Good morning, good morning, good morning. Hope everybody's having a wonderful Friday. I guess it's it's not just when Dorne's here, when we're having pre-show you know conversations that make us late to get started. But here we are. We're live, kind of doing some last minute things, and wanted to jump on now. So here we are. We are live as if you're a business owner, or maybe you are an aspiring business owner and you're looking for a place to come that understands you, that can help you point you in the right direction, in the right spot. So the Business Unscripted Podcast, what we're here for is we're here to help you not only learn from our experiences, things that we've gone through in our business, or things that we've helped our clients through, but we're also here to just you know kind of bring new topics to light. And hopefully one or two points every episode will give you some insights on things that you know can kind of push you forward and you know give you some insights into your own journey. So with that, grab your favorite cup of Joe or your water, and then let's jump into the show today. So it's just me. You just get to hear my lovely voice all show. And I apologize if you know I am doing some things to kind of you know share it and get the get the information out in the background here because we don't have a producer or anything. It's just me. So Dwarne is doing some house hunting today, and so hopefully he was able to find a good spot and a good uh location for them to move. So Dwarn, we wish you the luck there. And what I was kind of thinking, you know, what do I want to what do I want to focus on today? And and really my it came down to I wanted to share, I guess what I call like my 10 don'ts in business. I guess some of these could even apply to your own life, right? You know, and so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna kind of I kind of was you know writing down some of the things that I've gone through that have maybe held me back temporarily that I wanted to share with you, and maybe you can learn from those and you know apply them into your situation as well. So let's jump into that. So the first one that initially kind of stood out for me is you know, don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. I think far too many people try to stay in that in that bubble, you know, where you're used to it. And I think as especially as new business owners or entrepreneurs, especially if you come from the corporate world, you know, you're you're you're definitely you know in that mindset of having to get everything done. And in in you know, as as we said it in the past and in prior episodes, you know, with the Michael Griber's the ebook, right? The it's the technician mindset. And so that's our comfort zone. We're used to doing all the that technical work, the day-to-day in the grassroots, you know, you know, in the grass and the weeds type of type of work. And and ultimately the issue becomes is that you you don't give yourself enough time to to start thinking about the future. So going back to Michael Gerber's book, you know, he mentions the technician is one mindset, right? It's important you're there, especially as you're getting started, you kind of spend more of your time there, but you can't let the other two mindsets uh that you need to have in order to be successful, you know, kind of be put on the back burner. And the the next one is kind of like your managerial mindset. So this is where you start thinking of, you know, what is my you know corporate structure going to look like when I when I grow and when I get to where I want to be? What do my policies look like? What are, you know, am I holding if you have somebody in that it's working with you right now? Am I holding them accountable? You know, am I treating myself and giving myself the opportunity to be a manager of the people that are in my organization? And then finally, the third mindset is that entrepreneurial mindset. And that's like the the visionary. And that's where like you give yourself the opportunity to like to like dream forward, right? And vision what you really want to accomplish out of your business. And if you spend too much time in the technician, you're spending too much time in your business. You're right, you're spending too much time trying to just get things done. And ultimately, what ends up happening is if you continually do that, you end up just owning a job. And you know, you don't want to, you know, that's not what you got into business. You don't own a job. I mean, I guess you know, maybe some of you might just want to have a job, just being able to work for yourself. But I think the majority of us, when we get into business, we have this vision of something that we want to accomplish, a vision of something that we want for our lives. And if you don't give yourself the opportunity to be in the manager in the entrepreneurial, you'll find that that you can't actually make that, you know, and it can't actually, you know, come come true. So give yourself the opportunity. So don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone, which is that technician, and be able to, you know, kind of be more in that managerial, be more in that entrepreneurial mindset. And you know, comfort zone could also mean, you know, putting yourself in in situations that you might not have even thought that you could. And to get started, sometimes that's just networking, right? Just having a conversation with somebody that you've never met with. That's something that can be outside of your comfort zone. Or maybe it's, you know, maybe going for a larger client than maybe you're typically used to. Step outside your comfort zone. That's where the kind of that that growth, that growth happens, you know what I mean? So that's the the first don't. Like, so don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. And with that, that kind of brings me to the to the second don't. And and that's don't be afraid to fail, right? Test your limits. So for me, like I'm going through this right now, you know, and it's a learning experience. So with with the, you know, obviously the inventions like AI and the coding assistance and everything, I'm working on a specific program for myself, right? And and there's a lot of failure. And I think if if I was in a a passive version of myself, I probably wouldn't have even gotten started. One, because it was definitely something that I've never done in my entire life, right? I've never picked up a coding book, I've never understood what all of that means. And and what I'm learning right now, I had a big sort of, I guess you can call it a ha ha moment, or, you know, oh God, like I can't believe I wasted so much extra time over the last two weeks. When I realized that a lot of the systems that I was using potentially and did integrate together. And it was just because I was, I was not experienced, right? So I didn't know to think about it. So I was just kind of doing everything manually for two weeks. And I just think back now, like, holy cow, how much time could I have saved, you know, trying to fix all the different versions when I could have just been talking to each other the whole time. And so that's the same thing in your life and in your business. You know, there's gonna be things, you're gonna come out with a new program, you're gonna, you know, you're gonna have a conversation, multiple, hundreds of conversations with people that are gonna fail. But what you learn from that is the growth. So if you see failure or as as an opportunity instead of an end situation, that's where the growth actually, you know, happens, right? And so don't be afraid to face failure head on. You know, it's something that I embrace now. I look forward to it. I know, you know, not everything you do the first time is going to be successful. And if you're comparing yourself to the people that did get successful after the first time, there's you know, 99.99% of people that don't have success the first time. And for me, one of the things that that kind of truly you know helped me kind of get over that was you know seeing somebody that you want to emulate, right, that's successful, and and then actually going and trying to find their their real story and listening to the real story and realizing you know how it relates to a lot of people in my situation for sure, where they had stumbling blocks, they had failures, you know, you know, think you think back even to you know, like Thomas Edison, you know, the biggest, you know, 10,000 tries at the light bulb before he actually you know accomplished his goal. Could you imagine? Are you willing to are you are you truly willing to fail 10,000 times to get to your goal? And if you're not, where are you willing to fail until? Is it one time? I hope not. I hope not. Because it's if you're only giving yourself one failure or one stumbling block, it's gonna be very, very difficult for you to reach that goal that you're setting for yourself, whether it's in your business, in your life, etc. So don't don't don't give yourself once, don't even give yourself 10. You know, you're gonna you're gonna fail in many things along your journey. A lot of people, you know, say get rid of the word failure. I agree with it, you know. Consider that it's a learning opportunity. It's your biggest, it's it's as soon as you can kind of make that shift and be like, okay, this didn't go as I expected. How can I change? What can I make different? What can I learn from this opportunity? What feedback did I get that I can grow and and change for the next time? And then be quick at making that adjustment. So don't be afraid to fail. Test your limits. That's where your true kind of growth happens, right? And the third one, so don't stop learning. I think, and I've had this conversation with many people, even when I was in corporate, so many people feel like they're they're they're at their peak, and and they stop, you know, kind of learning new information, learning new opportunities or new ways to do things that they do on a regular basis. And my biggest, you know, kind of pet peeves with that is that that's when you're gonna get that's when you're passed over. Because the world is ever evolving. And if you're not willing to continue to evolve and move forward with the world, then you're just gonna get passed by. And yes, you may be at the top of your game for a month, six months, a year. But the true reality is that you're you're gonna get passed by very, very quickly if you don't, if you're if you feel like you don't want to keep learning in your business, in your life, whatever it may be. So that's that's number three. Number four, and I think this is a big one for a lot of people, once for me, don't accept anybody else's vision of your life as the vision that you have to accept for your life. You know, so many people are going to want to give you their opinion, want to um tell you how you should do things. And ultimately, nobody but you know what you're truly heading for, what you're truly trying to accomplish. There's gonna be people along your way that are going to support you, that are gonna point you in the right direction, but ultimately don't accept you know somebody else's vision of your life as the way that you have to live your life. I I think all too often it's difficult for people that aren't, especially like now I'm speaking to like the entrepreneurial journey, right? The business market. It is very easy for people who were not in that same mindset on that same journey to try to project what they feel is safe and what they feel is the way that you should be treating and living your life onto you whenever you try to have a conversation with them, especially about maybe things that are going on in your business. And so the biggest thing that you could do is, you know, if you are having some of those conversations, is to listen, but then you know, kind of don't let don't take it personally, right? Your your your vision for your life is never gonna align with anybody else's vision of what they think, right? They have their own beliefs, they have their own sort of mindset. And so what you need to do is basically, you know, kind of just say, I appreciate it, but I'm gonna keep living my life, I'm gonna keep pushing forward. That's that's the number one thing. So so far, what we've talked about, right, is don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to test your limits. Number three is don't stop learning, don't stop having that willingness to grow. And then number four is don't accept anybody else's vision for your life as your own. And so what we're doing on today's episode is we are going over what I call the top 10 don'ts for business owners and for life. And so I'm kind of going through those lists. And so before we kind of jump into the rest of the list, uh, if you are a business owner and you're interested in kind of joining us for an upcoming episode, I will have a link down below where you can request a future episode that you want to join us on. I'll all we kind of ask here is that you have some sort of educational, you know, kind of piece that you want to give to business owners, right? You want to share. So whether it's information on a specific strategy, specific update, anything that is within your realm, we're gonna give you some opportunity to kind of share that. And the idea there is that we want this to be informational. But also if you're going through maybe one or two kind of specific maybe obstacles in your business that you'd love to talk through here live on the session, we will we ask that you kind of share that as well and we'll go over those on the session. So if you're a business owner and you're interested in joining us in a future episode, there's gonna be a link down below. Feel free to click on that and you can request to join us in a future podcast. We're looking forward to having some business owners join us. We got the, I think the next two weeks are filled right now, but you can definitely start filling that up if that's you. So I look forward to talking with you on the podcast. So next, so we we've talked about the first four. Next is don't allow, well, this is one an hour of this morning, it's totally me. Don't allow the internal negative speak, right, to cloud your perception of reality. And this speaks to life in general, not just business owners. And so all too often, as as humans, we we have the basis, right, of being negative. Like it's our default in our mindset. Our our default for as a business owner, or sorry, as a human, right? Our default as a human is to be negative. And we have to kind of train ourselves, at least the majority of us, we have to train ourselves to be more positive. And with that, our thoughts, and I'm a true believer in this, right? Our thoughts form the reality that we see around us. So if you're always thinking negative, if you're always having that negative self-talk, you know, that the well, uh, you know, woe is me, or I'm a failure, or I'm never going to accomplish anything, that's what's actually gonna happen. And it's only gonna cause it to spiral down even further. And I speak this from truth. Like this was this was me. I was a negative thinker for the longest time. And if anything small happened, I would go down that spiral and I would be there for weeks, right? Until I was able to kind of break free from it. And even even now, like it's not like it's it's just gone forever. Like I was just talking earlier this week, right? Part of this is that like imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is a true thing, whether you're a business owner who's trying to help people, right, with with challenges and obstacles, or you're in the corporate world and maybe you just got you know a promotion into a leader. You know, this the imposter syndrome is true no matter where you are. I experienced, you know, I was feeling a little bit, you know, earlier this week, you're kind of going through that, you know, well, maybe maybe I'm not where I'm supposed to be, maybe I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do. And you know, being able to talk that out and realizing, yeah, you know, that's just a temporary negative kind of self-talk. It's true that it's a limiting factor. And if you let yourself right, and so don't accept that vision of you, like don't accept that negative version of thoughts in your head to be to form your reality. You're gonna have them address them, recognize them, and then convince and tell yourself that those thoughts are just thoughts, they're not beliefs. Because what I've learned through conversations and I've I've worked closely with uh I actually want to get to him on Victor. I mean, he's he's one of my clients, but he's also a great guy around, you know, kind of the mindset, the limiting belief factor. I had a breakthrough when I when I just worked with him, you know. So, Victor, if you're listening to this, I want you to be on the show. But it it's true, you know, beliefs, thoughts are not beliefs. But if you begin to believe your thoughts too often, they will become beliefs. So if you find yourself always having those negative thoughts and you find yourself only seeing negative in the world or whatever, it's probably because your thoughts have now become your belief. But you can break that belief by changing it, by telling yourself that that's not the true belief that I want to hold, and then reformatting it into the version of the belief that you want to have. So recognize that negative thoughts are gonna happen, but don't make them the basis for your reality. Just think about, you know, when you buy a new car, and this is you know kind of a a version of this, right? When you buy a new car, what happens for the next six months? You you're like, man, I never realized there's this many cars on the road, right? Maybe you buy a new truck and you're like, man, I never realized there's this many trucks all I see them all the time. Well, it's because your vision, right? Your thoughts are on that truck. And so you you see it more often. They were always there, but you're seeing it more often. Same thing. If you if you only think negative thoughts, you're gonna see the negative more often. So if you can, if you can focus your thoughts more on positive, what you'll notice is that the more and more you do this, the more and more you'll see the positive things happening in your life, and you won't and you'll break that belief. Okay. So just don't let that internal negative speak form your reality. Because in the end, it's not true. You have the power to think positively and actually grow and see things that are more in a better light than what we typically tend to think about in our life. Okay, so what I will say next, so we got so that's number five. So number six is don't ever stop moving forward, small steps consistently actually beat larger leaps forward. I think far too many times we we're looking to make that large leap ahead. So we're we're looking to go from from, if you're a business owner, you're looking to go from zero to 150, 200 million dollars a year, you know, kind of overnight. And ideally, uh what you're looking at is is just try to get from maybe zero to 5,000 a month. Like set small, consistent goals because when you set the the smaller goals uh on your path ahead, you what you're gonna find is that it's easier to obtain, right? Small, consistent steps will always, always beat the the large leaps that you potentially are trying to make in your business, in your life. So don't be afraid to be consistent, but then also just take smaller steps for yourself. Like that's ultimately the best way for you to be successful in business and in life, right? Focus on being consistent. Don't focus having to have these, you know, big influxes of revenue or big influxes of change in your life or in your business. Um, because if you do that, kind of going back to the the previous don't, you're you're just gonna think negatively because you're not seeing that result, you're not seeing that outcome. And in the end, you know, you'll you'll you'll give up or you'll get burnt out, etc. Whatever you know, version of that may be. Which leads me to number seven. Don't, the the seventh don't, and that is don't compare yourself to social media. There's so many, there's so many gurus out there that like to flaunt their cash, right? Or their big planes. And in reality, most of those people are are fake, right? It's it's crazy. Like if you actually go and like maybe search back three or four years, how many like lawsuits or issues have come up from those individuals moving forward. And so don't be afraid, you know, or sorry, not don't be afraid, don't compare yourself to them. But also don't come, you know, don't compare yourself right now to the actual successful business owners as well, right? There's a lot of legitimate business owners that are out there. So you know, like Gary V, or you know, there's tons of them out there, Grant Cardone, you know, Alex Ramosy, there's all these successful business owners that are on social media as well. Don't compare yourself to them right now. Don't say, oh wow, he's 45, I'm 45, I'm so far behind, I'm just never gonna be there. You can't do that. What you can do though, however, is instead of comparing yourself to your timelines, learn from their efforts and emulate them. So don't think, well, they're 45, I'm 45. Shit, I'm so far behind, I'm never gonna make it, right? Or I'm 30, and you know, Gary Vee, when he was 30, he had he had an $8 million business. I have nothing. I'm so far behind, I'm never gonna accomplish that. You can't do that. What you can do is then you can start at 30 and emulate the activities that he did. And the beauty in today's world is that people who are 45, 50 now, it took them forever to do things that you guys can do now in months or even days. Right? We you starting right now, you have such a huge advantage over people that have been in business for 10 or 15 years that have grown something because things are so like streamlined, right? AI helps you become 50 people, you know, from from one. They keep saying, I keep hearing out there that that's there's gonna be a one-person billion dollar company because they're gonna be doing it through AI and they're gonna be building it, could be out there, it could be you listening to this. I don't know. But that's the like you have so much going for you if you are just starting now or you're you're newer in business right now. You have so much going for you that people that have been in business for 10, 15, 20 years are have to fight, right? You know, they had to fight claw their way to get where they were. They didn't have you know AI to assist them or you know, outsourcing or the internet, you know. They they built it right from from scratch. 20 years, I guess they would have the internet got age to myself. But you know what I mean. You know what I mean. They had to grow it manually. You know, there wasn't a lot of the the capabilities and and the offshoots and the support that we have now. So if you're just getting in the business now or you're just getting started, don't, you're kind of going back to the don't, don't compare yourself to the people that you're either your same age, or maybe you look at their journey when when they were your age and they were so far ahead of you, that doesn't matter. What matters is that you can learn from those people and emulate their effort, emulate their consistency, emulate their path and their actions in your life today, and that's going to get you where you want to go. Who cares if you get it by the same age as them? That doesn't matter. Learn from them. Don't compare yourself to them. And so that's the that's the seventh don't is don't compare yourself to social media, whether it's these social media gurus that are flaunting their big planes and their cars and their money, or it's the social media, you know, successful business owner. You know, you don't need to be where they're at when they got there. You are gonna get there when you were meant to get there on your journey. So don't don't think that you have to you know be there when they do. Which leads me to the eighth note. So the eighth note is don't think too small. And in this specifically, when I was thinking about this you know, pre-show was was around your goals. I have talked and and and you know kind of mentored a lot of people around their goal setting. And so many times they try to set goals that are too small, too attainable, right? And so don't be afraid to think big, right? So so don't think too small and don't be afraid to think big. And the biggest thing that I that I always talk about is, you know, with goal setting, is we all know the SMART acronym, right? So specific, measurable, the A is my problem, right? Because in the SMART acronym, A is said to be attainable. And I don't like that word because in business, when you're trying to grow, you're trying to level up, attainable is an attaboy. You're not looking to give yourself atta boys in business, you need to push yourself further, as we talked about in the what is it, the first dump, right? You need to push yourself outside your comfort zone. Attainable goals aren't going to do that. So you need to change your goals if you're following the SMART acronym, because the other four are definitely relevant. But A, instead of attainable, needs to be ambitious. You need to set ambitious goals for yourself. All right. So don't set attainable goals, set ambitious goals. And then the other two, so R is relative, right? So it's relative to the path that you're on, especially with your business. And then T means there's a time restriction to it. And so just like any, so you want to go back, so you want to have specific, you know. So many times I've heard people say, Well, I just want more revenue, or I need more clients. What does that mean? That's not specific. Are are you needing because you know, 10 clients at a dollar a client? Is that what you're looking for? Because, you know, you got to know what you're shooting for. So be specific. M measurable. You know, again, I want to grow or I need more revenue. Like, okay, again, what does that mean? Right. And it needs to be measurable. So many people talk about they're like, well, I just want to improve my culture of my company. Well, how do you measure the culture of your company? And then you start breaking it down, right? And this is what you need to do with your goals. So instead of doing these vague high-lever, high-level goals, and this could be, you know, in your life or or you know, anything, think about it. What do I need to review or what do I need to know, right? In order to attain that. And so if you're to go back to the example, if you're going to uh you know think through culture, then maybe it's your satisfaction scores of your employees through surveys. And so then your goal should be we're looking to improve our satisfaction goals by 10 to 15 percent. Right? Maybe your previous goals, when we were talking about like the next acronym, right? The the ambitious, maybe you've only seen one or two percent increases year over year for the last couple of years, and so now you're shooting for this ambitious goal of 10 to 15 percent. And the reason why, right, is now you have to start thinking differently because you know you can get a one to two percent, you know, increase in your culture scores, your satisfaction scores. So you're not gonna change anything, you're not gonna do anything differently. You're just gonna keep doing the same stuff because you're like, oh, if my goal is to go one to two percent up, well, we've been doing that already. So I'll just keep doing what we've been doing, keep doing the same processes, and we'll expect it to go back up. But if you set a goal of I wanted to improve 10 to 15%, now that requires you to like, okay, what do we have to change? What do we have to do with our employees, our our our engagement, our you know, feedback to our employees, our our our morale? What do we have to do differently in order to get that 10 to 15%? And that's the reason why you want to set ambitious goals is because it requires you to think differently from the norm that you're doing on a day in and a day out basis. So, and then relative, right? Obviously, if you're if you have employees, you know, any company that has employees, they're your number one sort of you know resource. So you want to take care of them. So that you know, I would say increasing the culture of your employees and of your business would be a relative goal. And then you know, time restriction. So is it in six months? It is in the year. Because if you just leave it open-ended, anybody can come back and be like, well, we're not there in six months, but we'll just keep going. That's not goals. You know, you want to give it some time restriction, right? I think you can even break it down even even into more, you know. So maybe you say in the next five years, we want to be, you know, a five million dollar company. Okay, great. That's a five-year goal. But how do you then break it down into the the 12 month, the 24, the the 36th? Where should you be? Right. And make sure you're pushing yourself even further down that path. So number eight is don't think too small, especially in goal setting, especially in the vision of your of your future in your in your company. You know, that's one of the other things that I always let people, you know, I ask to a lot of people that I start working with specifically is where where are you heading? What do you what do you envision as the future of your company? And a lot of times people struggle with seeing that big odd you know company that maybe they initially thought of, but they they they want to be modest. You know, they don't want people to know that you know they're trying to grow a $5 million company. And this is why the previous don't about number four, don't let other people's vision create become your reality. I've talked about that. Right. And I and so kind of how how this thinking small kind of relates to that, right? Is that you know you're afraid that when you tell somebody that you're working to build the next five, $10 million company, they're gonna be like, oh, that's impossible. Like, what are you doing that for? Right. Because you're worried about what other people think. And so don't think too small, right? Think of your future, think of the business you're looking to grow and truly build it out. Don't hold anything back. It's a vision. Who cares? Don't think small when it comes to the future of your business. Because the I the idea, as we just talked about with your goal setting, is that when you think big, it's gonna require you to think differently about the next steps you need to take in your business, where you're going. So if you are looking to build a million, a two million or a five million dollar company, and you're at $50,000, $60,000 right now in income, you are gonna have to think differently. What does it look like when you're a million dollar company? Don't hold back. Like, draw out that company structure, draw out that vision, draw out the number of sales, how many clients do you have? You know, what's your average, you know, customer lifetime value? Because all of those things are going to drive decisions that you need to make today to start getting there. And when you think too small, you know, maybe your ultimate vision is to have a million-dollar company, million-dollar net company. But when you're when you allow yourself or you you you continue to think small, you're never gonna get there because you're just trying to think where you are today. Maybe you're trying to make small steps ahead in terms of you know goals. And and that's a small you may be like, okay, if you literally just said try to take small actions, not giant leaps, right? Here's the difference your goals should be giant leaps, right? They should be something that you know if you attain it, it's a home run. It's you're in the clouds. The steps to get there though, those are the small steps, right? And and so this is why when you set those big ambitious goals, you're not setting a time frame of 30 days to get to that big ambition goal. You're you're setting yourself a vision of six, uh, twelve, eighteen months, right? That's your goal. Now you can back that into today, and what small steps can you take? Because those small steps over time are going to get you to that goal. So I hope you can kind of see the difference there. So when we talk about building your vision, your vision is going to be a giant leap from where you are today. No matter what you're trying to do, even if you are a $5 million company, you know, maybe you want to become a $20 or a $100 million company. That is a giant leap from where you are today, but that's your future goal state. Now you need to break it down into more small, manageable steps, right? You're not gonna go from five to a hundred million overnight. One out of you know, every 100,000 businesses might because they they come up with a brand new, amazing you know, product or it something takes off, but you can't count on that. So your your success is gonna come from what we've talked about before about don't try to make giant leaps, be consistent and take smaller steps. So I hope you can kind of see the difference there that you know there is a big difference between goal setting that is giant leaps forward and their actions being smaller and not trying to be actionable to a lot of giant leaps forward. Let's recap really quick before we get into the last two. One second, real quick. Number one, don't be afraid to step outside your comfort zone. Ultimately, so many people, and this was me for a long time. We talked about it, right? You want to do the technician, you want to do what you're comfortable with, especially when you came from you know corporate world. I get it. I was there. Don't be, you know, push yourself outside your comfort zone. That's where your growth is gonna happen. Number two, don't be afraid to fail. Test your limits because when you start seeing failures or stumbling blocks as opportunities to grow, that's where you can begin to, you know, kind of make that next step forward in your journey, make that step next step forward in your career, in your business. Number three was don't stop learning or you're gonna get passed by. The world is constantly evolving, the world's constantly changing. And if you think that you know everything right now, it's only gonna be two or three months before you're passed by. So always be willing to evolve, always be willing to learn. Number four is don't accept anyone else's vision for your life as your own reality and your own vision. You have your own vision that only you know what you're trying to accomplish. Nobody else is going to do that. So don't accept their vision of your life or their next steps for your life as your own. Number five is don't allow that internal negative speak to cloud your perception of reality. Okay. We're defaulting as humans to become negative thinkers. So if you consistently think about the negative, it's gonna cloud the vision of your reality, right? Our thoughts become our reality. So, you know, acknowledge the negative thoughts that you're going to think, but don't allow it to become a belief. Number six is don't ever stop moving forward. We just talked about that a little bit, right? Small, consistent steps over time is always gonna meet beat the giant leaps forward that you try to take. So don't be afraid to you know take those small steps and don't ever stop moving forward. Number seven is don't compare yourself to the social media gurus, right, that are flashing money and flashing all their cars and everything or their planes. And then also with that, don't don't compare yourself to these successful business owners that maybe at your age right now were way farther ahead than you. But what you can do from those people is you can learn from those. You can take the steps, the actions that they've done, and recreate those in your life. Learn from them and move. And as we said, you have so much opportunity as a business owner now that those people didn't have when they were getting started. Take advantage of that. And number eight, don't think small, vision big. You know, set your goals big. We talked about the SMART acronyms. So specific, measurable, attainable is the bad word, right? We want to use ambitious relative to your future and your goal and your you know where you're heading, and then T is your time. So make sure that there's some sort of time restriction to it. And so that leads us into the last two. So hopefully, if you, before we kind of get into those last two, if any one of these so far have been impactful to you, or maybe the last two is going to be impactful to you and you're listening to this, our goal here at Trying Business Solutions is to serve and impact a thousand business owners by the end of 2028. We're well on our way. We're just getting started, but that's my ambitious goal. We just talked about it. But my ambitious goal is to serve and impact a thousand business owners by the end of 2028. So if you got a piece of information, maybe one of these dotes helped you accomplish something in your business, helped you, you know, maybe overcome something in your business, please share this video with your network because you never know. There may be a business owner that could use learning from some of these dotes and it will help push them forward as well. But I appreciate you for listening. I appreciate you for being here. We I know Dwarne, I speak for Dorn and I we we love doing these shows because we've we've gotten messages about you know some of the episodes and how impactful they were. We don't know who's going to be listening or when, but we definitely appreciate you being here. So if you could do us a favor and like the video wherever you're watching it or listening to it, make sure you're following along so you subscribe. We definitely want to see the followers. And then if you have any questions, you can share those down below at any time. And I apologize today if you're watching a live video. You know, there's probably not more of the banners because I try to do producing and talking when I'm with Doran and when now when I'm trying to talk all by myself, some of that stuff gets done by the wayside. So I apologize if the show quality is is much worse when it's just me. Yeah, but so with that, let's get into these last two. Number nine, don't take no personally. This is a big one for me. I had to learn this a lot. You know, whenever I felt no, like I was like, well, what did I do wrong? Or it would feed kind of that imposter syndrome. I think a lot for a lot of people it does. And what the ultimate thing that you can do is when you hear a no, great. Like be confident in yourself. And this is where I've gotten in my career, right? I know that I have a service that I can provide to people that's going to help them overcome an issue. So there's one of two ways. Either one, when you hear a no, that individual, that business owner, that client, that customer, they're not experiencing that that pain, right? They're not experiencing that issue. So them saying no has nothing to do with me. It's just because, well, I they don't have that problem right now. Great, move forward. The other one is if I know that they've had the problem, right? I've had the conversation with them, they've expressed that pain to me, and they still have said, nah, you know, I'm I'm I'm just gonna keep moving forward, or I don't need that certain, you know, I don't need the help right now. Now it's probably on me as the business owner to look at maybe the conversations and evaluate what I could have done differently? Have I have I set the conversation up correctly? Have I broken the pain point down enough to where they can see how it's holding them back versus where they could be? Have I not shown the value? Right now, those are the opportunities that you can take and learn from when you know that somebody has the problem, but they still refuse to say yes. Now it's on you as the business owner to say, okay, what can I do better? Because we have the service, we have that support, we want to help them, but we can't make them, right? You can't force somebody to do business with you unless it was legal to kind of you go to your customer's head and you'll kind of hold a gun to their head and say, okay, you're gonna sign the contract, which is not legal. Other than that, you have to do a good job, you know, kind of having that conversation, showing the value, showing the outcome. And the biggest revelation here when you're thinking of the second part to hearing no is, you know, lead with emotion, right? Lead with pain when you're having the conversations. Because far too many times we we try to focus on our benefit or the service and the outcome and what we're gonna do or the hours we're gonna save them, right? People buy in emotion, they don't buy on logic, right? They buy on emotion and then they they reason with logic about why the the you know the purchasing decision was right. So lead with emotion, lead with pain, right? Because ultimately, just like a doctor, we want to help alleviate people's pain. So whoever your ideal client profile is, what are their pains? What are their obstacles? You know, so if you're hearing no and you know that people have pains or you know that they have obstacles, are you focusing too much on the logical side of the conversation versus the pain side of the conversation? And how can you make a change? And that's where you can learn. So, you know, don't take no personally. This is number nine, right? Don't take no personally. It's one of two ways, more often than not. The first is that they didn't have the problem that you propose that you are going to help them solve. Great. There's no personal attack there. And then the second place is if you know that they have the problem and they refuse to come and do business with you still, you need to learn as an opportunity how can you improve what you're doing better? Where can you focus? How can you have the conversations more effective? Right? And so don't take them personally because once you you kind of take that step back, move that personal sort of attack, that's where you can make improvements as well. And then finally, don't feel like you have to do everything alone. In business, especially if you're just getting started, too many people waste time. And what do I mean by that? Time is your personal number one resource, right? It's finite, everybody has the same 24 hours in a day. Nobody gets an extra two hours because they're more successful than anybody else. You have the same two hours, or sorry, same 24 hours, two hours. So don't feel like you have to do everything yourself. Meaning, don't spend time wasted with your weaknesses, with things that aren't adding value to your life, to your business, right? So if you have a weakness, you have something that is not your you know, not enjoyable, find ways to either outsource it or partner by doing that, you spend more time on your strengths, you spend more time doing the things that you enjoy. There's plenty of opportunities out there for you to outsource your weaknesses and focus on your strengths. So many times I've had conversations with people that they're focused on their weaknesses, they're spending way too much hour time doing things that one aren't leading them towards the path that they want to, which is why it is important for you to think, right, as we talked about earlier, think what is your future state? Where are you heading? And if you are not focused on that, meaning you're not focused on your strengths and leading you towards that vision, you're spending too much time on your weaknesses, you're always holding yourself back. And I've talked about it on this podcast before, right? The number one thing, you know, the number one example of this that I always kind of refer back to, um, that I think about, you know, and there's plenty of other examples, is the Henry Ford, right? You know, if he spent so much time trying to figure out how to build the engine, right? Or how to, you know, all the stuff that he was weak at, you know, that he would do you think we'd have the Ford company that we have now? No, he didn't spend time on his weaknesses, he spent time on his strengths, and he brought people around him that had all that knowledge in all the areas that he was weak to build a motor company. You have to think about that yourself. And a lot of times, of course, it's not going to be employees right when you're starting, but think of who's your circle? Who do you go to? Do you have a group of trusted people that you can go to that can, you know, offshoot your weaknesses, you know, and a lot of times that could be in a mastermind group, it could be in you know a joint venture partnership, it could be in any sort of way that you want to develop it, but find ways to you know supplement your weaknesses, outsource, partner, whatever it may be, but stop spending all your time on your weaknesses. That's the last one. So you don't have to do everything alone. You can partner and you can outsource. So I hope the top 10. I guess I mean it's not even top 10. None of these are in specific order. I was just, you know, when Darren let me know today that he wasn't gonna be here, I was like, you know, what do I want to talk about? And these don'ts kind of popped in my head. So they're not in any specific order, they're not like, oh, like this one's more important than the other. Ultimately, some people are gonna struggle with some of these than than others. And so it's specific to your situation. So think through, like, let's give it, give it, give it a listen. Okay. And if you're not even in business, or you are in business, these things can also apply to your life. A lot of these things can apply to your life on top of your business. So I hope one or more of these were impactful to you. I love doing these episodes, I love teaching, I love adding value. So if you're here, I appreciate you. Thank you for watching. If you haven't and you missed the first part again, today we talked about 10 of the don'ts that you should be focused on don't doing in your business and in life. So hopefully, if you go back and you watch those, one or two of those will be impactful to you. And if you made it to the end, I appreciate you. We love you. I know Dwarne and I love you. If you can help us, again, we're trying to reach and impact a thousand business owners by the end of 2028. And so if you got a piece, want maybe one or two of these don'ts meant something to you, share this video with your network. You never know, there might be a business owner that is gonna see it because you shared it. And some of these things may impact them. I appreciate you. Thank you for sharing. Until then, we're here every Friday. If you're a business owner and you want to join one of the podcasts, down below is a link. You can schedule a future session. You can join us. We'll be interested in kind of having you on, talking through some, you know, what you do, what it is, your business is your support, and how you help people along with maybe one or two obstacles that you're facing in your business today. So until then, I hope you guys all have a wonderful and fantastic weekend. We're here every Friday, 8 a.m. 8:15 a.m. We love you all. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day, and we'll talk to you and see you in the next one.