Author: Henry Murphy

You won’t change, but you want change. Let me explain.

You can find yourself in a good job, living in a nice home, driving a nice car, and loving those things about your life, even though you don’t really love what you do. I’ve been there before.

When you get comfortable in life, there are things you never want to change. Your routines. The things you do on certain days. The commitments you made in the past.

But when you’re trying to build a new future, things have to change.

If you’re one of those people still working a full-time job while trying to jump into entrepreneurship, your intentionality has to be different. Your level of commitment has to be different.

 Your level of investment has to be different.

Everything has to change.

This is what I call one foot in and one foot out. You want change, but at the same time, you want to continue doing the same things you’ve always done.

I’m not saying you have to totally disrupt your life, but you’re going to have to get a little uncomfortable. And you’re going to have to be OK with being uncomfortable.

I feel like a lot of people jumping into entrepreneurship don’t realize the intentionality it takes.

If you have kids, you might not make it to some of their games. If you have commitments at church, you might not make it every Sunday like you used to. If you have a night out with the guys, sorry, you’re not going to make every one of them.

You want something different? 

Then you’re going to have to become a different person.

And you better get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I woke up this morning thinking about a memory from a long time ago.

My dad has always been a pretty wise person. When I was young, I used to see people come to him for the same thing over and over again. He would give them advice, but they would never take the information he gave them.

I remember eavesdropping from my room, wondering, “Why do they keep coming to him with the same thing?”

He used to get so frustrated, and I really didn’t understand why. It was above me at the time.

Sometimes, Wisdom Comes From Experience

Out of necessity, I’ve built a few skill sets throughout the years. A lot of them came from some crazy mistakes I’ve made in business.

It’s kind of like walking down the road and falling into a pothole that nobody sees until they actually fall into it. Quite naturally, you want everyone else to avoid that pothole.

You want to warn them. You want to tell them what to look out for because you’ve already experienced the consequences of not knowing it was there.

But it took me a long time to understand something: Some people either want to fall into that pothole themselves, or they simply don’t want to listen to you.

They don’t value the person the wisdom is coming from.

I actually had to sit with that, and it was kind of hard for me to digest.

Stop Throwing Your Pearls to Pigs

I was reminded of something Jesus said in Matthew 7:6 about not throwing your pearls to pigs.

And I was like, “I get it now.”

I finally understood that everybody isn’t going to value what you have to offer, and everybody isn’t going to listen to the wisdom you share.

You can have the experience. You can have the knowledge. You can have the answers to the very problems someone is struggling with, and they still might not listen.

That doesn’t mean your wisdom has no value. It means you have to be mindful of who you’re sharing it with.

God Called Me to Serve Entrepreneurs

Now, my goal is to talk to people who will listen.

I know God called me to serve people in the capacity of entrepreneurship. Over the years, I’ve built a toolbox full of lessons, skills, and wisdom that came from both my successes and my mistakes.

And now, I have a toolbox and a bullhorn through social media. I have a voice that can reach people across multiple platforms, through videos, and through blogs.

I don’t have to chase everybody down trying to convince them to listen to me.

I can show up, share what I’ve learned, and trust God to attract the people He has called me to serve.

That’s a different mindset.

Instead of spending my time trying to convince people who aren’t interested, I can focus on helping the people who are ready to learn and grow.

Not Everybody Deserves Access to Your Wisdom

Nowadays, I can tell pretty quickly who the pigs are, and trust me, I don’t waste my time on them anymore.

I’m only sharing my wisdom with people who are willing to listen and actually do something with the information.

That doesn’t mean I think I’m better than anybody. It means I’ve learned that I can’t make people value what I have to offer.

I can share the lesson, but I can’t make someone apply it.

I can point out the pothole, but I can’t make someone walk around it.

And I can give someone the knowledge I had to learn the hard way, but I can’t make them use it.

My responsibility is to share what God has given me. Their responsibility is to decide what they’re going to do with it.

So if you’re an entrepreneur, a coach, or someone who has spent years learning lessons that could help other people, remember this:

You don’t have to convince everybody.

Share your wisdom. Serve the people who are willing to receive it. And stop exhausting yourself trying to get people to value something they have already decided to ignore.

When you use the words “so far” and “not yet,” there’s a mindset shift that takes place.

This title came from Seth Godin’s book, The Practice.

No matter what you aim to do in life, you never put a negative outcome on what you desire to accomplish.

And this is where the words so far and not yet come into play.

The one thing that I love about entrepreneurship is that everyone’s journey is different.

So you should never be comparing yourself to anyone.

But you should always be drawing inspiration from as many people as you can.

I want you to think about it like this.

Let’s say you have a goal to reach 10,000 people with every post that you put out on social media.

The reframe is:

“I’ve only reached 1,000 so far. I haven’t gotten to where I’m trying to go—not yet.”

Would you reframe the whole situation?

The possibility is always there.

There’s always something to work toward.

It also helps you not fall in love with the actual destination, but fall in love with the journey.

Because 10,000 should always be a moving target.

10,000 is just a goal you set for yourself while you work on becoming a better communicator, understanding hooks, and understanding what keeps people’s attention.

Here’s another example.

Let’s say you started writing a book a year ago, and you’re beating yourself up because you haven’t completed it yet.

This is how I want you to look at it:

“I only have three chapters so far. I haven’t finished it—not yet.”

As long as you do a little bit every day toward it, that’s what matters.

We always get better as we’re doing the thing.

As we’re taking action.

So no, you haven’t reached your goal so far.

And you haven’t made it to where you wanted to be not yet.

Keep going.

I heard someone say, “Get better at doing hard things.”

It kind of reminded me of Jim Rohn’s quote:

“Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”

I believe there are days when life will feel like everything is easy.

But that’s not a place where you stay.

There are hard things that come with life, and the truth is, we do have to get better at doing hard things.

You’ve heard me say it before, and I’ll say it again:

I love the Bible because it shows us patterns.

I think about King David.

We can point to many things in his life to look at, but one in particular is when he returned to Ziklag and discovered that they had taken his wives, his children, and the families of all his men.

The people wept until they couldn’t weep anymore.

And then they wanted to stone David because of it.

But David did something that I think we should make a part of our lives.

He encouraged himself in God.

He reminded himself of God’s faithfulness and who God is.

One thing I like to rest on is that when life is hard, I know that if I let it, it can shape me.

But it can also show me my character.

It can prepare me for the next hard thing in life.

And it can help me navigate difficult seasons.

Every hard thing can make you better.

Just remember to encourage yourself in God.

Remember who He is.

Remember what He’s done.

And remember that you can always lean on His faithfulness.

As I’m sitting here in the room that I primarily do content out of when I’m in the building, I started thinking about what it took to get to this day, this moment.

Weeks before I left Atlanta, Georgia, I told all of my clients that I would be up and running about a week after I got there.

The transition was pretty amazing, but there were some things that were challenging.

The day of the flight, my wife realized that my name was spelled wrong on my eVisa.

So we had to do some research and pay a rush fee to get it done quickly.

That hurt a little bit because it’s free if you do it with a lot of time.

Then we got to the airport, and our bags were too heavy, so we had to dump a few things.

You have to realize we had already condensed our life down to two suitcases each.

Four suitcases, 50 pounds each.

We thought we were at our final decision.

As soon as we touched down in Vietnam, it was storming.

We did do our due diligence and downloaded the Grab app beforehand, but when we went to use it, we realized we didn’t have a card connected.

So when you’re trying to get a Grab with 200 pounds worth of luggage, plus a backpack on your back, you can get a little challenged.

We spent almost 45 minutes trying to figure that out.

The guy who worked for Grab had the air conditioning blasting in the truck.

The airport is in District 1, which is in the heart of Saigon, so it took a while to get where we were going.

You gotta think New York City traffic, busy as can be.

So the chill setting, of course, meant a cold was inevitable.

Also, I didn’t drink a lot of water on the flight just so I didn’t have to get up to use the bathroom a lot.

So that dried my eyes out, which makes my eyes get blurry.

Now, in the scheme of things, that’s about 4% of things that went wrong compared to the 96% that went right.

If you add all that together with two days of traveling, coming here, making sure that the place you picked out was legit, and then learning a whole new culture in seven days just to show up today in this room that I’m sitting in to do content…

It was a journey.

I got here today, and my first call had to be postponed.

But nevertheless, I said I would show up here today.

And by the grace of God, I’m here today.

And I have so much space I don’t even know what to do with it all.

I am excited for this next journey of my life as I continue to build entrepreneurs who build businesses from the ground up.

A lot of people jump into business because they hear the glory stories.

They hear how easy it is.

They see the highlight reels.

Entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.

And I know you’ve heard that before.

But the reason it’s not for the faint of heart is because it makes you become a different version of yourself.

Not the version of yourself that just has to show up, do an eight-hour day, and go home.

The version of yourself that builds the whole thing.

The version of yourself that pushes through adversity when challenges come up.

The version of yourself that makes you innovate when there’s no money coming in.

That’s a different type of endurance.

And it means having faith when it looks like nothing is working.

If you haven’t been doing this for a while, I want to encourage you.

I want to point quickly at two stories.

Three Feet from Gold.

There’s a story about a man who was digging for gold.

He found gold, invested more money, and then the vein of gold disappeared.

He quit.

He sold the equipment to a junk dealer.

The junk dealer brought in an engineer who discovered that the gold vein was only three feet away from where the man stopped digging.

Three feet.

The other story I want to point to is Florence Chadwick.

She had already swum the English Channel.

Then she attempted to swim from Catalina Island to the California coast.

She swam for almost 16 hours, but there was so much fog that she couldn’t see the shore.

She stopped.

When she got out of the water, she found out she was only about a half-mile from the coast.

She was that close.

Two months later, she tried again.

The fog was there again.

But this time, she knew the shore was there even though she couldn’t see it.

And she made it.

That’s why no one’s journey is the same.

And this is why it’s important to be around like-minded people.

Because although everyone around you might love you, they don’t necessarily understand what you’re pursuing.

They don’t understand the internal struggle.

Keep showing up.

Keep putting in the work.

Because the funny thing about entrepreneurship is you never know what’s going to make it pop off.

You could literally be one repost away.

I’m sitting on the steps surrounded by greenery, and it’s about 9:30 AM in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

It’s 86°, but it’s overcast, and there’s a very cool, crisp breeze.

I started thinking about how everything belongs to God.

It doesn’t matter where I’m at.

He is Lord.

He owns everything.

I never traveled much when I was younger.

Living in Savannah, Georgia, when I finally moved to Atlanta, I was 33 years old.

The typical Jacksonville, Orlando, Florida run, maybe Maryland or South Carolina—that was pretty much it.

I was a Georgia boy.

It kind of reminds me of that line in the movie ATL where they say, “He ATL for real. Never been outside of 285.”

However, I wasn’t proud of it.

I actually wanted to see more of everything.

And when I became an entrepreneur, I got that opportunity.

I’ve been to almost every state in America and many, many cities within each state.

And I got to do it doing what I love—selling clothing and traveling with artists.

It was amazing.

I remember having a conversation with my wife about moving to California, and I told her, God is God no matter where we are.

And that’s true, even being halfway across the world from everything that I know.

We actually picked Southeast Asia so that we could travel to Thailand, Manila, Malaysia, Bali, Taiwan.

It’s so much more than that.

Who knows what’s next?

I definitely have some places in Africa I want to go.

However, I’m not in a rush.

I just want new experiences.

I want to stay in a place for a while.

Soak it up.

Understand the culture.

Learn new languages.

I didn’t become an entrepreneur until I was 38.

And then I realized…

It is never too late to do anything.

If we ever look in the mirror and be honest with ourselves, the only thing stopping us is us.

Everything is just a decision.

We have to decide, and we have to cut away all other choices.

Life is to be lived.

So start living it.

A lot of times, creativity is birthed in us when we’re young.

And we know it.

We have this idea of what we want to be and who we want to become.

For many of us, it takes decades.

But a lot of times, when we look back, we can see little signs along the way.

Once you get it, you got it.

Then you finally get up the nerve to invest in yourself, and you start doing the thing.

There’s a lot of pressure that comes with starting a business because it actually goes against everything that we were taught in school.

But let’s just say you make it past all of that, and you get there.

You actually start a business.

You need someone around you to encourage you because it gets hard.

And most of the time, if we don’t have a coach or mentor, then we are doing it alone.

Entrepreneurship is already a lonely journey, even with those things.

And let’s say you have someone in your life that tells you you can’t do something.

They tell you that you will not make it.

Depending on how close they are to you, it can really kill your motivation.

They can kill your productivity.

And a lot of people quit here because they don’t have support.

And I don’t care who it is—your mama, your daddy, your cousin, your grandma, your husband, your wife.

Nobody gets to tell you that you can’t do what God put you here to do.

I wanna tell you to use that as fuel.

Let them tell you that you can’t.

Every time you hear that, something inside you should have this burning fire to keep going.

To be relentless.

There should be no quitting in you.

I’m here to tell you that you can.

I’m here to tell you that that business can be profitable.

I’m here to tell you that you can change your life and the lives of your children.

I’m here to tell you that you can continue to learn new skills.

I’m here to tell you that you can breakthrough the barriers.

Never let anyone tell you that you can’t.

I was sitting down with a good friend of mine, and we were just catching up before I moved to Southeast Asia.

We were both talking about what’s next in our lives, and he has always been a creative.

He has a very good job, but that creative side of him comes up more than he probably cares to admit.

It’s not a surprise to hear that from anyone because the first thing that God told us about Himself was that He was a Creator.

He made us to create.

He made us to solve problems and serve people.

Okay, let me not lose my focus. 😂

He was talking himself out of working on some concepts for design because he felt like the market was oversaturated.

I told him, you’re looking at it like a slice of pie instead of a garden like God intended us to look at it.

Every creation is a seed, and those seeds reproduce after themselves, just like fruit.

There’s no limit.

There are only a certain amount of slices in the pie.

Once the pie is gone, that’s it.

This type of thinking is a scarcity mindset.

He shouldn’t be ashamed of it unless he chooses to stay there.

We have the opportunity to think more abundantly and to live more abundantly.

The question is, what are you going to believe?

Faith and doubt are both beliefs.

Doubt is an undesirable outcome.

Faith is a desirable outcome.

I would always lean toward the desirable outcome.

If you have an idea and there’s a market for it, then your duty is to take it to the market and let the market decide.

The year was 2009, and my wife said, “I’ll be back.”

I said, “Where are you going?”

She said, “I’m gonna get a passport.”

I said, “I want a passport too.”

Ten years passed by, and we didn’t travel anywhere.

So we renewed our passports again in 2019.

By the time 2019 came, we had already been empty nesters for seven years.

Nothing was stopping us from traveling.

We just never pulled the trigger.

We never pursued it.

We made the big decision to move to California, and I think hopping across the country prepared us to hop across the world.

There were some underlying things going on between getting those two passports.

My wife needed two new hips, and she got those.

Then I was diagnosed as legally blind in 2021.

That was a big shift for me.

Arie being born definitely affected me too.

There was something about just packing up and leaving at one time that felt different.

My wife started talking about traveling out of the country, and I said to myself:

“What’s stopping us now?”

Since we started talking about it, I knew two things were important.

My wife and I needed to be in agreement.

And if the Lord wills, then we will go.

I don’t know how complicated it needed to be.

If the Lord isn’t stopping us, and my wife and I are in agreement, then that’s a green light.

We just needed to figure out where we wanted to go, or at least where we wanted to start, and then map everything else out from there.

We talked about putting our stuff in storage.

But then we were like, why carry a bill?

Let’s just sell everything.

And that’s what we did.

We already live pretty minimalistic.

I honestly think that’s the first step—to learn to live on less than what you need.

Also, I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2011, and I know how to make money online.

So what made me take that risk?

It didn’t seem like a risk to me.

It seemed more like a decision.

I think the main thing I need to get through my head is that we’re going somewhere we’ve never been.

It’s a different culture.

They do things differently.

So don’t go in there thinking you know everything.

Go in there open.

Be willing to learn.

But then there’s a pessimistic part of me that starts thinking:

“What can go wrong?”

And when I started thinking about that, I realized something.

It can go wrong in America, and it can go wrong in a different country.

But what happens when things go wrong?

We find a way to solve it.

That’s what we’ve always done.

We realized we wanted new memories.

We wanted new experiences.

And that’s why we sold everything and moved to another country.