The Brutal Reality: Why Most Entrepreneurs are Their Own Worst Enemy

Let's talk about what really causes business failure. Because I had to look, as I mentioned before, I had a lot of different times where my businesses were. I was the problem with my business.

I was the problem with my business. There's thousands of leadership books and thousands of business books that will tell you one common principle, which is a life principle, which is a true principle, which is your business is not going to outgrow you in one way, shape or form. John Maxwell said it. I don't know, Simon Sinek said it. I mean, pretty much every thought leader on the planet has basically said some form of that statement, and it's because it's true.

The reality is it comes down to an execution, learning and execution. You have to commit today if you're going to build an unstoppable business. You have to commit today to constantly be a learner.

So you can become an executioner in a good way.

Hear me? So I began saying, okay, well, what are the things that almost took me out? What are the things that really honestly, if I'm honest with myself, if I'm radically honest with myself, if I take the time to really, sincerely, deeply commit to understanding what it is that almost took me out all these different times, it actually came down to things that they don't talk about the marketplace, that drive the behaviors, about the bad cash flow management, that drive the behaviors about the bad legal resources, that drive the behavior, about the pricing.

So we're going to talk about those.

Because once you're aware, you can do something about it. Here are the lists that I came up with. The first one is ignorance.

You don't know what you don't know.

I've been there a lot.

You don't know what you don't know. The second one obviously is on the screen, which is arrogance. You think you know it all.

Interesting.

You think because you've had a level of success in a certain capacity that all of a sudden you've got my mastery level exposure in building a business.

Because you can drive nails really well. In my case, you can run a business.

Because you can do the thing. You can run a business.

Great entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs that ultimately change the marketplace and change the world, they are always learning and they're always growing.

The moment that you forget where you come from is the moment you lose sight or can take ownership of where you're going.

I want to always remember in my heart and in my head the kid who was sleeping in a car.

I don't ever want to be too far from him.

And the reason I don't want to be too far from him is because I never want to take for granted what God has given me today.

Arrogance will stop you in your tracks.

Next one, complacency. This one burned me last year.

Last year, this got me crazy. Market turmoil, supply chain disruption everywhere, price increased, stuff everywhere. And I took for granted I got complacent, that I needed to supervise my management team and my team in general to make sure that they were stewarded through that marketplace really well. And by the time that I figured it out, six months in.

Guys, my bus was off the, off the street.

And I had to jump back on the bus and get in the steering wheel and crank it hard left.

Had to change out a lot of our folks and our staff, unfortunately, who also weren't paying attention.

Because I took for granted where we were. I took for granted. Well, we've been in business for almost 25 years, man. Like, this is.

This shouldn't be happening. This shouldn't be happening. But yet it was happening. Next one, paralysis. You're overthinking.

You're not deciding.

You let something spin and spin and spin in your head. Especially if it's since something super sensitive like removing a team member that has been with your company for a long, long time. I told my team this recently and I'm not sure why this is coming up now, but I just want to kind of give you a little break on it.

That from zero to $1 million, you'll keep about 90% of the people that started off the business with you.

Okay? 0 to 1 million. You get to keep a huge chunk of your team. 0 to 5 million, 70%. 0 to 10 million, 50%.

As you escalate in top line revenue, the people within the business are either going to be wanting to grow themselves or they're not going to want to be growing themselves. And if they don't grow with themselves, they can't grow with the business. And as a result, they won't be part of your team unless you let them be part of your team, which then holds your business back, which then holds you back, which then actually prevents you. Because you love them and you care about them. And you went to the baptisms and you did all these different things. And it's okay to love people. I want you to love people. I do. I love people.

But I finally, as of literally three years ago, finally had to separate myself from their emotional stuff.

Because I'm in charge of stewarding a business that is responsible for hundreds of people.

Every decision that I Make. Whether it's to promote somebody from within or to hold somebody back or to remove somebody, every one of those decisions ultimately affects everyone.

And as the entrepreneur, the business person in you, you're also going to basically deal with the same thing.

All right? Focus.

Lack of focus.

You are not actually focused on growing a business. You're focused on doing something else. Or because you feel anxiety ridden, you feel overwhelmed, you don't want to focus.

And if you've ever ran a business or wanted to start a business, you feel overwhelmed, you feel anxiety, you feel frustration, you feel like you're stagnant, you feel like you're underestimated, you feel like you're not getting what you need out of life. The reason you feel that way is because every entrepreneur feels that way.

Every one of them. The trick is being able to focus when everybody else is fleeing.

That's the trick. In order to focus. We'll talk about this a little bit later on. You have to put yourself in a set of circumstances where you have guardrails and guidelines that protect you with your ability to focus. One of the things I'm trying like crazy to do, and I still haven't mastered it yet, which is to build a great business, have great team members, but also make sure that I'm home and present with my family in a really strong way. I've always struggled with that.

So when I go home now, I literally basically have to shut. I was getting text messages last night. My phone was going and my wife was like.

Ding'S over there. I said, it's after six.

I'm not even gonna look at it.

And I'm having to do that because it's something I haven't been great at.

So make your focus count.

Make your focus count. When you're at work and you're doing your thing, focus on that. When it's time to actually focus on the family, hey, that's actually a great organization. Focus on the family. When you do that, focus on that. The other one's lack of a mentor. I was very fortunate very early on to have Steve Myrick. He was my first mentor. I've had a lot of others since then. We'll cover the mentorship matrix in a later lesson, which is going to give you the boundaries to select a mentor specifically and the types of mentors that make learning easy. Never has it been easier than ever before to learn from masters at certain levels of business, certain levels of life, certain levels of relationships, certain levels of faith. There are masters in those organizations, and you have direct Access to them now that we did not have a decade ago. So we're going to go through that. All right? Lack of responsibility and accountability.

Entrepreneurs that really struggle, unfortunately, from what I've seen, like to blame. It's the team's fault.

Interesting to me, if it's the team fault, who'd hired the team?

You hear me? Like, this is. This is. I'm just. I'm telling you stuff that I've had to tell myself. I struggle with all of these. All right, next one. Disjointed risk mitigation.

You've opened yourself up to risk. You're not checking on compliances. You don't have any partnerships with local attorneys. You don't have anybody reviewing your documents before you sign them. You're allowing the bank to dictate you what you can and cannot have.

Most people don't know this, but a personal guarantee is a negotiable.

Did you know that?

We'll talk about more of that later. Disjointed. Your brand is disjointed. Your product is disjointed. You're disjointed. You don't know where you're going, why you're going there. You're just lost to the wind. Which is why we're gonna start with the fundamentals and build our way up the next few days. So if you came in today and you're like, I got a pricing problem. I'm like, we'll get to that.

You came in today and you got. I got a branding problem. We'll get to that. You came in today. I got a business model problem. We're gonna get to that. But we're gonna build it step by step. Step. Because the fundamentals matter. The fundamentals are where everything's built on. I learned that from construction industry. Did you know a skyscraper has just as many stories, oftentimes underground, as it does have above ground?

Because I was Anton and I. So you guys are gonna have an amazing experience later today with Anton Gunn. But he just made this interesting thing I'm gonna go ahead and bring up. And I hope I don't steal from him too bad. But.

He said.

He said, great entrepreneurs don't build chicken coops. They build skyscrapers. If you build a skyscraper, you have to go below ground to build above ground. You build a chicken poop chicken coop that can be knocked over with the wind and rain and whatever, doesn't have to be on fertile ground. It can shake with the wind, whatever.

That's a different type of business. So Decide right now what kind of business you want to do. You want to build a legacy based empire, so to speak, or do you want to build something that's gone here, that's here today and gone tomorrow? What do you want? You can choose either. All right. Bad advice. I've had lots of bad advice.

In fact, going back to my earlier challenge that Steve Myrick taught me, there are two specific comments that come to mind. The first comment was, actually, my father came to me right after his first business failed or his only business failed. It turns out you have to pay taxes, and if they don't pay taxes, they come take your stuff. Okay? They're the only organization on the planet that if you don't do what you're supposed to do, they'll literally come take your stuff.

Well, he was going through that, and I remember him coming home. It was just before we had the repossessions and stuff like that. He came home and he walked in the door.

And he sat down and he looked over at me and he goes, I just want you to remember something like, like he says, scoggins, don't get ahead, they get by.

What kind of lifeline are you leading from? Who told you something that's not true? Those lifelines we, we, we take ownership of, they're not even ours. We believe in limitations that other people set for ourselves. Which kind of leads me to the next point. Your friends and your family.

Don'T understand. And they can't teach you or encourage you or inspire you or empower you past their level of belief.

Do you understand what I'm saying? My father tried to talk me out of building the first flagship business that allowed all this to become possible. He tried with all of his might to do that.

And I had to finally commit to myself. No, this is something I have to do.

This is something I have to do. And as a result, it became something.

So when you're actually listening to your friends and your family and the people around you who do love you, it's not that they don't love you. It's just that they can't see past their own level of belief.

They can't see it.

My family that I have sometimes struggles with seeing things that I see now, they can also see blind spots. So it's not like there's no value. But you have to be very careful on the advice that you're taking based on where's it coming from? Is it coming from a limiting belief from that person, or is it coming from genuine concern? Did they see something. Is it a blind spot? And I've got blind spots. I've had my family bring up blind spots. I E not spending enough time with the family.