Episode 132: M.I.T. Business

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable?

That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answers.

I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast.

Welcome to The Bottom Line, a new weekly podcast series that we drop every Thursday to complement our weekly Monday podcast interviews with the industry leaders. These podcasts are going to be designed to give you short, impactful, and value-driven information that you can start using right away in your business. I value your time and attention and will do my very best not to waste it. Just get what you need and go. So with that, let's get into today's episode.

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Hey everyone, welcome back for part 3 of a 3-part miniseries called The Most Important Thing on the solo episodes version of The Bottom Line. So let me take you back. Last couple weeks. So 2 weeks ago we talked about what's the most important thing you can do for yourself is to protect your confidence. Do that by capturing wins on a regular basis. Last week we discussed what's the most important thing I think you can do for your team, and that's to give them your energy. Ultimately, they're going to feed off your energy one way or the other, and you can't pour from an empty cup. You need to put your oxygen mask on first and One of the ways to do that is have an awareness of your energy rhythms and then architect and build your week based on that. And I think this week, what's the most important thing you can do for your business? Look, this could have gone a lot of different places, but the thing that I settled on, I think I came up with this idea of the MIT maybe 2 or 3 years ago, and I think the most important thing you can do for your business is to think about your business. And just hear me out. The first time that I heard about this idea of thinking time came from Keith Cunningham, incredible entrepreneur, uh, business coach. He is the rich dad in Rich Dad Poor Dad. Many of you may not, may not know that, but he is the one that's portrayed in that book by Robert Kiyosaki. And so at first when I heard that, one of the things that really stuck out to me about this idea of thinking time is whenever he says anytime you're making a decision with your gut or your glands, just think about making a decision— that gut stands for gave up thinking. Anytime you're making a decision with your gut, it stands for gave up thinking. And at the time, and when I reflect back, every decision that I've ever made, every bad decision that turned out, always started out as a good decision. What I didn't do is take the time to actually really think things through. I was emotional in my decision-making. And many of you may be thinking I'm referring to emotions in a negative sense. Meaning that I was down or I was depressed or I was just flat out angry. And yes, those were certainly times that I've made some decisions, made some calls, changed things in the businesses whenever I shouldn't have. I was reactionary in the moment and felt like I needed to come up with an answer immediately. I mean, yes, that happens. But actually, do you know when some of the worst decisions I've ever made is whenever I was coming off of a high. We had an awesome month. We had a great quarter. Maybe we even celebrated an incredible year. And that was the time that I got stupid, delusional, and thought everything that I was touching was just going to work. And I would in some cases overstaff. But simply put, I would definitely overspend. And then when the tide went out, I've heard Warren Buffett, Buffett say, when the tide goes out, that's whenever you see who was swimming naked. And that happened to me on a number of occasions. And so now the discipline of actually spending time every week thinking on and thinking about the business. You maybe have heard me say before that Gerber is the first one that really I think popularized the idea of working on your business, not in it. He certainly came up with that, that phrase for sure in his book, The E-Myth. But how do you— what does that actually mean? And I think one of the things that it can mean is spending time every week thinking about your business, and that is a dedicated hour of time thinking on paper, not typing into a Google Doc or a Word document. And then going into that with a question. Many of you have heard it and have— I've seen myself that when someone asks me a really good question, boy, it makes you, it makes you stop in your tracks and to think, you know, simply put, there are times when you feel like that you want to change a compensation plan as an example, or you want to start a project, or you really want to reconsider your marketing efforts, are they working? You talk to somebody, you go to a conference, you go to a convention, you get fired up, you get around people that are doing well. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. The problem is the amount of thinking that we do equates to really daydreaming, as opposed to actually spending the time necessary to really think things through. And oftentimes what we think that we're thinking, we're basically just selling ourselves on the idea and telling ourselves how good that idea is. Well, in a previous episode I mentioned ideas are everywhere. It's the implementation and the execution that is everything. I can't recall if it was actually in a solo episode or another one, but the ability to figure out what the actual constraint of your business is, like what's the thing that's really holding you back, That takes time to really think that through. And once you've really defined what the constraint is, then you can begin to articulate, well, what are the possible solutions or strategies to overcome that? Well, those are endless. There are so many things you can do. And I think that a lot of times we mistaken a belief of the a description of the gap as opposed to what really is causing that. And so if we say that our sales are not what they need to be, okay, then we can say, why are our sales not what they need to be? Well, the sales team's not making enough calls, we're not doing enough quotes, we're not having enough, uh, sales conversations that we need to have, depending on what it is that that you sell. Well, that may be true, but why isn't that— why are they not doing that? And oftentimes the answer is 2 and 3 levels deep. And I think it takes maybe more discipline to take the time to think on paper as to what that actually could be, what the real constraint is. And then once we figured out what it is, to then take the time to detail out, okay, where are— what are all the possible things that we're going to do we could do, excuse me, and what are the things we're actually going to do? I can remember making decisions and listening to a podcast myself or listening to an audiobook, getting an idea, and by the time I've walked into the office, that's what we're going to do. Let's call everybody together. Let's get some people on Zoom. I've got this harebrained idea. That is definitely going to be the next best thing. And there's definitely a time and a place to get excited about it. But I think that for me, taking the time to say, all right, I really need to work this through. There was a— I was talking to some of our other coaches recently about this idea of going from the principles that I believe in, in business, going from 6 to 5 principles. And I kind of floated the idea, and there was enough there from the feedback that I got that said, yeah, I think that there's something there. So I then took, uh, right at about 90 minutes and went through trying to convince myself, almost debate both sides of it. So I said, well, okay, we're all— what are all the reasons why we should do this? But then what are all the reasons we should not do this? And asking myself that question, almost taking both sides of a situation instead of just looking at it from one way, because again, we're really good at convincing ourselves and telling ourselves a story, was very helpful for me. So then I could begin to weigh out, okay, was this actually worth it? What's the benefit by doing this? What's the downside by doing this? And can I live with the potential downside? If you're familiar with, uh, Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach's Impact Filter, they basically talk about what's the best thing, uh, part of the very bottom that says it's a one-pager. It's great. I think you can download it for free online. And so anytime you're thinking about possibly doing something, that's a good template to potentially use in your thinking time. For me, I just use a legal pad. And go into it with a project or most of the time a question. And I'll share with you the very last thing that I always walk out of in just a second from that. But I ultimately will say, what's the best thing that can happen if we do this? And then also, what's the worst thing that can happen if we do it? And then the last, very last thing is I think about what do I need to calendar and what do I need to communicate? Sometimes that's referred to as cascading communication. But I'll say, okay, great, I am sold on this. And sometimes I'm not always sold. Sometimes it's incomplete. I don't have enough time to finish that, or I'm stuck. I need to come back to this at another time. So what do I encourage you to do? I encourage you to consider installing thinking time into your week. And if you go back to last week, I talked about energy rhythms. This is not something that you probably want to do whenever your energy is at its highest. You want to do front stage activities when you're, when you're there. Doesn't necessarily have to be whenever your energy is the lowest either, but it definitely needs to be at a time and in an environment and in a place that allows you the best chance to get into flow, uh, the best chance that allows you to be able to focus. For me, that never ever happens in the office. Never ever. For me, I found the best time to do thinking time is in the mornings. In fact, really early. So wake up at 5:00. Usually once I go through my, quote, morning routine, that 6:30 to 7:30 or 6:15 to 7:15 time is a really good time. And I enjoy doing it on Friday mornings in particular. And usually it's with a chair, in a chair, comfortable chair, with, uh, one of the pens that I love, a legal pad, and a cup of coffee. And that is when I do some of the very best thinking for my business. So let's recap some of the things, the high points, so to speak. If I was going to boil all this down into 3 minutes or so, Maybe less than that. Most important thing I think you can do for yourself is, above all else, is to protect your confidence. Business is really hard and it gets harder. And so capturing the wins, at least on a weekly basis, so that you can flip back through that. Depending when you started your business, don't you wish you had some sort of a record that you could go back to and see all the wins that you had and just remember those? I think The most important thing you can do for your team is to give 'em your energy. They're gonna feed off of your energy whether we like it or not, but you can't give what you don't have. And having an awareness of your energy and architecting, building your week based on that is a really great best practice. Been very helpful for me. And lastly, I think the most important thing you can do for your business is to spend time thinking about your business. I've heard somebody say that you're the chief problem solver. And there's a time to be able to shoot from the hip and to be able to make decisions on the spot. But oftentimes, the decisions that we're making that affect our teams and our budgets and our financials, I think too often we make those on a whim. We get fired up in a moment or down. We just don't take enough time to actually think about the business. I hope you've enjoyed this little mini series that I've done. We'll be back to a different topic next week. I hope you've been able to get a great return on your time and attention, and I appreciate all of you. Until next episode, lead well. If you're listening to this podcast, I know you're someone who has a growth mindset and you probably want to be able to grow your book of business as well. But DirectClicks specializes in helping insurance agencies leverage Google Ads and SEO to drive inbound phone calls, leads, online visibility, and even organic traffic. You can be confident in knowing exactly how well your ads are working and getting support in what really matters in your business. Get exclusive online marketing support today when you visit directclicksinc.com. You know how important it is to develop yourself and to develop your team. Well, if you're going to do that, you want to do it with the best. Work with Coach P Consulting to learn and implement the same strategies that he used to sell over 700 life policies in 2021 alone. 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