Mindset - Taking Ownership of Your Destiny

In this solo episode of the Stay Hungry Podcast, Joel Stone dives deep into one of the most crucial elements of success, taking ownership. Whether in business or life, the way you respond to challenges determines your trajectory. Joel unpacks the mindset shifts needed to stop blaming external factors and start taking control of your own results.

Through personal experiences and hard-hitting truths, he explores why no one is coming to save you and why that’s actually the best news you could hear. If you want to build a resilient, unstoppable business, this episode is a must-listen.

Key moments:

🔥 The harsh truth: No one will fix your business problems for you. It’s all on you.

⚡ Mindset vs. excuses: The cost of blaming the economy, competitors, or “bad luck.”

🔑 The power of response: Why your reaction to setbacks defines your future.

🧠 Training your mind like a muscle: Daily habits that separate winning entrepreneurs from the rest.

🚀 Taking full responsibility: What to do when your business isn’t growing and what you might be avoiding.

🎯 Your mindset challenge: Three practical steps to reframe problems, audit your headspace, and take radical ownership of your success.

No excuses. Just action.

Links:

Website: https://www.codebreak.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codebreakcrew/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/codebreakcrew/

Joel's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelstoneofficial/
Joel's Facebook: https://facebook.com/joelstoneofficial/

Free Marketing Budget Calculator: https://codebreak.outgrow.us/knowyournumbers

Arrange a call with Codebreak: https://form.jotform.com/241272835208051

Transcript

0:13

Hi everyone, Joel at Code Break. It's me, myself and I today. So, haven't done one of these in a while but it's just going to be me talking to you and on this episode I'm going to be talking to you about mindset and taking ownership of your own destiny. Now, to give some context, the reason I'm on my own is the team are super busy at the moment which is great and also we've had a few situations I think have presented some really interesting challenges but also really useful for sort of entrepreneurs, business owners to see they're not the only ones going through this and also that every challenge presents an opportunity as such. So, very recently we've been working with a client who, to be honest, they came to us and they weren't too happy about their current agency, felt like they were using a bunch of different freelancers and there was no consistency and we hear that story quite frequently and then got working with them, we were doing digital ads for them and the leads were starting to flow and then they started complaining about their sales team and that it wasn't generating sales and that they might need to change tactic and do something with more nurture and so we adjusted to that and they were really grateful for everything we were doing, really happy with how much effort we were putting in and then they wanted to bring more work over to us, their websites and various marketing materials, things like that and we got stuck in, started doing the work and every six or seven days they would almost burn everything to the ground and want to change strategy, change direction, change tact and I quickly realised every time I spoke to them someone else had done something wrong in their eyes and it got to the point where I was sat there thinking and to be honest as a supplier this is difficult but sometimes you just want to say to someone, have you considered looking in the mirror, have you considered taking some responsibility for this and I've got so many examples, we've had a client again recently and some of these clients might listen to this but this is all meant with love but I think I need to present a real picture of what actually goes on behind the scenes sometimes and they were kicking off because they didn't know where any of their leads were and you're the professionals, you're the ones generating these leads, I can't believe you haven't been notifying us about our leads, we would expect better from you, we've invested a lot of money with you and we went back to them and said well as agreed at the start of the project the leads go into your sales CRM system so that your sales team can pick up the leads and do their thing and surely the CRM system should notify us if a new lead has come into it, perhaps it should but take that with the software developers not your marketing company and anyway end of the conversation, please can you give me the login to our CRM system, it's your CRM system and that's two kind of I guess attacks or barbs on clients of ours but also this applies to me too, every problem in my business is a leadership problem so onboarding three new staff, they're great guys, they're doing a fantastic job but obviously there's going to be stumbling blocks along the way, there's going to be little things that happen that you have to overcome, there's going to be boundaries you have to set, rules that you have to enforce, codes of conduct, company values, expectations, expectation management, all these different things even like daft boring things like fire regs and fire registers and where the first aid kit is and how to go to the toilet properly and all the things that you never think you're going to have to tell people as an employer that you end up having to tell people and inevitably there's been some stumbles, some mistakes, some hiccups, maybe some things communicated to clients not quite correctly and I could lash out and I could blame and I could say I've already shown you how to do this or why aren't you doing this properly or I can take a look at myself and say okay well if I only ever show everyone twice maybe I actually need to show everyone three times or if I've shown someone maybe I should also signpost them to where that is in our SOPs so that they can access it when they're next confused or maybe I should signpost them to our AI bot so they can ask that next time they've got a question. There's no point me getting frustrated and lashing out without any element of constructive behaviour around it. I have to take ownership of the direction and destiny of this company. I can't just lash out and throw my toys out the pram. We worked with a sales agency 18 months ago now and it was a minimum three month agreement and I knew that it was a risk so I decided would I be willing to risk the three month investment to see what happens because selling in our game is hard. It's a low trust environment, there's a lot of competition, there's a lot of people making false promises and so I knew the sales agency were on to a tough thing with working with us and they didn't get the result that I wanted but I didn't then attack them for it. That was my risk to take. It was an informed decision. I went into that with my eyes open and I often bump into business owners and people in mentorships and people in these environments that aren't actually willing to take a look at themselves and take responsibility for themselves. They're looking for that magic pill, that thing that they can spend some money on and just everything will fall into place, everything will be magic and it's just not how it happens. There's other ways to look at this too. I was training the team yesterday on how to see phone calls as an opportunity whether it's a client, whether it's a supplier, whether it's somebody inquiring. What's the opportunity and how can you make sure that your tonality is presenting opportunity to make sure that you're engaged and interested and one of the guys said, well I don't want to appear salesy and I said, yeah, no, that's fair enough. I don't want you to appear salesy either but my responsibility as the company owner is to make sure this company is healthy and where there's an opportunity to sell to someone that we do because I know we'll do everything in our power to do a great job for that person so selling to them isn't a bad thing and also if they're inquiring and ringing around, they are in the mood to spend that money and I would rather they spent that money with my business. And when I spent it went and took the risk of spending it with someone who I know won't try as hard as us So sort of the next time you're in that situation where you're like, how am I next gonna make a sale? How am I gonna push this over the line? remember, it's your duty to your business to take control of the destiny and Your duty to sell to that person because they're gonna go and buy something and they might buy something inferior to what you offer So you're actually doing them a favor That's how you have to go into it as a business owner I mean that might not be your moral stance when you book in a holiday But that if you provide a good service or a good product and you're afraid to sell it You've got a real issue in your business. So I Guess the harsh truth here is no one's going to fix your problems for you Yes, you can go to suppliers who might be able to help and fix some of it But if ultimately the problem is you or you're the bottleneck or you're the crux Then these problems going to come back to haunt you all that happens is the problem will get bigger and the bottleneck will become tighter And things will get harder. So Often the people that succeed are the ones that push through the the tricky period the Kind of like wading through treacle part that the darkness before the dawn thing don't let victim mentality creep in and start blaming people and Then push hard on the other side and use the headspace that they've saved themselves by not getting sucked into that to reach a new level and You'll know yourselves if you go to like a networking event if you go to a meeting There'll be the people in that meeting that are banging on about competition or bad luck or the economy or the war in Wherever I was going to say Ukraine. Obviously, it might not be Ukraine when you're listening to this And there'll be the business owners that kind of Are a bit shoulders back and like well, I don't care what's going on. I'm in charge of my destiny I'm gonna take control of this situation and Like knowing that when they spend money, they're gonna make more money on this on the other side by hook or by crook not Sitting there hoping someone's going to save them not playing the lottery every week to get themselves out of a bad situation but actually taking informed decisions and taking ownership and owning their own shit, and I think that's really important and then also like Bad things are going to happen to you like things will happen. I you know to name Three things I've been through in the last three years my dad Wrongly got sent to prison and then got put into a mental health hospital That's a pretty horrendous thing to happen. I have little control over that situation My stepfather Unexpectedly had his leg amputated just before Christmas. He went in for a routine Vein bypass and came out with no leg again That's a pretty Significant thing to happen and then my wife had an operation just before Christmas just gone. That's been three months in a wheelchair now Where I found my opportunity where I found my power in that situation Was my response to it. I Could crumble I could fall to bits and I described to people sometimes if you want someone in a crisis come and knock on my door If you've got a paper cut don't bother and it's not because I've got no empathy for the paper cut I just don't cope well with small problems. I'm the guy you go to with big problems, but the power of your response Defines what happens next and Sometimes it's about taking a step back taking a breath thinking about what's going on You might not be able to control that external event You can control your response when your partner be your wife or your business partner or your kid or? Is going fucking berserk at you about something? you can choose how you respond even if you're upset, even if you're angry you can choose how you respond and That emotional toll or that emotional freedom Will dictate your state and if you if you get to a place where you can control your state most of the time You will feel more in control of your life than most people ever do now There's things that can do you can do to help that make sure you get plenty of sleep Make sure you're hydrated. Make sure you're eating the right things Make sure you're exercising but controlling your mental state is the key to taking ownership of your destiny if you find yourself lashing out at people and blaming others and Constantly fixated on that and thinking about that or thinking about what Donald Trump's doing or Keir Starmer's doing or what the weather's doing or what? The economy is doing instead of what can I do? What can I do to change this? What can I do to control this you're going to find yourself in a tricky situation? So like the things that you can control your reaction to it could be bad business reviews market downturns staff performance Client performance the postman not showing up with your parcel the car breaking down You can control how you react to that and often how you react to that will dictate The mood and the energy of the people around you too and you can be quite inspiring in a moment of difficulty Just by how you react to it And that's something really worth thinking about when you're thinking about the power of your response You're thinking about how you're going to take ownership of this situation They're like we've had situations recently where working with we work with meta ads a lot and meta a notoriously difficult platform to To play with things just change and go wrong move around Things switch themselves on with no advance notice and no explanation and we had a client recently who We were running some ads for and some really inappropriate music got overlaid on the ads by meta even though we'd turn that function off and Every time we went to republish the ads it turned it back on now. You can imagine that's incredibly stressful It's actually Valentine's weekend I was meant to be spending time with my wife at a spa and I said I'm on my phone and my laptop trying to fix some ads with ridiculous music on and I could frame that as I'm the victim of that a meta has Done me down and no wonder the client doesn't like me or I can frame it as the client can see that I'm making every conceivable effort to put this right and I've Learned to look out for what happens every time you republish ads on meta at the moment now Believe me I it my mental state wasn't great through that period because I was getting very very fucking frustrated, but I Can see the wood for you know hindsight's 2020 vision I can see the wood for the trees now and It's really important that sometimes you you see that and you see how you reacted at the time so that you know You won't react like that in the future and like you think about some of these entrepreneurs that have turned massive setbacks into huge growth opportunities by Striving for success during kovat or during recessions or People who've lost their homes then used it as the spark to to grow to the next level very often that discomfort that you're feeling or that moment where you want to just snap and burn it all to the ground or tell your team to fuck off, or whatever it might be. Might actually be the moment where you're about to step up, might be the moment where you're about to get to the next level, and you're just sat there stewing in it rather than seeing the opportunity in front of you. And it is worth sometimes just taking a breath and going, what does this all mean? We go through these periods where, as the business progresses and we get to a certain size, we don't outgrow our clients, that's an awful thing to say, and every client here gets very good treatment. But sometimes the clients aren't coming on the same journey as us, and we might not, where once we might have been the right supplier for them, we might not be anymore, and it is okay to tell them. And I find that incredibly emotionally difficult, and I find it tricky to communicate that without sounding like an arsehole. But it's also the right thing to do where a client would actually be better suited to working with a freelancer who can be as flexible as they want, as agile as they want, will answer the phone at 3 a.m. in the morning. It's kind of my duty to tell them, I think this is what you need. And we find that when we're growing, when we're reaching a new level, sometimes we'll have some clients that aren't quite on the same path as us anymore. And equally, we'll be bringing in new clients who are very much like a challenge for us. And I think that can be a period of real discomfort where if you're not careful about how you react, if you're not careful about how you're taking ownership of that situation, you can feel very much like a victim. And I guess like treating yourself with a bit of kindness too is important with this stuff. Like your mindset pretty much needs to be worked out in the same way your body does. Like you've got to treat your mindset like a muscle and have daily habits that reinforce the good behaviors. And that might be journaling. It could be structured to your day. It could be like the physical support for your mindset by going to the gym in the mornings or going for a dog walk or doing your breathing exercises or yoga. Whatever it is for you that helps get you in the right state. It might be what you eat, what you drink. Like I drink London Neutropics to get into flow state and I get like two or three hours flow state out of that. But I also find that when I start skipping those things, if I skip my journal, if I don't have the London Neutropics, if I don't hydrate quite properly, if I do stay up a little bit later on the laptop, my mental discipline decreases. My mindset starts to crumble. The tools and tactics that I have aren't as powerful. Bit like when you let yourself get too hungry and then you can't not have a takeaway, that kind of thing. If I let my mindset get too tired or a little bit too loose and out of practice, I start doing the things that I dislike in myself. And I think you've really got to be open to that and really self-aware and look at realizing that a challenge is just a business challenge in this instance. You don't need to like spiral out of emotional control, that just look at it objectively. What's the very worst that's gonna happen? You might lose that customer or client, but you'll learn a lot and totally appreciate some businesses feel like they can't afford to lose a customer or a client, but it's always the ones that are like challenging you and eating up all of your time that you're likely to lose. And when you lose one, you normally gain two more and it's weird how that happens, because you've got way more bandwidth. So yeah, there's sort of various ways I take ownership in business, exercising my mindset, keeping on top of that, doing my daily routine, taking full responsibility for everything. So I don't mind disclosing, if I have to discipline a staff member or have a difficult conversation with a supplier or a client, I actually feel very upset after that. Like I normally have to take a few minutes on my own. And it's because there's some sort of self-awareness around it too, that ultimately it's my responsibility. Like I don't want it to be other people's responsibility, because I want that level of control. And so like the ultimate question for me is like, if the business isn't heading in the right direction, if we're not growing, and that might not be material growth, it could be the team developing, the clients feeling like they're getting better results, suppliers enjoying working with us. What am I avoiding facing up to that I can control? And why am I avoiding it? Is that in, it could be disciplining a team member, training the team, buying a new piece of equipment, admitting defeat on something that we've put far too much time into. Like what is it that I'm avoiding? And what is it that I can control that I can change? And then going towards it, moving towards the discomfort, because that's where the answer will be. So if you've been listening to this, I totally appreciate me on my own might not be the most dynamic podcast, but hopefully there was some useful tidbits in there. I guess if you were to take three takeaways away from this one, it would be to reframe your challenges into opportunities, even your most difficult challenges. Because to reference one I've just mentioned earlier, visiting my dad in a pretty horrible prison where there was murderers in the visiting space, opened my eyes to an awful lot of things. I learned more that day than I've probably learned in the last 10 years. So as horrible as that was and as hard as that was, I learned a lot. Audit your headspace. So when you're starting to be naggy with your partner, when you're starting to get angry on the team, when you're starting to feel anxious about the post instead of excited to open the post, when the phone rings and you don't wanna answer it, when you're skipping gym or you're eating stodgier food than normal, just like what negative things are you giving too much attention to and what's the cost of that financially, energy-wise, mood-wise, sleep-wise, and just give yourself an audit. And then if you really are gonna take radical ownership of your destination, what's the one change you're gonna make? And just write it down. What's the one change you're gonna make that's gonna significantly impact the direction you're taking? And that might be your morning routine. It might be the way you address the team when you get in in the morning. It might be the way you communicate with clients on a weekly basis. Whatever it is, what's that one thing you're gonna do and measure, and I would put a date on it. I would put something quantifiable on it. What are you gonna do to make that difference? So yeah, in summary, just remember that you're in control of the destination of your business. You're in control of your destiny. And every problem is a leadership problem. All right, take care.