SFR 50: Character Flaws

Progress in entrepreneurship REQUIRES you to face a few character flaws. Address them, and you'll move forward...

Hey, how's it going? Hey, thanks for tuning in. This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio.

Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.

All right, you guys. Hey, if you listened to the last episode, I was talking about how I went and I spoke at Local Client Takeover and that was a lot of fun, had a whole bunch of fun doing that.

I don't know. The older I've gotten, not that I'm old at all, I'm 29, but the older I've gotten, the more I've realized I truly don't care that much what other people think about me and what's funny is that ... That's not like a chip off the shoulder way like, "I don't care. I don't care."

That's not it at all. It's just I've become far more comfortable with my personality and who I am and the value I think I can bring places and being energetic and if I feel like I want to yell, I'm going to yell. That's actually been part of the fun part about having a house now is man, I'll just start ... My little girl, my little 1-year-old and 3-year-old will just start running around the house screaming, right. I'm comfortable doing that in public settings now.

There's something to be said about being comfortable with you and self-expression...

You know what I mean?

Anyways, I was speaking at this event, right, or I was about to go on stage and this isn't a bash at all on that event. It was really, really good actually. It was awesome. Honestly, most of it was about SEO. I don't know anything about SEO. I don't really want to know anything about SEO and so, I tuned out for a little bit because my topic was about local funnels and how to structure agencies in order to sell to local businesses, right, and so that's what I did.

I went in and I talked about that, but beforehand what was happening was ... It was pretty funny. I noticed that the emcee, he probably wasn't an actual emcee. What he was doing was he was standing up and he was saying, "Hey," low energy, "Hey, welcome.

All right, it's time for our next speaker and here he is." That was like sometimes there's applause, sometimes that's it, the guy just stood up and it was like, "Hey," and I was like, "Oh, man," again, nothing against him. I don't think he's an actual emcee. I think he was just part of the employee staff that was there and I was like, "Gosh, that's really, really rough."

What I started thinking about was the time Russell asked me to introduce him to his inner circle. Now obviously, his inner circle knows who he is, right, and this was at the last Funnel Hacker Event we had and just my mind went back to it and I started thinking about it. It was huge lesson for me, right.

The event's about to start and Russell's like, "Okay," he comes to me, he's like, "Hey, Stephen, do you want to introduce me before I go out there?" and immediately I got nervous. I was like, "Man, I don't have any problem speaking.

I love speaking. I always want to speak, but I've never introduced somebody like what do you do? What's the structure? What's the model? What does it look like? What does it look like to successfully introduce somebody?" You know what I mean?

That might sound like a cheesy, dumb question, but to me, it was a big question...

I was like, "Dude, yeah, man, but like what do I do?" He laughed and he was like, "Dude, here's your only goal. This is the only thing that you need to do." There's a whole point to this whole thing, by the way, so just keep following me here. He goes, "Okay, all you need to do is you need to ... I don't really care how you do it. I don't care what you say honestly."

He's like, "The only goal that I have for emcees is that before I come on stage, they've got to be at a drastically higher state than before so that when I come out on stage, I don't need to lift their state. I don't need to spend time putting energy into the room. I don't need to spend any time helping them raise up to me because I'm a high energy speaker," and I was like, "Okay, that makes sense. Okay, okay."

He's like, "So that's all you got to do is get out there, whatever it is, elevate the energy in the room, elevate the state in the room and then, I can come out and meet them with high energy. Otherwise, it's weird. You get on stage and everyone's kind of like blah, like they're not energetic yet. They're not in a state to receive me yet."

I was like, "Hey, okay, that makes sense..."

I went out there and I told this cool story and I think it worked. It was my first time, the first time I did it was a little bit weird. I don't think I hit it. I don't think I nailed it very well, but second time, I did better. The third day, I definitely did all right.

Anyway, that's what I went up to this emcee and I told him, and if he hears this, please know that I'm not at all bashing at all, but it just really brought me back to that lesson of how important it was. I walked up to him and I was like, "Hey, how do I tell this guy that man, you can't be boring and it's really boring," and be respectful for what he was doing, what the event was, but at the same time, I didn't want to go on stage and have everyone just sitting there like, "Okay, dude, start talking. What are your gold bombs you're going to drop on me?"

You know what I mean? They got to be at this higher level of energy so that when I come in, I start to go nuts.

It's the reason Tony Robbins events are parties. If you change your state, you learn better...

If you change your state, you receive things better, you act better, you make decisions faster. I have bad days every once in a while.

I had a bad day just recently and I was like, "Crap," and I was telling Russell this and I was like, "Man, I'm sorry, man. It's a rough day. There's some challenges going on and I think I got to change my state."

I'll spend some time state control and try and get back into a fiery zone so that I can produce and be a high producer, right. Anyway, so I went up and I told this guy that and he did better and it went fantastic and it was awesome.

On the flight back I was listening to High Performance Academy. It's something Russell gave me. It's awesome. By Brendon Burchard and it's been super awesome. I was thinking about life and I was like hey ... I'm not trying and have this be like a super deep podcast at all just so you guys know, but I was thinking about like okay, what do I want to do? What do I want to accomplish? What are the things I want to be known for? What's my life's work?

Things like that...

I want to be purposeful...

I want to be driven...

I don't want to just be ... What's that? I can't remember what book that is. He's like, "Most people are just floating around in a river without a paddle." Actually, they have the paddle. They'd just would rather drift and just stick the paddle in the water and start going somewhere.

Most people just take life as it comes. They don't really move in a certain direction.

I was thinking about all these things and I was getting an Uber driver and I sat down and the Uber app all of a sudden popped up and it said, "Your driver is hard of hearing or deaf. Just be aware." I was like, "Whoa, okay, cool." I just thought she'd be a little bit of hard of hearing, but she was actually completely deaf.

Obviously, she can't talk and she's sign languaging for me to sit in the front and things like that. It was really, really special. Actually, it was interesting. I have a niece who's completely deaf and so I have a few cousins and they're trying to learn sign language and things like that so they can keep communicating with her and it's really, really special, but it was interesting.

I sat there and it was dead quiet. There's nothing to say, of course, which is a little bit weird for me. Usually, there's some kind of interaction at least going on. I always like to ask the Uber drivers what's going on with their life and learn what they're doing and see what path they're on, stuff like that and all of a sudden, I just thought I've got 20 minutes before I actually get back.

What if I learned some phrases in sign language so that by the time I got out of the car, I could thank her and ask her some stuff and things like that?

I discretely pulled out my phone. I was sitting in the front seat. It's not like she couldn't know, but I was sitting in the front seat and I started going through and I was looking up all these sign language phrases and I was trying to practice them without moving my hands. We pull up to the house and I start signing thank you, please be safe, hope you're doing okay, stuff like that.

Her eyes lit up and she starts saying with really fast sign language and mumbling and all, and thank you and hope you're doing well and things like that and it was really, really a cool experience.

I had Brendon Burchard's High Performance Academy stuck in my head. I had a bit of the high from the event that I spoke at going through my head. I had all these things going through my head and then to top it all off, there's been this follower who's fantastic.

I'm sure I'll introduce him here to you guys shortly, but there's this follower who has reached out over and over and over over the course of several months begging to do something for free for me and I couldn't believe it and he reached out again. It was like all these events started coming together in one cool moment.

I came back upstairs, I came inside after the lady dropped me off from Uber and I came inside and all these things were just racing through my head. I was like I can't go to sleep yet. It was super late. I got back really, really late. I had to go to work the next morning, in just a few hours, but I couldn't go to bed and I started thinking of all the cool things that have been going on and this is something I recommend that you guys do.

The entrepreneurial journey is something that's very interesting, and this is a little side tangent real quick here, but there's a really cool part in one of Robert Kiyosaki's books.

I think it was the Cash Flow Quadrant where he talked about when you are beginning to move forward in entrepreneurship or any kind of thing in business, but particularly entrepreneurship, there's this really interesting phenomenon that happens where, as you move forward, let's say ... I'll just say it.

As you move forward, your character flaws begin to be exposed to you and it's very uncomfortable. It's painful and you don't move on until you address that character flaw. That's something that he taught.

You think about it, it's totally true. Let's say I was moving on with my business and there's all these things going on and I'm just getting things started, but I really can't control my own sched. Let's say that I just really can't control my schedule enough and so, I never get up on time and I miss a few crucial meetings and so, the business just sizzles out and dies, right.

That's a character flaw, right, and that happens for every single time you start a business every time or anything in business, right. These character flaws will start to blow up in your face. It's not like it's this soft blow. They will blow up in your face and you will not move on.

Your business will not progress. You will not do anything until these character flaws are taken care of and fixed...

When he said that, I was like, "Holy cow, that's crazy," and I was like, "That's neat. That's interesting," but it stuck with me. As I began to progress and move forward and as I've done things in my personal business and stuff with Russell and all over the place, character flaws have been exposed and it's uncomfortable.

I had that in my head and I had this stuff with Brendon and this really cool experience with this ... I had this really special quick connection with this lady who was deaf and I was trying to sign, and this high coming back from speaking, all these things coming on and then, the guy reaching out saying, "Please, let me help you. I see you're struggling in these certain areas." I just gave in. I was like, "You know what? Yeah, I do.

Character flaw is blowing up in my face right now...

I'm trying to ... I got to fix this one aspect of business. Can you help me? I will not move forward until I get help." He's been helping and it's been great.

It's been a character flaw of mine that I know in the last six months, I've not done as much as I can to be connecting with people and show concern for other people's welfare. It's not that I've been greedy. It's just been so focused that I've not taken the time to connect with other individuals at all, right. I was trying to do that with the deaf lady.

There's a character flaw that I've been fighting with is this whole ... Guys, I'm just trying to be super vulnerable. This is uncomfortable for me to say with this podcast, but I'm just trying to be open and honest about it, right. It's been a character flaw of mine to shut in and not express what my actual inner feelings are while I'm progressing on this journey.

So, I went and I spoke my mind, right, to that emcee and in a loving way said, "Hey, look, could you not do that in the way you've been doing it? Here, try it this way." You know what I mean?

It's been a character flaw of mine to suppress some energy and I'm actually much more of a open and out there and very high energy person in my head, but not always in public and that might shock some of you guys. I'm an extrovert, but there's also this part of me that needs to be alone sometimes to recharge and sometimes that can be a character flaw for what's going on around me.

It's been a really fascinating last few days for me as I thought about all these little pieces and all these things and this guy. I don't want to just keep talking about this guy, but I want to actually introduce him to you at some point. He's been awesome.

He's like, "Hey, man, I love support and it looks like your support sucks." That's basically that's what it came down to and I was like, "Yeah, my support does suck." I get hundreds of questions a week and it stresses me out to death. I'm not good at that. It's not that I don't want to talk to anybody. It's just I feel walls closing in. I feel confinement.

I feel like I can't expose myself and ... Whatever it is, I'm not good at support. I'm good at sales or marketing I should say. I'm good at speaking. I'm good at those kinds of things of the aspect of the business.

What was really interesting and I think what started this whole ... It's been on my mind in general, but what really started this is on the flight over to go speak, two or three days ago, while I was on the flight ... It was about a week ago when I was flying to Utah with Russell. That's what it was. I decided to read and pick up and read Ready, Fire, Aim and the very beginning of the book was really, really powerful.

I haven't got that far into it yet, but while on the flight over there, I just started to read. There was this really, really funny ... It wasn't supposed to be funny, but for the situation I'm currently in, it's been really, really funny, right.

Timely, I should say, but it's talking about the different stages of needing to work with other people and I was like, "That's funny. That stuff's been on my mind."

There's been this really, really awesome thing that popped up while I was reading and so I underlined it and I just wanted to read it here. It was on page 27 of Ready, Fire, Aim. If you guys have ever read that book, highly recommend it. I'm only, I don't know, 30 pages in, but I can already tell it's going to be one of those favorite books, spots on my shelf kind of thing.

Anyways, the bottom here says, "If you make it a practice to hire people with potential, the potential to do a particular job as well or better than you can do it, your business can grow. This way, with each tier being promoted to the next level and each stage of growth giving rise to the new level of challenge and reward for your employees.

Smart entrepreneurs will encourage their employees to hire subordinates who are as good and capable as they are. If you are not doing that, start doing it now. It will make everything easier later on."

Gosh, this is just so key. It's so amazing and it's not that I've been afraid to do that. It's just it's funny how relevant that is to me right now. He says, "Smart entrepreneurs will encourage their employees to hire subordinates who are as good and capable as they are, if not better." I thought that was so, so important.

You guys, you'll not do it alone.

You won't do it alone...

If you're going to do it, if you're going to try and do it alone, you'll get there to a certain extent. Don't go out and just try and start hiring people. Russell always says, "Hire when it hurts. Hire when you're in pain. Hire when you can't handle it anymore," but know that overall, you're not going to be able to do it alone. You have unique abilities that you're really, really good at and you have stuff that you suck at and it's cool to know what those things are and it's totally fine.

If you don't know what those things are, don't worry, just start moving, and like Robert Kiyosaki said, the character flaws will start blowing up in your face and start taking note of that and take some humble pie and just be like, "Okay, that's what it is. That's fine. I don't need to be the best at everything in the world. That's not possible anyway. What am I really, really good at?"

Focus on those things. Hire out on the other parts and super, super powerful...

Anyways, it's just really interesting to start thinking through all those things. Not going to do it on your own. Understand that you've got some character flaws are going to pop up. I understand this is not like a normal episode for Sales Funnel Radio because it's not totally about sales funnels, but as you guys begin to build or continue to build, just recognize that if you haven't done so before, that there are flaws inside of you and that's fine.

Just know that it's going to be way better to find somebody else to go hire and help you out...

What's been so cool is the guy who's been helping me out, man, it's been awesome to take stuff and put it on his shoulders and he's come back and be like, "Yeah, totally fine. I can do that. By the way, I've done X, Y, and Z also while you were gone." You're like, "What?" Oh, my gosh, I hired somebody as capable as I am, but in a different area, a different specialty. You know what I mean? It's been amazing. It's been so cool.

The level of stress has dropped dramatically in my life and I didn't expect that. I thought that I'd have to manage this person a lot. I thought I would have to ... Not like judging him, just I've never really done this before so I assumed that you would have to do heavy management of the situation and as long as you can hire a few rock stars, go for it.

My question became a couple of weeks ago while I realized I needed a person, I needed something, I needed someone and I started looking around. I started making little tiny hooks out there to just see this isn't something I want to care of. It's not something I can focus on.

I want to stay focused with Click Funnels and my current thing, but there needs to be some attention in this support area because I'm getting hundreds of questions a week and I can't handle it, but I tell people that they should ask me questions. I'm like, "Crap," that was ... Anyway, it's vicious little cycle there, but it's been cool to go out and vet people out.

What I've been doing to vet people is give them a little task and see how they react to it.

I was talking to Dan Henry and hope Dan's fine with me sharing this, but he was saying, he's like, "Dude, when you go out ... " I actually talked to a lot of people. It was one, two, three, four, probably five entrepreneurs. I was like, "Hey, what'd you do in this scenario? What'd you do in this scenario?"

I got all the feedback from all these different people and I said, "Hey, cool, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? What are you doing here? And How do you actually hire these people? And how do you find this person overall?" Because you could hire anyone off the street, but he may not be that very good.

How do you find someone who's good and willing to go the extra mile and who's just full out in love with you?

Basically, it was, hey, see who's willing to do it for free, not that you're going to be free loading on them, but you need to find someone who's passionate and who would do it for free because they love your brand. They love what you do. They love the things and the direction that your business is going in.

Find somebody who would do it for free and actually doesn't ask for money and does a few tasks without asking for anything and excels in them and pushes forward and babysits the business a little bit and acts like it's their own and find that person.

Two or three days ago, I realized there was this certain person and I was like, "Oh, okay, he's the guy and okay, so let's do this." It was this big character flaw moment for me also. I got to give off some control and trust in a certain area and it's been amazing. Anyways, I'll bring him in here at some point and I'll do a little interview because he's got a cool story as well, but for right now, that's basically it.

I basically wanted this whole podcast when I came home and I didn't want to go to sleep, I just went to my white board and I just started brain dumping all over the place, all these things around my head and the common theme around all of it was this whole thing. Wow, I have character flaws. I'm totally fine with that.

I got to find someone because I'm not going to be able to do it on my own and that's fine. It's been fun to push forward in that area.

Anyways, guys, hopefully that was helpful and super excited for all the cool things coming up. Hope you guys all got the Expert Secrets Book from Russell Brunson. If not, go to expertsecrets.com. That book's amazing. I just barely got mine in the mail and I feel like I got to put it in a glass case or something.

These books have done more for me than my marketing degree and that's not to badmouth the education at all, but seriously, these are like the bibles of marketing. It's brilliance.

It's brilliance that the man's put in there. Anyways, guys, this was a fun one and I will talk to you all later. Bye.

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