Small-business leaders often play not to lose instead of playing to win. The speaker uses clips from The Last Dance and sports examples to show how a win-oriented mindset drives growth, while defensive thinking limits it. He argues winning requires sacrifices and calculated risks, and that leading yourself first is essential to leading your organization to victory.
My favorite documentary is The Last Dance. It's a story of the 1998 Chicago Bulls in the final championship, number 6 of 6 for Michael Jordan. My favorite episode is episode 7. I believe there's 10 episodes in that documentary, and my favorite clip is the last 3 minutes from The Last Dance episode. So what I want to do, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll be able to see it. But if you're listening to this on a podcast, you'll be able to hear the audio of this last 3 minutes from Last Dance, episode 7. And then we're going to talk about what it means for us as small business owners in wanting to win and also potentially hating to lose. Some people take ice baths. Some people work out in the morning. I just watch that 3-minute episode every morning to get me fired up. Obviously, I'm being facetious. It's one of the best really scenes of anything that I've ever personally watched because there's so much in that that personally relates to me and is honestly motivating and inspiring. But I'm going to pull out a couple of things. Number one, he talks about that leadership and winning has a price. It has a price. Winning has a price and leadership has a price. And if you want to grow your business to $2 million, you want to grow your business to $3 million. There are certain sacrifices. Business is hard and it gets harder. The bigger that you want to get, the more people you want to add on to the team, the more challenging that it becomes, but it's still worth it. It's still worth it. The other thing is he talked about that in that episode that I wanted to win and I wanted them to be a part of that as well. What a great example for us as small business owners. Now, look, I don't think that business and sports are direct parallels. In fact, I often think that sometimes sports gets over-paralleled with business, but in that case, it's absolutely the case. I want to win. We want our bit— we want our clients and Blueprint to win. As a matter of fact, that is our mission, is to help small business owners win. Now we go on to share some other things about what we think that winning looks like, but we also recognize that other people have their own definitions of success. We want to help other people to be able to win. We want to win, and I want to win across all the businesses that I touch and I'm a part of, whether they're clients or businesses that I'm a part of myself. And that mentality has changed. I used to— would have been able to tell you just a handful of years ago that I hate to lose. The problem with that mindset is it puts you in a defensive mode instead of leaning forward. And so now I've changed everything about the way that I approach things in a mindset that— listen, you do what you, what you feel motivates you, but for me, going about it to say, what does it look like for us to win, is a different disposition then what does it look like for us not to lose? And that clip to me is, is a part of that. It has been, uh, something that about 3 years ago that I could begin to change. But even the last couple years, in the last 6 months, has been all about let's go win, let's take the calculated risk, let's make the bet, let's bet on myself, let's bet on the team. Let's go ahead and try to win the game. How often— I was watching a varsity basketball game recently, uh, two very good teams playing, ranked teams in the state of Alabama, and it was very clear one team was playing to win and the other team was playing not to lose. At the time this recording, we don't have the Super Bowl yet. But it's about to drop. In fact, I think it's gonna drop within a couple days of this episode dropping. You know when the teams are playing not to lose. The Falcons against the Patriots a few years ago. The Patriots came back in the second half, led by Tom Brady, I think down 28 to 3, and they played to win the game. And the Falcons, everything they do that did their body language, probably the way they spoke to each other, et cetera, was all about not losing the game. Hey, we got up 28-3, let's not lose. I've talked about this also from my time of playing collegiate golf. I get it to 1, 2 under par. Hey, let's get this thing in the house. Instead of the mindset of what does it take to go to 3 under par, 4 under par, 5 under par, whatever your analogy is, the Super Bowl, golf, NBA basketball with Michael Jordan, there is a difference and playing to win instead of playing to lose. And that mindset shift has changed in me tremendously. I no longer fear losing. I want to win, and I want to help other people to be able to win as well. Now, I often don't do very many motivational, inspirational things. We, we try to stay very hard skill on this podcast and our YouTube channel, and it's certainly in our programs. What are tools and frameworks and concepts and mental models? But there's also something at play here, which is your mindset. How do you show up as the leader of your organization? What are the things that you need to do to take care of you so that you can lead yourself first? Do you have a personal leadership plan for you? So that you can change and shift your mindset to be able to lead your organization to go win instead of not to lose. At the end of this, coming up, uh, end of February, February the 24th, I believe it is, we're having a personal leadership track, Lead Yourself First workshop. You've got a plan for the business. Do you have a plan to lead yourself? Do you have a personal leadership plan, whether it's around mindset or habits or routines, we're going to be talking about that on Tuesday, February 24th. Go to blueprintos.com/assets, blueprintos.com/assets. You can register for free to come to my February workshop where we'll talk about your mindset, your habits and routines so you can have a plan to also lead yourself first, so you can be a better leader, so you can help your organization go and win. Hope this was inspiring to you. If you've not watched The Last Dance, please watch it. I've watched it probably 20 times at this point. Hope this served you. See you at the workshop in a couple weeks. Till next time, lead well and go be great and go win. See ya.
