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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25
00:13:48
In this episode, Scott Becker shares 25 personal and professional mantras.
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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion and it's and it's in preparation for a webinar, we have coming up 25 mantras, concepts and business thoughts. Some of these are personal, some of these are business. And bear with me as we walk through the 25 of these. I would love somebody to give me feedback on this discussion. If you're the first one or two people to text me with feedback in this and suggestions for changes or edits at 773-766-5322, I will send you a $100Amazon gift certificate. Thank you for listening. So the first concept we talk about a business often. Whenever you're on the course of a business, if you have to choose to double down on that business if it's going well, stay the course if it's going fine, or abandon it if it shouldn't, you shouldn't keep on purs. Abandoning something is a very hard choice sometimes because periodically you get positive feedback, you get dopamine fixes, and so you want to keep going with it. But at the end of the day, when you realize there's not that much potential or it's going to be so hard to get to that potential, you got to make that decision to let it go. The easier decisions are when things are going well, to pour the coals to it and double down on it. I love that. Or it's going fine, you keep on doing it. You keep on moving along. It's doing fine. It's making some money. It's not a loser, not a huge winner. But fine, you, you stay the course. The second concept we talk about is a business investment concept, and I love this as well, is save and protect yourself like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. So even though you want to invest to win for the long run, you also have to save and put enough money away that you're safe, regardless of what the long run brings. The third and four concepts, the third and fourth concepts are more along the lines of personal concepts versus particularly business concepts. One comes from Jerry Seinfeld, which is sort of this concept of some meditation, some weights and moderate coffee that those three things get them through life. More meditation, more weights, and more coffee. I can only do so much espresso without driving everybody around me crazy and making myself insane. But the concept of working on some meditation practice very hard for me. But the concept of staying in shape very important to me. And I think that's right. On the fourth concept that Goes with those concepts is a different concept. And as you age you'll understand this better. But the concept is don't let the old man in. That you gotta be very careful in life about slowing down too much. Because as you slow down, it's harder and harder to get your mojo going, to get moving in the right direction. And I don't want to overuse this to cause people stress to push themselves too hard. But there is this fine line and if you slow down too much, mentally or physically, it's very hard to recoup and get back at that speed you want to live at and work at. The fifth concept is really for all professionals or people building a business or doing whatever job they do is when you first get into whatever you're doing, you have to get great at whatever you're doing. So if you're a doctor, you got to become a great doctor. If you're a lawyer, you got to become a great lawyer. Same thing with accountant, same thing with any kind of professional. Then at some point you move from being great at that profession to practicing leadership and practicing management and growth in that profession. But the starting point is really understanding and being great at your profession or job. So those are the first five points. Now I'll move to six to 10. The sixth point is really understand your business and the landscape that it's in. And then you're trying to always apply things in that context. So if you're a lawyer and you're in a sector you really want to understand the business sector you're in, then apply law in that context. And I think this goes for very many things, is really trying to understand the landscape that you work in and that you live in. The seventh concept is that is the economy weakens. It's important that you prioritize your spending as to what you think is really critical, that you really keep your debt under control, that you understand your asset allocation and maintain your emergency funds. The eighth concept is a different one again. A wife concept, a personal concept that injuries are better than illness. If you have an injury, you're going to know somebody else who has a horrible illness. So do your best not to whine or complain too much about the injury I've had over the last year. A couple eye surgeries, a couple knee surgeries, and by God, I am fortunate that those are injuries versus horrible life threatening illnesses. And be thankful for the injuries, not the illnesses. I know it's a hard way to look at it. Ninth concept is whether you're hiring a lawyer, a painter, Anybody you're working with, always ask for an estimate before you start a project. Again, a life lesson learned over and over and over again. The tenth concept, and we talk about this all the time, that it's one thing to get wealthy or get successful, it's another thing once you climb that mountain. To stay successful it takes tremendous drive, or to stay wealthy, it takes tremendous discipline. Never lose sight of those two concepts, both extremely important. Getting wealthy, climbing the mountain, God bless. But staying wealthy, not screwing it up, that takes tremendous discipline and willpower. And the same with so many things. Let me, that's, that's 6 to 10. Let me take a pause and give you 11 to 15. 11. And this goes to assets. Allocation of your assets is critical. What you have in equity, what you have in debt, what you have in cash, you know, if you've been investing for a long time, you doubtless have been through lots of swings. My punch in the gut came a long time ago when it everything in equities and the markets just got tanked. And of course that caused me to do a ton of studying as to what allocation was right for me. Now most financial advisors push people into more aggressive allocations. And my own take is you want to live with an allocation that you could live with. And you don't have to live. You don't have to listen to anybody's take on, oh my God, you have 80% of your assets in equity, 70% in equities. You have to have the amount in equities you need to keep up with inflation to grow, but, but at the same time be able to assess risk so that if it goes down, if the equities are really struggling, you can live and not panic. So that's allocation is critical. 12th concept is don't quit your job during a recession. Everybody at some point hates their job. If you're in a recession, hang on tight. The best thing you'd have during a recession is a paycheck. The next best thing is a business that generates money or lots of assets. But don't quit your job during a recession. Third concept is every business meeting or meeting of any sort that you're involved in, show up early or right on time. And then another caveat is keep those meetings as short as possible. We're the biggest fan of that. The 14th concept, and I think this is true, 80% of success is showing up every day on time and doing what you're supposed to do. The rest is bright drive and personal skills, but constantly showing up on time. 15th concept in anything you do. Constant and regular communication is everything. And you got to constantly focus on whether it's with clients, with people, with whatever you're doing. The more they know this is where we're at, this is where we're going, this what we're trying to do, the better off you are. Not to put a knock on President Trump, but his communication about these trade wars is awful. So it leaves a lot of us frantic and panicked. Similarly, if you're a leader of a company, a leader of anything, the more you communicate, where you're going, how you're getting there, the better off you are. So Those are concepts 11 to 15. Let me give you 16 to 20, 16 to 20. There's this concept about how you do anything is how you do everything. And I think there's truth to this and there's not truth to that. I'm a believer that you got to figure out the few things in life that you want to be great at and the other things that you do. You don't have to kill with 100% intensity. It's almost nothing worse than the person who's great in business who then you're playing some sport with and also has to kill you in the sport too. They can't help themselves. I think you have to pick and choose. Here's where you're going to be great, here's where you're not going to be great. Something to be, hobbies, something businesses and really finding out what you do and what you love doing. The 17th concept, I think this is so right on. Life is a game. It's not only about winning, it's also about having fun while playing, that you got to enjoy what you're doing and view it that way. And if you don't, it gets very old very quickly and a real prescription for burnout. 18. Marketing versus sales. I'm a big believer that marketing without a sales team or sales effort is a huge waste of money. In the ideal world, these things work together. If I got to do one versus the other, we're building a bill break product and building a sales team, then a marketing team. But. But marketing versus sales. Two very distinct things. And I see many people marketing is easy, sales is hard. So many people off put to marketing versus sales. But sales is what pays the bills. 19th and this isn't always the case. But don't upset the apple cart when it doesn't need to be upset. When you don't need to upset the apple cart, don't do it. Just relax. You don't need conflict every place. This is not intended to be a message to President Trump, but we don't need, you know, you don't need conflict every place you go. It's a horrible way to go through life. It's a horrible way to do business. It's a horrible way to do fan, to do families 20th again, the clearest way to give value to customers is literally wake up in the morning, figure out how can I do something for that customer, where can I connect them, where can I help them, how do I make them pleased, you know, what can we do for them? I think that's sort of what the clearest way to give great value to customers is. Wake you up every day thinking this, thinking how can we take care of customers? And you're likely to excel in what you're doing. So that's concept 16 to 20. I'm going to give you at least five more, particularly if my producer will sit with me for another five or so and if you're not too bored. But I can't tell if you're bored because it's a podcast. But tell me by text if you're bored or hating this or liking it. 773-766-5322. You're listening again to the Becker Private Equity and Podcast, which this week is the top ranked podcast in the Apple Business news rankings. The 21st to 25 no new ideas. There's all this concept. There's no bad ideas. And that may be true, but there are bad ideas. But there is also this concept that whatever business you're in, there's execution time versus idea time. And the two of those often have to be different. There's a certain point in the business cycle where you have to execute on what you're doing. And there's nothing worse than constantly somebody who's constantly coming to you with ideas, but not executing execution over ideas. 20 second digging ditches. This is a concept that goes with the flywheel concept and one that I use often, that if you want to dig that, if you want it to be successful at anything, you have to dig a lot of ditches, put in a lot of grunt work till you start to really figure it out and figure out how the ditches start digging themselves. You have to get enough momentum going to really make this work. And that's something that we're a believer in. We use the phrase you got to dig 10 digits where they start digging themselves. And real concept is you really got to get going to a certain extent. There's enough momentum that Things will start moving on their own, not just with your personal effort and drive. The 23rd concept, and again, this is the one that's way overstated. People often say failure is good. Well, failure is not good. Failure is only good if you're actually learning from that failure and you're not putting so much risk into that failure that it destroys what you're doing entirely. So failure is good within reason. 24th, there's this concept that culture is everything. And I can tell you in my perspective, culture is important. It really is. But it's culture plus strategy plus having the right talent and the right people. I get of a beautiful culture, but if I'm surrounded by all people that are morons, it doesn't matter how nice the culture is. We're not going anyplace. I get to have culture, strategy, right people, disciplined people, hard working people. All those things are part of it. And you might say, well, that all defines culture, but I think it's deeper than that. Culture plus strategy plus great people and a great team and ultimately finding customer product fit is really important to 25th concept that I like. Some of these of course, have come up with different readings and stuff like that over time. Is cautious when right when you're right, be cautious. Don't over understand what you've done. Great. I do. Even doubling down on where things go right and then when things go wrong, be curious as to why they went wrong and could you fix them. So those are so far 25 of the concepts, mantras of thoughts that we're working with. You know, if you're, if you like this, please text me. We'll give you the other 10 that are list at some point. But again 773-766-5322. If you send me a a text at that number and you're the first two to send me comments and texts and thoughts on this. Would love to hear your comments and thoughts. I'll send you a $100Amazon Amazon gift certificate and we'll get it to two people that listen and and and work through this. Thank you for listening to the Becker Private Equity Business podcast and thank you to the remarkable Chanel Bunger for her help every day as the best producer in the world. Thank.