Documenting the Journey with Will Lucas

do as a culture. But deep down inside, so many 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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

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 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. 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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

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 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.

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 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, 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.

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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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

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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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,

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 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 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.

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. 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 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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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. 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 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 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.