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What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today I want to talk about tolerating discomfort and when it goes wrong. This is something that I have not talked about but is super top of mind for me, and I think this is incredibly relevant for any of you who are facing challenges building your businesses and trying to figure out what do I tolerate and what do I extinguish. This concept is super top of mind for me because, to be honest, I realized I had gone backwards a little bit and something that I used to practice all the time and that I learned many years ago, gosh, probably eight years ago now. And I'll kind of tell you the story that led to me wanting to make this podcast. So over the weekend, I was on a call with one of my friends who is also an advisor@accentility.com we were talking about all the things I had on my plate. You know, I was saying essentially to relieve my constraints, I just need more resources. I need more people. And until that happens, I'm just going to continue kind of pushing through and accepting that it's just a season of hard. And it has been for, you know, maybe six to nine months now. As we went through the list of here's the big items that are constraining the business, he just asked me this question that was so silly that I couldn't even believe that I had forgotten this. He said, I understand what's constraining the business, but I'm actually more curious what's constraining you? What takes the most amount of your mental bandwidth? In that moment, when he asked me, I was like, how did I forget this? I learned this so long ago. And somehow I think because I've gotten very good at managing stress and I've gotten very good at tolerating things, I forgot that I was doing things backwards. And this is what I realized. What I learned maybe eight years ago is that if I relieve my stress, if I relieve my plate, if I relieve my time, the business will always grow. I will always use my time to grow the business faster. But what I've been doing recently is I fell back into the trap of, well, what's. What is best to do for the business to function properly, Right? And it seems funny because, like, on paper, you're like, okay, here's the constraint of the business. I need to tackle this. And, you know, the stuff that maybe is bugging me or taking up my mental bandwidth can wait, but the reality is, is if you don't have a certain amount of your mental bandwidth to tackle Those challenges, how fully and how well are you going to solve them anyways? And so when he asked me this, I literally said, I was like, dude, oh, I can't believe I forgot this. Like, I completely started doing this backwards. And he was like, well, that's logical, because you're trying to do what's best for the business. But the irony of it is that if you have no capacity and you have no mental bandwidth, can you really do what's best for the business? And I wanted to share that story with you guys because it really brought me back to remembering a time when I was teaching my team this. I think I did a really good job of transitioning from constantly putting the business first to learning that sometimes, as uncomfortable as it may be to put yourself first, you kind of need to in order to put the business first. And I am definitely the type of person that if I'm being really honest, like, I will always take a bullet for somebody else. I will always put the business first. I will always accept that I'm going to be uncomfortable and stressed. And I have a large capacity for stress, frustration, discomfort, and just doing shit work that I don't like doing. For me, this has been a process that has been very difficult to learn, and I'm realizing that I've had to learn it over and over again in my career. I think it shows up differently. And I think now the reason why it's so much harder is because I'm so much more capable. And so I'm like, I can put all this on my back and I can accomplish these things. But I recognize in having that conversation, I don't even know how much discretionary effort I'm unable to put towards some of these initiatives because my bandwidth is being taken by these other things, right? What I realized is this lesson that I learned so long ago that I wanted to share with you guys, because the reason I think it comes about, and I think a lot of you probably can resonate, is because most of the time, right, in order to get the business started, we have to put up with a ton of stress, a ton of chaos, and a ton of discomfort. And then what happens is we see that upon putting up with all those things, success is created. That's not untrue. That is what happens. But what often happens is that as you're growing the business, you just assume that you constantly have to make that trade in order to grow the business. And here's what I will say in the beginning. And this is. This is where you need to understand the usefulness of tolerating those type of things is that during times of change, during times of chaos, during times of uncertainty, when you're first getting business off the ground, it's important to know how to tolerate discomfort, stress, chaos. However, as you become a leader, as you have more people on your team, as you grow your business, it actually becomes really hard to just like, brute force, good leadership. Like, if you don't show up well for your team, if you're not a source of stability, calmness, neutrality for your team, who the fuck is, right? Actually, it turns out that then tolerating those things actually creates an adverse effect in the business because your job has changed. You often go from being a doer with your hands in the dirt and in the weeds to not just being a doer, because I will say I am always consider myself a player, coach, but also having to be a leader, also having to think proactively, also needing consistent discretionary effort from your brain to put towards the things that drive the business forward and to put onto your people. And if you have these things that are sucking a ton of your attention or requiring a ton of effort just to manage the stress of, you rob yourself of that attention that you could be putting towards these other things that grow the business. And so what I recognize is that the conditioning starts really early on, right? We go through all these struggles. We're constantly in a high emotional state. And then we get through it, we push through it, and then, bam, success. And I get it, guys. I was sleeping at Motel 8 and extended stays and eating out of the gas station and had less than a thousand dollars in the bank account when we started our first business. And that was almost two years of my life. Constantly waking up in the middle of the night. I remember I would wake up every hour in a cold sweat. I would drench the bed every night because I was so stressed. And I had to push through. Truly, I had to push through. I had to just grit it and bear it to find success. And so for me, it was an incredibly hard transition to go from. I can shoulder this, I can manage this, I can suffer, and I can still come out on the other side to okay, it actually is worse for the business if I'm always suffering. Because I'll say this, I'm really good at feeling awful, and I'm really good at suffering. I'm really good at enduring pain. And I recognize and I actually like those things about myself, but I like winning more than I like those things about myself. And so once I Realize a new tool is required to get to the next level. I'm like, okay, I need to. I need to learn how to use this tool. And so I was reminded over the weekend that I need to use a different tool. And I want to sell you guys on this because I think it's something that I've always been afraid of. I am always afraid of, if I'm being honest. I don't want to be soft. You know, I don't know what it is, but it's like when I see people who have a lot of success, have a lot of money, and then they're like, oh, I can't travel without my special pillow and my this and my that, and I'm like, oh, my God, I don't want to be that person. Like, I will habituate. I will tolerate it. I will get through it. And I've just learned that. One, I don't think I'm ever going to be soft. Two, I think that there's a difference between being soft and tolerating less. And it's actually really interesting. But I see that there's definitely a link between what you tolerate and the standards you set for the team. And so that is what I want to sell you on. Because understand it like this, right? By constantly tolerating chaotic, stressful environments, by letting distractions build up, we actually slow ourselves down, okay? Because it makes everything else harder. Because we are putting our attention onto these other things rather than the things that grow our business, right? And it robs us of clarity. Because when we're constantly taking our discretionary effort, trying to manage the stress of these other things that, quote, aren't the priority right now, right? There's no room left for growth. There's no room for creativity, and there's no room for progress. And so what I've recognized is that there's a cost to tolerating a lot. There's a cost to tolerating too much discomfort. There's a cost to tolerating too much frustration. And it's funny because I make this after I made a podcast on frustration tolerance just a few ago. But I also felt like, gosh, there's another side to this, which is like, you don't need to be in constant pain, nor do I think it serves your business if you are. The way that I see this show up is that when people accept constant pain in business, it's often because they aren't holding other people to high enough standards. So you essentially become the absorber of all pain, and you protect Your team, you protect your leaders, you protect everybody else from all of the things. And I've fallen into that trap many times. And here's what I realized when I am the one who is constantly absorbing the pain of everything that's happening in the business. I don't even know how capable my team is, nor do I give them the opportunity to become capable. My number one is like, I always want people to leave here better than they came here. Pretty much everybody joins my company because they want to grow. If I don't expose them to some of the same stressors that I have been exposed to, they will not habituate the way I have habituated. Therefore, they do not gain the skills I have gained. And so for you, if you're looking at your business and you're like, gosh, I don't understand, like, why are these other people not capable of these things? Ask yourself, am I absorbing all the pain for everybody else? Am I robbing everybody else of opportunities and actually suffering in the process and not even showing up as the leader I need to be for the business? I see this happen all the time, and here's where it kind of ties in with how everybody else shows up for the business. You get what you tolerate, okay? So if you tolerate a business with chaos and noise and stress and discomfort, that is what you will continue to have. And if you want to your business to continue growing, at some point, it needs to get out of that phase. And you need to have a business that runs well, that has processes, that has contingency plans. And that isn't just you shouldering all the pain on your back every single day so that other people can avoid it. That was a lot and probably just a rant. But I really want to sell you on this concept because as somebody who prides myself on being able to dollar a lot of pain, this has been a really hard one for me to learn. And I apparently have to learn it over and over again. So let me tell you how I actually put this into action. I want to give you an analogy to think about when I'm looking at that list of all the things that need to happen in my business. The question is, which ones are taking the most attention from me. It's not which ones are going to grow the business most. It's not which ones are the biggest constraints business, but which ones take the most of my mental bandwidth right now. And I'm not saying that we ask this every time, but I am saying that we need to reflect on this frequently enough because sometimes you need that bandwidth back in order to tackle the thing that is the number one constraint of your business. And so if you are in that spot right now, this is what I do, right? I imagine myself like my attention is a jar of marbles. Okay? So if you think about it, we have so much attention. Let's say we have a hundred points of attention, and they are represented by a jar of marbles. I see that. You know, in order to grow my business, I need to hire these three people and I need to run this initiative in my CS department. Okay. That doesn't really take much of my attention, though, right? But it is what I need to do in order to grow my business. However, I have a very inadequate sales manager who I'm actually basically doing their job, and that's actually taking 30 of my attention points. Now. You cannot get more attention points. And so that 30 attention points that are put on that sales manager I can't put towards this CS initiative and hiring these three people. Though it feels selfish to say, you know what? I have to handle this sales manager thing because I don't have the attention. It actually is the right thing for the business because then you get those 30 points back, you put them into your jar, and now you have a hundred percent of your attention to put towards the initiative that grows the business. The question is, how do we audit this? How do we ask ourselves, what is stopping me? What is taking my attention? Okay, there's a few questions that I ask myself. Okay? One, I actually ask myself, what is stealing my marbles? What is stealing my attention? Right? Where's my mind? Where does it wander? Right? And these could even be things outside of business, by the way. In fact, they often are. The second question I ask myself, what people, tasks, or processes make it harder for me to grow the business rather than easier? And that's a really important question to ask because I realize oftentimes there are people who make it harder for me to grow the business, not easier. And I'm like, okay, shit, if that's where my time's going, then that's not good. I've got to figure that out. The way that I'm able to put this into action on a daily and weekly basis is I have one question that I constantly ask my team. Where do you feel stuck? Where do you feel constrained this week? Right? Because I think the word constrained a lot of people can resonate with the word stuck. People can resonate with. Right now. I ask myself the same question, which is, where do I feel stuck? Where do I feel constrained this week. Like, where do I feel like I'm not getting any momentum? I'm not able to do things because of that situation, that thing, et cetera, that's taking all of my attention and a really great way that you can do this. I talk about Monday, hour one, which is how I plan my week. But I think it's really helpful to look back at your week and think about what are the things that made you incredibly uncomfortable and took your attention this week? I know this is a very hard thing for you to do if you're like, I'm tough and like, I can deal with it. Yes, I fucking know you can deal with it, and you're tough. But ask yourself, what were the things that took your attention this week? What were the things that made you incredibly uncomfortable that really stressed you out? If you resolved those things or those situations, would you get attention back to tackle more important things? It's really just doing what I would call an attention audit. The last thing I will say on this is some of you, the reason that this is going to be difficult is because you're too fucking optimistic. Okay, here's the thing. I love being optimistic. I have trained myself to be more optimistic, which is, like, I have to think about how things will work because everybody else tells me how they're not gonna work. Honestly, my brain comes up with why they're not gonna work as well. I've had to train myself to be that source of, I would say, energy for the team, especially during times of change or when we're trying something new. However, if we just always think that everything's going to get better, if we push through it right, then we actually miss out on learning. Have you ever met those people? You're like, wow, I'm jealous because they're so optimistic, but they just never make progress and they never change things in their lives that suck. I actually can think of somebody like this. I know somebody who is married to, like, the most atrocious spouse. That was really mean of me. But I mean, truly, like, I'm like, I would immediately divorce this person, and he is just like, you know, she's. You know, it's tough, but, you know, I committed and we're going to get through it. You know, this is just a season. I'm like, it's been a season for 10 years, buddy. But, like, he's too optimistic to the point that he is creating delusion around the fact that a situation shouldn't change. And I often see this with people in business as well, which is like, the downside of being optimistic is that sometimes you tolerate too much because you try to look at the bright side. And where does this show up the most? People? It's usually people. It's not usually initiatives. You're not like, hey, we've been losing money for 20 years, and I think it's really going to turn around. You're like, yeah, fuck this shit. Cut it out. But with people, that's usually where we tend to be the most optimistic. I know that's where I get stuck, which is like, I'll do this exercise. And then I'm like, oh, these two people are taking up all my attention. And I have no attention for all these other people who are actually even more productive. Shoot. But they are great. They have so much potential. They can change. They can. And I make up all these reasons in my mind, and then I have to take a step back and say, is this out of my scope? Am I tolerating too much from people? And also, am I being too much to them? Because often when you tolerate too much, you also are too much to somebody. I am the leader. I am a boss. I'm not a therapist. I'm not a life coach. I'm not a spiritual counselor. I could do all those things, though, so it makes it tough. And I'm sure some of you can relate, too. And here's what I will say. You have to remind yourself of the scope. You've got to remind yourself of the scope of your role, because you can't be all things to all people, and you can't be the reason that somebody succeeds or fails. They are the reason they succeed or fail. And you certainly cannot be putting all of your attention towards one or two things or people that are robbing you of putting that attention towards things that will grow the business and therefore create stability and a future for the entire rest of your team. It's something that's really top of mind for me. And I'm recognizing that I'm in a season where, though I still need to tolerate a decent amount of things, I also need to stop tolerating certain behaviors, certain people, certain processes, certain things, because they robbed me of the attention to put on the important stuff, to put on the stuff that grows my business, to put on the stuff that I want to focus on, to put on me, to give myself a little time with that. I hope that you have a fantastic day, week, workout, whatever it might be. I hope this rant wasn't too ranty for you. I'm also on the treadmill. So if you hear some sound, that's why. And I will catch you guys on the next one.