Going through the hard seasons AUDIO
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[00:00:00] If your brain is not rested, and this is short-term, rest, like sleep and taking days off and even long-term rest, giving yourselves, giving yourself several days to pull away and let your brain focus on other things. If we can't do that, you will. Not. Only the rules of retail are changing one by one.
[00:00:20] Corporate retailers are closing their doors and some call it the death of retail, but those rules never apply to independent retailers like us. We're riding our own rules. We're here to answer the questions about how to grow your business, stay competitive, and still have a life. I'm Joshua h and this is the Retail Initiative podcast.
[00:00:39] Welcome back to the Retail Initiative Podcast. I am so excited for today's episode and here is why. If you're watching on video, you might see, notice that the scenery behind me is different. In fact, it looks like it used to. Uh, I am back in my office. I have been working out of a co-working space, uh, and today is my first [00:01:00] day back and I can't tell you how excited I am.
[00:01:03] Like, I honestly, I've been thinking about this day for months, so a few months ago. And so I'm gonna bring this around to some business lessons because I think this is going, this should be an encouraging episode. Um, so a few months ago, I, we have found this like itty bitty pinhole leak under our kitchen sink and it had dripped into the walls and gotten under the floors.
[00:01:27] And you know, we have a plumber out one day and the next day half of our kitchen's ripped out. And at that point, like we start the journey and that was in January. I'm recording this at the beginning of June and I've been out of my house since like February, living in my in-laws who are amazing people.
[00:01:46] But it's still living with your in-laws. Right? Uh, and uh, we've been doing all this construction cuz what happens is you rip out half your kitchen cuz you have to. And then it's like, well, that's ripped out, so we might as well remodel. And then while we're doing that, we should [00:02:00] do this. And while we're doing that, we should also do this.
[00:02:03] And here we are months and months later, finally moving back in and hopefully, uh, hopefully can get back to some semblance of being normal again, which beyond excited about. But that's not the point of today's episode. Uh, I've been visiting the house a lot over the last few months, and we've been in the middle of construction and.
[00:02:25] It gets discouraging when you're in the middle of construction. It is the most challenging thing in the world. Like your house is dusty, everything is messy. Uh, it doesn't look quite right and you almost like want to correct your contractor constantly, but to a degree you have to trust the process cuz it's not finished yet.
[00:02:44] And it, it gets discouraging. And, and in the middle of that, you know, here we are, go, we were in May and we're at friends' homes and. I'm looking at what they have and I'm then looking at my situation where I'm living with my in-laws and I don't even really have a home [00:03:00] anymore, and I'm comparing myself.
[00:03:02] I'm looking at their current situation against my current situation as though they're the same. Now, do we ever do this in business? Well, we are in that transition time, that construction time where we are building, maybe we're building to starting our business or maybe. We are taking to the next level.
[00:03:21] And that requires some new infrastructure that requires new strategies. And you could consider that like putting your business under construction. You're remodeling it. And we look at people that are so much further along than us and we compare ourselves against that. And so to go back to talking about my friends' homes, here's what's wild about that is I live in Houston, Texas and most of my friends' homes in my neighborhood flooded during Hurricane Harvey.
[00:03:48] And several years ago, they were in the middle of construction. They had homes just ripped apart due to the hurricane and the flooding that happened. And [00:04:00] what am I doing? I'm comparing myself today against where they are today and not really acknowledging, well, hey, like several years ago, they were in the exact same situation.
[00:04:09] Their homes were du dusty and felt like a mess and never felt like they were gonna get it back and. We have to acknowledge that. And so in business, and I think this is a lot of areas of life, what do we do? How do we treat things? When we are in that season where it's under construction and it's challenging and we don't even see the end in sight and, but we know that there is one, we know it.
[00:04:35] Even if we don't feel it, we know that it's there. Um, if you're in business and you're in that construction phase or that remodeling phase, And I don't mean of your physical building maybe, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about. Uh, if you're in that phase, how do we treat things? And so there are four things that I want to encourage.
[00:04:52] If you're in that and you're tempted to look around and compare yourself against everyone else. Um, so number one, remember your why. [00:05:00] Why are you doing this? Why did you start a business? It, there are things that maybe were secondary goals, like the freedom that comes with it. Um, or maybe it was money, whatever those things might be.
[00:05:14] But what's your deep, your deeper reason for starting what you do? Is it the impact that you could make on your customer? Is it the impact that it can make on your family? Is this a lifelong dream? Write that, write down that. Why. Write down the vision for you for where you're wanting to take it. Because those things, when the, when days are challenging, when seasons are challenging.
[00:05:38] When months don't produce what they think. If we don't remember why we're in it, it is so hard. It is so hard to dig down into an empty bucket and pull out strength. If, if we don't have, Hey, I'm in this for a reason, or a lot of times we have to have like that outside reason [00:06:00] to encourage us to get back in it, put in the work, put in the time, and stay consistent.
[00:06:07] Which without that, why it's so hard. Next, and this is, uh, a bit of a concept from Dan Sullivan. Um, focus on the gain, not the gap in his book, the Gap in the Gain, which is a phenomenal book. Uh, he talks about the, these two ways that we judge ourselves. Um, there is the gap. And then there is the game. Um, the gap is when you look ahead at who you want to be, where you want to be, and you measure yourself against that.
[00:06:38] Here's, here's where I am and here's where I want to be, and look at how different those are. I'm nowhere near where I should be. I'm nowhere near where I want to be, and therefore I'm not blank. And obviously that probably isn't something positive. Instead, what we look at is the gain. We look back at where we were [00:07:00] and we can say like, but look, look how far I've come, look how much further along I am than I was then.
[00:07:08] You know, I, I sometimes don't feel like I'm the business owner that I want to be, but I look back at where I was four years ago, gosh, four years ago, I was the worst boss in the world. Like I could not manage a team to save my life. And here we are now and I have a team with really lure low turnover and a culture that is unbelievable.
[00:07:28] And I couldn't have done that several years ago. And that's something that I have today. And I can, instead of comparing myself against these leaders that I wish I was like, I can compare myself against where I was and recognize that progress. It doesn't mean that I don't want to continue to grow. But it does mean that I can be grateful for how far I have come or the maturity that I have as a business owner.
[00:07:50] I remember how I used to freak out about everything. I literally, I, you name it, I would spazz out all the time and now I have a much more [00:08:00] level head about situations. Things don't keep me up at night like they used to. You know, in the past if I got an email on Friday and it was even slightly negative, like that ruined my weekend.
[00:08:11] And it doesn't mean that I don't take some of those things seriously, but I've learned to say like, Hey look, that just is what it is and my worry about it right now isn't going to make it better and I can focus on my family. Those are areas where I have gained. So for you, what would it look like for you to focus on how far you've come rather than focusing on how much more you have to go.
[00:08:33] Um, and weirdly, when doing that, you'll see that progress becomes easier to make. Progress becomes easier to make. You know, there's a reason why Dave Ramsey, despite how much I honestly can't stand him. That's gonna be, that's the hill I'll die on. I'm just letting you know right now. Um, this, there's a reason why Dave, Dave Ramsey has you pay off a credit card despite, it doesn't matter what the interest rate are or whatever.
[00:08:58] He wants you to start with your smallest one because he wants [00:09:00] that win. It lets you see, again, it lets you see, hey, we, I've accomplished something. And there's a intrinsic motivation when we have that. Anyway, so back to that. Again, don't love Dave Ramsey is what it is. If you do, that's good for you, but, uh, not a fan here.
[00:09:17] Uh, alright, next, rest, rest. This one is hard. When you're in the middle, when you're in the, the, the middle of chaos and your business is, uh, not where you want it to be. Your life's not where you want it to be. A lot of times we just want to grind. We just want to push on and keep going and going and going when what we need to do, what we, what we are supposed to be doing there is letting ourselves rest and recuperate.
[00:09:46] Now the, the thing that you are going to need to bring to your business, What you're gonna need to do in order for your business to succeed is be able to think of strategies, be able to think creatively about what's gonna get to [00:10:00] the next level. And if your brain is not rested, and this is short-term, rest, like sleep and taking days off and even long-term rest, giving yourselves, giving yourself several days to pull away and let your brain focus on other things.
[00:10:15] If we can't do that, you will not only burn out, but you will not be able to come up with what you need to come up with to get out of where you are. It's that fascinating idea that to speed up, you slow down. And a lot of us, we think we can't take a vacation. We're like, I can't look. Everything is gonna fall apart.
[00:10:36] It won't. And I know that seems absolutely crazy. But you know a fascinating thing here, Lin Manuel Miranda who songwriter, he wrote the Hamilton soundtrack, the Moana soundtrack, uh, and Canto so much, and his songs are unbelievable. He came up for the idea for Hamilton while at the pool on vacation. [00:11:00] Our brain does this thing where it's processing and it's working through things behind the scenes.
[00:11:07] While we're resting, this is why you get really good ideas while you're in the shower or while you're walking, is our brain is connecting things when we're not even trying to, and when we give ourself time to rest, it lets us do that. So that's, that's point number three is let yourself rest when you're in the middle of the chaos.
[00:11:26] Slow down and rest. So number one, remember your why. Why are you doing what you're doing? Number two, focus on the gain and how far you've made it, rather than the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Number three, let yourself stop and rest. And my last one is get help. You know, a lot of times we think that we have to just figure everything out on our own, but really what we can do is get help in the areas where we need help.
[00:11:55] Sure, you probably could figure it out, but how long is it gonna take for you to do [00:12:00] that? Are you going to. You know, try this and this and this, and two years later have an answer. When there can be a proven process that works, maybe this is your inventory and you need to connect with like management one and get some of that under control.
[00:12:12] Maybe it's your e-commerce strategy and you need to work with someone like us at Capital Commerce to get a, a proven process in place to grow online. Maybe it's your team management and you need a coach to help you learn and grow, and maybe it's not even coaches. Maybe we just need to read books and take courses and.
[00:12:29] Those kind of things, but ultimately get help at Mo in moving in the direction you want to go in from people who have done that before. So that's my last thing. Uh, I know that this episode's a little over the place, but I hope that you are leaving encouraged if you're in the middle right now. If you're in the middle of building and construction and you're looking at people further along than you and you're wanting to compare yourself, know that you're not alone.
[00:12:56] Know that, uh, everyone has been there. And there [00:13:00] is an end, and you can come out of this with a business that fuels your life in the way that you want it. Uh, and it's not always going to be exactly like it is right now. So I hope this is encouraging for you. I can't wait to see you next time.
