Start With A Win - Lies Business Leaders Tell Themselves

Episode Date: October 23, 2019

“Owning a business makes you a leader.” – Just about anyone can own a business, but it takes intentional effort, a willingness to be coachable, and a commitment to giving 100% to your business, customers, and employees to truly be a leader.“My employees want to work for me.” – It is your responsibility as their leader to make the workplace somewhere that your employees want to be and where they are encouraged to be the best version of themselves. Your business should be viewed as a community or family that people want to be a part of.“Since I own this business, it is the best one out there.” – Just because you think your baby is pretty doesn’t mean it really is. Approach your business with humility and frequently reach out to your customers for their feedback in your quest for continuous improvement.“I will succeed just because I showed up.” – You will succeed when you are serving your customer well, which takes time, hard work, and a willingness to listen to the feedback of your customers.“Success is fast.” – When you try to rush success, you will end up being a jack of all trades and master of none. Success requires a series of small wins every day including consistent interactions with your customers, employees, colleagues, and mentors. It has been said that “focus” really means Follow One Course Until Success, and success in business is a long game.Connect with Adam:“Why Customers Leave” by David Avrin -  https://www.amazon.com/Why-Customers-Leave-Them-Back/dp/1632651513“Atomic Habits” by James Clear - https://www.amazon.com/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/dp/0735211299 https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

We've got a kind of a fun topic here. We're going to talk about the lies we tell ourselves because we rationalize a lot away in our lives. We tell ourselves things are okay just to hide from the truth. We lose our humility with ourselves. And really that translates into the rest of our lives. So we're going to talk about some of the lies that we tell ourselves today and just come to terms with some of those things and see if we can come up with some solutions. Atop of the 12th floor of the REMAX World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. Atop of the 12th floor of REMAX World Headquarters, Adam Contos here, CEO of Remax.

Start with a win. We got a beautiful view out the window today. And with me here today, Producer Mark, how you doing, buddy? As always, so good. So good. Yeah. All right, let's jump into this. I know a lot of people that own businesses. And it's funny because I have a lot of friends who go, I'm going to buy a business. I'm going to buy a business. I just said that the other day. Really? This is not about Mark. This is not me though. This is not about Mark. Okay. So, so, you know, really the funniest thing is regardless if you are an independent contractor, meaning you are a solopreneur, just by yourself, or you own a

business with employees or something like that, owning a business does not make you a leader. I think that's one of the first things we need to understand, because a lot of people go, I bought a business. I am a business leader. That's a lie to yourself, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. If you've ever gone into a business and you're like, hey, can I talk to the manager? And then somebody comes stomping out from backstage and says, I'm the owner, what's up? And you ask them a question and you're sitting there going,

functionally, there's no leadership coming out right now. That's not how it should be. I mean, there should actually be this leadership test before you own a business, I would think. I think that's a great idea, actually. The unfortunate part is there's no magical leadership test in life. We have to hold the mirror up. Which is so hard to do. It is. It's very difficult to hold that mirror up. It's like it gets heavy. I can't hold it up very long. The mirror gets heavy. I can't see my

problems, the issues that I create. We need to hold that mirror up because owning a business does not make you a leader. Your leadership, your community, your transparency, your humility, your ability to create amazing experience for your customers and your employees, that's kind of the foundation for making you a leader and to influence them to accomplish great things or provide great experience for the customer. It takes 100% giving to be a leader. Which is hard for a lot of people. Yeah. I mean, we're selfish innately, so. Innately, yeah. Why do we want to start a business? Oh, I want to make some money. I mean, okay, that's great. You need to. That makes the world go round. Frankly, it's okay to make money. It's okay to make a lot of money. It's not okay to be a jerk and lack leadership in the process and stomp on people.

So really, you have to be coachable as a leader. Whoa. Where'd you come up with that one? Yes. You know, I listen to a really sweet podcast that talks about really beneficial things. Oh, that's a good win. Are you coachable? Good question, right? Yeah. Here's the second one. You have a business. You have employees.

That doesn't mean people want to work for you. That means they applied for a job looking for an income. You need to be a leader, be an employer, run a business that people want to be at. Now, that's important. That's really important. Why? Because that translates to the service, to the customer, the experience that you're providing, to what you do for the community with your business, things like that. You don't want people that are just

showing up. You want people that are present, that are giving there. People that want to be there for the right reason. So basically, you want people in that community, that business community that happen to be employed by you, people in that community that happen to be customers, people in that community that want to gravitate there. So have you ever noticed some businesses have people that just kind of show up and hang out at the businesses in the community? Yeah, like Cheers or Barbershop or something like that. Why do they do that? Well, I guess because there's probably good community there.

Yeah, it's community. They care about each other. Employees care about them. They care about the employees. It's kind of neat. You ever walk into some place and they greet you by name? Hey, Mark. Isn't that fun?

Yeah, or when they get your Starbucks order ready for you and they see you coming. I'm glad you said that. I was just about to throw out the big coffee shop. But it's not a coffee shop. It's an experience. It's a community location. It's about giving your employees a family to be part of instead of just giving them a place to make a few bucks, right? Having employees doesn't make people want to work for you. Building a community in your business does. Creating value, creating that great experience, not just for the employees, but also for the consumer. Here's a hard one for a lot of people, because a lot of people start a business or they buy a business, they jump into business,

and they think their baby is pretty, Okay? Buying it doesn't mean it's pretty. The smartest, most beautiful. Yeah. Oh my gosh, this is the best business ever. I can't fail. I walked in, I always talk about the gym. I belong to. Sorry, guys. Not sorry, because you give some great examples. Let's hope they listen to the show you know yeah well it's it's funny because you ask them you know what do you do oh we have this great testing process we're going to help you establish your health and your guidelines all this other stuff i'm like i'm gonna go work out i want a gym i want to have my health experience and i'll ask you for the help but that's what they start with that's what they start with. That's what they lead with. And I think they've only sold that process to like three people. It's this

human testing process and you go, oh, that's fantastic. It's scientific, whatever it is. But nobody that goes there has done it. Why? Because they think their baby's prettier than anybody else does. Don't think your baby's pretty. Listen to your customers. Listen to the experience that they're having and the feedback that they're giving. That's important. Just because you've bought the business doesn't mean your baby's pretty. Yeah. We kind of talked with David Averin recently. Yeah. He was just an amazing author, amazing speaker, goes around the world talking about customer experience. He's pretty upfront about that. that. I love it. Here's the next one. This is a big lie. People show up and they think they're going to be successful just because they think that they're a great leader and they showed up.

It doesn't work that way. You can't stand there in your business, put on your cape and your Superman suit, your super suit, and expect people to come in and say, I want to make you successful. That doesn't work that way. Yeah, the Midas's. Yeah. Things that everything they touch turns to gold. There's no magic touch in business.

You know what gets you there? We've heard these words that are like super overused. We get sick of hearing them, things like that. Words like hustle. Grind. Grind, grit, massive effort. You know what it is? It's having a good experience for the consumer and a bit of hard work. And that's one of the things that's interesting that we've forgotten in society sometimes is hard work.

You know, people go, I want a job. All right, what does that mean? It shows up and you hang out there. And if somebody tells me to do something, I'm going to go do it. Well, wait a second. Have a little initiative. That's right. Show up and, you know, even the leaders.

Leaders lead. It's weird. That's the base for that word. Lead. Lead. What does that mean? It means do. It means go do it. Get out there. Grow the business. You know what I do? I call customers. I call customers and I talk to them and I go, how's your experience with us? We appreciate you.

I want to make your day better. What can we improve upon, magnify, change, things like that in our business that makes your experience with us better. Leaders, you got to be conscious. You got to be a conscious leader. You got to be participating in that customer experience. You got to lead and you got to put in the hard work. That's hard for a lot of people to hear, I think. I think that you get this magical idea in your head about how easy something's going to be, or you have that magic touch or whatever. And then you spin something up and then it's like, oh, I got to actually like work. Exactly. Weird. But you know, it's interesting about this because this leads to the next one. Success comes from showing up. I mean, like being present and actively doing the things that need to be done. And I'm going to break that down just a little bit here.

You got to think of success in business as it's the long game. It's never the short game. You never see somebody go out and open the doors on a business, start a consulting company, whatever it is, and go, all right, this should take me about three months and I'm going to punch out with a big load of cash. Life doesn't work that way. You're not buying lotto tickets, sitting there scratching them off and going, I won. All right, I'm out. Sorry. Long game. Success comes from showing up over and over and over and over and over again, relentlessly having the patience. You look at, say, Michael Jordan, that guy's success. I mean, that man could fly. You know why? Because he jumped a lot. He shot a lot of basketballs over and over again, thousands and thousands and thousands. To reach mastery, you go after

something 10,000 times. What if you showed up at your business 10,000 times? Would you get somewhere that creates more success? Absolutely. Yeah, I recently talked to a friend about something similar. He owns multiple businesses. And I started to think about, OK, what is one thing I could do to build wealth and not just make more money, but build wealth? And I had this idea. I have a friend who does

lawn care. And I was like, oh, well, what if I start my own lawn care company and then put him in charge of it and then built this business? And my friend was like, yeah, you could do that. But he's like, why don't you focus your energy on what you're currently doing? And instead of trying to over-diversify yourself, focus on what you're doing and keep doing it and do it better. You know, do you think, do you think we get distracted a lot in today's society? Oh yeah. I mean, cause I think it's constantly, you're being bombarded constantly about missing out on something or like it has to be fast now instance. Like, you know, it's like looking for this instant gratification of success or whatever it is. It's funny because I think we have too many options now. In our society, we have too many

options. We've created dozens of options for every single thing that we can do. Dozens. Like the real estate industry, for instance. 20, 30 years ago, real estate was you're a real estate agent or you have a brokerage. There weren't 15 or 20 different business models in real estate and all these other external entrants coming in. So now we have these people that just spend all this time bouncing from business model to business model, to business model, to business model, and then going, oh, that's a new fendangled fancy thing. It's the new shiny thing. And they get distracted by that. And then they dabble in it for a couple of weeks or months or whatever.

And then they jump to the next thing and dabble in that. You know where they get? They never get anywhere. Because they never, you know, jack of all trades, master of none. Right. You know, the whole, the dog that chases two rabbits catches none. I love that quote. Focus on one thing.

Let's talk about focus for a second here. Focus, F-O-C-U-S. Follow one course until success. That is a good acronym. Follow one course until success. It's so hard to do that though for so many people, I think. It's distracting. All of these things that are on here, if you focus on building success in that through great customer experience, we talked David Averin and his book. We talk about atomic habits, focus on things. We have all these little business books that keep directing you towards doing one thing over and over and over again.

And you know what's interesting about doing this one thing over and over and over again? It's not like a massive win you're seeking. And this is probably the biggest lie that we tell ourselves, is I have to go create this huge win in order to find success. It's not. It's a series of little bitty wins every day, which is, I mean, the basis for this podcast, start with a win. What are we looking for? We're just looking for those little wins. Yeah. A lot of them. We're filling that, that dump truck one pebble at a time. Well, yeah. And even I know like in the CEO group that you run, you know, it's like, just start making a video, you know? And I think a lot of times people get overwhelmed with like, well, there's Instagram and Facebook and Twitter

and you know, all these places that I can be doing content. But yeah, it's focused, right? Focus on one discipline, making a video, and then focus maybe even just on one platform, whether it's who's going to reach your audience best, Instagram, Facebook, and then just start posting consistently. Exactly. Exactly. Give somebody the ability to connect with you emotionally. Give them a great experience with you. One little introduction at a time. It's the business owner, the business leader who comes out and talks to the employees and the customers. They walk out into their store.

They pick up the phone or they go get face-to-face with their customer list. If you put your customer list on the table in front of you and you put a photo with every single one of those people and you picked up that photo and you talked to that photo like it was a human being right there in front of you and you complimented them and you asked them how they're doing and you gave them a moment of your time and appreciated them. Remember, go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People aren't looking for some sort of a trinket or gadget or a monetary amount in that hierarchy of needs. That's near the bottom. That's near the bottom. What they're looking for is

they're looking for self-actualization, appreciation and love, things like that, up at the top. And people are forgetting about those things. They're never getting up above trying to feature dump on somebody or give somebody their to-do list and make it that other person's priority because nobody wants anything to do with your to-do list. They want to know that you appreciate them and you're helping them. You're providing them value. Solid. We've talked about lying to ourself a little bit today. We need to stop lying to ourself. We need to be transparent with ourselves. We need to be wide open with our business. We need to understand

that it's not about us. It is not about us. I am not building my business. I'm helping other people. I'm letting them build my business by me, deploying gratitude, deploying kindness, being consistent in my business and in my life. That helps not just them. That helps me. And when I translate this into my relationships, into my health, I get up in the morning, I do the pushups. Nobody can do your pushups for you. You got to do the work. That is how you make big strides one day at a time, one little stride at a time. So that's how we build success. Stop lying to yourself, folks. And let's grind. Let's go out and let's get this done. Be an amazing human being. Deploy kindness and do it consistently.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We hope you enjoyed it. Don't forget to go on iTunes and subscribe, write a review, or rate the show. It helps us get the word out and reach more people. You can follow Adam on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. And remember, star with a win