Last week I was listening to author Lewis Schiff on a webinar and something hit me in the gut. Hard. So much so, that his words are stuck on a continuous loop in my head more than 7 days later.
Schiff’s book Business Brilliant studies the mindset and habits of the middle class versus those of self-made millionaires and billionaires. It’s fascinating stuff and I’ve read the book at least three times in the last year.
On the webinar, he was talking about how the middle class approach to things teaches us to work on improving skills where we are weak. How the school system and traditional workplace train us into this focus on skills improvement, when in reality we should really just work on what we are really really good at.
Is this new information? No. Call it the zone of genius, your sweet spot…whatever you call it, for the love of entrepreneurship, it’s a message I needed to hear. It’s something I knew in grade 12 when I dropped math because it was dragging down my GPA and a career that involved math at that level was never going to happen.
All these years later, why in the hell do I think I need to be able to “do” everything in my business?
Does this Sound Familiar?
Do you do everything because you love to learn?
Because having someone else do it costs too much?
Or worse yet, you don’t trust anyone to do it quite like you?
Hi there. Guilty as charged!
I’m a dabbler because I like to know how things work. I don’t want to eat my profits any pay someone else when I can do it super quick…and it turns into an hour of Googling because I am so damn stubborn.
Who’s with me?
I will say this, I’m probably 100x better at delegating and outsourcing than I was a year ago, but after judging by my reaction to Schiff’s point, I still have a long way to go.
DIY mentality is keeping me (and maybe you?) firmly in a middle class mindset.
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I don’t know about you, but I’m here to do more than I ever would working for someone else sitting in a cube watching the minutes tick by as I look forward to cupcakes for someone’s birthday celebration at 3 p.m.
The things that we suck at, we need to stop doing as soon as humanly possible. The things we’re mediocre at should probably go too…because are you in this to be medi-fucking-ocre? Exactly.
Three ideas to get you on the road to ditching your mediocrity:
1. Start by keeping track of the stuff you loathe doing or that makes you slightly insane. That should be the first stuff to go. Figure out what you are really good at and start mapping out a way to focus on that only in your business.
2. Simplify your product/services or niche. Ditch things that aren’t working in your marketing or business. The social network you hate or video blogging that makes you want to barf – hasta la vista!
3. Get help. If you can’t hire a VA, project manager or subject matter expert quite yet, figure out a way to do it. Trade services, offer to help in lieu of payment, get a side hustle to pay for it, save like a mad woman to get what you need.
Persistence is the key to all of this. It can be done, but not if you simply file it away as “one day” or “not right now”.
Life is too short to be mediocre. And really, there’s enough of that going around. Save it for your friends who hate their job and spend all their time living for the weekend. You and your business deserve more.
What’s one thing you can get off your plate to help you be just a bit more brilliant starting this week? How can you ditch your mediocrity? Hit me up in the comments below.
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