(epic orchestral music)
Let me share a story with you.
Many years ago, I had a client of mine,
and a pretty successful entrepreneur.
Pretty successful, and he has a business,
making good money, he's been in business
for a number of years, has six full-time employees,
and doing quite well, good margin business.
But he was exhausted, he was just tired
and he said, "Oh my God, I can't keep doing..."
Making good money.
So he came to me and I said, "Well..."
I looked at his business, his business model,
his product, everything he's doing.
And a lot of things he's doing quite well, actually.
And then first piece of advice I sent to him,
I asked him, "So...
"When was the last time you took a vacation?"
And he said, "Well, I haven't taken
"a vacation in five years."
I said, "Holy shit."
and I said, "So your wife still hasn't divorced you?"
(laughter)
"Well, she was thinking about it."
(laughs)
And I said, "Okay, here's the first
"piece of advice that I wanna give you:
"I want you to take to weeks off.
"Take a two-week vacation."
Now guess what was his response:
He freaked!
He was like, "No, there's no way in hell
"I can't do that, my business needs me
"and I gotta run my company, if I'm not there,
"everything would collapse, and my employees...
"Ah, no, I can't do it!"
I said, "Let's pretend you could.
"what would it look like if you were to take two weeks off?
"What has to happen?"
"Well, then gotta have...
"I gotta promote somebody within
"maybe to manage my business,
"I gotta put some systems in place,
"I gotta make some changes,
"I gotta make sure of my marketing, I have a calendar,
"all my promotion is going out...
"A whole bunch of things I gotta do, man.
"I don't know if I can do it."
"I know you cannot at this moment, but let's work on it."
So we worked on it and after in about three months,
finally we were ready and he took two months off,
took his wife to Europe for two weeks.
I prepped all this stuff to him, I said,
"Hey man, no cellphone, no email."
You should see his face.
"No cellphone?" "Yeah, no cellphone,
"No email, I want it to disappear.
"I don't want people to get a hold of you,
"I don't want anybody to get a hold of you."
(gasps)
And I said, "If I find out, 1000 dollar fine."
Okay, so he went away for two weeks,
came back, the minute, listen to this,
the minute he arrived back home at the airport,
he rushed to the office, he was so concerned.
Rushed back to the office, and he was afraid,
"Oh my gosh, all my employees will be gone.
"There will be no-one left in the office,
"Oh my goodness, my business will collapse."
He walked into the office,
everybody's just doing their thing.
"Oh, you're back, hello."
And they're doing their thing, oh, this is good.
And he looked at his sales report,
and he was blown away.
He's made more money in the two weeks that he was gone
than the whole company combined in three months.
Now what does that mean, what does that tell you?
What's the moral of the story?
You're the bottle neck.
Here's the moral of the story, write this down:
We are the ones that are choking our business to death!
In fact, do this with me.
Pretend you're choking somebody, go ahead.
Yes, do it, like (grunts) like this.
That's your fucking business, right there.
You're choking your business to death.
We are the fucking problems, we are in the way.
We are exactly why, our business is the way we are.
Good or bad?
We are the problems, so the good news is you own a job
and the bad news is, you own the job.
I am the exact problem for my business.
I am exactly what's preventing my business
going from eight figures to nine figures.
I am the problem, I know, it's me, Dan Lok.
Because I'm not comfortable with nine figures.
I'm comfortable with eight figures,
but I'm not comfortable with nine figures.
So I had to expand my mind.
What's that, expand what?
My mind, expand my comfort zone to go to that next level.
And it's the same thing wit you.
You are in the way,
and you're choking your business to death.
You're the one, not your employee,
not the government, not the product,
none of that crap, it's us.
So how many of you are willing
to take responsibility this evening, yes?
- [Audience] Yes. Yes?
- [Audience] Yes.
Knowing that, that's the good news,
because we can change it.
It's not a bad thing, it's a good thing.
So here's the reality, if your business sucks
it's because as a business person, you suck.
If your sales suck,
its because as a sales person, you suck.
And if your employees suck,
it's because as a manager, you suck.
And if your customer service sucks,
it's because you deliver sucky customer service.
(audience laughs)
Everybody understand, yes?
- [Audience] Yes.
It's very, very simple.
Because most business problems
are personal problems in disguise.
Write this down.
Most business problems are personal problems in disguise.
I can ask you a couple of questions within your business,
it tells me an awful lot about you,
the way you operate, the way you think
and how you behave, and your habits,
it's very, very simple.
If your business is disorganized,
I guarantee you, your personal life is disorganized.
If you have cash flow problems,
if you're not good with finance,
you're not good with managing money in your business,
guess what, your personal finances are a mess.
Guaranteed.
So knowing that a business is nothing more
than a reflection, nothing more than a what?
- [Audience] Reflection.
Nothing more than a what?
- [Audience] Reflection. Reflection of the owner.
It's just a mirror, that's all.
It's a mirror.
And that's why, in business,
I always believe business is the ultimate
personal development boot camp,
if you think about it, because every day,
in our business, since it's a reflection of who we are,
we're facing our bullshit every day.
Every day.
No business fails overnight.
No business succeeds overnight,
but no business fails overnight.
And what you do every day accumulates
and accumulates until a point where
well, your business is just a reflection
of all these habits and beliefs
and attitudes, skills, everything that you have.
It's just a reflection, nothing more than reflection.
So before I can end here, I wanna give you two minutes.
How long?
- [Audience] Two minutes.
Among your tables, introduce yourselves, two minutes,
and discuss what I've said so far.
What does it mean to you, ho does it apply?
Or maybe any "Aha" moment, just among your table.
Two minutes, go.