Episode 1: Unveiling the Pillars of Entrepreneurial Motivation

Episode 1

Transcript

Hello, everyone. Welcome to entrepreneurship Odyssey. I'm your host, Jacob. yes.

I'm assuming you're coming here because you're interested in entrepreneurship and you also probably know that entrepreneurship is quite a difficult task. And it's something that you set out to do and you instantly become an undated by all of the possibilities. You don't know where to start. You lack information of any kind. And whenever you do try something, you're awful at it. And that can be discouraging and disheartening and making you want to quit. So my goal with this podcast is to document and share my own experiences. So people know that they are not alone in the way that they feel.

Now, for entrepreneurship at something that I've been trying to do. Probably for the last three years. Especially. So the last six months, so I came up with all these business ideas and I would get excited. Maybe a website. I would create some logos. I would create some social media accounts, maybe post a little bit, but then I would stop. And I would lose faith and heart in that particular idea. and then I would want to move on to the next new and exciting idea constantly bouncing between them. I think throughout my life. I bounced between a hundred different ideas, which I thought. This is what I want to do with my life.

This is the path. This is the way. It turns out most of them were not, and they were transitory and they only lasted for a very short amount of time. Until they passed. So, for example, you know, I wanted to be a diplomat. I wanted to be a physical therapist. I want to be a personal trainer. I was a personal trainer for awhile.

I wanted it to be a twitch streamer.

I wanted it to be so many different things. And each time I thought this is the one, this is the thing I want to do. It wasn't until later that I figured out, oh, it's actually not. It's not meant to be.

Okay. So back to the topic, um, I feel like things have finally started to come together for me. The last few months. And I've made some real progress towards my goals. I have started learning how to film video. So I have a camera. That I bought a long time ago, but I never used it. And I started to learn some cinematography, how to change the color grading in lightroom. Or in DaVinci resolve. And I'm learning how to edit some and how to shoot from different angles and things like that. And my goal with that is to create content.

I want to produce content on every platform. So right now I've created a Tik TOK, and I have an Instagram and I have a YouTube channel, and now I'm doing podcasts. So I am spreading myself out thinly.

But the reason for this is because I need to build momentum. I need to dive in as hard as I can and produce as much as I can of every kind. I've already noticed the positive effects of this. I've noticed one that I'm no longer afraid of producing things where the quality is not so good. So for example, this podcast is my first time shooting a podcast and it's especially awkward being a podcaster to alone and having an unscripted audio. Right, because I don't know what to say. And I don't know whether or not it will be entertaining.

And it's probably going to be the case where the first hundred episodes or so are complete garbage. But I just need to record, record record and publish it. The issue is, is I have recorded some things in the past hesitantly and decided to delete them later. And this was a big mistake. I think because you need to get over that fear of publishing that fear of facing judgment. That fear of getting started. You just need to start without a plan without thinking about it without fear of repercussion or people judging you. And you need to just do it consistently every single day. This I have found to be a key principle in changing the course and directory of your life. I have started producing videos, which I have not been proud of the quality, and I still upload them anyways.

And we see negative feedback. Not negative feedback directly. No one has said anything. Terrible. But I noticed that, okay, maybe this one doesn't get as many likes. So this one doesn't get as many comments. And that's going to be the case, because to be honest in the beginning, when you're starting out a new skill, you're going to be terrible at it.

You're going to be terrible at it for the first hundred thousand times you do it. But maybe the 10,000 and the 10,001. Those will be the times where you see that you are creating something of quality and of worth and value. And from there on, and only get better and better and better.

And that's an extremely exciting thing. hopefully. My goal is through this. I can get better at speaking because I think the way I'm speaking right now, Is perhaps a little rushed and too quick. And maybe it's not as relaxed. As I would want it to be like, my mind is quite scattered right now and running at full speed. Because I'm thinking, oh, what do I need to say next? Right.

Like I'm filming a podcast, which I may take this audio and I may put it out there on the web and other people may hear it. Oh, no, like I need to say something smart and clever. And that's a lot of pressure that I built up within myself. And I think that will take a long time too. Let it go. Okay. I find that another thing that is a big problem is I am digressing. And talking about a bunch of random topics, which may not be, Directly correlated to the theme of this first episode.

So to go back, what, what is this first episode for? I think the main theme should be an introduction. So what is entrepreneurs Odyssey? Okay. So I don't even know exactly what business I'm going to create. right now, I'm just creating content. So that's the first stage, but eventually I will create some small businesses or something larger later on, maybe, you know, some gyms or create some fitness product or clothes or something that just adds value to people lives and, and experiment with that.

Using that as another stepping stone to learn.

So to return back to what entrepreneur Odyssey is. It's going to be a documentation of everything that I do. Any insights that I have, any resources that I find to be useful. All of that will be uploaded to my website. So I do have a personal website, which is just www dot Jacob. dot com. So you can just take that name and enter it into the, uRL address. On this website, I have decided I'm not going to SEO optimize it.

I don't care if people find it through Google rankings. What I care about most is that it's user-friendly. So I will just have questions probably. And that will be as opposed to it's an article and then maybe linked to some guide or some resource that I found to be useful. And then my whole process of how I came to be.

So maybe if you're listening to this in five years time, hopefully by then I had some sense of success. And you're like, oh wow. This Jacob Pokemon, dude. He, he did something pretty cool. I really want to go back and see how he did it. Well, you can. That's what the point of this one, because I listened to something from. Um, Somebody. Where they said that they wished that. Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos like shot a blog while they were creating their business.

Like.

Oh, here's another day like Tesla is almost gone bankrupt. Oh, Amazon is still not making a profit. Right. Like if we had those vlogs, as people who want to start businesses, they would be quite exciting and insightful. And I think a lot of other podcasts that I've seen the quite professional, but they just talk about principles. And they talk about some stories and they have some interviews.

And I think these podcasts. Carry great value. They offer a lot of resources and insights, especially the ones with the interviews. But I don't feel like any of them represent. The entrepreneurial spirit. Like how, how difficult it really is to go down this route and why most people don't succeed. Like it is. At least to me, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And you feel such a mint. It's like self doubt and worry and stress.

And you want. Yeah, I want to say you want to give up, but you don't even know where to start. You feel completely overwhelmed. And. I feel like people don't. Talk too much about this. Yeah, they say, okay, you need to grind it out. You need to come at it every single day. But. You don't really hear about the failures. That much, I don't even want to say I'm going to shift failures, but

I guess my goal in this podcast is that you can find some solace knowing that someone house. Is going through the same thing that you were going to and how did they overcome it? And how do they deal with it? And how do they answer the questions that they have? So what resources did they access? Because I'm not an expert.

Okay. Um, I'm not some business guru and I don't think I have a, want to be one. I'm not going to sell some online course in that regard. I'm not going to tell you, oh, this is the way you make $10,000 a month in three days, or how you gain 50,000 followers in six days. It's not realistic. And most of the time, the pyramid schemes, right. It's usually a guy teaching you how to sell business courses while he himself is doing that through a business course.

So then you will go on and teach people how to build business courses. And it's just on and on and on. And you can see it's a loophole where everyone feels like they're productive, but no, one's actually doing anything. And I think it's quite. Quite funny. Um, so that's not my goal. And that's definitely not my goal.

My goal is to document this. And then the other thing is my goal is twofold.

I also want to showcase why. This entrepreneurship journey is so worthwhile. Why is it something that we are going to pursue? Despite it being such a painful experience. And the reason for that is. It's meaningful work. So I don't believe work is necessarily a bad thing. I think. Honestly, not working as quite a terrible thing.

Like the idea of working your whole life only to retire at 60. Because you hated your job, your entire life. And then now you're just sitting at home alone, not doing anything that that's held, and then you're just waiting to die and be buried in the dirt. That's a, that's a horrible experience and that's not what we want at all. What we want instead. Is that our work brings meaning to our life.

There's a Japanese philosophy, which you probably heard of called ikigai. And econ guy. If I remember correctly, it's a combination of doing something that you love doing something you can get paid for. Doing something that the world needs and doing something that you are good at. So you kind of use these four to analyze,

what business ideas or work opportunities suit me best. So for example, I before thought I wanted to teach English. And, you know, it's something that the world needs is something I can get paid for. And it's something I'm good at. But it's not something I love. So perhaps it's not the best. And then here's another example. I want to teach philosophy. It's something that I love.

It's something I think I'm good at it's something I think the world needs, but it's not really something I'm going to get paid for. And the list can go on and on and on and on about all my business ideas.

You have to use these four questions, these four principles to filter and decide which business ideas or which careers are worthwhile to you? Because I want to say entrepreneurship doesn't mean you're necessarily going to start a big company. It could also just mean that you are just a freelancer.

You just have a skill that is valuable and you are going to. Sell it to other people. I think entrepreneurship can come and many different forms. There's words like solopreneur Where. You are an entrepreneur, but you are basically the one running everything. You are the pillar stone of the entire business. And without you, nothing would be left. Then there's autopreneur. where you just kind of create like a machine or a factory. Something that you can leave and it will keep running on its own.

Now that's pretty cool because that's a source of passive income. And then there's entrepreneur, which usually is. You are half and half, you are actively engaged in the business. And making it grow. Yet there's other people also working in the business and play an important part. And that one's pretty cool because that's when you can create something quite great.

Right? So solo , you can only accomplish so much on your own. Uh, you need other people. You need people who you can delegate different tasks to people who specialize in different things. Entrepreneur. On the other hand is something that's great for passive income and something that can run and get you some money. However, it's not something that's going to grow into something great or amazing because the people who are working for you, the not passionate about, you know, building your dream, your vision. You need to be the one to lead them and inspire them to believe in and be convicted. So auto preneur doesn't work for very large companies.

Solopreneur also doesn't work for very large companies. So that leaves us with entrepreneur. So this podcast can be any of the three.

I also want to talk about why is this lifestyle appealing to us? So I first touched on the meaning of the work. So the eco guy, right. It's something where you want to be. Excited about every single day is something that you want to work on. And something that you want to do.

That is extremely important.

So for example, Are we recording this? It's a little bit awkward in the beginning. I think I'm warming up later in the episode.

But besides this shooting videos and creating content is something that I look forward to every single day. It's something that I really love and enjoy. And I am working, you know, late into the night until like 5:00 AM. And I love it very much. And I get very excited about the possibilities. Hold on one sec.

Okay. I'm back. My roommate was fighting mosquitoes. While listening to Taylor swift and it was a little bit loud. So perhaps I got into the recording. I think the place that I live is quite loud. I live in the middle of the city and you can hear the scooters and the cars passing by. I live in Taiwan right now, by the way. And yeah, the place I live is decent, but yeah, like this is good at outside driving right now.

Switch something you may hear and the microphone that I'm using, if you are interested in buying it yourself as the Samsung. Uh, S two Q. Something like that. It's the one that everyone recommends for begin to podcasts. It's quite inexpensive and it's easy to use. You just plug it in with the USB. I can't wait to drink some water really quick.

Okay. So back to meaning. It's something you want to be excited about every single day. So recently I've been saying up until about 5:00 AM. I slept like two hours last night. So today is Monday. Um, Friday night I stayed up until 5:00 AM editing a video. Then the next day, you know, I also woke up early, around like seven or eight didn't sleep and then. Uh, the day after that I did the same thing. Um, so I think the last three or four days, I've probably gotten a total of like 10 hours sleep. Which is very unhealthy, but my energy levels feels very high right now. Um, even right now, I should sleep soon because I have some things in the morning. But it's something I'm so excited about, right.

That I have to record this right now. And get it done. And, and Ashley moved towards the goals that have always been having. I've had some goals my entire life. And for some reason I never accomplished them. Um, so for example, Today at gymnastics was my first time ever trying a backflip. And wow. The first time you try it is. Such an exhilarating feeling because you, you really eat, like you wanted to learn a back flip your whole life and you just always thinking about it.

You're thinking about it like, oh, how cool it would be to learn a back flip. But you never get around to it. Um, Y but anyways, back to actually learning it and experiencing it. So you practice on the ground and then you practice on a bonk. So then, then you're ready to jump into a foam pit and you're, you're prepared. You know what to do.

You, you tumbled on the ground a bit and you think, okay. This is not so bad. I can do it. I know how to roll backwards, basically in the air. And John. So if I combine the two. I should be able to make it. But at the moment when you're just about to do it, This seems to be a divide between your brain and your muscles, because you tell your muscles, okay, this is what you need to do.

Now. Go. And they don't do it. And it's a really weird phenomenon. And sometimes it's really scary because in the air you may freeze and not rotate. And that's a big problem because of course you'll land on your head or something. But anyways. I finally built up the courage, trained it a little bit, and I've just practiced maybe like 30 minutes a day.

Right? Like you've had this goal for I'm 24 years old now, like. My whole life I've had the school. I want to do a backflip. And it took me 30 minutes to learn how to do it or less. Like. That's amazing. That's why didn't I do it before. And so I'm having a lot of those. Um, revelations recently, like, why am I not living the life that I want to live? What is stopping me, right.

I think everyone wants to maybe create content or travel the world or do some difficult sports. I want to do the things that I've always wanted to do. And, I'm actually at the point now in my life where I can do it. I'm actually at the point, I guess, mentally. Um, yeah, mostly mentally, I would say. To what I'm comfortable putting myself in an uncomfortable situation and persisting through that discomfort. Tell I and proof and doing that over and over and over. So all of the content, the sports socializing. I'm recording this.

It's all something. These are all things that I'm not good at. And I don't necessarily enjoy in the moment because it's stressful for me. But it's something where I look back and I'm so, so proud of myself. And so happy and glad of how far I've come and to having that deep sense of trust in yourself and that gratitude. That is probably the best feeling you can ever have the opposite.

The worst is when you have a grit. When you have regret. Of not doing the things that you've always wanted to do your whole life. That is probably the worst feeling. So the opposite is being grateful for yourself. And the, the bad one is having grit for not doing things.

Uh, so entrepreneurship besides the meaningful work. There's a lot of personal growth that you will experience. So that's a very exciting part of it. If you can combine your skills and athletics and business and your social endeavors and your personal growth. Everything. You will become one hell of a person.

And that's fantastic. That is something that we want to strive to be like. Okay.

Next. And probably the next point or the next two points are the ones that people always think about.

Okay. So I want to be financially independent and I want to be time independent O N location independent. So I guess three things. So financially independent. I don't want to rely on somebody else. I don't want to rely on a job. For them to give me money. Time independent.

I want to work whenever I have time or energy. So, for example, if I work best in the evening, I want to work in the evening. If I work best in the morning, I want to work in the morning. If I want to go on holiday for one week, I go on holiday for one week and then I come back and I worked for two weeks, whatever it is, I think that is a fantastic way of living. To be able to control when you work. Now the last one. Location independent is also very important to me now.

Not all jobs are going to be like this. Not all entrepreneurial careers and paths are going to be. Location independent. But I really am drawn to the numb. Maddick the digital nomad lifestyle. I think. That lifestyle seems. Very exciting for somebody who's young and wants to see the world, someone who loves traveling and seeing how the cultures.

So you can see this many factors in entrepreneurship, and these are only. You know, maybe five I talked about, right? So you have meaning you have personal growth. You have time independence, you have financial independence and you have location. Independence sees it as five. This. A bunch of those I could list.

Okay. I think this podcast is getting a little bit long. So already I talked a little bit about the theory, right? So why entrepreneurship? Talk a little bit about myself, but not too much. Maybe I should give my current situation and my circumstances, so people can understand me. Understand what I'm working on and to maybe compare to however they are.

So I'm 24 years old. I am studying in Taiwan right now. I have actually studied at five universities, two in the U S both of which I did not graduate from, when COVID hit. I decided to go to Thailand. I studied. Uh, a Thai university chain, my university study there for about a year. Then I came to Taiwan.

I went to TIDA. National Taiwan university to study Chinese. And then I decided to study. Business. A shudder. Which is the national Taiwan normal university. It's kind of funny that those a word normal and the university's name, like why would it not be normal, but normal. If you don't know is a weird translation thing, but I think it comes from like a French word.

It just means the school that teaches, teaches. The one that is. A pedagog school. Okay. A pedantic school.

Pedagogue. Yeah. Fancy wood.

Okay. So that's my situation, so, okay. I studied a bunch of places. I didn't graduate. And I'm quite older, right? So like first year of college, I'm 24. It's a bit odd. But I have the equivalent of like six years of study. We had situation. Um, In terms of finances. I wouldn't say I'm doing great. I have a little bit of money saved up maybe 2001 to 2000 and I left my English teaching job.

So right now I have no jobs. So that means. I have maybe one to two months living expenses. So right now time is ticking. I don't have too much time.

So what is my plan? Well, I do work at a modeling agency and I decided to take that a little bit more serious. So tomorrow I have two castings and the reason for this is because I want the opportunity to be able to. Live temporarily in different countries. So the modeling, you can get a very nice fee.

So you're just staying in that country for a couple of months. And you normally instantly have a big group of friends. You stay what they are, the models. And you have some work. And then you only work maybe a couple of days and the rest of the days you can explore and work on your own projects, such as making content or starting my business. So I think modeling is a good freelancing career that I can implement into my life.

Now there's a lot of skills that I need to build up for. Most people think models, you just need to be attractive and it just works. Like you're just naturally good at posing, but it's not that way. Modeling is a skill like anything else, and you can learn it. So you have to learn how to control your body, how to control your facial expressions.

And most importantly, your eyes. And in addition to this, you have to learn a little bit about fashion and a little bit about how to groom yourself, to look clean, healthy. You need to work out. You need to do some skincare, know how to style your hair? Keep a nice clean cut. Et cetera. But overall, I think it's a good opportunity for me because. Because it helps with my confidence and it teaches me some valuable skills of how to be in front of a camera more naturally. So I hope to take these skills. Then apply it to when I shoot videos of myself. In addition to this. I can use whatever I shoot as content for my own platforms.

And hopefully that can help go a following.

Furthermore, the models that you meet are usually pretty great people. They are usually very active and huge into nature and they are a wonderful bunch to be around. So I decided, okay, this is the freelancing career I want to do while I'm young. It's fun. I can travel to many countries. I can meet really wonderful people and I can build the skills that I want to build. Well English teaching English on the other hand. It's kind of a dead end.

If you teach one year, if you teach 20 years, it's about the same. You know, I'm teaching kids, I'm getting paid the same amount as the guy that's been working there for 21 years. And it's like, okay. It's a dead end. It's a good. A quick money grab, but besides that, it's not a good career. It's a job, but not a Korea. Other options such as posts I'm training.

I do have a idea where I may open up to where. I become a fitness influencer for the Chinese market. Because, you know, I'm a foreigner who can speak Chinese living in Taiwan. And I am huge into athletics and I can teach them. I was a personal trainer in the us for two years. I got my certificate from the national academy of sports medicine right after. High school.

And I started working. I worked at two different gyms. One was actually the second or first best in Seattle, which is the city I'm from in the U S. That was a great opportunity for me to meet some high-end clientele, very rich people who taught me a lot of lessons. And I was very grateful for that opportunity. I have experience with that. And so that's something I can leverage,

but the problem with personal training is it takes a long time to build your clientele. And maybe it's not something I'm like always so enthusiastic about is something that. I think it depends. Uh, I may go back down that route, the future, I think ideally. The other freelancing job that I really want to do is kind of like a self-help coach. I want to be able to sit down and have deep philosophical. Conversations with people and help them fix the internal problems and the problems in their life. Kind of like a psychologist, but more. Philosophically based.

And acting more as a friend or a mentor or a coach. I liked that relationship more than a psychologist, client relationship, psychologist, patient relationship. I don't like that as much.

That is probably where I may head in the future. But again, this is not so sustainable because it's still, one-on-one where I have to exchange one hour of my time. In order to get paid. So my goal is, is something that is a little bit more scalable. So if I can make content that people find valuable and useful, well, then this can help people and they don't even have to pay sometimes.

Maybe there's an ad. And that is enough to cover my expenses and I can keep doing the thing I love and help people. And this brings up the last point. And this brings up the last point. What is my goal right now? Or what kind of content do I want to be making? Well, I want to inspire people. To live more. Right. We don't really think about how we are going to die and we don't really think about how we want to live.

And we are normally too afraid to live the kind of lifestyle that we want to live. We are too afraid to take that leap. That step. So, for example, a lot of people want to travel. But do they really want to travel on a third world country by themselves walking around not knowing where they're going to sleep that night and having no money in the bank account.

Probably not.

It's a risk. And not many people are willing to take it.

So my goal is to remind people and have people think for themselves. Okay, what do I want to do with my life? And then pursue it with all their heart. I want to be that warm hand or that. Why Sage that I wish I had in my own life. You know, the one that you read in a fantasy book and he comes and guides the hero and sets them off on an adventure on a quest.

I want to become that person because. That's the kind of person I wish I had in my life. So that's my goal with creating content, but I still have to figure out how am I going to do it and how do I put a community and how do I make it like work? How do I keep it wholesome and authentic? And Jen's parent. How do I keep it from getting corrupted? Right.

I don't want it to become any kind of self-help guru. I don't want to become a business guru. Um, that's not my goal. My goal is just to encourage people. And share insights. I keep saying the word insights, but I think insights and principles, these two words are very important to me and a will come up very often. And later episodes, so insights or things that you learn about the world. You gain a greater understanding of how things are and principles are. Rules that you derive from your insights. And you use these rules to guide your behavior, which then creates the life that you want. So principals are very important as well. And these are things that I. Slowly throughout my life establish.

So I have an insight of revelation, how I understand the world. And then I take that and maybe I create a new principal and then that principal will got all of my further actions. So for example, recently I have create a new principal saying yes to spontaneity.

So if. My friend invites me to a crazy advance or to the beach or to the mountains. Even if I think, oh, me staying at a cafe all day working, or probably be better because you always hear about the hustle culture and the grind grind, grind. Um, now I will ignore that sense of responsibility or that sense of stress and anxiety that I ought to be working on my future. And I will just go on the adventure because in all honesty, that is probably the thing that is most worthwhile. It's quite ironic that most people work their entire lives for the goal to retire, to finally be able to go hiking, go to the beach when you can just go to the beach or go hiking right now, you don't even need money for it really. Um, so finding that balance between the two. It's quite important. And I see that I am digressing a bit.

I still haven't fully introduced myself. There's still topics. I want to talk about. But I think I should wrap up this episode here. I hope you understand what this podcast is about is going to be. A bunch of insights. Principles philosophy. Entrepreneurship, the hardships of entrepreneurship, the resources, questions that we have. The information that we can use, et cetera.

And eventually I want to interview other people and figure out, okay, how can we work together to uplift each other? Because. One insight that I had recently is I think whoever you meet in your life is an ally. You don't need to compete against these people. If you want to compete, you can be against the other 7 billion people you haven't met yet. Okay. You. You can compete against them if you did. But the people that you meet, it's so silly to try to keep secrets.

Oh, I know this information. And I don't want to show it because they might use it to get ahead of me. No thinking this way. We dickless, you need to think, okay. How can I uplift the people around me so they can uplift me? So we have this mutually beneficial relationship. That is key. You don't want to be competing against all of the people near you.

You want to be competing against all of the people you haven't met yet. The people near you are your resources. They're your friends. The other people that can help you achieve what you want to achieve. So don't get jealous. Don't be envious. Don't be secretive. Don't keep information away from them. I think just give them value and perhaps value will come back. So that's my mindset. Okay, thank you for listening to the entrepreneurship Odyssey.

I'm your host, Jacob. Check out my website, www dot Jacob pug. dot com and P U G M I R E. There, you will find all of the tips, the tools, the resources, and you will find a bunch of journals and articles. That will hopefully help you. And make sure that you subscribe to my socials or you can subscribe to my newsletter, which every week. I plan to share whatever resources or insights or principles that I have. Anyways, thank you for listening.

I hope you have a wonderful day and I hope this helped you. If you're struggling. And worrying about your future. I hope to let you know that you aren't alone and that we are in this together. I'll see you next time. Bye. Bye.  📍

In the darkness of the night, a hero emerges. With a heart of gold and a soul that never falters. He sets out on a quest, a journey to the unknown. Facing demons and dragons, having got his own throne. Through the valleys and mountains, he fights with all his might. His voice, like thunder, echoed through the endless night.

At every step he takes, he's closer to his destiny. He's the hero of the odyssey, embracing his legacy.