A Pro is Proactive

I have prescribed a heavy dose of business owner's mindset on this podcast. My desire is to level-up the newbies and speed up their success. Plus, I really enjoy teaching this stuff. Sometimes I teach something on the podcast and use it as a lesson to my kids or in a local networking group. Sometimes I teach in my local networking group and share it as a podcast. In this case, I taught a lesson to my daughter with my wife that I also wanted to share with you. If you are new to the show, go back a few episodes and listen to "Beginner's Business Mindset". It's a great place to start your journey as an entrepreneur. Speaking of entrepreneurs... let's do a test. Are you an entrepreneur? Entrepreneurs are always thinking. We are looking for problems for the opportunity to solve them. This leads to so many new businesses, inventions, books, etc. Some entrepreneurs are overactive problem solvers like my friend Vincent that they're always in problem solving mode, finding problems even when it doesn't exist. It's a curse and a blessing of the entrepreneur. We are ALWAYS thinking, figuring, bettering, tinkering, creating. We can't stop. We say "How Can I" to every problem, where the employee mindset will say "I can't".

​My wife and I were walking with our daughter and training her on these basics of entrepreneurship or growth mindset. She is 14 and is operating her first business creating and selling greeting cards in diners. She is so gifted with the cards. She also has a Why to use the profits to support her ballet dream. During the walk, we noticed that she has ideas to grow her business but she's not taking action. She was not being proactive. We explained to her that she's acting more like an employee, where she's waiting for Mom and Dad to tell her what to do next and then she'll do what we tell her. We explained that's not how entrepreneurs think or act. She understood. I shared. "Christianna, we taught you how can I over I can't." She remembered that for sure! I continued. "Here's the next lesson that goes hand-in-hand with this one. There's a difference between proactive and reactive. Here's the simplest version. In a reactive state, something happens and then you take action based on what happened. In a proactive state, you take action and then something happens based on what you did. In a proactive state, you are driving the business or the idea. If you were being proactive you'd be like a boat on the lake cutting through the undisturbed water. You are proactively cruising through. This causes a wake behind you, which disturbs the resting ducks on the water. The ducks now have a choice. They either move, fly away, or deal with the wake. You were proactive and cut A new path and the ducks were reactive and had to find comfort somewhere else. There is always someone being proactive and someone being reactive as a result of someone else being proactive. If you're proactive, you can get ahead of problems (like the wake) before they come. The ducks could have seen the wake and decided that they were going to move before the wake got there or move over. That would be proactive to them. They don't. Some people are always waiting for something to happen before they take any action. They live in a reactive state and will rarely have control of their environment. They are at the mercy of so many other people and things. They are ducks! Proactive people drive change and have so much more control and flexibility over the outcome of their life."

I know what you're thinking. "Ken, do you actually say this stuff to your 14-year-old daughter?" Absolutely. You bet I do! Christianna understood the lesson. I then moved in for the knock-out punch. I asked my wife this question. "Teresa, how much time do I think about our various entrepreneurial business ventures?" She said. "Probably 10 hours a day!" Now that might be excessive, but it's not far off. Any true entrepreneur listening to this podcast totally relates. We asked our daughter how much she has been thinking about her business in the past week. Her answer was not 10 hours. It was 10 minutes. It was honest. We told her that's not the level of creative thinking or proactive thinking that will ever cause her to get ahead. I related this to the cleaning business. "If we only put 10 minutes of thought into C3, we'd be reacting to the wake.  We would not be able to grow this way. In fact, this type of behavior is how we'd go out of business. She got it. Ever since this talk, our daughter has been so much more proactive and setting goals toward her ballet dream!

Now it's your turn Mr. and Mrs. Cleaning Business Owner. Are you being a pro and acting proactively? Or are you a duck in the water being tossed and driven about by the wake? If so, correct course!