You Don’t Know Anything About Business

I love business. If business were a Hispanic male named Armando, I’d have a full on love affair with him.  But it’ s not. So anyways…

Hi. I’m Lauryn.

I am a full-blooded entrepreneur if I ever knew one.

I love creating, building, making money and helping the world around me live with greater efficiency, freedom and enjoyment.

But building businesses is not as easy or as hard as we make it.

In fact, they’re kind of like cookies.

The main ingredients for most cookies are almost always the same:

• Flour
• Sugar
• Milk
• Eggs

Although each cookie has its own flavor or design that makes it different, without those key ingredients, you don’t have a cookie. The same goes with business.

There are key aspects to every business. In the beginning, it is very easy to lose sight of these core components and waste time doing crap that does not directly affect your bottom line. It seems absurd that someone would forget the flour while making cookies. How could someone forget something so fundamental as flour? I say the same thing with business. People neglect the most fundamental parts of business building everyday. They begin with the frosting and forget to add eggs to their cookie dough.

Are you forgetting the eggs and flour of your business?

Your bottom line ($$) is the principle reason you’re in business. You can argue that you’re in business to save the world and don’t care a thing about money, but, unless you’re:

• backpacking through the woods
• living off the land like a native American pre-Christopher Columbus invasion…

then you need money to live, and an effective business should leverage time to let you live and save the world.

However, that doesn’t always happen.

And although this would be a great place to cite some stupid statistic that references the high number of businesses that “fail” every year, I am not going to do it. I don’t care. I am not interested in the amount of people who fail. I am interested in what people do to succeed.

Know this: if you are looking to do anything “untemplater” like (e.g. build a business, invest your money, work remotely), you are going to find that you are a minority and that there will always be some lingering statistic forewarning you of the high probability of failure.

So what? Forget it.

Use it as toilet paper, because it’s crap.

Focus on what works, go hard at it, be consistent in your efforts and adjust along the way.  The real reason these businesses do not succeed is because they forget the eggs and flour of their creations. To prevent this, I prescribe a heavy dose of uncomfortable conversation, affirmation and focused, consistent action. Today we will talk about the first 1/3 of the prescription: uncomfortable conversations.

I utilize uncomfortable conversations to address my own unproductive habits, fears and stagnant areas of my business. The affirmations are to reinforce my purpose and the consistent action is for consistent growth.

I can generally measure my success by the amount of uncomfortable conversations I’ve had recently. These range from conversations with

Super comfort does not put more money in my pocket; it makes my gmail account look prettier.

 

Wack!

 

After some semi-extensive tracking, I found that when I face something I do not want to do, i.e. cold calls, I begin to do “other things” like system building.

 

I love building systems apparently. Why, though, am I building systems to support massive incoming prospects, when I have yet to do anything to bring in this expected flood of new customers?

 

The rule of thumb is to do core activities only, especially in the beginning.

 

• Is this going to put money in my pocket in 2 steps or less?
• Is this a key contact that will assist in my growth?
• If I did not do this, would it potentially cause me to lose a lot of money?

 

Harness your fear and go hard for big wins. You will feel awesome and actually see results. The real stuff stings a little, puts some hair on your chest and pushes you and your business forward. Welcome the challenge, because within the challenge, is the golden nugget. Truthfully.

 

To all of the readers out there. Those are the conversations I have with myself when I sense easy-street coming on and I am still broke.

 

And as a side note…

 

You can kick butt in business.

 

You can take on the world, but you have to be compassionately honest with yourself. Be objective enough to examine your efforts and implement the necessary changes. Look for the big wins in your everyday life and attack!

 

If your choice is between a twitter post and contacting the CEO of a prospective client company, I hope you choose to prep your ass off and contact the CEO.

 

You can do it. Start now.