when growth gets too uncomfortable

Hey friend,

Did you catch my email a few weeks ago, where I talked about how I spent three hours on a sixty-second video?

Well, HERE’S THE VIDEO!

Turned out to be 90 seconds, but you get the point.

On to today!

Today, I did some “thinking time.”

Here’s what I thought about this morning…

• To achieve the success I desire, what effort and expertise are required?

My ultimate answer: The ability to get through friction points.

Entrepreneurship has levels. Each level comes with a steep learning curve.

The steepest learning curve is when you start. It’s no hike up a mountain; it’s a vertical climb. You need ropes, harnesses, picks, and a massive amount of determination.

Once you summit, you realize you climbed a vertical rock face only to be at the bottom of a new mountain: a new entrepreneurial learning curve.

With some confidence from the previous climb, you start up the next mountain…

This cycle continues in perpetuity.

But one day, you hit another vertical rock face, but this one makes the first vertical climb look like a joke.

You don’t say it out loud. You may even lie to yourself, but you don’t have the stomach to climb another mountain like this.

It’s too steep, it’s too dangerous, and hell, you are already pretty high up, why not be happy with where you are?

Instead of climbing, you head back down the mountain and start from the beginning. You want some challenge, but you’d rather have a challenge in something you already know you can do.

So how does this apply?

As you gain skills as an entrepreneur, you may know exactly what it takes to start and grow a six- or seven-figure business.

But to go from six figures to seven figures, it’s a different skill set. The same is true going from seven figures to eight figures and even from eight figures to nine.

Instead of growing your current opportunity, you start another project. You take the new project to a level you have already been.

In other words, instead of tougher climbs you go back to the mountains you have already conquered.

You know what that is, my friend?

COMFORT.

It’s comfort disguised as hard work toward a goal you have already achieved. Do you see how damn sneaky comfort can be?

So the skill needed to get through the friction point is to find out exactly what you do not know.

Then, go learn it.

That’s where I am today.

So what’s next?

I’ll be looking at constraints, then data.

I’ll find out what the biggest constraint is in my business that is holding me back from achieving my goals.

Once I find that, I’ll look at all the data surrounding the constraint.

I’ll hypothesize about what inputs can influence the data around the constraint. After three months, I’ll see if the constraint is loosening its hold on the business.

It’s that… or start a whole new business altogether, which is what my historical ‘go-to’ is.

I hope that showing you my thought process is helpful.

If so, reply and let me know.

If not, reply and let me know what you’d like to see more of.

Try harder,

JM