Pretending to pay the price
A friend’s husband recently gave up his job and became a “full time entrepreneur”.
Oh the excitement!
The freedom!
Two weeks later she dropped home from work unexpectedly to find him… on the couch watching a DVD and supping a litre of coke.
The benefits of the entrepreneurial life are so desirable.
But without self-discipline you can’t keep those benefits for longer than it takes to chew through your line of credit.
I think it’s because we’re trained from school days to be reactive.
If the teacher wants us to do something, we do it.
If the project is due we get it done, even if we have to stay up all night.
That reactivity, that only taking action when it’s ‘have-to’, can blend into adulthood.
Like meeting targets or showing up for work because of having a boss who’ll fire you for not meeting targets or for skipping work.
That boss, ready to use a bunch of consequences, says jump… and so we say ‘how high?’
But I’ve seen it again and again – heck, I’ve done it myself! – we ‘fire our boss’ and then take up residence in lah-lah land.
We fully pretend we’re entitled to lashings of ‘freedom’ and – without any accountability – completely deny the fact we’re actually just playing hooky.
This has huge consequences in any business, but especially network marketing.
Because it’s very easy to fluff about, never actually paying the price, and then blame the system: ‘it’ didn’t work.
(The Laws of Physics and The Land of Your Dreams is a longer look at all of this).
On the other hand, consistently bringing the expectations your boss has for you into your own business can bring tremendous – in fact astounding – results over time.
So…
Find someone to hold you accountable. Establish non-negotiable targets to reach over the next week, month and 6 months.
Put consequences in place for if you fail to follow through on your action steps.
Lift your game.
Ask yourself:
- Would an employer accept this performance?
- Would I give this excuse to my boss and expect them to swallow it?
- Would I hire me to run my business this way?
An early-days entrepreneur is both the employee doing the work, and the boss setting the expectations and demanding the results. It’s a new skill for most of us, and a combination worth mastering.
If you want to be the wealthiest employee you’ve ever known –
be the toughest boss you’ve ever had.
See you on the road,
Helen
Kelly
“If you want to be the wealthiest employee you’ve ever known – be the toughest boss you’ve ever had.” Ohhh yes, this is fantastic.
Helen
I stole that line from an inspiring upline. It’s really true! It’s best mastered with accountability & regular goal focus – otherwise it’s too easy to let ourselves off the hook, no matter how much this concept makes sense! Thanks for commenting Kelly.
Jo Baxas
Oh I have this issue! After my last job ended I decided I would just do network marketing full time!
I am in lag lag land so many hours of faffing! Thank you I love it
Helen
You’re not alone – I can only write about this because I do it myself Jo! Always strikes me as *bizarre* that we’d settle for such a tiny short term gain when there’s so much at stake. But it’s certainly the case. There’s power in accepting that. Like I said to Kelly – accountability and regularly reviewing goals are things that can keep us honest. Thanks for commenting – I love hearing from readers.
Christopher
Love the post.i can really identify with that – the initial change from working for someone to working for myself, i often allowed anything distracting to occupy me instead of containing my own work hours into reasonable work hours – then had to spend so much more time to get things done – meaning my self employed work bled into all the rest of my life, so i was actually “working” all hours.
Helen
Some kind of juicy deadline, and the ability to really embrace down time (like having some kind of nourishing hobby that’s NOT connected to work) is really crucial I think – for that motivation to both take effective action, AND the motivation to relax and have proper down time too.