Ep28 Unreasonable Urgency: How to Outpace a World That's Drowning You in Noise

Joe Blackburn  0:00  
Are you actually hungry, and do you demonstrate all the things that would constitute you being truly hungry for the things that you want, or are you just okay? Because complacency is the silent killer. With the speed of knowledge and change, if you can't start to increase your sense of urgency, then you'll get run over.

Jason Croft  0:22  
Welcome to the Lion's Edge, where top performers sharpen their teeth. Hosted by Joe Blackburn, founder of The Lion, who is relentlessly dedicated to helping business owners lead multi-million-dollar teams, and me, Jason Croft. I transform unseen entrepreneurs into industry leaders by developing their market gravity. Each week, we reveal proven strategies and raw insights to help you maximize your business, multiply your wealth, and make your family indestructible. Now, let's create your edge. How's it going, Lions? We jumped in with this episode with Joe and I talking about his latest in-person there that the group just had in Boise, Idaho. Big success. Fantastic lessons pulled out of those sessions that they have those days spent together, like always happens. So we dig into that a little bit of an abrupt ending, just so you know. My internet went out, so conversation kind of cut off, but not before we got some really good stuff in there. So just wanted to give you that heads up. Let's jump in.

Joe Blackburn  1:43  
Was it a good one? They always say it was the best one. I don't. I mean, I think it's because it was the last one that they went to. It feels like the best one, but it flowed really well. And we talked about capacity and condition, which is mental toughness versus mental health. So when you think about it, it's not I'm a tough guy, and you know like bravado. That's not mental toughness. Mental toughness is your capacity to hold the standard despite how you feel or what you want. You know, like not giving in so much. Whereas mental health is your condition, meaning if I am not sleeping or I am constantly stressed out or I'm doing something repetitively that isn't procrastination or giving up, it's just a symptom of what's going on, if you only focus on your mental health, you will you can be happy and broke, and then you won't be your mental health won't be good. But if you at the expense of you know saying I'm I don't feel good I'm depressed I can't do this you know kind of what I was just talking about. I don't think I have a mental health condition over it, but I still functioned yesterday. I I brought a new client on yesterday. I did my normal things. What I didn't do is I didn't do the little things. That's what I know. I was real. I'm like, and I was okay. I was at the. Here's the weird part. I was totally okay with it, you know. Like Gary and I wake up at God knows when, and he's we're kind of the accountability before 5o'clock. Get a text in, get going, and I was up because we had a lightning storm out on the Gulf, and Zeke, my dog, he's got the sixth sense. If there's thunder and lightning coming, he's got to go out because he ain't gonna go out when it's thunder and lightning, so he's up at like you know I I went to bed at 1230. He's up at 345 or whatever, going berserk. So I walked him, and there's lightning coming in or whatever. I walked him. I and I come back in. I'm like I could just get up and work out, or and I'm I said I'm just gonna lay down, and then it was 8o'clock. Like I was just out, and then this morning I didn't like. I don't set an alarm. Like usually I just it's usually about 350. I kind of start warm. My body warms up, and I'm kind of not able to go back to sleep. 710. Susan woke me up because she, her, and Mark or Scarlett had to go to Pensacola for the doctor, so that woke me up. So I can tell like it's off, but I'm still here on this podcast because it's that important. But so mental toughness is showing up when you-it's easy not to. That's like discipline and being able to do that consistently, whereas your mental health is the story you're telling yourself, how you're dealing with complexity, and what it's like a blowout. Like, where am I blowing out? You know, if I if the pressure across family, life, business, trauma, all it's like, where's the point where I just. I've got an. I have depression. I have ADHD. I probably have all those things. I don't know, and they're they're not fake. So if you let's say you patch a blow up and move on, it's highly likely you might pop that tire again. So you got to be, you know. We so with a lot. It was interesting because a lot of the people in the line already have their routines and things that they do to try to make their mental health strong, like make it vibrant. And when they find themselves in a you know tough spot, they reach out, they talk to the right people, they you know fix their. It's funny how diet affects it. By the way, more on the the mental toughness side, like what we were talking about. The whole theme of it was we're in this world now that is just drowning, and you hear this on the internet or whatever. But it's like there's so much information, like it's everywhere. You can ask, you know, Claude or whoever, whatever you've named your ChatGPT, mine's Kyle. You know why?

Joe Blackburn  6:05  
Kyle, I yell at Kyle all night in the Cartman boys. I talk to AI, and now I must have a problem. Yeah, I do it all day long. So there's all this, and it's like okay, but everyone's still starving for transformation. It's not changing anything. I think it's making it worse, quite frankly, because it gives you a false sense of accomplishment to get an answer you didn't have to work for, that you do nothing with, and then you just get an accumulation of that. It's real weird. So it's like, okay, well, this is the new world. I don't think we're going back. I mean, I don't think I can convince Sam Altman to change his course at this point. You know what I mean? So, okay, so what are you going to do? Like, we can debate whether AI works or pillars works or whatever. Fuck, I don't care. You can debate it all day long, but what you can't do is get drowned in it and do nothing because that is where the you know the end of it of your rope will be financially. So how do you deal with it? So it was like first of all, it's real hard right now to be hungry, despite inflation and what you hear, most people aren't that hungry, and I and there's kind of two types of hunger. There is I'm starving to death hunger, and I will do anything to eat hunger, and then there's a hunger I've had a taste of something really good, but maybe that's just enough, so I'm not that hungry for it, or I've gotten a taste for this, and now I can't get enough. Some people call that an addiction, by the way. So, if you were going to be addicted, why wouldn't you be addicted to the positive things? But get like, are you really hungry? So we, Lauren and I, made mostly Lauren a whole assessment on: Are you actually hungry, and do you demonstrate all the things that would constitute you being truly hungry for the things that you want, or are you just okay? Because complacency is the silent killer. So we started them there and went through the assessment, and I was pretty close to what I thought. There was a handful of people that were in the kind of relentless phase, and then a handful that were really hungry. We didn't have anybody who was what I would consider complacent. They wouldn't help people don't even write their goals down, let alone invest themselves. So that was kind of a starting point to give them an idea where they could improve it, what they were really good at as far as the habits that feed it, and then how to take it forward, and then we talked about, and I, with the speed of knowledge and change, if you can't start to increase your sense of urgency, then you'll get run over. Like things happen so fast now. Our brain, you know, if you think about the human mind, and I'm not a neurologist, but I highly doubt the actual design of it was to absorb and change as fast as it's happening. I don't think that's that's why people distract. It's easy. I can I can fulfill this and the dope and just be distracted and feel accomplished, and then feel sick afterwards. But if you're so, you're not going to outpace technology. You're not. No one is. You can't do it as fast. But if you don't have a sense of urgency, urgency around direction and action, that's where the gap's going to start. So, do you actually have an unreasonable sense of urgency? You know, most people do things reasonably in what they believe is an amount of time or amount of money or whatever it is that's reasonable, and then miss that. Meaning, because of if I ration, if I'm rational, I'm going to ration everything. So I'm not even going to hit what I believe is reasonable. So now I'm way below. So you. Have to increase urgency, and that goes for everyone on your team, you know. And you know, there's a fine line between being a chicken with your head cut off and being quick. So, how do you actually assess where it's costing you? How to do it, and really just compressing time. And then we gave them account.

Joe Blackburn  10:20  
We've never done this before. They have their own accountability partner on some takeaways, and I'll see where that's at on Thursday when we get together. But just so if I'm hungrier and I have a greater sense of urgency now, I want to be in in my marketplace. We talked about how to get an unfair advantage because you know our businesses aren't highly reliant upon commodities, so products like physical products or technology that is, you know, essentially commoditized. They're tools in what we do, but they're they're not the product. Most of our businesses, at the end of the day, I always say the product is you, like, but it may be a combination of what you do physically and who you are. And then we went through where is your actual unfair advantage relative to your market. And most of our markets are somewhat local. I mean, they have some reach, but they're more local. So when you look at that, where do you have the unfair to manage? And I suspected it, but most of it's access. I've built enough relationships that my access puts me ahead of my competition or my experience, and then our products. I mean, everybody thinks their products the best, right? But the reality is, they're all about the same.

Jason Croft  11:38  
Yeah, and there's an important place for naming it. What do you do? I mean, that's what I work with, especially like you and I do on a coaching consulting side. Especially, it's like let's look at what you do. What you have a process, even if you've bought a coaching program, you still have your version of that. Let's wrap that up. Let's build a framework around that. Name it, and you can do that in indie industry. You know, back to the Mad Men days. You know, like putting in. Like, what do you do? Everybody does that. Okay, is anybody talking about it? That's our new campaign, right?

Joe Blackburn  12:20  
It's funny. So when I would hear them or talk to people, the question is, how big of a secret is this? Only you know, and you. So when you're, it's. I don't think it's bad. I think it's normal. You know your business so well that you would just think that's evident. Everybody knows this. Everyone knows how great I am. Everyone knows how great our experience is. No, they don't. They have no idea, and you carry it around in your heart and your head, and don't let anyone know. So, the last part was: How do I actually, in the next 90 days, get this into the marketplace and let people know what our true advantage is without saying we have an advantage, like you know, you can't. It's the inadvertent sales part of it. How do you broadcast the message so that people get, hey, there's something different here or better here? Brings me back to my point that they know intuitively. The meaning the owner, I know intuitively we do better work, you know. We we are have more integrity and honesty around what's actually being delivered than some competitors. I mean, that was, you know, and sometimes people don't care,

Jason Croft  13:34  
but you can't say it that way because then you sound like everyone else, and instead you have to brand that aspect. You have to name even that. What you know? Here is something that everybody says. This. Here is where we've taken it because we've built an entire company around it. How do we? How do you know? Because here is our system for it, and every single person. You know, and and yeah, then you have to talk about that. You know, you have to get out of the day to day and talk about that. Put that out there somewhere so it does grab that attention.

Joe Blackburn  14:12  
So on the product side, you have to have, however, you're going to strategically market. But in most cases, it was access to people, groups. What I mean, it was people stuff. That I'm, you know, what one of our most successful people has been very successful, especially relative to age. However, they have access that some people would spend a lifetime trying to build, and they have it in their cell phone, and they can actually help that person. But they have a block on. I'm not going to approach this person. It's my friend. It's what you know that story you tell yourself on why you're doing someone a favor by. Not helping them because you care about them. Have you ever heard this story? I care about this person so much. I don't want to be the person that helps them because I don't want to hurt them, which would tell me then you shouldn't help anybody. Because why wouldn't you? I just using this new thing called logic. Why wouldn't you want to help people who care the most? It it's a fear me. I mean, I'm being shitty about it, but it's a fear mechanism. I'm afraid that I will be rejected by someone close to me or ruin that bond by being helpful. So, if you know, my answer always is motive. Fear motive is make a sale to them. That's probable, but if it's to actually help them and be the person they rely upon and take care of their family. I would say not doing it is worse. But the unfair advantage in access is I don't have to go through all of the different levels of trust that everyone else does that my competitors do. Because if I know you very well and we like and trust each other, someone else who may be able to do what I do doesn't like where you know my competitive my unfair advantage in that marketplace is. I know everybody. That's why I focus on building people systems, not you know other systems. Not that you shouldn't do that. I just don't. That is temporary to. If you have the access built, everything else is easier and less of a hurdle.

Jason Croft  16:32  
And then it becomes a different set of skills that you're implementing at that point. You those relationships are a little more fragile and nuanced, right? Because I understand the the fear that you don't want to jeopardize the friendship. But again, it comes back to motive. If it's you truly believe in what you're doing, then find a way, right? Get in there and use those people skills and figure it out.

Joe Blackburn  17:03  
Well, and this was kind of a dagger that I threw. I mean, you're not really concerned about the other person. You're concerned about how you feel about what happens, which is about whom, not the other person. Which is, I mean, self preservation is one of the you know number one priorities in every human being might be number one. Like I have to take care of this first, and that's normal. So I don't, I don't ostracize it or make it villainous. I just want awareness around what are you actually doing? Why are you doing it? And if it is your advantage, how are you going to overcome your fear of being hurt by doing something that you already believe in for someone that you care about? That's all. That's all it is. And sometimes people don't want to look stupid because they have to see that person again if they're friends. Like if I fuck this up, you still may come to my house and know that I fuck it up. And so we actually we did the I have a manifesto for the line now, and it kind of centers around the six core fears, and one of our fears is being criticized or humiliated or embarrassed. I mean that's like a core fear in humanity. I don't want to look bad, and I've given that up. I'll I look bad every time we do one of these. I just let that fear go. So anyway, it was it was a cool meeting, and I'm excited for our next one. You've just experienced the lion's edge. If this episode lit a fire, if you're ready to push past your current ceiling, there's more waiting for you. Want to see what it takes to become a member of the Lion, visit jointheion.com to discover how successful entrepreneurs become unstoppable forces, and make sure you never miss an episode by hitting subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. This isn't just content; this is your edge.

Speaker 1  19:01  
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