25 Mantras, Concepts, and Business Thoughts 4-22-25

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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast 13 min 1 speaker 8 chapters transcribed

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Who is Scott Becker and what are the 25 mantras about?

0:00

This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast. Today's discussion, and it's in preparation for a webinar we have coming up, 25 mantras, concepts, and business thoughts. Some of these are personal. Some of these are business. And bear with me as we walk through the 25 of these. I would love somebody to give me feedback on this discussion. If you're the first one or two people to text me with feedback in this and suggestions for changes or edits, it's 773-766-5322. I will send you a 100-hour Amazon gift certificate. Thank you for listening. So the first concept, we talk about a business often.

How do you decide to double down, stay the course, or abandon a business?

0:43

Whenever you're on the course of a business, if you have to choose to double down on that business if it's going well, stay the course if it's going fine, or abandon it if you shouldn't keep on pursuing it. And this abandoning something is a very hard choice sometimes because periodically you get positive feedback, you get dopamine fixes. And so you want to keep going with it. But at the end of the day, when you realize there's not that much potential or it's going to be so hard to get to that potential, you got to make that decision to let it go. The easier decisions are when things are going well, to pour the coals to it and double down on it. I love that. Or it's going fine. You keep on doing it. You keep on moving along. It's doing fine. It's making some money.

1:26

It's not a loser, not a huge winner, but fine. You stay the course. The second concept we talk about is a business investment concept, and I love this as well, is save and protect yourself like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. So even though... You want to invest to win for the long run.

What is the advice on saving and investing mindset?

1:48

You also have to save and put enough money away that you're safe regardless of what the long run brings. The third and fourth concepts are more along the lines of personal concepts versus particularly business concepts. One comes from Jerry Seinfeld, which is sort of this concept of Some meditation, some weights and moderate coffee that those three things get them through life. More meditation, more weights and more coffee. I can only do so much espresso without driving everybody around me crazy and making myself insane. But the concept of working on some meditation practice, very hard for me. But the concept of staying in shape, very important to me. And I think that's right on. The fourth concept that goes with those concepts is a different concept.

What personal habits does Scott recommend for life balance?

2:33

And as you age, you'll understand this better. But the concept is don't let the old man in. You've got to be very careful in life about slowing down too much. Because as you slow down, it's harder and harder to get your mojo going, to get moving in the right direction. And I don't want to overuse this to cause people stress, to push themselves too hard. But there is this fine line. And if you slow down too much mentally or physically... It's very hard to recoup and get back at that speed you want to live at and work at. The fifth concept is really for all professionals or people building a business or doing whatever job they do, is when you first get into whatever you're doing, you have to get great at whatever you're doing.

3:13

So if you're a doctor, you've got to become a great doctor. If you're a lawyer, you've got to become a great lawyer. Same thing with accountants. Same thing with any kind of professional. Then at some point, you move from being great at that profession to to practicing leadership and practicing management and growth in that profession.

Why is it important to be great at your profession before moving into leadership?

3:28

But the starting point is really understanding and being great at your profession or job. So those are the first five points. Now I'll move to six to 10. The sixth point is, really understand your business and the landscape that it's in, and then you're trying to always apply things in that context. So if you're a lawyer and you're in a sector, you really want to understand the business sector you're in, then apply law in that context. And I think this goes for very many things, is really trying to understand the landscape that you work in and that you live in. The seventh concept is