Owning a business has many benefits. It gives you more control over your time. It gives you certain freedoms that employees will never have. It gives you the potential to make a LOT more money. And you get to make all the decisions.

The possibilities are limitless.

However, those benefits have a cost, which is often higher than what you’re led to believe on social media.

Am I saying it’s not worth it to grow a business?

Hell no! It’s worth it. Even if you don’t achieve your ideal lifestyle, building a business challenges you, forces you to learn valuable skills, and builds character like nothing else.

However, if your expectations are too high, you’ll either burn out or give up trying to reach them.

As I’ve said many times before, business is a mental game. If you can win that game, you can win at business. If you lose that game, it doesn’t matter how much money you make; you will lose.

In this episode, I discuss a critical part of winning that game—managing your expectations. In the last episode, I discussed why high expectations are a recipe for constant stress and dissatisfaction and why intentionally lowering your expectations will reduce stress and help you be more effective and joyful.

In this episode, I talk about how.

Listen right here or on your favorite podcast app!

HS053 – The power of low expectations part 2 – Simple tips for less stress and more fun

Podcast Transcript

I’d hate to lower your expectations, but that is the episode’s goal. Welcome to another episode of the Handyman Startup podcast. My name is Dan Perry, and today, I’m going to talk about managing your expectations. In the last podcast, we talked about why and the power of low expectations. Today, I want to talk a little bit about how to do that.

So back in 2010, way back in 2010, this is 14, almost 15 years ago, after another boring day at work, my friend recommended a book called The 4-Hour Work Week. At the time, I was living in a three-bedroom home that I had purchased a year or two earlier. I lived about two blocks from my office, and I hated my job. I was so disappointed with what a 9:00 to 5:00 turned out to be. I mostly sat at a desk all day in a big open room with five other desks and five other engineers working, and then my boss was right across the room from me. And there were some good things about my job. I mean, I got to do some cool stuff with engineering, and it leveraged my skills.

I was pretty good at it, but I just felt stifled. So, I read that book my friend recommended to me, and I remember being unable to put it down. Right after that first chapter, it hit a nerve. I sat on the couch and read it until my eyes turned red. Once I couldn’t read anymore, I put it down, picked it up again the next day, and I think it took me about two days to read that entire book. And this was a pretty big turning point in my life. I didn’t know that at the time, but it was because ever since that moment, I couldn’t be satisfied living an ordinary, boring nine-to-five lifestyle. I knew something else was possible. I had a clear definition of success, and I wanted it now. I didn’t quit my job right away because I needed the money and didn’t know what to do, but that book amplified my distaste for my job. It was like sticking a salty knife into an already festering wound. It made the experience of working my job worse. And as a result, I eventually quit my job.

After a while, I started getting worked up and depressed and had some health issues. I started a handyman business a few months after I quit my job. Since then, I’ve grown that handyman business and done well there. I created a YouTube channel, this podcast, my blog, online courses, and all these wonderful things that bring me income and give me more freedom than most people have. I’ve also helped many people in the process, which is awesome. I regularly get emails from people thanking me, which is awesome.

And on the one hand, I’m thankful for that. On the other hand, I think that content, specifically the four-hour workweek and a lot of the content you find on YouTube or Facebook about growing a business, I think it can be toxic. The reason is that it anchors your expectations so high, as I discussed in the last episode. If you haven’t listened to that, I recommend listening to that first before listening to this episode. Now, for some people like me, I couldn’t sleep at night living a mediocre life after realizing what was possible because I fell for the arrival fallacy that once I got that, then I would be happy.

The need it created to reach a certain level quickly caused me a lot of stress and disappointment. I beat myself up when I didn’t achieve amazing things. I lost sleep over silly things that don’t matter. I was imprisoned by the idea that it was impossible to be happy without passive income, and I sacrificed a lot of time to get there. I eventually succeeded. I’ve done some cool stuff, made great money, helped a lot of people, as I mentioned. If I had to do it all again, I might not change what I did, but I would definitely like to adjust my expectations in the process. And my perspective and my mindset. I could have enjoyed the journey much more, had less stress, and who knows, I maybe would have done even better.

So with this episode, I want to share a few ways that you can manage your own expectations. So hopefully, you can enjoy the process of growing your business more and not get so caught up beating yourself up if you’re not making progress as fast as you’d like or if things aren’t happening as quickly as you’d like.

Before we do that, let’s just briefly cover what I covered in the last episode. I talked about the power of low expectations. I talked about why high expectations are the perfect recipe for disappointment, stress, giving up, and really failing to enjoy the wins along the journey.

I talked about two major factors that amplify this, which are social media plus human desire. We always want more, no matter how good we have it. And then social media anchors our expectations even higher than they would already at an unrealistic level. We see amazing results without the work. It creates unrealistic expectations. But low expectations are actually more effective in many ways in many areas of life. Because if you have low expectations and you exceed them, you get to delight in small wins. It makes it a little more fun. It makes it easier to accept failures and hard work. It makes setbacks not as devastating and less stressful because you’re expecting them. It makes you willing to put in effort for less, which usually leads to better outcomes. In some cases, I wouldn’t say always putting in more effort for less makes sense, especially when it comes to pricing. I want to be very clear about that. You guys know my mindset on pricing your services high enough to make a profit.

Anyway, low expectations keep you in the game for long enough for small wins to compound. A good example of this is Warren Buffett. Interesting fact: he made 99% of his wealth after the age of 65. He’s like 92 now, I think. But that’s because of compounding. Small wins compounding year after year after year. He hasn’t outperformed everybody every single year. He’s just been playing so damn long that he has amassed so much wealth that he is the sixth wealthiest person in the world. So, ultimately, low expectations can be very helpful. And it’s all about being realistic in the short term and optimistic for the long term. Working hard consistently. It’s not about throwing your hands up and giving up. It’s about embracing that work as part of life, no matter how well-off you are. So do the work and don’t expect the world. Don’t expect it to be easy. Don’t expect to get to some point where you’ll be endlessly happy all the time. As much as it is hard to do that because it’s so ingrained in human nature, let’s talk about some tips to help with that a little bit.

In this episode, I’m going to explore some ideas for managing your expectations. This is probably more of an art than a science. This probably isn’t going to apply to everybody. Some people probably need to increase their expectations. I think this podcast is more created for those who are wired similar to me, where you want it all now. You tend to be impatient. You tend to stress yourself out trying to strive for these unattainable ideal outcomes. So, hopefully, in this process, you can start appreciating more of what you have right now. You can embrace the struggle along the way. And maybe even go further than you would have otherwise.

And the way that I see this, there are two parts to this equation. First is being optimistic about the long term and realistic about your short te