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The biggest mistakes that are made stem from these three evil ease.

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Welcome to the game where we talk about how to get more customers,

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how to make more customers, how to keep them longer,

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and the many failures and lessons we have learned along the way.

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I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

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What's going on, everyone?

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It's Alex Mosea, CEO of Allen prestige labs.

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Jim Lawrence, we've done $120 million in sales in the last four years.

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And I have nothing to sell you.

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And so today, what I want to talk about is the three entrepreneurial evil ease

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or of entrepreneurship.

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So these are the three kind of ease that I see over and over again from the entrepreneurs

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that we work with directly in our portfolio companies, but also in the entrepreneurs that I

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talk to in general. The biggest mistakes that are made stem from these three evil ease.

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And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk through all three of them.

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I'll tell you an easy way to try and at least attenuate the mistakes that you can make from them.

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And then at the end, I'll show you the one that I think is actually the most evil of them all.

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So the first E is expectations.

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And the reason that this one is so evil is that most of the time,

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us entrepreneurs, we think that everything has to happen immediately.

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Right? I had an entrepreneur not that long ago reach out to me and say, hey, how can

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you know, if we work together, how can you guarantee that I'm going to get to a million dollars a

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month within the next six months? And they were currently, I think, doing $100,000 a month.

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And that kind of expectation and mindset is literally what will destroy you in business.

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Because what happens is you set these arbitrary, because all goals are arbitrary for the most part,

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right? These numbers that in your mind make you feel good or make you feel accomplished.

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And you set these things up there with not a huge path of getting there.

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And you put an arbitrary timeline on it and then you try and force yourself into it.

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And so what ends up happening is you take shortcuts, you make hasty, high-risk decisions,

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and most of the time you end up destroying the business and taking 10 steps backwards.

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And so expectations that we set for ourselves and our teams, we want to be intolerant of anything

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other than excellence, but focused for more on the process than the outcome.

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So if you could shift the expectations from outcome-based expectations to process-based

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expectations and then meet that with the intolerance of excellence or tolerating only

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excellence, excuse me, then you can mitigate expectation evils where you basically destroy your

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business as a result of thinking that you have to be at $1,000,000 a month or $100,000 a month

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or $10,000 a month or whatever that number is for you by ex time. What I see again and again and

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again of the people who make way more money than I do is they have reasonable expectations that

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would be unreasonable to achieve based on process, right? I'm a mentor right now who always

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represents the same thing. He says, good process drives good results. And I just, that's

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something I'm trying to ingrain in my mind, good process drives good results. All right, so

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that's evil number one. The second evil is emotions, all right? The second thing that will kill

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your business, all right? If you look at the biggest CEOs in the world, you look at the baseless,

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as you look at, you know, you look at, you look at Munger, you look at Buffett, you look at all

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these guys, right? And what you may notice is that they're very devoid of emotion and it's not

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that they're like emotionless people. It's more so that they try and stay as even handed as possible

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with the decisions. And this is just something that I've observed. And so here's a telltale sign

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that you can tell for yourself if you're, if you're suffering from this because sometimes it's

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hard, especially for guys, first to be like, I'm emotional right now, right? But like we're human,

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we have emotions. And so if you're, if you're looking and you flip flop a lot on decisions,

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as in you're presented the same data, and one day you feel this way, and another way you feel,

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another day you feel this way, and literally how you process decision flip flops all the time,

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it's because you're being subject to emotions. Now, if you look at the trajectory of a business

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and the hundreds and thousands of decisions that we have to make as an entrepreneur,

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you could see how quickly these thousands of decisions can spin in this way or this way on this

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path based on your emotions. And it can be the right way the wrong way. And so I'll give you,

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here's, here's two, two piece to this. It's, it's very difficult to eliminate emotions, right?

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But if you can detect when you aren't emotional, then you can decrease the speed of your decision

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making, which is usually contrary to what most people do when they are emotional. They speed up

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their decision making process when they're in emotions, all right? And so if you feel urgency,

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so for me, these are, these are things that are like red flags. If I feel like I have to make

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a decision by today or whatever, most times it's completely fictitious and made up in my mind.

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And so what I try and do is extend the time horizon between the feeling I have and when I actually

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decide to take action. I can't tell you the amount of huge mistakes that I was able to avoid simply

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by slipping it off, right? Giving myself 24 hours to think on it, right? And a lot of times the entire

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world looks different when you wake up the morning. And so that should frighten you because it

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frightens me. How can the world looks so different only, you know, after nine hours of sleep, right?

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It's because our emotional state's different. And so this is a tactic that I do like a lot

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for managing emotions. So the best decisions that we make for ourselves in my opinion or that I

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have made for myself have come from a state of contentment. And so there have probably been

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a moment. That's why when you go on vacation, you feel like you have a lot of clarity. It's because

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you're in the correct emotional state to make the right decisions because you're not operating

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from place of scarcity, right? You're not operating from a place of half to. You're not operating

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from a place of deficiency where I am not good enough, right? When you're operating from a place of

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contentment, and I'm not saying we're always content, that's not my point, right? The point is that

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you could probably recognize those times where you sit back and you're feeling great, you know,

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you have a lot of gratitude for an experience or were things that give you perspective.

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And so it's in those time periods where you should make big decisions for your life and then

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know that you made them in the proper emotional state. This is something that I'm actively

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focused a lot on for me because in our businesses now, we have four of them.

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They're being in the correct making the right call is basically my only job. Now it's really

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just proper decision making. Aimosonation, quick break, just to let you know that we've been starting

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to post on LinkedIn and want to connect with you. All right, so send me a connection request and

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note letting me know that you listen to the show and I will accept it. There's anyone you think

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that we should be connected with, tag them in one of my or Layless posts and I will give you all

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the love of the world. All right, so let's get back to the show.

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And so when I sense myself in a well-rested content, you know, full of gratitude mood,

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that is when I want to look at my most complex issues, my most complex multi-variable,

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you know, decisions and say, this is what I think the best course of action is.

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And then sticking with that even when the the trials and tribulations that are never

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really going to happen as a result of the decision later down the road. And so that's my that's

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my hack is I can't get around emotion. I try and extend time horizons whenever I feel urgency.

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And then if if I'm going to make emotions from an emotional state, I try and go from a place of

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contentment and gratitude. And if I do not feel that state, I don't usually make the decision.

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So think about that. So if you have like moments when you're playing with your kids and you look

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back, you're like, man, life's awesome. That's when you make the decisions that you need to make

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about your life. All right, because from there, you'll be operating with a much longer time horizon.

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And that's I think my way. I think this this is doing it that way. We'll trick yourself into

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extending your time horizon, which ultimately will lead to better decision making. And the third

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E of third evils, evil E, oops, I'm writing down evil is or are excuse me are expenses. All right,

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so the first two, one is what you think should happen. The emotions affect how you think it should

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happen. And the expenses are the the it's like the cloud and the dirt, right? Are the things that

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that we incur along the way that increase the risk of it not occurring, right? So if you think

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about expenses in general, they are liabilities, they are risk that we take on. And so if

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if our goal is entrepreneurs is to increase our upside and decrease our downside, right? That is

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kind of entrepreneurship and business in general, right? Then actively thinking about decreasing our

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downside are liabilities is a way of increasing the likelihood that our expectations are met, right?

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And so one of the biggest mistakes and biggest evils that will destroy entrepreneurial

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businesses is because they set massive expectations when they are emotional and emotionally

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deficient because they need to satisfy the emotional needs that their parents didn't meet when

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they were kids. They then incur expenses that they shouldn't otherwise have to meet these demands

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that are completely arbitrary and made up in their minds, right? And so I see this what happened

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all the time. It's like, hey, we want to scale. We just hired four more people so that we can scale.

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Doesn't work that way. Get the growth first and then the growth will pay for the people.

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Don't put the cart in front of the horse. The only exception to this is if you have like commission

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only, you know, reps, like sales reps, things like that. But most other times, 99% of other times,

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when you are incurring greater expenses, it's not like it's it should not be to quote anticipate

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growth, right? Growth will pay the expenses. And if you need to quote delay, something for a

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smaller period of time so that you can shore up your infrastructure, then you can do that. And you

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would be amazed at how much flexibility there is, right? It's much easier to solve problems with

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cash in the bank, with with contract signed. And you're an entrepreneur like solving problems is

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what we do, right? And so if you're in that state, think about how much eat like if you need to,

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if you have the immediate demand, right? You will solve the problem and the people will come.

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I promise you, right? One of the biggest mistakes that I mean, I've made this one so many times.

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I hired 25 support reps in anticipation of growth for our supplement company,

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prestigious labs two years ago. And I currently now have four people that handle more business than

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the 25 did. Think about that. And so what happens is when you anticipate growth, you don't even know

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what the growth is going to look like. And so you basically just put people there, the culture of the

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team decreases, the morale of the team decreases, they're being less efficient. And when you have lots

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of people, you don't think about driving good process, right? You just think like we'll just throw

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more bodies at the problem. And that's a horrible way to go about business. It's also not a good

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customer experience in the long run. And so if we can adjust our expectations to be reasonable

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and based on process, not outcome, by managing our emotions and making decisions from a place of

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contentment, right? So that we don't set these deficient expectations on ourselves and our business

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that we have to satisfy because we must be a certain way by this time. Then we won't incur expenses

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in risk that is undue and unnecessary. There will likely destroy our business when it was a

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hundred percent based on our false made up expectations about what we thought should happen.

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Should. And so when I look at the things that undue entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial businesses,

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these are the three evil ease, expectations, emotions, and expenses. And I told you at the

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beginning that I would share the one that I think is the most deadly. And it's this guy, in my opinion,

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expectations. Because what we believe, because these are basically beliefs, just said differently,

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right? Another way to say this, and this is a really, a really good way that I got from a

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different coach to reframe beliefs, is she said, if you just call all your beliefs assumptions,

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they will be far more malleable. And it's such, it's, it's words matter, right? And if we call

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our beliefs assumptions, they become far more changeable for ourselves. And so if I say,

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this is my assumption, what do you guys think? Rather than this is my expectation, what do you guys

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think? See how different that feels? But they function the same way, right? But one of them is

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approachable. One of them is malleable. One of them can take new feedback and new inputs and new

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data. And the other one is a must, a should, a have to, right? And so if we can readjust our

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expectations, right? And be focused on our product over delivering, delighting the customers,

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right? Being intolerant of anything but excellence in the process. And because of that,

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our emotions stay more stable because we're not missing goals that we have to hit, right? Which

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then create more scarcity, more deficiency, more, more guttural feelings that then make us

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shorten our decision making loops that cause poor decisions and then cause us to make poor

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decisions that create expenses. All right? So this is a loop that self-reinforces and it can either be

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a virtuous or vicious cycle. And so it starts at the top and spins all the way around. And so those

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are the three evil ease of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial mistakes that hopefully you can

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use some of these tactics to avoid. All right? Don't, don't hire before you need it. Let the growth

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pay for the expenses. When you're making decisions, trying extend the, the space. This is what I have

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found effective for me and trying to make decisions from a point of gratitude and contentment and

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then keep the expectations driven around process, not outcome. And if you can keep the high,

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like keep your high expectations, but keep them on process. Not on what has to happen because when

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you reverse it the other way, you'll start making terrible decisions.