Ep. 6 The Stern Truth: What is Your "I Will When"

Today, I share powerful personal stories about the dangerous mindset of "I will when" that holds so many entrepreneurs back. 

From nearly losing valuable team members because I delayed firing a toxic employee, to almost sinking in a kayak because I ignored warning signs, these experiences taught me crucial business leadership lessons. 

My experience in small business taught me that postponing important decisions until some future conditions are met often leads to preventable crises. I challenge fellow business owners to identify what they're putting off in their business—whether it's hiring help, seeking mentorship, or outsourcing tasks—and act now, before you start to sink.

The journey of entrepreneurship is beautiful when we surround ourselves with the right support and address problems proactively.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] So today's episode is a little bit different in the sense that I'm sharing some big life lessons and business lessons through some personal and business stories, experiences that have happened to me in the past and what I've taken from it and what I've learned from it. 

[00:00:17] I think you'll get something from this episode. Enjoy.

[00:00:24] Hi, I'm Marshall Stern and I've spent over 35 years leading and growing multiple small businesses. I know firsthand the struggles of entrepreneurship, feeling isolated, lonely, overwhelmed, and feeling like you have to do all by yourself. I've been through multiple recessions, and I have felt the highs and the lows. I've been there, and I get it.

[00:00:45] This podcast is here to change that. Every week, I will bring you straight talking advice, real world strategies, and honest conversations about what it takes to succeed in business without the fluff, the gimmicks, or the sugarcoated. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real progress, then you are in the right place.

[00:01:07] This is the  Stern Truth. 

[00:01:11] Alright, welcome back to another episode of the Stern Truth Business Unfiltered. And yes, today, you just get me, so it's the two of us. You and me, and we're gonna have a bit of a conversation. And yes, I'll probably be doing most of the talking because this is a podcast show and you can say what you wanna say, but I can't hear you, although I do want to hear from you.

[00:01:33] So before we go any further, I would love your feedback on this episode because I think this episode might actually resonate with you. You know, I get it that growing, running a business, growing a business. Navigating this thing of business entrepreneurship, business ownership can be challenging. I get it.

[00:01:55] I've been doing it for - yes, I age myself - 35 plus years, multiple businesses. But here's the thing and, and today I'm gonna actually share with you a few different stories. It's story time today with Marshall, and here's what it's all based on. The phrase, which you and I have succumbed to: "I will when." I will when.

[00:02:24] Story number one, I had an employee, a bit of a toxic employee. I didn't know at the time when I hired this employee, there were red flags in the reference check. I ignored it. I ignored the signs. I needed this skillset of this employee. Seemed like a nice person, really good at the craft, but there were some red flags early on in his tenure with my sign company.

[00:02:52] He didn't know.. And he got into a bit of a dispute. A bit of a battle, didn't end well with a client. And he said some words to that client, which I'm not gonna repeat here. I. I talked to him about it. I apologized to the client and then we moved on and I let it go. There were other things he did con continue to do, and I kept saying to myself, I know I need to let him go, and I will.

[00:03:20] When? When what? When I find someone else, or I find someone who can do the skill, the craft that he was doing, I will when. I will when one day. I hear it when I am in conversations with prospective coaching clients who want my guidance, who need some guidance, and they're looking toward, to me, to help them be their coach.

[00:03:49] And then they say, okay, I will hire you when. When what? When I have enough money, when this. I hear it from my existing clients when I encourage them to outsource or bring people on their team, employees, subcontractors, other experts, marketing strategists, so on and so forth, to help them focus on so they can focus on the activity that they're really good at.

[00:04:14] And I hear from them sometimes. Yeah, I know I need that and I will when sometimes that when can come too late. Okay. I gave you the story about the employee. I finally got to the point where I almost had multiple employees on my team quit if I didn't remove this one employee, if I didn't get rid of this one employee, it was almost too late.

[00:04:41] I almost lost three key employees because of one bad employee, because I was too stubborn and I was too myopic in my thinking. Thinking about the here and the now and not the bigger picture. That wasn't being a good leader, and I learned from it. 

[00:05:03] Last summer, on a more personal level, you may have heard the story before.

[00:05:09] I went out kayaking with my daughter and her friend, and I've done it many times, love kayaking, love going out on the lake. I prefer the lake, although we're on the West Coast or we have the ocean. I prefer the lake. It's nice, it's calm, but we go to a place where it's really as pristine. And actually, it's one of the scenes from the famous TV series, "Virgin River", but I digress.

[00:05:35] Anyways, I get into my kayak, which is their kayak, like the, it's a rental kayak. Don't judge. And yeah, I live on the west coast. You think of it on my own kayak. So I get onto the lake and immediately I see there's a little bit of water in the kayak. I think no problem. Probably splashed in when when I got in, just tipped over a bit and no water came in.

[00:05:58] I didn't think about it. Just went out, get out into the middle of the lake or I'm rowing out to towards the middle of the lake. Now I do have a life jacket. Okay. And they have a whistle. And they say, if you're, if there's a, if there's a problem, you have to whistle, blow the whistle and all that kinda stuff.

[00:06:16] And I'm paddling out. Paddling out. And I noticed the water's getting more, it's filling up in the kayak little by little. That wasn't like that before. And I thought, okay, it should be okay. Maybe I had a bottle of water with me. I didn't think of it. Maybe the water spilled. I didn't bother to, to just stop and look at my bottle of water, which was actually full.

[00:06:41] And then I get out to the middle of the lake. My daughter and her friend are somewhere else on the lake, not a huge lake. It's still a lake, and the kayak is now filling up quickly with water. I ignored the signs as I'm rowing. The last few minutes, I kept thinking, okay, yeah, I will check this out in a few minutes, but I think it's okay.

[00:07:09] I will, when, when, what? I have no idea. When I'm in the water, when it's tipped over, or I've sunken and my choice was simple. If I continue or if I sit there, which I was sitting there enjoying it, I was taking pictures, I should have taken a picture of the actual kayak. The water was pretty much grabbing onto like it was above my knees.

[00:07:39] If I didn't turn around right away, I probably would've ended up having to jump, abandon ship and swim back. Now I do have a life jacket. There's no sharks in the lake. I would've been okay. People were messaging me after because we did a Facebook Live and they said, oh my gosh, are you okay? I would've been okay, but the point is, I ignored the signs.

[00:08:03] I kept saying to myself, I will. When it's like in business, I will hire a coach when, or a mentor when, or marketing strategist. When I will hire a bookkeeper, I should stop doing my own books. I should stop doing this. I should stop doing that. Bring my first employee on or outsource to this so I can focus on my business.

[00:08:25] When, when what? When you and your business are underwater, like me and the kayak could have been if I had kept going. So I quickly turned around, I navigated this baby, this bad boy back to the shore. It wasn't easy because it was almost completely full and it was starting to sink. By the time I got back, it was pretty full.

[00:08:47] I did have to jump out a few feet before. It's okay. I'm okay. It's a lake. I know at a deep lake, actually, I don't know how deep it was back in the middle of the lake. It would've been okay. I could have really Hollywood-ized the story, really amped it up. Made it sound better. But the point is not that I wasn't really in danger, although my cell phone would've been, and my wallet would've been, which would've sucked, especially the cell phone thing and my car keys.

[00:09:13] Who would've known. I'm okay, I'm here. It's been like eight months. I'm okay. But what's not okay is the fact that I let it go that far and I ignored the signs and I didn't ask for help. The help that I needed was myself paying attention. If I'd gone any further, I would've probably have to have asked for help, although I'm probably too proud and I wouldn't have, and I don't want that same for you either.

[00:09:44] I was able to turn it around and steer back, but I did not. It was a 15 minute, I was supposed to have it for an hour, an hour and a half or something. It was 15 minutes. That was it, because it filled up pretty quickly. I ignored the signs. Same thing happened. Quick story. I've talked about this before, but it's changed since.

[00:10:04] So you may have heard, you may have heard this on a previous episode or a post New Year's Eve. Our hot water tank goes out, got it fixed, so and so forth. Temporarily, I guess it was few months later, just a few weeks ago, it happened again. This time I called someone else. He came in, he says, you're gonna need to replace the hot water tank.

[00:10:28] It's been 15 years. Actually, it was about a month ago. You're gonna replace it even back in January or New Year's Eve. I was told it's 15 years old. You need to replace it. A month ago, this person said, it's working now. You might get another month, maybe two months out of it, you'll need to replace it. I got a quote on it.

[00:10:48] Everything was fine. I kept saying. Okay, I will order it when one of these days, I'll get around to it. I did ask him if it goes out again, how long is it gonna take, if it's done, if it just completely dies on me. And he had said, usually a couple of days, but don't wait for that. So what ended up happening was I waited, I ignored the signs 'cause I didn't see the signs.

[00:11:22] I was already warned about. I was given the warning signs, but I didn't see the signs. When it finally did crap out on me, crap out on us, and I got it working again myself, and I went out again. I then called and ordered the new hot water tank, but I waited and almost too late. Because what if they were sold out of them?

[00:11:48] What if he was away and not able to get it done in time, and it would've been on a hot water for three days, four days a week. Who knows longer? I get it. It's just hot water. We could have figured it out. The point is, we don't want to wait till it's too late. We don't want to ignore the signs in our business, we don't want to ignore the signs, and our health happens way too often.

[00:12:14] You've seen it before people have heart attacks, all of a sudden they become healthy. Healthier eaters. They lose weight, they go to the gym, so and so forth. We as entrepreneurs, as small business owners, should not wait. We should stop telling ourselves the story. I can't afford it. I will invest when I will hire a coach or mentor.

[00:12:38] When I will hire this marketing strategist or this ads manager or someone for SEO, I will redo my website when I. I will hire an employee or fire an employee. When? When, what? That's my question. When what? When it's too late. If you're at a place in your business where things are not quite where you want them, you're making the progress and the traction, the momentum that you want, what's your "I will when"?

[00:13:11] What's the need that you have that you're holding off doing? What's the warning signs for you? My suggestion and the Stern Truth is, it's not gonna fix itself if you have those warning signs. If you want something bad enough, take control of that kayak. That's my analogy for the day, and steer it to safety.

[00:13:34] Get some help. Then you can go back on that lake and you can enjoy to relax. All you want without the kayak filling up with water because you have a proper kayak that actually has no holes in it, which this apparently did. And when I got back to shore, they had asked me, sorry that we took that from the damaged pile.

[00:13:56] It's like, thank you very much. Would you like a new one? I said, no, I'm okay for the day. Okay, thank you. The point is, don't wait. It might not be me. If you're looking for someone to help you grow your business and get through the blind spots, someone, that's my encouragement. That's my ask of you today. If you are feeling alone in your business, if you feel like you aren't able to do or get to where you want to get to or you wanna get there faster, connect with me or go out and connect with someone else who could help you get there faster, who could help guide you and be your partner along the journey. Because I'm telling you, the journey is a beautiful journey if we do it with people around us. 

[00:14:40] That's my story for you today. That's my encouragement for you today. That's what I want to talk to you about today, and I wanna hear back from you.

[00:14:48] What's your "I will, when"? How often are you saying that? Marie Forleo always says she has that. I think it came from her aunt, or her grandmother, might have been her grandmother. Everything's figureoutable. So what is figureoutable for you? What can you do so you don't have to be? I will when kind of person, because time's just going by at the time that I record this, we're already going into the second quarter of 2025, second quarter of 2025.

[00:15:23] You might be listening to this episode and it might be 2026 already. The year has flow, is flying by and has flown by. It's gonna be the end of the year. And are you still? I will win. The time is now. Whatever you need, whatever steps you need to make, take them now. Be proactive, not reactive. Don't wait like I did until your kayak is full of water and you can't get back to shore safely.

[00:15:56] You have to jump in the lake. You don't want to jump in the lake with your business. You wanna be paddling. You wanna be navigating that kayak to where you want to get to. Otherwise, if you're way too long, you'll never get there. I'd love to hear your feedback. Don't forget, please subscribe, like, share, review, all that.

[00:16:14] And if you wanna become a member or check out our Momentum Group coaching program, just send me a message to marshall@marshallstern.net and I'd love to have you as a guest. Until then, paddle safely. Be aware of what's going on and look at the warning signs and take action before it's too late. We'll see you next week.

[00:16:36] Thank you so much for tuning in to the Stern Truth. If you found today's episode helpful, we would love to hear from you. Please like, share and leave us a review. Also, if you'd like to be a guest in upcoming episode or join us in one of our Momentum Accountability group sessions, simply email me to Marshall@marshallstern.net.

[00:16:57] That's Marshall@marshallstern.net, and don't forget to hit the subscribe button, so never miss an episode. Until next time, keep pushing. Forwarding with confidence.