How You Manage Frustration is How Your Business Moves Forward

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[00:00:07] Like Michael Gilmore says every week, this is his favorites, uh, time of the week and his favorite show.

[00:00:14] It’s truly one of my favorite shows as well. I’m not comfortable with all the topics that we talk about on the show because, you know, I tend to be that entrepreneur that has not paid attention to being a holistic person and being just a well-rounded balanced individual. Um, so this art, this show, actually, I believe it’s benefited me quite a tremendous.

[00:00:39] And, uh, and I appreciate Michael everything you’ve done to, to spearhead the show and, and make it. Hey, Colin, look, let me tell you it’s so good to be here. It really, really is a thank you for those kind words. I must admit you’re an inspiration as well. Uh, the way you have supported a startup club and everything like that for all of us entrepreneurs out there that are just, um, struggling in our own businesses, trying to do our own thing and to make those those dollars to be fulfilled and all those sort of things.

[00:01:13] And as many people know, um, the complete entrepreneur, it happens at 5:00 PM every single week, uh, 5:00 PM Eastern time on Thursday. And it’s a show where we look at not just the business aspects of what it means to be an entrepreneur, but we take a look at the, the life of an entrepreneur. Like how do you lead the life of an entrepreneur?

[00:01:35] How do you deal with things like family and loved ones when you’re chasing this gripping business? And, and all, all those sort of things. And it’s a show. One of the reasons why I love hosting the show, and it’s such a privilege to host a show is because when people come to the stage and they share their stories and their experiences of their life as an entrepreneur, I get so much out of it.

[00:01:58] Um, and, uh, I don’t know what you’d call them, but I find that as it’s phenomenal and Michelle, it’s great to see you here as well, Michelle, and, uh, uh, and I know you both are here each week and I’ve got so much from you both. So thank you very, very much. So, Michelle, the question for you then is what’s going on with up the club just before we start get stuck into, uh, today’s topic in the complete entrepreneur, tell us what’s happening now.

[00:02:27] Thank you. Yeah, we’re, we’re busy, like crazy over here and working really hard to get all this amazing content. That we get from people like yourself, Michael, and people from the other recurring sessions that are producing. So we’re doing a lot of recording, um, posting transcripts. We’re also doing blog posts and we have begun a podcast of actually of serial entrepreneur.

[00:02:59] So if you haven’t done so yet. Um, we would love for you to go to startup.club, www startup.club and check out the site. We also have added a schedule of our regular recurring featured shows. So we’re doing, you know, we’re fielding lots of requests from members of the club and we’re working as hard as we can to add them.

[00:03:23] Um, also, you know, just make sure you join the emailers. We don’t email very often when we do. Um, we’d like to make sure it’s, you know, good, relevant content to point to some good shows or share some resources. And on that front, exciting to us is that we finally today launched our social media accounts so official today, as we start to, you know, branch outside and share content, um, we are now on Instagram at startup club underscore HQ, the same for Twitter.

[00:04:01] Startup club underscore HQ. And on Facebook, we are startup club official. And very soon within the next couple of days, we’ll also go live down LinkedIn. Um, you know, we really are going to be trying to post good relevant content and give all kinds of tips and tricks and whatnot on all of these channels as we start to, you know, really ramp up.

[00:04:25] I really feel like we’re really just at the very beginning here. So thank you for everyone who attends these sessions, everyone who comes up to the stage and everyone who speaks it’s really greatly appreciated. And I, myself, like Michael said, I get a lot out of these sessions. It really makes me think and evaluate, you know, great ways and good ways to manage, you know, my entrepreneurial life.

[00:04:51] Thanks so much. Uh, it was great to hear from you, Michelle, as always. I’m sure you’ll be contributing a lot more to this topic you see today on the complete entrepreneurial you, and you’re looking at something that I can guarantee you. Every single entrepreneur has to deal with every single entrepreneur.

[00:05:09] And that is managing frustration, managing frustration, whether you’re frustrated with suppliers, whether you’re frustrated with staff with your first railroad with clients, or, or just frustrated with life, like what’s going on here, what’s going on? Like, why can’t I get be more successful yet? Every entrepreneur goes through.

[00:05:33] And it’s one of the most debilitating emotions for entrepreneurship and how you deal with your frustration. Um, and it quite often determines whether your business will actually go forward. How do you deal with it internally? Like how do you deal with the fact that your friends, like a regular job, they seem to be so successful?

[00:05:55] Yeah. They’re pulling in the money and they’re living in the high life and sort your stuff. And you’re trying to work out with how are you going to pay the rent next week? So how do you actually deal with that? Frustration is so important and they share with you a story. I remember I had this guy come to me and, uh, he said, I’m so jealous and angry.

[00:06:19] And I said, wow, that was a bit, bit, bit of a shock. And he goes, yeah, I’m just so jealous and angry at you. I said, why is that? He said, you genuinely get excited for other people’s success. I just get frustrated. And I said, I was a bit confused how much I said, yeah, I, I actually, I find when other people are successful, that inspires me for it and what I’m doing.

[00:06:46] And he said, yeah, but just makes it just rots away. And inside of me and I get so frustrated and angry and all that sort of stuff, when I see you getting so, so excited about other people’s success and you’re, you’re genuine about that. Then all I want to do is go a law, a long work out how I can pull you down, man.

[00:07:06] That was, that was, that was pretty full on. Yeah, but seriously, if you are successful, I will be excited for. And it’s one of the things that I learned many years ago is one of the ways that I blurt out to overcome frustration, um, has been to look at other people and let their success inspire me forward versus pull me down and right away at the core of my being.

[00:07:36] And that was the decision I was speaking to a friend of mine just the other day. And I said to him, one of the most incredible things that an entrepreneur can do most emase things an entrepreneur could do is make a decision. Make a decision you may say, well, hang on. Yeah. We make decisions all day every day, but it is incredible.

[00:07:58] If you make a decision or do a lot, that you’re going to be excited for another person’s success versus have it rot away at you inside, like some festery wound of jealousy and all bound up with frustration and everything like that. If you’re going to go along and use that as an inspiration, that’s a decision you need to make.

[00:08:18] And it’s a difficult decision for some people. Let me tell you when your brother or sister or a, or a loved one is so successful doing what they’re doing and you are struggling away. It’s had you, you let that green-eyed monster called her jealousy and frustration welled up inside. Or do you use that as something to inspire you forward?

[00:08:40] And it all comes down. To a decision, but frustration in is sales, every single entrepreneur. And, uh, it’s something that we as entrepreneurs need to go along and work at, have to manage it. Frustration, not necessarily a bad emotion. Frustration can be good, because like I said, it can inspire you forward, but it’s how you handle that frustration is so important.

[00:09:04] So Colin, here’s a question for you to call it. You’re running, you’ve run so many businesses over the years and you’ve been moving forward with these businesses. I bet you, it hasn’t been all like flowers along that journey. I bet you, there is times that you just want to go crazy, like in a stock member or a supplier or something like that, or a client.

[00:09:26] And you’re sitting there get onto the clinic here at like, what do I do with this situation? So you have it, something you can share on that in an event where you use go show. Oh, my gosh, Michael. Um, you, the timing could not be better. This is not going to be a very, um, politically correct conversation. I know some people in startup club might get frustrated with what I’m going to say, but, um, an hour ago we had Kevin O’Leary coming on to the show.

[00:09:58] Um, we promoted the events with the organizers and, um, we joined the event. We opened the room, we had two to 300 people show up. Initially we would have grown the room, you know, once the organizers came on with Kevin O’Leary and I started like, okay, they’re a bit behind. Let me tell you what’s going on with start-up club.

[00:10:22] And I talked for about almost 10 minutes. I had a little help from Michelle there as well, you know, you know, trying to update everybody. And then at a certain point, I said, guys, I must apologize. I don’t know what. Kevin. O’Leary’s just, you know, I talked to him last month, whether I did talk to him last month on startup club and he was a really good guy and, uh, I was extremely frustrated.

[00:10:46] And Olivia, are you, are you, I know you’re recording Olivia, how are you alive as well? Can we ask you a question? Um, you know, you asked me a question you turn around and say and said something to me. And I was just, I was very frustrated and it was calm. And I’ll tell ya, I’m trying to analyze what happened at that moment when they, the organizers didn’t show up with Kevin O’Leary and, uh, and the story’s not about that.

[00:11:12] Cause Kevin Aleah does show up five minutes later and they, they tried to put the room together, but of course, you know, the whole thing was bungled horribly. And we know we’ll obviously have a conversation with the organizers. Um, but how did I handle that moment? And Michelle, how did you handle that moment?

[00:11:28] Because you were on stage with me as well, and we’re talking.

[00:11:33] Gosh. I know my heartbeat, my heartbeat was going faster and faster. I was getting angrier and angrier, I think for me, yeah. I just try to go into like, how do you recover? Right. But, um, I, this is such a hard question called, right? No, I got, I was going to say Michelle is when I started, I started getting all of a sudden I started pacing.

[00:12:00] I, then I, then I recognized I was gonna, like, I was really getting angry and I said, call Liam. Now call the organizers. Now I was like, you know, talking pretty hard stuff, but then I, then I, then I realized, okay, just breathe again, Olivia, if you’re here, I really want to hear what you asked me the question.

[00:12:17] Like, you’re not, like you said something like, do you not just call people assholes or something? I can’t remember exactly what she said, but she said something like that. No, it’s just not worth it. It’s just not worth it. So, but I think I recognize what I did at that very moment when I was getting frustrated was I just had to breathe deeply, calm myself down, Michelle.

[00:12:37] I mean, I’ll pass it to you in the back to you, Michael. I mean, if in the audience too, and you experienced those moments, so we come on, share them with us, come on stage. Let’s talk about it. Yeah, for me, it’s very difficult, right. Because you know that our team spent a lot of time, like trying to make a big effort to like boost the attendance and promote it.

[00:12:59] So, or it’s obviously very disappointing and I am, yeah, I got very upset and frustrated in the process. But for me, I, I’m a very like, okay. Like I like to try to think what is the lesson in? This is the only way that I can call myself down. If you ask the question, it’s the only way, like, how do I get control of this?

[00:13:24] How do I manage this in the future? I like to try to say to myself, okay, you learn, you know, everybody’s going to learn a lesson here, even though we didn’t have control over it, but already I’m thinking about like, measures that I want to put into place to help mitigate that from happening in the future.

[00:13:43] So for me, it, I have to look at it that way or else I won’t want to like still be involved in it. Right. Or else I’ll get disheartened. I have to look at like, okay, how do I fix this moving forward? How do I make this never happen again? That’s what I try to do. I know it’s not perfect, but it’s what I need to do for myself.

[00:14:06] Um, emotionally, no, I think what you’re being very smart. You’re Michelle. Even though we didn’t control the Kevin O’Leary events and we had organizers doing it, but we were promoting and we, we, we went on stage to help them out. Um, what you’re doing is saying, what did we do wrong? I know it sounds crazy.

[00:14:27] Like you could argue, we didn’t do anything wrong. We should never change a thing. Or you can say, what did we do wrong? Or what can we do differently? So this doesn’t happen. Like, what do we do? So it’s, you know, we can recover quickly. Cause obviously we don’t control other people’s. Right. So I just have to think, okay, what are measures that we can put into place?

[00:14:51] Like I’m the queen of backup plans? Like, you know, w I, I think all of us as entrepreneurs are very familiar with that. So just like, how do you manage that? You know, moving forward, have the backup plans. So you’re not left out on the limb, um, you know, and even worse, um, involving other people in it, right.

[00:15:11] By involving three other 300 other people, like, I felt more bad about that than anything.

[00:15:19] Wow. What a story. Let me tell you, it comes out in your voices, both you, Colin and Michelle, that, that level of frustration that you planned this great event and, uh, all fell to pieces. Um, and so you then begin to put it all together, put it back together a bit, a bit at a time and everything, and you’re chasing your tail.

[00:15:41] And Michelle, I think you, you hit a really key thing there, which was, what did I learn from this experience? What did I learn from this experience? Because it’s true that learning mindset that you can actually deal with, things like that when they happen to in the future. And the only reason why guests is the only reason why you asked that questions, because you’ve hit things like this before, where all the plans of mice and men came crashing down.

[00:16:09] And then you just got to deal with it. Um, I remember many years ago I was, um, uh, told that, uh, uh, I was flying to Bangkok. I was told that, going to be speaking, this there’s this little event. And, uh, the organizers told me, yeah, this is this just little tiny van you’ll, you’ll be fine. And I said, okay, great.

[00:16:29] So I’m used to speaking at different conferences and everything like that, and it’s not the ride in the back midnight. And I thought I’m just going to get down to the hole. Uh, and the hotel is checking that and I went down there and I expected to be like, like a roommate, cause it hold the little room and I put up the door and it was like a two and half thousand seater auditorium filled with chairs.

[00:16:53] I thought, okay. I then found out, I’m sorry. I thought, okay, that’s getting a little bit different. Then the next morning I got up really early because I thought there’s this beautiful lawn, this thing. And I found out that I’m going to be speaking to two and a half thousand people. The person before me was the head of Coca-Cola Southeast Asia.

[00:17:15] Um, and the press after me was the head of MTV. And I was in the middle and I went and spoke to the AVP people. I found that my presentation was in the wrong format size for the screens and all that sort of stuff. So I had to redo my entire presentation. I’ve never been so frustrated in my life with the people who are coordinating the whole thing for me.

[00:17:39] It was unbelievable. But like you said, You ended up developing a series of mindsets and one of them is learning and you go, okay, what can I do to prevent this from happening and happening in the future? And, uh, and you work your way through the problem. It was great event and all that sort of stuff. And, uh, it was highly, highly successful for me.

[00:18:02] It was fabulous, but you know, managing that frustration at that time of come on, come on, what’s going on here. Like I should have been known this way beforehand and Alexa stop, um, uh, is, uh, can be debilitating for some people. But anyway, um, I just wanted to just hear from some other people in the audience, you’re Chitra Chitra.

[00:18:23] It’s great to have you here. And, uh, on the complete entrepreneur, we’re talking about managing frustration, so welcome to the stage, right. And, uh, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how do you manage as an entrepreneur frustration. Welcome to the. Thank you, Michael. And my CTO, Michelle and Colin. I think one of the things in this kind of scenario and I’ve faced it as well, because we interview CEOs here on clubhouse is this idea that my expectations are the same as the other person’s expectations that they understand that even though I’m investing all this time, that they have a little skin in the game as well.

[00:19:00] And I find that at times when it’s not. Balanced, uh, they find it easy to kind of change the scenario where they’ll come in later to the event. They may not show up. They may try to change it last minute, change it to 30 minutes instead of one hour. And so I’ve learned over time to try to make sure that I have like a direct contact with the person speaking so that I can help have them through clubhouse, help them if there’s any problem and make sure that I’m also upholding my promise too.

[00:19:29] Like you guys were saying the audience, the other moderators as well, because they’re investing time in this too. So I think it’s been tough. I think understanding that everybody has to be invested is, is really key. But for me, as well as like how Michelle was kind of seeing. My perspective is to say that, you know, what I’m trying to do is make a good experience for those who are in the audience.

[00:19:53] And that’s the end of the day, that’s the most important thing. So how can I turn this around so that everyone benefits, and I think you guys did a wonderful job. You were trying to continue the conversation and, you know, in those instances, that’s the only thing you really can do. But I find like trying to like, change your perspective and see like, how can I learn from this?

[00:20:11] How can I make sure in the future that this doesn’t happen? And additionally, like how can I make sure that everybody is invested, that’s involved? Um, that’s been critical, but this is a constant battle. You constantly run into new things that you didn’t expect to happen. And it’s almost never ending, and there’s not like one great complete solution, but to constantly analyze it really helps.

[00:20:34] And I applaud you both. Um, You know, for putting that room together because that’s, you know, a big speaker and I know it’s not easy and how you handled. It sounds really great. And I’m sure people appreciated your effort. So you saw that debacle, like you were part of that you were in the room, you were in the audience.

[00:20:50] I mean, I don’t consider a debacle. I think actually many of us learn from that type of experience as well, honestly, because you know, how many people would actually open up a room like this right now and talk about it after the fact and like, have like a discussion where we can all learn from how do we improve from this?

[00:21:07] I don’t think very many people would do that, honestly, because everybody’s trying to make sure that they look polished and they look like everything is going a hundred percent. And, but for many of us, it doesn’t. And so I applaud you for having this room. Hey, no, I appreciate that. Um, and it was just a great, now I’m still angry about it and, uh, it’s fresh.

[00:21:27] Right? Um, it’s embarrassing, you know, when you, you know, it’s like, oh, okay. Here’s Kevin O’Leary and then he’s not. And it’s like, uh, uh, and then you talk for 10 minutes and it’s like, uh, I mean, you can understand how bad that was. He did come on five minutes later through gregarious. And is it was, it was not handled well compared to a month ago when it was handled very well.

[00:21:53] But, uh, but I will say he’s a great guy, Kevin O’Leary and gregarious is a great guy too. I just think they’re football was fumbled in this one. Yeah. It’s one of those things that happen sometimes in life also is that we ended up impacting frustrations. Let me share with you a funny story. Um, uh, Actually one, me too.

[00:22:19] He said, look, I’ve got this client is a management consultant. I got this client and the UK. And, um, uh, I, I, I need some help, um, with the client and wonder if you can jump on a call with me and I say, yeah, that’s fine. Now to give us a background to this, I’ve spent a lot of time over the years, really developing a brand of being professional and all that sort of stuff online.

[00:22:44] That’s very important for me is that if I say I’ll do something I’ll deliver on that, whatever I’m going to do and all that sort of thing. And so I jumped on the call and the zoom call. And so my brother, he couldn’t help himself. He goes, this is my little brother. He’s going to help you out with, um, uh, with, with the problem with your websites and when your marketing strategy and Alexa stuff.

[00:23:08] And I’m here. I hear this and I get the level of frustration. Get like, I don’t know what it is between siblings. It’s just, just, um, it’s just one of those things. I was just so frustrated that I’m 50 odd years old, mid fifties. And I’m the little brother. Yeah. And, and you can sort of put it off or anything and they say, oh, whatever, it’s, it’s what happens.

[00:23:31] But also not, not, I’m going to deal with this one sometimes with frustrations entrepreneurial, you need to deal with it. And so I said to the client, I said, it’s really great, Alicia, you’ve got, the brother actually knows the topic and be able to help you out. It’s like slam dunk. Yeah. I thought, no, I’m going to deal with this at sometimes with their frustration and whatever it is, it could be a sibling person.

[00:23:55] Your buttons could be a client. Could be, it could be a supplier. You’ve got it headed on, go straight at it. Sometimes you need to do that. Other times you can deal with it internally. I needed to let it breath. Other times you’ve just got to hit it off, go straight at it. Uh, I later talked to my brother about the scenario.

[00:24:14] I said, don’t you ever did use me as your little brother again, but there’s a separate issue. Cause he wanted me to help him out with some other clients. But, um, it’s so important that we make a decision about how we manage the frustrate. As entrepreneurs, if you let the frustration drive you, then it’s very, very different.

[00:24:35] That means frustrations in your driver’s seat of your business or that situation. If you say, no, I’m going to make a decision and this is how I’m going to respond. I’m going to learn from this situation, I’m going to go along and make a decision to hit it on straight and go straight at it. I’m going to be, um, uh, laid off some steam and another different way.

[00:24:57] Yeah. You got to make a decision of how you’re going to deal with it. It’s the most powerful thing you can do to manage frustration. But, um, th that’s a funny story, Michelle, go for it. Yeah. I mean, you just made me think of something, Michael it’s, it’s something I say to myself a lot. I don’t remember where I heard the saying, but here, here it goes.

[00:25:21] And I love this being mad or frustrated at someone else is. Drinking poison and asking the other person to die. Okay. Think about that a little bit. It’s like, you’re just killing yourself. You’re killing your soul and you’re trying to direct it towards them, but you’re not hurting them. You’re really like killing your soul.

[00:25:47] You’re killing yourself. So I like to think about that. And, um, when I’m really, really mad at somebody, I oftentimes reflect on that.

[00:26:00] Yeah. How true, how true Michelle, that it’s just, um, the other thing I view it as this is that when you’re mad at someone else and you let that control you, you actually put them in the driver’s seat of your own life. They’re now driving you. They’re now pulling your strings. On the other hand, if you make decisions, then you’re still in country.

[00:26:26] And that’s really about what being emotionally intelligent meant, how you’re reacting to the situation. Uh, however, that is, and it’s, um, it’s one of those really important things as entrepreneurs, we need to be able to control ourselves before we can control our circumstances. We need to control ourselves before our circumstances.

[00:26:51] If you go along, I think you can control your circumstances. And if I control my circumstance, I’ll be able control myself. You’ve got in the wrong way. You’ve got in the wrong order. And it’s just one of those things in life, you know, it’s um, uh, and it can be a big challenge, but anyway, it’s, it’s so good to have Victor here, Victor, I want to welcome you as the, the, the complete entrepreneur as we’re discussing managing frustration.

[00:27:16] So welcome to the stage victim. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Hi guys, uh, lovely to see you all, um, really agree with, uh, every things that people have been saying, especially from a known in aspects, you know, um, as entrepreneurs where we are constantly, constantly learning, be it, uh, in, if we’re trying to obtain industry, industry knowledge, emotional knowledge as we go through.

[00:27:45] Um, so it’s, it’s awesome that this room is, is here as well to keep, uh, keep learning. Um, basically when I. Left uni. I started off a business in Peru. It was called mama Manco was like a Peruvian fashion, uh, business. And it didn’t go that great. There was a lot to learn. There was a lot of frustration around it.

[00:28:09] One of the I’m going to throw out some metaphors. So bear with me. All right. So one of the main things that I, uh, learned from that is that, uh, and it goes alongside something, some things you were saying, Michael, it’s great to build this knowledge and, and learn from it. But if you don’t put any action, then it’s almost like you’ll be going round in circles.

[00:28:34] Imagine your, your entrepreneur career is when you are on a rowing boat and you’ve got the two paddles one’s knowledge one’s action. If you just use one of, or the other. You’ll be going around in circles. You need to have that combination of both and be prepared to take that leap sometimes. Um, and yes, frustrations will come, uh, because errors will be made.

[00:28:59] So the two important things would be to learn from the zeros, think what you could have done differently. How and how would you could have improved the situation to not repeat it in the future. Um, and when you. Yeah, constantly facing these problems. Obstacles, it’s usually best to just depart from the area.

[00:29:21] At least for me, I like to, uh, take walk, uh, separately myself with nature and just start appreciating how it sounds very cheesy, but how beautiful life is really, you know, in the simple things. Um, you can do meditation as well. You know, it’s almost a way to just depart that your mind go have a shower or something and relax almost because like, I’m sure a lot of people in this room have maybe been in an argument with someone, uh, it could have been when you were, when you were a kid with your spouse and whatever.

[00:29:57] And usually when you did part of that situation, you know, the best thing what to say, and that is usually to resolve the issue or if you’re, if you’re, um, a bit, um, How can I say it a bit frustrated, still, you know, he’s the best comeback. Um, but I guess my final, um, piece of advice regarding the frustration, and again, this comes when you are, when it’s almost feels like everything is.

[00:30:29] Overwhelming. Um, you sort of get into the habit of creating these problem ghosts. I like to call it. They’re basically just imaginary situations of like the worst thing that could happen, which is good in a way, but when you’re doing it constantly and just go in on, on overdrive almost that can be really, uh, toxic, uh, to, to the way you work.

[00:30:55] Um, some a really nice analogy that I, I heard is that when you go, when you ski or snowboard and you’re going off Pierce, then you might see it in videos or do it yourself. Uh, and there’s loads of trees down the slope. It looks really complicated and really hard as, as the skier, the one involved, you know, you’re always amazed of how they’re not hitting the trees.

[00:31:19] Um, but there is a part. That skiers followed down this slope and the skiers. What they do is they focus on the path. They don’t focus on the trees. If you focus on the path, you can easily evade the trees. And actually the trees look really far apart. So there is no way you’ll be able to hit them. It’s once when you start focusing on the trees and the abundance of, of, of, you know, obstacles in your way, that’s when you’re going to hit a tree, you just think about it.

[00:31:53] Like the brain just can’t think about. Anything negative. Really? If I told you don’t think of an infant, you think of the phone. So I guess that ties in nicely with these problem ghosts and departing yourself from the situation really helps clear your mind and almost start fresh in a clean slate. So I guess that’s my yeah.

[00:32:15] Oh, big groups of great advice there. I must admit I’ve got a picture of an elephant in my mind now was a bit, which is a bit annoying, but, um, yeah, so true. Like getting, getting that, remove yourself from the circumstances. Yeah. I wouldn’t have come to GYN a sec in a second, but just before we do it, I want to ask you a question and this could end up becoming personal in that sort of stuff.

[00:32:39] But the question is this, how do you feel now from the time of frustration about an hour ago? What are you feeling at the moment? Well, a guy saw it too. He saw, he saw what happened there, right? Um, what am I doing right now? I’m, I’m enjoying a glass of wine. Um, substance abuse is always a good alternative.

[00:32:58] I’m teasing, I’m joking. Uh, but I am actually doing that right now. Um, I’ve calmed down. Um, I did go for a little walk. So it’s interesting. You said that Victor, because I remember having epic argument with my business partners when I was in Ukraine about 15 years ago. And you have to understand in, you know, you don’t normally just walk around Ukraine, but I had such an argument and I knew there were two alternatives.

[00:33:27] One I could scream and yell back and, and whatnot, or I could just get up and walk out. And I just did that. I just got up and walked out and I was walking around the streets of Ukraine in a pretty shady places. And, and, uh, eventually they found me, but I just decided it was fight or flight. Right. I decided to, to take the, just go for the walk road and it did calm me down and it did make, give me a chance.

[00:33:51] For, um, I know a psychologist, if we have one in the audience would be interesting, but I know the, the hippocampus HIPPA, the front of the brain, you know, it goes like you begin to not think when you get into those moments. And, um, and if you can take that breath and you can breed, like I did, when, you know, when Kevin O’Leary and the, there wasn’t Kevin Laura’s fault, it was the organizer’s fault.

[00:34:16] They didn’t show up on time and, and just take the breath deep, breathe deeply, and then go for a walk that helped me out tremendously. So thank you, Victor, for sharing that. Yeah. So, so Colin, when you think back on it now, you’ve got your glass of wine in your hand, the lecture stuff as an entrepreneurial activity of this event.

[00:34:38] What’s your thoughts now about what pred transpired versus when you’re in the middle of it? Are you now thinking, okay. Make it not happen again? No, no. Michelle helped me out with that. I mean, she was the one who earlier said that, okay, what can we do differently? What can we learn from it? What can we, how are we going to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future?

[00:34:58] What could have we done differently? You know? And I said to Michelle, I said like, this was like before I was a little angry too. Right. But I said, look, when we’re doing a big event with big celebrity, we need to have phone conversations in advance so that we have no miscommunication. Now don’t get me wrong.

[00:35:17] Everything was a writing. This, this event was planned for a month and something went wrong with the organizers, but I still feel like we need to have, like I just said, my point is, learn from it and what can we learn? So it doesn’t occur again, even though we know it was not our fault and it’s easy to say, okay, but it’s easy to say, it’s not our fault.

[00:35:39] But if we say, what can we do differently next time, our couple will be that much better off. And we will be that much better off my. I can’t wait to hear from guy. Cause he was there. He was in the audience watching this happen live when it was like all fallen off the rails. Yeah. It’s really interesting that constant themes coming through, which is, it is all about learning and God, you were in that room and you’ve got a great breadth of experience on how do you help entrepreneurs manage frustration, stuff like that as well, and even in your own business.

[00:36:15] So what do you share on this topic on managing frustration? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for allowing me to share, you know, I want to first off

[00:36:28] ’cause. That was, that was, uh, that was tough. Um, so thank you for just what you did. And I think, you know, I think your, your credibility, just, um, your, your abdomen and how you can take care of people and want to serve them at the highest level, a standard. Reading within the past few weeks, but you know,

[00:36:55] You know, in under five minutes, you know, you’re, it, it shows how much, how well you really serve people at the highest level. And I wouldn’t just say at the highest level, I would say at the highest, most truthful level. So, I mean, it happened, it, you know, like Michelle said, what can you grow? What can you glean from this?

[00:37:14] How do you move forward? And with that, there’s two things on this topic that immediately come to mind for me. Let me just unpack one of them right now. And if time permits a move to unpack the other, um, and the first is, you know, and, uh, I’ve had, I’ve been frustrated with my employees. They’ve been frustrated with me, my children, my.

[00:37:34] Um, my I’ve seen clients, might the leaders, the entrepreneurs frustrated with their team. And it’s like, what is, you know, how do we navigate this process and what I’ve, what I’ve learned, um, in curating just all of these friction points that I’ve seen is that there’s patterns that show up every single time.

[00:37:53] Right? And it’s for patterns that actually show up, and this is how I’ve moved to operate now. And even when I go off course, and what I’m giving you to just share with you, you know, I have to laugh when I go back and look at the four patterns and the first, no matter what happens, there’s patterns that serve you and as patterns that deserve you, and then there’s emotional patterns that serve you, or they don’t right where you’re you’re.

[00:38:17] If I could say it pissed off, right. Or you’re excited about something and those emotional patterns lead, the thoughts. Th that take place and those thought patterns lead the behavioral patterns that lead the action patterns with all of those patterns, you know, which one can you really ought to focus on to really have some success and there’s thought patterns, right?

[00:38:38] And, and, you know, if it’s, if the thoughts are moving like noise, would you can’t really control them. Don’t w what, um, what am I saying? Don’t try to, don’t worry about trying to not think thoughts, but cause that’s an impossible feat. It’s a futile effort. What you need to do is you need to replace the thoughts for other thoughts when something happens, if it, let me just put it, like if my wife comes in and we.

[00:39:03] ’cause she can hit my triggers better than anybody. And I know everybody’s married knows that, right. What I do is I start looking at my own patterns, my emotion, my thoughts, my behavior, my actions, and I look at where I can replace my thought pattern with another thought about how I love her, or just something another top for me, it’s scripture.

[00:39:22] I go to the Bible and I’ll grab a scripture and replace the thought that I have with that thought and try to focus on that door and apply it. And when I do that, what happens is that that trigger that she has in which she, what happened, whether she chose to move in that trigger and that it’s gone, because now my focus is on my patterns and not on what happened.

[00:39:45] And so that’s how I teach my clients. That’s how I get past frustration by looking at those patterns. And, and I try to always find patterns of. Uh, w what a great amount of advice like it really is fabulous advice. I, as always taking a look at the patterns of your behavior and understanding what’s going on here, uh, and then saying, what can I do?

[00:40:11] What can I do? How can I replace my thinking with something else? Let me share with you guys a interesting story. This happened the other day. And it’s a way that I found actually also helps me manage frustration. And it’s a strange story where my wife is looking at me and she says, what are you doing?

[00:40:36] And I said, I’m standing on one leg. And she says, I can see that, like why? I said, well, I’m doing the experiment share. What’s the experiment. What’s this, I’m staying in one leg, I think, close my eyes. And I immediately. Oh, well, I didn’t quite follow, but yeah, but you get the, the idea doing, and, and I said, if you gotta understand, this is an analogy of business on how you can manage frustration and everything.

[00:41:08] She goes, I have no idea what you’re talking about, Monica. So you’re standing on one leg. What are you doing here? I said, Taylor, this, if I stand on one leg, this is like, when you’re managing your business, not everything is balanced and you’re trying to go along and get things done. The thing is it will hit you and everything like that.

[00:41:26] And you can hop and you can look around and I’ll, let’s just stop. I’d better. Make sure that does knock me over and everything. That’s the present. When you close your eyes, you have a vision of the future. And the tricky with business in many, in many respects is to have a very clear vision of the future.

[00:41:47] I said, what’s the difference between me looking at the kitchen with my eyes versus if I close my eyes and I have a picture of the vision in my mind, it should be no difference. If it is a reality for me, that picture, then that that future should be my present and I’m not going to suddenly fall over. So I said to her, the vision for a business should be so in front of the center of an entrepreneur’s mind that every bit of frustration, every, um, uh, hit, you may take along the journey.

[00:42:23] It doesn’t destabilize you cause you to fall over because you’ve got a picture of the vision in front of you. And it is so crystal clear it’s as if you’ve got your eyes open the present, but it’s actually. And she goes, oh my gosh, Michael, you think of the stupidest things, but yeah, it’s so true though.

[00:42:43] And one of the ways you can deal with frustration in your own business is having that picture of the future, have that vision for your business. What does it need to be like? What’s it going to be like that? No matter how many other people in your, in your friendship circle, you gonna have success there being all that successful, no matter what occurs, you’ve got that picture.

[00:43:07] You’ve got the picture of the future. And that picture is such a reality for the entrepreneur that it passes everything. It just fades away because you’re living in the future and that future has become your present. Yeah. And, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s a strange thing. Yeah. By the way to this, to this day, I’m still trying to try to get a picture of my kitchen.

[00:43:32] So clearly in my mind that I can stand on one leg. If you ever done it before having a go with just one leg. Yeah. But that’s what we need to be like with entrepreneurs, as entrepreneurs being very clear on a picture, a vision, because if you could have clear vision in your mind, it doesn’t matter what all the other things are happening around you because you already know where you’re going to be in the future.

[00:43:57] Yeah. And that’s something that I find really does inspire me and it causes me to be able to move forward and deal with that. So I’m going to get back to you, both Michelle and Colin, there may be a bounce back to guy as well on this, on the whole thing of what is the vision versus that you have per startup.club as an example, or one of the other businesses.

[00:44:19] That’s fine. What are the vision that you have and does that actually help you manage. Michelle we call it. Yeah, no, I absolutely. Um, having a clear vision is extremely important because everyone in your organization understands where it’s going. I’m going back in time. A bit to 2006, the wheels were coming off the bus on one of my companies that we took it public.

[00:44:52] And, uh, we really had a lot of conflicts. The employees were frustrated, the shareholders were frustrated. Investors were losing money. The stock was down from its IPO price. And, um, I hired a CEO coach. He came in his name’s Patrick, Dan, and we began to implement goal setting and we did 90 days of, uh, execution, two days of strategic plan.

[00:45:21] We would set up three to five goals for the quarter for the company. And then every individual would have three to five. Every executive would have three to five goals for the company and that methodology put us all into alignment. And you would be surprised, Michael and guy, how much less frustration the employees had.

[00:45:44] We had 600 employees in the company at the time and they were just before this happened, you know, I would say something, they’d go one way. My brother, who is my partner would say something they’d go the other way. Uh, another individual in the company would be doing something different, total lack of alignment.

[00:46:01] If you can get all of your people in alignments and set up goal setting and have your vision complete. And if you could add one more thing, one more thing. As we added values, this is what my CEO coach and this comes from burn Harnish. Um, and Patrick Theon, my. Um, I believe Jim Collins might’ve started this, but either way values first and foremost is respect.

[00:46:26] When our customers succeed, we succeed recognize greatness, and we spend it like our own. Those were the four pillars of the company. Hostopia back in 2000 to 2008 or 2009 before I sold the company. But the fact of the matter is I can remember them and I’m not reading them off there. And I’m just sitting in the boardroom here and my, um, incubator.

[00:46:48] But the fact of the matter is I can remember them is important because you want them to be memorable. But if you can set up those core values, the core pillars, you can set up goal setting and, and great alignment with all of your organization. The frustration just disappeared. Yeah, I completely agree with Colin on that.

[00:47:10] I really do. Um, I ended up taking it to, to another level, a bit more personal level as well. And that is, I remember when I was in my twenties, uh, just got married and my wife and I said, okay, what sort of family do we want to create? What is the vision for our family? And we were away in Japan at the time, uh, doing some work in Tokyo.

[00:47:37] And, um, so we, we nutted out across a period of about a month, what it is we actually wanted to create as a family. And that became the vision for our family because we wanted a direction for our family. And, uh, it wasn’t just a whole lot of mumbo jumbo words, but it was really, really important for us tonight that I printed it out and I carried my wallet.

[00:48:02] Every eye goes everywhere. Um, and if I ever have any questions or anything like that about like, what am I doing? The kids are driving me crazy whenever I go. And I look at that little diesel and it pulls me through the frustration. It’s like, it sucks me forward. There’s a great scripture, actually, guy, you probably know this.

[00:48:24] And it’s the people that have vision parish or person without revisions in the process of perishing. They’re not even coasting somewhere that coasting nowhere because they’re actually letting other people be in the driver’s seat of their life and pushing them to the left and pushing them to the right and the lesser stuff where that’s the bank, whether it’s a client, whether it’s a supply or whatever it is in your entrepreneurial activities, you need to have that clear vision because that’s the thing that’s going to get you through.

[00:48:53] In many cases through times of frustration, Do you familiar with that? People without vision perish. And is that something you think is really important for entrepreneurs? That’s what Colin was relating as well, a hundred percent on, on so many levels. I remember in my first company, um, I was 21. I started an auto service.

[00:49:16] Didn’t have mechanical experience. Really didn’t have much business that.

[00:49:24] My customers. I want to teach consumers how to ask the right questions, but more importantly, recognized the right answers in order to repair so they can have control because I saw people that either were being ripped off or they weren’t show up. They will be ripped off because they won’t be in community.

[00:49:37] You looked at the communication, wasn’t tight between them and the service provider. So I said, I can fix this. And so I go in business, not realizing I’m in an adversarial business, and I’ll spend a little bit about that in a second, but I go on business that really help clients in that regard. Clients love this.

[00:49:52] They learn how to ask the right questions. They can hold me accountable. It’s beautiful. What I didn’t take into account was what I call. Bottom-feeders the type of clients that actually come in the door and they’re trying to get over on you before you get over on them. We’ve seen them, you know, whether it’s a client employee, Uh, business or whoever it is, there’s bottom theaters everywhere.

[00:50:11] Well, I had to quickly learn how to disseminate between a client that was wanting to do good business from the ones that didn’t. And not just that, um, I would have, I would have employees that I had, you know, under my employ, who are like, it doesn’t take all of this to run a business because, you know, I had a strong vision, so I have policies and procedures and standards that we went by, that they’d never had here too before.

[00:50:35] So I, and I had a buddy that he used to say, it’s guys where the highway and, you know, being new with that process, I refused to settle. So I guess it was that way in a certain regard, what am I saying? So I had a strong why and a vision for how it was going to take care of my client. I have that for my team and the people that I hire and what I quickly learned.

[00:50:59] And this is a stretch I believe is strategy first and whatever I’m going to do, whatever policy procedure, however, I start anything is strategy. First, first, it’s the mission of why am I doing it? Then I have to determine what are the non-negotiables, what am, what am I not going to settle for? What am I not going to tolerate?

[00:51:16] I don’t, I don’t deal with bottom-feeders that I deal with. I mean, I’m sorry. I don’t really serve as bottom feed as well. I deal with them, you know, right away in that regard. That’s part of that non-negotiable then I got to figure out who’s my right fit employee. Who’s my wrong fit employee, right? For their client Moffitt, uh, client, and the same with everything that I deal with, because I believe that you need all of those components, a well-balanced 360.

[00:51:43] In that process. So as this, the mission is what are your non-negotiables, what is your right fit.dot, dot? What is your wrong fit? That, that, that, and then you can have a more well-balanced process in anything you do going forward. Yeah. And some great advice there. Guy has always just looking at, um, how a vision can really help you add in managing your own frustrations by, by giving you a very linear parameters for your business.

[00:52:12] Like, what are the clients I’m going to go after? What are the partners I’m going to work with? I’m not going to be working with all the bottom feeders and the reason why is because they could be time wasted and just detract me from my core vision of where I’m headed. And that is just so, so true. So true.

[00:52:30] Yeah. It’s I think one of the important things as entrepreneurs, we need to acknowledge, and I was very interested in, but Colin and Michelle’s reaction. So the previous session, and that is acknowledge when you feel fresh. Acknowledge it pretend it’s not happening. Like we’re emotional beings. You know, one of the reasons why we do what we do, because we’re emotional about it.

[00:52:52] We’re passionate about our businesses acknowledge. You’re frustrated, acknowledge it yourself. I’m so frustrated. Oh, just let it out. And I think that’s actually really important to recognize that, Hey, your mindset right now is one of I’m frustrated. The next thing is,

[00:53:15] can I say one thing? I just want to piggyback on what you said. That’s like, um, you know, as we really look at anything that’s happened in life, you know, looking in the rear view mirror, um, it’s not so much what happened as where we are now. Where are we now? We really, and be honest about it. You know, like Collin said earlier, he was honest with his employees, right.

[00:53:40] Where, so they can really see where they are. And once you can, then you can see what it takes to get in shape and to have that tough, hard conversation, what’s it take to get in shape because then you can just, right. If you stay in the review mirror, you’re going to total the car. Right. So if you look at what happened, it’s like, what are we, where are we now?

[00:54:01] How do we get a shape based on what happened in the last video. Right? And then how do we go forward and establish those boundaries? Yeah. That’s once again, that’s very true guy. Like to me, frustration is based upon past experience and frustration affects the present your vision, uh, decisions affect the future.

[00:54:23] Let me repeat that frustration is based upon past events or experience and impacting potentially. But you, as well as an entrepreneur can change your mindset and because of your vision and your decision-making processes, and it’s incredible power that you actually have, don’t let your frustrations drive your decision-making processes.

[00:54:53] The other thing is this. I find a lot of people in business. They, they, they get frustrated because they’d actually understand their own limitations. You, you can’t do it. You really, you can’t do everything. Just face it right now. You can’t do everything. And one of the key things that I’m estimated I did was in my businesses is I got good advisors around me.

[00:55:16] I got a great accountant lawyers. Uh, and other people like in Colin was talking about, he has business coaches and things like that. And he’s got a wealth of experience, but he says, you know what? I need someone else in my ear because there’s times I just need to bounce off some someone a little bit.

[00:55:35] Yeah. And get other people around you. If you were lone Wolf, let me tell you you’ll be taken down. But if you’re in a pack much, much harder, much harder, and you’ll end up getting afraid of frustrated because you can’t be an expert in everything. So the other thing is people who get live a life of frustration and drive their businesses with frustrating.

[00:56:02] Th they lit push circumstances, impact what they’re doing. Don’t take anyone, take things personally, you know what that competitor, um, who’d been curious for a particular job as something like that, you know, that they may not even know you were trying to go for that job. Don’t when there’s really out to get you.

[00:56:22] That’s the rare circumstance. No, one’s saying I know what I’m going to make. My mission live is the takeout. Michael Gilmore. I believe that. Yeah, if it happens, I’m thinking to myself. Wow, that’s pretty good. I become so important to them that they’re focusing their entire beating on me. I remember one time I had a very successful blog and someone did a typo of my, and my blog dominion.

[00:56:53] And, uh, people saw you must be so upset about that. And I said, no, I’m actually very flattered because I’m now so successful. There’s one typo in my domain name. It’s like, it’s your mindset of how you approach things. It really, really impacted the other thing I was picking up from both Colin, Michelle, and also Victor previously is learn, learn, learn, and adjust your strategy, learn what you’re doing, adjust your strategy, and then move forward with decision-making and that can help pull you through frustration.

[00:57:33] Yeah, it’s a great topic today and really appreciate everyone’s input. You have managing frustration can be difficult, but it’s often part of the journey that an entrepreneur will go on the business. Let me tell you, Steve jobs said something really interesting, which inspired. And then let the vision pull you along your journey, let the vision pull you along.

[00:57:57] So the vision is constantly pointing you forward. Yeah. So you’re getting into the future, not the past. Yeah. So we’ve been taking a look at a great topic here on the complete entrepreneur. Who’s managing frustration and it’s been great hearing all the fabulous advice and the raw emotion of just the previous session for me, Colin and Michelle meticulous and what they went through in their own mindset.

[00:58:23] Um, and, uh, uh, of what occurred with a very, very recent fractured dress writing event. But, um, what I’d like to hear about the column, Michelle is what’s going on with start-up club, this coming week, like what’s happening there. How do people get involved with startup?

[00:58:44] Maybe Michelle, if you want to chime in on that one. Yep. I’m here. So yeah, I mean, we’re just crazy busy. I’m working on getting all this great content in a form, in a fashion, in a place so that people can reference it in the future. Um, for us, we really think that’s a bit, part of our mission is providing this library of knowledge and these interchanges that we’re having on clubhouse out to the general public, where they can reference them anytime, anywhere they want.

[00:59:20] So for us right now, we’re putting all the blog posts, recorded sessions and transcripts up on www.startup.club. Also, we have just started a podcast for the serial entrepreneur club, and we’re going to move forward with doing that with other sessions. Um, so you should be able to go to Spotify and look for serial entrepreneur club and listened to, um, these, these past recordings also inform of a podcast we’ve posted the first six and we’re going to be busy over the next few weeks, getting the rest of them up there.

[00:59:59] We already have over a hundred recordings on the website and we’re looking forward to, to getting more up there and hearing suggestions on how we can better provide folks members with the information that’s generated here. Um, we highly suspect. That you sign up for our email list. We only email when there’s an important vent or some kind of content that we really believe that you would be interested in seeing.

[01:00:27] Um, we recently also launched our own calendar on our website as well. So there’s a lot going on. And additionally, we launched our social media channel today. So we’re on Instagram at startup club underscore HQ, the same for, um, Twitter and Facebook is startup club official. So we’re doing our best to really like grow the community globally 360.

[01:00:58] So you have access to all kinds of cool information anytime, anywhere. Um, thanks so much. So Michael, if you actually go to startup. And you can see the link above. You can click on anyone in the audits. You can click on that and you click on blogs and recordings. You should do this right now, Michael. And then you click on the complete entrepreneur.

[01:01:20] There are 16 episodes of the complete entrepreneur.

[01:01:27] Hey, I’m doing that right away. I realize it’s pretty cool. It’s very cool. Yeah. So you can make all the episodes on one show versus another show. Um, or I know, so there’s some random shows that we do record as well, but it’s pretty cool how it’s all working out very nicely. Yeah. It’s, it’s looking really good there.

[01:01:49] Like I must admit, like, if you were in the audience right now and you were sort of saying, no, I’m an entrepreneur, I want to become an entrepreneur or I’m running my own business or anything like that. Get involved with Scott off their club. Like seriously, what we going to do is go start up a club, um, and subscribe to the email.

[01:02:09] You can always unsubscribe. Each thing is a pain in the rear end or click on some of that. Some of the faces of the people that Megan speaking in this session, even today and follow them. Yeah. It’s as entrepreneurs, you do not have to reinvent the wheel all the time. There is such a wealth of information out there, and I must admit startup climate is just getting more and more content and everything like that incredible stuff.

[01:02:35] So rather than sitting down and watching another soap or something like that, Hey, listen to a podcast. Get some good, good input into you. Cause there’s nothing like that. And, um, it’s something that really, really does inspire me. And it’s something I look forward to all the time is, is hearing from other entrepreneurs because that’s where I can learn what to do and what not to do.

[01:03:02] And so I don’t have to do those things myself. I don’t want to make that mistake. Oh, I want to make this, do this new macro strategy or how do I deal with that whole family work-life balance. All those sort of things are in there. So I can’t emphasize that enough. And if you’re sitting there, guy, yeah. I’m not going to go along and subscribe or I’m not going to follow so-and-so.

[01:03:24] You know what? It’s great to have you on here, but seriously, look at your business and ask yourself one question. Are you doing everything? If you’re doing everything and you’re not getting good input, then what’s going to happen. Are you going to burn out one day? And there’s a topic just on that, on salad.club, on the complete entrepreneur on entrepreneurial burnout and how to manage that.

[01:03:46] But you wouldn’t know about that. If you weren’t here. Or subscribing, so make sure you do so anyway, so next week on the complete entrepreneurial, what are we taking a look at? We’re looking at the topic of only the paranoid survive. So it was Andy Grove from Intel, right? In suggesting that entrepreneurs and businesses need to be paranoid survive in a hybrid competitive world.

[01:04:10] And what does it mean to have a paranoid mentality and what is the positive and negative sides of having a paranoid mentality for your business? And if someone about to eat your lunch. So where did we take a look at that topic? I just want to say thank you very much. All of you who have been listening to the, the complete entrepreneur today for the wonderful speakers that we’ve had regard for Victor and others, and just read and so forth.

[01:04:40] Thank you very much for your input. It’s it’s why I love hosting the show so much to hear from people like you and from my fellow moderators. Hey, there’s nothing like you guys calling Michelle, uh, really do appreciate your thoughts and your wisdom. This is the complete entrepreneur. I’ll see you at 5:00 PM Eastern time.

[01:05:00] Next Thursday for another session on taking a look at only the paranoid survive.