Episode 2 - Defining Entrepreneurship with Andrew Lees and Clint McPherson

Show Transcript

Andrew Lees:
Sup guys, this is Andrew Lees and Clint McPherson here on That Entrepreneur Life. We got episode two right here. And every day we talk about entrepreneurship. That's what this podcast is all about. And if you're starting a new business, or you're just thinking about it, or you've already started a business recently, or you're years into building a business, there's of a lot of good information that we're going to talk about and were going to have some pretty cool guests on here and discuss their entrepreneurial journey. And today, we're going to talk specifically about... We're going to define entrepreneurship and talk about what it is. We should have some kind of a baseline understanding of what entrepreneurship is and what it means to be an entrepreneur and that'll kind of set the stage for the rest of what we talked about.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, without a doubt, I mean, that's going to lead us into the role we have in our specific business landscapes as entrepreneurs, and just playing off of that whole concept, I think really defining it and helping everybody understand what entrepreneurship is, is going to be a good thing initially. First to continue on, and it'll live up to that entrepreneurial life motto or taking individuals from an idea, like you said, if they're starting their entrepreneurial journey now, to launching that business. And then also going much further than that and taking it to where we're bringing individuals on our show as you said, and just digging down into their struggles, their successes, and just hearing their story, man, it's gonna be good times.

Andrew Lees:
Yeah, yeah. Because I think that, as we talked about in the last episode, every journey is different. And so you can really learn a lot from talking to different people about what their journey was like, and the things that they've learned along the way. Every entrepreneurial journey is similar. There's a lot of similarities, there are a lot of things that we can all relate to and identify with, for sure. But everybody's got a different story. Everybody's got these awesome nuggets of information that you can have a multimillion-dollar business and talk to somebody, you're doing seven figures a year, talk to somebody who's doing five or six figures a year and learn something really, really good that can help propel your business to the next level and make you even more successful.

Clint McPherson:
I agree. I think to take that whole... Just from that standpoint and looking at it, you're talking about five figures, six figures, whatever it is, at the end of the day. It's not about the money. It's about the journey. Obviously, we all want financial freedom. We all want to do what we want to do because we have the money to do it. But I really think once you align your wealth with your health, and then the love and happiness for what you're doing and just enjoy life and enjoy the entrepreneurial journey that you're on whether it sucks embrace this up and strive forward.

If it sucks, what are you going to do about it to make it not suck? What are those angles and things that you could come up with, to just get through the tough times? And then really enjoy the whole experience because being an entrepreneur, man, I've struggled. I know you've probably been there too and struggled because you do it. right. You know the struggle is real. But at the end of the day, it's like hey, what can I do to make today better? What can I do right? Is it me taking 100% responsibility for what I have control over? Or me blaming everybody else because I don't have control over that?

Andrew Lees:
Well, yeah, that's the thing. And you really get to the point on a daily basis where you can blame other things, outside factors that are seemingly beyond your control, or you can work around them. You can just be like, I got to get this done. And I'm actually working on something right now, where I'm running into this situation, run into a technical issue with an email platform I'm trying to get it to do something that it should easily be able to do and it's getting buggy or glitchy or whatever. I'm on the line with tech support, trying to figure it out. And I'm just like, I'm just going to figure out a way to get through It if they cant.  I'm not going to wait for them necessarily to figure it out because I need to get it done I need to move on to the next thing and I don't need this thing kind of hanging me up.

So we have plenty of choices I can kind of figure out how to work through it myself, work around it, get some help with them if I can in a timely fashion, or I move on to something else. There's another technology, there's always a way. So yeah, I think it becomes really important to just work through those things and you realize how much more urgency there is when it's your business. If you're not getting through things you're not generating revenue, you're not pushing the ball further down the line like when you're working for somebody and it's a nine to five kind of thing. It's like I could just say, "yeah, we've got a problem with this software," and maybe they'll get back to me. I just have to wait for it. Wait till next week, whatever, it doesn't matter to you. But when it's your business, it really matters to you. And I think that's cool it really makes you more efficient in business and I think in life because it spills over into other aspects of life too.

Clint McPherson:
Oh, without a doubt. I mean, you always have somebody that's been there in that same scenario to an extent. So you are not the only one experiencing that problem, but you might be the only one that accepts defeat. So don't be that person that says, "Hey, I'm just going to wait for tech support to figure it out." Yeah, submit the issue to tech support. But if you come up with a cool solution that actually can solve the problem or you have a workaround that while they're fixing that problem I have something else in a backup plan, or I have somebody that is good with this type of stuff and they can figure it out and work because as a team member of leverage them. And again, that you can always find that way. But with that said, man, let's get into defining what an entrepreneur is, brother.

Andrew Lees:
Yeah. So, if you google entrepreneurs, what definition of an entrepreneur, which just kind of googling something to figure out what is always a good start.

Clint McPherson:
Without a doubt, I googled it.

Andrew Lees:
Especially these days, yeah. So, an entrepreneur, the first thing that pops up, the definition for entrepreneur is a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses, taking on a greater than the normal financial risk in order to do so. So super simple. That definition definitely makes sense to me. I've also heard it defined as somebody who takes something of lesser value and creates greater value with that. So you're taking something that you can buy at a relatively low price fundamentally and sell it at a higher price. But you have to create some value somewhere in between, some value adds, whether that's customer service, more features, whatever, whatever it is. But yeah, that definition that I just read is the fundamental definition of what an entrepreneur is.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, universally known from, again, when somebody says, "How did you come up with that definition?" We googled it, right?

Andrew Lees:
Yeah, yeah.

Clint McPherson:
We rely on a lot of stuff. You got to know how to read through and disregard but, also thinking that definition somewhere along the line should be adjusted to where it's like talks about... You've been putting it in as far as stepping out of your comfort zone. Doing something that maybe some... A few things going along with the definition. You know, like crazy, people that aren't normal. Like people that again see something... They see there's profit potential in things, not just whether it's a digital product, whether it's a physical product, but things it definitely risks bearing, right? Entrepreneurship is a risk. Being an entrepreneur is not stepping into a safe zone for a business that's already been figured out.

When you start your own business, unless you are franchising something, or take over another business, and become an entrepreneur that way, it's different. I started my business, a digital marketing business from scratch. Started from the ground, working my way up. And so that's a huge risk. My wife, she's more again, she's the one on the no more of the corporate side of things within accounting and stuff. So she's basically in the normalized and accepted version of the corporate world. Her job, she's not an entrepreneur, she doesn't have an entrepreneurial mindset or that entrepreneurial spirit. Because there are people that like the comfort of a corporate job because that's basically when you go to a school, you're trained to do one thing. And-

Andrew Lees:
It fits the system.

Clint McPherson:
Exactly.

Andrew Lees:
It can be-

Clint McPherson:
Systemized.

Andrew Lees:
... It's something I mean... Employment is definitely something that can be that there's a system to it, that there's education that you go through formal education, to learn skills to get a job. And that makes sense in society as to have that because not everybody's... Not the majority of people are going to be entrepreneurial and be willing to take that risk. And I think that if you had to sum up the definition of an entrepreneur in two words, I think it's a risk-taker. Definitely, that's it because you don't know you're not like, "Yeah, I'm going to do this and make X amount... Definitely make X amount of money next month or a year or something," if you're like, Jeff Bezos and looking back it was like, "Yeah, he was a no brainer. And what was the risk in what he did?"

Well, he started from nothing in his garage, there was no guarantee that his business would do so well. And he could have floundered for a decade and whether he actually had a great idea and a great business model or not, he's still, it could have been a struggle for a really long time. Maybe he gave up, maybe you would have given up at some point because just-juice just wasn't worth the squeeze, but it turned out differently. So there's always no matter what when you're starting something from scratch, it's just everything's unknown.

Even if you've already done it before, there is still a risk. If you've launched 10 successful businesses, and they're all doing really well, and they're operational and everything starting number 11, is it easier? Yeah, probably. But it's still going to be risky because you don't know it's a totally different animal than everything else you've done probably, so... Oh, yeah. And to tag onto the risk-taker is one of those things, you have to be a motivator because you have to learn how to motivate yourself internally-

Clint McPherson:
Definitely.

Andrew Lees:
... and if you can be a motivator, and you can motivate yourself, you can motivate other individuals. So one either sees your vision so you can get there quicker and bring people in to help you succeed a lot faster. You have to be in that... Being an entrepreneur, you're also a leader. I was a leader in the military, you have to be a leader, you might be leading yourself again. And it might be self-lead. But if you have a team around you, or if you work with people, or you have investors or whatever it is, you have to be a leader, right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
Because they have to understand you were able to lead your company or your business to the vision that you have, right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
And so when you look at it, you have to be an initiator too. I mean, initiating things again-

Clint McPherson:
Nobody is going to do that for you. Nobody's knocking down your door saying, "Please, please let me give you business"

Andrew Lees:
Exactly.

Clint McPherson:
... "let me just give you all this money to do this stuff." And like nobody's knocking down your door. So-

Andrew Lees:
No, not at all.

Clint McPherson:
... yeah.

Andrew Lees:
I mean, the decision-maker on top of that is huge, right? You have to know how to make those decisions and then go into initiating the process of what you're going to implement in the first place and organizing things... If you're unorganized man, like I can find myself a lot of times not being the greatest organizer, but always can tell a huge improvement when I sit there and start thinking about things and start organizing things and structuring things like as they should be instead of as my mind's like, whatever. Your mind can easily just be like, whatever, right?

Clint McPherson:
Oh yeah.

Andrew Lees:
Relaxing, everything's clutter, everything's unorganized, you can't find anything. But I think being organized is being an entrepreneur, right? There are so many things, being a creator, coming up with additional content, ads, to podcast what we're doing currently. Not only that blog articles and just putting stuff out there so it's really not a far-fetched idea. Entrepreneurship is like I said, fun. It is a challenge for me. I accept the challenge, I embrace the challenge. It's just one of those things, even if you can go through a horrible day, right? But then at the end of the day, you know that you're in control of the outcome of that, right? Because whatever event that's being thrown at you, you can choose to respond in a good way, or a negative way, right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
So how you respond equals that outcome. And so as an entrepreneur having that clear mindset of one, accepting 100% responsibility, as I said at the beginning of this podcast episode, of what you have control over, and if the stuff you don't have control over, like your email marketing platform that has a limitation that you should easily be able to do, hey, you just got to understand that right now, that's a problem. But it's a problem that you can overcome at the end of the day, right?

Clint McPherson:
Right.

Andrew Lees:
You might not be able to figure out the solution to that specific problem. But you are smart enough to figure out the way around it or accomplish the mission at hand without relying on that email marketing platform that again, you might be paying for and frustrated with. But you know, somebody is in the background trying to work on it with you, and then there might be something better out there for you, right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, sometimes it's a matter of adjusting your expectations too. Sometimes it definitely comes down to that. Maybe you didn't need, like really, really need to do that thing that you thought you did, or get the functionality out of something that you thought you really needed and you can work around it with something else and get something that works. At the very least, I think that's the goal every day is to just keep pushing forward-

... and there are some days where man it really doesn't feel like anything's moving forward at all. And then a few days later, you might realize... If something happens and you're like, "Oh, that's because of that, what I did a couple of days ago that I thought I wasn't getting anywhere with." And now all of a sudden it turned into like more business or turned into a new business relationship that could help further down the road or whatever. So yeah, it's just moving it forward and just to be cliche, just kind of grinding it out every day and it definitely helps to have a plan, to have to understand, have a pretty good idea every day of what you need to accomplish. And now I'm getting a little bit sidetracked but making a shortlist every day, where it's like, it's only between one and three things.

And until you've accomplished those one or three things, you haven't even thought about the next few things. Because if you make a list that's 100 things long, cool, you're just going to be overwhelmed. And the reality is that we're kind of playing somewhat of an infinite game. It's not... We can talk about that later to this... There was a guy who talks all about infinite games and not getting caught up in the finality of making sure that you're doing things that have every day that are geared towards long term success. And that's the thing because you can get bogged down in the minutia of things and so-

Andrew Lees:
The clutter.

Clint McPherson:
... yeah.

Andrew Lees:
There's so much that again we don't have control over that happens in our life, right? Like if we set aside time to do a list, right?

Clint McPherson:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Andrew Lees:
As you said, a short three-step list or whatever it is, or even breaking that long list up of 100 tasks into smaller lists that you can accomplish in a set amount of time, typically, you know how long it typically sends you to send the email, right? Are you the person that waits for it to be a perfect email to where you're like, you type it out, you delete 1000 things? Are you that person? If that's you, then you got to know, okay, well, it takes me 15 minutes instead of two minutes to send an email. Right?

Clint McPherson:
Exactly.

Andrew Lees:
So you just got to be realistic about how you set it up. And you also got to set the priority. Right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
What is a project coming up that's due... That you told a client five days ago that it was going to be done in five days. So today's a due date, and then it's still like number 20 on the list. Then your priorities [inaudible 00:19:45] line properly. Right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
And it's really coming up with that checklist and making sure that priorities are in check. And again, it's just having that little bit of organization to where like I find myself a lot of days to words like, man, I'll go away from that process. And just you get lost because time goes by so quick-

Clint McPherson:
Oh, yeah.

Andrew Lees:
... when you're doing stuff that you won't either enjoy or one when you're just don't set yourself up for success during the day. You look at it you're like, "I didn't get anything done today," or anything that I needed to get done today. And I did some stuff and took action. But again, that's all the clutter to the stuff, the phone calls that get in the way. We have a podcast, whether it's us getting sick, or us, whatever, man, we can't do this, but there's a lot of stuff that we can figure out ways around it. And you have to make the decision. Is it better for us to do it next week, which we did, right? It was better for us at that time. Could we have done it? Yeah, we could have done it-

Clint McPherson:
But it's found a way.

Andrew Lees:
It's a way... How do you... It's all about sidestepping, or how do you get out of that or how do you just disregard the clutter that's in your way, right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
I don't have time for this phone call right now. But hey, I'll make sure I get to them. I just saw how important phone calls come through, which I probably needed to take, right?

Clint McPherson:
Right.

Andrew Lees:
But was it the right time to take it because there was a prior... Something more important needed to get done. And that right there could have turned into, it could have been a quick five-minute conversation or two-hour conversation. Now you've lost two hours of time that were those two hours could have been committed to just finishing the product that the dude already paid for. Finish today. And then you're like, "Oh, man, I missed the deadline to [inaudible 00:21:29]." Yeah, man. It's all about trying to just strategically find the right way to make sure you shift through all the clutter that might be in your way and just again, prioritizing things.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah. And focus on what you need to do at that time and really dive into it as best as you can until it's finished.

Andrew Lees:
Exactly.

Clint McPherson:
And we when you've got let's say, you've got five, 10 different projects all going on at once. It's so easy to just bounce around, but really the best thing is to just really focusing on one, knock it out, move on. It doesn't mean you're not going to have to go back to that project. Maybe you're going to have to fix something with it. It's not like it's all right, you put all your effort into it, for a few hours and it's just done forever. It's not necessarily the case. You might have to come back to it, but at least you're way further along with it.

So you can... It's better to better to check one thing off than do 10 things and not check anything off. So yeah, and as it turns out, being an entrepreneur, being self-employed it's really easy to stay busy. Like that's there's no challenge in doing something.

Andrew Lees:
Oh, that goes without saying.

Clint McPherson:
Maybe for a little bit if you're not used to working for yourself, you probably twiddle your thumbs for a few days, you do something and it's like, all right, cool. Now I don't really have anything to do but you quickly realize that there's literally not ever a time when there's nothing to do. Because there's always something else to be done whether it's creating as you talked about creating new content, you could be... If you're... Literally, any product or service you're selling, especially when it's online, you can be working to be the authority or be an authority about it and writing content, making videos, working on an ad, copying, creatives. Working on the product itself, customer service, like there's always whenever I think I'm finished with something I'm like, I literally have nothing to do. I'm like, all right, well, now I can create some content at least [crosstalk 00:24:07] there's not... I could always be doing that.

Then that kind of brings me to the thought of it definitely while there's always something to do as an entrepreneur, you kind of always have to know when to shut it off too. Because once the more you get into it, the more you're like, "Oh man, I could just keep going. I could do this forever. I can just, work, work work." Sometimes it really feels like work. But when it doesn't, it's almost like it's exciting. You're having fun. You don't feel like it's work. And so you can just keep doing it and forget about the rest of your responsibilities as a human. So it's easy to happen as well.

Andrew Lees:
Yeah, man. I could say just from experience, I've been there, right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
I'm sure you have to. When you're responsible for other people outside of yourself, like if you're married like I am, two kids, you know two dogs. I mean, it's like one of those things that [inaudible 00:25:10] it's if you don't allow yourself to balance properly, you can start putting everybody second, and that's not always a good thing. I mean, placing your business above your family is not the way to go. But I've been guilty of that from time to time.

Clint McPherson:
Sure right.

Andrew Lees:
I've been in the groove and I've been... I felt it to where it's like, "Oh, man, no, I can stay in this room and just..." Because content like you said, man content infinite. Content, like if there's one thing that has a limit, it's not content because content can be pumped out in so many different ways. There are so many different forms of content, but as I said, it is infinite. You can never run out of anything to talk about as long as you can write it, as long as you can type, as long as you can write, as long as you can record a video. There's so much content that can be created. That, like, if you allow yourself to go down that rabbit hole, you could go down it. It's a good rabbit hole to go down to or go down in.

But at the end of the day, it's like you said, you have to know when to shut it off. You have to commit to saying, "Okay, well, I'm actually going to only work from nine to five or nine to six, or whatever it is eight to six..." Whatever time you set, but make sure you're looking out for yourself and the individuals that are with you, your family. I mean, for me, that's my wife, my two kids. And so that's something that I got to understand that I have to flip the switch. I got to shut the computer off. I got to give them the time that they need. Right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
I mean, when it comes down to it, I'm not somebody that really needs all the love and the whatever, right? Because I'm more of a person that I can be alone, and more likely somebody that I can be in this room and be finding content with it. By the end of the day, it's like, are the individuals that live in this house fine with that, right?

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
So you got to balance that man. And when you love people, and when they're part of your family and you don't want them to look at you differently, you have to do that. And I think that we're busy... Entrepreneurs or business owners just in general are guilty of that a lot. Because they might not be able to know how to turn it off, because they're like, well, I'm doing all this for you. Don't have that mindset. You can accept responsibility and just say, "Hey, I turn it off right now." Because is it going to be me? Is it going to mean more to my kids for me to sit on my computer and work? Or is it going to be more meaningful because he's out of school now, for me to go shoot the basketball with him? Or spend some time with him.

He's drawn something and he wants attention. I have to give it to him. Because at the end of the day, he's only young for so long. And the next thing you know, he's grown up and none of that matters, but who always remembers that type of stuff. Right?

Clint McPherson:
Exactly.

Andrew Lees:
So it's just a good example, to say [crosstalk 00:28:00], and like you said, man, you got to know how to turn it off.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, definitely. My wife supports me tremendously. And so I definitely want to respect that and she understands that I need to work and sometimes weird hours, sometimes weekend, sometimes I'll have to... I'll be up at 10, 11 o'clock at night still doing something, but I try and limit that kind of stuff as much as I can. And if you're purposeful about it, you can make it happen, you can really have a really good balance and it's good for the people around you, people that you love, and also yourself too. I mean, it really when you have a good balance... Like when I'm all in on work or trying to do something with work, at that moment, it might seem like everything's cool but then a few days later you might really feel how much of a toll that took on you to just be so focused on it and not taking a break really can be a problem.

So it's good to balance, good to take a breather and you're in it for the long haul, it's not a sprint. I used to think that I used to pick off, I just powered what if I just worked like a full a solid month and didn't do anything else just lock myself in a room and just try to get all this stuff done as much stuff as I could get done? And it doesn't work like that. You'll get somewhere, something will get done but then guaranteed the next month other business or the month after that your business won't keep going. It's about creating sustainability. And, I think if you're doing it to create some freedom for yourself, then that has to be the goal.

You have to be purposeful about that. So put that hard work in on the front end. But at what point... You have to figure out at what point are you going to realize the benefit and the flexibility of owning your own business.

Andrew Lees:
Yeah, I really think we, as you said, you've thought about that month, if I just did everything, it seems like I'm in that a lot to where my mindset like if I solve this one problem right now, today-

Clint McPherson:
It unlocks the world-

Andrew Lees:
... like it's going to... The key and all the pieces are just going to fall in place. It's I just solved world peace or something. That's not the case. Because you're going to start creating inner turmoil inside, and that inner peace that you might be trying to solve worldwide and that might not be the greatest analogy, but when it looks like it, you're going to start... There are going to be times where you're going to be not at peace with yourself. Because you're again, things, you should have a... Like make a priority, whether it's your family, whatever it is, but you locked yourself in the room where you were like, I have to do this now.

Yeah, I'm all about working the odd hours. My wife understands that right. If I have a customer like, "Hey, my website's down. I got to go fix that." If I can't just say, "Bro see you tomorrow." No, I can't do that-

Clint McPherson:
Can it wait 24 hours?

Andrew Lees:
Can it wait 24 hours for me, man? It's like, I'm going to go fix this and let me go figure out why your website's down. But it's like you got to again be at peace with what you're doing. And I think if you're always continuously because I get a mindset sometimes like I do this right now, it's going to be done. We might be scheduled to go somewhere. [inaudible 00:32:05] and I'm like, "I just need this one more minute and it turns into 30 minutes." You just can't do that. It happens just so quickly because it's like, it's only going to take me one minute, promise.

And then it's like, okay, two hours later and she's over there like, just frustrated because you like, "My dad." It's like, you look up, you're like, " really two hours?" It felt like just one minute really. But again, as I said, man, once you get consumed with that stuff, time flows. I really feel like sometimes that I just booted on my computer for the day. My wife will call, "Coming home." I'm like, "What time is it?" It was 4:15. She's on her way to the house.

Clint McPherson:
It's crazy.

Andrew Lees:
What have I done today? I don't know. Isn't it days like that? It really feels like okay, I send out one email, and what else did I do? But that one email took maybe three hours. Why did it take so long? Because you're trying to pull all this information to provide to the client, but it's like, I could have made it a lot easier, right? I mean, all myself and then could have got a lot more done.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, no, I definitely agree. Yeah, my wife will be like, "So what are you working on now?" You know, it's like, if I told her I was going to take something, I just had to send this quick email, I'll take two minutes and then 20, 30 minutes later, it's like, I'm like, "Oh, shoot," I'm like, five tasks ahead. I did the email and then I did four other things. Sorry. So yeah, we really got to avoid that. And it's funny what you said about the sustainability of I just do this one task, then everything falls into place.

I mean, I kind of think of it like, I'm not a big gym buff, but I like to exercise, I like working out and I think it's a lot like the gym that getting results out of business I think is a lot like the gym, although the gym is way more straightforward. Exactly to go and you do something, you lift or you run and you don't have to really think too hard about it where you have to think a whole lot harder about business. But it's the analogy I think is in to, if I just do all this work real quick, is it going to unlock the keys to everything.

So if you go to the gym for an entire day, you go to the gym for like 10 hours, all your stuff is you're going to have a problem. You're going to get something done, you're going to improve something hopefully a little bit if you don't end up in the hospital. But a couple of days later, a week later, a month later, you're back to square one. It's more important I only go to the gym 15 minutes a day. But I do it every day. That's way more important than trying to jam all this work into a short period of time. So that's important, you definitely have to make sure that it's sustainable that if you're going to... If you can't set aside a ton of time to do something like creating content every day or every week, at least do a little bit so that... At least do enough that you're not going to get so sick of it that you don't want to keep doing it. Because the key to long term success, I really think is doing whatever you can do consistently and keep doing because all that work compounds on it. So-

Andrew Lees:
Consistency is really a key man. That's where like one being consistent on social media, consistent pumping out content. Consistent doing whatever you're doing in working out... Again, there's a lot of people that quit working out because they think they... Because they went to the gym for five days and that's all they did for five days-

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, that's it.

Andrew Lees:
... and yeah, like, look, if you go lift weights, you're not going to see results. You'll look and be like, okay, I might be a little more cut up. You feel swollen. When you take your shirt off, you're like, I'm sore as hell right now, man, like, what am I doing? But eventually, it's your muscles. It's you're trading them over time and it's something you're not used to. And it's about as long as you're consistent with it, man, you'll see results, but it's the people that think they're going to get the results in that first week. As you said, I work out all day for 10 hours, and Dude, I'm going to have a six-pack today. No. As you said, you might be in the hospital, you might... I got a sports hernia or some craziness, something's going to happen. It's not going to feel good.

And there's no six-pack going to go along with it unless you draw it on. So, because the one you weren't consistent, yeah, okay, you were consistent for 10 hours. But that's not consistent for days, that's not consistent for months. That's when you start seeing the results. And I think entrepreneurs or people that want to claim to be entrepreneurs, and they hop around to different things, and they fail a lot of different things. They just don't continue or have a clear path and aren't consistent enough to yield the proper results that they're looking for. They don't have a clear vision of where they're going, or where they're actually steering their ship is like, dude, you got to know why you're doing this. Have a mission. Know what you need to do to get to where you want to get and be consistent is a huge thing, man.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, definitely. You're probably not going to know how to get there right away, but you just have to ask people, you have to do research, you have to start to put a plan together and understand the different things that you need to put in place. And then once... The more you do it, the more you get that understanding. And then you get to the point where you're like, all right, I've done XYZ and I get results from X and Y, but not Z. So you can eliminate that. And you just focus on the things that... You just really focus on the things that get your results, and you just do them over and over and over again, and you scale them and I think that that really helps a lot instead of... And having that focus on the things that work and the things that are probably going to work be the most efficient for you is really critical.

There are so many things out there. There are so many ways to... If you're developing a product, there are a million different ways you could develop one simple product. But you have to pick one, you have to figure out what the market is demanding, and really trying to address that, solve that problem. But it doesn't mean that you're going to... You're not going to create the most perfect solution for that problem that has ever and will ever exist. So you can spin your wheels and waste a whole lot of time trying to figure that out. Or you can solve the problem the best you can and move on. And then the same thing with marketing, you deal a lot more with that and there are so many different ways to do it.

There are so many different ways to get a customer, to get like, let's say you're selling something online, there are so many different ways mechanisms to get traffic with advertising and with content, trying to figure out, trying to get in front of people who are already searching for, they're googling what is an entrepreneur. I didn't look for it but there was an ad somewhere there, I'm sure about, for some something related to entrepreneurship, and there's plenty of content if you look down the page, there's content that people spend a lot of time researching and writing about but anyway, there's so many different ways to get traffic, to get customers but it's so important, again, to focus on the things that are going to get you the best results and not try to do everything all at once.

I mean, that's definitely something that I've learned the hard way along my journey is I've definitely tried to do too much. I've tried to engage with too many social media platforms, and try and write emails and try and do outreach too, and try work with affiliates and try and work with influencers. And like, all this stuff, and it just doesn't... And then you're not really... You reach out to all these people and you get 20 emails back, and you're focused on something else now, and you don't have enough time to really dive in and spend the time to get back to those people.

And so it's just so important to just pick a few things that work really well. Optimize those and then you can always expand, you get a bigger team that can help you out with growing and scaling, and then you had those other things to get another 2% business or 5% percent you get those extra gains here and thereafter you've dialed in the majority of how your business is going to grow.

Andrew Lees:
Yeah, and I think it's important to just look at where you are at in your business. One, set goals, almost like you're doing for your day to day, simple goals too. I mean, obviously, you can write some far fetched stuff out there. Like if you do make $100,000 this year, and you want to make $10 million next year, is that realistic? Maybe not. But you can strive to do that. You can manifest that, you can work your ass off and push to that goal. And then now you went from 100 to half a million.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah.

Andrew Lees:
And now you're on your way to making the 10 million but you're not there. Well, there is something you could strive for, visualizing that's good. But I really think coming down to it, and you said not trying to do too much at once. That really kills you as an entrepreneur and can really slow your progress down to where you're trying to get. It's really honing in and if it's trying to get that increase in business, whether it's that two to five, 10 percent of whatever you're trying to increase it to. You just got to look at it and see if it's realistic and what you are currently doing. Is that really helping you get to where you want to be? Are you doing things like that? Not really... You're focusing on everything, and that's really slowing your growth down. And then once you start realizing things like that, and then it starts clicking. And again, we make mistakes, we will probably do it again, we'll probably try to do too much. And that's-

Clint McPherson:
Definitely.

Andrew Lees:
... just our mindset-

Clint McPherson:
That's part of being an entrepreneur too. I think it's really pushing the envelope and seeing how much you can do and how many different things you can kind of juggle I think that's part of it. I think it's part of it because fundamentally, as an entrepreneur, you are juggling things, no matter what, even if you are really focused on the right things, you're still juggling things that go back to the definition of it, management, you're managing a business. So you're managing the tasks that you have to do, and what your team is doing. Whether your team is employed by you or whether you're working with the outside, really you could consider, your email platform as part of your team. You're paying them for a service, that is part of your team, you have to manage that, you have to... And so, managing those different... Managing everything really becomes you really have to juggle all that.

So, it's in nature I think of every entrepreneur to want to take on one more thing. And then, so yeah, you're right we'll definitely inevitably try and take too much again realize, all right, I can't do that, time kind of take a step back.

Andrew Lees:
But it's also good to look at like, okay, I've been here before. Should I do this again? Because I know the result. I know the end result, I'm going to try to juggle more, and maybe I can take it on, but how much more time is that going to take me to actually do it? Because when you micro... I've micromanaged the past just because of some failures and some stuff that's happened in my business from people I trust, to where they take the... I give them a task and run with it.

And then it's like, okay, you didn't run very far, or you didn't even do what I asked, and so it's like, now I feel I've failed a client and so even though I come and save it, I go in and do the work myself and then completed by the deadline, but at the end of that I feel defeated because I trusted somebody to do something but it's right playing to people's strengths. You hire a team, even you knowing your strengths is very important. Because, look, if you're trying to do too much, and you know you suck it... I'm just doing email marketing out because you said it and it's on my mind. If you suck at email marketing, brother, should you really be doing email marketing? Probably not.

Outside of doing like exchanging emails with clients that are emailing you, you probably don't need to do it. Put somebody that is good at that or can actually visualize and put what you want down because you're like, "Hey, this is what I want to be done. This is what I want to be pushed out." They can take that and run with it. Because of that sort of strength. That's what they do on a daily basis. They manage the outflow, pushing stuff out and managing the stuff that comes in to see if this Something that... Again, you're playing to their strengths. And you're getting away from something that you're weak at because there's a lot of things when I look at it, can I do it? Yes. Do I want to do it? Probably not. Am I strong at doing it? Yes. So let's go ahead, knock it out real quick.

Because I know I'm good at this. If I suck at it, but I know how to do it but it's going to take me 10 times longer to do it, maybe I need to find a team member that likes, "Okay, Susan, you got it. This is what you do. This is what I hired you to do step up. I need you to complete this task." And they deliver man, but because that's their strength. And I see so many entrepreneurs that are bringing in team members that aren't strong at specific things. And they say, "Hey, I need you to do A, B and C." And that person is like, motivated to do it, because they're excited that, "Hey, he brought me in man. I'm in. I'm in this business now. Like he's trusting me cool."

But reality man, they suck at what you just asked them to do. And you even though they suck at it, but do it anyway. And then you complain about the results that you get. It's really trying to figure out and play to your strengths, man.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, I definitely agree with that.

Andrew Lees:
So, man, I think Episode Two that's a wrap.

Clint McPherson:
I think so.

Andrew Lees:
We touched on what we wanted to touch on.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, we defined entrepreneurship and what it means to be an entrepreneur. And we hit on that, we hit on a few tangents, I think, but it's every show we are going to-

Andrew Lees:
That's going to be every show.

Clint McPherson:
... yeah, exactly. Just we'll move where the entrepreneurial spirit leads us. And-

Andrew Lees:
Yeah, man.

Clint McPherson:
... so yeah, that was cool.

Andrew Lees:
So as we progress in this, man, obviously we're going to want people to follow us on Facebook or YouTube channel. That podcast is going to be released. It's rolling, man, and we got some momentum going. I'm excited, brother.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, me too.

Andrew Lees:
I appreciate everybody for tuning in.

Clint McPherson:
Yeah, excellent. Yeah. Thanks, everybody for listening and let us know what you think. We just love to provide as much value as we can in every episode and we're working on a bunch of things to give you even more tangible value down the road, so stay tuned.