You Grow by Becoming More of Who You Already Are

Picture this. Your income has fallen off a cliff. You just moved in with your significant other, so your expenses are higher than they have ever been. The business you bet everything on is barely breathing. Then a friend pulls out a laptop and shows you all the AI tools, the custom code, the automations he has been quietly building. And you, the person the whole internet knows as the AI guy, feel your stomach drop.

That is exactly where John Mendez found himself heading into the final stretch of 2025. And I want to be clear about who John is, because context matters here. He was the very first interview I ever recorded for Surviving the Side Hustle, back on May 16th of 2023. He came back for the 100th episode. And now he has returned a third time, which tells you a lot about the kind of person he is. I walk through the full conversation with him in the full episode, and honestly, it is one of the more honest conversations we have had on the show.

The numbers that kept the lights on but not much else

Here is the arc in broad strokes. In 2023, John went all in. He had a massive launch that cleared $33,000, quit his job off the back of it, and hit the ground running teaching people about AI. 2024 was his first full year as a business owner, and in his own words, he got beat to death. 2025 started flat, landing around $50,000 for the year, which kept things running but did not feel like progress. Then the last quarter hit hard. Income dropped. Expenses went up because he and his girlfriend had moved in together. He had already stopped working with his business coaches because money was getting tight.

So from the outside, you still see the AI educator, still posting, still grinding. On the inside, he is trying to figure out what comes next.

The real struggle was not money

The financial pressure was real, no question. But the deeper thing John was working through was identity. And I think this is where a lot of capable service providers get stuck without ever naming it.

When you build your whole brand around one lane, and then you start to realize that lane no longer fits you, or maybe it never fully did, that is a disorienting place to stand. John was honest about the fact that he was never truly passionate about AI itself. He loved the teaching side of everything. But waking up fired up about the topic of AI just was not cutting it anymore.

He was managing that quiet internal conflict while also carrying real money pressure and the weight of a relationship he did not want to let down. He even took a shot at a client, built a pitch around a percentage of revenue model, put his credibility on the line, and still lost the deal to someone with more proof behind them. That one stung.

But here is what I noticed. Each one of those low moments pushed him one step closer to what he is doing now. And that is not an accident.

The pivot that was not really a pivot

John stopped trying to become the best version of someone he was not. And he started leaning hard into what he already knew and already loved, which was digital marketing, funnels, and webinars. The whole system behind moving someone from cold to client.

Here is the thing. He had been using all of that to grow his AI business for years. He just never thought of it as something he could actually sell. The moment he packaged it up and ran a five-day webinar challenge, people showed up. Then a client signed. Then another. Then another, all within a few weeks.

This is not luck. This is what happens when you stop fighting your own wiring and start running with it.

He even built a real framework around it. His five Ps of a successful webinar: a good pitch, a good presentation, a good pipeline, good promotions, and then a bonus P he calls a lifelong pursuit, being a good presenter. Frameworks like that do not come from people who are half interested in what they do. They come from people who are genuinely in it.

Where this lands inside the Prime Performance Process

This story sits squarely inside the Optimization principle. And I want to be careful about how I frame this, because optimization is not about turning your weaknesses into strengths. That is a different conversation.

Optimization is about being clear-eyed enough to identify what is actually working inside of you, and then building your whole operation around that thing. A lot of people spend years in the wrong lane because they got good at something, or because someone else needed them to be good at something, and they just kept going. The lane became the identity, and the identity became the trap.

John had to get honest with himself first. And that kind of honesty is only possible once you can actually see the truth of the situation. Self-awareness is the first move. The pivot, the new offer, the new clients, all of it came after that.

Optimization is not a spreadsheet exercise. It is a decision you make about where your energy actually deserves to go.

The one thing to carry with you this week

You do not grow by becoming someone you are not. You grow by becoming a more focused version of who you already are.

So think about that this week. Where are you running someone else's race? What have you gotten good at that you were never really fired up about? And what do you already know and already love that you have never thought to package up and sell?

Pay attention to what works for you. That is always where the answer is.

If you want to hear the full conversation and get into all the details of John's story, go catch the full episode at survivingthesidehustle.com. And if you know someone who is in the middle of a tough pivot right now, share this with them. A pivot is not a failure. Sometimes it is the most strategic move you can make.