I've Seen This Kill Businesses

Good Morning Rogues!

Here’s to another week closer!

Every day I wake up I thank the universe that I’ve woken up on another “good” day and ask for the strength to make today a step closer toward waking up on “great" days.

I guess the question is, what is your idea of a “great” day?

Hopefully you’ve taken the time to build out some goals and dreams so that your days can make a meaningful step in that direction!

If not, stop reading this now and just take the next three minutes to write out what that would look like.

If you’re like me (and I think you likely are if you’re here!), creating freedom from time and finances likely takes up a big part of what you’d like your future to be.

For me, the path toward that includes creating opportunities for myself and others through building a “remote empire.”

Whether you’ve started building your at home business(es) or not, I want to chat with you about something that I see get in the way of a ton of founders.

It is very easy to get stuck in the routine of “playing business.”

What on earth do I mean by that?

What I mean is that there are key metrics and activities for your business, but many founders find themselves gravitationally pulled toward doing things that don’t matter.

It might be easy to think, “that would never happen to me,” but it’s an easy trap to fall into.

The truth is, there are parts of your plan and business that you’re going to be naturally good at, and there are parts that will require a lot of growth.

If you don’t force yourself into those growth areas, your business will suffer.

Example time…

I work with a ton of founders who are creating their dreams by running and building a supplement brand.

We’ll call the guy in this example “Frank.”

Frank runs a sports nutrition supplement brand that sells protein, preworkout, and amino acids to fitness enthusiasts.

Frank loves supplements and is obsessed with human performance.

Because that’s what he loves, he puts most of his time into researching and planning his next products.

While he should be planning for the future, Frank loses sight of the fact, that the key metric for his business is to sell units.

If he doesn’t sell units, he doesn’t get to have fun creating new formulas in the first place.

The problem is, selling units isn’t fun to Frank.

Frank gets tied up in conversations with athletes about what else they’d like or spends his time reviewing the formulas of competitors to try and plan his next move.

What Frank needs to hear as a start up founder in his first year is that nearly all of his conversations should be about selling units.

If he misses this point and gets caught up “playing business” or buying himself apparel with his own logos and business cards with “CEO” on them, he wont be able to call himself CEO much longer.

I see people fail to launch in the same way regularly too:

The love to plan…

and plan…

and plan…

Meanwhile, someone with half a clue of how to run a business, is making more progress because they just focus on selling units.

I’ve seen people who are clueless about how to run a business outperform college educated “planners” on MANY occasions.

The difference is focus and execution.

The people who focus on executing on the things that matter, start crushing it right away and figure it out as a they go.

The planners drive themselves crazy with unknowns and launch much later (if they launch at all), and our overwhelmed by too many things.

Your business will likely have different “chapters” in it’s life that require different levels of focus, but never lose sight of your key metrics.

Do an audit once a month (once a quarter minimum) and ask yourself:

If you could only influence one thing about your business, what would make the most impact?

When you answer that question for yourself, double your effort on that one thing.

To turn the example to myself, the key area of focus for myself and Pure Private Label right now is to get in front of as many brand owners as possible and create solutions for them (resulting in sales).

I can easily apply 90% of my effort to that one thing for all of September and create positive results for the company and our team.

It’s time to ask yourself the question and make sure you’re on track!

If you’re in the planning phase, ask yourself what the most important task will be starting day 1 and do only that thing.

Any execution will outperform planning. You will change your plans and direction eventually anyway.

You will figure out the tough or unknown parts along the way.

Just start, and do only the things that matter.

Don’t know where to focus? Shoot me a message and lets figure it out!

Thanks for being on this journey with me.

Let’s keep winning together!

Forever Forward,

Rush

P.S. There are 2 ways I can help you if you’re ready for more:

#1. For more methods, insights, inspiration and practical advice, Follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn

#2. If you’re ready to get serious about your personal or professional growth, reply to this email to see if coaching is the right fit for you. We’ll set up a 15 minute audit to see if there is a right fit for you!