When The Opportunity Won’t Wait [Raw Session]

00:00 — Opening

Hey, welcome back to Slow Builds. I'm recording this one because I'm in Miami with my daughter, and this trip is what made the idea feel real.

She got invited to be part of a YouTube channel, chat, something, and it could bring a lot of attention to her brand and get her exposed to the industry a little bit more. An introducer for networking and stuff.

She's not getting paid for this. There's no guaranteed promotion. There's no clean return where I can say we spent this much and we're definitely getting this much back.

On paper, it would be easy to say no straight up. It's not cheap. It's last minute. It's a big ordeal. It costs a lot of money. It takes time. My whole week got interrupted, and it showed up when a lot of other things were happening around the same time.

But that's not how some real opportunities show up. They don't always arrive when you have extra money, you have the time, there's no stress, and everything's kind of perfectly certain that it's the exact thing to do.

Sometimes they show up when life is already full and you still have to decide.

And everyone knows the Eminem line from the song. You got one chance, one opportunity. But I think there's another part of that idea that matters just as much.

You have to know when it actually is an opportunity.

Because not everything that feels urgent is important, and not every exciting thing is worth chasing. Some things are distractions dressed up as opportunities. Some things are expensive because they hit your ego, your fear, or impatience.

But every once in a while something comes along and you can tell it's kind of different.

01:55 — Making The Most Of The Moment

That's what makes this Miami trip, in my mind, feel like that.

There's no guarantees. It wasn't easy to make this happen. The timing was way off. But to me, it was worth taking the risk.

And this is a side note. It's not just that it was worth taking the risk or doing it. I also felt it was an opportunity to expose her to other things. Expose her to how we do logistics, how we make things work on the spur of the moment, and how we try to analyze what makes it worth it.

But I also wanted her to know, yes, Ren, I get paid for this. We don't know if this video is going to go live. We don't know if you're going to get your air time, or your likes, or your tags, or whatever they're going to do.

But I did say to make the most of it.

You need to make sure that when you do something like this, you don't waste your money, you don't waste your time or the opportunity. You try to make opportunities. You do the networking. You grab the content while you're there. You explore. You see. You just do everything you can to make it worth it.

Every second, every minute while you're there, you maximize it.

03:01 — Knowing A Good Deal

I think there's a skill in knowing a good deal.

And I don't mean cheap. Cheap is not always good. A cheap thing you don't need is still a waste. A cheap distraction is still a distraction.

A good deal is when the price, the timing, the purpose, and the upside line up in a way that probably will not be there later.

That's the part I think a lot of people miss.

Sometimes the deal is not just a number. It's the timing. The window. Who's involved. Who it affects. It's what becomes possible because you said yes now instead of later.

And if you wait too long, the deal changes. The price changes. The opportunity moves. The people involved may change, or swap out, or not be there. The seasons just change.

That's when you really have to look at it.

Do you bite the bullet and jump in? Do you wait it out and maybe a better opportunity comes? You can't hem and haw a lot about things. When something's good and you get that little gut feeling, a lot of times you have to chase that.

I compare it to last year. We needed to get work done on the lawn. We didn't really have the money sitting there in a comfortable way, but the quote we got was so good I couldn't ignore it.

And I knew enough to know that if we waited, that price probably was not going to come back.

That's not just a lawn thing. It was the deck. My roof. It's the repair you know you're going to have to do eventually.

Sometimes waiting feels responsible, but all you're doing is giving the price time to grow. You're giving time for the people to change, the opportunity to shift. The weather, if it's an outdoor thing, might change.

If everything lines up, then you go for it.

04:49 — When Waiting Gets Expensive

Sometimes you save money by waiting, but sometimes waiting is how the price doubles.

That's where money gets tricky, because being responsible does not always mean delaying.

Sometimes being responsible means recognizing that today's uncomfortable price is still better than tomorrow's impossible price.

That's a big piece to sit with for a while, because we're always taught don't go deep into debt. Don't owe money. Don't push that. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. If you don't got the cash, don't do it.

But sometimes, because you know the money is going to come, and you can budget and you're responsible, you know that price today is worth it.

Even if you paid for that amount of money right now and you let the interest build for a little bit, you're still going to save enough money that it's justifiable.

Like I said, this connects directly to my book, Handle Money Like An Adult, and part of it.

There's a line in that chapter that says, "Spend before the money's in your hand only when the math is real."

That's the rule.

Not spend anyway. Not follow your dreams and hope it works out. Not put it on a card and pretend future you will figure it out.

The rule is protect the foundation, verify the cost, know how you will cover it, and make the decision from numbers instead of fear.

That's the difference between reckless spending and adult spending, is what I like to call it.

06:08 — Money As A Tool

Fear can make you careless in both directions.

Fear can make you spend money you don't have because you're chasing relief, status, or attention. But fear can also make you refuse to spend money when spending is actually the right move.

One costs you because you move without thinking. The other costs you because you froze when you should have moved.

There's another chapter in the book called "Money Is A Tool, Not A Security Blanket."

That chapter is about the idea that money is not security by itself. Money becomes useful when you give it a job.

Money can reduce stress. It can build skills. It can create memories with people you love. That's the one I spend a lot of money on. I can't always afford it, and one of those things is that the framework helps me with the Miami trip.

If I spend money to look successful, that's probably a bad use of money. If I spend money because I'm panicking, that's probably a bad use.

But if I'm spending money to support my daughter, help her get experience, create a real memory, and put her around something connected to what she's building, exposure to the industry, to budgeting, to other people that are already in the industry making their work, then the money has a job.

It's not just disappearing. It's being used.

That does not automatically make the decision right. But it makes it worth considering. It makes me not look at the number itself, but look at the entire package of what the trip is bringing.

07:38 — Waiting Is Not Free

This also connects to another chapter in the book.

I'm sorry, I'm going way off. I've been doing a lot on the book lately, and I'm on this trip, and then it all kind of clicked.

It's like start now and make life easier for the future self.

That's an idea in that chapter that I keep coming back to.

Waiting is not free.

Waiting feels free because you don't spend the money today. You don't take the risk. You don't make the uncomfortable decisions.

But you still spent something.

You spent time. Momentum. The chance to learn. The chance to be in the room. You spent the version of the future that only exists if you start moving now.

So what could have been is gone because you didn't move. You lost that.

That doesn't show up on a receipt, so people ignore it. But it's real.

If you wait too long to fix the roof, the price may go up. If you wait too long to learn the skill, the industry may move without you. If you wait until your kid's opportunity is easier to afford, that exact opportunity will never come back again.

Perfect conditions are usually late. Way too late.

And when you look back in hindsight at what you decided not to do, or what you gave up, you realign it and realize, I could have made that work. I should have done that.

That's where regrets come in.

But you need to take those as lessons. You need to look at those.

09:06 — Reflection Instead Of Regret

That's funny, because my next one is reflection instead of regret.

There's also a chapter called, it's funny how I do these things with AI. I come up with all these ideas. I list out what things I wanted to do, and I'm always afraid I'm not going to remember everything I want to talk about.

But as I'm going through it, reading each section, I say, I bet you that's not in my head. And then I start talking about it, and boom, it's usually the next thing.

So right now this is the next thing that I thought wasn't in there, but here it is.

Life is an adventure, so keep moving.

That chapter is about the difference between reflection and regret.

Reflection is useful. Regret is circular.

Reflection asks, what do I know now?

Regret keeps asking, why didn't I? I should have.

That's what I'm trying to avoid more as I get older.

Not every mistake can be avoided. Mistakes are part of life. You're going to spend money you wish you hadn't spent. You're going to save money you later wish you used. You're going to avoid spending money on the thing because you were waiting for the perfect time. You're going to miss some things.

But there's a specific kind of regret that bothers me.

It's the regret of knowing you saw the moment clearly, knew it mattered, and still talked yourself out of it because the timing wasn't clean enough.

That one sticks the hardest in my mind, because deep down, you know the truth. You weren't being responsible. You were hiding. You were panicking. You were afraid of the unknown.

10:33 — Asking Better Questions

The question is not only, can I afford this?

That matters. You have to ask that. But it's not the only question.

You also have to ask, what is this really for? What happens if I say no? Is this a real opportunity, or am I reacting to pressure? Will this create stress I can't handle, or value I can't recreate later? Am I avoiding this because the math is bad, or because I'm scared?

That last question is uncomfortable because sometimes the answer is obvious.

Sometimes the math is not the real issue. The real issue is fear.

Fear of spending. Being wrong. Looking foolish.

There's no wrong questions. There's no stupid questions. Curiosity is what makes us learn and grow.

I don't like when people have the instinct and they have the nudge where they want to ask a question, they want to learn a little more, but they're afraid they'll look dumb. They're afraid they'll look like everyone knows more than them.

We're all in the same boat.

And most times, when there's someone who does know the thing, they've spent the time learning it. They're not experts in everything all the time, but they're really passionate about something, and they feel helpful.

It's a good thing to ask questions.

So yeah, fear of looking foolish, to me, shouldn't be a thing at all.

Fear of backing something that doesn't work. Fear of hoping too much.

You have to put all that aside, and sometimes you just have to go in.

12:18 — Supporting Your Kid's Thing

In this case, for my kid, going to Miami feels even heavier because it involves my child.

When you support your kid's thing, you're not just paying for a flight or a hotel. You're putting belief behind them.

That can feel risky, obviously.

You don't want to create false hope. You don't want to pretend every opportunity turns into something big. You don't want to teach them that money doesn't matter.

But you also don't want to teach them that everything has to be guaranteed before it's worth trying.

That's not how life works.

Most meaningful things begin before the guarantee.

The business starts before you know it will work. The skill starts before you're good. You have to practice. The project starts before the outcome is clear. And sometimes the trip happens before the return is obvious.

So the lesson from this trip is not always say yes. That would not be wise advice for anybody.

The lesson is learn how to recognize the real thing when it shows up.

Know your numbers. Protect the foundation. Don't spend for image. Don't spend because you're panicking. Don't confuse excitement with wisdom.

But when the math is real, the purpose is clear, and the window may not come back the same way, don't hide behind waiting.

13:35 — Make It Worth It

Don't hide behind excuses.

Sometimes waiting is responsible, obviously. Sometimes waiting is expensive.

You see that over and over. As the market moves, the world moves, things go up. And if you have the opportunity, and you know what you need, and you know you're going to have to do it anyway, spend the money then.

It's wise. It's responsible in that situation.

And sometimes putting your family first means getting on the plane before everything feels perfectly organized.

That's what I'm thinking about here, in that Miami trip.

Not that this is a guarantee to become some huge turning point. Not that it's a moment.

It's a moment with my kid where we get to build our business a little, learn some life lessons, and most importantly, make memories together.

With their dad on South Beach, exploring, talking about networking and meeting people.

It's priceless.

I'm excited for that because even with my other kid, with the art and traveling and things like that, there's all this excitement.

So I get to live through them, and I'm trying to teach them how sometimes you have to take those risks. You have to be willing to spend the money even though you don't know the outcome.

But even when you don't know the outcome, you have to set your own goals. You have to make it worth it.

So don't do things just to do them. Don't just go down there and stay in a hotel and go on Twitter all day, or X, or whatever they're on.

Go out. Network. Find people. Talk to people. Find what the network's going on.

Just maximize the opportunity, and also have some fun with your dad while you're down there.

I don't want to miss moments just because they show up before life was perfectly ready.

Sometimes you just have to make sure when the moment comes, you analyze it. You evaluate everything. You're not always going to be ready. Not every opportunity is an opportunity.

But some of them are worth taking the chance.

Thanks for watching.

Bye.