MBA2385 What's Important is Difficult + Free Ride Friday

0:09Heyo! Welcome to the$100 MBA show, the business podcast that always got your back with our practical business lessons. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zinhome. I'm also the co-founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started back in 2014. And today's episode is Free Ride Friday. On Free Ride Fridays, we give away a lifetime membership to the$100 MBA program over at 100mba.net, our complete course on how to become a better entrepreneur, 100 % guaranteed. If you want to win a free ride, just leave us an Apple podcast rating and review, and you enter our weekly random draw.

0:43We call Free Ride Friday. It's that simple. We announce this week's winner a little bit later in the episode. In today's episode, we're going to explore something that I've learned over 20 years of entrepreneurship, business, and life, to be frank. And that's what's important is difficult. Eating healthy, it's important. It's also difficult. Staying in touch with your family, very important, also difficult. Building a business and becoming financially independent, important, also very difficult. difficult dragging yourself to the gym and working out every day important also very difficult in this episode we're going to explore how i use this principle to motivate me to be sort of an alarm for me to say hey i have to do this when i start feeling like this is going to be hard this is difficult i don't want to really do this that's the signal that i have to do it it's important We're also going to look at why.

1:38Why is this the case? Why aren't important things easy? Of course, and how can we actually practically apply this principle to get more important things done in our business? Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Anything that I've accomplished in my life that I'm proud of, if I'm being honest, if I look back at it, it's filled with difficulty. It's filled with challenges and heartache and perseverance and struggle. Anything worth anything is going to be difficult. This is why it's worth so much because most people don't do it. Why do people admire people with a great physique? Because we know deep down inside us, it's a lot of hard work to eat right, to exercise, to do it consistently.

2:18It's really difficult to do that. And therefore, we admire people with that kind of discipline and understand there's a lot of value in that discipline. And therefore, we value the great physique. When you watch anybody perform, whether it's a singer, a dancer, and we're in awe of their performance. It's because we understand it's difficult to get that great at something. Anybody can just sit around and do nothing. But these great performers chose to dedicate their life to something really difficult to become, really hard. Now, I start today with this message because I use these ideas to inspire me, to push me.

2:55Because when I have to do difficult things, I know deep down that it's important. Anything important I got to do in my business, it's probably hard. It's probably something that is not a breeze to do. It's easy to go through email, but it's not that important, right? If you left your inbox for three days, probably the world won't stop. But creating a compelling product that customers want, very difficult. And that's the signal that it's important. Whenever I have to look at my business, look at all the things I have to do and all the things I need to work on, the first thing I look at is which one of these tasks is the most difficult.

3:31This allows me to understand which one is most important. Because more often than not, what's most difficult is most important. So in that moment, what do I do? Do I just say, oh, all right, this is going to be horrible. Let's do it. No, no. I have a choice at that moment. I say, okay, I know this is going to be challenging. I know this is going to be difficult, but I'm going to embrace it. I'm going to embrace the struggle. I'm going to embrace the challenge. I'm going to relish in it, actually. I'm going to be like, yes, I'm doing difficult things. I'm doing tough things. This is what great people do.

4:02I'm one of those people that goes after it, that's not afraid to do tough things. I'm tackling important stuff. I'm going to make progress. I start getting motivated because I understand on the other side of this is success. Don't shy away from difficulty. Sit in it. Embrace it. Be proud of the fact that you go after difficult things. And here's something I discovered. They say it's very empty up the mountain, right? At the top of the mountain, there's not many people because it's very difficult to get at the top of the mountain. So if you decide to do difficult things, there's not a lot of competition.

4:34There's not a lot of people doing what you're doing. It's actually easier to stand out. It's actually easier for you to get noticed and to get customers. Think about it. If you create a business or a product that kind of already exists and people have seen already, and you're just basically copying and pasting and just adding your branding, it's much easier to do this, but it's much harder to stand out and to sell. But if you create something that is unique, that's interesting, that's never been done before, and people totally get it and it solves a problem, you're going to have people knocking down your doors to buy your product because there's not many like it, because not many people are going to go after something that's hard.

5:11What's important is difficult. This applies even to my own personal life, whether it's spending time with family, whether it's working out, whether it's investing in myself and making sure that I make time to get better. These things are difficult because life is demanding, and there's so many things we got to do. But again, it's a signal that you got to do it. For me, when things get hard, I know, hey, I'm on the right path. This is supposed to be hard. I know this is the same path that people that create great things that have achieved great things have been on. Now, when it comes to your day-to-day business activity, there's going to be some activities that you have to do that are vitally important to the success of your business.

5:51They might seem like small things, but they're often very difficult things. One of them is just-in-time feedback with your teammates. It's not easy for you to criticize somebody, to tell them, hey, you're doing something wrong, or to even have just some sort of confrontational conversation with somebody on your team and say, hey, this is not acceptable. Or rather just kind of ignore it and let things keep going and hope they don't do it again. But that just doesn't work. You're delaying the inevitable and you're making things worse. It's better for you to have a conversation. It doesn't have to be stern or mean.

6:24You can just have an open conversation and say, hey, these are my expectations. You're not meeting my expectations. This is what I'd like you to do instead. Please do this, right? Most people want to do a great job. Most people want to please their employer. Most people want to be successful. So it's actually a little bit hard in the beginning. It's a little bit confrontational. It stings a little. But a few moments later, they realize, hey, this is for the good. I'm glad that we had this conversation. I can now move forward doing the right thing. And even though it's a small thing, we often don't do it because there's some friction.

6:57It's difficult. I don't want to do it. But it's important because those little cuts add up. You know, death of a thousand paper cuts. You've heard of that before. Well, that's what it's like in business. You can't let the little things go because they add up. They make a difference. And this is how we learn. We learn by small corrections. When I was younger and I was learning how to play basketball, all the small corrections a coach would give me or I'd learn from a friend were very minute. The way my hands were placed on the ball, the way my elbow was tucked in, how my feet sat under me. These are small little details, but they're important.

7:31And it's actually difficult to change the way you shoot, the way you handle the ball. You got to learn a new way, but it's the right way. And it helped me become a better basketball player. And I'm glad that I learned those things because otherwise I would be doing it wrong for years. So anytime in your business, you feel like, oh, that's uncomfortable. That's hard. Maybe I'll do that later. That should be your signal. That should be like an alarm inside of you that says, I got to do it. That's important. And guess what? The more you do this, the better you get at doing difficult things. And that's what greatness is.

8:02People that are great at something, at anything, an Olympic athlete, an architect that designed amazing buildings, a renowned an engineer, a singer, a performer, whatever it is, right? They're very good at consistently doing difficult things. And it's not that it gets less difficult or it's not difficult anymore. They just get used to getting up and doing the difficult thing. They don't resist it anymore. They just accept it. And I want you to start accepting it as well. You're going to see tremendous momentum forward when you start doing this. You're going to start realizing, hey, I'm taking care of the most important things in my business because I'm not avoiding them anymore.

8:38I'm now tackling them head on. I'm embracing what's difficult. Thank you so much for listening to the$100 VA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe. Hit follow on your favorite podcast app. That's the best way to support the show and spread the message to the algorithm. Hey, this show's all right. Today's episode's not over, though. It's Free Ride Friday. Let's see who won this week's free ride. And the winner is Natasha Sienes, 97. Natasha says, informative, five stars. Lumber does an absolutely wonderful job producing a show that has witty banter and informative content. Thank you, Natasha, for that great review.

9:10Your mission is email me over at omar at 100mba.net so that we can hook you up with the$100 MBA program over at 100mba.net. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. For me, I always look at it this way. Do I want to live with the regret of not trying to go after great things? Or would I rather live going through some difficult times in my life, doing some hard stuff in my business and in my life to accomplish great things? Which pain is worse? For me, the pain of regret, the pain of feeling like I just settled and tried to be mediocre and didn't really experience life to the fullest. That is really tough to live with.

9:47And seeing the choices in front of me allows me to say, yep, let's go for the hard stuff. Let's go for something that's significant, that's important. That's great. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you on Monday's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

10:05Thank you.