Ep. 9 The Stern Truth: Do you have a Busyness or a Business?

In this episode, I tackle a critical question every entrepreneur faces: Do you have a business or a "busyness"? I dive into how entrepreneurs get caught in the trap of being busy without being productive. I share insights on becoming a more intentional and mature business owner instead of working exhausting hours with little to show for it.

I also introduce the concept of an Energy Audit - a powerful tool we use with private and momentum coaching clients. This audit identifies activities that drain versus those that energize you. My recommendation? Examine your daily agenda. As my mentor John Maxwell says, "Your success is determined by your daily agenda". This will provide actionable steps to help you restructure your day around revenue-generating activities that invigorate rather than exhaust you.

The Stern Truth is that building a successful, sustainable business requires focus, intentionality, and the courage to build a team rather than trying to do everything yourself. I challenge you to take immediate action toward transforming your "busyness" into a true business, supporting the lifestyle you desire.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] So in today's episode, we cover one of the biggest topics, one of the biggest areas that hold small business owners back from growing the business that they desire and deserve. And it's having a busyness, not a business. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and be ready for some major insights. Enjoy.

[00:00:27] 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.

[00:00:48] 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 sugar-coated. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start making real progress, then you are in the right place.

[00:01:10] This is the Stern Truth. Alright, welcome back everyone to another episode of. The Stern Truth, Business Unfiltered. And today I'm here to ask you a question, and the question is this, do you have a busyness or a business? I want you to think about that question because what I have found in my years, not just coaching, mentioning small business owners, but running my own business for over 35 years, or multiple businesses over 35 years.

[00:01:46] Is that way too many people get busy being busy and, and have you been one of those people in that situation where at the end of the day you are just beyond exhausted and you look back, if you even do look back and reflect and you wonder why you got so many hours in. 10, 12 hours and you're exhausted.

[00:02:19] But what did you really accomplish? That unfortunately is normal for many entrepreneurs. They think that's the way it should be. Just be busy. How's business? They ask, well, I'm really busy, but I'm not sure doing what you have yourself and my friends. A busyness and not a business. And if you want to be able to grow and be sustainable and have the life, have the income from your business to sustain the lifestyle you want or grow into having, you're going to need to build the business you need to, like we discussed with Pauly in a previous episode of the Stern Truth.

[00:03:06] Become the mature business owner, and that is becoming more intentional, and that is actually having a plan and being focused because let's face it, there's so many activities out there vying for our attention, distractions vying for attention that they hold us back and they don't move us towards what we say that we want.

[00:03:34] My mentor, John Maxwell, my coach, said famously, one of my favorite quotes of his goes like this, your success is determined by your daily agenda. I'll repeat that. Your success is determined by your daily agenda. And he said that he could come in and spend a day with us, with you, with me a full day, and just by monitoring and watching.

[00:04:01] What we do, what our activities are, how we show up. He could tell if we're going to be successful just by our daily agenda. So I want you to look into your daily agenda. Look back to yesterday and what hour by hour, what did you do? Look towards tomorrow and the next day. What do you have on your agenda and is it setting you up for success?

[00:04:28] Is it moving you towards what you say that you want or away from what you say that you want? Are you getting stuck in the land of email distractions and things and notifications and people coming in to your office? Are you allowing it to happen? Are you stuck in the email chain, the habit of receiving, checking your emails or texts and responding right away?

[00:05:04] Are you finding yourself scrolling on Facebook and Instagram and other social media platforms and you say it's for business purposes, and then an hour goes by and you wonder what you've accomplished because you got lost? In that black hole of distraction. Well, listen, I get it. There is so much information out there.

[00:05:27] There are so many people out there talking to us, telling us to do this, telling us to do that, helping overwhelm us. They say they're trying to make it simple for us. Just do this, just do that. But it's distracting us. It's taking us away from our focus, and in the end, it overwhelms us and it drains us.

[00:05:48] And one of the tools that we do with our private clients and our Momentum coaching group coaching clients is what I call the Energy Audit. And we have a new one that's going to be an online tool, which I'm going to introduce you to very shortly. That is a simple tool to help you identify the gaps. And the opportunities that you have to become more productive, more effective, which will help you earn more and build the business that you say that you truly, truly want so that you can have the life that you truly desire.

[00:06:34] So for the, in the meantime, why don't you think about why you started your business and then. Write that down. Get clear on the why you started your business, and then I want you to write down on a daily basis, what are all the activities that you focus on and put them on one column or the other, either on the energizes side or the drains side.

[00:07:02] What drains you in your business? I want you to be as clear as you can. For example, maybe bookkeeping. If you do the books yourself, maybe that that drains you or writing checks. If you have to pay your vendors, your suppliers, maybe it's cold calling, it drains a lot of people. You hate cold calling or you don't like creating social media content and or going on social media that might drain you.

[00:07:32] Following up accounts receivable, maybe that drains you. All the activities that drain you. Okay. Get really clear on those activities and the same thing as the ones that energize you. What do you love to do? And then I want you to also go to the next step, and it's the people and do they, and the environments, what trains you, what energizes you, certain type of clients or people might drain you.

[00:08:06] And what are the same type of people or clients that actually energize you, that you enjoy being around that lift you up, that you enjoy working with? And when it comes to the activities, key here is to try to get off your list as many of the drains as possible. The ones that are not revenue generating, the ones that are more administrative.

[00:08:31] So look at the list. On both sides, the energizes and the drains, and itemize them. Put a R if the revenue generating and an A, if it's administrative. And then ideally what you want to have is revenue generating activities on your energizing side. There may be some administrative on the energizing side, you ideally want to have them all to be more administrative.

[00:08:57] And if they're revenue generating, they're revenue generating, we can work with that. It doesn't mean that you should be outsourcing that to someone else necessarily, but maybe it does. We would've to have a discussion further about that and find out really what's going on behind that. But the key of the Energy Audit or the Business Energy Reset, which we're going to be calling it, is that we want to focus our day, structure, our day on the activities.

[00:09:28] And being with the people that will move us towards where we say we want to go and that they energize us rather than drain us. And we can get caught in the drains. And at the end of the day, it goes back to what did we accomplish? You can do more with less than you realize if you were given two hours a day.

[00:09:54] Only two hours a day to work on your business. But if it was focused, intentional, with a purpose, you could make it happen. But unfortunately, many of us have eight hours, nine hours, 10 hours, 11 hours, and we waste it by not being productive. And worse yet by focusing on activities that actually drain us.

[00:10:22] And then you get to the point. You start to dislike your business and you start to resent it. Here's the thing, and maybe this is the Stern Truth in all of this. We've talked about this in previous episodes and we'll continue to talk about this in future episodes. We need to build a team. We need to focus on activities.

[00:10:48] That energize us, that are revenue generating, that will move our, move the needle for us and our business and bring people on our team, whether they're employees or subcontractors, freelancers that can do the rest and don't fall into the land of I will win, which goes back to one of our previous episodes because the I will win will most likely never happen.

[00:11:17] If you invest now and you bring the people on your team now and get out of your own way and focus, focus, focus on the right activities with the right people telling you it will move the needle for your business and you'll achieve so much more and faster than if you live in the land of having a busyness.

[00:11:42] We want to have a business. So what are the next steps you can take today? Right now? What is one? Here's the challenge for you this week. In fact, it's the challenge for you today, and I want to hear from you. What's one activity that you can take off your plate, off your agenda right now that drains you?

[00:12:11] Because when you remove the drains, it leaves room for those activities and people who energize us. So what's one drain you can remove today? I'll leave you with that. Please comment. Send me an email to marshalls@marshallstern.net. That's marshall@marshallstern.net. Come check out one of our upcoming Momentum Group sessions.

[00:12:36] Let's help you remove the drains and focus on those activities that energize us so we can work more with people who energize us. Please subscribe and share this podcast. I thank you for listening and we'll see you again next week. 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.

[00:13:01] Please like, share and leave us a review. Also, if you'd like to be a guest the upcoming episode or join us in one of our Momentum Accountability Group sessions, simply email Marshall@marshallstern.net. That's Marshall@marshallstern.net, and don't forget to hit the subscribe button, so never miss an episode. 

[00:13:20] Until next time, keep pushing forward and meeting with confidence.