Hidden Patterns of Failure in Entrepreneurs

Summary

Failure, like success, leaves clues. In this video I’ll discuss the 5 top pattern of failure I’ve seen time and time again in entrepreneurship willing to grow their business. This patterns show up at different stages in an entrepreneurs’ journey, so I can guarantee you’ll resonate with this.

Transcript

Failure just like success leaves clues. This is about the five key patterns I've noticed time and time again, in entrepreneurs of all walks of life, all levels of experience. So if you find yourself following any of these patterns, let me tell you, the outcome will not be the one you seek in the long term. So pay attention. So you can spot the pattern, reverse the trend and essentially guarantee the outcome you want. Let's get to it.

[INTRO] Hey, I'm Leon Castillo, founder of Selfmastered a high performance training company that helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses by solving their solid bottleneck, their own performance, will transform the unproductive, overwhelming and focus entrepreneurs into laser focused business athletes that can achieve in one day, what they previously achieved in one week.

So today's video is motivated by a conversation I had yesterday with one of our clients, he said, How do you know if someone is inevitably headed towards failure? Right from the performance side of things, right. So obviously, if you don't have the skills, or you don't know how to market your services, or you have the wrong team, then obviously you are going to fail at some point. But if you are a solopreneur, or you are the CEO of a company, and you are doing the things every single day you putting in the work, you have the skill set, how can I know if you will eventually end up failing?

Well, after mentoring coaching hundreds of entrepreneurs, but they're essentially five patterns that I've noticed time and time again, that lead to failure. So pay attention. And if you happen to be doing any of the few things that I'm going to share next, please stop in your tracks, reverse the trend. So you can have a chance at success. The first pattern is not having forward looking clarity. What does that mean? It means that you do not really know what you are working towards, you don't have a clear vision for the long term. Nor do you have a clear execution framework in the short term that is aligned with our long term vision, it is very easy to create a vision to have goals and targets and stuff, but only the best of the best know how to fit a strategy that actually works in aligning the long term vision and the short term outcomes, they need to make that vision a possibility.

So having no forward looking clarity is a surefire way of making sure you fail because those that succeed, know what they're working towards, have intimate knowledge of everything that needs to be done all the costs that need to be paid, we have a video on this in order to get what they want. So if you do not know what you're working towards, on a 10 year, three year and three months frame, you're not really going to make it you're probably winging it.

So the first step will be asking oneself, what am I actually trying to do and create a plan that actually works, the clearer the plan, the easier will be for you to align your team around that plan, and eventually, warranty, a successful outcome.

Two is lack of consistency. And this one is huge. And that can be personal consistency, you can be company consistency, once you have a clear vision for the future and a clear execution framework that you can do. In order to get to the vision.

The next thing you need to do is essentially become consistent on that be very good at doing the things you said you were going to do. If you keep doing the right thing. Over time, things become easier because your luck, what psychologists call momentum, things start going your work easier, things become easier, you have positive inertia that is pushing you towards those goals. So if you lack consistency, on the few core things that you have identified as important, you are not going to make it so it really pays off to one have that vision and that execution framework and to actually do the work consistently. So you can have a chance of unlocking momentum in your life and business.

Now number three, very related to number two is your time to rebound time to rebound is a KPI that we use with our client, because I've noticed over the years that those intrapreneurs that have a very short time to rebound, which means that every time they're hit by an obstacle, a setback, something that derails them from the path, how long does they take them to get back on track? Is it 12 hours? Is it 12 days? Is it 12 months, this really matters because the longer you take to get back on track, the harder it is to you guessed it become consistent and get momentum. So the best of the best that I've seen, never get fazed by anything that goes away. They may have a bad afternoon or bad evening once they learn that new tax bill is due that they didn't foresee or a new competitor into the market or they lost our contract. If you have a short time to rebound. You can always get back on track number four and this one is huge. Having no backwards looking clarity.

What does that mean having forward looking clarity is knowing what it is that you're trying to Build, and what are the key steps you need to do in order to get there, but back we're looking clarity is actually knowing what happened. What did you do? And more importantly, what inputs led to what outputs, right? So the best of the best know what thing did they do that gave them the result they want. Now, if you are in training peak performance, or you do not have the right tools to get this, it is very hard. I've built a tool over five or six years that we now give our clients called the SubMaster dashboard, which allow me to understand where do the results I'm getting today come from because the results you get in the moment come from something you did three months ago, or two months. If you do not know what you were working on two or three months ago, if you have no clarity over the cause effect relationship that led you to where you are right now chances are that you are in the dark because you cannot replicate the success, you may be having a double. So you have utterly failed. If you have like a scattershot approach towards project management, you cannot replicate your successes, right?

So having backward looking clarity is absolutely crucial. And I found that having a dashboard, a dedicated project management tool that blends together the personal and the professional is the way to go. Because oftentimes, a good decision can pay off for years. But you need to understand what are the personal circumstances that led to that good decision, how well did you sleep, how well rested you were how important was your emotional management. And that's what our dashboard does.

So the final hidden pattern of failure is when I see someone not updating his or her identity fast enough to accommodate new results to accommodate new standards, everything in life is in flux. That's something you inherently know and already racked with us 3000 years ago or 2500 years ago, already said, right manta ray, everything is in motion. But in entrepreneurship, that's even more so because you are willing to create change in a world that is always changing. So you need to be very good at spotting patterns and changing your ways. This implies that the same person you were yesterday is not suited to the challenges you're going to be facing tomorrow. You need to constantly work on yourself in order to be able to meet those challenges, otherwise, you will not achieve it. But I see oftentimes people that are stuck in their same patterns of behavior, same thought patterns they had in the past, they hang out with the same people, they do the same stuff. They believe the same things. And that's why they become stuck. If you want to truly build a seven figure business, you need to become the person that deserves our seven figure business. And that can only happen if you actualize your identity. If you level up your skill set, if you strengthen your character, if you build new relationships, your identity needs to evolve over time as fast as it is needed to accommodate the business growth and the results you want.

So these are the five hidden patterns that nobody talks about that I've seen time and time again, in entrepreneurs. So one remember having forward looking clarity what it is that I'm trying to build, and more importantly, what should I do in the next three months in order to get there to consistency that leads to momentum? how consistent are you as a person and as a business in doing what needs to be done three time to rebound, the shorter it is, the easier is going to be for you to get back on track. So the better you will become at managing the obstacles and setbacks that inevitably will come your way for having backward looking clarity. So what happened in the past? What things did you do three months ago that led to the results you're getting now this is supremely important.

This is truly the mark of a master OS Mahalik semi highly said the mark of a master is the ability to give objective feedback to oneself and then five not being able or not be willing to upgrade your own identity as fast as you need in order to accommodate the results you seek. I hope this was useful. Please let me know in the comments if you are suffering from any of these and how would you go about fixing them and I can do a video about that.