The Problem with Taking Massive Action (And How to Fix It!)

Hi, I'm Jim Johnson, the head coach here at Contractor Coach Pro. Me and my team have coached thousands of contractors over the last decade, and we were talking here this last week about why do so many people struggle out there in the world to get their business where it needs to be? And I want to talk to you today about some of the bad advice that we get. And maybe that's a little bit of what's going on out there for you and kind of give you what I went through and maybe that'll help you. I believe that will be something that you have probably heard before. And you went, hey, I've gotten that advice. And yeah, maybe that could be what's causing me to go the wrong route. So what is that advice? What's the worst advice that you ever got in business? And so the worst advice I ever got, and you've probably heard it in a variety of different ways, is you just got to take action. Without action, nothing happens. Take massive action. Stop thinking about it. Just do it. And so that type of advice, while really good advice, is out of context. It's one piece of what needs to be done. And really, if you think about it and you listen to it a little bit, there's actually two pieces in there. There's the thinking about it part and there's the take massive action part. But there's something in the middle there that I didn't realize existed or at least wasn't aware of it and really didn't sound like what I wanted to do that I want to share with you guys today to help you resolve maybe some of the issues that you might be having in your business. Because to be honest with you, I'm sick and tired of watching 80% of the businesses that get started out there, especially in contracting, go out of business within the first three years. What does all this lead to? What is this? Take massive action. Go and try it. You know, the people that have tried it, they're the ones that come to you and say, hey, man, I got something cool that you need to see this. I've got these shakes that are going to help you lose weight. I've got this beauty stuff that's going to make you look amazing. And then you talk to them three months later and ask them how it's going. And they oh, that thing was no good. I'm doing this other new thing. And you guys see that those are motivated people, but they're not driven, they're not dedicated, they're not disciplined. They don't absolutely believe in what it is that they're after. And they get started down the path and hit some obstacles and it doesn't work out. So they try something new because they're motivated and easily manipulated. And so it leads to this frustration and feeling of failure that we're trying to help people avoid. And why does it lead to that? What happens? What's causing that to happen? Number one, there's a lack of structure. It's like, hey, I'm going to go climb Mount Everest. And you show up the day that you're going to climb Mount Everest at the bottom and just start climbing without any kind of preparation, thought or anything like that. Just, hey, I'm going to go do it. I'm going to take massive action and go climb Mount Everest. Well, we all know where that's going to lead to. And you're going to probably lead to not making it or at worst, maybe even dying because you took the wrong path. What else causes this feeling of failure and this idea that I'm frustrated with where I'm going? I can't ever quite get it to happen. Well, no accountability. There's nobody else that knows. There's nobody else that knows really what's going on. And because nobody else knows, if it doesn't go the way we want, we go, hey, we're gonna be okay. Hey, I can try something new. Hey, I didn't tell anybody. So I don't have to keep my word. Because there's no accountability aspect and lack of that, which humans don't like accountability. We bounce from thing to thing to thing. Whether it's on to new things or even in our businesses and moving our business, we keep bouncing around instead of being very focused on where we're headed. And so I had this epiphany and this epiphany that I was approaching business like I was running an obstacle course with a blindfold on that, hey, I'm going to go and run this obstacle course. I'm going to achieve it. But I have blinders, and I don't really see what's going on in front of me. And we all know how that's going to go. Not real well. So how did I, like, figure it all out? I've been pretty lucky over the years to get the right information at the right time or maybe a little late and learn how to implement. But it's helped me to be successful. And one of the things that I tend to do whenever I run into these obstacles is I look for resources to help me solve the problem. And the Very first thing I usually do is I go look for, does it exist somewhere? Is there something written about it? And started asking around, like, hey, I feel like things are not going the way I need them to. I keep doing these things and this thing keeps happening. And I got some good advice from somebody that told me, hey, you should read this book. That book was Art of War by Sun Tzu. If you haven't read it, Go Read is a book written by a Chinese strategist from 2,500 years ago that still stands up today. His whole concept was on building a strategy to win battles. But those strategies apply to our businesses because business is a battle. We are competing against our competitors and perception against ourselves. And what do we have to do to put the right things in place in order for us to accomplish those big things? Whether that's climbing a mountain, running an obstacle course, going on a diet. It's these things that are along the way that make the difference in the success or failure of that grand achievement that we're after. And so I read the book and I realized that there was a very key piece of the formula missing. If you remember, earlier I talked about this concept of stop thinking about it and do it well. Those are two really important pieces. We do have to think about this thing that we're after. We've got to put some thought into it, and is it worthy? Do I believe in it? Is it something valuable? Can I make a difference? Is it something that's going to sustain me and fulfill me? And if we can get through all of that and our thought is yes, then the advice is, usually take massive action. But really the action that we should take, which is the second piece and the most important piece is the planning aspect. Hey, I'm going to achieve this great thing, whatever that thing is. What are the milestones along the way that allow me to achieve that thing? Who do I need to reach out to and get information from? Has somebody done it before? All of those things go into helping you develop a plan that with a plan, your chances of success are increased by as much as 70%. That was a key number for me. Like 70% better chance of achieving the thing I'm after. I'm going to do this planning thing, or at least that's what I said. The reality was it seemed like it was hard. There's a lot of work. It was taking time to work on something when I could just go sell something or I could go get some more leads and opportunities where I could go recruit some more people and the reality was that I continued to do that for a little while and kept having the same problems. But then I finally decided, I made a decision. I'm going to sit down for two days and I'm going to hire an expert. I'm going to have them help me build out a plan. And that expert had had experience at it, guided me along the way, helped me see the format for it and we developed a really strong plan for the coming year. And I had to go into that being coach, that was the key. I had to be really coachable. I had to be there with a set my pride aside and say, hey, I don't know it all. I can learn something here and be engaged in the conversation. And so I went into it to learn intentionally. That was the key part. I was intentional about my learning. I made notes, I took records, I kept everything from those conversations. And we ended up developing what we called a mission. And not like a mission statement, I don't think those are worth the paper they're written on in most cases. But a mission like a military type mission or a sports team type mission that we are going to go achieve this thing, all the milestones along the way that would need to be achieved to achieve the greater thing and then all of the priorities, objectives and actions that needed to be done in order to get to the end game. It was life changing. The results were off the charts. We blew away all of our goals because we actually had a roadmap, a plan to follow. I want to help you guys do the same thing, really do. It is important to me to give back to this industry. And so that's how we help. That's what we do once a year. We help people build these plans and then hold them accountable to them. So why do we do it as an event? Why do we have an event that brings people together to build out a mission? Well, that was the second thing that happened that really changed the game for me and being able to grow multi, multi million dollar businesses, six figure, eight figure businesses, was the fact that I was introduced to an event called the Elite Forum. It was in the software world. A bunch of software companies got together and went to another software company that had done very, very well and they shared with us what their roadmap looked like. We got to see the order and format for it. We got to see how it was built out and over the long term what that might look like. But that wasn't really the valuable part. I kind of knew that part already going in from my past experience. The valuable part were those other people, those other businesses that were there, those businesses that shared what was working for them, the things they had tried that didn't work and why they didn't work. It sped up the process of achieving what we wanted to achieve much faster. It was crazy to hear all the things that you've been thinking about. Other people were thinking about how they had solved them that you hadn't solved yet. The multiplication of multiple minds inside of a room makes a tremendous difference. And that's why we do this as a retreat style thing. We bring contractors in, we sit down, we go through the order, the format, exactly how to do it, have brainstorming sessions, our coaches are involved, other contractors are involved, they're sharing willingly to help you be successful. And the ultimate result is something that's actually finished and ready to go. You walk away with a mission. This is a retreat for doing, not a retreat for a bunch of information. You're not going to hear a bunch of talking heads and things like that. This group mission planning allows you to take your blinders off, see how other people do it outside, and exponentially give you the information that you need to achieve those huge goals that you might be after. This is one of those things that you can do too. Just like I went to Elite Forum, you can come to something like the mission. And I don't care if you come to mission control, but go somewhere, get off site, spend two days with your team planning out your year. If you can incorporate other companies like yours, please do. It will dramatically change what you think you can achieve and what you can accomplish. So in summary, we've got to build a plan, We've got to stop thinking about things. You can't take too much time thinking analysis by paralysis will kill you. And a lot of that is because we don't start the planning phase. We keep thinking about it, we keep thinking about it, we keep thinking about it, but we don't get it down on paper. We don't get it written out for everybody to be on the same page. And that's the real cool part about a mission, is everybody is aligned with you and to the mission to achieve that thing in the long run. And if we can get that down on paper, we can remind people of it often hold ourselves accountable to it and achieve those things and show the progress along the way. The chances of that thing being successful are dramatic. So if you want some help with this, this is what we do. And the cool part about it this year is we're doing it for free. One of my missions in creating this coaching thing was to give back to an industry that has been very good to me. And our sponsors have stepped up and paid for you to attend Mission Control. There's going to be one virtual session on December 1st. It's a prep session. Think of it as pregame prep for the actual event itself. We're going to give you some things that need to get done, some information that needs to be brought with you and give you a great start on building your mission when you arrive. The event is actually on December 7th and 8th in New Braunfels, Texas. No, it's not in Vegas or Nashville or Miami or any of those places. We're here to work. We're here to get some things done. We're here to start to install the habits that we're going to need for the next 365 days to be successful. Why do we do it December 7th and 8th, most of us wait. Most of us go, hey, I'll get my plan done first part next year. But that's already too late. You're already behind. You don't have everybody aligned. You don't have everybody thinking about it. You don't have everybody hit the the ground running on January 1st. Because when January 1st comes along, after the year you just had, you're at zero again. Are you going to change the end result next year or are you going to keep doing what you've been doing and just winging it with a roadmap, a plan, a mission to achieve, a strategy to follow, milestones that tell you how you're progressing, the actions, priorities, objectives, everything that you need to be successful laid out for you before you even start your journey is going to be something that you actually achieve. So go check us out. Contractorcoachpro.com youm can click on Services and Mission Control Retreat or you can just put in contractorcoachpro.com mission control retreat and come join us. Get registered today. You're going to get some work right back to you right away. Some questions that you got to get answered as your RSVP. And we will see you December 7th and 8th in New Braunfels, Texas, working with the coaches and executive team here at Contractor Coach Pro to help you have the best 2023 you could possibly have.