Tag: decision

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

I’m a nutritionist and I see clients for several hours each day. There are certain things I need to do to grow my business, but if I’m still the practitioner, I have limited time. Plus, there’s self-care—eating lunch, working out, etc. If I’m working, sitting in the office all day, it feels less healthy. I know I need leverage.

Still, I’m having resistance around hiring someone. Twenty years ago, I managed employees, and had good and tough experiences. Maybe I’m scared to hire someone. What if I bring a ton of drama into my life by hiring someone, and it goes south? Do we all go through that fear of hiring people?

I don’t think that’s the right question. It doesn’t really matter if everyone goes through that.

What matters is that you make the most use of your time possible.

I’d recommend 3 things:

1) For 1 week, keep a notebook next to you, and write down every single thing you do each day. This will show you where your time is being spent.

Track all the $10/hour tasks that you do, like managing your calendar, sending clients reminders, setting things up on your computer. That’s all stuff you shouldn’t be doing, because it’s not the best use of your time. Those tasks don’t require your skill level or your brilliance.

You could easily pay someone to do $10/hr tasks for you.

If you take those off your plate, how much MORE you could
do—both on your business and in servicing your clients?

2) Look at how many times a day do you say the same thing, or teach the same thing to people?

If you’re repeating yourself over and over again, start to record those things, so you can send clients the recordings. Begin to build a bank of trainings, so that you can inform them, rather than repeating yourself.

3) When you’re looking to hire someone, put them through a process that will give you key indicators of what they’ll do for you.

It’s actually easy to spot people who are high-drama early on in the hiring process.

If I ask, “Hey, are you willing to do a test project?” Instead of a simple yes or no response, they’ll send me, “Yes, I’d love to. But I have this going on Saturday, and I have this on Sunday. So I won’t be able to get it to you until Monday afternoon, but maybe then it might be Tuesday…”

You can get an idea that this person won’t be a good fit.

Get as much information as you can from someone before you even bring them in for an interview.

You HAVE to hire if you’re going to scale. It’s required.

Look at your role mathematically. It’s like a formula. There’s only so much time in the day. You want to spend most of your time doing high-dollar tasks. Offload the low-dollar tasks to someone else, because mathematically you’ll make more money.

The first hire should be an assistant, even if it's only for a couple hours a day.

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! This October, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

What’s the difference between setting a goal and making a decision? I’m struggling with differentiating the two in my mind.

For example, let’s say I want to get up at 6:00 am and take a cold shower. That’s a decision, right?

But then I have a goal that I want to make $X amount of dollars. That’s a goal, right? Can you clarify the distinction of where it breaks from being a decision to just setting a goal?

They’re both part of each other.

When you set a goal, you need to figure out, “What do I need to do to reach that goal?”

The decision is about, “I’m going to accomplish this goal, and I’m making a decision to do it, based on cause and effect of what needs to be done to reach that goal.”

First you set the goal.
Then you make a decision to reach that goal.

From there, figure out what actions you need to commit to, in order to reach the goal.

Here’s an example. If I sat down with my CEO, Steph, and said, “Hey, let’s set a goal to make an extra million this year…” we’d sit down and reverse-engineer what that would look like.

• How do we want to make that money?
• What do we want to do?
• What are you and I going to commit to?
• Do we need to hire someone?
• What needs to be done?
• For how long?
• On what days?

We’d break it down into activities—all the way down to the smallest details.

Set the goal, make a decision to reach the goal, brainstorm how to get there, then commit to taking those actions.

Commitments are just decisions along the way.

If you don’t chunk your goal down into specific activities, then you haven’t really set the goal. You haven’t made a decision.

You have to turn the goal into activities that are based on cause and effect. What is the cause of this goal that you want?

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! This October, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Over the past two years, I’ve been having cash flow challenges. We’ve been generating income, but we’ve still had very high expenses. We’ve also had challenges in retaining some of our staff. We’ve found a great hire now, but she’s $1,200 more expensive than anyone I would’ve hired in that position before. She’s leaving the top firm in my country to come to us.

In the back of my mind, with all of our cash flow challenges and debts, I’m feeling overwhelmed and a little guilty. I fear that if she comes on board…what if I can’t afford to pay her? How can I set my mind right about this situation?

I would look at two things:

1. Will she bring in new business?
2. Will she free up your time (or whoever else’s time needs to be freed up) to bring in new business?

If the answer is yes to either of these questions, then this person will be worth the cost of hiring her.

If she’s not going to bring in new business… then consider whether she can free up YOUR time, so that you can bring in new business.

How much work will this person take off your plate? Is that enough time for you to go out and create enough business in order to make it a smart hire? If so, then that’s the decision to make.

People need to realize that if you want good help right now, the help is out there.

There’s a ton of help out there. But you’re going to pay a premium for it.

The only thing you have to make sure is that it makes sense to the bottom line.

Is it going to solve your problem? Is this person as good as they project themselves to be?

I would have no problem making a decision like that, and then making sure I brought in enough business for them to take care of.

The worst-case scenario is… you’d have to let them go because you can’t pay them. And then you’d have to make the money to pay them for whatever work they DID do. But that’s not a bad consequence.

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! This October, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi David,

I have a copywriting business and a small team of writers who work under me. I write, but I also edit everything my team writes before it gets sent off to the client. It’s my name on the end, so I want to make sure I agree with what they write and that it’s on brand.

I want to scale my business, so I can make more money. But working with more writers takes a LOT of my time, editing. My dilemma is… do I hire an editor who edits like me? Do I hire better writers, so there’s less editing needed? I’m reluctant to hire more writers, because my clients are buying ME and MY writing.

Also, I see other people creating revenue streams like coaching or creating a course. Should I do that instead?

First of all, people are adding those revenue streams, because they think it’s easier… which is ridiculous. Most of them don’t know what the hell they’re doing.

I think you have to look at it from a few perspectives:

1. What is your long-term goal? What’s your vision? What do you want to create, business wise?
2. If you start bringing on another source of revenue, you have to consider the amount of time and attention required to build up that other source.

That’s always a great thing if you’re really solid in your primary business—where you can step away a bit to focus on something else. But you’re not in that place yet. So that concerns me.

I would look at finding an editor. Editing is a huge job, and it’s necessary. They don’t necessarily have to edit the way you do. Don’t get hung up on that. They just need to be a good editor.

The idea is… are you putting out the work that you say you’re going to put out?

If you want to create another source of income, then I’d get yourself to a place where you have the time, energy, and bandwidth to be able to do it. In that case, I’d look at hiring an editor and quality writers.

As far as clients buying you and your writing… I think you need to stop selling you and your team altogether.

Instead, focus on selling the outcome people are looking for. How you get them there, shouldn’t even be their concern.

If you fall into the trap of branding yourself consciously or unconsciously, then it’s a bear to get away from that… because nobody will want to work with anybody else but you.

I’ve seen people do this their whole careers. Even Tony Robbins can’t get out of it, because he branded himself way too much. My mentor, Bob Proctor, who just passed away, did the same thing. He could never get out of it completely, because it was always him. He was the brand.

Don’t sell you as the brand. Sell the outcome.

You can be the face of the company. But psychologically, what people are buying is the outcome, not the person.

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! This October, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi David,

My question is around goal setting and ‘need versus want.’ I’ve been using Napoleon Hill’s mantra every morning: “I know I have the ability to achieve the object of my definite purpose in life. Therefore, I demand of myself persistent, continuous action towards its attainment. And I, here, now, promise to render such action.”

I love that and have been analyzing what it means. I get stuck at the part that says “definite purpose in life.” That sounds so grandiose and final. I have financial and personal goals… but how do I find my “definite purpose”? Do I need to have a big enough “why” behind the work I’m doing as an entrepreneur?

What I’m going to tell you is very important. You’ve got to find out what inspires you about what you do. And you’ve got to be 100% honest about it, no matter what it is.

Here’s an example. I have a rockstar client who went over two million, really quickly.

Then afterwards… she started screwing around with writing her purpose out on paper. She wanted to say, “I’m doing all of this for my children.”

And I said, “Why would you change your purpose?”

She felt guilty that her children weren’t in her purpose.

I was like, “If they’re not in there, then they’re not in there. It’s not that you’re ignoring your kids. But you have to be honest with yourself about what turns you on about what you do.”

What turns her on is being seen, being public, being on the world stage, and doing what she does.

“If you take that away and allow yourself to feel guilty—then say you’re doing this all for your kids—you’re going to crash your business,” I told her.

It doesn’t matter what your purpose is,
as long as you’re honest about it.

Ask yourself: “What do I absolutely love about what I do, more than anything else?”

If it’s helping people, great. If it’s building a team, great. If it’s having enough money to buy a Ferrari… buy a house… provide for your family… great.

Whatever it is—whatever gets you out of bed in the morning that excites you about what you do—THAT’S the purpose you need to focus on. At least for now.

If you feel guilt or shame around it, remember:

Whenever you experience guilt and shame, understand that’s not your voice talking to you. That’s the voice of the person who installed guilt and shame into your subconscious mind (usually a parent).

You need to tell that person to get the flying f@&% out of your head. Because it’s not you.

We’re not born with guilt or shame. Someone put it into our mind.

So, if you start feeling guilty about something, or you start feeling shame, you have to ask yourself, “Whose voice is that in my head?”

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! This October, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi David,

To reach my income goal, I need to create a higher ticket offer. But I don’t have the confidence to charge what I want to charge. If I were to try selling at a higher price, I feel like I wouldn’t do a good job of selling it, because the confidence isn’t there.

How do I build or increase my confidence?

You’re using the wrong emotional tool to think about this. You don’t just “build” the confidence.

Confidence comes as you continue to do something, and you get a result. It comes from practicing and getting better at something.

Meanwhile, you're building the knowledge and awareness of how to do that particular thing. That’s where confidence comes from.

What you need to work on is your courage to charge more.

Many of my clients want to present a higher ticket offer to their audience, but they’re not able to get themselves to ask for the higher rate. They don’t feel confident, and this comes through during the sales call. So, they don’t make the sale.

You can change this by doing a simple exercise in the mirror.

I would take the amount you want to charge and do a presentation in the mirror, looking back at yourself, 500 times, while saying that number.

Let’s say you want to charge $20,000 for something. In the mirror, practice asking an imaginary client for $100,000. Do this over and over again.

What happens is… when you do this 500 times—and then you actually ask someone for $20,000—it’ll seem like nothing.

You could do that in a couple of days.

It works beautifully.

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! This October, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi David,

Can you expand a bit on what you teach about managing activities versus managing time? I sort of get it, but was hoping you could say more about that.

Great question!

The idea is that we cannot manage time. Nobody can manage it. In order to be able to manage time, you would have to be able to stop it, start it or slow it down.

You can’t do anything with time except be in it.

So, what you manage is your activities. That includes all the things that need to be done within a specific period of time. You determine that by reverse-engineering what the outcome is.

Decide what your outcome will be for a goal, task, project, or whatever it is.

How much time do you need to devote to that, based on when you want to reach the outcome?

Let’s say you want to accomplish something in 90 days. How much time each day, or every other day, or every week, do you need to put into your project to reach the goal in 90 days?

Now, here’s the thing. This is not your only activity. You have many other activities in your life.

You have your family. You have personal care. Maybe you have children and many other things to care of. With all of that, you get to determine how much time you spend doing what it takes to meet your 90-day goal.

I got off a call with a private client who’s having an issue with this. They’re butting up against how much work they have to do in their business, versus how much time they can spend with their family. They’re struggling with that.

I told them:

“There’s no reason to struggle. Nobody is telling you how much time you have to spend with your family. Nobody’s telling you how much time you have to work. That calendar is your life. You get to set it up any way that you want.”

Most people just don’t think this way. They think, “Oh, I have to do this, or I have to do that.”

You don’t have to do anything.

You create your life the way you want to create it.

And the only way to do that is to manage activities, based on the lifestyle you want to live. That’s it.

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! This October, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi David,

I have two “rockstar” team members who are asking for 3x their salary. Hands down, they’re worth that amount.

I’d feel guilty paying them more, because the rest of my team is paid based in their country’s currency. If I pay the rockstars U.S. wages, it seems unfair to those who aren’t as capable—because maybe they’re disadvantaged, their life was harder, or they’re a single mom or something.

How should I approach this?

If one person is a rockstar and one is mediocre and you’re paying them the same for the same position—you’re going to lose the rockstar eventually.

The mediocre one should probably be let go, and you should hire a second rockstar.

It’s not personal.

Let’s say someone is showing up every day, giving their best—and they’re just not getting there. That’s probably the wrong position for them.

I tell people, “Find a place where you can be the rockstar of your own life.” If they can’t get there, they should probably look for something different.

That’s not your burden to carry.

You’re responsible TO people, not FOR them.

Everyone has a hard life. Everyone’s on their own journey. How determined are they to change their circumstances?

It’s their responsibility to clean up their life.

As the business owner—and their boss—you can do your team a great benefit by having those truthful conversations with them.

Be transparent. Tell them, “Look, I’d love to pay you as much as the next person. But you’ve got to clean up these issues before you can get there. You COULD be a rockstar, but it won’t happen until you clean things up. You’ll probably perform way better once you do.”

Consider how a professional sports team is run. The best person gets the job… period. People who aren’t the best go somewhere else, even if the coach loves that person.

The coach makes hard decisions in the best interests of the team.

That’s how you need to see yourself. The best player gets the spot. If they’re not the best, they need to go somewhere else—maybe somewhere where they’re looking for a “B player” or “C player,” rather than an “A player.”

If you have B and C players on your team, working with A players—those A players will leave, because A players want to work with other A players.

Don’t do a disservice to your A player, your B player, AND to your company.

Remember, it’s a team—not a family. Everyone is gunning for those spots, while taking responsibility to do their best. If someone isn’t doing their best, have a conversation about why. Then it’s a decision on what to do about it.

Recommended Reading
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! In April 2022, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi David,

I need to hire a team for my business and get more support. At the same time, I keep hesitating.

I feel stuck. I don’t feel confident in the decision I need to make of what support I need for my business. I’m afraid to make the wrong decision. What’s going on here? Why am I not pulling the trigger when it comes to hiring more support?

When someone refuses to hire help, they will eventually slip into resentment.

The last thing you want to do is to go into resenting your clients and your business because you are under supported.

If something happens in your life, and it starts to become a huge problem in your business, it should be a wake-up call that “I’m not building the business as I should.

A business owner should be able to walk away for a period of time without worrying what’s going to happen to the business.

Get your emotions out of it.

Look at it as a business decision.

Yes, you have to learn to manage people. Yes, you need to create more systems. Yes, you need to learn how to hold people accountable. These are skills to learn.

You just have to step into them and learn them as you go.

You need to learn to start welcoming making the wrong decision, or you’ll be paralyzed forever.

There’s nothing wrong with making a wrong decision. It’s not a reflection on you as a person.

We’re all ignorant about everything we’re doing to move forward because we’re doing something for the first time and stepping into the unknown.

I have no idea what new decisions I’ll have to make tomorrow, and I can’t be certain what the outcomes will be.

I have no idea.

It’s okay to make a mistake, because then you know what to change.

Make a decision.

Decide by when you’ll make it.

Then hold yourself accountable to following through on it.

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Summit! In April 2022, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save

This week's question from my portal “The Neagle Code: Directions for Life” comes from someone who wishes to remain anonymous.

Hi David,

My question is, how far do you invest in your business before you’re getting the return?—whether it’s doing a coaching program like yours, or even with the people that you hire?

All the way.

Invest all the way, with everything. Because if you do it half-assed, you won’t get there.

Let me just be a hundred percent transparent. When first I started down the road of working with my mentor, it was a multi six-figure investment. I was working at a job. I did not have my own business. I had to take out another mortgage on my house to pay for it. I maxed out all my credit cards.

The deal I made with my mentor was…I had to go to every event he taught. I had to pay my own way. Back then, that meant riding in the back of the car (hiring a limo driver) or riding in the front of the plane (flying first class).

I had to pay my own way for everything. I wasn’t making any more money at the time. All I was doing was learning. It was an investment in my own education.

When I started my business, it was “everything in at once.” It didn’t matter what I was doing. If I had to hire somebody, or pay for something for myself—every resource went into making this thing work.

Let me say this again: If you do it half-assed, you won’t get there.

Now, I need everybody to understand this. And I say this with total respect. You can only play this way if you’re willing to step up and earn the money. If you’re not willing to make the sales, if you’re not willing to be responsible to earn the money, then don’t do it. Because you’ll get yourself into a world of trouble.

I’m always willing to earn the money that I spend. As a matter of fact, I love to earn money. I love to sell. It’s in our core essence of who we are. It’s part of how we help people. And it’s exciting. It’s a tremendous amount of fun.

Part of this is about knowing who you are, and making a decision that this is the change you’re going to make for your life. It’s one of the greatest changes you can make, because once you break through it, you’ll never run around saying, “Oh, my God, I don’t have any money.” Or, “How am I going to hire somebody?”

Just do it, figure it out, and make it happen.

Invest in your business all the way as long as you’re willing to earn the money you need!.

P.S. Whenever you're ready… here are 3 ways I can help you grow YOUR business:

• Listen to The Successful Mind Podcast. Three times per week I drop cutting edge information and strategies relating to success mindset, leadership, wealth creation, and relationships.
• Join other like-minded small business owners in my Transformation Facebook Group! Allow us to be a place to share ideas, get advice, and meet others who value truth and growth!
• Join me at The Art of Success Virtual Summit! In April 2022, I'm getting a group of amazing business owners together for 3 days to work on exponentially growing their business.

Save