Ep. 119 - Entrepreneurship Ain’t Fun: It's a Fight

If you’ve been told entrepreneurship is “fun,” consider this your permission to delete that myth. We get honest about what building a business actually feels like: the fear after a big exit, the 10-to-1 ratio of problems to opportunities, the seduction of passive income promises, and the daily discipline it takes to stay optimistic when your calendar and cash flow say otherwise.

We break down why founders burn out, not because they’re weak, but because they’re sold bad expectations and then face real stakes with little room to reset. Our take: boundaries don’t always exist in small business the way gurus claim. The market doesn’t clock out, and neither do your responsibilities. Instead of chasing balance-as-a-cure, train resilience like a muscle. Start the day focused on one real opportunity, not the noise. 
Approve revenue when it meaningfully offsets overhead, creates strategic access, or builds credibility, and watch out for the “MBA syndrome” that overanalyzes context away and chokes progress.

You’ll hear candid stories about selling companies and the unexpected stress of protecting what you’ve earned, why speed beats strategy theater, and how to turn fear into fuel. We dig into brand building beyond word of mouth, consistent content, bold presence, real follow-through, and we highlight a powerful lesson from AI: solving specific customer problems often wins faster than platform hype. Whether you’re wrestling with burnout, debating boundaries, or just trying to find the next lever to pull, this conversation gives you practical, unvarnished guidance to keep moving.

Subscribe, share this with a founder who needs straight talk, and leave a review with the hardest truth you wish you’d heard earlier. Your story might help the next entrepreneur keep going.

Subscribe and tune in for new episodes of Big Talk About Small Business with Mark Zweig and Eric Howerton. Each week we focus on practical insights and real-world strategies to grow your business!

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Transcript

Opening Rant: “Entrepreneurship Is Fun?”

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The opportunity exists. And if you can achieve the opportunity, you are going to make your clients and customers happy. You are going to make the world a better place. You are going to create opportunities for all your employees who work for you. Yes. I am, man. We're in the studio today with another episode of Big Talk about small business. And it's a constant preoccupation with us. That's all you do. That's all I'm thinking about. Right. Another two o'clock in the morning for me. Waking up frustrated immediately when I wake up about a surf thing. Hey, but here's the thing. I think it was uh it was a uh spill over from an event that I went to last night. Oh, tell me about her. Yeah, so I went to this event, and you know, it's it's all good. I mean, there's organizations doing good things, trying to get people as to start up. But it's another one of those um and you're a rock star, everybody wants to see you and greet you. Well, I mean, not necessarily here. Yeah, they did. No, I mean it but they all didn't hear. Okay. But they they didn't know you. Well, so I know, I mean, and I didn't really know what it was all about. There became one of those actuals, those um another one of these uh capital raising type of deals, right? Well, they were raising capital in the room, they were talking about the startups that they had raised capital for and what as they was all fine and duty. You know, I mean I had a lot of you know perspective on that to begin with, but there was a comment right at the beginning that just really just and I don't know if you made it, and I don't think it was intended to be so official, but for me as an entrepreneur, it really went under my skin. They said entrepreneurship is so much fun. I was pissed off for the rest, I couldn't really listen to anything that was going on. And it's because it's not fun. It's like, are we having fun? No, no one has fun as an entrepreneur, it's not fun, you know. And I kind of but I mean, I think that but it's a statement that I was made. What's happening in today's that's the expectation of people, yeah, right? Yeah, and I'm like, that's how can how worse of a position could you put someone in? Hey, entrepreneurship's fun. Yeah, why don't you start your own business? Because you're gonna have fun. This is the fun way to live. And then they start this and then they go through this process and they find themselves not having any kinds of fun. And so then therefore, they'll think that they're doing something wrong and other people are better because they see the media and all the social crap over AW startups bragging about how you know great they're doing and how wonderful life is, and that's all bullshit to begin with. For the most, I would say 90% of the time, right? And and so then they give up, and then they give up and then they're in debt, and then they failed. And I mean, they just you know, and now I'm a failed business owner, and now I'm gonna go take a job, right? And I didn't think that I had to do that anymore because I had all these things around me that saying that the ego, the entrepreneurship ecosystem was telling you how much fun it was gonna be and how easy it would be, huh? It's the biggest goddamn lie that's ever happened. And we here's the thing about it, and we talk about this. Like, I believe that every really, I mean, American, especially, we have in our blood entrepreneurship, no doubt. Like, I don't think like our guests that we had, that's like anybody can be an entrepreneur. I agree. Sure. You know, and that's an opportunity. And I think that we historically before you know the big conference, we were all entrepreneurs in this country. But there, if you were around back to then, you interview people in the late 1800s to say, how much fun are you having with your new business you just started? Yeah, they were like, shut your freaking face, dude. I haven't eaten in like three weeks. Yeah, I'm just hammering out the horseshoes on an anvil behind a hot fire all day, right? It's like 14 hours a day, seven days making a living to survive because there is no other opportunity. There's nothing that's been fun historically about it, yeah, there's nothing fun presently about it, and there won't be any fun about it in the future. Entrepreneurship audience is not fun. Success is fun. Success is fun. It is when you get there, right? But the process that you go through is not gonna be fun. No, it's a lot of work, and I would I would even, you know, we uh saw in the uh event, yeah. After they were talking, we had like a little networking time or whatever with our table. Of course, I went on a rampage about this, and I started getting questions. You know, well, did you not have any fun? I'm like, not necessarily what I call it fun. But I'd say even whenever I did sell the company and kind of got to this, you know, to a level of of a check mark or whatever you want to say, it was so surreal, it wasn't really that much fun. It was really confusing in a lot of ways. It is Gary in a way. Yeah, yeah. Because you like, it's like if you're like it's it's like if you're training for something and you're just exercising all the time, and then somebody says, Okay, it's over, you can just relax now. Like I had your body's not gonna respond. That's so funny. I mean, I remember when I sold my company for the first time, and and I obviously I got less money than you did, but I still I got that check and I was able to check out, and I thought I didn't was even scared of like where do I go with this money? If I put it in the bank, it's only insured for a hundred thousand dollars. Oh, I have to open up you know two zillion different bank accounts and put a hundred thousand in each one or whatever. Yeah, I didn't even know that protect yourself. I know, like you worked really hard to get this thing, yeah. And then you have this major problem of not losing it. I know, which I would honestly say is even higher stress level in my life about having something and not losing it versus not having anything and trying to get something. I agree with you 100% because you had nothing to lose the first time around. Now you got a lot to lose. I get it. I'm with you, dude. I live in fear. I always say, you know, I had somebody ask me the other day, they said, like, what you know, what motivates you right now? What um and I I said, you really want to know? And they're like, Yeah, I go, a whole lot of coffee, uh, lucky strikes, uh, two ex-wives and a current wife, five daughters, and freaking fear, absolute fear of failure. Okay, that's what motivates love it because we're calling it like the truth, man. Because it's not if you're trying to get in business, you're a small business. Number one, if you're a small business owner today, what I like about the show is we're talking about the real crap that where you're not being continued to lie to. There's there's a lot of problems, there's nothing but problems in business. You mentioned before we got on you have 10 problems in one opportunity, right? That is normal. Yes, it is, and um, and I for some reason had even tricked myself into thinking that there's a better way. And I find myself back in the I was just talking to somebody else on my team who were talking about the same goddamn problems that we've had five years before. You know, that's a thing. I was like, I surely thought that I could have fixed it. Oh shit. Oh my god, that's so familiar. Right. And I'm like, I'm disappointed in myself because I haven't resolved them. But the reality is, is that's what we like to trick. Like we consume all this bull crap lies that if somebody has it figured out. I mean, I can tell you right now, like if you really investigate, look at it, Sam Alton and all these other leaders that are in all this, you know, big enterprise stuff, all any person, they're not that there's nothing that's figured out. Right. They're struggling, sure. And they're just having to deal with the struggles, they're dealing with a bigger number. Yeah. And you don't know the media that. Yeah, bigger number of problems, a bigger number, a bigger number to risk. Yeah. Right? Because and then if you're a small business or don't bel or or wannabe one, don't believe the fluffy aspirational lies. That this is an easy or fun path to choose. Well, it's just like I said something on LinkedIn the other day that real estate is not a passive investment. That's another one of my favorite ones. Like passive income. It's like it's the biggest lie. Yeah, there's no passivity to trying to figure out what to buy, how to lease it out, finding tenants, marketing it, fixing it, dealing with all the pride. Yeah, yeah. That's anything but passive. You want to be passive about it? You'll lose all your money, is what'll happen to you. Be passive, be my guest. Maybe they had ever had made money on passive income or the people that are promoting the program. Yeah, no kidding, right? Hey, if you join this, it's all pyramid top schemes. Right. It's like I that's what I also said on my my post there. It's like, I'm not selling real estate seminars. So it's funny you say that. But you know, no, in the last three nights of my class um this semester in my small enterprise management class, um, you know, my students do a consulting project on a small business. And it has to be somebody doing less than 10 million a year is privately ill. And they're they're very wide-ranging, and their goal is to increase revenue, make recommendations, you know, identify the issues, make recommendations to increase revenue, increase profits, increase value, and reduce risk. Well you know there. And anyway, so you know, you see a lot of businesses, most of them don't make any money. Yeah. I mean, I you know, I saw a restaurant last night that it really blew me away. It's in like year queue. Uh they they spent a whole bunch of money on a build out. Um, they're doing like 200 and some odd thousand or three hundred thousand in revenue, and they're losing to over 200,000 a year, and they're in year two of losing over 200,000 a year. I'm like, wow, you know, would you think you could do that, lose that much after the build out? No, but they are okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm just saying they probably thought this is gonna be fun. You know, this is gonna be fun. That's the only part, Tom, really, is right when you're first starting, and you can you're fantasizing. Yeah, you're fantasizing or in the fantasizing phase, but I just see another business. You know, there are some people who actually have small businesses that are low stress. Yeah, I saw another one of a guy who's got a flower shop in his house in a small town. Now he's in total squalor. Yeah, okay. The the student who did this had photos of everything, his whole operation. You should see this guy's kitchen, all right? Yeah, it is a frigging disaster. His office looked like a hoarder was there. Yeah, he's got this floral business though, he's owned it for a million years. Over 30 years, he makes like 300,000 gross and probably queers like 80 grand a year. Okay. Okay. He has out of paying himself? Yeah, no, no. Okay. He's making 80. He basically makes eight. Right. He makes 80 grand. I'm not saying it's$80,000 profit because I always argue with people on that. If I had to pay somebody to run this, maybe it makes a$30,000 rocket or whatever. Right. But anyway, my whole point of this is he had no interest in growing his business, yeah, in making more profits, okay, or creating any value. He's like, no, I'm just buying just the way it is. He lives in a small town, his overhead is low. Yeah. Simon, good, you know, his house, he's he's living out of working out of his house. That's your historical spreader from the 80s, like, which is fine. I mean, if you can make a living, he's fine with that. Yeah, good. Now, a lot of people aren't gonna, I mean, that's not what most people think of, though, when they think of this thing. They think they're gonna get rich, yeah, they're gonna go raise all this cap and yelling. You're not gonna be burnout, they're gonna have time, they're gonna have work-life balance. Yeah. No, no, they're not, and that kind of leads to this whole discussion about burnout, you know, which by the way, I mean, like our first stat here says burnout leads to 23% drop in productivity and a 2.6 times increase in likelihood of active job seeking for small businesses. Founder burnout can be catastrophic. Operations often depend heavily on the other, which is absolutely true. And I would say, like, number one, if you're burned out as a business owner, you're you're you probably chose the wrong path to begin with. Like, you might have listened to, like, that's why I think there's kind of a point at the beginning of this. But if you're, you know, if you believe that entrepreneurship's fun, you got this fantasy of making a million bucks or whatever, and that's your total objective and what you're trying to do, you're probably gonna burn out real fast when you get slapped in the face. Well, a thousand problems. By the way, if your motivation is to make a lot of money and you're doing nothing but losing money, you're gonna burn out real fast. And burnout to me is really kind of like a state of of a of a depression in a way. Of course it is. You lose your vision, you lose your purpose, you lose your goals, like in you You just think survival, get through the day. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not get me through the day, get me to the night. Yeah, and you need to also understand, like in my case, and I'm just being really vulnerable, it's like I I can't. We were talking about this where you started. I don't know if I'm if I have do experience burnout, but what I can tell you is that I'm like I live in a roller coaster. Sure. You know, of where I'm you you called it, you said I was uh like before that when you could be discouraged in a state of discouragement, you know. But do I call that burnout? But I think that what pulls me out is when I start actually thinking about the opportunity. Exactly. One opportunity that came out, like if you stayed out is some all the bull crap and the discouraging stuff. I said that in a meeting we were in the other day. I guess you missed, or maybe you did hear it. I mean, it's like you can look at all the problems, and you can get so preoccupied with your short-term survival that you forget where the real opportunity is out there. Okay. Now, obviously, there's a million things you have to do to get to that opportunity. It's not going to be one thing. There's a long slog. All right. It's kind of like um, it's kind of like a slot machine. What do they call that? Variable, arable reinforcement, I think. You keep pulling the lever and you lose and you lose and you lose and you lose. But you know what? One time you pull the lever, you could win. Yeah, okay. Persistence. And and that's very reinforcing, believe it or not. If you pulled the lever every time and you won, you'd be less motivated to do it. And when you lose, lose, lose, it'd be you could win. You could win. And that's a good, I think that's a good analogy because it is every day you're pulling levers. Like, I was talking this morning with someone, and and the answers all the way will just go pull keep pulling the levers, pull different levers, jump up and go to a different slot machine, change, change the just change a little bit. Then you've got to keep pulling. Yes. Because if you don't, your your chances, and I think that if folks feel so discouraged by all the problems, it's then they're they'll experience what we call maybe a burnout. Which I when I hear burnout, I think of somebody that's on their way to quitting. They're not successful. That's why, you know, they're burning out. Yeah.

unknown 16:10

Yeah.

Student Projects: Why Most Businesses Stall

Burnout, Depression, And Staying In The Game

Slot Machines And Persistence

SPEAKER_02 16:11

And but I I can I can attest that I've probably about 90, I would say 90% of my entire career to this point and still today, is I'm at about a 90% rate of not feeling like I'm successful. Yeah. Oh, I get it. Are you in the same boat? Oh, absolutely. I'm always thinking I could have done better, I should be doing better. Never leaves you. Oh, I've always Lawrence Hill, like I'm such a I'm such a loser. Yeah, do you ever feel like a loser? Don't say that you don't. Oh, I I'm not gonna say that I don't. You know, but it was interesting. I got you doubt yourself. No, I got asked the other night, though, by my students in my last class. I I told them to ask me anything they wanted after the semester to make sure that we covered whatever they didn't feel like they covered. I somebody say, Are you happy? Okay. And I and you know, and and I am happy overall. I mean, life's turned off pretty good, let's face it. You know, we have so much to be thankful for. Agree, yeah. Nice houses, our kids are all doing well, yeah, kids all live near us. I mean, you know, there's I got a great spouse. I mean, there's so much to be thankful for. Sure. You know, we don't owe any money to anybody except on our house, which you have a lot of equity. You know what I'm saying? It's like we're everybody's college education is paid for. It's like we have so much to be thankful for, but that doesn't mean we are dicholic how we can be dealing better than we are. Why am I in this right now at this age going through these things that I'm going through, right? So, yeah, it's interesting, you know, it and looking at again, I think a lot of the small businesses that that my students worked with, and and I think there's a real relevance to what you were saying about you got to keep pulling the levers and pull different levers. Yeah. Oh, so many of these business owners, in spite of, let's say, my student project where they point out the problems and all the things that they could do differently that would make things better, they don't want to do it. They're like, uh no, I don't want to do that, or I can't do that because of this, and yada yada yada. They're so non-experimental that it blows my mind. Okay, they're not doing that well and they're not happy, but they're not experimenting either. Right. Okay, you you literally like you literally have no idea, you know, on this lever talk, like the next pull, what it's gonna be, and you have to be open. You know, I to me the the the the levers to pull are when you're talking to your customer and when they say something that you feel that you could actually fix you, I get it. But if you're not willing to do it, to do it, you're that's I mean, that's on your way to like like a really bad position. It really is. And so if we can get closer to yes, saying yes, yes, my biggest successes in my career were when I said yes, it was always yes, yes, I can do that. Exactly. I mean, this is what I in fact. We had this discussion the other night in class, and I hate to keep just bringing it up, but I mean, all these things come up, and to me, I said, like, I don't want to give up a dollar's worth of revenue. I will fight that all the time. Okay, you're saying yes, yeah. I because that's the way I think okay. Here's my problem. I call it the MBA syndrome. We don't make any money on that, therefore we need to get out of that. Okay. But what there's two things they don't consider. Number one is by doing that, does it lead to a bigger sale or something else? Yeah. And we're literally sending a client to one of our competitors. Here's our customer because we say we don't do X. Right. So we they've got to go find somebody that does X, who also, by the way, does the other shit that we do. Right. So we just send a customer away. Yeah. Terrible. The MBA syndrome doesn't consider that. And the second thing they don't consider is how much overhead does that pay for, right? I see this all the time. It's like, well, we get this one unit. We do$500,000 a year on that, but we lose$100,000. So we need to get out of that. I go, now, wait a minute. Do we really lose$100,000? Yeah, well, that's what when I look at all the numbers, that's what it says on our accounting. Yeah, but it's got$200,000 in overhead charged against it. Okay. So in other words,$100,000 worth of overhead is being paid for by that. So if I take that out of my system, now I got$100,000 with overhead that's got to be paid by something else. Right. Now we do lose more money by deducting. Yeah, because you're so insistent as your offering must be yes. And you and you're you're not in the hurt and not willing to adapt. And you're not and you're not willing to see how that fits into the totality of the business. Yeah. That's why I'm with you. I like to bring new out. I like to find out what the customer needs and give them that and stop. But the problem, I think, with a lot of companies is the bigger they get, harder it is for them to implement fast. Everything slows down so damn much. They got to study this, they got to have a meeting on this. Freaking just do it. Okay, just do it. I just want to say that to everybody, every company I work with, I want to see speed awards of response. Do, do, do, do, do. Take action, man. Take action. Be willing to say yes. You, I mean, it's all risky. Yeah, it is. But when you have somebody that's telling you a problem that they have, like here, the everything in business comes down to who has a problem. And then anybody that has a problem is usually willing to pay to have that problem fixed. And so that's all you're trying to do in business. Is figure out how much they'll pay. What's the bath? You have a problem, can I fix it? Yeah. And were you willing to pay for it? Or how much can you pay for this problem? Yeah. And that's my whole economic basis right there. Now it's and it can be that micro. Now I feel like that we the problem is we get we get lost in a lot of these other big discussions and strategies and theories, and there's other ways that other things have worked out for other companies, you know, and and we watch the news. Like, I mean, one thing that I've really appreciated in all this AI crap, you know, that we're watching, you have somebody like OpenAI reaching all the headlines of the world, raising billions upon billions of dollars. Right. But over here, you have this company called Anthropic, right? That did the capital raise, but they did something a little different. They started listening directly to specific problems of companies. And they are building this large language model over here, but they're going in these micro scenarios and helping individual companies with a specific problem that open AI is not willing to do. Right. Because they want Chat GPT and these products that they have on their roadmap and they've raised their capital against. Right. Yeah. But guess who's making money? Sure. Guess who's doing a sustainable build business, right? Yeah, because they're solving real problems. Yeah, specifically. And over time, you've seen this whole thing, people like, oh, wait a minute. This company over here has actually got a true business opportunity. And so we're gonna, you know, right, we're gonna look over that. I mean, it's just the basic uh economics of problem solving. Yeah, when you guess it does get discouraging for people. I mean, you know, it that I I always love these things. 42% of small business owners say mental health challenges negatively impact day-to-day operations. 42%, I mean, that's only 42% right. It should be a hundred percent. Of course, your mental health challenges 100% where mental health is. I mean, that's what it's all about. If you can keep your head screwed on straight and keep positive in spite of all the negativity and bad things that are happening and problems that you're encountering, you'll probably do okay. And hey, guess what? And it drains you whenever you are if you come to the to the office or to the business with an optimistic. Many times I come to the office office with an optimistic point of view because guess what? I've already worked on my own mental health and and vision and perspective of things. Because, like what we talked about earlier, I'm not looking at I'm looking at the one thing, not the non-problems. That's my next article in this lag letter I wrote earlier this week. It's on being optimistic. 100% Solier, it's essential. I practice that, it's not an accidental thing. No, it's not. So I'm practicing. I know that I like how to have that. It is like working out. Yeah, it's a hard trick. Like I don't want to get up and become optimistic and and have that vision, but I do spend I do things that claim yourself into it. Oh yeah, yeah, like it's discipline, man. Yeah, and so then when I walk in the office, though, guess what? Now you have the drain of other folks that have not done that before they came to the office, and you got to fight through that. You gotta bear that shit for five hours, right? And then you're by the afternoon, everybody's tired, right? And you gotta push to get a little bit more out of it, and everybody goes home, and the whole cycle just repeats itself. Yeah, they all go home when they shut down, yeah, right? Yeah, no, and you're not because that's the other thing here. Setting boundaries, the hardest yet healthiest. 67% of entrepreneurs struggle with shutting off work. You can't, especially in digital or home-based business. You cannot shut off work. It says here work hours, boundaries, parentheses, work hours, email limits, communication expectations are essential for long-term wellness. Bullshit. Disagree. It's bullshit. It's essential for long-term wellness if you don't want to really be successful in the end. Yeah. Okay. If you want to be successful, do not shut down. Can't. You cannot. That's that's one this is a prime example of a stat that people find in some major you know, statistical freaking thing that they they interviewed and and trying to find this balance, this like perfect pathway to life that's gonna make everything work out just fantastically well. And it just doesn't exist. And that's the whole problem with all this. Is if you want to be a business owner and you're listening and looking and watching this kind of lie, you've got an unrealistic your expectation, your boundary lies in the volume. It's physics, yeah. It's off here, it's just a universal law, man. You're you're gonna be disappointed, yeah. Yeah, and so we're trying to tell you the reality here, right? But in spite of all that, okay, as you said, there is the opportunity, the opportunity exists, and if you can achieve the opportunity, you are going to make your clients and customers happy, you are going to make the world a better place, you are going to create opportunities for all your employees who work for you, yes, okay, and their families and them as individuals. Yes, you are going to uh make the community you live in better because your people are successful and they support other business owners. So there's so much good that comes out of the stress. Yes, yes, okay, 100%. That's good. That's what you need to be focused in on if you want to be an entrepreneur, is and it's not having fun. Because there is not uh a lot, I've I've related this a lot as I've gotten older, right? Like we see movies of it where it looks like you know that the general and army is just like having a really good time and everybody else is dying. That's not true. There is no real leader in the world that is having fun and has it easy. They're typically living under so they very the reason why there's so few leaders is because it's extremely demanding. Extremely demanding. Yes, it is. And there's most people won't step up. Most people won't step up, and if they do, they cave because they don't get disciplined enough to handle that day. Like I just think about, you know, like we talked about the millen or furna, you know, at Walmart, like what they the demand they have to they practice that they have to employ and discipline themselves to do on a daily basis for a very extended time, that is basically their life. Sure. It has to, I mean, like there's not many people on the planet earth that would be willing to work like that. No, it's you're right, man. You know, I mean, there's zero absolutely. So if you're gonna be an entrepreneur doing that, that is one thing, though. That's one place where corporate America and entrepreneurship are the same. You better stay engaged if you want to go to the top. It's true. You you you can't just shut down. It's true, right? It's so it makes the same level of commitment, it may take different skills, yeah. Okay, yeah, but that you and I should never be no a chief executive officer of any major corporation. No, we'll get in trouble, and it's just all there is to it.

Say Yes: Revenue, Overhead, And MBA Traps

SPEAKER_00 29:50

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Speed, Action, And Customer Problem-Solving

Anthropic vs OpenAI: Solving Specific Problems

SPEAKER_02 30:05

We're not patient enough with the process are necessarily going to be as as um smooth as we need to be our communication. Yeah. No, at least not in this world. No, yeah, no, but he's like, hey, maybe in the 1950s you pay that, but I made you so. But I mean, I think the but you're right, like the demands of the engagement and the commitment to the vision of the company is, I think, very similar. And and I'll tell you this like I've tried to explain this to my team, and it hit me back at White Spider early on. Like one day I realized I looked at the company logo. Literally, I looked at my logo at White Spider, and it was just me and my logo looking. I think I've got like one of those spiders on my toolbox. Yeah, yeah, dude. That I got yeah. White spider was an incredible brand. I mean, I still learn it. Yeah, I know you loved your spider webs all over to vehicles, so branded vehicles. People never everybody has some sort of a fear with spiders, and so it just like implants itself. I used to say you just got spider and I just spidered your face, and you'll never forget. It worked though. But yeah, I told you I got a spider bite in the back of my neck. It was horrible here. I thought I was gonna die from everything. Anyway, go on. So I looked at the logo and I finally realized this is a young entrepreneur. If it's a young entrepreneur, I was like, I am not that brand. Right. I'm a part, just I'm just a piece, a contributor to that brand. That brand is actually an entity, is a it has its old life. Yeah, it's got its identity and it's made up of you plus a lot of plus a lot of other everybody's before and after. Right. And so, but having you know, like the way I legitimately see like this company and the other companies that I'm dealing with is like I can completely see the value of building that brand, right? And if everybody would come to work, ecosystem, dude. Can you imagine the miracle that everybody came to work as a contributor to the brand? Every one of our dreams would come true. Listen, dude, first off, most small business owners, they don't believe they can become a brand. It is a huge problem when you really come down to it, because they don't believe in market, and they just you know, I see it all the time. What's the best one? Word of mouth. How the hell do I get word of mouth? Um uh, you know, it's just pulls ass slot, baby. It's doing freaking four social media posts a day instead of two, and that's right. It's you know, paying for a certain amount of effort, it's doing your freaking podcast every week, it's it's putting out your branded merch all over the place, it's being louder, prouder, and and and hit using more channels than anybody else to get that message of that brand across. It's about living it, it's about the making sure that the realization of the customer is what the brand is supposed to be, and it's not something that's totally disconnected. That's right. Yeah, it's about not that takes care about every detail, it really does. And it's about then you as a founder, the auctioner, the business owner, you have your your the where the rubber meets the road is that you are a uh leader in the company. Of course, and as a leader in the company, you cannot be burnt out, right? The second you get to burnout is the degradation of that company. Yeah, and it didn't and it's a it's a toxic over that just leaks itself into. I've been there. There was a time period at White Spire where I felt like that my like it didn't matter anymore. I was no longer contributing to this company. And that was because of my there's a must have been a burnout. I don't know, it's looking back, but yeah. But I think when you lose that, you know, you become just like anybody else, it's not contributing, and then therefore it's just fall apart. But I mean, like you have a responsibility, like you know, the whole mental health thing, like you mentioned, is uh it is a hundred percent. You have to know that your what you bring and contribute to that company every time as a leader in the company has to be the optimism, the push forward, the drive forward. You have to be really great at overcoming yourself. Yeah, period. To achieve your vision, to achieve your vision. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah, you have to. Yeah, there is, and that is the difference between an entrepreneur and anybody else. Because if you're employed at a company, number one, you don't have to do that, it won't be so devastating to the company. Should you do it? Hell yes, you should. Right. That's the problem with everything is that folks walk in and they're not positively impacting and contributing to that company. Yeah, they don't realize how essential that is to success. Yeah, right. And if your perspective as an employee that you don't have to do that or you should not do that, because you have some jaded perspective that you're not getting compensated or whatever the hell it is, you're never gonna hurt the company like you're hurting your peers. Because your drag of negativity is in intoxificating. Oh, it's a it's a cancer that's Brad spreads, and all you do is bring everyone down with you. Yeah, exactly. You know what I'm saying? Because the pot, yeah, just like the positive, like the you know, the the the real leaders in the way companies make it success are because of that one opportunity versus all the problems. They find that they drive past it when they and it starts with one individual. Yeah, it does. It really does. It starts with the one individual, the owner, the founder, the president, the with the leader. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a founder, it could be somebody comes into a company, it's at three generations, but they see the real opportunity and they do something with it, right? Yes, it it's yeah, I it it it it it all starts with you because because as you see that opportunity, like here's my experience. I'm a little interested to know if you do the same thing. Like, I I don't really investigate what goes on in my brain, but when I think about it, when I see something, and it could happen in the quiet meeting. This is usually when it happens. I see something when I'm talking to the customer and they say something, then I can fix that. Oh, I can fix that. And I'm like, if I fix it for them, then they're gonna pay me, then I can fix it for other folks like them. Because there's gonna be other people just like them who need to say they're the same problem. I got the soup problem. I learned that right out of grad school. Yeah, my boss taught me that. He was the national sales manager for Xerox Corporation before he started his own business. He said, You find somebody in an industry that's got a problem, he goes, Everybody else in that industry has the same problem. They do, yeah, it's so true, isn't it? It is just go. And when I when I see that and I see all the that can that what happens in my brain is is that I just become locked into that. Yeah. And then all the problems that are in my face for the next day or however, week, or it could be months. I'm just like trash, just trash. I've just ignored all that shit, and I just stay locked in. I'm like a dog, you're good at that. Just locked in on that puppy. And it that's what makes all the problems become really obsolete in the grand scheme of things. And that's so I'm saying that because it's really important that I've reminded myself of that. Because right now I'm facing this, it's the same cycle. Like you you find that, and then you might find that problem, then you start working the client, then you find out, oh, wait, but this problem is really not that big. So therefore, they don't want to really pay for it. Or they're getting smoked and cheated and lied to by some other wannabe gaper, freaking competitor of mine that comes in and lies as well. We can take care of the problem. They're like, okay, sounds good. They saw, you know, all this freaking big political, bureaucratic, freaking jumbo jet limousine, freaking sky, you know, sky rise, freaking meetings with nice crap, and everybody's getting lied. You know how everybody lies to themselves in the entire world? Yeah. Right. But you know, that has to happen. And so, but then I find the next little boat, you know, and then go after that. There's gonna be one of those that gets you to pierce through, and now you're starting to do business and working with them. And that's where like all this problem area in business starts to dissipate. It's exciting, yeah. It is, it's exciting, but it's got its challenges. Yeah, that's why you gotta look at the like if we say look at the bright side, see see the cup overflowing versus you know, versus the you know, going empty. As an entrepreneur, you have to see that overflow because that's where the energy is. And it's actually usually it's a very intuitive thing. Yes, it is, right? This isn't a freaking put it in a spreadsheet and calculate it to death. Nope. This is like there's a problem, I can fix it. I'm gonna go, and I'm not gonna hear anybody's negative crap along the way. I'm gonna go until I discover that this thing is either working or not. I'm gonna run with this as far as I can. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Hey, we're out of time. You know, you could talk about this all day. But we got problems we got to solve in our own businesses, so yeah, we do. I got a lot of things to do. No time to do it. Yeah. Back to back meetings today. So, um, anyway, well, hey, it's been fun talking with you about it. You too, man. And um, I hope that our audience can benefit from our experience. That's the whole point of this. We want you to be more successful, and we're trying to help you do that. Yeah, and don't don't listen to the mainstream stream on a lot of things. Listen to your guide. If you're loving what you're doing and excites you to solve problems, then you're probably an entrepreneur. Yeah, listen to people who've actually done it by the okay. All right. Well, hey, it's been another episode of Betal About Small Business.com. See you next time. See ya.

Mental Health, Optimism As A Discipline

SPEAKER_01 40:37

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