Ep 260: Making Money Online Is About Learning to Love Failure & Challenges With Jaryd Krause

Jaryd Krause:

You know, what's crazy is that I'm actually a bit nervous about this. And this is a bit of a test. And I invite and encourage you to come on this journey and this test with me. And yeah, see what you get out of it. Reason I am doing this as a solo podcast episode and I have no, you know, plan or schedule or talking points or anything like this. is because I've been asked to do it multiple times and I've been told many, many times that it's inspiring.

What I have to share is inspiring and how I got to where I'm at and what we have built as a company with buying online business is inspiring. And also, you know, I keep getting told, Oh, you should tell a little bit more about your travels; you know, that's why you got into this whole buying online businesses thing and making money online. And I haven't really shared a lot of my travels, my travel stories or how I sort of got here.

Because I just didn't want to go down the route of like showcasing and showing off my life, and la-di-da look at me and how good my life is. I have an amazing life and most of you guys know I don't work too many hours and I live in, you know, go away. I've lived in multiple locations and tropical places and I've traveled a lot. But I've been resistant to recording this podcast and sharing this journey and this story with you. But the reason I decided to do it was not to make it about me.

This is not totally about me. I want to share it with you guys to inspire you. And hopefully it is at least somewhat inspiring to get you motivated to push through certain troughs and periods in your journey to make an income online, because I know it can be tough. And I believe that your story, just like my story, is character building, and I'd like to share a little bit about how much character I built over the years.

And so, I don't know how long this is going to last; I'm just freestyling as I go. It's kind of like, I guess, a lecture without too many prompts from an audience. And if you guys do have prompts or questions and things you'd like to ask me at the end of this, please reach jaryd at buyingonlibusiness.com and I can answer a bunch of those questions in one episode, a solo podcast episode as well. So I hope you get a lot from this.

So, where do we start? I guess let's start from the beginning. Why did I want to make money? And I guess another reason for sharing this is that I don't know why, but I'm just trying to justify why. sharing this for myself. I've been told so many times by you guys that you want to hear it. But here it goes. So, from the beginning, why did I like it? Why? Where was I at school? I guess, I guess that's where it starts. And firstly, I want to thank my parents, like, you know, my parents, like I've got my work ethic from my parents, because there were times that, you know, as privileged as I have been to be born into Australia.

And have that environment and that support. I've been very, very privileged as well. This is a typical rags-to-riches story because I wasn't really in the rags. Yeah, there were times when my parents and I were eating cheese on toast because we had four kids and it was a hectic household. It was just my dad working and my mom was just trying to keep her head above water. And I'm super grateful and I have a great relationship with my parents. And we get to talk about these things.

And what I really got from them was a work ethic. And I also see that on both my dad's side and my mother's side, they're both, like, both sides of the family have a crazy work ethic. And I should share that there's a caveat to work ethics. That became a double-edged sword for me. So what used to be one of my superpowers was that I was an action-taker.

But also, as you'll see in this journey, I took action in the wrong direction at multiple stages in the journey. I guess I went through primary school and into high school. I was an absolute loser at school and I was not confident at all. I didn't know anything about personal development. I didn't know anything about you; you know how you were; just I remember I did get bullied at school, not to say, Oh poor Jared and all that sort of stuff.

I guess it was a good experience to have a look back on hindsight because I worked through it and when I was about 14–15, I realized I wasn't going to be wealthy. I wanted to be wealthy because I had a stepfather on my mother's side who was an accountant and he had a lot of money and fancy materialistic things. And me being a younger child, I wanted that stuff and that's why I wanted to be rich at the start. That's why I wanted to make money.

And from there, I realized, okay, cool, I'm going to become an accountant and I tried to study like the most advanced math at school in year nine. I must have been like 13-ish or 14-ish. And I just wasn't able to do it. And dad was tutoring me and I was just struggling and getting frustrated with my father. Sorry, dad, and thanks for the help. On trying to pass and trying to grade and learn the stuff And I just couldn't wrap my head around it.

And I realized that I wasn't that academically smart and it wasn't my thing. And from that, I got put into what we called English. and dumb math. So DINGLE stands for dumb English and dumb math for the kids who were dumb. I know how crazy that is to label in that way. So I used to feel like I was dumb and I also hated English as well. And I didn't read. I hated reading. In fact, my mom wanted to try and make me read and she gathered around a group with her sisters and all my aunties and they said, Well, like, why don't you pay him to read because that's his motivation, right?

It's really cool how they incentivize this. And even though I wanted money, mom gave me the Harry Potter book and said, Jared, read this and I'll give you five cents a page. And I got halfway through the first chapter and I said, I followed the book in half and said, Mom, you can keep your money. I wasn't motivated that much to read about money. So what she did was say, I'll buy you surfing magazines. They came up with another theory that my aunties, thank you aunties, love you guys.

And came up with another theory, like, Let's give him surfing magazines. He loves surfing; let's give him surfing magazines, and he can only have the magazines and keep them if he reads the articles, which I did, and that got me into reading. And then one of my aunties realized that I was into money, and she bought me the Rich Dad, Poor Dad book when I was about 15. Or did I get it from Dad?

I think I got it from Dad, and I got another book from my auntie, which was a Tony Robbins book. And that sort of started my journey toward personal development. So I've been doing personal development for about 20 years now. almost two decades and doing a lot of work on myself.

And that's another thing that I'd mention, which is that the character building from doing that from a young age has added to my success or whatever you call success, but some of the wins that I've had in business and life because I started doing that from a very young age and put myself through multiple journeys of growth and healing. through different things in my life.

And I think that's an important one to mention for us listening or you guys listening is that business success isn't just about what you learn in business at all. There's a lot that contributes to your success from character building from other times in your life. Even these little things that you've had to get through stack up to add and equal a lot of confidence and instill confidence.

within yourself if you count them as wins of you getting through them. On the other side, sometimes people feel like they're victims of, like, I've had to go through this and I've had to go through that and you know, life's been tough for me. If you look at it from the other lens, and this is just an option and an offer for you guys, if you look at it from the other lens, yeah, it was tough. At the same time, it was the best thing that happened to me because of this, this and this and I grew out of it rather than shrunk from it.

And some people have the lens of the victim and I'm not pointing fingers at people because I've been there and we all fluctuate between the two. And at times, we need therapy, we need help, and we need to speak to people. And I'm all about therapists. They're awesome. They've helped me so much in my life. And I'd like to normalize how it should just be a standard practice for us as human beings. So if you need help, reach out. Reach out to people who can help Tanzanian professionals in those areas.

So that's basically, I guess, where I was at. when I was 15 and I realized, alright, cool, I'm not going to be able to actually do this whole being an accountant, you know, sit in an office job type deal and earn good money. So then I decided I'm going to choose the trade that earns the most money. So I did an apprenticeship, I did a school-based apprenticeship and I chose between either plumbing or electrical and I did two different, what we call work experience weeks. I did one work experience week with an electrician and one work experience week of free work, unpaid, with a plumber.

And the electrician had a really awesome lifestyle. I probably should have chosen that, to be honest. And the plumber, he worked a lot more, but he was a younger guy and he served, and I was like, This guy's cool; I want to be him. So I chose plumbing. And then I started earning a good amount of money from plumbing and I made my dad. I forced my dad to teach me how to invest in the stock market when I was 15. So from 15 I would come home and I put like a thousand dollars into the stock market what I'd saved from my jobs as working in, you know, Subway and Red Rooster, which are fast food chains in Australia and then also Big W, like a clothing store and stuff like that.

It's kind of like a Walmart—a mini Walmart in Australia—and so I worked there. at those places, earn a little bit of savings and then a little bit from plumbing and yeah, yeah, I just asked my dad to teach me and I got really emotional. I went on the emotional rides of getting massive wins and then having low troughs and I remember one time I came home from school and mom was like, You can't, you're not, you're banned, you're banned from the stock market, you're not allowed because it's just wrecking you emotionally and I promised my mom I wouldn't get you know I wouldn't be moody and all that sort of stuff and mom was trying to teach me stoicism.

Whether she knows what stoicism is or not, my mom is very stoic, and so that helped me a lot. I started to try and learn a little bit about money and finance through that period, and so from there, my dad's dad kept teaching me to invest in the stock market, and I tried to start some multi-level marketing businesses, or I got involved in a multi-level marketing business and tried sales and all that sort of stuff, and it didn't really work out for me. I found it really, really tough. It is really, really tough. If you look up the success rates of people who do multi-level marketing, it's very, very hard.

And so, with that, I failed. And then I was working as a plumber and I started to travel. I thought, I'm going to save some money and just get out of this life and go snowboarding. So I went on snowboarding trips and I did a snowboarding trip in Canada. I loved it. I did it; I lived there for a season. and we drove through America as well. And we all loved it so much. I made so many great friends that we went and hired a house. We lived in Utah and we did the snow season there and the year after. And then I did a bunch of traveling.

I went and got my dive license in the Caribbean and that ignited my love for scuba diving. And then, all through this period, I was thinking, I don't like plumbing. I need to figure out how I can earn some money online so I can continue this travel thing. And so from there, I would come home, work my bum off, earn a bit of cash, and then I'd go back and do another snow season in Japan.

And then I was surfing around the world, going to a bunch of different countries. And I've done it; I've lived in eight countries now. I've lived in Canada and America. I have lived in Mexico, Panama, Japan, Indonesia, and Australia. and Egypt. The Egypt one was interesting. I moved to Egypt so I could become a dive master and that was absolutely awesome. I lived there for six months. I met a guy named Stephen Keenan.

I'm not sure if you guys have heard the Netflix documentary called The One Breath or Last Breath or something like that. Stephen Keenan: I became good friends with him and he taught me to freedive. He was trying to get more people into freediving when I lived in Egypt. So it's a beautiful story. and it was very sad to watch that this year when I did watch it. It's called the one breath or the last breath. And I became really good friends with him and then I went all through India and all this sort of stuff.

So I've lived in eight countries and I've traveled to 48 so far. And when did I start to make money online? And that was in Egypt. When I moved to Egypt in 2012–2013, I thought, All right, as I was working as a diver. I'm not going to go; I want to go back home as a plumber and I need to work out how I can work as a plumber and then get myself out of it and make money online.

So I started a few different things. I started a travel blog, okay, and the travel blog there was basically within a year everybody with an iPhone was my competition. The ad rates weren't very good with Google AdSense and affiliate commissions were super low. So I tried that for like a year and a half and I wrote all about my travel stories. I kept going and doing that, trying to make it work while I was plumbing, and it didn't really work. And so I started an e-commerce business.

I thought, I'm going to sell travel products here. I love traveling, and I'm going to sell travel products online. And so I started a store, and I got a bunch of drop-shippers and suppliers in Australia. And it took me a month to find all the supplies and the drop-shippers, build the site, and all that sort of stuff, and I launched it. And I was like, Yes, I've got a business here. And from doing so, I realized I didn't have a business because I didn't have any customers.

And I didn't know what. marketing was, I didn't know what digital marketing was. And I was. This is a time where you could get free traffic off of Facebook, Instagram and stuff like that without doing as much work as you need to do now. But to really get results, you need to pour money into ads and pay-per-click ads through Google and Facebook. And I didn't know what that was. So I basically made just a few sales from that business through organic hard work and organic traffic, and I realized, damn, that's a flop as well.

So at this stage, I'd started multiple businesses, right? I started multi-level marketing. I also had another little business that I did with my friends, where we tried to save money for a boat when we were like 13-ish by washing cars, which is fun. I had started my travel blog and my e-commerce business and I was just failing hard. And I went back home and I was working as a plumber and I realized there were so many guys on the job site who were telling me to work smart, not harder.

And I could see these guys in their 50s and 60s and I thought, I can't be this person with a broken body working as a plumber anymore; I need to work this out. And then I came across a statistic that 90% of startups fail. And from that, I thought, Hang on a second; if 90% of these things fail, why don't I take some of the money I've saved and put it on the stock market and take it out and buy? I didn't have much money because, hey, the GFC had happened after this, and I'd lost a lot of money through the stock market then. and took what I did have and I decided I'm going to learn how to teach myself to buy a business. And so I bought my first business in 2014. And that was a membership site. And then I bought another one in 2015.

And then, at the end of 2015, I was making more from my two businesses that I own than from my job as a plumber. So I quit my job at the end of 2015 and then I went and traveled. I bought a motorbike in Saigon in Ho Chi Minh City, and I rode that bike all the way up to the north, to Hanoi, and I think it's like 3000 kilometers, or something like that. It took me three months to do that, traveling around, and then I went and did Central and South America surfing for a year and a half.

And on that trip, actually, just before I went to Vietnam, I got invited to go to a business event in Thailand, and everybody was... trying to start online businesses there. And I had been through that process and I had two businesses at this stage. And this is how Bob came to be. There were everybody, I was on, we're on the bus and we're going on some excursion and everybody started, like, one person started asking me like what I do and how I do it on the bus.

And then, within about 15 minutes, everybody in the bus was sitting around and listening to me talk about buying online businesses, how they can do it and all that sort of stuff. Anyway, after that bus trip, everyone was like, dude, can you get on stage tomorrow? And like, instead of these guys that are running this thing, can you teach us how to buy it for my business? Because they're all struggling, right? And I thought, damn, there's a market here for this.

Just by me telling my story. And so I was like, obviously, it's not my event; I can't teach you guys. And then I just put that aside. And then, as I kept traveling and surfing, people were like, Hang on, dude, how have you been not working for so long? And quit your job; you don't need to go home. I need to live this lifestyle as well. And I had already been to, like, 30 or so countries at this time. So I was like working my way up to get to more countries and surf more.

And people were like, dude, that's awesome. That's inspiring. You need to teach me how to do this stuff. So I created a free course and I used to give Bob away for free and obviously it was like the most beta version and it was not; it was good, but it wasn't. awesome like what it is now. The time, money and resources that have gone into building it, what it is and getting people results are very different from what it was. Anyway, I got a collection of people together and gave it to them for free and they didn't do any work. And nobody bought businesses.

And then I came home in 2017, launched it and started doing one-on-one coaching with people and people were buying businesses left, right and center. We did really well that first year. We made half a million in our first year of launching that in Australia and in business. And we crushed it right and people buying businesses left the right center, and then it's evolved into what it is now. From doing so, from 2017 through COVID, I've done a bit of travel through then, but I found I was with a partner at the time.

With full vulnerability and openness, I stayed in Australia through that period. And I didn't want to. And I am no longer with that partner, and now I've been doing a lot of traveling and a lot of surfing. And I was on one of our group calls, our Facebook Lives in the Bob. Bob community and just sort of talking like somebody asked me, Why did you move to Bali? Or why are you moving to Bali? I mentioned there's so many reasons and I wanted to share this sort of story with you because when you do a lot of this traveling, I do a lot of it.

Anyway, I did a few seasons with friends by going from place to place, like India living in Egypt, you know, hiking to the Himalayas, you know, swimming with sharks and whale sharks and, you know, doing the Great Wall of China and all through Central and South America, the Machu Picchu thing and all that sort of stuff. When you do it alone, you've got to build friends, you've got to find food, and you've got to find shelter. There's a challenge along the way.

You miss buses, you miss things, you miss planes and all that sort of stuff. It's a stressful period. You're doing it on yourself; you're doing it yourself and you have nobody to lean on. You need to make it happen; you're fully accountable. And that has really helped me build a lot of character in my life. And I wanted to say that because there are so many people who think, Okay, if I just learn a course, I'm going to get results. The course is great, right?

Buying an online business gets people results like clockwork, but only for the people that work it and only for the people that have the right... Mindset to get through. I'm not saying this is not possible, like you've got all the case studies and all the people that have achieved awesome things, but if you're going to take a path like this, I want you guys to know, like, using your preview life experience as character-building, count your little wins and your little successes.

For example, a little win could be like you found five dollars on the ground, you know, or a little challenge that you overcame could be like you didn't crack it last time somebody cut you off in traffic. Right? Counting those little wins adds up to you building so much more confidence in yourself and that's what we need. That's what I help with in the mindset.

This mindset series and the first Prepare for Success module in the Buying Online Businesses course are by far the most important things. It's more important than the course in itself, but people believe they're buying the course, but what they're actually getting is mindset stuff. And that's why I want to mention this. It's like... For me, I have this; I think it's just from doing so much work on myself and being so independent that if you back me into a corner, I'm like, That's okay, I'll work out how to get out of it, right? And I'll have the resources.

And that's what I want for you guys. It's like, I want you; there's so much more value in you having that sort of confidence in your life; swagger, whatever you want to call it, doesn't need to be ego. You can do it with love. uh, and humbleness, but that can be far more valuable than the money you end up earning, feeling, just feeling solid, feeling grounded and feeling so confident, uh, that, you know, you can be unwavering and you can tackle some big situations.

In fact, I actually really, you know, a lot of my friends and family sort of think I'm a bit of a sicko because, like, when I'm going through a challenging period, I'm like, Is that all you got? Bring it on. And I know that I do not need to tackle that with something like alpha male masculinity in a toxic sense. But I do it very much with the yin and yang. But I like to. I like that pain in a weird way.

And it's not like, it's not what I want, but in a weird way, I like it because I know that that's going to help me build my resilience even more for the larger challenges that come up in life. And that's the game, I think. If you can feel this way and you have the independence to spend more time with your friends, your family and your kids, and maybe you do some traveling, then you're going to be a far happier person and the far happier you are in life, the more your energy resonates and people are going to want to be around you more. People are going to want to do things with you, talk to you, ask you questions, and listen to you as well.

So. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to share that story. I was pretty hesitant and resistant to sharing it. But I think it's important to understand that your life situation is as hard as it can be, and as you can tell, I've been pretty privileged. I earned a good wage through plumbing and I was able to turn that into something. Some people are in different situations and all that sort of stuff. You gotta realize that I was also, uh, on the border of anxiety, depression, and losing a kid.

I guess I was really lucky that I got put into wealth building and personal development. And you can do that as well. No matter where you're at right now, you can build this life for yourself. And it has been a long journey for me. Obviously, I started achieving some of these awesome things. many, many years ago, though you can do it now. So if you're listening, understand that your story is awesome. Embrace your story and embrace the challenges you've had. Count them as wins.

Don't count them and don't sit in the victim mentality like this happens to me and always happens to me. It's like, great. I'll give you an example. When I had mine, I think some of you guys may have heard me share the story around BOB. I nearly lost the whole business through 2018 and 2019. And I had to fire my marketing staff; I had to fire my sales guys; I had to get rid of everything and everyone. And I went backwards for many, many months—almost a full year. And I had to change the whole business model and everything.

And the reason I had to do that was because I had a single-source dependency and was only getting traffic from paid traffic. I also got very sick; I got calandular fever. So I could sit in this mentality of victimism and say, Well, life's hit me a massive curveball; it's not my fault. Also, I'm sick. It's not really my fault; I just got sick. But the reality is, it was my fault; I had to take accountability and responsibility so I could either choose to sit in on the victim or just let it happen. push it aside and not go through that challenge. Or I could go and bring it on. Is that all you have?

And I know that I'm going to, because that's the lowest that I can get in my life at the moment. So I can only use that as a platform to build out of it. So when you're going through challenges like, I can't find a business to buy, or you're in business and you're like, Oh, this is a really, really tough period. Don't hold it all within yourself; try to work it out. Reach out to people; speak to people. Speak to me and you can get through it. You should get through it and you can use that as leverage.

You can use that as power to go. All right, cool. I'm going to use this as a very good life lesson. This is another thing where people are very worried about failing. Why would you be worried about failing when everybody who's achieved any level of success has failed so many more times than they have won? Right? Just like me, I've failed so many times. Failing is a lesson.

You've heard this sort of stuff before with all this motivational speak and whatnot. Failing is a lesson and there are only really failures if you don't learn from them, right? Because you failed yourself, you failed to learn from that lesson or failed to learn from that failure, and that's a massive shame. You can't learn from it and bounce back unless you learn from it and decide to, you know, make a conscious decision not to move forward, but if you want something bad enough, you will get it.

I promise you. This is why I stopped holding people accountable for the goals that they wanted to achieve. Because I'm not going to drag people through the mud for them. I'm not going to rob them of the education that they are going to get and they need to be resilient to get to the top of the mountain. Because if I did, they're going to be on shaky legs when they get to the top. and they're not going to be confident that they didn't do it themselves.

And the reality is that you need to earn it so let's start earning what we are wanting to achieve. So I don't know if I went on for too long there. If you guys feel that sharing a little bit about my story was valuable, let me know. If you want to hear more about my travels, let me know. I do work a 20-hour work week now. I just came home. The reason I decided to do this is because I came home, I had a good surf and I was feeling confident enough to go out and to just have this chat unscripted, totally unscripted.

So yeah, I'm sending you guys massive love. Stick with it on your journey. If your goal is to make money online, you can do it. You just need to want it bad enough. I do have some resources. You can listen to the mindset series on the podcast. and I'll link to those in the show notes for you. There are four of them. And that's basically it. Sending you guys love and I'll speak to you soon.