Archive 1 of Momentum for the Entrepreneurial Personality Type (EPT)

As entrepreneurs we want everything right now in the moment, sometimes yesterday. It is our impatience that makes us successful. Our insistence that things happen our way is how we change the status quo. In many ways, our impatience is the cause of our success.

But it can also be our downfall.

Our impatience can cause us to derail our team, waste resources and make us an ineffective leader. It can cause us to chase shiny objects and delay or halt our progress.

When we take a longer time horizon everything changes. We can tell our team where we are going and rather then following us, they can lead the way and help us get there.

One of the most consistent ways that entrepreneurs waste time is heading off in a direction without a plan. We have an idea, get excited, and start executing as fast as we can. We are eager to see the end result before we are 100% clear on what that results should be.

This results in us spending a lot of time that we don't need to getting mediocre results if any.

There is a better way.

When we learn the minimum effective dose planning methods, everything changes. Spending just a little bit of time clarifying where we are going ensures that we get there faster and get the result we want.

It's amazing how many different places I've seen these entrepreneurial lessons, they appear, even when my daughters are getting a haircut.

As entrepreneurs, when we start our business the vast majority of us have to do everything. Let's be honest, we are the only ones there and if we don't do it it won't get done.

As we move forward and grow our business, we may soon find people who can take tasks off our hands. We contract people to take small parts of our process and do them for us.

This offloading of tasks and items will help you grow your business and scale… to a point.

When you grow enough, having people do things for you won't be enough.

Eventually you will need other people on your team who are capable of chasing down outcomes and getting results.

Far too many entrepreneurs today are trying to build businesses with people as process, this is why so many of them are failing to grow.

At many large corporations "happy hours" are seen as a team building tool. Employees are encouraged to go out and hang out together at a bar, drinking, in hopes that they will build relationships that will somehow help the company.

I have never understood the logic in this.

When I was a consulting with multiple Fortune 500 companies, every month at least one of the companies I worked with had something happen during a happy hour. When you work at one company, you may only see something happen every once in a while. But when you work with a lot of companies, you realize just how damaging happy hours are.

There is more than one reason we don't support happy hours in our organization. If you want to build a world changing company, you may not want to support them either.

Entrepreneurs are evolutionary hunters. We are propelled forward and driven to seek momentum.

Evolutionary hunters are driven forword and compelled to seek momentum.

We are physiologically sensitive momentum base beings that are highly reactive to constraint.

When we feel constrained our bodies can go into fight or flight mode.

This can cause us to operate at a fraction of our capabilities.

If you don't feel like you are there, congratulations.

Unfortunately too many entrepreneurs exist in some level of fight or flight.

Evolutionary hunters are different than the rest of the world. We are more sensitive to the world around us, we see opportunity and risk in a different way and we are driven to continue to go forward and seek momentum.

Anything that gets in our way or causes constraint throws us off.

How much, we don't know. But it is clear that when people like us experience too much pressure and noise things do not go well.

There is one place where far too much of the world invites rather than defends against pressure and noise and that is what we put in our mouths.

This may be one of the most important podcasts I have recorded.

There is no excuse for an unsuccessful marketing consultant today. Anyone who is working in today's environment has it easy. You identify an avatar, understand where they are, pay in order to get in front of them, and generate leads so you can sell your product.

The guesswork is gone. Marketing is as direct as it has ever been in history.

That is why it is so frustrating when I hear business owners getting ripped off by consultants and marketing companies when they're spending their time in places where it just doesn't pay.

If you have a company that is helping you market or sell and they aren't showing you a dial where you can turn up your lead volume or turn it down, something is wrong.

If you are a victim of a marketing ripoff, you will know it for sure after listening to this podcast.

Before you make the decision to follow a leader, you should understand who they are. It is inevitable that you will become more like them in every way.

You maybe going to someone for business advice but if you join a mastermind, when you spend enough time with them and learn enough from them, you will pick up their habits, tendencies, and you will be influenced by their strengths and weaknesses.

This is a major decision that many entrepreneurs enter into lightly and pay for later.

I know I did.

When I finally realized just how much we absorb from the people we are following, I immediately changed the mastermind I was in. I realized that the person I follow must not just be doing well in business, but share my values and support who I am.

If you are following someone to help you grow your self or your business, you can't forget you follow the whole leader with nothing left out.

Remember a few years ago after Apple introduced the app store and after just about anything said you would get the reply "there's an app for that!"?

The funny thing was that there really was an app for just about everything. Want to sell something or buy something? There's an app for that. Want to relocate to a place you never been? There's an app for that. It was funny that there was an app for just about everything except…

Leadership.

It doesn't matter how hard you try, or how well you have learn the software you are using, you cannot lead people through an app.

Leadership is a contact sport and it requires proximity to your people. You have to spend time with them, get to know them, understand them and then you can lead them.

Far too many entrepreneurs today are trying to lead their companies through a software program.

This just isn't how it works.

There's a very high percentage of business owners today that are starting their companies looking for an exit strategy.

I am consistently surprised at how often "exit strategy" comes up in conversations with relatively inexperienced entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs who are barely getting started are already looking for a way out.

This is about the most difficult way to start a business and it may make it impossible.

Growing a company is one of the most difficult things any person can choose to do in their lifetimes. When you get into business trying to stop, you add unnecessary constraints that may freeze you in place.

On top of that, exits aren't all they are cracked up to be. Take it from someone who has been there.

The silence of success is deafening.