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Work smarter, not harder. Or longer. 

Bull.

It’s bull because you’re competing against people who are working smarter, harder and longer. 

It’s also bull because you’re not on control of your innate talents, but you’re in complete control of how smart you become, how hard you work and how much time you devote to it.

Time invested is critical because it takes time to figure it out. Then it takes more time to really figure it out because things don’t remain the same. In our success, we often get tripped up. Causing us to have to figure it out again. And again. 

Get smarter.

Devote more time and effort to learning. Knowledge is a big part of figuring it out. Idiots can’t figure it out. You’ve got to put in the work to be smart. You can’t ever stop either because you’ll never be too smart. 

Work harder.

Not fake effort, but real effort. You can walk around the block. Or you can jog. Or you can sprint 30 feet, then walk 15 and repeat it. People enjoy walking but characterizing it like the sprinting. Most of us tend to feel like we’re working harder than we really are. Don’t fool yourself. Put in the effort to match your ambition. And I’m not going to encourage you to lower your efforts to match pathetically low ambitions. Come on, the website and podcast are titled, “Grow great!” 

Work longer.

Give it the time it deserves. Because it’s worth it. And there’s the reality that time is going to pass all of us at the same rate of 24 hours daily. The next few hours are going to pass no matter what you do. You may as well invest that time in doing the work to figure it out. It’s not about simply spending more time. Any dolt can sit in a chair hours longer than others, but get nothing done. It’s about what you do with those hours…all toward accelerating your ability to figure it out.

Success takes time.

I live in Dallas/Ft. Worth. This is a pro sports town with every major sport represented. Dallas Cowboys. Dallas Mavericks. Texas Rangers. Dallas Stars. These teams are comprised of wealthy players able to compete at the highest levels of their sport. Yet, the Cowboys were last champions in 1996. The Stars in 1999. The Mavericks in 2011. The Rangers still haven’t achieved a championship even though they lost 2 World Series in 2010 and 2011. Even if you’re elite figuring it out takes time. Sometimes it takes a very long time. 

Professional sports is entertainment. That gives the industry a unique ability to turn a profit without winning the sport. Even losing teams make money because most teams do lose. Success has many fronts and financial is just one of them. Admittedly, the chief one because if you don’t make a profit you can’t keep the doors open. 

You have to see it over and over.

This is the time of year when I’m willing to watch Major League Baseball. Otherwise, I hate baseball. Too slow. Too long. Too boring. But I appreciate the tactics and skill. And I appreciate how hitters talk about how they’re able to adjust to pitchers during a series because it helps when you’ve seen a pitcher multiple times. Pitches that first fooled a hitter may not fool them at all later. Players make adjustments based on experience and learning. 

How else can you explain a multi-million dollar NFL quarterback with unquestioned ability throwing more interceptions than touchdowns? Because when they enter the league they’re up against elite defenses coupled with world-class speed. Mistakes cost you. But pay close attention to these quarterbacks over the period of 3-5 years. Unless they’ve got no supporting cast – namely, a good offensive line to protect them – they figure it out, but it takes seeing it 16 games, then another 16 games and maybe then another 16 games. The more complex it is, the longer it takes. The fewer repetitions available, the longer it takes. 

It’s why minor league systems exist. One reason. Players at the major league level of baseball or hockey get called “up” (to the majors) or “sent down” (to the minors) sometimes because they need more repetition. The management knows that by playing more games they’re giving the player more time to figure it out. 

If you don’t want to put in the time, that’s up to you. Go ahead. Embrace the mantra, “Work smarter, not harder!” It’s a contradiction. The people working smarter, are working harder because harder is smarter. Success isn’t guaranteed. No matter what you do. But consider the alternative…

Not working harder is sure to fail, then what are you left with? Failure will take away a lot more than time. It’ll rob you of your self-respect. Fill you with regret. Fuel bitterness and envy. And guilt. Failure demands a higher price than success, but it’s disguised as something other than a lack of effort. It’s too often cloaked in feeling sorry for ourselves. Wanting others to feel bad for us. 

Trial and error. Error isn’t failure. 

Success requires trial and error. In the moment, the error is failure. It didn’t work. But it’s only temporary so it doesn’t count as failure. It counts as learning. Big difference.

Failure is quitting, or not putting in the work. That teaches us nothing! There is no learning. And that’s a waste of everything. 

So be patient. Put in the work. Stick with it. Learn. Keep learning. Figure it out.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Let me get one thing out of the way. I can’t remember the first time I heard the word, “entrepreneur.” We were “business people.” Period. Or “merchants,” those of us who operated in retailing. 

We were anything, but cool. Musicians, writers, and artists were cool. I spent my entire teens, 20’s and 30’s being anything, but cool. New flash: if you’re not cool when you’re a teen, or in your 20’s and 30’s…then you ain’t ever gonna be cool! 😉 

I’m good with it. 

Some years ago it began to be cool to be an “entrepreneur.” Today, you have to be a “rockstar entrepreneur.” Well, that’s special. Robert Plant and Mick Jagger were (and still are) rockstars, but I didn’t know of any rockstar business people. Okay, that’s not entirely true. In my 30’s I was fascinated by GE’s Jack Welch. I sorta thought Jack was a rockstar. Still do. 

That’s just some context that I think is necessary for today’s question: Is entrepreneurship a birthright – meaning you’re born with it – or is it learned?

I think the answer is, “Yes!”

There are stereotypes of everything. Somebody gains popularity telling a story of how they were a child entrepreneur. Suddenly, everybody thinks that’s the path. So some create a fictional version of their own youth in hopes to draw the admiration of others.

Not every successful entrepreneur was born that way, but every successful entrepreneur learned how to operate a business! 

Carol Roth wrote a book some years ago (2011) entitled, The Entrepreneur’s Equation: Evaluating the Realities, Risks, and Rewards of Having Your Own Business. She observes that going into business for yourself isn’t the right thing for everybody. Some folks are better off with a job. For the past 20 years or so being an entrepreneur has been cool though. A job? Not so much. The result has been too many people pursuing a path not ideal for them.

Another shift has happened that has nothing to do with being cool. Being old. 😉 Baby boomers with extensive experience and know-how have often found themselves displaced in the workplace. For whatever reasons. Many have found it difficult post-50 to find suitable employment. Some have been forced into entrepreneurship because they’re not financially independent enough to retire so young. Organizations like Encore.org speak to the growing population of older workers who have extraordinary experience and skills. 

All this just means the entrepreneurial landscape is constantly changing. It gives rise to the daily conversation about the craft, the craft of entrepreneurship. Are entrepreneurs born or do they learn it?

Human beings are born with some innate tendencies and personality traits, but we’re all born to adapt. The “born” entrepreneurs seem to have been fixated on money at some early age. Maybe it was poverty. Or maybe it was the opposite. Most kids don’t think about making money, just asking for it. It’s curious to me that even self-proclaimed born entrepreneurs don’t focus on the money, but what kid mows lawns or throws paper because they enjoy the “process.” No, we enjoy the payday!

Taking risks. Being assertive. Being communicative. And persuasive. These can be part of our personality, but even these can be learned. 

Wikipedia says this…

Entrepreneurship is the process of designing, launching and running a new business, which is often initially a small business. The people who create these businesses are called entrepreneurs.

The dictionary says this…

The owner or manager of a business enterprise who, by risk and initiative, attempts to make profits

If entrepreneurs were born then more teens would operate successful businesses. Plenty of kids are involved in business, some of them quite successful. But there’s always an adult or a crew of adults involved. The 14-year-old YouTube or Instagram star has parents and other adults behind the scenes who understand how business works. Business, like basketball, or playing guitar, is a learned skill. Some of us are athletic. Others of us are creative. Some are musical. A few are all of these and more (they’re the ones we love to hate). All of us have to learn and adapt in order to grow, improve and transform. All of us. 

Your entrepreneurship is uniquely your own. I hit RECORD this morning mostly so you’d stop comparing yourself and holding yourself up to some ideal standard based on what you think is culturally true. “Real entrepreneurs are born, not made.” I’m tired of us comparing ourselves with people we think are better. It diminishes the biggest value in all business, putting too much emphasis on money and size. According to one source, there are 28 million businesses in America. 22 million are individually owned without employees. 18,500 are large businesses (defined as companies with over 250 employees). Then there are those rockstar companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and others who occupy so much business press space. The startup world calls them “unicorns.” These are companies who have cracked the billion-dollar mark (in revenues or valuation). 

Consider Jeff Bezos, arguably the most successful entrepreneur of today. Back in 2017 he became the world’s wealthiest person with $90 billion. By this past summer (July 2018) his estimated wealth escalated to $150 billion. When he started Amazon with $300,000 borrowed from his parents, do you think he had the innate skills and talent to run a $178 billion empire? Of course not. Nobody is born with the ability or know-how to do that. 

He figured it out.

You know who the real entrepreneurs are? They’re people just like you. And me. They’re people who figure it out as they go. 

Reid Hoffman co-founded Linkedin. He said, “An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down.”

Some people are born to more quickly jump off the cliff. Some are reluctant. Others won’t jump unless they’re pushed. 

Some people are born to learn fast. Some learn slower. Others aren’t interested in learning. Still others are just too lazy to learn.

Bottom line: learn what you need to learn to help yourself succeed. Admit you don’t know everything you need to know. Embrace curiosity and learning. Wear those as badges of honor instead of fretting about how smart you look to others. Your entrepreneurship isn’t about how good you are today…it’s about how good are you willing to become. 

Hoffman’s quote addresses in a single sentence a variety of things involved. Facing the fear of taking the jump even though you don’t know how things may turn out. There’s faith involved. The belief that you can and will figure it out.

There’s the commitment to do it. Not merely to jump, but to figure it out once you do. It’s not acting blindly. It’s preparing and getting ready, but knowing that you until you start you’re unable to really figure it out. Battle plans all look great inside the tent. Once you hit the battlefield is when you find out who the real generals are though. 

There’s the ability to learn on the fly, even in the face of strong adversity. Stop focusing on what you know and get busier learning what you don’t yet know. That doesn’t mean you diminish what you know. It just means you remain focused on your own learning. 

And there’s the ever-present requirement we’re all born with, adaptability. Some of us do it better and faster than others, but we’ve all got it. We all learned to walk and talk. Everybody has spent their life figuring things out. Admittedly, some love it more than others. Some are faster at it than others. But we can all do it. 

Grow Great is all about helping people figure it out. A decade ago when I began my own entrepreneurial journey as a one-man-band, I didn’t have anything figured out. Sometime this week I’ll share a bit more. But for today, know this. My own figuring it out happened rather recently – just a few years ago. It ignited in me a drive to serve business people – entrepreneurs – because I know the key ingredient to Jeff Bezos’ success (and ours, too). It’s about constant learning and summed up in the phrase I continually use, “figuring it out.” It’s not about other people telling us what to do, or how to do it, but rather it’s about our own ability and willingness to surround ourselves with people who can help us figure it out for ourselves. Our success depends on it. It’s what our entrepreneurial journey is all about.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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We understand cash-flow pinches. We’re entrepreneurs. And most of us don’t have major funding. Some of us don’t have any outside funding. We bootstrap every step of the way. There’s no judgment here against or for outside funding. To each her own. 

Business owners have to chase business. That means we have to pursue customers. Sometimes it also means we have to chase cash. It’s not a sign of poor management or leadership. Building, growing and even maintaining a business sometimes demand it. The pinch happens for any number of reasons. No point wasting time on those today. Rather, I’m focused on how cash-flow needs today can tempt us to think only short-term.

Whenever I hear an entrepreneur or CEO say something like the title of today’s brief it makes me think of how every single person embraces short-term and long-term thinking no matter what happens to us. Well, we do if we want to exercise wisdom. Foolishness ensues whenever we neglect long-term thinking. 

At lunchtime we’re hungry. What are we gonna eat? Are we gonna think about what we eat and how it may impact us later today? Or tonight?

During a late night meeting, my guest is avoiding caffeine. “I can’t drink it after 6pm or I won’t be able to sleep,” he says. There’s a guy who is thinking ahead. Long-term. Longer-term. He’s not just fixated on here and now. 

A friend has me drive him to the airport in his car so he can use my place to park his car while he’s away. I hop in behind the wheel. The “check engine” light is on. I mention it. He says, “Oh, it’s been on for months. There’s nothing wrong.” I worry anyway, hoping I’ll make it back to my house. Hope is a poor strategy, but it’s his car. 

There is evidence daily – in our lives and in the lives of others close to us – of short-term and long-term strategies. The comment that provides today’s daily brief title speaks to the reality of every entrepreneur to manage today and tomorrow.

Short-term needs don’t have to cause the forfeiture of long-term objectives. 

We can and must manage both. Simultaneously.

I’ve been forced to chase plenty of cash in my career. And I know it can be done while still thinking about the longer view. When we need food, we eat. But when we know we’ve got a big meal tonight, we should go light at lunch. All bets are off when we’re starving though. Survival first. That’s why I’ve spent no time talking about the variety of things that might create our cash crunch. Context matters and there are simply too many variables to talk about. 

If your cash crunch is severe enough to put your enterprise at risk (merely missing a single payroll could do it), then you have to stop the bleeding. Going to the ER isn’t a good long-term strategy for healthcare, but it’s the best option when your life is on the line. Rule one for cash flow management is simple – get out of trouble!

You don’t serve anybody by staying in danger. Just like a visit to the ER though, we have to diagnose why we’re in danger. It’s “fix and figure out” at the same time. Both are necessary and can’t be separated. As with your physical health, you likely have some idea of what may be wrong. Besides, as business people, we’re more acquainted with a possible diagnosis than we may be with our body. We’re not a doctor with that expertise. 

Accounts receivables is a major culprit for many entrepreneurs. Slow paying or late paying customers is up near the top of the list for many small business owners. Show me a leader/manager who doesn’t pay close attention to AR aging reports and I’ll show you somebody headed toward a cash crunch. Collect the money owed to you. Get the money, get the money, get the money. Otherwise, you’ll be chasing cash.

Spending cash you don’t yet have is another major culprit. We land a big deal by booking a major piece of business. Feeling pretty good about ourselves we move forward on some purchases (maybe a truck or two, a new forklift, etc.). Problem, the deal ain’t done until we’ve been paid. We felt so confident in the forthcoming cash that we spent money we don’t yet have. Cash crunch.

I’m not saying there can’t be sudden and unexpected causes of cash crunches, but mostly they’re self-induced problems that stem from a sheer lack of discipline. When we don’t pay attention to the details of operating the business today, we pay for it tomorrow. And today. 

Stop the madness. Do what you must to meet payroll, or get past your immediate cash crunch. But make sure you figure out why it happened so you can stop it. Using yourself as a bank (loaning money to your own company) is sometimes necessary. Just don’t make it a habit because it’s bad business unless you’re doing to fund growth. It’s not good if you’re constantly needing to bail out your company from a cash crisis. Long-term, it won’t work out well for you personally, or your company. 

Cash flow is vital. Ramp up your efforts and knowledge in being better at it. It’s sorta like taking care of our arteries so our blood flow isn’t impeded. When we don’t, bad things happen. Grow your expertise in cash flow management because it will pay off bigtime today, and down the line, too. And like your arterial health, the devil is in the details. 

Don’t ignore the problems. Don’t be ashamed to ask for some expert help either. No need to make hard lessons any harder.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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Yesterday we asked the question: “Do You Really Have To Find Somebody Who Has Already Done What You Want To Do?” The answer is, “No.” 

Today, let’s talk about the temptation to compare somebody’s past accomplishment with what we hope to accomplish in our future. Hint: it’s not likely the best way to spend our time or energy.

Here’s how it goes. We want to accomplish something we’ve never accomplished before. We see somebody else – maybe a whole lot of somebodies – who have done it. So far, so good.

The problem isn’t the observation or the attempts to learn. The problem is comparing their achievement – the final result – with the required work we’ll have to put in to accomplish the same thing. Or something similar. 

It’s the difference in looking at the finished product versus the raw materials required to build it. Or the difference in the world-class performance versus the years of toiling it took to be able to perform at that level. 

I get it. All of us do. 

We want a better future. That’s as it should be. People need hope, purpose, responsibility, and achievement (even the quest for achievement makes a positive difference). 

What we don’t always want is the toll required. We’d like to get in the express lanes toward our fondest dreams without paying the price required. 

Part of this phenomenon is driving me to make some small adjustments in this podcast. I’m going to start including, as much as possible, that hard stuff. The gap between knowing and not knowing. The gap between failure and success. The gap between where we’re at and where we want to be. It’s in that gap where we spend our lives, but so few people talk about it. Instead, we’ve been fooled into thinking we have to focus on the goal. I’ve contributed as much as the next guy or gal to the storyline of keeping your eyes fixed on the horizon where your big goal can be seen. It has some value, but it’s not where I believe the most value is found. 

Rather, the most value I’ve learned is found in that no man’s land between not knowing and knowing. I also have learned why it’s so hard. 

You can’t unlearn what you’ve already learned. Even with the concentrated effort, it’s hard to go back and remember the experience before you learned it. I know I learned my ABC’s and basic math. I rationally know there was a time in my life when I didn’t know any of that, but I can’t remember life then. In the last decade, I’ve learned a ton of things I didn’t know before, but it’s virtually impossible for me to go back and put myself in a mental state where I can fully remember life before that knowledge. 

Then there’s the magic of remembering it the way we want versus the way it really was. Kinda like our parents walking uphill in the snow, both ways, to school. We can amplify the difficulty. Or minimize the timing, chance or serendipity. We can remember how vital our role was, while we minimize the role anybody else may have played. 

Ecclesiastes 9:11 “I returned and saw under the sun that— The race is not to the swift, Nor the battle to the strong, Nor bread to the wise, Nor riches to men of understanding, Nor favor to men of skill; But time and chance happen to them all.”

It’s true, but we don’t like to acknowledge that when we’re looking at our success. We’ll happily admit how true it is when we’re looking at somebody else’s success though. “Boy, were they lucky!” Or, “Boy, did he have great timing!”

You know why I fixate on the phrase “you’ll figure it out”? Because you will. You have to. Others can help (that’s my professional mission…to evangelize that notion and to help entrepreneurs surround themselves with people who will help). But you have to find your own path and understand that close examination or the cursory examination of somebody else’s finish line isn’t going to necessary show you the best path to take as you leave your own starting line. 

Use it for inspiration. Use it to help spark your own process to figure it out. Just don’t waste time trying to dissect it in hopes you can replicate it. You can’t. You’re not them. You’re YOU.

Your path may look similar. It may not look like it even belongs in the same universe. That doesn’t matter. Don’t be conned into thinking it does. 

Somebody else’s’ creation isn’t your own. Envy and jealousy aren’t positive paths to an improved future. You’ll never grow as great as you can by obsessing on somebody else’s accomplishment. 

Instead, devote yourself to putting in the work to figure out what you can best accomplish. Figure out why you want what you want. Get really clear about it. Then set about to spend whatever time is necessary between where you are right now and where you want to be. And here’s the real hard part. You don’t know how long that gap is going to last. It could be months. It’s more likely going to be years. Depending on how you’re defining “where you want to be.” Short-term and long-term are relative things. 

Life has been defined as the dash that appears on grave markers. The dash between the date of birth and the date of death. Think of that dash as the gap between where you currently are and where you most want to be. It’s where living happens. It’s where you question, test, try, fail, fail some more, then fail some more, achieve a little success, make a million adjustments and persist for however long you’re willing…until you give up or until you’re able to plant your flag or run your victory lap. 

Let’s aim for the lap. I’m with you. You’ll figure it out.

Be well. Do good. Grow great!

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