and start a business. Okay, cool. There's a lot of businesses you could start. You could start a lawn mowing business, you could start a pool cleaning business. You could start, I'm just looking outside. A tree trimming business. You could start a house cleaning business. You could start an online business. Okay, what's up? An online business. You can start a print on demand business. You can start a, an E commerce, a supplement business. You can sell protein powders, you can sell lamps, you can sell lights, you could sell physical products, you can sell digital products, templates, you can sell subscriptions. You can start a software company, you could build an AI, you know, advertising agency business. What? There's a million businesses that you can start. Okay. There's no shortage of those in America. And really in this world we live in an incredible time. So it can't not stop. It cannot stop there. You need to ask yourself the next qualifying things, which is, what are you trying to achieve? You need to do this, otherwise you will chase the wind. You Will constantly just chase and chase and chase and do and do and do and do with. And you'll never, ever get to the destination that you want to get to because you never defined the destination. Silly, isn't it? Completely silly. You need to be specific and you need to get clear on what you're trying to achieve. An example of, of what this not is not right, is, I want to make money. I want to be rich. I want to be successful. I want to have freedom. Not specific enough. Keep going. Drill down further. Good start. Keep going. I want to make $1 million with 20 hours per week that doesn't require me to travel that, you know, like, those are filters. Those are constraints. You need to put constraints on them. I want to make $300,000 per year, fully remote, with only one employee. Interesting. Okay, now we just filtered out a bunch of. A bunch of businesses. Now I can't be a lawn. A lawn service. Right. Can't be a house cleaning business maybe, but you know what I'm saying? I want a $10 million exit in the next five years. Got it. So you probably won't go after starting an H vac company. You probably won't go after starting a lawn care business because those typically don't exit for $10 million in five years. Right. And so you'll want to start to. To get clear on these outcomes that you're trying to achieve. And then those are natural filters for decisions that you can make when it comes to starting your business. Then you layer on more constraints. So after you get clear. So, for example, I want to. I want to make. I want to have a $10 million exit in the next. Let's call it five years. I'm willing to spend 40 to 50 hours a week for the first couple years. But I, I want to have a clear plan of. I, I want to make it. I want to be simple enough to. Where I can easily layer in other people and I can work probably five hours a week. Ten hours a week. Okay, cool layer. Another constraint is how much capital can I. Or what am I willing to invest? Well, for me, let's say I want to. I want to be able to raise no capital with it. I want to do this with bootstrapped, completely no capital. So, meaning, like my own, obviously, you have to have some money to start a business, but I want to start with. With no outside capital. Right. Let's call it $5,000 or less. Okay, cool. So you're all of a sudden not. Not starting necessarily a, you know, a hardware company because you're not, you're not starting an Amazon FBA company if you want no capital, Right. You need to buy inventory. So maybe it's print on demand and maybe it starts there and et cetera, et cetera. Right? So risk tolerance, Okay. I want it to be evergreen. I don't want it to be seasonal. Okay, got it. So I'm probably not starting again. I'm using H Vac because it's seasonal typically in most, most places. I want it to be something to where I family as my, my family's growing. Interesting. Okay, cool. Tricky one. But you can do it. But then typically it's like, what do you value? It's, I value spending more time around my family. Maybe it's in the house. So that means I have to be 100% remote. Got it. So all of a sudden that filters out, you know, a service business where I need to go and travel and, you know, and, and create a bunch of salespeople across the world and teach them how to sell. Right. Like filters those people out or those businesses out. Right. So every business is just a trade off. Okay? It's a trade off machine. So if you don't, if you don't define the constraints, the outcome, and then the constraints, then you'll accidentally accept trade offs that you absolutely hate and you will build a business that you, you can't stand and that you'll have to sell. Not that you, not that I want to sell or have the option optionality to sell. I'll. I'll either have to sell or I'll have to quit. Something will break or worst case, you'll end up in a situation where your marriage is suffering or your kids and your relationships are suffering because you, you l just didn't think about the outcome first and then the constraints on it. You see where I'm going with this? As if, as if I can hear you. Uh, so second thing, after you define the outcome and then Put Filter In Constraints 2, you choose the vehicle. You choose the proper vehicle that solves those things. Do you understand what I mean by this? So it's all based on the outcome. This is when you actually choose the business model. The business model and then the type of service, etc. Right? Only when, only this. I know this is different than, by the way, I do recognize that this is a different way to think. I think a lot of times we hear stories about, oh, I just fell into this, fell into this business, man, I just got so lucky. Or, oh, I just like grinded my way and eventually I just, I found, you know, I just, I found this path and I just ran with it. Those are all cool, those are all cool stories, but I don't think that it needs to be that way. And I actually don't even think that's the best way to do it. I think we can be more intentional. We're in 2026, the top of this recording. We can be more intentional with our decision making process. Here we have that luxury. We are conscious beings in an Internet world full of opportunity and a capitalistic society where we are rewarded for building things of value to others. We have the opportunity to be intentional with, with this decision. So after you define the outcome again, put the constraints on it and then two, this, this is when we choose the vehicle, okay? Because different outcomes will require different vehicles. So example, if you want fast cash, low risk, then you typically have to start a service business, right? Because I can walk outside and I see a whole bunch of lawns that need to be mowed and I can knock on their door and I could say, hey, I, my name's Cody and I' Lawns in this neighborhood, can I mow your lawn? Right? My service is $100 a month. Like that requires zero capital, only my effort, only my time and courage. And I can go figure out a lawnmower, I can go borrow a lawnmower. It doesn't cost me anything to jump into that business. And this is, this is typically better for service businesses. Same thing for if you have a skill, let's say I know how to do I, I know how to write blog articles really well, right? You can go knock on literally any single business, business door or call them or email them and say, hey, I write blog articles for coffee shops. I'd like to do yours 100amonth or 1500 dollars a month, whatever you charge, right? This is a service business and this is the fastest path to cash typically. And it's the lowest risk. But there's trade offs, right? That business is way less valuable from a selling perspective. From an enterprise value, it's way less valuable. It is, it is way less automatable. It's gonna be challenging, right? You naturally will have humans that you have to deal with. It's a local business also, right? With lawnmower businesses. And so it, there's trade offs to this. Now if you want to scale and you want leverage, then you typically want a, an online business, some sort of business where you can create income through the Internet while you're sleeping, right? An example of this would be print on demand. It could be selling, selling literally anything on the Internet. It could be E commerce, the same thing, but you know what I'm saying, E Commerce, it could be maybe an AI software. Nowadays that's, that's the thing to do, right? Like some sort of, like there's a billion little, you know, problems that you could solve with, with some sort of software type of product. You can absolutely do that. And, and those are, that will get you scale because it's on the Internet and you can typically leverage that into a higher enterprise value typically because it's more desirable by the, by the buyers of the world. So if you want lifestyle and flexibility, you can kind of fix mix and nose, but software you're gonna get less lifestyle and less flexibility typically because it's way more effort. Uh, if you want lifestyle and flexibility and a little bit of leverage, then it's probably gonna be in scale, maybe a little bit of that too. It's gonna be E Commerce. You're gonna sell digital products, physical products, something with little inventory, like physical inventory that you're gonna have to have or maybe none ideally and where you can literally create Internet money and those kind of like that, those fit a lot of those boxes. Lifestyle flexibility, leverage, scale, probably very low risk too, but it's not as fast cash, right? And so that's the trade off that too because typically when you build an E Commerce brand, it's like you don't just get to collect a thousand bucks from a client. You know, day one you need to build the system, you need to have this system that prints off and eventually it's printing zero, eventually it's printing $1,000 a month cash and 10,000amonth and you know, $100,000 a month and beyond. And if you want to have high upside but high stress meaning like you want to build a, you know, a billion dollar company, there, there's trade offs to that. Like awesome, awesome, like you can totally do that. Anybody can do anything in this world. The, the reality is there are trade offs to that, right? Like the, the lifestyle, the family, the flexibility, the fast cash, low risk, like all that stuff kind of goes away. But you get the high, high upside of if I hit this thing right though the outcome is going to be insane. Right. But also the stress is insane. And that's more of like a venture backed tech company or maybe it's even a bootstrap tech company. I mean Everbee is in that and it plays in some of these categories across, but it's more inside of hey, this isn't just a coast business for, for Cody. This is like we're building this every day, actively every day. We're hiring constantly, firing constantly. It's a growing thing. And so there's trade offs to, to all this stuff. And the cool thing is you can play in your business. You can kind of create your own after you understand, you know, the trade offs between them. So there is no quote unquote, best business. There is just the best business for your desired outcome. That's the way I think about it. But you have to be clear. You see that? You have to be clear on, on the outcome that you're trying to achieve. Otherwise you will just chase the wind. Number three. Okay, so first one, again recap was define the outcome. Second one is choose the vehicle. And the third one is you commit. You commit to it and then you eliminate. Okay, this is probably the hardest part of all of them, right? Anybody can think right now. It's really hard to take action, actually execute. So this is where the, the winners are kind of separated from the, the, the wannabes, I would say, is you have to choose. And this is the things you, you have to do. So once you, once you, you kill the alternatives, you stop second guessing, right? Cause you don't, you don't get as distracted so much because you, you did the work upfront to clearly understand, you know, what you're trying to achieve, why you want to achieve it. And the vehicle, this is the vehicle for me. And I don't need to second guess this anymore. I already did all that work. So you are like hyper, hyper focused on what you're trying to achieve. And you, this is where like people kind of get. Put their blinders on. And this is where success usually, usually happens here because you, you go all in. You go all in. Every time that you reopen the question of, of should I do this or should I change my vehicle? You kind of reset your progress to zero, typically. And so the reality is indecision is, is the biggest and most expensive decision that, that most people make is they kind of just get stuck in this indecision mode is it's usually because they don't clearly understand the outcome. And so no vehicle could possibly bring you to that destination because the debt they, the taxi driver does not know where you want to go. So he will drive you around in circles. He'll collect your money, he'll collect your money, but he won't drop you off. And even if he did drop you off, even if you're like, drop me off here you're not gonna like it, right? You're not gonna like it because you didn't choose it. You know what I'm saying? With this, you don't need a perfect path for this, okay? It does not need to be perfect. There's. It doesn't need to be engineered to perfection. You don't need to overthink this. You can easily can, but you should not. You need to just do the work up front, which is understanding what you're trying to achieve. Choose the vehicle that. A plot that solves that problem, the best vehicle to get you to that destination. And then you just need to stay in the freaking vehicle and drive the vehicle, okay? Stop jumping out of the vehicle and jumping into a new vehicle. You need to commit to that one vehicle and drive that thing all the way to the destination you want to achieve, okay? You need to commit. You need to stay on it. And I would stay on it for. Don't think in weeks, don't think in days. Don't think in months. Think in years, right? For me, I always use the word of just like 10 years. I'm going to be in this business 10 years. Maybe it's going to be two, maybe it'll be three, maybe it'll be one. But if you commit to 10, the chances of your success are significantly higher. Most people aren't really confused. They just don't stop to actually ask themselves the right questions. If you find yourself, this is relatable to you. If you find yourself kind of shaking your head like, ah, yeah, I've been there and done that. You're not alone. There's a lot of people listening to this episode. This is exactly the same boat. In fact, most of the people, 99% of the world are exactly in this boat. And that's why there's 1 percenters, and that's why there's 99 percenters, okay? And I'm not talking about just in wealth and money. I'm talking about liking anything, right? Is you need to have a specific goal. So right now, for the context of built online, do these four things. One, write down your income goal. Just practice this, okay? Write down your income goal. Be very specific and do it per year. Okay? I want to make a hundred thousand dollars a year in profit. I want to make a million dollars a year in profit. I'll make $10 million a year in profit. Doesn't matter what it is, write it down. Two, write down your time commitment to this. How many hours per week am I dedicated to this? To this goal? Okay, Lifestyle constraints. Okay, what are you not willing to sacrifice significantly for this stuff? Right? There's always a trade off. But what are you not willing to like, lose in order to get your goal? So for me, it's like, I'm not willing to lose my marriage. Okay? I'll never sacrifice, I won't never sacrifice my marriage. I won't sacrifice my, my flexibility to a degree of my optionality. Mostly for me. Like, for me, I never want to be in a place that I don't want to be in. Okay. I never want to have to, to have to move, move my, move my home to, for, for my business. That's not something I want to do. Stress, okay? How, how much stress am I willing to have for this? So for me, it's like I, I'm willing to be stressed. I'm willing to be stressed as long as it's the right type of stress and as long as my, my outcome is very, very exciting and clear for me. Uh, for you it might be like lifestyle constraints is maybe you're a mom and you're just like, ah, I want to be there for my kids every single time at the PTA meetings. I want to always be there. I, I don't want to have to have a nanny. I don't want to have to. Cool, that's fine. You don't have to sacrifice those things if you don't want to. Just build it into the model. Make sure you have it clearly as a constraint, otherwise you will get sucked into a business that you don't even want. Okay? Four is time horizon, quick cash, long term build or in between. Where are you? All right. For me, I was willing to do a long term, but there's times in my life where a quick cash was important to me. Right? And so you can, you can do that and that. There's nothing wrong with that. But typically quick cash usually equals less enterprise value. And for me, it was important to me to build something of a bigger value, enterprise value. And so that was important for me. And so you want to kind of make sure you write that down. So again, quick cash versus long term build. If it's your, if your business is a manual, you know, maybe it's construction. Like you're a, you know, let's say you're a cabinet builder. Like, you know, for example, behind us, like building cabinets and building shelves. Quick cash, lots of people, lots of homes need, need cabinets. And if you're skilled in that, then amazing. The downside with that, the upside is it's get Quick cash. You can, you can go get those customers today. You could start that business with literally hammer, nails, drill, right? Maybe a CNC cutter and things like this. But the point is you can start that quickly, get cash. But the problem with this, the trade off that you're making, is that nobody wants to buy that business. Another trade off is you can't do that. You have to be in someone else's house building that. Another downside is, maybe I said this, but nobody wants to buy that business. So that means the enterprise value, it doesn't increase your net worth at all. It just, it just, it's basically buying yourself another job. So for me, that irks me. I don't want to be that, have that business. I don't think you do either. Otherwise you wouldn't be listening to Built Online podcast, for God's sakes. But you understand what I'm saying, so. And then after you write these four things down, ask what business model best fits this? Don't ask yourself yet, what business sounds exciting? First, ask yourself what business model best fits this. Then you can ask yourself the question of which one excites me though, of those answers, right? Which, which one just lights me up. And if you don't know that, yeah, don't, don't have those things yet, then, then keep thinking, keep writing down, keep getting more clear on this. Spend time on this. By the way, most people do not spend enough time on this. And this should be like a. I don't know. For me, I spend hours on this every single week. Hours. Because I never, ever want to build something that I don't actually want to live in. You see? So clarity first, strategy second, execution third. I went longer today than I expected. Thank you all for listening to the Built Online podcast. I hope this was helpful. If, if I can ask you a favor, just let me know if this is helpful or not. Doesn't matter if it's on the YouTube channel, if it's in the comments, Spotify, wherever it is, just let me know. Otherwise I won't know. Tell me in the comments if this isn't helpful. Tell me this is. Kind of waste my time. I want to know. I don't care. I can handle some negative feedback. I got plenty of it, trust me. But if you do like it, let me know too, and see you all next time.