Discover the Urgent Solution | How to Fix Old-School Business Barriers in 4 Minutes

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Emily, who wrote in asking, "Thank you for the articles. They're so encouraging. Please keep it up. I would like to ask this question since I work with managers who are still in the Stone Age and would not like to embrace technology." What is your personal experience with 21st century managers or managers who are stuck in the past, and what would the impact be on the employees in your organization? So, that can be a really frustrating situation to want to push initiatives through and you're stuck with somebody ahead of you who is blocking your ideas. And it's a lot of reasons why people go and start their own business, because they have bosses and managers who they don't like and they feel are stuck in the stone ages and aren't listening to their ideas and positions. Maybe being an entrepreneur is your path, but if it's not, how to change the structure in an organization, it can be really tough for somebody who's used to doing things a certain way to change the way they do it. So especially in an older company, more established business, and managers who may have been in the role for a long time, they have certain patterns, ways of doing things, and that can be really hard to change. The best way I found to do it is to not propose huge, big, sweeping changes which would scare people off, but really, really small steps. So think about whatever you're trying to change. Hopefully you're on the same page in terms of the end goal as your manager, so you both are trying to accomplish the same thing. You just maybe have a better, faster, cheaper, more awesome way of going about doing it. So if you're on that same page, then try to find the smallest step to get the fastest win. So you're not going to go and accomplish your whole goal overnight, but what's the smallest step that you can immediately get some results from, very quickly get some results to be able to show them and say, "Hey, this is working." I try to do it so that you're not investing any of the firm's money. Try to make it more of your time, or try to get a free trial if you're trying to use some software. Try to really bootstrap it up. The more time it takes and the more money that it costs, especially on the money side, then the more your manager's gonna say no. They don't wanna invest the budget. But if you can show that it's having an impact and they're able to accomplish their goals, uh, much more quickly, uh, more cost-effectively than otherwise, then you have a greater chance to be able to sell it up and be able to get budget for it. So start on a small scale. Don't pitch a huge program that might scare them off. Start really small, try to get a quick win without having to spend any money, and then build a case to say, well, we were able to get this far without any money. Now if we invest just a little bit, we'll be able to accomplish a lot more and achieve results, much, you know, with much greater success than what they're currently doing. As you see, they're stuck in the Stone Age. So again, you know, make that in small chunks as you go forward. Even your next pitch after you have your first small success, still make it a small trial. So you only ask for a little bit of money, a little bit of time, and continue to show that what you're doing is having a lot of success. And then it's easier for them to say, okay, keep going, here's more money, here's more time. You're just trying to reduce the risk as much as possible and show them that you have great ideas that can move the company forward. If that doesn't work out, you can always go start your business as well and hopefully have some luck as an entrepreneur. I hope you guys liked the video. If you did, please give it a thumbs up. Seeing those thumbs ups come in makes me want to do more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a question about this video or another question about your business, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I always check those out. And we'll see you on the next episode.