Do You Have What It Takes To Make It in Business?

In my 20s, I felt everybody had it in them to be a success in my business. Now, one year removed from 40, I'm not so sure. I've seen businesses chew up and spit out smart, friendly folk. I've witnessed many people I thought had what it takes quit, and others I assumed had a snowball's chance in hell become industry titans.?

Business isn't for everyone. But is it for you? If you can't do the following well, maybe you should work for someone else.?

Handling Stress - Both Personal & Professional

A few weeks back, an opportunity fell into my lap with a high probability of making me an extra million in net profit. It seemed easy at first - a gift from the heavens.?

But as I started digging into it, it got real complicated quickly.?

• The potential partner in the opportunity was told one thing by his previous business partners, who then did the opposite behind his back. He was betrayed, hurt, and I'm picking up on the pain. It can't be?just?marketing.?
• A business friend might perceive us as a competitive threat, which I didn't think about before going in. I still want to do it, but now I'm reaching out to have a frank conversation with my friend, who is sensitive to competition because he has had people join his community and then siphon off clients.?
• The calendars are near impossible to line up. There's a clear sweet spot to this opportunity, and I don't think we can launch it in time and have it do what we want. We are running plan b's and c's now that we have unraveled this.?

It's still worth doing, and it probably is simpler than most other new initiatives I could go at, but sheesh! I'm devoting way more brain cycles to this than I thought - unpacking complex emotional relationships, calibrating to current market dynamics, all while devoloping new working relationships with my new business partners.?

The stress in business can kill you - literally - and it's rarely the stress of execution, but the emotional stress that surrounds it, the constant trade-offs you'll have to make. When is it okay to ignore your family to grow the business? Is it ever? How hard do you push, knowing someone is gunning for your market share every second you sleep? Do you care? Can you deal with the constant, conflicting information that will be projectile vomited on you nearly every waking moment of the day??

If you can, you deserve any and all riches flowing to you.?

What's Your Internal Structure Like?

I do my best work alone.?

I can set my schedules and follow my internal deadlines without anyone looking over my shoulder or without having outside accountability. I am a rare breed in this regard.?

Most struggling entrepreneurs I know have trouble managing their day-to-day. If you're already a big deal, it becomes easier because the demands on your time force you to show up and get things done.?

But what if you're starting? You'll have to build in binds - intentional limitations that prevent you from drifting off into the land of unproductivity with a schedule like a jellyfish.?

Maybe you take the laptop to a coffee shop, but don't bring your charger, and force yourself to work until the battery dies. Or you commit to?ship?one thing daily - something you publish that the world could see if they knew it existed. Or you join a community that brings accountability, to have other eyes on you than your own.?

Whatever you do, if you can't either bring in your structure or have it forced on you, you'll have a hard time getting any momentum, and momentum is key to business success.

Are You Cognitively Flexible?

I love sports. Watch an American football game, and the offense line up in various ways to run all sorts of plays. Sometimes they call audibles, changing plays moments before they're run based on something they see from the defense.?

How often do you run the ball vs. pass it? When do you go for it vs. play it safe? What tempo do you start with, and how do you know when to adjust it? If you just made a poor play, how do you shake it off like it didn't happen and run the next one with 100% confidence??

Mike Tyson said everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth. So what do you do when you've been bitch slapped by the marketplace? Can you make immediate adjustments??

90% of your business decisions will be made while considering contradictory sets of information. Guru A tells you that webinars are dead, and yet you see us selling $59.7 million of product on webinars in less than 227 days. So you hire me to advise you on a webinar, and you're the first client I tell in a long while that a webinar doesn't make sense for your business at this time.?

I told a close business associate that there was no way I could work with this other strong personality in our industry. Then a week later, I was doing just that. I had to go back and try to take my foot out of my mouth because I wasn't a liar - how I viewed a potential deal the week before changed once I found out more information.?

Context is king, not content. The subtle differences between situations often are the differences between world-class, excellent, and absolute failure. But context is constantly shifting, and it's hard to read.?

If you can take in large amounts of information, parse through the contradictions and then run experiments on an initial low-risk basis, you may have a shot. But most people prefer congruency instead of contradiction, so they stay poor.?

How do you Deal with Confrontation?

It amazes me how many of us big-time business icons still behave like little boys and girls. Something comes out slightly wrong on stage, and someone's feelings get hurt, and instead of privately pulling that person aside and communicating how you feel - you bury it.?

Or you carry it around like a vendetta.?

Or you limit yourself because you're conflicted with the fact that you like this person but don't like what they just did.?

Confrontation is scary. On the one hand, there is a disproportionate amount of psychopaths that become business leaders, and they?love?conflict because they're good at it. It holds little to no weight on their shoulders emotionally.?

Most of us spend more time worrying about the confrontation and all the bad things that might happen that we're exhausted before we even confront - and that's if we confront at all.?

I've seen many problems that could be solved in business if we could be more emotionally available to each other. But that is unlikely to happen. We just don't know how to communicate well with each other.?

I went a decade plus by trying to avoid every interpersonal conflict in business and was successful, but boy was it harder and for less money, too.?

How well do you know your weaknesses?

I can sell the lights out, but I can't manage a single employee.?

I'm like Michelango when it comes to business strategy, but I'm a bull in a china shop when it comes to operations. I'm great in a few ways, and I'm terrible in many ways, and some of my weaknesses I don't think I could fix if I lived as long as Methuselah.?

It's a bitter pill to swallow - knowing you will die being so terrible at so many things. The tendency is to want to work on your weaknesses. Don't. Instead, double down on your strengths.?

Until you get enough money to build a team around you to plug those holes, you have to get creative to find solutions that?only?serve your strengths.?

When I started, I could write a lot in short spurts, but I couldn't finish a project requiring multiple writing sessions. My breakthrough came when I decided to create an information product in one setting to guarantee I had a finished product when I got up for writing. Every other way I had tried prior didn't work - even if I said I'd do it in two rounds.?

I'm not good at planning for the long-term. If I do multi-day training, I create the slides the day before. It's a pressure cooker. I'm exhausted because I'm building the plane while flying it - but it brings out the best in me in the most productive way.?

Your success hinges on you being able to attempt, observe and adjust your way time and again until you uncover the circumstances that allow your strengths to soar without your weaknesses getting in your way.?