Episode #5 - Lessons That Changed Our Lives
In their fifth episode, Dale and Coby share personal lessons learned in business — from not taking things personally, to putting yourself out there, to looking after your mental and physical health. A candid conversation about the free habits that separate struggling business owners from thriving ones.
Hello and welcome to the Sequoia Project podcast. We are in here with episode five now.
Dale: The reason why we wanted to talk about that today, or at least have that, is because obviously the first few episodes, the people that are gonna listen to this, we kind of wanna have a nice cadence, like an upwards trend. Before you go spending money, before you go taking out business lines, before you do anything like that, these are the things that we wanna highlight that you can do for free in your own home, and there's no risk to them. You can just see rewards straight away.
Dale: My first one is very simple. It's just, if you can get to a point where the decisions you make, the things that you do in business, you just don't take them so personally. You know, if you had a phone call and you didn't get the result you wanted or something like that, if you just didn't take that so personally, you wouldn't be so scared to try again. So it's almost like an exercise in being able to let go — do an action, get a result and just let go and move on.
Coby: What I had was to get out there just no matter what the response you're going to get. Whether it's a Facebook post, whether it's something you want to do, no matter what it is, just put yourself out there. There's going to be so many people that are going to tell you no, or like have a go at you. I mean, I remember one of the first times that I was doing cold calling, I called this little clothing boutique. And that was so rude. That was so rude. I think I texted you just being like, I'm done with this. This is bullshit. Like that was awful.
Dale: You have to put yourself out there and if you don't take things personally, those two things together will get you probably most of the way to where you need to be in business because most people just don't put themselves out there in the first place. And then if they do, they get a no or they get someone that's rude on the phone and they go, I'm not doing that anymore.
Coby: Learn to talk to people. This was massive for me cause I hated talking to people. I still hate talking to people sometimes. But I think it was so important to actually learn to speak to people. I had a lot of social anxiety and I refused to get on the phone. I'm not doing it. I'm not talking to people. I hate people. And you were like, if you want to get anywhere, you have to learn to talk to people.
Coby: I think something that you always said to me is do what you say you're going to do. If you're gonna communicate with someone, say, I'm going to take your photos or I'm going to do your media or I'm going to build your house or whatever. These are the deadlines. These are the things. Just do your absolute best to do what you say you're going to do.
Dale: My next one is knowing what you stand for, even as a young business owner. You can get into business with people who are doing shady stuff. If you know what you stand for, you can, you can always at least try to do the right thing. Authenticity is one of the hardest things to fake. And if you are doing things for the wrong reasons, if it doesn't come up today, it will come up tomorrow.
Coby: Something so important from my personal experience — your mental health and your physical health is so important for your business. I mean, you going in and breaking your back for your work and everything like that. I would always message you and just be like, dude, my mental health is so shit right now. I hate this. And the first thing you would always tell me is like, you are the business, look after yourself first, otherwise the business isn't there.
Dale: Yeah, and one last thing I'll say on this — only focus on things that are within your control. You will save a ton of time and worry and stress, and you'll be able to move a lot faster and a lot more efficiently if you're not going, you're not worrying about things that you cannot have any impact on. Is there anything that I could do to avoid this in the future? Is there anything I could do to make this better? What is the contingency for this kind of thing happening? Then you just build out this list of — you know, whatever happens, I know what to do in every scenario.