A lesson from being bashed around as an entrepreneur for 20 years.
Why becoming comfortable with discomfort matters in business.
A look into how a shift in focus can yield great outcomes.
One of my 3 brothers is a really strong runner which I believe comes from his very strong mind, determination and ability to endure lasting discomfort.
He often gets asked how to get faster, better at hills etc and his answer is always brutal but so accurate.
If asked how to get better at hills, he simply replies “run more hills”.
If asked how to get faster over a certain distance he simply replies, “when you run, run faster for longer”.
This is so painfully obvious and yet so few of us actually take this approach to life, business and family. Instead we look for the hacks, for the shortcuts, for the easy route. In my experience very few things that result in progress are easy. Very few things that are going to move you forward towards your goals or vision are going to be comfortable.
Being good at business is not a thing. Business is made up of many skills and abilities that when executed upon well and consistently, day in and day out, result in business success. Becoming comfortable in the discomfort within each of these skills and abilities will often lead to better business outcomes, better mental health and more fulfilment.
Here are some examples:
Leadership.
Leadership is a never ending process and requires an ability to constantly self assess and learn. It is about listening even what you are chomping at the bit to give the solution. It is about having the courage to experiment, often without sufficient knowledge to know if the experiment will work. It’s about admitting when you are wrong. It’s about leading by example, even when nobody is watching.
It’s about being comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Relationship building.
Relationships are about trust, consistency and dependability. The notion that business is not personal is just insane to me. Businesses are run by people and they exist through people interacting and transacting with other people. They are as personal as it gets.
This is why relationship building is such a critical part of business both within your organisation and with your potential and existing client base.
Relationships are built on trust and getting to trust requires things like consistency, vulnerability and dependability.
Being consistent, vulnerable and dependable will often require you to do things that are not comfortable. These things might expose insecurities or fears that you would prefer not to expose. Being dependable often means making sacrifices that you would prefer not to but you do anyway because you are choosing to invest in the relationship.
These things are uncomfortable and becoming comfortable with them will increase the likelihood of strong relationships.
Empathy.
Empathy in business can be extremely uncomfortable. It can force us to look at a businesses decision or direction through a very different lens. We have made many decisions at Nona to take a direction that will be less financially lucrative but that makes for a better human environment and happier people.
These are not easy decisions to make. We are in business to, at a base level make a financial profit and deliberately saying no to more profit is not a comfortable decision. It is however very often the correct decision for longer term and more human success.
Becoming comfortable with these uncomfortable decisions will make you a better business leader.
Zooming in and zooming out, especially during tough times.
When things are tough it is very difficult to zoom out. It feels like time and energy is being wasted and that it should be spent only on the crises at hand.
It takes discipline and courage to step out of the weeds and zoom out to look at the bigger picture.
Doing this and doing it often can and often does lead to catching blind spots and seeing things that you otherwise would just would not have seen. This leads to better decision making and ultimately a better business.
This process is not comfortable.
Coaching.
Leading by coaching can have a significant effect on your business. The shift to active listening, to deeper questions, to more empathy and less solution giving can really empower your people and open up opportunity and growth. We spend so much time, effort and money on getting the best people into our businesses and coaching can be a powerful way to get yourself out of their way so that they can thrive.
Starting this process however is not easy nor is it comfortable. It requires courage and vulnerability.
Especially in the beginning it’s really uncomfortable because not only do you not really know what you are doing but your team is also not used to you behaving this way.
The first few times its just plain awkward and in my case I even got ridiculed a little. But then eventually things start to improve and after a while, if done right it takes on a life of its own beyond you and that’s really where the magic happens.
This all starts from a willingness to actively sit in the discomfort and to keep executing even though you don’t know whether it will be successful or not.
Continual improvement.
Continual improvement as a way of life is one of my own values and it is also one of Nona’s values. While learning generally excites me it also often brings with it some very uncomfortable feelings and situations.
Often I will be consuming a piece of content and I’ll see that something that I have implement in the business is wrong and that it needs to change. Sometimes this thing is quite recent and at the time I was convinced and convincing that this was the right thing to do.
It is not easy to go back to my team and say that I was wrong. It’s not easy to admit this to myself either but it’s the willingness to sit in this discomfort and put the greater good ahead of my own ego that is a massive lever to building a business that improves at a rapid rate.
Marketing.
My definition of marketing is the term given to the collective efforts that are undertaken to getting your business in front of the people that you want to work with.
It is part science part art and we are by no means experts in this field but we have certainly learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t.
There is a great saying, “50% of all marketing activity works, the trouble is that we don’t know which 50%”.
This is not comfortable because every time we spend money on a lead generating asset or a campaign we just don’t know what the results will be. We know that we need to do this and we need to continually be experimenting but as a small business with limited budgets this is not comfortable.
Becoming comfortable in this discomfort reduces decision delays and allows for faster iteration which increases your chances of success.
Communicating.
Without communication I don’t believe that it is possible to build a strong culture.
There are some days however that I don’t want to talk to anyone.
Some days that I don’t want to do any of the 6–10 calls or meetings that I have with my team or clients. Especially during tough times I often don’t feel like the weekly meeting or even the daily huddle. But I know that these are the calls that matter. I know that consistency is what builds trust and I know that I need to show up properly and this is about choosing to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Sales.
My mentor used to say to me “Mike, there are very few problems that sales can’t solve at least in the short term”.
A business without sales is not a business and sales is hard.
Any successful sales person will tell you that its a numbers and relationship game, that you will face rejection every single day and that that is part of the package. It’s completely true.
I don’t believe that it is all about bashing through the feelings and / or pushing them aside. I believe and I have experienced that it is far more effective and healthy to choose to be OK with the discomfort of rejection. It’s far more effective and healthy to choose to acknowledge that rejection and the discomfort therein is part of the process and that with continued disciplined execution you will get to success and that success will make the rejection worth something.
If you are able become comfortable with the discomfort, you will be a much better sales person and as I have written about before, if you are a small business CEO or founder it’s likely that you will never truly step away from sales.
Business is not easy and as I have outlined above, business itself is not a thing that you can get better at. Rather it is made up of skills and activities all of which have differing levels of discomfort at different times.
If we are able to work deliberately not just on the skills but also on the discomfort that inevitably comes with those skills, we stand a much higher chance of not only business success but also mental health and sustained performance.
So, embrace the discomfort, run those hills and enjoy the benefits of doing the work that most people simply won’t do.
