The #1 Silent Killer of Online Fitness And Coaching Businesses

Today's video is specifically about the silent killer, the silent killer of businesses and the silent killer of entrepreneurs. Now, first and foremost, before we jump into the specifics around that, what you need to understand is you are not, you and your business are two different entities. Right? Now, I'm not talking from a legal perspective, because you definitely are from a legal perspective, but I'm going to talk about from a structural, how you need to structure your life perspective, right? You and your business are not the one thing. Now, too many people, too many entrepreneurs who are hardcore in their business every day, working super hard, stuck between the walls and they're in it every minute, every hour, every day, every week, right? They end up being in it so much that they become their business and their business becomes them and they kind of get this attachment to their business that it's like it's this personal, it's almost like an infant, almost like a child, right?

Because you put so much blood, sweat and tears into it and it becomes your ... it becomes the love of your life. I'm not going to say the biggest love of your life. That might be your wife, your husband, your partner, your children, but it becomes a love of your life because you put so much in it, you want to protect it. You want to take care of it, whatever it might be. Now people end up like, especially in a sm9aller business format where people name the business after themselves, like, I don't know I'm going to call it Chris Lynton coaching or whatever it might be. They go down that path. They put so much blood, sweat and tears into it. Their life and their business life end up becoming the one and the same and they are unable to separate it.

And this causes a massive stunting of growth. It reduces your capacity to growth, reduces your capacity for income and reduces your capacity for impact. And you got to remember why you got into this in the first place. Most entrepreneurs, why they get into business is for a couple of reasons. Now I'm not going to say that every single one of these will suit you. But generally these are the specifics. One, and if we'd be totally honest with ourselves here, one, to be in the area of your passion. Rather than having a job and being forced to do whatever the hell you need to do to get the paycheck at the end of the week, being an entrepreneur allows you to create what you want to do and be in every single day where you want to be. Why? Ultimately most believe that'll bring more happiness, because they're doing what juices them, what makes them come alive.

Two, the ability to have more impact. The ability to impact more lives, help more people and truly live a life where at the end of the day, end of your life, you can look back and say, "Man, I've had a lot of impact on a lot of people's lives in a positive way. I've had a positive influence on the world. I can show my family, my friends, my integrity. And at the end of the day, there's a going to be a lot of people that I've positively helped in this world. And I've like paid it forward." And why do we do that? Happiness. Bring it back down to the crux. It makes us happy to be able to help other people and make them happy.

Ultimately, it's a positive selfish trait to want to help other people because you help them but in return that actually makes you happy. So ultimately you do it because it makes you happy. So one, we build businesses because we want to do what makes us happy. Two, we want to have impact because that makes us happy. And three, we want to, ultimately I will say most entrepreneurs, want to earn the income they want and actually work less than they would have to if they were doing that in a job. Now this is a very broad based strokes that I'm going through here. A lot of people might be here like, "Chris, I work super hard. And I grind all day and I love the grind." Look, I'm not saying there's anything against that. And I'm not saying you don't, but what I'm saying is the point and look as a business owner, you need to work really hard to get something off from ground zero to ground 10 takes a lot of work, right?

And generally entrepreneurs are hard workers. But the core of it is that you could go get a job. And you could work 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day. You could work 18 hours a day, 20 hours a day and work really hard. And you will only earn whatever your hourly rate is times those hours. That's your maximum capacity to earn. So you actually trade time for money. And time is, you can only work 24 hours. We all, no matter how rich you are, what country you, in what gender you are, how old we only have 24 hours in a day. Now, most entrepreneurs want to have impact, being there of passion, have the happiness, earn what they want to give them financial security, help their family, help their friends and be happy. Once again, bring it back down to the main core, happiness and lack of fear and financial scarcity and so on, but do that without having to work as hard as you would, if you are just punching the clock.

Work hard now to build something so you don't have to work as hard later. That's what's called leverage. That's why we build things so that hopefully at one stage, that thing can stand on its own two feet, we can step back from it and it continue to have impact, can continue to allow you to be in the area of passion that brings you happiness and it can continue to put money in your pocket. Taken back to the three things, build something that becomes bigger than you. Now, as it brings me back to my point before. Way too many people believe they are their business, their business is them. And they're never able to that disconnect or disconnect the two so they can step away from their business and go, "Why did I create this in the first place? Is it serving me?"

Now, you've got to think about this as an entrepreneur, it is business by design, it is life by design. So you've got to ask yourself the question, [inaudible 00:06:40] do people get into this with the visions of doing X, Y, Z, they get into the business. They get so ground down into the business, the business becomes them. They become so protective around it. And if someone says something bad about their business, they take it personally because they feel it's saying something bad about them or whatever it might be. If something doesn't work, they take that personally and so on and so forth. But as I was saying before, you got into this to get a certain outcome, but then that gets forgotten. You end up becoming yourself, your business rather than, "Hang on a sec. I'm here. The goals I want is this is my business serving? Is it serving my clients, getting great impact, helping people, but is it also serving me?"

Sorry about that. I've got an alarm going off, because I've got a call with one of the team members soon. Now you've got to ask yourself that. Is my business helping people? Is it serving people? Tick. Got a small drop out. I'm not going to tell you which one's more important. Now, is it more important that it helps people or is it more important that it helps you? I would say that they're exactly on the same level. If it's more important that it helps you, then you're taking a greedy way and you're going to scam people, that's no good. If it's more important that it helps other people than you, then you're going to help some people you're going to burn out. You're going to hate your job. You're going to hate your life. You're going to hate your business. And ultimately you're going to have flat energy. The thing won't grow, it won't have an impact and it'll close. So that's the end of the business, right?

So you can see how the two, it's a very strong balancing act between the two. And I would say that they're both as important as each other. And what happens is people get so ground down into their business that they stop to ask the question, "Is it serving me?" They only ever think about serving their clients which by default will actually mean that they won't be able to serve their clients. Because if it's not serving you and you are the driver of the business and the business isn't going to go anywhere. And ultimately it's not going to do what it was set up to do. So what I would like all of you to do is ask yourself today, "Is my business serving me?" Disconnect yourself from your business, step back and go, "Okay. The business that I have today, is it serving my clients? Is it helping people? Is it having impact?" If that's a tick, great.

Ask yourself a second question. "Is it's serving me?" And if you sit back and you go, "Hmm. Now this part of it, I don't particularly like this part of it. It's taken away too much time. I built it so I could have time with my family. And now that I have this business, I have no time with my family or I built it because I wanted to have leverage and travel. But now I'm stuck here and I haven't travelled for the last 10 years or I built it because I wanted to earn this certain income and buy a house for my family and take care of my friends and give money to charity. And in actual fact, I'm not earning anywhere near what that goal was. And I haven't for the last five years, once again, not serving, not serving, not serving."

Ask yourself that question today, take out a little pen and pad. And this is a deep question. And be honest with yourself, disconnect yourself from the business. Because ultimately as entrepreneurs, we can create another business today. We can create another business tomorrow. You can create another next week, next month, next year, whatever it might be. And you need to remember your business needs to serve clients and help people first and foremost, if you don't solve problems and help people, you don't have a business. But second to that, you are in total control. It is life by design, business by design. How can you get your business to help people, but also serve you? And if you can get those two to happen, guess what happens?

One, you'll be happier, but two you'll actually help more people. Why? Because you'll be happier in your business. You have more energy, you have more flow. It's this perfect circle. And it just grows and snowball. Hope for that ... On my phone. So hopefully, I didn't cut out the audio too much. Now, hopefully that makes sense what I'm talking about. I want everyone to take a moment to think about that and not forget the real reason why they created the business in the first place. And that help people have impact, but also create happiness for yourself. And you can't have one without the other. So don't let one take full control and be the driver. Because ultimately by letting one become the driver, the other one fails and then both fail. So take a step back from your business today. Stop working. Go grab a coffee, get to a cafe, take out a pen and a pad and go, "Hmm." Take five, 10 minutes. Why did I create this business in the first place? What was my ultimate goal? And second thing, and be brutally honest with yourself.

If I could have, what would my dream life look like? How would I design my life? If it was possible. Take away fear, take away all of that sort of stuff and go, "If possible, if I could, if someone gave me a genie in a bottle, what would my life look like? How would I design my life? What would I like my day, my week, my month to look like?" And then try and bridge the gap between what your business does and the servicing of what your life want to look like. That's a nucleus of being a true entrepreneur. And actually you'll see your business grow. You'll have more impact and you'll have more happiness and you'll have more longevity. It's not a sprint. It's a marathon. And you want to be here in 10 years time loving what you're doing. That's why these things are important to tick off.

I highly recommend that you do that today. Hope for that resonates. Hope that makes sense. Take action right now. Have an amazing week. And you've probably seen once again from a life, I guess, to give some examples, like things that I do. I spent a lot of time with my family. I've got two young sons. I had one born three months ago and one just two years old. I spent every single day with my two year old for all of his life where I've got friends that don't even see their child for the first three, four months because they leave for work before they wake. They're back home when they're asleep. That was something that was non-negotiable for me. I only work four days a week. I don't work Fridays. So I have a long weekend every single week. Why? Spend it with my family, spend it my friends, do things that I enjoy outside of business and taking care of my health.

Last night, we ordered a masseur to come to my house for myself, my wife and our reach last week, infrared sauna midweek. I exercise plenty, eat amazing foods. We've got travel coming up. My wife is French. We go to Europe all of the time. That's important for us as well to be with her family at least once a year for a good portion of the time. So there's little things. I'm kind of going through top level stuff. There's financial goals. There's early retirement goals myself, so on and so forth. So these are my examples. Some examples of my requirements of how I design my life. And how I design my business around my life to serve me, but also to serve my clients and customers. You have to take response responsibility. You can't go, "I want this. I want that." And then that by default, doesn't serve your clients and customers. You have to take responsibility for it, but you can always build things in certain ways that get you both because ultimately if you only get one, you get neither. So if that makes sense, take action today. And that's it for me. Cheers.