After a powerful and productive week of coaching small business owners, I once again noticed a critical common thread. There was an apparent reason why these respective businesses were struggling with leveling up.
So grab a cup of coffee (or tea), a pen and paper, tune in to the following video, and learn the #1 impediment to leveling up your small business.
For the last 15 years or so, I’ve been working with small business owners worldwide, helping them level up their respective businesses.
There’s one thing that I’ve noticed after spending well more than 10,000 hours coaching some of these small business owners and just talking to them. A lot of their success hinges on one specific thing.
I’m going to dive into a mindset concept called being unstoppable. The conversation and the concept of being unstoppable no matter what.
Small business can be a terrifying place and a very lonely place. And it’s one of those places where things like fear have an easy time creeping in and becoming part of your plan whether you want it there or not. So our constant ability to fend and fight that off is critical. So let’s talk about being unstoppable.
Let me start by explaining a little bit about my day today. My day started like this. I’ve been slacking, and I’m admitting it to all of you. I’ve been slacking on when it comes to hitting the gym for the last week and a half or two weeks, and I’m starting to feel the physical symptoms. And I don’t like it!
Those who hit the gym and agonize over getting out of bed and getting to that gym the first thing in the morning know what I’m talking about!
So I get up and say I’m getting back to it today, get dressed and go outside. I have a new car, and I go out into the driveway and notice that my tire is flat. A very simple thing like a flat tire stops many of us. So I guess I won’t work out today. So then I think about that concept of ‘practice what you preach.
Be unstoppable!
What would you do with your unstoppable mindset?
We push through it. I start looking at my options. What do I need to do here? I could walk to the gym. I could sit there and change the tire myself real quick. Mind you, I have a full boat of clients to talk with during the day, appointments, and all of that stuff. So the tire needs to get fixed. It’s just a matter of what has to happen.
Long story short, I decided to stop and take a minute to think about it. You know what, the new car has this assist button that I can press and have someone come and change the tire. They’ll come and change the tire in my driveway, and that’s fine.
So I called and had them fix the tire, and I walked to the gym. Instead of hitting the treadmill at the gym, I just walked to the gym and counted it as part of my workout. That was just a small example of living the idea of being unstoppable.
You just need to push through. These little victories make all the difference in how we feel in our minds; and how we approach the rest of our day. Especially as small business owners because there is always something or someone dumping on you. They are trying to unload their junk on you—trying to make their problem your problem.
We would be in trouble if we had really thin skin as small business owners. You can’t! You have to have thick skin as a small business owner or be doomed.
When we talk about being unstoppable, the example I just shared with you is just very rudimentary, but the thing is that those kinds of things are popping up five, ten, twenty, fifty times a day! So those little victories have to happen and if they don’t, what you are doing is defeating your mind. And the weaker the mind gets, the harder it is for you to push through anything you want to do.
Today we are touching on mindset because as I talk to small business owners, that seems to be the most significant piece that stops them from getting whatever they want.
For the most part, most of those small business owners have no idea what they want. And that is problem number one. If you don’t know what you want, you tend to work someone else’s plan if you don’t have your own plan. So setting forth your own plan based on what you want will make it much easier to be unstoppable.
If I know that I want to accomplish this, whatever “this” is, if I’m crystal clear on where it is and all the details about “this,” it makes it much easier for me to begin with the end in mind. And then start planning my attack plan going forward by working my way backward versus just allowing myself to get stopped by every obstacle that comes in my way.
Those obstacles will come in your way. For example, it could come in the way of your phone ringing at the wrong time. You feel like you have to answer it even though you know it’s not something you really need to answer at that moment.
The Key
The key is being unstoppable in the face of fear because that’s what this is all driven by. It’s driven by fear. You think if I don’t pick up that phone call, I might miss what the caller is going to say. If I don’t do this, this is going to happen. And we can let our minds go crazy with that concept or not.
When we know what we want, focus on what we want, and build a plan and a strategy to get what we want, it certainly makes it easier to push away or turn back those things that don’t serve us. Some of you, I’m sure, have bumped into that one.
Some of the things that I would also start thinking through is what is your contingency plan?
Coming back to that story from earlier, I didn’t panic, and part of the reason I didn’t panic was that part of my contingency plan was all in place. I have a fully built home office that mimics my corporate office. I have all the things that I need here, but I have almost the same setup in my home, so if I had to work out of my house, worst-case scenario, I could.
By thinking things through in advance, you avoid problems. Especially when you’re a dad, you’ve got kids, and real-life gets in the way. So you have to have that ability to have a contingency plan that says if “this” type of scenario shows up, I can go with “this.” That comes from my IT background when I was doing a lot of disaster recovery planning for corporations worldwide.
When you start thinking about what if all of a sudden, one day you have 1,000 employees and the government comes and puts chains on your doors that day. No one can work. What’s the game plan? Those were the type of scenarios we had to deal with in the IT world when building out disaster recovery plans.
As a small business owner, you don’t have to have those robust plans as we did with a $500 million company, but it does make sense to just put a little bit of thought into those “what if “ scenarios and build out some contingency plans.
I didn’t let the flat tire stop me from going to the gym today. As soon as I started my walk toward the gym, I told my wife that I would not let myself be stopped. I needed to get my chubby ass, excuse my language, go to the gym and work it off!
I share this with all of you because I want you to know that no matter how seasoned you are, no matter how long you’ve been in business, this applies to your personal life as well.
When I coach, I call them rocks. So no matter what the rocks are, realize you can step around the rock! You don’t have to keep bumping straight into that rock, do you?
If you do, we need to talk! It may not be something I can help you with, but we can start a conversation. The bottom line is realizing that the universe will always throw up obstacles. It’s going to continually challenge you, no matter what. It just does. And when the universe isn’t doing it, someone else is!
So, again, the bottom line here is to know what you want. Put together that strategy and that plan. Be unstoppable in your pursuit. Don’t allow fear to creep in. And remember, it’s those little victories that make all the difference. They may seem insignificant, but when you start training your brain to be OK with not succeeding, failing, or allowing yourself to be stopped so easily, it starts to act like cancer eating away at your ability to do what needs to be done. So you have to push through that.
One last thing
Don’t worry about the things that you can’t control. I’m sure you get me on that one. Why sit there and worry about it if we can’t control it? What’s it going to do? What’s the worrying going to do for us? Again, you have to know what you want. You have to create that strategy and game plan because the failure to have one means you’re working on someone else’s game plan or s someone else’s agenda—As a small business owner, that will crush you. You don’t want to be there.
You want that unstoppable, insatiable pursuit of whatever it is that you want. It’s like putting the goggles on and seeing what you want clearly and going for it. And as you are unstoppable, you are pushing through the fear; you’re not worried about things out of your control.
If this resonated with you, let me know. This effort is part of me being unstoppable today! I did have a guest scheduled, but the guest had something suddenly come up—a little Brady Bunch-ism there for you. But here I am!
Be unstoppable folks!
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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
