There are societal rules like finishing college, taking a job in a large firm and working hard to get promoted. Following these may mean a lot of hectic schedules and an unhealthy lifestyle. Not everyone can follow these rules of the society. So in life, you may come across the question: Do I follow my dream or do I take the easy road?
People do business for different reasons. Some do it to make a profit, some do it to steal money, and others do it because they care and want to have an impact, make a difference for people that their business influences.
My Analyst Framework
- Being an entrepreneur, doing business on some levels is easy. There are only two things that you have to manage in life:
- To manage, minimize and eliminate as much downside risk as possible.
- To maximize potential and boost opportunities that come into the picture.
These are below the line stuff that answer “The How” and “The What”.
- Above the line is where you’ll find a more important question and that is:
Why are you doing what you do or want to do?
All the challenge lies here. You might get the “below the line stuff” right, but managing the things that lie above the line—giving meaning to your business— is not simple. The lifestyle that you have because of the business and the legacy that you build is your meaning. These inform all the decisions that we make below the line.
- It is necessary to have our stuff above the line, right. Otherwise, it can negatively impact the things that we have below the line: like being unable to make the correct business decisions or allowing our businesses suck the life out of us. We may dedicate our time and resources to building something, but it ends up being an empty build.
- There are four things we need to ask ourselves to build the above the line stuff:
- What are you dedicated to in the context of higher purpose, the meaning and everything that you are doing?
- What are you devoted to or who are the people that you are devoted to?
- What are you prepared to do and how much discipline are you prepared to bring to this game, this world called entrepreneurship?
- What is the energy that is driving you and the thing that wakes you up in the morning?
Answer these four sets of questions, write them down, journal them the old pen and paper way. Reflect and act on them to refine and define your “Why”.
— Begin Transcript —
Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham the author of The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Business Breakthrough Academy. We teach you how to design a business and create a life: A life of freedom and peace of mind.
And welcome back to this episode of the Entrepreneur’s Solution show … really excited about this episode because what we’re going to talk about is one of the key turning point in my entrepreneurial journey that really shifted things, opened my eyes to a new way of looking at things, a new way of life and a new paradigm.
So, when we talk about this it’s to do the same for you. Remember, when I look at entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship is about building possibility. It’s about bringing possibility into people’s lives again. It’s about giving them another way to live; it’s giving them a new paradigm—a new way to look at life.
You know, we have so many societal rules and we have so many different ways of doing things. In fact, I followed them at first when I came out of college. I went to one of the large accounting firms just like every other accounting student tried to do.
That was the journey we were supposed to be on. We were supposed to go get a job in an accounting firm, work our way up; you know till we became partner. That was our career path and I kind of succumbed to that. I kind of allowed that influence into my life and said “All right! Let’s give it a shot.”
So, I went to work for one of the large accounting firms in Downtown Los Angeles and I was doing the journey, I was doing the … you know “Fighting the Good Fight”; just the way that I was expected to do by the powers of the society, the partners and the management of the firm and all that.
So, I was working the late nights in the suit—the three-piece suit—the shoes, the tie and all that stuff. And here I was [10:30] at night after years of doing this, looking out at the skyline of Downtown Los Angeles; which if you haven’t seen it, it really actually is stunning at night.
And as I was looking I was reflecting and saying, “Wait a second, this is not the life that I was looking for” and I turned around from the sky and looked into the partner’s office and there was the partner, sitting there, working late again also and in the moment, in that moment I saw a vision of what my life was going to be like.
Here’s this partner who is overweight, stressed out, high blood pressure, diabetes and probably that close, just inches away from a heart attack. And I looked at it and said, “This is what’s in store for me if I stay on this journey”. And I realized in that moment that, “I wanted to do something different, I wanted to something different.”
So, I went in literally that night and quit.
That put me on a totally different path to say:
- “How do I design my business?”
- “How do I go and do it myself?”
And I went out and started to try and build my own practice and build my own business. I did it with a couple of partners and then all of a sudden in 1996, my partners came to me and said, “We don’t want to be partners with you anymore.”
Now, mind you in 1996 I had been travelling around the country trying to build my reputation, trying to build a practice during that time. And you may know that I’ve been involved in the martial arts for many-many years; actually for almost four decades now.
And I went into that Karate school around then and started to do something I tell my students not to do. One of the businesses I owned was a martial arts studio. I went in there and I started throwing the students around and working out without warming up and the next thing I knew, I hurt my back.
I didn’t do anything about it, six weeks later I found myself hunched over at down Chicago trying to speak and I could literally not move. I couldn’t straighten myself up. I had pain down to the toes and I found out that I had herniated three disks down to three disks; eight millimeters into my spinal cord.
So, it was excruciatingly painful. I was on disability and here my partners turned around and said, “We don’t want to be partners with you anymore.” So, I found myself on disability with no clients, no cash flow, no work backlog and I just purchased a house. So, I was in 350 thousand dollars in debt, trying to figure out what do I do.
And I was struggling with this decision because now I was faced with the decision of:
- Do I follow the path of my dreams?
- Do I follow the journey that I want to create? or
- Do I take the easy road?
Do I take the easy road and go get a job somewhere that would be the road well-travelled path; the standard path to do that.
And I had to reflect on it until I looked at it and said, “WHY?”
“Why am I doing this?”
See, business is really easy to understand. Building a business is easy; being an entrepreneur on some levels is really easy. I mean, you just simply have to take care of two things. One is to minimize the downside.
I’ve been an analyst all my life. Let’s face it, I’m an accountant, so I’ve analyzed businesses and I know what makes them successful. I know what builds their value. I know what can destroy them. And I know how to avoid those things that can destroy them. So, analyzing it I understood that there were only two things that you have to manage in business:
One is: To manage the downside risks, to minimize the downside risk, to eliminate as much risk as possible.
And then the other is: To maximize the potential, maximize the opportunity to boost and escalate all of the opportunities that come into play.
If I can manage the downside and maximize the upside, then I’m doing well; the business is going to grow. It’s what we call the mechanics of business; it’s based upon the business model of business. The interesting thing I that, different businesses will have different business models and people come to business for different reasons—so, they’ll have different business models.
Let’s face it, some people just come to a business and say, “I just want to make a profit. I just want to make a profit.” And all they care about is the bottom line and the dollars that are coming into their pocket.
There are others that literally come into business—believe it or not—to steal your money. If you don’t believe so look at, The Wolf of Wall Street; all the Ponzi schemes, it’s not a true business but they’re coming into this world to steal your money.
And then there are others that will come into business because they care about things. They want to have an impact. They want to make a difference. They want to solve a problem. They want to create solutions. They want to create a better life for other people. They do it because there’s a meaning to business.
And that’s kind of the camp I fall into. That’s where I learn and work with. That’s why I love to work with entrepreneurs that want to build something that’s impactful—that makes a difference, that’s for a higher purpose.
But that’s all below the line stuff. The minimizing of the downside, the maximizing of the upside … that’s how we do business and that’s what we do for business. Those things are really easy to do, “The How” and “The What”.
The challenge is what’s above the line. The challenge is what’s above the line.
I was building my business, I was trying to do that; I had the downside and the upside working. I had my business model in place. I was doing the work. I was building the practice—my own practice after my partners threw me out and it was growing. I had a reputation, I was travelling and I was speaking and I was doing all the different things that you should do to build and a cash flow was starting to come in.
And then one day, my little boy came in.
He came in excited and he says, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy; I drew a picture of you at school today”.
Have you ever had it happen with you where one of your kids come running and so excited about something that they accomplish, something they did and they want to share it with you, that all that you can do is Stop Everything and give them that moment—give them that moment, where you’re there with them present?
And it was one of those moments, where I knelt down and I looked at it and I said, “Yeah, let me see it.”
He hands me this picture of me in blue felt tip pen, a stick figure in front of a desk with two computer screens, a phone in each ear and the other one on the desk ringing. And all I can do was say, “WOW”.
It wasn’t a picture of him and I playing ball. It wasn’t a picture of me and him at Disneyland. It wasn’t a picture of us sharing joy together.
It was a picture of me working to the bone and that’s the vision he had of his dad. That’s the vision he had of what I was all about. And in that instant, I felt the knife go deep into my heart. I realized, “I got to change this”.
I mean, I had the bottom, the below the line stuff right. I had the mechanics right. I had the model right, but I was missing the greater thing. I was missing the greater good. I was missing what is so important in business today and what is missing in many businesses today and that’s—Meaning.
I realized that, the greatest responsibility, gift that I have ever been given in my life, my son. I was a single full-time dad from the moment he was six years old and I was raising him from that point on. And I look at it, he was the thing that was driving me to do some of the things that I was doing but I was allowing that—that driven need for success to take care of him—to drive a wedge between the two of us.
I was failing at the greatest responsibility and the greatest gift that I’ve been given. And that was to be a dad to that little boy. I had to figure out; I had to struggle to figure out:
- How do I change it?
- How do I shift it?
- What is it that needs to happen?
And I realized that there’s something beyond the below line: minimize the risk and maximize the opportunity stuff; that you need to think about and that’s the above line stuff.
What’s your legacy and what’s your lifestyle is going to be like … that’s meaning
It’s not about “The What” and “The How” we do business, it’s the why we do business.
Simon Sinek talks about this also, and it’s just in a different format. But the reality is:
Why you do business?
What we do above the line, the meaning we give it, the legacy, the lifestyle that informs every decision we make below the line.
And if we don’t have that set right. If we don’t have above the line stuff set right, we can’t make the correct decisions down below and that’s where I was failing in business. Because I didn’t have the above the line things set right. I didn’t know what I was doing it for. I didn’t know why I was doing it.
Except that I was trying to drive profit in order to take care of my son. But what he needed was not profit, he needed presence. And that’s what I needed to realize.
So, how often do we take and allow our careers, our professions, our businesses to suck the life out of us so we dedicate our time to building something, but it’s an empty build?
I have colleagues and friends of mine that are ultra-ultra-uber successful. They’re the one that’s got five airplanes but he’s miserable because he’s lost the meaning behind it. His health is failing, his relationships are awful.
That’s not a way to live. That’s not the way to do it. That’s not what business is for. That’s not what entrepreneurship is for.
So, I realize that there’s four things that we need to ask ourselves as we start to build this, in order to make sure that we get the above the line first, then we dig down on the below the line. And we’re going to get into the mechanics; we’re going to get into “The What” and “The How” of business in some later episodes.
But, let’s start to dial in and drill in to make sure that you have your “Why” correct; where you understand the meaning. What kind of lifestyle you’re going to create—want to create; the legacy that you’re going to create and why that’s important.
Remember, in the last session we talked about this concept that you can’t compartmentalize your life and say, “There’s business and once I’m done with business I’ll have my life and then once I’m done with life I’ll have my legacy”. That they’re all in continuum and they co-exist at the same time. That business, life and legacy are created in the moment as we live and breathe.
And every decision that we make is a life decision, not a business decision. It may have a business context but it affects life and when we make those decisions, when we understand that they’re life decision—we’re going to make them differently than if we simply just categorize them and corral them and say, “It’s a business decision”.
So every decision I make in business, every decision that I help others make—the one that I’m working as part of a board of directors, where I’m working as an entrepreneurial mentor or when I’m working with entrepreneurs or other business owners. We talk about it in the context of life because we cannot separate the two and we should not separate the two.
So, there are four things that I want you to consider. These are the four takeaways I’d like you to take from this episode and to think about it. In fact, not just think about, actually write it out; to really reflect and write it out and revisit.
The first of is this:
1. What are you dedicated to?
What are you dedicated to in the context of the higher purpose, the meaning, everything that you are doing?
In my world, I look at entrepreneurship as the vehicle. It’s a vehicle to create life; it’s a vehicle to create change; it’s a vehicle to create impact; it’s a vehicle to make a difference. And for me it’s a vehicle to bring possibility into people’s lives again.
That’s what I’m dedicated to. To turn around and find folks that are in business but they are not sure where to go next. Or they’re just thinking about shifting gears and going into business and say, “Let’s dust those dreams off, let’s you know, escalate them. Let’s give them life and let’s bring them to life, so you can live your dreams.”
It’s about bringing possibility into people’s lives again, and that’s what I’m dedicated to. That’s what everything in this show is all about, is to bring possibility into your lives again.
So ask yourself this:
- What are you dedicated to?
- What is the higher purpose that you’re dedicated to?
2. Then the second item, the second piece is, what are you devoted to?
You know, what person, people are you devoted to?
And this is an easy one for me. This is about my son, my beautiful wife and my family and my friends. I’m devoted to creating experiences and memories that are meaningful for them, that they can reflect and say that their life is different because I was there and that, their life is better because I was there.
So, that’s what I am devoted to in that context and any time I lose sight of you know, I’m getting frustrated with business; I go back and reconnect to the dedication and the devotion that I have.
3. And then, we get to number three: That’s the Discipline.
- What are you prepared to do?
- How much discipline you want to bring to this?
- What are you willing to do, to make this a reality?
And you know, it’s easy for us to look at people at in the world and say, “Oh! They’re gifted.”
Well, most of the time yeah some might be gifted but most of them are gifted with one thing and one thing only and that is the gift of Discipline: to do what it takes, to build, to create, to continue, to master, to become an artist in the things that they do.
They dedicate their lives to a pursuit; they’ll put in the ten thousand hours. They’ll put in the work and they’ll dedicate themselves to make it clear.
You know, my discipline quite frankly comes from the decades of the martial arts, the discipline that I took to advance and to become a high ranking black belt in the martial arts. There’s a lot of discipline involved that is really just systematically and methodically and determinately going for what you want. It’s the same thing that I bring to my entrepreneurial pursuits to everything that I do.
So, how much discipline are you prepared to bring to this game, this world called entrepreneurship?
Because the level your lifestyle, the level of your success is going to be directly proportional to the level of discipline that you bring to this. And then, ask yourself, “If I don’t have discipline, how do I get it? How do I start to build that habit? To build that muscle of discipline what are the things that I need to do?”
4. And the fourth, which brings it all home, is this concept of “What’s driving you?”
- What’s the energy that is driving you?
- What’s the thing that gets you up in the morning and then gets you moving and that’s driving you?
And again it comes back to the things that I’m dedicated to and devoted to and I’m driven for growth. I want to learn; I’ve got this insatiable desire to continually grow, to become better, and to learn more and more and more.
Just as much as I can become your entrepreneurial mentor, I have plenty of mentors myself to continue to push me to be better, to continue to be better as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a husband, as a father, as a brother, as a son. To continually see, “What can I do that’s better to drive me forward?”
So, if we’re looking at this episode and we’re talking about a business, that is a business with meaning creating a business with meaning, which is what this episode, is about. I want you to take away these four things and ask yourself these questions and you can download the worksheet and work through it.
- What are you dedicated to?
- Who or what are you devoted to? You know viscerally, emotionally in the heart.
- Where does your discipline come from? Do you have enough discipline? Do you need to build the muscle of discipline? What are the steps you need to take to build the muscle discipline? How can I support you in helping you become more disciplined? And …
- What is driving you?
Answer those four questions. Literally, don’t just answer them in your head. Write them down, journal them. I journal; this is my journal here and I spend a lot of time writing about things. So, don’t just reflect, act. Take action, take those four elements and ask yourself the question because that’s what’s going to start to define and refine your Why; the above the line stuff so when we make the decisions below the line about minimizing your downside, maximizing your upside, building the model out of the how and the what.
We’re going to make them under the umbrella of the meaning that you created of your legacy and your lifestyle and the things that are important to you. That’s the important part of this, that’s what I call My Analyst Framework. This is the way I look at business right from the get go; is to start to get a pulse of this and what is it you want to do.
So, I hope that serves you and in this episode, and go ahead and make sure that if you haven’t already, make sure that you subscribe so you can get notified every time I do one of these. We’re going to be doing these regularly and if you have friends out there that are looking to be in business or are in business go ahead and share this with them because I look at entrepreneurship as the vehicle—the shift and the change in our society is going to come from you and I as entrepreneurs.
And I’m looking forward to being on this journey with you.
If you have questions on this episode, go ahead and post your comments or questions here. If you have other questions on business go ahead and go to askmelnow.com. You’ll be able to leave me your questions in a voice mail there. I’ll make sure that I pick it up and we will answer on one of the upcoming episodes as we go through this.
So, I hope you enjoyed this and if you want to access the worksheet, the tools, go ahead and go to melabraham.com/session001.
And I look forward to seeing you in the next episode, where I’m going to talk about the five elements that you need to focus on to build a business. It’s going to be the stuff from below the line. It’s going to be some of the mechanics and the model stuff that we need to talk about. So, we’re going to do that in the next episode.
Until we get a chance to see each other in the next episode
May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!
See you soon, bye for now!!
— End Transcript —
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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel
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