Worst Failures #3: Waiting For The Right Idea - Ep. 81

Ryan: Aloha, folks, and welcome back to Degree Free. We are your hosts, Ryan and Hannah Maruyama.

Ryan: On this podcast, we share fundamentals we've discovered and the mistakes we've made while self-educating, getting work, building businesses, and making money, we'll tell you how to make it happen, no degree needed. 

Hannah: Welcome back. Welcome back to the podcast everybody. We are happy to have you with us as always and if you want more degree free, which why would you not, you're gonna want to run, not walk over to degreefree.co/newsletter to sign up for the newsletter that Ryan and I send out once a week.

Hannah: That has degree free jobs, degree free news resources and just stuff that we find that we think is cool, that we think you will think is cool too. So you're gonna wanna go grab that now. 

Ryan: Awesome. Right on. 

Ryan: And before we get started, links to everything are gonna be in our show notes, degree free.co/podcast. You can get all the links to everything that we talk about there.

Ryan: And, let's get into today's episode. Today we are doing the second episode in our little mini-series, Worst Failures and 

Hannah: Ryan doesn't like this series. ,

Ryan: I despise this series, 

Ryan: but it was his idea. . 

Ryan: Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah. It was my idea, but I really don't like this series, but I figured because I don't like it,

Hannah: it's probably good.

Ryan: Yeah, we should probably talk about it. Yes. So that hopefully other people 

Hannah: aren't as dumb as we are.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Which is, I mean, I'm pretty dumb, so I set a pretty high bar on that one so I'm

Hannah: Low bar, high bar?

Ryan: High bar.

Ryan: To be exceedingly more dumb than I am. So I 

Hannah: high speed, low drag.

Ryan: I'm not super worried about that. If you haven't listened to the first one, you can go back and listen to that. I talked about my worst interview ever. I'll link it in the show notes for everybody.

Hannah: It's painful, folks. 

Ryan: It was painful for me for a long time. It was also painful to talk about but I won't belabor that here.

Ryan: But today we are gonna be talking about worst is number two, and that's gonna be waiting for the right idea. 

Hannah: This is a good one. 

Ryan: This is something that,

Hannah: This is an all-American pastime, 

Ryan: I don't know. I'm not sure I don't know about that. I just know for myself and from us talking, I guess you too, but this episode was actually written by me. This is my worst failure. I mean, one of, is waiting for the right idea. And I don't know if other people are going through it. I assume so. I don't know if other people have heard it. I'm guessing so, but this is all from my personal experience and so just getting into it, I mean, this is something that I heard from my parents all the time and I'm from what we talk about prior to recording this episode, is that you heard it from 

Ryan: your parents too? 

Hannah: Yeah, I think, and there's a reason I say that, it's an all-American pastime. Like people think it's baseball. I think it's sitting around talking about ideas to make money that people never utilize at all and I don't think that this was,

Hannah: I had good friends growing up and I feel like this was universal. I feel like this is something that Americans do. They go, oh man. They try to think up things and they just say, oh, that's a great idea. If we did that, we'd be millionaires. Like, EV I think everybody's heard that. I think most people have to be honest.

Hannah: Like everybody thinks that they have a million dollar idea and that the only thing standing between them and a million dollars. Is having the idea, right? Because thinking of it is almost the action, but it's not. 

Ryan: Yeah. So in that vein, I would always hear my parents saying like, all we need is the right idea, then we'll make it, then we'll make millions of dollars.

Ryan: Like it was almost as if all we were missing was the idea and. I mean, there's a couple of things here, which is, are, is hilarious to me now, but, and we'll get into it, but like during dinners we would do this exercise and like, give us an idea. Give us an idea. Give us an idea. Did we ever execute on any one of these ideas? No. Never. I never. 

Hannah: Or you'd be a millionaire. 

Ryan: Right? Exactly. I mean, supposedly, 

Hannah: right? Supposedly. 

Ryan: Well, or actually we just didn't have the right idea. 

Hannah: Oh, there we go . 

Ryan: Yeah. We just didn't have the right idea. If we had the right idea. 

Hannah: The right idea on merit alone will make you a million dollars.

Ryan: Yeah. And so. We just thought that if we had this brilliant idea, it would just strike us like lightning, like from the heavens boom down to the kitchen table.= And I would just be like, guys, I got it 

Hannah: and then the entire cast of all the judges of Shark Tank will show up at your doorstep ready to give you money.

Ryan: Right? 

Ryan: And it was as if you had the perfect idea, you would just get that path laid out in front of you. It would just 

Hannah: materialize. 

Ryan: Materialize. And all you had to do was walk this path and you're gonna make it. For those people that have never heard this before, you might be thinking, God, you guys are idiots and

Hannah: you'd be right. 

Ryan: Yeah. 

Ryan: Right.

Ryan: Exactly. 

Hannah: That would be accurate. 

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. You're definitely right.

Hannah: He's pieing the sky. Ding dogs . 

Ryan: Yeah, and I know that now. I know that now, but I mean, it took me years and I wasted years of my life. Waiting for the right idea. That's why this is one of my worst failures. I mean, really really sincerely.

Ryan: I've wasted hours, weeks, days of my life just caught on a treadmill of my own thoughts and what if this, what if that? What about this product? What about this service? What about this brand new invention?

Hannah: What if I

Ryan: and I never did anything? So with ideas, I mean, you've heard the cliche ideas are a dime a dozen.

Ryan: They, easy come, easy go.

Hannah: Yeah, I was about to say that. You can have a million of them a day and it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. 

Ryan: That's not to say that ideas don't have their place. All action is predicated on an idea and so they absolutely have their place, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a very, very tiny part of what's about to play out and I guess this is a good point to say, this isn't necessarily just talking about entrepreneurship while starting a business is definitely relevant here. This can go for having an idea at your work of how to streamline your work or how to get that next promotion, how to get your boss to finally recognize you and your hard work.

Ryan: You can do this as an employee and you can also do this as an entrepreneur. It doesn't matter the field. 

Hannah: And it can be about, it can be about other things too in your life. It could be about if, if you weren't writing a book for money, but you wanted to write a book. Right. And you have this idea for a book that you wanna write and you just never do.

Hannah: Or you have an idea for a project at home that you wanna start and you just never do. Right. Great ideas are easy to come by. 

Ryan: And one of the things, it's kind of silly when. Illustrate the picture, but a lot of people get, I'll speak for myself. I got caught up in this where I'm just thinking about things to do, but I'll never act on it.

Ryan: So how would you even know how to execute on your idea if you've never tried anything? If you've never tried anything? And so I like to think of a jigsaw puzzle. I mean, we've all done one, I think, and jigsaw puzzles take a lot of trial and error. 

Ryan: Yeah, you gotta try the pieces, but just waiting for the right idea is basically, basically the equivalent of looking at the jigsaw puzzle and then just trying to like solve it in your mind. Okay. We're just gonna take this 500 piecer, dump it out on this table right here, and we're just gonna stare at, we're just gonna stare at the pieces 

Hannah: and it's just gonna happen 

Ryan: and it's just gonna happen. 

Ryan: Right? I'm just gonna, I'm gonna be like, yep.

Ryan: All those pieces go together. 

Hannah: Or I have to know where every piece goes before it even before I even try to put two pieces together. 

Ryan: Exactly. 

Hannah: Like before you even start looking for a corner. 

Ryan: Right. And that's a good, that's a good point cuz that's where I wanted to go next, was that. Okay. Well your next action is predicated on an idea and that idea continuing on the jigsaw puzzle example would be like, okay, well how about we put these pieces, like edges go over here, corners over here, like let's start with the corners and then the colors go over here. Like those are all ideas. 

Ryan: Okay, perfect.

Ryan: But you then have to execute on your idea. Okay. Colors here. Edges here, corners, distill 'em up already.

Hannah: And at some point you're gonna put two pieces together and they're gonna get stuck and fold. And you go, oh, these two don't fit. You're just gonna have to keep trying things until they do. 

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And the basics of it is you don't know if you don't try it and I kind of wanted to hear, I kind of wanted to talk about when I. was younger when I was a much younger man. Boy, I was a boy at this time. 

Hannah: When you were a much younger man boy, 

Ryan: I was up, man.

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. 

Ryan: I had this saying, and it was in my late teens, early twenties, and it was, you don't know if you don't go and that was mostly. In regards to, I would use that saying mostly when I would be doing something really dumb, like if I had held that philosophy with everything and been consistent.

Ryan: Then I probably would be in a much, 

Hannah: you've done some great things earlier in life. 

Ryan: Earlier. I probably would've, 

Ryan: . Yeah, exactly. 

Ryan: Like I probably wouldn't have sat around for days and hours thinking of the right idea

Hannah: instead of trying.

Ryan: Right. But in this one small portion of my life, I did try a bunch of things, right.

Ryan: And I adopted this saying like, you don't know if you don't go. And so it was mostly about like cliff jumping or like bodyboarding or doing something incredibly stupid. 

Hannah: Yeah. Like you don't know that you won't break your back if you don't try to break your back, you know? 

Ryan: Right. Exactly. And so, like, we, so one of, there's a video, I don't even know who has it.

Ryan: One of my friends probably has it, but it was like Gen one or something of the GoPro or Gen two. And,

Hannah: we're showing our age a little bit here. 

Ryan: We're at this place, it's called Spitting Caves. It's on Oahu in Hawaii. I'll put some links to everything in the show notes if you guys wanna see like how high this thing is.

Ryan: It's pretty freaking high. 

Hannah: Yeah, it's far up there. I would never jump off that.

Ryan: Yeah, I wouldn't, I would never jump off it again, but I was

Hannah: Young. 

Ryan: Just young. 

Hannah: And you didn't know? 

Ryan: Yeah, I didn't know because I didn't go Yes. . Right. Like I didn't know. I never went before. Yeah. I stood so we just, so we went there one day.

Hannah: So how high is it? How deep is it? You have no idea. 

Ryan: No idea. 

Hannah: Where are the signs? I don't know. 

Ryan: I knew how deep it was because I knew that people jumped off it prior and I knew that, you know, I mean, I'm not, I grew up around the water and so while I'm not a while, I'm not a great waterman.

Ryan: Like, I know my way around, especially in Hawaii. Especially in Hawaii.

Ryan: Yeah. And so it was a nice calm day.

Ryan: I'll just paint a word picture for you people since I'm going, I didn't mean to go off on this tangent, but there is, there's a cave in Hawaii where it's in, out in Hawaii, Kai. Like I said, I'll put some links in the show notes for everybody and on calm days, it's pretty safe to jump off of this thing. On rough days, it's not safe because the waves start coming in

Hannah: and you cannot swim in the break. 

Ryan: Yeah. Well, the waves start coming in and then it goes into the cave, and then it just starts, it hits the back and then it spits out. hence 

Hannah: it's all rocks,

Ryan: hence spitting caves.

Hannah: Yeah.

Ryan: Right. And so if you, if you jump on a big day, The chances of you getting caught up in the swell and getting pulled into the cave and then just getting tossed around and dying are pretty high and so we went on a, we knew that, so we went on a pretty calm day. It's still, there was still maybe like

Hannah: a little choppy.

Ryan: Yeah, it's choppy. Yeah. It wasn't even maybe like foot swell. 

Hannah: Oh, okay. Not bad. 

Ryan: Yeah. But it was choppy and anyway, long story short, we get there. I look over and my motto at the time is you don't know if you don't go. I had this idea in my mind that I wanted to jump off this thing, and I was like, well, now's the chance and long story short, I jumped and I used to do that with a whole bunch of things like this one day at, Caico is one of this, surf spot. in the summer of like 2015 or whatever it was. There's a big south shore swell and I'm not a very good body boarder and my friend, it was just me and my friend.

Ryan: And my friend and I don't know, somebody correct me and we're looking, we're sitting at the surf spot, Caicos, and I'll put show notes. I'll put it in the show notes for everybody. And we're just looking at these massive waves and I have no business even looking at the, like just putting eyes on it. I have no business even looking at it.

Ryan: But here we are thinking about jumping out. And he just looks back at me. I'm like sitting on the rocks, just like super scared, like a grown, I'm like 20 years old or whatever. 

Hannah: You should be scared of the ocean. , if you know that you shouldn't be in the ocean. And I'm just, when it's a certain height, 

Ryan: and I'm just like, I'm cowering.

Ryan: I'm like, I'm so afraid. And he, we had this idea like, we should go this. The biggest swell that we've had in like a decade, we should go and I was just like, and he looks back, my friend looks back, he's a really good body boarder. He could be in there all day, it's no problem and he looks back at me before he jumps in and he's just like, you don't know if you don't go right.

Ryan: And he just jumps in. I was like, oh my God. You're right. I mean, you're absolutely. Long story short, I ended up going out there. Catch one wave. I do. Okay. Catch a second wave.

Hannah: Eat it.

Ryan: Oh man. I ate, holy moly. I went down so hard and I was just like, I'm going in, I was like, I am going in. I went and now I know can't do it.

Hannah: So for people that don't, for people that don't know, there's, for people that don't know in a way, they're, the signs typically on the beach when it's big like that, they usually say, if you don't know, don't go. But we are telling you to do the opposite. But not about the ocean. Yes. Not about the ocean.

Hannah: We are not responsible. 

Ryan: Know your physical limits. Know your physical limits. 

Hannah: Do try ideas. don't drown. 

Ryan: Yeah. Don't drown. 

Hannah: Bumper stickers. 

Ryan: But anyway, sorry that was a really long tangent. But I think it, if I had taken that cavalier attitude and applied it to other places in my life at the time, I would be in a much different position.

Ryan: I'd be in a much different place in my life and so I think that's useful. It's something that I do now, like I, to this day, I mean, I don't jump off of, 60 foot Cliffs anymore, but, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't ever, but 

Hannah: 40 feet.

Ryan: 40 feet I would . Yes. But it's too high, man. Yeah. 60 is too high.

Hannah: Yeah. 60 is too high. 

Ryan: But if I applied this in my life now, like, okay, well I've never reached out to this person before. I never talked to this person before. You don't know if you don't go, okay, here we go. Hey, how are you?

Hannah: Try. 

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. 

Hannah: Try. 

Ryan: Right. And that kind of leads us into the next point, which is like just execution is the thing that matters.

Hannah: Doing things. If you don't do something, you're not gonna get a result. That's for sure. If you don't do it, you're definitely not gonna get a result.

Ryan: Yeah. Trying, failing retrying. Not to like talk about like how you should be the man and stuff like that. I mean, I literally almost drowned in that second story.

Ryan: I literally almost drowned. Yeah and my friend, like he was having the time of his life. I mean, he was killing it. He was killing it. He was doing a great job. Yes. And. It was a sight to see cuz just, I mean, it's a big desire to compete and go back there again. But I'm just, now you and I are just talking story.

Ryan: Hopefully we're subjecting all these people to, to my story's alright. 

Ryan: But like it was picture perfect. Yeah. I mean there was nobody out. Oh there was nobody out.

Hannah: Cause it's too big. 

Ryan: Cause all of 'em had a sense. Right. all of 'em had sense. And if there's anything that you know about, like if you like, I dunno about other places, but in Hawaii on big days like that,

Hannah: it does get thin because people know. 

Ryan: Yeah, it does get thin but then also the Coast Guard. The Coast Guard helicopters are out. Yeah. And so like, 

Hannah: which is a sign 

Ryan: They're patrolling because

Hannah: for people who are literally in over their head. 

Ryan: Right. Exactly. Which is funny, right? Because Coast Guard doesn't really do the stuff between three miles and stuff, but they're out.

Hannah: Yeah.

Ryan: And you know, when you see that, when you see the bird in the sky, you're just like, oh my god, 

Hannah: it's a fun day.

Ryan: Right, exactly but yeah, it was beautiful. There was nobody in the water and. We could get all the waves. I mean, I only got two. I got like one and a half and I got pounded and I almost drowned.

Hannah: Did you remember it? 

Ryan: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I was like water in my freaking cranium for like a week after that. Yeah. 

Hannah: Was it worth it? 

Ryan: I got tumbled. No. No. I knew, I knew before I went in. Like I don't, I forget how big it was. It was big dog. It was big. Way too big for me. 

Hannah: For you to say that it probably

Ryan: Way too big for me.

Ryan: Yeah and I was like, this is crazy. 

Ryan: And anyway, the trying, I forget where I was going with that. 

Hannah: Execution matters. 

Ryan: Yeah. With that I tried and I fail and now I know like I'm probably not gonna try that again. Okay. There's, I can still go and maybe attack it from a different angle. Maybe I'll go on a smaller day or whatever. I mean, to use a different analogy now, like if your approach this way. With getting a job didn't work. If you applied to a hundred jobs and you haven't got, you haven't heard anything back. If you'd applied to 200 jobs and you haven't heard anything back, well 

Hannah: change something.

Ryan: You've gotta change something and then try again. Right? Change your resume, add more keywords. I don't know.

Hannah: Different job description,

Ryan: Dump your resume. You know, maybe you gotta start doing personal portfolio. Maybe you gotta go around places and knock on doors and try to get in front of people.

Ryan: Change something up. It's the execution that would really matters. 

Hannah: Yeah. So, and this is where, this is where the doing and the execution of things really matters. If you want, let's say you wanna be an EMT right? What have you done? What have you tried that has gotten you closer to that goal?

Hannah: Have you gone and tried to do a ride along? have you asked, have you talked to people who are EMTs to see if it's something you'd be interested in doing, or if there's some way for you to volunteer or get involved? Like have you gone to a local care home and maybe try to see if they'll let you work there as an orderly something, but just trying to get close to the thing you're trying to do, and just sort of starting to wade into the, we're back to the water analogy, but waiting back into the water as it were, to try to just do, like you have this idea, you want to do this thing. What are, what steps are you taking to try to get close to it?

Hannah: And how are you acting? Right? What are you, what actions are you taking in order to get to this place where you can test this idea as opposed to just having it and doing nothing about it. 

Ryan: Yeah, definitely. I think that's a good example because that's an idea in somebody's career they'd be like, oh, I want to do this, but.

Ryan: Well, do you know what they do or have you even tried to do that before? Or something like what you said, like volunteering in some sort of capacity of patient care.

Ryan: Right? 

Ryan: But you can think all you want. And then what happens a lot of times, and this is a little off subject, but what happens a lot of times with people that do this where they start to think that I want to be an EMT.

Ryan: They think and they plan out their whole career path before they've tried, and then they go and they go into school and then they get on a rig and they're just like, wow, this is not what I expected. Wow. Like this, there's a lot more depending on where you are, you know, like there's a lot more homeless people than I thought.

Ryan: Wow. There's a lot more drug addicts than I thought. Like, wow. I don't like to deal with, you know, people dying. I don't like to pump chest 

Hannah: A lot more death than I thought for some reason. 

Ryan: Right, exactly. 

Ryan: You know,

Hannah: whatever it is,

Ryan: whatever it is. I don't like to go into messy people's houses, into order houses.

Hannah: And this is something too, like this is very much. 

Hannah: This is very much something that happens a lot with college graduates, is they do. They don't. They don't try anything near what they're majoring in before they just. Dive headfirst into for what we know to be five and a half years of educational purchasing to try before they get anywhere you're trying that thing. 

Ryan: Because it's all an idea, right? And as an idea 

Hannah: it's a thought. 

Ryan: It's brilliant. 

Hannah: And ideas, and I get this too, cuz like ideas are perfect. Right? Ideas are perfect because they, there's no mistakes in them. There's no mistakes in ideas. So your ideas can stay pristine and your ideas can stay safe, and they can stay perfect if you protect them from reality by not trying them at all.

Hannah: And so that's something too that like I'm definitely, me personally, I'm an idea person and I know that's definitely something I've fallen prey to is not, is definitely having a lot of ideas and then being overly protective of the ideas in that I'm not willing to try them because I don't want to see them fail because I don't wanna see, I don't wanna see myself proven wrong, whatever.

Hannah: But the idea itself, if you just have it, it's a good idea, right? But if you try and you fail at it, now, maybe it's a bad idea and that kind of reflects on yourself and it makes you question yourself too. 

Ryan: Absolutely. And I think another thing that's similar to that is entrepreneurship. They go through this very similar process, thought process.

Ryan: Where it's like, I have an idea for a business. It's gonna be huge. 

Ryan: I mean, how many times have we heard that from people?

Hannah: So many. 

Ryan: So many. Right. And. You are like, okay, perfect. Like have you started to build your product? Have you started to build your surface or have you tested your idea? Like, are you even solving a problem that's out there in the real world?

Hannah: Or worse, like they have an idea and they've given all this thought to it, and then you say, oh, well, oh, who, like, you know, they even tell you who the customer is. Like they've thought about who the customer is and who it would help and whose problem it would solve. And they say, oh, like have you gone and talked to, have you gone and asked somebody?

Hannah: Have you gone and offered to do it for somebody? and they're like, No, you know, cuz you don't wanna get anywhere near, you don't wanna get anywhere near the actual execution of the idea cuz that's scary but the idea itself, where there's no action attached to it is safe. 

Ryan: And there are a couple of like books that have helped me in the past with like, as far as like getting stuff done, there's that whole like, I don't know if like GTD, like there's a whole freaking thing getting things done by David Allen. 

Ryan: There's like a whole system behind it.

Hannah: Oh, I was gonna say that sounds like a cult that you're saying.

Ryan: Yeah, I won't go into it here, but I'll put links to everything in the show notes.

Ryan: But yeah, that, that's one of those things that's like. You can execute on some things, some quick things and get things done. It's like more productivity. for habit building and for kind of if you wanted to be better at X thing, better at outreach or better at whatever it is really.

Ryan: There's Atomic Habits by. James Clear. 

Hannah: People love that book.

Ryan: Yeah, it's a good book. It's a good book. Very, and it's good for it's good for like flossing your teeth, getting you to floss your teeth or helping you at business. 

Hannah: Amen. You gotta floss your teeth. 

Ryan: Yeah. And then like, one of the things that I've been thinking about, there's another book by Seth Godin, it's called Lynchpin and that book is funny cuz that book is about like, making yourself invaluable in a company as an employee. Really 

Hannah: that's useful right now.

Ryan: Yeah. So and so, yeah, definitely you can, get that book and look at it from that angle but really in about halfway in it's not super useful to me for that aspect of it. But really about halfway in, there's a part about talking about like just executing, about just doing stuff and thinking about things in a different way, thinking about art and execution. And I think that that's where this stuff really, it's kind of the perfect, it kind of highlights for me what I think is the perfect blend of idea and execution.

Ryan: Like where those two things meet and how you can get there, which is exactly what we're talking about. And the final one is Magic of Thinking Big. 

Hannah: A classic. 

Ryan: Yeah. This one's really good. Just cuz it's like, it's like that. It's kind of like that saying if you aim for the moon and you miss, you're still amongst the stars.

Hannah: Oh yeah. The the elementary school poster that we all saw

Ryan: That kind of thing. 

Hannah: Like the little, the little cartoon stars. 

Ryan: Yeah. So those are just some books I said links to. Everything will be in the show notes. The grief free.co/podcast. They're all kind of over the place. All over the place, but I think they're useful in their own separate ways.

Hannah: One thing to note here is that you'll hear that everywhere. Like you just need an idea and then X will happen, right? So after you realize that you don't actually have to wait for an idea and you need to just start doing things, you'll start seeing this pop up all over the place. 

Ryan: Yeah, definitely.

Ryan: And like. I remember a girl that I dated, and this is kind of funny, like so talking about ideas and not execution. We were in the like drugstore one day and we ended up looking at these slipper mops. You know what I'm talking about? Like, you put 'em on, they're like socks.

Hannah: You put 'em on your feet.

Ryan: But they have the fuzzy stuff Oh, on the bottom. Sure. They have fuzzy stuff on the bottom.

Hannah: So like a sweeper kind of,

Ryan: Yeah.

Hannah: But with a mop 

Ryan: more like a mop yeah. And then you could like wet them or whatever, and then you can just kind of drag your feet on the floor.

Ryan: Nice so while you walk around like you're mopping like that. Yeah, sure. And so she was like, She's like, I invented those. Like I invented those when I was five years old. 

Hannah: Oh, that's a bold claim.

Ryan: Yeah. Like they weren't, they weren't around. She's like, I could have been a millionaire.

Hannah: Because having an idea equals doing the idea. 

Ryan: Exactly. And I was just like, obviously at the time I didn't say anything. It was like, oh, right on. That's awesome but then I think back to it now, and I'm just like, really? , like one you're five years old. And then so I mean like there's that 

Hannah: obviously, obviously not , 

Ryan: but then even if she wasn't five, you still have to deal with.

Ryan: Everything else that comes after it. Like, I don't know, manufacturing, marketing, sales. 

Hannah: A good example of this, I think a good analogy would be like somebody who had, I like the example of Spanx because Sarah Blakely invented them. Right? But somebody who had cut the. Cut the legs off pantyhose and put them on underneath a dress.

Hannah: And then when Sarah Blakely, landed her, started her company and got super successful for, for somebody to go, I cut the legs off my pantyhose one time I invented span. It's like you didn't though, you didn't, because you didn't go around and sell it to people. You didn't find manufacturers.

Hannah: Like you said, you didn't source, you didn't market, you didn't sell. You. You didn't, you didn't make these contracts. All of that. Having an idea and even doing the idea, even making the thing sometimes is not inventing the business. 

Ryan: Yeah. So this kind of leads us into the one time that an idea was worth money,

Ryan: And we think, just a quick note. No, no, no. It absolutely was. It just wasn't worth to us, it just wasn't worth money to us. And so we had, we not had a friend. We have a friend, and one day we were sitting around and we were just talking story. that's chit chatting for those people that are not from Hawaii.

Ryan: And we were, we came up with this idea for our company and whatever. It's not a good idea. I won't bore you with the details here but at the time we were drinking and everything that we just thought it was a good idea. 

Hannah: That's probably why we thought it was a good idea.

Ryan: And so we started, in our heads, we started like building this company and 

Hannah: Ryan and I are getting super excited we're like, whoa,

Ryan: We're getting super excited. A little background about this other guy, he's not an entrepreneur, he doesn't know how to run a business and he's not really a go-getter, which is fine. I mean, that's

Hannah: Don't gotta be. 

Ryan: Right, exactly. And so I looked at him though, and I didn't want him as a business partner because he doesn't know anything about business and I didn't wanna like Teach him or anything like, 

Hannah: Yeah, we just were, we were running another business at the time and we just thought this was a cool idea and it would've, , you have to teach.

Hannah: Yeah. You want people that can help you do the things, not people you have to teach how to do the things. 

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. Or at least at that point of our life, cuz we in that other business, we were already teaching people, right? Like, we already, like we had people to teach. We were doing our Yeah.

Ryan: Like service of helping other people, grow and stuff like that and we're like, well, I just want to get an idea up really quick but in order to like, maintain a friendship with him in order to like, kind of get him out and pay 'em off, like I was like drunken. I was like, dude, I'll pay you a thousand dollars right now,

Hannah: I was there, this didn't happen.

Ryan: I'll pay you a thousand dollars right now for that idea and just leave it with us and just, yeah, just leave it with us. You don't get any equity of this bi future business or anything like that.

Hannah: If we do it.

Ryan: Yeah. If we do it and there's no, there's nothing to say that we do it.

Ryan: No. And, and he goes, nah, man. Like, no, I wanna be a part of it. I wanna be a part of it. I had to like stop. I had to be like, wow, I'm being like really dumb right now. Offering him money for like one, it's also like a thousand bucks. Like I have a thousand dollars to give you. Yeah, I mean like almost a big shock.

Hannah: It's like, oh man. I'm an angel investor. Like thousand dollars for this manufactured idea.

Ryan: I know. 

Ryan: Yeah. And I just, but I sat there and I looked at him and I said, look man, for like, like really? You should take that money. 

Hannah: Yeah. And this is, this is a good friend. This is a good friend of ours.

Hannah: Yeah. This is a very dear friend. A very close friend.

Ryan: I was like, I still want the idea and I don't want like any hard feelings if I end up doing it and like this is a one time that an idea is like worth money. I literally told him this. 

Hannah: I'll pay you for it right now. 

Ryan: Pay you for it right now

Hannah: just leave it with me,

Ryan: Long story short, he ended up saying no. 

Hannah: He said no. He thought about it. This was later too. This was after the time we talked about it with him after you talked to him about him, about it with him later. And he still was sure, like a week later you, you brought it, you guys talked about it again and he was like, no, no, no like I wanna be a part of it. And it's crazy cuz this just really shows this what we're talking about, which is and I don't know if it's an American thing, maybe because entrepreneurship is is so, like this type of, the value of your ideas is so American. Like, I do think that there's a higher placement on ideas and, just like, especially now with everybody wanting to be an entrepreneur and all of these small businesses starting, but this idea was worth more than actual money.

Hannah: Which is crazy, you know?

Ryan: Yeah. 

Ryan: Long story short, we never did it. No. He said no, because then now I'm, we got other stuff to do. Yeah. I have thousand dollars more in my pocket. I didn't pay him, you know? And so it makes you think of a scene in a movie Middle Men. The I think it's on Prime or something like that.

Hannah: Yeah. We just watched this. 

Ryan: Yeah. I think it's on Prime or Netflix. We'll link to it, but that's what the, that's what he does in this movie is he pays off the guy that had an idea that connect, he paid off the connector. He paid off the person that connected him with this person. He paid him like 200 grand.

Ryan: Here you go now you're out. 

Hannah: Because it's simpler. It's simpler.

Ryan: Right. Exactly. 

Hannah: Yeah. And now you have, you have the idea. 

Ryan: And the last thing that I wanted to talk about with this one is kind of the reason why I think people. Myself, I was talking about myself. Sorry. I was talk about people, but why I always waited for the right idea.

Ryan: And the truth of the matter is I was always scared. It's fear and it was fear that was holding me back. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the known. Right? Fear of like giving up what I already had and fear of succeeding. 

Hannah: That's the one. A little bit. A little bit. There's definitely that fear of that. Fear of what if it works?

Hannah: Of what? It works, what if it works, what now?

Ryan: And I think a lot of that has to do also. I agree with you wholeheartedly. We've had multiple discussions about this recently off air and yeah. , the fear of succeeding is real, but it's also, 

Hannah: it's because you have to give things up.

Ryan: Exactly. It's because you have. in order

Hannah: it's fear of loss.

Ryan: Yeah. You can't get where you want to go without giving up 

Hannah: something,

Ryan: what you're leaving behind and maybe in certain ways, if you think about it and in your personal experience, whatever it is that you're thinking with and whatever it is that you are dealing with you, that might not be the case.

Ryan: But for me, in almost every decision, big decisions that I've ever come to, . Those are, that's the reality of it. 

Hannah: Yeah. There's a very clear thing over your shoulder when you look back. 

Ryan: Yeah. You left something behind. . And That's scary. 

Hannah: It is. 

Ryan: And so it's easier, it's much more comforting.

Hannah: Safer. 

Ryan: Yeah. Safer.

Ryan: Comforting to say, ah, that's not the right. I'm gonna know the idea when it comes. 

Hannah: Yeah. I'll recognize it.

Ryan: When it comes. I'm going to know. and I'm just gonna, it'll lay out all in front of me.

Hannah: It'll make itself clear to me. 

Ryan: That way you've built yourself a nice little cocoon because then, ah, that wasn't the right one.

Ryan: Ah, that wasn't the right one either and you just sit there and you just wait. You just wait on your hands. Sit on your hands and

Hannah: keep yourself safe from trying. 

Ryan: Right. Exactly. And. that I think for me, I know that that is, to this day, one of the biggest reasons why I still don't execute to the level of which I think that I can.

Ryan: A lot of it has to do with fear. Yeah. And a lot of times, once you do it that fear, you realize that you got nothing, 

Hannah: to be afraid of.

Ryan: To be afraid of. 

Ryan: Right. Exactly. 

Hannah: Not that the things that you leave behind aren't very real, but you know, what you're afraid of is not as scary as you thought.

Ryan: Right. Exactly.

Hannah: Yeah. 

Ryan: Yeah but that's pretty much it for this episode. Sorry, we went on a couple of tangents. 

Hannah: Yeah, this is a good one. This is an interesting topic. 

Ryan: But yeah, this is something that I feel really strongly about because, I mean, this really is one of my worst failures. I mean, really waiting for the right idea.

Ryan: I wholeheartedly believed. That once I had the idea, whether it had been in my career or as an entrepreneur, even in relationships, like how to get myself out of whatever a fight that I'm in or something like that. Oh, wait for the idea, but that's just wrong.

Hannah: All right, everybody, if you wanna get more degree free, because why would you not make sure you sign up for our newsletter and you're gonna get that once a week.

Hannah: So go over to degreefree.co/newsletter to sign up to get more topics like this, resources, job ideas, companies that are. That are d or down credentialing and make sure you don't miss that. It's pretty cool. 

Ryan: Yeah, absolutely. And if you guys wanted to support the podcast, please consider leaving a review wherever it is that you get your podcasts.

Ryan: And as I said before, you can find links to everything that we talked about in our show notes, degreefree.co/podcast. Until next time, guys. 

Ryan: Aloha