Identity Before Income: Why Your Business Can’t Outgrow You

Identity Before Income: Why Your Business Can’t Outgrow You

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All right. Welcome back to The Daily Mastermind. I’m your host, George Wright III. Today we’re going to explore a truth that every entrepreneur eventually collides with, and that is that your business will never outgrow your identity. You can upgrade your software, you can hire more staff, you can double your ad spend. But if you don’t grow yourself, neither will your business. And we talked a little bit about this yesterday, but the idea is that you’ve got to grow yourself to grow your business.

Now, life doesn’t give you what you want; it gives you what you are. We know that, and I told you yesterday I love that quote from Carl Jung, where he says, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” So if identity drives behavior and behavior drives results, then the most leveraged growth move isn’t a new tactic; it’s upgrading your identity. And today we’re going to lock into that, and we’re going to use a practical framework you can use in your business to really start growing. Let’s get into it.

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Personal Journey and Lessons Learned

Most of my career—I’m just going to give you a little background of some awareness that I’ve come up with—I’ve been able to build a lot of successful things, but I’ve also been the kind of person who learns skills and picks up tactics. I’ve always got new upgrades I’m making when it comes to techniques I use in the business. And every time I learn a new technique, the business grows. The bottom line is things that I’ve done have worked—and a lot of failures as well.

But the challenge with that is that at some point the strategies and tactics—just like marketing campaigns—always stall out. And so you’re always looking for the next tactic. You’re always looking for the next campaign to keep things going. One of the lessons I learned early on—and even though I’m still learning this every day—is that when I stop trying to build external systems or solutions and start working to grow my own identity, my own internal world, my own internal game, that’s when things really go to the next level.

That’s one of the reasons why I started The Daily Mastermind. It’s the reason I’m such a big advocate of personal development. It’s even the reason I have this Phoenix emblem that you see on the apparel that I have. It’s the idea that you can unleash your potential, grow to your next level, and really build your mind, body, money, and business to create the life that you’re meant to live. But every breakthrough that I’ve ever had has come right after an internal shift—an evolution of the way I think—hence my company name, Evolution Group.

Whenever I stop identifying as the operator who has to touch every task and I start embodying the CEO who builds leaders instead of doing it myself, that’s when my team changes, our numbers change, and most importantly, my peace of mind changes.

“Life doesn’t give you what you want; it gives you what you are.”

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The Power of Identity in Business

Identity is what really rewrites your limits. Listen to me carefully when I say identity drives your beliefs. Identity drives your beliefs, and your beliefs are going to drive your behavior, right? And your behavior builds habits, and habits determine your outcome. It’s a universal law. Your identity is what’s going to drive your beliefs and your behavior—what you choose as your identity.

If you see yourself as the solopreneur who can get it all done yourself, you’re instinctively going to protect your own control of things. You’re going to resist delegation, and you’re going to choose short-term hustle over long-term scalability. If you see yourself as more of a calm, decisive builder, you’ll architect systems, empower your people, and protect your focus. Are you protecting your focus or are you maintaining control?

So you’ve got to ask yourself, Which identity do your actions prove? I want to say that again. I want you to really listen to this: Which identity do your actions prove that you’re following—not your intentions, not what you think you want to do—but your calendar, your actual schedule? Is your identity expressed in time?

If your week is packed with low-leverage tasks only you can do, your identity is still an operator. If your week highlights deep work, leadership, strategic conversations, then you are inhabiting the identity of a CEO—one that’s growing your business, not doing it all by yourself. And recurring problems that you might have and things that you keep bumping up against—this is my red flag. When I have things that keep coming up—communication problems, results not getting done, KPIs not getting hit—it’s identity feedback. I want you to think of it that way: when recurring problems happen, it’s identity feedback.

Cash crunches often mirror a leader avoiding pricing power or value communication. Teams with chaos often mirror a leader who hasn’t clarified the standards and a common vision. Marketing inconsistency often mirrors a leader who hasn’t fully owned their message. I talk about authority a lot recently. If you are not acting like an authority, it’s probably mirroring some things you’ve got to work on.

“You can’t outperform your identity—be it first, then do and have.”

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Common Identity Traps for Entrepreneurs

So let’s talk about the three biggest identity traps that keep entrepreneurs stuck. These are lessons that I try to remind myself of and go back to.

The first is the operator trap. You equate your business with value and control with safety. When you want control, you’re valuing safety, is a better way to put it. You’re indispensable in the worst way. If you step away, the machine stops. You’re proud of the grind. Your grind is what you have as your badge of honor. This is an operator trap. You’re valuing control. You get things done yourself. If you’re gone, nothing happens. You’re proud of your grind, right? So that’s the operator trap.

The second trap is the imposter trap. You know you’ve achieved, but you don’t own it. You dismiss your wins, you’re not really celebrating them, and you compare your behind-the-scenes to others’ highlight reels. You try to compare yourself to others’ wins, and you overwork to compensate for an identity that hasn’t caught up with your accomplishments. You can’t receive what you don’t believe you deserve, right? You don’t believe you deserve it. This is that imposter trap if you can relate to that one.

Or the last one is the survival trap. You run on cortisol and adrenaline. Pressure is your fuel. It worked when you started, but it silently takes away all your creativity, your relationships, and your decision quality. You react to everything, and you choose urgency over importance. You live in those quadrants I talk about when we do our Franklin podcast, where everything’s urgent and everything’s not important. In survival you can’t truly grow your business; you’re only putting out fires all the time.

All of these traps—the operator trap, the imposter trap, and the survival trap—they’re all related to your identity. These are the traps that you fall into where you know you’ve got to upgrade your identity.

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Steps to Upgrade Your Identity

I talked about this yesterday, and we discussed three different steps to grow your inner game, so I’m just going to remind you of them. Step one is awareness. You’ve got to name the identity that is stopping you. What is it? What are you operating from that’s stopping you? Listen to your language. If you say things like, “I’m terrible at hiring,” or “I always mess up launches,” or—maybe you don’t think it’s negative—but “Nobody else can do it as well as I can,” those are identity statements masquerading as facts. That’s a signal that you need to grow your identity.

So audit your calendar. You’ve got to become aware: What would a CEO do that you’re not doing—a true next-level CEO? Become aware.

Then that second step was alignment, or the vision of who you are. Define the next-level identity that you want to be. Be specific. Maybe write a one-pager—a Leader Operating Profile—an identity that you would live. How do you think? What do you tolerate? What decisions and rules do you make? What are your principles? What are your standards for meetings, metrics, and communication? Be specific. Give your future identity a voice so that you can hear it when you start to drift away from it. If you haven’t clarified your vision of who you want to grow into, how do you have a litmus test for what you’re doing right now?

And then, in addition to the awareness and the alignment, you’ve got to have action. You’ve got to actually live it. You’ve got to embody it. Identity upgrades come through action, not affirmations. This is not “give your affirmations; it’s going to happen.” Choose evidence behaviors—things that are next-level—and find ways to track them. For example: I delegate one repeating task every week with a clear SOP. I protect two 90-minute blocks for deep work off the phone every single week, because a true next-level CEO would do that. I coach leaders on my team—instead of solving their problems, I coach them. Small behaviors create neurological proof. You’ve got to help your team grow just as much as you grow.

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Practical Tips for Identity Growth

Now let’s talk really quickly about a couple ways you can get something tangible or tactical that you can use. Sometimes it’s as simple as putting a two-column list on a sheet of paper: the left column being the current-identity behaviors that you recognize you’re doing, and the right column being the next-level identity behaviors. Make a goal to move those behaviors over to the right column—next-level identity behaviors. Move one per week and go from doing it the way you currently do it to doing it the way you know you need to be doing it for your next-level identity.

Another thing you can do is—listen, this is a big one—you’ve got to upgrade your language. You’ve got to start replacing words like “I have to” with “I choose to,” or “I can’t” with “I don’t yet.” Language is really what’s going to steer a lot of your identity subconsciously, and it’s pointing you either in the right or the wrong direction. So upgrade your language.

And the last thing is make sure you surround yourself with the right people. Most of us surround ourselves with people who are at par or below. What you need to do is upgrade your environment. Surround yourself with positive, successful people who are growing—people who are further along than you. Because when you do that, you get this belief transference. People who are already doing it have more confidence. You know what it’s like when you’re around people who have more confidence.

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Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Now I want to give you a couple of cautions to think about today. One is many of us feel like if things are going to be done right, we’ve got to do them ourselves. If you reframe that a little bit and step back, you realize that without leaders your business is never going to scale. So it doesn’t matter if you can do it better—you’ve got to take time to train leaders, because the future you, the one who’s running a sizable organization with a lot of success, doesn’t want to be doing it all themselves.

The other thing I would caution you about is that most of us don’t take time to look at, work on, or grow our identity. We like personal development, but we don’t use time to grow our identity. You’re already doing identity work by the way—your subconscious is growing whether you like it or not. You’re validating your identity. What you want to do is be purposeful. Take time and reframe it so that you know that your future depends on you taking time to really identify and grow your identity. If you do that, I know it’ll make a difference.

Your business is going to mirror your identity. If you want enduring external expansion—whether it’s your business, your relationships, your wealth—you’ve got to work on the inner game. You’ve got to say to yourself, If my current schedule and calendar are proof of where I want to be, what do I want them to look like? If your calendar is proof of what your current identity is, what do you want it to look like when you become the person you want to become?

I really encourage you to dig deep on the topic of identity. We’ll talk more and more about it over the coming weeks and months going into the first of the year. But your business cannot outgrow your identity, and so it’s important that you spend time clearly defining where you’re at and start to use that as a litmus test against everything you do on a day-to-day basis. That’s my message for today. I hope you have a great week. I hope things are going well for you, but if they’re not, hit me up. Let me know what you’re struggling with. What can we do to help you? And if you’re winning—which I know most of you are—let’s celebrate the wins.

Hit me up on The Daily Mastermind. I always put it in the show notes, but my email address is George@g3worldwide.com. I always read all my emails. It might take me a little time, but I’d love to respond to you. Hit me up. Let me know what you’re doing. And once again, I’m going to keep hammering this down: if you’re not building your authority, go to TheAuthorityScorecard.com. It’ll give you a quick assessment and show you a bunch of ways you can grow your identity and your authority at the same time. And listen, it doesn’t matter if you’re starting your brand, you’re building your brand, or you’re an iconic brand—there are always things that we can do to help take you to the next level.

Have an amazing day. I look forward to talking with you tomorrow. Once again, this is George Wright III, and this has been The Daily Mastermind. Talk to you tomorrow.

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About George 

George Wright III is a proven, successful entrepreneur and he knows how to inspire entrepreneurs, companies, and individuals to achieve massive results. With more than 20 years of executive management experience and 25 years of direct marketing and sales experience, George is responsible for starting and building several successful multimillion-dollar companies. He started at a very young age to network and build his experience and knowledge of what it takes to become a driven and well-known entrepreneur. George built a multi-million-dollar seminar business, promoting some of the biggest stars and brands in the world. He has accelerated the success and cash flow in each of his ventures through his network of resources and results driven strategies. George is now dedicated to teaching and sharing his Prosperity Principles and strategies to every driven and passionate entrepreneur he meets. His mission is to empower entrepreneurs globally, to create massive change and LIVE their ultimate destiny.

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You have GREATNESS inside you. I BELIEVE in you. Let’s make today the day you unleash your potential!

George Wright III

CEO, The Daily Mastermind | Evolution X

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