America turns 250 years old on Saturday and my husband’s been smuggling fireworks across state lines for this event since July 5th of last year. This time he’s extra insufferable about it because it’s the big 250.
Two hundred and fifty years since a bunch of broke, pissed off, wildly unreasonable men signed a document that was, functionally, a business plan with a death penalty attached if it failed.
Let that sink in for a second, because we’ve romanticized the Founding Fathers into marble statues and forgotten they were the original bootstrapped startup founders. No investors. No safety net. No market research firm telling them independence had product-market fit.
Just fifty-six guys betting their homes, families and fortunes on an idea nobody had proof would work. Most of them died broke, hunted, or both. That’s not a metaphor I’m stretching for you — that’s just what happened to them. And 250 years later we’re sitting here whining that setting up a good lead generation campaign is “too hard” and Q2 was “a tough quarter.”
What made this country GREAT was that it was built by people with an absolutely unreasonable relationship with responsibility and a deep thirst for FREEDOM and TRUE independence.
But most people get this wrong: independence isn’t just freedom FROM control. It’s freedom from being carried and coddled. You don’t get to keep the “don’t tread on me” flag on your truck and then turn around and expect the government, the market, or even that outsourced marketing firm to fix your sales numbers for you. Entitlement is just dependency with better PR — it enslaves you to whoever you’re depending on, every single time.
I have a number of MSP clients who immigrated to the US. All of them are some of the hardest working people I know. Tough as nails and fiercely independent. They came here looking for nothing more than an opportunity. Not a handout. Not even a hand up.
Dr. Nido Qubein, one of the smartest men I know and an immigrant himself, has said that immigrants succeed in this country at multiples of the rate native-born Americans do. Not because they’re smarter, but simply because they’ve never once assumed the deck was supposed to be stacked in their favor and they got to work instead of getting to whine. They showed up broke, worked eighteen-hour days, and treated “no” as a comma instead of a period.
Meanwhile I’ve got members born with every advantage this country offers who quit implementing a marketing campaign because a prospect was rude to them on the phone once. ONE TIME. The founders got shot at. You got a mean email from a guy named Kevin about your cold call and you cower.
This is where it connects back to YOU and YOUR business: It’s best you remember that you are not entitled to clients. You are not entitled to referrals, to a full pipeline or to a good year just because last year was hard and you feel you’ve paid your dues. Nobody owes you success, profitability or growth.
The prospect doesn’t owe you a meeting because you’re good (or even great) at what you do. The market doesn’t owe you growth because you’re a nice person. You have to go get it — declare it, fight for it, and if the first plan doesn’t work, you go to Plan B, then C, then D, same as every founder who’s ever built anything worth having. That’s not cruelty. That’s just how the whole damned country got built, and it’s how every single highly successful MSP in my community got to 7-figure net profits.
Ask any of them if it was handed to them because they’re “special” or a “good person.” Go ahead. I’ll wait.
So here’s your assignment for the 250th, and it’s not “have a beer and watch fireworks,” though God knows you’ve earned that too. Go look at the one area of your business where you’ve started expecting something and are taking it for granted — a renewal, a referral, a client who “should just know” they need to buy what you’re selling — without actually campaigning for it or earning it. Or maybe you’re asking your team to take “ownership” for things without actually giving them any ownership.
Or better yet, get brutally honest with yourself about the things you’re frustrated over because you think they “should” be easier.
Whatever it is, find it. Then go do the un-entitled thing: make the ask, DO the work that you know needs to be done, have the uncomfortable conversation you’ve been avoiding or stop blaming your team, the economy, your clients, your competition and dig in and get ‘er done. That’s the whole spirit of this country in one sentence, and it’s the whole spirit of building a real business too.
Nobody’s coming to save you.
Declare independence from your own excuses, or keep paying rent to them forever.
Want some real independence from living month to month “hoping” sales will come in and profits will materialize? Click here to apply for one-on-one consulting and let’s get a real growth plan working so you can declare freedom from your brokenness.
