There were no differences really, except the girls had modesty checks for their dresses, there was no touching anyone of the opposite gender, there was absolutely no dancing, and there was an actual service with prayer, music, and preaching.

Okay, I guess there were some differences.

Well anyway, on the way back to school campus from Anaheim (about a two hour drive), I had my first kiss with my ninth grade girlfriend in the front of the bus. That’s right. Not even the back of the bus.

To be fair, it was almost midnight, and our thighs were touching. For a sheltered 14 year old boy, you can imagine how hormone-full I was. Although—I wish you wouldn’t. 😝

For some additional context, about a year before, I had taken a “purity pledge,” which was where the youth in our church would literally sign a 4x6 index card with a pledge that said we would not have sex until we got married.

Oh— and that was before we even got the sex talk. So when I kissed my girlfriend at 14 on a church bus, there were a few people in my life who were disappointed in me…including myself.

And a couple of those people were classmates of mine who felt they needed to tell the principal of the school on me. Naturally because I wanted to squelch the feelings of guilt, I offered to break up with my girlfriend and in return, the school gave me a couple of detentions.

They didn’t give my girlfriend any detentions even though she was the one that kissed me first because it was obviously my fault…? 🙄

Why am I telling you all of this? I hated the feeling of disappointing my parents, my youth pastors, and the other authority figures in my life.

So the next few years of my life was lived trying to make sure that people wouldn’t be disappointed anymore.

Fast forward to college graduation. I graduated with a double major in Bible and Church Ministries, and I figured out I didn’t want to be in ministry. It took me a couple of years to come to the final decision because I knew I would be disappointing so many people again.

And now, I’m 30.

I drink, I smoke cigars (and sometimes other things), I party with friends, I haven’t gone to church for almost 5 years, and I often say “fuck.” 🤭

I also have two beautiful kids, a badass wife, a seven figure marketing agency, a funded software startup, and a popular podcast.

Needless to say, I’ve gotten used to disappointing a lot of people in my life, and a lot of those people haven’t talked to me in years, many of them talk shit about me and my wife, and others just pity me because they think I’m wasting my potential.

Ultimately I came to the realization that only one person looks in the mirror and sees my ugly mug staring back—me.

I’m the only person that lives with me 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and ultimately it’s up to me to be happy or disappointed with how I choose to live, not anyone else.

Assuming you’re not doing things that are bringing harm to others, the main person you should worry about disappointing is YOU.

That doesn’t mean you have an excuse to just be selfish and narcissistic. It does mean that you should be conscious of who is steering the direction of your life the most.

If someone else is disappointed in you because you are choosing to live life on your terms, and it conflicts with their perception of how you should live, it’s their problem to fix. Not yours.

Read that last paragraph again ⬆️

I know, I know, this isn’t a Christmas post, but I do hope this lessons helps some of you as much as it helped me. And if it did, share this newsletter with someone you think it might help.

I sure wish someone shared this message with me a little bit sooner.

Merry Christmas friends!

The problem with being a realist is that you’re always riding the line of optimism and pessimism.

As soon as it makes more sense that you’re not going to figure something out, your realist brain steps in, crunches some numbers, and spits out a probability.

It’s just, if you’re an entrepreneur like I am, everything we do is against the odds. In fact, a study done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that 70% of businesses fail within the first decade.

I’m no statistician, but those aren’t great odds. Especially because I’m no one special. I don’t have an MBA. I didn’t work on Wall Street for a decade or have life savings before I started my business.

I’m just a former door to door sales guy who started a podcast. Everything I do has low chances of success.

Recently I’ve been riding the line of pessimism like crazy. When something bad happens, I basically expected it to happen, which is great for expectation management, but not great for my psyche. Why?

Because you get more of that which you focus on. Being constantly focused on things that could go wrong will only draw my attention to things that can go wrong and never lets me sink into the true winning of mindset of an entrepreneur.

That mindset is predicated upon the question of “What if this goes right?” That’s where all beauty and innovation comes from—the outlandish and unsubstantiated belief that even though it makes no sense, I think this is going to be awesome.

The other day, my wife and I started watching Ted Lasso, and I gotta say…this was one of those times that a show made me think about myself and how I could do better. In the show, a football coach from the US gets hired by a soccer organization in the UK to coach their team even though he knows nothing about the sport.

It’s a feel good show that is centered around Ted’s blind optimism and contagious fervor for the unknown in life. He always has a smile and is encouraging to others. He is genuine and kind, and even in the face of certain adversity, he reminds you to be like the goldfish because of their short memory, and get back out there.

He reminds you of what he calls “rom-comm-unism” which is the ardent belief that everything is going to turn out okay. No good story ends in the middle of a storm. That usually comes somewhere in the middle.

So if you’re going through a storm right now, don’t worry. Your story isn’t finished. I don’t know what’s gonna happen next, and newsflash, NEITHER DO YOU.

But if we are going to speculate about the unknown, we may as well start expecting the good things to come our way. Not only will it train our brains to look for more good things in life, but it will also help us be more productive and refreshingly optimistic when things are not going well.

All of this to say, if you’re looking for a good series to catch up on during the holiday season, I recommend Ted Lasso. I’ve been impressed so far, and I appreciated the reminder that I’d rather be more like Ted than Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh.

Are you an optimist, pessimist, or realist?

One of my best friends that I’ve known since I was barely not peeing in my diaper anymore was supposed to come out to hang in Vegas for a couple days, then I get a text from him while I was recording a podcast episode…

His mom (who was in her mid fifties) was in a terrible car wreck and didn’t make it. Her and his dad were my four year old Sunday school teachers so I’ve known the family for quite some time. This lady was a saint. She had eight kids, and I never saw her lose her temper with any of them.

Needless to say, he wasn’t coming out to Vegas anymore, and I dropped my plans and headed back to where we all grew up to be with the family for a couple of days.

This is where being a startup founder gets sticky. See, the market doesn’t care about what’s happening in your personal life. Things still move right along.

This didn’t change the fact that I had a big pitch coming up to one of the most well known angel investors in Silicon Valley, and I had a deadline to get them all of the necessary light diligence docs as well as complete a brand new pitch deck to their unique specifications.

If there’s anything I’ve learned as a founder, it’s compartmentalization. The ability to pierce through how I’m feeling and objectively tackle the task at hand.

My team and I worked hard and prepped the deck, and we finished it late the night before my pitch. It did NOT go how I had hoped. I still don’t definitively know the results, but my intuition in these things rarely leads me astray.

It was a finishing blow to a rough few days, and then this powerful thought hit me again…

“It happened. Now what?”

Regardless of the f*ckery that occurred, I still have to figure out the path forward. Life isn’t going to wait for you to regroup and lick your wounds. It just keeps going.

Are you going to have bad weeks? Yes. Are unexpected events going to throw you for a loop and make you wish you were shoveling pig shit for a guaranteed hourly wage in the middle of nowhere? Probably.

But it’s in those moments that you get to decide who you’re going to be and where you’re going to end up. Life isn’t a marathon. It’s an ultra marathon.

And the only way to finish one of those things is to dig deep, remember why you’re running to begin with, drink some water, and recommit to the finish line.

Here’s to hoping some of you had a better week than I did and definitely better than the Stafford family. I ask you all to keep them in your thoughts and prayers.

Until next week, ✌️

Your Friend,

Travis

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