How I Dropped Out Of College, Started My First Business With No Experience, And Launched 2 Best Selling Kindle Books, All By The Age Of 21 - With Chandler Bolt

Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast Guest Name Interview – Chandler Bolt Introduction: Welcome to Starting from Nothing – The Foundation Podcast, the place where incredible entrepreneur show you how they built their businesses entirely from scratch before they knew what the heck they were doing. Now here’s your host, Andy Drish. Andy: Welcome everyone to another episode of Starting from Nothing, The Foundation Podcast. Today, I’ve got with me Chandler Bolt. Chandler joined The Foundation at age 19 which, I think, is one of our youngest students if not the youngest student. At the time, the cost of the program to join The Foundation was more than his rent. In less than a year after joining, he built his team and went from zero to 190 few thousand dollars in business. He since written four best-selling books and he runs a company Self-Publishing School teaching entrepreneurs try and publish their first book in less than three months. Chandler, welcome to the show, man. Chandler: Thanks, man. Great to be here. Andy: You’ll notice he joined The Foundation, didn’t do SaaS, did something else, but he’s absolutely been crushing it. How long has it been now since you joined? Chandler: Oh man, it’s been two and a half years maybe. Andy: You were in the second round right, class of 300? Chandler: Yeah. Andy: Two and a half years since he joined. One thing that’s really fascinating to me is to watch students, not just during the six months but watch them over the course of the next two years or so because you make such deep shifts internally that sometimes they take a little longer to materialize and manifest in reality. But when they do, you end up shooting up relatively quickly. Chandler: I always like to remember that quote. I remember this clear as day from the program that Dane said which was that your money lags 12 months behind your mindset. Andy: Yeah. Chandler: I just remember graduating from The Foundation and I wasn’t a “success story” because I didn’t start a SaaS or anything like that. I would tell anyone that I talk to that this is one of the best decisions I ever made because I could tell that things were shifting up here and that things were moving along even though I haven’t reached the destination or anything yet. Andy: Paint us a picture. Tell us what it was like when you were 19, how you heard about The Foundation, why you signed up for it. What was your life like then? Chandler: I went to a conference called Succeed Faster. Dane spoke at that, he spoke at it for a few years. He came there and spoke and I just remember him doing the limiting belief exercise and it just blew my mind and everyone else’s there. I just remember getting on the email list, getting the videos, the millionaire mindset videos, the four pillars videos, all those. It was kind of bad timing because I had this internship and I was running a business and stuff. I was like, you know what, screw it. I’m going to join anyway. That’s when the – like you were saying, it was more than rent. I would tell my friends or my parents and they thought I was just stupid. I was paying more than my rent at school while going to college to do this but it was awesome. Andy: So fascinating. Have you always known you wanted to start a company and be an entrepreneur? Chandler: Probably so. It’s always been super interesting. My dad was an entrepreneur. He kind of got forced into it to provide for our family, at a young age for me. I just saw what the freedom that that gave us that he could be at every basketball practice, every sport event, we could take vacations. My mom was a realtor so basically an entrepreneur. I just saw them creating something for themselves and the freedom that that gave them in our family. I love that. I think subconsciously it was just kind of like, alright, I’m going to be that one day and I’m going to do that one day. Andy: Badass, man. It’s cool to hear that about your dad. Chandler: Yeah. Andy: You joined The Foundation kind of on a leap of faith, what was it like when you joined? Chandler: I just remember a lot of the limiting belief stuff. That was awesome to go through. I remember taking the Enneagram test, and I was training my guys to run their businesses at this point kind of simultaneously. I made all of them take the Enneagram, and then used that to kind of manage and encourage them and stuff. Andy: What were you doing at the time for money? Chandler: It was Student Painters Andy: Oh, nice. Chandler: I was in college and I was coming off of … I ran my first six-figure business. Did $102,000 and got number one in the country which was my goal. Andy: Oh, no way, dude. I didn’t know this. Chandler: Yeah. Then I came into The Foundation and I was about to train some other guys to run their businesses. At the same time, doing online stuff, The Foundation, it was way more crazy, way more something I wanted to do long term. That’s when I joined. Andy: You went to – was it college pro? College Pro Painters or something different? Chandler: Student Painters. Josh Isaak and I share war stories all the time. It’s the same thing. Andy: Hell, yeah. It’s such a great training ground for entrepreneurs. Getting the basis of running a business like money in, money out, leads, sales, all of it. Chandler: It’s a crash course and everything business. You get great training but you just get going at – Andy: Get hammered. Yeah, totally. Chandler: The thing with The Foundation, you guys teach about pre-sales. We teach that in Student Painters too, hard core. I sold 60 grand worth of work before I ever painted a house. I’m telling people, this is going to be the best paint job ever but I haven’t painted a house. You’re really pre-selling. And then the sale starts and you painted all. Andy: Oh man, dude. How incredible. You had to have learned a lot of mindset stuff from that though. Chandler: Hell yeah. Just the whole fail fast, get out there, screw up and do it. Just kind of like a lot of the things you guys were teaching in The Foundation. But it was nice to be able to kind of rise up levels. I went from just learning my business and kind of micromanaging painters or dealing directly in the business so like training other guys. I was able to use a lot of the mindset stuff that you guys were teaching to kind of do that and just kind of take it up a notch. Andy: Awesome. Awesome, awesome. You’ve got your business and you’re training a couple guys under you to run theirs. What was the first actions that you took inside The Foundation? Chandler: I started into idea extraction. I was doing idea extraction with chiropractors. I did that for a while. And then it kind of hit this point where Student Painters was really ramping up and I was having a lot of attention with my guys. Things at The Foundation kind of fizzled out. It’s interesting how even though that happened, it’s like the basics of what you guys were teaching and just the different way to look at business. Not coming with an idea, and not doing a logo, and not doing any of it – just totally bootstrapping. That’s the stuff that’s deeply engrained in my brain to this day. I think that’s why the books have been successful, that’s why the program’s been successful. Everything sits. We just throw it out there, test and then improve, and just tweak and just kind of bootstrap it from day one which is the whole lean startup kind of all that kind of stuff that you guys teach. That stuff’s still engrained. Andy: Nice. What progress did you make during the six months? Chandler: During the six months we did – that would go through May. What’s when I was training all my guys. I think we pre-sold about 100 grand, or probably even more than that, probably 125 grand for the summer when they were going to be doing all their stuff. That summer, we did 192 grand. That was my year of training other guys. That year I got rookie exec of the year, right after that. That’s pretty cool. Andy: Nice. So you went through The Foundation. Most of your energy was focused on your painting business at the time, right? Chandler: Yup. Andy: Go through the summer, paint all the houses, and then I imagine September rolls around and school starts again, and you’re done painting. What did you do next? Chandler: Yeah. So that’s when things kind of started to shift. That’s when I – Really in that summer and in that spring when I was in The Foundation, I remember having a call with Dane because I was seriously considering dropping out of school. I talked to a lot of mentors and talked to a lot of people about it, prayed about it, talked to my parents about it; really, really thinking about it. I talked to Dane. Basically at the end of that call, it was pretty much shouted up to about 90% chance. He didn’t tell me to drop out, he was just asking really great questions that really got me thinking. That’s when I planned to drop out. But I always wanted to study abroad, go see Europe. It was like, “Well, I’m not just going to drop out and not do that. I’m going to go do that and treat that as a time of introspection and really just thinking about what I want to do.” That’s when I went to Europe in the fall, stumbled into putting out the first book, the book blew up, dropped out of school, then that’s when the book continued to bring in money and that kind of paid the bills and kept my head above water after I dropped out of school. Andy: Let’s talk about the book. Did you get the idea for the book when you were in Europe, or before that, or had you always wanted to write a book? It seems like such a massive shift to go from painting to becoming an author. Chandler: Yeah. I never wanted to write a book because I always thought I was a horrible writer. I kind of just stumbled into it. Got the idea before I went to Europe. Me and my business partner now – he was my mentor at the time through Student Painters – James Roper, we decided to write this book based on stuff we learned in Student Painters and in The Foundation. Based on just hustling hard as an entrepreneur and never having enough time to get all our stuff done. Like going to school while running a business, all the stuff. That’s where we were at the productive person but just kind of like productivity hacks for entrepreneurs, how to be productive, and manage your work-life balance. It kind of came out of that time. Andy: Got it. Why a book? Chandler: We started with just a PDF. We wanted to just put together a 20-page PDF and just throw it out there but then it shifted. I think when we sent it off to our designer and she took this crappy looking Google Doc and turned it into this magical looking PDF, then we’re like, “Okay, maybe we can sell this. Maybe we can throw it on Kindle, we’ll see what happens.” We had no intent of selling it. It was just like a fun little side project. Then we put it out and that’s when we taught David Allen’s Getting Things Done, like [unclear 00:11:46] bible. Number one in Time Management. He lowered his price from $10 to $3.29 which was cheaper than ours. We started selling hundreds of copies a day. The book brought in close to seven grand in the first month which is just mind blowing. That’s when – I feel like it’s probably the point that we’ve all had, especially you guys were starting The Foundation. I remember going up a lift, going on a ski lift because I was just snowboarding all the time when I was there in Austria with some buddies and they heard about the book, and they asked me about it. They were like, “Well, is it making any money?” I was like “Well, it made $400 yesterday, and I’m spending the day with you guys.” As those words left my mouth, it clicked. It was like, whoa, passive income. I remember reading about this in Rich Dad Poor Dad. I thought you could only do it via real estate. You can actually make passive income on the internet. This is amazing. Andy: What else were you going to say? Chandler: I was just going to say then it was just the light – you see the light at the end of the tunnel. You can’t un-see that. It was like my eyes were – just a veil was lifted off and I was like, “Okay, this is awesome.” That sparked, “Okay, what am I going to do after I drop out?” That kind of sparked that. Andy: How did you guys market it and put it out there? Because rarely for people do they just put a book out there and it sells like crazy. Did that happen for you guys or did you do a launch around it? What made it so successful do you think? That’s really what I want to know. Chandler: We did an MVP launch, the stuff you guys teach. Minimum viable product, let’s put it out there. I was in Austria having fun so I didn’t want to work on the book all the time. I told myself I wouldn’t work at all when I was in Austria, but this book kind of came about. We just decided to do just the things that we were good at. We just did some social media, built a small email list of 124 people, got the help of our friends and family, and just people on Facebook to got them to vote on our covers, got their input on stuff, and just put it out there. We also went with a very specific positioning. We went productivity for entrepreneurs, which not too many people were talking about at the time. That message really resonated with people. Plus, we didn’t try to do everything under the sun to market the book, we just did a few things well and kind of followed a little formula and then it just took off from there. Andy: Cool. What was it like when you put it out there? Was it like day one you got a ton of sales or did it take a little bit of time? Chandler: We got 5200 downloads in the first three and a half days. We put it out at free. That was our goal at the beginning. That was the interesting part about this book because we wrote with specific people in mind that we wanted to help. We were writing directly to them. We always wanted to give it to them for free because we wanted to change their lives. We decided to still release it at free and then switch to pay. We got 5200 downloads. Then the week after it kind of started picking up, and then it just started really picking up. There was like 100 something books a day, boom, boom! It was like “Whoa!” That was the point where the – it went from just free downloads and just you think your mom, your grandma, and a few people that want the book for free to, wow, 172 people bought the book all around the world today that I have no clue who they are. That’s when it really switched. Andy: How cool, man. How cool. So that went really well. This is when you’re in Austria doing your little trip abroad, and the introspection, and just kind of figuring out what you want to do, and this all happened. After this went live, you guys did so well with it, then what? Chandler: Then we did another – I did another book with my brother that was kind of a charity project. That was a book called Breaking Out of a Broken System. We donated all the profits to charity. So we did that. I helped a friend put out a book. That’s when people just started calling and asking questions. Everybody was like, “Okay, how are you putting out all these books? How are you marketing these books to take off? What do you do?” I just felt like I had this same conversation over and over again, like a broken record. Giving people book advice. That’s when it segued into … The business was struggling, I dropped out of school, actually ended up moving into Dane’s house in Iowa. I’ve been living there for a while. I love this idea of being in an entrepreneur house and surrounded myself with people that were just hustling. That’s when people kept asking about it. It was like what do you guys teach? “We’re focusing on this thing that we want to do over here, and this is fun, and this is the business. This is going to make us money.” All the while, we’re just blind to the fact that everyone’s asking about books. Everybody. Finally, we were like, “Okay, wait a second. We need to re-evaluate. We need to take a look at this.” That’s what we did. That’s kind of started a whole new journey Andy: So then what happened there? Chandler: That’s when we seed launched our version of a self publishing school. Totally doing everything you guys teach. You just threw it out there. We had nothing. We put it out there, we got some help from some awesome people like Jaime Tardy, Hollis Carter, James Schramko. Just some cool people that believed in us and took a chance on us. They helped us with this. They help promote and we launched the program. It was awesome, man. We literally had nothing. We were just selling this like we’re going to teach you and we’re going to custom make this content to you guys. It’s going to be a little – Just like Dane did with the Software Roundtable. Andy: How many people did you sign up with that? Chandler: We had 43 people. Andy: Forty-three, what was the price point on that? Chandler: The price point was $1,000 and $3,000. Andy: Awesome. How did it go? Chandler: It went great. We brought in right at 83 grand with that and then we had ridiculous success rate. So many books launched out of that. Then we made people some great money, we had great success stories all around, and that’s when really like – I don’t know. I reached this point. I’m sure you’ve experienced this in The Foundation. You’re just head down, you’re creating content, you’re doing your thing. You kind of get burn out. It’s in the back end, right? Andy: Totally. Chandler: I hit this point where I was just in this back end. We had tons of success with the first round of the program, and it was awesome. We figured we’d probably re-launch it again, didn’t really know. That’s when I went on this cruise with Student Painters kind of like coming in full circle. I wasn’t even a part of the company anymore. I just paid my way on because I couldn’t miss it. It was just the most fun time ever. I went there and that weekend changed everything. One of my good friends from Student Painters, he actually passed away in a tragic accident on the cruise that weekend. Right when I pulled back in the port, I found out that my grandma had also passed away that same weekend. It was crazy, man, like kind of – I just went into shock and a lot of feelings of guilt. I felt like the accident was my fault. All these things that really just shake you to your core. I just remember that next week just being shut down. I flew back home to South Carolina instead of coming back to San Diego and just thought. That’s something that really just shakes you up. That was when I started thinking, what am I really doing with my life that matters? What’s really important here that I’m doing? That’s when things brought full circle. I was like, okay, this thing with books is actually something that’s changing people’s lives. It’s giving them more confidence, their parents are proud of them, their friends think they’re cool, they’re making more money. All this stuff. Also, my buddy [Kindle 00:20:52], he just written a book through what I – he wasn’t in the program but just through a webinar that we did. He took notes and wrote the book, but he never got the chance to launch it. I saw that his friends were able to launch it after and I helped him out with that. He will forever be remembered and his legacy is submitted through that book. That’s when I kind of took a step back and was like, okay, this is a lot bigger than just a program online, membership portal, all these things we get caught up in. That’s when I – that kind of shifted. That’s reprioritize things. I was like, okay, it kind of reinvigorated the passion for what I’m doing. That’s where you see I got this bracelet – Andy: Make him proud. Chandler: Yeah, make him proud. It’s like a constant reminder. He was 20 years old and he passed away. He wasn’t able to – The night before he passed away, we were at dinner talking about five-year goals and plans and what we would be doing. It was like he never got to do those things. That really lit a fire into me. I got to make him proud and I got to live out that legacy and do those things he never got to do and make that impact that he would’ve wanted to make. Andy: How long ago was that? Chandler: It was about four months ago. Andy: That’s intense, man. Chandler: I’d never experienced anything like that. Andy: Yeah. I don’t think many people have. It’s a rare thing. Chandler: It was literally a case of – he passed away basically in my arms. It’s just something that you will never un-see, you never forget the sights, the sounds. It was like an out of body experience that whole day. I just remember being dazed and confused, wandering through the airport, just trying to get home, just didn’t sleep all night. Yeah, man, it was crazy. Andy: Man, death is a funny way of putting life into perspective really quickly. Chandler: For sure. Andy: How else has things shifted for you from that, aside from just the business stuff? Chandler: It really raised my BS meter. I felt like it’s one of those things we’re going through life, we think everything’s important, right? Everything I do has a meaning; sending this email, doing this thing. It just kind of narrowed everything down from that. It was like, okay, these few things are important and all this other stuff doesn’t really matter. I can live without this. My relationships with my family, the impact I make, not the money I make, all those things really matter. Andy: Wow! How old are you? Chandler: Twenty-one. Andy: It’s a pretty profound realization to have at 21. Chandler: It really is, man. I look back and I was pushing so hard, but without any perspective. This really – It takes something like that to shake you up and say, “Hey dude, there’s actually other stuff that matters. You need to get a little perspective here.” That’s what I did really is I felt like I had so much more purpose, and passion, and drive behind what I’m doing. I’m on fire right now, but in a good way, not driven by just shallow things. Andy: Yeah. Not from a place of lack, from a place of purpose it sounds like. Chandler: Oh yeah, man. That’s why I made this bracelet. I don’t ever want to forget that and I wanted to be reminded every day. Any time I get pissed off, any time I get frustrated with just stupid stuff, I look at this and think about – The other side is WWKD, what will [Kindle 00:25:26] do? A guy with such integrity, such a nice person. I think that, too, when I’m real pissed off, something just really stupid, I’m just like, “Alright, what would he do right now?” And I try to channel that for sure. Andy: That’s intense, and sobering. I appreciate you sharing all of this. Chandler: No problem. I can’t say that I saw the interview going that way but … Andy: Me neither. Chandler: But here we are. Andy: That was four months ago and here you are on fire now. Where are things at for you now? Chandler: We kind of had been re-launching Self Publishing School and taking the success stories and taking all that and just really taking things to the next level. It’s been really, really fun. We’ve been hustling hard on that for the last couple months, and that’s kind of where we’re at now. We’re launching this new program. In The Foundation, you guys do six months, we do three months. It’s book idea, the bestseller in three months, because it’s not quite as much of a leap as starting a business. What we like is we feel like we can change people’s lives during that time, and then they can level up. They’d get a book and it’s a confidence builder, it starts bringing in leads, they start getting that little taste of passive income, like I was talking about I had on the ski slopes in Austria. Just getting all those first wins, that’s kind of what we do to – We’re re-launching that and we’re super pumped about it. Andy: Nice man. You’ve had such a multitude of life experiences really early. For people who are just getting started, what advice do you have for them? You didn’t go through the – you made it out before even getting to the corporate America route, some people that are a couple years into some sort of shitty job that they hate. What advice do you have for them? Chandler: Oh man, that’s a great question. Like you said, I’ve kind of shifted and went through so many phases very quickly. I think it’s a result of something you guys really preach in The Foundation is taking action and then recalibrating. Kind of like the ready, fire, aim approach. Two years ago, if you were have said that I was running a company to teach people how to write and publish their first books, I would’ve said you’re crazy. I hate writing. I make C’s on all my papers. That doesn’t even sound fun. But it’s crazy. We just took action, put out the book. It’s like, okay, it was kind of a success. What can we do next? Put out another book. We just kept in this – by continually taking action even when things sucked, it wasn’t all roses and la la land. When I dropped out of school, I moved to Iowa – this is a great story. I moved to Iowa and right when I got back from Europe. We had this potential deal to do basically Self Publishing School but with a big marketing company. If I said the name, everybody would know. I won’t say the name. We got this offer for a six to seven-figure deal sliding scale to revamp their program similar to ours. It’s a cheaper price program, stuff like that. We had a verbal commitment on that. Easily, like low end, 250k for seven months of work easily, and trending towards seven figures, low seven figures. I learned some lessons there. It was a verbal commitment. I’m moving to Iowa, Willy Wonka, it’s my golden ticket. I’m dropping out of school. Life is good. I just hit the jackpot. I’m a genius. This is so easy. About three weeks to a month in, the deal falls through. I just remember it being just like this punch in the stomach. I remember Dane and I talked about this at the house there in Iowa, it’s like total punch in the stomach. There goes how am I going to make money, all these feelings of fear and everything. I think they realized that they could – Because we were going to revamp the program, we were going to be the face of it. I think they realized they could do it for cheaper, who knows what happened. We’re still friends with the guys to this day, but it’s in a way was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was a classic starting from nothing moment, right? The big dogs offered you a juicy deal, loved it, and then it got just taken out from underneath. That’s when everything changed and it was like, “Okay, we need to start this by ourselves. We’re going to start from nothing and build this into something.” Just taking action, right? You asked for a piece of advice, just continually taking action. Even when things don’t go your way, and even when things are totally screwing up, or you hate your crappy job or whatever, just doing what you can to get out of that. Andy: It’s funny how sometimes those are the greatest blessings. Chandler: I sat down with one of the partners in that business three weeks ago and I was like, “Yeah, no hard feelings. That was one of the best things that ever happened to me.” Andy: Yeah, thanks dude. Chandler: Because of you, those couple months sucked. Andy: Gave me a great war story to tell. That’s awesome, man. I’m super impressed, dude, and just stoked for how much progress you’ve made, especially at 21. It’s crazy. It’s crazy. Most 21 year olds are binge drinking right now. Chandler: Yeah, it is kind of crazy, man. I think to do this kind of thing you do have to be a little bit crazy. All my friends are just now graduating. They’re in their final semester of college. I think about this decision to drop out, and it’s the best decision I ever made, hands down. I kind of wished I would’ve done it earlier. I just thinking about it like they’re having this “oh crap” moment, or they’re going to. They’re kind of starting into it, your senior semester. They’re all going to have that in three months of I’m out of school, I have no way to make money, what am I going to do? Some people will have jobs, some people won’t. I had that “oh crap” moment a long time ago and I’ve been able to live with that uncomfortableness of like, “Yeah, I don’t know where money’s coming from next month” and get through that. Because of that, I failed so many times. Classic stuff you guys teach, just fail, fail, fail. But with everyone, it’s like I’m climbing out, and then you have a success, and then it just builds off of that. I’m so glad I put myself through that because I think I was able to just expedite that learning process. Andy: Yeah. Once you get through … there’s like a learning curve in entrepreneurship of like the beginning – Peter Shallard and I talk about this a lot where it’s like the beginning is all based in scarcity and all you’re looking for is opportunity, trying to get new opportunities to come into your door. Something shifts where you go from lack of opportunities to abundance of opportunities. The goal is to sift through all of the stuff that you have, and that’s when it gets a lot more fun. Chandler: Oh yeah. It’s way more fun. I always told myself … I’ve always had big dreams, big aspirations. I’ve always told myself if I’m going to try to get where not many people have ever been or will be, why would I do the same things that everybody else is doing, right? Staying in school, doing all that. It’s very uncomfortable but it’s like if I have those big dreams, and I’m re-learning this lesson now about writing some really big checks, and big masterminds. Make you want to poop your pants kind of check, and just putting faith in that. “Okay, Chandler, once again, if you want to get up here, you can’t be –“ Andy: Doing the same thing. Chandler: Like everybody else is doing, right? Andy: Totally. It’s so true, man. It’s so true. I think the beautiful part is you’ve already made it through that beginning phase and so it’s funny how things get easier as you go, it’s not the other way around. People think it gets harder, but it gets easier at some level. Chandler: Totally. Andy: Badass, dude. What else? What else should we know? Chandler: One of the big lessons I’m learning right now is based off of what we were just talking about. I heard a guy say write small checks, cash big checks, and your definition of small checks will change and your definition of big checks will change. Kind of this whole concept of investing in yourself, I think is one of the best decisions I made is to join The Foundation. It was one of the first of many times I decided to invest in myself. I’ve just continued since then to see. There’s this moment of when you write the check that you have no clue how you’re going to get the money back, or if you will, or whatever. Almost instantly regret it. [unclear 00:36:03] people have probably refunded your program. It’s because of that, and they don’t know that if they would just get right past that, that’s where the breakthrough is, right? Andy: Yeah. Totally, man. Totally. You have this buyer’s remorse phase where you’re like, “Shit, what did I do?” Think of how everybody thinks you’re crazy. I remember writing a check, I went down to Tony Robbins rabbit hole for seven months after everything. Went to Unleash the Power Within, ended up hiring his coach, signed up for a Date with Destiny. That was like six grand or something there. This is when I just quit my job three months earlier and wasn’t making that much cash. I was making two or three grand a month from Referral Squirrel at the time. A Date with Destiny, went there, and got all pumped up on everything and wrote a check for ten grand which is the biggest check I had ever written in my life at that point. Feeling that exact same thing, knowing I had not much cash in the bank and ten grand was a significant portion of it. You’re just like, “Whoa, what am I going to do and how am I going to get that back?” but just having that faith. And it’s always – I don’t know about always but most of the time it’s worth it if you’re committed. Chandler: For sure. It’s like you have to – Because all the things that are going through your head are like “People who told me I was an idiot for doing this, they’re about to be right.” Alright, I just need to refund, something like that. Even just recently writing some checks to join some masterminds it’s like I’ve already got so many business opportunities out of those. There was a month or two phase where I was like, “Oh man, what did I do?” Then after the business deal started coming in it’s like, “Oh wow, that’s already paid for itself. Awesome.” And I have ten months left in this mastermind. It’s all gravy on top of that. Andy: Totally. Chandler: Every time is like you just have to get through that – Andy: A little more, a little more. Chandler: I feel like that’s so symbolic to the whole entrepreneur game and all that. Andy: It really is, man. I love how you keep stretching yourself. It seems like you keep pushing that edge. Whatever that edge is, you keep riding it a little bit farther, a little bit farther, a little bit farther. The expansion is inspiring. Chandler: Thanks, man. It’s like this comfortable meter, right? I don’t know. I feel like subconsciously any time I get to a certain level of comfort, morning bell start going off. Just like, “Alright dude, time to move, time to do something.” I dropped out, moved to Iowa, now moved to San Diego. Each time it’s been like, “Okay, I need to level up. I’m comfortable, this isn’t good. I’m complacent right now. I need to step it up a notch.” Andy: Funny how that always seems to – something comes into your reality to shift that. For me anyway. Every time I get too comfortable, something comes and shakes it up. Chandler: Why do you think that is? Andy: I don’t know. I don’t know if we’re attracting it into our life. We tend to, as entrepreneurs, I think do that but boredom’s probably a part of it too. There’s something awesome about the comfort but the boredom is there, you know. I talk about this a lot like how everybody wants – you know there’s all this content being published about happiness in the past five years. Books, and podcasts, and programs about like studies about what makes people happy. Because everybody says at the end of the day they just want to be happy. I don’t really follow or subscribe to that reality. My reality is I want to have the experience of feeling alive, and I want to be able to experience everything on the spectrum from the crazy darkness to the incredible highs, and lightness. For me, that’s the human experience. It’s not about being happy, it’s about being alive. I think when you make that shift, what happens is you tend to pursue the experiences that push you, and challenge, and change you as oppose to clinging onto the safety, and the comfort, and the illusion of security that people think that they have. Chandler: For sure. To me that’s what being an entrepreneur is all about. I would tell this to my guys, it’s like a roller coaster. If you’re in a corporate job or any kind of job really, it’s like a kiddy ride. You’re just on a merry-go-round; the highs aren’t that high, the lows aren’t that low. Andy: Totally. Chandler: But when you make that decision to become an entrepreneur and you actually do it, that’s when it’s a thriller coaster. You’re going way to the top, then way to the bottom. You’re doing some corkscrews, and flips, and spins, the whole spectrum. That is living, right? Andy: Totally. Chandler: I remember – it happens continually now but even back to Student Painters selling $8,000 job, jumping in the air, my hand accidentally hitting the ceiling fan, that’s how excited I was. Two days later having a massive job cancel. Having a whole team quit like what am I going to do? That is living. Andy: Totally, totally. And that’s where confidence comes from. You go through those things. You just get confidence in yourself to handle stuff when it comes up. I think that’s the most incredible gift in the world is having that confidence of like, you know what, no matter what comes up, we can figure something out and handle it. That is freedom. That is freedom to me. Chandler: Sure. That’s like Elon Musk, making all his money in PayPal and then syncing it onto Tesla, being down to his last million which for most people I know – Andy: No big deal. Chandler: “Oh, my last million.” That must suck. But for him, being down to just broke, and then having the confidence to come out from that. Andy: That’s like their – One of my mentors, his name is Bill Flag, he’s here in Boulder and he’s friends with Kimbal who’s Elon’s brother who lives here in Boulder. He runs a little restaurant and a couple of things here. We were talking about it. Bill said that that’s actually their strategy, almost as a family, is that they don’t really hold any money back. They don’t leave a lot on the sides for safety nets, they put it all in. And it’s so interesting because when you go all in, you don’t 0 there is no exit, there is no safety latch that you can escape from. You’re fully in and you have to figure shit out. Chandler: Oh yeah. I’m experiencing that right now, man. Andy: With what? Chandler: We’re going all in with Self Publishing School. We’ve re-invested all the profits. We’ve borrowed money. We’ve written checks we can’t cash. We’ve postdated payments on a bunch of stuff until after the launch. Failure is not an option, it’s just not. Andy: You have to. Chandler: It feels amazing. I’m not going to lie, it scares the crap out of me and just drives me to really make this happen. Deep down, it feels so good knowing that I’m leaving everything out there to make this happen. Everything’s out on the table, on the field, whatever you want to call it. It’s happening. There’s some kind of enlivening feeling that comes from that. Andy: Yeah. Dude, it’s amazing. Thanks for coming on, man. This has been a very fun experience. I was going to cuss again but I need to stop that. This has been a very, very fun interview. Chandler: I appreciate it, man. I feel like we were just talking about the whole spectrum that happened in our interview. Andy: Yeah, it really did, right? Chandler: With the highs, lows, everything. Andy: Moment by moment, day by day, week by week. It’s awesome. If people want to get in touch with you, or learn about Self Publishing School, or get a hold of you, where do they do that? Chandler: For sure. They can go to self-publishingschool.com. I’m putting out a free four-video training series, so that’s going to teach all my best stuff basically. We had people launch books just from this free content last time. Just like you guys have start businesses from the awesome content you guys put out. Andy: Totally. Chandler: That’s self-publishingschool.com. Or they can find me on Facebook Chandler Bolt, or just shoot me an email chandler@theproductiveperson.com. Andy: Badass, dude. Thanks for coming on again, man. Chandler: Dude, no problem. Thanks for having me, Andy. Closing: Thank you for joining us. 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