5 Common Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make

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 Summary 

One of the most important things to keep in mind as an entrepreneur is having a clearly defined vision of where you and your business should go.

What’s your mission? What’s your passion?

Are you doing what you love or are just earning a living?

In this episode (19) of Making Bank, Josh interviews Logan Stout, a lifelong entrepreneur, former professional athlete, sixteen-time World Series player and coach, motivational speaker, and author of the book “Stout Advice.” Logan has become one of the world’s most successful businessmen—not by dwelling on what day of the week it is or what suit he’s wearing—but by living a life of discipline and cultivating meaningful interpersonal relationships.

During their Making Bank conversation, Josh and Logan work to help conscientious businessmen and women understand…
• The importance of visualization in driving success
• How to avoid common, early pitfalls of entrepreneurship
• Why developing personality, loving what you do, and steering clear of negativity is vital
• The difference between living and merely existing

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Transcription

Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank on the Whatever It Takes Network. In business, as entrepreneurs, it’s not an easy road. We hit a lot of road bumps, just different kinds of challenges, failures along the way, and really navigating so we can become successful is challenging. A lot of you out there are hesitant to start a business, to start that path down entrepreneurship.

When I first started my business at 14, I’ve owned over 15 different companies since then, and so I’ve been fortunate enough to really start to learn some of the hurdles, some of the challenges, a lot of the common mistakes that entrepreneurs make along the way, as well as being fortunate enough to be able to coach and mentor entrepreneurs, as well, to success. What do we want to talk about a little bit is how you can utilize these ideas and these challenges and the top five common mistakes, that I call them, to navigate and move your business forward or take that next step out of, “Hey, I want to start a business,” and give you the tools and the path to be able to get out and do that.

One of the very big things that a lot of entrepreneurs make is not having a clear, defined vision of where they want their business to go, as well as what their goals are for the business. As entrepreneurs, a lot of times, it’s like, “Oh, I want to go out and I can do this better and make money,” but that’s not really a goal and it’s not really a vision. We have to really get clear and concise on what that vision is, what that direction is and where we want it to go, as well as then, what is our goal? What is our outcome? Is it creating more value for our clients? Is it making the world a better place because for every toothbrush that I sell, I’m going to give a toothbrush to a third-world country and help a kid out?

We have to really take a look at, what are those visions and what is our clear, concise goals? How you can initially start to do this and understand what that vision is, is take out a legal pad and just start brainstorming. Just start writing down what your vision for the company is. What’s your mission? What makes you wake up every single day and have that passion, that desire, and that burning fire in your belly to move the business forward?

As we’re brainstorming and really getting this information down on paper, let’s put down what our long-term goals are, short-term goals. Who we want as our target market, how we want to structure everything, who we want around us. Who do we want to surround ourselves with, as well in business, is important. By getting all this down in our vision and making everything clear and concise as possible will start to move us forward on the right track.

Number two would be not taking the financial planning seriously. As we start our business, and we start seeing new shiny objects, “Oh, I need to have this for the business. Oh, I’ve got to have that computer and maybe this TV or this new camera,” or whatever it may be, that’s not what’s going to make the business successful. That’s just going to take more money from the business, pull more money away on where you should be putting it.

One of the things as entrepreneurs, we got to put our money in places that are going to move the needle, move the business forward to start generating revenue so we can then give back and do those things, if that’s the focus of our company, or generate revenue so we can then have that time and have that freedom to do whatever we want whenever we want as a business owner, as an entrepreneur. Not taking financial planning seriously is a big challenge that a lot of entrepreneurs face.

Number three is doing everything alone. When we do everything alone, we kind of think like, “Oh, we’re Superman,” or “We’re Superwoman and we’re gonna make this happen and we can carry the world on our shoulders and that’s what’s gonna make us successful.” That’s what’s not going to make you successful. You have to have a team of people. Maybe starting out, yes, you’re the only one, but as you grow and you leverage your business to grow and become more successful, you have to have the right team in place to make that happen. We want to start to surround ourselves with the right people that are making that happen. By not doing it alone, it is very important. Surround yourself with the right team or surround yourself with the right mentors, the right coach, somebody that’s going to help you push the needle, move your business forward, question when things are going the right or the wrong way and help you really make that business successful.

Number four is hiring the wrong people. We talked about surrounding yourself with the right people, but when we start to hire, we want to hire slow and fire fast. What I mean by that is really understand who the person is that you’re bringing on, that they do share that same vision, that they do share that same focus, and that they’re there to help you grow the business, to start becoming more successful themselves, as well as moving forward towards that mission and towards that vision that you created.

Number five. This is a really big one. As entrepreneurs, as leaders, we’re like, “Man.” It’s hard for us to admit fault. It’s hard for us to admit when we do things wrong. We have to learn how to admit our failures and admit, “Hey, it’s okay that I failed,” or, “It’s okay that I was at fault for whatever XYZ,” and then learn from that. As long as we’re learning from the process, it’s only going to allow us to move forward faster and it’s going to allow us to move forward further and push through those challenges and push through those hurdles that we’re able to overcome.

My next guest that I have on the show is Logan Stout, and he is an expert in this field of entrepreneurship, busting through challenges, personal development, and driving businesses towards success. I’m excited today to be able to have Logan on the show and share his vision and his focus with you. I am Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank on the Whatever It Takes Network.

I am Josh Felber. You are watching Making Bank on the Whatever It Takes Network. I am super excited today. We actually have Logan Stout. He is a lifelong entrepreneur, former professional athlete, which I definitely want to find a little bit more about, 16-time World Series player and coach. He’s accomplished as a successful business leader, coach, motivational speaker, as well as an author of the book, Stout Advice, and he’s empowering and inspiring entrepreneurs to achieve success in life.

Logan, welcome to Making Bank, and I’m exciting to have you on today.

Logan: Thanks, man. I love your show title. Making Bank. I love it. It’s great.

Josh: It kind of fits us as entrepreneurs as well.

Logan: It’s so true. Most people are afraid to talk about bank and money. I think ___ said ___. You have to have money. I love it. Making Bank. I like that.

Josh: Cool. Well, tell me a little bit about your background, how you got started as an entrepreneur, and kind of your path and what got you to where you are today with IDLife and everything.

Logan: Yeah, basically I started my first business at 12, which sounds crazy, but I grew up with kind of humble beginnings, if you will. Saw my mom everyday come home and smoke a cigarette and have a box of wine. Everyday she was miserable at work, was miserable about it. As a kid I’d sit there and think, “Whatever my mom’s doing, I don’t want that.” Right?

Josh: Right.

Logan: Here we are. I live in the United States of America and you have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s one of my favorite statements of the Declaration of Independence, yet most live life, liberty, and pursuit for the weekend. They don’t live the free life.  For me, I started my business when I was 12. Long story short, you know the rest of the history. I say with all the humility in the world, I was a multimillionaire in my early 20’s and I was very fortunate, but my whole life was freedom. It wasn’t for the money. It was for what the money could give me. That’s freedom to do what I want when I want. Not have to answer to people. I love to give, support great causes. It’s hard to give if you don’t have it, right?

Josh: Definitely. That’s awesome. I know that’s one of the things that has drove me all along. Fourteen is when I started my business. You’ve got me beat. Always trying to give back and be able to deliver value to people and everything. That’s what we try to do here on the show with Making Bank. Part of what I’ve talked about so far in this segment is, for me, “Hey, here’s some common mistakes that I have come across as an entrepreneur.” How I was able to overcome those and everything as well. I know as entrepreneurs, we talk about our success and how we’ve done and where we’ve gotten today, but it’s those failures and it’s those challenges and those mistakes that we’ve had to overcome that’s actually separated us and made us better in who we are today. I know along your journey, what was some of the challenges that you ran into and how you overcame those?

Logan: Anybody who had any success, I promise you they’ve had adversity along the way and the difference you either go through adversity or grow through adversity and for me, one of the things I try to train folks on is when you have a bad experience, you learn from it. If it’s a bad experience, if you don’t learn on it, right, you’re going to do it again. I think, if anything, it’s alignment before assignment. When you align yourself with the right people, life just works better. When I look back at where I’ve made mistakes, where I really had big struggles in the beginning, were not personal efforts. My struggles in the beginning is putting your team in place. An individual can play a game. Teams win championships. The faster an individual can understand that you’re only going to be as good as the people you have in your life, as soon as people understand that, life works better.

I’m so humbled, though. If you look at the people I did IDLife with, John Maxwell, who is one of my dear friends and partners here. Troy Aikman. Honestly, his track record speaks for itself. You get the point. I’m very intentional about surrounding myself with great people. When I look back at my early entrepreneurship, probably the biggest mistake I made, every entrepreneur they think they can do better than everybody else, but that’s what makes you an entrepreneur.

Josh: Right. For sure.

Logan: I can go do this better and when I learned the concept, I actually write about this in my book, Stout Advice, but the steps of mentorship, which I’m doing a podcast on that later today, but modeling, teaching, serving, equipping, empowering, and then following-up. Those are the stages of the mentorship process. When I was a young guy, I didn’t understand the mentorship process, right? An entrepreneur meant I was the leader. I was the guy. You know? CEO, founder, that just means you’re going to serve more people. Leadership is not something you make or give. Leadership is a gift that people grant you. There’s leadership by consent versus leadership by permission. I think one of the most humbling, greatest honors in the world is when someone brings you the right to be a leader in the life.

To go back, long answer to a very simple question, one of the biggest mistakes I made was I didn’t value the relationship component to success. To me, it was about the transaction component of success. If there’s one tip that I can give people it’s lasting relationships and then the ___ will take care of itself.

Josh: No, that’s awesome. I think I kind of went down that same path as well. You see that and it ends up being transactional as you realize it’s the team around you, it’s the people that you associate with, and that’s what’s going to help you move to that next level of success. It sounds like you’ve been fortunate enough, too, to really align yourself and be able to connect with some really awesome people, as you mentioned, John Maxwell and Troy Aikman and everything. I know on our earlier segment you mentioned something about working with Barbara Corcoran and everything as well. Those are just some awesome entrepreneurs to really align yourself with.

As myself or audience is watching, they’re like, “Man, that’s really cool, but how I am going to get myself to align with those kind of people?” I know when you talk or I talk, it seems like it’s so far out of reach for the normal entrepreneur, I guess you could say.

Logan: Well, look, every expert was at one point not very good. It’s so true. It’s the law of attraction, right? If you want to be around Level 10’s, if you want to be around game changers, not just folks playing a game, but folks who change it, if you want to be in line with those people, you’ve got to be that person. Bottom line, everything is personal development, in my opinion. I believe that personal development liberates a human being, creates a maximum potential in life. Individuals who aren’t committed to personal growth, personal development, not only are they letting themselves down, but they are letting down the people that are counting on them. You might say, “Well, I don’t like to read.” Well, I don’t, either, but I can promise you this, everyday, first thing in the morning, I start my Fitbit. It’s because you either make your way in the world or the world makes its way in you.

Josh: I want to continue this here in a minute right after our break. I’m Josh Felber. You’re watching Making Bank on the Whatever It Takes Network.

I am Josh Felber. Welcome back. You’re watching Making Bank on the Whatever It Takes Network. We’ve been speaking with Logan Stout. He’s been filling us in on some of the common mistakes that he’s come across as well as how to align yourself and how to raise your game to the next level to perform better, to become a better entrepreneur, and to elevate your level of success to a 10. We left off, I think, we were talking about personal development and how key and how important that is in your own life to raise you up and to move you forward with what you’re doing.

Logan: Yeah. I mean bottom line is as we grow as individuals, everything else just works better. It baffles me how individuals want success, but they’re not willing to pay the price for success. They think it’s degrees on a wall, which I have college degrees, but they think degrees on a wall. They think that’s success, but the truth is success has to be internal, first and foremost, because as I was just saying, thoughts lead to action. Action leads to habits. Habits lead to results. You have the right thoughts, the right actions, the right habits, the right results, but people don’t understand that. All people think about for the most part is what they can see and touch. You don’t really see and touch thoughts, but the thoughts will become things.

At the end of the day, when I look back on my life, and my commitment to personal development, my unwavering commitment to personal development is without question the reason I’ve become who I am and therefore become what I’ve been able to do. I’ll make sure I emphasize that point. Become who I am could only come from what I’ve done. People don’t understand that. You have to be the right who before the what takes place.

For all those folks listening to this that are new entrepreneurs, they’re grinding, I get it. I get it. All I can tell you is never underestimate the importance of feeding your mind the right thoughts. It’s alt-control-delete. Alt-control-delete. Everyday I alt-control-delete. I reboot my brain because if you don’t control the inventory in our heads, then we’re going explode junk sitting on our ____. Those people walk around on empty gas tanks, not feeding their minds, and then they wonder why they don’t get the results that they want. The bigger and better you are as a person internally, the bigger and better your results will be externally.

Josh: No, for sure. That’s one of the things as entrepreneurs, a lot of us, I think, get so caught up in the fact like, “Man.” Like you said, they’re grinding, they’re pushing, and everything else, and they forget that whole personal development piece. Reading everyday or the morning daily habits and the different things that put people in the place of success. I know on one of my other shows, we touched about modeling success and really looking at what other successful people do that are in your niche that you want to be successful in and modeling them and utilizing what they’re doing day in and day out and start putting you on that same path to success as well.

Logan: A buddy of mine, Darren Hardy, wrote the book, The Entrepreneur Roller Coaster. Darren Hardy, SUCCESS Magazine, great guy. I encourage every entrepreneur to read. It’s so true. It is a roller coaster. I think a lot of entrepreneurs that I know … The stages of building your business, whatever kind of business that is. The first stage is always like the honeymoon stage, you know what I mean? It’s like you first start dating somebody and you’re on the phone until 3:00 in the morning calling each other, “Pookie”. “You hang up first. No, you hang up first. No, you hang up first. You hang up first.” It’s like you’re in that honeymoon stage. Two’s going to come, which is adversity. I don’t care what the business is. I don’t care what the platform is. Honeymoon stage is quickly met with the adversity stage. As long as you keep grinding through that, you get to stage three which is success and stage four as ___. Stage five is the freedom stage.

At the end of the day, for every entrepreneur, the great thing is this. There’s people that, with one-tenth of everyone’s out there watching this abilities, has gone on to have huge success. That’s what I told myself because I would be distressed. I would go, “You know what, there’d be people lower than me that are going on and building their own companies and having incredible success, so why I can’t I do that?” I’m encouraged by going through adversity. Hey, it’s not ideal. It is what it is, but I promise the price is worth it.

Josh: No, definitely. It definite is worth it. As entrepreneurs and what I try to coach people on and work with them on from a mentorship level is finding out when you hit those adversities and pushing through because a lot of times you’re only millimeters away from your success.

Logan: Yeah. It’s funny, Barbara Corcoran addressed this earlier and she endorsed my book. First day on the job in the Shark Tank. Barbara and I were having dinner not that long ago. It was funny. She said, “Everybody here on set doesn’t realize is for a couple years, I was broke. Not just without money. Broke.” I’ll never forget what she told me, she said, “All the naysayers and all the people,” it was actually her ex-boyfriend said, “You’ll never be successful.” That’s what she actually used as fuel. What she was able to do was shake it off.

That’s a joke because Taylor Swift did not shake it off and wrote one of the bestselling songs in the history of music by taking all the hate and the haters out there and putting it right in her heart and using that as fuel. When entrepreneurs fail, it’s because the discouragement, the negativity, all this stuff, they take it personal in a bad way versus allowing it to be fuel that they can transfer the direction.

I’m having flashbacks. We’re having dinner and talking about that. It’s so true, though. Every entrepreneur, you’re going to through life and people that tried to drag you down, they don’t want to see you succeed without them. When you do succeed, they’ll make excuses as to why you did. “Ah, he’s lucky,” or whatever. It’s cool. That’s why I love Making Bank, what you guys are doing. Encouraging people, helping connect with people because entrepreneurs, they need a good place to go and get good feedback.

Josh: Definitely. I know one of the things that where you are now with your company IDLife and everything is giving the ability to start into a business relatively cheap and on their own and start being around other successful people and getting the personal development and the training and everything and you’ve created a really awesome atmosphere to help empower those people that may can’t just quick their job and go start their own business today.

Logan: Right. I was retired. If that’s possible for an entrepreneur, but I was retired for the third time, actually. My golf game wasn’t getting any better, so I figured I should start another company. PGA Tour wasn’t calling, right? To this day, the whole normal concept and picture you bring on life. The majority of it, of course, Troy Aikman, John Maxwell, and Darwin Deason.

Josh: Darwin. Yeah, I saw that.

Logan: We have a bunch of successful people involved, but what we’re doing, like you said, it enables men to be an entrepreneur without putting down hundred of thousands of dollars, without ___. We already did the hard work for you. Without all the financial liability. No brick and mortar building. You don’t have to deal with employees and all that type of stuff. IDLife stands for “Individually Designed Life”. I own a bunch of different companies and then, obviously, I own IDLife as well and networking marketing’s doing a 180 billion, Josh, a year. $180 billion every year.

Josh: That’s crazy.

Logan: Crazy. Over 100 million people involved in network marketing and after the 2014 census, 93% of them reported making income.

Josh: Wow, that’s awesome.

Logan: How cool is that? That’s actually why we chose to launch IDLife, this network marketing company because the customized supplementation is revolutionary. That blew my mind. Then when we decided how to go to market, we chose the direct sales approach so we could empower people to reach their dreams because I do believe in entrepreneurship. The truth is most people don’t act on potential. 99.999999 percent of people die with potential. Their dreams stopped in their early 20’s and just stayed there.

Josh: That’s the truth.

Logan: Then they’re 50 years old and they look back and they go, “What happened to my life?” We decided to do, we really try to preach to people. Live intentionally. Don’t just exist. Josh, people celebrate hump day. I didn’t even know what hump day was.

Josh: I know.

Logan: How bad is your career when you have to celebrate surviving-

Josh: Halfway through the week, yeah.

Logan: That’s what I’m saying. People watching this who don’t know what hump day is. Wednesday is hump day. I just learned this. People are celebrating, “We’re halfway through the week. Thank God. Let’s celebrate.” How pathetic is that? Go do something that you don’t want to escape from. How about that? If you have to celebrate surviving halfway through your week, “We’re halfway there,” then you’re in the wrong thing. Do something else. It drives me nuts because I care about people.

Josh: Yeah, I know.

Logan: I know people can accomplish their dreams if they’ll just make the intentional effort to do so. Anyway. Hump day.

Josh: Awesome. No, it’s been an honor to have you on the show and I think we’ve been able to really extract some awesome success points for our audience and learning about what brought you to where you are. With aligning with the right people. Pushing their failures and adversities and using those as power and energy to fuel us, to move us forward, to not looking for hump day every single day of the week.

Logan: There’s people watching this, I’m just telling you, they’re going to go, “Oh yeah, I posted on social media about it. It’s hump day.” Go do something else.

Josh: I know. For me, it’s like, “Okay, how can we use Friday to catapult and create so much success and massive action that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday is phenomenal every single week?”

Logan: I can honestly tell you, Josh, around that topic, I can honestly tell you every day is just as fun for me.

Josh: Yep. That’s what you’ve got to do.

Logan: Every day is fun for me. I don’t even know what day of the week it is. Right now, I don’t even know what day it is. Laura, what’s lunch today? What’s today? Laura, is it Tuesday? I don’t know what day it is. I don’t say that to be arrogant. Everybody watching this, I want you to understand. Go find a career, go be an entrepreneur, where you don’t have to worry about what day it is. Instead, what most people do, Sunday night, 10pm rolls around, they get that sick feeling in their stomach and they go, “God, I got to go to work tomorrow.”

Josh: That’s right.

Logan: That’s what most people do. That’s not living. That’s called existing. If you’re 80 years old, that means God’s not done with you yet. Start living. If you’re 18 years old, then you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Start living. Don’t just exist. My biggest passion is seeing people accomplish their dreams. That’s what makes me tick and that’s why we started IDLife.

Josh: Cool. That’s awesome. If any of our audience that’s watching this show and you need that step to kind of push you out that door to entrepreneurship or take that next action is go check out IDLife. It’s an easy way to get involved. The nutritional products are bar none some of the best in the market place as well as custom-designed to you. It gives you an opportunity to become an entrepreneur and be around awesome people and people that are successful as well as getting that personal development and everything that we talked about today. I really appreciate your time today and you taking the opportunity to be on the show and that we’ve got Laura over there to help you coordinate the schedule.

Logan: ___ shows and I said, “Well, what show is it?” She said, “It’s called Making Bank.” I go, “I’m on.” I love the name so much, I go, “I’m down with that.”

Josh: I know. You fired back right away to me. I was like, “Boom! Yeah. That’s awesome.”

Logan: I was like, “Anybody who could come up with a cool name like that, I’ll support it.” Thank you for having me on, man. Hopefully we added value to people’s lives today and I appreciate you.

Josh: No, for sure. I’m Josh Felber. You are watching Making Bank on the Whatever It Takes Network.

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