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Are you kidding yourself? Do you really want to grow your business?

biophase

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I'm posting this under a rant because this is something I've been trying to tell my friends all summer. I'm going to throw a few under the bus, but not by name (but you know who you are), but I feel like it's an important topic for everyone to be aware of.

So this summer, I had a little mastermind session where I had about 5-6 entrepreneurial friends who weren't happy with their current situation come and stay for up to 14 days at my house. Now, in my opinion, this was a great opportunity to really brainstorm ideas with others and really set up a direction to go.

So this is what happened...

Nobody stayed for 14 days. Some arrived a few days late, some left early. To me, it already told me that they really weren't motivated. Not to sound conceited but, seriously, how many of you here would have paid big bucks to live with me and learn business for 14 days?

On the days that they were here... they worked very hard IN their current business. Meaning that they spend most of the day doing the same tedious work that they've been doing all along. They were answering emails and doing menial business tasks when they should have been thinking of new strategies and ways to improve their business. It's like going to a weekend conference and not attending the seminars because you had to return voicemails. So this left us with no time to brainstorm. We ended up having brainstorming sessions on only 2 or 3 nights.

So when they left, nobody in the group had any new ideas or new direction. It's as if they came and the 14 days was a small blip in their normal everyday life.

But to me what is really interesting is that after they left my house, they continued to vacation all summer. Based on the Instagram and Facebook feeds, they are all still on vacation and it is September! So to them, I ask, do they REALLY want it?

They tell me that they aren't happy with where they are. But their actions are telling me that leisure and fun are their priorities. This whole summer they haven't done anything that tells me that they really want to change anything. So come December, when they aren't where they want to be, there's nobody to blame.

I write this as a rant towards them, but I'm also asking you to think about your actions. Do they match what you say?

On a side note, one of my clients launched on Amazon and it's not going well. I tell him to take better photographs, build his IG or Facebook. Week after week, no new photos, his last IG post was in March. All he's doing is playing with PPC and doing giveaways. Finally I just had to tell him that he hasn't done crap. You can't launch and just play with PPC. He's had his own product for 3 months and has no photos of it in use on IG or even his Amazon listing. He still has no FB page. So what's he been doing? Does he really want this?
 
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steelandchrome

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Hey, I'm happy to be your next case study if you want a new mentee ;) I keep hoping the old coaching program would come back at some point in some way shape or form. Until then yes speaking for I am sure many others on this forum just the knowledge and advice in your AMA is worth the INSIDERS price and a thread more should follow and I thank you for doing it tremendously! @walterhay has also been awesome and I probably should reread his importing book from a few years ago.
 

MJ DeMarco

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Whew! Now I'm glad I couldn't make it this summer! I avoided the scrutinizing eye of the Big K!
 

biophase

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Whew! Now I'm glad I couldn't make it this summer! I avoided the scrutinizing eye of the Big K!

You were the big attraction. I promised them all MJ and then I had to refund their $15,000 payments.
 
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Martin Galli

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What a waste!
I've been to several brainstorming sessions, not as long as 14 days but for a day or two, and in that small period of time I could reach out little new solutions.

I can't imagine what can be achieved in 14 days...
 

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On the days that they were here... they worked very hard IN their current business.

I could be totally off base here, but the second I read this I immediately wondered if they were worried about appearances and didn't consider that the actions they associated with hard working and the actions they associated with being lazy were accidentally reversed in this scenario.

If this was the case, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were actually doing far more work in your house than they normally ever do on their own, simply because they wanted to appear hard working, busy, and ambitious in front of someone fare more successful than them.

Perhaps they thought that the idea of sitting around and shooting the shit and talking shop could be seen as "having a vacation" when they really wanted to appear like they were "there to work" or "prove their worth".

Again - I could be totally off base. But this is immediately what I thought about when I picture a group of entrepreneurs sitting around doing busy work in the presence of someone they respect. They did what they thought would be seen as positive, never considering that taking a step back to do what appears "lazy" was precisely the best use of their time in that moment.
 

TonyStark

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It’s crazy how people don’t realize that they’re stuck thinking small, reinforcing their small beliefs by performing these menial tasks day in and day out.

One needs to take time out every week to launch new initiatives, take new direction, and practice thinking bigger.

Only then can you escape the rut you’ve put yourself into.
 
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AllenCrawley

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Sounds different from our Vegas entrepreneur retreat.

Whew! Now I'm glad I couldn't make it this summer! I avoided the scrutinizing eye of the Big K!
Lol. Same here!
 

AllenCrawley

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Most of us don’t spend nearly enough time thinking through our business strategies. We are caught up in being an Operator vs being an Owner. Truth is we shouldn’t be waiting for entrepreneur retreats to work through strategies and brainstorming. (But when those types of opportunities present themselves we should take full advantage of it!) We should be spending 2-3 times a week thinking about high level business stuff. Not the tactical stuff.

I’m on the second reading of The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham. It’s one of those books I will forever reference back to as a book that positively changed the course of our business. I highly recommend this book to anyone already with an established business.
 
Last edited:

MJ DeMarco

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Im on the second reading of The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham. It one of those books I will forever reference back to as a book that positively changed the course of our business. I highly recommend this book to anyone already with an established business.

Thanks! Just found my next audiobook!
ruth is we shouldn’t be waiting for entrepreneur retreats to work through strategies and brainstorming.

How did that sampling card idea work out for you? Was it something doable? Or did further investigation exclude it as a strategy?
 
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Andy Black

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AllenCrawley

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Thanks! Just found my next audiobook!


How did that sampling card idea work out for you? Was it something doable? Or did further investigation exclude it as a strategy?
You’ll love this book.

We’ve received a bunch of samples and have requested quotes. It seems very doable. So many options nowadays it’s very impressive what can be done now.
 

MJ DeMarco

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We’ve received a bunch of samples and have requested quotes. It seems very doable. So many options nowadays it’s very impressive what can be done now.

Awesome, I have a feeling that strategy is going to be another quantum leap for your biz.
 
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biophase

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I could be totally off base here, but the second I read this I immediately wondered if they were worried about appearances and didn't consider that the actions they associated with hard working and the actions they associated with being lazy were accidentally reversed in this scenario.

If this was the case, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them were actually doing far more work in your house than they normally ever do on their own, simply because they wanted to appear hard working, busy, and ambitious in front of someone fare more successful than them.

Perhaps they thought that the idea of sitting around and shooting the shit and talking shop could be seen as "having a vacation" when they really wanted to appear like they were "there to work" or "prove their worth".

Again - I could be totally off base. But this is immediately what I thought about when I picture a group of entrepreneurs sitting around doing busy work in the presence of someone they respect. They did what they thought would be seen as positive, never considering that taking a step back to do what appears "lazy" was precisely the best use of their time in that moment.

Actually, I learned alot about how different me and others work. One blaring difference was the amount of time spent on "other" activities. Now I don't know which is right or wrong, but lifestyles definitely skew the available time that each person has during each day.

I intermittent fast, so I don't eat a breakfast. I also don't drink coffee and I'm not that picky about my food. I usually get Ubereats or just put in a microwave meal for lunch. So my day usually looks like this. I wake up, get a cup of water, go straight to my computer at around 8-9am. I sit there and work until 12, pop in a microwave meal, work through lunch. Some days I would go on a one hour bike ride from 9am-10am. But usually by 1pm, I've gotten 4-5 hours of work done.

Some of my friends, would stay up late, wake up late, say 9-10am. Then they would need coffee or breakfast. By the time they sat down at their computer it would be 11am-12pm. So I'm sitting there and I've gotten 3-4 hours of work done, before they've even started! So imagine this skew over the course of one month. If I'm competing against my friends in the same space, I've probably put in an extra 100 hours of work into my business vs. them. It's no wonder that I can run 3 businesses to their 1 business.

Again, I'm not saying this is better. But it definitely opened up my eyes, because they always tell me that they have no time to do anything else and here I am going biking every day in the afternoon while running 3 businesses.

Right now as I type this it's 8:43am and I've been up since 7am sitting at my computer. By noon, I would have 5 hours of work done. I can spend my whole afternoon hiking or doing whatever.

I learned during this time, how much time cooking, cleaning and enjoying food takes away from working. I'm not saying it's bad to like food, I'm just lucky that I don't care about it that much and that I can't cook. When at home in Arizona I'm 100% Ubereats and Doordash for every dinner.

But here's my main issue with the 14 days. I'm a very single goal oriented person, so if I'm going somewhere to accomplish one goal, that's all that I do during that time. We had set a goal of coming up with a new business for each person during that 14 days. So I would have been 100% concentrating on that goal. Let your current business suffer a little bit during that time, and do what you came to do. Just think of where they would be today if they had accomplished that goal in June!
 

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I have to ask: how clearly did you communicate your expectations? Did you have a daily schedule, with a set time for mastermind sessions? Did you make it clear that attending all 14 days was essential?

It's possible that you didn't communicate as clearly as you think you did. I used to manage volunteers. When they didn't do what they were supposed to, it was often because I didn't properly convey what that was!
 
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biophase

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Most of us don’t spend nearly enough time thinking through our business strategies. We are caught up in being an Operator vs being an Owner. Truth is we shouldn’t be waiting for entrepreneur retreats to work through strategies and brainstorming. (But when those types of opportunities present themselves we should take full advantage of it!) We should be spending 2-3 times a week thinking about high level business stuff. Not the tactical stuff.

I’m on the second reading of The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham. It’s one of those books I will forever reference back to as a book that positively changed the course of our business. I highly recommend this book to anyone already with an established business.

I go out for a 1-2 hour mountain bike ride and during this ride, I'm listening to podcasts or thinking about strategy. I usually come back with 1-2 ideas which you probably hear about in Slack. lol

I'm also reading that book now, thanks for the recommendation! I'm at the beginning, but one of the first questions he asks is something like, "how much money would you have if you could take back all the stupid decisions that you made in the past 10 years?" Think about that, and think about why you made those decision when you did.
 

biophase

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I have to ask: how clearly did you communicate your expectations? Did you have a daily schedule, with a set time for mastermind sessions? Did you make it clear that attending all 14 days was essential?

It's possible that you didn't communicate as clearly as you think you did. I used to manage volunteers. When they didn't do what they were supposed to, it was often because I didn't properly convey what that was!

No, it was informal. Remember, these are my friends that I've known for a while. It was more like, you should come to my house, so and so will be there, we will come up with a new business by this day. They didn't have to come at all, or stay all 14 days. What I'm saying is that not coming all 14 days does say a little about your priorities. But again, I learned alot about myself because I would have be all in. I don't expect them to be like me.

After they left, I was a little disappointed. But what's disappointing me more is following them on IG and that they are still on vacation. And this isn't the same as me seeing @MJ DeMarco on vacation, because hasn't been complaining about his financial situation for the past year!
 

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No offense, but I think you may have set yourself up for failure. You told them they didn't have to stay the whole time, so of course they didn't. You didn't tell them how you expected them to spend their time, so of course they did their regular business tasks. Just because they misunderstood you doesn't mean they're not "all in."

You wouldn't run a business the way you ran that retreat. You don't set a goal and say, "We'll achieve this in 14 days," without making a plan.

Anyway, take this with a grain of salt: I'm just a stranger on the internet, and I wasn't there. I'm just responding to what I've read.
 
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@biophase really good rant. it is EXTREMELY frustrating when you give someone an opportunity and they do not take advantage.

then we have to remember that not everyone sees things the same way. all we can do is help those that want to be helped.

call them out directly and see what they have to say. that is what we do in some of the mastermind groups i am in. maybe they didn't even SEE the opportunity. next time they will if you help them see what they missed.
 
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DeletedUser0287

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No, it was informal. Remember, these are my friends that I've known for a while. It was more like, you should come to my house, so and so will be there, we will come up with a new business by this day. They didn't have to come at all, or stay all 14 days. What I'm saying is that not coming all 14 days does say a little about your priorities. But again, I learned alot about myself because I would have be all in. I don't expect them to be like me.

After they left, I was a little disappointed. But what's disappointing me more is following them on IG and that they are still on vacation. And this isn't the same as me seeing @MJ DeMarco on vacation, because hasn't been complaining about his financial situation for the past year!

Maybe they didn’t think it was worth their time to stay full 14 days? Maybe they only needed a couple days to see what it was about and got enough value already? The knowledge that your provided, how can you be sure it would be guaranteed success for your friends or actually valuable?

How long ago was this sent? Did all your friends take PTO off work for this?

For the vacation thing on IG, my friend is the same way. He would say he got stressed at work, and spontaneously books a trip this weekend across the state. Yet he complains about his financial situation all the time. This is a normal thing I have realized he is doing. I’m mean if you gonna take a vacation, at least plan months ahead to save more than 1/2 price.
 

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By the way @biophase ... I think I may adopt your routine. I've been spreading my work out too much and sleeping in too late. I can easily solve the sleep issue by going to bed around 9 or 10. And getting to work straightaway should be pretty easy, too.

Do you keep your phone on in the morning, or keep it off? I have found that if I wait to turn my phone on until late morning/afternoon, I feel less stressed and get more done.
 
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@biophase I'm keen to here about the things you do to grow your business.

You know, the 20% that actually moves the needle and drives revenue/increases profits.

Do you spend a lot of time continually working on PPC? Or looking for new products?

I'm trying to leave my team to do the day-to-day order processing and product adding etc. but I often struggle with the high level stuff I "should" be doing and often find myself either un-productive or doing "stuff".
 

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Actually, I learned alot about how different me and others work. One blaring difference was the amount of time spent on "other" activities. Now I don't know which is right or wrong, but lifestyles definitely skew the available time that each person has during each day.

I intermittent fast, so I don't eat a breakfast. I also don't drink coffee and I'm not that picky about my food. I usually get Ubereats or just put in a microwave meal for lunch. So my day usually looks like this. I wake up, get a cup of water, go straight to my computer at around 8-9am. I sit there and work until 12, pop in a microwave meal, work through lunch. Some days I would go on a one hour bike ride from 9am-10am. But usually by 1pm, I've gotten 4-5 hours of work done.

Some of my friends, would stay up late, wake up late, say 9-10am. Then they would need coffee or breakfast. By the time they sat down at their computer it would be 11am-12pm. So I'm sitting there and I've gotten 3-4 hours of work done, before they've even started! So imagine this skew over the course of one month. If I'm competing against my friends in the same space, I've probably put in an extra 100 hours of work into my business vs. them. It's no wonder that I can run 3 businesses to their 1 business.

Again, I'm not saying this is better. But it definitely opened up my eyes, because they always tell me that they have no time to do anything else and here I am going biking every day in the afternoon while running 3 businesses.

Right now as I type this it's 8:43am and I've been up since 7am sitting at my computer. By noon, I would have 5 hours of work done. I can spend my whole afternoon hiking or doing whatever.

I learned during this time, how much time cooking, cleaning and enjoying food takes away from working. I'm not saying it's bad to like food, I'm just lucky that I don't care about it that much and that I can't cook. When at home in Arizona I'm 100% Ubereats and Doordash for every dinner.

But here's my main issue with the 14 days. I'm a very single goal-oriented person, so if I'm going somewhere to accomplish one goal, that's all that I do during that time. We had set a goal of coming up with a new business for each person during those 14 days. So I would have been 100% concentrating on that goal. Let your current business suffer a little bit during that time, and do what you came to do. Just think of where they would be today if they had accomplished that goal in June!

I used to be that guy saddling up to the work station at 10 am every day. I also felt pressed for time...

Do you know what changed that? The 75 Hard Challenge.

I committed to completing this challenge that takes a minimum of 2 hours every day. Some of the tasks are not the kind you can save for the end of the day so I have to get started early to avoid having to chug water or exercise right before bed.

The ironic thing is that I'm massively more productive in my business. I wake up at 5:30 every day, read and do other powerlist items, then I'm out the door exercising by 6:30, and to my computer by 7:30. I work 8+ hours then I go do another workout and enjoy my evening with the old lady. I find time in the evening to do some online courses to improve my business skills.

Now that I am "forced" by this challenge to be more efficient, it's unbelievable how much more things I can do in a day. It's funny that it took a time-intensive commitment to make me realize this. Sounds like your friends need to check out 75 Hard if they really want to crush it in business.
 

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14 days seems too long for this kind of stuff. Once you get an idea in the first 2-3 days, you probably want to go back to your base and get onto it right away.
 

Greg R

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@biophase In construction there is something called "critical path" which is what I believe you are doing. You are focused mostly on the critical steps to get the job done. If one of those critical steps is neglected or put off, it does not move the project forward and the goal will not be completed.

Thanks for the RANT. This helped me rethink the way I'm currently working on my biz.
 

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I'm posting this under a rant because this is something I've been trying to tell my friends all summer. I'm going to throw a few under the bus, but not by name (but you know who you are), but I feel like it's an important topic for everyone to be aware of.

So this summer, I had a little mastermind session where I had about 5-6 entrepreneurial friends who weren't happy with their current situation come and stay for up to 14 days at my house. Now, in my opinion, this was a great opportunity to really brainstorm ideas with others and really set up a direction to go.

So this is what happened...

Nobody stayed for 14 days. Some arrived a few days late, some left early. To me, it already told me that they really weren't motivated. Not to sound conceited but, seriously, how many of you here would have paid big bucks to live with me and learn business for 14 days?

On the days that they were here... they worked very hard IN their current business. Meaning that they spend most of the day doing the same tedious work that they've been doing all along. They were answering emails and doing menial business tasks when they should have been thinking of new strategies and ways to improve their business. It's like going to a weekend conference and not attending the seminars because you had to return voicemails. So this left us with no time to brainstorm. We ended up having brainstorming sessions on only 2 or 3 nights.

So when they left, nobody in the group had any new ideas or new direction. It's as if they came and the 14 days was a small blip in their normal everyday life.

But to me what is really interesting is that after they left my house, they continued to vacation all summer. Based on the Instagram and Facebook feeds, they are all still on vacation and it is September! So to them, I ask, do they REALLY want it?

They tell me that they aren't happy with where they are. But their actions are telling me that leisure and fun are their priorities. This whole summer they haven't done anything that tells me that they really want to change anything. So come December, when they aren't where they want to be, there's nobody to blame.

I write this as a rant towards them, but I'm also asking you to think about your actions. Do they match what you say?

On a side note, one of my clients launched on Amazon and it's not going well. I tell him to take better photographs, build his IG or Facebook. Week after week, no new photos, his last IG post was in March. All he's doing is playing with PPC and doing giveaways. Finally I just had to tell him that he hasn't done crap. You can't launch and just play with PPC. He's had his own product for 3 months and has no photos of it in use on IG or even his Amazon listing. He still has no FB page. So what's he been doing? Does he really want this?

People can just be so lazy. You could tell them how to make a million bucks but unless you do it for them they aren’t interested.
 
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Ultimately it is the goal of any entrepreneur to step out of operations and into the CEO seat. Too many of us are playing manager day in and day out and when we are done managing, we feel like we accomplished something while the football still sits at the 50 yard line. I’m often as guilty as anyone, and know it.

The worst offenders also tend to be the same type of people, in my experience, that say they don’t need to grow THAT much bigger and allude to the fact that they are already so busy, they can’t imagine a bigger company.

I’m here to tell you, bigger companies, run right, are less work than this menial task crap so many people end up doing.

Quit spinning wheels. Start moving.

Put another way... I love to play offense in business.

Thank you @biophase for this reminder. Also, @JAJT and @AllenCrawley your posts were great as well.
 
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Rivoli

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Thanks! Just found my next audiobook!


How did that sampling card idea work out for you? Was it something doable? Or did further investigation exclude it as a strategy?

What’s the sampling card idea?
 

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