How to Find Success and Kill Stress as a Business Leader

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Welcome to Lunch Break a special weekly series of the

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eternal entrepreneur that gives you bite sized pieces of wisdom on how to

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build a functional faith and business.

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Each episode unpacks, a short, actionable topic you can put into practice this week.

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Let's get into it.

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Well, hello.

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Welcome back to the eternal entrepreneur podcast.

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I am Pierce Brantley cohost of the show, and I don't know about you.

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But as I get to the end of this year, I've been particularly busy.

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I don't know if you guys have been busy, I've been busy and it's making

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me reflect a little bit on what I want next year to look like and know this

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is not a new year's resolution episode.

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Uh, there'll be plenty of those to come.

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No, but what I have been thinking about is.

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Where the Lord has taken me in the last year and what that means for how

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I think about success moving forward.

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And so what I want to talk about today, I hope you get some encouragement

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out of it is how to be successful from a kingdom perspective.

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And when I say kingdom perspective, this is what I'm talking about.

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I think we get kind of weird about was a worldly success or as a godly success

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or as a kingdom success, I'm going to define successes as your business is

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growing the way you want it to grow.

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That can mean different things for different people.

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I don't really care what that looks like.

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If that's $5 million a year, if that's a hundred million dollars a

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year, a year of that's, you know, a billion dollars a year, I don't care.

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It could be customer reach.

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It could be market acquisition.

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It could be something completely tertiary from all that stuff.

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But.

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In that I think there is a way, and I want to talk about a principle to

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working in the world, but doing it with a godly lens or some, some kind

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of godly levers to keep us centered.

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So one of my favorite quotes about success, that's really kind of been

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a good filter for me is that success is on the other side of stress.

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Success is on the other side of stress.

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What does that mean?

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Well, I've got CEO, friends, as I'm sure you do with hanging out together.

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We have to stick together.

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One of them we're in a meeting and about halfway through that meeting,

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I'm going through my presentation and there's an escalation was escalation.

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Here's what happened.

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And maybe you've had something similar happened in your own business.

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Effectively about, I want to say it was 30, 40, 50, something

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like that in that range.

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A lot of customers who had sessions scheduled through his app, they

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all got canceled in one full sweep.

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He was a programming development bug and he lost tens of thousands of dollars with.

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At the click of a mouse with one mistype, uh, in, in some code and,

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uh, his vendors who supplied, uh, that service, they also lost complete track

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of who they were supposed to serve.

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Uh, for him for his business because it got deleted and it was

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extremely, extremely stressful.

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Is it stressful?

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Because the vendor was upset, the customers are upset and

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then the money was lost and the problem had to be fixed quickly.

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And the only way in that moment, they were going to be successful

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in serving their customers was on the other side of that stress.

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Another business I can think about, uh, they had a national,

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uh, outage for like three days.

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And when you talking about a subscription service model, which is

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what this was, that's a huge, huge deal because people get frustrated

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enough to just cancel their service.

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So you think about your ARR, your annual revenue, and that's a serious series.

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Another, uh, Christ following CEO, friend of mine, he, uh, took over

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his business, uh, from his bosses.

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He literally bought them out and you'd think he was on the top of

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the world within like a month.

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I believe him buying out this big business.

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He was hacked by the Russians Russian espionage.

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I kid you not can't make this stuff up.

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And they had to, uh, Uh, get the government involved, I believe.

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And they obviously had to very carefully navigate that with their

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massive, massive customer base.

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And I'm sure you have examples like this in your own life.

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It may not be Russian hacking or international espionage,

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but what you do have.

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His problems that are in between you and the success that you

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have defined for your business.

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And maybe you're just starting out on this entrepreneurial journey.

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And I want to tell you, now this isn't me like trying to speak it into existence

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or prophesize something negative on, you know, in order for you to reach

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the things you want to accomplish.

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There are going to be unheard of.

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Problems and stresses that you're going to encounter.

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You cannot imagine this asks one of your CEO or entrepreneurial buddies.

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Who's a little bit ahead of you.

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The problems and the challenges that you are going to face most of what

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you chat, most challenges that you're going to face are going to be internal.

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It's going to be you choosing to go through the pain and to grow as a

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person, but you're going to face a lot of external stuff as well that you

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never in a million years would dream would be on the other side of you.

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And the definition of success, we asked my CEO, buddy, that, Hey, You can acquire

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this company and you're going to be CEO of this massive organization, but you're

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going to have to face a Russian espionage.

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What are you going to do?

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He might second guess whether or not he wants to buy the.

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Uh, the same for, uh, being given a business and knowing that you were

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going to have an outage during the week, tens of lose tens of thousands of

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dollars and have angry people, uh, call you out on social media and whatnot.

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This is just what comes with the territory.

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And part of adjusting to entrepreneurial life means adjusting

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to a regular amount of rigor.

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Now I do not mean.

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That you are a glutton for punishment, a glutton for just, uh, stressful situations

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that you just want to try and overcome.

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But what you do have to get very comfortable with is living and being

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present in things that most people would never dream of wanting to be involved in.

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You have to be willing.

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To fight international hacking.

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You have to be willing to deal with thousands of angry customers.

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You have to be willing to take on competition and try to forcefully, put

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them out of business and deal with, you know, um, attacks coming from PR and HR.

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And, uh, the news.

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You have to get super comfortable with critique and attack and

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escalated, stressful situations.

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And.

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I not for its own sake, but because success is on the

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other side of those things.

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And so part of what it means to grow into the success that both God has

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for you, or that you have defined as something you want to go reach out is

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to get really comfortable with the idea that you're going to have to navigate

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some murky waters you are going to have to, you know, just jive with the

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punches of running a business someday.

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And anyone who's been a veteran of business ownership will tell

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you that this is not the outcome of poorly managed business.

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This is just the outcome of being in business.

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Again, doesn't mean that you have to make life difficult on yourself.

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But what I have found is that.

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I don't look for stressful situations in order to go beat them out

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and to say I've conquered them.

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Um, that would be stupid.

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But what I do do is I have trained my mind to get comfortable with navigating things

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that I would otherwise be uncomfortably.

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To do so that's what I want to talk about in this episode is how do you achieve

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success by navigating through stress?

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What are those principles?

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The first from Proverbs commit all your plans to the Lord

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and he will direct your path.

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We've talked about this before in different episodes, but this is

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critical because you're going to come across things in your path of

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business ownership that you don't know.

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If you want to continue in, you are going to come up against

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things that make you second.

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Guess whether you want to go any further.

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That's natural.

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Anyone who's built a big business or any business as successful reaches

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points in the road that make them decide whether or not they are going to

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change who they are or dig more deeply and rely on the grace of God or quit.

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And you're going to have many of those moments in business ownership, and I'm

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telling you right now, do not quit.

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If I were to stop there, that would just be kind of good.

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Good general good advice.

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Thanks piers.

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Yeah, I won't quit.

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I'll continue to make, you know, live through the hard stuff.

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I'm not asking you to do that in and of itself.

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Dedicate your plans to the Lord and he will direct your steps.

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This comes from Proverbs.

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What does this mean?

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It means that when we surrender, what is in front of us to the Lord,

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God is going to give us direction.

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And how to solve problems.

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Sometimes this is going to be divine revelation wherein he's shows you

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specifically how to solve the problem.

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Sometimes he's going to help you navigate around the problem.

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And then sometimes he's just going to give you enough peace and to stay in

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the stress and navigate through it.

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Without it affecting your psyche.

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Sometimes you just got to go through the problem.

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And it, you are going to change going through that.

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I've had some extremely difficult seasons that I never want to repeat

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again in my life, but I am different now on the other side of it.

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And I want you to consider again, I know I've said it a million times in this.

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We don't want to be a glutton for punishment, but in order for you to be the

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business owner, the CEO, the entrepreneur.

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Uh, is capable of what you see in your mind right now, you personally

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are going to have to change.

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And so sometimes God, isn't going to remove that obstacle because.

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You are going to change by dealing with that obstacle, which is going

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to make you operate at a higher level, a higher level of faith, a

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higher level of business acumen.

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And so getting comfortable with just embracing the challenge is going

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to be a really good thing for you.

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So that's principle one dedicate all your plans to the Lord.

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He will direct your steps.

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The other one is just kind of zooming out a little bit.

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I don't know about you, but anytime something comes out of left field,

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my stress, me to just spikes through the roof and I have to mindfully not

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shut down or not go, um, focus on something else that's entertaining.

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Uh, and I've gotten really, really good actually over the years

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at just staying present with.

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But that's come through years of training my mind to stay super focused and to

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know that I can break the problem, the problem is not going to break me.

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But one of the ways I do this is with some kind of mental tricks.

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And one of the most powerful mental tricks that I use is being okay with failure.

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So I, what I do give you a little bit of my secret sauce is I look at myself

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in five years and I asked myself, is this problem going to be here in five?

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Am I going to care about this problem in five years?

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And if the answer is no, then I'm fine with it.

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I know that this thing is transitory.

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It can't last that long.

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And so by zooming out, it gives me enough perspective to realize it is

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stressful as this situation is right now, as much as I hate what I'm having.

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Kind of break down or attack or fix or solve right now,

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the truth is future means.

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Probably won't even think about it.

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It's probably going to be a, uh, a forgotten thought.

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So many of the things that spike our stress meter do.

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So because we weren't expecting them, not because they're actually that difficult.

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I use the example of outages and, you know, international attack earlier.

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It's not that those things don't have.

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They do happen.

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And as you level up in success and business growth, so do your problems.

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That's just the nature of the game.

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Think of it as like a video game.

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You never get out of.

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He never escape from difficulty.

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What you do is you get better at handling it.

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Just like someone who works out gets better at handling

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heavier and heavier weight.

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You as a leader, as a business owner, get better at handling

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heavier and heavier situations.

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And they're not really heavy anymore.

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Yes, they are to someone who is untrained, but you are not untrained.

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So be willing to go through the training.

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So zooming out.

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And asking yourself, am I really going to care about this in five years?

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My customer's really going to care about this in five years.

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It is a fantastic mental sort of trick to help you refocus and, um, actually

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makes you more present to the problem.

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Now let's say it's, let's say something horrible and legal or something like that.

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And maybe, you know, it could affect your life in five years.

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Well, then what you need to do is first of all, surrender it to the.

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And trust that he's going to work through it for your good,

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because that's a promise.

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And then after that again, zoom out and ask yourself, okay, again,

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on the other side of, of this life, am I going to care about it?

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Probably not.

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And then you can zip up 10 years again and say, okay, a decade from now, am I

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really going to still be living with this?

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And there's a good chance.

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You're not in a decade.

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You're probably not going to be living with this problem.

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So those are my two principles for, um, the main ones for navigating stress.

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The last one, and it's kind of just been an undercurrent in all

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of this is be present with it.

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So many times as business owners on the outside, we like to look like we

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have it all together on the outside.

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We like to look like we're success or businesses, a success.

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We have a good brand, yada yada, yada, yada.

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What that does, why that's detrimental?

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I don't think at face value, I don't think that's such a bad thing.

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It's okay to, to persist in trying to build a steady brand and a steady image.

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How ever big caveat here, it cannot come at the detriment

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of your own personal growth.

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And so.

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When a problem hits you that you're not expecting an images your most is the

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thing that you are most concerned about.

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You will not be willing to wrestle with the problem.

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You will shut down your little entrepreneurial gig that you, you

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know, you're upstart that you were talking about and just say, ah, you

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know, it wasn't for me, I'd tried it.

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And I like to feel best you don't like to fail fast.

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You don't like to fail.

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And so you just avoided the problem.

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Quit doing that as a business owner.

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As business owners, rather, we need to get really comfortable with wrestling,

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really comfortable, comfortable with just grappling with what the

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business gives us, what our customers are telling us our own sense of not

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knowing whether we're going to succeed and just be present to the problem.

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If you just present to the problem.

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And you're solution oriented long enough, eventually something has

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to break and it's going to be the problem if you stay present to it.

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And when that's, once you've moved past it, you're going to realize you have

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a new skillset and yes, it's going to be business acumen and yes, it's going

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to be your ability to solve problems.

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But the most powerful thing that you're going to gain from it is realized.

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That you're not going to personally break and that God has been with

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you throughout the whole situation.

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And that's a really great thing.

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I was reminded this morning in church of David in the Psalms.

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And I don't remember which Zack, um, so it is, but he talks about how an army.

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Uh, it does not win a war because of monetary as it has or straw.

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And that a strong man does not win his own battles because of how strong

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is we win because of the Lord's willingness to participate with us.

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And so in the final kind of view of all of this it's humility and surrendering,

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everything we do to him, Wow.

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Realizing that stewardship is ultimately up to us and

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holding the tension of the rope.

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There's two strands of the rope that stewardship and being present to the

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problem and humility and realizing that none of it ultimately relies on us,

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keeps us tight and connected to what we are choosing to do with our lives and

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with our businesses in our time here on.

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All right.

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My friends, I hope this was encouraging to you.

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Remember that success has always on the other side of stress and reamer

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to surrender that stress to the Lord.

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As you go about all of your business problems this week, I don't

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have any real challenge for you.

Pierce Brantley: 00:19:40

Any real application for you this week?

Pierce Brantley: 00:19:43

All I would say is what is that one problem that you might be avoiding and

Pierce Brantley: 00:19:48

what would success look like for you?

Pierce Brantley: 00:19:50

If you're willing to just hang in there and stick with it?

Pierce Brantley: 00:19:53

Another year or until that problem would actually break for you.

Pierce Brantley: 00:19:59

All right.

Pierce Brantley: 00:19:59

My friends, I have a fantastic week and don't forget to think.

Pierce Brantley: 00:20:03

Eternally, thank you for listening.

Pierce Brantley: 00:20:05

If you enjoyed the show, do me a favor and leave a quick review.

Pierce Brantley: 00:20:08

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