The Path to Greatness: Discipline's Role in Entrepreneurship

0:02Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of the Epic Entrepreneurs podcast where we are all about helping business owners just like you achieve success. So we don't do fancy smancy. We don't do flashing lights. We don't do a lot of things that a lot of podcasts will do. These are just real stories about real people and their entrepreneurial and business experiences. We go into their wins, their challenges, and their learnings. So we hope you enjoy it.

0:36Welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs powered by Action Coach Growth Partners. You likely went into business to have more freedom and flexibility so that you could spend more time with your family, do more things or travel or enjoy your hobbies or whatever it is that you like to do in your spare time. We're here to help you find better ways to make more money, build better teams and get that time back so that you can have that freedom and flexibility. We'll help you simplify things and make sense of business, investing, and wealth building so that you can be epic and achieve all your dreams and goals.

1:08And now, enjoy the show. Hey there. Have you ever noticed that most successful people generally are disciplined people? Hey, welcome to Epic Entrepreneurs this week. And this week, we're going to continue our series, Always Be. And this week is deep, so it's always be disciplined. So what exactly is discipline? And why would it be important? But I think there's two kinds of discipline. There's self-discipline, and then there's outside discipline, the kind of discipline that might come from a parent or a boss or a coach. So let's deal with the outside discipline first. I believe for outside discipline to work, it can't be antagonistic.

1:48It can't be in your face. It can be appropriate. It should be a teaching moment. One of my heroes, Coach John Wooden of the UCLA Bruins, talked about discipline and the fact that it needed to be the appropriate behavior. One, for example, he had two players who were eight minutes late for a team meeting. They knew the rules. They knew they needed to be on time. He was a strict disciplinarian. So the punishment was that they wouldn't start the game, the next game. They would not be allowed to play the first eight minutes. It seems appropriate. It makes sense. And it was a teachable moment. It's a lesson.

2:26As it turns out, They didn't play the entire first half, but they did start the second half. They got the message. They became greater players and better people, which is actually more important. For outside discipline, you want to make it appropriate and you want to make it positive. Now, let's talk about self-discipline. And I believe this is actually a bit harder. And the reason I think it's a bit harder is because I believe it's harder to hold yourself accountable than it is to hold somebody else accountable. I notice all the time when people go into business for themselves, a lot of time is they don't want the accountability that they had when they worked for somebody else.

3:03But when they worked for somebody else, they generally got a lot done because there was accountability. There would be discipline if they didn't have it. So I think self-discipline is actually harder. The second thing about self-discipline is we live in a microwave society. I call it the microwave society. And what that means is we can take some food and we can put it on a plate. We can heat it up in 30 seconds. We can eat. We want our things now. We want things to happen later. Well, that's not how it works in real life and in real success. If you want to be epic, if you want to climb the mountain, you have to do it one step at a time.

3:41You have to work your way up the mountain. You can't just automatically jump up there. It just success doesn't work that way. It's about delaying gratification. So you can, Jim Rohn says that you can, you know, be disciplined in your approach now, or you can be have regrets later. And that's a paraphrase, but that's basically what he says. If you're not disciplined now, you're going to regret it later. So here's a few ideas to help you become more self-disciplined, because it really is about doing the things that you need to do now so that you can do the things that you want to do later. So the first thing is create habits.

4:18And some of you say, well, I'm not good at creating habits. Well, yes, you are. I will guarantee you that you probably brush your teeth at least a couple of times a day. That's a habit. You can create habits. You probably eat. You probably shower regularly. There are habits that you have created. Now, you may have bad habits that you need to replace with good habits. So one of the things is to create habits of doing the things that you don't want to do or that you need to do before you can do the things that you want to do. And an example would be, look, I'm going to make phone calls in the morning, first thing, until I book two appointments.

4:54So two hours or two appointments. That would be discipline that you could get on to that would guarantee to improve your business if you would do it. The second thing is block time or time block. And what that involves is setting a time. So in my previous example, let's say you want to grow your business and you know you need to make calls, then you're going to time block that. You're going to say, all right, I'm going to do this for two hours first thing in the morning every day. So you've created a habit and you've blocked the time to do it. And time blocking, a lot of my clients think that it's like handcuffing them a little bit.

5:26No, no, no, no. It is allowing you to do the things you need to do so that at five o 'clock at night, you can go home and be here with your family or that you can make the money you need to make so that you can take the vacations you want to take. You must do the discipline. Success doesn't happen overnight. It happens over time. So the third thing I would suggest is plan your week and plan your day. Plan your week and plan your day. You plan your day the night before. You plan your week the week before. So Friday, latest Sunday, you'll plan your week. What are the things that you want to get done this week?

5:57What are your goals? What are your tasks that you need to get done next? If you really want to amp your thing up, I would suggest getting some accountability. Now, you could do that with carrots and sticks. So you could give yourself penalties or you could give yourself rewards. You can also hire an outside agency, like you could have a buddy or you could hire a coach, someone like me, to hold you accountable, getting things done that you know you need to do so that you can do the things that you want to do. In any event, discipline is a marathon. It is not a sprint. Discipline is a marathon. It's not a sprint, just like business.

6:29Business is a marathon, not a sprint. So go out, create those habits. What is one area of your life that you know you need discipline in and what are you going to do about it? What's your plan to do it? Let me know in the notes below. I'd love to have a chat with you about adding some discipline into your life so that you can have more of what you want. Hey, and until next time, all the best. Thanks for joining us for this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. Here's four things you can do. First, you can listen every week on Biz Radio Mondays at 1. Second, you can subscribe to the podcast. Hey, you get it.

7:09The more subscribers we have, the more cool things we can offer you. Three, you can also go out and give us a five-star rating everywhere. And number four, if you'd like a free copy of my book, The Coach Approach, Five Principles to Build an Epic Business, just go to giftfrombuild.com. It's your roadmap to building your epic business. That's giftfrombuild.com. Until next time, all the best. hey thanks for listening to the epic entrepreneurs podcast here's three things that you can do number one remember to subscribe to the podcast it takes very little effort on your part it's going to help you and your fellow entrepreneurs plus you you guys know how it works the more subscribers we get the more cool things we can offer to you second to learn more about growing your business, just download my book, The Coach Approach.

8:04It's free for you at giftfrombill.com. That's giftfrombill.com. Hey, and if you'd like more info about growing your business and what we can do to help you grow your business, send me an email directly. Just send it to williamgilliland at actioncoach.com. That's my personal email that I read. No one else reads at first. It's not screened. It's my real email. Just send it to me. I can't wait to talk to you. Hey, and until then, all the best.