Start With A Win - Top 10 Worst Excuses

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

The topic of this episode of the Start with a Win podcast is the 10 worst excuses that Adam has heard about why people can’t grow their businesses and why these excuses are not true. These excuses really come from a self-limiting mindset which will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don’t alter your thinking.“I’m an introvert.” – When it comes to marketing yourself, it doesn’t matter if you like talking in front of people and getting yourself out there; you have to do it in order to build your brand and establish rapport with your potential clients. If it helps, establish an alter ego that you assume when you need to talk in these settings and then relax, be happy, and talk.“I don’t have time!” – We all have the same 24 hours in a day, so if you feel that you don’t have time to build your business, you must be making poor time management choices.“My technology doesn’t work.” – With all of the advances in technology and the continual updates, chances are the issue you are having is human error.“There are no customers left in my market.” – There are plenty of customers to go around, so you must not be looking hard enough or in the right places. Take responsibility and put in the effort to find them.“I don’t do social media – I’m too private.” – Social media is one of the easiest ways to reach the most potential customers, so you need to be present. You can have boundaries around your usage, but you at least need to be active on one platform.“I need more leads.” – It is your responsibility to generate enough business for yourself and to take care of the leads you already have. Increasing your conversion rate is just as good as – if not better than – getting new leads.“They don’t want my product/service.” – Most of the time when you give this excuse, what the customers really don’t want is you. They are looking for the end result that can come from your product/service, so be genuine, tell your story, build relationships, and show them the result you can provide.“I can’t do it.” – This really means that you won’t do it. If it is important, you will find a way.“It’s too hard!” – If it is too hard for you right now, then go get the training needed for you to know how or outsource that task to an expert in the field.“I’ll get to it.” – Now you are just finding a passive-aggressive way to say “no.” Don’t tell people that you will get to it if you have no intention of doing so.Links:“The Alter Ego Effect” by Todd Herman: https://www.amazon.com/Alter-Ego-Effect-Identities-Transform/dp/0062838636/ Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/ https://www.facebook.com/REMAXAdamContoshttps://twitter.com/REMAXAdamContos https://www.instagram.com/REMAXadamcontos/ 

All right, Adam, how's it going? It's good, Mark. How are you? I am great. Always excited to be recording podcasts. I love this. Yeah. I mean, we're just kind of sitting around talking, right? That's right. And we're allowing people to listen. And what are we talking about today? Excuses. Ugh, I hate excuses. I hate excuses too. In fact, I'm going to go through 10 of the worst excuses I've ever heard

as far as why people cannot grow their business. Interesting. All right. And why they're not true, by the way. Well, let's just jump on into this then. Go for it. Atop of the 12th floor of the REMAX World Headquarters, you're listening to Start With a Win with CEO Adam Kantos. And top of the 12th floor ofax, global headquarters here, Adam Contos with Star With A Wind.

I've got with me in studio here, producer Mark. How you doing, buddy? I am doing so good. Wow. With a little tune. That's right. I love it. Take it to the next level. Yeah. Yeah. You got no excuses today, do you? I have none. You know, I'm the person too. Yeah. Yeah, you got no excuses today, do you? I have none.

I'm the person, too. It's like I like to just take responsibility because excuses are like nobody wants to hear those. Own it. Yeah, own it. Yeah, I love that. So you got, how many of these have we got? We got a lot of excuses, but we're going to whittle it down to 10 of the worst excuses I have ever heard and why they're not true. And I hope that when we talk about something like this, I hope that someone would just reflect on themselves and then be like, oh, I do that or I've said that. And they're like, you know what? I'm not going to do that anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you. I think part of fixing your problems is encountering them head on. You know, just let's go, hey, I have this excuse and I'm just going to throw it out there and I'm not going to use that as a reason to avoid doing something. All right, kick us off. Where do we go? We're in the business business. We're a business that builds businesses here. And we deal with a lot of real estate agents, a lot of people that do marketing, and we've been

putting out a ton of social media content. And I get a lot of people that do marketing, and we've been putting out a ton of social media content. And I get a lot of people that say, how can you do that? How can you market yourself that way? I say, it's easy. You just kind of push record and talk about what you're talking about, right? I mean, you get out there. And I keep hearing this excuse over and over again. And I think people that avoid marketing themselves on social media use this more and more every day. And that's, I'm an introvert. Classic. Classic. I'm not good in front of people. I'm going to go hide from myself. Yeah. Come on. I get it. We're all fearful of getting in front of others. Okay. Why? Because we're afraid of failure. We're afraid

that we are not going to, not going to show up well and we're going to be judged. But what if nobody could judge you? Would it matter if you were an introvert or not? No. Nobody's judging you. Get out there and do it. Just get in front of people and smile and be a fun human being. And that reverses that whole introvert polarity. Well, and we recently talked with Todd Herman, right? Yeah, Todd Herman. He was talking about the alter ego, right? Yes.

And so it's like, if you're not a people person, well, put on your alter ego and get out there and be the... It's like everyone who's not an introvert or an extroverted person, they probably have sung in the mirror or shower or something like that, right? Because they've been alone and no one's judging them. And so they put on that alter ego and just go for it. You know, what's funny is when you think about all the different introverts in like comic books and stuff like that, like Superman, you know, Clark Kent, introvert.

Spider-Man, Peter Parker, introvert. Yeah. You know, all these different people are introverts until they become their superhero, and then they go, ah, and they go save the world, and everybody goes, oh, they're awesome, and they're not afraid of getting out there. So realistically, I think introvert is,

there may be some psychological principle behind being afraid of crowds and stuff, but ultimately, if you just relax and be happy and go talk to people, you get out of your shell and it's okay. All right. So that's excuse number one. I'm an introvert. Yes. What's excuse number two? All right. So this one really gets under my skin. And I hear this because when you ask somebody about a project or you even catch yourself doing this so much.

And that is, I don't have time. Time. Time. You know what? We all have 1,440 minutes in a day. Okay? Is that the exact amount? That's it.

1,440 minutes in a day. That's great. Did you know that? I didn't, but now I do. That's a lot of minutes, man. Yeah, it is a lot of minutes. But I hear what you're saying because there's so many times where I've thought, you hear that idea of like, well, Warren Buffett has the same 24 hours as you do, or Bill Gates had the same exact amount

of time that you had to do what you are trying to do. You do have the time. You know what you don't have? You don't have the right choices. That's what it's about. When you sit down and think about what do you, if you do a time audit, let's When you sit down and think about what do you, if you do a time audit, let's say, sit down and think about what did you do during the day and what did you spend time on? And by the way, our iPhones, the iPhone says you spent this much time on average a day on screen time. And you go, oh, that's where that went. You don't have time for what? I don't have enough time to do this. Okay. What that should be is I didn't make enough time for this. Right. Instead of I don't have enough time. Yeah. You don't have enough time

for excuses. That's what you don't have enough time for. Bam. Whoa. All right. Number three. All right. So I hear this a fair amount when it comes to people trying to accomplish things in business and that's my technology doesn't work. So is it technology with a human being operating it generally, or is it a human being doing a job and leveraging technology? So usually what I, what I come around to is operator error, not technology error. You know, technology does pretty much anything we want it to do. In fact, you know, like in the 1960s, we put a man on the moon with technology that is way less than what's in the palm of our hand right now. It's just crazy. We can do anything. Yep. Anything, but my technology doesn't work. You know what? You just haven't learned how to

use your technology to accomplish what you're doing. So therefore, excuse. Excuse. Next one. Everybody's in sales in some way, shape, or form. You're in the sales or delivery of an experience, regardless of what you do, be it a government worker, be it somebody who's on an assembly line, whatever. You are in an experiential environment. And what we hear a lot with this one is, there are no customers left in my market, or I've sold to everybody, or there's no one that wants to buy my stuff from me. Right. It's an excuse. It is you giving the responsibility of accomplishing your sales, marketing business goals. Right. You're placing that responsibility, that monkey on somebody else's back.

Yeah, there's so much business to go around. There's so much opportunity out there. You just have to go get it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. I hear that excuse a lot. People in the creative industry are like, oh, exactly. I hear that excuse a lot. You know, people in the creative

industry are like, oh, there's just not enough, you know, work or whatever. I'm like, they're not enough customers. I don't know what you're talking about because there's thousands of companies in this city that need content. Right. Yeah. And you know what? There are 320 million people in this world. Right. Find one of them that wants to buy your stuff. Yeah, exactly. You can do that. Exactly. So next one, it kind of plays off of that one. And you hear this one from the previous excuse quite a bit. And that's, I don't do social media. I'm too private.

Whatever. Here's the reality. Unless you're living remotely somewhere and nobody else has any impact on your life, you kind of need to participate in this machine called social media these days. Yeah. The thing is, is that everyone's there. Yeah. And I think you can have healthy boundaries around how you're using social media and when you're using it. But yeah, you definitely need to be on there and participating because chances are all your customers are there as well. You got it, my friend. If you want to sell something, where do you go? Where there's

customers. That's right. And they happen to be, there's this philosophy, meet them where they're at. They're not sitting in your living room with a book in their hand waiting for you to walk in after a hard day's work so they can buy something from you. They're on social media. Go out and meet them where they're at. Speaking of that, here's another one. When somebody's struggling in business, you know what they say? I need more leads. I need more leads. The classic I need more leads excuse. The classic I need more leads excuse. I don't have enough leads to do business. Okay. You're now putting that monkey on somebody else's back because they're supposed to deliver to you a truckload of leads, right?

And you're going to magically turn that into business. So in all reality, let's take a sidestep here. Give a man a fish or teach a man to fish. What they're actually saying is, I'm not doing what I need to be doing to generate more business. Big excuse. I need more leads. No, you don't. You need to go out and generate more business is what you need to do. You need to build efficiencies in your life, in your business. Or be good stewards of the leads you already have. Whoa, hello.

I'm just saying. Yeah. Right? It's like how many times is you maybe not call somebody back or you have a whole phone book of people you could call to create leads, but you don't. That's called measuring your conversion rate. Up that conversion rate, my friend. That's right. Instead of converting like one out of 10 leads, convert two. You just double your business. Weird. I need more leads. Big, big excuse in life. If you have a lead,

turn it into more. Don't complain about not having enough. Got it? Got it. So the next one, you hear this a lot in business, they don't want my product or service. So you've got leads, you've got customers, they just don't want what you got.

You know what they don't want? Excuses. That's it. They don't want you. They want to do business with somebody that they want to do business with. So they choose the company or the human being generally before they choose the product or service. Correct. So that's the business you're in, right? Yeah. I'm in that business. Brand Viva, man. That's right. Brand Viva. Good plug for Brand Viva. Yeah. So I mean, it's about telling your story. It's about gaining the confidence,

the relationship with the consumer, and they want your culture and what all comes with that product or service and the result that that product or service creates, not the product or service. They want the result that that creates. That includes the experience. That includes the interaction. That includes what challenge does it solve. But if you're talking to them, you think that they're the right people for a reason, they need it. They just have not seen what they want out of the whole thing yet. Okay? Good. So here's another one. And I love this one because I hear this a fair amount. In fact, when we had Todd Herman on the show from Alter Ego, he really helps people fight through this, and that's, I can't do it. So we've just already decided that we are giving up, right?

Right. I can't do it. No, the reality is you won't do it. Yeah. Okay? You've chosen to not do it, not that you're physically incapable of doing it generally. Now, if it comes down to me saying, hey, Mark, can you pick up that car and put it over there? I can't do that.

Right, right. Within limitation. But the reality is the majority of stuff that you're up against, you can do. The whole thought of if it's important, you'll find a way. If it's not, you'll find an excuse. Generally, the answer to that, the pivot point is I can't do it. And people go, oh, okay, I just found an excuse. There you go. Done. Done. Done. I can't do it. That leads to this other one. It's too hard. That's a lame one too. It is. So what you're saying is you haven't gone out

and determined the process or the skill necessary in order to accomplish that. And generally, the process or skill necessary is very little. Nobody's coming in going, hey Mark, here's a scalpel. Go do open heart surgery on that human being over there.

That's not happening where you go, I can't do that. It's too hard. Yeah. Well, it is hard, but what you got to do is you got to go to school. You got to educate yourself. You have to practice and you got to put in the time and work so that you can do that hard thing. There you go.

Bingo, man. It's too hard. Okay. Well, what's hard about it? How can you overcome that? And, or frankly, outsource it. Right. But get it done. The excuse, it's too hard. Basically, all these things are, whoever you say these to, you're basically putting that monkey on their back. You're saying, you know, if you say,

hey, Adam, I need you to put out a new podcast.'s too hard i mean what did i do i basically made it your problem right by giving you the excuse right yeah not a nice thing to do not cool not cool at all so and the final one this one really bugs me because this is like the most really kind of the most painful and it's kind of passive-aggressive i'll get to. I'll get to it. I'll get to it. Yeah. I'm so busy. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I've been so busy. I'm so slammed. Right.

I'll get to it. I'll get to it. That basically is kind of like the big, no. I'll get to it is I can't stand that whole excuse, which basically means I don't have a good excuse for you, but I'm telling you something as an excuse. And I put you on the hook too, because it's like, okay, you're going to get to a win. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Win. I'll get to it. Yeah. Come on. Yeah. Stop giving me excuses. Are you going to get to social media? Yeah, I'll get to it.

Are you going to get to making videos? Yeah, yeah. I'm going to get to it. Right, right. Why not to it. Are you going to get to making videos? Yeah, yeah, I'm going to get to it. Right, right. Why not? And then scroll up and see above. Right. Okay.

Ultimately, what the culmination of all these things is is mindset. If we believe something about ourselves, that's the way we are going to perform. If we do the, I'll get to it, I can't, I need more leads. I don't do social media. My technology doesn't work. There are no more customers for me, things like that. All we're doing is establishing these preconceived notions in our brain for why we're not going to do it. And we're just setting ourselves up to fail. So it's really all excuses are. They're kind of like the go button for failure, just by throwing an excuse out there. Yeah. I hate that. And I hope that that inspires you to not make excuses and to recognize the excuses that you are making and potentially stop making

those excuses. Well, you know, it's funny when we know they're excuses and we catch ourselves saying them. You're like, ooh. Yeah. It's like, oh, it's dirty. I don't feel good about that. Exactly. Be hard on yourself about these things. Don't let yourself get away with them and it will change your world. Thank you so much for listening to Start With A Win. We hope you enjoyed today's episode.

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