Episode Transcript

What’s up? What’s up? What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to THE a.m guys. Welcome back to five minute rants. I’m your host, Michael Abernathy. And welcome to the show predicated on the journey of life and business. Hey guys real quick before we get started, if you know somebody whose life would be changed or bettered by listening to the show, like they could pay their bills, improve their business, anything like that, would you share this with them and partner with me and changing lives? I appreciate it.

Well, guys, just to get started, I mentioned this in a episode a while back about how, if you are the solution, then you actually become a problem. And I want to talk about this from a very important aspect. Because oftentimes, as people, we view ourselves as a solution, especially when you’re new in business, you got to wear a lot of hats. When you’re young and entrepreneurship or business, you wear a lot of hats. And as a result, oftentimes mindset develops that you’re the solution to everything, oh, a customer needs this, I’ve got that, oh, I’ve got to reply to these emails, I’ve got that, hey, awesome, we have this fire, I can code that, hey, we’ve got this, okay, I’ll go and service that client site, I could do this, I could do that. And then you become the solution to everything. And What you don’t realize is slowly happening is you’re no longer actually releasing the flow of work into a team, you’re actually building the dam in a bottleneck, because now you’re the solution.

And this is so easy it’s to do with, it’s very easy to fall into this and to actually fall into this trap. And it happens everywhere. I was talking to a good friend of mine. And he was talking about like, hey, I really want to like better my kids lives. I want them to do all these things. And, you know, he’s got younger kids. And he’s like, Man, I really want them to get more exercise, want them to be outside more all these things. And this What we talked about, because he was like, Hey, I’m thinking about doing this with them and doing that with him. And I was like, Hey, man, if if you have to do all this stuff with them, it will break because when you’re not there, it will never happen. If you’re the solution for it, and you don’t build a solution, that will never happen.

And it’s the same thing in business, you must build solutions. And you must build systems and processes that actually provide a solution that empower another team member or somebody else to accomplish the same work. Either have equal level or a little less than you, or best case better than you. And I think especially within leadership, we often view ourselves as I’ll do everything, because that’s What it’s taken to get the business off the ground. And then we have a hard time transitioning into delegation. And Here’s the other thing. If we view ourselves as the solution than anybody who’s not getting anything done, we actually view them as a problem. And people aren’t problems, people create problems, or people create solutions, like you are not a solution, you either create a solution.

Now you can create a solution by showing up and being a warm body and completing the work. But that doesn’t mean you are actually a solution. Think about that. Same thing with the problem. You can show up not do your work and create problems. But that doesn’t mean you are actually a problem. That’s not identity mindset, right. But we often take it as identity. And if you are solution, and you view yourself as a solution, you will start seeing everybody else’s problems when they don’t do things the way that you do them. There’s no system, nothing’s systematized. Nothing’s documented, nothing’s written. And then you just view everybody else’s problems, you view What they do as a problem. And then there’s nothing but a toxic culture, because everybody’s got to read your mind and to actually accomplish the work that needs to be done.

I’ve worked for bosses like this where there’s nothing documented, there is no process. It’s like, Hey, this is the job we need to complete. And so as we’re going along and working, and there’s no documentation with this, there’s no guidelines. There’s no railings, there’s nothing. That work culture is very toxic, because it’s constantly asking the boss and the boss is tired of being asked questions. Why do you always got to ask me questions? Well, I don’t know how this needs to be done this different than the last one. So on and so forth. I don’t know What my bounds of responsibility are. I don’t know how much freedom I have to think, to process and to make decisions. Within my production. I don’t know any of these things.

And if you think about it, What I’m talking about very much is its lanes on a highway. If you’ve ever driven anywhere, where there are no lanes, or people are just lawless, where they don’t follow the traffic rules. It’s nuts. Like driving to Mexico City. I remember getting a cab in Mexico City. And one of the first things I thought is I’m gonna die. This is nuts. Everybody’s running red lights. This is crazy. Nobody obey speed limits. So they have speed bumps everywhere. I’m talking about like every 100 150 feet, there are speed bumps, because nobody obeys the speed limits. It’s just straight up craziness. And that’s What it’s like when we are just solutions we’re the solution, not the system, not the process, not the principles we operate on, and we don’t build solutions and then we don’t operate within What has been built.

And so again, I’m saying this Have you have trouble delegating oftentimes is because you don’t have any infrastructure built in you view yourself as a solution, which often means you’ll create something toxic culturally because you’ll start viewing people as problems which you shouldn’t. Anyways, I’m out of time guys. I’ll catch you later. Peace