George Kao says the shift from hobby to athlete mindset transformed his business. He emphasizes disciplined training: stick to a schedule, practice consistently, and expect results to lag years behind skill development. Show up, do the work, trust the process.
Set shift that I had to make in my business that I hope to communicate here with you and really make a difference in your business going forward, which is this. I stopped taking my business as a hobby, and I started to see myself as an athlete. Let me say that again. I started to see myself as an athlete in my business. What do I mean by that? Well, those of you who are athletes or who have had training as athletes or as artists, you know, professional artists, this is true as well. There is a practicing mindset that I had to take on that was incredibly important for the sustainability and then the thriving of my business without taking on this mindset of being an athlete. What happened was I was taking my business as a hobby, which meant I'm like, okay, now that I'm my boss. Because before we become a business owner, we work for other people, probably, right? And working for other people means they tell you what to do. Oh, show up at this time, do these exact things, and then take breaks at this time and then leave at this time. And so someone else gave you the structure. And so when you became a business owner, you thought, oh, great, now. Now I get to do whatever I want. Okay, oh, now I get to wake up whenever I feel like it and do whatever I want. And if I just do what I love, people will love what I do, and then it'll be successful. Okay, well, how's that going now for a few of you lucky ones that might be going really well. You just do whatever you want whenever you want to do it in your business, and it just works well, and that's wonderful. Keep doing it. For most of us, myself included, it doesn't work like that. We need to take this seriously and say, okay, I need to train like I'm training for a marathon. I need to imagine I paid, you know, $20,000 to train for a marathon because I have to, like, get a coach, and I have to fly to a certain location and get, you know, stay over for a week or whatever. I got to pay all this money to train for a marathon. You bet I'm going to take it seriously. I got all this money at stake, okay? And the coach is saying, I got to wake up at this time. Now the problem is someone else is giving me a structure again. But imagine I was training on a marathon on my own, and I paid all this money, and I didn't have a coach. I just had to read books about it or take courses about it. Then I have to say, I got to wake up at 8am or whatever. I Got to have this particular diet, I got to do these particular exercises. I got to take these kinds of breaks. Right. You need to see your business in that way. You can't just be waking up whenever you feel like it and doing whatever you want. Well, like, you can. You could do whatever you want, obviously. But how is it going? Like, once I stopped taking my business as just, I get to be my own boss, do whatever. Once I started training like an athlete, my business started working really, really well. Now there's a bit of a lag time because just like training as an athlete, you can't say, I started training as an athlete yesterday and now I'm so strong and fit and I can run a marathon. No, it does. There's a lag time to training as an athlete or practicing as a musician or an artist or any kind of craft, you know, as you start training, there's a lag time before you can do it really well. Well, the same thing in your business. How can you expect that Today I'm going to take it seriously. Yesterday I started taking it seriously. Last month I started taking it seriously. How come I'm not success? There's a lag time of about a year or two, usually in business and in most skills. There's a lag time of a year or three or five in most skills when you can finally go, gosh, I really like how I'm playing the piano now, or I really, I really love how I'm able to, you know, play tennis or whatever it is you're training for. Same thing with your business. You've got to take it like an athlete or like a performer. And then you need to accept that there's a lag time until you see yourself very happy with the results. But along the way, you are happy with how you're training. Along the way, you take on the practicing mindset and go, wow, I'm proud of myself that I showed up today for the training. And in your business, I'm proud of myself. I showed up today for the creation of my content. I'm proud of myself. I showed up today. For posting in my offer, I'm going to set aside what the results are going to be for posting the offer because that's, remember, George said, there's a lag time. Just like with any skill that you develop, you can't say, well, I posted my offer, George, and how come I'm not making $10,000 yet? What, are you kidding me? You're a beginner athlete. In your business, you don't know how to make an offer yet? Not really because you don't understand your audience well enough. You didn't do enough market research yet but you're doing it now. You're showing up at 9am or whenever you you decide to show up. You follow your calendar. You follow your calendar. You do. You follow your schedule. You make your schedule however you want to make your schedule but you follow your schedule. You show up with a practicing mindset. You know there's a lack time and you know you're going to succeed in two or three years but not now. Maybe not now. I don't know. I mean I don't know how fast you are I don't know how skillful you are yet but you need to have skill before you can expect results. If you don't have results it means you don't have the skill yet. So take your business seriously like you're an athlete or a performer in training. I hope this is helpful. Thanks for watching.
