418: Putting in Hard Work
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How does continually taking shortcuts in your business hurt you in the long run? While it may seem like a good idea to go after “tips and tricks” or “hacks” to overcome obstacles, you end up cheating yourself out of learning opportunities and confidence building. We break down several elements as to why tackling hard things is good for you, and how to know the difference between a hard task and a hardship in your life.
Main Topics:
There will be hard things to do
Can’t always take a shortcut
Benefits of tackling hard things
Embracing the challenge
Main Takeaway: If you do the hard work, not only will you reach your goal, but you'll also have built up a huge amount of skills, knowledge, and experience that helps you continue to build and grow faster and faster!
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
business, hard, pet sitters, hack, delegate, shortcut, grow, build, skills, volleyball player, confessional, learn, pet, tackle, labor laws, benefit, clients, associates, hardships, brain
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:00
Oh. Welcome to pet sitter confessional it open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you to pet sitters associates and our Patreon members for supporting today's show, Patreon members are those who've have found value in the show and want to continue to support it. So if you would like to be one of those members, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support.
Collin 00:22
Our daughter recently started volleyball, and we've been going to practices with the very first practice. She kind of hung back from the group and really hesitated and I could tell that she was unsure about what to do and how she was going to move forward. So I pulled her to the side. And I asked her what the matter was. And I she said she was worried. So I asked, What are you worried about? Meeting new people? No. Meeting about? Do you worry about your shoes coming and not fitting? Well? No. She said she was worried about it being hard. And my response to her at that time was well, it will be hard, because you've never done it before. Yeah, yeah. That is why we are here though we are here to learn. And if you enjoy this enough, if you like it enough, you'll actually end up pushing through and you'll keep trying, even if it's hard. And after that very first practice. I asked her how was it? And she said, it was hard. And then I said, Did you still enjoy it? And she said, Yes. Because the truth is that there are hard things happen to all of us all of the time. And sometimes there are things that we want to happen we want to take place want to do, those will be hard that we have these goals, we have these visions in our life, we have these things that we want to accomplish, we have to recognize upfront before we even get started. This is going to be difficult.
Meghan 01:43
It's a very simple story. But it really teaches us a lot of lessons, particularly business owners who we do hard things every day, we do things we don't like things that there are some things that come easy to us. But a lot of things come hard. Sometimes the admin side the taxes, maybe there's a particular dog that has been stubborn that day, or a cat that is not your friend, and would rather scratch you. There are hard things in in life in general, but particularly when you are running a business.
Collin 02:11
And what this does is many of us then go okay, well, I know this is going to be hard or this feels hard to me. So we start to look for shortcuts, we start to look for easier ways to get to our goals. And I think it's important to note that there's nothing wrong with working smarter, we should always look for ways to find easier routes. As part of our process, we should look for simplistic processes and simplistic manners and finding the road that's already been paved by somebody instead of having to feel like we have to reinvent the wheel every single time we should lessen our workload. The problem, however, comes in when we only look to shortcut the process. And we stop being interested in growth and doing that hard work. Lots of things come up. Megan, you mentioned running a business. It's hard, right? How do I grow my business? How am I gonna hire five more people? How I'm going to expand into this new area? How do I step away from my business? These are all extremely hard problems. And ones where shortcutting is actually going to hurt you in the end.
Meghan 03:15
But it can be very easy to want to shortcut things. You know, doing easy things is easy. Doing hard things is hard. That sounds silly, but it's true. Our brains are wired to kind of avoid hard things and just do the easy thing our brain say, why should it take 25 steps when it could only take two, the quality is not going to be as good but you're still going to get it done.
03:37
Now the root of this is the difference between something being hard and a hardship. Your body your brain is programmed to prevent you from undergoing or going through hardships, it's trying to preserve you and preserve your life keep you alive and hardships are a detriment to an individual. And so when your brain that lizard part of your brain that we've talked about on the show before when that starts to feel like things are getting hard, it looks for ways out avoidance is one entirely that's when we would do a lot we would completely avoid the hard thing coming up. Then the shortcutting the route is the second pay. Okay, maybe I have to do this. So how can I do this quickly just get it over with and get through it and try and prevent this from taking place ever again. But the difference between something being hard or difficult in our life and a hard ship, I think is the goal that we're moving forward. A hardship is usually something that's imposed upon us. That's not something that is going to help benefit us. In the end. It's something that's pushing us back setting us back and delaying us from our goals. Something that's being hard is just a difficult task that's going to take time, energy, attention, money to solve they'll be more than any of those that you're wanting to expend at that time. But in the end, there's going to be a payoff there's going to be a benefit to you. And so we have to as the business owner have enough control self control and self discipline to know the difference between hardships and hard situations, and know how to navigate those appropriately and embrace the hard situations because those are going to be worth it, those are going to come back and benefit us in the end, versus just always avoiding things when life gets a little bit difficult.
Meghan 05:19
While we enjoy the easy things, and we enjoy the comfortable situations, they don't really allow us to grow, though. That's the other thing. Comfort can be our biggest foe, when we don't allow ourselves to push beyond those boundaries of our comfort zone. We aren't then growing as people or as business owners, we're not doing new things, trying new things, see what works and that innovation in our businesses stops. And I don't want to sound like a Debbie Downer of if you don't do hard things, then you're going to stop as a business. But it kind of does lead to that point. If you only do the easy things you're going to limit yourself and what your business can do,
05:54
you are limiting your you're holding yourself back the potential that you have. Because here's the thing, when you constantly look for tips, tricks, hacks to shortcut the system, you actually end up shorting out your ability to be a better indifferent person. Tomorrow, you limit your ability to grow and adapt. Whenever you just look for these little hacks these little things, you end up not building the skill set necessary to tackle bigger and better problems down the line. If all you did was do shortcuts and try and shortcut your way to your goal, you're not actually getting stronger, you're not actually becoming more mentally and physically adept at that actual kind of work so that when real work shows up to be done, you're not conditioned to do it, you physically or mentally are unable to tackle those things. Because you haven't built up the systems. Let's just talk about that away from your business. Okay, you want to grow and you want to hire five people, the hard way to do that is sit down and understand all of the labor laws, then understand how you can use those labor laws in your business. Then write policies and procedures for people for your business and understand and then go and learn about being a manager and then go and learn about these things and bring people onto your team equipped and grow with them and continually to push yourself to be better at managing them and growing them as individuals. The shortcut way to do this is go down the street five, find somebody to start doing work, bring them on into your business, and then wonder why it's not working out and try and just not put in that effort and not dive into those details. We pull back from details so often because it's boring. It's laborious, it's not interesting to us. Or maybe
Meghan 07:37
it's not even on our skill set. Maybe we're not a detail oriented person. And we like the 30,000 foot view. And we go from there. But there are times when the details are necessary, including labor laws.
Collin 07:49
Because how will you know how to handle a weird situation or what what if you want to change and adapt your business in a new way. By building the scaffolding and setting that strong foundation through the knowledge through the hard work through that experience, then you can truly change and adapt when things change around you. Because also, in some cases, like volleyball, there's actually no way to shortcut that process. Either you're going to put into the work, and you're going to practice and grow your skills, or you don't, there's nothing you can do to shortcut your way to being an all star volleyball player, you actually have to put in that practice. And while you're practicing those skills, you're actually developing the muscle tone, the stamina, the communications with the team, the experiences, from the range of scenarios, as you practice those skills, all these ancillary things come along with that. And if you don't show up to the practices, if you don't work on those basic skills and those fundamentals in the offseason, you won't have everything that comes along with it those benefits. You could, I will say you could shortcut your way to being a professional volleyball player by buying your way onto a team. go donate $10 million to the volleyball team for the next Olympics. And they may put you on that. I don't know. Now, will you be any good? No, but you but you're a volleyball player, but you have none of the skills you have none of the stamina to keep up with everybody. You have none of the coordination in Team Impact to actually do something and utilize that position. Well, it's the exact same thing when running our business.
Meghan 09:29
If you're a bodybuilder you could take HGH to boost your muscle tone, but you're not actually building that stamina. If you are a football player. You could watch game footage to boost your experience and knowledge of the game but you're not building muscles. So again, same thing in our business you can grow your business by going out and giving away your services for free. I wouldn't suggested or recommended but you will definitely be booked. That is the easiest way to get hundreds of clients is giving away your services for free or $1 But you won't really be learning anything about the marketing or the needs of the clients or how to properly budget for your personal and your business needs. Something that's not a hack is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years, they've provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote, at pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com.
Collin 10:45
This also comes up in the context of your image and marketing. But also think of this like website design. If people go, Well, how do I word this or maybe you just find yourself in you're copying the work of someone else, it may be the best work in the world, the best marketing, copy your ad copy on a website to sales pitch, a dog walking and pet sitting service. But if you don't understand why it works, it's hard to then go on and do more with that content in your business. Because you're kind of at that point, you're missing the point you're cheating yourself out of a better understanding of what's going on. I'm also reminded of, of actors in Hollywood, who maybe they have a scene where they need to learn they have to play a piano, many actors will go through and learn the song that they're supposed to play in that scene, there shortcutting their way to playing the piano and playing a song by only learning that song, are they learning the fundamentals of technique, how to read sheet music, chords, all of that stuff, and piano? No, they're not going that deep into it. They're just going okay, I have to play a song for this. So instead of doing all this background work, which honestly, they don't need to because it's not important for that scene, they shortcut their way. And they just learned the couple notes that there's going to be on film, and then they move on. But they haven't become a better piano player. Have they know the habits. So if they want to be a piano player later on, they're gonna have to go back to the very beginning of all that
Meghan 12:10
well, and I know we keep Pooh poohing the hacks and tips and tricks and all that. But there are times when it is okay, per se to do this. And one of those is when you want to have an employee handbook, and you don't have the time necessarily to create one, there are those out there on the internet that you can purchase. And they will be okay. Or you can have chat GPT craft one for you. But again, it's the going back and having to edit this to tailor it to your business so that it's not from Jan's dog walking in a different city that doesn't operate the same way as you, you do have to come around and say this is how I operate. This is a good structure. But I need to to make it my own.
Collin 12:54
And that is where we often fall down is we don't take that second pass at it. We go well, this worked for that person or this work for somebody else. I'll just buy this. And now I'm done. box checked. What What else do I do? You can think of it also if maybe you're going for to get us a certification in some in pet first aid and CPR or fear free or you want to go through psi or naps professional pet sitter certification program. You can't really shortcut your way to going through those, you actually do have to study, I guess you could shortcut that way by having someone else take it for you. Right then that point says that's kind of cheating. But again, you're cheating yourself out of that knowledge. Because that knowledge is going to be beneficial to you. At the end, it's no good to just have the plaque on the wall. If you don't know anything about what's behind that plaque or there's no substance there.
Meghan 13:45
Yeah, because doing hard things. And gaining this knowledge really helps us to build confidence and gain. It helps us to gain knowledge about ourselves to know ourselves better than we did before to know that, hey, I can't do this, I'm awesome. I was able to achieve this thing or build this thing. And it almost produces a snowball effect where we say, Oh, I did this hard thing I can I can do more hard things. Let's go.
Collin 14:10
Again, yet another one of those ancillary aspects of why this is important, because yes, do the hard work, you will reach your goal. But you'll also have that confidence. You don't have the skill set and that knowledge so that you can do something next time, you can actually take that and continue to build on it. If you hack your way to the top, there's nothing to build on except find another hack to do something else that comes along your plate.
Meghan 14:34
It builds our self confidence when we do hard things. And sometimes we don't necessarily do them all that well. Or there are things that we would improve on or things that others kind of criticize about what we've done, but it builds that self esteem and us that says Well, I'm proud of the work I did I'm proud of overcoming this challenge and doing this hard thing. So I understand that not everybody's gonna like it but I can at the end of the I can still be proud of the business that I built and the website I designed or whatever the case may be. Okay, so let's say you come up the face something in your business, that's hard. How do you know whether to do the hard thing, or to hack your way through it,
Collin 15:14
I think there are really three aspects that you have to consider. And the first one is, maybe you should delegate that. Because what's actually going on here is when we are faced with that decision, have to hack the problem or tackle the problem head on, we are focusing on two big aspects, our time and the seriousness of the issue. Maybe you don't have the time to tackle this. But it's serious enough that you don't want to hack your way through it, finding somebody to come in and help you alongside and have them tackle it and them do the work. That's what delegation is. And that's one of the most powerful meetings that we have when running our business is delegating these tasks. We've talked about that interplay before of things I want to do, but things I don't want to do and things that are important to things that aren't important. Whatever it all boils down to, do I have the time to do this? And how serious is this? Or how critical is it to my business, because you may find yourself delegating it, because then that way, you are giving somebody else the permission to then tackle that problem head on and actually do the hard work or use their experience to solve it. Yeah,
Meghan 16:21
that could be website, that could definitely be taxes, that could even be social media, you're not a creative person, and don't enjoy it, delegate it.
Collin 16:29
And all of those are serious enough to the mission critical to your business, to the extent where hacking through them, you know, is going to be detrimental to your business. Don't try and hack your way through your taxes, the IRS will come after they will not be happy, okay? Don't try and hack your way through your social media, because that's your public outward facing appearance to your community that showcases who you are and how you'd provide services. But if you don't have time, okay, well, this is your stuff, I'm going to do this, I'm going to delegate this. And then if you decide that you don't want to delegate it, then you need to go, Okay, if this is not very serious, and I have the time, maybe I can kind of hack my way through this, how mission critical this is to my business. And I'd be fine if I can find something where somebody's already made a document or somebody already has that planner, or somebody who has already experienced this, or buy this thing or not do this thing so that you can overcome that hurdle. But if you have something that is mission critical, and it's going to take you a long time, you may still decide, well, I can't financially delegate it. But I can't afford to hack this because it's going to come back and bite me, or I want to have this experience of doing my own taxes, so that I understand the fundamentals of my business, I need to take this on. And I actually need to do this work.
Meghan 17:47
And if you do decide to do the hard thing, understand that it is going to take time, but that you will achieve something on the other side of this, just as you started your business from literally nothing and you grew it to a successful level, whatever that means for you. You can do hard things you are capable of doing this. When you will only live your life on hacks and tips and tricks, you don't actually grow as a person at least as much as you would if you had done it yourself. You know, after 10 years, you'll still be someone who looks for those tips and tricks, most likely you're looking for the easy way out. But if you do the hard work, and you want to grow as a person, not only are you going to reach your goal, but you'll also have built up a huge amount of skills and knowledge and experience that you could potentially pass on to somebody else. Whether it's a generational thing for your business, you want to impart your wisdom to your kids of how to successfully do these things. Or maybe you are a mentor to another pet sitter in your community or you want to one day become a coach to pet sitters worldwide, it's going to help you continue to grow and build faster and faster when you learn these things. When we do the hard things, and we produce excellent work, it helps us to continue to produce that excellent work and propels us further in our mission.
Collin 19:05
Not only because it proves to us that we are capable of that, which I know you talked about banking, but because we've built skills to do excellent work, our muscles are ready to do more excellent work, our brains are more in tune with what is required to have that kind of outcome. So the next time something comes across our desk or we encounter in our life, we know ah, I can do XYZ and I can get through this and I know it will be okay on the other side. So it's this it's the skills it's the confidence that come from those skills. And it's the attitude that we bring to problems bring to new scenarios that arrives only when we've gone through that the hard work. In the beginning.
Meghan 19:42
There is a time and place for hacks and tips and tricks. But overall I think we should be wanting to grow as people and as business owners and leaders in our community to do the hard thing so we can have that personal fulfillment that we all need. We would love to know some of the hard things that you have done in Your business if you would like to share those with us, you can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you very much to our sponsor pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's show. And thank you most of all for listening taking your most valuable asset your time and listening to this today. We will talk with you next time. Bye
