From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2018. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL’s in these archive episodes are still relevant.
Ajit Nawalk is a serial entrepreneur, global educator & consultant, and he is the co-founder of Mindvalley Teach, Evercoach, and Global GRIT Institute. He is also the author of The Book of Coaching and Live Big.
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Your Big Idea: Successful Entrepreneurs have One Big Idea. Follow JLD’s FREE training & you’ll discover Your Big Idea in less than an hour!
Art of Living BIG Online Program – Get Ajit’s 21-day program for FREE! (Sorry! This link was active when this episode was first published in 2018 but is no longer an active offer.)
3 Value Bombs
1) The increased focus on social media and the amount of time we spend looking at the 5-minute stories of entrepreneurs – thinking that it’s their story for 24 hours – makes us feel that we are always behind.
2) A genius starts the mission, sets the pace, and sets direction – but that’s not what builds the company. What builds the company is a team of individuals working together.
3) Think about the life that you want to create in the next 3-5 years. Don’t try to get that life in the next 3-6 months, because that creates a lot of stress and anxiety on people, which tends to have them give up on their goals and creating the life that they really want.
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Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: How to deal with anxiety around your business with Ajit Nawalk
[01:22] – Ajit shares something interesting about himself that most people don’t know.
[03:03] – Entrepreneurs live in a constant state of fear and anxiety, which destroys their health, friendships, and relationships. What is the potential remedy to this?
- The increased focus on social media, and the amount of time we spend looking at the 5-minute stories of entrepreneurs – thinking that it’s their story for 24 hours – makes us feel that we’re always behind.
- Social comparison means that we, as human beings, measure ourselves compared to somebody else.
- If you are experiencing anxiety or any type of fear towards your company, or if you’re feeling like you’re not moving fast enough, then you have to evaluate your life.
- If you compare yourself to the outside, you’re trying to chase their reality, which creates anxiety.
[07:20] – Entrepreneurial culture places expectations on “the hustle”: work 10-12 hour days. But one of the reasons to become an entrepreneur is to have the freedom to do what we want to. How do we get out of that mindset?
- Work is never going to end. Your passion, vision, and purpose that you’ve set out for yourself – it’s something that is so far out
- What we have to understand as entrepreneurs is the distinction between living our passion and following our purpose.
- If we fulfill all our goals, we are going to have a really depressing life, and a very boring life.
- The default mode of the brain is the part of the brain that gets activated when you are doing the most mundane things on earth.
[12:31] – Ajit shares his story from CEO of Mindvalley to Founder of Evercoach – from stressing himself and the team to put in more hours, to learning to maximize the same outcomes in less time.
- He was so driven from his career and creating a change in the world that it took away from his capability to be able to look at his own life. He was creating a living for himself and destroying his life in the process.
- He wondered why he had to work so hard and why he couldn’t create a culture, team, systems, and processes to generate revenues where he didn’t have to sacrifice everything. That led him to do experiments on how he was running his organization
- There’s more to life than just your career or your business. It actually helps your business if you live a freedom-based lifestyle.
- He was someone who believed that you have to work really hard to be successful. But working in optimized ways actually creates results and you can grow your companies effortlessly if you do it right.
[18:48] – A timeout to thank our sponsors, HubSpot, Coda.io, and Conversion Fanatics!
[21:23] – One single genius does not build that company. But it seems that everybody believes the ‘Steve Jobs’ myth. Why is it not true?
- A genius starts the mission, sets the pace, and sets direction – but that’s not what builds the company. What builds the company is a team of individuals working together.
- Go study people that you love. Don’t just listen to the superficial stuff or the things that they’re saying – because it’s different sometimes to what they’re doing.
[24:37] – How can we build this type of company but still enjoy the critical freedom of time and wealth?
- The first step is to ask the question ‘What is it that I want to build in my life?’
- Next is to take a step back and see what you need to do today to be able to create that life you want.
- Think about the life that you want to create in the next 3-5 years. Don’t try to get that life in the next 3-6.
[29:09] – What are the specific disciplines and principles that allow us to achieve the type of lifestyle you’re talking about right now?
- What you have to do is leverage the Pareto Principle: 20% of the work creates 80% of the results. Then do the 80/20 of that, too. What you will find is that there are maybe 1 or 2 activities in your business that create around 60-70% of the results for your company. It’ll allow you to create great impact with very minimal effort because you’re only focusing on 1-2 items.
- Follow Parkinson’s Law: work will always take up all the time you assign to it.
- Don’t only do this for work. Do it for your life, too. Create your life the same way you do your work.
[34:31] – Ajit’s parting piece of guidance
- You always have a choice. Even if it feels hard, you can create the life that you want. You just have to start operating from a place of creation versus a place of reaction.
- Visit Art of Living BIG Online Program and you’ll get Ajit’s 21-day program for FREE! (Sorry! This link was active when this episode was first published in 2018 but is no longer an active offer.)
Killer Resources!
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