The Right & Wrong Time To Be Patient | Ep 215
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- What's up guys, welcome back to Build. And today what I want to cover is patience. When is it good to be patient and when is it actually bad to be patient, especially when it comes to business. I wanted to make this podcast because I'll be honest, I haven't been making a lot of content in the last few weeks. I have,

I just haven't felt inspired. I have not felt like it. And I've been super busy in my business, actually doing business. And I haven't really had time to like cement the lessons that I'm learning right now because I am learning a ton of lessons and relearning some that I've already learned. But I haven't really taken the time to like cement them, write them down. And I've definitely felt a lot of desire not to do it. And every moment that I sit down, I'm like, I could make a podcast about this.

I decided to do something else instead. And so, you know, this morning, I found myself really in a place where I was like, okay, I think I have something that I want to talk about. And I think it's relevant to a lot of people in business right now. And that is patience. And so what is patience? Okay, this is something that my friend, Dr. Kashi, defines as finding something to do in the meantime, right? And that's really operationalizing patience. And the thing is, is like for me, I think for the most part, I'm actually...

very patient. I can remain incredibly patient when it comes to waiting to get results. A lot of the reason is because I'm good at keeping myself busy, right? And I think that one reason that I like operating a business and owning a business, not doing one or the other, but also being the CEO, not just the founder, is because if I'm just sitting there watching the business happen,

I just ruminate on it. And so I like to, whether it is the best use of my time or not, be in there making shit happen. And I do think, of course, founder-led businesses are typically

more successful businesses. But I also think to myself, what would I do if I were not doing this? I'd probably be sitting there twiddling my thumbs, finding every little nook and cranny that I find wrong with my business, rather than being in there fixing that shit. And so I think that that's actually part of the reason why I'm quote, so patient is that I'm actually just really busy. When I was thinking about this topic, really came up for me today, because recently, and

In fact, like in the last 24 hours, I found myself feeling incredibly impatient. I had to catch myself because I was like, oh, I'm impatient to the point of like, I'm about to start accusing people of things before I get curious and ask them what has occurred. Because enough incidents...

in completely unrelated departments and facets of my life occurred that have irritated me. And so when I'm already irritated, the next thing that happens, it might be the one that sets it off where you're like, I have nothing left for this person. I'm going to assume that you did this thing wrong because of gross negligence, not because you didn't know how or didn't have proper instruction. And so I found myself getting really close to that line. And I sat down, I was like, damn, I consider myself to be a patient person, but I'm having this actual like

inner debate around where patience is best and where it's not. And I tell you, the reason I have that debate and I've been thinking about this and it's been something in my mind lately is because I've always looked at patience as my superpower. But as of recently, I've also seen that it can be my kryptonite. The reason for that is because I think patience is very good in many ways, but it can also be bad in some. And so I was making myself some notes because I was like, I really want to

identify where it's advantageous that I am patient in my business and in my life, and where it's advantageous that I'm not patient and that it actually might be hurting me. Because as of recently, and I think we all operate off recency bias, I definitely had a few situations where I was like, wow, I was way too patient in that situation. And it ended up not being good for my business or not being good for a relationship or not being good for a team.

And so, you know, I've kind of swung to the opposite end of the spectrum where I'm saying I'm going to be impatient because that wouldn't work. I'm pretty good at catching myself. And so I said, OK, it's neither of these things. It's that in some situations and some circumstances, being patient is super helpful. And in some situations, in some circumstances, being patient is actually hurting us. Patience hurts.

allows people in my business to fail and learn. If I'm not patient with people's skill acquisition, the fact that people are gonna be gaining skills while they're here, then that means that they'll probably never gain the skills. Because if I'm not patient enough to let people fail and then to help them learn what to do better next time, then they're never gonna learn and they're never gonna get better. And so my people will not be an appreciating asset, but rather a depreciating asset. And we don't want that in the business, right?

And so I think one of my biggest reinforcers for being patient has been that I've been able to really develop people because of my patience.

because I have the patience to say, "It's okay. What can we do better next time? It's okay. What can we do better tomorrow?" Understood. What are we going to do next time? Understood. What can we do better tomorrow? And I'm really good at asking those questions because I try not to dwell on it. I try to just redirect people to, "How do we ensure this doesn't happen again? How do we ensure we do it this way next time instead? What do you think would have prevented this from happening?" Like, I'm just trying to get to the solution as fast as possible. Sometimes that even in itself can be jarring for people.

because it's not like, oh, it's okay, I'm not. But here's the thing. I don't want to also reassure people that every time we make a mistake, they need to get coddled. I don't want that kind of culture either. And so I'm constantly just trying to redirect people into the future. I think that's a really good thing and it promotes a lot of learning and a lot of development for people on my team. So that's the first place where patience is good.

The second place is that it helps us make better long-term decisions. If every time you have an idea or every time somebody else has an idea, it's going to take six to 12 to 18 to two years or even five years to play out. And you're like, wow, that's way too long. We've got to get it done in a month or a quarter. Like that's so long. There's no way something could take that long. Yes, I think urgency when it comes to tasks and how we work is good. But urgency in terms of accomplishing goals is often bad because the question is at what cost?

Sure, we can build a rocket that takes us to Mars tomorrow. At what cost? Everyone on the rocket dies, right? There's always a cost to speed. I think that when it comes to our long-term goals in a company or in an organization,

A lot of the times what helps us accomplish those long-term goals is being patient because if we do it right the first time, we don't have to redo it. And especially with large initiatives like an entirely new product line, like a sister business, like a new entity, you don't want to have to redo that, right? You don't have to redo the rocket that you send astronauts up to space in. That's not something you want to have to redo. Patience often helps us

make better long-term decisions, and usually build better products. The last place where I think patience is really good is that patience builds trust and loyalty, right? I think that the reason that I have a lot of trust from my team and with people on my team is because of patience that I exhibit. I think the reason I get a lot of loyalty from people is because I'm patient with them and because I show them it's okay to fail as long as we learn, as long as we pick ourselves up, as long as we try something different the next time.

I absolutely accept failure. I don't accept quitting. I don't tolerate quitting. I don't tolerate beating ourselves up. And I don't tolerate coddling people when they fail. I actually think that that teaches people that failure is bad. And so if coddling people worked, I would do it, but it doesn't. And so I do think that patience builds that loyalty where good people want to stay with you for a long time.

because they've seen that you are able to be patient with them and they appreciate that. And so it's almost like reciprocity. That's where I think patience is good. And honestly, for most of my career,

I have coined being patient as a reason why I've been able to have such great relationships with people that I hire and people that I bring onto my team and just people all in general because I tend to be patient. I allow them space to fail and learn and I don't judge them for it. Now, here's the thing. When is patience bad or when is it not useful to deploy patience? Patience can very quickly turn into putting off a hard decision.

So how do I fall into this trap? I sometimes am so patient with people that I allow poor performers to remain on the team too long. Have we tried everything? Have we taught them this? Have we given them a million hours of our time? Have we, okay, but what cost is that for the business? And can the business incur that cost right now?

Those are the questions that I have to ask myself on a daily basis when I'm confronted with mediocrity, which is, could I help fix this person to become a competent performer? Yes. How long would it take? 12 months. Does my business have that long to wait? No. Okay. Back to zero. Rehire a different person. And that, guys, has been something that I have had to try so hard to teach myself because I hate giving up on people, but I also hate not getting the business results even more.

And at the end of the day, my job is to be a steward of the business. And so I have to make decisions that are best for the business because if I don't, guess what? Nobody's got a job. And so you do the rest of your team a disservice by allowing that mediocrity to remain on the team.

And again, I don't look at it as somebody's fault when they're a poor performer. I just look at it as like, I misunderstood what was needed for this role, or I misinterpreted their skills when I was interviewing them. Either way, it's my fault, my problem to solve, whether I have them remain on the team and coach them up, or I exit them from the team and accept the fact that they're going to be upset about that. I constantly remain in conflict with this one, which is like, and that's why that question is what's so helpful for me, which is like,

How long would it take? And does the business have that long to wait?

And so I think that really helps me from deploying too much patience into an area where it could actually be really bad for my business. Now, the second place where patience is bad, right, is when patience turns into tolerating poor performance and low standards. So I've seen this, especially with new managers. A lot of new managers will, especially when they really care and they really want to be a great leader, they help a lot. They help people a lot to the point where sometimes it's coddling people.

And they help them to the point where what happens is that person cannot meet performance standards without that amount of help. And so they actually become the crutch to that person. And what happens is they back off and they're like, all right, no crutch. And then what happens is really poor performance. And then they're like, crap, I guess I just have to be patient with that person. But the question in those scenarios is, does this person have the skills, aka the competence, to do this role to the ability needed for the company?

It's not, could I put this person on my back and carry them across the finish line? Yes, we can all do that. That's an option for everyone every day. But it's, is this person have the skills to fully do their job? Or am I doing 30 or 40% of their job? And because of that, is that distracting me from doing my job, which is actually hurting the business? The next question that you can ask yourself when you're trying to figure out if are you being too patient with poor performance and you're lowering your standards is, how does the rest of the team get affected by this person?

Is this person making the culture better or worse? Is the way I'm handling this situation making this culture better or worse? Am I gaining or losing respect from my team by keeping this person on it? Here's the thing, guys. We want to invest in our team. We don't want to invest in incompetent, poor performers. Now, I don't say that as an insult to people.

they are incompetent because you're probably incompetent in choosing them, right? And so like it goes both ways. But nonetheless, if somebody is incompetent for the role, the job of the boss is to spend the most time possible with top performers, not the most time possible coaching low performers. And so if your patience has turned into you tolerating poor performance and lowering your standards and accommodating and constantly coaching and babysitting,

That is when you don't want to remain patient. That's when you have to say, you know what? I can't do this. I can't keep living like this. I can't spend 30% of my job doing this other person's job. I can't set the standard for the rest of the team because guess what's going to happen? If you continue to do that, your team loses respect for you. I promise, no matter how cool you are, no matter how much they like you, they're fucking losing respect for you. And those people quit.

High performers, A players, they don't want to be on a team of low performers. And if anything, they don't want to work for somebody who's going to babysit low performers. And then lastly, when is patience bad? When your customers pay for your patients. This is a quote that one of my mentors taught me about a decade ago. She said, you never want your customers to pay for your employees' training. And I replaced that with anything. You never want your customers to pay for your employees' incompetence.

You never want your customers to pay for your employees' incompetence. You never want whatever, insert word there. If your customers are paying for the incompetence on your team, then you might be being too patient, right? You might have just mishired. You might have hired someone that didn't have enough skills. You might have...

hired the wrong person. You might have not properly scoped the role and understood what it really took. Whatever it is, you can always make more money, but you can't get your reputation back. Reputation stays with you forever. And it's much harder to change than it is harder to make more money. And so that is a place where being patient

It's not something we want to do. We don't want to be patient when it comes to results we're getting with our customers. We don't want to be patient when it comes to how people are treating our customers. We want to make sure that our customers are always getting the best and they're not paying for your patience in a scenario where it doesn't work.

Here's my advice. And here are the, I would say, like guiding rules for me when it comes to remaining patient and knowing when I need to be patient versus when I need to be impatient. The first, and this is the most common one that I tell myself, is I want to be impatient with effort and patient with results. I stick by this hard. If somebody's not deploying their 110% into effort, I will not be patient with them.

But as long as somebody is deploying their 110% effort into improving, I will be patient with them. It's being patient with effort that you don't want. You don't want when somebody messes up, when somebody promises something for you and doesn't uphold it, what happens next, it's not as important if they get the result the next time, it's important that they put in the work.

So I'll give you an example. Like if you have a sales team and there's a guy and he's off his game, he's just not closing deals. When you listen to his calls and you're like, oh, he's not following the script. That's why he's not closing deals. If then he just drills the script, nails the script, rehearses the script over and over and over again, late nights, early mornings, but he doesn't close the next sale, what do you do?

For me, I would reinforce to him how proud I am of him for rehearsing the script. But I would understand that I'm going to be patient with the fact that it might take a few tries for him to close some deals. I'm going to be impatient with his effort, make sure he is violently attacking the problem, but I'm going to be patient with the results. And here's the thing, if you're impatient with effort and patient with results, you're going to get results eventually.

Successful actions precede success. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that being patient means it happens faster because you only have to do it once.

Rushing makes things take longer because you have to start over so many times. In many cases, I have to remind myself of this, which is in this situation, is this something that's hard to reverse? If it's hard to reverse, I should be more patient. If it's not hard to reverse, maybe I'll be a little impatient. And so if something's really hard to redo, we want to deploy more patience.

If it's not too hard to redo, we can probably be a little less patient. And then the last thing that I focus on is if you want to be more patient, you want to figure out what to do instead. Okay. While somebody's learning, while somebody's training, while a product's being built, while a marketing campaign's being built, while somebody's practicing, while somebody's working on their skillset, what do you do in the meantime? Because nagging somebody...

is not going to be helpful. Maybe making processes that make the thing easier, creating trainings, doing calls with your team, doing Q&A's, whatever it might be.

Get busy doing something else instead. I think a great one that I used to suggest when I was a personal trainer and I had clients trying to lose weight was they're like, I don't know how to not eat. I'm like, well, it's really hard to eat when you walk. So while you wait to eat next, go on a walk, right? Listen to a podcast, go work out. It's not even a net zero. That's a net positive because you're not even not eating. You're also burning calories. And so like, what's the equivalent in your business to walking in order not to eat?

What do you need to do? I mean, shoot, maybe it is walking. Maybe it is listening to a podcast. Maybe it is writing a book. Like what is it that you can do to remain patient so you can be impatient with effort and patient with results? So with that, guys, that's all I've got for you today. I hope this was useful. I hope for those of you who struggle just trying to find the line between patience and impatience, that this provides a little bit of insight into you. We all deal with these things. We all wish to be patient, but also wish for fast results. That is just being human.