Read This If You Feel Stuck In Life

If you feel stuck in life, have always wanted to start your own business but simply don’t know where to start, or feel overwhelmed by the journey ahead of you, then this episode is made for you. This is a long one, so settle in and enjoy the listen, I promise it’s entertaining.

Are you struggling to come up with a good business idea? Do you think all the good ones have been taken already, so why even bother starting?

Are you daunted by the list of technologies or character traits that you need become proficient in, or the sheer apparent distance between your current situation, and your desired situation?

Do you have lofty goals of location freedom, the ability to work anywhere, anytime? Or the dream of financial opulence?

Maybe it’s simply the choice to choose where and when you work from, as opposed to turning up everyday to the same dull, boring office environment.

Imagine being told when to arrive, ask permission to use the bathroom, given assigned timed lunch breaks and a pre-set home times, irrespective of how your energy levels best suit your working hours for maximum productivity.

Maybe you’ve inadvertently fell into the Matrix honeypot trap of working a job you hate, building someone else’s dream, assigned to sell someone else’s products and services, all to simply ‘get by’ and pay bills.

The Sunday evening fear is real, the Monday morning miserable commute is all too real, and sitting opposite ‘Big John’ at work who have gave up on his dreams and lackluster approach to life years ago gives you a shocking insight into how your life is going to be in 20 years. It’s terrifying.

Without generalizing, John is most likely obese, divorced, mildly depressed, crippled in consumer debt and literally unable to ever quit his job because this income is his single point of failure. The mortgage won’t pay for itself. Someone needs to put food on the table.

John didn’t take the time to pursue self development. Or, maybe he did, but didn’t take any initiative to strike on on his own, because the fear of failure was so great.

You see, these monthly overheads and bills you accrue over time, probably unconsciously, are typically things society prescribed for you.

What’s worse, keeping up with the joneses forced you ever deeper into consumer debt for a nicer car, bigger home and more subscriptions than you could possibly use.

You. Are. Stuck.

Another tell tale sign of feeling stuck in life is how you spend your weekend.

Do you find yourself seeking escapism in the form of televised sports, alcohol and recreational drug use. It numbs the pain, right? Or, rather, it helps you brush these existential problems under the carpet. Your head is firmly buried in the sand.

The problem is, this is NOT how we are designed to function optimally as fully actualized human beings. The matrix trap numbs our propensity for self expression and maximum fulfillment in life, making all efforts at freedom seem out of reach.

Is life supposed to be all white roses? Absolutely not. Hardships help craft our personality, especially so when we face and overcome them.

Most of us set out optimistically to follow our dreams as kids, just for these to be squashed as adults once we’ve been fed through the lackluster education system, designed to create compliant worker bees.

Please trust me when I say this, because I was also living this life in my early 20’s - the situation I’ve just described can literally be likened to the walking dead.

Directionless, without hope. A zombie.

This is where I want to provide an escape portal for you through the pursuit of entrepreneurship. Aside from winning the lottery (which bring its own problems) I don’t know of any other way to reach self actualisation and live life on your own terms.

My hope is to encourage and inspire you to take action, follow in my footsteps and start your own wildly profitable online business. I want to help you find a way to merge passion and profession, finding the ideal blend of meaningful work, whilst building meaningful, long term relationships.

I credit Ray Dalio for the above heuristic, as it’s typically the intersection of all four of those variables that hits the sweet-spot of business and leisure.

Sometimes, the best person to learn from, is one who is only 1-2 steps ahead of you, since the success and tools, tricks, tactics, routines and mindset is still relatable to your current situation. Hopefully, where I am right now is not too far out of reach to your present reality.

So, how did I get my start?

Let’s wind the clock back and start from the beginning.

I was born in a working class family, in the north east of England. My dad, an italian waiter worked split shifts, and my mum a stay at home housewife. I was brought up in a religious cult (an interesting story for another video), I worked since the age of 12 and dropped out of school at 16, opting to become a barber so I could be around girls (smooth).

1.5 years of 12 hour shifts later of making $400/month on an apprentice wage, realising that barbering was never going to pay the bills, I did manage to pave my way back into education, working 1-2 jobs on evenings and weekends to pay though college and university. I pursued sports science, simply because I wanted to play football, and landed an internship at Newcastle United FC, working with the academy(also unpaid).

I recall at one point, maybe in my late teens or early 20’s not having a SINGLE day off, for 3 years. No exageration.

I had not a penny to my name. The second I was able to earn money part time, I locked myself into a car finance contract for a Mini Cooper S. I loved that car, but I literally lived at home with my parents, sleeping in the same childhood bunk beds with my older brother. I was car rich, cash poor.

I realised, even if I worked a full time job, I’d still not be able to afford a home or flat on my own, at least not on minimum wage, anyway - which is all I ever earned. I remember thinking making 15,000/year (my first full time job salary) meant I’d be rich.

LoL.

Anyway, hopefully yours starting to see the bigger picture: That I come from very humble beginnings and yet somehow, though sheer persistence and determination, managed to fight a path through to life liberty, through the pursuit of entrepreneurship.

This month alone, I’ll bill around $400,000 in online sales between brands. For most, this is literally life changing money.

So, how did I get there?

By failing. And failing fast.

I remember working in corporate recruitment for Microsoft technologies, slaving away 14 hour days for still less than minimum wage, with the carrot dangling of a month end bonus if I secured 3-5 placements. I think I made bonus once, for just over $3,000 just for it to be taxed like 40%.

Not good.

By this time I was 25 and about to have a mental breakdown. I’d worked hard all my life, took on debt to put myself through college and university, just to end up working a job in sales that I detested. I had no affinity to sales, recruitment or microsoft so drowned my sorrows most evenings and weekends by going out and partying. At best, it temporarily numbed the pain.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

I had to work evenings and weekends unpaid just to show face that I was trying hard in the job so that I wouldn’t get fired. This effort did eventually compound and I was promoted to senior consultant and manager, however I think I lasted around 2 months in this new position.

This all changed when taking a 2 week vacation to Portugal with my family, staying in a 3 star hotel packing 6 of us into one room with only 5 beds. We took turns sleeping on the floor.

A little before this holiday, my old boss who’d quit his role in the recruitment firm had gifted me a book. This was the book that was to change my life trajectory and course in life.

If I hadn’t met my mentor that fateful day, God only knows where I’d have ended up.

To this point in life, I don’t think I’d ever read any book cover to cover. I found it dul, boring and monotonous, especially anything in the self help category.

Nonetheless I woke myself up early, sat on the veranda and started reading. For the first time, I was hooked.

This book spoke to me in a way that illuminated my worldview and broadened my upto then, limited thinking.

It taught me about the ‘new rich’ and how they lived life on their own terms. They leveraged the internet, built systems to protect their time and made more money than they’d ever thought possible.

This book was the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss.

After reading this, I think I lasted about 10 more days in the corporate world before phoning in to say I wasn’t returning.

This was such a big, bold and probably misguided step to take. I had 0 savings in the bank, probably around 30k in consumer debt, a pricy riverside apartment and of course a fancy car, all of which demanded regular monthly payments.

However now, I had zero income and was too detached from the corporate world to even try make my way back into wage slavery ever again.

This was the most stressful part of my whole journey, even to this day.

I knew I wanted to find a way to merge passion and profession, which meant not selling time for money and making sure I was building my own empire, not someone else’s.

I remember the panic.

I remember the acute stress.

I remember crying for the first time in-front of my then girlfriend because it all felt so hopeless. How on earth was I going to stay afloat with all of these financial commitments and build a sustainable business from nothing.

What I didn’t know at the time, is usually the lowest low, precedes the highest high.

Not to spend too much time on this period, but during my time at the football club, I noticed how poor the academy players diets were. Parents were stressed, kids were super fussy, picky eaters and most time would just grab sugary vending machine shacks, mcdonalds on the way home or simply skip meals.

This was my ‘A-HA’ moment.

So, what did I do?

I started a nutrition brand by taking two years (that’s right, two WHOLE years) to develop a product to sell - without speaking to the target market, parents.

I mean, from all outside metrics, the business ticked all the boxes. I loved sports, gym and nutrition. I knew there was a gap in the market that wasn’t being tended to, I had all of my network friends, family members play devil’s advocate and none of them could come up with a reason not to pursue it, so I did.

Long story short, a friends, friend’s parent had recently sold his roofing business, heard about my idea during my time asking friends about the business idea and miraculously offered 10k for an equity stake in the business.

I remember 10k feeling like 100 million and I was so scared to touch it. At the time, I had no right to demand investment from anyone, but my passion for the project echoed through the pitch.

I’m skipping through this part quite fast, since it’s another story in and of itself, but that seed money allowed me breathing space to set up and run the business. I subsequently came back for another couple investment rounds since I needed 100% dedicated time, effort and energy on the project and because I was making headway, thankfully he obliged.

I owe my whole start in entrepreneurship to this first investor taking a punt on me.

Anyway, back to the lesson.

I invented a product in blue ocean marketspace. Brilliant. However, it took me almost 2 years to design it, and I didnt have a single clue what I was doing.

This is the desert of desertion.

This is where I needed a strong support network and mentors. But I had nothing. I was stuck in the north east of England, on my girlfriends 10yr old macbook pro with a smashed keyboard and screen. I had no one to turn to for guidance, so I found my way in the dark through every step.

When it finally came time to launch my new brand, I remember removing the password protection from the site and waiting for the crazy influx of sales coming through.

What happened?

Crickets.

I remember getting one pity sale from an old friend.

Great.

2 years of stress, a couple rounds of investment in the bag, back again to little to no money in the account and no way of getting any sales.

Damn.

This was my moment of realisation that I need to understand sales and marketing.

I’d been so focused on building a great product, that I’d forgotten to actually consult and let the market tell me what it wants, needs and is (or isn’t) willing to pay for.

This set me off on the whole second marathon of business building, and arguably the most important: marketing.

It took me a further 1-2 years of painstaking, manual work to establish product market fit, travelling the length and breath of the UK every weekend to take time to speak to the target market and understand what they actually needed and valued.

It was only since I embedded this feedback into the brand, product, website and marketing that the business slowly started to make traction.

From that point on, things started to click and compound. From then, I had a much clearer view on how this whole e-commerce business process worked.

I applied these principles and lessons to multiple businesses, all of which saw great success.

Now, why am I relaying this story to you?

Because I don’t want you to make the same mistakes.

When you’re stuck in the startup phase or still in a job, you think all you want is to be your own boss. You’re seeking sovereignty.

Sorry to say, but this isn’t how life works.

In life and business, you’re always accountable to someone. Be it your partner, your shareholders or your customers, you’re never fully free from accountability. And this is a good thing.

Done right, accountability will keep you on the proverbial straight and narrow and force you to make progress since it’s a force in life that helps you break through procrastination.

Starting your own business is a long, hard and arduous process.

It’s very rare that you strike it big on the first roll of the dice. And if you do, you skip all of the important lessons and mindset character development required to maintain and replicate your success.

The point is that you have to stack opportunities in life and persist in them long enough for compounding to happen.

If you jump from one thing to the next, if you don’t stay the course and consistently seek feedback from the market, you’ll end up in an echo chamber of silence as far as sales are concerned.

Business is difficult.

It’s not for the faint hearted.

It’s looks good to see and read the success stories of the few who ‘made it’ but it’s almost like life will test you to make sure you’re worthy of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The only cheat code is to leverage and learn from those who are 1-2 steps ahead of you.

If I had access to the 10 years of knowledge I’ve accrued on this journey back in 2015, I’d have saved myself 9 of those 10 years. I’d be 10x ahead of where I am today.

The problem was, I had no one to turn to. I didn’t value learning. I was a product of my environment. There wasn’t the access to information like there is now and my market seemed too ‘niche’ to gather any actionable advice from.

These were all limiting beliefs.

It’s easy to connect the dots retrospectively, but in the moment the emotional roller coaster can feel exhausting.

This is why I’m building my entrepreneur academy, Invent Impossible. Having now scaled multiple businesses from idea to 6 and 7 figures (profitably) I want to be the resource that I needed back in 2015.

I’m building an engaged community of entrepreneurs and small business owners that I can personally tutor and mentor to find liberty from the 9-5, blend passion and profession, merge meaning work with meaningful relationships in business and life.

Do yourself a favor and don’t spend the next 10 years finding your way in the dark.

Business is hard enough.

There is another way.

Be a founder, not a flounder.

To your unstoppable success,

Lou Antonio

Feeling stuck in your business?

You can now book a 1-1 call in with me for an 1-2 hours of deep support on your e-commerce store.

This is designed to be the resource that I wish existed when I first started out on my business journey. It would have saved me countless years and 100,000’s unnecessary mistakes.

You can book a time using the link below: