How to Fix Your Stress Levels Now | 13 Minutes for Business Success

Hello, Believe Nation! Today I'm going to talk about 7 effective ways to beat stress. And as always, guys, if you hear a point that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below. Put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. And also, writing it down helps you lock it in for yourself too. Enjoy! So being an entrepreneur is one of the most stressful things I think you can do in your life. It's going to be one of the hardest things you will ever do in your life is to start a business. I don't think enough people talk about the difficulties associated with it. There's a reason why 80 to 90% of companies fail, because it's stressful, because it's hard, it sucks. There's a lot that goes into building a company that we just don't talk enough about. And I think entrepreneurs are among the most stressed out people in the world. And listen, we're trying to do big, bold, empowering, exciting things. And so I'm going to share with you 7 ways that I hope will effectively beat the stress for you. Some of them are things you can do immediately, some are things that will work over a longer period of time as well, and I hope you enjoy the video. So way number 1 is ask yourself, does this matter? It's surprising how much of the stuff that we put on our plate every single day doesn't actually matter, and the things that we stress about are are so little and so tiny that in the big picture they don't actually matter. And so when you're in the stressful zone, the hardest thing to do is just step outside and look at yourself. Look at yourself and say, "That thing that I'm worrying about, does it actually matter?" And more often than not, you'll come back with a no. Like, this actually doesn't matter and I'm being stressed out for no reason and it's going to work out in the big picture. So as an example, I have mastermind groups in Toronto and I used to keep meeting minutes, I used to keep notes on what happened in the meetings, and I would email it to everybody after each session. It took me a while to put the notes together, a summary. I thought it was a value-add service, right? Evan keeps preaching add value. I thought this was adding a lot of value to people's lives, and it would stress me out always to take notes as quick as I could and then send it off to people as fast as I could. And there was one time then when I just didn't have the time. I was stressed out, I had too much stuff happening, I didn't have the time to send the notes out to people. And you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing happened. Nobody cared. Nobody wrote to me and said, "Where are the notes? Where are the minutes?" And then the next month I didn't do it again. Nobody cared. I was doing all this work and stressing myself out over something that didn't matter. Nobody actually cared about it. I convinced myself that it was important, but it actually wasn't important. And so thinking about the things that stress you out, how much are they really part of the big your picture, where you see yourself going, does this thing actually really matter? Usually it's no, and just that awareness, just asking that question, can immediately help reduce the stress. Way number 2 to effectively reduce stress is come back to it tomorrow. Sometimes I find that if I'm in the moment and I'm stressed out and I'm angry or agitated and, and, you know, I'm not thinking clearly, sometimes the best thing to do is just to leave it Go to something else and come back to it the next day. And the next day you come back to it and your mind is fresh and you're in a different headspace and it just— the answer comes to you. And so I find that if I'm ever struggling on something, I just— I'm not getting through, I'm not getting an answer, just push it off. Come— it's not like push it off forever unless it's not important, but coming back to it the next day, I find often I come with a solution that comes super fast and I just saved a lot of time because now I wasn't spending hours and hours and hours frustrated trying trying to figure out a problem. Way number 3 to reduce stress is finish it now. Now this may seem counterintuitive and the opposite of what I just talked about of finish it tomorrow. And I think the context really is if you have an answer. So if I'm stressed out but I know what to do, then I will find it easier to get it done right now. If I don't know what to do, if I'm frustrated and stressed because I don't have an answer, then you can leave it for the next day. And so if you have a clear answer, you know what needs to get done, and you're just up against the deadline, just get it done. What I'll find is if, if I know what needs to get done and I'm delaying it and I'm waiting till tomorrow, then I'm spending all that time thinking about it, like, I just need to get this done, I just need to get this. And then you're not enjoying the rest of your day, you're not present in any of your other meetings or at home with your family, you're just always just stressed out thinking about it. So if you have a clear solution, then deal with it immediately If you don't know what to do next, then you can wait. Push it off to tomorrow and come back to it when you have a fresh mind. Way number 4 is model success. One of the things that really helped me in my first business, got me through the most stressful part of my life really, was understanding that I wasn't the first person to try to solve this problem before. You know, when I told my business partner that I quit and I wanted to leave the company, And then hearing me say those words just stressed me out, and I knew the next day that I had to go back and do this. I couldn't quit on this. I had to find a way to keep going, but I had to find a different way to stand. And the realization of hitting rock bottom, the realization that came to me was that somebody else had figured this out before. Whatever thing you're stressed out about right now, whatever problem you're facing that seems insurmountable, that is impossible to overcome, many, many, many people have already figured it out. Many people. It's one of the founding reasons for why I created this YouTube channel, was to share the strategies of successful entrepreneurs. And it's from two angles. One, the strategies, like, what do I do? I'm facing this problem, here's the solution. Every time I watch one of the Top 10 videos or Mentor Me videos or Believe Life videos, I learn something. I learn a new strategy that I can apply to my life or to my business. Even if I've heard it before, sometimes it comes from a different voice, a different angle, and I see it slightly different way that I can apply. The second thing it does though, it also gives you just motivation. Just for me knowing that I'm not the only person in the world who's ever gone through this. You know, seeing other entrepreneurs have hard times and fail and struggle made me feel like this is normal. Like what I'm dealing with is normal. And if they can get through it, I can get through it too. A lot of these people started with less than what you already have right now. You already have more money, more resources, more connections, more opportunities than a lot of these successful entrepreneurs had when they started. You are starting with more than what they had. And so I would tell myself, listen, if they could do it, why can't I? They don't have any natural advantage. If they can do it, I can get it too. And so by modeling success, one, to figure out the specific strategies and tactics, things that I can apply, but also just the motivation to know that these successful people went through the same thing I was, that dramatically helped me reduce my stress. Number 5 is join or start a mastermind group. I think one of the biggest challenges of being an entrepreneur is that you're alone. You don't have other entrepreneurs to talk to. So many entrepreneurs that I connect with and meet, they're the only entrepreneurs in their circle. Their family, they're not entrepreneurs. Their friends are not entrepreneurs. Everybody's telling them that they're crazy, they should do the safe thing, and they should stay with their job and they should take a professional career. And sometimes those people around you are hating on you, but sometimes it's just out of love. The way that they see success is a normal, typical corporate career, and that's not what you want. And so when you don't have people around you who are like-minded in that capacity, it can be really hard to move forward and it's easy to get stressed out. And so I find that being a part of a mastermind group, if there's one in your area, or you could join an online one. We have an online one. Or you can start your own where you're connected with like-minded people. A lot of the people in my group call it Entrepreneurs Anonymous because half of it is about strategies and tactics and here's the problem I'm facing, what do you guys think, do you have connections or ideas to help me? And half of it is just about having people around you who understand you. You know, coming to a monthly meeting where you're connected to people who get what you're going through, who have gone through it, who are facing some of the same challenges, and just that emotional support. So being a part of a mastermind group, again, from the strategies and from the emotional side, can dramatically help reduce your stress. The 6th way to reduce your stress is to create a better schedule. I live and die by my schedule. I find that if I don't have it scheduled in and I don't have a plot somewhere in my week to deal with something, then I get stressed out, I get antsy, I get nervous, like, "Whoa, when am I gonna do it?" force myself to do it now, and it may not always be the best time to do it. This happens maybe once a quarter on a big scale, maybe once a month on a smaller scale, where just something happens in my life or in my business, or just I want to grow and I want to learn something else. And to do it, I need to take time from somewhere else. And recognize your time is limited. You only have so many hours in a week. You have other interests as well. And so if you want to add something to it, you have to take something away. When I took over Toronto Dance Salsa and acquired the business last year, I knew it would take up a lot of my time. And so I had to dedicate a single day in the week. So Tuesdays is my Toronto Dance Salsa day. All day I'm working on TDS stuff, I'm working with Alex, I'm mentoring, I'm training, doing all the stuff that needs to get done to build and grow this business. It also means that I'm out 3 nights a week in coming to class, in having meetings, in going to parties, and entertaining and hosting. And so it's a big time commitment that I needed to be prepared for. And so one, it was talking to my wife, Nina, and saying, "Here's what I'm thinking of doing," and getting her support that this was something that I'm committed to. And two, in order for me to free up a Tuesday, I had other stuff planned on that Tuesday, right? I had to take away some other things and say, "You know what? This is not as important a priority." And I think too many times we just jam our schedule or we don't have any kind of plan for our schedule. We just get it filled up with things. And then when you want to add something new to it, you can't because it's jammed full. And so whenever I feel stressed out about something and it's consistent, like every week I'm feeling stressed out about something, I know that I need to make more time for it in my calendar and see if I can find a way to schedule that in so that I will be less stressed every week. [MUSIC] And the number 7 effective way to beat stress is to get some help. You know, you can't do everything yourself in your business, and you're likely doing things that you shouldn't be doing. And so I mentioned earlier on that I used to take meeting notes and it wasn't effective, and I should have stopped doing that a lot earlier. That's not something that you want to get help on. That's just something you want to eliminate. First rule is eliminate. Look at where you're spending your time and eliminate the things that are not adding the most value. When you're especially at the early stage of the business and everything is you, You need to really focus your time because you're everything from the CEO to the janitor in your business. And so you need to make sure that the time you're spending is having the most impact possible and you're eliminating the things that you don't want to be great at. So eliminate is number one. Automate is number two. Look at the tasks that you're doing. If anything is happening consistently, that should be automated. You shouldn't go to somebody else. It should just be automated. It should go to a software program, a computer system, a website, right? Making something so that there's these tools that automate things for you can really free up your time because those tools, you know, they don't take sick days, they don't require vacation pay, they're a lot, lot cheaper than having somebody working for you. And so eliminate is first, automate is second, and the third is delegate. If you're doing something important, you have to build a team. The first person I hired was for 1 hour a day, and he freed up more than an hour of my time a day because he he was better at the work than I was, and then I slowly built up my team. And so you can hire somebody, may not have enough money to have somebody come on full-time in your business, but to hire somebody for an hour a day or a couple hours a week to help take off some of the tasks that you shouldn't be doing will really help. You want to spend as much time in the CEO role as possible. That's where you want to be. And so looking at your schedule and seeing where am I spending time that should be eliminated, what things can be automated, and then whatever's left that still has to get done, How do I delegate some of these other things so that I can focus on what I'm great at? So when I started my YouTube channel, I did everything myself. I'm a big advocate of not spending money till you're making money. Don't go out and start hiring somebody if you're making zero in your business. But as soon as I started making money on my YouTube channel, you know, I was doing everything. I was the cameraman, I was the editor, I was the researcher, I was in front of the camera, everything. As soon as I started making some money on my YouTube channel, I poured it back in, and the first person I hired was an editor. Because editing took me a long time. I wasn't very good at it. I didn't want to get good at it, more importantly. And then as I started making more, I hired more people, more editors, a cameraman. I bought more gear. I got, you know, I got cameras, I got microphones, you know, I got researchers, I got people to help me on the YouTube channel with the comments. And so my team grew as my business grew. But the thing that really helped skyrocket the early growth was getting my first editor. So as soon as you can afford it, bringing somebody on to help alleviate some of the tasks that you're not good at, and more importantly, don't want to get good at either, can really help you quickly scale up your business and reduce the stress, because you get most stressed out when you're doing work that you don't want to do. So those are my 7 ways to effectively reduce stress. I'd love to know what did you think? Which way resonated the most with you? Do you have an 8, 9, 10 that you want to add to the list? Leave it down in the comments below. Super curious to find out what you have to say. I also wanna give a quick shout out to John Sonmez. Thank you so much, John, for picking up a copy of my book. I really, really, really appreciate it, and for you doing that review. Means a lot to me, man, and I'm glad you enjoyed the book. So thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.