The Crazy Mindset Shift Every Founder Struggles With. Binder #015 - Something Else
This "something else" is the expansion of an existing thought I recently heard from Alex Hormozi (that I can't find for the life of me.)
It is for the guys and gals trying to grow, but feel the business is stuck at it's current size.
Quitting your day job to pursue your business full-time will more than likely be the hardest decision you ever have to make as an entrepreneur.
The big reason for this is that when you throw yourself into the business ownership ring, you have no choice but to constantly make difficult, high-leverage decisions.
Seriously- you don't have a choice. You don't get to kick stuff to someone else, especially in the early days. You have to make decisions that no one else knows, in situations that are brand new and evolving, where you don’t have a choice to make them or not.
When you don't have a choice - it's kind of easier to make those decisions.
My mentor calls it “running from the bear.” The bear doesn’t stop chasing you. You just get conditioned to running from the bear.
However, quitting your job IS a choice. It's the ultimate career leap of faith. It usually isn't grounded in accurate projections. And it definitely is grounded in certainty of success - Go read the stats on how many businesses make it to 5 years.
So, what's the mindset shift?
Most day jobs are left because the work is monotonous. (I have to do boring work.)
Starting a business is liberating, exciting, and the unknown. (I'll do the complete opposite of my boring day job, and go out on my own as an entrepreneur.)
To grow the business, you need to lock in on boring, monotonous work, guaranteed to require more time than your day job. (Wait, didn’t we leave our day job for this VERY REASON?!)
This is the game. This is the bizarre mindset that you need to grow and scale.
In the early days of business, you don’t have financial leverage. You're too small to get funds you need to really scale. But, in order to get bigger, you need more leverage to get bigger.
The solution?
Boring, awful, monotonous work, done consistently. So, basically, a day job - the only difference is the fate of the business entirely lies in your hands, and it’s a guarantee you’ll have to do it more than the 37.5 hours you used to do it at your day job.
It’s the reason you hear successful people all tell you the same story. The work required when you’re trying to scale a business isn’t always fun. In fact, it is rarely fun. It requires you to become like a cog in the machine.
Unfortunately, the image of entrepreneurship on social media doesn’t always show that. It’s cooler to show watches, cars, and make selfie videos on a boat.
If you want a more in-depth version of this message, go watch any interview from Andy Frisella, Alex Hormozi, Elon Musk, Gary Vee… they all say the same thing.
So, this week, I challenge you to really embrace the boring work.
For the record, this newsletter was spawned because it is something that has been lacking in me and my business. I tried (and still try) to avoid the boring work.
Promise, it doesn’t work out the way you want.