Happy Sunday Everyone:
I was on a coaching call with 3 big students on Thursday. They’re all doing really well in their business. This is assuming “really well” is defined by closing a lot of loans. The biggest student on the call (defined by most loans/income) was also the least happy/content and fairly disengaged on the call. Not disengaged in the sense of feeling sorry for herself but disengaged in that she was pre-occupied with a mountain of stress.
Digging in to the call I’m realizing we’re all talking about things that we hate about our jobs and that’s when it hit me, 8 years as a coach and I had my first original thought. On the fly I had everyone write down 3 things they absolutely hate about their jobs. Things that keep you from wanting to get out of bed, things that make you procrastinate, things that make you want to find a different line of work. Then I had everyone write down 3 things they absolutely love about their jobs. Things that if this was your only responsibility you couldn’t get in early enough to start, shouting to the heavens “I love my job”. Then I had everyone write down one thing/tactic they need to implement to stop doing what they hate so they can do more of what they love.
Example 1: Not something I should be divulging to all of my students and business partners but at this stage of the game, I hate cold calling new business partners. One of the things I love most about my job is talking to new business partners about their needs and our ability to fill that need. That’s a problem, I can’t have one without the other. Resolution: hire my sister, who is a pit bull, to make the appointments for me so all I have to do is show up and do what I love.
Example 2: Per last week Sunday Thoughts, I hate waking up on a Sunday with no clue on what to write about but I love doing these when I have clarity. Solution: friendly competitor (Jay at JVM) is on these. He wrote me back last week and told me to create a folder in outlook to store any thoughts/ideas/readings that come to me throughout the week that I might want to write about on Sunday. Not sure how I didn’t think about this one on my own, it take s village I guess! Also told me to start titling these (trying that here too).
Take aways for me:
1. We usually suck at what we hate doing.
2. What we hate doing is usually what someone else loves doing. I hate the details inside of the paperwork, my team loves it. I’d rather stab my eyes out than look through a bank statement and they feel the exact same way of jumping on a zoom call with a new business partner. I think we fear delegating sometimes because we feel bad off-loading what we hate. What we hate doing someone else loves doing and vice versa.
3. One life to live here. To not have a path to focus on what you love doing vs. what you hate doing is insanity.
4. One student asked Todd Scrima (owner of Summit Funding), “What do you do about all the things you don’t like to do”. His response “I don’t do anything I don’t like to do, much”. Key word is MUCH. We will always have to do things we don’t like doing, the key here is to recognize them and minimize them.
5. This exercise works for life, not just work.
I have now spent hours thinking about this concept and the clarity I’m feeling is liberating. One student texted me saying “I think we had a breakthrough”. I certainly feel that way. My hope is you’ll put some time into this one.