For this time, your take-away is the first 3 points:

1. Define the reward

2. Consider the business

3. Understand the effort

It's good to think about the effort needed for the reward you're after when choosing a business.

Every business decision you make, should in one way or another be audited through the customer-centric filter: “Does this make the customer’s life better?”

Everybody on your team, starting with you the business owner, must always keep the focus on the customer.

When starting off, you don’t need to be efficient. That'll come later.

When starting off, you need to move.

Efficiency is great when you’ve got momentum, systems, and clarity. But if you're at the starting line, still obsessing over the best way to take the first step, then you’re not building. You’re stalling.

You’re not stuck.

You’re just avoiding the thing you know you need to do — because it’s uncomfortable, risky, or might make someone mad. So instead, you’ve built this pretty little lie called “stuck,” and you’ve wrapped yourself in it like a warm productivity blanket.

What are some tasks that make you want to light your laptop on fire?

Figure out how to delete, automate, or delegate them.  

And start solving burnout — not with vacations, but with systems.

Because the goal isn’t to escape your business.  

The goal is to build one that doesn’t make you want to.

You don’t need a break.

You need a better business.

It's not overwork that's causing your burnout.

Internal motives and thoughts do matter in our public and work life. To be effective overtime in our business pursuits - serving customers, employing people, blessing the community - we’ll need to plant a little deeper than just surface level behavior. Our entire being should be aimed at doing good.

If we want to have results, we’re going to have to be okay with the world having problems. Not only would we have to be okay with that, but we’d have to be excited about it. Almost, thankful for it. It's why you're in business. A problem in the business world is nothing more than an instigator for innovation.

Whether it's production runs, flow of product, financing needs, finding equity, resolving customer issues, or clearing work blockages, people build up a mirage of rules and explain away why they can't get through this problem. What they lack is a sort of freedom mindset - a creative approach - to be able to chart a path toward solving the problem. Some people are stuck finding the lights for their facility. Others are on their way to Mars.

There are less rules than you think.

Take whatever sort of example in institutional culture. Maybe it's a culture of excellence, or continuous improvement, or disciplined execution. Maybe it's a culture of gratitude, or hard work, or competence. Whatever it is, why is it in the lifeblood of some institutions, and can't seem to get any traction in others?

The Value-Growth mindset is focused on the person for whom I'm providing value. In order for a business owner to be successful in his purpose of delivering value to a customer, he must care about that customer, and care about him as a customer - meaning, as a person who is the recipient of the value.

What that means, is that although all businesses are in the game to deliver value to people in general, the value that businesses are to deliver is particular to their customer.