It's easy to spend thirty years of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, scarcity and abundance, always reacting to the good or bad times that seem to be happening to us, not because of us. Because we feel dragged along by our business, we can't wait to sell it some fool who will do it all over again for another thirty years. Is it any wonder we're tired?
This podcast shares examples of people who learned how to be proactive about the right things, ignore others, make decisions based on the long-term gain, and get off the business treadmill. It's the difference between laying bricks, making a wall, or building a cathedral. Which one are you doing? Let's get off the Roller Coaster Treadmill of Business, and find Freedom IN our business, not FROM it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:05):
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Hi, this is Chuck Blakeman and welcome back
to the Get Off The Treadmill podcast.
Today we're going to talk about the rollercoaster
treadmill of business, what 30 years of business
usually looks like and how to get a
different result.
(00:46):
This illustration, the rollercoaster treadmill illustration shows 30
years of business in a wavy line.
And it's one of my favorite business illustrations
because even I can draw it.
I just fell into it one day a
few years ago in a discussion group with
business owners around why business seems so cyclical.
Responding to questions in that workshop, this illustration
emerged.
It was a simple line drawing, but as
(01:06):
with so many things, the simplest things are
usually the most profound.
So let's jump in.
First, let's look at what 30 years of
business sadly looks like most of the time.
If you're listening and not watching the video,
it's a simple illustration to explain.
It's just a wavy line, kind of like
a sine wave from left to right with
regular peaks and valleys.
It's a lousy rollercoaster because it repeats the
(01:27):
same peaks and valleys over and over without
much variation.
And for our purposes, we're going to say
that this wavy line represents 30 years of
doing business.
In this illustration, the peaks and valleys aren't
good or bad.
They simply represent too much of something or
too little of something.
So the rollercoaster treadmill can be read a
dozen ways.
The first value could be that you have
no clients, so you crank it up.
(01:48):
And the first peak after that might be
that you oversold your capacity right out of
the gate.
And all of a sudden, you have too
many clients.
Then the value beside that is that you
don't have enough production capacity for all the
new clients.
So you ramp that up.
And the next peak is that you have
too much production capacity, either too many staff
or too much machinery.
And you overcorrect again, so you're back to
not having enough production capacity.
(02:09):
And then you crank it all up and
it's working great.
And now you have too much money and
the taxman wants to take it all from
you.
And to solve that, you buy too much
inventory or you buy a building to get
rid of the cash.
But clients aren't paying on time and you
don't have enough cash on hand to get
through the next payroll.
So you go get a loan and now
you have too much debt.
And then a recession hits and you don't
have enough clients again.
So you ramp up sales and overshoot your
(02:30):
capacity again.
So you shut a lot of it down
and then the economy comes roaring back and
you're caught flat footed and don't have enough
production capacity again.
And at the end of 30 years, you're
literally sick and literally tired and you want
to sell it all and get the heck
out.
But of course, you don't have enough profits.
There's another valley.
So you don't take salary or distributions for
(02:51):
a year so that the business looks like
it's worth more.
So you can sell this job to some
fool who will ride the same dumb roller
coaster for another 30 years.
Welcome to business.
Isn't this fun?
And by the way, who made this happen?
Who made these rules?
I did.
I designed a world for myself that required
that I live reactively for 30 years by
(03:12):
just working really hard and hoping something good
would happen, but never really believing I could
make it happen.
Looking at the roller coaster treadmill, is it
any wonder we're tired?
Well, business doesn't actually have to be tiring.
I've said this before.
It can be fun, rewarding, fulfilling, meaningful and
enjoyable.
We don't have to live reactively to the
(03:33):
roller coaster treadmill our whole business lives.
Even though this is what most businesses experience,
it doesn't have to look like this.
We can do 30 years of business very
differently and get off this treadmill early on,
even in our 30s or 40s or a
few years from whenever you first hear this
once and for all.
Let's get off that treadmill.
Let's figure it out.
Let's look at the second wavy line illustration
(03:54):
that shows what business could look like for
30 years.
A roller coaster always ends up at the
same altitude it started.
But this second illustration isn't a roller coaster
treadmill going up and down for 30 years
and ending up just as busy as you
were the day you started your business.
This illustration is still a wavy line because
nothing in life is a straight line, but
(04:14):
it is radically different in one way.
It goes up gradually and relentlessly over time
and ends up in a very different place,
a much better place 30 years from now
and even five years from now.
And the overriding theme of this second illustration
is that life and business are not happening
to the person experiencing this wavy line because
that owner is proactively taking charge.
(04:35):
We're on the roller coaster treadmill for one
simple reason.
We are reacting to the world around us
instead of deciding what we want and proactively
going after it.
The first illustration has the world around us
in charge, but the second illustration says I'm
in charge.
I know what I want and I am
proactively pursuing that until I get it.
The world around me will not dictate the
terms.
I am not a hostage to my business
(04:56):
or a victim waiting for the world to
knock me down again.
We have a training facility in Denver that
seats about 75 people and splashed across the
top of the front above a row of
giant whiteboards in 18 inch letters is the
saying, make your own business rules.
Why?
Simple, because she or he who makes the
rules wins.
(05:16):
If I'm letting the world around me make
the rules, who do you think wins the
world around me?
If I'm making my own rules, who do
you think wins?
I do.
We need to take charge of our business
lives, make our own business rules and win
at the biggest game in business, creating freedom
in our business.
So that I can make more money in
less time, get off the treadmill and get
(05:36):
back to the passion that brought me into
business in the first place.
I need to take charge.
Great, fine, wonderful.
But how do you take charge when it's
so average to just react?
The rollercoaster treadmill way of doing business is
definitely average, meaning that it seems like just
about everybody is doing it.
But I would suggest while it may be
average, it's not normal for us to live
(05:57):
reactively to the world around us.
Let's not be average.
Let's be normal.
And normal means being proactive and taking charge
of your life and your business.
And when we do, 30 years of business
looks very different.
The next thing we'll talk about is the
most important thing to understand for both the
first and second illustrations.
Let's overlay the two graphs to show how
(06:17):
two business owners can start out the same
and end up in very different places.
These two illustrations are like a fork in
the road.
The first graph shows someone who's making most
of the decisions reactively as a victim.
And the most important thing to see here,
they are making decisions reactively based on short
term gain, always reacting to what we call
the tyranny of the urgent.
(06:39):
We're all still hunting mastodons in our head
and always default to what might keep us
alive one more day.
The second graph shows someone who's making decisions
based on the long term, on what will
be best for them and their businesses years
from now, even if it hurts right now.
They are taking charge and making proactive long
term decisions.
As a result, they are a thriving victor,
(07:00):
not a surviving victim.
And most importantly, they are making their decisions
based on what is best for them in
the long term.
In my first business, I was doing all
the work myself, and that seemed to make
sense, at least in the short term.
I didn't have to hire anybody, didn't train
anybody, didn't have to talk to anybody, didn't
have to deal with conflict, mess around with
(07:20):
building systems or processes or lay people off.
But that only worked in the short term.
I couldn't take a day off without losing
money and vacation was something I went on
with my family while they had fun and
I continued to work and I could only
make so much money because I only had
one hundred and sixty eight hours a week
and I'd use that all up dealing with
the tyranny of the urgent.
(07:41):
I was making all my decisions in the
short term by only answering the question, how
do I pay my bills this month?
I needed to get to where I could
ask, how do I build a business that
pays the bills when I'm not here?
That's the magic question in business and was
the big mindset shift that took me from
being an income producer masquerading as a business
(08:02):
owner to becoming a real business owner who
owned a business, not a job.
In an earlier podcast, we talked about the
tyranny of the urgent versus the priority of
the important, which describes two opposing workforces we're
faced with every morning when we get out
of bed.
The roller coaster treadmill illustration shows someone living
reactively to the tyranny of the urgent.
And the second illustration shows someone living proactively
(08:24):
and focused on the priority of the important,
which is the only way to solve the
tyrannical stuff permanently.
So it begs the question, how do I
make decisions?
Do I make them based on the short
term or on the long term?
How do you make decisions based on the
short term or on the long term?
The second illustration starts with the phrase, see
(08:45):
your future clearly.
What do I want 10 years from now?
If that's what my future looks like, then
where should I be five years from now
and three years from now?
And to get there three years from now,
where should I be in the next 12
months?
And then what needs to happen in the
next three months to get that 12 month
goal?
And if I have a three month goal,
then what do I do this month, this
week and today?
(09:07):
If we see our futures clearly first, we
end up using today differently.
We make decisions based on the long term
where we want to be 10 years from
now or longer.
But if we start with a reactive view
of business, I need to pay my mortgage
this month.
We will never get off the treadmill of
reacting to what we need to in order
to survive this much.
(09:28):
We'll be on that roller coaster treadmill for
the whole 30 years.
Stephen Covey famously said, start with the end
in mind.
It was one of his seven habits of
highly successful people.
He had quoted me in his final book,
and I was just getting to know him
before a tragic bicycle accident took his life.
From what little I knew, he seemed to
be someone who lived out the things he
wrote and the things he wrote came from
(09:49):
his life.
Start with the end in mind is one
of those profound, simple things that should guide
us every day.
We need to see our future clearly and
then use today to build tomorrow.
We shouldn't live in the future, but know
that every day is precious, which can motivate
us to live fully present every day.
And what does that mean to live fully
present every day?
(10:10):
Is it all about just today?
Not at all.
Being fully present means we build a great
life by stacking one day on top of
another, knowing that today was lived with the
long view in mind.
Living in the present never ignores that we
are building a long life.
If each day is about being fully present
to make bricks, we don't just make a
few bricks every day and then toss them
(10:31):
aside and tomorrow we make another few and
trash them as well.
That is not being fully present.
That is living without purpose.
We make bricks not because today is the
only day and we should live each day
to its fullest.
We make bricks today because we are building
a wall, but not just a wall, which
just might take a few months, but because
(10:53):
we are building a cathedral with our lives,
which will take years.
We should always use today to build tomorrow.
Being fully present is to know that I
lived today to its fullest as one small
brick in the cathedral of my life.
No random bricks, no random days.
The following is something that has only become
(11:13):
clear to me in the last couple of
decades, even though it has been obvious and
in my face much longer than that.
And it is this people who make their
daily decisions based on short term gain will
almost always remain hostages to their businesses and
rarely taste true wealth, which is the combination
of time plus money.
But people who make their daily decisions based
(11:34):
on the long term will eventually, if not
quickly, almost always find freedom and wealth that
only the combination of time and money can
get us.
They will find freedom in their business, not
needing to have freedom from it.
What if we build a business that gave
us freedom?
That's the business everybody wants to buy and
a business you will never want to sell.
(11:56):
My Irish friend John Heenan asked me this
great question a few years ago.
Chuck, are you making decisions based on where
you are or where you want to be?
It's another one of those simple, profound questions.
If you make decisions based on where you
are, where do you think you'll be next
year?
Welcome to the 30 year treadmill.
But if you're making decisions on where you
want to be, you will end up in
(12:17):
a very different place.
So let's start with the end in mind.
So let's overlay the first illustration, the rollercoaster
treadmill, with the second one, what a business
should look like for 30 years.
And as we overlay them, you'll see two
very different 30 year journeys.
We see how making decisions based on short
term gain causes us to end up where
we started, just like every other rollercoaster.
(12:38):
We never went up at all.
We just went up and down and up
and down.
And then we see that when we start
with see your future clearly, that instead of
ending up as a hostage to your business
after 30 years, you end up with true
freedom in your business much sooner than 30
years.
I've seen plenty of business owners move from
hostage to freedom in a year or two.
And five years is the longest I've ever
seen it take with people who are being
(13:00):
intentional and making decisions based on the long
term to build their own personal cathedral of
a life.
But if you look closely at the beginning
years of these two illustrations, you see something
very important.
Both business owners experienced the same nonsense in
these early years, the same issues and the
same hardships, not enough money, too many clients,
not enough clients, too much production, a bad
(13:22):
economy, a great economy.
Neither one of these people are getting a
break, nor is either one any luckier or
any smarter than the other.
Business owners who achieve freedom in their business
don't get a pass as they face the
very same trials and tribulations as anyone else
will.
They do one thing differently.
They make today's decisions based on what will
(13:44):
be best for them and their business in
the long term.
That's the singular difference between those who get
off the treadmill and those who don't.
When we react to the present, we mortgage
our futures.
When we are proactive about using every day
to create our long term future, we are
motivated to use the same opportunities and obstacles
everyone faces to build our cathedral instead of
(14:06):
just make bricks and survive the next month.
So are you treadmill guy or are you
freedom woman?
While treadmill guy is worrying about technical things
like I've got a mortgage to pay, freedom
woman is already thinking strategically about what she
is creating in the long term.
Treadmill guy is focused on the tyranny of
the urgent, while freedom woman focuses on the
priority of the important, like figuring out from
(14:27):
the start how to build a business that
makes money when she's not there.
Treadmill guy is reactive and employs the random
hope strategy of business.
You know, I'm going to work really hard
and I hope it all works out.
And freedom woman believes she can make the
rules and actually build her future and plans
very intentionally to use her business to live
out her ideal lifestyle.
(14:47):
Sadly, treadmill guy's focus on short term gain
has him seeing expenses while freedom woman is
seeing investments.
The result?
Treadmill guy is busy for 30 years making
money, surviving and repeating the same exhausting activities
for decades on the way to retirement, while
freedom woman is living a life of significance
and wealth on the way to freedom.
(15:08):
So I'll ask John Heenan's question again, because
it's a question that will lead us to
vastly different outcomes.
Are you making decisions based on where you
are or on where you want to be?
How you answer this is the first step
in determining which journey you'll take, the hostage
journey or the freedom journey.
As I said before, our expectations for our
(15:29):
business should be no less than those for
our kids.
If we don't expect our business to grow
up, we're still going to be changing its
diapers 30 years after we started.
Remember, riches equal money, but wealth equals the
freedom and the ability to choose what to
do with your time and your money.
Do you want to be a wealthy person
who owns a business that makes money while
you are elsewhere doing what you want?
(15:51):
It's not rocket science.
Throughout these podcasts, you will discover that building
a mature business which gives you freedom to
enjoy life is not a matter of luck
or talent in any way, but simple, focused
intentionality.
Remember, you get what you intend, not what
you hope for.
So are you in?
(16:12):
Will you join me in building a mature
business that creates both time and money?
Does moving from survival through success right to
a significant life sound motivating?
Let's figure it out.
Let's figure out what it takes to get
off the roller coaster treadmill.
See your future clearly.
Take charge and fully intend to build a
mature business you can enjoy for decades to
(16:32):
come.
Keep going.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
(16:53):
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker or
workshop leader, you can contact us at growgroww
at cranksetgroup.com.
Until next time, have a great week.
Welcome back to the Get Off The Treadmill
podcast for small business owners and entrepreneurs, where
we show you how to build a successful
business and to have a life too.
We're going to dive into another topic that
helps us make more money in less time
and to get off the treadmill so we
can experience a life of significance.
And now your host and the author of
(00:25):
the number one bestselling business book, Making Money
Is Killing Your Business, Chuck Blakeman.
Hi, this is Chuck Blakeman and welcome back
to the Get Off The Treadmill podcast.
Today we're going to talk about the rollercoaster
treadmill of business, what 30 years of business
usually looks like and how to get a
different result.
(00:46):
This illustration, the rollercoaster treadmill illustration shows 30
years of business in a wavy line.
And it's one of my favorite business illustrations
because even I can draw it.
I just fell into it one day a
few years ago in a discussion group with
business owners around why business seems so cyclical.
Responding to questions in that workshop, this illustration
emerged.
It was a simple line drawing, but as
(01:06):
with so many things, the simplest things are
usually the most profound.
So let's jump in.
First, let's look at what 30 years of
business sadly looks like most of the time.
If you're listening and not watching the video,
it's a simple illustration to explain.
It's just a wavy line, kind of like
a sine wave from left to right with
regular peaks and valleys.
It's a lousy rollercoaster because it repeats the
(01:27):
same peaks and valleys over and over without
much variation.
And for our purposes, we're going to say
that this wavy line represents 30 years of
doing business.
In this illustration, the peaks and valleys aren't
good or bad.
They simply represent too much of something or
too little of something.
So the rollercoaster treadmill can be read a
dozen ways.
The first value could be that you have
no clients, so you crank it up.
(01:48):
And the first peak after that might be
that you oversold your capacity right out of
the gate.
And all of a sudden, you have too
many clients.
Then the value beside that is that you
don't have enough production capacity for all the
new clients.
So you ramp that up.
And the next peak is that you have
too much production capacity, either too many staff
or too much machinery.
And you overcorrect again, so you're back to
not having enough production capacity.
(02:09):
And then you crank it all up and
it's working great.
And now you have too much money and
the taxman wants to take it all from
you.
And to solve that, you buy too much
inventory or you buy a building to get
rid of the cash.
But clients aren't paying on time and you
don't have enough cash on hand to get
through the next payroll.
So you go get a loan and now
you have too much debt.
And then a recession hits and you don't
have enough clients again.
So you ramp up sales and overshoot your
(02:30):
capacity again.
So you shut a lot of it down
and then the economy comes roaring back and
you're caught flat footed and don't have enough
production capacity again.
And at the end of 30 years, you're
literally sick and literally tired and you want
to sell it all and get the heck
out.
But of course, you don't have enough profits.
There's another valley.
So you don't take salary or distributions for
(02:51):
a year so that the business looks like
it's worth more.
So you can sell this job to some
fool who will ride the same dumb roller
coaster for another 30 years.
Welcome to business.
Isn't this fun?
And by the way, who made this happen?
Who made these rules?
I did.
I designed a world for myself that required
that I live reactively for 30 years by
(03:12):
just working really hard and hoping something good
would happen, but never really believing I could
make it happen.
Looking at the roller coaster treadmill, is it
any wonder we're tired?
Well, business doesn't actually have to be tiring.
I've said this before.
It can be fun, rewarding, fulfilling, meaningful and
enjoyable.
We don't have to live reactively to the
(03:33):
roller coaster treadmill our whole business lives.
Even though this is what most businesses experience,
it doesn't have to look like this.
We can do 30 years of business very
differently and get off this treadmill early on,
even in our 30s or 40s or a
few years from whenever you first hear this
once and for all.
Let's get off that treadmill.
Let's figure it out.
Let's look at the second wavy line illustration
(03:54):
that shows what business could look like for
30 years.
A roller coaster always ends up at the
same altitude it started.
But this second illustration isn't a roller coaster
treadmill going up and down for 30 years
and ending up just as busy as you
were the day you started your business.
This illustration is still a wavy line because
nothing in life is a straight line, but
(04:14):
it is radically different in one way.
It goes up gradually and relentlessly over time
and ends up in a very different place,
a much better place 30 years from now
and even five years from now.
And the overriding theme of this second illustration
is that life and business are not happening
to the person experiencing this wavy line because
that owner is proactively taking charge.
(04:35):
We're on the roller coaster treadmill for one
simple reason.
We are reacting to the world around us
instead of deciding what we want and proactively
going after it.
The first illustration has the world around us
in charge, but the second illustration says I'm
in charge.
I know what I want and I am
proactively pursuing that until I get it.
The world around me will not dictate the
terms.
I am not a hostage to my business
(04:56):
or a victim waiting for the world to
knock me down again.
We have a training facility in Denver that
seats about 75 people and splashed across the
top of the front above a row of
giant whiteboards in 18 inch letters is the
saying, make your own business rules.
Why?
Simple, because she or he who makes the
rules wins.
(05:16):
If I'm letting the world around me make
the rules, who do you think wins the
world around me?
If I'm making my own rules, who do
you think wins?
I do.
We need to take charge of our business
lives, make our own business rules and win
at the biggest game in business, creating freedom
in our business.
So that I can make more money in
less time, get off the treadmill and get
(05:36):
back to the passion that brought me into
business in the first place.
I need to take charge.
Great, fine, wonderful.
But how do you take charge when it's
so average to just react?
The rollercoaster treadmill way of doing business is
definitely average, meaning that it seems like just
about everybody is doing it.
But I would suggest while it may be
average, it's not normal for us to live
(05:57):
reactively to the world around us.
Let's not be average.
Let's be normal.
And normal means being proactive and taking charge
of your life and your business.
And when we do, 30 years of business
looks very different.
The next thing we'll talk about is the
most important thing to understand for both the
first and second illustrations.
Let's overlay the two graphs to show how
(06:17):
two business owners can start out the same
and end up in very different places.
These two illustrations are like a fork in
the road.
The first graph shows someone who's making most
of the decisions reactively as a victim.
And the most important thing to see here,
they are making decisions reactively based on short
term gain, always reacting to what we call
the tyranny of the urgent.
(06:39):
We're all still hunting mastodons in our head
and always default to what might keep us
alive one more day.
The second graph shows someone who's making decisions
based on the long term, on what will
be best for them and their businesses years
from now, even if it hurts right now.
They are taking charge and making proactive long
term decisions.
As a result, they are a thriving victor,
(07:00):
not a surviving victim.
And most importantly, they are making their decisions
based on what is best for them in
the long term.
In my first business, I was doing all
the work myself, and that seemed to make
sense, at least in the short term.
I didn't have to hire anybody, didn't train
anybody, didn't have to talk to anybody, didn't
have to deal with conflict, mess around with
(07:20):
building systems or processes or lay people off.
But that only worked in the short term.
I couldn't take a day off without losing
money and vacation was something I went on
with my family while they had fun and
I continued to work and I could only
make so much money because I only had
one hundred and sixty eight hours a week
and I'd use that all up dealing with
the tyranny of the urgent.
(07:41):
I was making all my decisions in the
short term by only answering the question, how
do I pay my bills this month?
I needed to get to where I could
ask, how do I build a business that
pays the bills when I'm not here?
That's the magic question in business and was
the big mindset shift that took me from
being an income producer masquerading as a business
(08:02):
owner to becoming a real business owner who
owned a business, not a job.
In an earlier podcast, we talked about the
tyranny of the urgent versus the priority of
the important, which describes two opposing workforces we're
faced with every morning when we get out
of bed.
The roller coaster treadmill illustration shows someone living
reactively to the tyranny of the urgent.
And the second illustration shows someone living proactively
(08:24):
and focused on the priority of the important,
which is the only way to solve the
tyrannical stuff permanently.
So it begs the question, how do I
make decisions?
Do I make them based on the short
term or on the long term?
How do you make decisions based on the
short term or on the long term?
The second illustration starts with the phrase, see
(08:45):
your future clearly.
What do I want 10 years from now?
If that's what my future looks like, then
where should I be five years from now
and three years from now?
And to get there three years from now,
where should I be in the next 12
months?
And then what needs to happen in the
next three months to get that 12 month
goal?
And if I have a three month goal,
then what do I do this month, this
week and today?
(09:07):
If we see our futures clearly first, we
end up using today differently.
We make decisions based on the long term
where we want to be 10 years from
now or longer.
But if we start with a reactive view
of business, I need to pay my mortgage
this month.
We will never get off the treadmill of
reacting to what we need to in order
to survive this much.
(09:28):
We'll be on that roller coaster treadmill for
the whole 30 years.
Stephen Covey famously said, start with the end
in mind.
It was one of his seven habits of
highly successful people.
He had quoted me in his final book,
and I was just getting to know him
before a tragic bicycle accident took his life.
From what little I knew, he seemed to
be someone who lived out the things he
wrote and the things he wrote came from
(09:49):
his life.
Start with the end in mind is one
of those profound, simple things that should guide
us every day.
We need to see our future clearly and
then use today to build tomorrow.
We shouldn't live in the future, but know
that every day is precious, which can motivate
us to live fully present every day.
And what does that mean to live fully
present every day?
(10:10):
Is it all about just today?
Not at all.
Being fully present means we build a great
life by stacking one day on top of
another, knowing that today was lived with the
long view in mind.
Living in the present never ignores that we
are building a long life.
If each day is about being fully present
to make bricks, we don't just make a
few bricks every day and then toss them
(10:31):
aside and tomorrow we make another few and
trash them as well.
That is not being fully present.
That is living without purpose.
We make bricks not because today is the
only day and we should live each day
to its fullest.
We make bricks today because we are building
a wall, but not just a wall, which
just might take a few months, but because
(10:53):
we are building a cathedral with our lives,
which will take years.
We should always use today to build tomorrow.
Being fully present is to know that I
lived today to its fullest as one small
brick in the cathedral of my life.
No random bricks, no random days.
The following is something that has only become
(11:13):
clear to me in the last couple of
decades, even though it has been obvious and
in my face much longer than that.
And it is this people who make their
daily decisions based on short term gain will
almost always remain hostages to their businesses and
rarely taste true wealth, which is the combination
of time plus money.
But people who make their daily decisions based
(11:34):
on the long term will eventually, if not
quickly, almost always find freedom and wealth that
only the combination of time and money can
get us.
They will find freedom in their business, not
needing to have freedom from it.
What if we build a business that gave
us freedom?
That's the business everybody wants to buy and
a business you will never want to sell.
(11:56):
My Irish friend John Heenan asked me this
great question a few years ago.
Chuck, are you making decisions based on where
you are or where you want to be?
It's another one of those simple, profound questions.
If you make decisions based on where you
are, where do you think you'll be next
year?
Welcome to the 30 year treadmill.
But if you're making decisions on where you
want to be, you will end up in
(12:17):
a very different place.
So let's start with the end in mind.
So let's overlay the first illustration, the rollercoaster
treadmill, with the second one, what a business
should look like for 30 years.
And as we overlay them, you'll see two
very different 30 year journeys.
We see how making decisions based on short
term gain causes us to end up where
we started, just like every other rollercoaster.
(12:38):
We never went up at all.
We just went up and down and up
and down.
And then we see that when we start
with see your future clearly, that instead of
ending up as a hostage to your business
after 30 years, you end up with true
freedom in your business much sooner than 30
years.
I've seen plenty of business owners move from
hostage to freedom in a year or two.
And five years is the longest I've ever
seen it take with people who are being
(13:00):
intentional and making decisions based on the long
term to build their own personal cathedral of
a life.
But if you look closely at the beginning
years of these two illustrations, you see something
very important.
Both business owners experienced the same nonsense in
these early years, the same issues and the
same hardships, not enough money, too many clients,
not enough clients, too much production, a bad
(13:22):
economy, a great economy.
Neither one of these people are getting a
break, nor is either one any luckier or
any smarter than the other.
Business owners who achieve freedom in their business
don't get a pass as they face the
very same trials and tribulations as anyone else
will.
They do one thing differently.
They make today's decisions based on what will
(13:44):
be best for them and their business in
the long term.
That's the singular difference between those who get
off the treadmill and those who don't.
When we react to the present, we mortgage
our futures.
When we are proactive about using every day
to create our long term future, we are
motivated to use the same opportunities and obstacles
everyone faces to build our cathedral instead of
(14:06):
just make bricks and survive the next month.
So are you treadmill guy or are you
freedom woman?
While treadmill guy is worrying about technical things
like I've got a mortgage to pay, freedom
woman is already thinking strategically about what she
is creating in the long term.
Treadmill guy is focused on the tyranny of
the urgent, while freedom woman focuses on the
priority of the important, like figuring out from
(14:27):
the start how to build a business that
makes money when she's not there.
Treadmill guy is reactive and employs the random
hope strategy of business.
You know, I'm going to work really hard
and I hope it all works out.
And freedom woman believes she can make the
rules and actually build her future and plans
very intentionally to use her business to live
out her ideal lifestyle.
(14:47):
Sadly, treadmill guy's focus on short term gain
has him seeing expenses while freedom woman is
seeing investments.
The result?
Treadmill guy is busy for 30 years making
money, surviving and repeating the same exhausting activities
for decades on the way to retirement, while
freedom woman is living a life of significance
and wealth on the way to freedom.
(15:08):
So I'll ask John Heenan's question again, because
it's a question that will lead us to
vastly different outcomes.
Are you making decisions based on where you
are or on where you want to be?
How you answer this is the first step
in determining which journey you'll take, the hostage
journey or the freedom journey.
As I said before, our expectations for our
(15:29):
business should be no less than those for
our kids.
If we don't expect our business to grow
up, we're still going to be changing its
diapers 30 years after we started.
Remember, riches equal money, but wealth equals the
freedom and the ability to choose what to
do with your time and your money.
Do you want to be a wealthy person
who owns a business that makes money while
you are elsewhere doing what you want?
(15:51):
It's not rocket science.
Throughout these podcasts, you will discover that building
a mature business which gives you freedom to
enjoy life is not a matter of luck
or talent in any way, but simple, focused
intentionality.
Remember, you get what you intend, not what
you hope for.
So are you in?
(16:12):
Will you join me in building a mature
business that creates both time and money?
Does moving from survival through success right to
a significant life sound motivating?
Let's figure it out.
Let's figure out what it takes to get
off the roller coaster treadmill.
See your future clearly.
Take charge and fully intend to build a
mature business you can enjoy for decades to
(16:32):
come.
Keep going.
That wraps up another episode of the Get
Off The Treadmill podcast.
If you found this podcast helpful, please subscribe
and hit the like button to ensure you
are receiving the latest tools you need to
grow your business and to get off the
treadmill.
If you want more information on the 3
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
(16:53):
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker or
workshop leader, you can contact us at growgroww
at cranksetgroup.com.
Until next time, have a great week.
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