550: 90% Of Entrepreneurs Are Not Doing This…And It’s Costing Them
As entrepreneurs, we’re wired to seek instant results and immediate gratification. But what if I told you that one of the most potent secrets to success lies in playing the long game? In today’s episode, I’m explaining the essence of the long game – that elusive concept that’s often overlooked in our quest for rapid success.
Tune in as I unravel the layers of this game and help you understand how it applies to our entrepreneurial journey. Remember: in a world obsessed with instant results, those who master the long game emerge as the true champions of the entrepreneurial realm.
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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Emily Hirsh
Hello, everybody. Happy Thursday. If you are tuning into this live, otherwise happy. I can’t believe August is almost over. I just said to one of my team members today. I said, I hope I go back to Texas and it is going to be fall. I know that won’t actually happen for like two more months, but I’m getting ready. I’m ready for fall and all the things that come with fall. It is my favorite season. So, we are still in California. I’ve been traveling for almost six weeks if you count Alaska and I’m still happy, still loving it. I do miss my garden, in my house and my chickens, but I do not miss the heat. It is so hot there. So I think it’ll still be hot when we get there, but I won’t complain and I am excited to get back and see my garden. I bet it’s really grown. I thankfully have a neighbor who’s watering it twice a day because that’s the key.
All right, you guys. So I felt inspired to talk about this after having an interesting conversation with my husband and my brother, which it’s kind of weird, like the connection to this, you’re gonna be like, I don’t, I don’t know, like this might be a little off. But one of the things that I always talk about in business is the importance of playing the long game. And I think so many business owners have a hard time doing this. I think people have a hard time doing this because especially entrepreneurs and that like type a high d on the disc assessment myself included personality. We want results tomorrow, we want change tomorrow when we have an idea, we want it now. And so patience is a very hard thing to come by. And I’m, I’m honestly speaking to myself sometimes when I say this because I think it’s one thing to execute strategies and initiatives and projects to get results now in the next month and even 3 to 6 months, like in the big scheme of things, that’s such a short term. And I have struggled, still struggle and have struggled in my past with having patience with something that it’s like you could have this in a year or in six months or you could have this right now and it might be a little bit less and I have a hard time choosing the longer one because it’s so far for me to comprehend. And I want it now and they’ve actually done, there’s that study that they do not study. It was like an experiment on kids where they said, I don’t know if it was a marshmallow or something and it was like, you’re in a room and they put the marshmallow next to the kids and they said I’m gonna leave. And if you don’t eat this, when I come back, you can have two marshmallows. I might be butchering this a little bit. But basically, there’s a treat sitting in front of you. You can eat it or you can wait an hour or wait a certain period of time and you can have double that. And I think like majority of the kids or if not all ate it right now, right? So that delayed gratification, the patience, the play, the long game, we struggle with that as humans, especially as entrepreneurs. And I think it seriously hurts us. And so I talk all the time about the importance of playing the long game in your business and your marketing and making sure that your strategy, your content, you create your audience growth, your lead generation, all of that feeds into a bigger picture and that you make consistency, the goal to constantly be building that. And so I want to dig into this a little bit more. But my brother and my husband and I were, he was my dad. We were all in the kitchen having a conversation and my husband made this comment that just made me think and he, we were talking about, they were actually talking about like politics in the world. And I was just listening because my husband’s very, very intelligent and I like to listen to him talk because he just, like, knows how to articulate things that I don’t always know how to articulate. Well, especially as it, when it comes to like global and, and stuff problems. And he said something about China and how China is probably one of the best countries at playing the long game. And they’ve been playing the long game for decades. We don’t even need to go into what that means. But with their plans and their initiatives and everything they’ve been doing and their goals and their, you know, vision for where they’re taking themselves to China, they have been absolutely playing the long game and delaying the gratification of all of that work for probably decades. And it just got me thinking that in politics and in countries like this, I’m sure that there are conversations about what is going to be happening in the direction that they want to take things in 2030 50 plus years, which is so crazy to me because some of the times the people having those conversations may not even be involved. And there’s definitely a lot of corruptness and so much bad about all that about what their priorities are. But just setting aside from that, it just made me think and I was like, yeah, and that’s why they eventually it catches up to them and they start winning, right? And they have that success. And it was a reminder for me about understanding what your long game is and digging deeper into that. Like, I think it’s easy to say, oh, play the long game, right? But you have to first have two things. You have to first have the vision of what that long game means. Like, if you, if I was to sit you down and say, you know, where are you gonna be and where is your company gonna be in 10 years from now? I believe that there’s a balance of, you can’t know every single detail about that. You can’t be like, ok, I’m gonna be exactly doing this and this is exactly how many customers we’re gonna have and exactly how much revenue we’re gonna be making. You can, to an extent, define that, but you have to have this balance of flexibility. But I think having a vision from a high level of where you wanna be, which oftentimes if I ask you a 10 year vision or 20 year vision, it’s probably going to go beyond just your business. Like for me, I know if you were to ask me what’s my 10 year vision? Well, I have a vision for my business, but then I also have a vision for other things, for passive income. I wanna grow for companies I wanna buy for things outside, for things that impact my net worth as a person outside of just my business. But those things, I can’t necessarily set goals that I’m gonna start to see an impact and a change in a month from now. Like those are bigger picture visions. So that’s the first thing first, you have to understand and actually take the time to define what that vision is, but balance not being overly detailed and rigid because you don’t know what’s gonna happen in a year. And I feel like that’s where a lot of people mess up. You either go one or two ways you have no vision and you only live in reactivity and reacting to the things thrown at you this day and this month and kind of letting things happen to you. That’s one scenario or you have a vision, but it is so specific and so rigid that it puts blinders on opportunities that come your way or problems or feedback that you can’t respond to because you’re so focused on this rigid vision. And that’s why the vision should be focused on outcomes. It can be focused on how you want to feel your lifestyle, your net worth and your overall income. Like, I mean, if you have a vision to have a private plane that’s gonna take more than a year, ok? So that’s a 10 year plan, that’s a 15 year plan. If you have a vision to be able to pay for your kids’ first house, ok. That’s gonna take more than a year, right? And so what are those big picture visions? You don’t have to have the step by step manual of how you’re gonna get there yet, but you need to have that vision. So that’s the first thing. The second thing I think you have to have defined is in order to get to that vision, what are the non-negotiable things that you need to be doing consistently to guarantee that you’ll eventually get there. So what comes to me when I think about this is a few things, one growing my audience because no matter what direction I take my business myself, my company, a new company like you name it. If I grow my audience, I’ll always win. You grow your audience, the business grows. So therefore, in order to play the long game, I need to have the patience and the ability to not just see the immediate success of growing my audience, but also what it’s playing into a bigger picture. OK. Another thing is growing your leads. I am gonna do a recap of Alex Hersey’s webinar. Not quite ready. It’s gonna come out next week. I wanted to actually rewatch it one more time. But one of the things he says is double your leads and you’ll double your business and it’s so true. It’s a direct correlation. If you are growing your reach and your impact as a business, as a person, it doesn’t matter what direction you take things, you will always be growing, right? And, and I love how Alex said in his webinar, you can mess up a bunch of times and still be ok if you are growing those two things, which is so true, you can put out a bad offer, you can have a bad month in business. You can fail at things. But if you’re growing your audience and your leads, you’ll be OK, you’ll come back from it, you will make it better, right? And so the second piece to this is having that vision. But then understanding what are the initiatives and the efforts and the things I need to put consistent resources and time into and then have the patience and understanding that it’s not just about the immediate reward. So yes, if I add, let’s say like we add about 1000 leads a month to my list. On average. If I add 1000 leads to my list, then I can do the math and tell you that from those leads, we should get about 10 new customers at least initially. That’s a 1% conversion. That’s on the low side, right? But that’s initial like within the 1st 30 days. I also know that my customers take on average six months to convert. And I also know that those 990 leads, I now have a massive opportunity to nurture to build a relationship with and I can maybe convert them later. And so the game of business is being profitable and successful in those initial efforts. But then having enough profit and also the vision of the long game to be willing to put back in to continually grow for the future and having those non negotiables. Because imagine if and this happens that I was like, ok, I’m sending 1000 people on to my list and I’m only converting 10 of them. And so let’s say that’s not giving me high enough profit margins that I want and maybe it’s, it’s putting me at like 50% and I wanna be at 60. Well, if I cut down the number of leads, I bring on to try to save money and now I’m at 60% profit margins, but I’m growing slower.That’s a short term reward, increasing my profit margins, which yes is good, but that’s a short term reward that’s gonna take away big time from my long game, from my bigger picture. And between that conversation I had and then also watching Alex T Mosi, who I find it Like my takeaways are gonna be different than everybody else’s because I take away things outside of the webinar. And what I think is really, really cool for those of you guys who don’t know, Alex Tizi, look him up. He’s an amazing marketer, his book, $100 million offers. I recommend it many, many times. And I just really appreciate how intentional he is with content and concepts that he puts out. And so he wrote his last book two years ago, it released two years ago and he waited two years and played the long game of building his audience, generating leads and writing this book when he probably could have written it in a year and released it in a year. And he had a big enough audience to release it that next year. But he took that extra intentional time to play into and have the patience to play into the vision that he had, which resulted in like 500,000 people signed up for this book launch and over 100,000 people in life point being, he didn’t cave to that instant gratification or that faster result faster to get good enough, you know, turn out and sign ups on his book when he could have done it faster. I’m sure that he could have, but it was an intentional decision to, to go at it really slowly to be very intentional to build up his audience and then get those results. And so I find that to be one of the biggest takeaways is the ability. I think that the most successful entrepreneurs, the smartest ones out there, learn how to manage the desire for instant gratification and control that and put themselves constantly into a state of seeing the long game of understanding the value of putting resources, time and money into growing something bigger. That becomes that snowball effect. So you gotta have the vision for what that looks like. You don’t have to have the step by step manual of how you’re gonna get there yet. But you gotta have the vision for what that long game looks like. Like, why are you doing what you’re doing today in this month? Why, what is your bigger picture? What is your dream? What is that vision? What, where are you gonna be in 10 years? And are your behaviors and your habits and your commitments and your goals right now in alignment with that? Or are you just reacting to everything thrown at you? Two? What are the consistent actions and initiatives you need to be taking that feed that long game no matter what. So my examples are that I used to grow your audience and your leads that feed the long game no matter what. It doesn’t matter if the economy crashes. If Facebook shuts down, if a new platform is created, if something big shifts, those things still support your long game. And then when you put energy into those, are you doing that with the understanding of? It’s not just about the instant gratification and it’s about that longer game. I’ve seen this happen with a lot of clients where at about the six month mark of being consistent of growing their audience visibility ads following our process, lead generation consistently doing it. And like I said, the game of business is getting not to be profitable, but then reinvesting back for the bigger picture. So the clients who do that, there gets to be this breaking point where all of a sudden everything we’re doing is still working, how it was like it’s still working, it’s converting, there’s one specific client coming to my mind who I witnessed this with recently, everything we’re doing, our marketing is working two x three X in one example, 10 X return on ads spend, right? But then all of a sudden you start to get buyers from people that have been hanging out there for six months for four months who have seen you launch three times and now is the time for them to buy. And now everything you’re doing is working and it’s still bringing in that revenue. But you’re getting all these new sales because you already paid for these leads, you’ve been nurturing them and I call that snowball effect and that only comes from consistency that only comes from playing the long game. So I think when I was reflecting on this for me, I think I do a pretty good job of playing the long game when it comes into like this year. I don’t think I necessarily do the best job and I could do a better job at thinking about like the next 5 to 10 years. And what could I be doing now to feed that vision? And am I clear on that vision? And am I really making sure that I’m patient? Right. And that I don’t stop something or take away resources from something that could help that 5 to 10 year vision. So that’s my lesson. That’s my reflections. I think again, the entrepreneurs who figure out how to have control over the desire for instant gratification will grow their business in the long run. So much more than those who are constantly reacting and focused on the instant gratification and bouncing around from thing to thing and losing focus when something doesn’t work. Some, I hope you guys appreciated this message. As always, I appreciate you guys. I am going to be back next week. I have planned an episode to kind of break down my takeaways from Alex Hersi. So I’m excited for that and I’ll talk to you guys next week.