If you are frustrated that you’re not growing as quickly as you would like, this episode of Real Retail TV is for you.

So this is a common conversation I have with people in our office, with myself and with retailers like you all the time. There’s this idea that we want to get where we want to go more quickly. And then when it doesn’t happen the way that we’d like, we become frustrated.

And it’s all about desire. We want this thing and we’re not getting this thing and there’s stress that comes from not getting that thing. And so that’s the thing to explore right now.

So my late father-in-law, Susan’s dad, Frank, Frank Leach, said defined stress as knowing what to do but not knowing how to do it. And there’s always an impatience around learning how to do it. There’s always there’s this desire to get it more quickly. And when that desire isn’t fulfilled, that is the stress. Now, Emile Cady, about a hundred years ago, I believe it was about a hundred years ago, had a great quote. He said, desire is God tapping you on the shoulder and pointing you in a direction for more.

And so desire is good. The desire for achievement is good. It’s what makes you a successful entrepreneur. It’s what drives us as entrepreneurs forward. It’s what motivates us to get up in the morning and do the work that we do. But desire can also lead to the frustration. Unfulfilled desire can lead to the frustration.

So part of the problem that I see in others, that I’ve seen in myself, is this idea that it should happen more quickly and it’s not. So if this is this frustration that you’re feeling, I’d I’d ask you to think about this.

First of all, do you know what you want?

If you’re not clear on what you want, it’s really hard to get it. It. And that vague desire for more, for better, doesn’t lead you, doesn’t get you where you wanna go. I clearly remember a conversation I had with a very successful retailer.

He had eight, nine, ten stores at the time. Don’t remember the exact number, but very successful stores. And and he shared with me. He said, Bob, this business, all growing this business cost me my marriage.

And I’ve recently mended the relationship with my children, but it almost cost me that relationship too. You see, he was not clear on what he really wanted, so he was misplacing his energy. He was putting his energy, all of his energy, into his business when he should have been putting equal parts or he should have been giving his family, his wife, his marriage, his children energy also. So you have to be clear about what you want if you’re going to get what you want.

But then the next part of it is this idea of slowing down enough so that you are clear on what you’re doing and how you’re going to get there.

So this goes back to this idea of what do you really want. And I wanna reference this book, The Gap in the Game by Dan Sullivan. Now Dan Sullivan is the founder of Strategic Coach, and, he claims that he has coached more entrepreneurs than anyone on the planet. And I and frankly, I believe him.

Susan and I went through his strategic coach program for three years. Brilliant business thinker. I would encourage you to follow him. But this is one of his top concepts.

And it goes like this.

Most people judge themselves against the ideal.

So we’re judging ourselves against what we think should be happening. We’re judging ourselves about against how fast it should be happening. But the problem with an ideal is that an ideal is a mental construct, and you’re never going to hit the ideal. The ideal is an an ever changing set of goalposts.

I remember when Susan and I first started whiz bang retail training, I remember it was like, when we get to a hundred thousand dollars in sales, we’re gonna start, taking, three days a week off. We’re gonna spend a lot more time with our kids. We’re gonna you know, a hundred thousand dollars was that number. Of course, we got to a hundred thousand dollars, and it was like, well, wait a second.

We can do more. So the ideal kept changing and, you know, a hundred thousand dollars was way too low, but the point there is the ideal changes all the time.

But now when you’re judging yourself against the ideal, it becomes incredibly demotivating.

You’re not hitting it. You’re not hitting it. You’re not hitting it. You’re not hitting it.

You’re getting close to the goal line and the goal line moves. You know? This ever changing shifting of goals just becomes frustrating. It becomes wearing.

That frustration, that annoyance, that that disappointment becomes demotivating.

But then what Dan Sullivan says, the gap is between the ideal and understanding what you actually have accomplished.

So I’m asking you to think about everything that you have done. I’m just gonna rattle off a couple of them for you. So if you’re the owner of a retail business, I wanna say to you, you have done something that most people or a lot of people want to do but haven’t done, and you have. That is a gain.

So, if you have grown your sales to a place where you are making a profit and taking home some money, that is a gain. If you have a website that is built and that you’re proud of, that is a gain. If you are happy with what you’re doing with your store, that is a gain. If you’re making an impact in your community, that is a gain.

If you’re taking good care of your employees, that is a gain. You know, think about all the good work you do in the world. You impact customers. You impact your team members.

You impact your community. You impact your industry. These are all gains.

And when you think about what you have done, when you look at your business life through the lens of the gain, what you have done, not the ideal and what you haven’t done, that gap represents the problem. So what I’m suggesting to you, if you are frustrated that things aren’t going as quickly as you would like, stop.

Just stop for a moment and take out a piece of paper and write down all the things that you have done. Write down all of the accomplishments that you have made.

Write down all of the progress you are making towards your big goal. And here’s what’s gonna happen.

You’re gonna feel good about yourself.

You’re going to feel motivated to do more. You’re going to feel motivated to get where you want to go. You’re not going to be frustrated by where you aren’t getting. You’re gonna be motivated to get to the next level of where you are going. So there’s this exercise called the positive focus exercise.

And in our platinum mastermind group, we always, every single meeting and we have for the last, I think, twelve years, every single meeting, we start with this exercise.

And we ask everyone in the room, and Susan and I participate also, and it’s write down all of the good things that have happened to you since the last meeting.

And as entrepreneurs, you know, the members of the group, they they tend to naturally go into the gap. Right? Because we all want more. We all want to get better faster.

But then when you start writing all of the good things that have happened personally, professionally, all the progress that you’ve made, all of a sudden in the room you can feel the energy change. You can feel the energy go from, oh, I’m a an entrepreneur who is stuck in the grind of my business to, oh, wow. I am really, really kicking butt. And that energy change is what you’re looking for.

So couple of things.

First of all, if you haven’t read this book, read this book. I have heard from people. I’m not an audiobook guy. I’m a reader, but I have heard from people that the audiobook for The Gap in the Game is fantastic because there are several, conversations between the two authors, Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan. Apparently, they’re fascinating.

Someday, I’m going to get around to them. So read the gap and the gain. The other thing that I would encourage you to do is to do the positive focus exercise right now. Ask yourself. Write down what are the things that I have done? And then when you’re motivated by thinking about and writing down all the things that you have done, ask yourself and write down, what is the next step?

Not where is the ideal, what is the next step? And use the motivation that you got from that positive focus exercise to move you forward, to pull you towards the next milestone in your progress.

Yes. You want to have a vision, but you don’t want to compare yourself against the ideal.

So I hope you found that helpful. If you did, I would love to hear your comments. If you were watching this on YouTube, please subscribe. We’d love to have you see more of what we’re doing here on Real Retail TV. Alright, everybody. See you next week.