Hey, what's up, everybody? I am driving right now, and I'm just using my phone to record this just because I felt like I would record while... the topic is hot in my head this audio is probably not going to be great and you're going to hear all the like car noises and everything but whatever um i I'm literally right outside my therapist's office, so I'm just getting out of therapy today. I go to cognitive behavioral therapy. I've been going to therapy on and off for...
a long time now, for generalized anxiety disorder, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about right now. I had a great session, and... One of the things that came up, it's interesting, this came up now twice in the last two days. It is this idea. So last night I was speaking with Blake, who's my business coach. He's a guy called Blake Lagrange.
I've been working with him for two years. Talking about the business and kind of talking about, I don't know, feeling a bit unmotivated. And anyone who listens to this podcast knows that my motivation... kind of comes and goes and all that kind of stuff um i was talking to blake and my suggestion like i was like look i'm just gonna
see how it plays out with aj and smart you know like as in with all these different projects that are going on and you know our partner's business and i'll just see where it goes and then i'll just kind of take action based on where it's going which is like like a you know kind of a passive approach i'll just see what happens and then i'll react to it and you know one of the reasons i can do this or i am thinking about doing that is that
In the past, I've done that a few times. I've just waited to see what would happen before deciding to take action. Ah, shit, I just missed my turn. Ah, fuck. All right, well, I'll have to turn this way. So yeah, many times in my life, I've sort of, even though I kind of knew what I needed to do, I've put it off and just waited. And I've just been like, I'll just see what happens.
There's so many cyclists here. I'll just see what happens and then I'll react to it. Oh, shit. I'm just going to have to come into this lane here. Sorry, guys. And Blake, as Blake is, he was like, John, if you wait, if you just wait and see. then this time next year, you're just going to be in the same situation wondering. And the question I had for where the question we're talking about with Blake is like with AJ and smart do like.
do we make the push for the 10 million revenue or not? Like, do we make the push for the 10 million revenue? Or do we structure the business the way it's kind of getting structured now almost automatically? which is like this uh you know some parts of it are just running almost automatic but they're not really making much more money each year as in
We're not like on some big growth path. Or yeah, or do we do the 10 million? Or do we push for the 10 million? Or, or, or, or, or. And my response was like, I just want to wait and see. sort of where the, what happens and then I'll react to it. Just because that's sort of the mood I'm in at the moment. And he was like, you need to take action. You need to do something to get a reaction.
And it's interesting because when I'm coaching people, when I'm talking to people who are in our partners programs or other entrepreneurs and they're like stuck, I'm like, you just need to do something. You just need to see what happens. For example, you just need to hire someone or you need to, maybe you need to just get an office space. Maybe you need to shake things up and then just see what happens. That action will create some sort of reaction.
But, you know, it's hard to sometimes take your own advice, especially if you're a bit tired. And I'm a bit tired at the moment. The last two weeks I had this flu. It fucked me up massively, like destroyed my motivation. And I'm having a hard time coming back, feeling motivated, which is also fine, by the way. So anyway, therapy today, the session I just left, you know, five minutes ago.
I was talking to her about this feeling kind of unmotivated thing and just feeling like I couldn't be bothered doing anything. I'm almost in like a depressive state. And I told her, yeah, this... kind of happens to me like every so often sometimes i'm excited sometimes i'm not excited um and it comes in bursts and it comes in waves and she basically came to that brought me to the
the conclusion of waiting around to get excited. And again, I know we've all heard this. We've all heard this. Anyone listening to this podcast, you've heard other people talk about this. Sometimes you just need to hear it again and again and again and put it in your context. So waiting around or my mood to change or for the circumstances to line up in a way that.
Now it makes sense to make a move. Because sometimes waiting could be just the right solution. Although maybe it's rare. Anyway, waiting around for it. She said, you know, the thing that actually in the past has made me excited, has gotten me pumped about the business, and has gotten... My life and business. Oh, there's a couple fighting really bad next to me right now in a different car. They look so pissed. I feel bad for them. Anyway, the things in the past.
that have given me excitement and brought the business forward and made me feel pumped, always just came from me fucking taking action without knowing exactly what the result would be. For example, right now. I'm on the fence about investing heavily, and I mean a lot of money, into making our new office super nice, like new furniture. The cost of some of the things, it's going to be like, I don't know, $100,000 to just improve a part of the office. And it's a rental space.
Yeah, okay. So the worried and ineffective version of Jonathan is like, maybe I'll see how we're doing in a few months. I'll see if we're like... you know, if our next program does well, maybe I'll just check this out. Maybe I'll see how the B2B sales are going before making this decision. That's one way of doing it. That's definitely like a...
safe way of doing it or the way that's worked for me in the past and I believe that works for the most successful entrepreneurs is like, all right, fuck it. I know having a better space and a nicer space. is conducive to making great things and so i just need to do that i just need to be confident that doing that will lead to more great things another example is chatting with uh Blake last time he was like you're basically on on the partner side of the business you're basically missing um
a designer in the way that you have it for the facilitator side of the business so for the facilitator side of the business we have an amazing designer a guy called tim he's been working with us for 10 years but what we don't really have is someone else who can just jump onto random projects for months and be completely off the core business, facilitator.com. But I'm like...
And this would need to be also a very good designer. It can't just be, oh, this is like the craft designer and we keep the really great designer for facilitator. We would need a great designer. someone who can do really good visual design work, but also then create the pages in Framer, etc., etc. And again, I was like, oh, but maybe we wait and see how the partner's business is doing.
i'm about to close a big deal uh this week and then maybe what next week maybe i'll just see but then the other alternative is just well let's just fucking get like let me just start taking this action looking for this designer instead of waiting till the perfect moment. And that resource is someone then I can start using straight away and that will just start moving things forward.
I'm not making any amazing, crazy point here. The point I'm trying to make here is just often, I mean, more often than not, we're waiting around and I can see it in other people. It's easy to see in other people when someone's talking about, I'm going to quit my job. You just fucking do it. You need to do it to take action. But then there's the fear. Yeah, but I have the security of this job. I have the security of this thing. I know.
basically this pain or whatever it is. But sometimes to get the result we want or to... to even be in the mood so for example i was talking to the therapist i'm just not in the mood i don't feel motivated and besides her saying well sometimes it's fine to just chill the fuck out and not do anything and she also pointed out and I know this that my style is a bit of a burst of energy and then sort of needing to come down a bit but alternatively
one of the things that I tell people to do, but I then don't do it myself, which is why I need coaches and therapists. By the way, having mentors is so important. And I'm very grateful that I can afford these things. One of the things that I need to goddamn remember is just often the answer to a question is taking action.
regardless of whether you know this is the right action or not and sometimes i mean i'll give you a great example you know the b2b business two years ago or two and a half years ago were starting to go in a direction that didn't make any sense to me. And I basically knew it was going to fail, but I didn't 100% know it was going to fail. Meaning that I had a feeling that the team...
wasn't going to actually be able to pull it off. And so I was like, yeah, but I should really wait until this team completely fails so that I can at least be like, all right, well, it really didn't work. So I can be... really sure that it was worth taking you know tearing this apart and redoing it and but what happens is these things then drag on and yes eventually you do get your
moment where it's like oh this is so fucked i have to do something about it now but by that point you're you've waited around for a year being unmotivated, eaten into your motivation for running the business, and also lost loads of money. All just to get this security. Oh, I'm just going to pull into this parking. garage right now, so I might need to stop. Oh, shit, is it closed? Oh no, what's up here? Wait a second, guys. I need to talk to the man here. Alright, well, it looks like...
Parking is free today. They're taking... Oh no, they're taking away the Chargers. Okay. What was I saying? Oh yeah. So, instead of... taking the action that I kind of intuitively knew I needed to take, what I did was waited. And just, let's just see if it really fails. And if it really fails, then I'll...
Then I'll shut that down. Then I can, you know, tell those people it doesn't really make sense anymore. And then everyone will like agree with it because we'll all have seen the results instead of just, I mean.
There's basically never been a time at AJ and Smart where I had a feeling that something wasn't going to work for more than a month, and then it worked. It's like when... we hire someone, let's say a salesperson, they either are really fucking good in the beginning, like within the first six weeks, they're already fucking great.
Or, to be honest, it's an uphill battle and they never really make it. And it's like this traction and momentum in the beginning of things. You just feel it. When something's working, you feel it. Our most successful thing ever at AJ and Smart, in terms of just raw millions of euro, was this VSL funnel we created for Workshopper Master.
That shit started working straight away. There wasn't this big period where it wasn't working. It started working almost straight away. I'm deep down in a parking garage right now. Hopefully, I guess I'm just recording on my... always no thing um and so for me this thing coming out of therapy and her saying jonathan like you don't need to wait for the motivation
You don't need to wait for this feeling of momentum. You're not, you know, this thing that Tony Robbins says. She also sort of said it. She's like, life isn't happening to you. You know, you're actually. creating the life that's happening to you what is it life's not happening to you life's happening for you but you have to take action to actually get any of these results um
So yeah, what's my message today? I just wanted to record this for myself as well, because I'll forget it in the future. The answer here is... And I'm saying this to myself more than I'm saying it to you guys, or the takeaway here is, it doesn't seem like waiting around and just seeing what will happen. Even though it's safe and even though you don't have to have any conflict, it doesn't seem like a good way to live life or run a business. Yet, I...
stupid and will obviously fall into that trap again. And there's going to be parts of my life where I'm like, this is a building block I just don't want to work on right now. And I guess you have to give yourself that ability to just not work on every single fucking building block all the time. But generally, if there's a part of your life right now where you're like, where it's been...
Let's say it's been like six months and the results haven't really changed. And you've been kind of trying and you've been also like waiting or seeing. And for a lot of you, this will be... Let's say an employee that you have or a product that you have where you're like, there's potential here, but it's been.
six months or it's been 12 months or it's been two years and it doesn't really get better or it's fine but it's not like this holy shit this is just clicking oh my god the lights aren't turning on down here um sorry guys you're just living with me right now i'm parking um Okay, I'm parking really low down here. So, yeah, what part of your life right now are you just kind of like, ah, oh.
Maybe just another tweak to this thing or maybe just another coaching session with this employee will help. The true answer to it is. It just might not be the right thing. And you might need to make a real decision. The decision you kind of know you need to make. um one of those there's like questions you can ask yourselves when it comes to employees which i think is pretty cool uh one question is if you were to if you if you could like
If this person, if you knew what it was like to work with this person and you had to hire them today, like if this was the first day where you're like, you have the choice to hire them or not, would you hire them again? That's like a really great question to ask.
yourself like would i actually you know now that i know what it's like to work with this person would i hire them again um whatever for your next company or if it was just like a hypothetical situation where they're you're meeting them for the first time but you know what it would be like to work with them um and if the answer is no or the answer is i don't really know yeah probably then you know this this might be the answer to your question um
So yeah, taking action. I am going to try to internalize that after two very smart people reminded me that my... hanging around and just sort of seeing what will happen approach isn't what has worked for me in the past in fact what's always worked for me is going all in just making a fucking decision and like riding the waves of excitement from that point um i hope i remember that i recorded this i'm gonna have to set a reminder to upload it later anyway
Oh, yeah. By the way, many of you, I asked a lot of you. So a couple of weeks ago, we did this launch of this book, this click book from Jake Knapp. I'm John Zorasky. It went extremely well. We at AJN Smart were through our partner's business. We launched it. We're very happy with the results. The guys are happy with the results. And I wanted to thank you guys. Because I posted in this, in the unscheduled CO. By the way, we've got a new domain name for this. It's unscheduled.fm.
Or you can go to unscheduleceo.com or unscheduleceo. But unschedule.fm is my new domain name. Anyway, I posted. I asked you guys to buy the book. And you did. So many of you bought it. was amazing i think i think just from my post into my blog around 800 books got sold which is amazing um really cool
To be clear, we're not taking any cash from that at AJ and Smart. This is a totally separate thing. But I really appreciate it. I also said that I will run a... how to build funnels session for you guys for the people who bought the book i haven't forgotten that what happened is i got this fucking horrible flu right after the clickbook launch and i haven't been motivated to do
really anything and so i haven't forgotten it i'm going to get around to it um maybe this week maybe next week i'll post about it but i just want to say thank you guys i really appreciate that you all came through so well for that and um yeah really fucking cool i really appreciate that and i haven't forgotten um that i promised this funnel session
you know what i'll do it for everyone who listens to this podcast and everyone who listens to the blog because so many of you actually bought the book that i can't it's too it's too many to just be like all right i'm just gonna allow these people into the session
I'm going to make it an open session for people who are listening to the unscheduled CO. Yeah, thank you guys so much for everything. I've got an exciting topic to talk about over the next few weeks because I'm trying some other... form of therapy um i won't spoil it right now and i'll try it first i don't want to like jinx it um but yeah i hope you're all doing well love you all have a great day goodbye