One Question Could Change Your Business

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Hey, Hey, so this week I want to challenge you on something that's probably happening in your business. When you're looking to grow your business, where are you looking? And you rethink, I mean, I'm not looking at marketing. Am I looking at sales? Am I looking at operations? But what I actually mean. Is how you making the decisions around growth? At this stage in your entrepreneurial journey, you have more than enough information, probably just in your course graveyard to figure out how to do anything in your business. And if your course graveyard is not as extensive as mine, there's always the university of Google to fill in the gaps. So we know that information is not what's lacking or what's slowing the results that you might want to have. We operate in an environment where we are told constantly about quick fixes, about if you just learn this one thing, if you just follow this one process, if you just steal my strategy, everything will happen super quickly. And what happens is we keep chasing those short term fixes those short term solutions that come packaged up as information. And what we really want to be doing is finding the right question that unlocks our own onset. You have plenty of other people's answers. In your course graveyard and in university of Google. At this stage we, you need to be cultivating is your ability to find your own answers. And the reason for this is that you are the only person. With enough context to find the right answer for your business. Just because a strategy or a process or a system or a marketing tool worked for someone else. Doesn't mean it will work for you. So rather than going out and looking for more information. We need to be trying to find the right question that unlocks the answer that works for our business. The goal of that right. Question. Gets you to think in a different way. And when you can think in a different way, it's going to give you new ideas, [00:02:00] new concepts that maybe you hadn't applied before. And it's going to teach you this critical thinking. This creativity that not only applies in that moment for that question. But you've now practiced for the next time. Something feels stale and you need to find the answer to a question or a challenge or a problem. Now I say all of this it's that, it's the easiest thing in the world for you to find this one question. That's going to unlock this genius. That's going to unlock your business and have your growth, shooting through the roof. But the reality is that we have a few things operating in our business. At any one time that are maybe. Keeping us stuck in the kind of view that we have. One of these is our blind spots, right? Everybody has blind spots we are creatures who like things that are familiar to us and things that are routine. And so we can get really comfortable just chugging along with what's working. That we don't notice that we should maybe be asking ourselves a question about why it's working and how long it's going to work. And what else we could be doing. And then we have everybody's favorite sunk cost fallacy. If you don't know what sunk cost fallacy is, it's the idea that we've invested so much in something that we're doing. With it, and that can be time. It can be money. It can be energy. That we need to just keep going. We need to just keep pushing through to the end because we've already invested so much. Rather than going, actually, this isn't the right thing. I'm going to stop spending right now, spending time spending money, spending energy. It's very easy for us in our personal lives. And our business lives, even in relationships to be like, I've just put so much work in. And so we don't want to question it. Because our brain is saying, we need to just keep going, just keep going and put so much in don't look at the other thing that might be a better path for us. Just keep going. and finally, probably one of the things that's. Kind of unique to us in the small business world is the emotional connection. We fail to our businesses. Our business, as much [00:04:00] as we try not to let it becomes a part of our identity. and that emotional connection, just think about like any emotional connection you have to a person. But that emotion can cloud your judgment. You can be in those like rose colored glasses moments. You sometimes don't question what's happening. You just take it on face value and you just trust. And that's always worked the same. Thing's happening with your business. Like why fix what isn't broken. It's always worked out in the past. I love my offer. So I'm going to keep doing it. We have this really like unique situation, a small business owners where we are hyper-connected to what's happening in our business. And so being able to step back and be objective enough to even notice that there's an area you should be asking a question can be really, really tough. And then once you've managed to step back, do you have the perspective to ask the right question in that moment? Or is it confirmation bias, you know, where you look for information to prove yourself, sneaking in. I love my offer. So yes, it can ask questions about it, but I'm going to ask questions in a way that gets. Me on sows. The, tell me that it's okay to go ahead with my offer. Or I'm really nervous to do this next level step. Over here because it's going to make me so visible. And I'm afraid of that. So I'm going to find all the reasons not to do that. I'm going to find things that are more important so that I can delay that. We are complicated little creatures. So on the one hand, I'm saying you need to be asking questions of your business. And on the other hand, I'm saying, Ooh, you're probably also not the best person to ask questions about your business. So a couple of things that you can work on to kind of bridge that gap. Is honestly just being curious. So I think a lot of times we listen to other people's information and strategy and we see it on their social media posts. And we're like, oh, that's amazing. They did so well. Well, Instead, if we can turn that into, how would that work in my business? Why would that work for my business? Why wouldn't that work in my [00:06:00] business? It doesn't mean you're being negative. But almost turning the idea over and looking at it from all those different questions. The same way. If somebody shares a quote that kind of resonates with you. Ask yourself. Well, how is that applying to me and my business? Does it apply? Does it not apply? Anything around that curiosity will start to open those critical pathways and that creativity and that solution orientated mindset. And that will start to apply itself more and more to your business. So while we're staying in that curiosity, I want you to expand where that curiosity goes. So if you only follow the same 10 people. On Instagram or threads or wherever. How can you expand that? For me, I love to follow people who aren't in the small business space. And ask myself how this concept that applies to yoga. Could apply to my business. Not because I'm necessarily going to apply it to my business, but because it makes my brain. Into that state of like, huh? If this is just a puzzle. And the more diverse it can be, the more different it can be from what you're actually doing. The lower the stakes are. Like if I can't apply that yoga principle. I haven't really lost anything. Whereas if we're thinking about somebody else's business concept, all of our FOMO. Is kicking in. Like I could be making 10 X the money tomorrow and just three minutes a day. Versus thinking about how calming the vagus nerve could apply in my business. There's a two very different. Angles to come at creativity and critical thinking from. And finally. Probably the most difficult, because we do love information and we live in an information rich age. Is it, we have to become really comfortable with not having all the answers. We have to be comfortable that we might ask a question that we don't know the answer to. That we might have to sit with. That might feel uncomfortable. And that we might not know where it could lead. Those are the moments that you are pulling on your CEO pants. Those are the critical thinking moments. Those are the skills that as you develop them, you will [00:08:00] notice. Star to tentacle out into all the other parts of your business, into your decision-making, into your planning. Into how you lead your team. Now the reality is being able to do all of this, find these. Diverse concepts that you can apply to your business, sit and think about them. Even sitting in the unknowingness of all of it. Can feel kind of overwhelming, right? You will probably already have a really full calendar. There's probably not a lot of time spare for you to be thinking about concepts and how they might or might not apply to your business. And this is why we're changing coffee and Columbus to the five minute strategist. I want to help you take five minutes a day. Where you're being presented with one of these questions. That you can. Turn over and think about and noodle on for your specific business. So that you can develop that critical thinking that is so key to you. Being able to be strategic in your business. And because this is a compounding skill. The more you practice it. The stronger it gets the better you get it on stirring the questions, the better you get at applying things to your business, the more strategic you get, we're going to do this every day. It's just five minutes a day. It creates a daily practice for you. A moment where you've been strategic in your business before all the usual firefighting kicks in. Before all the clients start clamoring for your attention before the team needs your help. So the first question drops on Friday, the 1st of March.