We are all dreamers. However, the difference between those who achieve theirs and those who don’t is the action they have taken. So let’s be honest; do you like the IDEA of the dream, or are you willing to do the WORK? In this episode, Julia Gentry and Travis Gentry push you to make your ideas come to life. They each share stories about putting in the hard work to see through the things you want to happen. After all, there is no such thing as overnight success. Behind every success story is a long path full of challenges and lessons learned. But don’t fret; you don’t have to take the hardest path available. Julia and Travis help you understand how to pick the right kind of hard, along with some advice on navigating the road between where you are and your dreams. Tune in for an honest conversation and discover how, with hard work and introspection, you can absolutely achieve your heart’s desire.

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Let’s Be Honest

Do You Like The IDEA Of The Dream Or Are You Willing To Do The WORK?

I am super excited about reengaging this show. We took a little bit of break and we’re back. We’ve settled down. We have a new studio.

You can always go to our YouTube channel to see the latest and greatest. I am with my friend, my favorite person, my champion, and everything good in this world, my husband, Travis Gentry. It’s good to see you.

It’s good to see you too. Welcome.

How are you?

I’m doing pretty good. I got a good workout, so I’m feeling good.

At least one of us did. It’s amazing how much we can get done before 9:00 in the morning as parents. I want to say to all the parents that are reading this. I applaud you for all of the things that we get done before 9:00 AM. Here’s to you.

Especially when you wake up at 4:45 wide awake so excited about this show.

What are we talking about in this episode?

We are talking about, let’s be real.

Let’s be real. Let’s be honest. Here’s why we think that this is important we are firm believers that everybody has ideas. Everybody has dreams and those are important and the world needs them, but there is a huge difference between having an idea and doing the work to see that idea come to life. We’re going to talk about the day that now because it is real and it’s an honest conversation that we all need to be having with ourselves. I know for us personally, we’ve had this conversation many times with ourselves. We’re even going to share some stories with you about the difference between the idea and liking it versus the actual desire to do the hard work to see it through.

Is it what you want? We had this dream and there was an example of someone that wanted to be a rock star. He thought he wanted to be a rock star for years and years, but he never put in the work to learn how to play instruments. He couldn’t sing. He liked the idea but putting in the work. We have ideas in potential dreams, but you have to also look at them and say, “Is this really what I want for me with my natural skill sets and talents?”

Don't think; just do. Share on X

Looking at where you are and where you want to go can be pretty daunting. It can be pretty big where you’re like, “I’ll never get there or you look at someone else and you say, “You’re there, but they understand the work that’s been put in for that person to get there.” Whether it’s starting your business, fitness or financially, you look at the end result most of the time. You don’t get to see where they started and how long it’s taken.

I think what can happen is that when we are looking at the manifestation of the idea, we’re looking at the rock star. We’re looking at the Tony Robbins, the Justin Bieber or the person who is “there.” I think we start to go down all these bunny trails of how nice it would be, how glamorous it is and how good it feels. All of that is true to some degree, but I think what we’re missing is the hard that’s in between, which we’re not going to talk a ton about that now. That’s going to be on the next episode about understanding how to pick the right kind of heart. I think it is the process and the journey that is in between the idea and the full manifestation of it. Let’s talk about that in this episode.

Let’s give a couple of examples. I’m going to give one. The first one is this show. This show has been a dream of ours. We’ve started and stopped a few different times. It’s something that we feel like we want to share all of our experiences. We have a lot of experience. We travel all over the country with kids and live full-time RV. We’ve started businesses. We’ve had businesses not be successful and we’ve successes in business.

We feel like we have something that we want to share and build a community of like-minded people that are intentional about going after their dreams because we’ve been at the beginning. We’ve also accomplished certain dreams and then we have new ones. This is one of those things for me personally and I think you too because we’ve been back and forth. We’re back. We’re excited to do this. I’m excited to do it, but it’s not easy and we’re not there. We’re at the very beginning of where I see this could go.

In your mind, how are you bridging the gap between the idea of the show and doing the show?

I think, first and foremost, it’s just getting started. It’s doing it. We set up this and we had our fifth baby. You got to give us a little bit of grace here, but we’ve had this new setup for weeks. It’s easy to procrastinate and say, “We’re going to start next week or when this happens or after the baby. It’s one thing after another and we just made the decision. We put it on the calendar and we’ve got to get started. We have to do it.

If anyone needs good motivation, it’s from Top Gun. I happened to see the new movie and I want you to know my new slogan. I think it’s the one that I’ve been living by that you’ve suggested is probably not the best.

It’s not the best set of things always.

Maverick says or Tom Cruise says, “Don’t think. Just do.” At some point in time, we’ve even said this to our son Malachi. You could tell that he is overthinking things and he’s processing things at a level that he probably doesn’t need to be processing. We look at him and we’ve said to him, “Don’t think. Just do.” At some level, when you move forward towards the idea, you have to look at this and go, “I can’t be thinking about this anymore. I only need to get it done because the more I think about it, the further away I’m getting from doing it because it is hard and it is stretching me. It is uncomfortable. At some level, for me, I think the way I have to think about this show is don’t think about it. Just do it.

We’re not going to go down at the bunny hole in this either, but Dream Killers. We’ll do another episode on it, but it’s who you tell it to. Who are you surrounding yourself with? Because it’s easy to have a dream and an idea. If you go to the wrong person potentially at the wrong time, you stop before you even get started. Having a community of like-minded people pursuing it can give you constructive criticism, give you outside eyes, or make you rethink maybe what your original thought was on how you were going to do it or the timeframe maybe you were going to do it is important. Don’t get me wrong but if you say it to the wrong person, if I said, “Julia, we’re going to start this show,” you’re like, “No. That’s a bad idea.”

We would never get started. It’s something that we both want to do, but I would say that I would like to do an episode on that because it’s so important to surround yourself with the right people and whether you’re getting feedback from them or you’re watching stuff. I love watching different YouTube and researching on Google and all the things, but I’m going after the information that is going to complement what I’m seeking. What would be another example for you of not thinking just doing?

Part of what’s got us here to Bend and there’s a huge story there for us as we were traveling the country

Where are we?

I don’t know.

We’re in Bend, Oregon. She got a local shirt.

“Are you from here?” I’m like, “Yes, I am. I just happened to be wearing this shirt. It looks like I’m not a tourist. As we were traveling the country looking for a place where we wanted to land, bringing people up to speed and giving some context. After RV, we traveled the country and went to different cities to establish, “Where do we want to live?” I’m looking at all of these cities for various different reasons. The two that we landed on were Bend, Oregon and Sarasota, Florida. In the back of my mind at that time and in our minds and even on our vision board, we’ve always wanted a farm. I’m on a run one day and Travis sends me a text message with this beautiful yellow house and a big red barn farm in Sarasota, Florida, after we’ve been traveling now for 6 or 7 months just from city to city.

Three years total, but 6 or 7 months with no concrete home or anything. I’m like, “Yes. Do it. Buy it. Let’s go for anything, but it’s a farm and I have always liked the idea of a farm. That’s number one. I knew and I could own that. I have always liked the idea of a farm. I have never tried living on a farm. I have no context of what it’s like living on the farm. I’ve been to Sarasota, Florida, but not in May.

There was a lot there that I own that I liked the idea of a farm in Sarasota, Florida. Long story short, we go for it and we buy a farm in Sarasota, Florida. We have 2 cows, 18 chickens, 2 goats and an unfinished home within the first three weeks of buying the house. Let me give some context. Our bed was on the floor still. We were doing dishes in our bathroom tub with chickens and goats and cows. This is how the farm we know.

I think it was the yellow house because it was a yellow house and our other 10-acre property was yellow. There’s something with yellow houses that we must like or gravitate towards. It was a 5-acre property. The house needed to be fixed up. We bought it. We put an offer sight unseen and I flew down there. I looked at the house and we moved forward with it. We moved in and that’s when we got two goats and chickens. It wasn’t a farm that we bought.

It was a property of five acres, a barn and all, that we turned into a farm within a matter of a month. We had eighteen chickens, goats and all that. We had the chickens because there were chicks and they lived in our house, but the house was being remodeled, so we had no kitchen. We tore out the floors of the kitchen. We were doing our dishes in the tub with the chickens living in our living room.

It's easy to have a dream and an idea. If you go to the wrong person at the wrong time, you stop before you even get started. Share on X

Yes, with four children under the age of seven in May.

We’re going into the rainy seasons.

Sweaty and swampy.

We did not 100% realize what we were stepping into.

That was a real-life scenario and I knew probably at week 5 or 6, I liked the idea of a farm. I don’t actually want to live on a farm, at least, this farm.

Why?

For all the reasons.

Why did you think you wanted to live on a farm or what was the dream of living on a farm?

One word, Pinterest. If you get on Pinterest and you search farm.

What that it was for you?

Yes.

That’s not what it was for me, but that’s awesome. I don’t think I’ve heard this.

You then get on Instagram. I have a friend who has chickens. She had four of them in her cute little Portland suite and they’re the most adorable little chickens that don’t crap all over everything.

They do.

No, not hers. Not on Instagram. For me, it was a mirage of an idea that looked good, but for me, it’s not real life either. I fell into this, “It will be so nice when,” and, “It will be so beautiful if.” I’m looking on Pinterest and I’m looking at the Instagram pictures. I’m looking at the finished product and I found myself going, “I don’t want to fix this property.” I don’t like being dirty. I don’t like sweating 24/7. I don’t want to feed cows. I don’t want the process and that’s what was interesting to me is I don’t want the process.

I have to own. I like the idea. I like the glamour of the finished product, but I don’t want the process. You then started talking to people, which again, we could have done at the beginning, which will be part of this conversation, which is, I started talking to people in the area who had grown up as farmers. It’s all they knew and they loved the process. They love prancing around their yard. They love feeding chickens. They love the journey. There is no destination for them. I wanted the destination. I wanted Pinterest pictures, which at some level, didn’t make me wrong. It just didn’t make me right. I wasn’t aligned with something because I didn’t want the process.

I honestly had no idea that’s why you wanted a farm. I wanted it more for sustainability. We could be self-sufficient if we needed or wanted to be. We could eat our own meat. We could have our own eggs. After experiencing it for probably 2 to 3 months and in Florida, in general. Florida’s a great place. We love Florida, Sarasota. The beaches are top-notch to visit. We thought maybe, “Let’s try living there,” so we went all in, but living on the farm and as you said, when it’s rainy and you have eighteen chickens, there’s a lot of mud and poop to get to those eggs. What do you have to do to raise those chickens and feed them? Also, the goats didn’t do anything. We got the wrong goats.

The cows don’t do anything for a certain amount of time because we didn’t get milk cows. We got meat cows. It was everything that I don’t want after you step into it like, “This is not the lifestyle that I want.” I don’t want to be putting up fences because half the property, I help put up a fence and that’s not the journey or the process I wanted, the lifestyle and/or the destination. Even when everything started to come into place and we had it, it wasn’t what I wanted long-term. We started talking as a family and as individuals who do we want to be not only now but in the future? That’s when we started to say, “This is not it.”

It was also one of the hardest things to do, especially when you’re already in it. When you’re already committed and when you’ve already said yes to a journey and then you realize this is not necessarily the journey I want to be on. There is that part when you realize, “This is not where I want to be that I think takes a ton of courage. T.D. Jakes says this to his son when his son was like, “Dad, what if I pick the wrong career?” T.D. Jakes says, “Buddy, you’re going to pick the wrong thing until you find the right thing.”

I think it’s the courage in the midst of sometimes choosing the wrong thing, choosing the wrong idea, and getting going. For us, we learn by doing. All of our journeys have been this process of, I would say for you, I don’t think a farm is a no for you. I think the location of the farm was a no for you. Having a few more hands on the farm would’ve been helpful for you. In your defense, I don’t think it was the whole picture was a no. I think part of the picture, which included the location of the farm and the way that the farm is set up would be a big difference for you moving forward.

Dream after you have the information. Share on X

I want property. We’ve had a 10-acre property and this was a 5-acre property. Yes, I like space for a lot of different reasons. For the kids to run around and we can do activities outside and also have some animals, but now having that experience, I would absolutely do it differently to fit into our life with five kids.

What I would say to anybody that is at the threshold of an idea, I think that it is important to simply first ask yourself, “Do I like the idea of this or do I want the process?” If you don’t know what the process entails, go find out or as Travis Gentry would say, “Google it.” Go behind the Pinterest, YouTube or Instagram. Go talk to a farmer. Go talk to people that live in Texas. Go talk to someone who’s been in real estate investing.

Go find someone who is further down the path and don’t just ask them all the beautiful things about it because again, had we asked all of our neighbors about the beautiful things in farming and they would’ve said, “You wake up and you hear the chickens and the cows. You got fresh vegetables and you got meat,” and we’d be like, “That’s awesome.” Ask them what’s the hard in this journey because then they’re going to say, “Swamps, chicken poop and the cows aren’t ready until and alligators.”

You’re like, “Okay. Not so glamorous. I don’t know that I want this process. I don’t know that that’s who I want to be or what I want to do or where I want to invest my time or my money.” I kill all of my plants. I don’t even water them. I barely remember feeding my kids a good breakfast, let alone my chickens and all of those things. I feel like if you are at the starting line of, “Do I like the idea or do I actually want the journey? Is it only about the destination or is it about who I’m going to become along the way?” I think that’s question number one.

What you said is spot on as far as you can go gather the information. You can go rent a farm. You can go on VRBO or Airbnb to see, “Is this something I would want to do and where I want to put my time? I would say the second thing that we are big believers in with that dream after you have that information and we had it to a certain extent. We knew a certain level of what we were going to need to do and what it was going to look like, but to go do it. I don’t look at that experience as a failure. I look at it as, “Now we have real-life information and when we do it again, we’re going to set it up totally different.”

We’re not going to remodel the house when we live in the house. We’re not going to live in Florida because we want the mountains. We want lakes. We want things that bring our souls alive. We want animals, but we’re going to do it differently on the animals that we choose. There are two things that I want to make very clear. One, put in the work to do the due diligence. You can YouTube it and then you can go experience it, talk to some people and then do it. Get the information. You may love it and that may be the path or you may say, “This is not what I want, but now I know what I want.”

That’s also important. It is not only identifying what you do want or what sounds good but what you don’t want it’s like the process of elimination a little bit. This has been brilliant for you and my journey because I think you and I are a little bit of the adventures. We’re a little bit of what’s possible. For me, I needed to be able to check that off the list to go, “That isn’t it.” I think that at some level in order to do that well, I think you have to have the tenacity to keep going. At some level, it’s like, number one, ask yourself, “Do I like the idea?”

Number two is to do the research because if you’re not even going to do the research, you don’t want the process. If you don’t want to do the research and then you’re not willing to be tenacious. If you don’t want to do the process, you have to be tenacious enough to go, “This wasn’t the right choice. Florida wasn’t the right choice,” to the point that you move across the country to the place that you know is the right choice. Did it cost us money? Yes. Did it cost us energy? Yes. Did it cost us time? Yes. All of those things, but the tenacity in both of us going, “Now, we’re clear,” is invaluable. I feel that there is a couple of things mentally, emotionally and spiritually that you need to be equipped with and ready with to move through this process well.

If you’re not willing to reach out to someone that has the proof in their life to get some information, the good and the bad and the ugly and/or Google it or YouTube it, I hear so often when I’m talking to someone, “I have this dream or I have this idea. I don’t know where to start.” I’m going to tell you right now to start with Googling. Start with YouTube. You literally can get so much information to see and then you’ve got to be honest with yourself. “I like the idea, but I’m not willing to put in the work.” It’s like working out. “I want to lift X amount of weight, but I’m not willing to start at 5 pounds to get to 200. Be honest with yourself and don’t get started, but then find something that does excite you and that you’re willing to put in the work and go through the process.

I want you to know that my husband tells me all the way down to Malachi to Google it. I give a look at him and go, “Okay,” but here’s why this is incredible right now. It’s a resource that we didn’t have many years ago that the amount of information that you can learn. The ins and the outs, of all the places we’ve gone, the kind of content that’s being put out here is unreal what you can learn in a short amount of time. It does work. I want you to know that all my, “Don’t think. Just do,” does work, but I think that the beauty of this is your ability to be honest with yourself, which is exactly what we’re talking about. There’s no way to develop confidence in yourself if you’re not willing to trust yourself. The only way to trust yourself is by doing the work. Confidence is a trust game. As you start to pursue these ideas, if you’re not real and you’re not honest with yourself, it becomes so much harder as opposed to going, “What do I not know? What do I need to know? Am I willing to put in the work?”

That’s all it is. If it’s a no, great. Let it be a no because then you check that thing off the list and you don’t need to come back around to it because I’m not willing to put in the work and I don’t like the journey. I like the destination. That’s also very freeing to say. I know that you and I have come to each other at certain times and we’ve said, “I want to do this thing,” and you’ll look at me and go, great. “Do you like the idea or do you want the process?” “I like the idea,” of it because the process is hard or I don’t want to do it or I’m not making time for it. I’m making excuses for it. The most liberating thing I can do for myself is to simply go, “I don’t want that journey.”

I forget how you said it. You said something along the lines, as far as like, “It does take courage and boldness to start to go down a path and then change paths because you’ve got the information that you were seeking and you realize that it’s not what you want to do.” However, for the friends and the family around you thinking you’re on this path and you’re doing this and then you take a hard right, it takes courage.

Our friends and family have seen us through this process. “We’re going to go try and experience it.” It may work. It may not, but for most people, it can be so intimidating and so hard from the pressure around in their community. Their community loves them and supports them, but it’s hard when you say, “I’m done.” You’re a quitter or a failure. You could be perceived as so many different things.

You’d mention that and I’m like, “That is what we hear with some people.” I made a commitment. I understand that, but it’s like climbing a mountain and realizing you climb the wrong mountain. You should be on a different mountain. That took all the time, effort and energy to get to the top of this one to recognize and realize that it’s not what you want to do.

I think that it takes intuition too. It takes trusting yourself more than trusting other people. You might have heard that people pleasing is made in fear, not love. For a lot of us, we think that, “I want to do things to make someone feel good around me. It’s built out love because I love people.” No. You actually fear what they think. You fear their rejection. Some of this is also a detaching from the things that we fear and realizing that if I’m doing things for the wrong reason, it’s going to find me out. Part of this process is also going, “Do I like the idea of it to the point that I’m going to impress you or I’m going to accommodate my family?”

It’s this constant decluttering and de-layering of our motives behind it too. I think the sheer motivation behind whether I want to do something or not is a big indicator as to whether I want the idea or the journey. If my motivation is to please you, I’m going to be in trouble because at some point in time, it will never be enough and I will never please everybody. If my motivation is to impress someone or to not be rejected, my motivation will get in the way of my potential. I think that there is a huge piece to this that when you begin this journey, you’re going to have to be okay with the unlearning and the relearning and rethinking as you go.

You may be in a season of what t is called liminal space where you have maybe 2 or 3 different dreams or ideas. Maybe you’re in a transition with your career or you want to start a business or side hustle or whatever it may be and you’re in this space. It’s so hard when someone asks what you’re doing to say that you’re pursuing something, as opposed to saying, “I’m just in this liminal space or I’m looking at a few different options.” What I have experienced talking with people is everyone wants to feel like they’re pursuing something, but that something may not even be the thing that they want to pursue. However, in conversations with people, you feel like you have to be doing this.

We had this example years and years ago. I think it was Christmas or something. We were in this weird, “I don’t know what I want to do and people are going to probably ask us like, ‘What are you up to?’” We’re like, “I want to say this,” but I’m like, “No. We’re going to go into it and say nothing right now.” We’re not going towards something. We’re figuring out and looking at options. It’s embracing that trapeze moment or that liminal space while you’re dreaming because you need to rethink certain things the way you’ve lived and how you’ve thought. It potentially is going to take you on a hard right or down a few different paths.

To give some context to liminal space from a psychology perspective. It basically means the space in between. I’ve let go of one thing, but I haven’t grabbed onto another. I’ve let go of this career, but I couldn’t clarify or completely determine what I’m doing next. It’s the space of the great in between and I think it is a scary territory, especially in this ideation process where we often don’t know what we don’t know.

What Travis and I are suggesting is to get clear with the idea or journey. Get clear with your motivation. Do the research. If you don’t want to do the research, then you don’t want to do it and that is great. That’s okay. I think you need to develop the courage and resiliency to keep going when you don’t know, when you aren’t totally clear, when you have to change directions or when a farm in Florida is not the answer.

People pleasing is made in fear, not love. Share on X

We tell each other and we even tell our kids too. We ask them a question and/or you’re wanting information. I ask you and you say, “I don’t know,” and you do this to me probably more so and you’re like, “If you did know, what would be that next step, that next conversation, the next Google search?” I’m not saying Google’s going to give you all the answers, but it’s going to at least spark a new question so that you can peel back the layers and go down that path.

If you did know, if you find yourself in this process of like, “I have this dream or this thing I want to pursue, but I don’t know what to do next.” What’s one thing you can do? That will open up the next thing. You don’t need to know five steps ahead. You only need to know that one thing. What do you do if you don’t know?

Ask yourself, “What if I did know?” Even our six-year-old will say “That is a mommy-ism.” It works like a charm. She sometimes looks at me like, “You’re cray-cray.” I’m like, “No.” I don’t know is just not an answer.

“I don’t know where my shoes are,” “But if you did know, where could they be? Let’s look at the first place. They’re not there. Look at the second place.” Go down the process of elimination in life.

Our heart for this episode is to give you an opportunity, to be honest with yourself. Be honest with where you are and with your ideas. Be honest with your dreams. Look yourself in the mirror and either owns the fact that you want a farm in Florida and you’re going to do everything in your power to make it happen or you don’t and that is okay too. You don’t want the journey. You don’t want the process. Don’t do it and we’ll figure out what’s next. If it’s not a farm in Florida, we’ll figure out what’s next.

You’re not the only one. If you look at anybody and everybody, there’s something in their life that they’re at this process that we’re talking about, so you are not the only one.

Join us every single week for encouraging episodes that will challenge you and support you in bridging the gap from where you are to where you want to be. We pray that our content gives you a little wind in your sales and provides you with a little bit of encouragement to don’t think, just do.

Dream on.

Dream on.

 

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