WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.000 The biggest mistakes that are made stem from these three evil ease. 2 00:00:04.000 --> 00:00:07.680 Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers, how to make more 3 00:00:07.680 --> 00:00:10.920 per customer, and how to keep them longer in the many failures and lessons we have learned 4 00:00:10.920 --> 00:00:11.920 along the way. 5 00:00:11.920 --> 00:00:13.920 I hope you enjoy and subscribe. 6 00:00:13.920 --> 00:00:14.920 What's going on, everyone? 7 00:00:14.920 --> 00:00:20.920 It's Alex Mosea, CEO of Allen Prestige Labs, Jim Launch, we've done $120 million in sales 8 00:00:20.920 --> 00:00:22.240 in the last four years. 9 00:00:22.240 --> 00:00:28.400 And so today what I want to talk about is the three entrepreneurial evil ease or of 10 00:00:28.400 --> 00:00:29.400 entrepreneurship. 11 00:00:29.400 --> 00:00:33.600 So these are the three kind of ease that I see over and over again from the entrepreneurs 12 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:38.080 that we work with directly in our portfolio companies, but also in the entrepreneurs that 13 00:00:38.080 --> 00:00:40.080 I talk to in general. 14 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:43.840 The biggest mistakes that are made stem from these three evil ease. 15 00:00:43.840 --> 00:00:45.920 And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through all three of them. 16 00:00:45.920 --> 00:00:50.400 I'll tell you an easy way to try and at least attenuate the mistakes that you can make 17 00:00:50.400 --> 00:00:51.720 from them. 18 00:00:51.720 --> 00:00:55.600 And then at the end I'll show you the one that I think is actually the most evil of them 19 00:00:55.600 --> 00:00:56.600 all. 20 00:00:56.920 --> 00:01:01.520 So the first E is expectations. 21 00:01:01.520 --> 00:01:07.760 And the reason that this one is so evil is that most of the time us entrepreneurs, we 22 00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:10.240 think that everything has to happen immediately, right? 23 00:01:10.240 --> 00:01:15.160 I had an entrepreneur not that long ago reach out to me and say, hey, how can, you know, 24 00:01:15.160 --> 00:01:18.080 if we work together, how can you guarantee that I'm going to get to a million dollars a 25 00:01:18.080 --> 00:01:20.400 month within the next six months? 26 00:01:20.400 --> 00:01:24.880 And they were currently, I think, doing $100,000 a month. 27 00:01:24.880 --> 00:01:32.000 And that kind of expectation and mindset is literally what will destroy you in business. 28 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:36.600 Because what happens is you set these arbitrary because all goals are arbitrary for the most 29 00:01:36.600 --> 00:01:38.280 part, right? 30 00:01:38.280 --> 00:01:43.000 These numbers that in your mind make you feel good or make you feel accomplished and you 31 00:01:43.000 --> 00:01:47.840 set these things up there with not a huge path of getting there and you put an arbitrary 32 00:01:47.840 --> 00:01:51.080 timeline on it and then you try and force yourself into it. 33 00:01:51.080 --> 00:01:57.160 And so what ends up happening is you take shortcuts, you make hasty, high risk decisions 34 00:01:57.160 --> 00:02:03.080 and most of the time you end up destroying the business and taking 10 steps backwards. 35 00:02:03.080 --> 00:02:08.480 And so expectations that we set for ourselves and our teams, we want to be intolerant of 36 00:02:08.480 --> 00:02:13.360 anything other than excellence, but focused for more on the process than the outcome. 37 00:02:13.360 --> 00:02:18.240 So if you could shift the expectations from outcome based expectations to process based 38 00:02:18.240 --> 00:02:23.680 expectations and then meet that with the intolerance of excellence, right, or tolerating only 39 00:02:23.680 --> 00:02:29.760 excellence, excuse me, then you can help mitigate expectation evils, right, where you basically 40 00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:35.320 destroy your business as a result of thinking that you have to be at a million dollars a 41 00:02:35.320 --> 00:02:37.560 month or a hundred thousand dollars a month or a ten thousand dollars a month or whatever 42 00:02:37.560 --> 00:02:40.720 that number is for you by ex time, right? 43 00:02:40.720 --> 00:02:45.600 What I see again and again and again of the people who make way more money than I do is 44 00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:52.920 they have reasonable expectations that would be unreasonable to achieve based on process, 45 00:02:52.920 --> 00:02:53.920 right? 46 00:02:53.920 --> 00:02:58.680 I'm a mentor right now who always the same thing he says, good process drives good results. 47 00:02:58.680 --> 00:03:02.400 And I just that's that's something I'm trying to ingrain in my mind, good process drives 48 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:03.400 good results. 49 00:03:03.400 --> 00:03:05.960 All right, so that's evil number one. 50 00:03:05.960 --> 00:03:10.360 The second evil is emotions, all right? 51 00:03:10.360 --> 00:03:13.840 The second thing that will kill your business, all right, if you look at the biggest CEOs 52 00:03:13.840 --> 00:03:17.960 in the world, you look at the bases as you look at, you know, you look at, you look 53 00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:21.440 at Munger, you look at Buffett, you look at all these guys, right? 54 00:03:21.440 --> 00:03:25.840 And what you may notice is that they are very devoid of emotion and it's not that they're 55 00:03:25.840 --> 00:03:31.840 like emotionless people, it's more so that they try and stay as even handed as possible 56 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:32.840 with the decisions. 57 00:03:32.840 --> 00:03:34.760 And this is just something that I've observed. 58 00:03:34.760 --> 00:03:38.160 And so here's a telltale sign that you can tell for yourself if you're, if you're suffering 59 00:03:38.160 --> 00:03:41.600 from this because sometimes it's hard, especially for guys, first to be like, I'm emotional 60 00:03:41.600 --> 00:03:42.600 right now, right? 61 00:03:42.600 --> 00:03:44.760 We're human, we have emotions. 62 00:03:44.760 --> 00:03:50.400 And so if you're, if you're looking and you flip flop a lot on decisions, as in you're 63 00:03:50.400 --> 00:03:54.040 presented the same data and one day you feel this way and another way you feel, another 64 00:03:54.040 --> 00:03:57.760 day you feel this way and literally how you process decision flip flops all the time, 65 00:03:57.760 --> 00:03:59.840 it's because you're being subject to emotions. 66 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:03.920 Now if you look at the trajectory of a business and the hundreds and thousands of decisions 67 00:04:03.920 --> 00:04:07.680 that we have to make as an entrepreneur, you can see how quickly these thousands of decisions 68 00:04:07.680 --> 00:04:12.680 can spin this way or this way on this path based on your emotions and it can be the 69 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:14.040 right where the wrong way. 70 00:04:14.040 --> 00:04:18.920 And so I'll give you, here's, here's two, two piece to this. 71 00:04:18.920 --> 00:04:22.600 It's, it's very difficult to eliminate emotions, right? 72 00:04:22.600 --> 00:04:26.880 But if you can detect when you aren't emotional, then you can decrease the speed of your decision 73 00:04:26.880 --> 00:04:30.960 making, which is usually contrary to what most people do when they are emotional. 74 00:04:30.960 --> 00:04:34.920 They speed up their decision making process when they're in emotions, all right? 75 00:04:34.920 --> 00:04:39.560 And so if you feel urgency, so for me these are, these are things that are like red flags. 76 00:04:39.560 --> 00:04:45.800 If I feel like I have to make a decision by today or whatever, most times it's completely 77 00:04:45.800 --> 00:04:47.640 fictitious and made up in my mind. 78 00:04:47.640 --> 00:04:52.560 And so what I try and do is extend the time horizon between the feeling I have and when 79 00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:54.160 I actually decide to take action. 80 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:59.240 I can't tell you the amount of huge mistakes that I was able to avoid simply by sleeping 81 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:00.240 it off, right? 82 00:05:00.240 --> 00:05:03.480 Giving myself 24 hours to think on it, right? 83 00:05:03.480 --> 00:05:06.800 And a lot of times the entire world looks different when you wake up at the morning. 84 00:05:06.800 --> 00:05:09.200 And so that should frighten you because it frightens me. 85 00:05:09.200 --> 00:05:13.000 How can the world look so different only, you know, after nine hours of sleep, right? 86 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:16.000 It's because our emotional state's different. 87 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:21.880 And so this is a tactic that I do like a lot for managing emotions. 88 00:05:21.880 --> 00:05:29.040 So the best decisions that we make for ourselves in my opinion or that I have made for myself 89 00:05:29.040 --> 00:05:31.760 have come from a state of contentment. 90 00:05:31.760 --> 00:05:33.760 And so there have probably been moments. 91 00:05:33.760 --> 00:05:36.320 That's why when you go on vacation, you feel like you have a lot of clarity. 92 00:05:36.320 --> 00:05:39.400 It's because you were in the correct emotional state to make the right decisions because 93 00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:41.840 you're not operating from place of scarcity, right? 94 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:43.920 You're not operating from a place of half to. 95 00:05:43.920 --> 00:05:48.000 You're not operating from a place of deficiency where I am not good enough, right? 96 00:05:48.000 --> 00:05:52.760 When you're operating from a place of contentment, and I'm not saying we're always content, that's 97 00:05:52.760 --> 00:05:54.240 not my point, right? 98 00:05:54.240 --> 00:05:57.600 The point is that you could probably recognize those times where you sit back and you're 99 00:05:57.600 --> 00:06:03.280 feeling great, you know, you have a lot of gratitude for an experience or were things 100 00:06:03.280 --> 00:06:04.960 that give you perspective. 101 00:06:04.960 --> 00:06:10.560 And so it's in those time periods where you should make big decisions for your life, 102 00:06:10.560 --> 00:06:14.120 and then know that you made them in the proper emotional state. 103 00:06:14.120 --> 00:06:21.120 This is something that I'm actively focused a lot on for me because in our businesses now, 104 00:06:21.120 --> 00:06:23.560 we have four of them. 105 00:06:24.360 --> 00:06:27.840 Being in the correct, making the right call is basically my only job. 106 00:06:27.840 --> 00:06:30.040 Now, it's really just proper decision making. 107 00:06:32.520 --> 00:06:34.880 Hey guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. 108 00:06:34.880 --> 00:06:39.520 If you ever want to have the video version of this, which usually has more facts, more visuals, 109 00:06:39.520 --> 00:06:44.520 more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff, sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different 110 00:06:44.520 --> 00:06:45.520 ways. 111 00:06:45.520 --> 00:06:46.520 You can check out my YouTube channel. 112 00:06:46.520 --> 00:06:47.520 It's absolutely free. 113 00:06:47.520 --> 00:06:48.520 You can check that out if that's what you are into. 114 00:06:48.520 --> 00:06:50.320 And if not, keep enjoying the show. 115 00:06:51.320 --> 00:07:01.160 And so when I sense myself in a well-rested content, you know, full of gratitude mood, that 116 00:07:01.160 --> 00:07:06.400 is when I want to look at my most complex issues, my most complex multivariable decisions 117 00:07:06.400 --> 00:07:09.320 and say, this is what I think the best course of action is. 118 00:07:09.320 --> 00:07:14.600 And then sticking with that, even when the trials and tribulations that are never going 119 00:07:14.600 --> 00:07:17.440 to happen as a result of the decision later in the road. 120 00:07:17.440 --> 00:07:22.520 And so that's my hack is I can't get around emotion. 121 00:07:22.520 --> 00:07:25.600 I try and extend time horizons whenever I feel urgency. 122 00:07:25.600 --> 00:07:31.360 And then if I'm going to make emotions from an emotional state, I try and go from a place 123 00:07:31.360 --> 00:07:33.080 of contentment and gratitude. 124 00:07:33.080 --> 00:07:36.920 And if I do not feel that state, I don't usually make the decision. 125 00:07:36.920 --> 00:07:37.920 So think about that. 126 00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:40.720 So if you have moments when you're playing with your kids and you look back and you're 127 00:07:40.720 --> 00:07:44.360 like, man, life's awesome, that's when you make the decisions that you need to make 128 00:07:44.360 --> 00:07:45.360 about your life. 129 00:07:45.360 --> 00:07:49.040 All right, because from there, you'll be operating with a much longer time horizon. 130 00:07:49.040 --> 00:07:50.240 And that's, I think, my way. 131 00:07:50.240 --> 00:07:55.600 I think this is doing it that way will trick yourself into extending your time horizon, 132 00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:58.840 which ultimately will lead to better decision making. 133 00:07:58.840 --> 00:08:06.320 And the third E, of third evils, evil E, oops, I'm writing down evil, is or are, excuse 134 00:08:06.320 --> 00:08:08.040 me, are expenses, all right. 135 00:08:08.040 --> 00:08:12.240 So the first two, one is what you think should happen. 136 00:08:12.240 --> 00:08:14.600 Emotions affect how you think it should happen. 137 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:19.440 And the expenses are the, it's like the cloud and the dirt, right, are the things that 138 00:08:19.440 --> 00:08:23.640 we incur along the way that increase the risk of it not occurring, right. 139 00:08:23.640 --> 00:08:26.080 So if you think about expenses in general, they are liabilities. 140 00:08:26.080 --> 00:08:27.720 They are risk that we take on. 141 00:08:27.720 --> 00:08:33.480 And so if our goal is entrepreneurs is to increase our upside and decrease our downside, 142 00:08:33.480 --> 00:08:37.720 right, that is kind of entrepreneurship and business in general, right, then actively 143 00:08:37.720 --> 00:08:41.240 thinking about decreasing our downside, our liabilities, is a way of increasing the 144 00:08:41.240 --> 00:08:45.920 likelihood that our expectations are met, right. 145 00:08:45.920 --> 00:08:51.800 And so one of the biggest mistakes and biggest evils that will destroy entrepreneurial businesses 146 00:08:51.800 --> 00:08:57.280 is because they set massive expectations when they are emotional and emotionally deficient 147 00:08:57.280 --> 00:09:00.480 because they need to satisfy, you know, emotional needs that their parents didn't meet when 148 00:09:00.480 --> 00:09:05.280 they were kids, they then incur expenses that they shouldn't otherwise have to meet these 149 00:09:05.280 --> 00:09:10.080 demands that are completely arbitrary and made up in their minds, right. 150 00:09:10.080 --> 00:09:12.640 And so I see this what happened all the time. 151 00:09:12.640 --> 00:09:13.720 It's like, hey, we want to scale. 152 00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:17.000 We just hired four more people so that we can scale. 153 00:09:17.000 --> 00:09:19.680 Doesn't work that way. 154 00:09:19.680 --> 00:09:24.640 Get the growth first and then the growth will pay for the people. 155 00:09:24.640 --> 00:09:26.680 Don't put the cart in front of the horse. 156 00:09:26.680 --> 00:09:31.960 The only exception to this is if you have like commission only, you know, reps, like sales 157 00:09:31.960 --> 00:09:33.520 reps, things like that. 158 00:09:33.520 --> 00:09:42.960 But most other times, 99% of other times, when you are incurring greater expenses, it's 159 00:09:42.960 --> 00:09:48.760 not like it should not be to, quote, anticipate growth, right. 160 00:09:48.760 --> 00:09:55.000 Growth will pay the expenses and if you need to, quote, delay something for a smaller period 161 00:09:55.000 --> 00:09:59.760 of time so that you can shore up your infrastructure, then you can do that. 162 00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:02.800 And you would be amazed at how much flexibility there is, right. 163 00:10:02.800 --> 00:10:08.920 It's much easier to solve problems with cash in the bank, with, with contract signed. 164 00:10:08.920 --> 00:10:12.960 And you're an entrepreneur, like solving problems is what we do, right. 165 00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:16.000 And so if you're in that state, think about how much to eat. 166 00:10:16.000 --> 00:10:20.280 If you need to, if you have the immediate demand, right. 167 00:10:20.280 --> 00:10:22.400 You will solve the problem and the people will come. 168 00:10:22.400 --> 00:10:24.280 I promise you, right. 169 00:10:24.280 --> 00:10:28.440 One of the biggest mistakes that I mean, I've made this one so many times. 170 00:10:28.440 --> 00:10:34.520 I hired 25 support reps in anticipation of growth for our supplement company, prestigious 171 00:10:34.520 --> 00:10:36.480 labs two years ago. 172 00:10:36.480 --> 00:10:42.760 And I currently now have four people that handle more business than the 25 did. 173 00:10:42.760 --> 00:10:44.080 Think about that. 174 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:47.000 And so what happens is when you anticipate growth, you don't even know what the growth is 175 00:10:47.000 --> 00:10:48.400 going to look like. 176 00:10:48.400 --> 00:10:52.920 And so you basically just put people there, the culture of the team decreases, the morale 177 00:10:52.920 --> 00:10:55.440 of the team decreases, they're being less efficient. 178 00:10:55.440 --> 00:10:59.760 And when you have lots of people, you don't think about driving good process, right. 179 00:10:59.760 --> 00:11:02.280 You just think like we'll just throw more bodies at the problem. 180 00:11:02.280 --> 00:11:04.040 And that's a horrible way to go about business. 181 00:11:04.040 --> 00:11:06.720 It's also not a good customer experience in the long run. 182 00:11:06.720 --> 00:11:14.280 And so if we can adjust our expectations to be reasonable and based on process, not outcome, 183 00:11:14.280 --> 00:11:18.440 by managing our emotions and making decisions in a place of contentment, right. 184 00:11:18.440 --> 00:11:22.600 So that we don't set these deficient expectations on ourselves and our business that we have 185 00:11:22.600 --> 00:11:27.240 to satisfy because we must be a certain way by this time. 186 00:11:27.240 --> 00:11:30.200 Then we won't incur expenses in risk that is undue and unnecessary. 187 00:11:30.200 --> 00:11:37.200 There will likely destroy our business when it was 100% based on our false made up 188 00:11:37.200 --> 00:11:40.600 expectations about what we thought should happen should. 189 00:11:40.600 --> 00:11:44.960 And so when I look at the things that undue entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial businesses, 190 00:11:44.960 --> 00:11:50.080 these are the three evil ease, expectations, emotions and expenses. 191 00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:54.960 And I told you at the beginning that I would share the one that I think is the most deadly. 192 00:11:54.960 --> 00:12:00.360 And it's this guy, in my opinion, expectations. 193 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:06.120 Because what we believe, because these are basically beliefs, just said differently, right. 194 00:12:06.120 --> 00:12:11.720 Another way to say this, and this is a really good way that I got from a different coach 195 00:12:11.720 --> 00:12:18.160 to reframe beliefs, is she said, if you just call all your beliefs assumptions, they 196 00:12:18.160 --> 00:12:20.480 will be far more malleable. 197 00:12:20.480 --> 00:12:23.320 And it's such, it's words matter, right. 198 00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:27.600 And if we call our beliefs assumptions, they become far more changeable for ourselves. 199 00:12:27.600 --> 00:12:32.920 And so if I say, this is my assumption, what do you guys think, rather than this is my 200 00:12:32.920 --> 00:12:36.440 expectation, what do you guys think, see how different that feels. 201 00:12:36.440 --> 00:12:38.560 But they function the same way, right. 202 00:12:38.560 --> 00:12:40.440 But one of them is approachable. 203 00:12:40.440 --> 00:12:41.760 One of them is malleable. 204 00:12:41.760 --> 00:12:44.640 One of them can take new feedback and new inputs and new data. 205 00:12:44.640 --> 00:12:48.400 And the other one is a must, a should, a have to, right. 206 00:12:48.400 --> 00:12:56.040 And so if we can readjust our expectations, right, and be focused on our product over 207 00:12:56.040 --> 00:13:00.160 delivering, delighting the customers, right, being intolerant of anything but excellence 208 00:13:00.160 --> 00:13:02.400 in the process. 209 00:13:02.400 --> 00:13:06.960 And because of that, our emotions stay more stable because we're not missing goals 210 00:13:06.960 --> 00:13:13.320 that we have to hit, right, which then create more scarcity, more deficiency, more gutter 211 00:13:13.440 --> 00:13:18.000 feelings that then make us shorten our decision making loops that cause poorer decisions 212 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:21.680 and then cause us to make poor decisions that create expenses, all right. 213 00:13:21.680 --> 00:13:26.760 So this is a loop that self reinforces and it can either be a virtuous or vicious cycle. 214 00:13:26.760 --> 00:13:29.920 And so it starts at the top and spins all the way around. 215 00:13:29.920 --> 00:13:33.080 And so those are the three evil ease of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mistakes 216 00:13:33.080 --> 00:13:39.560 that hopefully you can use some of these tactics to avoid, all right. 217 00:13:39.560 --> 00:13:44.280 So don't hire before you need it, let the growth pay for the expenses. 218 00:13:44.280 --> 00:13:49.280 When you're making decisions, try and extend the space, this is what I have found effective 219 00:13:49.280 --> 00:13:55.280 for me and try and make decisions from a point of gratitude and contentment. 220 00:13:55.280 --> 00:13:59.960 And then keep the expectations driven around process, not outcome. 221 00:13:59.960 --> 00:14:04.440 And if you can keep the high, like keep your high expectations, but keep them on process. 222 00:14:04.440 --> 00:14:07.520 Not all what has to happen because when you reverse it the other way, you'll start 223 00:14:07.520 --> 00:14:08.520 making terrible decisions.