10: How To Work Smarter & Break Free From Our Failing Comfort Zones - #GrowYourLife

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the grow your life podcast, where we talk about ways to grow in your life and in your business. Because I believe that if you grow in your life, it affects business. If you grow in business, you make more money, you can do more, expand your reach, expand your territory, and grow your life. If you're not part of our grow your life community on Facebook, you need to join that. That's where it's like a virtual mastermind online. It's on my website. Go to jeremiah.com, click community. You can join there today. What I want to talk to you about is this. How to go from working just hard to working smarter and what that means. This is a topic that for the longest time, I used to struggle with not knowing what it meant, not even knowing what those words meant. Working smarter. Okay, we hear that often. We hear that in business. We hear these gurus, these mentors say, to work smart, smarter. But what does that really mean? Well, here's the deal. When we're building a business, building a company, it can be very tempting to just do the hard work, to just work hard. You know, we're taught that growing up as a. As a standard of earning a right to something, possibly paying your dues, quote, unquote. People say this, working hard. But so often when it comes to business and business growth, the hard work isn't always the smart work. And what works best is when you can work smart and hard at the same time. And what I want to do is expand your vision as to what this means to work hard. Not just smart or smart not just hard. Sorry, guys, I messed that one up. Anyways, imagine, if you will, that you're working for 16 hours a day just to make ends meet. You're building a company and you've been doing it for 10 years, but you're not selling any products. You think by now, well, you've earned the right to be making a million dollars. You've worked hard enough, you've paid your dues. Why are the paychecks not coming in? What is this? And a lot of people fall into this trap of working hard and being a hard worker. And sometimes they fall into it for years. And it becomes a comfort zone for them because they feel accomplished inside, that at least they're doing something. And they're not being lazy or as a business owner. They're working hard to feel like they're earning their keep, to make the money that they do. But what ends up happening is in that you run out of capacity to do the activities that produce profit, that produce results. Because you're only working hard. You're doing those hours. And it comes from school work, being raised in public school, even homeschooled, like I was. I was homeschooled. But in that, you know, I would fill up my time with activities that felt like schoolwork, to feel like I was earning my keep, to be able to go play for the day. You know, the hours spent grinding and learning and doing that do not equate to results. Now, first off, I want to stop right here and pause, because some of you are going to say, jeremiah, seriously, what are you talking about? Hard work is what produces results. Results. It's true. Hard work is what produces results. Consistently doing the hard things that get results produces results. But they have to be the things that get results, not just hard work for the sake of hard work. And. And sometimes we can get caught in a trap. We can get caught in a trap of just doing things the way they've always been done, or because there's an employee, possibly if you're running a business that has a certain job that takes them 40 hours to do, and you found a way to possibly eliminate that role and move them to something else, you won't do that type of a thing because you don't want to hurt their feelings. I've seen this happen in companies as well, where a technology might replace a employee's job, and then they could be doing other things while the technology aids them. And in this type of a thinking is you are purposefully making a choice and a decision to not work smart, but to only work hard. You know, so, for example, let's say that you're just grinding to get people to show up to a webinar, to a conference, to a school that you're offering. And you know that if you do certain tasks that may take just as many hours as you currently are, it's a risk that you've never done them before, but you've been told that it will get you a better result, but you choose not to because you're so stuck in the old ways of doing things, the hard ways of doing things. And sometimes you might even write it off as the process. The process of growth is to. Is working hard and doing hard things that you hate and choosing to not do the tasks that better leverage your time. And I'm here to tell you that that is a lie that has been ingrained in you over time, over the last 40, 50 years. It could have been through how you were raised. Maybe you were raised with A narcissistic parent. Maybe you were raised with this teaching that, you know, if you don't earn your keep, then you haven't earned the right to be at that place. Maybe you just feel inadequate. Maybe you feel like, you know, things come easy to you, so it shouldn't be this easy to get a result and you choose the thing that's harder, or you've been doing the hard thing for so long, you think, well, eventually it will get a result, eventually it will pan out. Eventually it will produce what I am due, what is my right, what is that I am supposed to receive from working this hard? And you stay in this rut for years, or let's say that you did something, here's a very common one four or five years ago that got a lot of results. So you decided to methodically do that thing, the hard work that got results five years ago, but now it's not. However, because it got results and because it's the way it's always been, you're choosing to not do the new way of things because the hard work is how you've always done it. I'm here to tell you that in that you are, you are making a choice, a decision for your life, for your company, for your future, to stay small, to not grow and to not expand because of fear of, A, the unknown, B, what will people think about me? C, how will this look? And D, how will it pan out? And in that, you let those fears reduce your confidence from doing what produces a result. You're making a decision and a choice for yourself that I'm going to stay doing the hard work and not doing what produces a result. Because this is what I am comfortable with. This is what I am comfortable with doing. And I am not comfortable doing this new way of things, doing what gets results, what's smarter. And in that, you're actually choosing the easy route by doing your hard work. And this becomes a vicious cycle of activity in business. And I've seen so many people do it, so many organizations that they, they get stuck in these ruts of doing certain things one way and not wanting to experiment and explore the new ways of doing things. You know, I heard something about a month ago, I think it was a Tony Robbins teaching. He was saying that in companies that have had the most growth, they bring in new outside voices to audit the old systems every six months to come up to look at. Is there a better way to do what we've always been doing up to this point? Is there a smarter way to be Doing that, can we be more efficient? And this is what this is about. This is about efficiency and getting more done with less time, by choice and intention, not out of emergency or need or lack. And what I've seen happens as people hit the end of their rope after struggling for so long and working hard and not getting the result that they feel they deserve or are due based on A, what used to work in the past, B, the fact that they feel like they should be earning the right to get the result that they envision because they're working hard. And that place becomes a comfort zone for them. It becomes a comfort place to where they don't want to look to the left or to the right of what they don't know of, what could possibly be there to help them grow. And on the left and to the right could be what you haven't thought of before. So let's say, for example, let's say that you're trying to sell a beauty product, for example, okay? And you've been working for 10 years to sell this product. You've been working hard up to this point. You'd think, man, after this long, I should be a household name. People should know who I am. They should be buying my product. Because you've been doing the work that feels like the work that somebody that would get that level of result would get. But the issue with that is you're not doing the right activities. You're doing some activities, you're doing long activities, hard work activities, what takes long hours, what is time consuming, what feels like smart work, but it's actually just hard work. But for the sake of hard work. And in that, you're missing out on the possibilities that exist through working smarter and looking at how can we set ourselves apart? How can we establish ourselves as the best in the industry, help people experience our product and service before they buy from us. How can we come up with new video content on social media? See, if you listen to my podcast, if you watch my page, if you go to my page, if you watch the videos. I do these videos every single day because I want to drive this home for you guys. That's why my group exists, the Grow youw Life Community. That's why I'm on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube with content for you. That's why this podcast exists, as I am bringing to you the exact strategies and tools of what works, what produces results. I am telling you and handing you the blueprint for free. Most of the time through my free content, but also my paid content that I'm starting to come out with, I have my first course that I'm about to launch here in that I'm giving you the blueprint of what works. And yet still I see people in my group on my page listening to this podcast. They've heard every episode and yet they're still looking at things through the lens of how they've always done it, through the lens of hard work instead of how can we work smarter. And so in that, you know, I just had a coaching call, a free call with a gal who won my GrowYourLife giveaway from my Instagram, which I'll talk about at the end of this podcast. You'll have to listen to the end of it to know about that. She got a free coaching call for listening just all the way to the end of the podcast. And what I told her was this. She was describing to me what set her skin care product apart. It was that it was handmade, that it replaces multiple products. And I paused her. I said, listen, what you're telling me right now is what makes your product unique in the marketplace. Yet I see that nowhere on your website, nowhere on your social media. And your product almost looks like you're afraid of letting people know who's behind this product. You need to have courage to be vulnerable, to put yourself out there and in that. That's what I'm talking about. Working smarter and not working harder. You see, you could be working, building, trying to sell this product, this E commerce product, doing this if it's an E comm product, if it's a conference, if it's a book, if it's a course, if it's a program, it doesn't matter if it's an app, if it's a video game, if it's a movie, whatever it is. And you're doing all the hard work that everybody told you you should be doing when deep inside of you, as the person, as the visionary that came up with that idea, especially I'm talking to you who are either in charge of vision or work with and our decision makers in an organization, you know what makes your product unique. Yet you're not telling people why you are different from the marketplace. And you're not letting them experience what it's like to be your customer before they buy it. And then you're using old school tactics to get people outdated websites, low quality design websites. And that's what my course that I'm releasing is all about. Website building Made easy is building professional, mobile, responsive websites with as much knowledge as Using a word processor like Microsoft Word, that's all you need to know. No technical knowledge. You're using these outdated hard work tactics, doing hard work. You're using old systems. You got people that are using old systems because that's what they're used to. If you're in a bigger organization or if it's just you as a solopreneur, you're doing things the way that looks like the way everyone else is doing it. You're trying to copy other people in other industries, maybe even me, which I actually invite you to do that. I want to see people taking what I'm doing as a model and copying it. That's my whole thing. Is that so? By the way, I just gave you permission to do that. If you're wondering that not plagiarism, but copy what I'm doing, it's a model for you that you can model and then apply. And yet you're doing these things that are a comfort zone for you. And then when you learn a new way to do it, you're still applying the old mindset to it, the old way of thinking out of experiences, experiential truth of how it worked out in the past, whether it failed or didn't fail. And you're letting that cloud the creative thinking that comes from being courageous and having courage. You know, if you, and if you haven't before, I recommend you watch the Netflix special from Brene Brown, the Call to Courage, where she talks about this, that creativity comes from being willing to be vulnerable and not fearing failure, but rather embracing it as a way to learn what works and what doesn't and to learn and grow. And instead of avoiding it, it's actually smarter to put yourself out there. It's working smarter to put yourself out there to see what works than to try what you think works and playing it safe. And so in that this all boils down to if you're working harder versus working smarter, most of the time working smarter. What exists in what working smarter is usually exists in the realm of possibly the unknown. What we're afraid of, maybe an experience. We tried that before and it didn't work. And so we're unwilling to try something that even looks like that because of that past experience. Or we just don't have the technical know how the technical skill. And if you don't have that, if there are some technical knowledge that you want to know, the grow your life community, that's what it's for. Post in the comments. You know, I just did an advertising audit this Morning with a lady who sells a nutritional product on there. And I told her, you know, you can't sell your MLM nutritional product directly. Build a following around you and build authority around you. And that's the other thing is this. If you are a solopreneur that's building on your own, you need to build a following around you and get people engaged in you, not just what your product is. Nobody knows what your product is by its name. And if you're trying to sell an E comm product just by the name without building a passionate community around it, and either that community is around the product, around the industry of the product, serving that industry, the people that would buy that product, or around you as an endorser of the product, then you have to put a lot of money behind advertising. You have to pay sponsors, you have to pay endorsers to do that. And if you don't have the capital and the funds to do that, then you have to make the hard decisions to put yourself out there to do what might scare you, what might be completely outside of your comfort zone. And choosing to do that because what's outside of your comfort zone. See, your comfort zone is actually that hard work that you've been doing. That comfort zone is that working hard, because at least you know how to do that. But the working smart is usually this. Maybe the stuff that you don't know how to do. There's even stuff that I do that I know. I feel like it's what I should be doing, but I know there's a better way to do it. But I'm choosing to work hard and not smart because it's a comfort zone for me. We all do this. We all do this. But when you take a step back and you look at. Let's look at the big picture. Here's your goal. Here's what you're trying to get out there in the marketplace. Here's what you're trying to sell. Okay? Is it in front of all the right customers? If the answer is yes and they're not buying, then maybe your messaging is off. Okay? But if the answer is no, then you need to work from there and find out, how do you get in front of the right customers? How do we serve them? How can you create a massive following around what serves the potential customer for this product and in that nowadays, in 2019, that comes through video content and coming up with unique, unrecycled content. I'm not talking about taking the same piece of content and repurposing it. The Same recording. I'm talking, let's say you said one training here. Say it five different times over the course of the year and, and different people will see it. So you say the same thing multiple times in multiple platforms, in multiple areas, and engage people in a community around you. That's what I'm doing with this podcast. That's what I'm doing with my products. And whatever your product or service is, that's the model for you. And think about it. A lot of people have trouble connecting how they can do that with their product or service. And that's why I invite people to let me know what industry they're in and what they're trying to do and if they would like me to come up with a solution or a plan for that. That's what I do on our, on my coaching calls. That's what I do in the group, in the Facebook group. That's what we do on social media. We help people get results in their unique individual product or service, whatever that is. It's not about just creating lead magnets and funnels and all that. A funnel for product A and product B are not always going to be the same. But if you can look at, take a look at some of maybe your competitors in an industry, here's another way of working smarter. Look at some of your competitors. Not to copy them, but how do they get in front of their customers? And then, you know, and if your immediate answer is something that's impossible for you, like spending millions of dollars in advertising, you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. Okay, that's great. So who do they advertise to? How do they do that? And you, you have to work backwards and look at, well, what can I do to maybe create a microcosm of that, create my own version of that in the realm that I'm in, to then establish my product and myself as an authority in this industry and be the best in the world at what my product or service does. Make it be economical so you can make money from it and then roll that money into advertising to get more people in. And then, you know, obviously, what, what do you have? What do you have a passion for? That's the hedgehog concept that Jim Collins talks about in his book. Good to Great is the hedgehog concept. What's your big, hairy, audacious goal? The bhag. And you break that down to the hedgehog concept. What can you be the best in the world at? You know, what do you have a passion for? And what can you make Money with. And you take that and you build a brand around that, not around a product. You know, when any. Take any product that you like that you engage with, why do you buy that product not just purely for its features, but because of how it makes you feel. You feel like you're part of a community, an exclusive community. And the benefits and features that you get out of that are so much deeper than just what that product gives you. You know, maybe it's, it's easy to use. Why did you choose that product over another? Was it because of a referral? Was it because of that? And so then how do you establish yourself in the marketplace as the authority in products of that industry? And for people with network marketing products, the way to do that is because there's so many reps or an oversaturated market is you have to build the following and the community around you and why people want to engage with you and your company and your product over anybody else. And that becomes the unique selling proposition. What makes you so special? And if your answer to that is, well, nothing, well, then you need to adjust your product to make it appear special. You need to appear in the marketplace as unique from anybody else that's out there, a reason that they're going to engage with you and not somebody else. And if you can't do that, you're not going, you're, you're going to keep working hard and not smart. And so working smart has nothing to do with head knowledge. It has nothing to do with being a genius or not being smart. Working smart, quote, unquote, is doing the activities that produce results consistently over time and course. Correcting as new information comes up, as new tools are established with speed and efficiency to get results. Anything that doesn't fall into that category should probably either be eliminated, passed off to somebody else, or put aside. And what you should focus on is how do we get in front of the right people? How do we get our messaging clear? How do we then help people experience the product, make it easy for them to buy it? You know, I've seen some people, the working smart versus the working hard is just their website. It takes five pages to find how to order the product versus it. Being front and center, just that alone. Simplifying the process, simplifying the process for the potential customer to make it easier to buy your product, helping them maybe get results in other areas, then they will trust you to buy your product. These are all ways of working smarter and not harder. Using automation, using technology, using tools of technology. You know, you could hire somebody for a few hundred dollars to save you thousands of hours of work because you've automated something. And in that you can then do more of what produces results with your time, with the time you've been given and go from being just somebody who is grinding and working to earn their keep to somebody who actually runs a business, owns a business, produces results in the marketplace. And then you go from just being a worker to being an entrepreneur and then being an investor, somebody who then takes the profits and rolls it into profit producing activities. So first you have to do the profit producing activities and then from those profits you can make your money actually work for you in that. Now, this is not, that's not what this podcast is about. But for many people, you need to go from just hard work to combining hard work with result producing and then always looking at how can I get more work done with less time and effort and constantly looking at how can we shrink things down smaller, get them smaller. Take this, you grow it, you expand it and then you shrink it smaller. And now you're here. But you have all this capacity now to do more by working smarter instead of harder. Instead of talking just one on one with people, group coaching, instead of just meeting on the phone and you're limited by the hours that you have, you could hire somebody to be a salesperson to make calls for you, whatever those things are. I want to, you know, I'm not able to kind of have a conversation with you on this podcast and what that is. And I really want to create a dialogue with my group on this topic. So if you're listening to this point, I want you to go to the group, find the post right where I put this episode of the podcast up there, or find it on my social media or go to my website. You can find it episode nine and leave in the comments what your unique situation is, how you get your customers, what your current avenues are. And I want to look at those and I want to see, you know, I'm gonna leave some comments and give people some free coaching just in the comments here. For those of you that have listened to this podcast, to help you go from working hard to working smart just with a few simple tweaks. And what you're also doing by doing that is you're helping me come up with. This is my selfish ambition of this, but it's to help you in the long run is to come up with. I'm gonna, you're gonna help me come up with new content to make on my Grow youw Life videos and my podcast by telling me those areas that you need to shore up. And, and we're, that's how we're able to grow together. That's how this is a, a fluid, organic, growing program. This podcast is a program that you can plug into and grow with. And we're growing together. And as you listen through the episodes, as you watch the content, we're able to then expand in that. So I want to hear from you, I want to start a conversation with you. If you're listening to this DM me, write me comment. Find the post with this episode. Episode number actually it's number ten. You're right, it's not number nine, it's number ten number. Episode number nine was how to make more money. This is about working smarter, not harder. So episode number 10. Find that post on my Instagram, my Facebook, my LinkedIn. Leave a comment what's your unique situation? You know, how are you selling your products? What are your avenues? What's your website? What have you tried? What's working? What are your struggles? And let's hone in. How can you, how can you work smarter and not harder? And I want to help you do that. And you can also win right now. The only coaching that I'm doing right now is actually with my current clients that pay me monthly retainers, but also those who get, who win the hashtag grow your life giveaway on my Instagram. And so what that is is if you leave hashtag grow your life within the first 10 minutes of me making a post on Instagram, not my lives, because I do those every morning and then those disappear. So these have to be just what's on the feed. Whether it's Instagram TV or a post on Instagram, it could be any post within the first 10 minutes of me posting it live. So make sure you set your notifications on Leave GrowYourLife in the comments. I'll pick one winner every single week. On Sunday, I'll do it on my stories. So watch my stories on Sunday. For the winner, I'll pick one person who wins a 30 minute coaching call with me. That's as of recording this podcast. I may change the giveaway in the future, but as of right now, that's what I'm doing. That's the only kind of coaching that I'm doing. I might change that as well in the future. So who knows? Keep following me, keep listening to this podcast, keep watching the videos, keep, keep an eye on my website for different resources that we're starting to create. For you guys, I want to create the best resource for people to learn how to go from an employee to a business owner, to an entrepreneur, to an investor. And that four step process of just being a skills worker, to being somebody that has a business around their skills, to then hiring people to leverage their time and resources to then having their money work, work for them and going from that process to grow your life and grow your business. And that's what this is for, is how to go through those stages. And once you get to that level, that's where you're making seven figures, eight figures and beyond is that. And so let's do that. Hashtag, grow your life, everybody. If this has helped you, share this podcast episode with somebody, you know every podcast episode that helps you, I want you to just tag somebody, share them, let them know about it, tell them to go listen to it on itunes, Spotify, Google, join the community, do the hashtag grow your life giveaway on my Instagram and let's grow. Let's grow your life together, everybody. We're doing this together. We'll talk soon. And that's it. That's the end of this podcast. Kind of an awkward ending, but you know what? It's all good. Hashtag, grow your life, everybody. And we'll talk soon. Bye.