The Asset Most Experts Forget They Already Have

I watched my business partner lose twenty years of work on a single Friday.

For about a week, Dustin let himself grieve, the way a person should. Then a Monday came, the way Mondays do, and the math came with it. A wife. Kids. A mortgage that did not care how many years he had poured into a calling. The grieving had to end, because the bills did not.

The Smallest Move in the World

I know how this story turns out, because I had a front row seat to it. But the part I keep coming back to is not the comeback. It is how small the first move was. Dustin had no plan. He has told me he said it out loud, God, I don’t know what to do, because he had never once imagined a day outside of working for a church. And a friend, instead of handing him a strategy, asked him two questions. What are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? Then four words that did all the work. Just start asking.

So he did the least impressive thing a person can do. He opened the contacts list on his phone and started scrolling from the top. No funnel, no campaign, no clever pivot. Just names, in alphabetical order, and the willingness to begin. He got down to the C’s, hit my name, and called me. He figured I might need some video editing help. I did. I had work I could send his way, and he had been editing video for over a decade, because that is what creative ministry at a small church makes you, a person who can do a little of everything. One yes was all it took to get the whole thing moving.

What Actually Saved Him

Here is the part I cannot stop turning over. The thing that saved him was not a skill he scrambled to learn in the crisis. It was a relationship he had built ten years before he needed it, with no idea he ever would. When the bottom fell out, I was not a stranger he had to win over. I was a name he could call.

And it was not just my name. There was a friend from his Liberty days who had been running his own business since college and never worked for anyone else, and that friend coached Dustin for free his entire first year on his own. There was another friend who, about a week after the separation from church work, pulled Dustin and his wife aside and said, do not worry about the house, if you cannot make the mortgage, we have got you. None of those people showed up because Dustin ran a campaign. They showed up because they were already there, built into his life over years he never thought of as strategic.

An Asset Built Without Trying

That is the thing I want you to sit with, because I had to. Dustin did not earn that list in the emergency. He earned it slowly, mostly without trying. A lot of it traces back to his dad, who was social before networking was a word, the kind of man who could not walk into a room without someone shouting his name across it. He taught Dustin young to introduce himself, to shake a hand, to look a person in the eye and mean it. So by the time the worst day came, Dustin had spent thirty years quietly building the one asset that would carry him through it, and he did not even know that is what he was doing.

Where That Left Me

I will be honest with you about where this left me. I sat across from him hearing all of this and realized I do not do this. I have five hundred names in my phone, and I treat them like nothing. I am not standing over you with a lesson I have mastered. I am sitting next to you, convicted by my own partner’s story, thinking, who have I just never thought to reach out to?

Simple Is Not the Same as Easy

Because the reason most of us never make that move is not that it is hard. It is that it feels too obvious to count. We confuse two words all the time. Simple means there are not many steps. Easy means it costs you nothing. Reaching out is simple. It is not easy, because it means admitting you need something, and most of us would rather chase a complicated answer than do the simple thing that requires us to be a little exposed.

The Part Nobody Admits

I do not want to skip past how frightening it was for him, because the fear is the part people hide. Dustin genuinely believed they were going to lose the house. He pictured packing up, moving back to Virginia to live with his wife’s parents, starting their whole lives over in the middle of them. He applied to Home Depot. He applied everywhere, ready to take anything, and he never even got a we received your application. Just silence. What actually held them up, again, was a relationship. A friend with a nonprofit needed someone to build systems and process, which is exactly what Dustin does, so he took a pay cut and let that cover the bills while he built his own business underneath it.

They did not lose the house. They are still in it. And, as Dustin will happily tell you, he drives a nice truck now.

Go Open the List

So here is what I would say to you, the same thing I had to say to myself. The move that saves you is almost never the new tactic. It is usually the relationships you already have and have stopped seeing. You probably have hundreds of names in your phone right now, and someone in there knows somebody. The help you need, or the help you could give, is closer than the blank page makes it feel. You do not have to build a new asset. You have to use the one you have been building this whole time without noticing.

So go open the list. Start at the A’s. And just start asking.

Watch the full conversation, and if it moves you, send it to one person who needs to hear it. If you want to build a thought leadership platform of your own, visit 1898creative.com.

#createyourart

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Full Transcript

Darren: Talk to me about that moment. Let’s say it happens on a Friday, and now Monday rolls around, and you’re going, the last 20 years I’ve done this. Now what?

Dustin: There’s a grieving process for sure that lasted probably a week or so. But then the realization hits you that, yeah, I’ve got a wife and kids and a mortgage, and this has to get taken care of. So that’s when I was just like, God, I don’t know what to do.

And [a friend] is like, well, what are you good at? What do you enjoy doing? And I was like, well, I’m good at helping creative things actually come to life and happen, and I really enjoy doing that. He’s like, okay, just start asking.

So I literally opened up my contacts list on my phone and just started going through it. And by the time I got down to Darren Cooper, I called him and said, hey, you do the video agency thing, right? You probably need video editing help. And you’re like, yeah, I probably got some things I could throw your way. Because, again, I’d been doing video editing for over 10 years. When you’re in creative church ministry at a church that’s not a megachurch, you have to know everything.

Darren: Yeah. So you called me up and I was like, yeah, I could probably use some help.

Dustin: Started doing a little bit of that. That was going well. I was pursuing some nonprofit work over on the side, did that a little bit too. Yada, yada, yada. Here we are.

Darren: What I love that you pointed out there, Dustin, is something that’s probably easily overlooked. It’s so simple, but it’s not easy. It’s so simple that it’s easily overlooked. And what you said here, and what I would encourage anybody listening who might find themselves in a very similar circumstance to Dustin, is it was asking yourself, what am I good at, and who can I connect with, who can I reach out to? That was the simple thing that literally was the catalyst that changed everything for you.

Dustin: Yeah, I’ve always believed, maybe it’s because I saw my dad was really, really good at it, kind of before networking was even a phrase. My dad was a very social person. He had a lot of friends, he knew a lot of people. When we walked into a place, there was going to be at least one person who’d shout my dad’s name from across the room because he knew him.

My dad taught me how to introduce myself to people and shake a hand and look them in the eye and give a firm pump on the handshake, a pleasure to meet you, all that. So from an early age, connecting with other people was something I saw as important, and something that came natural to me. I always made friends when I was little. We’d go on vacation to the beach and I’d just make some random friends.

That Rolodex that I was able to go to, you were in my contacts list at that point for, let’s see, that had been 2020.

Darren: Oh, we’re doing math now. Oh, boy.

Dustin: You were probably in my contact list for at least 10 years at that point. I think we met in the early 2010s. And those connections, going back to my days at Liberty, I made a lot of connections there, and a lot of them have paid off over the years.

Even when I stepped out on my own, one of my buddies that I played with at Liberty, he’d basically been entrepreneuring since college, never worked for anybody else. He coached me for free my entire first year of being on my own. Here are the things you need to be thinking about, here’s where you need to not get overwhelmed, here’s where you need to lean into this fear and where you need to ignore this thought. That type of stuff really saved me through that season, for real.

Darren: That’s such a beautiful thing to think through, and a challenging thing for me, going, who have I just not thought about connecting with? You get what you ask for, or you get what you don’t ask for. So you’re saying, I had this in-between thing, and I just started talking to the people I’ve connected with naturally over the years, and that became the new thing I was able to drum up.

Dustin: I still do that. I’m in the process right now of toying around with a creatives meetup here in the West Georgia area where I live, in between Atlanta and Alabama. I’ve gone through my Rolodex the other day, only got about halfway through. I call it my Rolodex because I’m old. The contacts list, 40 plus, that’s what you have to say.

Darren: Yeah, I opened up a contacts list. I never even owned a Rolodex.

Dustin: Neither did I. I started going down it, and all I was looking for, scrolling from the A’s all the way down, was, number one, are they in West Georgia? And number two, are they a creative? They don’t have to be a creative professional or a creative business owner, but are they a creative person? Do they create some type of something?

And I just started shooting out messages. Hey, I’m thinking about doing this. If I did this, would you come? I sent out probably 20 messages, and I’m only halfway through. The reason I can do that is because I try to get out there and meet people. Even for my business, I’ll go through my contacts list two or three times a year and go, is there anyone in here I could pursue as a client, or who would know someone I can pursue as a client? Because my contacts list is growing all the time.

I don’t know how we got on this conversation.

Darren: No, it speaks to it. I’m sitting here going, I need to do that. I’ve got 500 contacts in my phone. Someone’s got to know somebody. Often the thing we have to do is easy, but not something we think about doing. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. Take me back real quick. You’re about to step into this. What was the scary part? What were you emotionally thinking?

Dustin: I thought we were gonna lose our house. I thought we were gonna have to move back to Virginia with my wife’s parents, and start all over again in the middle of our lives. That was the scariest part for sure. There was no way this was going to work. I’d never imagined anything outside of working for a church. I applied for Home Depot and places like that all over the place, and I never even got a “hey, we received your application.” Nothing.

Darren: So you were even at a place where you were like, I gotta do something outside of what would be considered my normal. Just go get the side gig.

Dustin: Yeah. I was thinking I can get a quote-unquote day job while I start this business. And thank God, my friend who had a nonprofit was looking for an executive director. I’m really good at building things. I build systems for a living for creative businesses. He needed somebody to build infrastructure and processes around this nonprofit. I took a pay cut for sure, but it allowed me to pay the bills while I built this business.

Darren: So did you lose the house?

Dustin: We did not lose the house. I had a friend, him and his wife told us about a week after the separation from church work happened, don’t worry about the house. We’ve got you covered if you can’t make your mortgage payment. Which is awesome.

Darren: Did you have to move in with your in-laws?

Dustin: No, sure didn’t. We’re still in the same house we were in when I made the transition.

Darren: Man. And you drive a nice truck now.

Dustin: And I drive a nice truck now.

Darren: Yeah, you do.