I think you need to hear this from me

First things first, I wanted to say thank you so much for all of the positive feedback on my video from last week about my minimalist approach to planning and time management. And I also wanted to address something that came up in the comments, and it was that a lot of you are feeling overwhelmed, you’re not moving fast enough, like you aren’t going to be able to reach your goals as quickly as you want to, and you’re putting a ton of pressure on yourself. And I so relate to that. My nature is to be constantly working and constantly driven. That just is how I’ve been since I was a little kid. I was in this constant quest to be the best and to be perfect and to be all of those things. But comparison is a hell of a drug.

And I figured I would make this video because it’s easy to compare yourself to the people that you watch. It’s easy to compare yourself to someone who’s maybe on step 20 of their journey when you’re on step one. And so I wanted to share the not-so-sexy secret behind how I hit my biggest year ever, personally and professionally, last year. I’ve had some time to really think about it and reflect on it. And it is not what you think it would be. We doubled our revenue, officially crossed the eight figure mark in my business since we started it four years ago. I got married to the love of my life, and I had deeper connections with my friends and family than I’d ever had before. So how? How did I do that?

I got proactively lazy. Yeah. I know that sounds strange. And I truthfully didn’t even know that was a real term, but I recently read the book Atomic Habits, which I highly recommend, and that’s the term that’s used in here for taking a very efficient approach to your success. The path of least resistance, making the hard stuff easy to do. The necessary stuff to your success, easier for you to do. And it just was a real trip for me because that’s basically what I’ve been practicing for the last year intensely, and really learning about for the last two years. So I wanted to break it down because I think it’s really important to understand that I had my biggest year ever, keep this in context, biggest year ever when I got lazy. It wasn’t because I was pushing myself every day, it wasn’t because I was working 12 hour days every day. I really wanted to reverse engineer it because I think this is so important to understand.

And when I looked at it, there was really six key things that I’ve done to reprogram my brain in what success looks like for me, and what entrepreneurship really is all about for me. And it’s very different than what I thought it was supposed to be in the beginning, and how I was supposed act as a successful entrepreneur. So I figured I’d break those down, because I think it will be helpful for you.

So the first thing is shifting my identity. So I grew up thinking that the only way to achieve your goals was to work your face off, and work your face off constantly. And to have the pursuit of perfection. I actually remember this one instance when I was growing up as a dancer, and I think I was like maybe 12 years old. And there was this big performance that was happening and I really wanted it to be a part of it, but I didn’t get picked to be on the A team, I got picked to be on the B team. And I remember going up to my instructor at 12 years old and saying, “Nope, I don’t think I want to do it if I’m on the B team.” That is a horrifying thing for me to look back at it now, but also says so much about my personality and what I thought success was. I thought success was perfection. And so I had to shift my identity from hustle, hustle, hustle, work, work, work, to understanding that sometimes the slow periods are just as important as the sped up periods.

And I also had to really create the identity of what success was for me. And success for me was not being burnt out all the time. It wasn’t being exhausted all the time. It was looking at people I truly admired, and looking at their habits. So people like Oprah, duh, Arianna Huffington, Shonda Rhimes. They really focus on success as a whole picture. They don’t focus on success is just business and work. It’s having daily rituals, taking time to enjoy a cup of tea, sleeping, saying yes to your family, not just your business. So I had to shift my identity and create an identity of what I knew success was for me, and make my decisions on how I built my business based off of that identity. Because your current self, who you are right now, you’re not able to up-level into who you want to become if you don’t have an idea of how that person operates. So you kind of have to create the vision of who you want to be, and play up to who that person is. So shifting your identity, I think, is a really core piece of this.

The next thing I did was I created systems. So a lot of what I do for a long time was constantly customize. And I was constantly shifting my approach and catering to each client who came in my path. And I thought that’s what you did. And it took me a while to realize that that was actually keeping me stuck, in more ways than just financially. So what I did was I created a systematic approach to everything I do in my business. Everything in my business can be duplicated by anybody outside of me. Of course, obviously not my YouTube videos, but everything else behind the scenes, all the revenue generators, someone else could step in and run my business without me. And that is so important, because what I learned is that motivation is fleeting. Systems are my fallback.

So if I have a day where I’m like, “Oh, I don’t want to make … I don’t want to go to the team meeting. I don’t want to have a sales call. I don’t want to meet with this person,” what I have to fall back on is what is the systematic approach to building my business? And what is required of me every single day in order to build that business? And that’s why I keep it really simple and only really have four daily priorities, which I’ve talked about in many of my videos. And they’re the simple key foundations of how you actually build a successful business, because a business is not a business unless you have revenue coming in. So it’s about having the best product on the market. It’s having amazing testimonials and ambassadors. It’s creating an incredible client experience. And it’s getting a ton of traffic and leads so I can actually bring more people into our program so we can create more ambassadors. Those are my systems and my fallbacks. So if my tasks for the day relate back to those things, then I can stay motivated to keep doing them.

So systems have become the most important piece, because here’s the thing. You can’t build that million dollar business if you don’t actually know what to do on a daily basis. And that’s why most goals fail, because you have the big outcome, the big goal, but you don’t actually know what you need to be doing on a daily basis. And oftentimes it’s very small. It’s the little things. It’s not these big, massive efforts. It’s taking one step at a time. And just like a stock, it starts to compound. Let’s say you do 50 sit-ups today, but you don’t do any for the rest of the year. You’re not going to see results. Let’s see you do two sit-ups today, to sit-ups tomorrow, two sit-ups … keep going. Eventually you’re going to get stronger and you’re going to start seeing results. It’s that compound effect, which again, in Atomic Habits, he talks about a lot.

So the next thing is intention. This is huge, because for a long time I just went on autopilot. Tell me if you can relate. I would just do the work to do the work. I would do the work that everyone else was telling me to do. I would do the work that the gurus were saying I needed to do. I would just go on autopilot and do the things, without ever stopping or coming up for air to say, “Is this working? And is it necessary?” And so much was not necessary. Prime example of this. I actually looked at my social media accounts. In 2019, I posted on Instagram 86 times on my feed, and probably daily on my stories. Last year, I posted half that, nearly half that. Around 40. And I would take full months off of Instagram, off of social media. Why? Because I realized, one, it wasn’t really working for me.

Not so much it wasn’t doing what I needed it to do, when I didn’t see the purpose of it, it was that I didn’t really love the platform that much. And I didn’t like that I felt like I had to be on it. So now it’s my choice, and that makes it something that I actually want to do when I do share something. And everything that I share is highly, highly, highly intentional. There’s a purpose to it. I’m not just doing it on autopilot to keep up with everybody else. And posting less didn’t have any effect on my business. Why? Because I actually looked at the numbers, and I looked at the data, and I looked at, “Is this driving traffic? Is this working? Or is there other parts of my business that can run on autopilot that I don’t need to be putting as much effort in to that actually yield better results?” And there are. So intention is everything.

In everything that I do, the one question I ask myself is, “What’s the intention behind this? Why am I doing this?” Because if you don’t know why you’re doing it, you’re just doing it to do it.

The next thing is friction. And I talk about this a lot with my clients and in my business. If you ever talk to my team, they’ll tell you this is one of my favorite words. I like to reduce the friction as much as possible. So for example, if we want to bring in more clients, how are we getting them in the business? What’s the process look like? Do they have to jump through a bunch of hoops? Do they have to click on a bunch of different things? How do we reduce the friction to getting a client in the door?

Another easy example. I’m in my workout clothes right now. I pretty much work every day in my workout clothes. It’s a rarity that I’m not in them. Why? Because I know if I’m in my clothes to work out, I will work out, inevitably. If I don’t get it in in the morning, I will get it in later in the day. So that reduces the friction. So that’s what I mean by making the hard things you want to do in order to get the results you want to achieve. If you want to get into your best shape ever this year, you have to make it really easy to take the steps to create the action to do that. And as simple as having your gym clothes on will make that easier. So where can you reduce the friction? How can you make the hard things easier for you to do?

And another example of that is my camera. My camera is always set up now, and my mic is always set up now in my office. So it constantly reminds me to create. To create content, and to trigger creative ideas for new video topics. Again, that reduces the friction. I used to have my camera hidden away and it would feel like a chore to have to go get it. It’s a little thing that makes massive difference. The next thing is action. So I think a lot of issues around what people really want to achieve come up because of inaction, which sounds so strange. Because if you say, “I want to build this huge business this year, and I have this idea,” that’s where most people stop. Because in order to actually make it happen, you have to take the action. So it’s as simple as every day, what are you doing to get the word out there about your business? How many connections have you made? How many sales conversations have you made? Are you constantly fine tuning your product and your service? Are you listening to customer feedback?

Or are you just sitting there trying to post a perfect image on social media when you really don’t know what the hell you’re doing to your business? And I can say that, because at one point in my life, that’s kind of how I approached this, because that’s what I thought successful entrepreneurs did. Because it was so much more focused on a brand than it was on the actual business itself. Now I know what actually moves the needle. You have an amazing program or product, your customers are happy, they’re going to talk about it, that leads to more customers. But if you’re not keeping that the main thing, it’s really easy to get off the track, and feel completely overwhelmed and completely unfocused. So action is everything. What are you actually doing? Not thinking about doing, not creating a plan to do, not just having a chat about doing it. What are you actually doing?

And the sixth thing is grace. This might sound weird, but last year was the first time in my life when I would make a mistake, or something didn’t go the way I wanted it to. I genuinely, I mean this, I got excited. Before that, imperfection for me was a little bit paralyzing, because I always equated perfection and being busy with my self-worth. I didn’t feel worthy if I wasn’t busy all the time. I didn’t feel worthy if I wasn’t doing things perfectly or if I didn’t look perfect. And that unfortunately is a reality for a lot of people. So now I celebrate imperfection. I celebrate mistakes, because if I’m making a mistake, I’m actually learning something. And that makes me a better leader, it makes me a better entrepreneur, it makes me better with my customers because I can empathize more. It just makes me better overall. If I’m having forward momentum, I’m taking the action, I’m messing up, I’m making mistakes, at least I’m doing something.

And that actually is compounding to create the results that you ultimately want. Sitting there and thinking about it and not actually doing the things, and beating yourself up for every little mistake is just paralyzing your success. And I say that because I need that reminder all of the time as well. So it’s the little things, and it’s the baby steps, which feels totally counterintuitive because you think if you want to achieve a big goal you got to take big, huge action. And that’s just not the case, and I’m proof of it. And I think if I were to ask you, “What do you want from your goals? What is it you ultimately want by achieving X result?” And the majority of the time, especially if you want to build a business, is that you want freedom. But the sweet irony of it is, the more busy work you’re doing, the less freedom you have.

And the trap of anything, fitness, relationships, finances, everything, is busy work. Is thinking the more you do, the more you’ll get. And that’s just not the truth. The more focused action you take, the more intentional and strategic action you take, the more you’re going to get out of it. And also the more freedom and space you’re going to create for yourself because you’re not constantly working. And the best ideas, my most creative times, the biggest breakthroughs I’ve had my business, have come from that free space from having downtime. And I call it the bow and arrow phase. Again, this is a term I use a lot, because I think of it in terms of sometimes you have to pull back, take a beat, take a second to really recognize if what you’re doing is working, or if you need to make some tweaks or pivots or change or test something or try something different, so that you can launch forward faster.

And whenever I do get into a place of perfectionism or pushing, it still happens, I still feel bad, I still compare myself to other people, I still think I should be doing all the things, I bring myself back to grounded by checking in with myself. And I have these questions that I keep in my phone so that I can constantly check in to see if I’m on the right track for me. I’m not on anybody else’s track, but for me. So they are, why am I working so hard? What am I working for? Where can I subtract and make more space? And you’ll be surprised at how many things you can get rid of in your day to day, if you really look at it. There’s a lot you can take out. Do I feel successful on my terms, or am I just on autopilot? Is this really my goal or someone else’s? Who do I want to become? And how would that person act? And will the 80 year old version of myself be proud of this decision in the work that I’m doing?

And those questions have saved me so much time, and so much effort, because oftentimes you can get just caught up in what you think you should do, as opposed to what’s actually going to push you forward, with less effort and struggle and resistance and friction.

So I really hope that this was helpful for you. And the reason that I can speak to this and that I know about the struggle of the other side of it, is because hustling and just working my face off and falling into that habit, landed me in the hospital. And it made me vulnerable when it came to my health, my relationships, my decisions, my business, everything in my life. I became vulnerable because I was tired. I was exhausted. When you’re exhausted it’s really hard to make decisions for you. It’s easier to just follow other people’s paths.

So I want to share that with you and the reality of that, and the ugly truth of entrepreneurship, because I’ve experienced it. And I would love it if my story could help you avoid it, because I think it is avoidable. So that’s going to be in the next video. And in the meantime, check out this video on the hustle scam. I think it’ll be really helpful for you as well. Thank you so much for watching. I have a whole work smarter, not harder playlist below this video as well. And I’ll see you in the next one.

Are you with me?