A short spoken piece by Chad Silverstein reflecting on the common excuse "it's just business." He argues that such disclaimers rationalize mediocre behavior, whereas high performers adopt a different mindset: they treat work as their life/opus, refuse to use excuses, call out disclaimers in themselves and others, and deliberately adopt mantras that enforce accountability and higher standards.
Chapters
That's a funny thing. It's just business. You do hear people say that a lot. And I think there's lots of reasons, a lot of symptoms going on of why people might say that. It could be people not following certain principles. It could be overlooking something that would have an impact on finances. Could be something about making your life easier by not making a change, because making the change would require you to have to do something or find someone else. There's lots of reasons why people will say it's just business. And a lot of this will come down to your worldview. A lot of this will come down to how you want to basically manage your life, whether it's your business, whether it's your role, your position, your situation in life. And I, I, I love that we call people out in practice for the disclaimers because, you know, we all use them, we all say them, and all it is is an excuse. It's a way to rationalize behavior that is mediocre or normal, and you're giving yourself a pass. But high performers don't do that. Those are the little nuances that they, they change. And they have the huge, you know, accelerators, and it looks as if from the outside like they do so much and they're so different, but they're not. They're not. They just have a different mindset. And they don't use those disclaimers because to them it's, that's, it's not just business. Like, this is my life, this is my opus, and I'm not going to compromise. And you've got to, you got to love something enough to, to feel that. And you've got to make a decision to put the stake in the ground. Otherwise you will default to these disclaimers. And we call them out pretty hardcore and built to lead. When people do it, when they stand up to share and they're just hardwired and you just kind of, you got to mine them up, deal with them and just change the mindset, create the mantra and, and be willing to call yourself out if you hear yourself telling yourself it or you say it out loud.
