There’s one thing I fear with people that follow all these different videos online especially Valuetainment being one of them is to think it is so easy to become an entrepreneur. I don’t want to mislead you, it’s not easy. The game of entrepreneurship is very, very hard. This is why only a few choose to become entrepreneurs and the majority are wanting to stay on the sidelines playing it safe.
How to handle pressure isn’t just a skill to learn business, it applies to many other industries and personal life. I remember one time many, many years ago I used to go to Dodger games. I was 13/14 years old and I went to a game against Houston Astros. Back in the days the squad was Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Ken Caminiti, Kevin Bass and I liked the Houston Astros team at that time. And one of my favorite players was Ken Caminiti. And I would never forget as a kid, Ken Caminiti was a left handed third basemen. He hit I think 41 home runs one season. Just beautiful swing he had. I go afterwards and I’m with Kevin Bass, I’m talking to Kevin Bass. Ken Caminiti is to my left. He starts crying and hugging this lady. 15 minutes he’s crying while he’s hugging this lady. And I watch this saying, “Oh my gosh, what is going on here?”
And all she was saying was begging him to stop drinking or whatever it was. Fast forward a few years later, you know what happens to Ken Caminiti? He ends up dying. I have personal friends that this has happened to. Business also happens all the time. In sports it happens all the time. So, I want to put a formula behind how to handle pressure where you’re gonna be able to say, “Okay, cool, I kind of know how to handle pressure now”. This still doesn’t guarantee you’re gonna make it a business, but it will help.
Types of pressure you’ll face in business:
- Fast success
- Fast money.
- Recently I received a Snapchat from a 21 year old kid, where he said, “Pat, I’m 21 years old. I just made one million dollars this year. I am so afraid. What should I do?” He’s never made that kind of money. His parents have never made that kind of money and little lone making it that fast at 21 years old. That is pressure. Some people might say, “I’d love to have that kind of a pressure”. It’s still pressure.
- Personal life issues
- You have a relationship and it doesn’t work out, how do you balance that while you’re still trying to close a deal.
- Getting sued.
- Losing talent to another company.
- A big order canceled.
- Somebody ordered with you a hundred thousand dollars, you’re excited, you’re about to get the order, boom, they cancel it with you. You don’t know what to do. You sold the house, you sold the insurance policy, social media contract with a client and they cancel it
- Media bashing you negatively.
- New competitor,
- New threat taking over your position.
- Security breach.
- Somebody comes into your system and finds all these social securities.
- Ideas stolen
- Back stabbing
- Deadlines.
- Deadlines bring a lot of pressure to people.
Types of questions asked during pressure moments:
- Can I do this?
- Did I make the right decision by taking money out of my 401K starting a business?
- Did I make the right decision of even getting into this industry?
- Did I make the right decision quitting my job?
- What if I fail?
- What will people think of me if…?
- Where’s the smallest hole in the wall for me to hide in?
- How can I get away from everybody and hide in it?
- Why?
So, what do you do? How do you handle this pressure?
Step #1, ask yourself, what’s the worst case scenario?
What’s the worst thing that can happen? Can you handle that?
If you’ve already accepted that you can handle the worse case (very rarely do worse cases happen), than you can handle all the other outcomes.
Step number two is control.
When I say control, it’s very simple. What can you control with this issue and pressure that you’re facing? What can you not control? Make a list of things you can not control, I don’t even want to spend a second thinking about it. Once you make a list of things that you can control, on the problems that you’re facing, next is qualifying it.
Step number 3 is qualifying.
What is qualifying?
What’s the most important? This is important, that is important, this is important. The other four, they’re really issues but they’re really not the issue. I take top three, then I finalize it and bring it down to one. The top issue. Prioritizing the cause of the number one issue. Then I ask, what is causing this?
Why, why did this happen? Why did that happen? What caused this? Why, why, why until I go to the deepest why. Then you solve the deepest why and you can move on.
People that make more money, know how to handle pressure better than others
In in the arena of politics, or the arena of military. Pressure. Whoever can handle pressure the best the most ends up winning. The world of business is very ugly. The world of business is gonna have a lot of people out there that are gonna come after you. But if you create a system and figure out a way to handle pressure and you put your work ethic where you’re going up and you’re constantly trying to find ways to improve and you put in a work ethic there and it’s important t you, you will eventually, possibly have a shot at doing this. And the reason why I talk about this, because if you don’t handle pressure, this is what typically leads to bad vices; habits that ruin the future of even the greatest entrepreneurs in business.
Now, I don’t wanna spend a lot of time talking about vices but I’m talking about drugs, alcohol, ecstasy, Xanax, pain, you know, Vicodin, pot, cocaine, gambling, secret gambling habits. Some start looking to all of that stuff because there’s an escape on the actual pressure that they need to handle.
I’d recommend for you to watch this video again, figure out one of the issues that you’re facing right now that are putting a lot of pressure on you and your life. Use this questionnaire, solve it and see what your deepest why is and then based on that, start working on fixing the deepest why.
