73. Myths of the Masters

Foreign. Hey, my friends, welcome back to leadership in a nutshell where we're cracking the code of the driven mind for home service leaders just like you. I, I resonate with you. I live and breathe here in the blue collar world in space and industries, and I'm just so honored to spend this time with you and really dive into getting you to take a moment each week and think about your thinking. It's why I keep these episodes 10, 15 minutes. You know that by now. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I'm honored to have you scan back through some titles that resonate. It's why we keep it quick and to the point. Just a little shot in the arm and hopefully more than that, a little question for you to think about your thinking. So today we're talking about Myths of the masters in episode 73 here. And I just wanted to bring this up. You know, last week I talked about that dangerous division of us versus them, and then this just kind of came to where it made sense to me to share this week around almost going another layer deeper on that and just reminding your conscious as well as subconscious mind to get out of that game forever, of us and them. They don't have something figured out. If you put that in your mind, like, oh, there's they, they have that business I want, they have the size I want, they offer. That's cool. They're doing some different things and making some different choices and activities and such. But there are some myths that we carry about the masters, and I would put it in air quotes, not necessarily as a title here, but I want you to think about that in your own mind of, like, what does the master mean? Well, there's five things I want to share with you and we're just going to jump right into it and let you resonate your own thinking around it. Number one, you, you know, when we think about like, oh, well, what creates master status in the trades in the service business? Like, how do I become a master? These people that operate at 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 million in revenue, they must have the knowledge that I don't have. They must have the awareness. The first myth is awareness is all you need. So false. It's not true. You need a lot more than awareness. Yes, you need some awareness, but awareness is not where it resides. Like, yes, there's a certain level of understanding certain things about the market, the way the world works, there's an awareness component, but that is a myth to think that's what you need. So it's Part of the success equation. It's part of who you are becoming as an owner, as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as an operator, as a service manager. Whatever the case and whatever the role is, you need a lot more awareness. You need awareness of the things that you need to learn and do and act differently. But act action is where it comes from. Awareness alone doesn't change anything. When I did the deep work and said, oh my gosh, I need to do some work on myself, I'm at a point in my life back when I said, I've got to get sober, that was an awareness. A lot of people have that awareness. But to take the action on it, say, I'm sober for life, drew the line in the sand, got the work started, doing the work I needed to do, that's a big different thing. So awareness is necessary component, but it's not everything. Same is true here. I need to charge more. Oh, I need to shift my marketing. Oh, I need to train more. I need to get better coaching. Whatever it is, that's an awareness. But the action is where it's at. Number one myth is awareness is going to set you free. Or awareness is all you need. No, you need more than that. Number two myth, because you can. Then you should. No, write it down and strike it, write a line through it, you know, burn the sheet of paper, whatever it is. Just because you can do, fill in the blank. Whether it's a skill, whether it's an activity, whether it's a function in the business. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. We think the masters are like, well, they can do that, so they do it all. No, you become a master by saying no to more things and getting the things that you're really, really good at but are not your true unique genius off of your plate, out of your psyche, and stop doing those things on a daily basis, out of your activities. And now you become a true master of game of life and business. Just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should be doing it. I was very blessed by this as not being a formally trained plumber, never operating in H vac or electrical, and being able to build a business that operated in trades that I quote, knew nothing about. Because I was able to hire skilled individuals, I couldn't. So I didn't know how. I couldn't go out and fix something. Most of us, though, operate in businesses that maybe we built from the ground up, maybe we bought. We know the skill, so I can do that. The same is true at every Level. Just because you can run the meeting doesn't mean you should run the meeting. Just because you can do your onboarding process doesn't mean you should. Just because you can do the hiring doesn't mean you should. Just because you can run payroll. You get the point. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. It's a myth number three. If I care more about my team, man, I'm going to get burned. If I care, they're going to get. They're going to burn me. They're going to leverage that. They're going to use that against me. Get it out of your head. It's a myth of the masters. Like, oh, the masters keep this big corporate veil. They say, stay away from, you know, and I'm using the word master very loosely here, right. I think the master shows up in many different ways, but really mastery is about you mastering your own life situation and your own emotional regulation. And there will be more on that in just a moment. But that's truly what it's about. But we have this tendency where we put people running big businesses on a pedestal and different things and we go, oh, man, yeah, I've got to. Here's the deal. Care more about your team and see what happens. Well, I care, and then I'm going to get burned. That is a myth. As a matter of fact, I believe that we're in a place in the world today where if you don't care, that's going to burn you, if you will. If you want to look for getting burned, you got to care about your team. You got to care about your people. And why wouldn't you, if you're a people person, then why wouldn't you care about people? And if you're not, then get out of this business. You don't belong in the people business. You belong in analytics of some sort or some other software business that's not as people intrinsic as this business is. Right? So, number one, awareness is all you need. Not true. Because you can, you should. Not true. If I care more, I'm going to get burned. Not true. The fourth myth of the masters is that there's a lazy workforce and people are just here for the check. We have this tendency to think that big companies are what we have a tendency to think in our minds. Like, oh, the masters have figured out that they're hiring. The entire workforce is lazy, but they're just able to get the few right. What was that movie, A Few Good Men? I suppose in today's world, you need to say A few good people or whatever. There's only a few good people out there and the big companies have all of them. Really. Do you want to keep telling yourself that myth, that limiting belief? Because as long as you believe there's a lazy workforce, you're going to create a lazy workforce in your own company. It's funny, I've said it for years, before Gen X or Gen Y or I guess I'm Gen X. Maybe not before Gen X, but as the Gen Y thing was coming up and then the Millennials, I was operating in a market of about 80 population and you know, there was like 80, 83 or 103. I forget the exact number of competitors that we had and quote competitors in the trades that we served. And it's like I used to tell my leadership team, like, we don't need everybody. We only need 10 trucks at the moment. Whatever it was that we were trying to, we only need 10 people that really want to work. I don't care what the workforce is doing as an entity, as an overall, what I care about is what we put on the field. It doesn't matter. You know what recently we had the Olympics were run again. Like it doesn't really matter what other countries are doing in the Olympics. What matters is what I'm fielding for my team. And the same is true here, whether it's on a global scale of the Olympics or it's my own business as I'm running my service company in my geographical area. Stop worrying about the entire workforce and stop worrying about the news. Said this in specific statistic and then your mind goes out and finds reasons to prove that if you go, it doesn't matter what the entire workforce is doing. What I know is I need a plumber and I've got an ad open for a plumber. What's it going to take for us to fill that truck that will set you free? It's a myth that the workforce is lazy and it's perpetuated by people that are perpetuating myths all day long. I'm not mad at them. I have compassion for them. I'm just saying protect your mind. Your mind is very, very powerful and where you focus your attention absolutely dictates the results you get. So last and absolutely not least as we're rocking and rolling here today, my friend, that basically size will eliminate frustration. Let that land for a minute. The size of my business will ultimately eliminate frustration. What do I mean by that? All of us have had it. We've had it show up in income. If we think about personal income, and then we start thinking, oh, man, you know, I. If I could just break a million in sales, if I was at a million in sales, then I wouldn't be. I wouldn't be frustrated. I wouldn't have this challenge. I wouldn't have such and such. We get to a million in sales, and then we go, well, wait a minute. I bet it's probably not 2 million, because 2 million is only doubling, but I bet 3 million, right? I know for me, I went from 1.2 to 3 million pretty quick back when scale wasn't. Wasn't real big. And I made an acquisition and I was in a small market, and so it was big growth to go from 1.2 to 3 million in a very, very short period of time. But I remember at 1.2, boy, I thought 3 million, my frustration was going to go away, right? It's a myth. It's a myth to think the bigger your business gets, that your frustrations will go away. Your frustrations may change, they may evolve, they may shift, but there are certain frustrations that people will have. And that's why I think it's important. Frustration is tied to emotional regulation, which you've heard me talk some about. You're going to hear me talk more and more about on this podcast, because it's the true key to success in life is managing emotional regulation whenwhen you don't ride the ups and downs and the highs and lows and the frustration and the pain and the, oh, my gosh, we hit budget. Everything's amazing. No, you hit budget, and that's cool. Oh, my God, we missed budget. Somebody take me to the shooting range. I'm firing squad and kill me because I'm a horrible person. No, you just missed budget. At the end of the day, you either hit budget or you missed budget. It's not that big of a deal. The world's not going to end. The sun's going to come up tomorrow. I think it came up today. That's all I know. So I'm not going to worry about tomorrow until I get up tomorrow and see if the sun came up or not. Or maybe I'll get up before it and decide to watch it come, come up. But at the end of the day, and I speak with massive compassion here because I've struggled most of my life until the last several years around emotional regulation. And I would put it on passion, and some of you knew me long before I found any emotional regulation. Oh, he's a passionate speaker. He's A passionate leader. And I rolled this roller coaster of pain and just went from one high to the next low, back to the next high, back to the next low, and all these different things. Instead, it's like, hang on, wait a minute. The size of the business is going to be the size of the business. There's complexity in business because there's complexity in human beings. And as our businesses grow, we grow team members. And with that, we've got to elevate our capability. A few podcasts ago, I talked to you about growth capabilities, and some of you are in pain because you've outpaced your own growth capabilities, right? It's nothing to be mad about. It's nothing to be upset about. It's just something to honor and realize that it is a big myth that you think you're going to outscale or outsize frustration in the business. If you're frustrated today, fill in your revenue blank or fill in the blank with your revenue number. If I'm frustrated at, let's say, 5 million today, guess what? I can assure you as a coach, mentor, friend, and peer, you will be frustrated at 10 million. I've coached too many companies. I've coached too many leaders. I've experienced it in my own businesses. Frustration has to do with the person, not the product. It has to do with you as an individual, not the result. So let's get clear about that. There are certain myths that we think about. You know, myths of the masters, what I named today because I want us to realize, you know, awareness isn't all you need. It's just a component of what you need. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. And sometimes because you can and you're okay at it, you shouldn't do it because you're not amazing at it. Sometimes you're excellent at things and you still shouldn't do them because it's not your true unique genius. The third thing we talked about is, if I care more, I'm going to get burned. Get that out of your head. You got to love on your team, you got to love on your people, you got to love on your clients. It's all about caring about people. And you will be able to go deeper and have more meaningful relationships and more meaningful success. And thinking the workforce is lazy. That's a myth. Now, I'm not saying there's not statistics, and I'm not trying to take an ostrich approach and say, oh, no, if unemployment was at a different statistic, then people would be beating down our door I saw Wendy's as advertising $22 an hour. I saw a big push on Facebook about fast food. I don't care what fast food's doing. I'm not in the fast food business. What I care about is what the trades are doing, what the blue collar industries are doing and how we can attract more talent. And that's where I'm focused. And that's all I'm focused on, is the labor pool that we're dealing with and what it looks like. Challenge those myths in your mind. Last, certainly not least, you're not going to scale yourself out of frustration. You're just going to scale yourself into a different level of frustration at a different revenue number and hopefully a different profit level, but frustration. We talk to clients that have very large businesses based on what the world would say. We talk to clients that have very small businesses based on what the world would say. And we talk to frustrated clients on both sides. It's just what it's about. It's about you elevating your game, you elevating your greatness. Don't fall into some of these myths of the masters, my friends. Challenge yourself. Do some thinking. I'd love to hear from you. If this is resonating with you, you can always hit me up@kennyennychapman.com Let me know how the podcast is going. Would love to have you share this with some people. We want to keep growing this community as I share a little thought each and every week. Chance for you to challenge your own self. Think about your thinking until we talk, my friend. Make it a better than fantastic week. We'll see you real soon. Cheers.