January 7, 2025 • 15 mins
What if you could transform your business into a tool for building your ideal lifestyle and achieving a life of significance? In this episode, Chuck dives deep into the Important Realities in Seven Stages of Business Ownership, uncovering the critical lessons and strategies that thousands of business owners have used to navigate these stages successfully.
💡 Here’s what you’ll learn:
✅ Why there’s no set timeline for reaching business maturity—and how intentionality accelerates progress.
✅ The importance of defining your vision for success and aligning your business with your life goals.
✅ How to manage setbacks, cycles, and risk-taking with clarity and confidence.
✅ A new mindset shift that can help you move from survival mode to creating a business that works for you.
🎧 About This Episode:
Unlike discussions on the lifecycle of a business, this episode focuses on the stages of business ownership and how to use your business as a platform for freedom, impact, and fulfillment. Whether you’re in the early stages or aiming for succession, these insights will equip you to make intentional, long-term decisions for your business and your life.
Why This Episode Matters:
Too many business owners get stuck in "stability" or "survival" mode, held back by fear of risk or the comfort of the status quo. This episode breaks down how to escape that trap, push through the stages, and embrace the mindset shifts necessary to build a business that serves you, not the other way around.
Host’s Takeaway:
I’ve seen firsthand how the seven stages of business ownership transform not just companies, but lives. It’s not always easy, but when you commit to the process with clarity and intentionality, the rewards—freedom, purpose, and significance—are worth it.
👉 Ready to stop spinning your wheels and start building a business that supports your best life? Click play now and take the first step toward clarity, hope, and measured risk-taking.
Links & Resources Mentioned:
- [Freedom Mapping Framework] for creating a simple, strategic plan.
- [Previous Podcast Episodes] on the seven stages and freedom mapping.
- Visit www.3to5Club.com for tools to fast-track your journey.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(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.
Today I want to address some important realities
around the seven stages of business ownership.
In the last two podcasts, we experienced moving
through the seven stages of business ownership.
In this podcast, I'll share some blinding flashes
(00:45):
of the obvious, or what we call BFOs,
that thousands of business owners, including me, have
learned over the past few decades about how
to apply these stages in the real world.
And a reminder, this is not the seven
stages of a business.
I could give a rather rant about your
business, except for how it impacts you.
This is the seven stages of business ownership,
(01:06):
where we put your business in the context
of how it's hindering or helping you build
your ideal lifestyle in support of a life
of significance, however you define that for yourself.
We'll have a future podcast on how to
arrive at your unique, clear vision for your
life of significance, or what we call your
big why.
Look for that in the next couple months.
(01:26):
But for now, let's quickly look at a
few of the really important learnings around the
seven stages of business ownership and how that
works for us in the real world.
First, there's no timeline for building a mature
business.
I've seen business owners take their business from
stage one startup to stage six significance in
two years.
I've also known way too many who are
stuck in between stage three subsistence and stage
(01:47):
four stability for 20 years.
There's no timeline for moving through the stages,
but this is the important learning here.
The more intentional you are about getting through
them, the faster it can happen and likely
will happen almost without exception.
I can't tell you how many clients we've
had who were stuck in stage four for
a decade and a half or longer and
attained real freedom in stage six in 18
(02:09):
months or less once they became intentional about
doing so.
I'll say it again, you get what you
intend, not what you hope for.
So intend to get there fast and embrace
whatever journey you face to get there.
The second blinding flash of the obvious, the
second BFO, is that no business is ever
neatly all in one stage of business ownership.
(02:30):
Life is messy and so is business, but
you still get to choose what maturity looks
like to you even if your business ownership
is strung out across two or three stages.
My business ownership is strung out across stages
five, six, and seven, and I like it
that way.
I find great personal meaning and fulfillment in
being directly involved with clients, continuing to speak
(02:52):
around the world, and continuing to write and
develop things that will help other business owners
avoid the mistakes I've made.
I want to continue to bring to others
the principles, practices, and tools I have found
that work over the years.
So I will do stage five production, but
remember, freedom is the ability to choose what
to do with my time and my money.
I get to choose to do work with
(03:13):
clients and also speak and write.
I don't have to do these things.
I get to and I choose to.
That's freedom.
A good chunk of my two present businesses
are in stage six significance.
We have some stage six leadership in charge
who need very little, if any, guidance on
how to get things done.
I get more involved in the vision for
where we're going.
I'm not the only one who gives guidance,
(03:33):
but I enjoy training and mentoring others and
helping them grow.
And a lot of our business functions in
stage seven, with Mark Balestri, our chief dot
connector, yep, that's his title, basically makes everything
run better than I did when I was
running it all.
I learn about a lot of things after
they happen, or sometimes not at all, because
Mark is competent and fully in charge.
I've seen a lot of things I used
(03:53):
to make the decisions on being taken on
by others.
I've even been fired from meetings I started
because I was in the way.
I'm pretty sure our staff loves me being
involved in stage five production activities with clients,
keynotes, and workshops, because it keeps me farther
away from the day to day and out
of their hair.
And as our companies grow, I continue to
(04:14):
work to be less and less involved in
running things and focused on what I can
do to add value that I'm passionate about.
Working with clients, speaking and writing, which everybody
agrees is the highest and best use of
my time and talents.
But I don't want a fully stage seven
succession company where I'm just the myth.
Everybody gets to decide for themselves, and that's
my preference.
(04:34):
Becoming the myth works for many, but not
for me.
We will always have a business where my
responsibilities are stretched across stages five, six, and
seven.
You need to decide for yourself what you
want, start with your end in mind, and
decide what you want and intend to make
that happen.
Another learning around the seven stages of business
ownership is that no business owner ever arrives
(04:57):
at a desired stage and just settles neatly
into that specific stage.
Again, life and business are messy, and as
a result, every business will cycle up and
down regularly through two or three stages, but
from my experience, rarely four.
So what are the implications of cycling up
and down between the stages?
The reality of this, it can be highly
(05:18):
motivating to making us want to get to
stage five success or beyond.
If you're shooting for stage five, your relationship
with your business will bounce around between stage
four stability, where you're making money but heavily
involved again for a short time, and back
to five, sometimes hitting six, and sometimes dropping
back to stage three subsistence, where you're breaking
even.
The good news is that if you've been
(05:39):
intentional about a simple strategic plan and freedom
mapping your involvement, and we'll have a podcast
shortly on both of those critical building blocks,
you'll find that getting back to your desired
stage is no longer the extended struggle it
used to be.
Setbacks happen, but since you've been there before,
you almost always panic less and recover much
more quickly because you've built the mental and,
(06:01):
more importantly, the emotional muscles to handle obstacles
with curiosity.
Another learning around the seven stages that I
have experienced over the years is that the
farther up the stages you decide to stop,
the less likely you are to experience business
survival issues in the future.
Every business will cycle around the stages like
a roller coaster, and as a result, stage
(06:22):
four stability is not your friend.
Stage four stability may provide great profit for
a time, but in stage four, your business
isn't stable enough to avoid cycling back to
stage three subsistence or even stage two survival
on a regular basis, and in stage two,
you're losing money again.
It's not where any of us wants to
go, even for a short period, but if
(06:42):
you stop at stage four stability while you're
profitable but still a hostage to your business
in regard to your time, you could spend
30 years cycling between stage four stability and
stage two survival as treadmill guy.
This is another reason why stage four is
so exhausting over the long haul, but as
stage five business is more likely to cycle
less broadly, usually moving from five to four
(07:04):
and sometimes hitting three before you can pull
it back up to five.
In stage six, it gets even more interesting.
A stage six business will cycle even less.
Six, five, six, five, and sometimes back to
four where you're still making money, but you're
heavily involved in the business again for a
short time while you get things sorted out.
And a stage seven business is affected even
less by cycling.
(07:25):
In stage seven succession, your business will rarely
cycle below stage five where you're involved in
giving guidance and maybe some production, but you're
not a hostage to the business again.
And more importantly, my experience is that in
stage six or seven business ownership, you will
almost always cycle down for a much shorter
period than a stage four owner who can
cycle down to stage two survival for prolonged
(07:47):
periods.
So the long and short of it is
that the more mature your relationship, your business
is meaning the less day-to-day involvement
you have, the less you will be jerked
around by outside forces.
So all this begs the obvious question, would
you rather cycle back to stage four stability
where you're still profitable but have to produce
again for a few months or all the
(08:08):
way back to stage two survival where both
you and the business are in survival mode?
The farther up the stage is your business
ownership settles, the less pain you experience on
the downside as your business regularly cycles back
and forth through a few stages.
I hope that understanding this cycling process helps
motivate you as to why taking measured risk
(08:28):
to embrace the big mindset shift and get
across the chasm from stage four to stage
five or beyond is really worth it.
By now, you've probably also figured out that
the difficulty of the seven stages of business
ownership is that moving from one stage to
the next almost always requires risking money or
time, many times both, which we illustrated in
(08:50):
the podcast on the first four stages using
the roller coaster treadmill illustration.
The climb from stage one start at the
stage three subsistence is one long cliff face
with no brakes.
We're in stage two survival almost the whole
time and we either keep climbing or rappel
down and quit.
Once we finally get to stage four stability,
we have something to lose.
(09:11):
We're making money and in some cases a
lot of it.
And we're realizing that taking the measured risk
required to get to stage five success seems
a little daunting.
By stage four, we are tired of risk.
Even though the voice of quiet desperation in
stage four is whispering, is that all there
is?
We weigh what we have with the possibility
(09:31):
of losing it and come to the following
conclusion.
Sometimes the pain I know is better than
the pain I have yet to experience.
This is a sad reality for most business
owners.
We're willing to settle for being hostages to
our business the rest of our lives because
we don't want to risk what we already
have to get something much better.
So we stay stuck in stage four for
(09:53):
30 years until at the end we sell
the business for its assets and its customer
list.
What we haven't realized is that at every
new stage, the risks are usually smarter and
of shorter duration.
And if we'll just keep pushing forward, we
will build our mental and emotional muscles for
dealing with them.
Richard Branson's salary doesn't go down during recessions.
(10:13):
Think like Richard.
Get out of production and build a business
machine that will more likely allow you to
cycle from stage six or seven to stage
four, not from stage four to stage two
survival.
Let's finish up the seven stages by talking
briefly about how to take measured risks.
Dealing with risk is actually quite simple.
(10:33):
It's just not easy.
Refer back to the rollercoaster treadmill illustration from
an earlier podcast.
The key is to start with a very
clear idea of where you're going.
Utter clarity about what it looks like when
you get there and when you expect to
be there.
And then make sure that the picture is
motivating enough for you to push through to
the finish line.
(10:53):
If you have that clarity, then the following
question becomes really helpful regarding risk.
Are you making decisions based on where you
are or where you want to be?
Because if you're making them based on where
you are, where do you think you'll be
next year?
It could just be groundhog year all over
again.
We need to know what we want when
we're done so we can make decisions based
(11:16):
on where we will end up.
It's really simple.
And I admit that doesn't make it easy.
But the more clarity you have about where
you're going, the easier it will be to
take the measured risk to make long-term
decisions instead of short ones.
And I personally prefer measured risks, not crazy
risks.
Some people are energized by the all-in,
(11:36):
lose everything, or gain everything risk.
I tend to default to risks where I'm
slightly scared and know I'm going to have
to really hustle.
But the objective looks promising if I just
give it everything I've got.
If you're not a little bit scared, you
might want to take more risk.
If you're terrified, you might want to pull
back unless you're an adrenaline junkie.
And more importantly, if the only person who
(11:58):
will get hurt if it all caves in
is you.
So the important thing in taking risk is
clarity, which gives us hope, which allows us
to take the measured risk.
Clarity, hope, and risk.
Do you know what your business and your
personal life will look like at maturity?
Do you have that clarity?
Do you know when you want to be
(12:18):
there?
Most of us have never thought about these
things, but if you do, it could be
the most motivating planning work you've ever done.
And each stage will seem shorter and less
risky because you've got a clear picture of
your great future, and that picture in front
of you is very compelling.
We are always more motivated running towards something
than running away from something.
(12:39):
The tyranny of the urgent will lose its
shrill voice and its grip on you as
you focus on running for the priority of
the important.
A last thought around risk.
Imagine trying to keep 11 ping pong balls
under the water with only your 10 fingers.
You're never done because every time you get
the last one submerged, another pops to the
surface.
Remember life and therefore business is like managing
(13:00):
these 11 ping pong balls.
It's messy and it's uncertain.
Here's the simple solution.
Being willing to let a few urgent ping
pong balls get away today to build a
business that can hold thousands of ping pong
balls under the water without you using any
of your own fingers tomorrow.
I know Jim Collins said good is the
(13:22):
enemy of great.
That can be true, but it's also true
that great is actually the enemy of good
enough.
Let a few short-term ping pong balls
get away.
Start with good enough or you'll never make
it to great.
It isn't about getting it all right up
front.
It's about getting moving and figuring it out
as you go.
Remember planning doesn't create movement.
(13:42):
Movement creates the plan.
All right, one final thought.
A good principle to keep in mind as
you move through the seven stages is to
be what I call ambitiously lazy.
Work hard now so that you can work
less later.
I am definitely ambitiously lazy and proud of
it and it has worked well for a
lot of other business owners too.
Work hard now with the goal of not
(14:04):
having to work so hard sometime soon.
So let's all be ambitiously lazy and commit
to the big mindset shift, which is to
stop making money and to build a business
that makes money when you are not there.
Pushing through the seven stages of business ownership
is how we can all make more money
in less time and get off the treadmill
and use our business to build a life
(14:26):
of significance in support of our lifetime goals.
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
(14:48):
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker, or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
g-r-o-w, 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.
Today I want to address some important realities
around the seven stages of business ownership.
In the last two podcasts, we experienced moving
through the seven stages of business ownership.
In this podcast, I'll share some blinding flashes
(00:45):
of the obvious, or what we call BFOs,
that thousands of business owners, including me, have
learned over the past few decades about how
to apply these stages in the real world.
And a reminder, this is not the seven
stages of a business.
I could give a rather rant about your
business, except for how it impacts you.
This is the seven stages of business ownership,
(01:06):
where we put your business in the context
of how it's hindering or helping you build
your ideal lifestyle in support of a life
of significance, however you define that for yourself.
We'll have a future podcast on how to
arrive at your unique, clear vision for your
life of significance, or what we call your
big why.
Look for that in the next couple months.
(01:26):
But for now, let's quickly look at a
few of the really important learnings around the
seven stages of business ownership and how that
works for us in the real world.
First, there's no timeline for building a mature
business.
I've seen business owners take their business from
stage one startup to stage six significance in
two years.
I've also known way too many who are
stuck in between stage three subsistence and stage
(01:47):
four stability for 20 years.
There's no timeline for moving through the stages,
but this is the important learning here.
The more intentional you are about getting through
them, the faster it can happen and likely
will happen almost without exception.
I can't tell you how many clients we've
had who were stuck in stage four for
a decade and a half or longer and
attained real freedom in stage six in 18
(02:09):
months or less once they became intentional about
doing so.
I'll say it again, you get what you
intend, not what you hope for.
So intend to get there fast and embrace
whatever journey you face to get there.
The second blinding flash of the obvious, the
second BFO, is that no business is ever
neatly all in one stage of business ownership.
(02:30):
Life is messy and so is business, but
you still get to choose what maturity looks
like to you even if your business ownership
is strung out across two or three stages.
My business ownership is strung out across stages
five, six, and seven, and I like it
that way.
I find great personal meaning and fulfillment in
being directly involved with clients, continuing to speak
(02:52):
around the world, and continuing to write and
develop things that will help other business owners
avoid the mistakes I've made.
I want to continue to bring to others
the principles, practices, and tools I have found
that work over the years.
So I will do stage five production, but
remember, freedom is the ability to choose what
to do with my time and my money.
I get to choose to do work with
(03:13):
clients and also speak and write.
I don't have to do these things.
I get to and I choose to.
That's freedom.
A good chunk of my two present businesses
are in stage six significance.
We have some stage six leadership in charge
who need very little, if any, guidance on
how to get things done.
I get more involved in the vision for
where we're going.
I'm not the only one who gives guidance,
(03:33):
but I enjoy training and mentoring others and
helping them grow.
And a lot of our business functions in
stage seven, with Mark Balestri, our chief dot
connector, yep, that's his title, basically makes everything
run better than I did when I was
running it all.
I learn about a lot of things after
they happen, or sometimes not at all, because
Mark is competent and fully in charge.
I've seen a lot of things I used
(03:53):
to make the decisions on being taken on
by others.
I've even been fired from meetings I started
because I was in the way.
I'm pretty sure our staff loves me being
involved in stage five production activities with clients,
keynotes, and workshops, because it keeps me farther
away from the day to day and out
of their hair.
And as our companies grow, I continue to
(04:14):
work to be less and less involved in
running things and focused on what I can
do to add value that I'm passionate about.
Working with clients, speaking and writing, which everybody
agrees is the highest and best use of
my time and talents.
But I don't want a fully stage seven
succession company where I'm just the myth.
Everybody gets to decide for themselves, and that's
my preference.
(04:34):
Becoming the myth works for many, but not
for me.
We will always have a business where my
responsibilities are stretched across stages five, six, and
seven.
You need to decide for yourself what you
want, start with your end in mind, and
decide what you want and intend to make
that happen.
Another learning around the seven stages of business
ownership is that no business owner ever arrives
(04:57):
at a desired stage and just settles neatly
into that specific stage.
Again, life and business are messy, and as
a result, every business will cycle up and
down regularly through two or three stages, but
from my experience, rarely four.
So what are the implications of cycling up
and down between the stages?
The reality of this, it can be highly
(05:18):
motivating to making us want to get to
stage five success or beyond.
If you're shooting for stage five, your relationship
with your business will bounce around between stage
four stability, where you're making money but heavily
involved again for a short time, and back
to five, sometimes hitting six, and sometimes dropping
back to stage three subsistence, where you're breaking
even.
The good news is that if you've been
(05:39):
intentional about a simple strategic plan and freedom
mapping your involvement, and we'll have a podcast
shortly on both of those critical building blocks,
you'll find that getting back to your desired
stage is no longer the extended struggle it
used to be.
Setbacks happen, but since you've been there before,
you almost always panic less and recover much
more quickly because you've built the mental and,
(06:01):
more importantly, the emotional muscles to handle obstacles
with curiosity.
Another learning around the seven stages that I
have experienced over the years is that the
farther up the stages you decide to stop,
the less likely you are to experience business
survival issues in the future.
Every business will cycle around the stages like
a roller coaster, and as a result, stage
(06:22):
four stability is not your friend.
Stage four stability may provide great profit for
a time, but in stage four, your business
isn't stable enough to avoid cycling back to
stage three subsistence or even stage two survival
on a regular basis, and in stage two,
you're losing money again.
It's not where any of us wants to
go, even for a short period, but if
(06:42):
you stop at stage four stability while you're
profitable but still a hostage to your business
in regard to your time, you could spend
30 years cycling between stage four stability and
stage two survival as treadmill guy.
This is another reason why stage four is
so exhausting over the long haul, but as
stage five business is more likely to cycle
less broadly, usually moving from five to four
(07:04):
and sometimes hitting three before you can pull
it back up to five.
In stage six, it gets even more interesting.
A stage six business will cycle even less.
Six, five, six, five, and sometimes back to
four where you're still making money, but you're
heavily involved in the business again for a
short time while you get things sorted out.
And a stage seven business is affected even
less by cycling.
(07:25):
In stage seven succession, your business will rarely
cycle below stage five where you're involved in
giving guidance and maybe some production, but you're
not a hostage to the business again.
And more importantly, my experience is that in
stage six or seven business ownership, you will
almost always cycle down for a much shorter
period than a stage four owner who can
cycle down to stage two survival for prolonged
(07:47):
periods.
So the long and short of it is
that the more mature your relationship, your business
is meaning the less day-to-day involvement
you have, the less you will be jerked
around by outside forces.
So all this begs the obvious question, would
you rather cycle back to stage four stability
where you're still profitable but have to produce
again for a few months or all the
(08:08):
way back to stage two survival where both
you and the business are in survival mode?
The farther up the stage is your business
ownership settles, the less pain you experience on
the downside as your business regularly cycles back
and forth through a few stages.
I hope that understanding this cycling process helps
motivate you as to why taking measured risk
(08:28):
to embrace the big mindset shift and get
across the chasm from stage four to stage
five or beyond is really worth it.
By now, you've probably also figured out that
the difficulty of the seven stages of business
ownership is that moving from one stage to
the next almost always requires risking money or
time, many times both, which we illustrated in
(08:50):
the podcast on the first four stages using
the roller coaster treadmill illustration.
The climb from stage one start at the
stage three subsistence is one long cliff face
with no brakes.
We're in stage two survival almost the whole
time and we either keep climbing or rappel
down and quit.
Once we finally get to stage four stability,
we have something to lose.
(09:11):
We're making money and in some cases a
lot of it.
And we're realizing that taking the measured risk
required to get to stage five success seems
a little daunting.
By stage four, we are tired of risk.
Even though the voice of quiet desperation in
stage four is whispering, is that all there
is?
We weigh what we have with the possibility
(09:31):
of losing it and come to the following
conclusion.
Sometimes the pain I know is better than
the pain I have yet to experience.
This is a sad reality for most business
owners.
We're willing to settle for being hostages to
our business the rest of our lives because
we don't want to risk what we already
have to get something much better.
So we stay stuck in stage four for
(09:53):
30 years until at the end we sell
the business for its assets and its customer
list.
What we haven't realized is that at every
new stage, the risks are usually smarter and
of shorter duration.
And if we'll just keep pushing forward, we
will build our mental and emotional muscles for
dealing with them.
Richard Branson's salary doesn't go down during recessions.
(10:13):
Think like Richard.
Get out of production and build a business
machine that will more likely allow you to
cycle from stage six or seven to stage
four, not from stage four to stage two
survival.
Let's finish up the seven stages by talking
briefly about how to take measured risks.
Dealing with risk is actually quite simple.
(10:33):
It's just not easy.
Refer back to the rollercoaster treadmill illustration from
an earlier podcast.
The key is to start with a very
clear idea of where you're going.
Utter clarity about what it looks like when
you get there and when you expect to
be there.
And then make sure that the picture is
motivating enough for you to push through to
the finish line.
(10:53):
If you have that clarity, then the following
question becomes really helpful regarding risk.
Are you making decisions based on where you
are or where you want to be?
Because if you're making them based on where
you are, where do you think you'll be
next year?
It could just be groundhog year all over
again.
We need to know what we want when
we're done so we can make decisions based
(11:16):
on where we will end up.
It's really simple.
And I admit that doesn't make it easy.
But the more clarity you have about where
you're going, the easier it will be to
take the measured risk to make long-term
decisions instead of short ones.
And I personally prefer measured risks, not crazy
risks.
Some people are energized by the all-in,
(11:36):
lose everything, or gain everything risk.
I tend to default to risks where I'm
slightly scared and know I'm going to have
to really hustle.
But the objective looks promising if I just
give it everything I've got.
If you're not a little bit scared, you
might want to take more risk.
If you're terrified, you might want to pull
back unless you're an adrenaline junkie.
And more importantly, if the only person who
(11:58):
will get hurt if it all caves in
is you.
So the important thing in taking risk is
clarity, which gives us hope, which allows us
to take the measured risk.
Clarity, hope, and risk.
Do you know what your business and your
personal life will look like at maturity?
Do you have that clarity?
Do you know when you want to be
(12:18):
there?
Most of us have never thought about these
things, but if you do, it could be
the most motivating planning work you've ever done.
And each stage will seem shorter and less
risky because you've got a clear picture of
your great future, and that picture in front
of you is very compelling.
We are always more motivated running towards something
than running away from something.
(12:39):
The tyranny of the urgent will lose its
shrill voice and its grip on you as
you focus on running for the priority of
the important.
A last thought around risk.
Imagine trying to keep 11 ping pong balls
under the water with only your 10 fingers.
You're never done because every time you get
the last one submerged, another pops to the
surface.
Remember life and therefore business is like managing
(13:00):
these 11 ping pong balls.
It's messy and it's uncertain.
Here's the simple solution.
Being willing to let a few urgent ping
pong balls get away today to build a
business that can hold thousands of ping pong
balls under the water without you using any
of your own fingers tomorrow.
I know Jim Collins said good is the
(13:22):
enemy of great.
That can be true, but it's also true
that great is actually the enemy of good
enough.
Let a few short-term ping pong balls
get away.
Start with good enough or you'll never make
it to great.
It isn't about getting it all right up
front.
It's about getting moving and figuring it out
as you go.
Remember planning doesn't create movement.
(13:42):
Movement creates the plan.
All right, one final thought.
A good principle to keep in mind as
you move through the seven stages is to
be what I call ambitiously lazy.
Work hard now so that you can work
less later.
I am definitely ambitiously lazy and proud of
it and it has worked well for a
lot of other business owners too.
Work hard now with the goal of not
(14:04):
having to work so hard sometime soon.
So let's all be ambitiously lazy and commit
to the big mindset shift, which is to
stop making money and to build a business
that makes money when you are not there.
Pushing through the seven stages of business ownership
is how we can all make more money
in less time and get off the treadmill
and use our business to build a life
(14:26):
of significance in support of our lifetime goals.
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
(14:48):
to 5 Club, the Crankset Group, or to
book Chuck as a business advisor, speaker, or
workshop leader, you can contact us at grow,
g-r-o-w, at cranksetgroup.com.
Until next time, have a great week.
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