Peaceful Profits Podcast Ep. 100 - 17 Things I Regret In Business
Synopsis:
In this candid episode, Author and Peaceful Profits CEO Mike Shreeve shares the 17 biggest regrets from his 17-year entrepreneurial journey. He doesn't just focus on the usual 'do this' advice but dives deep into the 'don'ts' that can cost you time, money, and success. From poor boundary setting to hiring mistakes, fear-driven decisions, and health neglect, Mike opens up about the real mistakes that hinder progress. If you're looking for actionable wisdom to speed up your journey to success and avoid common business pitfalls, this episode is a must-listen.
Transcript:
17 Things I Regret In Business
[00:00:00] All right, friend, hope you're doing well. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's show. We're going to be talking about 17 things I regret in business and no, this is not a will was me episode. This is, let me put it this way. I think there's a lot of great content out there in this space about things you should do, right?
So think this way or do this strategy or try this thing. What there isn't a lot of is content or advice [00:00:30] talking about the things to avoid. Don't do this. This will hurt if you do. This is going to set you back 10 years. This is, and in my experience, so as me as an entrepreneur and doing this for a while now, if I look back on my career, the biggest hurdle to speed was not choosing the right strategy or having the right mindset.
[00:01:00] It was all these wrong turns that I took. If I had been able to just avoid the wrong turns, I could have gotten much further, much faster. And I think in our industry, And in our space, that fact is not given as much attention and respect and emphasis and priority as it really should be, which is [00:01:30] one critical growth strategy is just avoiding the massive potholes in the road.
You can get to your destination a lot faster if you don't have flat tires all the time. That kind of a thing. So that's what today's episode is all about. I have 17 things because I've been doing this for 17 years, and so I figure one per year. I'm sure that if I really sat down I could really make a much longer list, but we'll talk about 17.
And not to sound overly sassy, but if anyone [00:02:00] tells you that they have no regrets, they are either a complete psychopath and have no feeling for others or themselves, or they're lying to you. Everyone I know who's been doing this for a very long time has something in their business past where they think, I wish I would have done that differently.
And I think that is also something that's really important has got to change about this industry. Is this idea that there are perfect entrepreneurs, that there are [00:02:30] people who are successful and have never messed up? And that I think even when we, even if I'm Intellectually, we say, Oh yeah, they may they failed.
They messed up. We kind of brush it off as not a real failure, right? We don't think of it as Oh yeah, they were like crying every night and people were, they were crying themselves to sleep and people were yelling at them and screaming at them and hated them. And we don't, I don't think we fully even can [00:03:00] really identify with what Almost every single business owner goes through.
I personally do not know any successful business people who don't have some kind of thing in their past where they messed up and they regret it and they wish they hadn't done it. And so another big reason for doing this episode is just to shine light that this is so normal. And if [00:03:30] you have stuff in your past and you're holding yourself back from doing something new or something again, or continuing on, or you're keeping yourself small because you're I don't deserve this.
I can't be that kind of person. Let me be the one to tell you, there is nobody at the successful level of entrepreneurship who doesn't also have the same feelings about themselves, about their past, that you [00:04:00] have, there's nobody who is successful that I know of, unless they're, you may have some people who claim it, but they're probably lying to you, meaning claiming that they've never made a mistake or they have no regrets.
Everybody I know. Has some kind of thing they wish would have turned out differently. And so hopefully this is a helpful episode. Again, this isn't just supposed to be a sob story. I want people to realize that every entrepreneur is a human being. Human beings make mistakes, but you can and should still be [00:04:30] successful.
Even with all of that. All right, so let's go through now 17 and 17 years been a while All right so number one that probably the biggest regret that I have in my entire career and this was I was reminded of this recently because my daughter's birthday was recently and When she was born, I was at the hospital taking calls from a very [00:05:00] specific client.
And to this day, every year, it's her birthday, I am reminded of that massive regret. And there's a whole host of reasons why that happened and etc. But we were at the hospital. Luckily, my wife wasn't like actually having the baby at that moment, but technically was in labor. So I was talking to my client while my wife was in labor for what turned out by the [00:05:30] way to be an absolutely Idiotic reason that the client was pinging me and calling me and threatening to fire me and all I mean it was in Retrospect so dumb that I did that I absolutely regret it And it is representative of a bigger regret, which I have had more than just this one instance.
This is, this instance is an examination, and this is the lesson that I want to leave with everybody, is [00:06:00] I have regretted every time I have had unclear boundaries for myself and others, and or have crossed those boundaries myself. Doing client work while my wife is in labor, that's a boundary that I crossed.
That, I regret it deeply. And I've done it many times, of I told my kids I was gonna be there on Friday, and what did I do instead? I dealt with client or staff drama. That's a boundary that was crossed, right? [00:06:30] A personal boundary. I can't tell you how many times in the past I've taken vacations and told I'm going to be there.
I'm going to be present. And what was I doing half the day on my phone, pinging people, right? Regret it every single time. And then, so along with that, I also deeply regret. Not making boundaries a more prominent part of conversations. Now, understand, this is stuff that I've worked on so I'm not saying [00:07:00] this is still going on.
What I'm trying to teach in this episode is, I wish somebody would have drilled that into my head a lot sooner. Because the big regrets I have, 17 years later, are all the times when I didn't do that. And it can be so hard because we tell ourselves this lie that this is that I can make the exception to the rule this one time, I'll just work on [00:07:30] this vacation or even smaller level.
I'll just check my phone right now. Everyone's on. Everyone's in the pool anyways. But then what happens? They get out of the pool. You're still on the phone. Boundaries are so important. They're so important. Personal boundaries. So that's a big regret. If you're newer, or if you've been at this for a while, It's time to really start thinking about that stuff.
You don't want to go on forever and ever. I can tell you the quality of my life. increases [00:08:00] every single time I think more or do more work around boundary setting. All right, number two, this is a big one. Hiring team, staff, vendors, et cetera. Before I establish the recurring income. To afford those new hires, so I get it.
I love that there's a lot of advice like hire when it hurts and hire fast and all that [00:08:30] stuff. I love all that. That's great. I don't disagree. I think most people are way too slow to hire. Way too slow. I also think that not hiring is a massive risk because you're putting the entire business on one person's shoulders, which is so dangerous.
That's so dangerous for a number of reasons. You're limiting the number of ideas and innovation that can happen in that business because it's just one person you're putting the business at risk for any kind of physical injury, [00:09:00] illness, burnout, et cetera. You are unnecessarily capping your earning potential.
Because the business is not a person, but it's run by a person. The business is an entity in a market, which is only limit is how far the business is able to push and et cetera, et cetera. It's incredibly dangerous to not hire. However, the single biggest introduction to stress that I have found and the lesson I want to pass on to you is do not hire.
Until you have at [00:09:30] least their salary or fees or whatever you're going to be doing set up in recurring revenue. So whether it's low ticket, high ticket, payment plans, however you have that set up, I can't think of anything more stressful. I will take a client yelling in my face and threatening me with everything that clients can threaten you with.
I will take competitors stealing my stuff. I will take every other problem in business. [00:10:00] But there is nothing, in my opinion, more stressful than having recurring expenses without recurring income to match those expenses. I've done it twice in my life where I overhired before recurring expenses could catch up.
I have deeply regretted it every single time. Deeply [00:10:30] regretted it. When you have to, cause this is what, I don't know if you've ever heard the phrase like starting from zero every month. That's what they mean. It means that you have these huge expenses. And then you have to make a bunch of sales, not so you can get paid, but so that you can pay the expenses.
This is when we talk about owning a job instead of owning a business. Because you are simply working to pay bills. Which is insane. And making [00:11:00] new sales is, it takes energy, it takes effort, it takes that expense of energy and effort. I don't really have other words. It costs something to make new sales.
You have to put oomph into it, right? You have to do things to make new sales. And that is, that's a very hard life to sustain when you have these big recurring bills coming in every month. [00:11:30] And there's so many risks to what happens when you can't pay. It's a nightmare. It is a living nightmare for everyone involved.
So hire, you should hire, you need good people. Having good people on your team is one of the greatest experiences in the world when you have built something that is that can expand beyond your own limited capacity when you have the right people and they actually help [00:12:00] you and they get behind your mission and they will support you there is genuinely no better feeling for me in a business setting than having a great team.
And especially if they can get results for your clients. And it's just, it's amazing, but don't do it until you have recurring. The one exception to this is that if the people you're hiring. are helping you to build recurring. That's the one exception that I think of. [00:12:30] So let's say, for example, you have a new offer or something, and the new offer has some kind of recurring element.
Maybe it's like a high ticket that people can pay over six months or something. And you're hiring a team to help you sell that. That makes sense because every one they sell covers their expenses for six months, right? That makes sense. What doesn't make sense would be to hire a whole bunch of people to help you sell something that's like a one off only.
That would be a little bit dangerous. Okay, so that's [00:13:00] number two. Number three, taking on clients or team members or partners or anyone that I wasn't excited about. One of the things you must do as a business owner is learn how to be selfish. When you are in an employee setting, you're forced to work with people you don't necessarily like.
And if you've grown up in that setting from school, a public school where it's a public system, [00:13:30] it's not like you have options. So you better get along with everyone in your class. To getting a job out in the workforce, you're going to lose your job if you don't get along with these people. You didn't hire the people who work with you.
The shift from that mentality to being an owner is so critical to get right. Because when you are paying people's bills and vendors and salaries and whatnot, [00:14:00] Or when you are expending energy effort trying to get a client a result, the worst thing, let's see, how do I put this? One thing that is guaranteed to ruin efficiency, meaning it's going to take you a significant amount of additional effort, energy, even cost to do something is when you have these Conflicts with the [00:14:30] people that you're supposed to be working with and make no mistake.
Let me tell you, if you don't know this already, let me tell you this. You don't work for your clients. Okay, you work with your clients and I can do a whole episode on why that is really important. So you don't work for your clients, you work with your clients. Your team doesn't work for you, they work with you.
So if you can't, if you're not excited about the people that you're working with, everything's going to take twice as long. It's going to be [00:15:00] twice as expensive. You're going to hate it. You're going to, it's, you need to be excited by the people you are around. And here's the hardest part where you need to get them out of your circle.
It is too expensive. It's just too expensive. And I have regretted every single time taking on clients or team members that just weren't that exciting. And I don't, I'm not saying like [00:15:30] you, you must impress me. Are they cool to work with? Do they bring energy or do they take energy? Pricks or are they cool people?
That's the kind of stuff that matters. And in this industry in particular, maybe in other industries, it doesn't matter, but in this one in particular, it absolutely does. All right. Number four, the biggest regret I have in my business. One of the biggest ones is not paying myself first. So first off, I recommend everybody read profit first, [00:16:00] great book illustrates this principle.
You got to pay yourself first. You cannot help others pulling from an empty well. And let me tell you something. Your business is always going to have problems. Okay. Newsflash. If nobody else is telling you this, there's always going to be some problem because every time you solve a problem, you create a new problem.
I'll give you an example. Let's say that you absolutely master sales and selling. And marketing and everything. And you can get clients on demand. It's no big deal. It costs you like 20 bucks. You can get as many of them as you want. Great. You solved the problem. [00:16:30] What's the new problem? Now, what do I do? I have so many clients.
I don't know what to do with it. There's so many. So you're always going to have problems. That's the nature of business, the nature of making improvements in your life.
So if that's true, and it is And you are not paying yourself first, which do you think is harder? To solve problems while you're also worrying about paying your bills? Or solving problems and your bills are paid? [00:17:00] Which is harder? Yeah, when you're not paying your bills and you're still trying to solve these problems and it's really, that is the hardest way to do things.
Even if it is uncomfortable to pay yourself first, you have to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, the business crashes anyways. And one of the very interesting things, and I first learned this from one of my mentors, Jonathan Cronstadt, and he [00:17:30] taught me this lesson a long time ago. He gave me a story, I won't share his story, it's his story, but he basically shared how when you do that, even if right now in your PNL it doesn't actually make sense, when you do that, Everything else starts to click into place.
Somehow, magically, the money finds a way. Either you realize maybe there were expenses you didn't need that much anymore, or because you're in such a good space, you're able to [00:18:00] match the expenses and all that kind of stuff. And it's not about pay yourself just a little bit, because that's not paying yourself first.
It's still holding, it's still holding back. Pay yourself what you want to get paid to run this business. And then the money left over is the money for operating the business. And you're an entrepreneur. You're resourceful. You will find a way to make that work. I think a lot of entrepreneurs put the resourcefulness into the suffering.
Let me pay everybody else or pay everything [00:18:30] else. Then I'll pay myself and I'll be resourceful about not having enough money. Wrong. That's the wrong way to do it. You can fight me about it. I don't care. I'm telling you that's the wrong way to do it. And there's another concept beyond just the financial paying yourself first.
A big mistake that I have made many times over the years. And this one, in fact, I am still dealing with this part of Pay Yourself First. Which is You wake [00:19:00] up, you sit down at your desk. Are you doing your tasks first, or are you doing everybody else's tasks first? And when I say your tasks first, the ones you wanted to do.
Let's say for example, you have, and here's the perfect example. That's specifically from my world, which is, many years ago, I was a freelance copywriter who [00:19:30] wanted to also get into fiction and write fiction and make money from fiction. So publishing and all that, it took me three years to finally realize I was never maybe two years, two or three years before.
So it took me that long to realize that I was never going to write. A book, a fiction book until I wrote the book before [00:20:00] I answered client emails or wrote client copy. See, what I used to do is I'd wake up and I'd say, okay, what does the client need today? Let me write a bunch of copy. And then with whatever I have left over.
Energy wise, time wise, then I'll write the book. It doesn't work that way because that's when you sit down to do the thing you wanted to do. And now you're like, I'm tired. I'm exhausted. I really don't want to do this. [00:20:30] I gave all my best stuff to the client. So pay yourself first is not just a financial concept.
It is a, Allocation of time and resources concept. So don't wake up and go into your slack or whatever you use. And the team is telling you they've got 17 things. Your clients are telling you they've got 17 things and don't make that the first thing you do in the morning and then expect to get anything you want to get done that day.
[00:21:00] That's unrealistic. What you have to do is before any of that, you have to do the thing that you want to do. Whatever that thing is, and maybe you have a lot of things. Maybe you want to work out. Maybe you want to see your kids. Maybe you want to eat something healthy. Maybe you want to do some of this.
Maybe you want to do this. Whatever those things are, do that first. It's a really fun concept. It's have a good day before you have to go deal with your business. I'm not saying you have to wait until [00:21:30] five o'clock in the afternoon, but you know what? If you don't get started till 10, guess what? The hustle bros on YouTube, they don't know what they're talking about.
They're all young dudes, they don't have families, they don't like, they don't have any of the responsibilities, they don't actually know what it's like to run this thing for 20, 30 years. You need to build a sustainable system. You are a real human, and you are an adult, and you have responsibilities.
If you get up, and you [00:22:00] take your time, and then by the time you get to the computer, you're feeling pretty good about things, and you've got what you wanted to get accomplished, and then you can deal with everybody else's stuff. You will be so much better off, so much better off. You'll be happier too. So not only will you be better off as in you'll get more progress and more success and more money and all of that, you'll also be happier while you do it.[00:22:30]
And it won't feel like everyone else is stealing your time. Because you got to do what you wanted to do and now you have some time left over for everybody else. Alright, number five. I deeply regret not acting faster. Ooh, I, and interestingly, this one's actually getting worse over time. So I was better at this when I was younger [00:23:00] because I was a lot more agile as a company.
I had many fewer responsibilities. So the bigger your company gets, the more people that are involved, the more companies you own, the da, like the more that is like at stake, the harder it is to move faster. But I definitely deeply regret every time I've not moved as fast as I thought I should have.
For example, one of my companies, I've, I was like, we [00:23:30] need to get some continuity in this company two years ago. Two years ago, we really need some continuity. Two years later, still working on continuity, it's not really scaled to where it needs to be. That, that is my fault. Because I didn't push it harder two years ago,
but that is an example of that regret where you know You should be doing something and you [00:24:00] don't do it as fast as you want it to get done Another example, you should write a book I will tell you the regret you're going to have is that you wish you would have written it faster Hiring you should hire someone You're going to regret it.
You're going to wish you had done it faster. You need to launch that thing. You're going to wish you had done it faster. Like all of these good things that we have in our lives that we know we should [00:24:30] do. And then we just, and it's in the worst part is that it always happens when you finally do it. And here the regret comes of, Oh, I should have done this a long time ago.
That is a very common regret that I have. But there's also two other kind of layers to that. So that's the surface level basic concept. The larger and perhaps even more important one is
part of not acting faster has to do with the [00:25:00] trust you have about the idea you're having in your head. So you think, okay, I should write a book. That idea pops in your head and then all of a sudden the doubt starts coming in. You don't really need to do now and dah. And as a result. You have these early ideas, and you don't act on them because there's too much thinking.
And, unfortunately, almost every idea [00:25:30] cannot be thought through. It has to be acted through. In other words, let's say we're trying to think about, Should I do this in my funnel? Should I do this in my funnel? Should I do this in my funnel? That doesn't help if you should do something in a funnel, just thinking about it, trying to plan for it, trying to guess, trying to The only thing that helps you know if you should or shouldn't put something in a funnel is what?
Put it in the funnel, run the traffic, and find out. That's it. Listen to me. That's it. [00:26:00] That's the only way you will know if something should or shouldn't be in a funnel. Everything else that you do is a waste of time in finding out. Now there may be other purposes for your thinking or anything like that, but if you're like, I need to find out so I can know whether or not this was a good idea to do, the only way to find that out is to do it.[00:26:30]
And so this comes down to procrastination and really making work about anything other than the work. Drama, self doubt, fear, anxiety, all of those things are delays. And they trick us into thinking, Oh, this is what's important. This is how I'm going to find out the answer. This is how I'm going to know.
When in reality, the only way to know you want to know if you're a good fiction writer, go write a [00:27:00] fiction book and throw it up. And try to sell it. That's how you know. Your editor can speculate, your ARC readers can speculate, your beta readers can speculate, everyone can speculate, but until you put it out there and you put some money behind it and you try to sell it, that's when you'll know for certain.
Same with funnels, same with anything that you do in your entire business. The answer is Acting faster, [00:27:30] and I have regretted not acting faster multiple times to the point where I've been early on if y'all give you the worst example, one of the ones that I deeply regret, I published my first client getting book in 2012.
It's still on Amazon, I think.
And
I then didn't [00:28:00] build a company that taught people how to use books to get clients until 2019. So seven years. I sat on this incredibly profitable idea and guess what happened during those seven years? I'm not saying I invented getting clients or with books, but there was not very many people. There was like maybe one or [00:28:30] two people really talking about it in 2012 in the, in, in this kind of space, making a big deal about it over those seven years.
What do you think happened? Everybody's talking about it. What do you think's happened since 2019?
Everybody's talking. The competition has gotten so much more intense. And one of the regrets that I have is, why didn't I just turn around and start [00:29:00] monetizing that? You remember the other day we talked about million dollar offers? I had the story. I had the ladder. Let me show you how to get clients with a book.
But what did I do? I doubted myself. I can't, I don't, I'm not good enough. I did all the things that every human being does for seven years. I now have a company that does multiple million dollars per year, helping people to get clients with books. [00:29:30] Multiply that by seven years. And that's how much money I missed out on.
Don't do that. If you have to act faster. You just have to. All right, number six, big regret, not spending enough on ads. Oh, so this one's really pretty short and simple, actually. I just wish I spent more on ads all the time. Even now I'm like, Oh, we [00:30:00] should spend some more. We should spend some more.
And here's really one of the core. There's really two core reasons about this. One is that ads don't get cheaper over time. Peter, who helps us here at Peaceful Profits and I, and a guy I've been working with a long time, some of you know him, he's an awesome guy, Peter and I were messing around the other day and I wanted to see if you could use what it would cost to sell a book using an old 2012 tactics.
I wanted to see because sometimes [00:30:30] things come and go, right? So there's something that's popular in 2012. You wait a couple of years, it's popular again in 2016 or whatever. In 2012 I was selling a book using a specific method. It was costing me about 2 cents a click. I said, Hey, let's see what the costs are now.
Same method. Same ads, same everything that we did. It now costs 64 cents a click. From 2012 to 2024. I wish I had [00:31:00] spent so much more money on ads over the years. Now the lesson I've taken away from that is that, okay, it's probably only going to get more expensive still. So today, what's the best date of when was the best time to plant a tree 30 years ago?
Okay. That's not real. So when's the next best time today? So ad spend is the thing. And with that, what is ad [00:31:30] spend really? It's buying attention. And I think that one big mistake I've made is that I don't actually want to be a guru. I don't even I, there's a slight discomfort I have even talking about things I regret and because it assumes that you want to listen to what I have to say about my regrets, it's just a weird thing as I don't like it.
My face isn't on stuff. I'm not going to be doing videos or nothing like that, but as competitive as a space is [00:32:00] we're in, it takes a lot of attention. And I think the amount of attention it's taking these days in a space as competitive as ours, where there's lots of suppliers and they're all good at marketing.
And they're also like, not afraid to break FTC guidelines or straight lie or screw customers. It's a wild niche to operate in that we're in, but [00:32:30] I, even with all of that said, not wanting to be all over the place. I really regret not having all of that attention. That we could monetize. That is a bummer.
We probably are spending 30 percent of what we could spend. And so that's one of those things. It's a regret that I have, that I haven't spent more. Okay. And so don't be like me. [00:33:00] Spend your, spend on ads. Y'all get out there. And by the way, I need to qualify all of this because it's all relative.
I'm not spending 500 a day. Let me put it that way. I'm spending way more than that. I think I could spend even more than that. I think we could be spending a million dollars a month. I actually, I really genuinely do. Now we, you don't just go out and spend it, but like figuring out how to spend a million dollars a [00:33:30] month in a way that works and scales at that, that, like all of that.
I, I, and I say that because we have clients that do that. I've personally have personal private clients that do that. I know what it takes. So we're at whatever level you're at right now. Just ask yourself, what would happen if you spent 25 percent more? What about 50 percent more? What about 75%? It's not going to get cheaper!
One of the things that I'm so grateful for are the email lists I've [00:34:00] built over the years. Because the more you spend, if you do things correctly, the bigger that list should be. If you love up on that list at all, they'll stay loyal. You'll have a base of fans and customers and that's a great asset to have.
Okay. Number seven, hiring too low on the S curve for critical roles. What the heck does that mean? Highly recommend another book by Michael Michalowicz, you can tell I'm just a big fan, called [00:34:30] Clockwork. He has a whole chapter about the S curve, and they have a whole concept about it. Great program, by the way, the Clockwork program.
Great team behind that.
There are a lot of roles in which hiring lower on the S curve is appropriate, and there are a lot of roles in which it is not appropriate. I myself have made the error multiple times of hiring too low on the S curve for roles which require higher S curve [00:35:00] expertise. And what is the S curve? The simplest version of which I'm going to not do it any justice whatsoever is that it's basically a measure of skill and talent and experience versus cost.
So the higher up, it's high cost, but high expertise, lower down, less cost, less expertise. Now, what are we talking about here? What's the lesson? Okay, great, Mike, you've made some bad hires. Welcome to business. [00:35:30] But, the real lesson here is understanding what do you want from a hire and making sure that you get that or more.
Not less. Settling in terms of hiring. Being like, I guess this is all I deserve. Or, this will do for now. Or, [00:36:00] that is a thing that I see in so many entrepreneurs. It's like this internal negative self talk. Downplaying. What it means to be an entrepreneur. I get that right now. It's very trendy to vilify people like CEOs and that kind of thing.
And if you grew up, like I [00:36:30] did super, super working class. Down with the man, right? Management sucks. They're making our life terrible, blah, blah. And you can get this mental picture of it's an, you get an inaccurate picture of what you are as a job provider
and the value that you bring just in the act of [00:37:00] hiring. And that as a result, you are entitled to and allowed to have. your own desires. It's not, Oh, you're just lucky people are working for you. That is not the reality. The reality is thank you for making jobs so that people can have work. That's the reality.[00:37:30]
So in doing so, It goes back to the, what I was talking about earlier about taking on clients and or team members that you aren't totally excited about don't hire for anything other than something where you think to yourself, I can't believe this is happening. This is so awesome. We have this person on the team.
Oh my gosh, they're going to help so much. This is going to be great. [00:38:00] I can't wait to support them. while they support me because that is the appropriate relationship to have. When you hire too low on the S curve for certain roles, What ends up happening is you have to invest an unequal amount into the individual.
Meaning you're not only paying [00:38:30] them, but you're also having to bring them up to speed for a role that you're paying for that they aren't actually able to fulfill because they don't have the training and da and etc. Now, please understand, I am not saying don't train your people. I'm also not saying don't invest in your people.
I love investing in people. What I am saying, though, is you need to be way careful about your own time, energy, resource. [00:39:00] Don't hire someone for a position that if it takes them six months to learn how to do that position that your business is going to crash. Just hire the person who already knows that position.
And I know for some people listening to that's going to be such a hard thing to hear for some people. It's ego, right? For some people it's person has different ideas than I do and they have, I don't want, I don't want it to be my way. Don't do that. That's [00:39:30] silly. That's just, that's a waste as a waste of your own time and money.
Hiring people that you feel like you can lord over that's a waste of time But you do need to look at and hire people who are Able to do what you need them to do pretty quickly otherwise You are gonna be in a bigger pile of poo than you can even imagine. [00:40:00] Alright, so that's a good one. Number eight. Fear, in general, I always regret.
Dang it, why was I afraid of that? Anticipating things that are gonna happen that never happen. When AI came out two years ago, I'm not gonna lie, the first couple months, I was like, Oh, it's all over? Okay. Nice run, everybody. Because I'm in coaching, consultant, consulting, fiction, writing. I've been a copywriter for 17 years.
And this was all like up in my face. [00:40:30] You know what I mean? This was, Oh, okay. A total existential crisis of, Oh, everything I've ever worked for. It's all gone. Two years later, three years later. I'm not saying AI doesn't have big impacts. I'm not saying that someday it won't, blah, blah, blah. But I was thinking it was happening like that day.
And there was in full transparency, three months. Where I didn't get anything done. I was ineffectual because I was just constantly [00:41:00] trying to find out what is this AI thing? How's it who be careful about fear. It can take anyone at any time. That's the most important. You never get over it entirely.
And as soon as you get over one fear, a new fear is gonna pop up. I deeply regret every single time I've ever let fear take over. I'll give you another one. In 2012, I was making more money with fiction than I had ever made in my life by a pretty big factor. [00:41:30] And I still went on to go make a coaching and consulting company outside of fiction because I was afraid Amazon was going to close up the self publishing opportunity.
I don't know why. There's no real proof of it. It's now 2024, and guess what? Amazon, they love their self publishers. Eh, you make us money, we make you money. Now, luckily, I was smart enough and I've [00:42:00] kept fiction going as one of my companies this whole time. But if I had just done fiction and committed fully and not taken on these other companies that I have now or other projects that I had that were done out of fear, I was like, I'll go do a coaching companies.
That way I'll always make sure I have money because independent of Amazon, and Amazon's a big platform. I shudder to think where my fiction could be now. to be totally honest. [00:42:30] So you have to be careful of fear. You have to be careful of fear. It is Dune's very popular right now. Fear is the mind killer.
It's also the opportunity killer. It is the productivity killer. It is the money killer. It is the trust killer. It is it will, fear is just terrible. It really is terrible. So watch yourself. All right, number nine. [00:43:00] Big regret I have is not putting health as a higher priority, sleep especially. So I've been a lot better about it the past couple of years, but there was about a decade with the exception of this last year, my sleep went to poop again a little bit, but there was a decade where, Ooh, we're talking like sub four hours a night, multiple all nighters a week.
This was when I was, I would like, I had at the peak, I had [00:43:30] six clients who were each paying me a minimum of 15, 000 a month. So this was before like all the coaching stuff and scaling and learning all these principles. I was just like individual personal clients, 15 K a month, or at least some were paying more and they, some of them wanted me to travel.
So I, there was one month where I was, and it was a December, I was home for Christmas day. Okay. And the day before my birthday [00:44:00] and that was it for the entire month of December. Otherwise I was traveling, which is typically in our space like a slow month and I was just trying to travel and I was like hitting this flight to connect to this flight to go from this client to that client.
It was at the time I thought I was being awesome. I was like, this is what you do. You got to grind and hustle. It turns out that I could have made that same money. Way more [00:44:30] healthily. Is that even a word? It could have been a lot more healthy, making all that money, way less stress, a lot more sleep.
And unfortunately, When you make those kinds of health sacrifices, some of them are irreversible, and you know that I'm now that I'm saying it out loud It's not just physical health the health of your relationships. There are some relationships that just irreversible It's one [00:45:00] thing that I will say I don't have any regrets about relationships because I've the important relationships have always been a priority to me I love my wife I love my kids.
They've always come first. We've never had problems in that regard. People who have been good and loyal to me I've got long term relationships in an industry that's notorious for just churning out. Churn and burn, and I'll use you and move on to the next one, and that kind of thing. That has been awesome.
But, I could definitely see [00:45:30] how relationship health, Physical health, mental health, emotional health. These are all related. For me, the big sacrifice was physical health. And part of that's just because the hobbies that I was interested in as well, ultra running. I used to be a wild lamb firefighter for a bunch of years.
So part of that was this story I had told about myself, told myself about my identity and all that kind of stuff. I regret it. That's one of the regrets. Wish it would have put health [00:46:00] higher. Again, what's the point of this? Is this a sob story about me? No, this is, hey you, listen, as somebody who's been doing this for a while, you gotta sleep.
Stop with the hustle mindset BS. The science doesn't support it. These guys are I've also noticed that some of these guys who claim this stuff some of, I, I have this unique perspective in that I've been behind the scenes of a lot of these guys, they don't even follow that stuff themselves, they're just making content.
They sleep fine, so [00:46:30] just, you gotta listen to yourself, you gotta put your specific health first, not the health of somebody else or some ideal that, you don't actually get there faster if you don't sleep, it turns out. You get less done when you don't sleep. After a certain amount of sleep, you're equal to being inebriated.
So it really is an ineffective way to run your life and your business. Alright, number 10. This is gonna be silly, but I regret not buying land sooner. And the principle here is that I kept [00:47:00] putting off buying land and building stuff that I wanted to build. I kept putting that off because that was like a childhood dream of mine because I just kept putting too much money back into the business.
I think there's a lot of people who are like afraid to take money out. I know I was for a long time. And it goes back to this concept, but you got to pay yourself first. That includes, Hey, if there's a big thing you want to buy, guess what? The company exists to help you buy that thing. Not the company exists.[00:47:30]
So that you can pay everybody else and everything else. And then if you have anything left over, good luck. No, that's not how it works. So as you're going through my advice here to avoid this regret is you need to live while you're building your business. If you have dreams and the business exists to fulfill those dreams, don't forget that the business exists to fulfill those dreams and those dreams aren't going to have, just like the business doesn't happen by [00:48:00] accident.
The dreams aren't going to happen by accident. In other words, you have to make the room in the space. In other words, the business cannot be your entire life. Otherwise the business will be your entire life. I know that sounds like some trite advice. Let me see if I can think of an example. If your goal is to go on a massive vacation once a quarter, guess what?
You're not going to go on that vacation until you tell your clients and your team and [00:48:30] everybody, Guys, I'm going on a vacation. Goodbye. Oh, but we have, but I need you to know I'm going on the vacation. I will see you when I get back. That's the kind of space you have to make. That's the kind of lines in the sand you have to draw.
That's the kind of discipline you have to have. That's the kind of Place you have to put the business. The business exists to serve the clients, the customers, and [00:49:00] you. If it doesn't, shut it down. I know that's saying so extreme, but what I'm telling you here is most people build a business With these hopes and dreams of what it's going to give to them.
And then it's like they got on a motorcycle that's overpowered for their ability, and they're screaming down the highway, just trying to hold on to the handlebars, hoping the thing doesn't flip. [00:49:30] That's not sustainable, y'all. The bike's going to flip eventually. So how do you change it? How do you, what do you do?
This is the work that we do at Peaceful Profits all the time. It's about setting up different things within the business so that you can more easily make the kinds of decisions that you need to make. There are some businesses you simply cannot say, I'm going to take a week off. Sorry guys, I'm gone.
There are some businesses you can't do [00:50:00] that, but that's because the business was designed that way. You're using the wrong strategies, you're, you've made the wrong choices. Now luckily, you can recover from all of that, as I have done many times. I'm guilty, like I said, this is my regret, y'all. Okay, so I am fully aware of what can happen, and you can recover from it, but you gotta live a little bit.
Don't leave all your money in the business. Take some out. Go buy the land. Go on the vacation. Go do the thing. [00:50:30] You have to. Otherwise, what are you doing this for? Please don't do this just for a paycheck that you're going to put in a bank account. Unless your goal is retiring early, or having some kind of massive financial safety net, or And then once you achieve that massive financial safety net, what's next?
I don't know. What is next? What's the next goal? Don't just say, I achieved that, I guess I'll just do my job now. No. You have to tie this to something. It's too hard not to. [00:51:00] Oh, the massive truckloads of just junk you're going to have to deal with. It's got to be for something. All right, number 11. This one's pretty straightforward.
Regrets I have is a whole slew of bad business relationships for a whole slew of reasons. Everybody has these. Maybe it's somebody, you probably have a couple of these, a client you had that turned out to be a sour client, a team [00:51:30] member. You're like, what the, why did I work with that person? A business partner.
You're like, whew, I'm glad that didn't go on for very long. There's just a vendor like those. I regret in the sense that I wish I would have been smarter in the first place. There's a level of when certain points in your business, you're I'll work with anyone or I'll take on anyone or I'll do a business and that desperation is [00:52:00] usually accompanied with lack of thinking things through.
And I know I've been there too. And that's usually when the bad actors can creep in. It's when you're just desperate and you're like, I can't, I don't, I just need someone to help me. And so the regret there is not even necessarily that there was a bad relationship or something that happened in the relationship.
The regret is I wish I would have been slower to make [00:52:30] decisions about That's slower isn't the right word. I wish I would have been more careful,
would have been more careful about one of the things that we're doing in Peaceful Profits this last year, which is I'm just so happy it's been like six month process. We are way more careful about whose money we take way more careful, like a level that I've not ever seen in this particular [00:53:00] industry careful.
And then you ask anybody who's scaled a company like ours, I'll bet you all the pennies in my pocket. One of the biggest regrets they have is. how wide of a net they cast in terms of who they let into their programs. There's some wild people out there y'all. And then they, and it turns out they don't show you their true colors until after the fact, right?
That kind of thing. That's the thing that anytime that's ever [00:53:30] happened, bad business relationship or whatever. It's always, I wish it would have been more careful. All right. Number 12. This one's very important. I deeply regret having too many companies. I have three right now. I wish I had one
and you say just shut them all down and do one. It's not that easy to shut down a company. You guys, that's why Peaceful Profits exists, meaning Peaceful Profits exist because I know how stuck [00:54:00] entrepreneurs can get in these companies that they wish they could exit, but they cannot. They have too many obligations to team, obligations to clients, obligations.
Peaceful Profits exist to help those particular individuals and everybody else, but those ones in particular, okay, if I'm stuck here, let's at least build something that is decent to run. That is lower stress that it maybe brings some of that passion back, maybe re engage and get people back into a spot where they love their [00:54:30] business again so that the responsibilities don't feel like burdens, but like gifts.
Oh my gosh, I can't believe I received this gift of working with this client and that kind of thing. But too many companies, it's just a lack of focus. A lot of that was fear based, right? So I have three companies. I have a private company where I do some, I do a, let's see, how can I describe it in five seconds?
Basically I take on partners, I invest in their stuff and we do exits together. Sometimes not. It's like an equity [00:55:00] partnership type deal. That's it's not open to the public. Don't ask me about it. It's not open. Like it's stuff that I. approach certain people or have relationships with, I take on a certain role, blah, blah, blah, et cetera, et cetera.
That's one company I have. The other company I have, which is one I really enjoy is, my fiction publishing company. And then I also am very passionate about what we do here at Peaceful Profits. And those are the three companies that I have. I wish I had one because it's just, it's, I get it. It's so cool.
Look at all these [00:55:30] cool guys with their 15 companies, but man. If all three have a bad week at the same time, that is a rough week. That's a rough week. And I don't care what anyone tells you when they're trying to sell their scalable program or whatever. It's tough to run multiple companies. There's a reason guys like us have gray hair.
And I think what I had hoped to get out of multiple companies What's the sentiment? I hear a lot from a lot of new [00:56:00] entrepreneurs, right? So let's have this one and this one. And then if this one doesn't do all this, and if you're trying to hedge your bets or you're trying to maximize your revenue or anything like that, one of the biggest regrets I have is that I have these three companies, but none of them are as big, powerful, fun to run, amazing as they could be.
Like Peaceful Profits probably could be a 30 to 50 million a year company. With an incredible rock solid team where I'm not [00:56:30] really doing much of any of the, any work at all. I'm just thinking grand thoughts and that kind of a thing, but it's not because I have two other companies. And so this lack of focus is important now, I don't want anyone to think i'm not grateful for my companies I can't believe from what I came from to what I have now But this is just the side of this stuff again The purpose of this episode is to show you a little bit behind the scenes all the guys I know that have multiple companies [00:57:00] are living a level of Stress that most normal people would crack under let me just put it that way now for them They sure that's probably fine for them.
Maybe they like it whatever but personally I wish I was doing less, but just doing it more. That makes sense, right? Fewer offers, even like smaller financial burdens. So like maybe smaller [00:57:30] team, a smaller financial outlay every month. So way higher margins and just doing less. but getting a lot more out of it.
That's the goal that I would look for. All right. So number 13, regret number 13 is micromanaging. I regret doing it every time that I do it because it doesn't actually help anything. And this is the principle here is like learning to let go as a business owner. That's incredibly difficult [00:58:00] because at the end of the day, you're not It's this weird thing where other people do the work that you are responsible for, and so there's a tendency to want to micromanage.
And I just have found over the years that it really doesn't get anything done. Really. And not just micromanaging people, but micromanaging like funnel pieces and micromanaging ads and micromanaging this tendency to [00:58:30] get overly focused on minutiae. Instead of stepping back and looking at the big picture and saying, You know what?
On the whole, This is pretty cool. And then moving on to the next thing so that you can do something else. Instead of safe, being so obsessed with one book, right? And say you're writing a book that you're delaying [00:59:00] the release by six months, by a year, by a, that's too much micromanaging. When you could just, and I'm not saying you take shortcuts, I'm saying relieve some of that pressure.
Don't be so like, wound so tight because you're never going to get stuff done. And even when you're writing books, two books is not just a little bit better than one book. It is exponentially better. Two books, three books, four books, five books, ten books. Even if they're slightly less [00:59:30] better than just one really good book, it's easier to promote them.
Readers will read more of them. There's a whole list of reasons why micromanaging is a detriment to Getting the things done that you need to get done to have the success that you're looking for. The success that you're looking for isn't going to be found in you micromanaging stuff. It's going to be found in your output and how much of it you can [01:00:00] create.
All right. Number 14, not investing sooner. Pretty straightforward. I kept rolling that money back into companies, rolling it back in, rolling it back in, rolling it back in. Should have put more and more of it into investments and simple investments. Some people take investing like another job or another career.
That's, I don't really get that because the returns are so small on almost any investment opportunity except [01:00:30] investing in a business. So why would you go spend a bunch of time, energy and effort on an investment? that has returns that pale in comparison to a business when you can just take that money and put it into.
So my investment strategy since correcting this regret has just been to, if it's not simple, I'm not going to get involved in it because I'd be better served putting that time, energy and effort into the business. Pretty simple. But there are [01:01:00] some of you right now who are making money and You got to get that money to start working for you.
There's going to come a time where you're going to be like, I wish I had put a lot more money into this a lot earlier. Number 15 growing too fast. Okay. I have a tendency to once I made up my mind, just do it and go for it. The problem is that also throughout my career, I have not always [01:01:30] taken the time to ask why am I doing it.
I'm just like, let's do this. Okay, go. Instead of saying, why am I doing this? And what has happened is I've just grown companies really fast and as fun and exciting as that sounds, it's also been really quite stressful. And it's a part that nobody ever talks about. Cause again, it's like when you solve one problem, you have a whole bunch of new problems.
Okay. Let's say I grow a company really zero to 200, 300, 000 a month and 30, 60 [01:02:00] days. Wow. That's so amazing. Isn't it? No, because 30 to 60 days is not enough time to build all the systems you need for 300, 000 a month. It's not enough time to get all the team hired. It's not enough. So it's all. Scramble. And I get it.
There's this whole, you need to move faster. And that's great for beginners because most beginners really do drag their feet and like overthink. But for those of you who are, you got, what you're doing and you're building up a business and you're like, I should grow. And I just think about [01:02:30] why you're doing that.
Your margins are going to shrink as you grow faster, bigger, you're going to have more responsibility, not less. You're likely going to need to get more people involved, not less. Are these the things that you actually want? And when do you want them and how do you want them? Some people want it all now and they're willing to deal with the stress of kind of building the plane as you fall out of the sky or whatever the saying is, build the parachute, whatever.
I would say if I were to do it again, I would go much lower [01:03:00] in terms of the scale and growing one thing at a time. I certainly wouldn't do two offers at the same time, which I've done before. That was not a great idea. I would just do one offer, scale it to a certain point, make sure it's getting great results.
Team is there, the consistency is there, and the recurring is there, and all that good stuff. Then do the next thing. Then do the next thing. And I would keep it as lean [01:03:30] as possible. As lean as possible. I think over the next couple years, the big focus is going to be on entrepreneurial leanship. If that's anything.
How lean can you be as an entrepreneur? How much margin can you get our number 16 is I actually regret not making more content for Peaceful Profits in particular, because my other companies, technically my fiction company [01:04:00] is content. And I suppose I could say, I wish I wrote more books. I definitely do.
But my third company, the equity partnership type stuff, you don't really need content for that, but I do regret not making more content for Peaceful Profits. One, I enjoy it too is good for team training. It's like content is easy mode when you have content It's so easy to sell to people who have consumed your content and I just have not really made that much of it Which is silly because it's like [01:04:30] super easy to do but not like just episodes like this I'm talking about I wish I had wrote more books for Peaceful Profits I wish that I had more trainings and courses and all these types of things.
And I think what this is a really good example of what most people really struggle with in this world and in this game, which is [01:05:00] knowing you should or want to do something. And then just not doing it for whatever reason. I don't even have an excuse for this regret, which is what makes me regret it even more.
I just haven't done it. I've always been able to have an excuse. Things have always been good enough, right? We've got the funnels that we have. We've got six front end funnels here at Peaceful Profits. We've got a VSL that retargets those funnels. We've got an authorship booking page. We've [01:05:30] got a sales team.
We've got great email marketing. We already have a bunch of good stuff. And so it's easy to justify. I don't really like one. I don't have to do that today. Wish I hadn't have done that and I think with the content like this is gonna sound really silly and like very ego ish One of the things that really annoys me in this industry and you'll get there, too As soon as you start getting into the seven figures, you'll notice this starts happening to you as well.
I really [01:06:00] hate when somebody comments something that they learn from someone who copied me and I hate that. I won't name any names, but we got a comment somewhere the other day and I was just laughing about it in like frustration laughing. It was something like, Hey, it looks like you follow the same framework as so and and I was just thinking to myself, okay, that so and so is a client of ours that learned that framework from [01:06:30] us. But this goes back to, this goes back to what I was talking about earlier with ads. In this business, the loudest person wins. Period. Full stop. Like, all the popular people, you know them because they're loud.
And I regret not being louder, I think. It's not really my personality to be that guy. And I'm not even saying necessarily I want to be like the loudest person in the room. But I [01:07:00] think we've, I think I've unnecessarily held up. And I think there's a lot of people who do that. I think a lot of people who are even like attracted to Peaceful Profits are in that same sort of introvert vein.
And this comes to number 17. So the last one here is that I really regret not owning and capitalizing on my achievements a bit more. This is going to sound so arrogant, but I've done some stuff over the years and I don't think anybody knows. We were, I was [01:07:30] just looking through our Peaceful Prophets, we use Basecamp to run the team.
And I was looking through some of the wins that our team was posting, and I had this aha moment, and realized, oh, nobody outside of our team knows we've even done any of this stuff. Which I'm laughing out of frustration to be honest, because we are, as a company, we're definitely the ones who are like, putting our light under a bushel.
We don't really talk a lot about what we do in terms of the results [01:08:00] we get for clients. And part of that is I'm really trying to be like very compliant with the FTC and all that kind of stuff. But cause thankfully we've never had to deal with any of that drama, but also part of it is we just haven't done it.
I'm not really into bragging, but the fact of the matter is. It works. Making content, telling people what you do, it works. And I'm making number 16 and 17 and letting, being transparent here, and I [01:08:30] regret not doing it, and I'm gonna do a lot more of it this year. But also, I hope you do too, because it really is a silly thing to not put your brilliance out there.
And, as somebody who has a Not put their brilliance out there, I wrote a book and every once in a while We do podcast but not real like we really haven't done anything. I can tell you I regret it I really do because other people are getting credit for [01:09:00] our stuff or our ideas or et cetera, et cetera.
And that's just making it unnecessarily difficult. And it doesn't take that much time. I rambled on this thing for an hour and that's like the extent of it. I didn't really do a lot of prep or anything like that, which might be obvious. But some for you to consider as well. Are you holding yourself back?
Are you making content? Because insert. Whatever excuse. Insert whatever [01:09:30] negative feeling, insert whatever, as somebody who's been doing this for 17 years, I regret it. So you might as well, you will probably regret it too. So let this be a warning or whatever you want, however you want to take it.
But that's it. So that's all 17. So just really quick recap. Not having boundaries, working when my daughter was born. Hiring before I had the recurring income to afford the hires, taking clients and team members. I wasn't excited about not paying myself first, not acting faster, not spending [01:10:00] enough on ads, hiring too low on the S curve for critical roles, fear, things like not trusting Amazon in 2012, not putting health as a higher priority, especially sleep.
Not living more, not buying land sooner, keeping too much money in the company, a whole bunch of bad business relationships because I wasn't careful. I wasn't more careful in those relationships. Having a lack of focus, too many companies, spreading myself a little bit too thin, doing things for reasons that were fear based, trying to [01:10:30] hedge bets instead of just going all in on something.
Micromanaging, not investing sooner, growing too fast, not making enough content and not owning and capitalizing on my achievements. Those are my regrets. Hopefully, this was helpful to you in some way. Hopefully there was some kind of spark of something where you're like, Whoa, I don't want to be like that guy and have that kind of regret.
I'm going to do something about it. Because the good news is that once you have the knowledge, it's just a matter of taking some action [01:11:00] and you can avoid a lot of drama. Those are the big ones for me. And you're going to have your own and that's okay. You're not broken. You're not bad. You're not bad.
You're not even doing anything wrong. Welcome to this is what making mistakes is. Bye. These are real mistakes with real consequences and real difficulty and real stress and real that. And every entrepreneur does that. And you're going to too, if you haven't already. So stay resilient out there. Stay focused on what you're trying to do in your mission.[01:11:30]
If you want any help, one of the great things about hiring coaches, consultants done for you, people like us here at Peaceful Profits is what we can offer is not only we'll help you to achieve an outcome, but we can also help you avoid a lot of garbage. And like I said at the beginning, if I had someone sit me down and tell me all these things, I could have cut down so much wasted time, could have got to where I wanted to go so much faster.
So that's you. You want some help? Peacefulprofits. com [01:12:00] forward slash call. Give us a call, chat with our team. We've got lots of different ways that we can help you and I hope you have a wonderful day and we'll see you in the next episode.
