Time To Own It

a transcript from this episode of the “Which Way Now?!” Podcast

So I've got a question for you. Have you ever tried meditation? Now for the past several decades, at least in the circles that I've been involved in, this word and concept of meditation is a little odd or off putting to some. See, I grew up in a Christian household, grew up in a Baptist church, grew up with the fundamental. Christian teachings. Right? And within those circles, the word meditation was this buzz word that really started having people up in arms. And so for many years of my ignorant life, I thought that meditation was this bad thing that we need to stay away from because it puts us further away from God. Well, that has changed for me.

And it's not something that's like a new thing over the past. Oh, I don't know, 15 years or so. I've not, I don't wrestle with that anymore. I've come to actually understand what meditation actually is, what it means for most people and what it does for people. And so. I was doing some meditation the other day.

Now I will go ahead and say super rookie, super beginner. I F I have this app on my phone. It's called insight timer. And I really like it. I mean, I know. A handful of other really good meditation apps out there. And the app stores and everybody kind of has their own flavor of how they kind of do it, but I really enjoy insight timer.

So if you're looking for something to step into, it's completely free. And of course there's paid versions of whatever and hashtag not sponsored. But that's the, that's the app that I like to use. And so what I've been trying to do lately is. As often as possible. I'm trying not to beat myself up when I mess up or if I don't get in a meditation session, but several times a week, at least I will take 10 to 15 minutes give or take and go through a guided meditation.

So typically this is right at the top of my day, and I'm just trying to kind of wake up and I'm brewing the coffee and just, I'm trying to actually avoid. Checking my email or scrolling social media. I'm trying to just wake up with the day very organically and just kind of. Experiencing life in those first few moments of consciousness of the new day, without, like I said, getting into the social media or anything else.

Cause I feel like it does kind of clutter my mind and it primes me to feel busy and overwhelmed or behind. But anyway, I digress, I've been doing the meditation towards the top of the day and I was going through this guided one the other day and it was called manifest your dream life. And I guess you can kind of figure out what this was all about, but it was, I think it was like a 12 minute meditation and the lady was having me visualize like where I wanted to end up.

And what is my dream life? What is this all for? Where am I trying to go? And she kept repeating things like you are valuable, you are worth it. You are good enough. And very deserving of the wildest of dreams. And I had to kind of, you know, fight the thoughts that I was having because at a certain moment, I'm thinking, okay, well you have no clue who I am.

So how do you know whether I'm worth it or good enough? You know, maybe it's like, okay, well, my dream is to be a race car driver. Well, you, you wouldn't know that I'm not good enough for that. I can tell you I'm not good enough. You know, I've got a lot to learn and be able to do before I could be that race car driver.

But anyway, I'm like, Just let's quiet, my own thoughts and just internalize what she's saying. You're valuable. You're worth it. You're good enough. And you're deserving of the wildest of dreams. And then what she said next was the thing that stuck out to me. And I don't know why, but it's just these two words that just struck me and I couldn't let go of, she said own it.

She said set all of those things, those, all of those affirmations. And then she said now own it. And she kept it going that wasn't the very end of the meditation, but those two words own. Stuck for some reason. And so I kind of had been chewing on this idea of like, what does that actually mean? And that's what the topic of this podcast is, is owning it.

And I've got some examples that we're going to dig into and kind of my breakdown of what I think this means and why I think it applies to all of us in is really bad. So the question is what goes along with owning it? What are the things that are in the process of owning it? And what is this thing called it?

What is it? Well, the best that I could say, as I'm thinking through this, and, you know, I'm a work in progress with my thoughts at, at this moment, as I record this, owning it to me, it encompasses the past, the present and the. And then the word, it means all the big stuff in your life, like your dreams and your desires, as well as every single thought and every single action that you take.

In every single moment. So owning it is recognizing and reconcile reconciling with your past where you sit in this very present moment and where you're going, what the future may hold. And it is all aspects of your life. The biggest, biggest, biggest parts, the biggest things, the wildest of dreams down to.

You are next breath. Are you breathing in through your nose or in, through your mouth? All of that is it it's your existence own it. Own your existence, your opportunity at life. The gift that is life. It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day. I know for myself. I am always working on that. And I think that's true for many of us here is it's so easy to get caught up in the day to day, that normal cadence of life, your response to the rhythm of the world, around us, the sunrise, the sun set, and we kind of plan and program our day around this thing called time.

And as we look at owning it and what that means, I'm going to focus in on the concept of time, because I think it's a really interesting thing. Sometimes we give it more power than we should, or we just abuse what time actually is or isn't. So here's, I was trying to kind of like, as I'm taking notes and thinking through how I want to deliver this podcast and what points I want to hit, I had written down this quote and I don't know if it totally makes sense, but it makes sense to me.

And it's very short and sweet. It says time favors no one. Until you favor time. Once again, time favors. No one until you favor time. Take it for what it's worth, you know, these are my own thoughts, but I think they ring pretty true. And it's not to say that time bends over for those that favor it. Like, obviously scientifically that's not possible.

You're not able to. Bend and manipulate and distort time. It kind of makes me think of I think the movie was called wanted, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it was called wanted with Angelina Jolie where she's like a gunslinger basically, man, it's been years since I've seen it. It's a good movie.

But she could basically. Like, like whip the gun around while she's pulling the trigger. And it would make the bullet like curve in the air and like go around obstacles and hit like the bad guy or whatever on the, on the other side. And it was just complete breakdown of physics and how this whole thing actually works.

And I'm not saying that if you favor time that you can completely just bend it to your will, but our beliefs and our perceptions are strong enough. To outweigh time itself. I know that sounds odd. So stick with me here because I believe we can actually flip the script on the science of it. And it's not that we're actually changing the fundamentals of time, but how we react to it and the power that we.

So it's not really about what is tangibly factual. It's about how we harness the power of our heart, our willpower, our intelligence, and our creative creativity and resilience that only is capable by human. Now time favors no one just as it should. Time is only a metric, a ticking reminder of potential motion available to.

Plants animals and people you can win and lose a thousand wars and time will age you with one hand and dismantle you with the other, not due to time itself, but due to you. Let me say that again. Time is only a metric. It's just a ticking reminder of potential motion. That's available to all things in existence.

And with one hand, it can work in your favor. And in the other hand, it can really screw you over and it's not time's fault it's us. So whether you're looking at the glass half full or the glass half empty on whatever the circumstance is, where you're wrestling with this concept of time and it being in your favor or not.

That's on you, that's on you. And so going back to owning it, I think to own it, you must internally and continually reconcile. Who's the captain. So like I'm the captain now that I don't know. I honestly, I don't even remember where that quote is from. I know it's a quote and it made me think of it when I wrote that down.

And yes. So who's the captain now? Is it you, or is it time? And getting into, I want to kind of spin this a little bit deeper on the concept of time into something that's a little bit more into the entrepreneurial world, which is a lot of the listeners. So let's talk at it from this angle a little bit and give a couple examples.

One over simplified saying is that time is money. We've all heard that time is money. Time's a wasting, money's burning. It's not waiting on anybody. Let's go. It's kind of that whole time as money thing. Let's rephrase that. And I understand, like I said, it's oversimplified. It's not actually true. It doesn't just boil down to time equals money.

Instead, what I think is maybe a more accurate way of saying this is the opportunity to gain or lose money is interwoven within the uncertainty of the time that we've each been. Now I get it. That's not as catchy or as easy to memorize. It's got a couple of extra words in it, but man, when you say it, it kinda makes you feel like you're smarter than you are stuff that, but let me repeat it again.

The opportunity to gain or lose money is interwoven with the uncertainty of time that we've each been granted. So it's not that time is money. Is that. The concept of time allows for, well, within time itself, there is opportunity to gain or lose money. So there's risk in it and there's opportunity within it all at the same time.

But, you know, when you say that, whether you say it, the more fancy way or the regular old time is money way, what it doesn't account for. And I talked about this, I put up a post on my Instagram at Evan Schenck 75. If you're interested, if you're not following already head over there and check this out.

But it was a couple months ago, I think, but I put up a post talking about the ongoing argument of quality or quantity. Which one is more important and saying time is money. It doesn't really account for the quality, the effort or expertise of something, or the quantity, like the output or the scale of something.

And it brings up to the question of ultimately there's this big buzzword of value. So the question is where do you place your. You know, so is it in the, the quality of an outcome or is it in the quantity of an outcome? You know, do you want to be like, just use easy examples? Like Nike. And have this really quality, very professional, high authority piece of final product that has tons of just brand loyalty behind it.

And it's just, it's the, it's kind of the chef's kiss like sneaker, right? It's that's what they do. It's what Nike does or quantity, quantity, where it's like, okay, your. The clothing department at Sam's club or Costco or wherever where it's like, okay, let's just bang out a bunch of shoes so that people that don't have shoes or need shoes can get them.

It's just about output. How many can we get out the door as opposed to how good can something be? And so the question is what's more valuable to you in the right answer is, well, I guess it depends. At least that would be my answer, right? But here's some, some things to think about. Where do you place your value on time being spent?

Is that where the value is? Is it money that's made or the quality of the result or the quantity of something produced? And I will say that I think there is a wrong answer within all of that. And you could probably argue me on this and that's okay. But I would say that placing your value on time spent is the wrong way to approach it.

Because like I said, this is just a metric time is just this thing that helps us rationalize existence and put some sort of frame around. Our life and everything needs to have some sort of beginning and end some sort of life cycle for us as humans to comprehend it and understand, you know, what are the rules that we're playing with and business.

We typically don't really care about how other people's time is being spent, as long as it doesn't negatively impact something that we have a vested interest in. So for example, as long as it doesn't negatively impact our own time or our company, the things that we are invested in that they, you know, we have money on the line or reputation on the line.

We have some sort of vested interest in it. As long as we don't have a vested interest, we really don't give a crap about how people spend their. And so I don't think that that's where our value ultimately is. I, and once again, I will say these are just my own thoughts and I'm okay to be proved wrong and I will actively and proudly say that I aim to adopt any idea or understanding that proves to be.

Closer to the center of the bullseye or AKA closer to being true. So, and like, like I've said in the other episodes of the podcast, if you're a new listener and I've already mentioned my Instagram at Evan Schenck 75, I'm not just trying to promote myself to like, be. Bigger and cooler or whatever. I'm just saying.

My Instagram's a good spot for us to be able to have some sort of conversation on some of these points and, and a handful of the listeners have already been reaching out. And we've been talking about different aspects of some of these episodes. So I would just encourage you if there's anything that's striking a chord or you have an argument or something that you just, that really struck home with you, I would love to hear it at Evan shank.

Seventy-five DME hit me up, but I think that. We are just misunderstanding time a little bit as far as the whole value thing. So let me tell you a story I have for those that don't know, I am a freelance marketer on the side. It's kind of the thing that pays the bills. And then the podcast is like a fun project and I'm working on other products and different things that I want to offer that will come out in the future.

But what I do to basically pay the bills essentially is freelance. And so I, I run for myself and I got my own little business set up and I'm having a lot of fun with it and it's been the best way to connect and learn on the fly. And I would highly encourage anybody. Who's kind of like looking for that.

Next thing is just go create a freelancing profile. What I did was I went on Upwork and I said, Okay. I'm going to go into email marketing because I had a friend that had an opera, had a business and needed some help with email marketing. And he, and I both knew I wanted to get into marketing, but I didn't know a whole lot about anything.

And we were like, okay, well, why don't I just throw you a couple bucks here and there? And you helped me just put some email together. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but you know, let's just start there. And so basically from that one little project that went on for several months, I started my own Upwork profile and said, I'm an email marketer.

So hire me. And what rate am I? I don't know. And I just started filling out the bio and then all of a sudden I got a lead and then I was like, nervous, so nervous. And I know I'm getting off track here, but I. Finally, it was just like, no, this is how I'm going to figure this out. This is how I'm going to learn.

Yes. I could go to school and put everything else on the back burner and sit in a classroom and then get some sort of degree and then go out in the field. But for me, that just didn't seem to resonate. In fact, I gave it a shot. I did a several semesters into that business program and I was like, no, I want to put my time into actually boots on the ground, tactical learning.

And so. Yes. Anyway, that's kind of my inception, my creation story as a freelancer and why I'm doing that. And obviously now I've built up quite a bit of experience and expertise. So I must say in certain areas of marketing and so with one of my clients, let me get into the story, bring us back on track here.

One of my clients and I, we were in the process of renegotiating our terms. And it was one of those questions that many of you are probably familiar with. And depending on which side of the conversation you are, if you're the professional, trying to get hired, you start to kind of cringe and get a little bit uncomfortable about this part of the conversation.

And it's okay. Well, how much does this cost and really there's kind of three different main ways that things can break down as far as how you figure out what to charge. And it's okay, well, what's your hourly rate? That's pretty like Flintstones version of this whole thing. It's not very intelligent.

I'll say it's not that it's a bad way to do business, but I will boldly say that it's not the best way to do business if you can keep from it, but it's a great place to start. So it's like, okay. I can charge for that. I can charge by the project, you know, per email that I send per campaign that we push through it can be a lot of different things or it could be a retainer based agreement where it's just, okay, here's a flat rate to pay monthly.

And every month you can expect me to do X, Y, and Z for you. And that's going to be our relationship. And I will say that's where I've had the most success. So for those of you that. Are out there either trying to do something similar to what I'm currently doing as a freelance professional or, you know, whatever it is.

I would strongly encourage you to start pushing towards some sort of retainer-based relationship with your clients. If you can. Now within all of that, I do have an hourly, like number that like a target that's in my head that it makes me actually. Want to care about what I'm doing, because even if you love what you do for a living, I guess at least for me with a Y with wife and kids and house and responsibilities and bills, and you know, the whole thing, like, you know, I've got things on my shoulders that.

I w that I I'm responsible for that. I need to carry. So you put all of those pieces together. It's like, okay, I love what I do, but it also needs to be worth it for me. Right. So I do have an hourly target that whether it's a project rate or a retainer, I kind of shit. I figured that out. I shifted around based off of what my hourly target is.

But anyway, the story with my client and I, we were renegotiating our terms. And up to that point, we had been on an hourly agreement and. It was fine. It, but it wasn't the best that it could be. And so what I did was I pitched this idea. I said, well, what if we were to just find a flat rate? Let's say, okay, on average, how many hours am I working for you each month?

All right. We've got our number. Okay. And how much is that costing you? So on average, This X amount to have me as your we'll just call it marketing guy. And a retainer relations, or I'm sorry, in an hourly relationship. I said, well, what we could do is with that. I'm really changing a whole lot. If we flip over to retainer, then what you're going to get is more commitment from me.

I'm going to be able to help you. We can broaden the scope of work that, that I can be in charge of and responsible for. I can start helping you out in a larger capacity. And in turn I will, as the freelancer, have the peace of mind and have a. More solid number that I can expect to be bringing into my business every single month from you as a client.

And so that assurance of money coming in each month makes me feel some type of way, I guess. Because you know, I mean, for those that are freelancers or if you work like a job where it's just, you're not getting paid a whole lot and your manager keeps changing the amount of hours you get, or the shifts or whatever, it's like, yo like.

I can't live off of making a bunch and then making nothing and then making a bunch of them, making nothing and then making nothing again, and then making nothing again. When I thought I'd be making a bunch again, if that makes sense, it's just the up and down rollercoaster ride. So anyway, I, and I, and I'll get to kind of my point with the story is I started talking to her and I was like, listen, I don't think that hourly, this time-based approach is the best thing for us.

Now, listen, if you were to, if we were to continue to work hourly, What would incentivize me to work better for you and what I mean by it. And she was kind of confused. Like when I said that she was like, well, what do you mean? So I said, well, if we're getting paid, let's just say $50 an hour. That wasn't the number, but let's just call it $50 an hour.

If you give me a task. Or if we agreed that there's a task that I need to be working on next, and you're paying me hourly to do this task. Why would I, if I could do it in an hour, why would I do it in an hour now? I'm not saying this is how I would actually be. I have a little bit more integrity than that.

At least a little bit. Right. But if I can accomplish it in an hour cool, but she probably doesn't know that I could do it in an hour. And why. What I do it in an hour, if I could justify three hours and just tell her, Hey, you know, like it's about a three hour project or a three hour thing, this task now, instead of it costing her $50, it costs her $150.

And so I'm not incentivized as the freelancer, the person that's being paid for my time, as opposed to the quality of work. I'm not incentivized to work faster, to work more efficiently. I'm actually incentivized to work slower and dumber and maybe have to make more revisions along the way and say, well, well, that was just a rough draft.

Let's let me whip this up again. Let's start. You know, I could drag this thing out if I wanted to so that I could collect the check. So hourly, not only does it not incentivize me to work efficiently on, on my client's behalf, but it puts this question mark into the client's brain of like, okay, well, how long is this going to take Evan?

I think, I think it should take them an hour, but maybe to oh, he billed me for five. Maybe there's maybe there's more to it than I thought, or, Hmm. I wonder is he. Is he just messing with me, is he trying to like milk it? Is he trying to make more money off of me? And now all of a sudden you start to have these questions of doubt of like, okay, the people on my team are they like here just for their own best interest or like, are they really actually trying to help and provide value in a good way?

And so that story kind of just ties into, and obviously speaking on some other things, as far as different ways to charge clients, if you're a freelancer or a startup entrepreneur or whatever it is, but it goes back to the concept of time and that it's just a metric and it doesn't actually equal money.

And once again, time favors. Until you favor time, meaning we have to redefine what time is and what power that actually has, because the more clearly that we can understand the essence of our reality and what I mean by that is reality reality in its truest form or as close to truth as we can comprehend and perceive the more clearly that we can understand the essence of our reality, the better that we can own it.

Time is ever present. It's an ever-present part of our reality, although it's distorted and widely misunderstood and miss handled to wrap this up, how does this, how this all ties together is that the discussion of time, it leads to a better understanding of time. And it's true that. And what it is and what it isn't, which then leads us, or allows us to better assimilate or AKA tie together slash understand our own past, present and future, which then gives us a heightened awareness of ourselves and what we can control.

And I'm speaking mentally, physically, spiritually, and. And then from there we can, it affords us the opportunity to truly be able to own it. So bullet points to me, owning it, owning it means accepting our past and doing our best to pool every ounce of value that we can from our past the highest of times and the lowest of times and everything.

Owning. It means living in the present. When I'm talking about living in the present, it's like slow your mind down. It's kind of that meditative practice. It doesn't necessarily mean close your eyes and go into some sort of like prayer mode where you're like have some sort of mantra that you're repeating or just humming or listening to a certain frequency or whatever.

And I'm not dogging on any of that. But living in the present is just like, Stop thinking in your past, it doesn't mean ignore it entirely. Don't go back and pull value. I was just talking about how we need to accept it and look for the value that's there. And then the same with the future. I actually heard this.

I'm going to go off my notes for a second. I hope I don't mess this up. I heard something about this recently. And if somebody has heard this also, and you have the actual source, please hit me up at Evan, shank 75 Instagram, let me know. Cause I'd really like to put a give credit where credit's due on this, but really that maybe it was Simon Sinek or Tony Robbins.

It was one of those guys, something like that when you're so future-focused anxiety can creep in because you're trying to. Do everything right? And make, take all the right steps so that bad and peril doesn't happen in your future. And the reality is we're all in this game of life and it's the epitome of a guessing.

Or using our best guests rather to move forward. And so anxiety sets in when you have this perfectionist type mindset and you're focused on the future and trying to force all the pieces to work. And what happens is if we focus so much on our past, there's a level of depression that can come from that and sadness, and it kind of weighs us down, especially if we have.

Bad moments that have happened in our history. And if you're a human, if you're alive and breathing today, you've definitely had some bad spots. We'll just say it like that. You know, there's been some down times and some of us are more fortunate than others as far as how our life has been up to this very moment.

The more that your F so like F past focused it, you get stuck there and you see people that are just, they kind of just start to swallow themselves up. And it's a, it's a level of depression that kind of can start to set in. So living in the present. So to me, owning, it means living in the present, focusing on the exam.

Moment owning it to me also means setting up our trajectory, moving forward into tomorrow and into our future owning it means reckoning with the not so good things in life, whether it's within our control or not owning, it means allowing yourself to have deeper feelings of everything or more so of the very good things that are out there.

If there's something. Like stew on it a little bit. Try to kind of play the mindfulness gratitude game with it. Let's try to pull out once again. It's kind of like, I always just have this visualization of just a sponge that you're just ringing out and you're just trying to get the last drop of water out of it.

Do. Do that owning. It means that you're constantly squeezing and twisting the sponge of life, pull as much value out of it, out of it that you can and owning. It means continued sharpening of mindfulness to the reality within ourselves and the world around us. And this goes into what's in your control.

What's in your, what's not in your control. What are you fixating on? Where is your brain and your heart spending time? My final thought as with most things related to personal development, owning it is a constant tug of war that can only be counted as a win. If you don't give up, there is no checkered flag, but there is fulfillment to be found in that process.

That very process is where the fulfillment lies. Not once you get good at it, but once you begin. And then every day the practice continues thereafter, get out there and own it. If you have other thoughts to this, I would love to hear them. And thank you for spending the time listening to this podcast, if you would just so kindly follow and share the podcast and whatever platform you're listening this to.

Go ahead and leave a rating or a review as long as it's good. Right? The more that I do, these podcasts, the more comfortable I feel and start to kind of find a groove and I just want to put out good content. So thank you for being here. Take a deep breath. Realize life is what you make it. And time is not your enemy time is this thing that we can manipulate to work to our favor.

Who is the captain? Is it you or time? Get out there and own it. And thanks for being here.