The small business owner said, "Grant, I am working twice as hard and earning half as much...what can I do???"

Okay, so I have an opportunity to talk with quite a few small to medium as well as large actually business owners last week. I was talking with a small business owner, I think he's got about five people in his company. And he made a statement. We were talking about the current context around COVID, and the impact of small, small and medium businesses. And he said, Hey, basically, I'm working twice as hard and earning half as much in the current in the current current context with COVID. It made me think about all of the things that it takes to become a successful business owner, a successful entrepreneur, especially during COVID. Right? Is there a set of things that are most meaningful? I started looking at different polls, what different research groups have talked about this one I found was on inc.com. They had done this, this research where they had found that, hey, as an entrepreneur, you're going to have to work hard or you're going to have to do more. And in fact, you got a disadvantage against you right? The cards are a bit stacked against because your larger competitor likely has more resources, you know, focusing on the same task as us. So one of the things you got to do is actually put more effort in if you want to succeed as a small medium business owner. So they came up with this list of items. And the first one they said was, Hey, quit talking about plans so much and just focus more on getting things done. And that's true. You see a lot of just talked about laying, let's just go do something rather than actually getting stuff accomplished. The other is stop being busy. And the thing about the buisiness is, yes, I might go do some work, and it looks like I'm accomplishing things. But if I change my focus to outcome based, right, I'm looking at what are the effects or the results of my activity, it's not the business that wins the award, but rather the the outcomes of that. The third thing they mentioned was be available, especially around the customers right be really available. It's certainly available to your teammates and of course to customers as well. The fourth thing they said that was really helpful for being successful as a small medium business owner was one more rep right? That's kind of got a workout sort of mentality, right? you're lifting weights and you just want one more rep but the mental mentally you gotta be strong enough to say, I gotta go through one more effort one more iteration, until I'm really satisfied with the quality and and what it is we're producing. Another was go to sleep with a plan and wake up with a purpose.

I love the way they said that. In particular, what they're saying is try not to go to bed without having some form, have a plan for the next day. That way then when you wake up, you end up having a little more organization and structure to your thoughts as you move forward in the day. I love the saying that says you know, an ounce of mourning is worth a pound of afternoon. And so boy if you can wake up feeling like you have some plan purpose already, then those fresh energies and that high level acuity in the morning can really be beneficial for us as a small medium business owner, create a winning routine was the next thing they pointed out. You know, recently, I was listening to one of those interviews of Jeff Bezos, you know, the CEO of Amazon. And interestingly, he was talking about his morning routine, which is rather slow paced. I think the word he used was putter he likes to putter around. And he takes opportunity for him to just have unstructured time where you can do some free thinking, whatever your routine is, come up with that find that routine. And then and then stick with that. The last thing this particular research pointed out was follow every setback with good with the word good. This one was interesting. It was basically how do you take something that's negative or bad, but try to turn it into a positive statement because there'll be plenty of negative things no doubt. So for example, let's say if I'm talking And if it's time for a workout, how do I translate that into something good? Well, the way they suggest it is Hey, good, I'm work. If I could say it, good, let's work out because I'm tired. I actually think this came from Jocko, who was a Navy SEAL who turned author and podcaster. That's where that tip actually comes from. Sounds like a navy seal, right?

Boy talking about being mentally tough for sure. Alright, so as I continued my search, you know, I was I think in about the conversation I had with that small business owner, where he said he's working twice as hard and getting half as much. I looked into another group, and this is on score.org. They were talking about how hard small business owners have to work right. So the first thing in terms of how do we be successful, come up with a good routine, come up with you know how to change our mental model when something bad happens, go to bed with a plan, you know, be available focus on outcomes and so forth. In this second piece, they had some interesting things around, you just got to be able to work hard and decide to work hard as a small business owner. In fact, in one report, one survey that they'd found out of the New York enterprise report said that business owners ended up working twice as much as regular employees, which is kind of interesting, because lots of times we equate, you know, coming into our own small business as here's our step to freedom, when in fact, sometimes what we're not maybe mentally prepared for is, Hey, I'm going to be working a heck of a lot more. Certainly, that's not news to anyone.

But mentally we have to step up to it and own that when we decide, hey, I'm going to go do my own business, in fact, found that one Gallup poll found that 39% of business owners worked over 60 hours a week. Obviously, as we talked about earlier, it's not just about the hours but the effectiveness of them just being busy isn't necessarily right at the end. have success, of course. But they did talk about how important it is to find work life balance in that 44%. It said of small business owners take 16 vacation days or more each year. And then 26% took 11 to 15 days of vacation each year. Well, that's certainly good to know that even the small business owners are able to do that. That's that's promising news, no doubt. But despite all that, you know, lots of times when you hear about millennials, people will really give them sort of negative connotation right? We'll say, hey, Millennials are slackers, but turns out that almost 90% in a Bentley University study 90% almost is 89% that were millennials said that they regularly check into their work after work hours, right, which and that that's an amazing study. And so it turns out, the good news is millennials you're cut out to be busy. This owners, right you're figuring out a you can take time off. But you also know that you got to come in and put in that extra effort as well. So not to not not to belabor that. But I do think that we can find that balance right between how to work hard and how to have some time off so you can mentally and emotionally refreshed. That's that's a critical, critical juncture, critical capability.

In fact, as I was looking into it, I reviewed this study from this guy by the name of Dr. Michael Gershon. He's the author of a book called The second brain, and he's the chairman of the Department of anatomy and cell biology. That's a big long title at Columbia University. What it was he I thought he proposed a very interesting question. He said, What would happen if everyone in the world got twice as smart, because everything so far that I've been talking about as well got to work hard Obviously, we got to work smart to, certainly we need to improve, you know, our efficiency in our work, etc. But we got to work smarter as well. So one of the things that he, he suggested here, just reading off a few of his items, he said, Look, eat a plant based diet, veggies are really good for you. The other was do focusing exercises, cut out sugar, meditate at least 20 minutes a day, trust your gut when you make a decision. In fact, he goes so far as to say, view your body and your mind as a whole system, which lets make sense. All right. So here is what we've talked about. Like we're going to be successful as small business owners during COVID. And even after but certainly it's more important now than ever. Got to work hard and got to work smart. And as part of that find work life balance. Figure out your winning routine. As Bezos and others point out right? Follow every setback up with hay turned it into a good statement. Go to sleep with a plan. One more rep, you can do it be available, stop being busy and rather focus on outcomes and quit talking about planning so much just go go get go get the results. Well, you know, one of the things that always comes to the top of my mind, given the my, my focus here is in technology as well.

I also think that working smart means to automate the pieces that we can, we want to of course, leverage the assets that are available to us. And some of those assets are our information, right? It's our data. It's what are the secret things that are hiding inside of our data that can course expose that right? So tell us here's the insights of things we can go improve on in our business. The funny thing about the AI stuff is that when you apply it, you have to continue to go back and apply it again and again. In other words, when you go apply AI and it gives you some insights in your business. Then you Go make changes to improve yourself working to be more efficient with the resources and the assets that you have. In a few months later, she should just go do a quick another run on it. See how the world has changed how your world has changed because you've applied it. So it's a combination of multiple things we need to do or we're going to go run our businesses augmenting all that with let's leverage technology the right way. Hey, my name is Grant. Thanks for joining and until next time, live right.

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