Does growing your business have to mean working longer hours? Charlie Bassett grew up watching his family work hard for slim grocery margins. In this episode, he shares how Strategic Coach® helped him rethink his role, build strong teams across four stores, and find more enjoyment in a business he once thought about leaving.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• Why Charlie’s been hearing about grocery prices since kindergarten.
• How COVID brought both tough challenges and record success to Charlie’s business.
• What helped Charlie realize it was time to step back from day-to-day operations.
• Why Charlie credits Strategic Coach with keeping him in the grocery business.

Show Notes:

There are no bad industries; you can still build a great business in an industry where others are struggling.

In the Strategic Coach community, there are about 100 industries represented, and clients come from about 75 different countries.

Focusing on what makes your business different is more useful than watching every move your competitors make.

It’s easy to change when everyone’s changing. Everyone else is so busy with their own adjustments that they’re not paying attention to yours.

Working in your Unique Ability® lets you bring more of what you do best to your business.

The work you don’t enjoy may be exactly what someone else on your team loves doing.

Part of your job as a leader is to help your team stay confident when things get tough.

When you’re under pressure, stop and take a breath before your thinking runs straight to the worst-case scenario.

Making a little progress each day can help you get through even the toughest stretches.

It’s easier to think clearly when you’re not physically, mentally, and emotionally worn out.

Building a business that manages itself takes practice, but small changes can add up and start to build on one another.

Resources:

Unique Ability®

The Gap And The Gain by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

What Free Days™ Are And How To Know When You Need Them

The Positive Focus®

Your Life As A Strategy Circle by Dan Sullivan

What Is A Self-Managing Company®?

In our last episode, you'll discover how a different approach to creating value can open up possibilities you might not see when you focus only on what customers ask for. Tap here to listen to The Difference Between Most Entrepreneurs And Great Entrepreneurs

What separates a successful entrepreneur from one who changes the way people live and work? In this episode, Dan Sullivan explores the shift in thinking that sets great entrepreneurs apart, using Steve Jobs as an example. Discover how a different approach to creating value can open up possibilities you might not see when you focus only on what customers ask for.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• The two ways entrepreneurs think differently from most people.
• What most entrepreneurs focus on in the marketplace.
• What great entrepreneurs focus on instead.
• How Steve Jobs created capabilities for himself and millions of others.

Show notes:

Entrepreneurs take responsibility for their own financial success and security rather than expecting an employer, government, or institution to do it for them.

Entrepreneurs don’t get paid first; they get paid after they create value that someone else is willing to buy.

It doesn’t matter how useful you think your work is; it only matters if someone else sees enough value in it to write you a check.

When you focus only on solving existing problems, your clients can end up defining the work you do.

Great entrepreneurs are more interested in creating new capabilities than solving known problems.

Start with a capability you wish existed for your own life, then ask whether other people would want it too.

Steve Jobs wanted computers to be easier to use, music to be purchased one song at a time, and phones to do far more than make calls.

Great entrepreneurs build a formula around their capabilities that stays true even as technology, markets, and the world change.

Apple’s enduring formula is to create beautiful technology that people love using.

A clear formula lets you keep creating new value without having to reinvent who you are every time the world changes.

After seven years in the NHL playing for the Calgary Flames and the Montreal Canadiens, Evan Lindsay retired as a professional athlete and entered the realm of entrepreneurism. Evan shares the story of how he went from the National Hockey League to engaging in successful teamwork he’ll never have to retire from.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• The mindset that’s made Evan both a successful athlete and a successful entrepreneur.
• How Evan’s multi-faceted company works with failing gyms.
• How Evan’s employment experiences always ended.
• The ways in which Evan’s company has grown and continues to expand.
• Some of the most useful tools and experiences Evan has gained as a Strategic Coach® member.

Show Notes:

Being a professional athlete at the highest level means you can be coached and you’re good at teamwork. Those are also the two crucial capabilities to being an entrepreneur.

For a lot of professional athletes, their unusual talent was spotted very early in life.

NHL hopefuls are serious professionals before the end of their teen years.

Many professional athletes don’t prepare for the time when their athletic career ends. And then they're thrown out into the world where they don't have the system that’s supported them.

An entrepreneur’s number one job is to improve themselves in relationship to their team members and then to the business they’re in.

If you consult but haven’t actually worked in the field for a while, you’re coming from a space of theory and ideas.

Being familiar with the nuances and details of an industry makes you a lot more effective and proficient at supporting the people around you.

In professional sports, you adapt or you don’t get paid. And whether you’re leading the team or on the bench, you have to be in service of winning.

When you take over failing businesses, you take over something where the identity is the losing business.

You have to come up against hurdles a few times before you realize what doesn’t work.

There’s no finish line for entrepreneurs. Being an entrepreneur is a life sentence.

Resources:

EOS®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

10x Is Easier Than 2x by Dan Sullivan with Dr. Benjamin Hardy

Unique Ability®

My Plan For Living To 156 by Dan Sullivan