Your intuition can be the best tool in the business field. Entrepreneurs often talk about their gut instinct leading them towards the path of success – but that doesn’t mean there aren’t failures or doubts along the way. It’s how you handle and move through situations that make your intuition an asset.
Sean McCormick, a successful life coach, and entrepreneur joins us on this episode of Making Bank. He discusses the business strategy that made his float tank center the highest rated on the West Coast. Creating a successful business in an unlikely field, he discovered some quality traits that separate entrepreneurs from everyone else.
Learn how he took his business to the top and his unique journey to his success, to how he used his intuition to lead him to where he is today.
Starting “The Most Ridiculous Business”
As a young person, Sean didn’t really expect to start his own successful business. It wasn’t until after college and later in his twenties that he discovered what he wanted – and that was to work for himself.
“So, when I was, you know, in my twenties, working as a sales executive for a radio station making six figures. It wasn’t my thing, man. I couldn’t get over the fact that I was working my butt off to pay someone else’s pocket.” Sean had all this energy and talent, but he wasn’t really using it for himself – it was going towards different people and a company that he had no control over. He wanted to try to funnel it so that he could cultivate his own success with the tools that he had.
So, Sean started a business. “I chose the most ridiculous business to start you can ever think of, which is a flotation therapy center.” At the time, there was very little research. In 2012, Sean had the money and had a partner, and build his company from the ground up. That was the backbone of how he started as an entrepreneur, and from there he learned.
From the get-go, Sean wanted to ensure that his business was liquid, that they were constantly in profit. Starting off at zero debt, he made 180,000 in the first year. With a specific focus on creating an online presence, driving success through that force. “And so for me, it’s just like, run, lean, work hard, care, have fun, and bring some sizzle to whatever it is that you’re doing. And then that has launched into podcasts and life coaching and online courses and all this other stuff that I love to do.”
Trusting Intuition & Failure
Throughout his entrepreneurship journey, Sean wanted to stick to the basics. While other float centers were focusing on infrared saunas and cryotherapy, Sean just wanted to be the float center on the west coast, the destination business. People flew in from all over the place to experience the service he was providing.
“And so we had Russell Wilson in the float tank. And we had a bunch of Seahawk guys. We had Mariners in there. And that was just for me, sort of like, who do I know? And that skill in and of itself came very naturally for me, but it doesn’t for everyone else.”
Looking back, Sean realizes at that point he was a great networker. He made connections and friends which in turn helped his business have some high-list customers. His expectations were high but that didn’t matter. “The other thing I’m really good at is I expect to fail. I welcome it…You’re going to make mistakes. I’m going to screw up. I’m going to make people mad…and so by going my own way, using my own intuition…to grow the business without doing what everyone else was doing became an asset.”
Sean takes the failures that happen and adapts to them. It’s a constant process. It will happen once a week, once a day. There’s a growth that comes with knowing that you’re going to screw up, and not letting that screw up defeat you.
“That constant iteration and change and growth that comes from knowing that you’re going to screw up and not letting it just defeat you – that’s what makes an entrepreneur in my mind.” In Sean’s experience, he never let defeat be the final result. He worked towards achieving what he wanted instead of letting it go.
That’s what makes entrepreneurs different from everyone else. They recognize that they aren’t perfect and that they are going to have to course correct on the spot or adjust without having planned ahead. If you can’t do this, you get left behind. There are going to be people that are working harder that will do the things that you gave up on, and that in itself is a motivating factor to push past the failure.
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