3 false ideas most businesses believe in and how it makes their life miserable
In this episode of the Love Your Business podcast, host Mayur Bardolia challenges three pervasive myths that trap entrepreneurs in unfulfilling, stressful business practices. He opens with the story of Jiro Ono, the legendary sushi chef of the three‑star Sukiyabashi Jiro, to illustrate how mastery and love for one’s craft can create extraordinary value without chasing hype. He then deconstructs three false beliefs: (1) the necessity of exponential growth, using the example of James Malone, a designer who works five hours a day yet earns four times his competitors; (2) the idea that hiring a team frees the founder from work, illustrated by Rajat’s IT company that collapsed after rapid, misaligned hiring; and (3) the mantra that constant hustle and grind are required for success, arguing that rest, breaks, and creative downtime are essential for sustainable performance. Throughout, Mayur stresses that purpose, joy, and quality of life should be the true metrics of success, not fame or revenue. He recommends Paul Jarvis’s Company of One for staying small and mastering the whole business system, and promotes his own OfferCraft program and book as practical tools for creating compelling offers. The episode ends with a call to action to subscribe, reach out via email, and join upcoming training.
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Hi, this is Mayur Bardolia and you are listening to Love Your Business podcast. This podcast isn't about magical tactics on running the business that makes you bored and tired. Instead, it's about how to love your business so that you can enjoy doing it and enjoy more time for yourself. If you want to book your lunch or dinner at a restaurant, you just call them up or just book from the internet. But it's not easy for few restaurants. There is a restaurant who is known for one of the hardest reservation to get in. The restaurant is called Sukiyabashi Jiro. It's a 3 Michelin star restaurant next to the entrance to the Ginza Metro Station in the basement of a building in Tokyo. And a meal there, which consists of about 20 pieces of sushi served one at a time, and it costs ¥30,000. That's equal to about $370, and it takes about 15 or 20 minutes to consume. That's it. There are only 10 seats, and there is a set menu. There's no appetizers or any kind of modifications, and nothing else on the menu. Some people visit Japan only for dining at Sukiyabashi Jio from overseas. But it is fully booked months in advance, as its website says. There are about 400 to 500 people on its waiting list at all the times, while only 10 seats in the restaurant. So it never accepts a booking by calling or through its website. The question of what makes this an average-looking restaurant In the basement, you know, why is it so great? And it's owned by and run by Jiro Ono. He was born in 1925. He left home at the age of 9 and has been making sushi ever since. He goes to work every day by getting on a train from the same position. He always tastes his food as he makes it. And he dislikes holidays. Jiro is described as a shokunin. A shokunin means a person who embodies the artisan spirit of the pursuit of perfection through his craft. He loves doing what he does, but not for the sake of doing. He believes in delivering consistent and perfect sushi for years. If you don't know what is sushi, then you can Google and find out. Though Japan has declared him a national treasure, he still says at the age of 95, all I want to do is make better sushi. I believe in the same way. I want to just make my things better. This is not only about me, and it's for all of us. We are not looking for some magic tricks of 10x our income or having a mansion. To me and to all of us, that's just a hype. We all want to do our work better. Just like Jiro Ono says, all I want to do is make better sushi. All the things that we are told about getting super rich and famous, they all sound good, but do we really find them meaningful? All those famous sports persons, film stars, and even business people, they all enjoy doing their work. Tom Cruise doesn't work day in, day in, day out just to get more money. Instead, he loves playing better roles. Cristiano Ronaldo doesn't work hard to get money. Instead, he enjoys playing football better than most footballers. Roger Federer is not looking for 10x his grand slams. He loves playing tennis. And he wins Grand Slams as a byproduct of his work. One of the most famous music artists called John Lennon, he said, work is life, and without it, there is only uncertainty and unhappiness. It's good to have money, but it's also great to have fun in the process of making money. In this podcast, we will talk about the lies and false beliefs people have about business. It's important to tell because many people around are telling us to 10x our income or so. So why are we being told to hustle and grind to get an extra 100 customers, get 8 figures income, or big mansion on a seaside? I again say it's good to have money. But there are some false beliefs that have put many business owners into some big life and business problems. So what are those 3 beliefs that are wrong to follow? Belief number 1, you have to grow exponentially. Belief number two: You don't need to work. You hired a team, and your team will work for you. Belief number three: You can't relax and enjoy. You have to hustle and grind. So let's talk about the first one. You have to grow exponentially. Let's dive in. In the year 2015, I was asked to deliver a 2-day workshop on excellence in business in London, UK. There's a guy called James Malone. He's a graphic designer, and during our conversation over lunch, he says something about the way he works and lives. He works only five hours a day, but he makes four times more money than his competitors. So someone in the group argued with him that James, you should work for nine to twelve hours a day so that you know you can make more money. He denied. He said, "I lovingly started the business to have more time to do the things I wanted to do and spend more time with my family." I never wanted to run the business to work endlessly. And it's not the story of James only. Perhaps all of us started the business with the same idea. We didn't want to spend hours at workplace working for someone else, but we wanted to have more time, peace, and joy for ourselves. Then some people came in your life and said, hey, double your income, quadruple your income. And people started believing them. Of course, those things do happen, but do you want to sacrifice your health, family, and even personal life? We were not born to work endlessly. We are not biologically programmed to hustle for 24 hours. You don't have to work 5 times more. Instead, you can grow slowly and still enjoy your life. Nothing builds up overnight. We need to enjoy the process called the work. The work that we do in business should give us more joy and satisfaction. That's exactly what we are looking for in our business, aren't we? As an example, we earlier talked about Jio, who runs one of the most expensive sushi restaurants in the world. He didn't want to work endlessly. Instead, he is earning money as a byproduct of his love for his work. The fame, exponential growth, and a lot of money should not be the measure of achievement. Those things matter, but not more than the quality of our life and our business. If you are competing with the big giants like Facebook, Microsoft, or Honda, You're doing it all wrong. Why? Because you don't know their purpose. Their benchmark of success may not be the same benchmark of success of yours. If you are enjoying the work that you do, the family that you spend time with, and enjoy your life, then it is your success. For Tom Cruise, Cristiano Ronaldo, Or Roger Federer, the money and fame don't matter much for them. Our work in the business should matter more than anything else. As John Lennon said, work is life, and without it, there is only uncertainty and unhappiness. That takes us to the second wrong belief. You don't need to work. You hire the team and your team will work for you. Let's find out why it is wrong. In the year 2011, my friend Rajat, he started his IT company. He was good at website development. He was obsessed with his work. He could create beautiful and high-converting websites. He was doing everything on his own for the first one year. Still, he had a good number of clients in the first year of his business. He then hired another employee to assist him. He made a good progress. Then someone asked him to stop working and hire more people in his team. He added 5 people within a month, and because he had a good amount of reserved cash, he got free from his work. Sounds like a good thing, but things started going in the wrong way. He didn't expect the disasters. His clients started complaining about the quality of his work. His employees were doing things that were different than the core value of Rajat. His overhead cost started increasing exponentially, but the number of orders was not. His employees were not staying for more than 2 to 3 months with him, and within 2 years, he lost all of his savings and was struggling to survive. So what went wrong? What made his flourishing business turn into a nightmare? Many times we heard that entrepreneurs don't work but hire people to work for them, and it's not 100% true. If you have managed a team, you know that managing people is not as easy as switching off the lights on and off. The people come to your life as a talent but also brings a lot of problems that increase overall pain and frustration. Now, I'm not saying that you have to do all the work for hours and hours. And as we discussed in the first point, we don't have to go for double or triple our income or our customers. You don't necessarily have to follow if someone has shouted at us from the stage or a video to grow exponentially. If your employees have different values, philosophy and work ethics than you, then your company will not go in one direction. They will drive your business in the direction that they want to drive to. I've seen many businesses doing really well with a team of fewer than 5 people. Sometimes a single business owner can run a business successfully with more time and fun than a business owner with a team of 50 to 500 people. If you want to know how, I highly recommend you to read the book by Paul Jarvis. It's called Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business. I highly recommend. Remember Paul Jarvis, the book's called Company of One. As a business owner, you can hire the team to support you and help you to fulfill the gap you can't fulfill. But you should know the entire business system inside out. You just don't delegate the task. You should also prepare them to deliver the customer service, the quality of delivery, the standard of your product, and the strong work ethic exactly how you want them to follow. If you don't do this right, you won't enjoy doing the business. You will get more tired and lose the joy of doing the work. So that takes us to the third belief: you can't relax and enjoy; you have to hustle and grind. Let's discuss, shall we? In the last 5 to 10 years, many people have come on social media and YouTube. The internet has given a platform to hundreds of people to share their voice, and it's a good thing. It has helped many people to learn things they could never learn. But things started going really ugly when some people started shouting as a motivational speaker that you have to hustle and grind. If you're sleeping, you're wasting your time. If you're relaxing, you're going to be poor. You have to work twice as much you are currently working. I don't believe in that. It ends up nowhere. It's one thing to work for a living and it's whole another thing to live to work. Biologically, we are not programmed to work for longer hours without sleep. We will talk about it in a different podcast episode. We can't generate more ideas if we don't take a break. The break can be for hours, days, and sometimes weeks. We don't have an unlimited source of energy within us. Our body and mind cannot perform consistently for hours delivering high quality of work. And as a result of lack of sleep and free time, people become physically weak and mentally ill. To do the work that you don't enjoy doing is one thing, and to do the things that you love to do is another thing. I work for longer hours not because I have to, but because I enjoy doing my work. I also take a break when I feel so without any regret of losing time. In fact, I become more creative and energetic after taking a break. Most people spend hours doing the things that they hate to do, and as a result, they become less creative and less productive because more number of hours doesn't mean more work done. It's about fooling ourselves. So when you take a break, you significantly become more productive and creative. So yes, don't believe everything that the famous guru says on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube just because they said it. See things from different perspective. If you follow the herd, you become the herd. This takes us to the end of the podcast. So let's summarize what we have covered so far. We discussed 3 things. First wrong belief most businesses have is You have to grow exponentially. And we talk about the example of a participant at one of my workshops in London. It's called James. What he shared was profound. He said, "I lovingly started the business to have more time to do the things I wanted to do and spend more time with my family. I never wanted to run the business to work endlessly. We started the business." With the same idea. We didn't want to spend hours at the workplace working for someone else, but we wanted to have more time, peace, and joy for ourselves. We were not born to work endlessly. We are not biologically programmed to hustle for 24 hours. You don't have to work 5 times more. Instead, you can grow slowly and still enjoy your life. Nothing builds up overnight. We need to enjoy the process called the work. The work that we do in business should give us more joy and satisfaction. That is exactly what we are looking for in our business, aren't we? And as John Lennon said, work is life, and without it, there is only uncertainty and unhappiness. Then we talk about the second wrong belief. You don't need to work. You hire the team and your team will work for you. And it's not 100% true. If you manage the team, you know that managing people is not as easy as switching the lights on and off. The people come to your life as a talent but also brings a lot of problems that increase overall pain and frustration. And as we discussed in the first point, we don't have to go for double or triple our income or customers. Well, I'm not saying that you have to do all the work for hours and hours, but if your employees have different values, philosophy, and work ethics than you, then your company will not go in one direction. They will drive your business in direction that they want to drive to. To understand this better, you should read the book Company of One: Why Staying Small Is the Next Big Thing for Business by Paul Jarvis. As a business owner, you can hire the team to support you and help you to fulfill the gap you can't fulfill, but you should know the entire business system inside out. You just don't delegate the task. You should also prepare them to deliver the customer service, the quality of delivery, the standard of your product, and the strong work ethic exactly how you want them to follow. Lastly, we talk about the third belief: you can't relax and enjoy, you have to hustle and grind. Well, it's one thing to work for a living, and it's a whole different thing to live to work. Our body and mind cannot perform consistently for hours delivering high-quality work. As a result of lack of sleep and free time, people become physically weak and mentally ill. To do the work that you don't enjoy doing is one thing, and to do the things that you love to do is another thing. When you take a break, you significantly become more productive and creative. So yes, don't believe everything that the famous guru says on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube just because they said it. See things from different perspective. If you follow the herd, you become the herd. So what's the one thing you can do from today? What can you love doing so well that people will pay you to do that? Talk to people around you and ask them what problems can you solve really well? What are you really skilled at? Ask for their feedback, not appreciation. Yes, there is a difference between feedback and appreciation. Get the feedback and improve. Enjoy the process of improvement in work. As one of the best sushi chef, Jiro, he said. All I want you to do is make better sushi. So be better at what you do, produce better things. That's it. So what's happening in my world? Recently, I did an online training program for some business owners, and I helped them to turn their average and not so profitable marketing offer Into an irresistible marketing offer. The training program was originally scheduled for three hours, but it took longer than four hours to finish. One of the participants, Roshni, she asked me, "Mayur, how can you stay energetic for four hours consistently during the training program?" And I answered, "It's because I love doing it. I love teaching others." And it gives me the energy to teach more. So all I want you to do is make better content and products. At the end of July, I'm doing an online training program on OfferCraft where I will teach and help people to create a powerful marketing offer. And if your customers don't pay attention to your offer and don't buy from you, you should enroll in this program. I will share more information about it. You can send an email on mayur@mayurbardolia.com and I will share more information. And if you can't enroll, go to Amazon and buy the book OfferCraft. The book is to help you design your compelling offer, but if you want my support, you should enroll in the course. It's Mayur from Love Your Business Podcast. Bye for now. Still listening? I share the podcast ideas like this, free goodies, new programs and products to my subscribers. If you haven't subscribed yet, Go to mayurbardolia.com and subscribe now. You will get a lot of valuable information. Bye for now.
