How To Overcome Mental Hurdles In Business

You wrote on the board, how do I achieve the cash flow fundamentals so that I can reduce anxiety and increase my confidence to become a. What does that say? More grounded and centered person?

I think what I was talking about when I wrote this, I was thinking more of me internally as a person and kind of who I want to be someday. My name is Jason Franciosa. I am the CEO of Element 26, which is a CrossFit year brand. To be honest, when I showed up here, I didn't have expectations set. It was more, this is going to be a really amazing time. I'm going to hang out with some awesome people, and I'm probably going to get a lot of clarity going forward out of this.

To kick off the day, we had everybody put up what their biggest one thing they wanted to take away from the meeting. While you're in this room of other people who are doing cool things, what's the one thing that you're hoping to get?

So.

Things are going really well.

We hit our revenue numbers faster than I was expecting. So we hit Q4, and then we've actually continued growing past Q4, which is insane. So now I'm at this place where I'm trying to figure out, do I continue down the same path that had planned, assuming our revenue is now ahead of schedule, or do I start trying to figure out different paths to go?

You wrote on the board.

How do I achieve the cash flow fundamentals so that I can reduce anxiety and increase my confidence to become a. What does that say? More grounded and centered person?

I think what I was talking about when I wrote this, I was thinking more of me internally as a person and kind of who I want to be someday.

And what we kept bringing up over and over again was the fact that. That actually, if you just relax, then you'll be creative enough to hit the goal that you want, and it will perpetuate. When you reduce anxiety and become a more centered person.

You will build the fundamentals that give you the cash flow.

That allow you to grow.

What's funny is listening to you talk about it, hearing it back, I think the real reason I wrote that was because I don't have any more clients on the side right now. So my cash flow is lower now.

Yes, I understand.

So I think I was. I'm thinking in fear, because how much personal income I have this year is now lower than last year.

So if we don't worry about last year, because it's not last year, is there a problem we're trying to solve right now.

If I don't care about having extra income because I'm gonna make me have to cover all expenses.

That's a big statement.

Just. You just, you are about to really skirt through that. I mean, I'm making enough to live while I'm, you know, living the life of my dreams and have this hot wife and this million dollar business.

But things are good.

I don't have any side, I don't have a side hustle. Right.

So I'm getting defensive.

So I just, I didn't want you to skirt over that because I think.

What you said was exact too. Everything's going really well right now and I'm probably getting afraid to lose it.

We too often have this, the feeling or the situation that we don't want. And so we do something that we also don't want so that we have the fuel to do something that we do want. And in reality, if you are able to relax into your current circumstances and create from a creative place now, you'll get the goal that you want much faster and with less resistance than if you were to go on this detour of doing something that you don't want to do for a while. That leads to more anxiety rather than the opposite. So let's play with a couple different scenarios. If you take on side clients and add an extra hundred K to your personal income.

Managing the clients, does that increase or reduce your anxiety?

Probably.

Reduce it to a certain point, depending on how much additional work.

I didn't ask you about the money. Would working with the clients increase or reduce your anxiety?

Probably.

Increase it because I would want to perform well for that person.

Okay, so let's not attempt to reduce your anxiety by increasing your anxiety.

But what you come to understand with the back room and then the problems that we have once you hit certain levels is the majority of the delay in growth is due to your own personal roadblocks. Because I know how to do the tactics, I don't need another tactic. But what I can't see is my own personal roadblocks. And that's where the back room really comes in. So that I can say, okay, well, someday I want to sell this for 5 million. But a little mindset shift could say, well, this could be a 50 million dollar company and if I just think about things differently, I take different actions which would achieve a $50 million company instead of a $5 million company. So I think that's where the return on investment in the back room is incredible.

And so you've grown into who you want to be a little bit over the last 24 hours, which has allowed you to calm down, because you're not playing the comparison game 24 hours a day while you're alone at a computer. And all of a sudden your question changed.

You can tell me if I'm wrong.

When things are not going well, or when you're still growing, but you're skeptical about it. You have less of a fear of it going away than when things are going really well. So that came out today, which was amazing, because now I can consciously understand what I'm doing and not doing and make sure that I focus on the things to ensure that I continue to grow and not get into a comfort zone or defensive mode.

The end result among all this is just for business builders to be able to more easily be creative and do good work. And the more we do that, the more that we can create really cool ideas and scale them.