The Secret Skills of a 7-Figure Entrepreneur

What’s up, all you beautiful people? Welcome back to the podcast. Alright, so if you’ve been tuned into the last couple of episodes, you know, we’re doing a very special sequence in this week’s string of episodes, which is we are unpacking step by step, step, what I call the escape velocity framework. This is the seven figure launchpad. So if you’re an entrepreneur or you want to be an entrepreneur, you’re starting and you’re like, I don’t know what to offer for my product. I don’t know how to sell, I don’t know anything. But I know this is a path I would like to pursue. Or maybe you’re already a five or six figure entrepreneur, you got some traction and you’re like, I would like to scale this to seven and eight figures and beyond, but I don’t really know what. I don’t know.

Well, in this series of episodes, I am laying out about five, six episodes of tactical strategic advice that you can follow step by step by step that will help you piggyback and like lego, block your way up to seven figures and beyond. So in the first two episodes, in the first episode, I laid out the outline of what we’re covering in these episodes. In episode two, we talked about the setting, the destination, right? So the escape velocity framework really boils down to three parts. You have you, the pilot or the entrepreneur, we have the vehicle or the rocket, aka the business. And then we finally have a destination. Like where are we trying to go with our business? What’s ultimately the goal? And so in the previous episode, we talked about defining the destination. What is the outcome that you’re trying to build towards in this episode? Today we’re going to talk about what I believe to be the most important part of this whole equation. I mean, you could make an argument that all three are important, but this is the one that’s the most near and dear to my heart.

And the reason is this, you as the pilot are to me the most important part of this whole thing, because there are no business problems, there simply, you problems. There are skills or resources, there are abilities that you lack that if you had, you could build any business and scale to any destination that you wanted to. So the fact that you don’t have those skills, that you have limitations, that’s totally natural. We’re constantly in a game of removing these limitations, these weaknesses, these constraints. And this is one of my favorite concepts called the theory of constraints, simply says that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And you as the founder, have to continually reassess what are your weakest links and then work to systematically remove them. Okay? And that’s why I believe entrepreneurship is the single greatest personal development program in the world. And the reason I think that this is the most important one to focus on is because you, as the founder, the entrepreneur, even if this rocket blows up, you can survive, you can parachute back to the ground, you can build another rocket ship, and you can do it again.

And so the skills that you invest into yourself, the ability, the networks, the relationships that you, you create as a entrepreneur, the skills, the, the mindset, the beliefs that you adopt, these stay with you until the day that you die. They pay compounding interest. And there are things that these skills, these beliefs, these mindsets that can’t be taken from you. So that’s one of the most important to me, things that you can invest your time and energy into. Now, we need to be building both you, the founder, the entrepreneur, simultaneously with the rocket. These have to go together, because in a lot of ways, the rocket is a reflection of the skills and abilities and mindsets, beliefs that you have as the entrepreneur. But we’re going to start here, and tomorrow we’re going to go and talk about the rocket and start laying out the different parts of the business that we need to focus on. But today, what I want to talk about is you, the entrepreneur, and what are the things that you need to be thinking about to scale, to become a seven figure entrepreneur? Because at the end of the day, that’s the more important thing.

Rather than building a seven figure business, we want to build the skills, the mindsets, the beliefs of a seven figure entrepreneur. And you can take that then and apply it to anything. It’s, it’s truly priceless. So the way that I think about this is that there’s two categories of skills. You have tactical skills and you have strategic skills. The tactical skills are the things that you do on a day by day basis. It’s, you know, creating the product, it’s selling the product and having a sales conversation. It’s writing the copy or designing the landing page.

It’s taking payment, it’s managing a team. It’s the tactical things that you do on a day by day basis. And that’s very important. We’re going to talk about what some of those tactical skills are as we get into building the machine itself. But more importantly, I believe that what separates the seven figure entrepreneur from just the five or the six figure or even the entrepreneur, it’s not the tactical skills because as you ascend through the levels, what you start to realize is that your tactical skills as the entrepreneur are actually not very valuable in the grand scheme of things because you can utilize the skills and labor of other people by hiring rock stars who are better at those tactical skills than you. So the value you have as the founder really revolves around your strategic skills, your ability to think at a higher level, at a visionary level, and to direct the teams. So the way I like to think about this is that you can hire people to execute the tactics, but only you can manage the strategy. Okay? So here are the way I think about this is there are foundational strategic skills and then there’s executive strategic skills.
I want to run through these, and I’ve done a video diving into each one of these very deeply previously. And so I recommend you go to YouTube.com. anthony Vacino, go to the main YouTube channel. I’ve done two videos, skills one was over a year and a half ago. I cannot remember what the name of that was off the top of my head, but it was probably something like these three skills, maybe millions. Start with that one. And then the second video came out about a year later and that was called this skill stack will make you millions or something like that. This future proof skill stack.
Okay. And in those videos, I break down these six skills in much more detail. And this is very important. I recommend you go watch that right after this. So again, just go to Anthonyvasino YouTube channel and you’ll find those videos. So foundational skills, the three foundational strategic skills I think all entrepreneurs need to master and continually be leveling up is focus, discipline and energy management. Start with focus. So focus is your ability to resist distractions.
It’s the ability to pick a destination, to pick a priority and say, that’s the most important thing. And we’re going to ignore everything else and I’m just going to stay locked in on this thing. And we talk about this all the time, is that time is not your most valuable resource because nobody’s paying you for your time. They’re paying you for what you do with that time. And what you do with your time is a result of what you focus on. Your attention is your most valuable resource. So the ability to hold on to that, to focus your attention in a concentrated area, is what leads to outsized results. And the people that I have met who are the most successful in life, they have this skill in spades.
They have the ability to lock in and focus for hours in at a time. And if you don’t currently have that. I resonate with that. Don’t worry. I have severe adhd. So I have struggled with this for a lot of my life. But through the systems, through processes and different habits and routines, I’ve been able to kind of turn that into a superpower. And that’s a lot of the content that this podcast and the YouTube channel is about is, like, how to harness this power of focus.
So that’s the first foundational skill you really got to figure out. Recommend you go deep into my content, because I talk about this one lot. Second one is discipline. Discipline is the ability to make yourself do the things that you don’t necessarily want to do right. It’s prioritizing the long term goal for, and rather than the short term gratification and discipline. This is, again, this is one that I really struggled with, and I rebelled against any external authority for pretty much the first 30 years of my life. Nobody could tell me what to do or where to be or how to show up or I couldn’t follow through. I could, like, nobody could tell me or hold me accountable.
I couldn’t be disciplined. And the big problem that I didn’t realize until, you know, as almost 30 years old, living in a van is that if you can’t discipline yourself, then the world will have to do it for you. And I lack the ability to discipline myself, to make myself do the things I said I was going to do. And that’s a real big problem when you’re an entrepreneur, because you don’t have a boss, you don’t have anybody sitting there saying you need to show up and punch the clock and do the work, and you can’t go home until you’re done. Like, there’s nobody doing that. So if you don’t have the discipline to make yourself do that, you’re gonna struggle like, you’ll never be successful if you do not have the ability to discipline yourself and to focus. So, again, I did a video on the YouTube channel called learning this about discipline changed my life. That is a fantastic.
It’s one of my favorite videos that we’ve ever done. I recommend you go check that if you struggle with self discipline. All right. The third foundational strategic skill for the founder to hone is energy management. So, energy management is all about managing your sleep, your nutrition, and your exercise, because these are three biological levers of energy. This is all you have at your disposal to maximize your biological pool of energy. And that’s what’s getting you through the day. Right? So we need to become masters of.
How do we fill up our energy tanks to the. To the brim so we have more to work with throughout the day? And that really just boils down to getting in control of your sleep, getting in control of your nutrition, and getting in control of your exercise so that your body, this machine that’s carrying you through life, can carry you through in the best way possible. All right, so those are three foundational skills that I think all entrepreneurs need to master. The executive skills that I want to talk about. The first one is judgment. So, naval ravicant says, in an age of infinite leverage, judgment is the most powerful or most valuable or the. The most powerful superpower or whatever. I can’t remember exactly how it goes.

Judgment is the ability to make good decisions, to think critically, to weigh out the different options. And the thing is, when it comes to building a business, there is no right or wrong answer. Often there’s just simply better and worse answers along a spectrum of probability. And you have to make decisions without having perfect information in every single scenario. And so your ability to make good decisions is going to dictate the quality of results you ultimately get. The best entrepreneurs that I know have impeccable judgment. The next one. Next skill.

Executive skill is prioritization, the ability to look at that landscape of things that you could be doing and to create order out of that chaos and say, this is the most important thing. These are the things that we need to work on and in this order. And then that, coupled with the foundational skill of focus, gives you the ability to actually zero in and target those items, rather than getting distracted and jumping all around. Because, after all, there’s no greater waste than to do with excellence, that which shouldn’t be done at all. So, prioritization is the second executive skill. And again, I’ve done videos on this as well. Go to the YouTube channel. I think it’s called my productivity system, or my simple productivity system that’s made me millions.

I think I lay out a couple different prioritization systems that I’ve used over the years that have been very, very effective. Go check that out. The last executive skill I want to share with you is the skill of communication. Because no matter what you’re doing in business, it is always in relation to another human. Businesses exist to deliver value to another person. Without another person, there is no business. Right. It’s just you.

So you need to be able to communicate the value of your product to your consumer. You need to be able to communicate your vision to your team, to be able to enlist them to, you know, work alongside you in all different instances. You need the ability to communicate what is inside of you in a way that influences the behavior of other people. If you cannot do that, you will never have a successful business. And so there’s two forms of communication in particular I want you to think about, which is the skill of writing, you know, taking your thoughts, putting them to paper, and then be able to communicate effectively through that. And then the second is being able to communicate through the spoken word. Both of these are imperative, but if you focus, if you nail these six skills, if you nail the foundational skills of focus, discipline, energy management, and you nail the executive skills of judgment, prioritization, and communication, then you, as the pilot of this vehicle we’re going to be building, are going to be well positioned to be able to navigate whatever life inevitably throws your way. So in the next episode, we’re going to start talking about the rocket.

We’re going to unpack the different parts of the machine that we need to build out and how exactly do that. So whenever you’re ready, if the episode’s already out, go check it out. If you’re tuning into this, the day that this episode has gone live, then you’re just going to have to sit and wait. I recommend you subscribe. You push the bell so that you get notified when those episodes go live. But if you don’t, that’s okay too. We still love you, but that’s going to do it for me. Guys and gals, we’ll catch you in the next episode.

Until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.