Lead with Limits: Boundaries and Priorities for Business Growth

Starting the conversation:

You’re bombarded with advice, ideas, data, and they all can be urgent — but the actions chosen underpin your company’s relevance and growth. It is up to you to decide what is practical and pragmatic and prioritize those actions. Jess Dewell, Managing Partner at Red Direction and host of the BOLD Business Podcast shares about how to lead with limits.

Ideas, plans, ROI expectations are all part of the beginning. Once decisions are made, everyone gets moving — without knowing what the end looks like. Start adding endings before implementation begins. Without endings, even the best-run teams fall short and don’t quite make it to the finish (because there isn’t one!).

In this program, you will learn the power of using “no” as a boundary, why to create endings to achieve more, and why Present Retreat™ is the most powerful strategic tool amidst daily demands. Jess Dewell, Managing Partner at Red Direction and your host shares why it is BOLD to focus on doing as much impactful action as possible.

Host: Jess Dewell

What You Will Hear:

03:04 Prioritizing growth strategy is key to breakthrough.

• What we prioritize is what we value.
• What we value becomes the way we work together and the more we understand each other and how we work together, the more we achieve.
• Make space to answer: How do we stay competitive? How do we adapt to changes? How do we break through the business plateau?

11:40 Claiming direction with clear endings allows you to manage priorities and build trust.

• Once you are able to claim that direction and say, this is where we’re going and this is what we’re doing and you’re confident about it … that is the direction.
• Everybody works on managing their time, their energy, managing other priorities; it’s how you work that creates achievement.
• Team members can bring competing priorities for clarification, helping everyone stay on track.

18:00 Create space by deferring and evaluating ideas.

• Take the idea, take the advice because you like it and think it has some sort of merit, even if you don’t know how much — and write it down and keep it somewhere.
• Deep thought and decision-making require a reset and space away from distractions.
• Set aside ideas for later evaluation and only focus on what is most critical right now.

24:10 Shortlisting through “no” is an act of relentless prioritization.

• Say no with intention; revisit ideas on a regular basis (weekly, quarterly, or annually).
• Narrow a big list of ideas through rigorous filtering: what aligns, what helps now, what helps in the future, and what goes in the bin.
• Being relentless about saying no means being relentless about your goals — pursue only right growth, not just interesting growth.

33:50 Use tools like “now and near” to capture, revisit, and assess high priority ideas.

• Capture ideas in a dedicated space (physical basket, digital folder) for review outside daily operations.
• Revisiting ideas helps to evaluate their timing, resource fit, and alignment with business needs.
• If not periodically evaluated, ideas can be forgotten and opportunities missed.

41:00 Planting a stake and present retreats give you freedom to adapt and focus.

• Present Retreats help you clear mental clutter and create the space required for creative, strategic work.
• Use these dedicated sessions to intentionally address new ideas, organize, and reflect — leading to deliberate business choices.
• Stakes (decisions) can be moved as you adapt and learn, allowing for flexibility alongside intentionality.

46:30 It is BOLD to intentionally prioritize small shifts that build lasting positive impact for growth.

Resources

• Too Many High Priorities from Season 1
• 10 Questions for Accountability

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
You’ve come this far, so start exactly where you are and be ruthless with your priorities.

Jess Dewell 00:10
This is Bold. I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business Podcast, we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly are going to be, what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training, and the programs that you are already using. This is a supplement to that. It can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out. Maybe you’re ready to scale. Maybe you’re going through reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 01:04
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast, where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 01:15
I’m so glad you’re here today. I want to talk about breakthroughs, those biggest breakthroughs, and they come from tapping into your company’s potential. And how to do that is to be diligent in the prioritization, making sure that you’re thinking about your future growth for your company amidst all the daily demands. The way to do that is to make space. That’s where you can find out what the next best action to take actually is. Creating space allows questions like these, which I’m regularly asked, to be answered. How do we stay competitive in a changing market? How do we adapt to changing expectations of our customers? And how do we break through our business plateau? All the answers have a common thread, prioritizing the growth strategy. And that’s my work. It does take a commitment to develop your business in a way that looks forward to that next three to five years. And a one-day or two-day growth framework reset is actually something that can help you. Everything you’ve got, everything you think you’ve got going on, and being able to put it into a place to look at and engage with on a regular basis. I call this the growth framework reset. And you can go to reddirection.com under solutions to find out more. For those of you listening and watching wherever you’re listening and watching, it’s time to like and subscribe. This way, every single conversation and every single topic that I publish will be at the top of your list and you will know that there is something new to listen to and tap into for inspiration and ideas to solve the problems that you’re working on today.

Jess Dewell 03:04
Results that we get from our growth strategy depend on what we prioritize. What we prioritize is what we value. What we value becomes the way we work together.

Jess Dewell 03:14
And the more we understand each other and how we work together, the more we achieve. Okay, that’s it. I’ll see ya. No, I’m really just kidding because we’re only getting started. This though is where the juicy, awesome work really begins for long-term longevity and success. I’m Jess Dewell and I support mid-market CEOs and entrepreneurs as well as boards to tap into the growth potential that your company has today. My take on growth strategy is that the direction that you actively go to ensure your market relevance also ensures your company’s future. There’s a newsletter that I love and read every day called the Daily Stoic. Here’s an excerpt that I read recently and is really poignant to this conversation.

Jess Dewell 04:05
Seneca says, one thing all fools have in common was that they are always getting ready to start. It’s not that these fools aren’t busy because they are. They’re running around like crazy.

Jess Dewell 04:18
They’ve got a million ideas and a million things that they’re doing. The problem is none of them concretely move the ball forward in any way. I know he lived a long time ago. I wanted to know exactly when. Turns out Seneca died in 65 AD. All these years later in the 21st century, we’re still figuring out what to do to move the ball forward. This is still an issue. How cool is it that part of our creative brain and figuring out what we’ve got going on and what we can do and what we can bring to the world is something that we’re always working on regardless of where and time we live? So knowing that this is something that if you’re not facing today, you will. Seneca did. I do. And I’m guessing you have and will again as well. There are going to be four areas in this program that will help you reflect on the priorities you have and actively engage with them to keep moving forward instead of working in place. So in this episode, I’m going to share with you that boundaries matter and know is the boundary. That the to-do list never ends. And so it’s important to create endings. And the third thing is there are so many ideas. What do we do with them? And how do we find the good ones? And the fourth, I’m going to talk to you about the best strategic tool you can use to create space. It’s called the present retreat. These small shifts that we can take that create lasting positive impact, utilize the work you’ve already done, and they leverage the skills and strengths that you already have and lean into. If you can consider that you’re already charting the course of your company’s future, listen up. Your biggest breakthroughs to future growth can come from the intentional selection of all the ideas and advice that’s always readily available and coming your way. Endings can be a guiding mantra rather than a rigid blueprint. Embracing a plan with endings ensures that your company can proactively address change, optimize time, and reduce costs.

Jess Dewell 06:34
Endings. That’s the key here. We think about the beginning. We spend a lot of time at the beginning. We forget about the ending. I know what seven habits of highly successful people.

Jess Dewell 06:46
That book has a whole chapter dedicated to begin with the end in mind. It’s easy to say it’s hard to do because some of us, most of us, me included, think that how do we know what the ending is going to be? All we want to do is try something and see what the results are and keep going. This Act to Plan approach is on purpose and right. The thing is, if we do it without a goal, if we do it without understanding what its purpose is, then all it is is a waste of time, energy, and resources. So endings matter. This intentional approach of having endings supported by clear communication, it allows the strategic use of constraints, it allows and fosters adaptability and innovation while empowering your team, while strengthening trust from communication and effort that is spent together, working together, and it ensures your company’s long-term relevance and competitive advantage. Seriously, who knew endings were so powerful? Well, we do. We feel them. Usually, we associate ending in the negative with grief, with something that closed or broke or we let go of. And sure, sure, that could even happen in the smallest thing, like something in your day. I want to try a different grocery store this week. Look at that, there was an ending built in automatically. Going to a different place for one week. I think that’s an interesting concept and it’s a good reflection for me just right here with you because I’m like, oh yeah, look, I’ve practiced this so much that endings become part of the way that I think. And there’s a value in this.

Jess Dewell 08:32
And so everything that is said, everything that is shared, everything that you do in your present retreat, which I do have a video about if you are unfamiliar with what that is, I recommend you watch it. It’s the best, biggest strategic tool you can use to make change right now. We’re talking about endings. And sometimes we avoid endings. One, because they might hurt or feel bad. And two, because we think, how do we know when the end is? We don’t know what the end is going to be. So until we have some idea, how can we? Well, that’s all decisions. That’s all choices. Whether it’s where you’re shopping or what company you want to buy or is this company that you’re spending all of this money to acquire actually worth it? There is a cost of not planning. The thing is, most people ask that question. What is the cost of not planning? By the way, this question is not only overused, it’s the wrong one. It’s the wrong one because there’s no accounting for the end of things.

Jess Dewell 09:35
A plan, most of the time, has like a, we just throw it in a year or we throw it in a quarter and then we see what happens. Instead of going, what is the ending for this experiment, this plan, this implementation? This deeper level of time management by putting on an ending not only reduces costs because you know you’ve committed, you have a constant clear awareness of the period of time that a cost will occur to make something happen and see what the result is. Those are clear decisions that come with some level of certainty because we know what’s going on in our business because we are strategically ready. We understand what our goal is and we’ve got to find out if it will work for us this way or what we need to adjust to make it work for us our way. Proactively thinking about the end not only increases productivity just because you’ve got tools that you can manage all the stuff better, but it’s also because this productivity comes in there’s less uncertainty and lack of clarity along the way. The communication that you are able to have with your people can be specific. When you are taking the time to look at we’re this much closer to that end goal, here’s where we’re supposed to be. You know what questions to ask and in fact even better will be your team will know what questions to ask and report into you so that when you’re doing the assessment it’s already there. That is a level of trust, that is a level of engagement, that is a level of contribution that we all seek and few ever get. And who knew it’s all about having an end to an idea, an end to a decision, to see how well it went, to see if it’s what we thought it would be for our team. You might have heard this stat in 2024 Gallup reported that only 22% of employees feel like the leaders in their company have a clear direction for the organization.

Jess Dewell 11:39
Everybody has a strategic plan and don’t use it enough that their teams know what’s going on. So the thing you can do, a strategic plan, an end to projects along the way, this allows you to claim your direction. Once you are able to claim that direction and say this is where we’re going and this is what we’re doing and you’re confident about it even if that just means you’re clearly sharing it and communicating it. That is the direction everybody knows. That is the direction then that everybody works on managing their time, managing their energy, managing other priorities and as they are able to say hey I think these are competing I’m not sure which is most important here and you and they can work together to confirm what is the right thing right now. To stay on track so that the path from the plan with an end that you have created is actually moving in the general direction that you want the company to go. We all need reminders. We kind of know that this is necessary, the need for endings and here’s the other side of that. When we have an end we have a very clear purpose, small purpose amongst the bigger goals and long-term vision.

Jess Dewell 13:03
Reminders are necessary. So repeating that message here’s our experiment, here’s our decision, here’s where we’re going, this is the highest priority right now and why and being able to distill that into one or two sentences is able to be communicated and sure it might feel like you’re repeating yourself and that’s okay because here’s the deal. The more that everybody knows that message, the more that everybody can say that message, the more opportunity there is for the team’s trust to increase because everybody knows where they stand with their work. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing in relationship to getting to this bigger goal and that is a place where capturing potential matters. This is the place potential within your company exists. Trust from plans with endings that are clearly communicated. So stay true to the direction you’re leading your company. Be clear, repeat it often, incorporate it into the communications that go out, the adjustments that get made, any reprioritizations that come along the way. Here’s the deal, regardless of listening to all of that you may be one of these people that is still saying, eh, I’m not going to plan. I don’t need a business plan or I don’t need something for this year. I just know where we’re going. They usually fall into one of these three buckets. Tell me if you’re one of these or have been one of these. Things are changing too quickly, Jess, and a plan inhibits our ability to adapt and change course quickly. Another one. Jess, it takes too much time and comes with a high cost to take the time to plan. How about this third one? Hey, Jess, the execution of a plan reduces our ability to create and innovate. Each one of these I could talk easily ten minutes about. Provided you find yourself here right now, just recognize planning or not. Planning or not planning. That is your choice. And that choice is specifically going to be tied to the direction you go. Are you going on purpose and with intention or are you just going and hoping the right stuff shows up so that more plans can be made to kind of find the way along the way? Clear endings allow for you to have more intentionality and shift and shift from I want to be adaptable. I want to be innovative within our organization and plans get in the way of that. Okay, fine. So why not choose to have that and still put an ending somewhere? Check it out. See what that clear ending can do to just change the energy.

Jess Dewell 15:53
To change the way people show up to their work, you show up to the work that’s there and the problems that you are solving. Now, the other cool thing about endings that is more powerful than anything I’ve shared so far is that pausing and assessing to reflect on what’s happening, what’s going on, new ideas that come up, changes in the market. Endings allow for sure a time to pause and assess and reflect. This is incredibly powerful because when you pause, assess, and reflect at a completion point specifically, you’re going to know, have we been doing the right work? What’s the next right work? Does it need to be done now or is some other work actually the right work to be doing and we need to change the order of things? It’s in these reflections from endings that allow us to check in to stay aligned with our overarching strategic goal five years or more out. Planning five years or more out with clear endings will allow you to see positive shifts. Positive shifts in the way your company is perceived, the market share that there is, the profitability that exists, and the cash flow necessary by creating time with endings and reflections on those endings. Did you know? Boundaries. Saying no actually creates time. It allows you to prioritize what really matters and protecting the scarce resources of time and energy for you and your teams right now. There are two letters when put together can be very powerful and many of us don’t even like to consider them. N-O. The word no.

Jess Dewell 17:59
This is the answer to resolving the overwhelm that comes from growth opportunity. Advice. What has been working for other people? What’s exciting right now? Where the good ideas within your organization always come from and will continue to come from? To simplify the path of relevance, the ability to survive and have longevity in a changing world, is mastering no. No protects more than your core mission and propels you forward. It protects the opportunity of the energy resources at your fingertips. One of the easiest, quickest things you can do right now to make space, also to say no, is to defer. Take the idea, take the advice, because you like it and think it has some sort of merit, even if you don’t know how much, and write it down and keep it somewhere. This is interactive notetaking. It might be electronic, it might be physical papers that you go through. Regardless, write it down and set it aside for a little while. Kick the can down the road just for even if it’s a day. It might be a little longer than that, because here’s the deal. This is a process that you can use to create space. Deep thought, making a decision about a new idea takes time and energy and it physically requires a reset of what’s going on and where you are at and how you are showing up. That’s just like a distraction when an alarm goes off, when an email comes in or your phone rings or somebody knocks on your door to come in and chat with you in your office. So recognize that everything that comes in may have a purpose. If it doesn’t, get rid of it right away. If it does, write it down. This is a process that allows you to have a standard. I will evaluate ideas that may have merit here and now. I will understand what this is because they may help us grow and change and innovate and evolve and be creative.

Jess Dewell 20:15
And this is my standard. I will say no right away. I might even be able to say yes right away.

Jess Dewell 20:22
It is likely I will take the idea and think about it later. Now back to no. No, the N-O put together is a boundary. We don’t really talk about no being a boundary for strategic ideas, yet we consciously, every time we make a decision, there are a whole bunch of no’s that are said without saying no to that, no to that, no to that, no to that. Crazy, huh? So when we actually take the word no and we use it as a boundary, not only as a constraint to make sure we’re staying within the shape of the experiment we’re working with, we also have the ability to see lasting returns. It takes a long time to sift through all of the opportunities and if we’re doing it, that could be, I mean, what the stat says something like seven minutes of every disruption. So if you’re asked to make a decision about something that’s strategic or that would cause a change of energy and resource management and possibly create a competing priority and you have to stop and think about it, that’s a minimum of seven minutes to stop, to get to be able to think about it, and then to switch back to whatever you were doing. 14 minutes every single time. That’s a lot. So to get these lasting returns, to get results beyond the numbers, to build your company for enduring relevance, especially in constant change, is to say, got it, maybe I’m going to put it aside and I’ll get back to you. Because here’s the deal. Why are we willing to take those 14 minutes and then whatever time it is between the transition to and from that deep work of making a choice? It’s because we’re fearful. There is an underlying fear of being irrelevant, of missing an opportunity. And you know what? That major driver, that need to always change, the constant feeling of knowing change is inevitable. The quickest way to a plateau is by trying to do too much, look at too many things all throughout the day and encouraging your teams to do the same thing. It creates overwork, which means there’s tiredness, which means there’s depleted energy, which means not saying no enough is something that’s happening in your organization. And the fear of becoming irrelevant is a concern that no directly addresses. Because when we stop and we can put something aside and think about many things at once deeply, we can find out and rank them together instead of individually. One example. So here’s the deal. The skill of saying no is interesting to me. I have a four-letter word for the word no. And to this day, my whole life, I always want to say yes as much as possible. A hell yes is even better. And I have found that learning to say no has changed the way I do business for the better. This is a skill that when I recognized when I said yes to something, I was saying no to something else. And when I made a decision, I was actually saying no to a lot of other things.

Jess Dewell 23:47
I was able to shift and change that. So if you’re like me and you want to say yes and you want to have as much opportunity as possible. Part of the ways to do that and do that well is to say no.

Jess Dewell 24:00
And here’s the deal. Skills are always evolving and they’re always changing. Me included. I found a video clip. I found a video clip where I am talking about how to say no and how I showed up to say no in 2017. We’re going to watch it and then I’m going to respond to it. As you’re listening to this clip from 2017, back then Jess, think about this. Is simply saying no to ideas enough to help prioritize or is more needed? How do you handle the guilt about saying no? This concept of practicing saying no is not enough for most people. It is not enough for me. Just saying no does not help me make the choice because I get in my own way and I’m stuck with this guilt. I actually have guilt. Guilt. People that I love and respect and care about and honor their opinions to help me develop my business are telling me and I’m like, I’m not going to worry. I’m like, no hiding in the corner, right? Sometimes it’s not being able to have the time to allocate to all of the steps for production. Recognizing what’s it going to take to actually do that. Okay, it goes on and on and on. And what matters here is, yeah, I did have guilt. Yeah, I didn’t like to say no. And here’s the scoop. Let’s come back to that question. Is simply saying no to ideas enough to help prioritize? And guess what? My answer back then and my answer today is that yes, simply saying no to ideas is enough. As long as we’re saying enough no’s. Because here’s what I firmly believe and once I realized then has only grown deeper and deeper and created a great foundation. Saying no sometimes just isn’t enough. It wasn’t ever enough for me. Because am I making the right choice right now? Am I saying no to the wrong thing? Right? There’s always this uncertainty. Not to mention, on top of that, I kind of like it but I still need to say no because it’s not the right thing at the right time. So what I learned from 2017 to now is that I’ve added something to my, when I go into my now and nears and I’m saying yes or no to things, right? Or in the moment when somebody comes in and I know right away, super clear on where we’re going, super clear on the super clear on the priority, can recite what we’re doing and how we’re doing, I can say no with a reason and it can go away. I can also in that moment say maybe later and put it away for further evaluation. In my now and near, once a week I go through all of the ideas that have come in that I have pushed and I look at them because I’m already in a space of here’s where we’re going, this is where we’re at, here’s what the priorities are and I can actually look at all of these ideas, all of this advice from wherever it came from and say, does it match the priority? Does it help us right now? And if the answer to both of those is yes, I set it aside. If the answer is no to either, might it be in the future? Could this be helpful to us? Could this be something we want to do in the future? If the answer is yes, I save it in a future pile that I look at quarterly or annually. If it is no, it won’t, it can go in the bin. The purpose of this is to have a really big list become a few things and then deciding, does it make sense right now? Does it change what we’re doing right now? And that is the key to saying no and we’ve got to get that shortlist. So we have to learn how to say a no enough to get a short list of things that really, really align to what we’re working on. And then we get to decide, is it now? Is it next? Does it enhance? Will it leap us forward to our goal, to our end? Because when we are willing to be relentless about saying no, it means we’re relentless about our goals. It’s relentless pursuit of growth, the right growth, not what’s interesting to us, the right growth, not what somebody else is doing, the right growth, because it supports customers. It allows you to show up to the way the market is changing and what is happening in your industry to navigate every step along the way. Boundaries ensure our priorities stay the priority. And with so many good ideas, we have to say no. So being able to say no to the ideas that don’t help us right now is incredibly important because when we know not only our future three and five years out, we know it might help us in the future, just not yet. And we know it might help us now or not. And that’s how we can create more time by taking our strategic time, which I call a present retreat, and using it to say no as much as possible.

Jess Dewell 29:17
With growth framework resets, they bring their questions showing up around growth strategy, around these big questions, around the complexity, around the consistency. And because they’re dedicated to create their own company’s future, they use the growth framework reset to stay relevant, to stay on priority, and to get clear about the message. And then they go out and do their work and come back for the next problem that they are working with. And so when I work with them, we’re always thinking about what ideas are the best ones. And that’s really what you have to figure out. And that’s what this is all about. There’s always going to be good priorities, good ideas to go after, an overabundance of them, in fact. So that challenge that you face, am I doing the right ones? Are we doing too many? Anything that’s competing for attention, anything that has to be set aside for something else to be focused on, indicates there are too many priorities. And we know we can have a lot of important items, genuinely important, and we still have to choose. We can only, I don’t know, some of us might be able to jump into our pants with both feet. I know I can’t, so I put my pants on one leg at a time, and I have to choose, do I want it to be my left leg or my right leg? Sounds simple and straightforward. When we take it back though, and we look at all the priorities in our business, it’s the same thing. When we’re talking about what is the right work to do and discerning that, then we can do as much of that right work as possible. And that’s when we get to say no. And I can also tell you, it’s not always enough. It’s not always enough. It’s typically inadequate. And I advocate for a systematic, emotion-aware approach. And that is important because it is repeatable. It brings in the way you do your work here, the values that you prioritize in the choices that you make. And then you’ve got this concept of reflection. How does it help me do my role better? How does it help our customers more? How does it help us in the marketplace? And what do I need to become? Who do we need to become? What are the additional resources we need to get there? Letting go after saying no takes a large amount of energy. Like so much energy. That no, even the not now, is clearly removing things out of the day-to-day so that the right work can be done.

Jess Dewell 32:06
That leaves space for the ideas that make it to the maybe or the yes and now we just need more confirmation. That requires constant commitment to evaluate them because having a lot of good ideas that we don’t act on is just as bad as having too many that we’re actually working on. Because if we think it might be a good idea right now or in the near future, but we never look at it again, we still missed the boat and we put energy here. And if we’re going to put energy in something that’s a maybe or a yes with validation, it’s probably a good idea to look at it. I can tell you from experience, it’s exactly the right thing to do to make time to look at it. Over the years of doing this work, I’ve been focused on what does it take to find the right priorities so that you are doing the right work right now, specifically during times of high pressure and fast change. The first time I talked about the framework I call now and near was in 2017. I had been working with it though before that, since I started this business back in 2004. Now the first season of this podcast, the Bold Business Podcast actually had a different name back then. Season one, we were called the voice of bold business. And I’m sharing that with you because if you go to the YouTube channel and you take a look at the whole conversation, which is in our notes right here, you can take a listen and you can see the whole thing. And it will look a little different and has a different name. And hey, that’s okay because here’s the deal. Everything evolves and changes. So I want to tell you from the voice of bold business episode about too many high priorities. There’s a piece that I clipped out for us to take a listen. You’re a journaler in general. You’re taking this concept of a thought, writing it down, revisiting it, putting it someplace if it needs revisited, letting it be if it doesn’t need revisited. But you’ve got this body of work that you can go back and look at, whether it’s flipping through a book, whether it’s putting it into word files, whether it’s putting it into some sort of online journaling thing. That is an incredibly helpful tool because what I have found when we’re talking about high priorities and revisiting things, I’m like you. I actually have a basket.

Jess Dewell 34:26
It’s a physical basket. I think I might be shiny object syndrome or it’s a really good idea that comes out of something I’m working on. I literally write it on a piece of paper and stick it in a basket. And that’s not the whole idea. That’s the start of the idea. And I have a video just for you that’s about how you use the now and near. By the way, my basket has changed, but I’ll give you a quick preview right here. Look, it sits on my desk. It’s literally called now and near. I know many of you use digital files. I do not. And inside are all of the ideas.

Jess Dewell 34:58
This is just like out of the last 10 days, right? Some stay here. If I can’t get to them, there’s a lot of good ideas that come from my mentors that come when I have my strategic meetings with my board of directors, uh, what, uh, working with clients. Oh yeah. All of that. It all goes in there. And other than talking about just that piece right there, knowing you have a tool for more, uh, that can also be linked in our description right here for you. The takeaway is this, when we keep these ideas, especially the ones we decide to work on, we can use that as a frame of reference. We can use that as something to go back to and say, oh yeah, we tried that. Maybe it wasn’t the right time based off of the results.

Jess Dewell 35:46
Maybe it’s time now, or maybe we have different resources, or maybe we have more information and we’re actually starting at the right starting line to take advantage of that idea. But if we’d never evaluated it and it sat in there or just goes into a bin and it’s forgotten about, how will we ever know? So part of the pulse of business understanding too many priorities, because we have so many, is to reduce them. You can say no when we talk about how to do that.

Jess Dewell 36:17
More importantly is discerning what are the best ones of the ones that are yeses and maybes. And what are the best ones more importantly right now, right now. So whether you journal, whether you keep a list, that’s fine. All of this is doing is it’s allowing you to collect these ideas so you don’t have to think about them when you’re doing other work. That transition, that distraction of switching from one thing to another is real and it adds up. So anything that requires more information that comes from a source that you trust, that feels right in your head, heart, or your gut, put it someplace to evaluate during your deep work strategic thinking time.

Jess Dewell 36:58
That’s what I call a present retreat. We’ll talk more about that too. Because here’s the deal, the more we can say no to, that’s active decision-making every day, during the day, every time we’re working, during our work sessions, when we’re saying no, when we’re saying maybe or yes for further evaluation. It’s also active decision-making, recognizing I’m going to need more and making the conscious choice to give more later. And that’s where the follow-up commitment happens. If you’re going to say you’re going to do it later, do it for yourself. Even if you look at it later and then say no, you still went back and got it through the process. Because when we are able to do this, when we are able to take an idea and say, yeah, I want to think about this, just not right now, it’s not the right time, set it aside, be able to go do other work. And what’s happening in the background, our subconscious, the curious creatures that we are and how we’re wired is working on all of the ideas that are coming our way that we’ve said yes or maybe to. So when we bring it back out during a work session, dedicated to evaluating ideas, we have all of what our background was doing. We have all of the information that we already gather, the data and results we have, the things we have done in the past, the trends and the current run rates and all the other good stuff in our business today. And then we can go out and ask some other questions and do some additional research to decide. Because here’s the deal. I believe that this is one of those things now and near or never right goes in the bin. When we take the action of saying no as much as we can and then sitting in front of us with this in work sessions just for now, near, future, never, we’re actively removing things out of our workspace and energy. Because collectively, your team needs as much of that time, energy and space to work effectively, to work with purpose without overwhelm, without burnout. And I can give you an example. I had a company come to me and say, Jess, I am not reaching any of my goals. So this trades business sat with me and they worked our first work session, they put together a two-year goal. And that was the beginning of our work. What can we do in this two-year goal? Well, get this, the attention and the effort they put into prioritizing ideas and getting rid of the things that was taking away time from their core work and the core things that were going to help them steady themselves and grow the way they wanted to grow, allowed them to not only make their revenue of two-year goals much sooner, it allowed them to do it in six months.

Jess Dewell 40:13
So after we talk through this, you may be like, ooh, what do I do now? Ooh, how can I show up to this? I’m not quite certain I’ve got it right. And that’s okay. Growth framework resets are just for you in these moments, a half day, a whole day, bring your questions, we show up to that work, we look at your existing growth strategy, knowing that the work you’re attempting in your present retreat is to remain relevant and create your company’s future. That’s what growth framework resets are all about. It’s easy to become stuck in analysis paralysis. I’ve got too many good ideas. I don’t know what to say no to. There’s just so much going on. I don’t have time or space to even think about this anymore. You’re right. You do. You’re there. I get it. Me too. Almost every day. The thing is, when we make a choice and we put a stake in the ground, all this stuff starts to react and respond to that and settle around it. And if we don’t like it, guess what? We can pull our stake out and we can move it someplace else and put it back in the ground somewhere else. Pretty cool to think about and see where things settle. Then present retreats are a perfect example of that. And the more you do, like when I started out, it was two hours a week. And you want to know what I did? I cleaned out my inbox. I organized my desk. I went through my library of books that are around. I made some phone calls and caught up on a whole bunch of things. And guess what? Those were all things that were really cluttering my heart and my gut and preventing my brain from being able to do real work. So by like the sixth or seventh present retreat that I did that was two hours long, after about 35 minutes, I went, oh, I have space. I’m so excited about this space. And in that space, I was like, oh, I have all these ideas. And I started writing them down. And guess what? That’s actually where Now and Near came from because I found out that I was trying to do deep work during the week, in the middle of meetings, in the middle of updates, in the middle of working with clients. And you know, that’s a big distraction. In addition to looking at the numbers, in addition to claiming exactly where your business is and understanding how far you are or are not on the track you expected, and is it the right track? And how do you adjust the journey to keep you moving in a positive fashion instead of getting stuck in place? In my present retreat, there are a lot of things I do. I’m going to talk about the Now and Near first. First things first. However you keep track of your ideas that you have week to week, coming at you at meetings, things that you think of when you’re in the car, or somebody says, I want you to think about this, and you get pitched to that. You’re saying no and maybe all week long. And in this present retreat that you do on a consistent basis, you bring out all of those things that you have said yes or maybe to. Because you didn’t say yes and commit to it, you said, yes, I’ll consider it. Or maybe this aligns. And ultimately your decision with the Now and Near is to determine, is it something that helps us now? Do I move it to a future folder where I would look at it quarterly? Or do I need to, now that I’m set and I’m in here and I’m holding the vision and I’m holding our goals and I understand the pulse of business, I can assess what do I want to be doing and what do we want to be doing for our highest and best good. Now and Near and Future are not only for me as an individual to grow and make sure I’m on track, it is for you as a business owner to and as a role having role and responsibilities and these goals that you want professionally to show up to those in a new completely different way to make the most progress along the way and help you achieve your bigger long-term goals. Thinking back to Seneca who died in 65 AD that I referenced in our opening today and all of the challenges that we as humans face about doing and being and taking action yet not going anywhere. I’m thinking about everything that was shared today. So I’m going to ask you a question and please consider it with all of your heart and all of your mind. What is something from this program that’s interesting enough for you to take away and try in the next seven days? This will be something that sparked you. This will be something that went, oh it applies to what I’m doing or oh I might actually be stuck here. Come back and share in the comments what you decided to try and what the result was and let’s say you decide to try something and don’t or let’s say you decide to see try something it does make a change and you’re not quite sure what to do with the information. That’s where a growth strategy reset will help you. So remember at reddirection.com under solutions you can schedule your growth strategy reset and bring the questions that come up from what has sparked and what your feedback and the results are and then we will get together and we will talk about your growth strategy what it is what you want it to be because in the end what it is and what you want it to be may be different and bringing those together to ensure the actions and priorities you have keep your company relevant you know that those will be the ones that create your company’s future. It is bold to intentionally prioritize small shifts that build lasting positive impact for growth. It is easy on the surface. It is difficult in practice. Everything that bombards us every day the fires the immediate actions what’s going on in our business the advice the information that we seek out all of it and being able to create space is something that is bold. It allows that space to have purpose to intentionally prioritize not only right now prioritize in alignment with what has been decided for the future. In this episode we talked about that boundaries matter and the word no is a boundary. We talked about quick changes that we might make and that to-do list that never ends so that we can create endings. We talked about what to do with so many good ideas and we talked about the present retreat the best strategic tool at your disposal. These present retreats and the tools for them utilize the work you’ve already done and leverage the skills and strengths that exist so that you can readily build more depth for what exists and new to help you get to where you’re going because what got you to where you are may take you forward some more. There is an upper limit to how far you can go with what you know and what your skills are. It’s important to continue to look forward and decide what is that next skill that will work for you to keep working toward the priorities that you have made the goals that you have. You’ve come this far so start exactly where you are and be ruthless with your priorities.

Jess Dewell 48:15
This is bold. Every single time I have a conversation I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share. In the comments I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because yeah there are going to be how-to’s, yes there are going to be steps, yes you’re going to be like oh I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what you’re not. So engage right now because that one thing you want to share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

Announcer 49:08
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection dot com. Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.