Lohchab Jr

Most entrepreneurs fail in the long run because their identity causes them to self-sabotage.

Instead of seeing results, you'll subconsciously hold yourself back, avoid important work, never market yourself, struggle to delegate and systemise, then be confused as to why your results don't reflect the level of effort you think you're putting in.

Until you fix your beliefs about yourself and the world, your self-image, self-sabotage will be behind every door.

The point of a business isn’t to spend your entire life working.

The point of a business is to create freedom and options. It’s to work 12 hour days because you choose to, not because you have to. It’s to work 4 hour days because you can. It’s to find something which lights you on fire, which drives you to improve and forces the best out of you.

And you cannot do that if you cannot focus, prioritise or systemise.

The most powerful skill anyone can build is focus.

The ability to sit down, ignore notifications, and focus on one task for 2, 4, 6 or 8 hours straight. If you can’t do that, you can’t expect to grow your business to the point you want.

There is not a single successful entrepreneur who cannot sit down and work in a hyper-focused state. It is the most essential skill because if you can’t do it, then you can’t do the work that matters, and if you can’t do the work that matters, you can’t grow your business.

So here’s how to actually focus:
You choose 1 task, you schedule time to do it, you turn your fu***ng phone off, you put it in another room, you lock the door, and you work on that 1 task until it’s complete.

And yes, it sounds simple, but if it’s so simple why don’t you do it? The more you focus, the more you'll grow.

The amount that you can do is astonishingly less than the amount that needs to be done, hence, you must be ruthless with what you choose to do.

If you run a business, something you have to realise is that what gets you to one level will not get you to the next.

You have to make better decisions, take better actions, build better systems and execute at the level you want to get to before you ever get there.

It’s not about the strategy or your team or anything like that, it’s about you. Because who chooses your strategy, who builds your team, who designs the systems and chooses what matters, you do.

And if you’re not willing to hire people smarter than you, then your business will stay stuck. If you can’t stick to systems, then there’s no point building systems. If you can’t prioritise or focus, then you’ll not do the work that matters.

So the only way to grow your business is for you to grow which means you need to stop asking what to fix, and start asking who do you need to become, then do everything in your power to become that person and naturally, your business will grow as you grow.

More or better marketing = more leads.

More leads = more sales.

More sales = more customers.

More customers = more revenue (and profit).

So if you want to scale, sure, there are back-end strategies you can use to increase the LTV of current customers, but primarily, you want to do more and/or better marketing.

But if you turn up marketing and have a sales bottleneck? You’ll lose a lot of those new leads who could’ve been customers.

Or if you turn up marketing and you have an operations bottleneck? You’ll create fulfillment hell, provide a crappy product or service and ruin your reputation.

And so, turning up marketing in either of these cases is futile and pointless - it’ll either not work OR potentially ruin your business.

Instead, you have to fix the bottleneck.

Remove the constraint, fix the next, then turn up marketing when your system can handle it.

Of course, there’s a bit of a paradox here, where by to see if your systems can handle more volume, you have to drive more volume through them - but that doesn’t mean you just keep driving more volume through your system when things are broken.

Fix what’s broken to capitalise on a higher % of the volume, then turn up the volume, then fix whatever breaks, then repeat.

Winners are those who have restarted more times than most have started.

I have designed my business in a way now, where I will still love it in 3-years, 5-years, and beyond.

Short term, might be bumpy for sure, but short term thinking only makes you want that quick money.

So you take that sales call, you onboard that bad fit client because he wants to pay you, you compensate your ideal lifestyle for Money.

Long time horizon, low time preference.

Build your business in a way where you’ll still want to do it in 5-years from now.

If someone gave you a million dollars right now, would you know how to keep it?

Or if you were given you dream business, would you know how to grow it?

The thing you want isn’t the point.

Because everything you truly want will be found on the way to the top, not at the top.

The character, the discipline, the consistency, the self-respect, the meaning and responsibility.

None of this is found at your goal, but instead, is found on the way to your goal.

And so the real work is the work you do on yourself.

Your goal might be external, but the work will always be internal.

It's who you have to become in order to get the thing that you want that is the whole point, that’s the real goal.

And you become that person by committing yourself to the things that you are currently trying to skip.

You have to build better habits, make sacrifices, get out of your own way, do the damn work that’s staring you in the face, solve the problems you’re avoiding, and do it all, every single day.

For years. There’s no hack, trick or secret that can make up for the lack of work you do on yourself.

Entrepreneurship isn't just about building a business.

It's about becoming someone who accepts nothing less than their damn best.

Because see if you lack discipline? Or can't focus? Or have an inability to delegate, systemise, prioritise or be consistent?

Then your business will expose you. Every limitation of yours becomes a limitation of your business. But that's the point.

There is no better vehicle for self-improvement than business.

If you want it to grow, you have no choice but to stop making excuses, stop hiding behind comfort and stop avoiding the fire, because there’s no such thing as business problems, there’s only personal problems reflected in your business.