Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction to Perseverance
The host introduces himself and the episode’s theme: why perseverance is a crucial trait for entrepreneurial success in ecommerce.

00:01:04 The Power of a Daily Message
The host shares how a short inspirational video on perseverance helped him overcome a personal funk and business-related frustrations.

00:02:07 Defining Perseverance
The host defines perseverance as the steady effort to achieve a goal, even when it’s hard or takes a long time.

00:03:13 The Video Game Analogy
Business growth is compared to a video game, where entrepreneurs must defeat progressively harder “bosses” or constraints to level up.

00:06:32 The Challenge of Omnichannel
Transitioning from an Amazon-only brand to an omnichannel presence is presented as a massive, multi-year challenge, like a thick concrete wall.

00:08:43 The Reality of Success
The host reassures listeners that slow, steady growth is more common than the overnight success stories often seen on social media.

00:11:13 The 40-Year “Overnight” Success
The story of Portillo’s is used as an example of a business that took 40 years to become a major success.

00:12:28 Balancing Growth and Lifestyle
The host discusses sacrificing rapid growth for a more sustainable pace that allows for family time and a balanced lifestyle.

00:15:15 Intelligent Perseverance and Strategy
Perseverance must be paired with a good strategy, which involves recognizing patterns and focusing limited resources on the right opportunities.

00:17:49 The Uncomfortable Middle
The host describes the challenging phase after hiring new talent, where progress isn’t immediately visible and patience is required.

00:20:20 The Real Test of an Entrepreneur
True perseverance is tested not when things are going well, but when facing negative feedback, missed targets, and setbacks.

00:22:36 The Danger of Diversifying Too Soon
Entrepreneurs often jump to new ventures when they hit a constraint, instead of persevering through the challenges of their current business.

00:24:50 The Breakthrough is a Process, Not an Event
Success is not one giant breakthrough but the result of making slightly better decisions consistently over a long period of time.

00:27:09 The Goal is to Handle Hardship
The ultimate goal isn’t to eliminate challenges, but to become someone who can operate effectively and move forward when things are hard.

Links and Mentions:

Business Examples:
“Portillo’s“: “00:12:28”

Books/Concepts:
“Intelligent Perseverance”: “00:15:12”

Quotes:
“Intelligent perseverance is remaining committed to the destination while being unattached to the route that gets you there.”: “00:15:12”

Transcript:

Josh Hadley 00:00:00  What if the reason why you’re still struggling with the same problem in your business isn’t because you’re failing, but it’s actually because the problem you are facing is actually worth solving? Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast, I’m Josh Hadley. I’ve scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I’m actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. My name is Josh Hadley. First and foremost, I’m a man of faith. I’m a husband to a beautiful wife and the father of four children. I’ve been selling in the e-commerce space for over a decade, doing over $20 million in annual revenue and doing multi-millionaires on channels such as Amazon, TikTok, shop and Shopify. And I am also the host of the number one business strategy podcast for ecommerce entrepreneurs. And that is E-com breakthrough. Today, I want to share with you why perseverance is one of the most important traits that you can acquire as an entrepreneur to set yourself up for success in the future.

Josh Hadley 00:01:04  And the reason why I’m talking about this today is because, to be honest with you, I’m going through hard stuff in the business right now. And, you know, I always start my day with kind of a daily meditation or a devotional with God. Whenever I drop off the kids from school, I’m always turning on a podcast or an inspirational message. And today, as I was driving back home from dropping the kids off from school, a YouTube video started playing after I listened to another podcast, and it was a two minute video, and it was from Jeffrey R Holland. And it was all about why perseverance is such a vital trait that we could acquire in this life. And it touched me right to the core, and honestly kind of helped pull me out of a little funk that I’ve been in over the last couple days of just, you know, feeling like I’m running on this hamster wheel, trying to defeat some of the top constraints in the business, but also feeling like I’m not going anywhere at the exact same time.

Josh Hadley 00:02:07  And so that’s the message that I want to share with you today, because it inspired me. It reinvigorated me, and it lit that fire underneath me to help lead the business to that next step. And that’s what my hope is for you today is as you listen to this, you know, wherever you are in your season of business, you will continue to face hard things. And it is through facing those hard things that you as a person, your character is going to be refined, but more importantly, you develop that grit and that perseverance that will allow you to succeed. So let’s talk about what perseverance actually is. I love the definition of perseverance. Just coming straight from the dictionary, which is perseverance, is keeping a steady effort to achieve a goal even when things are hard, frustrating, or take a very long time. Let’s talk about that very long time. Because in the intro I said, what if the reason why you’re still facing the exact same problem today isn’t because you’re actually failing as an entrepreneur? Maybe it’s because the problem is actually worth solving.

Josh Hadley 00:03:13  And I’ll tell you this much if you are selling in the e-commerce space, welcome to one of the most competitive business industries or opportunities in the entire world. Because you’re not just competing on a local level, you’re competing against a worldwide audience. So some of the best entrepreneurs in the world are your competition. And in addition to that, in the e-commerce space, there are different levels that you have to conquer. And so my favorite analogy is this if you liken the game of e-commerce business growth, or just business in general to a video game, if you’ve ever played video games, you know, typically if you’re going through these games, there’s always a boss that you have to beat to make it to the next level. So, you know, level one’s a little bit easier of a boss. And, you know, in the e-commerce space, maybe that’s just finding your first product market fit. And it’s like, oh, I needed to beat the boss of just like finding a product on Alibaba or something like that, slapping my private label brand name on it.

Josh Hadley 00:04:18  And wow, I actually listed it on Amazon and it actually worked. I actually made some money. That’s kind of like boss number one that you have to defeat. Well, now, as you continue to beat the next bosses, that will continue to come up, which is like, how do you do this at scale? How do you hire and lead team members? How do you actually implement an operating system into your business so that you’re not the one doing everything all of the time, right. Those are different levels that you have to unlock. But guess what? There are certain levels that are going to be substantially harder than others. And that’s exactly what happens in a video game. Oftentimes what happens is you go to beat the boss. And guess what happens? Most often in the video game? You’re probably going to die beating that boss the first time. Most likely you will. If you don’t, you know it’s probably an easier boss to solve. And that’s okay. You don’t have to die, at first in order to beat the boss.

Josh Hadley 00:05:17  But oftentimes when you’re beating a serious boss or there’s a massive constraint in your business, you might fail or time or two first, it doesn’t mean that the boss or the constraint is not worth conquering. It just means it may take you multiple attempts to get through it. And may I submit to you that that difficulty, how difficult that boss is in and of itself, proves that it is a worthwhile constraint to actually focus on, because most entrepreneurs would back away from that challenge and they just stay in the the game or the season that they already know. And here’s kind of the best analogy that I would give you here. A lot of the people that got started on Amazon and they know the Amazon game and Amazon is just about demand capture and you’re just arbitrage in keywords. That’s it. It’s a very opportunistic business. It it it does not take a lot of complexity to unlock that. You don’t have to worry about demand generation. You don’t have to worry about customer service. Really. Like all you have to do is like have the next best product.

Josh Hadley 00:06:32  When somebody is searching for keywords X, Y, or Z on Amazon and bam, I make the sell and that’s about it. Like that’s the business model. Now, the transition from being an Amazon only brand to actually becoming an omnichannel brand. That is a massive constraint. That is a massive challenge, and that is a massive boss that you have to tame. And to be honest with you, it’s not easy. And this isn’t one that you just say, hey, I’m going to roll up my sleeves and I’m going to go conquer this thing next week. On the contrary, anybody that has made it successful or big, they’ve had some significant unlocks and it’s taken them years to tame that beast and to actually beat that boss. It’s kind of like, you know, in every business, I believe that there are these massive constraints. And if you liken them to this big kind of like concrete wall, you just have to keep chipping away at it. And some of these levels and these bosses, like you could swing, you know, your sledgehammer one time and the wall topples over.

Josh Hadley 00:07:41  Great. You’re onto the next constraint in the business. Great. However you are going to run into massive constraints. And if you’re trying to move your brand from Amazon over to an omnichannel brand, and then heaven forbid we talk about retail on top of that, like that concrete wall is extremely thick, and that concrete wall is going to take you years to solve and to actually conquer. And so every day that you are taking your sledgehammer and you are just like chipping away at it, like if you were to take a step back after just a week, you’re going to look back and be like, wow, this concrete wall is still as thick as it ever was. I feel like I’ve made written no real, you know, progress towards like knocking down this entire wall. But then week two, week three, and then month six, month seven and month 12 come around. And if you’ve still been just kind of getting your sledgehammer and trying to knock down that wall, you know, a year from now you could definitely see, like, okay, I see some visible progress.

Josh Hadley 00:08:43  I’m not seeing like the walls. Definitely not knocked down. I haven’t had a massive breakthrough at this point, but it does not mean that just because that wall is still standing, it doesn’t mean that that’s not a constraint worth solving. And that’s what I get so excited about, is when it gets hard in my business, I say good because it’s going to make it. I know that everybody else that’s going to try to follow me is going to go through the same level of difficulty, and then it comes down to who has the stronger willpower, who has the stronger mindset that is going to be willing to stick with it when things are really tough, because that is who ultimately wins. Now, I want to provide a little bit of reassurance here, because this is one of the biggest challenges I think we all face because we’re all on social media, We’re all on LinkedIn or we’re all, you know, watching the news, or we go to these e-commerce events and things like that. And guess who you see on stage? Or guess who you see being talked about on social media? It’s the big success stories and it’s like, oh my goodness, look at these people.

Josh Hadley 00:10:01  They had a massive breakthrough sometimes in a very short period of time. And that’s great. But more often than not, to every one business that has this, like they just stumble into luck and opportunity and really luck is where opportunity meets preparation. So again, good, good for them. I would say for me, we’ve never had a massive breakthrough where it’s just like, oh my goodness, we just scaled to $100 million in just over a year because we just stumbled upon this opportunity. For every one entrepreneur that you hear makes these massive leaps to a $10 million brand, to then a 50 million to then $100 million brand. In the course of just a year or two. There are at least a thousand other entrepreneurs that it took them a decade in order to achieve those results. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that those other thousand entrepreneurs were bad or that they had the wrong strategies. It’s just the fact that somebody else lucked out and they had a good playbook. And, you know, luck favored them, to be honest with you.

Josh Hadley 00:11:13  And it was that opportunity met preparation and the stars aligned and they scaled quickly and congrats to them. But I want to provide reassurance to the 1000 entrepreneurs that are still in the day to day grind, that aren’t seeing these massive leaps and bounds and changes in their business overnight. And that’s okay. And that’s the journey that I am currently on and that’s where I’m speaking from today is also like preaching to the choir myself saying, hey, it’s okay, okay, here’s my favorite, like, business story that I’ve recently learned about, Portillo’s. Okay. So they are a hot dog stand. the owner of Portillo’s. He’s a overnight success. It only took him 40 years. So if you’re listening to this, are you willing to stick with it? For 40 years, that dude kept knocking down one constraint after another with his sledgehammer and probably hit wall after wall after wall. And at times it looked like there was no visible progress being made. But yet he kept going at it. He kept showing up every single day.

Josh Hadley 00:12:28  Yeah, and now he’s a little bit older, but he has a massive win and a massive, you know, feather in his cap, so to speak. But he was an overnight success. It only took him 40 years to get there, and that’s what most people overlook. And we just glamorize all the people that created $100 million brands in just a few short years. And then we always question to ourselves and we think, well, what’s wrong with me? Why not me? And I think that, to be honest with you, there’s there’s pains and obstacles that come with growth when it comes that quickly versus I think that there’s an intentional path as to why, honestly, slow growth can be better growth and it can be a lot more sustainable. And especially if you’re a lifestyle entrepreneur. And freedom means anything to you and you value your time. Or if you’re in a situation similar to myself, where I’m a father of four with another fifth child on the way, and I coach all of my kids baseball teams, I kid, I coach their softball teams, I coach my girls basketball team, and I coach my son’s basketball team, and I help coach some of the flag football games.

Josh Hadley 00:13:45  And like, I am involved, okay. And I do like there will be events at school where I will have to like go show up to watch a performance at 12:00 in the afternoon and it disrupts my entire business day. But may I submit to you that I’m willing to sacrifice the story of, hey, wow, this brand really scaled from 0 to $100 million in just two short years for the lifestyle of hey, I grew 20%, 30% year after year after year. And yes, I was $100 million brand overnight success story. But it only took me ten years or 20 years to get there. But if that allows me to be present as a father or whatever, whatever your other obligations are in life, I believe that there’s so much more to life than just making money. It’s about the relationships that you develop along the way, and it’s the people that you get to work with, and it’s the character that you refine along the way that makes all of the difference. And so one of my other favorite quotes here is intelligent perseverance is remaining committed to the destination while being unattached to the route that gets you there.

Josh Hadley 00:15:15  So just as important as it is to have perseverance and yes, I can do hard things like, hey, you’ve got to have a good strategy. And strategy is nothing more than having unlimited opportunities at your disposal with limited bandwidth and limited resources. So then you have to decide what opportunity am I actually going to pursue and put my limited resources behind so that I can make sure that there is one thing, one constraint I am putting all of my time and energy towards, and that one constraint better unlock a whole bunch of other constraints for you at the same time. Otherwise, you’re just going to get caught spinning your wheels. So yes, perseverance is important, but it is only important if you have the right business strategy. So how do you understand if you have the right business strategy? That is why you show up and you go to those other, e-commerce events in those conferences. That’s the reason why you listen to podcasts. That’s the reason why you read the news articles, or you’re on Twitter threads and you’re hearing about other entrepreneurs and what their journey was like to get there, because you’re trying to understand what is the common pattern.

Josh Hadley 00:16:26  And pattern recognition becomes one of the strongest advantages that you have because you could say, oh, okay. Hey, there’s something about this whole affiliate program and demand generation from TikTok shop and bigger affiliate programs that aren’t even just TikTok shop only, that allow you to then have an omnichannel brand and have a stronger case to get into retail stores. It’s finding the the common thread that is woven throughout. Like, why did grooms exit for $1 billion? Why did Bloom Soda exit for $1 billion? Right. It’s all of those things. Or it’s poppy soda, not bloom blooms. Another sugar. Sugar free or sugar reduced soda. But the point being is do. What is the common pattern that’s happened in each of those? And again, influencer strategy and distribution in retail is a big component to their success. and it’s creating that demand awareness, not just capturing demand, which is what so much of us have just continued to be focused on. So in my current season of business, here’s the the kind of the middle, the uncomfortable middle that nobody really talks about.

Josh Hadley 00:17:49  And this isn’t what’s glamorized on conference event stages or in Twitter threads or anything like that. But here’s the real meat and potatoes. Here’s what actually happens on a day to day basis that nobody talks about. And that’s this. I’ve hired very talented people in my business, and they are there to go work on the constraints of the business to actually solve the big constraint in the business. However, I’m a month or two into this and it looks like nothing is actually like it seems like we haven’t made significant progress now either. a I need a question like, well, did I actually hire the right people? If I can still come back to that and say, yes, I did hire the right person, I did follow the right processes, and I did vet these people. If I can still accurately answer yes to that, then it means that you are sitting in that uncomfortable middle where. All right, my results haven’t immediately changed, but are we focused on the right priorities? And are we laying the right foundation so that when the time comes, we will have that massive breakthrough and it doesn’t need to be one massive breakthrough? Maybe those breakthroughs are just like the small sledgehammer hits that continue to go at this concrete wall every day.

Josh Hadley 00:19:13  Well, here’s the way I like in this analogy. Even though that massive concrete wall in our business is still there. By hiring these really senior leaders, Guess what I’ve done? I’ve taken my sledgehammer and I’ve got another guy that has, maybe has an even bigger sledgehammer because he has more experience. And that’s why I’m bringing him in here to solve that constraint. And so now it’s me and my senior leader both taking a crack at that wall with our sledgehammers. And so yes, a month in, do we have to see like, oh man, we’ve had this massive breakthrough. Good job. Like this hire was definitely worth the while. Like, no, I think that very rarely happens. I think you’re you’re having to wait at least six months to a year, if not 18 months, to be able to see like, oh yeah, okay. This is why things are working now. I can actually see visible progress. Right? And that’s the uncomfortable middle that nobody talks about. Everybody always talks about like, oh I it was just this one hire that I made.

Josh Hadley 00:20:20  And he revolutionized my business. Made all the difference. Well guess what? On month one, I bet you he didn’t revolutionize the business. And even on month two, month three, month four, month five. I don’t think he revolutionized the business. But over the course of a couple years, yeah, he made a significant impact into the business. And so here’s what I want to share with you. Most people can work incredibly hard when they’re getting immediate positive feedback. Revenue is climbing. The new launch is crushing it. The ads are working. Everybody is hitting their numbers. That’s easy. Perseverance. This is the real test of an entrepreneur. The real test is whether you can continue making good decisions when the feedback loop turns negative, when your revenue actually misses the target, when the campaign doesn’t work, when somebody you hired isn’t where you hoped they would be. Yet when you look at another company that’s apparently crushing it and wonder if that what they figured out that you haven’t. Can you keep going without becoming kind of like.

Josh Hadley 00:21:26  Irrational. Or the biggest damage that most entrepreneurs do? Because they’re very opportunistic and very optimistic at the same time. They look at other business opportunities and they’re like, oh man, hey, you know, running a local HVAC business like the multiples are a lot higher over there. It’s, you know, I could go dominate that. Like that’s that’s easy. And then they jump ship because they think the grass is always greener over there. But every business has their constraint. You just don’t know yet what that unknown constraint is for that HVAC business. And to be honest with you, I’ll tell you honestly what most of that is that’s hiring really good local talent because HVAC technicians are like hard to come by. Right. And so that’s that. But I would always trade my known constraint for some other completely separate business. That is an unknown constraint. I mean, look at I want you to look at the many entrepreneurs that you see. How many of them are. Well, I created a private label brand and then I started Airbnb Airbnb business.

Josh Hadley 00:22:36  And then I also started this software business because, you know, my private label brand wasn’t growing as fast as I wanted it to. Like, I see this time and time and time again and it’s like, no wonder you’re not an omnichannel brand. No wonder you’re not a actual true brand that’s getting making moves into retail stores because you’re you’re diversified. You diversified all of your attention and you ran up into one constraint in the business, which is like, oh, Amazon’s getting a little bit tougher. Okay. Well hey Airbnb looks a little bit easier. So I’m going to go do that. Oh hey I think I unlock something with AI tools. And I’m going to go start my own SaaS software. This seems a little bit more appealing. And it’s like, look, every business has their heart. And so most likely they’re going to hit they’re hard in the SaaS software and then jump to something else later on. So here’s the question. Can you remain impatient about improving the business while being patient about how long the meaningful improvement actually takes? I think that’s the actual tension that we all have to sit with as entrepreneurs.

Josh Hadley 00:23:46  And I personally don’t have all of this figured out. I’m recording this while I’m living in this exact season of life, and there are days right now where I’m like, tired. I’m just exhausted. I wouldn’t call it burnt out, but like, man, I’m tired of trying to solve this exact same thing over and over and over again. I’m tired of swinging the sledgehammer at this concrete wall and feeling like it’s no closer to toppling over. There are days when I’m frustrated that the business is more complex than it used to be. Like that’s the challenge. Like it’s true. Like, my business has a lot more team members than where we were at five years ago. And five years ago, I didn’t have many meetings on my calendar. Now my calendar is full with meetings. There are days when I would really when I would really like one giant breakthrough that would make everything feel easier. But I’m starting to realize this, that waiting for that one breakthrough moment, maybe the wrong mental model. Maybe the breakthrough isn’t one massive event.

Josh Hadley 00:24:50  Maybe it’s actually 100 weeks of continuing to make slightly better decisions, hiring a little bit better, teaching my team a little bit better, focusing my time and attention just a little bit better every day. Understanding my customer better every day. Developing my team better every day. Allocating my capital Better every day. One day everyone calls. What happened in overnight success. So if you’re in one of those seasons right now where you’re thinking, I’ve been working on this forever, why haven’t I figured this out? Maybe there isn’t anything fundamentally wrong with you or your business, but don’t use that as an excuse to ignore reality. Look at the numbers. Question the strategy. Challenge your assumptions. Make the changes that need to be made. But don’t confuse the absence of an immediate breakthrough with the absence of progress. Some things are just hard, and in ecommerce, there’s a lot of things that are hard. Some things take longer than you expect them to. And some seasons of entrepreneurship require you to just simply put one foot in front of another, long enough for everything that you’ve been building underneath the surface to finally compound.

Josh Hadley 00:26:02  I’ve had that happen so many times, and often the best strategy in business is just stay in the game, stay in the game, allow it to compound for not just years, but for decades. Just like Portillo’s, it was an overnight success story. It just took 40 years four decades of compounding. That’s a unique entrepreneur that’s willing to stick it out in one business for 40 years. I’m reminding myself that right now, I can’t guarantee when the breakthrough comes and I can’t guarantee which strategy will ultimately produce it. But I can keep learning, I can keep changing, and I can keep making that next decision. And tomorrow morning I can get up and I can keep doing that all over again. So maybe that’s not the consolation prize. Maybe that’s the skill that makes everything else possible. Maybe this perseverance thing that we’re all learning, maybe that’s the big biggest thing that we all need to develop, is being willing to get back up and keep trying again, even when we don’t know what the final outcome looks like.

Josh Hadley 00:27:09  That’s a matter of faith, And I think that’s the reason why we’re here on earth at the end of the day, is to live by faith. To do hard things without knowing what the ultimate outcome is at the end of this life. And maybe that’s why we have to keep facing these things. Because guess what? After you solve one constraint, there will always be another constraint. There will always be another problem, and there will always be another level of uncertainty. So maybe the goal isn’t to finally reach a point where business isn’t hard. Maybe the goal is to become someone who can actually continue operating effectively and moving forward, even when it is hard. And so that’s my encouragement to you if you’ve been listening to this. My hope is that it inspired you to just like, keep leaning in, and especially when things are hard. Lean into those hard things because it means everybody else is going to try to follow that same strategy. Once you unlock it, they’re going to go through that same hard.

Josh Hadley 00:28:12  And the good news is most people are lazy. So 99% of people will fail when they try to come after you. And so keep moving forward. Build that overnight success story, but build it over the course of four decades. And if you use that mindset and you just evaluate yourself on this premise, did I get 1% better today? Because if you can do that, you will compound and you will change as an individual, as an entrepreneur, as a leader, as a parent, into a meaningful person at the end of the day, because character refinement, I think, is everything that this is all about. And so make sure if you found value in this, please share this with another entrepreneur that needs to hear the same message. Drop it in a slack or a mastermind group that you’re a part of. Share the good word and thanks again for your time. We’ll see you next time.