Tired of your marketing getting little results?
Get the 5 steps to get more subscribers, engagement, and SALES this week! (And make it EASY!)

I NEED THIS!

Ep. 109 Expectations vs Reality: How Much Time Is It REALLY Going To Take?

by Torie Mathis | Smart AF Show

Expectations vs Reality: How Much Time Is It REALLY Going To Take?

You’ve got big plans; grow your business, build a nest egg, get in shape. You know it’s going to take time, but how long will it REALLY take? Most likely, you’ve underestimated the time and don’t have the necessary plan to make it happen. So how do you do it?

In this episode, Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean, reveal secrets to reaching goals, staying motivated, and what you must change to get what you want. Whether it’s getting buff or building a biz, it’s a marathon, baby, and you gotta be in it for the long haul.

Listen or watch the full episode below:

SUBSCRIBE + LISTEN TO SMART AF ON:

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 109

[00:00:00] Sean: We’re talking damn near a decade to get to that. It was nine years. Most of them were nine years to go from just a regular looking guy to one of these, you know, completely ripped dude. It takes them forever. And I don’t think that’s.

[00:00:16] Torie: Okay. Were they like Arnold Schwarzenegger the rock or were they like Ryan Reynolds?

Hey, what’s up. It’s Torie Mathis and I’m here with the one and only Sean Mathis, Founder of Miles Through Time Automotive Museum.

[00:00:38] Sean: What’s going on.

[00:00:39] Torie: So if it’s one thing I’ve noticed it is that shit takes a long time.

[00:00:46] Sean: How much time?

[00:00:47] Torie: Much more time than you brick and think it’s going to take. And I think because of that, a lot of people give up way too soon.

[00:00:56] Sean: Quitting prematurely is a pretty big problem.

[00:00:59] Torie: I think, I think for a lot of people, I know there’s like some saying that says like, you know, most people, they overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in five years. Like, that’s, that’s kind of a big issue.

[00:01:13] Sean: Well, I mean, what it is is its disappointment, you know, once you, you don’t, you don’t hit that goal of whatever it is that you thought you were going to be able to do. At a possibly unrealistic amount of time, it’s easier to quit than keep going.

[00:01:28] Torie: Do you think the key there then is bad expectations?

[00:01:31] Sean: It, yeah, I mean, it, it definitely just unrealistic expectations, you know, and the whole thing was, I told you, I saw some some of the Instagram posts that I saw or working out weight, lifting type stuff, and I, it shows you all kinds of. Exercises. And you see these guys that are just ripped massive, right. And know, and they show you exercises. You just do, you know, do this and you’ll get biceps like me. And the thing, the thing is, is you have no idea how long that takes to get to that. Because most of the time they’re just talking about do these exercises.

And you’ll be ripped like me, like this is what I’m doing and look at me. And so you look at that and you’re like, okay, well I’ll do that. And, you know, yeah. I give it some time, you know, maybe a year or so. And you’re like, you see, you got a little bit of muscle, but you don’t look like that guy that you originally were starting, you know, that got you down this path.

And so I, I just recently seen this post where it showed multiple, multiple guys where they were. And now how they are being one of those rips guys that you’re like, oh, you know, that’d be awesome to look like that. Right. We’re talking damn near a decade to get to that. It was nine years. Most of them were nine years to go from just a regular looking guy to one of them.

These, you know, completely ripped dudes on Instagram where you’re like, well, you know, I don’t know any guy that wouldn’t seek at least secretly want to like, have that kind of muscle. It takes them forever. And I don’t think that’s.

[00:03:06] Torie: Were they like Arnold Schwarzenegger the rock? Or were they like Ryan Reynolds?

[00:03:10] Sean: A little bit more than Ryan Reynolds, but they weren’t Arnold. So that’s, I’m not talking like just, I, I super crazy bodybuilder. I didn’t see the post. So kind of like, just like, like definitely a bigger rip dude that definitely goes to the gym and you’re like, that guy works out, you know, there’s no denying it.

Well, he’s been working out for years to get to that level, but I could see. You know, not realizing how long that really realistically takes how easy it would be to quit even after two years. Yeah. You know, maybe you’re your, you would obviously be healthier than what you were when you started. But that mentality of like, I’m not where I wanted to be. It makes it real easy to just throw in the towel.

[00:03:53] Torie: Well, when we see shows like biggest loser or you see somebody from one T one, a movie role, and then like the next year they do, you know, they’re fat man in this movie role. And then like a year later or six months, like who knows, like whatever, the small amount of time is all of a sudden they’re thin and ripped and everything.

And so we’re seeing that, like, why can’t I do that too.

[00:04:15] Sean: Realizing that they’re on a super strict regimen, that, that they’ve got people making food for them, telling them what to eat, exercising, how many hours a day person can’t do that. And like, even when I go to, I work out at the level that I can maintain for the long haul. I don’t want to do anything that I’m like all of a sudden I’m trying to do all this stuff to get to a certain level. And then once I’m there I’d be like, okay, now I can stop and go back to like it. And I don’t, I don’t want to do that. I just. I just want to keep cruising along.

[00:04:48] Torie: I think that roller coaster of hard core is like with anything, whether it’s, you know, working or working out or it’s unhealthy, it’s like you said, you, you can’t keep up with that into the crown.

[00:05:05] Sean: Yeah. The level is, is going to vary depending on who you are. It’s not the same level for everybody, but what you can do consistently. For you individually is what’s important. You know, what, what I could do consistently, it’s going to be different than what Torie can do consistent.

[00:05:21] Torie: However, though, and I always like to bring up season of your business season of your life, because I do think that there is a time and a place where it’s your hustle time, right? You don’t have kids. You’re saying. Do what you gotta do in that time, because once you do have kids and once you do have a family, once you do have other obligations, like there’s, you maybe don’t have the time to go to the gym three hours a day. You don’t have, you know, 12 hours a day to put into your business.

So though I do think there are times. Yeah. You do need to work a little bit harder because that’s the season that you’re in. I think though, not going crazy at that time too. Maybe you would do a little bit more for a little bit longer, but again, you can’t go. All out for three months and think that, oh, I’m going to have the greatest body ever, or the greatest business ever, or you know, that whatever it is is going to.

[00:06:14] Sean: The thing is, is like, depending on your season, like you said, it, it can vary as far as what you do, but what happens is they, instead of toning it back down, you know, okay, there’s a life change. We need to pivot and do something a little bit different. They have more of that. Fuck it, I quit. Right. And then it just, it drops. And then it, there they’re down in the gutter for a while, from what it was some dude.

[00:06:42] Torie: And I was like, oh no, is that really him now? Oh Encino, man. I don’t remember his name. The mummy, Brendan Frazier Frazier. That’s it. So it was like this split picture of Brendan Frazier looking like he did all those the mummy movies, the mummy movies, right. You said in single man. So as I was saying, so he did the mummy and so we look like that very Harrison Ford, very thin, very fit. And then apparently now he’s not looking so healthy.

[00:07:10] Sean: Yeah. I mean, he’s older, but he like, he, he didn’t age.

[00:07:14] Torie: Well that picture, I didn’t think it was him. I thought he had a fat suit on or something. Like I thought it was for a movie. So far, like you said, you know, people just throw it in the towel and saying, fuck it. Like, that is really what it looked like.

[00:07:28] Sean: Yeah. But you know, you said people go from one role to another role when the, in the movie industry, you know, maybe he’s burnt out from it and that’s gotta be hard. Some of these.

[00:07:43] Torie: Yeah. Some of those people that have done that even who are we just talking about? The guardians of the galaxy guy. He was one of those that he yeah. Looked a certain way. And then once he started getting those roles, like, it looks like a totally different person. I don’t know if that’s the greatest thing. I don’t think I would do good at that. Like, I really enjoy working hard. I like working hard at the gym, but I’m like you, that I want to work hard. At a point that I can stay at, not where I’m going to run myself straight into the ground and burn myself out. Right. Because things take a long time. And so you always have to think that, like, this is a marathon, this isn’t a sprint. People are like that with Facebook. Like so many business owners are like, I don’t want to do Facebook.

Facebook doesn’t work. It doesn’t work bad, blah, blah, blah. Well, because they jump on there and go hardcore crazy. For two weeks there two week Dan, they go two weeks. They post like crazy, which is weird. Like if you look back, you’ll see, like for two weeks there was like 500 posts. There’s like 50 right posts.

And then they never post again. And they’re like, it doesn’t work.. Yeah. It is a marathon, not a sprint. And most things are like that. And you know, that nine years to get to that body shape, like that tells you. Marathon. Like you gotta figure out what you can do for the long haul. Not try to go too crazy.

[00:09:08] Sean: Like their social media profile. Like you got to start somewhere. So, you know, you, aren’t going to see. With nobody following you. And then you’re going to get your mom to follow you and your spouse and your siblings and any of your friends that will actually do it. And then you’ll start growing. And you know, when you’re providing that relevant content that somebody actually wants to engage with, it’ll start to slowly grow, but you know, going a hundred miles an hour right out the gate, and then hitting a brick wall and stopping.

Is it going to do you any good? And you look at all these other, but you could look at another business or even like a YouTube channel. And you’re like, how did they get so many subscribers go back and see how long they’ve been doing it and how many other videos are on there. And I mean, really, you don’t know how much effort and time that they’re putting into it. Like there’s no point in comparing yourself. To that.

[00:10:02] Torie: Well, and so many people though, don’t share the fact that it took nine years, nine years to get that body. And if I remember, like, if you watch this episode I will put it here. Cause I have it on my phone. I keep it for both Bella and I, because Bella and I are both working on our YouTube channels and it’s from, I’ll put it right here.

And it’s Evan Carmichael who is a YouTuber that does a lot of business stuff. And he has shown when he started and I want to say he started like 2008, 2009. And it shows like how many subscribers he had every year. And he has, you know, millions of subscribers now, but it really shows you that there were years, years that he had two digits, three digits, like it took a long time.

And like most things, it’s a bell curve. It starts out super slow. Then all of a sudden you have, you know, the workout ball. And you didn’t notice that it happened, right? Gary V is the same way. If you follow Gary V he did wine TV, and nobody watched, like he did a show a week for like an hour talking about wine years.

[00:11:09] Sean: This, this, this guy that has all these followers and says all kinds of crazy, awesome stuff. But they don’t realize, like he’s been doing it for a long time.

[00:11:20] Torie: And nobody saw him for a long time. You know, I, I preach all the time about how people should send emails. I encourage my clients to send emails. I send weekly, daily, even emails for some of my clients. Sean is fantastic at sending an email every, every week, every other day. He does a really great job. I, however, am super shitty at sending out a weekly email. Where are we at? Sean’s been helping me. How many emails have you sent it? Yeah, nine, nine the last nine weeks. I have sent out an email every single week.

They’re not the greatest emails. They may not be how the emails end up going, but I have decided that I need to send out an email and you’ll my list is not that great. It’s not very big. But I think it’s more of the fact, and I was talking to Sean about this this morning. It doesn’t matter how many people are opening my emails right now.

Right now. I need to be in that, you know, Evan Carmichael 2008, where I’m just getting into the rhythm of no matter what I have to put out an email every single week there wasn’t.

[00:12:29] Sean: It wasn’t really relevant for you to be doing that. Before in the, like in the past, like there’s so much stuff that you’ve been doing for all kinds of different clients and sending out an email to other customers, it didn’t even make sense, even, not really. Cause I mean, w what are you supposed to send in something like, Hey, this is I can, I can design your website, you know? Redesign it or whatever. And like, you don’t really have even time for that.

[00:12:55] Torie: Could have been done, but at the time, yeah, you’re right. It wouldn’t have been as relevant. However, I am not in the flow of sending out a weekly email because I just have never done it. I send out an email every once in a while. And so I have decided in order to help me do that, I do everything seventy-five style. Right. I am numbering my emails. And so along with that email, I have a new blog post that’ll come out that is actually written. And so I have the blog post and the email that goes with it and every single one is numbers.

So that’s why, you know, I knew Sean was going to know because on our, you know, little Like, what is that called dashboard part are back in our project management software where I actually like have it all in there. I have it numbered. And so I knew that this week was, you know, email number nine, went out on Wednesday morning and so next week will be 10.

And so now that I have that, I think that’s going to help me to not break that streak. You know don’t you wish you wouldn’t know what week you were on for the day. Well, that would be awesome. Yeah, because then it’s not cool at first you’re like, oh, it’s week two and it’s week three. But then when you get to like a higher number, you’re like, hell yeah, it’s week 562.

[00:14:08] Sean: Just make that more relevant on their app. You know, when we give them the barcode to scan in, there should be a little bubble on that top right corner. That how many days, cause you can go through and figure it out that long. But I want to know right there on the top, you’ve been to the gym 700 times, you know, and, and you know how they, I mean, they could do so many cool things with that.

[00:14:30] Torie: And the whole point was that you want to keep going, they do it monthly. So you can see, like, if you open it up our gym app, it’ll say how many times you visited per month, but then the month rolls over and it starts over it’s.

[00:14:41] Sean: It’s kind of hidden. It’s. It’s not in your face. Hey, this is a rock star that keeps going to the gym, like how the Fitbit works. Right? You want to keep track, you want to close those circles and do all like the same thing. If you can do that, game-ify any aspect of your business and the gym could do that. Hmm.

[00:15:01] Torie: Well, and you know, we talk about things that take a long time. If you expect that it’s going to take a long time. I think that number really helps. I have an email. I have an email, I have a client that I send a daily email. I mentioned that earlier, and this morning I sent email four hundred and sixty three, four hundred and thirty six. It’s a lot. And you know, when he first said it, he said, I’m going to do 30 days of daily emails. And he did 30 days and he got some feedback and everything, and now he just, he stuck with it and we’re in the 400 and thirties.

But the thing is, is that like we, after, I don’t know, a hundred something, he kind of tweaked the title of it. And so I thought that he was tweaking it enough to take off the day. And he’s like, no, no, no. Put the day back on there, because then he has every day when he does it, he’s knowing that like, you don’t break that cycle and he didn’t break it for Christmas.

He didn’t break it for new year’s. I send out an email or you know, every single day. But I think that that helps that then when he looks back nine years later, like if he still does that, like, that is an amazing. Number that’s like where you can really see your achievement because things take a long time. And I think it took him a while. Like I could tell, like where it was a little clunky and then all of a sudden he kind of broke through whatever that was and kind of found his voice in his emails. And now I’m sure he has a better process. That it’s a lot easier because sometimes getting through that first.

10 20, 30, 100 like, it may be weird, like even going to the gym. I think about when we first started going, I had always gone to the gym, like I was in the army. We worked out all the time, so I’ve always been very athletic and done those kinds of things, but I never like lifted weights. And so when I first went we did the normal, I, I did the normal stuff, you know, I was on the elliptical or whatever, did a couple of things.

And then I started working out with a trainer because I have a hip injury and I just kept hurting myself over and over again, it would make it so that the gym was crap for me. So I decided to work out with the trainer and he does some like CrossFit Olympic lifting type stuff, which I never thought that I would really be into. However, I like totally love it. But when I first started going, like, even like taking the weights down and re wracking, like it was awkward. Like, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing. And now I see these new people coming in and it’s there at that same level. I was like, Aw, like I was there too, but now I feel very comfortable with what I’m doing.

And so now I have to find different ways. Me and this other lady that I work out with, like, we’ve been there longer than a lot of these other people that like we’re pushing ourselves to a different level than all these newer people are, but it took a while to get to that. Like, time that things just like, feel a little bit better and you got to push through that time because it’s funky even like doing our podcast, doing our show. It was weird. You got to get through the weird. If you can’t get through the weird, I think the numbers help, like I’m going to do this a hundred days. I’m going to do this a hundred times. I’m going to send a hundred emails and then just, don’t not do it. Like you have to do it and doing it by that number.

And being able to check off that number every single time. Like, I think that that helps.

[00:18:13] Sean: Well, I mean, it definitely gets easier. Like the more you do it, the easier it gets and things are. But last time awkward difficult when you first start. And so if you pay attention that all of a sudden, some of that’s going to click and it just gets easier and easier, more comfortable, and you’re able to do things just so much easier than when you first started.

And then I think a lot of times that is also another time when people then just. They quit? Well, it was, it was too boring and too easy.

[00:18:48] Torie: I hear salespeople say all the time or people that are like business coaches say that whatever’s like, when it’s working in someone’s business and they all of a sudden start doing something else or like my business isn’t good. Well, what happened? Well, I changed and started doing this. Well, why aren’t you doing this? That worked well, you know, it got boring and I was doing it and doing it and do it sometimes. That’s, that’s the stuff that as you gotta keep doing.

[00:19:09] Sean: So there’s ways. Things a little more challenging. Maybe you can make it fun again and still have it be super easy.

[00:19:20] Torie: Yeah, I think though, everybody likes to kind of figure out what works for you. If the number works for you, if closing the circles, you know, like the Fitbit type thing, you know, works for you, you got to figure out whatever that thing is. Because like what works for me might not work for you. But I think that if you can figure out what that is for you, then man, that’s a magic happen, right?

[00:19:41] Sean: I mean, even if, if you were trying to get a bunch of followers on your Facebook business page, instead of saying, I want a thousand followers in 12 months, you know, say I want 10 in a month. And, and, and do it in increments and say, you know, I just want to keep, I want to do it on a daily basis or whatever the case may be.

[00:20:04] Torie: I think if you can figure out how to do 10, you’re like, ah, that’s 10. I just need to do that, that many more.

[00:20:09] Sean: Just keep going. And don’t go straight from zero to a thousand. Because I think people don’t even realize that they. They procrastinate and, and other things happen. And you know, instead of focusing on that, that end number, instead of focusing on what they need to do to get to that number where you will get to that number, if you’re doing what you need to.

[00:20:30] Torie: I think it’s like that bell curve we talked about. Let’s see. So, you know, you get one follower, you get nine, you get two, you get three, you get 10. And then you’re like, oh, That’s what works. You had all this taught, like it takes awhile to get to that point, that all of a sudden you’re like, that’s what I need to do. And then it goes up, right. It’s hard to get to that point.

[00:20:51] Sean: But so there’s no set rule. There’s no it’ll happen in 30 days or 40 days. It it’ll happen when, when it does. And you can’t be discouraged on that kind of.

[00:21:03] Torie: I realized that I don’t remember who I learned it from, but somebody talked about the power of incremental change and it, like, I was like, oh, cause I like everybody. Like, I want things to happen. Like I want to work hard and I want things to happen. But if you can figure out how to make an incremental change every day, every week, because incremental is like 1%. Like a half a percent, like do whatever it is. Like if you have how many followers you got last week, if it’s like the followers, then just do 1% more.

Like, how do you do 1%? Cause that 1% is easy for anything. Right. And so how do you figure out that 1%? And if you do 1% and then 1%, and then 1% like over time, It is a crazy amount that adds up and you didn’t even notice how hard you were working for it, that it doesn’t have to be like this huge leaps and bounds because that’s where you might fail, you know, trying to do too much, too hard, too quickly, rather than just, you know, trying to figure out how to get that marathon going for you.

[00:22:04] Sean: No even like you know, backs of the, the dog grooming, right? If the dog groomer would capture the email and get you back there, right. Cause you’re already a customer once, but then maybe they sent a, you know, you come back and, and, you know, encourage a friend of yours to come in and get the dog’s nails. They do that a couple of times, you know, one turns into two, two turns into four and before, you know, They’ve got a huge clientele you know, massive list of people that could come in there were you know, a couple of emails is all that that would have taken where, you know, if right now they’re just sitting, waiting for somebody to call them and you know, it’s going to take them forever, you know, but if they, if they did that, that one little change, you know, it will, it will grow much faster.

[00:22:53] Torie: You know, it’s kind of the same thing about making money also you hear about like, you know, millionaires or, you know people that have like a shit ton of money that it, the first million, you know, like getting to that one point took a really long time. But then once they figured that out it’s with investing or anything that has that compounding factor, that it takes a long time to get to first level, but once you figure that part out, then it’s a lot easier. I follow a couple of investment, like one of those it’s financial freedom retire early. So it’s fire people on Instagram and they share monthly where their savings are at with their stocks or with their, a lot of them do index funds and things like that.

And. It shows a lot of them will show, I love PC other people’s stats because like I like Sean with the nine months or, you know, Evan Carmichael with his, his Instagram followers. They’re showing like how much money they had saved. And it’s like very little, very little, very little. And then all of a sudden, like once they hit that hundred, 200, 300,000, then it really, really started.

To take off, but so many people don’t even give themselves that long to get to that point. I think about like when I started my business and I started in 2007, I started out of necessity. The, we did I did publishing for real estate magazines and worked for a little teeny publishing house. And when the real estate market collapsed. My job kind of went with it because every single client we had was a realtor. So a couple of them, you know, I think we had 55 at one time, different magazines that we did monthly for different real estate offices. And after all of that happened and it happened very quickly. I think I had four or five.

And so you really can’t like run like a huge business from that. So the, the lady that ran the company kind of bowed out and then I started my design business right there and, you know, took those couple of clients and I still did the magazine and started doing some other things, logos and brochures and, and grew my business from there. For quite a while, like I, you know, just me designing Sean still worked for Pepsi. I didn’t make that much money at all. It took a little while to get to that point of figuring out like what I needed to do and everything. And I remember when I first made a thousand dollars a month and I’m like, holy shit.

Like these are my clients and my hands. And like, I am doing this. Like, that was a huge thing. And it was only a thousand dollars and I. How, how to get people reoccurring. And like, rather than having them pay for something like a large sum of money and talk them into doing it at one time, I figured out how to have them pay monthly and then I could stretch out and then they were clients for longer.

And then they would like me more because I worked with them more often and I kind of figured out what worked for me. And I was at that level for quite a while. And it took, so that was 2000. Seven, it took until 2000, would I say 2012, 2000, I think 2012 that I made a hundred thousand dollars in a year. And that was like a huge turning point, but it took a long time to get from that thousand to, to the next and you know, to a hundred thousand dollars.

But what a huge change that is. And now, like I know how to make a hundred thousand dollar. It’s not hard to do. You know, like when I started though, I had no clue. And so you get to this point with different skills and different, different levels. That, that, that level isn’t hard anymore. But if you don’t put in the time and if you don’t put in I don’t even want to say like that the hours, cause it’s not necessarily hours.

But I could have never said like, I want to make a hundred thousand in two years. Like, I don’t think I could have done it. Kind of like most of your time we talk about that too, right? That if you had it, it took Sean a while to build up Miles Through Time. And he had to go through a first location that didn’t turn out very great.

That that was very binding, like stifling his growth, but it’s nice that you got to work out some stuff. And work out some details, even just like how we work with it and how how you wanted it to work. Because it’s hard to lay down details in the beginning because I really think it’s good to be flexible with things.

Like, I think people try to be too strict in the beginning and then that. Means they can’t grow or can’t like move around at all. And then it kind of makes you want to quit because you knew like the box you built is not the right box. And it’s kind of scary. Like you spend all this time building the box and you’re like, fuck the wrong box.

[00:27:17] Sean: Miles Through Time like we essentially spent three years figuring out what mousy time is. And that fourth year started over from scratch. I mean, essentially. A handful of cars.

[00:27:33] Torie: But like we talk, then we talk about that. Like, if you had to start, like, if you didn’t have Miles Through Time at wiped out, blew up gone. If you had to start from nothing right now,

[00:27:41] Sean: I can do it so much easier, quick. Okay. Even if I didn’t have anything at all, I could get to where I am today so much faster than I did the first time.

[00:27:54] Torie: So when you first started, I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but when you first started, do you think that it w. Did you think it would take this long to get to where you’re at?

[00:28:02] Sean: I had no idea. And I think that’s part of it is I didn’t really have an expectation as far as I wanted to be at a certain point, by a certain time, I was just kind of like along for the ride and going, like, let’s, let’s see where I can go and kind of figuring stuff out as I went. And then at some point it was 2019. I can’t. I knew exactly at that point, what it was that, that it needed to be and what I didn’t want, what I did want.

[00:28:35] Torie: I think that’s key knowing what you don’t want. Sometimes it’s stronger than knowing what you want and you definitely knew like this wasn’t.

[00:28:43] Sean: You know, the, the one thing that was consistent across the board from the beginning was collecting the data so that we could go back and figure out all this stuff. So it wasn’t just my emotions that I had to go off of which can be jaded and, and change and remembered incorrectly. Where we have data going, you know, these are the people that came in. These are the days of the week that they came in, what time they came in. How many obviously, and it’s from those numbers that I was able to determine that in 2020, the first year that the museum opened up in a new location, we had more visitors than the first three years combined.

I just looked at the data again and we are already. More like 200 more visitors this year than we were all of last year. And we’re only seven months into it. Yeah. So it’s, it’s that kind of stuff. So I’m like we’re in the right direction. Like we keep going this way and it’s working, you know, which then gives me Yeah, it makes me want to do more and more and more. And I think that’s kind of almost a, some subconscious thing that, you know, you don’t even think about it. You just, you are doing more and more better things happen. It’s pretty neat though, to, to look at that kind of stuff and go, I mean , I think I told you it was like, Well yesterday, we had a ton of people visit the museum on a, on a Tuesday, over 50 people.

So I don’t know what it is right now, but the other day, a few days ago, I was looking at where we’re averaging 38 visitors daily seven days a week. So far this year. I, unless it’s like a, one of the museums in DC. Yeah, that’s a pretty good number.

[00:30:30] Torie: We’ve visited some really big ones to some big ones and there’s like, I was surprised. So we went to a barber, which is a multi-million dollar facility. Yeah, like overhead, like crazy. And they said that they had days that they have no people.

[00:30:50] Sean: Yeah, we were at in Tampa and Tampa has got a really nice museum. It’s all privately owned there, but it’s a really nice collection and a very obviously touristy town and their best days that were. We’re rare. It’s not like it happens all the time. They might get a hundred people in there, but for the most part they’re not getting anywhere near that. And while we were there, I mean, we were there by ourselves, the majority of the time. And then there might’ve been a handful of other people in there, but it’s not like it’s like a ton of people in there all the time.

And that’s what makes, you know, running any of these museums have difficult. They’re never super busy in there and that’s probably.

[00:31:28] Torie: If we didn’t go and travel to those places, we wouldn’t know that.

[00:31:32] Sean: No, you’d have this expectation of these other museums are so big and you know, they get 20 people in there every hour, every hour that they’re open. And that’s just, that’s not the case. Yeah. And you can tell on some of these big ones. Yeah. There’s a reason why it costs $20 per person to go in there. It’s because they don’t have the volume to make it less. Like it has to be that much, you know? Cause they’re looking at their data going, this is how many people we have visiting the museum.

These are our costs. This is. This is what has to be charged for people to come in there. And then there’s that threshold of, you know, what’s too much, if somebody is not willing to pay and what’s, you know, what are they willing to pay for what they have done.

[00:32:10] Torie: The same as you can’t go too hard and too crazy and kill your business or kill your motivation. Like, where’s that sweet spot where you’re still moving forward. You’re still challenging yourself, but it’s enough that you can keep going for the long haul marathon people marathon.

[00:32:26] Sean: So that’s what I look at that data, and then it makes it so that I can, you know, forecast in the future, what it is that we need to do and what the outcome from those actions will be. You know, if we have more space and admission is more and the number of visitors go up, like those are all good, positive things, that’s just going to keep making it better and better.

[00:32:48] Torie: Well, it’s nice to have that data, that whatever that, that benchmark is. Because then you can look back and then you can share that with other people, like, thank you so much for those people on Instagram to say it took nine months, or thank you for Evan Carmichael, for being honest and saying, you know, I went through years with no subscribers or Gary V or you with the museum. Like there are so many things that you really don’t know what’s going on with other people. And it’s really easy to assume that things happened quick or that they had luck or whatever, like fixing these expectations that we have. Really is important to making yourself succeed because it’s expectations that don’t get met that, you know, kill dreams and kill goals and kill motivation.

[00:33:34] Sean: I think the best thing you can do is instead of having that gigantic end goal result and do the 75 hard style just one day at a time.

[00:33:43] Torie: Number it, keep that number so that you can check it off or whatever today is number five. Tomorrow is number six, then number seven you know, just like my weekly email. Now that I’ve started it and I’m on nine, like I got to do 10, I think that’s going to help me keep going.

[00:34:00] Sean: Don’t look down to the finish line. They’re looking at the next corner and they just got to make it past that corner and the next one and the next one. And then eventually they finish. But if you, if you straight from the beginning, look towards the finish line, it’s so far away that it can be discouraging or you start to doubt yourself. And doubt is a huge killer doubt, stupid and irrational. There’s nothing that says you can’t do it or fail. It’s just your mind telling you, you know, making you doubt that you can do it. And then, then it ultimately, it’s your action that says you can’t do it. So if, if you have the action to actually make stuff happen, then you’ll get it done. So that those smaller increments we’ll, we’ll make it happen and much easier.

[00:34:43] Torie: So if you want to check out my daily email, come on over to Tori mathis.com. Sign up. Next week, it’s email number 10. I would love to have you join me. And you know what? We have new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, and we would love it. If you would come and watch, we would definitely appreciate that. And if you’re ever in the Atlanta Georgia area, you’d come by Miles Through Time. Automotive Museum Sean will give you a tour.

[00:35:12] Sean: Maybe if I’m there.

[00:35:13] Torie: Will catch you on the next one. Thanks!

[00:35:15] Sean: Later.