Episode 47 - Hope Is Dangerous

Hope feels good. But hope alone can leave you helpless.
In this episode, we get real about the danger of operating purely on hope. From a personal experience of landing a promising job in California only to get laid off six months in — waiting on a clearance investigation that was out of his hands entirely — we break down what happens when you put all your faith in outcomes you can’t control. The lesson? Stop operating from hope and start operating from plans, systems, and opportunity. Hope is passive. A plan is power.
Build your safety net before you need it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I can hope that my situation changes. Or I can put a plan in place in a system that can eventually lead to me getting to where I want to go. I was in California. And I hope that this new job that I was acquiring that was paying me 80k a year would work out. But there was a caveat. I knew it depended on a clearance investigation. The hope was that they would hold the job and keep me there until it finished and then I could really start working and make that money long term. The reality, taking that job leaves control completely out of my hands, and they could potentially let me go because they don't want to finish the investigation because it takes too long. They laid me off because the investigation was going to take a year to a year and a half. And at the six-month mark, they're like, well, we don't have any work for you and we don't want to wait, so we're gonna let you go. Plain and simple. But in the process of that hope, I gave myself a safety net in a way. I knew in order for me to maximize the amount of money that I was gonna make, I needed to go to school. So while I was working there, I went to school. So even after losing that income, I still had income coming in. And then at that point, I didn't operate from hope. I operated from plans, planning and systems and opportunity. I knew I needed to get a job immediately, and I knew the lowest barrier of entry was retail. So I looked for the best possible opportunity in retail just so I could find a job immediately. I had two options part-time at Target or full-time at Walgreens. And from my plans, I knew I needed a full 80 hours every two weeks from a job to take care of bills. And I also knew in the future if we wanted to get a house, I needed a full-time job. So in the end I ended up picking Walgreens. Because not only was that the full-time job, it also was a lead position. So I wasn't just a regular worker, I was actually leading other people. It was calculated. So I got my foot in the door and took that job. And while I was working there, I was still going to school. At that point, it was planning again. It's like, okay, so where do I go from here? Okay, well, at that point, the job was an hour away. I was driving an hour to and from work every day. So I knew in order for me to cut down that time, I needed to get a house that was closer. That's when we started looking for houses. Hope didn't do that, planning did that. We found a house, 2024. Okay, boom. Uh we moved to the house in 2024. Now I live closer to my job. And now I uh I am still going to school. So then after that, what do you do? Okay, I started planning again. I was like, alright, well, I need to finish this degree while I'm working here. And then after I finish this degree, I need to find a better paying job. So I worked at that Walgreens until I started in September 2023 and then until December 2024, I got promoted. How did I get promoted? I finished my degree that December. So then I got promoted to an assistant store manager that December. So in the end, what ended up happening was me planning on finishing that degree ended up helping me getting a better paid job inside a Walgreens. Boom, I do that, right? So now at this point, am I still going on hope? No, I never went on hope after that. Still planning. So now at this point, I'm thinking, okay, I could be a store manager. But then I'm looking at the pay and I'm like, that's not enough pay. I need to get paid more money so I can help take care of my family and take care of these bills. So I'm like, okay, well, I use my degree to get a better paying position inside Walgreens and retail. But I need to find another industry where I can get paid more using my degree. So at this point, I started thinking back to where I made my most money before in California. That was manufacturing. But not just manufacturing, I was hitting all bullet points, all different industries. By the way, I knew I needed to find a better paying job in a different industry. So I started applying to different industries with the fact that I had a new factor cigarette. I actually had a few interviews. A few of them fell through. A few of them didn't work out. And then lo and behold, I'd say about five months later, I had an interview for a job. And I uh had a great interview. And then my phone cut off while I was in the interview, like it overheated. I was like, okay, well, this isn't ideal. They reschedule the interview, we do the interview, energy felt different, everything felt different. So at that point, it was like okay. So then I didn't get the job. At this point, I'm still working at Walgreens. And I'm still uh the assistant store manager. And then what ends up happening is that job ends up messaging me months later, asking me if I'm still interested in a position. I'm like, yeah, of course. So we go through another interview. And one of them happening, I end up getting a job offer. More money, more base pay for a lower um position. So the position wouldn't be a leadership role, it would be a regular associate role, you know, entry level. So I still would be making more money than if I was a store manager at Walgreens. So at that point, I'm like, okay, well, this is the opportunity I have. What are my uh chances here? And chances that I got. I'm like, well, I'll be starting at a new company again, I'll be starting over from the bottom. But in the end, if I'm going off a history, I've always started from the bottom everywhere I went, and everywhere I went, when I started at the bottom, I ended up moving up. So I said, fuck it, let's do it. So I take the job. And then lo and behold, one of the requirements is you have to have a degree. I have that now. So now you're going through the background check, and everything's coming out clean. And now you're looking at the job that I have right now. Working in manufacturing, making more money than what I was at Walgreens. And that wasn't off of hope. That was off of planning. All that was off of planning and putting myself in a position to succeed. I say all that to say that hope is dangerous because in the end, hope doesn't prepare for the unexpected. Hope doesn't keep you ready for what could happen. It only hinders on what could possibly happen that's good for you, not the negative. Rely on plans and rely on systems. Don't rely on hope. I'm going to school for my MBA, which that's another story in itself. But let's just say I had to uh um recalculate the amount of time in which it was gonna take me to finish it and move some things around to make sure that I finish it the way that I want to. But I'm still online to finishing my NBA by next year in 2027, which is all part of the plan. So um I got that happening, and that was all based off of planning. No hope involved. Hope is dangerous, and you should be careful, be careful of it. I'm just cast on, and this is hard reset.