THIS Is The HARDEST Thing To Do As An Entrepreneur In Your Business

As an entrepreneur, we have to increase our capabilities to reach our opportunities. As we build our capabilities, we have to grow our opportunities. The thing that we'll do the most here is you have to say no. And saying no is usually really hard, especially if you're a giver, especially if you want people to be happy, especially if you love opportunities. Because I love saying yes to everything. So I was talking to Sam and he's like, okay, what it is, is the thing that makes you happiest is when you say yes because you get an instant. So when I'm super overwhelmed, the one thing that brings instant relief and excitement to. Is to add a new project to my plate. And in the moment, though, I don't have an association with what I'm already obligated to. I never used to pause at all. So basically saying no is like the answer. Something like, Genius Network is great when things are going well, but it's really important when things are going wrong. And when they're going wrong, that's the time that people almost start opting out of everything because they get overwhelmed. So, you know, Dan Sullivan talks about the ceiling of complexity. And Dan, let me see if. Manuel, can you bring me that flip chart again with a pen, please? Thank you, sir. Okay. And so Dan Sullivan talks about ceiling and complexity. And complexity. Thank you. Thank you. Now that's good. Brown's fine. Yeah. Thank you. So remember the whole. Welcome, guest. Okay, so Dan Sullivan has a couple things, and the reason I'm doing this is I want you to think about this when you're doing your hot seat, because most of what's going to help you with your problems, challenges, and opportunities are just a few tasks. Because what is a successful business, a successful recipe, a successful anything. It's just a series of things done in a certain way that produce a particular result. Winners find ways to win and losers find ways to lo. So whenever we're losing at something in life, we have just found a way to lose. Whenever we're winning, we have found a way to win. We're going to have a conversation later about all of the ways that you win and some of the ways that you lose. So Dan has a couple of great things. M equals O minus C. Now, Gary. Where's Gary at? You've probably taught this to a bunch of people. Or do you? I don't know.

Not that one.

Not that. Okay, so what is M equals O minus C? Write this down because it'll be on a blank sheet of paper. So M equals O minus C. That is A mess in your life is when you have an obligation minus a commitment. And I have podcasts with Dan just about this particular thing, kind of going deep with it. Okay, so we have messes in our life. So if you have problems or challenges, things you need to clean up, you have an obligation, but you're no longer committed to it. So for instance, if you are in a relationship, like your first job, how many of you hated your job that you ever had? Okay. How many of you loved the first job you ever had? How much did you get paid for our. How did you get compensated at your first job? $2, $3 an hour. 2 or $3 an hour. What were you doing? Slinging burgers and McDonald's. Slinging burgers and McDonald's. Wow. What about you? $25 a. $25 an hour. How long ago was that?

1973.

But you loved it.

I loved it. I was in a 110 degree bakery sweating my wood off, and I was with a bunch of folks who loved their job. All foreigners. Nobody spoke English, but they were all happy all day long. I couldn't understand what's going on with the world. It was just a wonderful environment.

Gotcha. Okay. Would you do that today for $1.25 an hour?

Absolutely.

You would? Okay. Yeah. You're the wrong guy to ask. You already have money.

Yeah.

You already have money.

It's like what you're talking about. He was talking about taking experience, going through the desert and all that. There's something about being in an environment where the money's not the people that you're with bring something out of you.

Gotcha.

So the money doesn't matter.

Yeah. So it was the strategic byproduct that came out of it.

Yeah.

Awesome. Okay, cool. Would you still do what you were doing back then today? Okay, but here's the thing. So if Graham was still working at McDonald's, he'd have a lot of messes in his life. Okay. Now everyone has moved away from a mess because you were obligated to show up, but you're not going to show up today. For even if they paid you $500 an hour at McDonald's, you would not do it. Because you don't, you know, you just, you know. Unless you had to. Unless there was no other option. Right. So here's the thing. So we have a lot of messes in life. And when someone leaves a relationship, like a marriage that they can't repair, they can't heal, they can't fix. You can talk to Patty Ann she can maybe help you. So you have an obligation, but there's a commitment issue. So one of the things that. So that's M equals O minus C. So your life of an entrepreneur is you've got a. See if this pen works, you got these boxes. So I want you to draw these boxes, okay? So you have a little box and then you have a big box. And so if I was like, if I could write at all in a legible fashion, it would be even at the bottom. So there's a little box right next to big box. And underneath the little box is C, which stands for capabilities. You know what? This pen is not working. Eunice, let's contact Amazon. All right, thank you.

So.

Thank you. Capabilities. But you can't even read what the hell I'm writing here. All right. In the big box. So there's a C in the little box and there's an O in the big box, which is opportunities. Okay, so your life as an entrepreneur. One of the things that I would teach carpet cleaners, and it applies to everyone, it applies to me too, as I try to grow my business. If I want to add another $10 million a year in revenue to my business, I need capabilities in order to get to that $10 million. It's just not going to show up. That's why movies like the Secret were so great. Like, as if the money fairy is just going to come and ship money on you. If you think and manifest. But how do you prove it? And I'm a big believer of Law of Attraction. I mean, I'll of it, but, you know, it's a good thing that maybe have a good visionary attitude towards things. But that being said, yeah, boy, I got to discipline myself better. So in order to reach your opportunities, sometimes you need marketing capabilities. If you get marketing capabilities, you could get great revenue, great leverage. You have technology capabilities, you have financial capabilities, you have management capabilities. What are other capabilities that you need in business?

Leadership.

Leadership capabilities. What else? Finance. Yep. Okay, so anything people. Yeah, put them here. So in order to have say so, I would have carpet cleaners that would buy my stuff. And I'm like, what do you want to do? Hear it all the time. I want to have a million dollar. Your company. Because million dollars just is this number. Because they think once I get to a million dollars, I won't have any more problems. And you all know that the more money you make, more money, more problems, right? So the problem's always they' the treadmill of shit never ends. What changes is your ability to be resourceful, your ability to make decisions, your ability to not be bothered by it. Because go back to the first time you were getting paid by the hour. You deal with more shit on a Monday morning, most of you, between 8 to 9am that you might have dealt with in the entire year on a mental level than where you were. But the reason is you've massively increased your capabilities. So you got rid of that mess in exchange it for a bigger mess or a different mess or a better opportunity or whatever. So in order to reach our opportunities, so I would tell carpet cleaners, if you want to be a million dollars a year and you're currently making 100,000, you can't make a million dollars a year with $100,000 a year capabilities. So what do we need to give you now? I could help them get to a million with teaching them some marketing and some other stuff. So our job is we have to increase our capabilities to reach our opportunities. That's pretty much what it is. So what are the capabilities? And then. But here's where it gets tricky. Once you have built a successful business, and so here you got bigger capabilities, you're now doing something else. So you have, let's say you're at $10 million a year. So you have these $10 million a year capabilities and you want to go to 20 million a year, or you want to go to 12 million a year, or you want to have more profitability, or you want to keep the same revenue, you just want less bullshit in your life. You want to cut the amount of time on half hard, annoying, lame and frustrating things in half. What the way also applies to relationships. It applies to your physical health. If you want to be in better physical health, what are the capabilities you need? That's why we created unstoppable. It applies to any area. Once you've got the capabilities. Here's the hardest thing for me and for, I think most of us here in the room is we have all these opportunities that are no longer worthy of our capabilities. And that means you have to say no. And that's where you get in the success trap. So what we have to do. So you were talking about, how am I going to deal with all of the. I'm booked, but I have more people that want me, right? So that. Okay, well, how do we do that? Do we put you in AI? Do we double your prices? Do we package it up in a different way? Do we bundle and unbundle? Do you decide? You know, Peter Diamandis, he was completely booked I'll give the quick version of the story. Peter is a complete workaholic. He sits on a million different boards. He's ambitious, all kinds of stuff. And he was. The only way he was really making money was speaking gig. And so I told him to join Strategic Coach to help with his workaholism. And so he joined Strategic Coach. We did the very first event, which became Abundance360. I came up with that whole thing, and now it's this giant event. And so he was talking to me on the phone. He's like, man, I can't do Strategic Coach after I had told him to do it. And I said, dan Sullivan will change your life. And so I spent two hours on the phone with Peter, talking him off the cliff so he would not drop out. I said, the lifetime value of relationship you do not want to like. And I already had Dan liking him and promoting the first thing, which became Abundance360. Peter could not sign up a single person at $5,000 a pop. We put 50 people in the room, me and Dan. Back then, he was really good at raising money for xprize and nonprofits. He couldn't raise money for himself. He was getting paid for speaking gigs. And he's an amazing speaker. I mean, an amazing speaker. And he's like, I just don't have the time. I've got all the. I go double your prices. He's like, what do you mean? He's like, 25,000 was his. I go double your prices.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

I said, if you lose half of the clients that won't hire you, you still make the same amount of money because the business you're in is the arithmetic business. That's a. You're in. You're not in the speaking business or the medical business or the pet business or whatever. You're in the arithmetic business when it comes to making money. So I then had to talk to him for a while, saying, just have Connie, who does all this, your prices are now 50,000 a speech, and just see what happens. Try it on the next 10. And I talked him into it, and I said, don't drop out of Coach. So he did that. He doubled his prices and of course, his income went through the roof. And then Dan started promoting the heck out of it. And now Peter gets paid over 100 grand for a speech, and he turns down a lot of them. But he could not. He needed a sounding board in order to do that. So the thing is. So here. Why do I tell that story? So sometimes if the opportunity isn't worth your time, attention, money, effort, and energy just charge enough. So it is. So as an entrepreneur, we have to increase our capabilities to reach our opportunities. As we build our capabilities, we have to grow our opportunities to reach. You know, to reach our opportunities. But here's the hardest thing. The thing that will do the most here is you have to say no. And saying no is usually really hard, especially if you're a giver, especially if you want people to be happy, especially if you love opportunities. Because I love saying yes to everything. And what I've learned is Sam Qurashi on yeah, Sam helped me through conversations. Is the one thing that makes me happy when I'm super overwhelmed and I've got so much on my plate, and I'm really. I'm masterful. If any of you want to learn how to disguise yourself in massive overwhelm and make it think like you're being productive, talk to me. I will give you a roadmap. So I was talking to Sam, and he's like, okay. What it is, is the thing that makes you happiest is when you say yes, because you get an instant. So when I'm super overwhelmed, the one thing that brings instant relief and excitement to me is to add a new project to my plate. And in the moment, though, I don't have an association with what I'm already obligated to. So I've now paused and paused a lot more. I never used to pause at all. I'd be, hell, yeah, let's do this. And it's like, you know, Eunice, like, poor, suffering Eunice over here. 29 years of this craziness, Right? It's got to be better than any sort of, like, Jerry Springer show or anything, because you do it in real time. So. But so basically saying no is, like, the answer, you know? So Greg McEwen, who wrote Essentialism. Yeah. So I helped him launch his first group that he did. He decided he doesn't like doing groups. Like, I gave him the whole model. He was using all these tools. I helped him design, but he has this less but better. Three words, less but better. And then my buddy, why can I not? Hell yes or no? Why can't I think of his name? Derek Sivers. Derek Sivers. Yeah, I interviewed him. Him too. Genius. Derek Sivers is amazing. So, you know, he says this, which is worth writing down from Derek Sivers. Saying yes to less is the way out. Saying yes to less is the way out. So as you're going through the hot seats here, whatever your problem, challenge or opportunity is, I want you to think through the lens of, am I obligated to this because I really want to do it, or if it's not a hell yes, don't do it. And the best form of time management is being in a position where you can look at all of the obligations and truly from a place of power, say, I don't have to do any of this shit unless I want to, and I'm going to do a good job. So let's get you a mic, if we could, please. Where are all of the catch boxes?

Just to double down on this, you know.

Thank you.

A lot of people say, hey, I have a time management issue. And oftentimes I look, I say, well, let me look. Clients that say, you don't have a time management issue, you have a people pleasing issue, Right? Yeah, Right.

Literally, that would be me for most of my life, right?

So the mess and the obligation, right? There's a good distinction I use called invitation versus obligation. Right? And so, for example, like, I decided a couple years ago, I was like, I used to be on a lot of shows and podcasts, and I said, this isn't my highest level. I took off for two years, right? And this guy was trying to get. Get me on a podcast. And then Evan, who helps you so much, he brings you on, and I interview with him, he says, can I share it? He shares it. So the guy, the podcast guy for two years, says, hey, I see you doing it again. And I say, he says, can you come on my show? And I said, hey, I appreciate the invite. No. And he says, can you explain the no? And I said, well, you can count on me. I won't be explaining the no. I said, because my no is just as powerful as my yes. If I said yes, I wouldn't have to explain my yes, so why would I have to explain my no? So the distinction for me is, if my no changes how you feel about me, it was never an invitation, it was an obligation.

Yeah, that's great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yep. So as you go through this, however you want to interpret this. So here's the thing. So when we have messes in our life, obligations without commitments, it becomes overwhelming. And if you don't build up the capabilities in order to equal the opportunity. So marketing is one of the. You know, I used to say there's two ways to leverage yourself in business. You do it through either marketing, because marketing makes selling easy and ideally unnecessary. So that's why if you do effective marketing, it's time management, marketing. The other thing that I would say is you hire people. You hire people with capabilities. Now with AI, and you know, who are the AI experts in the room? Definitely Lior. Mike Koenigs. Who else is really skilled in leveraging? Jada Darrel. Yep. Michael. Okay, so with AI, you can do, you know, what is the line, Mike? You're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to someone using AI. Who said that? I can't remember, but I heard something like it. And I think, yeah, no, there's a guy that. They have some first use of it. But anyway, but that's the deal. You're not going to, you know, so if your team members are worried that they're going to lose a job to AI, they need to be using AI. They're not going to lose a job to AI, they're going to lose a job to someone who's effectively using it. So all of the different ways that you can leverage yourself. So. So if you're super overwhelmed and you're not saying no and you got too much stuff on your plate. One of the main reasons I took this sabbatical is from the whole premise of entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves. And Dan Sullivan is the one that got me to understand that, and we did a whole podcast on it. So if you are too pressed or you're too tightly scheduled, it's not that you can't get stuff done. I mean, because I was saying this to Robert the other day, there's truth behind if you want to get something done, ask a busy person. Busy people get shit done. You know, overwhelmed people that are busy. Yeah. Why? Because they just take on a lot of shit. But if you take on so much where it's going to break you, then you're going to be in a thing. So here's the way I want you to look at it. So Dan has free days, focus days, buffer days. So this is task, problem, crisis. When I first joined Strategic Coach, this is what Dan had explained strategies. So you have a task. Most of what we have to do in life, most of the things on Your hot seat, bunch of tasks, just different things you got to figure out to do or not to do. Then there's problem and then there's crisis. So my interpretation is writing a sales letter, delivering a genius network meeting and doing a good job at. Even though I only have four hours of sleep last night, last night was a difficult sleep night for me. So I just took a lot of amphetamines this morning. I'm kidding. I didn't have any coffee or anything, but I had trouble sleeping last night. But I still went to the gym and worked out and I didn't work out as hard as I would like to. And I think if you're really tired, it's bad to really push yourself. So it's always questionable. But I was like, you know, what the hell? And I started thinking about ray and the 10 minute talks and having a good attitude about stuff. And it's like, yeah, quit being belly aching. There are people all over the world, I always remind myself, there's at least 3 billion people on the planet whose dreams would come true to trade places with any of us for like an hour, you know, so it's not really a problem, it's a task, right? So. And then what a crisis. So a problem is you're going bankrupt, you're, you know, leaving a relationship. You know, crisis is you lost a leg, one of your children died, someone's suing you and you're gonna, you know, so there are crises, but most of what we have in life is a task. But how many of you have been, you're overwhelmed, it's time for lunch, you don't have lunch set up, you're booked with appointments and you're really hungry and all of a sudden getting lunch is like a problem, right? Or a crisis. Fuck, I gotta get lunch, I'm starving. What am I gonna eat? Well, usually most of you, it's not like you're gonna eat. It's like you eat Mexican food, you're gonna eat Chinese food, you can eat sushi, you're gonna eat, you know. So most of when we're really overwhelmed, we look at tasks through the lens of a problem in a crisis. So part of this, when you're doing a hot seat, like, just look at your attitude towards it. Because sometimes the solution is that's having a better fucking attitude. And if you don't have a good attitude, because Michael was saying that your nervous system was over regulated, it doesn't matter how much you're intellectually telling yourself, if you don't deal with that trauma you're always going to be in fight or feel flight. So that's one of the reasons to look at trauma. That's one of the reasons to look at health. Smart people try to intellectualize and self help their way out of everything. But a lot of times it's like freaking meditate, go get a massage, rest, talk to, you know, go through a process. So you somatically, because the issues are in the tissues, they're not in your head, they're oftentimes they're in the issues are in the tissues. So as you go through your problem, challenges, things, realize how capable you actually are. And if you're not capable in some area, that's why you're not reaching the opportunity. There's nothing wrong with that. Every single person here is spending money so that they can get results. No one wants to sit through seminars, listen to podcasts, read newsletters, listen to audio. Now I know some of you do because it's mentally stimulating, but I'm saying it sort for effect. What you want is results, but the way to get the results is you learn, you build the capability. So every time I go somewhere, going there because I'm trying to stack capabilities, insight and perspective. And also the only thing that helped me the most with recovery was unlearning. Because I spent my whole life trying to learn things, read things, consume things. And the unlearning is more important than the learning because a lot of times we have a bunch of things that we think are true that actually don't help us at all. And I think that most people have some form of learned helplessness where they have learned to be helpless. So I say all of that because you're going to go into hot seats right now with a much more different perspective on how to advise other people. So I said this not for you as the person, but you as the recipient of hearing what someone else has to say. Because at every meeting we solve problems, challenges and opportunities. Someone always shares that they had some major breakthrough. And other people like, I just had a nice discussion with two people. And that's usually because the two people you chose just were terrible people.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click, click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now. Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.