10 Things to Level Up Your Business

Count money, man.

Money, man.

Stacked riches.

I'm trying to told him I'm a beast, but...

What's up, gang?

Welcome back to another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

Thanks for sharing some time with us.

And we're going to dive in.

We got 10 things, 10 bullet points, of some things that we've been covering in the business

the last few weeks with some of the up and coming entrepreneurs in the business.

And so the first one is investing.

We're going to dive right in investing into your business.

I think this is one where I see people miss the ball on a lot.

And then the people that get this right and doubt in the right way, I watch them end up

growing at a higher pace and a higher rate than other people.

So I think first is if you're in a business in an entrepreneurial type of business to

where you can invest into something in order to get a return, first I would probably look

at what are the key factors?

What are the two or three major areas of your business that if you were to invest into

those things would give you the biggest amount of return and then how do you measure it?

So what's the...

What's the measurables?

For example, if you have one key driving factor, let's say for somebody it's marketing or it's

leads.

If we give out a certain amount of leads to our sales force, we have a data, we have the

data that shows for every lead that we give out, here's how much production that we get

back.

And you could look at, well, how much does it cost me?

What's the cost of acquisition?

How much does it cost me to get a lead?

And then with that lead, what is the return of that investment?

So that's just one example.

So look into what type of business are you in?

What are a couple key factors that drive your business and ask yourself am I investing properly

into that?

The mindset is key along with understanding the metrics and the math to it, but I think

the mindset of it is key to the point where if I look at this as an expense that I'm spending

money, nobody can afford that.

There's no way you can afford it typically to spend money, especially when you're growing

a business.

Nobody wants to spend money, but you have to look at it and make sure that it is one,

but you have to look at it as an investment.

And so I want to invest into the business areas and you may find for every dollar that

you put in, you get a dollar and 50 back out or you get two dollars back out.

If you're in a situation where you could double your money and you invest into that area

of the business and you double your money, you're in a winning situation and still people

struggle to invest into the areas of the business because they don't want to wait the 90 days

on the return or they don't want to wait, but I think that's the mindset that can make

or break you.

So the investing into the business in key areas, I think is critical.

The next is to look at yourself and look at where you're putting your time.

If you're somebody that's in leadership or running a business and you're spending time

with people, are you spending time with energy drainers?

And what you want to do is you want to try to reduce the amount of time that you're putting

into energy drainers and increase the time that you spend with up and coming people that

give you energy.

And so you know, the second bullet point was start to eliminate as much time as you can.

Some things are not avoidable, but start to eliminate as much time as you can from spending

with people that suck your time and suck your energy and make you feel drained in your

business.

Third point is the opposite is make sure that you're getting time with people that give

you energy.

The a lot of times these can be people that are up and coming in your area of business

or whatever it is that you're doing.

These are people that are hungry.

They're on fire.

They're coachable.

They're talented.

They're listening.

They're passionate.

Those group of people you want to get more time with elevating those people and creating

your bench because ultimately those will be a lot of the people that you can help lift

up to the top.

And so that's the next point.

The next point I would say is time for your mental health.

Okay, bullet point number four, time for your mental health.

Everybody, you know, that's a buzz word now, mental health, but especially when you're building

a business or you're in an entrepreneurial environment, it's a lot of stress.

It's a lot of hours.

It's very taxing.

And so you have to find ways for you to work on intentionally your mental health, your

mindset.

So what things can you do that recharge your mind on a consistent basis?

You need to renew yourself on a consistent basis.

For me, it's my morning ritual, my morning routine, from the time I wake up to the time

that I start dealing with other people.

I usually need a minimum of three hours.

Like from the time the alarm goes off to the time I start dealing with other people pouring

into them, I need three hours for my whole routine.

That to me is the best way that I can invest into others is by investing into myself because

I don't want the stress to take you out of the game.

There's going to be periods of your career where the stress level or some forms of negativity

creep in and it gives you these thoughts of man, should I stop doing this?

Now should I should I not even be doing this anymore?

Things that are going to talk you out of your vision.

And when your mental health is on point, it helps you to persevere.

So you have to intentionally look at things that renew your mind, your body, your spirit,

things that renew you and take time for your mental health.

Fifth thing is submit to a mentor if you're lucky enough to have one.

But not all people are lucky enough to have a real mentor.

They'll be phases of your career.

Maybe you go to a certain level and there aren't many mentors that you can find.

And so be grateful if you have the right mentor at your disposal.

Don't take them for granted and submit yourself to that mentor in that area.

So unless that mentor is great in all areas, you have to be careful when I say submit

to that mentor because let's say you have a great mentor in business but maybe they're

not a great mentor for your marriage.

Or you have a great mentor for your personal life and your marriage but they're not really

a great mentor for business.

Sometimes people confuse the two.

You're blessed if you get somebody that's great in all areas, that they're great with their

relationships with their family, with the business, with the way that they do things.

If you have a well-rounded, then yeah, submit to that mentor in all aspects.

But it's possible to have a mentor in something that maybe they're just a mentor for that specific

thing.

But either way, submit to them in that area and be the best student that you could possibly

be.

And a lot of talented alpha males, alpha females, a lot of talented folks struggle with submitting,

humbling themself and learning from someone and taking the approach of a student, walking

with humility in a sense of yes, sir, yes, ma'am.

And I think that holds them back.

So how you doing in that area?

Have you identified a mentor?

Are you blessed to have a mentor?

Are you submitting to that mentor?

Next bullet point would be, stay open-minded.

It doesn't mean that we have to throw the baby out with the bath water all the time.

Every time there's a new idea that comes up, but a lot of times people get old and stop

growing because they close their mind off and they just want to do things the way that

they've always been done.

Man, if you can get a group of people together, that you can gather information from and

get feedback from typically great things can come from it if you're dealing with the

right people.

And so I want you to look at, man, do I have a group of people that offer me feedback that

I bounce ideas off of and I keep an open mind in that process of I'm not just shutting

every idea down.

I'm just sitting here trying to think of ways.

Could that is that something that could work for us in our business?

One of the things we're excited we're doing here soon is we're going to our executive

council where we take a group of our top leaders.

We sit them at a table for a couple of days.

We typically take them to a nice location.

We break bread, we have dinner together.

We spend time together as a family, but we sit around a table and we bounce ideas off

of one another.

And oftentimes there's a topic and then everybody's given their opinion and then we bounce it off

of each other and we try to come up with what's the best way to go about it.

And it usually always ends up healthy when we have healthy discussion with 5, 6, 7,

8, sometimes 10 of the top people in that room and they're all bouncing off agreeing,

disagreeing.

These ideas and then we come up with some of the best ideas where no one of us could

have ever been able to come up with that one thing.

So just stay open minded.

Next thing is get feedback.

Get feedback from others.

Be afraid to be open minded to the point where you're getting feedback from a mentor,

getting feedback from people that you respect that you lead, get their feedback on things,

is critical.

Last three bullet points coming to my mind is don't get down during the solidification

phase.

What that means is not always is business in growth and upward climb.

It's not always climb the mountain, climb the mountain, climb the mountain.

Every six months we're going upwards, every year we're going upwards.

Every once in a while what I've witnessed is you'll have a flat line whether it's a

couple months or a year or a couple years it's a flat line where there may be some things

in there that you're doing, some things in there that you need to learn that is just

representative of stabilization.

It's stabilizing your organization, it's stabilizing what's going on and then it provides

a platform that you now build that next level on that foundation because what gets you

there won't get you always to the next level and sometimes what gets you there if you don't

adapt, evolve and change will keep you there.

So that phase sometimes builds another layer, another floor for you to build upon, but a lot

of times that's where people start tapping out and quitting.

They get so frustrated because they're in the phase that it's been climbing, growing,

climbing, growing.

Then it's, man, what am I supposed to learn foundation?

Let me learn here, flat line, grow on top of that sucker, go to the next level.

Don't get down during that solidification phase.

Keep your head up, stay motivated.

It's part of the process for most folks.

That's when built relationships that are real.

I'm excited and blessed to say a lot of some of the best relationships that I have in

my life for people that I've met and that I currently do business with or we have done

business together in the past.

That comes from intentionally building relationships with people, not just for a benefit.

Not just for, I'm going to fake like I care about this person so I can get some form

of a result from that person.

But I mean building genuine loyal relationships with people that takes time invested outside

of work with people, making their families important to you, making what's important to

them, important to you, and building genuine relationships with people that are real.

I think go a long way in building a business because you spend so much time working, building

that it just makes it all more worthwhile and more fun when you make the people that

you're building with a family and they're like family to you.

The last thing is don't take growth for granted.

I think the biggest enemy to growth in success is success itself.

Having success, having growth can put you in this mode of complacency, comfort, I'm comfortable.

I'm confident, I'm cocky.

Don't get comfortable, cocky, complacent when they have growth periods typically in their

life until you've had enough moments where you realize when that happens and you slow down,

bad things happen and you lose momentum and it takes even more energy to get back to it.

So don't take growth for granted while it's happening.

Avoid it but make sure you're not confusing momentum with a tailwind.

Tailwind is man we're on an airplane.

and going one direction coming home or going one direction,

going as faster than it is the other direction

because the wind is beneath your wings.

The wind is behind you and it's blowing you faster forward.

And so it's not even really you, it's the wind behind you.

So sometimes the momentum that you have,

the growth that you have is from things that you did six months ago

or a year ago and it's pushing you from behind.

It's pushing you and it makes you look good in the moment.

So you stop flapping your wings and you stop pushing the pedals

and you stop pumping your arms as hard

because you got this tailwind behind you

and then the tailwind dies out and it's man.

All of a sudden the same motion with these arms

ain't enough because I lost momentum.

And so I'd encourage you in the growth moments

to be even more paranoid and more focused

than when you're not growing

because when you're not growing

and you got a chip on your shoulder,

that's when you're locked in, you're loaded,

you're doing what it takes,

you're biting, scratching, clawing, you're open,

you know that you don't got all the answers

and you know you got to get it moving.

It's scarier I think because it can hide a lot of your flaws

and things that are coming when you're having success.

And so if you're on this other end

and you're having momentum and you're having success

and you're having growth, I want to encourage you

to stay focused.

Erase your mind that you're having all this success.

Stay paranoid as to what can come, what can change

and it'll put you in a better position

to keep momentum longer.

It doesn't mean you're always gonna have the momentum

but it'll help you keep that momentum longer

and put you in a position to avoid catastrophes

by staying locked in that way.

So hopefully these 10 bullet points provided some wisdom

for some of y'all, some encouragement for some of you,

some reminders for others.

But either way the mission of it is just to add value

to leaders, add value to people that are out there

adding value to other people

because we're in this sucker together.

If this helped anybody, do me a favor,

don't be afraid to share the words, spread the message,

share the ground cast force and share the message

with people, hit the like button, subscribe button,

all those cool things also.

But we appreciate you, we got more fire coming

in the grind cast studio, so stay tuned with us.

And as always, we appreciate you joining us

and get ready as a new day.