Every Decision Has a Cover Story: Triggers & Actions In Business

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, 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, welcome back to another episode of Million Dollar Grit. Today I'm talking about decisions, triggers, and cover stories. Every decision you make in business has a cover story, meaning you make a decision to start a new offer or to launch or to change your price, and you'll have a reason, like the market's shifting or competitors charging more or my program needs a refresh. And what's funny about this is that even if that's Somewhat true. I call it a cover story because it's not usually the reason that the idea showed up in the first place. Most people spend all their energy evaluating the decision that they have come to, and none of it finding out what triggered the idea in the first place. And that is what I want to unpack here. Decisions are always downstream of some sort of trigger. Think about it. You have some sort of feeling. Let's say you're on social media and you open the app and you're scrolling and you see a reel and it's from a competitor, and the feeling that comes up is jealousy. And then there's a decision that is being presented to you in your brain very, very quickly. And it's like, well, I should launch something just like that. And then we create a cover story, and this happens in seconds. And it's like, well, this is selling right now in the marketplace. I But the reasoning often gets built after the decision just to make it kind of defensible. So when you evaluate a plan on its merits, you're grading the COVID story. In the example that I just gave, doom scrolling leading to jealousy, leading to, I'm going to launch a competing product, and then the COVID story of, well, this is currently selling in the market, it wants it, so I'm going to make good money. We are grading the COVID story, right? Which is, the market wants it. And then we can be like, yeah, okay, for sure, right? And a plan can pass like every single test and still be the wrong move, and that's because we haven't gone backwards to look at what the trigger and the feeling was in the first place. And it's not just saying, okay, is this a good idea? But what actually started this? I want to unpack the 3 layers of a trigger. Most people don't see this, but there is a surface reason, there's an emotion, and there's usually a fear too. The doom-scrolling episode or example that I gave you is, okay, the surface reason is, well, the competitor charges more for the same thing. So, you know, I'm going to launch something and charge less. But there was an emotion. That's the second layer. They were envious, jealous. You were, you know, whatever that feeling is that kind of popped up. And then usually there's also fear underneath it. The jealousy is actually covering up fear of like, well, what if I become irrelevant?

Right.

What if that competitor makes it more than I do? What if I can't make this business work? And okay, and not to sound like a therapist here, but these are how decisions get made all the time. Like, all the time. And if you have someone that you rely on, like a coach, or maybe you're just using AI, and you're like, hey, I just saw a competitor selling, you know, a $97 course and I can do the same thing and the market clearly wants it, so I want to launch a version of it. AI is going to be like, that's a great idea. And a coach who's not very experienced will be like, okay, cool, let's do it. But if you can step back for a second and look at the trigger, right, the actual trigger, the emotion, and the fear that led to that decision and cover story, You may realize that even if it's a good idea, and I'm putting that in quotes, it may not be the right idea for you. The second part of this is that when you have this sort of quick reflex that's happening with the trigger, there's usually also a reflex of what to do. And there are different types of reflexes depending on the personality of the person. One of the most classic reflexes in this instance would be to build. Right? Just to launch something new. Kind of a variation of that would be to rebuild, like, oh, I'm going to go and I'm going to completely redo my program and change it up. So building and rebuilding, I see that reflex a lot, and that, you know, is like their go-to strategy. There are other personalities who their strategy is to hide. avoid, procrastinate. You know, they kind of go in the opposite direction, sort of an Eeyore, give up, well, you know, I can't make it happen kind of energy, which that one is a little bit easier to tell that you're being triggered because it doesn't spark action. You know what I mean? So you can be like, okay, clearly I'm triggered because now I'm hiding in a hole and I'm not posting on Instagram. And, you know, so I think when people do that sort of hide, avoid, It's easy to note that it's a trigger, but when you do the build or the rebuild, you can just trick yourself all the livelong day that this is a good idea, that this wasn't— had nothing to do with a trigger. Other personalities will, it's not really rebuilding, but they'll discount things, right? Or they'll just try to keep trying to like rejig the offer. Depending on how they're triggered. Other people, they'll do something like— these are people who their instinct is to just hire and buy, right? I'm going to hire this expert to help me, or I'm going to buy this course. I'm going to buy this program. That's another reflex. And how do you know if it's a true strategy versus just the reflex? You know, it's hard. You can't just be like, well, it's productive, or it's going to have an ROI because You know, those— it's easy to just make every good idea be productive and every good idea have a good ROI if it stays inside your comfort zone. This is something I see a lot. I'm going to tell a story here in a minute, but if you always have a tendency to build, to go in your closet and build, that's often a comfort zone because you don't want to actually put yourself out there and face rejection. And Oftentimes these reflexes are solving the true feeling. It's soothing the feeling that's going on underneath. It's not actually solving the business problem. Again, let's go back to the example that I started at the beginning of this episode. You get on Instagram, you're doom scrolling, you see a competitor, you get jealous, you immediately say, well, I should launch something similar. And the COVID story is, The market wants this. This is hot. This is trending. And if you're not peeling back the layers of what happened there, then your next step is to go build. And it's inside your comfort zone because you don't have to get out there and sell. You can just go build something new because that feels productive. It feels like you're solving the problem, which is, oh, I'm going to sell this competing product. And it's going to make you feel better. It's going to, you know, make you less afraid. If it all happens in one morning or in one message or in one quick decision, sometimes there's like a little tell there that it could be you're quickly trying to actually fix the feeling, not the true problem. And in this example, it's possible that the plan that you have— let's say your plan is a little bit, you know, of a longer strategy plan you're building, and you know, a long-term membership and you're launching the annual and you're doing a weekly webinar, whatever, like you have a longer plan and it's a little bit more of a slow go. And what you really should be doing is taking that idea and sticking it inside your membership to boost the value of your membership. But now what you're doing is you're launching it as a low-ticket offer because you saw a competitor do it. Right. And that, you know, was that the Was that the right move in that decision? So I have a client, and she does this to herself a lot. And what I do as a coach is I'll say, because she comes to me, she has ideas, she's a fast action taker, she's usually got a really valid cover story. You know, like this is going to make this much money. I've already done— like she's really smart and she knows she's got pretty realistic expectations, but I've worked with her for a while. And so I understand that there's usually something that triggered that plan. And so that's often what I do. I don't look at the program. I don't look at the price. I don't look at the idea. I just say, hey, what was the original trigger for this idea? And usually it ends up being, well, I need more money. And I say, well, okay, but if you need more money, why wouldn't you just sell the existing products that you have? And then she said, well, I think I was actually triggered because I was pissed when I saw someone who does the same thing I do getting paid more, and that really bothered me. And then I said, okay, keep going. And she said, well, I'm afraid that I'm going to screw myself here, and I'm afraid that my offers aren't going to sell long-term. And so it feels way safer to build something new than to try to sell to people who don't know me. And we were able to stop and look. At what was really going on for her, because this is a pattern for her, and what she needs to work on is selling the things she already has. And the iron the irony of this whole thing is that the person that she was you know looking at that had sold so much more than her had sold so much more because she had really worked on her traffic. She had a lot of affiliates, and she had really promoted herself, and she had gotten really visible on Instagram. And so all the things that actually got her all of this money. That allowed her to show up in this client's feed and trigger the hell out of her were traffic-related activities. And her response was to quickly go back into her little, you know, cave and build a new offer. Okay. I do want to say that this is never— like, I'm not saying don't build new offers. That's not what I'm saying. And I'm also not saying that every time you try to hire or pivot or discount or build or rebuild or whatever, that it's just you reacting to an emotion. I think what I'm doing is I'm trying to invite you to pause for a second and ask yourself, what led to this idea? What was the trigger that led to this idea? Because once you start to pull that back, There's usually some sort of emotion— boredom, anger, jealousy, fear. There's something going on. And then there's usually like a cover story, which is some sort of rationalization. And if you are coming up with this idea in a hot minute, and you've got the whole thing ironed out in a morning, and the reflexive option for you is to do what's naturally comfortable to you, Those are all just moments to say, hey, pause. And if we go back to the example that I gave at the beginning of this episode, let's say you're doom scrolling, you find a competitor, you get jealous, then you think, I should do this. And you start to take action and you pause and you say, well, listen, here's my cover story, which is, will the market want this? But what's really going on is I'm jealous, and I'm also afraid. I'm afraid that my stuff isn't going to convert as well. And then if you go and actually look at your stuff, right? And if you're like, well, you know what? Actually, this thing that I've worked on for a year isn't converting, and I've been so gung-ho on this particular problem, but maybe I have lost the main idea. Maybe I really do need to actually put something out there That is more in line with what I'm seeing instead of trying to convince people of a problem that they don't know they have. I think I'm going to go ahead and give this a try. In that example, it's the person is still going to go ahead and build that low-ticket offer. Maybe that membership is like, you know what, I've been trying for a year and maybe the membership isn't the model and I've really given it, you know, a good old college try. And so I'm going to launch this new thing, low-ticket, as an experiment to see what happens. Notice the energy behind that. It's more self-aware. You understand the trigger. You've really unpacked what your cover story was and the fears underneath it, but you're also pausing to say, well, maybe this is worth a shot. And only you can really know, and/or a coach. I promise you, AI is not going to figure it out. AI is just going to tell you what you want to hear all the time. But if this can help anyone, I wanted to share it because almost always when people move really, really fast, this is what's happening. So, next time you have an idea, stop, pause, ask yourself, what was the trigger? What was the emotion? What was the fear? Then think about it a little bit more, you know, just like let the emotion die down. Give yourself a day or two. And then make a decision from there. I hope that helps. Chat with you 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, and this has been Million Dollar Grit.