The Nitty-Gritty:

* Why Tommy Griffith left a job he loved at AirBnB to pursue growing his side hustle, a digital marketing education company called ClickMinded* How his expectations of life as an entrepreneur collided with the reality of executing his plans* The mindset that allowed him to persevere through some pretty gnarly circumstances* Why Tommy decided to bring on a partner at ClickMinded late in the game—and how that decision helped him take the company to the next level

Let’s talk about your fantasies.

Most ads that grace your Facebook or Instagram feed are selling every business owner’s fantasy: more money with a heckuva lot less work… get paid to be you… use this 3-step formula to finally find true freedom.

Most of those ads look pretty much the same because they’re selling an end result—an outcome that inspires you to buy. There are photos of beautiful destinations. There are videos with soft, natural lighting. There are charts that only point upward.

What most ads leave out is how it’s all going to come to fruition.

Sure, there are blog posts, email courses, and webinars that will tell you more about what happens in between now and full fantasy realization. But the details are in the product they’re selling or the service they’re offering.

And rightfully so! If you have a product that has the potential to create the ultimate fantasy, you should absolutely get paid for that.

Of course, what comes between the “now” and full fantasy realization—that’s where our brains start to play tricks on us.

This doesn’t just happen with business training or services, either. It happens any time someone is selling wellness, weight loss, retirement planning, relationship coaching, fitness, personal styling… in fact, most consumer industries are all about fantasy fulfillment.

We know that it will take time and work to create our dream outcome. We know there will be detours to follow and mistakes made. We know it’s never quite as easy and straightforward as it seems.

And yet…

We forget.

We fixate on the fantasy and forget reality.

Now while we’re fixating on the fantasy, we get careless. We assume that our dream of working from the beach, traveling full-time, putting the kids through college, or—say— building a custom tiny house in the Flathead Valley of Montana is just right around the corner and we act like our success is a foregone conclusion.

This is where the story starts with today’s guest, Tommy Griffith.

Tommy is the founder of ClickMinded, a comprehensive digital marketing training company that started as a simple, in-person SEO workshop.

I’ll let Tommy tell you the whole story—but suffice to say that it includes leaving a great job at AirBnB, living abroad, fantasies of working from the beach, food poisoning, ruining $50,000 worth of work, and being robbed.

Through it all, Tommy persevered.

And the story—a happy one—ends with a pretty unexpected move to bring the company into its next stage.

Tommy and I chat about why he made the decisions he did, how he kept going when things were nowhere near awesome, and how his expectations routinely got in the way of his execution.