The Mindset Mentor - 9 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started My Business

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

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Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode and go ahead and give us a rating review however you listen to us if you enjoy the show. Today, I'm going to be talking about the nine things that I wish I knew before I started my business. So I'm going to be talking about the business that I currently run. And I started my first business when I was 19 years old. And I'll put some of the stuff in there as well. But I feel like my knowledge has definitely deepened over the past 15 years of becoming an entrepreneur and working and, you know, growing businesses. So these are in no particular

order in any sort of way. I just thought it would be fun for me to go through the nine different things that I've learned while running, scaling, growing a business. So if you guys are business owners out there, or you think that maybe one day you want to be a business owner, at least you'll be able to learn something hopefully from this. The first thing that I learned, and once again, in no particular order, is that success does not equal happiness. And we hear it all the time. I know you've heard this. I'm not the first person to tell you this, but your success in anything you do will not make you happy. Success and happiness are not intertwined in any sort of way. I know some really happy people that are completely unsuccessful. I know some really successful people that are completely unsuccessful. I know some really successful people that are completely unhappy. They are not correlated in any sort of way.

Just going to tell you that happiness is a byproduct of being fulfilled in what you do. So if you love what you do, you'll have a byproduct of being happy. If you don't love what you do, then it's going to be really hard to be happy. And I just want you guys to understand that you've heard it before and I've heard it before many times that success does not equal happiness. But I can tell you absolutely from my standpoint, from what I see and what I have lived through, I can tell you 100% that being successful does not make you happy. Now, you could be happy along the way whenever you're doing something that you love to do. And when you do something that you love to do, it's easy to work really hard at it. And if you

work really hard at something, eventually you'll probably be successful. So the first thing is success does not equal happiness. The second thing is that time does not equal money. We always hear time is money, time is money, time is money. That's complete BS. One of the reasons why I find, and I've coached hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of business owners. One of the reasons that I find that people do not scale a business or grow a business because they have this preconception, this preconceived notion that in order for me to run my business and grow my business, I have to give my entire life to it. And that's really hard for people who have children. The reason why it's hard for people who have children is because if you were to take your children on the left, your business on the right, and making money with

that business on the right, your children are going to win every single time, as they should. But people always think that in order for me to grow my business, I'm going to have to put so much more time and I'll have no time with my children. Will you have to put some time into it? Of course you will. Will it take all of the time away from your children? Of course not. And so, so many people don't bring their greatness out to the world. They don't start that business. They don't change the world through that idea or that invention because they simply think that creating that will take time away from their family. And that's just simply not the case. A bad business owner, yes, will spend all of their time at work and they will run themselves into the ground and they won't spend time with their family. That's what a bad

business owner will do. A great business owner doesn't do that. A great business owner, which I'll talk about soon enough, will hire people as soon as possible so that they can do what they're best at and they can have other can do what they're best at and they can have other people do what they're best as well. Time does not equal money. So in order to make more money, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to spend more time doing it. Now, for a lot of people out there, I understand this is a complete, you know, it's completely different than what we feel like we were raised with. But I promise you this, time does not equal money. I'm going to leave it at that. Number three, going out of balance now allows you to be balanced later. So I will say this, it is very hard to run a business if you

don't go out of balance at least a little bit. But I've seen many people that have not started their businesses because they're like, I don't want to be out of balance. Completely cool. If you don't want to be out of balance, that's completely someone's prerogative. They can do whatever they like, whatever it is that they want to do. But I will tell you this, it's better to be out of balance for the next two years, maybe working a little bit more, even though it sounds, I completely understand with what I just said in number two, it sounds like it contradicts, but it really doesn't. But going out of balance now or putting a little bit more time into it,

you know, if you're working 40 hours a week and you quit that job to start a business, you might have to work 60 hours a week to get that business up and running, 70 hours a week, whatever it is. But I will promise you this, whenever you do that, you'll go out of balance now to be in balance later. And so I can tell you when I first started my business, yeah, I did work harder. I didn't have to in all sorts of ways, but I wanted to get up and running. I could have ran a $100,000 a year business and been pretty decent and done pretty well by working 40 hours a week. But I wanted to grow up bigger. I want to have more impact in the world. And so I went out of balance and I worked more than the average person did. And so I went out of balance and I worked more than the average person did.

And going out of balance has now allowed me to be in balance, like not imbalanced, in balance now. And the reason why is because now I've got a company and a system set up that allows me to not have to show up every single day, which means that I actually work less than the average person does if I want to. I don't want to. I love what I do. But if I wanted to take time off and work a whole lot less, I could. And that's simply because I was out of balance at one point in time.

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That's trustinwill.com slash dial. Number four, money is not the goal. Money is not the goal. If you're starting a business or wanting to be an entrepreneur because it looks sexy and you see people on Instagram and you want that Lamborghini or whatever it is that everyone else has or the watch, and you're doing it simply because you want to make money, I promise you this, the people who are the richest in the world, the richest people in the world are not people who decided to go after money. They decided to go after a mission. They decided to go after something that they believed in. They decided to go after something that they

were passionate about. They decided to go after something that they felt would benefit humanity, that would solve people's problems. Never, I mean, very rarely do I see someone that is extremely well off rich that decided to do it just for the money. There was something else behind it. So if you're going and starting a business or you want to leave your company and start a business just for money, that's not the right thing. Money is just a byproduct of the value that you give the world. That's it. That's all that it is. Money is basically a reward for the value that you give the world. And so if you want to make a lot of money, what you don't focus on is the money.

What you focus on is the value. How can I bring more value to the world? The most successful people out there are the people who have brought the most value. They have solved a lot of the world's problems. You might say like, well, Jeff Bezos is the richest guy in the world. How many problems has he solved? A lot. If you actually think about it, whether you like him or not, it doesn't matter. But if you look at it and just take a step back, you think, oh my gosh, how many problems has this guy solved? You know, being able to bring books to people's houses, not have to go places, you know, to be able to get into people's doors in two days.

So many different things has been able to be solved by Amazon.com. If you look at so many other companies and so many other successful entrepreneurs, what they're doing is being very high level problem solvers. So money should not be your goal. Money should be a byproduct of the value you give the world. Value and impact should be your goal because value and impact will bring you money. So that's number four. Number five, this is an important one for a lot of business owners, solo entrepreneurs out there. It is impossible to scale a business to a legitimate level alone.

It is. It's impossible to scale a business alone. I have seen so many people run their business into the ground because they cannot delegate. They cannot hire. They know they can do it better than the person that they hire, and so they don't even let the person do it. So what happens is the business doesn't grow because the entrepreneur is the bottleneck in the business. They're the bottleneck. They are the problem. They were once the solution. And so then they think they're always the solution. But eventually once they start hiring people, they become the problem. It is impossible to scale a business to a legitimate size alone. People are the most important part of any business because those people, when you are the entrepreneur, you are the person who started the business, allow you to stay inside of your zone of genius, which is your most important place to be. In my business, the only things that I do now

should only do two things. Number one, I should coach people. And number two, I should create content. Anything outside of that is something I should not be doing. Because those are my two things that I'm best at, in my opinion. I'm best at creating content. I don't think anybody else on my team could create content like I can. And then also at the same time is coaching people. I don't think anybody else can coach people like I can as well.

And so I should be doing those things and I should hire people to do everything else but those. So that brings us to number six is reinvest as soon as possible. Another thing that I see a lot of people do is that once they start making some money, they make a little extra coin, they're turning a little bit of profit. What they do is they put that and they start buying stuff or they start saving it. No, they put that and they start buying stuff or they start saving it. No, you have to reinvest as soon as possible. As soon as you are able to make enough money to pay your bills and to break even, what you should always do is hire your next person. Your next most important position should always be hired, right? Because those people allow you to multiply yourself over and over and over and over again. You've got to reinvest as soon as possible. You have to hire people and you have to train them

really, really well. And then you have to get out of the way. Don't micromanage, whatever it is, let them master their position. Because if you train them really well, you empower them and you allow them to do that, they will step up in ways you can't even imagine. So you have to reinvest as soon as possible. So number five was it's impossible to scale a business alone. That goes with number six, reinvest as soon as possible, which means hire people as soon as possible. And then notice if you are the bottleneck in your business, if you are the bottleneck in your business, you need to get out of the way. You need to figure, you need to be completely self-aware. You need to put your ego to the side

and say, I'm the bottleneck of my business. I need to be able to have people in my business that are able to crush it and I can get out of the way. So number six, reinvest as soon as possible. Number seven, it takes time to see growth. One of the things that I find with most new business owners right now is they expect success right away, especially with all these people that are investing in like cryptocurrency and everything where it's like you put in five dollars and within three days you're a multi-billionaire, right? Like there's all these people who are making a ton of money doing it in different ways and they're expecting, I should be rich right away. That's not how business works.

Business is a lot like working out. You don't go to a, you know, a gym and work out twice and just expect that you're going to have the best body that you've ever had by working out twice. You just don't expect that because you know that getting the body that you want to takes time. You've got to work out a certain amount. You've got to eat a certain way. It takes time. It's the exact same thing for a business. The same way that you can't just automatically work out a couple of times and grow the best body you've ever had. It's the exact same thing for your business. You can't expect that your business

within three weeks of running it is going to be super successful. Hell, you can't even expect that it's going to be super successful within three to six months. Does it happen sometimes? Sure. But that's a complete anomaly. What you really need to focus on is it could take three to five years. So if you're sitting there and you're like, I want to start a business, ask yourself, could I spend the next three to five years working really hard at this? Because it's really crazy. Your one's getting going. It's kind of like, you know, you got to get the ball rolling. It doesn't have any momentum on its side. But by four, business is cranking. By five, better than you thought it could have been. And I can tell you from personal experience,

it took years to get, feel like the ball was rolling. It was moving and the momentum was on my side. Now that I'm five and six years into this business, I can't even believe where it is. It's so much further than I could have possibly imagined. So like the first couple of years, it feels like it's moving slow, but now it feels like it's moved a lot faster, right? I'm like way past where I thought I could be. And so you have to realize that it takes time to see growth. In your business, the same way it takes time to see any growth in anything else. You don't expect that you go to the gym once, you have a perfect body.

I planted some seeds outside of my house on Sunday, a couple of days ago. I don't expect those seeds to just be popping up right now. Take time. You got to water it. They got to get sun. They got to grow the roots before they come up. It's exactly how your business is. Imagine that the first couple of years of your business is growing deep into the roots

and setting the roots in before it can explode. A tree cannot grow up until it grows down first so that it has a base that will hold it up in place when it does grow up. So it takes time to see growth. Be patient. Number eight, one thing. One thing. That's it. You need to focus on one thing. What is your one business? There's so many people. I just ran an event this past Friday and some people came up and they said, hey Rob, I've got some questions about running multiple

businesses. You know, I've got this business and we do this. We've got this business and we do this and we've got this business and we do this. I'm curious, how do you run multiple businesses at once? And I was brutally honest with him. I said, you don't. You got to close them all down except for one. It's like Will Smith says, there's no reason to have a plan B because it distracts from plan A. You have to have one business.

When I first started the business that I have now, before I started it, I had an Amazon business and we were selling, we were selling about a thousand products a month. We were doing well, but I realized that that Amazon business was stealing time away from my coaching business. And if I was going to grow my coaching business into what I wanted it to be, it would have to take dedication and have to take work. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to have to shut the Amazon business down. And it was painful. And there wasn't a whole lot of money coming in at that time. But I knew if I fast forward 10 years from today, I said to myself, if I fast forward 10 years from today, do I want to be known as a guy who

sells stuff on Amazon? Or do I want to be known as the guy who's coaching people? And it was very easy for me. I want to be known as a coach. And I said, okay, you know, if I don't want to be doing this in 10 years and I shouldn't be doing it now, if I'm doing it just to make cash, I'm doing it just to make money. That's not really fulfilling me. And when I did decide to shut down the Amazon business, that's when the coaching business really started to take off because I could put everything into it. You can't put 50% into one thing. If 50% into another thing, expect that it's just going to grow. It's like if you take, you know, if you have, if it's Thanksgiving, everybody, you're like, okay, I have a 20 pound Turkey. I have a recipe for a 20 pound Turkey. Okay. Recipe says I've got to put this 20 pound Turkey in for four hours.

And you're like, well, you know what? I've actually got four 20 pound turkeys. I'm going to put all of them in for four hours. Are they all going to cook? No, they're all going to cook 25% to where they need it to be. That's exactly how the business is. People are like, well, I don't understand why my business isn't succeeding. I've got this business and this business and this business and this business and none of them are succeeding. I'm like, I know, because you're not putting a hundred percent into one of them. You've got to put a hundred percent into one of them. I always say it's like LeBron James didn't become LeBron James by playing basketball when he was younger during the week and then playing volleyball on the weekends, just in case basketball didn't work out. No, he became one of the greatest to play it. Michael Jordan became one of the greatest player. Kobe Bryant came as one

of the greatest to play it because they put a hundred percent. There was no other option. They burned the ships and they said, this is the thing I'm going to do. You've got to figure out what that is. You can't have multiple things that you're working on once because if you do, neither one of them will succeed at the level that they possibly could. So you got to have one thing. And then number nine, you got to schedule free time. Going back to the one thing, there's a book called the one thing that I read by a billionaire, Gary Keller, and he has the largest real estate agency in the entire world. And he said, schedule a free time. I remember when I read it, my business was pretty young. It was about a year into my business. And I was like, this doesn't make any sense. Like

schedule a free time. I'm not where I want to be yet. Like I don't have the business that I want yet. Why would I have free time? I don't deserve free time is actually what I thought to myself. I don't deserve free time. My business isn't where I want it to be. Why would I possibly give myself some free time? Well, I realized that it's kind of like pulling back a bow and arrow. In order for the arrow to fly forward, you have to pull it back, which is kind of like your rest. You have to take time away from your business to be able to be a hundred percent in your business when you're in your business. And a lot of people don't realize that. I didn't realize that for a really long time as well. Schedule free time, have your time. You work from this time to this time. So whatever,

nine to six or nine to seven. And then at seven o'clock you turn off and you're done. And there is no more business after that time. And then you take a Saturday off or Saturday and Sunday, whatever it is you need to do. Reason why is because if you take Saturday and Sunday off and you go back in on Monday, you'll be much more productive because you took time away than if you were just continuing to work on it all weekend long. Because eventually, I promise you this, my very first business, I ran it to the ground at 24 because I literally was working 110 hours a week and I ran it into the ground. I burnt myself out. I'll promise you this. You have to schedule a free time because when you schedule a free time, you're much less likely to burn yourself out. So those are the nine things that I've learned

from growing a coaching business in growing a business period. And the nine things I wish that I would have known before starting. Number one, success does not equal happiness. Number two, time does not equal money. Number three, going out of balance now allows you to be in balance later. Number four, money is not the goal. Money is just a byproduct of the value that you give the world. Number five, it is impossible to scale a business alone. You've got to hire people. Number six, reinvest your money as soon as possible. Number seven, it takes time before you see growth. Number eight, one thing, concentrate on just one thing, one business. And number nine, schedule your free time. So if you like this episode, please share it on your Instagram and tag me at Rob Dial Jr. And also if you are interested in myself and my

business partner, Dean DeVries, coaching you, if you are a business owner and we're in a leadership position, management position, you're interested in us coaching you over the next 12 months on how to grow, scale your business, and also grow and scale yourself and improve yourself and transform your personal life, your mindset, everything. Send Dean an email right now, dean at robdial.com. We have an event that's coming up next month, and we'd love to see you in Austin, Texas, if you were able to come and if we're right for you and if you're right for us. So once again, that's dean at robdial.com, D-E-A-N at robdial.com. And I'm going to leave it the same way I leave you every single episode,

make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you. And I hope that you have an amazing day.