Building Business Grit: Strategies to Thrive and Stay Passionate For Entrepreneurial Longevity Ep 008

Ready to transform your business mindset and power through obstacles like never before? Discover the secrets behind building unshakable grit and learn how to ensure your business not only survives but thrives. Join me, Joey Young, as I open up about the pivotal lessons learned while scaling my family's professional services business to over $100,000/month in revenue in under two years. Master the art of maintaining passion and energy in your entrepreneurial journey with my top five strategies for cultivating and sustaining grit.

In this episode, I emphasize the crucial elements of making a long-term commitment and optimizing for fun to keep your entrepreneurial fire burning bright. Tune in for practical advice on aligning your daily tasks with what you enjoy and excel at, all while driving substantial revenue. Overcome shiny object syndrome and burnout by focusing on activities that hit the sweet spot between your skills, passions, and earning potential. Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your business to the next level, these actionable insights will help you stay focused, resilient, and enthusiastic about your path to success.

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Transcript

Joey Young: 0:00

Welcome to Bright Side Business, where we talk to online entrepreneurs like yourself about how to grow to seven figures and beyond. My name is Joey Young. I grew my family's professional service business to over $100,000 in revenue in under two years and I learned a lot of lessons along the way. One of them is grit is having the ability to persevere and to have enough passion to push through those barriers and those roadblocks that all entrepreneurs face as we scale our business, through those barriers and those roadblocks that all entrepreneurs face as we scale our business, and I've put together the top five things that I did to grow and sustain my grid over the past several years as I scaled my business. Because here's the reality. I saw this interesting statistic from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It talked about how most employees, the average time that they spend at a job is 2.8 years. For anyone 34 and younger, it's only 2.8 years, and the reality is, as a business owner who's looking to scale a business, you're looking at three years minimum to do that well, to scale your business to seven figures in the vast majority of cases. So we need to have some grit, and so when I talk about grit, these are things that you can do, you can take, you can grab, you can implement right now to make sure that you're going to be sticking around for the long term and making sure your business can grow to that hundred feet, $100,000 a month mark. So the first big idea is to start with a big commitment. Here's the thing I've talked to so many entrepreneurs who have changed ideas, changed products, changed marketing strategies every six months and they don't know if they're going to continue on because they're discouraged. They had a bad month or a bad quarter is very common. The way to just throw all those issues right out the window and clear them out in one fell swoop is to make a long-term big commitment to your business. Take a sticky note, write down the goal and write down a date two years from now. Here's what I'm going after. Here's what the next two years looks like based on this date. And then, all of a sudden, all the bad days, all the bad weeks, all the bad quarters, all those feelings of is this worth it? And man, this is so hard, goes right out the window because you got your goal and you got a two year mark where you're committing to focus on this goal for the next two years. After two years, if it's not working, you can give it up. You know, you can throw it out the window, you can try something else, but at least you give it a good shot for two years at least, and that helps to really just narrow those blinders and push out any ideas of shiny object syndrome, which is actually really, really helpful for most entrepreneurs. So think about that. What commitment you can make.

Joey Young: 2:32

The second way to build grit so you can scale is to optimize for fun. Just have a strategy for enjoying the day, for having some zest, for having some energy, for some variety in your work, something that you look forward to. You know we all want to have fun with our business and we want those needle-moving activities that we have to do to grow our business have some sort of enjoyment and thrill attached to them, right? So how do we do that? Practically? Well, if you want to make your business fun, you need to think about this Venn diagram. I think about it in three circles, and the first circle is things you're good at. The second circle is things you enjoy doing and you're passionate about, and the third circle is stuff that drives revenue. So the overlap of those three circles are the activities that you want to focus on. These are revenue driving, passion driven, fun activities You're good at, you're passionate about and that drive revenue. And if you're not sure, if you're in the overlap of those three, think about this If you're burnt out right now, you're probably good at something and it's driving revenue, but you're not passionate about it.

Joey Young: 3:42

So if you're exhausted, if you're burnt out, you're probably missing the passion piece. You're good at it and you're driving revenue, but you're missing the passion. So think about how you can plug in passion right now. If you're missing revenue, you're probably good at something and it's fun, but you're missing the revenue piece. If you're not able to grow your business and scale it to the way you want it to and you're not finding that customers are saying yes, then you're probably missing the revenue piece. You need to shift what you're doing to not only match what you're good at and what's fun, but also that revenue driving piece. So you need a business coach in that case. Specifically. And if your business is making some money but you're having a hard time scaling and you're spending a lot on ads and marketing but you're no one's like re-signing up and re-upping for your services and having a hard time getting referrals from people. You're probably in the revenue and in the fun category but you're not good at what you do yet You're not really acting in a zone where you have an unfair advantage in the marketplace. Because if you're trying to push your business upwards but it's kind of staying low revenue and it's kind of mediocre, you are not good enough yet to attract high quality clients and for your clients to re-up your services or your product. So hope that helps to kind of dial in exactly how you can make your business fun over the long term.

Joey Young: 5:08

Third idea to build grit as you're scaling your business is to be your own number one fan man. This is so hard for people to be able to let go of other people's expectations, and so you don't have to feel like you need to get approval from others to be in the business that you're in, to be passionate about the things you're passionate about. I mean this held me back for years the idea that people have to somehow give their you know approval from the other side of the screen here for me to be okay to talk about what things I'm passionate about, and it's totally self-imposed. So the solution to that is just be your own number one fan. Just have fun talking about what you love to talk about. Have fun building your business and having your goals that you're passionate about.

Joey Young: 5:54

Stop laying the expectation on other people to know and to understand and to approve of what you're doing. The fact is, eight out of 10 people really don't care either way what you're doing and what you're passionate about, and what kind of business you're building and why you're building it. One out of those 10 people will probably, you know not like what you're doing, and one person will be really excited for you, but eight out of 10 probably won't care either way. So you know, at the root of this is the truth that most humans just don't want to look foolish. We want to feel validated and we want to feel like we're respected by other people. So when we have a scenario where we're not feeling respected or we're not feeling understood, we can often make it the focus and the goal to feel understood, to feel respected, and that doesn't always line up with your business goals.

Joey Young: 6:42

You need to be able to be okay, looking goofy, making a bad call, making a mistake in front of your team. You need to be able to be okay, looking goofy, making a bad call, making a mistake in front of your team? You need to be okay. You know saying sorry to a client who you messed up and you made the wrong call for. You know the ability for you to make mistakes and look foolish is directly tied to your ability to scale your business. Okay, number four position yourself in responsibility.

Joey Young: 7:08

I don't know any faster way to build and sustain grit than to make sure that other people are relying on you to be at your best. At your best not just performing in terms of the business sense of what you need to do, but you need to have people relying on you to be at your best physically, mentally, spiritually, at home and at work in your relationships. People need to be relying on you to be excellent in all those areas, because that's how you're going to be able to sustain the long term. If you only have people relying on you to perform in your business, but you don't have anyone telling you to hold it together at home at the same time, or in your mental health and physical health at the same time, you're going to burn out because you're way too focused on one area of your life. You're going to spin wheels. Eventually you're going to crash, you're going to burn, it's going to be really ugly. I've seen it too many times.

Joey Young: 8:05

So you need to put yourself intentionally in entrepreneur accountability groups where they hold you accountable not just for your business results but also your whole life. You need to do personal development work. Um, what I love is the weekly meetings having weekly meetings with your staff or with your clients, where you're not just supporting them but you're also leading them. So you have the expectation that you're going to lead your staff and team in all areas of life. So you have that standard for yourself. And then, at quarterly meetings, a great way to take responsibility for your business is to paint a vision for where you're going. For your business is to paint a vision for where you're going Actually take time out of the quarterly to talk about not just the numbers but the impact, and then personally commit and take responsibility for your piece in creating that vision in front of the whole team so they all can hold you accountable for it. All these things will put you in positions of responsibility and accountability and that's a really good thing and that's going to help you sustain your grit over the long term.

Joey Young: 9:08

Lastly, find a mentor, find a leader, someone who's done what you want to do, someone who's accomplished what you want to accomplish, and watch them, pay them if you need to to get around them, but they have to have done what you want to accomplish. They have to have done it, already accomplished it, already gotten to that level you want to get to in your business. Because if you can be around that type of person, it's going to sustain your belief that it's possible for you. The more they rub off on you, the more you're going to believe that you have the ability to create the same type of business that they did and the more you're going to scale quickly. So what you do when you have that mentor is just listen.

Joey Young: 9:51

You first of all take a moment, anytime you're with them, take a beat between what they say and what you respond with, and process what they said. Don't just jump in and think you're right or think you know what you're talking about, especially if they say something that rubs you a little bit the wrong way or is phrased a different way than you would say it. Remember they're the ones who have accomplished what you want to accomplish. They've gotten to that certain level in business. Think about the way they think about things and process it. Don't respond immediately. Also, take time to think about how you can imitate their strategy. Also, take time to think about how you can imitate their strategy. Imitate their strategy until you get to the point where your business is just as big as theirs. You're making the same revenue as them.

Joey Young: 10:32

Before that, don't get fancy. Don't try to iterate, don't try to paint wildly outside the lines of their strategy. Just learn from their mistakes by avoiding them, and take their slam dunks, their Super Bowls, those strategies, those plays and copy them. That's as simple as it is. Just watch them, do what they do, at least until your business is as big as them. But don't try to go too fancy or too crazy, and your grit will thank you for it, because you're going to find that you're going to make a lot more progress quickly when you do those sorts of things, and you'll have you'll be scaling so much faster. So hopefully these strategies have helped you to scale your business a little bit faster and develop that grit that you need to develop, stick around for the long term and grow your business.

Joey Young: 11:18

If you have any questions or thoughts, please email me. My email is joey, at joeyh youngcom, would love to hear from you, or you can dm me on instagram. That's at joey h young on instagram. Also, while you're there, book a free 20 minute consultation with me, happy to talk about you and your business, what roadblocks you're facing, and I can help you out with that time. Develop a short little strategy, maybe a tip, to get ahead in scaling your business, and you can do that totally free. There's a link in my bio and my Instagram for that consultation call and don't forget, if you're at the end of the show I mean, it must've been valuable to you, I'm assuming if you're still watching, so like this episode, wherever you're watching it or listening to it, subscribe if you can follow all the things. Five-star reviews. Follow all the things. Five star reviews are great. Thank you so much for doing that and until next time, my friends. Happy scaling.