The Undiscussed Keys to Entrepreneurial Success

This is the masterclass in leadership and entrepreneurship mastery you’ve been waiting for! In this episode I’m sharing my most crucial strategies and personal insights that have significantly shaped my journey. I’ve used every one of these to get INCREDIBLE RESULTS over the years, and because so many of you have asked, I’d like to share them with you. This episode is a must-listen for anyone ready to elevate their business and leadership skills to unprecedented heights. Here’s what we’re diving into today: Embracing the Entrepreneurial Mindset: I’ll show you the crucial difference between working on your business and getting caught up working in it. This is key to scaling your growth without losing the essence of what makes your business thrive. Innovative Business Strategies: We're going deep with some lesser-known, powerful strategies for scaling and sustaining your business growth. I’ll share how viewing your business as a comprehensive product can open new doors. Leadership Excellence: Drawing from my own experiences and the impactful books that have shaped my views, I’ll help you enhance your leadership qualities and sharpen your entrepreneurial vision. Cultivating a Robust Business Culture: Learn how to foster an environment that champions innovation, commitment, and continuous improvement, not just among your team but within your overarching business operations. This episode will prepare you to redefine success on your terms, enhance your impact, and drive meaningful progress in every endeavor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  So hey guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now? Maybe stunted in your progress? Well, if you are, I want to recommend a place for you to go called Growth Day. GrowthDay.com/Ed. It is the number one personal development app on the planet. It's got all kinds of high-performance techniques in there. Courses, accountability, journaling, live speeches from some of the top influencers in the world, including me. It's an overall environment to change your life. GrowthDay.com/Ed. I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 p.m.

• 0:43Ed Mylett?

  And my third day, 6:00 p.m. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it waiting weeks on a big bank for capital. Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason. Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/Ed. That's cardiff.co/Ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding.

• 1:28Ed Mylett?

  Cardiff, borrow better.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  This is the Ed Meyer Show.

• 1:39Ed Mylett?

  Welcome back to the show, everybody. So this week, a lot of you have been asking me if I would cover some stuff on business and being a leader in business and some of the things that I've learned over the years in terms of lessons that have helped me grow and scale different businesses. And so I'm going to do that with you this week. Obviously, this could be 100 hours if we wanted it to be. So what I'm going to try to do is cover some things that I think are less covered when the topics of business and leadership come up, just to give you additional things to add to your tool chest as a leader. And so first thing is that I want to talk about a couple of books that I read that really impacted me as an entrepreneur. On my journey, I read a book many, many years ago by an author named Michael Gerber called The E-Myth. And it really made me look at business differently.

• 2:22Ed Mylett?

  It's a really brilliant book about the nature of being an entrepreneur. And in this book, there's many things that I took away, but to this day, I remember him saying, if you're a good entrepreneur, you're going to picture your business as a product actually sitting on a shelf. The actual business is a product. And then you can pull that product off the shelf and you can look at every single element of that business on its own. And he talks in the book about many people suffer from what he calls like an entrepreneurial seizure. He calls it, meaning that there's a bunch of people who have gone into entrepreneurship, who don't know the difference between working on their business and in their business. So I want to start out by talking a little bit about that. This entrepreneurial seizure that I learned about is that like a lot of people have a passion for something. Let's say they're a great baker.

• 3:07Ed Mylett?

  They go, man, I'd love to open up a bakery. And so what you end up having is a baker who's a technician owning a bakery, but they don't know how to run a business. And so they work in their business all the time on the logistics of the baking and putting the product out there. But everything from marketing to scaling to inventory, to taxes, to HR, to, you know, profitability. These are things they don't understand as an entrepreneur. And so they're very much a technician in their business. Technicians have a tendency to have a passion or have focus. Like I watch a lot of people that are in the financial business. They're very technically good at what they're doing in their business. So they work in their business, but they don't have to work on it where they scale and grow a business.

• 3:49Ed Mylett?

  I've watched this with people that own gyms, that they're passionate about fitness. They're passionate about people getting in shape. And so they're great at the technical writing of the nutrition plan and, and having trainers and having the best equipment. So they work in their business very, very well. But they're not so good at working on it from a bigger perspective on growing it and scaling it and getting above it and looking at their business as a product itself, sitting on a shelf that needs everything any other product would need. If you have a product, a normal product, you market, right? You're looking at all of it. You're looking at its, its cost, you're looking at its scalability, you're looking at its value, you're looking at its, the difference that it makes. You're looking at every element of how it feels when someone's consuming it, everything about it. Yet most people don't look at their businesses this way.

• 4:34Ed Mylett?

  So there's two mistakes entrepreneurs make. There's the entrepreneur who's the technician. In my opinion, when I've watched this over the years, they're very technically savvy at whatever their career is, whether that be real estate, or like I said, nutrition, or they've got a chain of dry cleaners, or they're a baker. They own restaurant. They're very good technically at that part of the business, but they don't work on their business. So they work in it too much. Then there's the reverse. I watch a lot of entrepreneurs who no longer really work in their business. I've made this mistake where they only work on it. They're only thinking, they're only strategizing, but they don't work in it enough to know what the market requires, to know what the problems are that their employees are experiencing,

• 5:14Ed Mylett?

  to know what the client or the consumer really wants to have in their life. And so they no longer work in it. They don't get their hands dirty enough. It's one of the mistakes that where many entrepreneurs begin to lose their businesses. They start out working in it. And then at some point, they know, man, I gotta begin to work on it, or it's not going to grow. And then what happens is they begin to work on it only, and they take the best player off the bench. Oftentimes, the best salesperson, the best marketer, the best vision caster is you. Yet because you think you need to work on it now, you take yourself completely out of it, and now all you do is work on your business. I've found most of the great entrepreneurs, depending on the stage of their business, have learned to nuance part of the time working on it and other times working in it.

• 5:58Ed Mylett?

  I've found that when I'm working in my businesses, I'm much more effective at working on it and knowing what I can do to grow it and scale it. But when I lose the ability to work in it, and I've made this mistake, I'm not as savvy at knowing what will grow it, what will move it. And so you gotta ask yourself this, and also stage of business. Some of you keep hearing all the time, you gotta work on your business, you gotta be a thinker, but not in the beginning stage. In the beginning stages of a business, you're mainly working in it. This requires your grit, your grind, your marketing, your sales, your everything. And so really businesses becomes about learning the transitions and the ratios of working on it and working in it.

• 6:39Ed Mylett?

  And obviously, as a company gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the leader of that company will be working on it more and more and in it less and less. But I still believe the great CEOs, the great leaders that I know, still walk the floor, still go with employees, still go on ride along, still want to know what's going on. So they're in touch with the current marketplace in order to know how to work on it. And so I just want you to begin to look at yourself as an entrepreneur and ask yourself today, am I working on my business enough? Or am I only working in it where I can't see the forest for the trees? I basically, I'm basically in it in the grind, but I don't have a real marketing plan. I don't have a scaling plan. I don't have a growth strategy. I'm not doing the things and pushing the levers that'll make this thing bigger. That's one type of entrepreneur.

• 7:24Ed Mylett?

  The other one is saying, no, I'm the reverse. I've got so much working on this thing. I'm so much of a thinker. I have so many meetings. I'm not in the day to day grind like I need to be, and I need to be working in my business more often. This ratio, this nuance, this rhythm, I believe is one of the biggest keys not discussed anymore in business. That will be a telltale sign as to how you grow or if you grow in your business. The best entrepreneurs know how much time to be on it and how much time to be in it. And they do, they are not delusional one way or the other. They're honest. They go, I am just in it all the time, grind, grind, grind. I don't ever look up. I don't have a plan. I don't have a 300,000 foot perspective. I don't know where I'm taking this thing.

• 8:09Ed Mylett?

  I, I'm just going to get around to that. That's a problem. The other problem is the one who doesn't do that at all anymore though. And that's a lot of people because they, they don't really enjoy being in the grind of their business any longer. And so they would prefer to be just working on it all the time and get away from what is the hard work, the real work in life. And so begin to nuance that based on the stage of your business.

• 8:34Ed Mylett?

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• 9:17Ed Mylett?

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• 10:01Ed Mylett?

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• 10:34Speaker 02

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 10:38Ed Mylett?

  The next thing that I want to talk about is you being focused on the experience you're creating for your customers and your employees or your, let's say, independent contractors, depending on your business. What gets people coming back, what gets people giving you referrals without you having to ask for them is how they felt when they did business with you. So step back today and ask yourself, what's the experience you're creating for your customer or your client? Not just whether, not just whether the product benefits them. What was the experiencing to getting them there? Were they, did they feel grinded on? Did they feel pushed too much? Did they feel taken advantage of? Did they feel too pressured? Right? Did they not enjoy the process?

• 11:19Ed Mylett?

  You have to look at everything from how they interact with your team to post-sale experience, to during the transaction. Every element is experience generated as an entrepreneur. And I, I think one of the things that's lost nowadays is, you know, how many sales did you get? How much marketing did you do? What was the profitability? Does the product help people? That's all great. But the greatest companies give you the best experiences. The best restaurants you've ever been to, it's an experience, right? Dealing with even your phone, like what's the experience of using the phone? The experience of buying the phone? Every element of every business, when you walk into a gym, what's the experience like when you walk in? You know, I've been to gyms where I walk in and the person who greets you in the front, I can tell is well-trained. "Good morning, Mr. Mylett.

• 12:04Ed Mylett?

  It's great to have you here. Have a great workout today. How are you?" I've also walked in where they're like on their computer, "Hey, good, just clicking right there." And immediately you're disconnected. The experience of being in the gym where, you know, what's the music they play in there? How well, how kept is the gym? Are the weights re-racked? All these different things are part of the experience of being in any business. Yet, most entrepreneurs, the busier and busier they get, they become less and less connected to the experience. The experience is what gets you referrals. The experience is what gets you more clients. The experience is what you, what you get in terms of repeatability. If a client can renew with you, if you have that type of a business, word of mouth. And then also the experience of working for you. Is it joyful? Is it fun? Is it exciting? Is it productive? Is it growth oriented?

• 12:49Ed Mylett?

  Do they feel like they're contributing? Do they feel a sense of certainty? Yet have variety in their business? Do they get recognition? Are they good at, are you good at recognition? Which I'll talk about in a little bit. So these are all elements, I think, that are under discussed, which is why I'm throwing them out at you today. Cause a lot of you that listen today are, are entrepreneurs, are entrepreneurs at least, and/or want to be one. If you're not one and you'd like the lessons of doing it. The next thing is, another book that I read was called Selling the Dream, many, many years ago, written by Guy Kawasaki. And Kawasaki was basically, as I get it, kinda like the marketing guy for Apple, for Macintosh back in the day. And what I learned from that book was that although the entrepreneur needs to learn how

• 13:32Ed Mylett?

  to be in their business and on it, they need to learn how to create the experience. The next level, I believe that's under discussed, is their ability to cast a vision, is to sell the dream. And he talks a lot about how Steve Jobs and after that was so great at selling the dream and casting the vision. And it's something that I took very seriously. I had to look at myself and say, how good am I at selling the dream? Remember this, as a leader of a company, of a business, whatever it might be, a real estate office, a gym, whatever it may be, you need to be able to sell a big enough vision and dream that the dreams of everybody who works with you, they can see themselves fitting inside that dream, or their dreams coming true inside the dream you're selling. Okay? And it's gotta be a real dream.

• 14:14Ed Mylett?

  And so, the best leaders are great dream sellers. And one of the things they're reminded of, of repeating that dream over and over again, and also that they sell it in such a way that the people that work with them can see their dreams fitting inside the one they're selling and marketing. Now, by the way, it's gotta be a real dream. Also, one thing as a leader, write this down, it needs to be repeated more often than you think. You almost have to get almost tired of saying it yourself and thinking you're saying it too much. Because business is not about saying, you know, new things to old people. It's about saying old things to new people. You've gotta be really good at repeating the vision, repeating the dream.

• 14:55Ed Mylett?

  The more something is repeated, and by the way, we'll talk about in a minute, other things you have to do, the more it's repeated, the more it's likely to happen. And I think entrepreneurs get what I call like a leadership fatigue of just repeating the vision, repeating the dream, thinking everyone's already got it already. No, everybody doesn't have it already. And oftentimes, they need re-reminding, and oftentimes, you need re-reminding. So, that's, that's selling the dream. And I want you to write this down. Number one thing you gotta do when you sell the dream, and I've made this mistake, you need to back it up with your personal example. You validate the dream by showing up and working hard. And maybe that's in the business and maybe it's on the business. But I have to tell you that if you set the example, and I've done a great job of this in my career.

• 15:40Ed Mylett?

  And there's other times candidly where I haven't, where I've just gotten so busy or have so many other things going on. That my own example suffered and then the dream isn't as valid. It's not, it's not as real for everybody around you. But if they see you showing up early, leaving late, doing the things that leaders do. That example can scream more loudly than even the repeating of the vision. Like I said, there's stages of my career. I've been tremendous at it. And in self-reflection, there's been other times in my career. I was spread too thin or not focused enough. And I wish I had been. And that's why I'm sharing this with you. So being an example of selling the dream is important.

• 16:20Ed Mylett?

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• 17:05Ed Mylett?

  Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com/ed for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q U I N C E dot com slash ed. Second thing is this. In addition to selling the dream, I think you need to consider what are you also against? Or do you have an enemy? Or is there something that you're trying to eradicate? So I would write down against or enemy or eradication. I think great businesses have a big dream they're trying to create. And they also have something, maybe they stand against. That they want to fix or correct an injustice, have something that you also can say,

• 17:49Ed Mylett?

  and this is what we're not, or this is what we're gonna fix, or this is the challenge. So, you know, oftentimes, great businesses have this big vision, and they're also like, and we're going to eradicate this problem. This is a challenge. This is what people need. There's this huge need in the market. And so, what are you against? If you could find something you're against, or you stand against, or you want to fix, or you want to improve, or an enemy even, in business, these are things that help solidify your business that's not talked about enough. The third thing is cause. What cause are you after? What's your crusade? What's your mission? Mission-driven, cause-oriented leaders who sell big dreams, man, that also have something they're against.

• 18:31Ed Mylett?

  That cause is something so many people in their life have a huge need for contribution. They want to be a part of something bigger than themselves, particularly young people in our country right now. All the data tells us that young people right now would rather make less money and be a part of something they think is making a difference in the world than ever before. But I can tell you, as a guy who's not a young person, that I think most human beings are wired that way. Now, let's step back for a second. You've got this business where you're working on it the right amount and in it. You've found that example. You're selling a big dream that you're repeating, that the dreams of everybody can fit inside, right? You've got that part going for you. You solidify it with an example. You're standing against something or something you want to fix, an injustice.

• 19:15Ed Mylett?

  Now you've got a cause and a crusade and a mission. Man, you've got something special now. You're starting to put together a business. And by the way, as you're listening to this or watching it today, maybe you're checking most of these boxes, but you're missing one. Then use the things I'm covering. They go, that's the ones for me. Or maybe it's all of it. But the reason I'm throwing out these things, I'm gonna throw a few more out at you, is I want you to go, that's the one we're missing, or that's where we're a little bit off, or that's the thing I need to shift and change, or that's the one I gotta emphasize more right now. Business is like, you know, it's almost like spinning tops. You sometimes, one of them getting a little bit wobbly, you gotta go spin that one. You know those tops you see? So sometimes you're like, man, we're doing a great job of selling the dream, but man, it's been a long Long time since we've really talked about our cause and our mission.

• 19:56Ed Mylett?

  Or you know what, we're really mission driven right now, but we haven't talked enough about what we're trying to eradicate or fix. Or I'm spending way too much time working in it. I gotta start working on it more often. Or maybe it's the reverse. Maybe right now you're like, man, I am so working at 30,000 feet. I need to get back to the grindstone and do more selling and marketing myself. So, so cause is the next one. After that, great leaders do what I'm gonna give you next. They transfer skill. They're teachers. Great leaders are not just motivators or inspirers. They're teachers, and if they can't be, they put people in place who can teach the skills required. It's one thing to be good at something. It's another thing to transfer that skill well to people. And just being good at something does not make you a great teacher.

• 20:40Ed Mylett?

  In fact, like in baseball, for example. Most of the great coaches weren't great players. They were okay players. Some didn't even play at all. And reason is, is that a lot of times a really great player can't relate to someone who doesn't have their talent or drive or ambition. And they're not great at transferring the skill because they did things so naturally. And so a lot of times, the way you're doing it isn't duplicatable, isn't transferable to other people, whatever that is in business. And so make sure that you're transferring skills. Great leaders transfer skill. They teach, they equip people is what John Maxwell calls it, equipping people.

• 21:23Ed Mylett?

  And then the last thing I want you to consider today is recognition. I believe great leaders are exceptional at recognizing people. People who run great companies are exceptional at recognition. Recognizing their clients, if there's such a way to do that, and giving them acknowledgement and praise. But especially recognizing the people that work with them every single day. They find reasons to recognize. I think they create two types of awards. Spontaneous awards that are just based on values and delivering on the company's core values and standards. And then sometimes what I call like historic awards, like every year, you know, there's going to give away an MVP award or a most supportive person every year.

• 22:05Ed Mylett?

  But what they're doing is they're looking for ways to recognize people. I'm telling you that we're a world stripped of recognition, that if you begin to look at everybody that you meet. I learned this very young in business. It says they've got a flashing sign on them that says, make me feel good, make me feel special. Tell me how great I am today. And in my case, I would say to you and say it with certainty. Say it with truth, say it with passion. That you got to get better at recognizing people publicly and privately. The best recognition is not just in public. It can also be done one-on-one where someone comes in and say, listen, just sit down for a second. I haven't told you enough lately how much I appreciate you, how grateful we are to have you here, how amazing you are.

• 22:48Ed Mylett?

  I have to tell you, recognizing people is a trait of all the best leaders that I've ever worked with in my career. If you made me pick the five best leaders that I've ever worked with, I could tell you that I would probably pick them based on their ability to sell the dream, their unrelenting example, their incredible ability to express our cause and what we're standing against. They were really great at teaching me something. But man, probably above everything, they made me feel a certain way about myself, the work I was doing and that I mattered. And so take a look at how you recognize people. Have traditional historic type awards and have spontaneous stuff. Have things people have to earn and things they didn't have to earn at all, just for who they are.

• 23:31Ed Mylett?

  And if you get, become a great master recognizer of people. And you do the other things I've discussed today. I think you're a better business leader than before this podcast. And so the reason I wanted to teach these things to you today and bring them up is they're not things discussed often enough, right? And so if we go all the way back to the beginning, by the way, if you want to go get the E-Myth, I think it's a great read. If you want to go read Selling the Dream, I think it's a great read. If you want to read The Power of One More, where I talk about some of these things in this book, but today was really stuff that's even not in the book. I recommend it, my book, The Power of One More. And so be great about selling the dream, be great about working on your business and not in it. Do an unbelievable job of focus on the experiencing you're creating for the people that work with you and your customers and clients.

• 24:15Ed Mylett?

  Sell that dream big enough that everybody's dreams can fit in it. Make sure you're against something or you're standing for something or want to eradicate something, have an enemy. Focus on your cause, set a great example, transfer skill and recognize people. And I think you'll have some sort of upgrade into the way that you lead. I hope today helped you, I went through a bunch really, really, really, really quickly. Because I feel so strongly about this and I like to keep these episodes sort of tight and concise and also I wanted to cover things that aren't covered all the time. Leadership, being an entrepreneur, there's hundreds of things that we can cover. This is a very short list of just things that I've found lately as I see content and read books just aren't discussed very much anymore.

• 24:59Ed Mylett?

  The E-Myth is a very old book, Selling the Dream is a very old book. And the things that I'm talking about today are tried and true principles and the applications can be done different in modern times. So, all right, I gave you my best stuff for today on leadership and entrepreneurship because you asked for it. And you said, cover stuff that's not covered a lot. So I hope I accomplished that today. Hope I helped, that's what I'm here to do. God bless you. Max out.