Business Coach : Do Away With Excuses
-In your career, have you ever met anybody who’s successful that’s perpetually not happy or perpetually angry? Have you met people like this?
-Clay, I want to make sure both feet are on the ground when we say this. Because– an entrepreneur can never get down and can never get pissed off and can never make excuses? Well, as human beings, they do all the above. Where do they focus? Where do they stay? Where is their home? Where’s their going back to their place of comfort? A business coach can help answer these questions.
Entrepreneurs go back to their place of comfort, which means if it’s to be, it’s up to me. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. A business coach can help brainstorm where your happy place is.
-You’re doing that rap thing.
-A white boy that can’t jump. Just stop doing it!
If it’s to be, it’s up to me. Here’s the thing. You have to understand that you can go back to a decision you’ve already committed to. Even my good friend Norman Vincent Peale– which I’ve never met, but I’m sure if I met him, we’d be friends– he said even in his eighties, every day was a battle that he had to stay positive. The father of this positivity and positive thinking, it was a battle that he had to come into and make a decision to say this is what I’m going to focus on. This is the battles I’m going to fight. This is where I’m going to go here. Even if it doesn’t come naturally, thinking positively is a trait you can take on, and a business coach can help.
And entrepreneurs, they get into this thing that says there’s no reason for excuse. I call a no-BS zone. BS, of course, stands for belief system. There’s no negative belief system zone around me. But there’s no excuse around here. We just come in here and do it. And so happiness, Clay, is to say– you know what? I choose to look at life from a positive viewpoint that empowers me to do more stuff than just reacting to all the garbage going on around me. This is the way a business coach will encourage you to be as well.
-An example that’s maybe the best one I can think of is I think about eight days ago, 10 days ago, I was on the phone and I couldn’t really compose myself, because we found out with my dad’s cancer where we were headed. It was a rough spot. But you don’t stay there. And I guess my question would be– I see this all the time. I see entrepreneurs that will come to me for help. They want to hire me as a consultant client. And they look tired in the meeting. Or they look worn out. And it’s every day.
-Sometimes they look like a pathetic, bad investment.
-I’ve had to explain you’ve got to decide, moving forward, that you are going to be happy. They’ll say something like– well, my kids are mad at me. Or I’m going through this divorce. I can’t be positive like you, because I have these circumstances. And usually I have to tell them– hey. When I was in college, my best friend got killed right when I was starting the business. And then I got kicked out of that college. Or I have to say something like– hey, I know you’re having a rough patch. My dad has cancer right now, and there’s a lot of crazy stuff going on in our family’s health right now. We all have it, but you can’t stay in that negative state.
-It’s a choice, Clay. It really is.
-I always hear millionaires and successful entrepreneurs saying you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond to it. What are some of the things that you can do? What are some things I can do, if I’m an entrepreneur watching this, on a daily basis, to keep myself thinking positively despite going through those things?
-This is good. This is very, very important. This doesn’t have to do with what product and what service and the pricing. It has to do with are you ready to come out and play the game full on? Because your business, for it to succeed, requires you to be fully aware, fully present, fully creative in this moment. Because you’re going to have stuff that hits the fan. Stuff. We can say fecal matter that hits the fan. Is that better?
-Fecal, you can say that.
-Fecal matter that hits the fan. I predict something here. In the next week, you’re going to have major fecal matter hit your fan and want to stick. And you’ve got to deal with it. So that’s going to happen to you. I predict the week after that, more of that’s going to happen.
So how are we going to handle this whole journey of life? I’m telling you, you how you begin your day determines everything. It really does.
Well, I’m just I’m a late-night person.
Well, you’re probably a disorganized pile of pathetic organic material, too. I’m not saying you have to be an early riser and all that kind of stuff. I’m not saying that here. But most successful people learn to do that. And how you begin your day determines everything. Are you building a case for yourself, or against yourself? What you’re saying, what you’re thinking, is that building you up, or tearing you down? You determine your day the night before.