MBA1249 Why You Can’t Sprint Forever

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100 A Better Business with every episode with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online. And in today's lesson you'll learn why you can't sprint forever. In today's business entrepreneurial world, everybody thinks you have to go, go, go, go. 100%, 110% all the time, forever. I'm here to tell you that that's not possible. You just cannot do that. And you're asking for trouble if you attempt to do that now. Conversely, this doesn't mean that you just take your sweet time. You don't work hard and don't try to hustle as hard as you can at all. There's a balance, there's a cadence that you need to follow. In business, there are moments, there are periods where you have to sprint and there are moments where you have to slow down. And I'm not only talking about you, I'm talking about you and your business and your team. These are just the laws of nature. And I've made the mistake of trying to sprint too hard for too long. And in many ways it cost me so much in my Business that it took me so long to recoup from that. I'm going to explain why as well as give you the cadence I'm talking about, give you the rhythm that you need so you know when to sprint and when to slow down, when to go hard and when to ease up a little so you don't burn out and you are successful and your business is sustainable. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Back when I was in high school, my main sport was basketball. Loved basketball, played all through high school. But to stay in shape, I used to run cross country in the fall and track in the spring. I wasn't crazy about these sports, but I did it to stay in shape and I'm so glad I did because I learned so many lessons through running track. And my main event was the mile. I was a long distance runner. And one of the things that you learn as a long distance runner very early on is this concept of pacing. In order for you to win a race, a long distance race, I'm not talking about a sprint here, I'm not talking about the 50 yard dash. If you want to win the mile in a track meet, you win it and you lose it by pacing. Now when I say pacing, many people think, oh, okay, so you run the same speed the whole time during the four laps around the track, which equals a mile. No, that's not what you do. Actually, to be successful at the mile, your pacing has to look like this. Now remember, a mile is four laps around the track. So in your first lap you're supposed to go all out. You're supposed to actually run fast. I was told at 80% of your maximum speed. So you're running, you're running really fast here. And the point here is that you need to get a good lead. You can't start off slow because you need momentum. Because if you are slow and you are behind, it's going to take you too much effort to come back towards the end of the race. So you go pretty hard on that first lap so you can get a decent lead. So you're in first or second place on that track. The second and the third lap, you kind of bring down your speed to around 60%. You're basically maintaining as much as possible, your lead, your footing. Now you'll fluctuate between 60 to 70% of your speed because again, you want to maintain where you're at. You might fall behind one place or two, but you're still in the mix. Come the last lap, the fourth lap you're going all out, 100%, 110 if you have it, and you're flying through that finish line. This is why you see a lot of upsets when it comes to the mile in the Olympics, and it's because of pacing. Now, why do I share this story with you? Because the same is true with your business. You need to pace yourself. You can't constantly be sprinting. Sprints are important. You have to try to gun it for a while so you can get things done, get some momentum and use that momentum to your advantage later on. Now, I found that the maximum time, in my experience, that you can really go all out with your business, working hard, long hours, all that kind of stuff, is eight weeks. So it's about two months. After two months, you're going to start to burn out and it's really going to affect the results of your work worse. You're going to start to dislike your job, you're going to dislike your business. You could be motivated, you could want it bad. But around eight weeks, you're going to start to see a decline in performance. Now, eight weeks is not a short amount of time. I know some people will tell me, well, I start to feel demotivated after a week. Well, that's something else. You need to find something that really, that you're in love with, something that you really want bad. Maybe you need a shot of vitamin B, I don't know. The point is, is that I believe, you know, six, eight weeks is a decent sprint. After eight weeks, you need to slow the pace down. Let me give you an example. With this podcast, I batch these episodes in advance. I record many every week. So that way they're all published on time. This is a daily podcast, so we gotta get ahead. On top of that, I might have to travel, I might have to take some time off, right? A vacation. And I won't be able to record. So I need to have some lead time. So during my sprint, when I'm recording my podcast for eight weeks, I will record 10 episodes every week. Two days out of the week, I record five episodes every day. Now, what this does is that it gives me one week ahead every week. So since we're five days a week, five episodes are dedicated to just, you know, fulfilling that week and then the next five, which equals 10, gives me one week ahead. And every week I do this, I go one week ahead. So after eight weeks, I'm two months ahead, I'm eight weeks ahead. But around that eight week mark, I start to lag off. I know myself and I need to start to pace myself. I'll have to kick it down to, to five episodes a week or maybe seven episodes a week. I'm still maintaining the lead and I'm still kind of even inching up a bit with those two extra episodes, you know, doing seven instead of 10. But I'm conscious of burnout. I'm conscious of the fact that I can't sprint forever. I might even take a break where I won't record for a full month and then I'll come back strong with a sprint of another eight weeks. This allows me to have a sustainable podcast. This August, the 100 MBA show will be five years old. A daily podcast that's five years old, that's super hard to do. But it's only possible because of pacing, because I'm not sprinting all the time, but I am sprinting at times. If you're constantly sprinting, you're going to shoot yourself in the foot. This is applicable to any business. With my software business, webinar Ninja, when I have my team together, my developers, we talk about what we're going to be developing the next month. I know that I can have more than two intensive months in a row. That's eight weeks. After that we gotta kick it back a little bit and not push them so much because mistakes will happen if we continue to sprint. I love all these videos online that tell you to hustle harder and work hard and keep going and never say never. All that is true. I'm not saying stop, I'm saying pace yourself, sprint, kick it back 60% and then sprint again. That's how you win the race. And I love this analogy with track because I lived it. And number two, the mile is a long distance race and business is a long distance race. It's a long term game and you gotta play the long game. You can't just think about tomorrow. So keep this in mind. Look at your calendar right now. Where are your sprints and where are you pacing yourself and kicking it back a little bit? And when are you sprinting up again? Color code it if you want to. This really helps me as well because cause I have something to look forward to. I know my sprint is over next week and I can take it a little easy on the recording.

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By being mindful of when to sprint and when not to sprint, you're going to save your business a whole lot of headaches. One physical headaches, right? Real headaches. You burning out and not being there for your team. As well as turnover. Turnover is one of the biggest costs in business where people invest in employees, they train them, they work them up, they're a part of the culture. And then six months later, they leave. They got burnt out. You drove them down through the ground, right? And then to invest more money into finding somebody, recruiting, training, it's so costly, and your team is your biggest asset. What you're going to create for the world, your product, your service, is not going to come out of thin air. It's going to come out of the people that create it. So be mindful of that and take care of them with this philosophy. Thank you so much for listening. If you love what you hear, why don't you leave us an iTunes rating and review? I'd love to hear what you think of the show. Your favorite episode is your favorite. Take away how it's helped you and your business. We read every single review and it means so much to us because we know what you love about the show and we can double down on that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I don't want you to get me wrong. I really believe in hard work and pushing yourself as much as you can. But I also believe that everything has limits. You can't just go, go, go forever. I can't work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If I want the best out of myself. I need to respect myself and you respect the limits that my body has. I have to get enough rest. I need to get the right nutrition. I need to have enough free time to clear my mind. And the same thing goes with your team. You can't just drive a car forever. You have to maintain it. You have to fuel it, right? Or if you have an electric car, you have to charge it, you have to do service on it. If you want to see through the windshield, you have to wash it, right? You can't just continue to go with no maintenance. Make sure you maintain and pace yourself in your business. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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