673. 6 Q's to Make Sure You're in the Right Business for You

Why are you starting this thing? Like, what's the actual why? And if it's because you don't like your job right now, or if it's because you, you know, you just want to say you're an entrepreneur or it's trending right now. Yeah, you feel empty, you feel depressed. Like, yes, those are reasons to look into it, but if those are the main reasons, you're gonna need to dig a little bit deeper.

Welcome to the earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness exper and cover model turned self love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author. Each week I'll bring you a guest or a thought that will help you bust through your fears, connect to your soul and get focused and clear so you can elevate your life, business and relationships. We don't wait until we're ready for someone to tell us we're good enough. We take what we want and we anoint ourselves. Get ready to earn, own and unapologetically rock your happiness every single day. Are you with me? Here we go.

And we're back with another episode of.

He said, she said, coffee in hand. What time is it right now?

You know, it is 7:43. 7:43.

Why have we been like, extra happy working hard lately?

I think there's so many things and this ties into what we're going to talk about today, but I really think there's actually so many things about that because we are eating better.

Yeah.

We're sleeping better.

Hardly drinking anymore.

Hardly drinking right now, which is amazing. I sleep so good. And we've been seeing some really awesome high level friends that we just love. Like, oh my God. Like, re energized after we see them.

Oh my God. This has nothing to do with what we're talking about today, you guys, but here is life's most simple litmus test as to whether you should hang out with so and so or not. If they leave and you're on a high with more energy when they got there, keep hanging out with them. If they leave and you're tired, don't. Isn't that like the greatest litmus test?

Yes, totally. I mean, I think that, you know, we don't realize how much during the day we can maybe be spending time with people who drain our energy. And you're like, you're not going to have as much energy as you need in order to carry through whatever it is that you're wanting to do. And I know that if you're listening to this Podcast, you probably have a lot of things that you want to do in life. So that is huge. That's really important. One of my mentors, Gabby Bernstein, used to always say, where are you leaking your energy? Like, where are you letting it out? And it should be being either built up or applied to something that you love.

I talk about that with my entrepreneurs all the time. Where are you leaking money? Right? Like, because so many people are leaking money. Money's energy door, this way, this way, this way. And they don't realize it. It's hurting their business. Speaking of which, today you wanted to talk about these questions that will determine if you're really ready to be an entrepreneur preneur or not.

Yeah, these are six questions, you guys, that you should be asking yourself, even if you have a current business right now, but asking yourself before you start that business or start another business. Because I don't know about you, but I literally, you know, went from doing what I, what I love to realizing I don't want to be doing these things anymore because I want something new, I want something bigger, I want something challenging. And I almost put myself into some situations and businesses where I was doing the same things that I didn't love in my old business because they're old habits.

They're ways of being.

Oh my God. I, I was looking at the big pic, I was looking at the like, overall, like kind of outcome and what am I gonna get and how am I gonna feel if I got that thing rather than looking at my day to day.

Oh my God, that's so. Okay, so let's talk about these six questions. And guys, entrepreneurship is so on trend right now. Right? And I teach all the time. If you listen to my show all the time, that it is one of the number one ways to create your own security and your own safety. But there's a huge but. I just laughed because I.

Those are on trend as well, by the way. The six year old buts are on trend.

But there's a huge but and it's this. It's. I can't stop laughing at the huge but. Okay, sorry to make you spit your coffee out. The huge but is this. It's not everybody is meant to be an entrepreneur or not everybody is meant to be an entrepreneur right now. Okay? So use these six questions to find out if it's for you or not. Lori was the first one.

Why are you starting this thing? Like, what's the actual why? And if it's because you don't like your job right now or if it's because you, you know, you just want to say you're an entrepreneur or it's trending right now. Yeah, you feel empty. You feel depressed. Like, yes, those are reasons to look into it. But if those are the main reasons, you're going to need to dig a little bit deeper. And these questions that we ask next are going to really help you with that as well.

Okay, so read that one again.

Why are you starting this? Like, just start journaling on that.

Here's the thing. So many people start it because their friends are starting it or because someone told them they need to be an entrepreneur or because somebody told them that it's the right thing to do. Like, I'm sure I'm guilty of that. I'm sure people listen to my show. They're like, that's what I need to be doing. I need to be an entrepreneur. When really they're meant to be an employee. And I think that we live in this day and time where people have made employee feel like it's less than. Oh, my God, an entrepreneur. Like, it's more than, and that it couldn't be further from the case. Guys, we need both halves of the equation. Both halves of the equation are just as noble as each other. Without great supporting cast, employees entrepreneurs would be nothing. And without incredible visionary entrepreneurs, there wouldn't be any jobs for employees. So we all have to play the role we were meant to play.

Okay, so before we move on to.

The next point, I have to take a minute to tell you about the snack that we're obsessed with. Did you think that we'd be talking about anything else besides snacks? So, you guys, we are in love with outstanding foods.

In fact, we're so in love with.

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My.

My favorite are the original pig out pigless pork rinds.

So incredibly good.

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To eat the entire bag?

Yes, I said that I eat the entire bag.

No judgment here.

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Bye.

Oh, that couldn't be more true. Like right now, I am just in the deepest gratitude for our employees and how hard they work and how, you know, the crazy thing is you can, if you get with the right, you know, company or a right person or whatever that looks like for you, you can really be creative and do your own thing while being an employee. You know, employee doesn't mean that you have to follow somebody's like, exact commands or direct, whatever that is. All the. It means that, you know, my employees, my employee right now, I just literally, she is so sacred to me and I love giving her a project and then letting her just completely take on her own, like her own ideas and put that within those parameters, within that frame that I've kind of cast for her. And it's crazy because if that's how you work, that's actually what a lot of people are looking for, is, you know, maybe just give us the idea of the vision and then let them run free within that. And not everybody is gonna do that, but at the same time, it's like there are amazing places where you still get to be free and creative and all the things while working with some direction so if that's you, that's really huge.

Yeah. So what's the second question that they should ask?

Second one is, what is your day to day going to look like? So this was really big for me because as I was starting to think of what I wanted to do after, you know, writing the book and doing all the events and doing the courses, I kind of forgot that the most important thing is what am I actually interested in doing every day and what am I actually good at doing every day? What gives me energy, what gives me life? So when I was first thinking about it, I was like, oh, I want to, you know, I want to follow this person's career and be a public speaker constantly. And I want to write another book. And I was like, wait. When I was writing, one of the biggest things for me when starting a new company was I want to be with people. I want to collaborate, I want to talk, I want to ideate. And then I was like, okay, well, if I'm writing a book, guess what you do when you write a book, you are alone. You are alone for months at a time. I was like, so maybe that's not for me right now because I'm putting myself alone. Even though the book tour and stuff, you're with people, but technically you're not really working with people. You're out there alone. And then public speaking, I'm like, I don't really want to be traveling right now. This was before Corona. I was like, I hate being away from my husband all the time and someone that I had just spoken to at 140 speaking gigs, which meant on the road all year long. And that was the moment for me that I was like, oh my God, I want things that I absolutely don't want to participate in in my day to day.

You got picture of the day to day. Because I think a lot of people right now, picture this. Oh, I'm going to work in this, my favorite coffee shop all day. There's going to be people all around me working and I'm just going to have meetings there and it's going to be so much fun. No, what's really going to happen is you're going to be on zoom half the day. Then you're going to be in like a cold co packing facility visiting your product. And then you're going to be like, you know, talking to your attorneys and doing so. You've got to picture the real day to day. And here's the test. Ready if you can love the low points as much as you'll love the high points that you picture, then by all means go into it. What's question number three?

Will you be happy doing this in three years from now?

This one is so important because you got to have a long term view. You want to know what the kiss of death is for everyone's businesses? It's so funny when you looked at me like, tell me. Here's the kiss of death. It's everybody keeps switching their business every year or their product every year. Guys. It takes a while to get it right. It takes a while to like become efficient. It takes a while to sell all the books or all the courses or all the cans of alcohol or all the cans of whatever. It takes a long time. And so if you're going to be bored in a year or if you're going to want to pivot in a year, then you're probably not cut out for this. You need to have a longer term attention Spanish. Ask yourself what will you still love doing X, Y and Z in three years? Or you're probably not gonna be confident because right about when you're about to break through, right about when you're about to get that momentum, guess what's gonna happen? You're going to want to pivot, you're gonna switch, you're gonna be bored, and that'll be the kiss of death to your business.

So that's my quick question for you though, Chris, is so if we just asked, what do we want our day to day to look like? And no matter what thing lights us up is like, you know, three years from now, we're looking at it. We're like, oh, there's a lot of stuff I don't want to be doing. What do we do?

You can hire that out. Got it.

That's coming up next. Yeah, okay, we'll talk about that when we get there.

When I say, you know, will you love doing this in three years? Maybe you have to do the QuickBooks, the accounting starting out just because you have no money to hire it out, but in three years, I don't mean will you still want to be doing QuickBooks? What I mean is will you still want to be pursuing these cans of alcohol, or will you still want to be pursuing courses in self love, or will you still want to be pursuing, you know, whatever it is, your genre.

Is going to be awesome. What would success look like in this business? Is the next question.

Question number four, what would success look like in this business? Boy, that's a good one. Here's why I think a lot of people. And we've heard this before. It's like a famous quote. They overestimate what they're going to do in a year, but they underestimate what they're going to do in five. And so they're like, success for me will be $500,000 in my first year. And honestly, you might make 100 and you might make 50. But then the doubt or the other side is in five years, if you actually stuck with it, you'd probably be doing way more than you thought that you could possibly be doing. Because there's a compounding effect on your knowledge, on your experience, on how long your brand has been around, etc. And one of the most important things that you can measure as your success. When you're saying, what would success look like? To me, of course, first has to be happiness. There has to be happiness. But second, it shouldn't just be top line revenue. Like, everyone thinks I'm going to bring in X. It's got to be your profitability, because it is not worth working your ass off to make a million dollars if it costs you 999,000 to get there.

You know? And I just want to say there's been a lot of times, Chris, where you and I have gone on a walk and it's like we've had to reframe and remember what happiness is and means. You almost need to sit and ask some questions to yourself about what happiness means to you. Because for right now, in the season that I'm in, happiness literally means being challenged and being stretched and, you know. Cause there are a lot of days where I'm like, oh, my God, this is so hard. And then I remember that when I am not challenged or stretched, I actually don't feel happy. So I've had days where I'm like, this is too hard. And then I'm like, okay, what would you be doing if you weren't being challenged and growing as a human? We know how you get, Lori. Yes, this is me talking in the third person to myself, but it's like, I know how I get. I'm not. I start to feel restless. I start to feel. Feel like, wow, I'm not having these conversations that feel interesting to me because I want to be learning. So really, when you ask yourself, are you happy? You have to remember what happiness means to you. And sometimes happiness comes from doing those hard things. So the next question is Tybo.

I wish people could see this.

Oh, my God, it's so distracting. It's absolutely crazy. There are dogs Crawling on laps like.

Guys bananas is basically as big as we are. And he keeps crawling up on my lap. I'm on a little, like, desk chair, little office chair. Right now. He's crawling up on my lap, on my shoulders, trying to get up here.

Like, why are you talking in these stupid microphones when you could pay attention to me?

All right.

Oh, he's licking the microphone. Great. Okay. All right, so this is the next question. What is your zone of genius within that thing you want to start? And who will you need in order to get back to your zone of genius quicker? So this applies to that question that I just asked you. So what is your zone of genius? For me, I have to remember that I love to ideate. I love, you know, the marketing side. I love the community aspect. So right now I'm in that. But I'm also not. I'm in, you know, supply chain, co packing, setting up, you know, attorneys, setting up all of these different things that, you know, licensing in from state to state. All of the things I'm terrible at that drain my energy really quickly. And right now what I'm doing is trying to see where I have money to build team around these things. And thankfully, I have some to build around these things, but some I don't. Some I have to kind of stay in these places. And building teams for me is not super fun. I'm good at it, but it's not my favorite part. But in order to get back in my zone of genius, I have to build these teams.

I've got so many resources right now that are just, like, popping into my head. So when you start a business, obviously half the things are going to be in your zone of genius, and the other half are not. That's just the way it is. And most people won't have the money in the beginning to hire a team of five right away to cover all the things. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can trade out the things that are not your zone of genius for doing things that are in your zone of genius. And there's a great website called Part, called Barter and Be by our friend Tata, where it's literally, you just jump on the website, and it's for women only. Sorry, guys. And you trade out, like, if you're an attorney, then you trade out your attorney services for a graphic artist. So that's one cool way of helping cover the areas that are not your zone of genius. Our friend Amanda Bucci has a great. Like, she teaches on the entrepreneurial archetypes and it tells you like being a teacher is a different zone of genius than being a coach. And being a visionary is a different, different zone of genius than being an integrator. Like there's all these different things where you have to understand where you should be leaning into in your business and where you should be seeking to fill that gap in your business.

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So when you start a business, you're not going to be able to avoid the tasks that are not in your zone of genius. But you can trade them out, barter them out, you can call in favors, you can do things like that instead of muscling through it and slowing yourself down.

Yes. The last question is, who do you need to be in order to bring this company to success and what habits do you need to have?

Resourceful and positive. Sorry, that's like my knee jerk reaction. I had a really great post yesterday. It went absolutely wild and I was talking about if we had to start over again, here's how I'd make a million bucks in 24 months. And you guys, it's still up. You can go see it on Instagram @ChristobeHarder. But 99% of the comments were amazing. So positive. Like, oh my God, thank you for the map. Oh my God, thank you for this. 1% of the comments were like really negative. Asking the most simple, horrible block questions like, well, where am I supposed to find this? Or where would I ever do this? Or how would I know how to do this? Here's an answer. Google it. Mother trucker.

Like that's all I use.

Just Google. Be resourceful. If you're stopping at well, how do I blank, then you're screwed. You are not meant to be an entrepreneur.

Oh my God. Like when I was starting this company, Light Pink, people asked me all the time, oh my God, how did you even figure that out? I was like, I literally put in the Google search bar. How do I find a formulator? What is a cohort actually I didn't even know the word formulator. Like, I didn't know that that's exactly what I should look for. So what I wrote is, if I wanted to start an alcohol company, where would I start? And it popped up with all of these answers here. People have written all about it. They're like, well, first you'd find a formulator. So guess what I did Then I put in the search bar who formulates alcoholic beverages or whatever I wrote. You know, you try it 10 different ways and all of a sudden you start getting answers you got it is like just an excuse if you're like, I don't know how to do that because I don't know anything about this world. And I'm like putting one foot in front of the other in blind faith. I have days where I'm so freaked out that I don't know what I'm doing. And I'm just trusting and praying and googling. Trust, pray, Google, repeat. Trust, pray, Google, repeat.

That should be a mantra for everyone.

But you know, one more thing I just want to say is what are the habits? Right? Like, I've noticed that if I'm not going to bed early, I can't support this vision. So if you're having some habits that are just blocking you, who do you need to be be? Like, what habits do you need to have? Because for me, if I don't have rest, it's like my kryptonite. So what do you need to put in place like it? What do you need to have in order to move forward?

Yeah, I need to not have a lot of cocktails during the week or I get foggy or I need to exercise my no muscle more or I get over committed to too many things, right?

Yes.

And so you really got to choose your habits if you're going to be building a business. Guys, we have so many tools and resources for they're free for building a business. We put them all in one spot for 2021. Go to 2021 blueprint.com 2021 blueprint.com 2021 blueprint.Com it's just tons of free resources needed for business at that point.

All right, you guys, we're so grateful for you. Our dogs are barking and until next.

Time, we will see you next week.

Appreciate you guys.

Thank you guys so much for spending this time time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought, an honest comment. Tell us what what you think. Tell us what you want to hear more of. It would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again guys.

Bye bye.