Jeremy, what is success to you?
Yeah, I love that question because that is a question I ask of clients and Mastermind
members all the time. And the way I always phrase it, you know, when we're looking at whether it's
a job description or a project or a plan, we always ask like, what's your definition of success?
Because if you don't know that, you can't tell if you're on the path or not. So when we talk
about what success looks like for entrepreneurship, for example, well, that varies by the person.
But the definition that I always use and that I help folks out with is entrepreneurial freedom,
right? Entrepreneurial freedom, yeah, it incorporates financial freedom, but that's
not the only piece we're talking about. Entrepreneurial freedom is your freedom of choice,
your freedom to decide how you spend your time, what you do during that time and who you do that
with. That can mean putting more time into your business. It could also mean being able to spend
more time with your family or be able to travel more or be able to give back in your community,
be able to provide jobs. It can be any of those things, right? But entrepreneurial freedom gives
you that choice. And the question is, how do we get that entrepreneurial freedom? Well, that comes
down to processes and systems and the right people to run those. That's what frees you from your
business and allows you to choose how you spend time. And that's what provides that true
entrepreneurial freedom. That's been important to me my entire career. And it's what I work with my
clients on all the time. It came from Emeth, I'm assuming. Emeth was, you know, was a big part of
that for sure. Michael Gerber, amongst many other authors and experts, have shaped pieces of that.
That's awesome. But thank you for sharing that. Jeremy, this is a little hard question.
To you, what defines a great leader? We come across so many people in our show,
and entrepreneurs and leaders, they think they know what a great leader is and what
it should be or ought to be. What is it to you? So, you know, I think leader and visionary can't
exactly be used interchangeably. However, as a founder, one of our main roles is not just to
lead, but to lead with that vision. So, in terms of what makes a great leader, I think a lot of
that comes down to being the visionary and being able to set that far away, you know, be had that
big, hairy, audacious goal, and get others on your team behind you on that mission to reach that,
you know, big, hairy, audacious goal. That's what we do as leaders, is we set that vision and we
help others to get there. What would you say that some of the things that you have noticed are
your people that stops them from being their great leader? Oh, my gosh. Almost all of it comes down
to mindset. Mindset is one of the biggest blocks that gets in the way of folks being visionaries
or leaders. And, you know, that comes from a number of things. We could do an entire episode on that.
But a big piece of that is imposter syndrome is so, so common, especially amongst entrepreneurs.
And there's self-doubt. It abounds with an entrepreneur. It's this idea of the thing you
want to do, you cast doubt on yourself and feel like maybe you can't do it or it's too audacious
of a goal. And so that often holds founders back from setting that bigger vision. And then, you
know, we can talk more about these, but, you know, I'll give you just one more from a mindset
standpoint, is this idea that you've got to go it alone. You've got to be the one who does it all
and can do it all. When the reality is you can bring on team members not only to take things off
your plate, but special hint, you can bring on team members who do things better than you do in
certain categories. And that is really freeing. So getting past those two mindsets that you're not
an imposter, right? It's okay to have a big vision and that others can help you to get to where you're
going is really freeing to entrepreneurs to get them to where they want to be as great leaders
and visionaries. I would love if you have some stories regarding the same. If you have some
stories where, you know, you came in or someone had that aha moment where like, oh my gosh,
I just didn't know I could do that. I would love to hear some of the stories from Jeremy.
Yeah. So this happens all the time. And when you're behind the closed doors of a mastermind,
what's really nice is this is where folks share what's really going on in their business,
right? The things they're not going to share online or talk to friends or family or their
team members about. But you get to the real truth of what's going on. And that can be the big wins
and successes that they don't feel comfortable sharing elsewhere. That can also be the failures
and challenges and setbacks and being able to support and help folks through those, right? So
I love seeing those big aha moments, those big pivots, the new businesses that get launched
just from a conversation that came up on a mastermind, just from discovering that unknown,
unknown, the things you didn't know you didn't know. So we were talking about mindset shifts
earlier. We had a founder who had joined us that they were a solopreneur and they wanted to grow
their business. But one of the challenges of being a solopreneur is you're responsible for everything.
And in his case, he felt he had to be by his phone and accessible to his customers all the time
because they needed him and he couldn't support them. That meant his customer's business was
offline until he got back to them. So this is a guy who loved the outdoors, loved mountain biking,
loved being in nature. But when you're in the great outdoors and the mountains, there's not always
great cell phone coverage. So because of this need to be connected to his customers, he wasn't doing
what brought him fulfillment, what got him the headspace he needed, what recharged him personally,
emotionally and everything else. And so that wasn't good for many reasons, right? So we're able to help
him to, to unblock and bring on a support person, someone on the front line to be there to answer
the phone and emails when customers reached out and take care of them. So that way the customers
were cared for and he was able to get some time back. And he used a little bit of that to get back
to nature, but he also used a bulk of that to do what was more important in his business, which is
sales, bringing on new accounts, working on product and all those things that frontline customer
service was pulling him away from. So that's one of those examples. We've had other businesses where,
you know, many of us are serial entrepreneurs, meaning we've had more than one business, right?
I've seen so many businesses launch within our mastermind groups that was like a side idea or
filled a gap in an existing business, or was just, you know, a parallel business or a little idea
that ended up eclipsing the business a member came in with. And we've seen that again and again,
you know, one example is we had someone with a software business, right? And it was a traditional
older school software with software licensing and contract renewals and all that kind of stuff.
But the world has gone the direction of SaaS, and there just wasn't really a good way of, you know,
translating over the existing solution. And SaaS is great for so many reasons, right? You have
recurring revenues, automatic billing, you know, self-serve, sign up and enrollment for clients,
and so many more things. And so a new business was launched in the SaaS model. And that business
continued to double and double and double. And that quickly eclipsed the older legacy business
by being able to bring on a whole new addressable market that was never a good client for the
previous product that was waiting for the solution that our members able to create, simply by applying
those pivots and best practices from other folks in the room that had experience with continuity
based businesses. Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that, Jeremy. I have one more question for
you. What is your goal for being on the show today, Jeremy? So entrepreneurial freedom is
something that is, you know, so, so powerful for me and has been what my entire career has been
about. For over 25 years, I've been helping entrepreneurs to move towards and find that
entrepreneurial freedom. And I know personally in my own life, just how freeing and meaningful that
can be. And I've seen firsthand how that can help others. And look, entrepreneurship isn't for
everyone. It really should be only for us select weirdos. But if we're going to do it, let's make
sure we're truly building a business that brings us freedom and we're not just building ourselves a
glorified job. You are quoting Emeth in a way. And I cannot agree with you enough where a lot of us,
a lot of us self-employed people think I'm an entrepreneur and we go down this rabbit hole,
not knowing what we're getting ourselves into. And only very, very few of us actually survive
in out of that, how many thrive. It's uncalculable in a way because so many businesses are failing.
Well, any business can really only go in three directions, right? You can pass it on to your
kids and have a multi-generational business, which rarely happens. And if you think that's going to be
you, ask yourself, is that what your kids want? Right? It's rare these days that we truly have a
multi-generational business. The second direction that can go is exactly what you touched on is you
run it into the ground and you're out of business. And that's kind of sad to see your baby just
be gone. Right? The third option is you can build a business to sell. So given those three choices,
which one would you want to do? Let's assume you're going down that path of you want to create a
business you can sell. Well, then there's a number of things we want to do and get right. So you have
a saleable business. And what you're talking about earlier with Michael Gerber and Emeth is great.
You know, we're also fans of Kiyosaki and Cashflow Quadrant. That's where he talks about moving from
employee to self-employed and then across this enormous chasm to business owner. Right? But what
does it take to cross that chasm from self-employed to business owner? Well, it takes you being able
to step away from the business for a day, a week, a month or a quarter. Right? When you can do that,
now you know you own a business, an income producing asset, and you don't just have a glorified job.
Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking
forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get
more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to
participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent
time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.