Ep #43: How to Win at the Game of Entrepreneurship

Written By Support at The Uncommon Way

Episode Summary

Jenna shares the importance of leveraging the long game as an entrepreneur, while expanding on tools for success. 

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Show Notes

Every business unveils new layers of clarity as it grows and changes. This is part of the game as an entrepreneur. Our businesses are nuanced, ever changing, and have shifting needs.

By celebrating your business's success journey, you are able to employ strategy for the long term. Value-based and solution-oriented businesses are built upon your ability to transform and hold a clear vision.

This week, I break down what being an entrepreneur is all about and why creating a long game strategy is integral to building a strong business. Learn why specific support, powerful community, and playing for the long haul creates results. Discover how to create radical wins for you and your business.

 

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • What the difference is between tactics and strategy.

  • The definition of being an entrepreneur.

  • Why your coach is a business expense.

  • How to find the right coach.

  • Why the right community can change everything.

 

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Full Episode Transcript:

Are you focused on a specific problem or obstacle in your business and you know if you can just reach that place or master that skill or overcome that hurdle, then you'll finally be good, or at least a lot better, and you can enjoy success? Well, that might just be the very mindset that keeps you from experiencing the success that you crave and slows down your success journey. So, let's dive into that brain twister.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Hello, and welcome back to The Uncommon Way. I'm so happy to be here with you. I have been guesting on other podcasts and I gotta say it feels different because I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to other people. Right?

But there's one that I wanted to tell you about because I just had so much fun with this host. It's called How I Got Hired, we'll link to it in the show notes. We ended up talking all about my career journey before I started this business, and so I thought it would be fun for some of you to listen to that very, very winding road and that trajectory. So, if you're interested, go check that out.

I was talking to my husband, Ben, the other day, and we get into these conversations where we really start kind of comparing and contrasting how entrepreneurship, and/or coaching, is similar or different than being a soldier, than his military career. There are a lot of interesting parallels. One that was coming up, the last time we talked, was kind of a conversation about tactics versus strategy.

And when you think about tactics, from a military point of view, it's sort of like, okay, we are going to go take that hill. How are we going to take that hill? But when you think about strategy, it's much more long term. For instance, what is our strategy with China? It's not about taking one hill, or accomplishing one small goal, it's really about kind of a very dynamic, ever-changing situation that will involve decades and decades.

I mean, look at Russia, as another example. The Soviet Union may have fallen, but our strategy with Russia continues. When you're thinking about strategy, it's not something that ever ends. There is no end state, you're always looking at the long game.

And I was thinking how much that can apply to entrepreneurship, as well. Because we often get caught thinking, “Well, if I just accomplish this next thing, or I'm just working on building this one skill, and then I'll be good.” But in reality, entrepreneurship is always morphing and changing. Markets are changing. Mores are changing. Ways of doing business are changing. You are changing.

We should delight in this. I mean, we are creating businesses for life. And how boring would it be if we just repeated the same thing over and over and over? And so, this really is how we win at the game of entrepreneurship; we take the long view. That lets us detach from so much emotion in the short term, and it helps us be so much more clearheaded and methodical about what we're building.

So, we're not resisting what is, we're not surprised by obstacles, we're not stopping and starting. Instead, it's the steady march towards mastery. Especially if you think of our souls as here on this earth in order to evolve and in order to learn more and more, then as frustrating as it might feel, the obstacles that we encounter are part of the game.

And there's a part of us, maybe our higher selves out in the ether or some part inside us in our brain, that actually delights in the hero's journey, in the ups and downs, in the fact that we don't have this straight shot, linear progression from where we are to where we want to go.

Humans have always been attracted to this. Of the myths that have survived through millennia, the Mesopotamian myths, they all had this arc of tribulation and then final catharsis and resolution. We are in the middle of this right now, and entrepreneurship is our chosen path.

And when we commit to ever increasing mastery, rather than just trying to put out brush fires, what we do is we enter into the dance of life, not to mention, on the human plane we start taking ourselves seriously. Doctors spend years on their education, and then a lifetime increasing their professional acumen.

Career soldiers do, too. So do so many other professions. Any profession, as a matter of fact, that self-evaluates as a profession rather than a job. And I don't think entrepreneurship should be any different. If you feel more comfortable thinking about your profession, in terms of a coach or a designer, that's fine.

But what goes hand in hand with that is being able to get your message out to the world to help your people find you. And to help create change for them. These are entrepreneurial skills. So, let's see what this looks like in terms of businesses that we can relate to.

I have a client that is stepping up into a new way of doing business, helping her clients on a much, much deeper level, a much broader level. But what that means, as she does that, is that she can't do it all for them anymore, because she's helping them create such a massive transformation. So, it's a whole new ballgame now.

There might have been an older part of her that thought, “Oh, if I can just start doing this, if I could just start selling this offer, then I'll be good.” But it turns out, it's now opened up so many new areas of learning for her, she is in effect learning to coach her clients. And then, needs to develop the whole body of thoughts that coaches have about their clients and their clients results. And in order to help at this level, she also has to bring on new team members, and on and on and on.

Or maybe what's happening is you start to think, “Well, if I could just reach this level,” like a financial goal. I have a client working on creating a 10K day, right now. But the energy for that will be completely different, once we've accomplished that, and then we want to move on to repeated 10K days.

How do I maintain, as my nervous system is starting to freak out and be like, wait a minute, this is actually happening? I'm actually bringing in this money? Is this right for me to be bringing in this money? Is this too much? Will I be able to sustain it? Was that just a fluke? How do I make it my new baseline? It's completely different than creating one 10K day.

Or maybe you'll say, “Well, I've built my business marketing to these types of people, this offer, but now I'm feeling my soul and it's evolving in this different area. I'm just compelled to move in that direction. But now it's like, how do I call them in?”

So, you see why I say clarity is an evolution? That there's always a next level and a next level. And right now, as I'm talking through all this, just take a read on your body. Does it feel like deflated? Will it ever end? Does it feel like a slog? If so, just take a deep breath. That's okay.

It's the natural tendency for our brains to want things to be easy, to want the problems to be over, to want things to be done. It's human biology, but it's also the way we've been trained. Because of modern society we want things fast and quick. And it's harder and harder for our brains to be available for dedication and ongoing effort in the pursuit of mastery.

I thought this was so interesting: I was listening to a parenting podcast and there was a guest, she was talking about how difficult it was to go out to dinner with her children because they would disturb the peace in the restaurant. And the coach was asking her, “Do you remember how you were when you were a child?” And she said, “Yeah, my brother and I we would just color or we’d just sit there quietly, and we'd be really grateful for our spaghetti.”

The coach brought up a really great point. She was saying that yes, now there's so much quick stimulation. Children are so accustomed to okay, now we're going to soccer practice. Now we are getting on the screen, and we have playdates and we're constantly filling our time and being entertained.

And so, to sit at a table, it's very difficult for the brain to accustom to what seems like boredom. Whereas back in the day, we didn't necessarily get all that stimulation. And so, going out to dinner was actually kind of a big deal. Right? We'd be looking around at all the different people. We'd be looking at the fun menu. We'd get crayons and something to color on. We just have to take a beat and realize we are all part of this. And so, nothing's gone wrong if we feel like we'd rather just have some quick hits.

But you don't have to associate this longer-term vision, this march towards mastery, with slog. That is just story that we pile on top. Right? It could also be super fulfilling. It could even be invigorating, in the way that it is calling you to step up to something greater.

I mean, think about all of the ‘ships’, scholarship, leadership. I looked up the meaning of that suffix, and it said, “condition, character, skill”. So, what you're doing when you step into this, is you're cultivating the identity of an entrepreneur, right? We are entrepreneurs, we don't start and stop, right?

We lean into our edge. We take this seriously, with joy and passion. We don't groan about the fact that we have to do all this stuff. We delight that we get to do these things, that we get to learn these things, that we get live this way. We wouldn't want to be anything but entrepreneurs.

So, your feeling of success, your experience of success, comes not from results but from how you show up, and how you choose to think about your experience as you're in the experience of it.

I'll tell you three of the most impactful things that I've ever learned in this game of entrepreneurship. One was, a seven-figure business owner just posing this one question to me: What if you never feel like selling is easy? And that just blew my mind. I had just always taken it for granted that someday, something would click, everything would be figured out. And it would never feel challenging to sell. It would just be this thing that was on autopilot, that I just did over and over and over.

And instead of making it feel difficult, when I realized that may never be the case, that there may always be challenge there, I felt a lot of relief. I was just like, “Oh, thank goodness. There's nothing wrong with me. This is just part of the game and part of the challenge and part of the fun.”

Another one was when I first hit some of my 10K months. I think I'd hit maybe two 10K months. The mastermind that I was in was coming to an end, and I was like, “Okay, peace. I'm done. I got where I needed to go. I'll be fine with just the small business and this quiet life.”

My son was really young, I think he was maybe two or something at the time, maybe less than one. Anyway, you don't care about the details. But anyway, I was feeling still in the new mom stage and I just didn't even envision a large business for myself at that moment.

So, I was like, “I'm good.” And I remember my coach at the time telling me, “Jen, you're just beginning. You're just beginning, not only in terms of the fact that you will want to grow beyond six figures. But also, because it's one thing to have one or two 10K months, it's another to start hitting that consistently and to make that a baseline. You really don't want to step away now, you really want to stay in it.”

I am so grateful for her, because now as a coach, I know that that's a difficult conversation to have with a client. Right? There's a natural human tendency to think that your coach just wants to get paid, wants to keep working with you. But the truth is, you just don't know what you don't know. And I had no idea. I thought the game was over. I thought I'd won. And I had not, by far.

I'm really grateful that I did, again, sign on for… It wasn't six months. It was a year when I was working with that coach. I signed on for another year. So, so grateful I did. At the time, I couldn't even envision though what I would be working on. But I built enough trust with her that I could really take that to heart when she said that.

Okay, the third thing, same coach actually, at a different time though. She was talking about how she considers her expenditures on her own coaching, not as an investment but as an operating expense. And that that is just what she does. That's just the cost of doing business for her. She won't ever stop working with her coaches, and/or a coach. She won't ever stop having business, either.

And that also blew my mind, because I think when I was starting out, I thought of a coach as someone who would help me accelerate my timeline and get me to the level that I wanted to be at, and then I would be done. Again, I've experienced this myself, which is why I can see it in others now.

It really helped me step up to a level of seriousness as a business owner. Not just… And it's so interesting now as I'm saying this, that I use the word “just” because I don't think of it this way anymore, but I definitely did then. And it was “just” a woman who has a business.

Wow, even as I'm talking this through, it really makes no sense to say it out loud. But in my mind, it wasn't a business owner, it was a woman that was happening to earn some money doing her own hustle, her own gig, having her own company. But it wasn't a business owner.

So, when I started thinking of this as part of my operating expense, I just had a completely different self-concept. One example I like to give is of Serena Williams or Michael Jordan, a pro athlete. Athletes don't say, “Okay, I'm going to hire a coach to help me win this tournament, and then I'll be good. I'm done.” Right? They continue to work. They continue to push the limits and see how far they can go.

Or executives, they don't think, “I'll hire this coach to support me through this merger and acquisition phase, and then I'm good.” No, they have a coach who knows them, with whom they’ve built trust, and has helped them create results. And will continue to help them imagine and then step into greater heights.

What we're seeing there is that these high performers, they aren't focused on the short-term problem. They're not starting and stopping. They're not waiting for the next problem to come up before they get the support. They have the ongoing support because they value themselves in that way, and they value where they're going enough. They're not questioning if they deserve a coach.

And they're not letting themselves be run by FOMO, and maybe hopscotching around from trying this to trying this. They may have something that they bring on in tandem. Maybe Serena brings on a coach just to help with her swing, or something. But that's an addition, not a switch.

We did a podcast on this with my client, Ale. It's called “Creating Exponential Results”. We're just talking there about how things start to multiply as you work longer and longer with support, and how everything starts to build upon itself, your results really start to multiply.

I had my first coach for three years, and then I only stopped working with her because she stopped taking on clients; she went to Evergreen. I have now been in the thought work community for three years. So, I'm not just saying this, I actually believe in it, have practiced it, and attribute my success to it.

So, the most important thing that you can do now for your business is to find your home base, right? You want to look for a few key things. One is trust. No ifs, ands, or buts, you have to trust the coach, trust the mentor, trust the process, whatever it is. You want to be able to speak candidly to this person. And you want to feel safe with that person, so that you can receive the guidance that you're paying for.

And next, you want it to be values aligned. You want it to be a system or a process that you can believe in. And something you actually like; you don't want to be fitting a square peg into a round hole.

Number three, this is a big one for me. But you want to look for something that's holistic. Just like when I'm talking to Ben about national strategy, long term, you're not just thinking about the military, that is one small tool. You're thinking about diplomacy. You're thinking about allied partnerships. You're thinking about the commercial sector, on and on, right? And that's the same when you are thinking about your business long term.

Personally, I have felt really hamstrung sometimes in certain communities where they have a certain way of doing things or thinking about things. Maybe it's thought work, and I have a question that comes up that's really much more about energetics. Or I'm in a container that's all mindset, but then I have something that's very tactical. Or I really want to get clear on my copy, for instance, and I just can't do that in that environment, because it's not meant for that.

But you want to put yourself somewhere where nothing is off the table. So, I often say, “I wish that people could start with coaches and then go purchase courses to kind of fill in the gaps.” That's usually not how it works, because we tend to kind of dip our toes in with our investments and start small and then build up.

But really, you can't underestimate the value of a generalist. Now, those are hard to find, right? Because in marketing speak, it's easier to be the hashtag lady or the copy guru. But really, it makes sense that you need the total picture. Someone who can say, “Yep, this is definitely a mindset problem. Okay, now you actually need to be working on this thing. You need this skill. Now it's time to introduce this new tactic.”

So few people do that. It has taken me six years to find a coach that I can really work with, in that way. I've always said that I would love to find a coach who can work with me holistically the way that I work with my clients. We can get down and dirty with copy, and then the next conversation, it's all about energetics.

I need exactly what I give my clients. I need someone who can be that outside objective coach, so that I can also see the things that I can't see when I'm in my own brain, or in my own habits, in my own way of doing things. So, I'm really grateful that I found that for myself.

And the last thing that is critical is community. Finding a community that really support you. Where everyone has each other's best interests at heart. Where people are willing to just hop on the phone call with each other and hash out some idea, or mentor each other through some situation. And being exposed to women who are also highly driven and who are normalized in success.

That is something that I started doing for myself very, very early on in my business. I got myself into those rooms, because you learn so much just by absorbing. And it's such an easy way to learn, because you don't even actively have to do anything. Just being in the room with people who are talking about this, that's one of the effective ways to use our brain’s biology to our advantage. That's one way to let it be very, very easy.

So, back to this long view versus short-term focus. Let me shed a light on what's going on here that is so, so, so powerful. What's happening is when you do that, you're orienting your brain away from the problem and towards the solution.

Instead of “When will I get over this problem of (fill in the blank), imposter syndrome, converting on my sales calls, figuring out who my people really are?” Instead of that problem, you're focused on the 180: How can I create more and more value for my clients? How do we create messaging that resonates so profoundly that when I speak with people, it's a no-brainer connection?

How can I get to know my secret sauce and my mission so unequivocally, and believe my own rightness for this work and these people so profoundly, and be willing to follow my inner calling so devotedly, that the people I'm working with become the obvious reflection of all that self-knowledge?

I can't not work with them. Seriously you all, I can't overstate the importance of this shift. It seems so simple that your brain might just sail right past it. And it might get back to its routine business of spotting problems and reactively solving for problems. That is how we're wired. And that's how we're taught.

But choose to really hear this right now: We've got to become solution oriented, rather than problem oriented. That's manifestation 101, by the way. But it's also Performance Coaching 101, we create what we focus on. And that is so much easier when you take the long-term perspective.

Now, it's a bit of a mental pretzel, because we want to have the skill of evaluating the kinks in our business, and also the kinks in our clients’ lives and businesses, right? The ones that are impeding their results. You've heard me say entrepreneurship is about solving problems. And you've got to understand what problem you're really solving. But that's because people's brains are problem focused. So, you’ve got to speak to that.

But put another way, it's about creating solutions. And for so many of the women I work with, whose work is about transformation; you either help your clients or your clients’ businesses transform in some dramatic way. You're helping create a solution that they may not even immediately be seeking, and might not fully be able to wrap their heads around. Even when they say yes to working with you. They still have no idea what's in store for them.

As you become more aware and focused, keeping your eyes on that prize, staying a step ahead, the more you'll be able to help your clients create it. And the more you'll have a beeline of clients coming to your door.

So, summing up, how are you going to win at the game of entrepreneurship? You're going to stop focusing on trying to take “the hill”. And instead, you're going to get strategic. You'll take the long view, by loving your business for life, and the mastery that you will continue to develop in that business for life.

And from that place, you will take yourself seriously. Just like any pro athlete or top executive, you'll decide that where you're going is important enough that you're done DIY-ing it. You're done with interventions that just solve short term, specific small problems. Really, in the grand scheme of things, they're small problems. And you'll get serious about creating the conditions for yourself that make your dreams inevitable.

All right, my friends. That is it for today. I hope you have a wonderful week, and I can't wait to talk to you next time.

Hey, if you're a coach who wants true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this. Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First Strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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