Consulting Your Business' Brain | Ep #36

Hey, everyone. I'm Chris Plackey, and this is how to Lead for Female Entrepreneurs and Founders. Because the best way to grow a business is to grow the person who's running it. Let's go ahead and get started.

Hello. How are you? Welcome today to the podcast. A fun lesson for you today. I really am excited to share this with you.

And also want to just thank you for tuning in. I'm so. I'm having so much fun virtually meeting clients and listeners as you post about the podcast on Instagram and Facebook and the emails that you send. So thank you for all of that. It's lovely to meet you. I want to talk with you today about your business and learning how to consult your business's brain, for lack of a better word. So if you're a podcast listener, you know that I really center my work around the fact that all of us as female entrepreneurs and business owners, need to develop the relationships that we have with five key areas. We need to develop the relationship we have with our time, with our money, with our team, with ourselves, and with our business. And the part about the business is kind of where I'm going to give you some attention today. And I want you to think about the fact that most of us, when we start our business and we're solopreneur and we have just a couple people that help us out, our business is us. We are our business. Our business is us. We're very tangled up. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the evolution of this growth process. But there gets to be a point. And honestly, the earlier you can do this in your business growth, the better for you and your business. So if you're just getting started and you're generating 100 or $200,000 a year, I'm actually really glad you found this podcast because for a lot of my clients, they didn't really have any support as it relates to going from solopreneurhood to entrepreneurhood or ship.

And so there's more untangling to do. It certainly doesn't mean it can't be done. But when you're earlier in the growth of your business, I'd love for you to take all these tools and apply them so your business sits outside of you.

And I want you to start to practice thinking about your business is over here next to you. It's not above you, it's not below you, it's not in the back in the basement, it's not tucked in a closet. And it's certainly not something we want to hide from or avoid. We want to pull up a chair and have our business sit next to us. And we want to build up our business so that it. So that she can become a partner with you and help you navigate some of the challenges that you have as you grow and evolve the business. Okay. Now, one of the most important parts of establishing that relationship with your business is building its framework, its foundations, which, which first is, you know, what is the vision? What is the business here to do? What are the values? What are those three core values that the business.

Represents? What are those values? And have you thought those through? Now, of course, those are an extension of you, but once we take them kind of out of you, we're going to put them in the business. And then once we have our values, we build our expectations. What do we expect of people who work in our business? Okay.

Now I talk about that a lot. And if you become a client of mine, this will be work that we have to massage and get clear because it's central to so much of the other decision making that comes later. And that's what I want to talk to you about today. As we go through the day to day operations of our business, and as our business grows, we're going to continue to face decisions, moments, challenges that we did not anticipate. I think all of you would agree, like things happen sometimes a lot in a day, sometimes in a week that you think, wow, that's a new one. I'm not really sure. Right. And I want to teach you a way to help you with those unexpected decisions so that you can consult the brain of your business, the filter of the business, and not just rely on your own gut, your own opinion in the moment. So in order to explain that to you, I want to revisit something that I use in all of my coaching, which is the thought model, which is a tool that I learned from Brooke Castillo many years ago. And the thought model, to me is just sort of the secret of the universe. But we can also call it a tool because you can write it on a piece of paper and it helps you get a framework for everything. But the thought model teaches us that circumstances happen every day, and we define those circumstances in our brain. So whether it's, you know, the weather or the words that come out of someone else's mouth or something that you see, you are translating every factual experience in the world through your own mind and then defining it with your own thinking. Right? And so how you define something will trigger how you feel and then how you feel will trigger what you do, and then the things that you do trigger the results that you get. Right. That's the thought model in its very most simple form. Now, in my coaching work, I do that much more extensively with my clients because it's at such a heart of. Especially the work. Well, in every part of your business, because you will have thoughts about every part of your business and every person in your business and et cetera, and yourself as a business owner. So we have to understand that things happen in the world. We define them in our mind. How we define them. The thoughts that we think trigger how we feel, how we feel triggers how we act, how we act triggers the results that we get. So as a woman who's running a business, there are going to be things that happen every day that you're not expecting. And as a human, you're going to have a lot of thoughts. You have about, I think, 50, 60,000 thoughts a day. The thoughts that I want us to pay attention to are the thoughts that make us feel really, really great and the thoughts that make us feel pretty bad and then trigger actions, feelings and actions that don't get us the results that we want or trigger feelings and actions that feel great and get us the results that we want so we can replicate those. But when you are faced with the unexpected or. Or something that you determine to be difficult, confusing. Right. That's. That's a thought that will trigger how you feel and ultimately how you act, which leads to your results. Okay.

So then.

That leaves us in a position sometimes of leading a business through our opinion. And while I do value your opinion and I do think you're very, very smart and capable of discerning, and that's why you've already built a successful business, your opinion has. It's just a bias, and sometimes it's not helpful, and sometimes, honestly, it keeps you stuck and confused, et cetera. Yeah. So instead, I want you to also recognize that your business has a brain, because you've built one if you've done the foundational work. So if we take that thought model, we leave that on.

From an example, sake, like a T chart. We leave that on the left side. I'm going to put on the right side your business brain, your business filter. So let's look at it that way. So things happen in the world that we don't expect in our business every day. But our business has already established thoughts. Right. It's already got its predetermined ways of evaluating if we've put our vision, our values, and our Expectations in place, We've already done it. And then what the business will tell you if we've done it right, is it has protocols or procedures based off of that.

So now we're not leaving things to opinion. We've already said, wait, wait, wait, wait. These are the values we, we'll wait. These are the expectations. So if this thing in the world happens now I just have to go to my business's brain that I already built and ask it, wait a minute, what do we think about that? Where does. How does that align or not align to a value? How does that align or not align to the expectations that we've already determined?

And then what's the proper procedure or action.

That will then lead to a result? So instead of just relying on yourself and your brain, which is, you know, part of. I know I've talked about this before, right? Your decision, fatigue. As the woman running your business, you are the one everybody comes to. What do you think about this? How do we handle this? What should we do about this? Right? You get to freaking 3:12 every day and you're exhausted. How many decisions have you made? It'd be interesting to keep a tally. Respectfully, you may not be able to be trusted.

Especially as if you're tired and you're overwhelmed. But with all of the other decisions, your capacity for processing, it's like a hot computer, right? Like it start that when, you know, I'm, I'm dating myself. But you know how those, how computers would get hot and then they just wouldn't work anymore as they've been working too hard. I feel like our brains get hot like that and they just fry out.

But the business has already done the work for us. So when things happen at work and I can think about, just in the last week, challenges that I have heard people mention. So I'm just going to play in my brain here. A person who's lied at work, we already had values that made that an easy decision. A person who doesn't get the work done, we already have values.

And expectations that handle that. I don't have to go through the mental gymnastics of, oh, well, they're really nice and their brother's sick and they've worked for me for five years. I don't have to do that. If I, I can bypass that part and I can say, hey, business, what does your brain say? What can I rely on my business to tell me? Because I already built it here with them, with him, her, my business, right? So what are those things that you tell yourself are hard to do. I had another client, actually, who just had a challenge with a new employee, and she was able to take really swift action because her brain, her business brain was built. She was like, it's done. I know what to do. I already built it. Business told me if. If she had allowed her mind to indulge, would have slowed her down. But because she built.

Wasn'T like every other transactional thought, like, I have to go through this every time. No, the. The decision's already been made ahead of time because the business brain is already built. So when you don't have that structure, that's part of why you're exhausted. Right? That's why you put your head in your hands and you're like, seriously, why do I have to deal with this? Why do I have to think this through? What if you didn't? What if your business brain was built? You relied on it because you trusted it? The pushback I get is the time it takes to build it right, to set the vision, to come up with the values. I've had people tell me, oh, I don't want to get so corporate. That is not what we're talking about. We are literally talking about thinking through the needs of the business, the values of the business, how the work is going to get done so that we can thrive and so that the business can stand on its own and not need you to make every single decision. Aren't you tired of that? But your employees that you hire will not be able to take over if you haven't built the business brain. You have to create it first. And I know it's not sexy. I know it's not selling stuff and talking to people and all the other things you. I know you want to do. I get it. Really do. The reason that I'm really proud of the work I do with my clients, there's. There's a few. But honestly, one of the reasons I'm the most proud is because it's not just a class you take where you get a binder that's sexy and it's pretty and Everybody's happy for 24 or 48 hours. And you feel, you know, oh, I feel so hurt. And I loved everybody in the room and. Right. Like all of that, I get it. I've done it. I've been it. I've been in the room. I've been a participant. I've been a leader. I've done all of it. We used to call it providing a warm bath for the attendees. Like, you just make people feel good and Then you leave and you got that damn binder, and that thing sits on your desk for a couple weeks, and you stare at it. And then that thing ends up on the shelf, and eventually it's in the garbage bin. The reason I'm proud of what I do is I don't give you copious tons of things to do. I give you the ones that matter. And then we keep talking about them.

We apply them. That's why my program is called the Founders Lab.

Not the Founder's Dunk.

Right? Or the Class. It's not a class.

If you want longevity, you have to invest.

If you want more free time, you have to invest in a business that can do things without you. If you want employees who can think like you, you have to invest in building the structures and frameworks that help them do that.

This isn't easy, although the process is simple.

I know I've said that a lot. I know that's true. There's a lot of heavy lifting for you. But this, There is simplicity here.

And if you feeling overwhelmed with decision fatigue or with wrangling with stuff you never thought would happen, and how do I deal with this? And you're just emotionally exhausted. It's because you have not built a business brain, and. Or you built one and you never talk to it, you never consult it, or you don't trust it. You keep relying back on yourself instead of what you've built in place.

To start to pick up some of the slack. So it's not always you. Are you with me? So take some time and think about what I'm talking about. Do you have a vision? Do you have values? Do you have clear expectations? Can they stand on their own?

And the next time you have a thing that happens that you're not expecting, run it back through your business brain, not just yours. And if this feels like work you want to do, then we should be talking, because this is what I do. And I love to watch my clients thrive. Everybody I meet, when I first start working with them, you know, head and hands, they're overwhelmed. They don't know where to go.

I just had someone this week tell me, if I can't figure this out, I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna close it all up. You don't have to, but you have to be willing to do some things differently to get a different result. Right? We know that. But don't give up. Not yet.

There's still hope, right? All right. Thank you for tuning in today. Have a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful rest of your day. I'LL talk to you next time. Foreign.

Hey, don't miss a thing. Make sure you join my community@chrisplackie.com forward/connect. Once you join, you'll get all the information on exclusive and private experiences that I'm offering to my clients. I can't wait to see you there.

Sam.