The beginning journey of
the entrepreneur. Where
are you and where do you
want to go?
Do you have a job when you
start out or are you still working
and hoping one day, you’ll make
enough money with your side
business to become a true entrepreneur?
Or maybe you’re the entrepreneur
that creates multiple
streams of income and you
somehow take advantage of
all these opportunities to make
money.
Maybe you work for someone,
you work for yourself, and
you have investments bringing
you passive income as well.
Question is, what type of entrepreneur
are you. However,
you slice and dice it, you’re an
entrepreneur.
The other thing is, do you
have or need a purpose to be
in this space. Basically, what is
your why.
What pain are you helping
people alleviate or eliminate?
What is your story?
As entrepreneurs and Life
Designers, we’re going to start
with our story, passion and what
drove us to starting the business
we’re in. We’re going to
drop some gems in the process
in hopes you take away information
that will help anyone listening
to this podcast.
If you’ve ever had the
thought that you weren’t a good
leader or didn’t know how to be
one, you’re not alone.
Business owners rarely go
into business for themselves in
order to become the leader of
a company. In truth, most are
looking to secure a “job” where
they can provide their product
or service free of a boss. This
orientation—the Technician’s
mentality—inevitably creates a
business built around their own
ability to produce results. It’s the
orientation of the vast majority
of owner-operated businesses,
and it has obvious limitations.
You alone can only get so
much done. You can only stretch
so far. You can only produce the
results that you can produce.
If you have a vision for your
business that extends beyond
your own personal reach, then
you need to become the leader
that your business demands
you be
You have to become the kind
of person people want to follow.
Your vision, values, character,
and communication have to
mean something to people, and
you also have to become comfortable
with that kind of attention
and responsibility.
So, how do you get there
from where you are right now?
Becoming a leader is a journey.
It doesn’t matter where you
begin, how good you think you
are at leading your team, or how
much you understand about
leadership right now. What matters
is your commitment to making
your own very personal transition
from Technician to leader.
In my experience, it’s one of the
most worthwhile challenges and
rewards of owning and building
a business.
I’d like to share with you
some of the things I’ve learned
during my own leadership journey
that are entirely consistent
with what we’ve learned at Life
Designers through our work with
business owners over the past
several years. But before we go
there, here are the four essential
qualities of leadership you
would want to acquire or have
with you.
My personal experience
(and the experience of our clients
over many years) has
shown me that the ability to lead
others towards a shared vision
is a skill that business owners
can not only develop, but also
love.
In our view, these are the
fundamental qualities of effective
leadership:
As the leader of your business,
you’re the one everyone in
your company looks to for cues
about how to behave. There’s
no getting around it. How you
think, feel and act in your business
sets the tone for everyone.
If you don’t value your
team’s input, you’ll discourage
them from making meaningful
contributions to the growth of
your company.
If you don’t set clear expectations,
you’ll create frustration
and confusion.
If you’re overly critical, you’ll
make people afraid to speak up
or take risks.
If you don’t express what
your company needs from your
people in a way they can hear,
you’ll deprive everyone of the
understanding of what makes
your company special and their
work important.
If you don’t continually question
your assumptions, you’ll
miss seeing your blind spots
and the adverse impact they’re
having on your company.
If you see your people as the
cause of your company’s stagnation,
you’ll miss the real opportunity
your business is giving
you to learn about yourself.
Your business is a reflection
of you. If you can’t see how
you’re influencing it, you’ll either
feel at a loss to change it, blame
others for what it’s not giving
you, or both.
The more you discover about
yourself and your impact on
people—not just your strengths
and weaknesses, but your motivations,
values, communication
habits, emotional triggers, the
feelings that you’re comfortable
addressing versus the ones you
avoid—the more you’ll grow as
a leader. And your growth will
directly impact the growth of
your company. To create a great
company, your business has
to reflect the best of who you
are. You have to lead the way.
That is why I am encouraged
to read every single day. I look
for ways to improve on myself.
I listen to those people before
like Dale Carnegie, Napoleon
Hill, ZigZiglar and Brian Tracy
or my current peers like Russel
Brunson of Clickfunnels, Myron
Golden of how to sell High tickets,
Real estate guru Jay Morrison
and John See of Grow Your
Business Network. Always Be
Learning (ABL)
The most entrepreneurial
aspect of leadership is the drive
towards a picture of a business
that works. Leaders take people
someplace. If you’re clear
about where you’re leading your
people and committed to your
vision, you’ve probably noticed
a pretty constant inner tension
between where your business is
today and where you want it to
be. This tension, which comes
from your ability to see every
aspect of your business today
that doesn’t match your vision,
can become one of your most
useful leadership tools.
At first, you might see this
tension as a source of disappointment,
resentment and
blame. But if you take the time to
understand and manage it, this
tension can become “healthy
frustration.” It’ll inspire your daily
decisions about the next steps
to take to close the gap and inform
your communication with
your team about what’s most
important now and why.
You can never speak to your
team too often about where the
company is going and what it’s
going to take from everyone in
order to get there. The entrepreneurial
tension that lives in you
all the time can become your
vehicle for inspiring your people
to help achieve the vision that
means so much to you.
Every adult makes thousands
of decisions on any given
day. Every one of them has consequences,
even though some
are obviously more impactful
than others. The consequences
of our decisions accumulate and
eventually define our life.
For a business owner, the
choices you make can mean
the difference between the life
you’ve always dreamed of, and
an unsatisfying one. They’re
the difference between a business
that serves customers the
way you believe they should
be served and one that leaves
customers disinclined to come
back, and between a company
culture that reflects your values
and one that’s shaped by the
whims of the people you happen
to hire.
Leaders understand that
their choices matter. They have
the ability to discriminate between
the choices that’ll bring
them closer to their company
vision, and those that won’t.
They have the ability to recognize
when a choice might make
sense or feel good in the moment
but won’t serve the company’s
best interests in the long
run. They have the ability to prioritize
seemingly competing interests
of their own at any given
moment.
This kind of discernment
forges a leader’s path to success.
It’s not easy to describe
what it means for a leader to
be authentic; words like “genuine”
or “real” don’t make things
much clearer. Perhaps “sincere”
comes a little closer. The best
way to understand authenticity
is in terms of how your people
react emotionally to your communication.
Whether your people
are aware of it or not, they’re
reading and responding to their
sense of your authenticity all the
time.
An authentic leader makes
it easy for people to relax and
trust the company and its leadership.
Your people want to feel
that you say what you mean
and you mean what you say.
They want to know that your
words are congruent with what
you’re feeling. If you say that
something doesn’t bother you,
but your people can feel resentment
or contempt in your tones,
you’re likely to create anxiety
and mistrust. Repeated experiences
of anxiety and mistrust
are unlikely to move people in
the direction in which you’d like
to lead them.
Authenticity is how you express
who you are (a function
of your self-awareness), where
you’re taking your people (a
function of the clarity of your vision),
and how you’ll get there
(a function of the discerning
choices you make) in a way
that brings more life to everyone
your business touches.
Leading your team so they’re
inspired to follow you requires a
real commitment to self-inquiry
and understanding how you
impact people. It requires a
willingness to accept the sober
truth that your business will only
change when you do.
That’s good news though:
Your business will grow as you
become the leader it demands
of you. You may never have
thought about it in these terms
before, but taking on this challenge
to become the owner your
business requires can also be a
labor of love.
