Episode Transcript
GLENN HARPER 0:00
Hello, everyone. Welcome to another edition of the Empowering Pondrepreneurs podcast. I’m Glenn Harper.
JULIE SMITH 0:05
Julie Smith.
GLENN HARPER 0:05
What’s going on, Julie? Looking ready for scrapping for a fight today.
JULIE SMITH 0:08
I mean, I think when we brought this up, we instantly knew we were aligned, but sometimes we’re aligned in a little bit different of a manner.
GLENN HARPER 0:16
Who’s we? You and I. Oh, gotcha.
JULIE SMITH 0:19
All right, so I think what we want to discuss today is what decisions or small things are killing businesses today.
GLENN HARPER 0:29
Lack of purpose.
JULIE SMITH 0:31
Yeah, I mean, I. When. As soon as we. This kind of came up, we’re aligned, but again, it falls a little bit different. Is. It’s not just the lack of purpose. It’s like there’s no awareness around where you’re going and what you’re doing, which I know is purpose, but I often feel like entrepreneurs come in and you always describe it like, okay, we’re just going to do this task. You have no idea what your profit is.
JULIE SMITH 0:51
You have no idea where you’re going. You have no idea what your inventory is. If that’s something, you have no idea the demand and supply or any of those questions. You don’t have the answers. Right. You don’t know what questions to have.
GLENN HARPER 1:04
I think that’s part of it. But the problem I think that most entrepreneurs have is the overloading of opportunities and potential of new things they can do.
JULIE SMITH 1:15
It’s funny, you looked right at me when you said that.
GLENN HARPER 1:16
I did not. I was looking over here in the no man’s land, over here. I felt it, because when you are an entrepreneur and you’re in the zone by rule, you’re going to attract. You’re going to see and attract opportunities. And it’s so frigging hard to stay on point and work through one of those at a time instead of trying to do 50 at once. And that is probably the biggest challenge that I know I face. I know you face that. I know we face that and everybody else faces is that there’s more opportunities than there is time in the day to exploit all those.
GLENN HARPER 1:50
When I say exploit, I mean.
JULIE SMITH 1:51
Couldn’t agree more, but I feel like sometimes there’s opportunities. You don’t have a choice.
GLENN HARPER 1:58
Well, you’re.
JULIE SMITH 1:59
I mean, you always have a choice, but I think at some points in time, you don’t have a choice.
GLENN HARPER 2:04
Well, you have to navigate it because it. It’s something the client will need and you have to solve that, and you’re put back into a corner where there’s no other process. Something your business needs you have to do it, and that’s okay, too. But it’s just. It’s hard to either, like, hey, I just need to put a band aid to solve this little thing so I can continue down this path. I just need to solve this problem versus hold down this and run down the path on this. Then another one comes up and you run down a path on another one. Meanwhile, none of these are getting done.
GLENN HARPER 2:31
But that’s normal for everybody.
JULIE SMITH 2:33
He tells me this every day, in case you guys are wondering.
GLENN HARPER 2:36
I wouldn’t. I would never. This is public, baby.
JULIE SMITH 2:38
But I. I think. I think a lot of. I mean, I agree with you, but I also think it comes from. Again, it’s. It’s the lack of decision, right? Like, it’s not maybe making a decision based on A, B, and C. It’s a lack of decision. We’ve talked about it on another podcast about, like, seeing the end goal and working backwards, right? And I think oftentimes we’re just faced with what’s right in front of us and having to make decisions based on that.
JULIE SMITH 3:03
Rather than, what do you say? Take the quiet time to the mountains, where, like, I’d rather go to the beach, but taking the quiet time to be able to see beyond today, beyond tomorrow, and understanding to be able to make some of those decisions.
GLENN HARPER 3:18
But that’s the whole point. If you can look and say, this is where I’m really going to go. I can’t get distracted with all these other things. Things. I have to stay on the path as close as possible. I cannot get off sidetracked and go visit every small town before I get to my destination. And that’s the squirrel problem, right? Squirrel. Squirrel, squirrel.
GLENN HARPER 3:34
We have to like this. We’re trying to get to. Yeah, that’s cool. Grab a couple nuts and just keep going. You can’t fall off and do it. And again, that’s just entrepreneurs. We’re just. We’re programmed that way.
GLENN HARPER 3:44
We look at this opportunity go like, oh, my God, we can make. We can make a great margin doing this. And then we jump over there on that, and we forgot where we were going. But I think that’s probably the biggest problem people have.
JULIE SMITH 3:55
So basically, to put a bow on it, you are going to go with purpose number one.
GLENN HARPER 4:03
You have to have a goal of what you’re trying to accomplish. Why are we doing this and what are we trying to do to get there? And along the way, you’re going to come up with other opportunities and you have to like, hey, I just need to take a little piece of this. Let’s set that aside. We’ll pick that up later after we get to this goal.
JULIE SMITH 4:18
So basically, you’re saying if you can decide your purpose, number one, you can answer every other question that will allow you to succeed. Essentially.
GLENN HARPER 4:30
Right. If we’re going that way and we have to get to that goal and we’re all pulling together to do that, we can’t let these things derail us. We identify opportunities and set them over here, and we get to the goal. Then we’re like, okay, we just ran the mile and now we’re going to run a 5K. Now we’re going to go run a half marathon. We can’t be running all of it at the same time. It’s impossible. I mean, you can try, but how’s that working out for you?
JULIE SMITH 4:53
It’s going great.
GLENN HARPER 4:54
Yeah, exactly. So it’s. And again, it’s so hard because again, as an entrepreneur, we have. We don’t look at a lens of fear, intimidation, being scared of something. Opportunity presents itself. We’re like, oh, we got it. Well, you can’t have everything. You have to pick and choose, unfortunately.
JULIE SMITH 5:13
I mean, I don’t really like that.
GLENN HARPER 5:15
I agree. But I guess we’ll go to the
JULIE SMITH 5:17
mountains and figure it out.
GLENN HARPER 5:18
There you have it. Well, there you have it. There’s another edition of the Empowering Entrepreneurs Podcast. I’m Glenn Harper.
JULIE SMITH 5:23
Julie Smith.
