Yura Bryant

www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs Yura Bryant www.entrepreneurialambitions.com www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs ii ©2017 by Yura Bryant The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs by Yura Bryant is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://entrepreneurialambitions.com/. Feel free to post this on your blog, share within your newsletter, or email it to whomever you believe will benefit from reading it. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs iii Table of Contents The Importance of the Playbook ............................................................................................................... 1 Creating a Winning Strategy......................................................................................................................4 Defining Your Goals.........................................................................................................................4 Matching Your Actions with the Strategy........................................................................................5 Focus on Execution...........................................................................................................................7 Assembling Your Team...............................................................................................................................8 Identify Your Needs..........................................................................................................................8 ` All-Star Roster or Role Players?.......................................................................................................9 Establishing Positions.....................................................................................................................10 Being an Effective Player-Coach..............................................................................................................11 Knowing When to Facilitate & When to Take Control..................................................................11 Creating the Team Identity.............................................................................................................12 Grooming Your Successor..............................................................................................................12 Positioning Yourself for the Win..............................................................................................................14 Analyzing Your Strengths & Weaknesses......................................................................................14 Learn How to Win from Defeat......................................................................................................15 Ignoring the Distractions.................................................................................................................15 The Championship Run.............................................................................................................................17 Winning the Hard Battles................................................................................................................17 Earning the Trophy.........................................................................................................................18 Staying Hungry Despite Experiencing Success..............................................................................18 Last Words..................................................................................................................................................19 www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 1 The Importance of the Playbook When you think of a playbook, what comes to mind is a set of plays that are supposed to help you score and defend in order to secure a victory. The tactics in this book of strategies are designed to play to your strengths so that you can perform at a high level, with the goal to dominate in the process. Playbooks are the blueprint for the success earned by sports teams during competition. Yes, talent plays a big role in the outcome of a win or loss, but a well ran system can always beat talent any day when each member on the team knows how and when to be effective in their role. Entrepreneurship is a lot like sports. While your goal is to score big, you also need to know how to defend so that you don't lose in the process of trying to secure a win. Defense in entrepreneurship is building a strong business foundation that can support your growth. Before you even get to this point, though you have to develop the culture and system that defines your business. Without doing this, your organization won't have a real identity, which makes it vulnerable to both internal and external distractions affecting its performance. This type of issue happens to sports teams all the time and it definitely happens in the world of entrepreneurship. With this in mind, you'll need to build your business piece by piece, instead of jumping into the competitive marketplace without a plan of action that'll put you in the position to secure multiple victories. Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of moving too fast and it cost them severely because they're not prepared to deal with the demands and competition involved with entrepreneurship. They believe success comes with the ease of just saying they're an entrepreneur and starting a business. But that's definitely not the case and this reality hits most people very hard, forcing them to abandon their entrepreneurial dreams. My motivation for writing this book is to help you avoid dealing with only losses, and show you how to create a winning process that ensures your entrepreneurial endeavor grows into a dominant organization. Think the New England Patriots or Golden State Warriors when I say dominant organization. These teams define the standard of success in their respective associations and they're who other organizations want to model themselves after and beat in order to say they're the best. First things first though, we have to ensure that we build you up to be considered the best. How I plan to do that is by showing you the process of building a winning organization step-by-step. Once you understand this, you'll be able to build your own system that grows your small business into a dominant dynasty that people are forced to recognize as great. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 2 But fair warning, the journey towards success isn't an overnight event. It involves a lot of hustle and patience, while at the same time being aggressive but strategic. Not very many people understand how to be so calculated and precise with their thoughts and actions, which is why they constantly find themselves on the losing end in when it comes to their entrepreneurial journey. The path towards success is one where each step you take is supposed to reinforce the goal you have set to be accomplished. If that's not how you're operating then you're only wasting your time. This is why reading this playbook is so important. You'll learn how to operate with effectiveness instead of running your business deep into the ground beyond repair. The hard part about this process is that you're going to have to work within your organization, while also working on it at the same time. This is a tough task to juggle, especially when you have to make money as you're working out the many issues that arise during the development phase of your business. If you're not committed to the long grind then you'll quit once you learn that a successful company can't be built in a week. So what is it that you want to accomplish? Your response is success but what does success look like to you? When you know this answer you can then create an effective strategy within your playbook that accomplishes the goals you have set to be reached. This is the in-game strategy that you devise based on scenarios that could occur during game play. Therefore, you're looking at what could go right and wrong as you're working to build your business and how you'll react based on the position you find yourself in. Creating this guide for the actions you take is critical to how your business fares when times get tough and your performance as a leader has to increase in order to get your organization out of the slump it's in. Many people don't take this into account when they start their business and it cost them the opportunity to be successful as a result. This is because when you're not proactive about your reaction, you tend to overreact and only make the situation worse by doing the wrong things. The difference between success and failure is preparation or the lack of it. You don't go to war without knowing your enemy's strengths and weaknesses, being unfamiliar with your surroundings, and not having a strategy that plays to your advantages while minimizing your liabilities. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 3 The world of entrepreneurship is a competitive battle zone. And while it's true only the strong survive, those who operate with the long-term in mind tend to create a dominant position because each action they take is based on continual growth. You probably never thought about the intricacies that go into building a successful organization. Some people believe that a successful business just grows over time as the entity remains in existence. There is a great deal of ignorance about the entrepreneurial process for most aspiring entrepreneurs. Admittedly, I was one of those individuals who was ignorant about this process for years. But as you gain more experience as an entrepreneur you learn that the details matter. If you skip over something important your business can't grow because it's missing key pieces that make it function properly. As you read further along in this book, you'll learn how to create an effective system of operations that leads to you building your own business empire (based on what you consider an empire). Really apply the knowledge provided in these pages so that you can start seeing improved results in your business. Success is produced through a process of habits that develop into behavior. You'll learn how to think successfully which influences you to take the actions that lead to more wins. If you're ready to learn how to create your winning playbook let's get started! www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 4 Create a Winning Strategy How will you get from your starting point to the point of success? You must know how this is going to be done and it can't only be known in your head. When important information stays in your head, it can change based on how you emotionally react to the situation you're in at that moment. That's a recipe for disaster. Having your strategy already written down allows you to make a level-headed decision in even the most stressful situation because you prepared yourself for that moment. You can operate with the precise actions that put you in a winning position instead of self-destructing in the moment, setting your business back as a result. The key to creating a winning strategy is focusing on growth producing actions. These are the actions that have a direct impact on the goal you've set to be accomplished. Too many people waste time on non-essential activities and it slows down the growth of their business. This happens because they haven't really defined how they will make their business successful. They rely on spur of the moment thoughts that they believe are good ideas in that moment which only tend to be a waste of time. Or they may initially have a good idea but don't create the reinforcing actions that ensure the intended objective is accomplished. If you want to win you have to prepare for the journey towards success before embarking on the destination. Because in actuality, you can't reach your destination of success if you haven't determined how you're going to get there. Therefore, you need to create a detailed strategy that continues to evolve as you accomplish each win. Defining Your Goals Goals are the outcomes we hope to accomplish with the actions we are pursuing. Many people have goals but they're not well defined. A well defined goal is one where you determine how your objective will be achieved with effective actions. This is the point where many people confuse constant dreaming with actually completing the actions designed to bring their goals into reality. What I mean by this is they think wishing hard will lead to magical results occurring that lead them to success. While it sounds insane, people really do this and then complain about ‛life not being fair’ when they remain in a position of lack. If your goal is to make $100,000 within a year, you need to break it down into smaller financial targets that should be met weekly, monthly, and quarterly. This makes the goal much easier to accomplish because you're not trying to make your six figure target in an unrealistic amount of time considering your starting position. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 5 If you've never made six figures, you'll have to gradually work your way up to that point until you understand the process of how it's done. You'll first need to understand how to make $1,000 every week, $5,000 every month, $10,000 every month, and so on. Once you know the formula to meeting these financial targets, you can then accomplish your $100,000 goal and start aiming higher. Whatever your goal may be, write it down, break it down into smaller pieces, set timeframes for each piece to be accomplished, and keep raising the audacity of your goals. When you give yourself benchmark targets with dates of completion, you're holding yourself accountable for the success you earn or fail to produce. Accountability for your actions forces you to hold yourself to a higher standard, which means your level of bullshit behavior is eradicated. When you have no other choice but to be successful, you maximize your time in order to get the most return out of each activity you're doing. Matching Your Actions with the Strategy A strategy is useless if you're not actually putting it to use to learn how effective it is. A lot of entrepreneurs create business plans and strategies to only abandon them once they're completed. This is not only a waste of time but it's the reason why failure is so welcomed by new businesses. If your strategy isn't influencing the course of actions you pursue daily, then you're not going to produce successful results because you're not building upon each action taken. This creates inconsistency, which means your business has no chance to grow. You're then frustrated because you're ‛doing so much’ but nothing seems to be working. What's actually happening is you're wasting time by focusing on non-essential activities that don't support your goals. You eliminate wasting time by ensuring your actions are aligned with your strategy. Every step taken has to work towards ensuring your goals come into fruition. You can't want to write an e-book within 30 days but you've only written the opening paragraph on day 10 (I've been guilty of doing this). Your e-book isn't going to be written and you're going to keep putting it off until you finally acknowledge to yourself it'll never be done and move on from it. This is exactly why most goals are never accomplished and you can't fall into this trap if you desire to build a successful business. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 6 It's all about staying focused on your goal, aligning your actions with your goal, and staying consistent until the impact of your actions become noticeable. It'll take some time before you notice the results for your efforts, but this is why patience is needed so that you don't abandon your strategy due to feeling discouraged about not seeing big results immediately. The foundation that you're laying down through your initial course of actions will lead to exponential results being produced once you establish a stronger position in the marketplace. But this will only be earned by you consistently hammering away at your goals with the strategic actions you designed to follow. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 7 Focus on Execution Every day people are creating goals that they hope to accomplish in order to become successful. Only a very small percentage of these individuals will actually accomplish what they set out to achieve because they're focused on executing their goals. You're excited and determined to succeed when you first set your goals but soon the process of bringing them into reality becomes more laborious than exciting. Now it's hard to stay focused on the task at hand because you never considered the actual work it takes to accomplish that big goal you set. You begin to have second thoughts about if you can actually get this done. The execution process is the time when you need to block out the desire to distract your mind with entertaining time sucks and focus on getting shit done. Writing content for your blog or ebook is time consuming and mind-numbing. Making sales calls can be intimidating due to the fear of rejection. These unsexy tasks have to be done, though so that you can position your business to get noticed. Soon you'll start gaining small victories that build up over time as you keep moving forward. As you're doing these execution focused activities, you're constantly growing and improving the strength of your developing business. None of this occurs, though if you don't execute the boring actions that lead to exciting results. You can't earn the reward of success without putting in the work required to attract it to you. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 8 Assembling Your Team No business is an one man operation. Even if you don't have employees, you're going to need to outsource certain tasks because you can't do everything on your own. Operating with the ‛one man army’ mindset will lead to failure because your focus is being spread beyond its capacity and you're negating your real strengths. While you think you're getting more done by being all over the place, you're actually limiting your impact and harming the growth of your business. No matter how talented you are, you'll eventually need a team around you to assist you with attaining the success you desire. Michael Jordan needed Scottie Pippen. Kobe needed Shaq. Bill Belicheck needs Tom Brady (this can be debated due to the system that has been built within that organization). What these relationships show is that no matter your individual greatness, another person is needed on your team to bring the very best performance out of you. This means you need to put your ego to the side and allow others to perform at a high level, instead of trying to suppress their talents due to your own insecurities. If success is your ultimate goal then you should want your team members to better than you in key moments if that guarantees a win. If it has to be all about you, though you'll always come up short because you don't know how to see beyond your selfish desires. Which means you can't build a company that actually serves your customers because it's all about your wants and not their needs. With this attitude, YOU will be the reason for your failed business. Identify Your Needs Despite whatever strengths we possess, we all have weaknesses that become liabilities when they're highlighted under certain circumstances. During the process of building your business, certain situations will come up that will require you to perform in the area of your weakness. This becomes an issue because the quality of your output will suffer due to you not having skills efficient enough to perform at a high level. You could learn how to improve in your areas of weakness but that takes time and you can't afford to slow the progression of your business's growth. To make an immediate fix, you have to depend on people with strengths in your area off weakness to get the job done. For instance, if you're good at sales but horrible at marketing, you need to bring a marketer on board. The marketer creates the awareness for your business and you close the deal by making www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 9 their leads new customers. You have to acknowledge that your weaknesses exist and address them so that they don't become an issue later down the line as your business grows and the demands increase. 1. At this very moment I want you to make a list of your strengths and weaknesses. A. Once you make this list, I want you to identify how you plan to rectify your weaknesses. B. Determine the type of person who would be the best fit within your organization to assist you where you fall short. C. Go after this individual and let them know why you need them to be a member of your team. All-Star Roster or Role Players? You must determine if you want a team full of alpha players or those who play more of a supportive role. Both have their pros and cons and you have to decide which set of cons you're more comfortable dealing with. An all-star roster consist of individuals who set their own rules and operate with ambition that can be considered arrogance. Role players are more supportive and need some direction to get their jobs done. You have to determine which set of individuals you're most compatible with or maybe it's in your best interest to have a mixture of the two types of personalities. For myself, I enjoy an all-star team because I know each member within my organization will enjoy performing at the highest level and will get the job done. The only problem that may arise is difference of opinion about the way in which an initiative should be completed. Also, they tend to abandon you for opportunities they feel are more rewarding to them, while only giving you notice of their departure at the last minute (Do Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving sound familiar?). Beyond that, you'll either exceed your goals with these individuals or you'll have one hell of a time failing. This isn't to say you should avoid a team of role players. Although you have to be more hands on with these individuals, they tend to do things the way you like and can be coached into all-star individuals. As they grow in their role, they'll perform in the most effective manner that benefits the overall performance of your business. You just have to be sure that you reward them for their hard work or they will leave your organization once they recognize the value they provide to your team isn't expendable. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 10 Establishing Positions A well ran organization is one where each member on your team knows their role and performs it at the maximum level. This can only occur when there is clear communication about how their actions add to the overall performance of the entire organization. You have to make it clear that individual accolades are meaningless if the team as a whole remains in a losing position. Although each member has to be excellent on an individual level, their actions have to align with the goals of your business. If this doesn't happen then you'll have different parts of your organization performing well and other sectors that are underperforming. This leads to inconsistency which creates dysfunction among your team. The key to team efficiency and effectiveness is putting your team members in the position where they can perform best and establishing the individual goals they need to accomplish. You can only do this when you actually analyze how well they perform in various situations to understand how effective they'll be in their role when the pressure is on them to succeed. This allows you to give them the responsibilities they can properly handle at their current capacity, while slowly giving them more as they advance in their role in order to continually improve their capabilities. You have to remember that you're not only developing your business but also your team. The best companies are the ones that invest in the individuals responsible for carrying out the daily duties of the organization. If you don't put your team members in the position to succeed then you can't be mad at them when their failure to perform at a high level hurts your organization. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 11 Being an Effective Player-Coach A player coach is an individual who can participate in competition alongside their team while coaching them at the same time. Many people consider Lebron James a player coach since his status as the best player in the NBA routinely finds him directing the plays of his team. It takes considerable intelligence to be this type of individual because you have to truly understand the dynamics of your team so that you can know which hat to wear based on the situation your organization is in. Most entrepreneurs want to do one thing, be a player (build their business) or be a coach (manage their business). When you can do both, it allows you to see aspects of your business's operations that no one else notices, teaching you how to maneuver yourself and position your team for the best results. This type of insight is only developed by forcing yourself to gain the experience of performing the dual role. Knowing When to Facilitate & When to Take Control This is a hard thing for most entrepreneurs to master because you have to know your team well enough to understand which course of action is necessary at the given moment. Without this knowledge, they either take a too carefree, hands off approach or they micromanage like an overbearing parent. Both approaches have their drawbacks due to too giving much freedom or taking it away entirely. There has to be a fine line between to the two. You want to allow individuals on your team to make their own mistakes and learn from them, while still being accessible so they can come to you for guidance. The facilitation process usually occurs when you're seeking to improve the confidence of individuals on your team by giving them the chance to score some wins for your organization. This can mean giving them the opportunity to make key presentations to prospective clients, letting them lead a big project that has a lot of money tied to it, or putting them in a leadership role within your organization. Think about Chris Paul when it comes to being a facilitator. He seeks to get his teammates involved in the game before thinking about his own offense. His goal is to make others around him better so that the team is performing well as a whole, instead of one or two guys struggling to carry the load -- like the careers of Allen Iverson and Tracy McGrady. The time to take control is when the pressure of the situation becomes too much for your team to handle. You then have to carry the load and perform at an extremely high level if you don't want to incur a loss. This is when you become the alpha leader, giving strict commands to your team that enables you to get in the position to consistently score until you secure the victory. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 12 You shouldn't have to do this often though, if you teach your team how perform well under pressure, which means them making critical decisions on their own. Kobe Bryant is a leader who often took control of games when his team was mediocre at best, after the departure of Shaq. He didn't seek to facilitate. He demanded the ball so that he could score at will and win the game that night. Sure, he allowed others to score when he was forced to give up the ball. But this was at a minimum since he already made up in his mind that he had to take control of the outcome of the game if he didn't want to lose not only the game that night but also his playoff hopes. His team's success started and ended with him. Creating the Team Identity Every organization needs a culture. Without having one, individuals on your team don't hold themselves accountable to a standard that has been firmly set in place. This is when you have inside distractions occurring, disorganized performance, and no real connection among your team. So no matter how hard you try to change things, nothing works because you never demanded the best from everyone within your organization from day one. Myself personally, I like a culture full of hustlers and sharks. I want my team to be aggressive and hungry for success. When they have this type of mentality, I don't really have to worry about them folding under the pressure of the moment no matter how big it is. Whatever the challenge, they'll always find a way to produce a win because they understand we don't look for excuses. We find solutions! You have to give your team their identity by being the representation of what you want them to be. You can't want your team to be hustlers, when you can't even pick up the phone to make a sales call. As the leader, you have to act like one and set the standard for your team to follow. All championship teams have a leader that led them to their winning destination. It's on you to step up and make it happen. Grooming Your Successor Great leaders understand the importance of developing the next leader in line. When you try to remain in the position of leadership for too long, you start to weaken your organization. There comes a point in time when it may be time for a new, fresh perspective. Maybe the years of command have worn you down both mentally and physically or you may be ready for a new challenge. Whatever the case, you need to have someone ready to step up when you decide to step down. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 13 You don't start doing this grooming process when one foot is already out the door. This process needs to start immediately once you identify who this individual is going to be. You need to gradually show them how you make critical decisions and how you lead a diverse team of individuals. This allows for these types of demands to become natural to them so that they can walk into the position of leadership with little to no issues. When Lebron James went to Miami, Dwayne Wade stepped aside to allow Lebron to take control of the team. He not only recognized Lebron was the best player in the world, Wade knew Lebron needed this type of mentorship to reach his full potential. Those years of leadership development under Wade and the Miami organization taught Lebron how to lead like a champion. Which is the mindset he brought back to Cleveland years later to deliver them their first championship. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 14 Positioning Yourself for the Win Success is not about luck. You produce successful results by determining how to put your organization in the best position that leads to more wins being earned than losses incurred. What you want to do is create an advantage that you can use to penetrate the marketplace. Just as the Green Bay Packers have a dangerous quarterback/ weapon in Aaron Rodgers, you need an asset that you can lean on to push you forward. You create continual growth by building around this asset so that it has complementary pieces that assist with the effort of winning. If you're a consultant who is a great speaker, your main goal is to book speaking engagements so that you can gain new clients from the events you speak at. In order to do this, you create different pieces of content that help you speak at more conferences and events. This means you create a blog, guest post on the authority websites your target audience reads, and write a book. Your goal when doing this is gaining more exposure (speaking request) so that you can position yourself to receive more opportunities for your business. Many entrepreneurs overlook doing these types of activities because they're not focused on positioning. Nobody cares about your business until you make them care about it. The only way you do this is when you put yourself in many different places at the same time (guest blogging, books, interviews, social media), leading interest back to the source (your website). If the activities that you're doing aren't focused on exposure and growth, you'll stay at the bottom of the competitive landscape. Analyzing Your Strengths and Weaknesses Now is the time to determine how well your organization stacks up against the competition. You'll hear some people say not to do this because you shouldn't compare yourself to your competition, but it must be done if you're going after the same customers they serve. The refusal to analyze their strengths and weaknesses compared to yours means that you don't know where you need to improve in order to become a more attractive provider for your customers. So when you always lose out on that prospect who initially showed interest but went with another option (your competition) and you're not sure why, this is the reason why it occurs. Competition is all about how well you play to your strengths while exploiting your competition's weaknesses. The best coaches know how to do this well, which is why you often hear sports commentators saying how another coach got outcoached after their team loses. It's about knowing how to succeed by being effective with your strengths, no matter how talented (big) your competitor is. Small businesses compete well against larger corporations everyday because they know how to deliver results where their competitor is falling short. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 15 Floyd Mayweather is known as a defensive boxer. As he started to gain more experience later in his career, he moved away from being an offensive fighter and used his advantage as a defensive, counter puncher to win boxing matches. One reason for this change was because he started to have issues with his hands and was losing the knockout power in them. The other big reason is because he didn't want to continuously get hit in the head and suffer serious side effects later on in his life. So he adapted the defensive style and made his opponents fight his type of fight, which helped him remain undefeated. Learn How to Win from Defeat No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you will deal with some losses. The goal is to not get defeated by the losses because when you do it's hard to move forward with a winning mindset. Winners are never happy with losing but they accept it as an outcome that comes with competition and move forward to the next challenge. You're able do this when you learn why the defeat occurred so that you can make the necessary changes that help you improve your future performance. There's always a reason for why you were dealt a loss. Someone on your team didn't perform their role well, you employed the wrong strategy, or you were completely unprepared for the situation you were in. Whatever the reason, it needs to be indentified and corrected so that you minimize your chances of defeat when you find yourself in the same situation again. If you make the same mistakes twice, then the only thing you're learning is how to accept being a losing business. The sports teams that you constantly see at the bottom (Cleveland Browns) remain in this position because the leadership within their organization refuse to learn from their previous failures. You can't become a winning organization when you still operate with loser qualities. Either you learn how to change or you continue to run your business into the ground until it's no longer a viable option to keep its operations going. Ignoring the Distractions When you let the outside world affect your internal operations, you'll find it hard to operate your business without having to constantly deal with bullshit. At the end of the day, your goal is to secure a win, which means serving your customers with excellent products and service. If your organization is unable to perform at a high level because you're focused on unimportant bullshit, you're acting like the average person whose behavior is controlled by other people and things. You must learn how to block out anything that distracts you from accomplishing your goal. This is why Lebron stops posting on social media when he's in the playoffs. His mind cannot be on anything else but securing a championship. If you give more attention to the outside world than your company's success, there's no way that you can build it into a dominant business. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 16 The most accomplished people in business and sports know how to make their goal their singular focus. They understand that most people fail because they become too distracted by things that don't assist them with accomplishing their goals. You have to be selfish with your time and energy when your goal is to be successful. If you don't take your pursuit for success serious then nobody else will. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 17 The Championship Run What was your purpose when starting your business? The pursuit for this goal should be what you focus on every day when you're working hard to build your company. It's easy to start a company but the hard part is when you actually have to put in the work to develop your concept into a viable business. This where you learn if you're built to last or if you'll fold up and jump out of the entrepreneurial game. For the entrepreneurs who aren't considered successful but haven't quit, you'll notice that they deal with a lot of inconsistencies. They don't have a business that has consistent sales because they don't have consistent customers. They don't have consistent customers because they operate their business like a part-time entrepreneur. They're not giving it their all which means they're carrying on a losing cause. If you want a championship organization you have to work your business day and night. Make those sales calls, consistently create content, engage on social media. If your daily habits are not focused on building your business then you'll forever be chasing a dream that will never come into fruition. Winning the Hard Battles Working to build a successful organization is an extremely tough task. You'll work from early in the morning till late at night creating the pieces that build on top of one another to strengthen your business. At times it will feel like everything you're doing isn't leading to any results but this is when you need to block out your doubts and keep pushing forward. Once you let pessimism enter your mind, you'll never be able to see opportunity in any situation because your optimism is no longer alive. Just because you're not winning now it doesn't mean that's how your situation will remain. If you keep improving yourself and increasing the value of your business, it will eventually start to produce winning results. The only way you get to this point, though is by remaining consistent with winning actions and staying dedicated to the success of your business. Michael Jordan had to go through years of being bounced out of the playoffs before he went on his two 3-peat championship runs. Instead of accepting defeat, he kept pushing to improve both his game and his body so that he could exceed his competition in skills, while matching their physical nature. Once Scottie Pippen was added to his team, he was finally able to dominate his opponents after years of losing to them. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 18 Earning the Trophy Think about how many people set out on the entrepreneurial journey but come up empty handed. This happens because they aren't committed to excellence. You have to demand the best from yourself and your team to develop an organization that seems to always win. This type of business is built through mindset and habits. A winning mindset influences the successful habits that are present within your company. It's not about just showing up because you're required to, going through the motions of the day, and heading home. It's about building an organization everyone is proud to work their ass off for. You can't become a champion with half ass effort. Everybody within your organization needs to be committed to the common goal of winning. If they don't hold this attitude then let them go. You can't have losers on your team affecting the established culture with negativity and disrupting your business's performance. One broken link in your system can destroy your entire operation. The Patriots and San Antonio Spurs are two teams that experience consistent success because they are built upon a winning system. Every member on these teams know they need to operate effectively within the system in order to experience success as a whole. They understand that if they try to make themselves more important than the team, they will be removed because the system will become ineffective and the losses will start to occur, which isn't tolerated. Staying Hungry Despite Experiencing Success It's very easy to get complacent when you're finally winning. You've worked extremely hard and now you're making money, your business is in demand, and you can finally live the lifestyle of a successful entrepreneur. You might consider putting things in cruise control because it's tempting to just relax and enjoy your new found wealth. DON'T DO IT! Success is hard to gain but very easy to lose. Once you take your foot off of the gas pedal, you start losing your discipline, which means you allow bad habits to form within your organization. Everything starts falling apart and your company is left in shambles and you're scrambling trying to reorganize. Why even put yourself through this hell when it can be avoided by simply staying focused and striving for more success? What do Kobe, Jordan, and Tom Brady all have in common? They are/were never satisfied with their past success. They wanted more championship rings to prove their strong desire to win compared to their competition. It wasn't good enough for them to say that they won a championship. They wanted to be known for their hunger to be the best and they accumulated the success to validate their insane drive to win. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs 19 Last Words This short e-book was initially going to be called The Entrepreneur Playbook but the name was changed once I realized the title was already used for a book written earlier this year. I changed it to The Starter Playbook for Entrepreneurs because the information provided will help you build the foundational framework of your business. I wrote with the intention to focus on developing your mindset which influences the actions you take. Hopefully I succeed in my goal of making you a more aware and calculated entrepreneur. If you enjoyed this e-book, you'll love 10 Laws of Power for Entrepreneurs. It will be released on December 29, 2017. Be sure to sign up for the waiting list so that you can purchase your copy as soon as it's available. If you were recommended this e-book by someone else, you definitely need to become an active reader of my blog Entrepreneurial Ambitions. I cover the entrepreneurial process and teach you how to implement the actions that create a successful business. Be sure to subscribe to the blog if you want to receive our newsletter that always has great information about entrepreneurship and the latest events within the Entrepreneurial Ambition's community. Need help with your business or want me to speak at your event? Click the link for whichever need you have or send me an email to- I would also love to hear your feedback about the e-book. www.entrepreneurialambitions.com