Avoid the Most Common Pitfall of Entrepreneurs

Transcript:

Distraction

This is going to be an easy one. Who scored 70% or higher for this distraction? Yeah, this is a natural one for entrepreneurs. It’s about chasing squirrels and getting distracted. 

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For someone who’s usually distracted, their strengths are being spontaneous, creative, engaging, and exciting. However, there are distorted beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors like the idea that freedom is absence of responsibility, being an authority limits their freedom, and the shiny object theory (thinking the next best thing is out there).

I promise you guys there is not anything out there that will make this business easier compared to what you’re already exposed to. We’re putting one foot in front of another. You saw the panel here before. There’s nothing magical about their success.

Dave said it took them a few years to put their basic systems into place. It kind of takes that. You said on Facebook before, “Okay, I took the last nine months and put the buyer's system in place.” I’m sure everyone reads that like, “Nine months, really?” You talked to me about it and asked me if it took this long. I say if you do it right, it does.

Everyone wants to come in an implement every system in three months. They want to scale their business from 70 transactions to 300, all systems installed in less than a year. It’s because we’re just in this mode like everything will happen quickly, but it doesn’t.

Now, for questions we should all consider. Do you get bored easily working on just one thing? My cure for this is to start another company. You get something working really well. Don’t mess with that and let other people in different skill sets, areas, and disciplines run that. Be the visionary or the CEO. Go have a hobby, but let your business be. You’ll screw it up otherwise. This is the way to lead your business.

Do you find it hard to say ‘no” to a new idea? How many people in here went into the year and you were going to try this thing you spent $10,000 or more on? You thought it was a good idea, so you signed up, but all of a sudden you commit to a few thousand a month. It could outweigh the expense if you score one transaction from it. A year commitment, you’re like that was $36,000 and no transactions to show for it. I have never done that ever!

Do you start things and tend to not finish them? Has anyone taken the Kolbe A assessment? It’s really good. I highly recommend. I’m going to make it a part of our hiring. There’s four categories. It claims to measure a part of the brain other assessments miss: the conative, which is your basic MO or how you should up naturally. One of the areas is called quick start.

I’m a high "quick start" - I’m good at the first 5% of a project and if I have any accountability around a major project in my company, it has the tendency not to get done. It’s not because I’m a bad person, smart enough, or determined. I’m really good at that first 5%.

It breaks my heart when people come in. A lot of people that have been through a lot of coaches, and not that is the only coaching situation to ever be involved in, but I think the biggest gift to give all of you is to only do five things at once.

Don’t chase all the things. I see people leave this group and lose the momentum. Anything you do in your business, go deep into. If door-knocking is your thing, go deep into that and get 100 transactions before you start the next thing. Open houses is a big push for us this year. We can sort of haphazardly do it. It will take a full year to get it right, though.

What impact does this have on your team? Your team is exhausted. I’m exhausting to my team. If I had to go there every day, I have a higher awareness about it. Just know these things you come up with, without checks and balance in place.

A structure we have in place now where I don’t have authority to implement new things in my business, which is a good thing. If you don’t have that structure in place, you want to make sure you don’t have free reign on just something happening in your business. You think of it and all of a sudden it’s in place, that’s really dangerous.

Key transformations include to surrender to freedom within responsibility, willingness to manage yourself and others, and the realization of the importance of the inner manager. The inner manager is responsible for tempering and shielding the entrepreneur from the rest of your business.