Effort Equals Success: Business Insights for Entrepreneurs

Business brain, episode 453 for Wednesday, May 31, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business brain, the show where we take our business brains and apply them as a filter to all kinds of things in our lives to help get us new perspective and really to help us make it a little bit easier for each one of us to lead that charmed life. Sponsors for this episode which will also help you lead your charmed life include checker.com businessbrain that's C E H-E-C-K R.com businessbrain. Fast, comprehensive background checks. And you can save 40 bucks on your first one at that URL. And then found.com brain, which is business banking that tracks your expenses, helps you find, find write offs, tracks your income, all kinds of cool stuff. We'll talk more in depth about both of those in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

Hey. And out here in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Gene. How's it going, man?

You know, I grabbed a seltzer to have while I, you know, while we do the show because I like to remain hydrated. It's either tea, yes, you know, seltzer, whatever. And first of all, seltzer is probably a bad idea because it's carbonated and it messes with me, but I'm fairly used to it. But, like, the side of this can is covered in, like, something sticky. And so I opened it up while the theme music was playing, and it's like, now I've got to do the show that way, but it's totally fine because, you know what, man? I'm a hustler and I put in the effort.

Yes.

I get it done no matter what.

Yeah, that's. That, that's critically important. We mentioned this last week. We're talking about effort and whether or not, you know, you're born with this concept that of, of always hustling and always, you know, really doing your best and above and beyond. Or is it something that can be taught nature, Nurture.

I think it's nurture 100% for me. I don't. I mean, yeah, get me wrong. My, my parents both, like, they weren't slackers, right? Like, you know, they, they had careers and my dad was always like, he had a good work ethic and it was just always just, you just do your best, you get it done and, and then you, you know, you take responsibility for the things that you do and the things that you don't do. And. But I, like, I So I can't really say, like it's impossible for any one of us to, to know that it was either nature or nurture. But I don't know, I think I, the things that drive me to get stuff done are things I can think of like external factors. I feel like. So that's what makes me think it's, it's like nurture.

Nurture.

Yeah.

I think that I always think about it in related to my kids and I'm like, okay, how did they, are they doing this? Or they understand you got to hustle this kind of thing. And I think they've gotten it over like by osmosis, over decades of just watching my wife and I, you know, work, manage, you know, various businesses, hustling at night so they could pay for their school, all these different kinds of things. But then I think, okay, let's say you hire somebody that didn't have that benefit of being in growing up in an environment that has shown you what needs to be done. But, but maybe I'm, I'm, I'm also narrow casting it too, too much. What if you grew up in the opposite where you saw how life wasn't that great for your parents or something because maybe they didn't have the education or didn't put the effort, didn't hustle. So perhaps that motivates you, right? Which work. Because so often you see people that come from very affluent lifestyles that don't. It has the opposite effect.

They just think, ah, everything, the money will always be there. Right?

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

So yeah, yeah, no, I, I think it's nurtured back and forth. Right? Yeah. Because I'm thinking about somebody that, that, that I know they're about 20 now and they did not grow up with the influence of parents who, who did anything. Like there was almost nothing happening. And they took this as like, well, wait a minute, if I want to break this cycle, it's a hundred percent on me to make it happen. And they made sure they got good grades in school because they knew they needed to get accepted into, you know, the schools of the caliber that would provide all the need based aid that they would require because they were, there was zero money for college coming from the parents, you know, and so they, they looked at the path and was like, I need out. Like, you know, they painted the picture of the story they wanted to tell and then figured out how to get there. And they're on their path. I mean they haven't grad, they're 20, they haven't graduated from college yet. But they've done all the other things, like they got into the school that paid for their way and they are kicking butt at school and figuring out their summer jobs and their, all their stuff because like their internships, all that stuff because like that's their ticket and without that there's nobody's going to pave the way for them.

So yeah, you know, yeah, it's interesting looking at both sides of it and the question I have that I'd love to dig into more of is can you, you know, effectively bottle that up and implement it into your work culture or, you know, you've got this limited time to connect with people that, you know, you work for you. How can we use our business brains to instill that love of, you know, or whatever it is to effort to make you hustle all the time?

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It's a human thing.

Yeah, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mentioned too, we're talking before the show about this topic and a really good friend of mine, very successful. And when I mentioned this, what I often see, lack of effort and, you know, unwillingness to give up time and hustle. Really unwilling to pay the price to get where you want to be. His comment is always, you know, we need. If everybody did it, it would be much more competitive and tougher for us to be successful. And I thought, yeah, yeah, that's. That's kind of an ugly part of humanity, right or at least capitalism.

Yeah. And I think that's kind of the, the angle that I come at this with is like, okay, well, that person and I, you know, I do often think of specific people, which is like, perhaps the bad part of this.

Of course, all of us do.

I know, but, but in those moments, they really aren't. It's not necessarily about that person. They're just playing the avatar for sort of the, the people who wouldn't put in the effort. Because I, I agree with your friend, and I often have said this, like, if you're willing to put in the effort, you're doing more than 98% of the people out there. And that makes it easier for us. People ask, what's the secret? Ask, what's the, you know, or, or as I've said on the show, somebody brings you an idea and asks you to sprinkle your magic fairy dust on it. What is your magic fairy dust, you ask? It is effort. It is implementation. It's action.

Right. Consistency.

It's consistency. It's bullheaded persistence. So, yeah, it, like, it's, it's all the same. But.

Yes, but. Okay, so let, let's break it down for my, My main question is, can we instill this into, you know, our team, people that work for us, even our business partners, if, you know, they need it, can you bottle it up and, you know, ways to do it? And I think that for me, one of the best ways that I found to do it is when you hire somebody is the, that conversation needs to be just baked in from day one, from even the interview about here's opportunity. Look, here's a, Here's a career path for you here, here's how you achieve these things. My expectation isn't that you're going to stay in this role, but just something that, like, from my background with technicians, we always had, okay, you're being hired as technician level. Okay, level one. And here's how you make it to level two. And here's, here's how typically how long that should take you. And, you know, here's how you get to three. Here's how you become a supervisor. And I think having that conversation that from day one, that there's this upward movement, not only is it available, but it's expected. Yes, it's expected. And it's. If you don't, you know, we're not going to penalize you per se. I guess we are, because other people are going to take advantage of that opportunity and hustle and get ahead. And whether that's their like moving from level one to level two required you to study on your own, take some certification courses that we would pay for, reimburse you for, but you know, that's on you. So when it comes time to the review, instead of the way I look at it is you can go into review as an employee and ask for a raise or, or you can raise yourself up and show that look at these things, I have progressed and so.

I'm worth more today than I was the day you hired me and set my current salary. So therefore it should be higher. Yeah, that's right.

And so if you've given them this, this framework and this roadmap of opportunity and expectation, it goes both ways. You can either say you're not, you're right, we're doing this, you've achieved these things or you say, well I actually, you know, these were on the table for you, but you didn't get these.

Done, you didn't do them. Yeah, that's interesting. I, I probably should do that or at least I should adapt that to my business or I want to adapt that to my business to take the word should out of it because it's often a bad word. What I do though, or what I have done thus far is I tell people, hey, look, here's the job, right? And it's up to you to get it done. If you need help with something or you're hitting a wall, ask. And of course, maybe not. Of course I work close, more closely with people when they start than I do say at the six month mark or the one year mark. Like there's the expectation that you're going to be self motivated, you're going to get your job done. But what I do tell people, and it's true, is that A, I can be a terrible micromanager and B, I don't like micromanaging you because if I am, it means I'm not doing the things I need or want to do to either keep the business going or keep the business growing or both. Right. And, and so I tell them it is up to both of us to make sure I don't become a micromanager of you. And if either one of us notices me micromanaging you, that's a problem, that's a symptom of a larger problem. And for whatever reason that maybe plus just the sort of the culture and the environment of yeah, we show up and we get our stuff done every day, I think kind of gets it like. But you do have to lead by example at Some level. For sure. For sure. Right. Because otherwise. But that's the same thing we do with our kids is of course they have a longer example period. Right. Because they grow up with it. But, but it's that same thing of like, yeah, I'm not going to show up and just sit in my office and, you know, drink and sleep all day. I'm going to, I'm going to show up and like, hit the ground running and I'm probably going to be here before you and after you, and that's okay.

Maybe I have different thoughts on that, that, on that part of it, but I think it's also important to point out, like you, your kind of background has been more managing creatives. Right. Which I think is. Is you have to have a different rubric.

That's fair.

Mine is, you know, mine are technicians, engineers, you know, this salespeople. And their motivation's very different, I think. And so, and some people really thrive on laying out that, that roadmap. But you better follow through is, is.

One of the, that's really it. It's the follow through, I will say. Yep.

Yeah. If you, if they go through the effort and you don't, you know, do your part, whether that's more money, more responsibility and a lot of it, I would, I would caution you not to always tie it to more money because a lot of it has to do.

That cost you a lot in the end. Yeah.

And it doesn't always. That's not the thing that, that after a certain level that keeps people going. A lot of it is recognition, collaboration, more opportunities to create a fulfilling career for themselves and that kind of thing. So don't just always tie it to a cash thing. Of course, that could be it for certain levels of employees, but I always used it to just some kind of measurement because otherwise it's very subjective. And I guarantee you the employee has a very different, different subjective outlook on it than you do or their supervisor does. Right. Yeah.

You can't, you can't just leave it up to them to decide it. There needs to be some external litmus test. And at least here with, for the most part with the people I've managed that, that litmus test of. Am I feeling the need to micromanage you? Because if I am, then let's look into why that is. I, you know, it's like, like in and of itself, that's my problem. But there's a reason it happened here. And so let's look.

It's a good way to do it, especially if you're starting off to tell them, oh, if we see this happening, we need to stop and talk about it.

Yeah. We need to figure out why. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Why it's going. So I, I would love to hear, you know, techniques and tricks that you've used to have. Have you been able to bottle up this, you know, motivational, high output effort and teach it to your employees? FeedbackUsBrain Show Share it with us so we can share it with our listeners and get entered to win a MacBook Air this year. We would love to hear from you.

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