What are three signs your business will never grow that you may not be aware of? That's what we're going to cover in today's video.
Hey, everybody, it's Dan Henry, and don't forget to subscribe to this channel if you like videos like this, because today we're going to discuss three ways that your business will be stifled and never grow. And these are ways that you, things you may not realize, okay? You may not understand these things because they aren't apparent. They're not things that people put on a billboard that flash by as you're building a business. You don't get a memo. You don't get a letter from Congress. You don't get an email, a Trello notification, nothing. So a great book on the subject of getting traction in business is the book, Traction.
Good title point is that there are three things that can prevent you from getting to the next level. Now, as stated in the book, I'm going to paint a picture for you. Imagine yourself on a cliff. And on the one hand, you have a thousand-foot vine tied up to a tree, and you're holding onto it. And you're at the edge of the cliff. On the other end, there are a thousand feet down to the rocks, and you're saying, "Oh, is there someone up there to help me?" And this big bellowing voice from the sky says, "Yes, I'm here to help you." And you say, "What should I do?" And the voice says, "Let go of the rope." And then you say, "Is there anyone else up there?" The point is that as entrepreneurs and business owners, we tend to hold on to the rope or hold onto the vine that vine attached to the tree. And because of this, we won't let go. We won't be willing to remove ourselves enough to let the business become its own entity and grow on its own. And this is called not letting go of the vine. In other words, you're becoming a self-imposed bottleneck in your business. So here are three ways to know if you're holding onto that vine too tightly.
Number one, you're not okay with errors. Errors happen. I'll give you a perfect example. This right here is my Plan Tomorrow Daily Planner. I told my team, I said, "Listen, I want you to come up with 90 great productivity tips. Say them in your own words, search around the web, come up with 90 solid productivity tips. And we're gonna put one on each page just to inspire people as they go through the productivity planner." Well, one of the tips literally says, "Get a blank planner and write down your to-do list." And I'm like, "Why would you put that in the planner that we're trying to sell? Dang, it."
But it's a mistake. And the thing is, mistakes happen. If I would have read every single tip in that book, would that mistake happen? Likely not, but you know what else wouldn't happen? The planner would have never got created. So the point is that mistakes happen. No company is perfect. No person is perfect. No team is perfect. No product is perfect. So to a degree, you have to be able to accept a certain amount of imperfection, a certain amount of errors, and you can always fix them and correct them over time. By the way, Brandon, can we correct that, please? The point is that you have to be able to be okay with that because if you're not okay with any errors at all, then nothing will ever get done. And that comes from you just putting your fingers too deeply into the business and having to check everything all the time to make sure it's perfect. If you do that, you will become a bottleneck.
Number two, you aren't happy with the way you live. What that means is as you run your company, you're sitting there saying I'm not happy. I don't like the way I live. I don't like all this, but you know, if I can just get to here, if I can just get to there, then I'll be happy. Well, the reason you don't like the way you live is because you're not properly delegating your team. It's because you're becoming the bottleneck. You're too deep into the business. You're not letting the business be its own entity. And you're trying to exercise too much control. And that's why you don't like the way you live. You have to be able to let go and allow the business to move forward, grow, make mistakes, correct those mistakes and let the team drive that entity on its own.
By telling yourself that you don't like the way you live, but you're okay with it temporarily. You're actually exercising futility. Because what you're doing is you're saying that I'm not making a mistake. I'm simply not to a certain point yet. And the reason you're not to that certain point yet is because you haven't corrected the mistake. So you're in this infinite loop, and you have to fix it now, not think that it'll get better once you hit a certain milestone.
Number three, your hands are in everything. What this means is every department, every aspect of your business, your active in. You're playing some sort of creative role, or you're playing some sort of role where you're actually doing the thing. And it's one thing to check things. And even that can be way too involved, but when you're actually doing the things, that's when you get really wrapped up. Remember your businesses, your own entity. So if you're working in your business, you're not an entrepreneur. You're self-employed, you need to work on your business. That's being an entrepreneur. So you have to be okay with completely removing yourself from certain departments.
For instance, I haven't touched our customer support department for over two years. I don't even know what goes on there. I have no idea. All I know is my customers are happy. I don't know. For all I know, there are a bunch of fricking aliens hanging from the rafters, doing baking soda and thinking it's cocaine. I don't know what they're doing. I just know that it's working, and you know what? I don't care because it's working. That's the point.
So those are the three things. And in, I would like to just say that this is something that has plagued me. I literally feel like I was talking to myself for the past few minutes because these are all major mistakes I have made in the past. Sometimes continue to make and really practice getting over. Because every time I have let go of the vine, it may have felt uncomfortable. It may have caused my heart to go into my throat as I fell to the rocks. But then I floated down and landed like Mary Poppins on the rocks, and everything was okay every single time. That's the thing you gotta be okay with that. Things are gonna work out. Your company is going to figure it out. You have to let your company go through a little bit of struggle without you for it to ever be able to get enough strength in his legs to stand on its own. And that is one of the fundamental parts of being an entrepreneur that is so hard.
It's that leap of faith. It's that willingness to feel that uncomfortable and relinquish that much control that allows you to mentally get your mindset to that next level. You're not going to see people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs, rest in peace, build things without relinquishing to a certain degree, a ton of control because it's just physically impossible. You're only one person. So I encourage you to take these tips. Look at your company, look at your business, or look at your future company that you might be thinking of starting and try to keep those things in mind.
If you need help growing your company, you can always check out one of my companies, getclients.com, where we help you grow your business through our methods of creating a premium offer and selling it for a premium price to premium people. I'll leave links in the description. Make sure to go there, check it out. You can also get my book, Digital Millionaire Secrets. It's a Wall Street Journal bestseller. I look forward to helping you and make sure you subscribe to my channel because if you do, you're going to keep getting updated when I do new videos, and I hope to keep serving you and helping you get to the next level. See you in the next one.