40 Brutal Business Truths I Wish I Knew in My 20s

in this video I'm going to share with you 40 brutal business truths that I wish I knew when I was in my 20s I've been in business for over 30 years and I've built two eight fig businesses and if I knew what I know now in my 20s I can't even imagine where I would be and I promise you if you stick through this entire video this video will save you over 10 years of trial and error but you got to also do the work so let's get right into the first brutal business truth which is your only competition is the old you as the saying goes comparison is a thief of Joy this is the growth mindset you need to adopt that you're not really competing against anybody else but just the old you make progress every day work hard at your job and you can make a living work hard on yourself and you can make a fortune so many people work harder on their job and neglect a very important part of personal development make sure you put a little bit of time in every single day to read a book to learn something new there are two types of people those who run away from fear and those that run towards it which of the two are you fear is usually an indicator of something that you really need to do so be mindful of the things that scare you and push forward despite it in most everything be passionately detached be passionate about the things that you do put all your love creativity energy into it and the minute you're done be detached from the outcomes and the results attachment and expectations is a source of a lot of disappointment in life when you have an expectation of something and doesn't live up to that now you're sad because of it not achieving that potential versus how far you've come from where you started the less attached you are to something less expectations you have the more likely you can to see things objectively and learn from the experience act as if what do I mean when I say that act as if you already got the job act as if they prefer you over competition act as if you already have all the resources in the world and approach life like that words shape world so if you believe at first and act accordingly you'll be shocked at how the world aligns around this new belief that you have practice intentional incompetence don't get good at things that you don't want to get good at doing so in my own life I try not to get good at doing production work or bidding or accounting because that's not what I want to get good at you only want to focus on the things that only you can do the things that build your zone of Genius don't get stuck in the tyranny of the how don't be asking yourself how can we afford this how can I get someone to do this work or how will we figure out the technical challenge the reason why is when you do that you eliminate ideas prematurely in a real life scenario my former design students would generate ideas that were within their boundaries of what they knew how to do therefore limiting the potential growth that they would do if they challenged themselves if they thought outside the box don't be the bottleneck don't be the person who has to make all the big decisions and the little decisions because all the roads will lead to you when you become the person who has to micromanage everyone you eliminate everyone's ability to think for themselves to make make good decisions for you and the business be flexible with the plan but not the goal be super rigid about where you see yourself in five 10 years from now but be willing to change the direction of the course or the plan itself if things aren't working out the worst thing that you can do is be stuck and wed to your plan when the evidence is telling you change the course keep the main thing the main thing a lot of people get distracted with shiny object syndrome squirrel and you're looking around and losing focus I find that if you focus your energy into one or two things at most you can go deep you can make greater progress and you can have a breakthrough hey we're at 10 out of 40 and you're liking this video be sure to like it right now don't manage time manage outcomes when you manage time all you're doing is watching what people do not the results that you want and time is not a good measurement of productivity of efficiency creativity or innovation good ideas and in ative ideas can come in minutes whereas if you sit there and promote people for working longer guess what they'll just work longer most entrepreneurs make this mistake working with clients they measure and sell time units of time when the clients could care less what they care about our results did you fix the roof did you make the site convert better is the ad campaign working they could care less how long it takes you to do sales is change management what people are trying to do what they pay money for is is to go from the current state to a desired future state so in sales what you need to do is you need to understand where they are and where they want to go it's as simple as that and if you have a plan on how to do that that's what you're selling this one's counterintuitive sell before you build huh okay what I mean by that is build the MVP the minimum viable product just a sales page to see if people are interested in what it is that you're going to make or sell or provide to them and if you have enough interest that'll give you a lot of excitement momentum and most importantly Capital to go ahead and produce the thing in marketing there's this concept called Product Market fit it's to see if what it is that you're making the product is something that the market wants and the mistake I see entrepreneurs make all the time is they sit there and and refine and produce something so it's a beautiful shiny diamond and they put it onto the market and no one wants to buy it or two few people want to buy it and it's a super defeating feeling so the way you avoid this is to make sure you sell before you build sell how you buy I see people over complicating this and emulating things that are super aggressive and predatory why would you do that just look at how you personally make decisions who you trust and where you spent money reverse engineer that and do that with other people this is consistent with your values and it promise you it's way more effective than what you're doing right now make it easier to find you than your competitor you don't have to compete against everybody just the ones that are going to take money off your table and projects away from you so here's the simple test try to Google yourself without using your company name or your name and see how difficult it is to find you chances are you don't even rank in the top 10 now here's what you need to do find a three-word combination that describes generally speaking what it is that you do and when you see the top 10 results as all the people you want to compete against you know you found the right three words and then use those three words to seed most of the content that you post so that in a very short amount of time two to three months you'll be ranked in the top 10 organically that's the best free advertising you can do for your business biggest lesson I learned from my business Mentor say what you think we're stressed out thinking about how the clients are going to respond when we say something or how our employees are going to feel when we have a problem with what they're doing or setting boundaries with them the best way to release the stress is just to say what you think the second part to this is to learn how to say it in an objective nonviolent way but that's a story for another day this one is super counterintuitive believe it or not the client is more afraid of you than you are of them why is that well because when they reached out to you you are theoretically the expert at a very specific Niche they run a broad business and so when they get on the phone they're usually kg they're not often going to disclose information to you not because they're trying to manipulate you it's because they're afraid of sounding stupid what you need to do is give them permission to sound stupid and you need to learn how to speak the client's language and not industry jargon the last thing you want to do is to use more technical jargon and to try to impress them with your knowledge because that's only going to make them feel dumber and are going to be less likely to disclose super valuable information to you having said that sometimes the client is right the ego of the creative says that we must always be right and all client suggestions are dumb that's not the case at all the clients can see things that you're not privy to like there's an expression that's going to take you a minute to figure out here is that the clients will forget more about their business than you hope to learn about their business and it's arrogant for us to assume we know better than the client and how to run a bakery a print shop a technical firm this one is so simple that you're going to say I know I know Chris but you don't know know like and trust people hire who they know who they like and who they trust it makes sense so the first and most important part of this equation is get known that's the business that you're in to get known first cuz there's no chance of them liking and trusting you if they don't know who the heck you are hot take never ever justify never ever ever never ever justify when you justify you're giving a reason as to why things cost the way they do and the minute you do that you see the higher ground you're saying one person holds a higher position than you and you're playing less than them so when clients say why is the price this much just say because it is why does it take this long because it takes that long to do good work why should I hire you I don't know why do you hire anyone this is Chris singing Bon jovies we're halfway there but due to copyright laws we weren't allowed to use a song in the video so I hope you enjoy this voice over I hope you've enjoyed the halftime show we're moving on to number 21 say the price first when you know what you're doing say the price last when you don't those who don't talk about money don't make it that's a quote from Blair ends when you're in a sales process you want to say the price first when you know what you're doing that anchors the client at a higher price so they don't have the opportunity to lowball you what they'll do is they'll work closely to the number that you say but the caveat here is when you don't know what you're doing you're going to shoot yourself in the foot by saying a price that you think is really high when in truth the price is much much higher than that let's say you're a logo designer and you've been designing logos for 10 years and you know it should cost 10 or $15,000 whatever the price is when you're talking to a client say that price up front for clients like you for projects like this it's going to be somewhere between $15,000 to $10,000 that's when you know what you're doing but let's say a big brand reaches out and said to you we love what you're doing with logo design how much is it to do a sponsored project with you now you have no idea what you're doing you could say well how about you give me $3,000 when in fact they have $775,000 to pay people just like you to do a collaboration tell me if your mind is spinning right now maybe you're super angry at me or you're like really curious and left you hanging at the altar let me know in the comments below which one is your favorite or which one you want us to have a deeper dive on and we'll make it for you there's a cognitive bias it's called anchoring we tend to focus too much on the first piece of information that we get it's 75 miles it's $3.99 whatever it is anchoring works and that's the magical part is even when we know it's working we can't help but to believe it to be true so whenever you say something first and you anchor high it's going to work in your favor don't make people think Donald Miller has said this if you confuse you lose confusion complexity is the enemy of understanding retention what you want to do is simplify your offer your messaging your product the benefits or the features so that people don't have to think too much get paid upfront do not Finance your client's projects that is not your business unless you're in financing in banking you're a creative entrepreneur get them to pay at minimum 50% upfront this is a good faith gesture that they're committed to doing the work and don't do what I've done in the past don't start the project so eager to do the work and then to find out later on they changed your mind what are you going to do you didn't get it in deposit you didn't get it in writing you didn't have a signed contract you started you have no one to blame but yourself and people change your mind all the time you know how I know because you do it too build in public what do I mean when you're thinking about launching a product a service or an event let people know in advance what what you're doing while you're doing it this builds anticipation for it you can look at the Hollywood model of when they want to launch a picture they tease little pieces of information out and it's literally called a teaser as we get closer they create a trailer a three minute version of the film to get you super hyped because what you want to do is you want to build anticipation for what it is that you're going to ultimately offer because you know what's really scary is launching something and not knowing if anyone's going to show up quantify your goals unclear goals unclear results what you want to do is you want to quantify your goals make it measurable make it something you can check off a list this is not only good for you and how you manage your team but this is really good at getting your clients to talk about what they want in quantifiable measurable goals people would call this success metrics how do we measure our success that way when you're done you can look back and say did we or did we not do the things we are hired to do and that's a great way to build successful case studies about the work that you've done start at the end I know that sounds really confusing and counterintuitive because it's meant to be we have a lot of anxiety over services or business or ideas because we don't know how it's going to end we get on a call we're super anxious about the call we fumble over our words we we have a brain freeze because we don't know how the call is going to end so what you want to do and this is a Brian Tracy concept think about how everything's going to wind up Imagine This desired feature State like how the call is going to go how the date's going to go or how the Project's going to be completed or how the story ends and then what you do is you build the road towards that ending and it takes away a lot of anxiety the perfect example of this is when you do public speaking so if you imagine yourself completing this talk the crowd up on their feet cheering you on and laughing at all your jokes it will take away a lot of the nerves that you get as you're sitting there backstage trying to think about how things are going to play out focus on the end start there culture equals brand forget about branding get the culture right because when the culture is not aligned with a brand who cares what you say the example here is from Tony Shay's book delivering happiness he goes imagine yourself at a bar and you're running into a couple people who work at say Microsoft and they're total deag toxic bro energy you're going to sit there and say my God Microsoft is a bunch of toxic Bros hanging out together hm and that's why culture equals brand don't be the world's best kept secret what do I mean by that well many years ago my business coach told me you're so busy doing the great work that no one knows about how is anybody ever going to find you and my introverted s was like freaking out like what do you mean he goes well do Public Speaking go talk to clients go to dinners because your network is your net worth you got to get out there kid he said and I took his advice and years later I can't think of a better piece of advice which is to put yourself out there and get busy getting known this is a tough one everybody do as you're instructed be a really good student don't try to modify or change what your coach your therapist your teacher says to do do as instructed follow their directions to the best of your ability it's actually really hard to do that I find that oftentimes amateurs or people who are very difficult to teach take the instruction in and they're like well yeah that kind of works for you but I'm going to change everything and then you realize you didn't learn the lesson and what you did did was a piece of crap anyways it's a really difficult thing to do but if you can do this you can grow really really fast hey guess what everybody we're here at number 31 and if you can tell I'm getting a little cranky it's hard to do but fasten your seat belts we're in it for the final nine It's the final hire people better than you yeah you don't want to be the smartest person in the room you're the person with all the ideas it just means that you're protecting your ego and you're hiring B players or even C players there's a famous expression that guy kwasaki talks about at Apple he said a players hire a players or A+ players while B players hire C or D players because they don't want to be outshined listen to me listen don't let the fear of firing someone be the reason why you're not hiring how do I know I did this myself for years I toiled just doing all the work myself staying up late just feeling burnt out because I was really afraid of looking at another human being and saying I control your livelihood of course that's not true but that's the reason why I didn't hire people now that doesn't mean go rush into hiring everybody that you meet put them on a trial basis get to know who they are make sure you're a good fit for each other then hire them a good entrepreneur is a good teacher what do I mean what do teachers do they help to elevate students to a new level they are able to break down a process and a framework so that the students can acquire new skills what is entrepreneurship it's not about you sitting around and just putting your your feet up on the table and saying yeah okay everybody go make magic well a good entrepreneur understands their own process understands what Excellence looks likees and can break it down into bite-sized pieces they know how to chunk down complex things and delegate the work so that other people can learn and grow good is expected good is the price of Entry instead of being good focus on being different because different is better than better create how you consume you enjoy a certain type of content you do it every single day you're happy to like it to share to save it to bookmark it to Archive it to do everything to it and then you turn around and create this super annoying direct marketing content that's super salesy what gives so you what you want to do is study the things you like and try to do more of that put more good into the world instead of creating more noise what I heard Alan dib say in his book and it stuck with me is successful entrepreneurs spend money to save time while struggling entrepreneurs spend time to to save money and you may be that person you may be the person who drives across town to wait in a long ass line to save $4 there's better use of your time because time is perishable it's nonrenewable and we can always make more money but we can't make more time you want better clients charge more people who pay more value things more and the thing they value the most guess what it's their own time so they're not going to sit there and micromanage you they're going to look for the very best people in the world they're going to trust them and they're going to say I'm going to pay you top dollar please take really good care of me and deliver an excellent product and that's who you want to work with the common mistake people make is they think that by charging more they have to create a totally different product it's literally the same thing but you're just doing it for a higher-end clientele being needy being desperate wanting it too much is repulsive you repel people away you push people away because you're so eager for the work they're sitting there thinking maybe this person has no business or maybe I should be suspicious as to why they're willing to give so much of themselves if you just map this to personal relationships you know what I'm talking about that needy ex who's always hanging on you who needs to be complimented who needs to be affirmed don't be that person a powerful form of cognitive bias is something called sunk loss bias what does that mean the more you have invested in something the more you want to see it through this happens a lot in trying to procure new clients what you'll do is you'll have a meeting then you'll have a call then you'll write up a beautiful proposal and you might do some spec work and then when the client say we have half the budget of what we were thinking what are you going to do you're going to say and the only way I could recover my cost here is to do this work for less money it's a sunk loss bias it's The Money Pit last but not least in drum roll please price the client not the job different clients have different expectations and different value systems and price or fairness or beauty is very subjective so don't price the job price the client now you're probably hearing all this and recognizing areas where you need to improve to get to the next level in your business and income and if I were to guess it's how to get more clients how to sell better to win new business and how to increase how much you charge so I'd like to invite you to a workshop I'm doing live called the client acquisition machine where I will give you my exact Playbook the step-by-step things that you need to do to get clients to raise their hand to volunteer to work with you instead of chasing them you can do this in a permissive way that's generous that's aligned with your values click the link below to join me live I will see you there