Peter Sage explains how entrepreneurs driven by scarcity end up in feast-or-famine cycles. He argues for reframing business as a way to express passion and deliver value, treating money as a result of that value, not the goal itself.
Chapters
Let's use the metaphor of a car. If you turn the key on a car. Yeah, you have, and it may be old fashioned these days, I don't know, but you have a starter motor that kicks in. Yeah. That turns the crank, that fires off the gas and what have you. And so it requires a different set of energy and gears to start the engine. But if that starter motors going all the time while you're running, it's not going to be good for the engine. The starter motor for many entrepreneurs can be fear of scarcity. It can be, I don't want to have the life that I grew up with where my parents couldn't afford to buy me the sneakers or the socks or the whatever it is. I don't want that for my kids. I'm going to get out there and I'm going to do whatever it takes to provide for my family. That's okay. As a starter model, if you're going to run your engine on that, it's going to have a real issue. You're experienced enough that you've seen, and I'm sure most people listening to this have seen so many situations where entrepreneurs go through the feast famine, they build it all up and then it burns to the ground. They build it all up and it burns to the ground. Why is that? Well, let's look at it through the lens of the question you asked. You see, when most people are starting and they get out of the blocks and they're going, they don't have anything. And they're focused on what they can get, they're focused on winning, they're focused on accumulating, they're focused on sales, they're focused on generating revenue, they're focused on the Ferrari that they want to treat themselves to when they hit their first milestone of X million, whatever it is. Now, once you have that and now all of a sudden you've got the car, the people, scarcity is not the issue. But you were driven by scarcity as a frame. If that's still a persistent mindset. Now your focus switches from what can you generate to fear of loss, of losing what you've generated. And so the energy now switches to scarcity around what happens if, or I need to protect or I've got to keep going in case I lose. And of course then the focus is essentially on losing because the brain doesn't process negation. And, and now all of a sudden things go downhill and then you've got back to zero. You got nothing against, you're not focused on scarcity. Of losing because you're, you're zero. So now you focus again on winning and accumulating and climbing, all right? But you get to the top of that mountain and you're scared of falling off the mountain and now you're back down the other side of the mountain. You got to understand that again, what gets you from A to B doesn't get you from B to C when it comes to staff. But I said that also applies in the mirror. If you started your business and you started through scarcity and now you've got it, and that scarcity raises its head because now you're scared of losing it, you're going to lose it when you realize that. And there's several frames for this, depending on the level of emotional maturity, depending on the level of consciousness of the business owner. But if you can come to terms with having a different shift in your relationship to the business, See, business is nothing more than a vehicle. It isn't who you are. It is a vehicle that you're currently riding right now in order to achieve something that has to, has to, has to be beyond money. If your focus is business is a vehicle to make money, you are going to be tied to the result of the business and your self worth. And if your self worth and your net worth are tied together, you will always be in scarcity at a certain level of the mountain, which means you're going to fall down the other side of it. Now, when you realize that your self worth and net worth are not tied right? When you realize that business is a vehicle for you expressing your passion in a certain way that allows you to add value to other people, to clients, to the world, to families, you're making a difference for or companies or B2B that you're making a difference for. When your energy is channeled in understanding that revenue, sales, cash flow is a byproduct or a consequence of, of you giving your gift through the vehicle of your enterprise, you start to focus on how do I add value and attach your passion to that rather than looking in the bank because I need to make more money and what happens if I lose it? That's the switch that people need to make. Stop thinking that money's a thing. Money isn't a thing. We make it a thing. The second we conceptualize money as a thing, we get trapped into the illusion of chasing money. Money is a, as a ghost, it is a byproduct or a consequence. When you walk into the gym, you don't say, give me the strength and I'll lift the weights. When you're sitting in front of the fire, you don't say, give me the heat, I'll fetch you some wood. You know you get the strength when you lift the weights. You know you get the heat when you chop the wood. Well, you don't walk into business and say, all right, let me go get the money and then I'll feel good. Let me go get the money and then I'll add the value. No, you get the money when you've added the value. Otherwise you're chasing your tail. Money is just a lagging indicator of the lives that you're able to touch in a positive way. And when you have that relationship to it, you're not worried about where you are on the mountain or going up. No, you're focused on how do I put one foot in front of the other with a heart centered. Heart led. Yeah. Head on my shoulders. I mean, we've got to eat. We're here to make profit. But you're not making profit like you're making a cake. You're accumulating profit as a result of the amount of cakes that you're giving to people who are hungry.
