If it were easy, everyone would do it!
I saw this phrase and it inspired me to do this episode, because so many of you are doing things at a high level, and that took work. At the same time, many of you are worried about the next new competitor. Maybe they’re doing more work than you to improve, maybe not. If you’re not doing things that seem hard, right now, you’re not pushing yourself higher.
Listen to this new 8-minute episode for some ideas to, hopefully, inspire you to reach higher, personally and professionally.
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Below is a full transcript. If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at [email protected] or contact me via text, use the short form on this page, or call 732.422.6362
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– If it were easy, everyone would do it. Listen to this episode, find out what I’m talking about. Hi, it’s Alan Berg. Welcome back to another edition of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I saw this phrase the other day, I think it was on somebody’s blog post or an article or something, “If it was easy, everyone would do it.” And I started thinking about you guys. I started thinking about our industry. I started thinking about anybody who’s doing anything at a high level. And a lot of people complaining about there’s always new people coming in, new people coming in. And you know what the truth is that we were all new once, and it’s whether or not we decided to take ourselves to the next level and then the next one and the next one and keep improving ourselves.
And that’s partly what leads to our ability to charge at a higher level for the results that are perceived higher by our customers. And the thing is it takes work. Anything that’s worth doing is going to take some sort of an investment, money time or both. And this is really what it comes down to. If it was easy, everybody would do it. I had somebody say to me, oh, you’re so good with languages. And I said, well, I’m okay with languages but I’m just more committed to studying them. You know, every day I do lessons I’m actually doing French and Spanish because the French was kind of messing up my Spanish. So I’m doing Spanish lessons to bone up on that. Make sure I’m getting a little bit better at that every day as well.
And that’s really all it is, is that I made it a priority and I made it a priority that I know that I can be better. And if it was easy, everybody would do it. Now the truth is it’s no harder for you than for me. It’s just a matter of can you make it as much of a priority as I do? Your life is not mine. My life is not yours. You have things going on that I don’t. I have things going on that you don’t. In your industry there’s somebody else right now that is studying to be better at what they do or what you do, it could be said “what you do”, and people that are taking that opportunity to do it. Now that doesn’t mean that you are not going to be able to charge your customers what you do and give them the results that you do and charge what you do. You should be able to do that.
The thing is it’s hard to move yourself up incrementally when you’re already good at something. When you’re new at something, those benchmarks come quickly, right? Like I’m trying to learn sign language. So I was able to learn the alphabet pretty quickly but finger spelling that for me to do it, I know what I’m trying to say. I can do it. I’m slow, but I can do it. Somebody else trying to read somebody else who’s spelling out things with their fingers is hard for me because I’m not used to doing it. And the thing is what do you do when you run into the obstacles? Do you persevere? Do you push through it? Do you say yes, it’s hard. I know it’s going to be hard but I’m going to get this or do you give up? Because there’s a lot of people that give up the people that don’t are the ones that achieve the higher level. Now sometimes it’s just an achievement for you. Sometimes it’s an achievement that leads to different things for your business. The ability for you to charge more because you’re providing a higher level result or working with other people that you couldn’t work with before because you couldn’t provide those kind of results.
Remember if it was easy, everybody would do it. And that’s what commoditizes things. That’s what makes it so you can’t charge more because there’s no perceived difference between one thing and another. If it was easy, everybody could do it right from the beginning, there would be no advantage to you for having 5 years, 10 years, 15 and 20, 30 years of experience. And just having that experience doesn’t make you better. What that experience does is it gives you the opportunity to take that experience and turn it into better results. But I think we know a lot of people that might have been doing the same thing for 10 years, right? But that’s it, they’re doing the same thing for 10 years. They’re not improving. They’re just doing what they did. And then you have somebody else who maybe is doing it for a year or two or five, and they’re surpassing the kind of results that the other person who’s been doing it for 10 years, because that other person wasn’t looking to change what they do to grow what they do to provide different results.
A phrase that you might have heard me say or might have read in one of my books is “Try to make your own business obsolete before somebody does it for you”. There’s always somebody else who’s innovating. Is it you? It’s hard. It’s hard to be the innovator. It’s hard to forge that new path. But that’s the point, is that if you want the spoils you have to go through the fight. You have to do that hard stuff to get to the other side because if it was easy, everybody would do it. Now the truth is once you’ve been doing something for a while, it’s easier for you but it’s easier for you because you’ve done the work. And then the question is, are you done? Or you’re trying to improve. I was speaking to somebody today who’s newer to speaking, he’s been doing it for a while, but newer to speaking. And I told them some of the things that I do, you know even at the level that I’m at speaking with all these acronyms, after my name and certifications and things I still watch other people speak. And I study the craft of their speaking. Yeah, I want to hear their content but it’s also how you deliver it because we know it’s not just the message. It’s the messenger.
So I’m listening for the tone of their voice and the rate of speaking. I’m watching their body language. I’m listening for filler words. I’m watching how they engage with the audience and how the audience is engaging with them and how they adapt to things that might happen in the room or things that might throw some people off that doesn’t throw somebody else off. I’m watching that craft. And then I also watch myself, listen to myself. I listen to every one of these podcasts because we do the captioning and the captioning is done by a real person. And then I’m checking that captioning because it’s not right. So I get to listen. And then sometimes I’m reaching out to Richie my podcast producer and saying, hey Richie, is this all right? Does that sound right? And this particular one I’m actually redoing because there was a problem with the recording. The quality of the recording wasn’t good. It must have been an internet problem that I had. And I wasn’t satisfied. I’m not going to give you that. So I’m redoing it. If it was easy, everybody would do it.
So what are you doing that’s hard right now. What are you doing that’s hard because you know that the rewards are worth the work? That could be personally. It could be professionally. I’ve seen people doing the 75-day challenge and showing me day one, day two. Thomas Heath, if you’re listening the day that I’m recording this I saw you put your photo up of day one. Well, good luck buddy. I hope you make it through those 75 days. And I want to see the results on the other side. It’s going to be hard but it’ll be worth the effort for him. For you? Maybe, maybe not. I like to do things that push me because they’re hard. I like to know that I’ve been able to achieve that thing. Maybe it’s from my martial arts training years ago you know, doing those things, pushing through and getting to that result on the other side. It’s so much more satisfying when you had to work for that than if it came easily to you.
So if it was easy, everybody would do it. What are you doing right now? What are you doing to push yourself, to improve yourself? What conference are you going to? What books are you reading? What are you doing personally, professionally? You know, if it was easy, everybody would do it. And that’s why you should be doing it because it’s not easy. And you want to get those rewards. Thanks for listening.
I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is [email protected]. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.
Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:
- Apple Podcast:
- YouTube: www.WeddingBusinessSolutionsPodcast.tv
- Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3sGsuB8
- Stitcher:
- Google Podcast:
- iHeart Radio: https://ihr.fm/31C9Mic
- Pandora:
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