Prepare Like a Pro: How to Reflect, Reorient, and Re-engage for 2026

Starting the conversation:

The cost of distraction isn’t just mental—it hits your bottom line. Clarity now sets you up to quickly spot opportunities and threats next year. And, like threading a needle, focus and discernment unlock your full potential—whether you’re mending, creating, or collaborating.

Unlock your competitive edge by planning earlier than everyone else. Strategic planning is more than an annual box to check; it is a time to reflect, reorient, and reengage your company with its long-term objectives, and to align today’s priorities with them. The panelists in this conversation, all business advisors, are Jess Dewell, strategic growth consultant; Dean Barta, finance advisor; and Christy Maxfield, business consultant, who discuss a three-part framework to unlock your business’s growth potential.

The real cost of distraction isn’t just mental; it shows up on the bottom line. And, it’s more than lost productivity – it’s 23 minutes and 15 seconds of time to switch business activities. We are doing the right work, but the time lost prevents our company from maximising the time available.

In this episode, you will hear how not to overthink reflection, literally sit down and own where you are at before taking the next step, and tips for generative deep work sessions. It’s Your Business and the business advisors discussing pathways to strategic re-engagement are Christy Maxfield, President and CEO at Purpose First Advisors; Dean Barta, Founder and CEO at Barta Business Group; and Jess Dewell, Growth Strategist at Red Direction.

Your Panelists:

• Christy Maxfield, President and CEO at Purpose First Advisors
• Dean Barta, Founder and CEO at Barta Business Group
• Jess Dewell, Managing Partner and Growth Strategist at Red Direction

What You Will Hear:

04:05 The actual cost of lack of clarity.

• Clarity in business allows us to quickly assess opportunities and threats against clearly defined priorities.
• Distraction leads to wasted resources and missed bottom line opportunities by chasing non-essential goals.
• Having a clear focus helps guide decisions and shapes the path for efficient growth.

07:20 Reflection starts with prompts, not overthinking.

• Simple prompts, like identifying distractions or missed changes, drive deeper business insight.
• Reflection doesn’t require complex processes; straightforward strategic questions work best.
• These prompts activate curiosity and motivation, making the reflection actionable rather than burdensome.

08:15 Discernment is key during reflection.

• Reflection helps separate what was in your control from external circumstances, which guides better future planning.
• Being clinical and impartial reveals consistent patterns in what stalled or succeeded.
• Discernment enables leaders to identify and address unwritten agreements and recurring pitfalls.

12:30 Get help to reflect and see your business fully.

• Advisors and third parties provide objective perspectives that help reveal blind spots.
• Broadening the view from daily operations to long-term strategy uncovers deeper insights.
• Asking novel questions and seeking new data can break impasses and spark needed changes.

17:20 Reorientation means more than jumping to action.

• Reorientation prevents the cycle of repeating mistakes by pausing to recalibrate direction.
• The story you tell yourself from reflection can determine whether you change or remain stagnant.
• Proper reorientation makes even small adjustments that have large impacts possible, especially after distractions.

19:30 Sit down, admit when you’re lost, and take stock.

• Pausing to admit you’re lost reduces stress and allows better decision-making before moving forward.
• Retreating to assess resources makes your next action more strategic and less reactionary.
• This willingness to reflect and regroup saves time and redirects focus toward the right path.

35:50 Commitment over time is the differentiator.

• Sticking to decisions despite slow results separates successful businesses from average ones.
• Most people abandon initiatives too quickly; staying the course provides a huge advantage.
• Long-term commitment is needed for strategies (including marketing) to yield full value.

33:35 Write it down—clarity through communication.

• Putting objectives and plans on paper (or visually) requires clear communication with stakeholders.
• Documentation creates anchors that limit confusion and reduce wasted effort.
• Regular written accountability helps teams stay aligned and on track, especially when priorities shift.

41:50 Design beginnings and endings into your strategic work sessions.

• Scheduling prep and closure time allows for deeper focus and transition between priorities.
• Intentional closure points help recharge mental energy and reduce distraction fatigue.
• Practicing these habits ensures that both big and small commitments stay actionable.

3 takeaways:

• Christy Maxfield: Sit down, admit you are lost, so that you can reorient.
• Dean Barta: Distraction happens so build space for task switching.
• Jess Dewell: The needle of opportunity, your business potential, is found in reflection, re-orientation, and re-engagement.

Resources

• Dean Barta on LinkedIn
• Christy Maxfield on LinkedIn
• Jess Dewell on LinkedIn
• PresentRetreat.com
• From Goals to Results: Mastering Accountability for Business Achievement

Transcript

Jess Dewell 0:00
It’s not about finding a new app or a new management system of tasks or projects or whatever it is.

Christy Maxfield 0:07
For me, it’s the single greatest thing you can distinguish yourself from your peers. Most folks won’t start planning early enough.

Dean Barta 0:15
It’s definitely time to take a look at where we’re at right now and not procrastinate.

Announcer 0:27
Welcome to It’s Your Business brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast. This is your source for navigating today’s ever-evolving business landscape. In this program, Jess Christie and Dean share the realities of current business challenges and triumphs.

Get ready to lead with depth, understanding and achievement.

Jess Dewell 0:47
Hi and welcome. It’s your business is brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast, and we’re here today. This panel is here today just for you and for us, but really just for you.

And what are we talking about today? We’re talking about the fact that it’s not about finding a new app or a new management system of tasks or projects or whatever it is, it’s about doing the thing you’ve actually been putting.

Dean Barta 1:11
And here to talk with you about that today are three amazing advisors, and we are going to introduce ourselves to you right now, Dean, Dean Bart, a business group, and we serve small businesses from with fractional CFO to bookkeeping services, and I love this time of year for reflection and, and also engagement. As you go into the new year.

Christy Maxfield 1:41
And I’m Christie Maxfield. I’m with Purpose First Advisors. We specialize in working with business owners who want to grow with the end in mind.

So growth consulting, succession planning, and exit planning.

Jess Dewell 1:52
And I’m Jess Dewell, and I don’t just advise, I ignite growth strategies that have been being put off. I help leaders install, actually install something, but really I meant stalling by blending data and our knowledge that we have been collecting into our business. Well, Hey, here we go.

Let’s talk about growth. Let’s talk about all of the things and the bold business podcast. And it’s your business is the place where we’re talking about things to tackle risks that your business faces in regards to its growth.

So let’s just jump right into this. What do you think everybody? Let’s just go.

Right. We, and we were talking about this because what’s our, because our why now timely about the year, but even more important than that, why now, what is the biggest why now for you having this conversation?

Dean Barta 2:47
I, for me is that I just, I consider myself a person of action and, and I look at, okay, it’s definitely time to take a look of where we’re at right now and not procrastinate just and move forward. And, but it takes those steps of the reflection and the reorientation and then to really re-engage in the right direction. Yeah.

I, and just like any kind of workout program, why not do it now? You don’t, don’t wait to the first of the year.

Christy Maxfield 3:22
For me, it’s the single greatest thing you can distinguish yourself from your peers. Most folks won’t start planning early enough and the earlier you can plan and then realize what kind of scenarios you might be encountering and idiot around how those might play out, the more flexibility you have. So why now?

Because the time of year actually is this culmination of beginnings and endings, and they’re very powerful. And if we can leverage the power of beginning and endings to reflect and then take action, reorient, where am I? What are we doing?

And then take action. We can distinguish ourselves from our peers. And that’s what I want for my clients.

Jess Dewell 4:04
Let me tell you, I’ve got to figure out something to say that’s different than action and different than beginnings and endings, because I could say that. So the lens with which I’ll show up today and the why now, from my perspective is going to be around the actual cost of lack of clarity. And we have this, the cost of distraction is big.

And this is the time to have that clarity, get rid of everything else. So that in the action, in the prioritization, in what opportunities and threats and ideas show up throughout the year, we can discern we can know quickly because we have a very clear shape, whether it’s a square or a triangle or a sphere or a cone. It doesn’t matter what the shape is.

It matters that there is a shape with which to work with. And that’s really my why now, because that distraction turns into real bottom line dollars. And we could be asking the wrong questions.

And when we’re talking about growth, I know I’m a proponent of finding the best question right now for that. So that’s my why now and my perspective that I’ll bring to this conversation. And as we were planning this for everybody that is joining us, because we do like to talk to each other and we’re bringing you in as a fly on the wall, but we are also trying to talk with you and for you as well.

So because we’re live questions, comments, additions, make sure you are sending them in on the platform, your world you’re watching and listening on. Are you on YouTube? Great.

Send us a comment. Are you on LinkedIn? Great.

Send us a comment or a question. We want to incorporate those into our discussion because that’s really why we’re here. We’re here to be of service and to make a difference and talk about things that are important to business that maybe are overlooked yet.

Have the greatest impact. So we actually came up with a framework for this conversation, a three-part framework, the first, and I guess framework pillars. I don’t know what we want to call them, Christy and Dean.

So those work. Yeah, those work. Okay, great.

So the first one, I love collaboration. This is great. The first part is reflection.

What distractions occurred that you wanted to change, but actually didn’t. The second is what’s the path forward and what’s it look and sound like? And the third is how do we engage or re-engage and what actions minimize our distraction to maximize our opportunity going forward?

So those are going to be the three areas with which we’re holding the rest of this conversation. As we’re getting into this, I’m curious, I think we should just jump into section one. What do you think?

Please, done. Let’s go. Section one, pillar one, framework part one, right?

Whatever you want to call it in your world, the reflection piece. What are the distractions? And this is a question that we started with.

So we’re going to delve into this and it may turn into something else. And it’s going to definitely add depth, right? The reflection, what are the distractions that occurred or what did you want to change, but didn’t this year?

How, how did it make it into our framework? Why is it in our framework? And what do we want to say about that?

Christy Maxfield 7:21
I think folks overthink reflection and sometimes get caught up in it. Like it has to be something very elaborate. And I think the prompts we’ve chosen around what does, has been distracting you or what did you want to have changed this year that didn’t change?

Are two really great prompts to get you thinking about your business in a way that isn’t just what happened over the last four weeks, four months, four quarters, but what has really been either the most detrimental to your business this year, or has the potential to be the greatest asset for your business and you haven’t unlocked it yet and you really want to, so for me, it’s taking any of the baggage away from reflection and really boil it down to asking yourself really important strategic questions that prompt your curiosity and motivate you to take action. So these are two really good ones, in my opinion, that help you get that ball rolling.

Dean Barta 8:18
And I look at also reflection is, it can be an opportunity, or it is an opportunity that some people take it as a, okay, I did all these things wrong. Okay. Or it’s discerning what you really had control of and what you did.

If you had a sickness in the family, okay, that caused you to divert your attention away from your business. Obviously it’s important to focus on that family member. And whereas, Hey, I was intentionally distracted by something else because it was a shiny thing or whatever that pulled me away from really essential things.

That’s the discernment is like, what is, what are things that I really had control of and I, or just lost focus on versus, Hey, these are important things that were out of my control, but I had to address them. And I think that’s important to weigh when you get to this fourth quarter of the year and you’re reflecting on, Hey, what are the good things and bad things that happened? And, and then we’ll help you with the next step.

Jess Dewell 9:38
Mm-hmm. Yeah. I really liked that word.

It’s one of my good too. It’s, it has a lot of, a lot of depth. And so don’t overthink discernment either.

Just do it, right? Bring in both sides of those. And I’m thinking about the, I’m thinking about that concrete cost of distraction in relationship to reflection.

And it’s really interesting to me as I was, as I was thinking through each of these sections and like what I do in my business, my reflection is the first step before I reflect on anything like dump, what is going on right now? First and foremost, because if I can get that out of my head, as I start reflecting or as I accidentally look forward and come back to reflection, since we’re talking about this piece and I’m all over the board sometimes, because it helps me with reflection. Anchoring in that is when I know exactly what is happening right now, when I reflect and look back and look at what was accomplished this year, what did we miss the mark on how many.

Weeks or quarters. Did that thing drag out? Those are the kinds of things I’m looking for on the surface.

And then once I’ve got that, I’m going to go a little bit deeper. What was common about the things that dragged on or showed up and became fires or ended up stalling something, whether it was in our control or out of our control, what were those things? And is there a commonality there?

Because I’m guessing there’s going into that depth. There’s a financial piece. There’s a, there’s a drain somewhere.

We were paying for things and we’re not in agreement on what tools we’re using and we’re all using different tools. That’s one, that’s an interesting piece of how do we streamline? Another piece could be just, we’re all using all these different communication tools, or we have five tools to communicate, but we’re only a team of 15.

We’re all communicating to each other and to avoid those. And then we have to circle back around. So what are the underlying things that got in the way of this reflection piece and just be as clinical as possible?

I know. Cause I can take a lot of that personally. Oh, as the person with the vision holder, I did this, or I did that, or I can totally accept responsibility, but guess what?

It’s not all my responsibility. And that’s why we have systems and processes and people like us to talk to in my own business, so that, so I’m going to think about the. Think about it more.

This reflection. I like much more clinical than I do feeling and business intuition oriented or the business instinct piece, because unless that’s as, as clear as possible, as simple and straightforward as possible, as emotionless as possible, it’s really hard to go, well, so what emotions actually were showing up? How do we find our unwritten agreements Things like that.

Christy Maxfield 12:29
Yeah. One of the things you both made me think about is that it is often said that people work with advisors and consultants and coaches, because it’s very hard to see, read the label while you’re in the bottle or see yourself in a three 60, see your business in a three 60, you need someone to reflect back to you, what it is that you’ve said is important, but also what you’re learning and put it into new context. So if we think about in this time of year, that on a weekly or monthly basis, we’re doing a reflection that has a fairly narrow aperture, maybe at most a quarter. And this time of year, we’re taking the aperture out.

We’re making the mirror much bigger. And with the help of advisors and consultants and coaches, seeing the parts of the business with greater specificity, or like you said, in a more clinical data-driven way, less encumbered by the emotion of who’s doing what, but what is actually being done. Is it useful?

And how is it helping us? And that made me also think that this is a great time of year to ask yourself, what do you want to know about your business that you don’t currently know, and then what are you willing to do to get that information? And so I think about pricing and working with clients this time of year on pricing, and I want to dig down to the, tell me how many hours did the person spend on three projects that kind of are evocative or illustrative of the kinds of work you do all the time?

And that for many people means, are you willing to track time? Are you willing to get into the minutia of certain things so that we can use that data to inform better decision-making in the future? Sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes the answer is no.

But if you keep coming back to me wanting to dial in your pricing better, and you won’t do the things that give us the data that we need, that’s where we meet an impasse where the desire for the change and the ability to re-engage based on your reflection with greater clarity and specificity meets the brick wall of, you don’t have the data we need to do that. So there’s this time of year of really asking yourself whether or not it’s what you’re doing is working, what you need to double down on, what you need to let go of, what you need to start doing that you haven’t started yet.

Dean Barta 14:49
Yeah. And I think you just mentioned the word commonality. And to me that more, what are the patterns, okay?

What has consistently worked well this year, but also what has consistently didn’t work, okay, whether it’s working with individual projects or clients, whatever it might be, because those are the patterns that we may not realize we’re in them at the time. As Christy said, you zoom out, but then you’re looking at specific specificity with, okay, let’s take a look at the three quarters or we’re in the fourth quarter, but this was consistently a good thing for us, or this was consistently a bad thing for us and then move into the next phase of, okay, now we know, we realize what our pattern is, what do we need to do to change?

Jess Dewell 15:40
And some of the things that you said, each of you added on to this, I went, Ooh, why wouldn’t we do this for our competitors too? What can we see that they’re doing? Because one thing that’ll help us know, are we in line with what industry standard is, and yes, I am using air quotes.

And then the other would be is what is the opportunity then to see what they haven’t seen, to do something different, to create the way through that is going to provide that competitive advantage as part of the clarity. Here’s what is, here’s what the industry is. Here’s what my competitors are doing.

And Ooh, nobody’s doing this or Ooh, this is being, this is something we already have the strength for and we can do well, those might start bubbling up from the reflection.

Dean Barta 16:27
And you can pull that information from even outside your industry. And, and because I’ve used it in, in, in various roles I’ve had is, wow, I’ll pull from an industry that it’s not even close to what the current industry I’m in, but I’m like, Hey, I think we can apply that and in retrofit it, that will be effective, that will also is different than what the competition is doing and obviously knowing what the competition is doing right or wrong is very important. But pulling in that kind of new idea or a new way of looking at things from a different industry.

Okay.

Jess Dewell 17:05
All right. I think we’re at a pillar framework part, key element number two, which is the reorient piece. What does the path forward look like for us in our organization?

Christy Maxfield 17:18
So I think that most times we jump from reflection to next action without reorienting. And Dean is the outdoorsman of the group or the outdoors person of the group. Christie is not, but if I were reflecting on where I had come from, where I was going and where I currently was, I would probably need to reorient at some point to make sure I’m taking the best path or I’m still on the path, I’m still headed in the right direction.

Especially if I got distracted by something along the way, there’s a beautiful Creek and I’ve gone down that way. And now I’m not sure, did I come from that point or did I come from that point? And in some cases, very small degrees of change or very small degrees of orientation can have dramatically different results when it comes to where you end up and how you end up.

So I really love this idea of reorienting. Not only what does the path look like, but now that you’ve done all this reflection, what does it mean to me? What story is it telling me?

What, and how does that story serve me? Does that story become, I’m a procrastinator and I don’t stick with the things I start. And I can’t be trusted to follow a plan because I’ve beat myself up over how things went the last 12 months, or is the story I need to delegate more, be more specific in the instructions I give, bring in more specialists to do the things I’m not really good at.

So you’re creating a story in your reflection. And now based on that story and the meaning you want to give it, you can reorient to get the outcome because otherwise if you aren’t happy with the results you’re getting and you don’t reorient, you will get the same result. And you will continue to be unhappy.

So that to me is that I love the reorient part of the process.

Dean Barta 19:18
And I think it’s so great, Christy, is I harken back to my search and rescue days in the veiled hour.

Christy Maxfield 19:26
Oh, people who didn’t reorient.

Dean Barta 19:28
I’ve been there many. Disoriented, unoriented. Full apropos to this conversation because yeah, here’s this, you know, so people go and they’re like ascending a peak and they go up the wrong valley and then they get into, they use a, okay, I’m going to make it right.

So then they’re just not taking the time to really ideally sit down, believe it or not, just sit down where you’re at. And one, you reflect, right? Because I’m okay.

Okay. And then there’s a, there’s an admission, right? I’m lost.

Ideally, but they don’t reorient. So then they just get more lost. And, and sometimes it’s just them taking that time to say, okay.

Let’s reflect on this. But if I go this way and just clear their head really about the whole situation, because it’s a high stress, it’s probably dark and it’s raining and, and lightning striking around them and all that. And such a, an important time to just, it will save you more steps in the engagement, if you reorient yourself to where you’re at right now and where you want to go.

Christy Maxfield 20:42
So Dean and Jess, I think we need to put sit down is the first step. You love that as action-oriented people were like primed, right? We’re like, so let me get my fighting stance and be able to get off the block as quickly as possible.

And Dean’s no sit your butt down, take a deep breath, clear your head, figure out. I wrote admit being lost. Oh my God.

That’s revolutionary. Admit being lost. And then, and, but without judgment, because he wants to waste all the time and energy it takes to then beat yourself up about being lost, then consult the info like maps and sun and all the other things you can look at and then reorient before you take action.

So I think sit down, I’m already calling it as my biggest takeaway from, I’m usually at a loss at my biggest takeaway, but I’m calling it early in the game here. You guys have to pick something else because that’s freaking brilliant. I agree.

Jess Dewell 21:43
And I’m listening to both of you. And what’s coming up for me is okay. This logic and this thinking and this nonjudgment of just putting it all out on the table to see what kind of bubbles up and what there is to move around.

That’s actually, as far as most people get in this process, they don’t actually complete the second part of our three part thing that we’re talking about today. And that’s the part that always, it’s a piece that always surprises me. Brilliant people, great ideas, interesting priorities that actually set apart, double down on what’s really great.

Focus on where the goals are. It still doesn’t get clear because I’m going to, I’ll just keep up the thing because nobody pulled out their sit-upon and just sat on it just to wait and see. Your sit-upon.

I still have a sit-upon. Do you have sit-upon? I take it camping with me.

And really though, right? What is this, all of this and what we’re saying here is, okay, so this is how I’m going to make a decision this year. How about them apples?

So take that thinking, take that logic and go, this is now my criteria for decisions that we make for this year.

Dean Barta 23:01
And it’s, I also, what comes up with me back in the lost person in the outdoors is you’re sitting down, but then you pull out your pack and say, okay, here’s the amount of food I have, or in business, this is the, what the resources that I have, people, resources, equipment, advisors, all that, and that’s part of the reorientation process is to say, okay, I need to ration food or I water, or where’s my water source?

So that because it’s planning then. Okay. Yeah.

Once the admission comes to like, yeah, I am lost is, Hey, I don’t know how long I’m going to be out here, but let’s just reassess a little bit on what tools we have, and then that’ll help set up the engagement phase.

Jess Dewell 23:50
You know what? There’s another word for that. It’s also called retreat.

It’s a place that you take inventory, pull back, find a safe place, retreat. Guess what? One word is that I love to say all the time.

It has a few words, present retreat. That’s where the word retreat came from. It was not a, it is not a sit down spa day, relaxing time.

No.

Christy Maxfield 24:11
And the other connotation is that you give up and you run away. So the retreat of, I go on a spa day and we’re on a retreat or the retreat is I’ve pulled back from the front lines, I’ve taken all of my resources with me and I’m hunkering down to lick my wounds. I think there’s, I don’t know.

There’s no, I’m going to challenge you on that, Christy. I don’t know. I think that’s a connotation in people’s heads.

I don’t think it’s what we’re doing necessarily. I think like retreat could be seen as both a luxury that one has, but also a burden that one, you know, is facing a loss. So they retreat to regroup and lick their wounds.

Or as you said, retreat to a safe place from which to do the reflection and reorientation. I never really actually thought about people looking at the word retreat because in business, we use it so much as part of a planning exercise. We use that word as part of planning, but if we’re talking in other spaces, retreat, no retreat could put you in a position of doubling down on things that are already sunk costs and leave you terribly exposed and at danger.

We have a place in St. Louis around our baseball stadium. That’s called ballpark village. And it has a lot of different things in it.

But one of the things that has or had until today was a t-shirt shop that they had really sunk everything into being in that location and the recent reports from that the local business journal has done is that was probably not the right choice according to the owner himself. And so he could retreat and lick his wounds. He could retreat and reflect, and he could also retreat and treat himself to.

Let’s pick up the pieces and figure out what’s going on next.

Announcer 26:01
If your week feels like you’re being pulled from one demand to the next, this is for you. The Daily Grind is the number one killer of business instinct, pulling you and your team away from your vision. Reclaim your strategic edge with the present retreat.

This free guide from Red Direction is a simple, powerful framework to carve out the space you need to filter out the noise, make the right decisions and lead with clarity. Visit presentretreat.com.

Jess Dewell 26:30
I actually had a person walk into my office for somebody else yesterday. And so I was talking to them while they were waiting. I love what I do because I can talk to anybody anywhere.

This man had been in business for himself for over, let me see, over 50 years. And one of the things that he decided to do a long time was to create a quilt shop. And his quilt shop is in a very tiny town, 60 miles outside of the closest big city.

And it’s a mining town. And looking back to your point, Christy, about the t-shirt shop, a quilt shop for miners doesn’t really go together. They found out, right?

What did they, what did they learn? They were also close enough to some other communities that needed some sort of materials that were in the realm of the materials you would use for quilting. And so they started stocking that and ended up having this business, this location that could serve the local communities.

And then they expanded into some areas of doing other things like machines and whatever it was, but they adapted and they grew. And unless they had stopped to actually look at why isn’t this working or why is it working in both cases for this gentleman, they would have never known the next step and he would have had a much, probably shorter career in this particular endeavor specifically.

Christy Maxfield 27:53
Yeah.

Jess Dewell 27:53
Isn’t that interesting to think about, to go, oh, I’m just here and I’m going to meet this. And because of the decision criteria that he had made.

Christy Maxfield 28:00
And also to look at, I’m sure for this business owner, putting his business in Ballpark Village where 40,000 people come for a baseball game sounded like a great idea on paper, except nobody’s going to the game to buy t-shirts that are team related. So it didn’t matter if there were a hundred thousand people or 300,000 people, if they’re not there for the thing, they’re not like quilts, right? If they’re not shopping for quilts, it doesn’t really matter how many of them there are because they’re not your client.

Right. And I could see where both in both scenarios where the quilt folks could question why we did this and why did we do it here and how could we make it better? And this business owner could also be like, oh my God, I bet everything on this location based on a lot of assumptions that were faulty.

And how do I trust my future decision-making? Will I continue to make decisions on policy assumptions? Like you could really get into a cycle of reflection that doesn’t lead to reorientation and re-engagement and action and only just put you down into the spiral.

But if you can forgive yourself enough to come up for air and see what does it mean to stop in the case of this t-shirt? Like they have to stop, they have to cut their losses and decide what to do next. And in the case of the quilting, how do we reorient to meet a niche that we didn’t, we didn’t even know about, weren’t particularly interested in, but can serve nonetheless.

So yeah, there’s a lot of baggage that goes into reflecting and the temptation is to just keep moving without the reflection and the reorientation. And again, as Dean will tell you, that will get you more lost.

Dean Barta 29:36
Yeah.

Christy Maxfield 29:37
Way more lost.

Dean Barta 29:39
Well, in each one of these pillars, okay, is you can engage professionals like us. Okay. But I think the reorientation phase is probably one of the most important.

If I was going to choose one and it’s because if you’re 180 miles per hour kind of guy, okay, you’ll go in that direction, but boy, if it’s in, if it’s in the wrong direction or it is 15 degrees off, you’re going to spend a lot of effort to get it back on track and having those other set of eyes or viewpoints to make sure that where you’re directing the energy is actually going to be the best return on your investment. And like I said, every phase you can definitely engage consultants and experts, but this, I think is such like the hub of the wheel that it’s just so important.

Jess Dewell 30:37
By the way, I think it’s so important. We can’t do it just once a year, right? So while we’re talking about this annual planning and looking at the bigger picture, Christy mentioned earlier too, about what are the, sometimes the most we look at as a quarter or sometimes the most frequent would, or the least in the most frequent might be a week or a month.

This is something where Dean to call out, yes, being important weekly, just weekly, checking in, touching base, understanding what is going on. Because I know even a month sometimes is too much to your point of being in the wrong off just a little bit can make us off a lot.

Dean Barta 31:15
Yeah. And it’s just the other things that I’m interested in, of course, sports. And you look at sports teams, the team made the halftime adjustments, okay.

Or, and then they were totally terrible team in the first half. And then they came out and they reoriented, right. And then they just smoked the opponent in the second half.

But that can happen from certain drives in football or play by play, or there’s those minutia adjustments. And sometimes it’s, man, we really sucked that quarter. Let’s make something different.

And so it’s how, you know, it’s that these three phases, they’re like a wheel, right? Because they’re always turning and you’re always going to have to be reflecting, reorienting, and then reengaging. And sometimes that’s on a moment by moment basis.

Jess Dewell 32:02
And you make up, you make a really good point in the sense of, if this is the phase with which we are making our decision-making process, it’s not necessarily going to look like last year. And it’s not necessarily going to look like the year, the year that hasn’t arrived yet. So being very present, I think that was such a great point, Dean.

We’re making decisions for this year, for these priorities, for these things that we want. And it doesn’t matter if it looks the same or not. It matters that it’s right, right now.

Christy Maxfield 32:31
Yeah. And I think the thing we haven’t talked about is just the power of writing things down. Even for my personal life last year, we wrote out, my husband and I, things we would love to do.

And some of them were broad categories, like travel more. And some got very specific. You wanted to go to Disneyland.

I did not. Instead, I did something much more fun in my book. But I said to him the other day, we need to do that again, because I’ll tell you almost everything we wrote down, we did.

And it’s not because we sat down and we wrote a three-page plan and booked all the trips on the same day. But we were very clear in our intentions, and we were very clear that if we wanted to do certain things, that there were certain times of the year that were better than others to do them in. It wasn’t just a whenever.

And if it was just left to whenever, it won’t get done. I’ve talked about a few things I’d like to do for a long time until I put them on paper and start to take action on them. Because I also don’t want to see that thing on a list for a whole month, two months, three months, right?

There’s a motivator for me of, damn it, I’m checking that thing off the list. But more importantly, just writing it down meant that we had to communicate. And so with your team, writing it down means you had to communicate it clearly enough so somebody else could repeat it back to you at the very least.

And then that gives you more clarity, gives them more clarity. And when you go off and decide you want to do something else, somebody else can bring you back and say, didn’t we just talk about doing something completely in the opposite direction a couple of weeks ago? Everybody’s working on that right now.

It would seem a shame to pull them off of all the good work they’ve done. We all have different management styles, but some people really resist writing. And I think taking the time to actually put it on paper is invaluable.

It really does move the dial.

Jess Dewell 34:20
And if you don’t like to write, draw it. I draw and write, but I doodle. I’ll be real.

It is written down, but it doesn’t always look like words and that’s okay too. So whatever it could be sticky notes. It could be pictures from magazines, whatever you want to do.

It could be a kidnapper’s note. I have your, I have your business plan hostage or whatever.

Christy Maxfield 34:42
Magazines at their house. And this is 20, almost 20, we can still do this. I think it’s pretty, I think we have to ask a GPT to put together a strategic plan written as a kidnap note.

Jess Dewell 34:53
Ooh, that would be fantastic. Okay. I like that.

And here’s the thing. We’ve already started to sneak into this third piece of this framework, this third pillar, which is the re-engage and that’s what we were talking about. And Christy set up perfectly.

What are our actions that are going to minimize distraction and maximize awareness, so let’s just keep doubling down on that. Let’s go down this part of the trail.

Christy Maxfield 35:20
And part of the challenge I think too, is that when you’re re-engaging, you might be doing things for the first time that you’ve never done before. And so figuring out, like Dean said, unpacking your backpack, figuring out what resources you have, how you might need to redistribute them, how you might need to ration them. And then also figuring out who else you might need to actually take this trick with next time around.

So that to me is really an important part of the equation as well.

Dean Barta 35:50
Yeah. And I, one of the words that came up to me when I get into re-engage is actually commitment and because especially trying someone something new that like anything is, if you’re not, okay, I’ll use, go back to like workout programs, right? Yeah.

If, okay, I’m going to work out five days a week or, and, but there’s the commitment of, okay, you know, you have all your clothes set out or whatever, but then it’s, Hey, you really actually are doing this and having a workout partner is helpful, of course, but to hold it to that commitment, right? Is, Hey, we’re going in this path. We found that, Hey, this is the path that we, we’ve vetted that, Hey, this is what we’re going to do.

And sometimes people don’t take it down the line long enough and they don’t, they, it’s, it didn’t, I’m sure there’s plenty of marketing people that will say, God, if people would have just let that happen for six months, instead of saying, Oh, it didn’t work in the first month. So then the marketing plan was crap. And just knowing that some things, it takes a little time, right?

You don’t, you don’t see the positive effects of working out in the first week, right? It’s like usually a month later or two months or three months later, because it’s the commitment over time, right? That’s where the gold is mined.

Christy Maxfield 37:15
Yeah. The cumulative effect of commitment, the stick to itiveness, honestly, that’s a differentiator. Most people won’t stick to it.

As long as if you can outlast the people who started with you, but didn’t stay the course, you’re ahead of the game exponentially. I love the commitment piece. I also think just when you talk about what distractions are costing you, that if we also have too many priorities, we’re going to be switching so much.

And so often that it be there’s a real cost to switching your, the orientation of your brain from doing X to doing Y, switching resources from one place to another, being able to dedicate time and energy. I find that some people like to pack their days, right? And it’s just meeting after meeting.

There is a cost every time you’re doing a different meeting, even if it’s about the same thing. And rarely do we get the luxury of having a day full of meetings that are rinse and repeat. So every time you stack one more thing in and you have to switch from A to B, you’re increasing, not only your distraction, but your level of fatigue, your level of energy depletion, focus, and where resources can be redistributed.

So I also just think that as we re-engage, what are the, what’s the smallest number of high value activities we can be focused on versus the largest number that feels like we’re accomplishing things, but we’re really not.

Jess Dewell 38:49
Did you know 23 minutes and 15 seconds is actually the current average of recovering from a distraction during our work time or working on a project. Somebody knocks on the door, somebody calls us, somebody texts us or messages us somewhere along the way. And we stop to get back into that focus is 23 minutes.

I really don’t feel bad because when people used to say whatever it was, like seven or 13 minutes, I’m like, I don’t know who you people are, but this takes me a really long time to refocus. And that’s actually why my present retreat time, there’s nothing. And I build in 20 minutes at the front and 20 minutes at the back to get in to the work on, to get focused in and to actually have an end so that I can start getting ready and getting so that I can jump right into the next thing right away.

That was something that I didn’t realize I was doing at first. And when it was, I was watching, I don’t know, I think it was four or five clients at a time across a period of time. And it was, it was four to five clients.

And I think I was watching specifically watching for this. How do we get in it? How do we get at it?

What does the beginning and what does the end look like of each of these present retreats? And what I found was that the people who came in and got started, I have to pull all the stuff and get everything ready, didn’t have as a powerful week. They didn’t say no as much.

They didn’t, they weren’t as committed to only keeping the most opportunistic or aligned items to think about during their present retreat time. They were, it was still everything in the buckets all the time. And so that that’s an interesting thing to think about is when we’re doing our work, are we also giving ourselves time to focus in at the front and then if we’re really smart, instead of only having a bio break in a quick eating break in to the next thing or whatever it is, can we also build in a little bit of time to settle, to close it off completely and actually prepare and give ourselves some of that time forward? Because that all that does is help.

What’s next. All that help. It helps us take that next action and stay intentional along the way.

Christy Maxfield 41:01
Doesn’t I actually think that’s the biggest thing I could do, right? Is the running from meeting to meeting with just enough time for a bio break for myself or for the dog is stressful and means that I haven’t quite stopped thinking about what I just left. And I’m not really ready to think about what’s coming next.

The place I feel like the most actually is dinner because I work at home. And so my husband gets home. He’s starting to unwind from his day.

He’s already got at least a 20 or 30-minute headstart compared to me. I’m trying to finish the last thing. And then like immediately switch and be present for him and to do end-of-day stuff and to start making dinner.

And I, that I am finding it’s a real struggle because I’m just, I’m not there yet. Like I haven’t D I haven’t transitioned off of one thing and shown up to be present for the next. So I think you’ve hit the nail on the head in terms of.

That finding that time to prepare and then exit and actually have beginnings and endings again. We need those closure points and we don’t design them into it. I have not been good at designing those into my day.

Jess Dewell 42:09
My present retreat is the only thing that does don’t get me wrong. I don’t do, I wish I could do it with every meeting. Can you still get a gold star for that?

Yeah. Thank you. And thank you.

And it’s actually, but that’s actually really true. And so I’ve been playing with something and I’m curious if you will accept the challenge. I think it’s a worthy challenge.

Maybe we’ll start, is it worthy? And will you try it out? And that is every meeting that I have in the calendar.

I’ve started to put time in front and time after that allows me 10 minutes to get in. It’s still not the whole amount of time needed, but it’s. Anything in between is already in that flex time also.

So I’ve got 10 minutes before, and then I have 10 minutes after, because invariably something cool comes up. I have to tell somebody else about get on the phone with Dean and Christie and be like, you’ll never guess what I heard. And this is the greatest thing ever.

Or what do you think about this? I’m not so sure. And, or there’s tasks that follow up.

If I don’t do the follow-up tasks close to the meeting, or at least get them into my system so that I can catch them before the end of the week. They never get done. And usually those are the ones that when I have those tasks, those are usually the highest priority, the highest impact, even though they’re not urgent.

Isn’t that interesting?

Christy Maxfield 43:17
I think it’s totally worthy because I do it for drive time still. I am conditioned. And so I do it for two reasons.

One, I need to remind myself, I need to leave enough time to actually get to where I’m going. And it means that somebody can’t use my calendar late and pop in into a time that I was mentally keeping for driving or doing a bio break, because if my calendar is free and it fits the parameters, they could pop in. So I’ve started to do that mostly with drive time, but I accept the challenge of doing it as a regular course of business to buffer meetings and to plan more appropriately, because I think that will make me happier.

I would like to be happier. That would be great.

Dean Barta 44:01
I mean, all these are good tips. And I used to schedule one-hour meetings. So I schedule 45-minute meetings or maybe 20-minutes meetings instead of 30-minute meeting.

And guess what? We still get it all done, right? You know, we work within the timeframe.

And, and hey, bio breaks for the dog and lunch, all that stuff that I scheduled in just like it would schedule and schedule, I’d schedule any workout time, all of that stuff, because that is as equal weight of importance than is the business task. Yeah, I think that’s great. Those are great tips and really important on the re-engagement factor is, okay, we’re moving ahead.

But if you’re moving ahead, I’m going to fill my calendar up and I’m going to work out every single day from January. Yeah. And you see all the gyms that are busy and then how much they’re empty come the first week of February.

Because zero to like impossible. And, and then that’s the result. There’s a lack of commitment.

There’s not, the engagement is way off because ultimately there’s challenges like sore muscle or God, I, I started to do this and I don’t have time in my day to do it. Or I didn’t schedule this right. Or I think I can work out at four o’clock in the afternoon when that’s my busiest time of the day.

And, and when I should have said, Hey, 6am is a better time. Yeah. I’ve got to reorient to my, my, the way my sleep patterns are, but that has a higher success of being done at 6am than it is at 4pm because of the amount of distractions.

Jess Dewell 45:45
So you are listening to it’s your business hosted by the bold business podcast, and we have a panel of three and I’m so honored to be one of the panelists alongside my peers here. Let’s do a quick reintroduction.

Christy Maxfield 46:01
Christie, Christie Maxfield, Purpose First Advisors. We work with business owners who want to grow with the end in mind. So we’re focused on growth coaching, succession planning and exit planning.

Dean Barta 46:13
And Dean Barta Business Group. We work with small businesses that with fractional CFO to bookkeeping and really we’re professional guides, professional accounting guides.

Jess Dewell 46:26
And I’m Jess Dewell and at Red Direction, we’re making sure that the next move is the best move in the growth advertising piece strategically. How do we use our time? How do we work together?

Because sure. Every minute matters, but so do we and the goals that we have. All right.

So we’re recapping here real quick. The recap is we’ve got a three part system here that we talked about reflection, which is the assessment phase to honestly evaluate the past year. No judgment.

Just what is the reorientation phase, which is the resetting phase. That commitment piece also starts to come into this, that the decision criteria, the way that we want to show up and what we will do and with our And then our third piece is the re-engage phase. That’s the action, how we’re actually going to do it, what we’re actually going to do and going one step further from saying, can we commit to this to actually doing the commitment piece and taking action small or big along the way.

And so as we’re getting into this and as we’re thinking about this now, we know it’s about doing the thing that we’ve been putting off. We know it’s not about time management. We know it’s about this thinking piece, this deep work piece, this designing piece, and it’s time for our biggest takeaway.

What’s our biggest takeaway is everybody.

Dean Barta 47:48
Fine. What is it? You see, what is it?

Christy Maxfield 47:56
I don’t sit down when you’re feeling lost, sit down and then finally make peace to with the fact that you are lost and take it from there. But first just sit your butt down.

Dean Barta 48:10
Yeah. Mine is, Jess introduced this too, is in really when you said how much an interruption happens and how much it keeps you off track for 20, what do you say, 25 minutes, and that is what’s important to know is that those do occur and building in the ample amount of time to get reengaged with what you’re, you need, and so you’ve got to have spaces or in a skiing term, you got to have space between the trees to ski the trees. You can’t just ski through a very dense forest and think you’re not going to hit a tree. That’s just not, that’s not. Yeah, in reality.

Jess Dewell 48:55
And my biggest takeaway is the potential that is on the other side of this. So I’m thinking about everything that Christie and Dean and I shared. I’m thinking about the stories that came out about the business owners along the way, and that makes me think of a sewing needle with the hole in the end and you take the thread and you, if you can be really focused and have a lot of dexterity and have really good eyesight, maybe not, maybe just work real hard in there, you can get the thread through that little hole and what’s on the other side, the ability to create, you might mend. You might sew something brand new and create it and bring it into the world.

You might collaborate and be part of somebody else’s bigger tapestry along the way. That’s the potential of doing this work is what’s on the other side. That’s my biggest takeaway here today.

Oh, I’m telling you what, this is what we can. So I’m going to say this. Is there anything anybody else wants to say before I close us out?

Christy Maxfield 49:47
No, I think we’ve done a really good job of leading folks to at least a pathway for their own period of reflection, reorientation and re-engagement. And we, I think we all hope you’ll reach out if you’re struggling with any part of that process.

Dean Barta 50:04
Yeah, you take the time, you as a business owner, you deserve to go through these different pillars and then reach out for help with people who can lend, who have that other lens or other perspective that can really support you in getting to where you want to go.

Jess Dewell 50:22
Thanks for being part of this. It’s your business. We are here live on YouTube and LinkedIn.

So it’s not too late to ask your questions. Dean and Christy and I will be around and we will be watching the conversation because it’s not only your questions, it’s your comments and your experiences that actually deepen what this is. We’re not alone on this journey.

Naming it, sharing it, being a part of the narrative shapes what we have available to us so we can each continue to grow and reach our goals within our organizations. Your action to do save this episode, leave us a review and guess what? Share it with somebody, you know, that can benefit from any of these points because our goal is to help you be exactly where you are and to keep on going because it’s about empowerment to move toward achievement.

Thanks so much for watching. We’ll see you next time.

Announcer 51:20
And that brings us to the close of another powerful and fresh perspective on the bold business podcast. In today’s volatile landscape, growth is a double-edged sword to truly thrive. You must engage with your strategy, not just react to the day to day without absolute alignment.

Your company faces a stark choice outmaneuver or be outmaneuvered grow or get left behind. Thank you for listening. And a special thanks to the Scott treatment for technical production.