3 false ideas most businesses believe in and how it makes their life miserable.
Author: Mayur Bardolia
Have you heard this before?
You need to hustle and grind so that you can grow 10X. Then you hire people so that you can even grow more. It sounds good. But it’s not at all true. It’s a belief thrown at you by people on how you should run your business.
Just think, “Did you lovingly start your business to work endlessly?
Do you work harder to get more free time for yourself? And even if you have more time, you still want to work harder to find more extra time. But does it ever stop?”
In this episode, Mayur will share some false beliefs you should not believe in
Belief 1. You have to grow exponentially
Belief 2. You don’t need to work. You hire the team and your team will work for you.
Belief 3. You can’t relax and enjoy it. You have to hustle and grind
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If you want to book your lunch or dinner at a restaurant, you just call them or just book from the internet.
But it’s not easy for a few restaurants. There is a restaurant who is known for ‘One of the hardest reservations to get in’. The restaurant is called ‘Sukiyabashi Jiro’. It’s a three-Michelin-star restaurant next to the entrance to the Ginza metro station, in the basement of a business building in Tokyo. A meal there, which consists of twenty pieces of sushi served one at a time. It costs thirty thousand Japanese yen that’s equal to about three hundred and seventy dollars.
It takes about fifteen or twenty minutes to consume.
There are only ten seats, there is a set menu (no appetizers or modifications), and nothing else on the menu. Some people visit Japan only for dining at Sukiyabashi Jiro from overseas, but it is fully booked up months in advance as its website says. There are about 400–500 people on its waiting list at all times while only 10 seats in the restaurant. So, it never accepts a booking by calling and through its website.
The question of what makes this an average looking restaurant in the basement so great?
It’s owned and run by Jiro Ono. He was born in 1925, left home at the age of nine, and has been making sushi ever since. He goes to work every day by getting on the train from the same position, he always tastes his food as he makes it, and he dislikes holidays. Jiro is described as a shokunin—a person who embodies the artisan spirit of the relentless pursuit of perfection through his craft. He loves doing what he does but not for the sake of doing. He believes in delivering consistent and perfect sushi for years.
Though Japan has declared him a national treasure, he still says, at the age of ninety-five, “All I want to do is make better sushi.”
I believe in the same way. I want to just make my things better. This is not only about me. It’s for all of us. We are not looking for some magic tricks of 10X our income or having a mansion. To me and to all of us, that’s just a hype. We all want to do our work better just like Jiro Ono says, “All I want to do is make better sushi”. All the things that we are told about getting super-rich and famous, they all sound good but do we really find them meaningful.
All those famous sportspersons, filmstars and even business people, they all enjoyed doing their work.
Tom Cruise doesn’t work day in and day out to get money, instead, he loves playing better roles. Christiano Ronaldo doesn’t work hard to get money, instead, he enjoys playing football better than most footballers. Roger Federer is not looking for 10X his grand slams. He loves playing tennis and he wins grand slams as a bi-product of his work.
One of the most famous music artist called, Jonn Lennon said, “Work is life, and without it, there’s only uncertainty and unhappiness.”
It’s good to have money but it’s also great to have fun in the process of making money. In this podcast, we will talk about the lies and false beliefs people have about the business. It’s important to tell because many people around are telling us to 10X our income or so.
So, why are we being told to hustle and grind to get an extra 100 customers, get 8 figures income or big mansion on a seaside?
I again say it’s good to have money but there are some false beliefs that have put many business owners into some big life and business problems. So, What are those 3 beliefs that are wrong to follow?
Belief 1. You have to grow exponentially
Belief 2. You don’t need to work. You hire the team and your team will work for you.
Belief 3. You can’t relax and enjoy it. You have to hustle and grind.
Let’s talk about the first one, ‘You have to grow exponentially.
In the year 2015, I was asked to deliver a 2 days workshop on ‘Excellence in Business’ in London, UK.
There was a guy called, James Malone. He is a graphic designer. During our conversation over lunch, he said something about the way he works and lives. He works only 5 hours a day but he makes 4 times more money than his competitors. Someone argued with him that James should work for 9-12 hours a day so that he can make more money.
He denied.
He said, “I lovingly started the business to have more time to do the things I wanted to do and spend more time with my family. I never wanted to run the business to work endlessly.” It’s not the story of James only. Perhaps, all of us started the business with the same idea. We didn’t want to spend hours at the workplace working for someone else but we wanted to have more time, peace and joy for ourselves.
Then some people came in your life and said, “Hey, double your income, quadruple your income” and people started believing in them.
Of course, those things do happen but do you want to sacrifice your health, family and even personal life? We were not born to work endlessly. We are not biologically programmed to hustle for 24 hours. You don’t have to work 5 times more. Instead, you can grow slowly and still enjoy your life. Nothing builds up overnight.
We need to enjoy the process called the work.
The work that we do in business should give us more joy and satisfaction. That’s exactly what we are looking for in our business, aren’t we? As an example, we earlier talked about Jiro who runs one of the most expensive sushi restaurants in the world. He didn’t want to work endlessly. Instead, he is earning money as a by-product of his love for his work. The fame, exponential growth and a lot of money should not be the measure of the achievement. Those things matter but not more than the quality of our life and our business.
If you are competing with the big giants like Facebook, Microsoft and Honda, you are doing it all wrong.
Why? Because you don’t know their purpose. Their benchmark of success may not be the same benchmark of success of yours. If you are enjoying the work that you do, the family that you spend time with and enjoy your life, then it’s your success. For Tom Cruise, Christiano Ronaldo or Roger Federer, the money and fame don’t matter much for them. Our work in the business should matter more than anything else. As Jonn Lennon said, “Work is life, and without it, there’s only uncertainty and unhappiness.” That takes us to the second wrong belief.
You don’t need to work. You hire the team and your team will work for you.
In the year 2011, my friend, Rajat, started his IT company. He was good at website development. His was obsessed with his work. He could create beautiful and high-converting websites. He was doing everything on his own for the first 1 year. Still, he had a good number of clients in the first year of his business. He then hired another employee to assist him. He made good progress.
Then someone asked him to stop working and hire more people in his team.
He added 5 people within a month because he had a good amount of reserved cash. He got free from his work. Sounds like a good thing but things started going in the wrong way. He didn’t expect the disasters. His clients started complaining about the quality of work. His employees were doing things that were different than the core value of Rajat. His overhead cost started increasing exponentially but the number of orders was not. His employees were not staying for more than 2-3 months.
Within two years, he lost all of his savings and was struggling to survive. What went wrong?
What made his flourishing business turned into a nightmare? Many times, we have heard that entrepreneurs don’t work but hire people to work for them. It’s not 100% true. If you have managed the team, you know that managing people is not as easy as switching the lights ON and OFF. The people come to your life as a talent but also brings a lot of problems that increase overall pain and frustration. Now, I am not saying that you have to do all the work for hours and hours. As we discussed in the first point, we don’t have to go for double or triple our income or customers.
You don’t necessarily have to follow if someone has shouted at us from the stage or a video to grow exponentially.
If your employees have different values, philosophy and work ethics than you, then your company will not go in one direction. They will drive your business in the direction that they want to drive to. I have seen many businesses doing really well with the team of fewer than 5 people. Sometimes, a single business owner can run a business successfully with more time and fun than a business owner with a team of 50-500 people.
If you want to know how, I highly recommend you to read the book by Paul Jarvis. It’s called, ‘Company of one: Why staying small is the next big thing for business’.
I highly recommend that. As a business owner, you can hire the team to support you and help you to fulfil the gap you can’t fulfil but you should know the entire business system inside out. You just don’t delegate the task. You should also prepare them to deliver the customer service, the quality of delivery, the standard of your product and the strong work-ethic exactly how you want them to follow. If you don’t do these right, you won’t enjoy doing the business. You will get more tired and lose the joy of doing the work. That takes us to the third belief.
You can’t relax and enjoy. You have to hustle and grind.
In the last 5-10 years, many people have come on social media and youtube. The internet has given a platform to hundreds of people to share their voice. It’s a good thing and it has helped many people to learn things they could never learn. But things started going ugly when some people started shouting as a motivational speaker that you have to hustle and grind. If you are sleeping, you are wasting your time. If you are relaxing, you are going to be poor. You have to work twice as much you are currently working.
I don’t believe in that. It ends up nowhere.
It’s one thing to work for a living and it’s whole another thing to live to work. Biologically, we are not programmed to work for longer hours without sleep. We will talk about it in a different podcast episode. We can’t generate more ideas if you don’t take a break. The break can be for hours, days and sometimes weeks. We don’t have an unlimited source of energy within us. Our body and mind can not perform consistently for hours delivering high-quality work.
As a result of lack of sleep and free time, people become physically weak and mentally ill.
To do the work that you don’t enjoy doing is one thing and to do the things that you love to do is another thing. I work for long hours not because I have to. But because I enjoy doing my work. I also take a break when I feel so without any regret of losing time. In fact, I become more creative and energetic after taking a break.
Most people spend hours doing the things they hate to do.
As a result, they become less creative and less productive (because more number of hours doesn’t mean more work done). It’s about fooling ourselves. When you take a break, you significantly become more productive and creative. So, yes, don’t believe everything that the famous guru say on Facebook, Instagram or youtube just because they said it. See things from a different perspective. If you follow the herd, you become the herd. This takes us to the end of the podcast.
Let’s summarise what we have covered.
We discussed 3 things.
First wrong belief most businesses have is “You have to grow exponentially”.
We talked about the example of a participant at one of my workshops in London called James. What he shared was profound. He said, “I lovingly started the business to have more time to do the things I wanted to do and spend more time with my family. I never wanted to run the business to work endlessly.” We started the business with the same idea. We didn’t want to spend hours at the workplace working for someone else but we wanted to have more time, peace and joy for ourselves.
We were not born to work endlessly.
We are not biologically programmed to hustle for 24 hours. You don’t have to work 5 times more. Instead, you can grow slowly and still enjoy your life. Nothing builds up overnight. We need to enjoy the process called the work. The work that we do in business should give us more joy and satisfaction. That’s exactly what we are looking for in our business, aren’t we?
As Jonn Lennon said, “Work is life, and without it, there’s only uncertainty and unhappiness.”
Then we talked about the second wrong belief. You don’t need to work. You hire the team and your team will work for you. It’s not 100% true. If you have managed the team, you know that managing people is not as easy as switching the lights ON and OFF. The people come to your life as a talent but also brings a lot of problems that increase overall pain and frustration.
As we discussed in the first point, we don’t have to go for double or triple our income or customers.
I am not saying that you have to do all the work for hours and hours. But, If your employees have different values, philosophy and work ethics than you, then your company will not go in one direction. They will drive your business in the direction that they want to drive to.
To understand this better, You should read the book ‘Company of one: Why staying small is the next big thing for business’ by Paul Jarvis.
As a business owner, you can hire the team to support you and help you to fulfil the gap you can’t fulfil but you should know the entire business system inside out. You just don’t delegate the task. You should also prepare them to deliver the customer service, the quality of delivery, the standard of your product and the strong work-ethic exactly how you want them to follow.
Lastly, we talked about the third belief. You can’t relax and enjoy. You have to hustle and grind.
It’s one thing to work for a living and it’s whole another thing to live to work. Our body and mind can not perform consistently for hours delivering high-quality work. As a result of lack of sleep and free time, people become physically weak and mentally ill.
To do the work that you don’t enjoy doing is one thing and to do the things that you love to do is another thing.
When you take a break, you significantly become more productive and creative. Don’t believe everything that the famous guru say on Facebook, Instagram or youtube just because they said it. See things from a different perspective. If you follow the herd, you become the herd.
So, what’s the one thing you can do from today?
What can you love doing so well that people will pay you to do that? Talk to people around you and ask them what problems can you solve really well? What are you skilled at? Ask for their feedback, not appreciation. Yes, there is a difference between feedback and appreciation. Get the feedback and improve. Enjoy the process of improvement in work.
As one of the best sushi chef, Jiro, said, “All I want to do is make better sushi.” Be better at what you do. Produce better things.
Next: You should not pay complete attention to your business for success?
Find out, Why always focusing on success can make you unsuccessful?
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