The Advisor’s Role in Industry Transformation

Starting the conversation:

Business rules are continually evolving across all industries, and to stay relevant, companies must focus on leading rather than just keeping pace with the competition. Embracing innovation is crucial, as the cost of stagnation can be significant. Research from the Wild Newsletter highlights that 52% of Fortune 500 companies have faced bankruptcy, acquisition, or obsolescence due to insufficient innovation.

So, how can your business become a catalyst for change, a disruptor, and a standard-setter that drives your industry forward?

In this episode of “It’s Your Business,” join Christy Maxfield, President and CEO at Purpose First Advisors, Dean Barta, Founder and CEO at Barta Business Group, and host Jess Dewell, Managing Partner and Growth Strategist at Red Direction, as they discuss three key strategies to navigate the fast-paced changes facing businesses today:

1. Discover the catalyst that can ignite change.
2. Learn to identify trends that can guide your priorities and decisions.
3. Leverage the strengths you already possess to implement lasting change.

By the end of this episode, you’ll have valuable insights to help answer the essential question: “How can our businesses become catalysts, disruptors, and standard-setters that ensure ongoing relevance while advancing our industry?”

Host: Jess Dewell

Guests: Christy Maxfield and Dean Barta

What You Will Hear:

03:55 Actions today shape tomorrow.

• Dean Barta: What we’re doing day by day, moment by moment, as business owners is crucial where we want to be ninety days from now.
• Christy Maxfield: The better we can manage change and understand the transitions enables us to embrace what they need to do moving forward.
• Jess Dewell: When we’re intentional now, we’re shaping what opportunities we have in the future.

05:40 What are the catalysts and constraints of change?

• Dean’s approach: Action over anxiety, being an intentional catalyst
• Jess’s insight: Innovation boosts external performance and profitability
• Christy’s perspective: External and internal factors, and contraction as a response to uncertainty
• The impact of constraint and uncertainty on business behaviors

17:05 Pulse of business to achieve what you want (and what you commit to).

• Maintaining awareness despite competing priorities and limited time
• Recognizing and acting on data patterns within the business, industry, competitors, and customers
• Utilizing SWOT assessments to guide decision-making
• Converting a “sense” or intuition into actionable questions

26:10 The work we do as an advisor to support and guide companies through change.

• Advisors as catalysts for reflection, asking probing and challenging questions
• Using clients’ stated visions to provide feedback, clarification, and accountability
• Encouraging regular “present retreats” or CEO time for reflection
• Emphasis on consistency, focus, and celebration of organizational strengths

38:05 Use your company vision to fuel lasting change.

• Leaders must manage their own energy to sustain organizational momentum
• Risks of internal erosion if groups are not unified in purpose
• Vision as motivation for behavioral change and resilience
• Leaders’ responsibility to manage employees’ experience through transitions
• Intentional management of team experience is key for successful change

3 takeaways:

• Christy Maxfield: Change is required to keep things the same.
• Dean Barta: Keep things simple and innovative.
• Jess Dewell: Look outside the norm.

Resources

• Managing Transitions
• Great Boss Dead Boss
• In Search of Excellence
• Change Agent
• LEAD Model for Better Decision-Making and Problem-Solving

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
Kicking the can down the road is a choice. Putting it on the shelf is a choice. Ignoring it is a choice. Doing something about it is a choice. Doing something with intention is also a choice.

Dean Barta 00:10
The best way to get over anxiety is action.

Christy Maxfield 00:13
You may not be able to choose how you’re feeling, but you can choose how you respond to it.

Jess Dewell 00:17
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 you 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 a reinvention. The conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So look around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos.

Announcer 01:09
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, Christy and Dean share the realities of current business challenges and triumphs. Get ready to lead with depth, understanding and achievement.

Jess Dewell 01:30
You are here. We are here. It’s your business. Brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast. We are talking about what it means to navigate today’s ever-evolving business landscape. We are your go-to choice and source. I’m your host, Jess Dewell and I can’t wait to introduce you. You already know them, Dean and Christy. We’re going to all talk to each other. Talk to you in just a moment. I’m just going to set the stage. Today we are talking about what it means to empower you to be assertive, to be dynamic in this world of change. And let me tell you, today we’re talking about shaping tomorrow. Today this conversation is about the long game. Can we embrace it and claim it and decide what we want to do to make tomorrow’s reality more and more possible with the actions that we are taking today, specifically regarding standing out in the marketplace, delivering on our distinctive qualities and making sure that we’re memorable and profitable? I’m super excited to have all of us introduce ourselves. Christy, Dean. Yay. Yay.

Christy Maxfield 02:37
Christy Maxfield. Purpose First Advisors. We work with business owners to increase profitability and build businesses that are transferable.

Dean Barta 02:48
And Dean Barta from Barta Business Group. We service small businesses with bookkeeping, controller level and fractional CF experiences so that we can help businesses grow and thrive.

Jess Dewell 03:02
I’m Jess Dewell with Red Direction and we’re growing businesses, businesses that want to be in business not only today, not only tomorrow, five and ten years from now, and what it takes to be relevant to do that. And I’m excited to be that growth advisor and that strategic partner, partner for companies that are growth-oriented. All right, this topic that we’re talking about today, Christy and Dean, shaping tomorrow today, what this means for a long game. Oh, we should tell people what those are. We’re going to talk about catalysts and constraints to spur change. We’re going to talk about knowing the pulse of your business and committing to it. And we’re going to talk about using your vision and how that is a tool that will help you in your positioning over time. All right, so with that, I did have this random question about what does like the shape of this whole conversation, the shape of tomorrow today? What does this actually mean to you?

Dean Barta 03:58
Yeah, I think I’ve mentioned it on other podcasts as well. What we do today is what shapes tomorrow. The old adage is what we have the most control over is the present. What we’re doing day by day, moment by moment as business owners is crucial to where we want to be 90 days from now, 180 days from now, or years from now.

Christy Maxfield 04:24
And I think that it really comes down to change is a constant. And that’s one of those trite things that we say to each other. But in fact, it is true. And the better we can manage change and understand the transitions it requires for people to not only let go of what they used to do, but be able to embrace what they need to do moving forward. There’s no other topic that is as relevant as that with regard to making sure your business is sustainable.

Jess Dewell 04:57
And I, my take is slightly different. I agree with both of yours. And so I’ll take a different tangent, which is the actions that we’re taking today, the ones that we are focused on, are incredibly important and intentional. When we’re intentional now, we’re shaping what opportunities we have in the future. So when I think about tomorrow today, it’s am I claiming the right work right now? Am I doing the work that makes sure we have the best options available to us in the future? Because we may think we know what they are, but we also may not know what those are. And so that’s what I’ll. That’s the lens that I can bring to this conversation too. So I’m really glad that we have that. How about if you start us off with this concept of right catalysts and constraints and using them to spur change?

Dean Barta 05:48
Yeah, I think day by day and week by week there I encounter am I being a catalyst for change? Basically, am I in the way? So it’s really, for me it’s focusing on what is the. Like what you mentioned, Jess, is what’s the intentional movement to. That is. But I also look at the return on investment. Sometimes I won’t know the return until 90 days from now. But is it in the best interest of being the catalyst for change and not just sitting there in anxiety land, if you will? I’m big over. The best way to get over anxiety is action, is be in action. But being in, in intentional action that, hey, how am I being the spark that moves things forward with my clients, with my business, with my team, or you know, just really objectively looking or maybe having someone help me have 2020 vision on is this causing more of a roadblock in progress?

Jess Dewell 06:58
I read a stat recently that innovation, it drives this concept of external performance. And 50% more likely are companies able to outperform their competitors financially. Isn’t that an amazing thing to think about when we think about innovation and if we think about catalyst and constraint as a way to get creative, as a way to reduce and increase opportunities, to simplify and find novel new ways of doing things?

Christy Maxfield 07:34
And when we look at what creates a catalyst or a constraint, it can be external, it can be a self-imposed expectation around innovation. It can also be something that necessitates that we do work differently simply because there’s no other choice. The only path forward is to do it differently. And, we can call that an innovation, but it may in fact start as a response to a situation that has no alternative other than to move forward in a completely different manner or abandon where you are and perhaps even abandon the idea of being able to be sustainable. We’re living in a time where the external environment is creating a tremendous amount of both catalysts and constraints. And it really depends on which industry you’re in and what your perspective is about whether or not you’re going to seize that opportunity to create an alternative innovation. But if you’re going to stay the status quo and try to ride it out, or if you’re going to approach it from a completely different angle and create a space that didn’t exist before.

Jess Dewell 08:47
It’s easy to contract from a constraint. It’s actually easy to also do that, use contraction as a catalyst for quote-unquote change.

Christy Maxfield 09:01
We’re seeing that now. I think the primary contraction is around buying behaviors. Is that because there’s so much uncertainty, the reaction has been to contract spending, contract decision making, contract forward motion, hoping that there will be more certainty around which we can move forward? Certainty is probably unachievable clarity. On the other hand, if we can be clear that things will remain uncertain and take that as a given constraint, then can we move forward in a different way other than simply contracting? Can we use that to create intentional action? Because otherwise, we’re stuck.

Dean Barta 09:46
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just the tapping into the motivation and what you mentioned too, Jess, is innovation. I think that’s it goes back to what I mentioned about just being in action and in intentional action. My experience working with different businesses and being in businesses going all the way back to 9 11, that it was our finest hour of innovation. And as a team deciding on how do we go forward and what can we do versus what we can’t do. I think restaurants during COVID were an excellent example of how do they. The takeout and all that. They shut the shop down early on and they just decided that was the best move for them. But it might have been more of a personal decision. They were going to close anyway or do something different. But I don’t think there’s a wrong answer. It’s what’s more effective for your business and for yourself.

Jess Dewell 10:49
I was having a conversation earlier today and the person that I was talking to, he said everything is in my control. And I thought that was really interesting. And I said, how do you apply that to an organization? Is everything really in an organization’s control? And he said yes. And we talked about it more and the gist and the outcome was, was actually interesting in the sense of here’s why we can choose what to do. We are intentional with that choice. Kicking the can down the road is a choice. Putting it on the shelf as a choice, ignoring it as a choice, doing something about it is a choice. Doing something with intention is also a choice. And every time we have choice, we have some semblance of control. Even if it seems that it’s bad or worse, even if it seems. If it’s not quite good and neutral, we get to understand and how cool is it that then taking this concept of where do we want to be going, what is exciting to us, what do we still have to look forward to amidst all of whatever else might be going on and then choosing this is the best action right now.

Christy Maxfield 12:00
And I think that also takes into account the fact that yes, you can choose how you want to show up, right? You can choose how you’re feeling. You may not be able to choose how you’re feeling about the catalyst or the constraint, but you can choose how you respond to it, how you decide to take that information and what it means to you. Most people aren’t that self-aware. And so the more we can do to help business owners increase their self-awareness about why they’re reacting the way they do and then be able to step back and actually say that’s comfortable for me as an individual to step back, to contract, to hesitate, to not take action. But is that what’s best for my business and can those two things be different? Can my personal reaction might be I’m going to spend less at home and I’m going to watch my budget and I’m going to save more money, but can I bring a different mindset to my business where in fact I might be called upon to deploy resources more aggressively to take advantage of an opportunity that this uncertainty has created in the market where I’m taking a greater risk because there is so much uncertainty. But I also know that there’s a higher cost to inaction. So that level of self-awareness, I think can be very challenging for anyone. But most certainly if there’s a way that you as an owner respond in your personal life that may or may not be helping you in your business decisions.

Jess Dewell 13:26
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business.

Announcer 13:38
Right now you’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast hosted by Jess Dewell, a nationally recognized strategic growth consultant. She works with business owners and executives to integrate just two elements that guide business through the ups, downs and, and downs of growth. Number one, know what work is necessary. Number two, do all the work possible. Schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at reddirection.com.

Jess Dewell 14:12
You’re listening to It’s Your Business with Christy Maxfield, Dean Barda and myself, Jess Dewell. And we’re talking about the advisor’s role in industry transformation. Hey, I think accountability is a little bit of taking responsibility. And if we can all agree that if we’re going to take responsibility for the actions and the choices that we’ve made, whether we were aware or not, whether we’re becoming aware, whether we’re having a good day or a triggered day, because we get to do that as being human. So what do we do next? And accountability is a little bit of that. Do I like, what happened? Did we handle that well? How much off track did it take us? What came out of this? And is there some new idea or some passing thought that actually can make a big difference in what we’re doing?

Christy Maxfield 15:04
That’s interesting because I think about, okay, if we play the scenario out and I’m the owner and I decide to do nothing, will I feel comfortable being and owning the accountability for that decision? If down the line, my inaction proved to be the wrong choice, would I be willing to stand in that space and say I made the best decision I could at the time? In hindsight, it was a disservice to the organization not to take action. And I own that responsibility. And on the same hand that I chose to take an action, it was risky and uncertain. I own that was the right choice at the time. So it’s easy to take the wins. Right. It’s harder to take the losses. And I think playing through. Would you. Could you see yourself taking accountability and responsibility for your choice, regardless of the outcome, because you feel confident that you used your best judgment, the amount of the information that was available, and you weighed the consequences, and you’re willing to stand in whatever the outcome is, knowing that you made an intentional, conscious decision rather than letting the circumstances run roughshod over you?

Dean Barta 16:13
Yeah, I think that’s well said, Christie, because I can just look at my own life and probably have like 400 examples of this is that. And it all came down to that was the best decision I made at that time based on the knowledge and experience and feedback that I had at that time. And I’m clean with it because I didn’t have the opportunity to have 20 years down the line, oh, hindsight to help me in something that happened in 05. So I think just being clean with the decision as well and saying, okay, I’m going to do all my due diligence on this and live with the consequences and just make the best decision, it turns out great. If it doesn’t, it’s just another learning opportunity. And somewhere along the line, that learning opportunity may benefit in a different opportunity.

Jess Dewell 17:05
That makes me think of the pulse of business. Right? And it makes me think of what are we actually willing to do. And we’ve been talking a little bit about that in the Catalyst and the constraint piece, and I’ve really been thinking hard about this pulse of business because I talk about how to do it a lot. I talk about the outcomes of it. When push comes to shove and we feel like we have all these competing priorities or we have lack of time, or we’ve been stretched too thin and we’re held in this taught space so long, we can’t be responsive when we used to be able to, or as much as we have ever been able to be. And this is the time we actually need it more than ever before. And so when I think about the pulse of business, even if it’s not as consistent as we would like, we know more than we give ourselves credit for. This human brain in here, right between our ears and between our forehead and our chin, holds so much information and it’s made to optimize and find patterns. It’s one of the coolest things about the brain. There’s so much we don’t know. There’s so much we’re continuing to learn. How this applies to us in business is we got a lot of them. We’ve got a lot of them that we can tie into. And so to find the pulse of business, it’s, are we consciously looking for patterns? Are we looking for patterns in what our competitors and our industry as a whole is doing and saying? Are we looking for patterns in the way customers are showing up? Christie mentioned earlier the buying patterns that we are experiencing out there, it could also just be the way they’re talking to us, the features they’re asking for, the ways that the problems that they’re trying to solve out there. And then on top of that, you have this whole other piece of what does our team have? Where are our strengths and our weaknesses? Because if we know our strengths and our weaknesses and we have some concept about what our customers and our competition and our industry is doing now, we have all the basic elements of a strengths, opportunities, weaks and threats assessment that allows us to go, okay, I know what we can control. I’m going to say we can choose that this is an outside of our control and we really want to focus on these. Or we are in a place, it feels really crazy out there. We want to mitigate as many threats as possible. All of those patterns being synthesized into a regular conversation and being able to be shared across many brains means we just have that much more information to go. Oh, we actually have more information than we realized. It might not come to us in a pretty report. All the data is there, the feeling is there, the sense is there. And that is something that helps us keep the pulse of Our business, which is so necessary in shaping tomorrow, today, because we know what the right next step is, even if it’s just to get us to that next decision.

Christy Maxfield 19:47
I’ve been reading a book called Managing Transitions. It’s not a new book, it’s an older book. Part of the idea behind it is that we used to actually need change agents in organizations because they were so accustomed to doing what they did and change was happening at a slower pace globally that you could do the same thing for a longer period of time. And there needed to be a catalyst and a literal person to catalyze change within organizations. But if you could all flip and change is so constant. And I think AI is a good example of this. Just to be able to keep doing what you’re doing, you are going to have to change how you do it because the table stakes have changed and they changed really quick and they’re going to keep iterating very quickly. So now the thing you used to do with two humans, maybe you’ll do with one and a half humans and more technology. But choosing not to change and integrate AI in the appropriate way for your industry, even the most highly regulated and constrained industry, choosing to do nothing means that you’re actually undermining the status quo. So if your whole goal is just to keep things the same way they are, you actually have to change in order to keep things the same.

Jess Dewell 21:07
It makes complete sense and it’s counterintuitive and it’s the reality.

Christy Maxfield 21:12
So for everybody out there who’s I don’t want to innovate. I don’t want to be on the bleeding edge of my industry. I don’t want to be an industry leader who’s bucking the trend.

Jess Dewell 21:20
Great, you don’t have to do any.

Christy Maxfield 21:21
Of those things, but you still need to change. Because the way we do business is so rapidly evolving that just to stay the same, you have to do something different.

Jess Dewell 21:33
And that’s like 52% of Fortune 500 companies have either gone bankrupt, been acquired or ceased to exist because of a lack of innovation. This came from the Wild News Reference, the Wild Newsletter and its historical Fortune 500 company data.

Dean Barta 21:49
Kodak Blockbuster, you name it. And one of the things I think about as far as the pulse or just innovation is I draw from different industries so I can learn something that’s being innovative in a certain industry and apply it to a separate industry. When I was in the travel industry, I’d pull it from other service-based businesses. It doesn’t have to be within the same ecosystem of the industry you can learn a lot from. You name it, whatever your business might be. I’m going to pull some gold nugget from some other industry that’s doing innovative things. It’s really. It’s an opportunity to. Because I think it just sucks not just to stay in one place. And maybe it’s just. I’ve been a business owner long.

Jess Dewell 22:39
I’m just kidding.

Dean Barta 22:40
The uncertainty is the norm. And that’s not. That’s not easy for a lot of people. And some days it’s not easy for me either.

Christy Maxfield 22:47
What I also think is interesting about what you were talking about is that the innovation, whatever that innovation is, can come from a variety of different sources. And so again, what’s motivating the decision to do things differently? And those companies that you cited, the companies that no longer exist or exist in a very different way, shape, or form than when they were at the height of their prowess. A lot of times they had change initiatives, they had change agents, they had change plans, they had blueprints. They knew what they wanted to be and how they wanted to get there, and they never executed. They just they the inertia of managing the process of change, the actual transition that has to occur. Quote my new favorite book of managing transitions. This idea that when we do something different, we have to first say goodbye to the thing that we did or the way that we did it. And so there’s an ending. And endings have feelings associated with them. And some people will hang on longer than others to the ending because it’s what they know and it’s comfortable. And then we enter this neutral zone where things are neither the same as they used to be, but they’re also not fully changed yet. And we haven’t fully adopted the new way of doing something. And it’s only after we’ve done that we can embrace new beginnings and we can create a new way of doing the things we’ve done. So I would also look at just like execution from a pure you need to go do this and you need to go that, but also execution from the standpoint of understanding that the emotional transition from ending to neutral zone to new beginning, this author would argue, is the neglected piece of the change activity. And because we neglect it, we are unable to get the full outcome of what has to happen, and it takes longer and it fails, and we have to redo and we have to put more resources in because quite frankly, we think that the managing the emotional piece of endings and beginnings is a waste of time and slows us down. But in fact, not managing it as actually costs us more in the long run.

Jess Dewell 25:06
Absolutely. That’s really interesting. It makes me think of the good, bad, the ugly, and the pretty. To your point that you said earlier, Christie, where you were like, we’re really good at claiming the wins, but we’re not really good at claiming the other.

Christy Maxfield 25:16
It’s hard to say. I made a decision and it didn’t pan out, and I got new information along the way and we decided to do something different. You get accused of whiplash or, oh, not having a clear eye on what you’re trying to do and not being focused. But sometimes you’re just working with incomplete information and making a decision that may appear out of the norm because your competitors aren’t doing it or your peers aren’t doing it. Right now, what would look outside the norm is anyone who’s making consistent buying decisions and investing money in their business to grow their business and to be positioned for whatever comes next. They’re actually the exception to the rule. Right now they look odd to other people, which means that they’re probably doing something that is either going to win Baker or lose big, and they’re willing to take the chance.

Jess Dewell 26:09
So I have a question for both of you. And this is about what we do, right? We’re all advisors in different ways to companies. And when we think about keeping the pulse of the business, that is something that I know I’ve always thought about having an external person, whether that’s informal or formal for your business. I want to know, how do you, as an advisor, show up to help a company keep the pulse of their business?

Dean Barta 26:35
I ask a lot of questions. Even though me and my team have experienced a lot of different industries, a lot of different situations, every single entity is different, and that’s a learning opportunity for me. But a lot of it is asking the questions about so that the realization about how that organization can get closer to the pulse of their company is theirs and not mine. Because that’s, to me, a lot more empowering if they go, ah, they have that aha moment, rather than me just feeding the answer to them, which may or may not be correct, because they have. They’re more intimate with their organization than I am. But I can ask the pointed questions to get them there so that they come to that realization. But that’s been my approach.

Christy Maxfield 27:32
Absolutely a hundred percent, asking good questions and pushing on assumptions. So one of the questions I often ask, is there a reason why we’re not. Fill in the blank, like, we would really love to and they go on and on about the thing that they would love to do. And then the question becomes, is there a reason why we’re not doing it? And usually there’s not one that they feel comfortable enough defending to stay in the space of not doing it. And again, to Dean’s point, I didn’t tell them that it was the right thing to do. I may not even identify the opportunity. But I’ve asked the question of if you are so sure that this would have benefit and would be a good thing for your business, then why are we not doing it right now? I would say my role is also a mirror, because once you’ve asked those questions and you get an idea of what the owner is trying to really build, not just from a financial standpoint, but from a legacy standpoint, then when they come to you with issues that they want to work through and questions that they’re trying to answer, you can use that vision for the future as the lens to look at the opportunity through. And you can also mirror back to them what they said they wanted so they can evaluate. Is that still what I want? Is that still what’s important to me? And I think actually introducing the ideas that might lead them to take what they would consider change is also the role of an advisor, to offer a counterpoint in some cases that says there’s a different way we might be able to do this. And is that something you want to explore? Explore?

Jess Dewell 29:13
Yeah. Mine is similar. And I start with a pause. If my. If somebody comes to me that I’m working with, my first question to them is, are you working with your present retreats? And, in other words, that would be CEO time or dedicated deep work time, whatever that phrase is to you. In my world, that’s a present retreat. And, if the answer is yes, I will question in a certain way, and if the answer is no, I will hold the pause first and we will figure out what the status, what the reality is, what is emotion, what is fact, where the unclarity exists, and then be able to find the right questions to ask. And so we all have questions in common. And I go one step further as well, because the work that a company needs to do to be where they’re at, to do the growth that they want to do, they can’t, they can’t be the same that they are today to get to where they want to go. And we’ve already established that. In some other words, I think in this conversation, at the same point in time, when we think about change, it can Be really hard because the mid-market companies that I’m talking to, they’re like, I don’t have the time, energy or resources, neither does anybody else here to actually do change and start over. And there are two things about that where I know I am different as an advisor. What got you here is worth celebrating. What got you here, there is some strength and it’s probably part of your unique selling proposition. It’s probably part of the market share that you already have. And so if you let it go, you’re putting more at risk for the idea of change than actually changing for the right reasons. And so I’m all about keeping our strength as advisors.

Christy Maxfield 30:56
We often help people find their train of thought and are very pleased when others indulge the fact that our trains can get off the attract too totally and completely.

Jess Dewell 31:05
That’s exactly right. It is about being consistent in the time that we are taking because we can’t give ourselves the time to check the pulse of our business to figure out what questions are the right questions to ask. Because there’s a lot of questions we can ask, but we want to ask the ones that we need right now to do that growth and to stick through that over time and be willing to allow them to change. But if we don’t pause, if we don’t take our present retreat, if we don’t really evaluate what we’ve got going in our business and understand our priorities on a week-to-week basis, it gets a real hard, real quick to know what actually is the catalyst or the constraint we might be working with.

Christy Maxfield 31:47
It’s interesting you say that because one of my most recent clients is a veterinarian and they’re working on improving profitability and they’re up against big firms, PE backed veterinary establishments who have a lot of money they can throw at marketing and a lot of money they can do for patient acquisition. And so it goes back to what are the fundamentals that we need to make sure are running optimally? And we identified a lot and they actually embraced working on a lot of things simultaneously. They also have a really great clinic software that gives them all sorts of data points. And they shared some of those reports with me and my question back to them is when you look at this report, what does it tell you? And they’re like, I don’t really know. And so really understanding the bottom of the report that there are pie charts and graphs and all sorts of things and seemingly interesting information, but not necessarily actionable information. And then there was a bunch of like miscellaneous KPIs at the end. And so I asked them today, I want you to review the KPIs. They’re in there because this is an industry software and the industry has said these are things worth paying attention to. What I want you to ask yourself is for your clinic, which of these would make the most sense to pay attention to, to move the dial on profitability and really focus on that. Because we could, if we’re trying to monitor all of them, we can’t. We’re trying to change behaviors around all of them, we can’t. But we know what success would look like, making progress towards improved profitability for X percent to Y percent. And so if we choose a KPI that we think has the greatest potential, if we put time and energy and tactics around it, then we can measure whether or not what we’re doing is getting us the outcome we want.

Dean Barta 33:43
And that’s what I like about that approach. Approach too is sometimes the best solution is the simplest solution because you can look at, oh, there’s all these different options or reports or whatever and when sometimes it’s just one report or two reports or hey, let’s just go out and have a better personal connection with our clients. To me, personal connections, you never go wrong with it. Really. And especially in this day and age of lots of options and drive by relationships, let’s say keeping it simple, I think is one of the big keys. And relating back to what Jess is talking about, the pulse. Hey, just check your pulse right now. Are you checking breathing and all at the same time? No, you’re just checking your pulse. You’re keeping it simple. It’s okay. That’s what my heart rate is Right now.

Jess Dewell 34:36
You are listening to it’s yous Business brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast. Like what you’re hearing? Share it with a friend. Like what you’re hearing. Subscribe or follow so that you can see us each time we do one of these things. I love doing this as a trio because to be bold requires outside sets of eyes. To be bold means can you think new and differently? And I’m your host Jess Dewell with Red Direction.

Christy Maxfield 35:01
And with me is Christy Maxfield with Purpose First Advisors. We help business owners build profitable and transferable businesses.

Dean Barta 35:10
And Dean at Barda Business Group, from fractional CFO to controller to bookkeeping for small businesses.

Jess Dewell 35:17
Make sure that you leave a comment, share your conversation. Because it’s through our conversations together outside of this that you are listening and watching to that actually make the change happen that spark what we can do so that we can continue to act boldly. Okay, so far. Why now? We’re talking about this now because our actions today impact the future. And when we are faced with high stress, uncertainty, it makes it harder to take action. Yet the actions then almost matter more. So can we take a step back? Can we look so that we can make sure we are moving forward? We are looking strategically at our marketplace positioning, at the distinctive qualities that we have within our organizations to help us connect with, continue to serve and adapt with our changing buyer expectations. So far, Dean led the conversation about catalysts and constraints that spur change. Christie’s going to lead us into this concept of how do we use our vision and use that in a way that allows us to become the change.

Christy Maxfield 36:25
For a lot of business owners when they’re asked, what are you building? I would say that question brings up a lot of different feelings about what they want their business to be compared to what their business is today. And so the clearer you can be in what the vision is, you have the to your point, Jess, of what got you here isn’t going to get you to the next step, even if the next step is an iteration on and getting you closer to your desired end result. The thing that you’re the big vision you’re working toward. So I think the clearer you can be about that and the more committed you can be to achieving that outcome, even though the tactics and strategies for how you do that might change, the greater the strength it is to do. Really, what we’re talking about is changing behavior. So change encompasses many different things, but at its core, it means we’re doing something different than we used to do it. We’re behaving in a different way than we used to behave. It might be in how we communicate with people. It might be in literally in how we do a process or a procedure, be in how we choose to lead and manage. I work with business owners who on some level, are not getting the outcome they want. And we’re trying to identify which changes in behavior, which changes in the way they think and therefore the way they act, will have the greatest impact on their ability to move the dial the way they want the dial to move. And in my experience, the clearer your vision, the more you’re willing to double down on, this is who I know we can be. This is what I know we’re capable of. And this thing we have to do differently is going to be hard, but.

Jess Dewell 38:07
It’ll be worth it.

Christy Maxfield 38:08
The more you can invest in that, the easier it is both for you as the business owner to endure the trials and tribulations of business ownership, but also to inspire others. People truly get inspired by your vision. People truly want to help you build something bigger than yourself and themselves. So that’s where I come in from. And that includes celebrating the things that are working and keeping the things. And I think that’s where we find values, really knowing your values, because to me, those aren’t going to change. They’re part of what got you where you’re going. They’re part of what got you where you are. And they are going to endure even as you choose to do and live those values in different ways.

Dean Barta 38:54
Yeah, I think business owners, they try to take on too many things when really the one sentence, job description is push forward the vision of the company. That’s it. And they have any of us as business owners, we have to make sure that we’re doing the things that energize that feed into that vision. And it’s fantastic when you have a team of people around you that also not only buy into the vision, but are willing to carry the torch forward as well. That’s a big plus. But it still emanates from the founder. But to me, that is so important to make sure you have that. It’s the internal drive, but it’s something that almost in some ways can pull me when I don’t want to be pulled. There’s a higher calling out there that’s pulling me in that direction. And to stay in, in touch with.

Jess Dewell 39:56
That makes a lot of sense, I think, about energy management in what both of you have been sharing. Because if we don’t, as the torchbearers, as that vision-holder, as the one who’s setting, adjusting and changing and doubling down on what’s going on in our organization at any point in time, we need to work on our energy, too. We need to make sure that we have enough energy to remove those obstacles, to hold the space for others to do the same safely and in an excited way. And as I was listening to both of you, two books came to mind. The first is In Search of Excellence, and the second is Great Boss, Dead Boss. So In Search of excellence in relationship to the vision is especially when we’re looking for internal change agents, we might have them already. Are we willing to look for them and are we fostering them? And both of the books that I mentioned talk about how do you work with these internal change agents that are already there? They care, they’re on the front lines, they see these patterns and can we Recognize going back to some of the other parts of the conversation, bring those thoughts in, bring those approaches in and say, hey, there’s actually something here. They’re seeing something. What is it exactly? Is there potential to unlock right here? And that’s one of the things I loved about In Search of Excellence. Now, the flip side of that, it was written so long ago, by the way. Still great, still really important. To Dean’s point and Christie’s point earlier, a lot of the organizations listed in that book as part of the research don’t exist anymore because they couldn’t maintain the change over time and keep that excellence in place. They were hoping it would just stay and it didn’t and they forgot to foster it in some way. And that’s where Great Boss, Dead Boss is. Very interesting because in that book they actually reference In Search of Excellence, which I thought was quite crazy and interesting. And so can we have the different groups work together or are each of those different groups accidentally eroding each other’s effort? And if we’ve got that internal erosion for this long-term change, it doesn’t matter what the external change may or may not be. It matters what we can do internally and making sure that everybody’s unified. And so then it comes back to all of the amazing, interesting pieces that Dean and Christy were just sharing is what I’m taking away of, hey, what can we do? How can we show up and can we claim and can we allow and can we expand in such a way that we are able to take what we need and leave what we don’t so that we can have what we want to be doing to make sure we’re on vision and the actions that we’re taking today aligned to where we want to be going. And it feels easy. It’s actually not easy. I don’t know what you two think.

Christy Maxfield 42:46
But I think it’s not easy. And I think what we have to remember is like you touched upon the idea that you’re taking people through the process and the journey. You’re inspiring them with the vision and you’re giving them the opportunity you mentioned earlier, Jess, that find the change agents and cultivate them in your business, find the people who are, who feel energized and inspired by that change. What we’re really saying is for everyone in your organization, because there are most definitely people who do not feel energized by the change. What our job is as leaders, our job is as owners, is to manage the experience of the change for them. And because we already put as little energy typically into managing and leading people as we possibly can.

Jess Dewell 43:40
Right.

Christy Maxfield 43:40
We want self-starters, we want independent thinkers, we want people who take charge. We want people who ask for forgiveness, not permission. Right. We really want people to take the work and go. And every organization I work with, every owner I work with, whether it’s 2 people or 25 people or 250 people, people, by under-valuing and under-resourcing in terms of time, the amount of effort you need to put into working with and caring for the people who actually do the work is. That’s the part that’s holding us back. It’s not that you have to spend a lot of time managing them that’s slowing you down. It’s the fact that you are not spending a lot of time managing them that is slowing you down. Because how they experience the change, how they experience what it’s going to take to get from where they are to fulfill the vision they have bought into, that experience matters. And if they are not having a good experience, that will shut down your ability to move forward. So I think you’re in some ways we’re curating. Yes. We should identify those individuals and we should maximize their code capacity to advance change from where they are in the organization. And I think we also have to acknowledge that unless we are very intentional about how we manage the change experience, we’re going to see setbacks and we’re. It’s going to go slower and be more painful than we would like it to be.

Jess Dewell 45:13
Okay, I want to know what has your biggest takeaway been from today?

Christy Maxfield 45:18
My biggest takeaway is that change is required simply to keep things the same.

Dean Barta 45:25
And I would say mine is really keeping things simple and innovative. And you can do that without a whole lot of complexity. But the key is really moving forward with whatever direction you have. And it’s okay. Don’t be too tight about the results. Just make the best decision you can in the moment.

Jess Dewell 45:49
And I think my biggest takeaway in our conversation, the thing that stuck with me most, is looking outside the norm. That is where a lot of magic exists and that is where a lot of the best questions will come from. And that is where a lot of the opportunity to reflect and make the next best choice will emerge.

You’re listening to It’s Your Business, brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast. Until next time.

Jess Dewell 45:59
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, important because yeah, they’re going to be how-tos. 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 engaged 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 47:06
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.com thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.