Anxiety vs Strategic Urgency: How to Tell the Difference When Cash is Tight

Welcome to Million Dollar Grit, the podcast that dives deep into the world of entrepreneurship, where tenacity meets strategy and dreams meet reality. My name is Julie Chenell, and I explore the raw, often overlooked truths of what it takes to succeed in business and in life. It's not just about the glossy success stories, it's about the grit it takes to get there.

Hey everyone, this is Julie Chenell. Welcome back to Million Dollar Grit.

Today I'm talking about the difference between anxiety and urgency in your business.

Specifically when things are tight, when you are under a cash flow crunch or you're worried about your profit and loss and you're trying to figure out, am I making this decision using anxiety or using rightful urgency that the situation calls for? And they can really look identical from the outside and they can feel similar on the inside. However, a decision made with anxiety is very different than a decision that is strategic urgency, because it warrants a pivot. I want to talk about the way that you can tell the difference. It's a little blurry. It's not perfect. This is definitely not a science. This is an art, but I'm going to go through some ways that you can do this. The first is a timeline test. When things are intense, your body, your anxiety, your, your mind, everything is going to tell you that this is extremely urgent. And I'm not saying it's not urgent, right? If you're looking, staring down your profit and loss, and you know that you're not going to have enough to keep the lights on, that is true urgency. You're not just making that up. However, strategic decisions, strategically urgent decisions, can survive 48 hours of pausing. And anxiety-driven decisions feel like they have to happen today. And my recommendation is that when you are considering something that is a pretty big pivot, I would give it 48 hours. Not 24, 48. Nothing is going to evaporate in 48 hours. And if it does, if the plan sort of evaporates or it starts to feel less urgent after that 48-hour mark, that's actually a signal that anxiety was really running the show. If at the end of 48 hours, it still feels like an urgent, "Yes, this is the decision we should move in," that's a sign that you are listening more to that strategic urgency rather than that nervous system anxiety. The second thing that you wanna ask yourself is, "Would I do this if I weren't scared?" Right? "Would I do this if I weren't in a cash flow crunch?" And some people might say, That's not a fair question to ask because if I didn't have a cash flow crunch, things would look completely different. And I get that. But let's say that you are considering doing something in your business that you would never do if you had funds available. I'm not saying not to do it. I'm saying there's information there. Okay. And if you would not do it unless you are scared or anxious, that offer idea is most likely based in anxiety and not strategy. Okay. That's just, you know, hold that with an open hand. The third thing I would ask is, is your pivot or is your switch actually going to solve the real problem? And Anxiety loves to put us in motion because it feels like we can control the outcome, but that motion is not necessarily pointed in the right direction. And you might temporarily feel a little bit better, but it's not actually solving the problem. And when you feel anxious, it's sometimes difficult to even figure out what the problem truly is. It just feels catastrophic. And I get this all the time, you know, when people are running a funnel, or, you know, they've just spent a lot of money on ads. They feel a level of responsibility and they're like, it's not working, it's not working, and we need to fix it. But the very first question I need you to answer is, fix what? The fact that you don't have money? The fact that, you know, your funnel isn't converting? The fact that your ads are expensive? Like, what, what are we actually— what is actually figure the problem, the true problem, and is the plan that you're suggesting going to actually solve the problem? And that's the big question. You want to make sure you understand what the problem is and if the plan is really designed to solve it. The next thing I would recommend you ask yourself is when you're making a pivot, is it a departure Or is it an extension? For example, you're running a webinar, you decide to add a second webinar, right? That's an extension of what you're already doing. You are already posting on Instagram. Now you're going to, you know, add 50 DMs a day. That's an extension. A departure is, I'm gonna close this offer down. I'm gonna change my audience. I'm gonna relaunch a brand new offer. Right? That's a true pivot. That's a departure. And departures under stress usually add more stress. I had a post somewhere. Did it—

was it a post?

I think it was a post.

Was it?

Sorry. Anyway, it was basically what I was saying is I noticed that a lot of my customers are trying to change the type of person they sell to, right? They, they have a particular human that is already attracted to them and they want to sell to a different human that's like they don't really have in their network. And I made the comment that you can absolutely switch your avatar, but you need to ask how much reserves you have on hand, because if you have cash on hand, you have reserves, you can go ahead and start building out that new audience. If you don't, that's going to be very stressful because it takes time to find a new audience, and in the meantime, your bank account is going to continue to get lower and lower and lower. And that is kind of adjacent to what I'm saying here. If you are in a cash crunch and you extend or, you know, slightly modify what you're already doing, that's an extension. But if this is the moment at which you are going to shut something down and start something new, that is often what I said before. It's often that sense of action that is making you feel better in the moment, but it's not actually solving the problem, okay? And the last thing I wanna say, the tip, and then I'm gonna give you a couple stories, is what evidence do you have? Anxiety sometimes does not work on evidence. It works on urgency of like, you need to change right now. Strategy is going to say, hey, what isn't working? And why. If you cannot name the diagnosis, you are lacking evidence. Okay, I'm just going to review those things. I'm going to just tell a few stories. Number 1, the timeline test. Have you actually sat on this for 48 hours? 48-hour pause. What happens after 48 hours? Number 2, have you asked yourself what would you do, or would you do this plan if you weren't scared? That's really important information. Number 3, does the plan that you have solve the real problem? Remember that anxiety wants to push you into action, and strategic urgency pushes you into action, but it's strategic, okay? And you want to know your numbers, and you want to make sure whatever the problem is, that the plan is actually going to solve that. Number 4, are you extending what you already do, creating kind of an extension Or are you completely departing from the model that you're running because that feels like it's going to stop the anxiety? And then the fifth is the 'what evidence do I have' check, right? Are you just feeling, 'Oh my God, I need to change right now, I feel trapped,' or are you— have— do you have strategy that says, 'Hey, this is specifically not working, this is why that's not working, and this is what we need to do next. And I wanna tell just a silly little story about myself because I struggle with financial anxiety. It's very, very much a trigger for me. So I'm sympathetic to those who feel the same way. I, it never fails. Every spring I get a notice from my mortgage company telling me that I didn't save enough money in my escrow. I don't know why they can't make this estimate correct. And every year I get this notice, and the first year I got it was— I was really anxious. I've gotten better, but I usually owe some— somewhere in the ballpark of $5,000 to $15,000, and I either have to pay that in a lump sum or I have to watch my mortgage go up. But it's already been going up every year because of home insurance. This always triggers my financial anxiety, always. And I noticed that my instant response is something must change. And for some reason, my instinct is to cut down on how much we spend on food. It's almost funny at this point. Now, the first few times that it happened, I didn't realize this— there was this pattern. But I would immediately go to AC and I would say, listen, next time you go to the grocery store, we need to stop spending so much money. The kids are eating all of our pre- packaged snacks that are for school. We are blowing through those cans of seltzer, like, and he'll just listen and he'll be like, okay, all right, sure, you know. And the first few times it happened, you know, he's kind of like, where'd this come from? Like, what's going on? And if we take the 5 things that I just said, right, the timeline test— if I slept for 40— not slept for 48 hours, but if I waited 48 hours and then decided, okay, wait, do I really need to cut back on my grocery bill because I got an escrow thing in the mail? Probably not. It's not going to feel as urgent. The second one, would I do this if I weren't scared? No, I would not be penny-pinching whether or not the kids eat the prepackaged snacks after school, right? Number 3, does the plan solve the real problem? Absolutely not. Like, absolutely not even close. Uh, is this a departure from the model or an extension of it? Now this one, I could probably make the argument this is an extension. We're just buying less seltzers. That one didn't quite work. The last one, what evidence do I have? Check, right? Anxiety was telling me something needs to change. We need to save money, and I reach for the most easy thing that I can control. Right? Or the thing that maybe bothers me, right? Like, I watch the kids eat pre-packaged snacks and I'm just like irritated, and I wish they would eat the, you know, the snacks that aren't pre-packaged. Okay, so I reach for the things that are like right in my sphere. Now, if we take this to business and we look at— sorry guys, that was my dad who just walked in and caused barking. If we take, if we take things in business, like let's say you're not loving your coaching program or you're not loving this course, and all of a sudden you get a report from your bookkeeper that says that money is tight and your instinct is to shut down that course and build something new, right? Number one, have you slept on it? Would I do this if I weren't scared? A lot of people would say, yes, I absolutely would shut that down. I don't like that anyway. Okay, fine. Does the plan actually solve the real problem? And that's a big one because if you start to crunch the numbers, usually new things take longer to earn than existing things that are already running. Is it a part— is it a departure or is it an extension? It's 100% a departure, right? And the what evidence do I have? You might have some evidence that that existing program isn't working, but it is still kind of funding your business. It's just irritating you, and the anxiety is making that irritation heavier. Okay, and the goal here isn't to say you should never pivot. You absolutely need to pivot sometimes. You need to get scrappy. Sometimes. But strategic scrappiness and strategic pivots and having a measured plan of how you're going to measure that pivot is very, very different than the urgency that anxiety creates, which is, "Something has to change right now. Let me just impulsively haul off and do something." And I'm talking about this right now, and I'm not anxious. And you might be listening to this podcast and you might be not feeling the urgency of a cash crunch, and you can think logically. But when that urgency comes online, or that anxiety comes online, it is very, very difficult to act logically. In fact, your prefrontal cortex, where you make all these logical decisions, typically goes offline. And What I would say is that these 5 tests, uh, or, you know, check marks, are rules that you want to bring out so that when emotions are high, you don't have to rely on your prefrontal cortex. You can just rely on the rules you set when you weren't anxious. And you know who does this really well is the stock market people, the people, the brokers who invest in the stock market, right? What do they do? They make rules for their investing. Investing, right? If it goes here, I, I buy. If it goes here, I sell. And they set those rules when things are calm, or maybe they do dollar cost averaging or what have you. And when things go crazy, they don't rely on their brain, their prefrontal cortex, because it's offline. They certainly don't respond with all their emotions. They pick up that piece of paper of those rules And they say, okay, these are the rules I made when things weren't stressful, and these are the rules I'm going to rely on now. And that is my hope here, that you would set up these 5 things. And again, you don't have to have all yeses or all nos, but if the majority of them lean towards, hey, this is anxiety that's driving this decision versus, oh no, this is strategic urgency, would be the timeline test, The 48-hour rule is the timeline test. Would I do this if I weren't scared? Does the plan actually solve the real problem? Are you departing from your model, or just, is there an, is this just an extension of it? And what actual evidence do I have? Do I have specific strategic understanding of what isn't working, or am I just driven by the need to change something? And I really hope that helps. And as always, it helps to have a coach in your corner. If that is something you're looking for, please reach out to me on Instagram, or you can email me julie@juliechenell.com. Talk soon. And there you have it, folks, another dose of Million Dollar Grit.

I hope today's episode has left you feeling inspired, equipped, and ready to face your own entrepreneurial journey with resolve. Remember, until next time, embrace the struggle, Harness your grit and keep pushing forward. You're stronger than any challenge you face. I'm Julie Chenell, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.