873: The most FRUSTRATING feeling we have as entrepreneurs!

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and in this Solo Sunday episode, we are going to be talking about one of the most frustrating things that happens to every single one of us as entrepreneurs, and especially as wantrepreneurs.

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This is something I feel like we need to confront, but we actually don't talk about this often enough, even though we all face this.

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I'm excited about this one.

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Let's dive in.

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It's been really fun for me over the first half of 2024, having so many incredible conversations, not only with all our amazing entrepreneurial guests, but with so many of you who reach out to our show via email or drop me direct messages on Instagram.

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I always love interacting with so many of you listeners all over the world and even outside of this podcast, I am just constantly talking to entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.

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It is kind of, when you're in this world, it's magnetic.

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I have a tendency of meeting so many different entrepreneurs, even out in the wild, even when I'm hanging out in coworking spaces or in coffee shops or even just in my day-to-day life.

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Obviously, a lot of my friends are entrepreneurs, which means friends of friends happen to be entrepreneurs, and it's fun for me to hear the real-life things that we all talk about, because you know, if you've listened to this show for any amount of time, that I hope to bring and I really strive to bring those real life conversations to you here on the air every single week, in fact, five times a week.

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And so, with that, one of the feelings that I've just consistently realized we all have is this very frustrating and real feeling of ah, I'm working so hard, why am I not getting the results that I'm looking for?

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I'm working so hard, why is my business not growing?

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I'm working so hard, why have I not cracked the code just yet?

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What is it that I've not figured out?

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And this is something that I carried with me for years, even, I mean, if we go all the way back to 2012, when I started my marketing agency.

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So this was my second business that I started.

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It was my first one after college, and even after growing that one to six figures in our first 13 months, I still had that feeling because we were working so freaking much.

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We were putting in 80 plus hour weeks.

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I remember it was the very quintessential and cliche startup story of we set up our office myself and a business partner which was a friend from high school.

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We set up our office in my parents' basement and there were mornings where my dad would walk downstairs because he was already waking up to go to work and we were still working from the night before and he would say you guys go to sleep, you need to get some sleep.

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And we really didn't feel like we had had it figured out.

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And the truth is we didn't have it figured out.

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We certainly didn't have it figured out even though our revenue numbers looked impressive for two 22, 23 year olds.

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And so, even as I've matured as an entrepreneur and, of course, as a person you know we're looking at more than a decade later there's still so many times that I look back, either at my own journey or when I'm talking to other entrepreneurs, or pretty much every time I'm talking to entrepreneurs and I see and I hear this feeling come up for them, this feeling of ah, why am I working so hard?

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And so yesterday's Action, saturday, we really talked about something super simple of tracking your time, and obviously focusing on productivity is one key component of getting things done, of growing your business, of making forward tangible progress in your business.

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But today I want to go beyond just focusing on the productivity stuff, and the thing that I really want to talk about, especially when we're addressing this frustrating feeling, is you're not in the effort business anymore, and I think this is something that takes a lot of us entrepreneurs more than a year, maybe more than a few years, to figure out.

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To truly grasp and to truly understand is that when you're running your own business, when you're growing your own business, you are no longer in the effort business.

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You are no longer in the hourly business.

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So when it comes to us getting paid from a nine to five job, so often we are simply in the show up business, if you just show up.

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Trust me, I worked in a corporate job for 10 months after college and I saw a lot of people who were in that same job for literally 30 years.

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They were not great.

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There was not a lot of innovation, there was not a lot of comprehension or understanding of the new things and technology that has come along the way, but they kept on showing up, which meant every single week they kept on getting paid.

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And it's not to say that everybody in corporate America is like this.

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Obviously, there are so many amazing employees out there, and that's why the United States has so many incredible businesses that really grow our economy and make so many things possible, even for us small business owners.

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So I think that there's a lot to be said about the efforts of people who work in the nine to five world and in the corporate world.

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However, the point is is that, to an extent, you know when you are in corporate America, that if I do these things, I just I have the effort and I show up and I do what's asked of me.

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I will continue to one keep my job and to continue to get paid every single week, and so, as entrepreneurs, we need to throw all that out the window.

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It's not like that anymore.

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You can diligently and consistently work 40 hours a week, every single week, for the next 10 years and get no results when it comes to growing your business, and that's why it's so frustrating, because it's so counter to all of the things that we've been taught in our professional working careers, whether it's nine to five, whether it's, you know, internships from the time that we're teenagers or we're in college or whatever the situation may be, it's it's a whole different, it's a paradigm shift, it's a completely different world and and we no longer get paid for effort.

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And what's really interesting is, I would actually argue, we don't even get paid for work as entrepreneurs.

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This is really a complete mindset shift that will help us to get out of this frustrating feeling that we have is when we start realizing we are no longer paid for work.

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Then that's when we can start thinking differently, acting differently, measuring our progress differently, measuring our productivity differently, assembling our to-do lists differently, chalking up our 30, 60, 90 day goals differently.

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We no longer get paid for work.

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We are not in the effort business.

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So you might be thinking to yourself well, brian, what do we get paid for?

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Then?

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We get paid for value that we provide to others and that others value others, but they have to value it.

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And I think when we start to really understand and actually go a step further and embrace this fact, the more we realize that one we shouldn't be so busy with our business.

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Our business is a business.

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It's not meant to keep us busy.

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It's not busyness.

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And so that's why, if we come back to yesterday's Action Saturday episode and you start tracking your time, start asking yourself which of these tasks that I'm really investing my time and my effort and my energy on which of these things are actually getting me paid, which of these things are actually revenue generating?

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Because, like I said, completing your website not going to make you any money, unfortunately.

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Is it a lot of work?

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Yes, does it take a lot of skill, willpower, thought, energy, effort, discipline, focus, consistency in order to complete your website, for example?

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Yes, it does, and unfortunately, you could spend a month, six months a year working on your website.

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It will not grow your business and that's where we start getting frustrated is any time in life, whether it is business, whether it's fitness, whether it's relationships, whatever it may be if we are exerting effort and energy and we're putting work into something and we're not getting results, that inevitably is going to be frustrating, and so that's why today's episode, I wanted to confront this.

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I wanted us to openly talk about this frustrating feeling, because the only way out of it is for us to shift our mindset and to start realizing hey, I can't measure myself In terms of effort or work or energy or hours or any of these things.

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I need to be laser focused on the only things that result in tangible business growth, and that is providing value to people who value the thing that I'm doing for them, whether that's a product or a service.

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And when you start viewing things through this lens, then it starts making a heck of a lot more sense in the pursuit of business growth.

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Because if someone comes to me and they say, brian, I've been working on all this stuff and I don't know why it's not working out and I'm trying this and I'm trying that, the first question that I ask them is are you providing value to others?

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And they say, yeah, you know I'm doing this for this person and one of my friends need help with this, and so I help them with that.

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And then I ask them do those people value it?

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And inevitably that's where they get caught up is they say, oh, I did it for free for that person.

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Well, okay, then that person doesn't really value it.

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You need to go find the people who value it, and I feel like that's why we get stuck in this trap at the beginning of starting our businesses, where we lean on our family and our friends, which is really positive.

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Having that support system out of the gate we hear it from so many incredible guests that come on the show is that their first client is and was a family member or a friend or a former co-worker or colleague, and that's where they find their first clients.

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But the reality is you have to make sure that even those people value what it is that you do, because you could provide value to a lot of people.

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A lot of people love getting value, but the question is, do they value it?

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And so I think that the deeper we go into this equation of providing value to people who value it, the more it puts a strong emphasis and a strong focus and a strong challenge.

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Actually, that's that's really the level I want to take this episode to.

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It's a strong challenge to us of we need to be doing both sides of those equation, and so, if you're looking at your efforts, the lack of results is coming from one of those two sides, if not both.

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Either you're not providing value to others because you're stuck in the world of busyness and you're simply working on your own internal things.

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Nobody else is going to care about how good your logo looks, nobody's going to care about how good your business card looks.

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So if that's what you're focusing your time on, well, you're just not providing value for other people.

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But if you are providing value for other people but you're not providing it to people who value it, then that is a failure on your part to exert your effort and your energy and your work on people who don't value you and don't value your product or service.

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So I think it's really important to have this equation top of mind for us.

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It's something that, the more I think about this frustrating feeling, the more I just keep coming back to this very simple notion.

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And so, if you need to write it down, if you need this to reshift and refocus your week and refocus your efforts and refocus your to-do list and refocus the projects that you're working on, write it down.

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I need to provide value to people who value the things that I do.

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It's got to be both of those and unfortunately, it's the only way we get paid as entrepreneurs.

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Now, one day, when we reach a certain stage of entrepreneurial and business growth and maturity, that unfortunately becomes a.

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Fortunately, because actually, then it means that you can offload, you can outsource, you can hire out a lot of the busy tasks to allow you to focus on those two sides of the equation One, providing more value to people and two, finding more people who value those things that you do for them, because those are the real goals, those are the real strategic and executive tasks that we all need to be focusing on in our businesses.

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So hopefully this solo Sunday episode helps you to refocus on that executive level, on these things that actually matter, because it is way too easy to be very busy with your business but we're not here for that and we're not going to get rewarded for that because you're no longer in the effort business.

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So I hope this helps you to refocus.

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I hope it reshifts a bit of your workload this week and a bit of your focus this week, and not just this week, but the next 30, 60, 90 days, because a heck of a lot of things can change in that amount of time.

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So get out there, be focused, keep tuning in, because I'll tell you what you are just in for some real treats this week and every single week.

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We have the most amazing entrepreneurs coming on.

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They're going to help you to refocus every single week, five times a week.

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This week's guests absolutely blew my mind.

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We have three really brilliant entrepreneurs.

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Brilliant not only in business terms but in the scope of the work that they do with others, including an Emmy award-winning entrepreneur this week.

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So you're really in for a real treat.

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So pound that subscribe button because we'll be at you, as always, with new episodes every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

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Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at thewantrepreneurshowcom.

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So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website, because you can send us a voicemail there.

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It's for real me, and I'm excited because I'll see you, as always, every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.