3 Illusions of Entrepreneurs: Comparison, Birthing, and Guru-worship

Entrepreneurs are idealists. When we start building a business, we think we're going to succeed much easier than it actually turns out to be. And in this video, I want to bring some more reality to the journey of entrepreneurship that I've taken myself and that I've guided hundreds of entrepreneurs through. So the key thing I want to talk about in this video are the three illusions that entrepreneurs have about how easy it is to build a business, and how can we overcome these illusions, find the reality of it, and have a better chance of succeeding as a result. So the first illusion, what happens is that we look at successful entrepreneurs, we look at what they're doing, and we say, well, gosh, it looks like it's easy for them. So, you know, if, if they make a post on Facebook and they get a hundred likes within a few days, well, if I post something, you know, on about my business, then it's bound to get even a few dozen likes, right? And then we post about our business and it gets no likes, or just one or two likes, or we look at how someone presents their business on a webinar and, wow, it looks. They're so skilled at it. It looks so easy. I'm going to go ahead and present my business on a webinar too. And then nobody buys into our services or products or programs or we hear about stories of how people contacted so and so and so and so, and they form the collaboration so easily and built their business up so quickly. And we think, oh, ok, just reach out to a few people and. And then we reach out and nobody responds to us. So there is this illusion that what we are doing is going to be this have the same effect as those who are already way farther along. It's kind of like imagine you are starting to learn the violin, and you watch a concert violinist, you know, play away, and you're like, oh, that looks pretty easy. And then you start playing and you realize, God, this is so awkward. This is not at all easy. I have to learn my scales. I have to learn how to hold the violin right, and how to hold the bow and practice it. And there's so many other analogies. So the musicianship is one, sports is another. You look at the basketball stars, it looks so fluid that they're just, you know, you know, three pointers and how they dribble and do dunks and things. And you say, oh, that looks pretty fun and easy. And you go out in the court and you realize you have to even learn how to dribble, how to hold the ball. How to shoot and maybe only one out of 30 goes into the basket. So how do we overcome this illusion of looking at people that are way ahead of us and thinking that's well, therefore it's supposed to be easy for us too. What we need to look at is their history. And a lot of times the successful people don't even tell you how long and hard they worked, how many years they had to practice to get to where they were. The same thing about entrepreneurship, usually the people who are successful at their startup, I'll tell you, the vast majority of successful business people, that wasn't their first business, that wasn't the first product or service they presented in the market, right? That wasn't the first marketing campaign they ever did that suddenly made their business from zero to zero to six figures. So you've got to look at, try to figure out what is the history, what do they actually do? Tell them, ask them to tell you the truth of how long it took them to get to where they was. And of course they can ask them for shortcuts. But even with the shortcuts, there is a long journey ahead of you to practice becoming as good as they are in their business. So that's illusion. Number one is looking, thinking it's easy because you see somebody else succeeding and wow, you know, you don't see all the work, all the practices, all the failures that they had to experience to get to where they were. So number one, find out the history, find out any shortcuts they may have. But know that you yourself have to experience a lot of so called failures and mistakes before you are able to get to that level of success. And really there is no such thing as failure if you don't stop. If you keep trying new things, if you keep, if you keep trying the things that you want to try in new ways. There is no failure. There is only redirection. Every single time something doesn't work, oh, you are just being redirected to a different way. Okay. Oh, something doesn't work being redirected to a different way. It's always redirection. And if you keep on redirecting and trying different things, you are going to find something that applies to that, where you are applying your strengths and finding some success. Do more of that, do more of your strengths and which takes experimentation to discover what they are in your business. Once you discover something, that's your strength, do more of that and keep testing other possibilities that might be your strength until you find another one that is, is, is an application of Your strength that seems to be working and do more of that, do more of your strengths after you as you experiment and then you will find yourself succeeding more and more along the way. So that's illusion. Number one is not to think of yourself as a failure when you're not getting kind of results that you're seeing other people get because you don't know what the road other people have taken are. Okay? You really don't. Even if they tell you the story, you don't know all the things they didn't tell you. Okay, so that's number one. Number two is that you tend to have this idea when you first get into entrepreneurship. You're so excited about the service you want to provide, about this piece of content you want to put out there, this video, I think I'm excited about, I think it's going to go viral because it came from my head, you see, it came from my own experience. So given that it came from my experience, long hard fought experience, and I had this idea that, you know, the aha moment, I naturally think it's far more valuable than you probably think it is. But this is true. This is called the, I call it the delusion of content creators grandeur. The delusion of grandeur for content creators and entrepreneurs. If I spend some time, all this hard work creating a product, of course all this investment of time and energy is going to make me think that it's so valuable. Whereas other people who just look at it, they didn't take all the time and investment to create it. So they are just judging it purely from their own experience. I would say in the market's eye, it's just a meritocracy from the market's eye does not take into account all the hard work you put into creating that product. So it's an illusion, right? Any. There was a study about this origami, this social research study. Three groups of people. One group was given taught to make origami. Just say, hey, you go ahead and here's some origami paper. You go ahead and just make whatever origami you want. You figure it out yourself. A second group was given detailed instructions of how to fold it. Okay. And the third group didn't make any origami. They just watched. They just looked the final product and evaluated on its own merits. Well, guess what? The group that had to figure out themselves how to make it, they valued their own origami way more than the, than the people who were just looking at it without having made it. And then the second group who had detailed instructions how to make it. They didn't invest as much time and effort and creativity so they valued it more, more than the, than those who didn't make it. But they didn't value it as much as those who had to figure it out themselves. So know that you have an illusion that because you figured out yourself, you think it's going to be really valuable when, when the objective viewer says they don't know your history, they don't know how much you made. So they're just looking at it based on their own experience, based on their own merits. And so what that how we overcome this illusion is that we have to don't spend so much time and effort creating your first thing. It's really good. Entrepreneurship is about testing more, testing more. Oh, I'm going to create this workshop. Oh, I'm going to create this service package. I'm going to create this piece of content. I'm not going to spend years creating and then put, putting out there and would be so sorely disappointed that nobody liked it as much as we do. Of course we loved it. We spent all this time creating it. Okay, so iterate, experiment more quickly, try different things in the market. Tell, you know, show, show more different things to your social media audience, to your email subscribers, to your friends and say hey, which one of these? You know, that's why I make three videos a week, right? Because every single video I'm just more casual about it. I don't take it so seriously. So I don't get this disappointed when you don't take it as value, as valuable as I take it. Okay? So because I don't spend that much effort with it. And so I want you to do the same with all of your products, services, workshops, you know, the books you write. I mean I'm writing a book right now, I'm publishing it. I am not spending the kind of grinding hard work that I think a lot of authors spend. You know, I'm, I, I, I'm spending some work of course putting the book book together, but I'm not investing myself into, oh my God, this thing has to be my life's work because I know that there's going to be many books that I write. So think in that way of experimentation rather than this is my baby, right? I'm having this baby, it's gotta have, everyone's gotta love this baby. Instead of thinking of that way, think of it as I'm flying a paper airplane, folding this paper airplane. I'm just gonna toss it if it goes down, you know, really quickly, no big deal. I pick it back up and I'll try a different formation or I'll tweak it a little bit, I'll fly it again. You're just flying a bunch of paper airplanes. That's what good entrepreneurship is. From my experience and from what I've seen from other people who have succeeded and been. Been persistent enough to be able to succeed. That's the key, right? If you just, if you take your failure so hard, oh, I launched something, it took so much effort. That's what I don't want to happen for you. You launch something, took so much effort, it failed. And then you get disappointed. And of course then you're not likely to keep trying new things in order then to find the ways that you can succeed. Entrepreneurship is a marathon. And I would say it's even more than a marathon. It's a series of sprints. But you have to sprint a lot to find out what kind of sprint works best for you. Okay? A series of tests. All right. And you got to persist in doing that. Okay, so the third illusion. I'll end this rather long video already. The third illusion comes from the people in my industry. I'm sad to say this, the people in my industry. I sell business training programs, marketing coaching programs, workshop, etc. A lot of people in my industry, and I'll be honest with you, I used to do this myself. We make it sound a lot easier than it actually is because we're trying to sell you something. So I really encourage you to stop buying, especially the multi thousand dollar 2000 marketing training programs, one to two thousand dollars, five thousand, ten thousand dollars business training programs and mastermind programs, et cetera, that sell you on. Oh, if you just join our program and follow our thing step by step, it's going to be easy for you. Look at these case studies. Look how wonderful they succeeded through our program. What they don't tell you, and I've been on the inside, so I know this because I've talked to many of the people who sold these programs, so I know what's really going on. They don't tell you that 90 to 95% of those who buy those programs do not get the results that those case studies being shown are getting. And what they also don't tell you, and they're often unwilling to admit that the people who got the fabulous results through their program were already on the. Many of them were already on the verge of success. They've already done a lot of things to build A foundation for the success that now this program is taking for credit. Say, see, John and Susie succeeded through our program. Look, our program is so effective. Well, John and Susie had done so much work already before the programs and now the program is taking credit for John and Suzy's success. So how do we do this? How do we deal with this? Do not buy any other. Now I'm saying this because I just sell these programs I really don't recommend unless money is no issue for you. Okay, if money is no issue for you, you've already got millions of dollars, then yes, you can buy a couple thousand dollar programs, not a big deal. But if you are struggling financially or you are frugal and don't, you know, spending $2,000, $1,000 on a program is not nothing. Okay, Be really, really frugal about those expensive programs and instead buy smaller price. I mean, this is why now instead of selling a $2,000 program, I sell a $25 workshop. That is not a big deal for most people. Spend $25 and two hours consuming the best of my content. And you know, if it doesn't work, hey, it's two hours and $25, not a big deal. I usually try to give my best in there so you'll get something out of it that's useful. But do you see what I mean? So even when it comes to buying trainings and programs and coaching, do it in bite sized pieces, not having this illusion that they're going to sell you that it's going to work amazingly. Just say I'm going to try it out. You know, I'm going to, I'm not going to spend thousand, let's try to spend $20, 30, $40 and see. But if it works, and if it works really well, maybe I'll spend more money with that person a little bit more. But don't suddenly go, all right, I'm going to spend 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 with someone that I've never spent a little bit of money with first. So I hope this is helpful to give you more of a reality of what it takes to succeed in entrepreneurship. And I would love to know in the comments if you want to leave any questions that you have or any comments you've had about any of the three illusions I've talked about. One, being not to take other people's journey as an indication of whether you should be able to do the same thing and succeed so quickly as they seem to have. You don't know the background. Second illusion is realizing that the creator you me we have this illusion that the thing we put out there is going to be so much more valuable than the market thinks because we've spent all this time creating it so we value it like having a baby right? And so we need to test a lot more things a lot more quickly to see what the market tells us is going to work to give more effort into making it even better. And the third illusion to overcome it, don't spend thousands of dollars on business and marketing training programs before you know, always spend a little bit with someone first, see if it's really effective then spend a little bit more, see if that's effective then spend a little bit more rather than jumping right into something that's expensive. I hope this is helpful. If I had followed this advice when I was first starting out I would have saved so much money and so much heartache. So I hope that it'll help you as well. Take care.