It’s a Conspiracy
You think you’ve got staffing problems…. Did you hear the one about the business that tried to fire the person who was seen drinking in a club when he was supposed to be off sick?
The following is from a June 2021 BBC News article. Names have been removed to protect the unwell:
A driver who was sacked after he was seen drinking in a social club while off work through illness has won his case at an employment tribunal.
[name of person], 66, was fired by Debmat Surfacing in Ryton, Gateshead, after he was seen smoking outside a bar in March 2020.
Mr X, who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, was found not to have broken the company’s rules.
Judge Andrea Pitt ruled that Mr X had been unfairly dismissed.
In her judgement, delivered in May, she also found that the firm had not undertaken a fair disciplinary process.
First of all, as an aside, the headline on the article was:
Driver sacked for drinking in club while sick wins tribunal
But they missed the bigger story. Shouldn’t the headline have been:
Bloke with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease thinks it’s a good idea to smoke
This story tells us so much about everything we need to know about people, life and running a business.
We must never forget that the entire world is engaged in a massive conspiracy to mess up your Entrepreneurial life. Their forces align with elegant precision to throw obstacles at you day in, day out.
Of course, it is not an organised conspiracy. They’re not that smart. It’s actually just a conspiracy of stupidity and incompetence. But the impact is the same. Businesses are being bombarded with people every day whose behaviours threaten to mess everything up.
So, you set up your business and go into work on Monday all set to work hard and do your thing to deliver great stuff to your customers. Then the conspiracy begins. First, the staff member calls up sick. Then you find out he’s not really ill — he’s at the pub. Then you realise you’ve managed to hire someone who thinks it’s a good idea to smoke with heart disease and wonder what other smart decisions he’s making on behalf of your business. Then you try to replace him with someone better than that. Then your government tells you that you can’t do that. Then the bill from the lawyers for the tribunal arrives and on and on and on.
During the weeks this sort of thing doesn’t happen, the conspiracy is just the normal stuff: suppliers let you down, customers don’t pay, Google doesn’t show your ad, Facebook can’t measure your conversions because Apple doesn’t like Facebook...
So if your business is under constant attack, what do you do about it?
There is a solution and it is not about the people causing the problems because there’s nothing you can do about them. The solution is about you.
It turns out that all of the problems listed above aren’t the big problem. They’re actually all solvable and you’re perfectly capable of solving them. The company with the employee at the bar will figure it all out. Let’s face it, your business has just been through the worst pandemic in 100 years and both you and your business survived. You’re tough. You can deal with anything.
So the ‘problems’ are not the problem. The problem is if you let the problems get to you. Because one of the most important things in your business is your state of mind every day. If you’re in a good, strong state of mind, you can deal with anything. But if you let it all get to you and go into a bad state, you become less effective, you make bad decisions and in the worst-case scenario, you give up.
So here are the 3 key ways to deal with the conspiracy:
1.) Watch your expectations
To feel bad, you need an expectation to not be met. If your expectations are that because you are a hard-working business owner, you deserve every day to be full of good things and good people being smart and intelligent, you’re going to feel like crap 20 times a day. If you expect to have 20 problems to deal with tomorrow. That is not negative thinking. It’s realistic thinking. You don’t know what they are yet but when they arrive they won’t be unexpected, so why feel bad? Don’t be like the London taxi drivers who complain about the traffic. What did they expect? It’s part of the gig.
2.) Understand that wealthy
Entrepreneurs are not just paid for their skills and talents. They are paid primarily for solving problems. As a general rule, the more problems you solve and the bigger the problems, the richer you’ll get. The reasons that most business owners don’t come close to becoming Millionaires is that they’re not willing to deal with the daily problems that the 7 figure earners are. The choice is yours.
3.) Think of the conspiracy as a test from the Universe
It’s like a massive multi-year obstacle course. At the end of the course is more gold than you’ll know what to do with. The course is littered with people who gave up at the obstacles. You are on one of the noblest quests in life — the quest for Financial Freedom. It wasn’t meant to be easy, so get over it and get to work.