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Welcome to Leading With Force β a podcast where seasoned entrepreneur Brian Force shares the invaluable lessons he's learned on his journey through this crazy, wonderful life. Having built several multimillion-dollar companies, Brian dives into the nuts and bolts of building successful teams, scaling businesses, and leading with passion and purpose.
Each episode offers practical tools to effectively cast your vision, build your team, boost productivity, and become the leader you were meant to be. Brian's mission is to inspire you to unlock the incredible power within yourself, achieve your goals, and make a meaningful impact on the world. Join us as we explore how to find your inner leader, empower others, and embrace your journey.
βWe look at our day-to-day frustrations, our day-to-day problems, the day-to-day π chaos, as if it's something that's keeping us from achieving our goals as if it's a barrier to our goals. It's not. It is the solution to your goals. Those problems are opportunities to find solutions that will help you build the business that achieves your goals. Hey
everybody. Welcome back to the show. I really appreciate you being here with me for another episode. If you are getting value from this podcast on whatever platform you're listening or watching, if you could like, share, subscribe, or leave a review, it really helps me with my mission to have an impact on as many people as possible.
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That's it for the PSAs. Let's get back to the show. β
π What if I told you that most successful business owners are obsessed with something that most people ignore, βmost successful business owners are not looking at their bank account every single morning.
They're not focused only on how do we make our next dollar, how do we increase our revenue? How do we hit our financial goals? How do we hit our yearly targets? Most successful entrepreneurs for a long part of their journey become successful because they are maniacally focused on the process.
They fall in love with the process of building a business, And that's what it is.
Building a business is a process. Don't let anything you hear on social media nowadays convince you otherwise. Building a robust machine-like business that you can eventually step out of an operator role and be a true owner of. Takes time to build. It is a process
and the reason that most entrepreneurs don't ever become true owners of their businesses is because they're looking at the process all wrong. They end up becoming victims of extreme burnout, massive frustration because of the day to day grind that will wear you down over time.
That is the process. The process is the day-to-day actions that over time add up to the business that you're trying to build. Process is just simply the combination of every day in and day out grind decision, frustration, problem to solve that eventually culminates in the business that you are building and falling in love with the process,
That day to day-to-day building of the business and everything that comes with it is what successful entrepreneurs do very well and it's something they do wildly differently for most entrepreneurs that never hit their goals.
So today we're going to talk about the process. We're going to talk about the process of building a business, what it's like to experience that as an entrepreneur, and how to fall more in love with the process than the outcome, which ironically in the end, is actually how you achieve those outcomes.
Promise you by the end of this episode, you're going to understand exactly why process focus.
Entrepreneurs outperform those that are solely focused on outcomes, and you'll have a framework to really adjust your mindset around falling in love with the process. Let's dive in.
I wanna start off by telling a story about my wife, which will provide some context. My wife is amazing. She runs her own real estate services business, and recently she hit. A really great milestone that we've had our eyes on, and we ended up actually hitting that goal a lot sooner than I had originally forecasted. And so I was really excited. I could kind of see it coming from a few months away. I knew we were gonna get there, and we finally did. I didn't wanna say anything until we finally did. And then we did, we hit that goal a lot sooner than I thought we would.
we celebrated, we went out to dinner. It was really exciting. And I asked her at dinner, I said, how does it feel to have hit this goal? And she looked at me and she said, and you have to know my wife. She's just like, very matter of fact, she was like, it feels totally normal.
She was like, it's just another day at work. I had expected this. I knew it was going to happen. I'm excited that we're having dinner. I like celebrating, but I feel totally normal. and we kind of went down this rabbit hole exploring this feeling of normalcy around achieving your goals. And I got really excited about it because the reality is that's how it's supposed to feel. See, we really romanticize our goals in business. We want to, you know, sell a million dollars worth of whatever, or we want to grow our company to a certain size or whatever.
What we don't romanticize enough of is the process that we have to undergo to get there. We just hope that these goals will manifest themselves and we get so burnt out from the day to day problems that we have to solve work, that we have to put in all the things that go in to actually making those goals a reality.
We never romanticize those, the best entrepreneurs do, but most of us don't. And so we get perpetually frustrated and perpetually burnt out.
And what my wife does an amazing job of is focusing only on the process. When we first started this business a few years ago, we had this short term goal in mind, something that we wanted to hit. in a certain timeline, it was far off at the time, but that was like the first benchmark that we knew, okay, when we get here, now we can hit our next level, start to expand, start to really scale.
My wife set that goal. We reverse engineered it to what needs to happen in order for that goal to be achieved. And then she just went about doing the work. My wife does such an amazing job of focusing on the process.
When we broke that goal down into a plan and said, here's the plan. Here's what needs to happen every single day. here's what needs to happen in order for us to acquire more clients. Here's what needs to happen in order for us to maintain our customer service. As we grow, here's what needs to happen in order for us to serve everybody and really come through on our value proposition.
And then my wife just went out and built it. She just fell in love with the process of, okay, here's the next thing that I need to do. Here's the next problem that I need to solve. Here's the next level that I need to get to, and the things that mostly burn people out the day-to-day. Grind, as we call it.
The things that most entrepreneurs feel like they're an obligation to my wife and to many successful entrepreneurs. Those are the goals. The process is the goal, right? The goal gets broken down from this big outcome that we're trying to achieve, to what do we need to do today?
The reason that my wife's business has grown so fast and is doing so well is because my wife is very focused on what do we need to do today and what do we need to do. Today isn't some product of just being super unprepared, not systematized, always trying to keep our heads above water and put out the next fire.
What we need to do today is a really well manicured. Strategic plan that has been reversed engineered from the goal that we're trying to hit. my wife is really good of maintaining the mindset of the goal is everything we need to do today, right?
And if you do everything you need to do today. Then eventually, and probably on a pretty quick timeline, you're gonna get to where you want to go. You're gonna achieve that ultimate goal that you have. But most entrepreneurs, they stay so obsessed with this goal. They stay so obsessed with, we wanna make this much money. We wanna serve this many clients. We wanna be this level of growth, right? But then all the things that actually need to happen in order to get there.
Just feel like work. They feel like, oh, This is the grind. I don't like to lead generate. I don't like to grind it out. I don't like to actually build the business all. I don't wanna solve these problems.
I don't wanna get over the next hurdle. I'm just focused on the goal. The process is the goal, and this is the key difference between really wildly successful entrepreneurs that can succeed in a multitude of different industries and spaces and people that.
Burnout. Even when they're doing something they're truly passionate about, or even when they're doing something, they're actually uniquely talented and well positioned to do, they burn out because they're so focused day in and day out on the ultimate goal. They forget that the goal is to do what needs to be done every day to get there.
My wife is really great at focusing on what needs to be done today and achieving that goal that what needs to be done today goal, And when you achieve enough daily goals, you string that together for six months. All of a sudden you've made an extraordinary amount of progress.
but when we stay focused only on that ultimate outcome and we forget about what we need to do today, what we need to do today starts to feel a heck of a lot like work. It starts to feel a heck of a lot. Like a grind, and we don't often do a very good job of tethering what we're doing right now to that ultimate goal.
This feels like an obligation. This feels like work. This feels like a grind. This is boring. We forget that all those things added up. End up being what helps us achieve that goal. So we've gotta change our mindset. We've gotta change our mindset around the process of building the business as an obligation to the process of building the business, actually being the goal itself.
And when you do that well, you'll realize that when you actually achieve those ultimate goals, they just feel normal by the time you get there because you've done every step along the way to get to that ultimate goal. And now by the time you get there, it's no surprise you knew you were headed there all along because you were focused on the process of building a business that gets there.
So how do we readjust our mindset to maintain our focus on the process and really make that the thing that we fall in love with every single day?
'cause that's really what is valuable here. First things first, we've gotta get back to the basics of reality of building a business. The reality of building a business is it usually takes longer than you think it's going to do, not listen. To anything that social media says Nowadays anybody who's telling you they're propping up a business that makes a million dollars a year in like a couple months.
I'm not saying that that's not true. What I am saying is that you are going to hear the most extreme versions of stories on social media, and the reality on a day-to-day basis is normally much different.
Businesses take a long time to build And a long time is relative. A decade is a long time, but so is a year, and you can accomplish a lot even in just a year if you focus on the process of building your business. But we fall out of love with the process if it's not working fast enough.
So the first thing that we need to do is adjust our mindset around how quickly we expect this business to really take. Off. If we feel like we're moving too slow, if we feel like we're not getting to where we need to be in the time that we really thought it was going to take to get there, we start to lose steam our team starts to lose steam. we start to get resentful of the business and then every day after that starts to feel more and more like a grind.
When I build coaching programs for companies, one of the most important things that I have to reiterate and continue to harp on in the beginning is the value of doing things the right way for a sustained period of time, and remind the people that I work with that this is a process that we can't get discouraged when things aren't working right away or as quickly as we had imagined.
It really helps to build a distinctive plan with distinctive milestones That are achievable and that you've worked hard to really segment out and you want to be realistic about that plan. Don't let social media and all the other different noise that gets thrown at us these days make you think that you have to build this business any faster than reality says you're likely to, and then make you feel bad when you're not doing it, because you'll start to resent the process of building your business.
So the first thing is you've gotta get your mind right. You've gotta get your mind right around the reality. Of building a business and the time it takes to really build something that is robust, that is scalable, that is eventually gonna run without you as a true owner.
Those things take time.
So if you're not where you want to be right now, don't resent the process. Fall in love with the process and it will get you to where you're trying to go.
Once you have a legitimate structured business plan that'll take you to where you want to go, it is time, like I said, to fall in love with the process.
And what that means is to truly fall in love with a daily problem solving team building, dealing with the frustrations that come at you every day when you're building a business, when you're an entrepreneur, it's falling in love with the controlled chaos, the problem solving. Figuring it out every single day.
The stuff that feels like a grind, the stuff that feels noisy, it's all in how we approach those day-to-day challenges, those day-to-day frustrations. Every single day is an opportunity for us to hit our goals. Every day is an opportunity to hit our goals just for that day. And in any business, you pretty much know what you're getting into day to day.
There's gonna be a lot of fires that you need to put out. Like I said before, a little bit of controlled chaos and things like that. But day in and day out, we pretty much know what we're doing in our business.
And what really great entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is see those daily bouts of chaos as opportunities to achieve their goals.
They connect today's problems to tomorrow's outcomes, to tomorrow's goals, to the eventual vision that they have for the company. They see it better than anyone else. I'll give you a great example.
If you've ever lost a team member or you've had a gap in your business that you've needed to fill, everybody's doing double duty, you're running all over the place, doing all sorts of roles, and then you find. The right person for that role that a level player and they come in and maybe not day one, but maybe day 30, maybe day 60, maybe day 90, you realize that part of the business is running incredibly well right now.
That part of the business that a level player came in, they changed everything for that particular part of the business. That process absolutely hums now. What great entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is when they need that person. they don't see it as, oh my gosh, I've gotta do a million more things right now.
I gotta carry an extra load. I don't have this person. They see it as, oh my gosh, we have an opening here. We have the opportunity to go and find the right person. And when we find this right person, it's a whole new level that the business is going to, right. What really great entrepreneurs do is they maintain a mindset of every problem is an opportunity to provide a solution that will culminate eventually and the manifestation of their goals. Every problem is an opportunity for a solution to a great entrepreneur but so many of us get bogged down in problems like they're the things that are keeping us from our goals.
We look at our day-to-day frustrations, our day-to-day problems, the day-to-day chaos, as if it's something that's keeping us from achieving our goals as if it's a barrier to our goals. It's not. It is the solution to your goals. Those problems are opportunities to find solutions that will help you build the business that achieves your goals.
So you should be grateful for them. Really great entrepreneurs are grateful for all the problems they get to solve in their businesses every day. They don't see them as a grind. They don't see them as another thing they have to do. They see them as another thing they get to do because it's all part of the process.
Achieving the goals in your business is the outcome of focusing on the process every single day. So you have no choice but to fall in love with the process if you want to achieve your goals.
recently in one of our businesses. We had an opportunity to bring one of the pieces of the process that we were outsourcing in-house and create another revenue stream, and it was gonna be a lift.
It was one of those things where we had talked about doing it a long time ago. There was a lot that went into it. We didn't think that we were quite ready for it. The reality is you never think you're quite ready for it. But at this current moment in time, we're looking at the numbers and we're realizing we're leaving a lot of money on the table by not bringing this part of the process in-house.
And it's stressful. It's something I've gone back and forth with my partners over a whole bunch of times. We could literally just leave things the way that they are and everything would continue operating smoothly, but we wouldn't be capitalizing on a substantial amount of revenue at this point where the business is now.
That part of the process, because we've scaled up is forcing us to leave a lot of money on the table by outsourcing it and we have more quality control over it. and I think it'll generally be a better process overall when we get it right. But it's really easy for us as entrepreneurs right now to go, I don't want to bring more chaos into our world.
I don't want to rock the boat. We finally have a working machine. I just wanna leave it the way that it is. That's small. Time thinking and we all fall victim to it at times. That's why you've gotta be strategic. Sometimes you don't want to take risks that will mess with your processes and potentially break things down.
But when you get to a certain point where you're realizing we're leaving a lot of revenue on the table, if we want to achieve our financial goals for the business, we've got to bring this part of the process in house
That is just part of it. And so now we're undergoing the process of bringing this in-house and it's difficult. It's scary, it's stressful. And you know what, I love it because I know when we get this right and we get back to stability we'll be running the exact same level of seamlessness that we always have, but we'll be having more revenue.
We'll have more revenue coming in, which translates to more profits, which translates to our ability to expand the business, serve more people, And it's a difficult thing to do. It's difficult to mess with your systems and it's easier just to keep it small.
Think small time, don't rock the boat. This is difficult, but I love it because it's all part of the process. You as an entrepreneur have got to fall in love with the process that same way. The process is the goal, the daily, everyday procedures. That help you scale your business. That is the goal. The goal is to nail 'em every single day.
And when you see that, when you really fall in love with nailing the process, everything else starts to fall in order really quickly.
And what tends to happen when you really start to focus on the process and you really start to focus on nailing today's decisions, nailing today's goals, today's work, And when you really start to get that momentum and you really start to get your team focused on the process, what happens is that you start making better decisions. You start making decisions out of a place of empowerment rather than a place of obligation.
You don't see decisions as something that you've gotta get through just to control the chaos for the day. Keep your head above water, get to tomorrow. You see every decision as an opportunity to eventually hit your goals, to build a better machine. That eventually gets to where you're trying to go, and so you start taking your decision making much more seriously rather than just, rather than decisions coming at you and you're just trying to get out of the weeds and you're just trying to keep your head above water.
You tend to take your time to think deeply about more of the important decisions in your business. You start to think more strategically because you realize that every one of your decisions is going to have a reverberate effect on the business. And when you start to do that. Your team takes notice.
They start making better decisions. The energy builds around the process, and your people will start to show up with a totally different level of ownership around their role. so? How do we actually like physically do this, get more excited about the process than the outcome? Knowing the outcomes will be there if we follow the process and focus on that? well, first things first. You've got to build a scoreboard that involves your processes, not just your financial goals.
It's great to look at your bank account and see it growing, but it doesn't always tell the story of where the business is headed. So you want to build a scoreboard. You wanna measure the most meaningful KPIs in your business based on their processes, rather than just their financial outcomes. So for example, I'll use our property management business, which I talk about sometimes on the show because I think we do a really great job of measuring processes rather than just financial outcomes.
so we focus really hard on the core aspects of the business and the processes behind those because we know when we nail those, the business is headed in the right direction financially.
So we measure things like applications processed on time. The amount of time it takes for us to onboard a new client from the time that they sign a management agreement with us to their house actually being on the market.
those. Things are very process oriented and we have standards behind all of them. Our goal is to hit the standard as often as possible. 95% of the time actually is our scoreboard. When we are hitting our standards, 95% of the time, we know the business is headed in the right direction.
And when that's not happening, our team goes and investigates which part of the process is not working properly. It's easy for us to get frustrated when we wake up and we look at the scoreboard and we're at 89%.
But the reality is because we've built out that scoreboard, because we know what the process needs to look like, we get really excited. About building it back to 95% about solving the next problem to get us back to 95%. Because we know when we do that long term, the business is going to achieve its goals.
So if you don't have it already in your business, you need to figure out what are the most meaningful process oriented KPIs that you can measure that when those things are happening properly, you know the business is running well. You know that when the business is running well, you can grow it, you can scale it.
So figure out what your scoreboard needs to look like and start measuring those KPIs with your team, and then you'll know where the process can stand to improve, and then you'll get excited about improving that process because that will ultimately lead to your growth.
so here's what I want you to do. I want you to identify the places in your business. Let's just start with two or three places in your business that either are bottlenecks, become bottlenecks regularly, or see the potential for them to be bottlenecks as your business grows.
And let's figure out. How do we solve those bottlenecks in perpetuity? How do we provide solutions for them to create a better, more robust process? These are probably things right now in your business that are only bottlenecks because you are doing the work yourself. You're diving back in and manually doing something.
You are taking on a role that probably should be somebody else's, but maybe you don't have the right person for that role yet, or you don't have a person at all, or you don't have the right piece of software or the solution for it, and So you're just allowing it to be something that exists in your business, even though you know it doesn't have to.
that is you not being focused enough and not falling enough in love with the process. I want you to identify immediately a couple of bottlenecks that you can provide a solution for, and when you provide that solution, when you test that solution.
When it works, I want you to celebrate that the same way that you would celebrate hitting one of your short term goals, hitting one of your financial goals, hitting a certain amount of sales, because the reality is, if you don't fall in love with the process, if you don't fall in love with solving those problems, if you don't fall in love with building a better machine, it doesn't matter how much you sell.
It doesn't matter how big the business gets, you'll always be a slave to it. You'll always feel like chaos. That's how you build a prison for yourself. Fall in love with the journey, the process of building this business, and start by identifying some of your pain points that you already know you have and really buckling down and focusing on finding solutions for those pain points, and then celebrating those wins.
If you can do that, you're gonna start to train your brain to see more opportunities to really enjoy the process of building your business.
And that my friends is what great entrepreneurs do better than anyone. They understand the correlation between the process, the journey. And the ultimate outcome, the goal, once you realize that as well, and once you really allow yourself to fall in love with the day-to-day process, I promise you, you're going to be π unstoppable.
I really hope that this episode was valuable for you. I hope you got something out of it. I'd love to hear your feedback. I'd love to hear how your mindset is adjusting around the process of building your business. Drop a comment, get in touch with me. I appreciate you listening to another episode, and I'll look forward to talking to you soon.