As a business owner, it’s difficult to do the right work AND guide your company toward its next big initiative.
With Red Direction Business Base Camp, learn how to implement and handle processes to meet your business’s specific needs and better understand your market.
Starting the conversation:
Forget perfect plans and endless strategizing. The secret to achievement is found by taking action, learning from mistakes, and making choices that align with your biggest goals. Audience questions and real experiences are shared in this It’s Your Business program with Quentin Ortega, Founder and Lead Consultant at QCO Consulting; Christy Maxfield, President and CEO at Purpose First Advisors; and your host, Jess Dewell, Managing Partner at Red Direction.
Ultimately, decision-making is a framework for action. Even imperfect choices create an environment that fosters gathering more information to hone in on what you don’t know, what you assumed … or even those actions that turned out to be great. Not only is making decisions a skill, it is a craft that requires stamina, energy, and commitment. Because every action affirms you are moving away or toward the goal.
In this program, you will hear how to stay competitive, that decisions don’t have to last forever, and how to measure the results of your decisions. Christy Maxfield, President and CEO at Purpose First Advisors; Quentin Ortega, Founder and Lead Consultant at QCO Consulting; and your host, Jess Dewell, Managing Partner at Red Direction discuss how making decisions is crucial to your success.
Host: Jess Dewell
Guest: Christy Maxfield and Quentin Ortega
What You Will Hear:
2:15 Decision-making for success is important because it creates a place to work from and all cascading choices are able to be made with more awareness.
4:35 Just get going: act to learn, act to plan.
- Real-life example of doing what it takes by recognizing your strengths.
- Put a stake in the ground. You claim what you already have to begin the journey.
- A structure, whatever it is, is necessary.
11:40 @Burnadette Papp asked: How do you prioritize what needs to be done for your business
- Use your time to the highest and best benefit.
- Commit to yourself and others: Limit to one or two things at a time.
- Have a structure for your day-to-day to check in with priorities.
22:30 Decisions help you stay competitive in the market.
- Identify the gap and determine if what you do is “covered.”
- Why you? Know and believe in your strengths to create a distinct voice.
- Limit your choices to open the right opportunities.
- Let go of industry “best practices” so you can leverage your unique way of doing business.
- Difference between real cost and opportunity cost.
31:30 @Mandi Harenberg asked: How do you support your clients in tracking and measuring results?
- Be accountable.
- Have an action plan that is three months, six months, or more. Check in often and know how you are practicing day-to-day.
- What is the gap: What you say you want versus what you really want (because that’s what you are doing).
- Learn the skills needed to support actions and celebrate every time you do it.
39:40 @Katherine Pomerantz asked: What are your thoughts about technology? When is it worth the effort to switch, when no software is really going to give you everything you want/need?
- Assess what software/technology that specifically fits the way you do your work.
- The number of people interacting with a tool will impact the choice of what to use as well as when to change.
- Pick tools and technologies that support your culture — specifically the way work is done in your organization.
- Consider using technology as a creative constraint as you grow and develop new processes and offerings.
51:49 The reality of decisions is that you have choice.
- Uncertainty is the norm, it takes stamina to make decisions.
- Make decisions knowing they are not set in stone and can change when circumstances change.
- It’s OK to change your mind. Questioning is a strength.
- Commit to a decision long enough to learn from it.
- Support reducing decision fatigue and eroding trust in yourself and your team.
57:22 @Michael F D Anaya asked: What is best to overcome the fear of failure?
- Be ready to own the outcome even if it is bad. Say: I made that decision.
- Knowing and believing you can shift with assessment and adjustment.
- Answer your biggest questions every 90 days.
- Failure is good for learning, and that is a mindset.
- Ask the question: what’s the worst that can happen?
1:05:04 3 Biggest Takeaways:
- Look at what you are prioritizing as want versus need, like in your finances.
- Start getting familiar with what it feels like to make a decision and what comes after.
- Assumptions are overlooked in decision-making, yet have a real cost of energy and time.
Get started and make a difference in your business with a Growth Framework Reset.
Resources
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Transcript
Jess Dewell 00:00
Okay, you’re tuned in to the Bold Business Podcast, and I’m your host, Jess Dewell. Welcome. Every conversation that I host here is to spark an idea to get down to the right business right now, without losing track of your long-term business strategy. Join me on my pursuit to identify the right work to be done. How to do as much of that right work as possible, and to navigate your toughest business decisions. My goal is to bring you high-quality knowledge, experience and tools that allow you enable you and empower you to make bold decisions, as an entrepreneur and a business owner.
Christy Maxfield 00:40
The only way you know what your choice of action is, is to know what your objective is, where are you going? What do you want to accomplish? What’s the desired end result?
Jess Dewell 00:50
My decision to do this thing in this time doesn’t necessarily have to be set in stone. And that’s a big thing about prioritization.
Quentin Ortega 00:58
Everybody’s business is a reflection of their personal life to some extent, right? If you’re the owners, and you’re driving the vision, you’re driving the strategy and goals. It’s tied in. It’s a big part of who you are.
ANNOUNCER 01:12
Welcome to It’s Your Business, brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast. This is your go-to source for navigating today’s ever-evolving business landscape. In this program, Jess, Christy and Quenton, share the realities of current business challenges and triumphs. Get ready to lead with depth, understanding and achievement.
Jess Dewell 01:36
And this is it’s your business brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast. Welcome, welcome. Today, we are your go-to source for navigating today’s ever-evolving business landscape. And who are we? I’m your host, Jess Dewell and managing partner at Red Direction. And with me is Quentin Ortega.
Quentin Ortega 01:56
President of QC consulting.
Jess Dewell 01:58
And Christy.
Christy Maxfield 02:01
President and CEO of Purpose First Advisors, and Sidekick.
Jess Dewell 02:05
That’s right. And we’re getting real. We’re getting really real about the current business challenges and triumphs that we see the questions that you have, and the interactions that all of us together can do to get better and reach our goal. We are looking to lead with depth understanding and achievement and bringing that to you as well. Okay, so here’s what we’ve got going on. Now, a little bit more about what our topic is today. Why? Why is result, stop planning and start deciding actually important today?
Christy Maxfield 02:38
It’s super important today.
Jess Dewell 02:41
It’s actually important to every day, isn’t it?
Christy Maxfield 02:44
All the days that end in “y”.
Quentin Ortega 02:46
Only those now
Jess Dewell 02:47
We are in a fast-paced time, we do see things coming. But we don’t understand how the impacts of those things we see coming are going to actually be when and if they actually impact us in the work that we’re doing yet, we still have to think about them. So that’s why I think it’s important today. The sooner we make a decision, the better we can understand what the cascading decisions are, and see if it was the right one and make any adjustments. But until that first decision is made, everything’s up in the air. And I got tons of stories about that in my personal life you want to ever go there? We got it. Well, what would you add to that, as far as the why for each of you?
Quentin Ortega 03:28
Everybody would agree, I think that we’re living in a more fast-paced, more constant stream of information, kind of timeline than we used to be in the past, right, and whether that information is relevant to your business, or whether it’s just distracting and feel like most of it is distracting. But at the same time, being able to make decisions and move forward and take action becomes even more critical because I think that a lot of people cause that ramp up of constant stream kind of, of information coming in, are just stuck in like reactive mode. In order to get out of that reactive mode in your business and in your life. You really do have to start planning and getting through the planning process and then making decisions and actioning them. Otherwise, we all spend and I’m guilty of this too days where we’re just trying to exist, right, just trying to keep batting down the things that are flying at us instead of pushing for the things that matter.
Christy Maxfield 04:21
For me, so much of growth actually requires change. And change requires action. So if you do any reading on change management whatsoever, that experiences they point to and terms of where it hasn’t worked, where big corporations have spent years planning and talking but not doing all of the point to the lack of action as the fail point in them being able to stay competitive and relevant and sometimes even to just continue to exist. The best like on the real practical side of if you want to grow you have to change if you want to change you have to. I have a natural predisposition to acting so I’m going to want to Talk about it. But then I’m gonna want to do it and I have colleagues and clients I’ve worked with, for whom thinking about it in their head is almost as satisfying as seeing it out in the world. And in that case, we have to remember that being able to visualize it in our head is not the same as being able to experience it in the world, because we don’t actually learn from what’s in our head because the inputs are too finely. So until it actually meet reality and has contact with other people and has to stand up to some scrutiny other than your own, you can’t learn and if you can’t learn, then you can’t move forward, you can’t iterate, you can’t make those things. So for me, it’s about acting, to learn and acting to change in order to achieve the goals that we want.
Jess Dewell 05:49
And I like to act to plan. How funny is that?
Christy Maxfield 05:51
I know you do. I know. Either way you’re acting and planning is essential. At no point would I say to you, you don’t have to plan
Jess Dewell 05:59
In our green room. Before we got started, we actually were talking about ourselves. And this whole thing is because we made a decision because we made the decision. I don’t even remember how it went on. But we will started doing this in January,
Quentin Ortega 06:13
Christie and I had talked for years at this point about starting to do a regular cadence then creating this thing, and I’ll talk, I’ll talk No, actually, we have one call. And within half an hour, we were like, we’re gonna do that right and just scheduled it and started going. And I love that
Christy Maxfield 06:28
Quentin and I talked about it, but we didn’t make any decision. And I don’t think it was a feeling fear of failure in our case, but there was something blocking us whether it was one of us feeling like we had to take the lead on it and feeling like we already had enough on her plate, or that talking to each other was satisfying enough if other people watch great, but we’re gonna find a way to make that happen if it didn’t saw how materialize and we just never will the decision piece. We can’t underestimate the decision, please. Because between plan and act, you actually have to decide which action and when and what do you need to read that happen. And is it a one-step process or a two-step process or a 10-step process, but the decision, the ability to put a stake in the ground and say, I’m gonna put aside this time on this day to show up and do this thing. And that, honestly, is where we went from a lot of talk to action,
Jess Dewell 07:23
We did a lot of exploration. And we did a lot of creation. And we did a lot of things to iterate. And it got to a point where we knew there was something to do, we just didn’t understand it and use something about so who were do, what do we do? And who’s going to do it? And how does that take your action, we didn’t actually find the thing that naturally incorporated all of our strength. So if I was looking back through our journey, once I became clear, all three of us got here. Okay, cool. Because Q and Christie could talk all day to you. And Jess could talk all day, Jess and Christie can talk all day. But when you get us all together, we go from 2d to 3d. And then infrastructure. Turns out, I already got it, we got to remove the obstacle. So the idea became a reality because we leaned into what we already had. And I think that’s a big piece to have. Are we going slow enough? And are we giving our ideas, enough space to create a shape to understand what do we already have to make this a reality? How hard is it actually,
Quentin Ortega 08:27
There’s a big piece of that that is also like recognizing your strengths, right? And I think that when we talk about decisioning, right, if we’re talking about kind of decision making, I think that folds right in right with that. There are things every day when I talk to people through the years. And I know Chris, she said the same thing, when those things are falling to the bottom of your to-do list every day, they keep getting pushed off, even though you’re supposed to do them are because you like don’t want to do them because you’re missing something to do them or you don’t feel like you’re the right person to be doing them or whatever that may be. And I think that being able to know what you’re good at, and then fine and surround yourself with a team and or other people to even bounce things off of that you’re not sure about becomes a big part of it. I think the three of us found each other, thankfully. And here we are because of that.
Christy Maxfield 09:10
And just and I really did give our ideas, a lot of space. And I have to credit Jess with that because of my predisposition to action. I’m like, let’s just kind of thing and do it.
Jess Dewell 09:20
We did all kinds of stuff. They never got to the finish line. They didn’t get past us, right?
Christy Maxfield 09:25
But they did get out of our head. That’s right, we created a structure in which we have to show up for each other. And even if we start I didn’t create the thing I thought I was going to create. But I had these thoughts about why I didn’t create the thing. And here’s where we’re running into a roadblock. And here’s where I think like, our idea wasn’t wrong, but it’s not actually going to get us the desired end result we want if we build this thing for these people, those aren’t actually the people we’re most interested in working with. So they need that thing, but we don’t really love the idea of doing that thing. So even in that our action wasn’t externally for rejected people didn’t see that because we didn’t get past the sausage-making stage. But we made a lot of sausage.
Jess Dewell 10:06
We did. And what’s cool is it allowed us to recognize when the three of us got together, there was something there, just like what Christy, you and Q, when you were talking and all of the talk that you had, there was something about the three of us that shifted enough that made it to be able to go cool, we can put a stake in the ground, cool, we can get out from behind the scene. 90% of the stuff that I do, does never get to that never gets to the place that somebody else can see. And it’s easy to make it feel like it’s a waste of time. And that actually brings me to a question that we got ahead of time from Bernadette. How do you prioritize what needs to be done for your business? And we’re going to put the spin on it of decisions and making those decision. I’m curious from the two of you. Where would you start? Because I hear what we’ve been saying in our real-life example to get here. And I think that this is a great opportunity to segue right into Bernadette Papp’s question.
Christy Maxfield 11:04
A lot of the conversation we’ve previously had on other episodes has been around the importance of the planning process. But the also the importance of prioritizing, so that you can use your time in a way that is of highest and best benefit, which actually all ties back to the only way you know what your choice of action is to know what your objective is, where are you going? What do you want to accomplish? What’s the desired end result? So that gives us the framework, if we know where we’re going, then we can identify all the possible actions we could take to get there. And then we can start to prioritize based on like you said before, do I have the resources? Is it a huge heavy list? Is there somebody I can collaborate with? Are there a few things I can do right now get myself an easy win a fast win and feel accomplished and create some momentum? So I keep going? And of all the choices? Going through those variables of resources and, and abilities and capabilities and interests? Which ones? Do I want to take action on deciding making it like? Because some hugs are like, Oh, the choice is right, yeah, but only a small fraction of them are things that you can act on today and want to act on today. So pick two or three of those and then actually do it because one of the keys to the success of this is we almost never leave a conversation without putting something on the calendar right then and there. And then it’s on our calendar, and we schedule around it. And we show up, we fulfill our commitments to each other. So you also have to be in a space where you will fulfill your commitments to yourself, and you’ll fulfill your commitments to those around you. But I really think to get to decide, you have to winnow down, it becomes a winnowing process of prioritizing, and to me, the biggest single biggest thing you’re prioritizing against is how well do I think this thing will get me going in the direction I want to go. And if it doesn’t, then I gotta make a different choice and take a different action,
Quentin Ortega 13:03
You have to develop some form of structure. For some people’s brain structure is scary, because they’re free thinking and they’re doing a bunch of stuff, and they’re bouncing around. And so when I say that, I think that sometimes people think, Oh, I don’t want to make this list, or I won’t keep it up or I don’t want, but you have to find the structure that works for you and your business in your day to day. So one of my structures, for example, on decisioning that I use every day is that every morning when I wake up, I would say scan the horizon, right? Skim the emails, check on the Slack, all these other places where fires might be cropping up. And I say, Okay, I had an idea when I woke up of what I wanted to get done that day. Is there something else that is burning brighter that I need to pay attention to? So that it doesn’t mess up? Other things? Is there a higher priority? I give that as example. Because even though that’s not a structure, as most people would consider it right? If you hear about decisioning, you hear about the Eisenhower matrix, or all these other things, right? It is a structure, right? It’s a structure that works for me in my day-to-day life of just reassessing every morning, before I start in to say, are there things I need? Do I need to shift this list? Do I need to deprioritize or reprioritize, or ramp up thing? And I think that just to get to this point, you have to have some form of structure. So it’s about discovering one that fits in the kind of your day-to-day life in your process.
Jess Dewell 14:23
And I’m going to add to that, because I’m thinking about the shape and I’m thinking about how much time shape takes to create to go do I have enough of a shape to actually make something? Or if I’m going into the pantry? Do I have enough ingredients to make something because I’m hungry? Or do I have the right tools to actually make this thing I’m excited about have something that can actually happen? So there’s this place of assessment that is going on that we’ve all been talking about a little and I’m gonna just call it out. And I’m calling it out specifically because when I think about prioritization, I’ve got to work. I’m always starting from the big one. What is where am I going in eight? The month and how does that help me right now? Because you know what, sometimes things I think you’re gonna get done in the third or fourth quarter actually end up getting done in the second quarter. But it’s only because I have that far away place of 18 months on the calendar go. Everything showed up. Now why should I wait? Why not my decision to do this thing in this time doesn’t necessarily have to be set in stone. And that’s a big thing about prioritization. For part one, I would say, and then part two, we have to look at it like are finding what’s a need, and once a want, and let’s be real, what’s a need? And what’s a want? And if it’s needed, and we can automate it awesome. And where you have a question about technology leader, but if it’s not, and it’s an issue, we have this need, and we have this want, there are a couple of ways to do that. And so one of the structures that I have is my president retreat, and one of the things I do on my present retreat, I’m gonna try not to make a big mess here, I actually have a box, it’s called now in near. So all week long, I am putting in ideas that show up into this because I’m tactile and I like sticky notes. Some people have document, and I do this with a lot of my clients, and they tend to do it electronically. But what they’re doing is then every time they’re sitting down for their protected time, their CEO time, that present retreat, they’re pulling this out and going, does it work now? Does it go in the bin, because it’s just a cool idea? Or do I need to save it for the future, which by the way, I got one of those till I got a huge box. And then I have a recycle bin, I have three bins, recycle bin, the now near and the future bin. And the reason I do that is because if it’s the right thing, but it’s for later, because it came up, it just goes in and I check on it in but the end of the quarter or my longer term, mid-year planning type thing. And that way, it’s out of my head, because I’m not sure about you. But when my head is filled with all those ideas, they never go away, and they take up space, and they take away my capacity to actually make decisions about what I need now. Because I’m always filtering, like load him on a website page, right? Are you the slow dots? Or do you come up automatically? These little boxes? I have no loading time when it comes to yes, no, maybe? Or yes, no later, right, that has been removed very well. And it comes from my needs. And my one. Also,
Quentin Ortega 17:16
I can’t be the only one that’s like super curious right now what’s in the future box, right? It feels like a prediction of the future.
Jess Dewell 17:23
This is a cool, random idea that I never know what’s going to happen. It’s been in my future box from four quarters now. What can I do to make it easy to create customized playlists of my podcast for each of my clients based off of their goals? That’s hard to do. Because they just takes time. Here’s another one that’s just random. That’s about positioning my positioning Red Direction and what my non-negotiables are. And then I also have one will be Where’s some of these are just, I know what they mean. But they won’t mean anything to you. If I just read them out loud. Oh, this one can come out because it showed up. Look at this podcast bumpers. Take out Fast Track Your Business. send everybody to read direction. I did that inadvertently. So now that we’re going through my box,
Quentin Ortega 18:06
You can go on the bed. And I feel like we just call the future for everybody that’s watching.
Christy Maxfield 18:09
This sense to have like, how do you prioritize the all of these things are important? All my baby ideas are? What are your expectations? That also I think comes into play is you expecting everything you prioritize will have a phenomenal end-results. Are you only willing to do the things you feel are unknown outcome and very low risks? Are you looking for the right way as a recovering, right where I would say that I’m not necessarily afraid of failing, but I want to do it the right way. And so is that holding you back, because I would also say if you look behind the scenes on all this, just as given a structure, she’s given us a structure for putting together ideas, choosing what to talk about when to show up. Let’s just be honest, Jess has done a heavy lifting for which I’m deeply grateful I’ve been just another setting, right. And we don’t treat it like it’s super precious. Or like I can talk about this, we got a rough idea of what we want to say when we want to say it, what we want people to leave behind from but I think as much as we want to reach people, even one or two people with something that actually helps them do what they want to do. I believe that’s important to all of us. We also want to have fun and we really like talking to each other and we also know that we need to be creating content in our lives. And we also know that video is the preferred way of doing it so if we can match together fun with getting some content in a format that we know is best for all of us and in a way that we can reach people and probably reach people who didn’t we didn’t even know needed to hear us and they didn’t know needed to hear us like if we got overly in our heads about this about four point 12 seconds we’re gonna be switch topics and move over here and Don’t think it would get done because our expectations of the experience and the expectations of the outcome would be far beyond what we could actually feel comfortable securing on. And so what are you letting get in your way? I guess is my question to if you prioritize, and some things get done, and some things don’t, in some things get done with really high fidelity, and some things get done with low fidelity, what are the blockers? Here is one of those things, but it’s not the only thing.
Jess Dewell 20:29
So let’s talk about competitive advantage. I heard this come up earlier. And so we’re talking about structures, we’re talking about priorities, we’re talking about all the different ways priorities can show up. But it does come back to where are we going? What are we trying to do, and do even have a stake in the ground for our company, which by the way, can also help us automatically have a stake in the ground of making these choices, if we are unclear and what our competitive placement, and opportunities are? Everything else could be unclear to here.
Christy Maxfield 20:58
Quentin, you gotta talk about our conversation with JJ. Chris,
Quentin Ortega 21:01
He’s referencing a conversation we had earlier this week, about creating more video content. Right. And, and the producer that we talked to your JJ he shared a tour with us, we’re basically, if anyone that’s listening has used kind of the Google search trends tool where you could go in type of thing, and you can see like, what’s trending, what’s happening, what’s not, those sorts of things, it’s basically that for, like, video course content, right, where you can type a word and and see, is there a gap here? Or are a million people creating content for this, so maybe it’s covered? Right, you don’t need to spend a bunch of time covering this because other people are basing it I think that process to your point, Jess, of, of your competitive advantage, you have to look for those gaps, right, as you’re deciding how your path forward look for the gaps, look for where your competitive advantages, but I also always work with people take the lead in to that together with the why, which is, I think, an important part of that competitive advantage that I always talk to people about because there are Chris and I used to talk about this all the time, like multiple people have the same idea, right? If you’re in the world of business, you’re going to encounter more than one person whose pitch the same exact idea basically for a new company. And so competitive advantage also has to factor in like why will you be successful at this thing when other people might not right? And that ties back to what we were saying earlier, leaning into your strengths? Why are you the person for this? And how can you leverage that forward?
Christy Maxfield 22:26
We didn’t even enter that call, thinking we would create something together was really an opportunity for me to meet JJ and what I think we identifying the gap and saying, like, intuitively, I know I need to be creating more video content in order to reach the audience I want to reach in order to do more of the work I want to do. But then it got the shape in this form that you were talking about just of like, how much more intentional? Can I be about what kind of content? What am I talking about? Where is it going to be available? Who is looking at those things right now. And it just came, like what started as I need to be doing this became like, Oh, I could do this. Not only will it be fun for me. But there’s a space, there’s a space here where we carve out a distinct voice. I think from a competitive advantage standpoint, we also have to remember your if your competitors are keeping the field wide open the way you are, that none of you are being really laser-focused on a few things that can really drive your respective businesses forward. So if the only thing you do is limit the number of phrases you give yourself, make those decisions and take that action, you will have differentiated yourself from your competitors, probably by and large.
Jess Dewell 23:45
I’m thinking back to a long time ago in my world, we were the first ecommerce company to have anything, it wasn’t an official affiliate program. But it was a way to track who sent sales to the page. So all the work could be done on the outs or outside of our system. We were an ecommerce system, that one tool, when we figured out how to do that it was the most requested and we couldn’t figure out how to do it for everybody. And once we found out the solution of just how to do that and track it was a differentiator It was first to market that was it was the first ecommerce platform for to for technology, I’ll say that had any sort of tracking for partnership sales and things like that. And it’s because we listened, we heard what was going to be going on. And we had the relationship with clients that they said, This is something we think you can do for us. And we would really like to continue to be your partner and have you do this with us. And so I think that’s an outcome of what I was hearing you say. And I would say today, I’m all about judgment. I know a lot of people are like no, don’t be judgy No, don’t be dirty. Guess what? I’m all about all the other stuff too. But what are decisions? They’re judgments by saying yes to decision you’re saying no to a lot of other things. Judgment is the same way. I’ve decided this is important. so everything else is not important. And it’s not that it’s not important to other people, it’s not important for where we are in this place in space. And so that goes back to some of the things of what’s really the priority? How solid Are you in what you really want to do? And when are you willing to claim it. And that is part of competitive advantage to, I was thinking about best practices, where all that came from. So now we’re working backwards, all the way back to where my thoughts started, which was when we have 10 things that we are compared to our competitors for and whatever our industry is, as soon as that is not your baseline that you got to break out of, if that’s the baseline with which everybody is talking to you. Now, you’re competing on price alone. So how do you break back out to that in these growth strategies, whether it’s the ANSOFF matrix, or value pricing, or whatever else it could be, it’s a matter of who’s determined these best practices that I’m supposed to be a part of, and how can I judge my way out of it?
Quentin Ortega 25:57
I saw Christy’s face, and I think we would probably all three of us would agree, you don’t want to be competing on price alone. If that’s happening, it is a known race to the bottom and not good, right? So if you find yourself your business in that space, it’s a good time to start looking around and being like, I need to reevaluate strategy, I need to ask people to come in, have conversations with other experts have conversations with other partners about how to how do we redirect right before before you’re in that position.
Christy Maxfield 26:23
And how many sacred cows are there, if everything’s a sacred cow, and you’re not willing to change anything, because that’s how we do it in this industry, then chances are, you’re not going to claim to make a decision that claims a competitive advantage, you make a incrementally better at something. But I think the biggest fear most people have is the opportunity cost, the FOMO. If I do that, I can’t do that. And because I don’t want to have to choose, I choose nothing. And therefore I don’t do anything that’s strategically differentiated in the market. And it is truly the thing that would set me apart from others. And then they’re terrified, I think at all times, people are terrified. If I do that, then only those people who will come and do business with me, and a if there’s enough of them, what’s the harm in that. And B, if other people find you and you want to do business with them, take their money, do business with them. But there is this perception that if I make choices, and I differentiate and I niched down, that in doing so, I self-limit the potential of my company to grow, where in fact, all everything I’ve ever read and experienced, has been once you niche down, the clutter goes away, the energy gets amplified, the results increase. You’re like, why didn’t I ever do this before?
Jess Dewell 27:48
Mandy Harenberg actually shared a question that she’s interested in hearing how we support clients in tracking and measuring our results. And I think this segues right into that. Because a lot of the time what we’re talking about, I think the three of us, we know, oh, we got this, we know what the outcomes are going to be. But they’re a ways away. They’re in the future. Good feedback. Right? And it’s hard. And everybody wants instant gratification. So I think Mandy’s question is very valid and reminding ourselves okay, so what does it look like along the way?
Quentin Ortega 28:24
Again, there’s a ton of tools and techniques out there that different people prescribe to for this process. But I think that the main thing that I lean on is one of my favorite words, really is being an accountability buddy, Christy loves when I bring that one up to my clients, and still figuring out and meeting where they are in their journey first, and then say, and then setting goals with them collaboratively and then coming back distantly, and being that person that’s going to call them out, if they’re not making progress on the things that are important, or also giving them the comfort of knowing that there’s another set of eyes trying to see what’s most important and where they should be focused on.
Christy Maxfield 29:02
Apparently planning the future because I believe all of our futures, live in that bar,
Quentin Ortega 29:08
Or put a box that has a closed lid on like hers on a desk on my desk that just says the future and just see was brave enough to open it when they walked by who’s curious enough, right? It looks great.
Jess Dewell 29:20
Oh, I’m totally going to have a future box.
Christy Maxfield 29:23
That’s gonna have to brand it. I think it’s a Red Direction. Feature.
Jess Dewell 29:26
Oh, do you think we got swag? We could have it. You’re busy swag?
Christy Maxfield 29:29
I think so. Yeah, not just any future rocks, but the Red Direction future. Love with the little note that kinda looks like the TED last I believe on it. I think we should blend anyway.
Jess Dewell 29:42
I have a structure that I use for every client. So here’s how we’re measuring results. Because what we’re talking about in the world that I’m working in, how do we change our skills? What does change management look like? How are we doing this planning? One of the things Mandy that is really important to me is that we have an act, there’s an action plan. And that action plan is three months, six months, and at least 12, sometimes we jump out to 24 really depends on the risk factors of the company that I’m working with. But in those three months, there’s usually leadership development. And there are tasks within the business. So leadership development for one of the companies that I worked with recently, they had a goal that they wanted to sell their company. So cool, we got together, what does that do their short term was to be able to change up some of their books, see what was going on in there and be able to make different decisions from an outside perspective versus just being the owner of the company. So that was a three-month goal, there were actionable steps to take to make it happen. And then there was the conversation that I was able to facilitate, to go pass fail, basically. And really, it’s more than pass-fail. It’s always an improvement. And it’s always the past, because unless nothing happened, there’s improvement. And again, when you have some information, now you’ve learned from it, and you can actually think some more and make some other decisions and try some other things. And that’s what we’re even doing with leadership and leadership. This is like boundaries. This is how do we want to do our work together, I have another client who that is coming to mind in this that had to practice boundaries around just around the way work was done. Being online to be available to clients was not the same as being at work. And that distinction had to be made for this company. And there are things that are and that those two things I work with on a lot of companies, even though I only had two in mind, as I’m thinking about Mandy’s question.
Christy Maxfield 31:37
I think our work inherently is to support our clients in getting clear on where they want to go. Understanding where what has to happen between here where we are, and where do you want to be sequencing, making decisions, assessing what we learned from it, making another set of decisions. And moving forward, if you distill our work down, whether we helped monitor the action plan that we helped design, whether we helped them build a job description, and fill key roles, whether we put together a financial pro forma, or review their financial statements with them, or dive into what is cost of goods sold, doing relative to the revenue that we’re generating, right? There are tangible things that we can touch and feel and do. But our fundamental role is to help them do the things they’ve told us they want to do. And that without us, they are generally unable to do with as much fidelity as they are with us. Because it’s same thing I go back to like physical conditioning, if you if you want a specific result, there are very few number of people in the world who can then design their own plan, stick to it, measure their own results, and then come back to the world and say, Look what happened to 12 months, I went from this to this right? Most of us need somebody who can say, if you really want that result, you got to work on this muscle, and you got to work this muscle in this sequence. And then you got to work this other muscle and now you get to rest and let things repair because everybody forgets how important that is. It’s hard. It’s hard to be your own trainer, it’s hard to be your own coach, it’s hard to be your own planner, and execution, accountability, buddy. And that that value that you derive from working with a professional who not only understands how the business of business works, but then how the business of people in business work. ethic is really something that most people don’t get. Unfortunately, most people don’t give themselves the gift of enjoying and reaping the benefit, though.
Quentin Ortega 33:43
The work that I do is always a balancing act of Yes, I’m here to help the business. And yes, I’m here to help you figure out how that business grows. But we can’t do that. If the executive or executives that I’m working with are not also taking care of themselves and are not also in a good place with their family and their family time. And like all those other pieces. Right. And so, inevitably, like unavoidably I would say even like we get around to this deeper conversation of what’s going on in your personal life, right? Because everybody’s business is a reflection of their personal life to some extent, right. If you’re the owners and you’re driving the vision, you’re driving the strategy and goals. It’s tied in. It’s a big part of who you are.
Jess Dewell 34:22
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. This is It’s Your Business and I’m your host Jess Dewell, Managing Partner of Red Direction.
Quentin Ortega 34:29
I’m Quentin Ortega, President of QCL Consulting,
Christy Maxfield 34:33
And Christy Maxfield, President and CEO of Purpose First Advisors.
Jess Dewell 34:41
I’m your host Jess Dewell, and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business Podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.
ANNOUNCER 34:58
Maybe you are or know a company that is looking for support to double their revenues to $3 million, 10 million or $25 million. Jess Dewell will roll up her sleeves to quickly understand your growth strategy and assess how you work with uncertainty. How much stamina is being used to make decisions, and how your current priorities aligned to your long-term growth goals. You can schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at Reddirection.com. And now back to the program.
Jess Dewell 35:34
Until I knew what I really liked this conversation, and I appreciate Mandy’s question because it’s amazing the lasting results of the reflection and the rest, that make the biggest difference. And they actually help us with our competitive advantage. I was thinking about just decision-making in general one, I think people have decision fatigue. And I know that’s a thing now but decision fatigue, but at the same point in time, I actually think there’s the ambiguity is a problem. But before we get to the ambiguity of what it actually means to make decisions and why that might get in our way. How about we talk about technology? Because we did have a question from Katherine, who she said, hey, I want to hear your thoughts about technology, when is it worth the effort to switch? Because no software is going to give you everything you need? You’re absolutely right.
Quentin Ortega 36:25
In this assessment of there’s not a one, one solution fits all right earlier. In this conversation, I mentioned structure. And I talked a little bit about finding the structure that works for you. And I think that if you’re going to bring software bring technology into the conversation of how to be better, faster, more efficient at decisioning. You have to really look at what software is going to fit within the bounds of your normal processes, right, how you work, how your team works, and what’s going to be conductive, not disruptive, right to that flow. Because I think that there’s a ton of tools, there’s a ton of things. But I’ve seen so many companies that I started working with who are like, Yeah, we have a CRM, and I’m like, does anyone use it? And I know, and I’m like, like, your systems are only as good as how much they’re used. And so when it’s worth the effort to switch to to get into your like, next question there is really dependent on your they have to feel that situation out, right? Like I think that if you’re a solo operator for quite a while you can survive in your own head in your notes in your bouncing around. From my experience, once you start to get past the word able to fit in a small conference room size. So you’ve got four or five people on a team that are trying to coordinate efforts for a company to grow and it’s paid for by people. And that’s even if some of them are part-time, right? So I’m talking it doesn’t really matter if they’re full-time or part-time. It breaks down based on number of people that are interacting with the goal, then you certainly to look for some tools and there’s a bunch out there. A lot of people I know choose Asana for just like project management decisioning to start easy to onboard my partners and I Christie was mentioning this earlier, we’ve run a modified version and heavily modified version of JIRA, which is like a wizard Asana along with a bunch of other things to just have a way to stack the tasks and they are we prioritizing the right one, how long is each one is going to take? And obviously you’re also trying to figure out how many of your decisions if we want to talk about the task, because decisions are quick yes or no most people get stuck in, I have too many decisions to make that decision fatigue, there it is now near the quick answers. And you really need, it helps to put them all in a system, whatever that system may be, to start to even if it’s boxes on your desk, where you’re able to make quicker decisions, right? Because you need to be able to process quickly, right, and when you can’t see them, or when you’re missing some of them or when you’re randomly remembering those of them. It’s very difficult to make those decisions fast, you should let go of the idea that a system is going to have everything you want to do
Jess Dewell 39:00
I’m just being able to go okay, this is the foundation piece. And now we get to make decisions from it. So if we want to track this ROI, what can we do with the tools that we have committed to because there are tools that help us be the culture that we have and move the way that we want to move? That’s what I would add in terms of this. And don’t move until you outgrow it? That’s actually a trap, isn’t it? It’s a trap. Because all this technology is new. So let’s go do it. And let’s there is fatigue in that. And that is actually the best quickest, fastest way to not grow.
Quentin Ortega 39:33
I was in a call earlier this week where I was talking through a plan someone’s financial plan for a new project. And the problem was is that everything in their plan was variable, right? And what you said is what you just said is you have to release the lock in one you have to have a constraint you have to have a wall where the buck stops here and then you can work backwards to fill in the rest of those variables. Right and, and I think that business owners I encountered myself included We’re all we’re like, Oh, I could change anything about it. But you have to pick something or use a tool that forces you to put some boundaries on. So that you have a backstop to start adjusting and deciding the other variables on whether that’s is this valuable enough is the hourly rate high enough to pick a thing and draw a line in the sand, you can change the line in the sand later. That’s why it’s in stand.
Christy Maxfield 40:23
I love the idea of using the system choice as a constraint that then you then have to first eliminate whether or not the system can be used for it. If it’s truly something you have to do, and you had not do it with what you currently have, that really does validate the need for something more specialized. And I do subscribe to the idea that as our businesses grow, we need more specialized people and more specialized tools to do the work we’re going to do. I also 100% agree, you should only be switching when you need to switch when the system is no longer meeting the need of the business no longer meeting the needs of the team. And I know that feels almost like a Get Out of Jail, oh, I can undo this decision, you cannot undo most decisions. Most decisions in life are not set in stone, they’re set in stone. So even if it’s not explicitly stated, There are very few instances where making a choice is irreversible. What I also really liked about what both of you said was it gives visibility because again, if we’re rowing in the wrong direction, like I think that getting this meeting done is the most important thing we have to accomplish this week, and you say, finishing this other task is the most important thing we have to get done this week, we’re going to be at loggerheads, we’re going to divide our resources, we’re going to divide our time and our energy, and we’re gonna be Pat we’re gonna, we’re gonna be pissed at each other, because we won’t be as effective as we need to be. And then I would just say low tech, the high tech before you add to figure out how you do the thing, right, and then which tech is going to help you do the thing. The way you’re most the way you want to do the thing, right? So I get a lot of pushback on people tracking time. Because they feel like it’s a burden. And then I have to explain if you really want to know if your pricing on that project or that good or service is profitable than this the single largest variable in whether or not it’s a profitable activity, the way you’ve priced it is how much time was spent to execute the work, even if you didn’t price it in to the customer based on time. The reality is people get paid based on time. And when you overwork a project, even if you’re in manufacturing, if you have to rework two or three times, you’ve now lowered your profitability. I have a cake maker who’s one of my plan, and they track the time it takes to execute the design. And they compare it to the amount of time they estimated in the quo, that it would take them to do that. Because the only way they can get better at properly pricing is not only know oh, this thing has three layers and on and on and this, but it also took two hours of design time compared to any other design we did that day, right? In that case, I will say even using a pen and paper as your primary technology. If it gets you what you need, which is how much time did I spend on this, but I can evaluate profitability, then do it.
Quentin Ortega 43:39
Like they are very, very powerful.
Christy Maxfield 43:44
And if I really want to get down and dirty and I when I’m invoicing a client, I’m using toggle. And when I’m looking at historical trends, I’m going What did a likened similar project actually paid for me to do compared to what I thought it was going to take me to do. Because that gives me more data to make better decision and learn from my experience.
Jess Dewell 44:07
And all that this wherever your constraint is whatever tool whatever technology you have today, if you are thinking about changing because there’s something better evaluate if there is if you’re thinking about changing because it’s not working for some, what’s it not working adoption, culture, being able to use it consistently and everybody doing the same thing? Culture, and there’s a lot of different things about that. So then you can make your action plan you can figure out what is what are those hiccups and start having the conversations to make those changes.
Quentin Ortega 44:38
As the leader in the business, no matter the size of your business, you were not willing to use the tool and it doesn’t work for you. It’s not the ritual because the culture is gonna follow what they see you doing and if you buy a system and say, Hey, sales team use the system but you’re unwilling to use it yourself. You’re setting the tone for that, and so the I’ve seen so many business owners expect their team to use a tool so that they can get insight, but not use it themselves. And so the quickest way to decide what tool your your team should use is, what will you start there? Because if you won’t use it, then it’s not going to, you know,
Jess Dewell 45:16
We have one more question that’s going to be a, I think, a part of this answer. And as part of our discussion, when we’re talking about we want results. So we have to quit planning. And we have to start acting, start deciding, start learning, whatever that is, the reality of decision making is, uncertainty is our normal, hands down, whatever, you’re going to make a decision, you’re making a choice, there will be cascading effects, you’re making a choice that is uncertain. And it could be as little as or, or the only thing you think about is our data is imperfect, we will never have perfect data. So uncertainty is the norm, to can we recognize our assumption, what assumptions are we bringing to this decision, and have stamina for finding them and acknowledging them, whether they make a difference in the end result doesn’t matter. We just need to know what our assumptions are. That’s second thing. The third thing is you’d call it a line in the sand earlier Q it’s our decisions are not set in stone they are for right now. Sometimes we think we’re making we have to let go the fact every decision we’re making is going to impact us five and 10 years down the road. No, it won’t, we’re making a decision to go moment to moment, sometime, we’re making a decision to hit to the next week through the next payroll, maybe to reach our growth goal this year. And that is going to be all in line with where we’re going. But the decisions we make today are not going to be the one that actually impact what happens in our future. It’s the culmination of each small decision. They’re not forever, decisions are forever. decisions
Quentin Ortega 46:47
aren’t forever, they can be reworked. I think Chris has done that earlier. Right. There’s not there’s very few of them that you can’t go back and redo. And I think that I want to point out that that oftentimes, when there is a cultural problem in a workplace that can often be driven by leaders or decision makers who are out there who believes that going back on a decision they made shows weakness. And I think that’s something that we as a work working society have to work to fix, right? Because I think that there’s a there are a lot of years, there was a culture, I made a decision. And I’m the manager, and that’s the decision no matter what. And if they went back on that they look weak. And I think that, in reality, you want people that are willing to question and realize that they made wrong mistakes, no one is perfect, you’re going to make wrong decisions along the way to guaranteed there’s no way to make always to always make the right decisions. And so being willing to accept that being aware of it, and looking to surround yourself with people that also know that and understand that and value, the fact that you’re willing to go back and be like, hey, this was this was a mistake, let’s retool and keep going again.
Christy Maxfield 47:57
That for me brings up the opposite of that is you have to commit to a decision long enough to actually learn something from it. Right. On the flip side of that is, there are a culture problems where there’s constant whiplash, but I think we understand each other, I think we’re all going in the same direction you told me to do at an I will do it, only to find that a day, two days, three weeks, four months from now, you’re going to ask me to do the complete opposite, or to scrap something I’ve done. And that actually erodes a whole lot of trust, and creates a culture where people will wait and see, which means nothing gets done, because I’m just gonna wait out, I’m just gonna wait you out. You have to both make a decision, allow it to play out. And then based on the data, be willing to change your mind if that’s necessary. Which also means you have to be willing to read people into your process because in the absence of information, they will make up stories. So do you have to do total open book? No. But you do need to give them a here was my thinking on. If they’re investors, you need to do a lot of that. If they’re employees, you need to do some of that. If they’re a high-ranking decision makers, you probably need to do a lot of that. But it’s not enough to just say because I said so. Because that’s not going to work either. And it allows me to trust in your decision-making process, not necessarily the decision and how they turned out. But the decision-making process if I understand how you’re doing that, that requires ownership. So if one of the reasons you’re not making decisions is because you don’t want to own the outcome when we’re talking about business owners themselves. They are the ones creating their own judgment, feelings of shame, feelings of disappointment, almost no one in their family in their business is looking at their decision and saying that failed. You are your own worst enemy in terms of whether or not you’re willing to accept that something might not turn out the way you had planned. And so if you can come to terms with the fact that you might have to make a different decision that you might have to turn to whomever or no one at all other than yourself, and say, in hindsight, I wouldn’t have done. But that doesn’t mean you would have done the exact opposite of it, either. Because it’s not a binary. And just because the thing you chose didn’t work out the way you want it to doesn’t mean if you would chose the other side of the coin, so to speak, that you would have gotten a better result, you just would have gotten a result. And then you would determine whether or not that result is good or bad. And then just a thought, on the 90 day here that just introduced, like taking your plans and breaking them down into 90-day sprints, or time blocks, whatever you want to call it, gives you a chance to then ask the question at the end of that period, keep going, make a different choice. And in the context of the work I do in Exit Planning, the framework for certified Exit Planning advisors suggests that you’re using 90-Day sprint, at an owner level to ask the question, keep growing, or sell. And so imagine if every 90 days over the course of 567 10 years, I asked myself keep growing or sell growing yourself, you grow yourself, eventually, I’m going to change my mind like one day, it’s not going to be the same answer. And the earlier I can detect that, the more I can anticipate. This is a couple episodes ago, if you like I can create enough time and space, timing and distance to then take advantage of whatever has changed in my circumstance, my passion level for the business, my personal desire to keep working this hard. The needs of my family, something probably has changed. That makes the answer different. And now if I can answer that sooner rather than later, I have enough time and distance to be able to create that opportunity.
Quentin Ortega 52:20
I want to also highlight this question this fear of failure question from the angle of building a team, right and how you’re enabling that. And so creating a culture where failure is good or encouraged, or as long as you learn from it, I think becomes a really critical part. And one of the examples of this that I see in that I push people to try to do is related to decisioning is habit structure. Again, here’s that word structure of which employees at what level which team members? Or what level are able to make decisions? And how big are those decisions? How big of a decision can they make on their own autonomously? And what’s the protocol for bringing that back and reporting on its success or failure, right and encouraging learning. These example that’s always giving given is there’s a hotel chain, I don’t remember which one it is that gives their managers up to $5,000, or something to solve. To solve a problem each day, or each week or something, there’s a structure there that they know, I can act autonomously, to make decisions, without management without needing anyone around me to help me make that decision. If it improves the outcome, or my customer that’s in front of me. I think that is a breezy, valuable thing to remember, as you build a culture as you build a team, you as a leader don’t want to be the only one making the decisions, let me assure you because there’s too many, you need to let other people make decisions in order to be successful. And as part of that, giving them a structure and encouraging an openness of if it failed, why did it fail? Let’s talk about it. You’re not in trouble. There’s no so the failure is not really a failure. But looking at failures, learning versus failure, I think is important. And so agree 100% of all that, I think that it applies to as you look at building this team, building this culture and giving people the license and the structure to go make those decisions for you and your company. And as long as they’re willing to learn from figuring out what those lines are, I think for you and your business.
Christy Maxfield 54:14
And sometimes a mistake is a mistake. And you can say it was a failure. And what we learned from it is that we have to do more to mitigate our risk in the future. Right? I think it’s the consequence. And understanding what kind of autonomy does somebody have and what is the consequence as owner, you have the greatest consequent and the ultimate responsibility. But taking ownership owning it, whatever it is, own it.
Jess Dewell 54:39
We do risk mitigation, not only at Red Direction, we do it in my household. And it is actually something that we do in the action plans as well. So when we’re talking about how do we get results before, part of that is risk mitigation, and we’re asking the question, what’s the worst that can happen here? That’s the, what’s the worst that can happen? And am I okay with it? And if I’m not okay, what’s not okay, because all that does As a shape forward, how do we avoid the things that I’m actually afraid of? What am I actually afraid of here? Which changes because I’m thinking, when was the last time I faced the fear of failure? And I was like, somebody asked me to jump out of a plane, I would be afraid of that. But that’s fear. That’s not a fear of failure.
Christy Maxfield 55:16
Fear of dying. Let’s be clear.
Jess Dewell 55:18
Yeah, it’s fear. It’s a fear of splat, April. And I have no interest in that, even though I’m willing to if somebody else did it, I would probably in the moment, I would probably do it too, because I’m not that afraid of it. But I’m like, what
Quentin Ortega 55:31
Typically is a way to fail at jumping out of a plane? Whew, that’s true. You can’t do it. I’m just trying to think about
Jess Dewell 55:37
What’s the worst-case scenario?
Christy Maxfield 55:38
That’s what we’re talking about here. Right. And if you want to avoid lat at all costs, you stay in the damn perfectly good team.
Jess Dewell 55:46
All I know is this is I think the worst-case scenario is interesting, because what it does is illuminate those places that we might think are weaknesses, but it also illuminates things we haven’t given ourselves enough credit for, that we have past experience with. And that the piece that that’s why I like this, because it’s a way to go, oh, yeah, we have a weakness here as the person who’s in charge or the company as a whole, or it’s, oh, that’s the worst that could happen. Look at all these other things that we’ve actually overcome that are pretty amazing that we’ve done in the past. So I think that particular question is a great way. Now, no matter what, if it creates a little bit of a pucker, wow, this is big. This is new, this is something let me just tell you take a closer look because I’ll bet there’s an opportunity for growth in there. Because you’re also going to ask the question, what’s the worst thing?
Quentin Ortega 56:35
I don’t know if I love the bug, bug report. I’m wasn’t really thinking about that.
Jess Dewell 56:39
You know exactly, you both went you went, oh.
Christy Maxfield 56:42
And they both occurred on calls with Q because we learn the wish biscuit
Quentin Ortega 56:47
earlier this week,
Christy Maxfield 56:48
just a biscuit made of wishes
Quentin Ortega 56:52
Wish biscuit and the bug pucker.
Jess Dewell 56:54
So what’s your biggest takeaway?
Quentin Ortega 56:55
Find the structure that works for you and then apply the Is this something I just want? Or is this something I needed to achieve today to get done to achieve my goals, find that path forward?
Christy Maxfield 57:05
For me, it’s the actually deciding, making the decision, all you took away today was I have to start trying to keep my feet in both worlds, whatever those two worlds are, right? And I just need to make a decision. Ask that question, what’s the worst that could happen? Assuming I can live with the outcome, just do it. Just take the action and start small, if it’s a dinner and usually have to talk for an hour about what for dinner, the worst that can happen is you eat something you didn’t enjoy, and you go eat something else. Right? So the restaurant or cook the dead thing, whatever the case may be right, like, just start getting familiar with what it feels like to make a decision and deal with whatever comes after. And I trust me, it will not be as scary or horrible or insurmountable as you think it will be.
Jess Dewell 58:05
I really liked both of those things. And I will add the assumption piece because we forget that’s a big part of decision-making. And that’s actually the place where it seems that we lose not only lose momentum, but we have to every single time we’re going through the thing. And if we haven’t made one decision, we have to think how is that going to affect this potential, but decision and this potential decision and this potential decision. And that time is incredibly valuable. And the energy that it takes is too valuable to us in that way.
Quentin Ortega 58:37
I see so many people in their social lives, right. I think this applies to that, too. They say Oh, I don’t know if I can make it to that event next week. And they wind up not going anywhere. Because they didn’t they were unwilling to commit to their schedule. Just be it a thing. And I think that you should live every day as the main character in your video game. So the main character video game doesn’t stay home, he goes to the events and he does the things right. Make the decision. Get out there and do it be the main character.
Jess Dewell 59:02
You heard it here. This was It’s Your Business brought to you by the Bold Business Podcast. See you next time.
Jess Dewell 59:11
This is just one program I’ve created in the pursuit of identifying the right work to be done, and then doing as much of that work as possible. Because that’s where success happened. We’re talking about building businesses that last the Bold Business Podcast equips leaders, business owners and management teams with the strategic mindsets and the practical tools to navigate the ever-evolving business landscape. Before you go, remember to visit reddirection.com for solutions, articles, and more programs like this one created to help you navigate the challenges that you’re facing in your business today. Don’t forget to follow us on our social media channels to keep up with all the latest insights. It is bold to pursue building a business that lasts. Until next time.
ANNOUNCER 1:00:08
Jess hosts the Bold Business Podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at Reddirection.com. Thank you for joining us and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.