Why Loneliness Is Your Greatest Entrepreneurial Threat

Dustin: [00:00:00] Loneliness is our greatest danger as entrepreneurs. And on the positive side, I have found that being in community and purposefully having a lack of loneliness is actually the greatest ROI that you can have in your business.
Dustin: You are listening to the Seven Figure Leap podcasts. We're here to leverage rich relationships and smart strategies to take your business to the next level. Here's your host, Dustin Rieman. The greatest danger for entrepreneurs is loneliness. When I heard that quote from Dan Sullivan.
Dustin: it just hit me right between the eyes. I was instantly transported back to June 18th, 2022, the day I will never forget. Uh, the punchline of that day was I ended up in the urgent [00:01:00] care and I went there with a very real fear.
Dustin: That I had a brain tumor, which seemed a little funny, I guess, in, uh, in hindsight because I did not, you know, thank God I did not have anything seriously wrong with me, but I really was scared that I did. and the things that built up to that moment are really a testament to this quote, this idea that.
Dustin: Loneliness is our greatest danger as entrepreneurs. And on the positive side, I have found that, being in community and, Purposefully having a lack of loneliness is actually the greatest ROI that you can have in your business. So I'm Dustin Reman with Seven Figure Leap, and I wanna take you back to start here in that moment of 2022.
Dustin: And I want to go through some really practical wisdom here that I've learned in the ensuing several years and go through the five major. dangers of loneliness as an entrepreneur, and I want to give [00:02:00] you a few hopeful stories of life on the other side of getting in community and all it's done for me as a husband, as a father, and as an entrepreneur, and how it's really exponentially grown my business.
Dustin: So the, buildup to that moment in 2022 was I was a partner in a snack stick company, a meat stick company called Fire Creek Snacks. And I was a partner there, but my partner. In that business, and I had very different roles, so I was effectively running all sales and marketing, and I was also trying to make some pretty big decisions about our future for that business.
Dustin: At the same time, I was getting pulled more and more into the coaching world because I've been doing podcast guesting for that brand, and people kept asking me for support and I had. Coached numerous people one-on-one. I found that that was actually way more exciting for me, this coaching world. And I had just run my first [00:03:00] small group container for this podcast guesting thing that was emerging, and I had just come out of a very expensive mastermind, so I'd spent $25,000 on a mastermind.
Dustin: I didn't really know exactly what I was getting myself into, but I knew what was promised and I thought this was. That ticket. You know, this was that thing that I needed. And it was really instructive to me because even though I was in a group and I'd spent a lot of money to be in a group, I never felt a sense of community.
Dustin: I never, I still felt isolated, right? It was the way that the group was run, and that's a story for another day. But I had this intense pressure now because I. I wasn't making a lot of money with Fire Creek at that point. we were reinvesting a lot of it back into the growth of the business, but I had this heavy weight of decisions to be made there.
Dustin: I was excited for this thing I wanted to do, but I had no clarity on how I could possibly get there. I had just went into debt for my business for the first time ever and I had a $25,000 credit balance looming over me. [00:04:00] And, I had just celebrated an anniversary with my wife and we were planning a family trip.
Dustin: That summer, coming up about two weeks after this, this sort of infamous date, and in the week leading up to this date in June, I. Woke up one day and I was shaving and I realized I couldn't feel my chin. I was like, this is really weird. And it was completely numb. And so, you know, another few days go by, I'm like, maybe I slept weird, you know?
Dustin: but I, at the same time was realizing I'm feeling extremely stressed and anxious, and I didn't know who to talk to. I have a wife who I absolutely love and adore and I share, you know, pretty much everything with her. But I found myself in this period. Even isolating from her in this sense. she's not an entrepreneur.
Dustin: She doesn't tolerate risk really well. I was doing a lot of things that, I felt were in the best interest of my family and they weren't working out very well. And, so it wasn't that I was trying to hide things from her, but. It was [00:05:00] more of a sense of I didn't wanna burden her with too much information.
Dustin: Um, maybe that was a self-justification, but I was holding these things very close to the vest, as far as, you know, my ambitions and these struggles and these decisions that needed to be made. And I had also tried to, to launch a higher ticket group coaching program coming out of that mastermind investment.
Dustin: And it had completely failed. So. There was no income to pay for this credit card debt. I still had no clarity on what I was actually gonna do in this kind of new version of the business. I had had a taste of what I really wanted to do with a small group, and I had so much. pressure on me on the Firing Creek side at that moment.
Dustin: And so I wake up, my, my chin is numb. I give it four or five days. And then if you've ever been in a situation like this where you have, questions about your health, you Google it. I guess now you'd probably, you know, hit an AI tool, but I just Googled it and it was pretty stark. It was like, Hey, if you have a sudden onset of a numb.
Dustin: Front of your chin, which is like [00:06:00] exactly what I was dealing with. It's like, you should definitely go to the hospital because that is a telltale sign of a brain tumor. 'cause there's only so many places that nerves come from that that go there. So I'm like, oh my gosh. Tried to, you know, get through the anniversary dinner and then knowing that we're gonna be leaving town, you know, shortly, for this family vacation, I had to drive a long way and didn't know how I was gonna, you know, pay for that either.
Dustin: I decided I got to get some, some medical help. So I started with urgent care. They had me follow up with a physician. They wanted to take x-rays and, blood work and all those things. So thank goodness. It was none of that. my white blood cell count was good. There was no sign of any sort of cancer.
Dustin: There was nothing major showing up on an x-ray. And so our conclusion, uh, from the medical staff was, this is stress induced. Do you think you've been clenching your teeth? Do you think you've been, you know, tense in your shoulders? And I'm like, oh yeah, you know, and I was tracking my resting heart rate and it was like way high.
Dustin: It was like 20 beats higher than, than it had [00:07:00] been before this season. And so I share that to say. I was extremely stressed in this situation, but I think in hindsight, what I realize now, because I've had other stressful situations, the reason it was compounded and the reason it was intense is because it was all on my shoulders, right?
Dustin: Like it was completely. Lonely. I was lonely in this stress and this pain, and I had all these open loops I had no one to share them with. I didn't know how to get help. and I couldn't even go to my wife with it other than to say, look, I'm really stressed and we've got some financial constraints here that I imposed on our family, and I'm sorry about that.
Dustin: But she had no, you know, solution out for this either. So. I bring that up to say that's one of many of these situations as an entrepreneur that you find yourself in, right? And in the highs this happens too, where something really good happens and you find yourself, or I'll say, I found myself looking for the next goal line, looking for the next adrenaline rush, right?
Dustin: Because I don't have anyone to really celebrate with [00:08:00] either. You know? I don't know how. So the highs and the lows can both be stressful because of this idea of loneliness. So when I heard these words from Dan Sullivan, it was like. Preach. I, I, I totally agree. If you're not familiar with Dan Sullivan, he is a, a very wise mentor in the business world.
Dustin: Strategic coach. he's, the, brains behind 10 X is easier than two x and who not how, and the gap in the game. So someone I really respect and so I saw this quote, I'm like, that's it. That is, a big part of our mission is, is dealing with this and helping people with it because there's so much positivity.
Dustin: On the other side of it. So, uh, this episode is not doom and gloom, and it's not like you're doomed as an entrepreneur. The good news is there's a means to get yourself out of loneliness and isolation as an entrepreneur. but if you're dealing with this or you deal with this at different periods. I think when I go through these five dangers that I've come up with of being an entrepreneur who's not in [00:09:00] community, bet you can relate, and I bet you've experienced, several of these in your entrepreneurial journey if you've been at this for a while.
Dustin: So number one is. You tend to recycle your own thinking when you're isolated, right? Because you don't have an outlet, you don't have a way to process ideas. and you basically get into these loops. You start to overthink, uh, you start to convince yourself of kind of false narratives. and what I found is like isolation is like, it amplifies.
Dustin: Bad assumptions, right? Because you're not being challenged and you don't have perspective. And so when you don't, when you lack the ability to bounce ideas off other people or hear about other people's experiences and have people relate to you and you relate to them, you get into a real echo chamber.
Dustin: And that can be pretty daunting. And it can also really, be it, it can put a huge cap on your growth. 'cause you can only, you only know what you know. And if you're not in community with other people. That isolation chamber of only being in your own head with your own thinking [00:10:00] can be, at best limiting and at worst, truly dangerous.
Dustin: number two, this is one that, definitely shows up in this story I just shared. Your risk tolerance gets distorted, right? Because you don't know what you don't know, so. In many cases, this just means you play too small because you're not exposed to bigger ideas. You don't know. There's better ways to do things you don't know.
Dustin: There's resources, the whole idea of who, not how, when you don't have who's around you, you don't have other ways to get things done other than yourself trying to figure out how to do everything by yourself, and that's not a good place to be as an entrepreneur. And associated with that is you start to make more like emotional reactive decisions, right?
Dustin: And so what I've found is being in community helps to normalize risk because you get to, bounce ideas off other people res give and receive, you know, foundational, Perspective probably is the right, the right word there, right? So number two, your risk tolerance gets distorted when you [00:11:00] lack community Number three, this is probably the big one for me on the positive side, this is the thing that truly unlocked for me, and I have a, I have a powerful story that I will share with you on this, but this is the idea that your own identity.
Dustin: Can be eroded. And I, I find that this is typically subtle for people. Like most people don't wake up in the morning. They're like, you know what? My identity feels limited. Or I really need to like, have an identity shift. Like identity is something that, I used to falsely believe was static. It's like, well, I am who I am, right?
Dustin: Like I was made by God in, in this way and this is my identity. But your identity actually evolves greatly, right? And you can influence it. And one of the best ways to influence it is through. the input from other people. So it can be really easy to sort of forget when you're in isolation, who you're striving to become, levels available to you of capability and, uh. And, capacity, right? [00:12:00] You can get distorted on like normal looks like, because when you're day to day, you wake up and you're working 12 hours a day and you're doing all the things and you're just, you know, hustling all the time. you start to get a distorted reality that that's normal. That's not normal, right?
Dustin: so if you're listening to this and that's your current case, that can be part of that early part of the, the entrepreneurial grind, but it's not normal. And so when you're in a community with other people and you see people kinda on the other side of that and people with different resources and people with different ways of approaching problems, you start to realize, there's a lot more available to me.
Dustin: When I think about my identity more proactively, right, and more objectively, I found that your vision really expands in community. And I think that's one of the key things that, we've encountered with our clients is something that I've encountered in a big way for myself. And I think when you're alone in your entrepreneurship, it's natural that your ambition shrinks because it's painful.
Dustin: When you're in [00:13:00] isolation to think bigger, want to do more because you already feel like you're capped out. Right? And so you naturally get stuck in this container. And, you know, proverbially, there's a, there's a label on the outside and you can't read it 'cause you're stuck inside of it. But when you're with other people, they can help you read that label and they can see a bigger picture and they can see a different jar and they can see a path forward that maybe you're not capable of seeing because you're in isolation.
Dustin: So, to kind of quickly recap the first three here, number one, you recycle your own thinking when you are entrepreneurial, stuck in entrepreneurial loneliness. So number one, you recycle your own thinking. Number two, your risk tolerance gets distorted. And number three, your identity, is limited. So fast forward two years from that original story.
Dustin: Same Dustin, you know, largely similar circumstances. Same wife, same family. you know, two years later I had evolved in my business life. I was on the sort of tail [00:14:00] end of exiting the Fire Creek Partnership, that original brand partnership, and I was much more immersed into what's now called seven Figure Leap, although it didn't have that, that name and that identity associated with it yet.
Dustin: What's cool is we had rapidly grown. so we had, I had, you know, recovered from the episode of the summer of 2022. I had sought wisdom from other people. I started getting myself into healthy communities and I was able to find the founding group of what has now become our podcast profits accelerator.
Dustin: And so that created income, but it also created a lot of impact. For me to them and, and maybe what they didn't expect, and what I didn't expect is from them to me because as they helped each other, they actually helped me a ton because I actually had a mastermind that that had been created around this offer.
Dustin: And so I actually gained a lot from that. So from the fall of 2022 when we started that first accelerator. Through the year [00:15:00] 2023, we saw rapid growth. And I say we, I saw rapid growth because I was the only, uh, I was the only one working at, this business at that time. So in 2022, we made $50,000 in revenue between the one-on-one coaching.
Dustin: And that first group in 2023, we actually made $550,000 in revenue. So it was a 10 x year and that was great in many ways. And I credit. The embracing of community as a big reason for that, right? So that was a huge growth lever, was just being in other people's groups and having groups of my own with cool people, that not only paid me money and I helped, and you know, they were very gracious for that, but I was in containers with them, which was hugely impactful.
Dustin: Fast forward to first quarter 2024. I had had this amazing opportunity to go speak at Traffic and Conversion Summit coming out of a podcast relationship. I was in Orlando at POD speaking again, and I started to [00:16:00] notice a creeping sensation come back. And it wasn't an numb chin in this case, but it was definitely this anxiety.
Dustin: And I was like, uhoh, like I'm starting to feel this again. And what I realized is I'm still pretty isolated in. The actual operation of my business. the good news is we had hit $250,000 in revenue in the first quarter, so we had hit a seven figure run rate, right? The bad news is I was completely by myself in the business, outside of the groups that I was running, and so.
Dustin: I didn't realize in the moment was I had hit a new plateau. I had hit a new ceiling because of the identity that I had as a hustling solopreneur. And so I had a very pivotal, relationship develop at that time with a client who happened to be in Orlando at the same conference. Her name's Cassie.
Dustin: You've heard her I'm sure here, numerous times on this podcast, and that was the first time I ever realized identity was like a thing and it was something you could. [00:17:00] Study and influence and change. And so we had a lunch meeting with another, client that was there. We had this really kind of fun lunch meeting last day of the conference.
Dustin: I bring this up and I'm like, you know what? I'm starting to feel really stressed. I'm traveling a lot, you know, hit this new mark and I don't know what to do with it. I don't know how to process it, you know, it's like a million dollar business. This is crazy. It's just me, but I'm wearing all the hats and I have all this going on, all this stress.
Dustin: And so in that lunch meeting. This is a, uh, a re literally a receipt from that lunch. this became sort of the new blueprint and it wasn't a blueprint so much about the financials of this business. It was a blueprint about what would have to be true for Dustin to have a seven figure business that he actually loved.
Dustin: 'cause I was starting to feel this sort of pull to maybe I just burn this all down and start over 'cause this isn't as fun as I thought it would be. And so that was a really important. Time that I had reached out to another person and shared how I was feeling and someone who was entrepreneurial and had experience in this area, multiple people in [00:18:00] that meeting.
Dustin: And then Cassie and I met after and we started doing these identity sessions. And so she became a who, you know, in the who not how framework. And we really started to redefine, success and what my business should be and my role in it. And so from that point forward. I made some major changes. I started hiring some team members.
Dustin: I started to embrace a new identity as leader. I started to realize that revenue growth wasn't the number one thing that was fulfilling in this business, right? And we really doubled down, or I really doubled down with a small team around me into community. That's when we ultimately launched our mastermind and like so many cool things came on the heels of that.
Dustin: Decision, but that decision does not happen had I stayed in isolation. Right. And I think that's the big thing I wanted to point out with that story. So 20 22, 20 24 could have been very similar stories, but the big difference in the 2024 version is I was able [00:19:00] to. Have agency in the moment take action and vastly improve the situation.
Dustin: Why? Because I didn't stay isolated. I didn't internalize it and try to deal with it myself. I sought help and I sought community support, and that made all the difference. So number three is that I identity work and the fact that you can't shift your identity and uplevel your identity in isolation.
Dustin: Number four, we got five of these total. Number four is. when you're in isolation as an entrepreneur, you will suffer from decision fatigue. I think this was probably the biggest battle for me, decision fatigue. So what do I mean by that? Well, you have a lot of decisions to make as an entrepreneur, and if you don't have a sounding board, you don't have good inputs and you don't have better options.
Dustin: the other thing that happens for me a lot when I. Do not allow myself to be supported by community is I get stuck with a lot of open loops. Oh, I had this idea and I started this thing and I talked to this [00:20:00] person and I need to follow up. And I got these 55 unread messages over here and 26 over here.
Dustin: And, and it may sound like, well, that's just like, a operational problem. It is an operational problem, but the way it holistically gets solved is by having less decisions to make, right. So you get overwhelmed with too many decisions. and the big ones take a lot of bandwidth. Then you get all of these open loops and it starts to create a compounding negative effect.
Dustin: And that's been my experience because you don't have perspective and support and you're not solving the big problems, which can often be solved much more quickly in community. So now when I have. A big decision to make. I don't sit around by myself and closet and try to figure it out. I take it to a group, right?
Dustin: Either a group that I'm invested in because I'm addressing something in that area of my life or my business, or, you know, a mastermind group that I'm leading or an accelerator call that I'm leading. Those are [00:21:00] all outlets for me in community, and that's on the business front. I'm also in a small, small faith group, that I meet with every Friday that.
Dustin: Really helps me with my spiritual needs and talking about our family life. my wife and I have couples that we meet with. I have a front row dads community that I'm a part of, a small group in that, and we meet on a monthly basis to talk about the big picture issues in our, our roles as husbands and fathers, right?
Dustin: So I have lots of different communities that I'm active in and plugged into in business and around the rest of my life. Because of these issues that I've dealt with over and over. And number four was that decision fatigue. Number five is sort of the overarching one here. I've alluded to it in different parts of my own journey, and that is when you're isolated and you're lonely as an entrepreneur, you almost by default will get disconnected from your vision.
Dustin: Right? This is probably like the deepest one here, and I think vision and identity are, are closely interrelated. So there's some [00:22:00] overlap here with number three, but. It's, I think, impossible to create a vision for what you're trying to do in business in isolation, right? Like you need shared input and shared belief in order to have a vision that you believe in, right?
Dustin: So if I share my vision in a small group and I get feedback, and I get encouragement, or I get correction, well, I have a vision on the other side of that that. Has been tested in a way and has been refined and is much more, ready, you know, to take action with, versus trying to have a vision that's created in isolation.
Dustin: It really doesn't work. so I think. When you stay in isolation, your vision gets softer, it gets smaller. You start to second guess it. You sort of put it aside, and you just wanna deal with the task that's in front of you today because you just don't have that capacity and that support in order to kind of think bigger about your vision.
Dustin: So I hope that this is, [00:23:00] helpful. I, I, the, the intent of today's episode was not negativity. I wanted to be real. I wanted to be transparent about. The lowest points in my adult life have come when I've isolated myself. there's a whole nother part of this in my own story, with family life and alcohol and things like that.
Dustin: But for today, I just wanna keep the scope on my business. I. My life before plugging into community, my life in the early days of starting to realize the benefits of community, right? In a, in a small way. And that was sort of that 2024 moment of seeking some individual support. And now a couple years later, my life is completely different, as an entrepreneur because I have.
Dustin: Multiple tribes that I'm plugged into who love me, who support me, who are honest with me, who give me correction, who give me hope, and who I can pour into too. 'cause a big [00:24:00] part of getting clear for yourself is providing clarity to others, right? that's how God wired us. We're made to be in tribes.
Dustin: We're not made to be isolated. And I think the entrepreneurial journey in particular is really hard when you don't have a community to plug into. Because you naturally don't have like a team, like in the corporate world, you have some people you have to interact with. You probably have some clients you have to interact with.
Dustin: you maybe have your peers understand your work life more. Like all my neighbors are like an insurance guy, a banker, an engineer. They don't understand life as an entrepreneur. And as much, again as I love my wife and she's been instrumental to everything we've been able to build. She's not an entrepreneur and she doesn't know my day-to-day emotions.
Dustin: when I'm sitting at this computer and, and doing the work, right, and when some bad news comes and some great news comes five minutes later, and there's another decision to make that's a really unique lot in life, and I think it's the best lot in life. I absolutely love being an entrepreneur. but [00:25:00] now that I'm in community, I realized that that's what's been missing, in those earlier stages of this entrepreneurial journey.
Dustin: So. That's why we do what we do. at seven Figure Leap. If you're not familiar with how we work, we don't do anything in isolation. We have, basically three, three things that we do and they all happen in community because as the wise Dan Sullivan said, you know, the most dangerous thing you can do as an entrepreneur is isolate or, be lonely.
Dustin: And so our accelerator program is. Done in a small 12 person group. And so the idea is you come in and yes, we're doing, we're building a podcast guessing system, and you'll add the next a hundred thousand dollars to your business. and we could deliver that like as a course where you just go off and on your own and figure, you know, follow the step by step instructions and all that.
Dustin: And we don't do that. Because for one, people don't do that well. They don't have a good accountability. but most importantly it's because that is a path to [00:26:00] isolation. So we provide a really unique container where people come in and they're in a group of 12 people from all different industries, but they're all founders, they're all entrepreneurs, and they all are on a similar journey.
Dustin: And 100% of the time. After the first 90 day part of the accelerator in the cohort, people say, yeah, the podcast casting was great. You know, I'm getting more leads like. Income, all the things you said would happen. Like that's happening. That's great. You fulfilled your promise. What I didn't expect, what has actually completely changed my life with these people, right?
Dustin: It's the community. It's this tribe that's around me and supporting me in it. And I got so much more progress and clarity, not just on my marketing, but on my purpose. You know, like on my, my market, on my offer, on my. the way I show up as an entrepreneur and I got so many shortcuts and so many insights from this group.
Dustin: So that's why we do the accelerator the way we do. And then from the accelerator, people [00:27:00] are in our community, and our community are all alumni of that first 90 day plan, that 90 day program, because it creates common, it creates like a, a bigger tribe, right? So you're in a 12 person tribe. and then while you're in that, and then especially after.
Dustin: For at least a year. You're in this 200 plus person community, and they're all alumni of the same program. So they all share values, they all understand. Podcast guessing, they all are. You know, invested in and using relationship-based growth strategies. So it's just a really rich environment that expands your network and it expands this, ability to connect.
Dustin: And then from that larger group, we have typically between 20 and 24 members in the seven figure leap Mastermind. That is sort of an extension of this whole idea. Right now we're dealing with different, phases of business that's more of a scaling program, right? So, it's dealing with the infinite problem of.
Dustin: Business growth versus like the finite problem of leads and marketing, the [00:28:00] things that we deal with in the accelerator. But in that mastermind, we meet every week virtually, and I think really key. We meet two times a year minimum in person at a retreat that we host. And so those retreats that are life giving and life changing, they're inflection points in people's businesses.
Dustin: And we hear that every time we do one. we have another one coming up here in April in my hometown for the first time in St. Louis. I'm so looking forward to that because I know there's so much power in this communion of bringing in entrepreneurs together, especially in person. You know, when that's feasible and it will change lives and it will change my life, again, and it happens every time.
Dustin: So if you're listening to this, my encouragement for you is to really get honest with yourself about whether you have. The community you need to support your entrepreneurial efforts. and I think it's, it bears saying too, entrepreneurial loneliness is not. The same as [00:29:00] a lack of people around you, right?
Dustin: So you can be in a very crowded room. You can be in a very loud auditorium and be completely isolated, right? So it's not about the number of people around you, it's about being in community with the people around you, right? And so community can be one other person, it could be two or three other people.
Dustin: It could be 12 people. It could be 200. You know, there's different scales and different purposes for community, but I'm gonna ask you four quick questions as we close out, as sort of a self-assessment on where you're at with this really important topic of your entrepreneurial, loneliness. Right? So, number one, and these are rhetorical questions obviously, who challenges you at your current level of thinking?
Dustin: So when you have an idea, when you're considering your goals for the year, when you're talking about your vision or your purpose, like who challenges you on that? Number two, where can you say things that you can't say publicly? About your entrepreneurial journey, like do you have a [00:30:00] safe place? Or where is your safe place to be real?
Dustin: And talk about the really crappy thing that happened, or the celebrate the amazing thing that happened that other people may be in your day-to-day life, which just wouldn't understand. Number three, who sees your blind spots? I, I love this as a framing question, because I get. So much, good input, you know, from the people in my life in all these different areas that I have community.
Dustin: And one of the things they're best at is seeing what I can't see and calling out my blind spots and saying, have you considered this? Or like, why are you assuming that? And that's really important. So, who sees your blind spots for you? And number four, who regularly raises your standard? The entrepreneurial journey is one that, uh, we, we say new levels, new devils.
Dustin: So every time you solve a problem, congratulations, you've just created a new problem. That's just the reality of entrepreneurship, right? So I finally got enough leads. Well, congratulations. Now you have to figure out how to fulfill [00:31:00] your program. Well, I got so many people. We know how I got a great team.
Dustin: We're fulfilling our program. Great. hope you're dealing with your taxes, right? Like there's always another thing. And so. With that, ideally, you're raising your standards as your business grows, right? And you have a, a new floor for the type of people you take on as clients, the type of people you have on your team, and the type of people you have in your inner circle.
Dustin: So who regularly raises your standard? So who challenges your, your level of thinking, number one. Number two, where can you say things safely that you can't say publicly about your business? Number three, who sees your blind spots? And number four, who regularly raises your standard? And if any of those four, you don't have a clear answer or you're like.
Dustin: No one. I would highly encourage you to invest some effort in creating some entrepreneurial community around you, right? There are many options for that. You can find a peer and start meeting one-on-one with someone so you can, you can reflect to each other and, and raise each other's standards.
Dustin: [00:32:00] Obviously, you can invest in a program, especially if it's a program that's going to meet one of your current goals and objectives, and it includes community with. people of similar value sets. Like that could be a really powerful and smart next move. and if you can find an amazing mastermind again of people on a similar path who are there to support you and who are, life-giving and, and loving of you, that's amazing.
Dustin: in closing, what I'll say is at our last in-person retreat in the fall for our mastermind, I went around the circle kind of on the last day and I said. Like, why are you here? You know? Like what is it about this mastermind? You know, selfishly I kind of hope people will be like, ah, Dustin, you're brilliant.
Dustin: I got, you know, these great business ideas and all that, and that, you know, predictably, that's not what they said. They said, a lot of things. But the one that really stuck with me as it relates to this topic is, someone there, her name's Lauren. She said, I love this group because it's my entrepreneurial [00:33:00] emotional support system.
Dustin: And I was like. Bingo. Right? Like, we need that. We need that As entrepreneurs, we need entrepreneurial emotional support because this is a unique journey we're on. And, we need to try, but we need community around us. So my encouragement to you today is to go find that. And if you don't know where to find that, reach out to me and I'll help you find that.
Dustin: Of course, if you wanna, you know, plug into what we do, we'd welcome a conversation about that. You can just go to seven figure leap.com and, and book a call and talk about the work that we do. All of which is in community 'cause it's so, so vital. So I'm here, rooting for you. I'd love to be in your corner and, listen to Dan Sullivan.
Dustin: You don't have to listen to me, but listen to Dan Sullivan. Don't allow yourself to get in the trap of entrepreneurial loneliness. Go out and find a community who's gonna help you level up.