Ep #6: Visionary Constraint

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.

Hey. Hello and welcome. Thanks for being here, you guys. I'm so glad you're tuning in. And can I just tell you, I'm so loving all of you and thank you for your feedback and for listening and for sharing this podcast with other women like you. I just. I'm super excited about the conversations I'm having with. With my clients and what we're learning about each other, and I love bringing all of that here to bring to each of you and to. And then hear back from you about what's. What's really working and what you love about it. So please keep that coming. If you ever do want to reach out to me, you can always do that at supporteadershipcoach, llc. Com. That's always, always an option. We'd love to hear from you. And if you love the podcast, please write a review on itunes. That would mean so much to me to hear what you are benefiting from and loving. And I think it helps other women, like, you know, like, oh, yeah, this is. This is a podcast I should listen to, and so we can help them also.

So today I'm talking to you about visionary constraint, and I think this is so important.

I can't even tell you. I'm like, I've been talking to several clients this week and realizing, wow, this is something we really need to talk about. And I want to start this by talking about my own experience and my own journey. So I've had my own business now for seven years. And when I first started, just like everybody I know who starts their own business, you're. You've got an idea. You know what you want to do in the world. You go out into the world and you start talking to people about it, and then people can be like, oh, well, can you do this? And what about this? And have you thought about this? Right? And then you start getting all these ideas. And one of the best parts about being a visionary is how brilliant your brain is. Like, you have so many ideas. Like, creativity is your pulse, right? You are never shy on ideas. I know that about you. And honestly, it's your superpower. It's the superpower. I know for me, right? I've always coming up with things I want to tell you and share with you and do in the world. But there's a problem when we have a lot of ideas. And so when I use my experience, what happened was I managed to just get involved in a lot of different kinds of work. So. So even though there was sort of a common theme to what I did, I was sort of saying yes to. Not even sort of. I was saying yes to all sorts of different things. I was doing workshops and I was doing speaking events, and I was doing coaching, and then I was helping other coaches be better at what they did. And.

It was very, very.

Personality. Like, I felt like I had multiple personalities in my business. I had a lot of things going on. And so what. What I believe to be true is everything I did was successful, but not very successful, right? I didn't go deep into one key area. Flash forward to now, this last couple of months, right? I worked with my coach. I joined a mastermind. I went all in on you guys on the women who are listening to this podcast, Female Entrepreneurs. That has been the hardest thing for me to do. Not because I don't love you, because I totally love you, but because it's like I've had to just practice over and over and over and over, constraining and not indulging all these other people I could help or all this other stuff I could do, like, really just forcing my brain to focus on this. This niche, this group of women, this kind of topic. But of course, since I turned this right, I was terrified because I've been busy and successful my whole seven years of my business. I was terrified that I would not be successful, Right? Like, how do you just go from doing all this stuff to not doing any of that and then just focusing on one. One group of people? And the irony, of course, is, within 30 days, 45 days, my coaching practice was full of female entrepreneurs all in, right? And now I have to turn people away. What? So of course, now I'm gonna start a group because I want to be able to work with all of you, and it's a really unique experience. So if that's something that intrigues you, you should reach out to me and schedule some time, which you can do so on my website by booking an appointment@chrisplackie.com but.

Your work as a visionary is not.

To be the genius and to be smart about what you want to do in the world. You're good at that. Your work as a visionary is to constrain yourself and manage all of the ideas that you have and be very, very methodical and thoughtful about what you are capable of. And I think there's A lot of different directions this can take, right? So first of all, your ideas are what launched you. So it's understandable that your ideas are what you want to invest in because they are your secret sauce. And I'm not arguing with you on that. The problem is, especially once you get to a certain point and you start being more successful, you cannot do all the ideas. You can't do all the things beyond be. Once you start getting successful. I don't know if you guys who listen to this have this happen. I get somebody at least once a day, sometimes many, who want to, like, you know, collaborate with me, who want to be involved with me somehow, or have I thought about this? Have I considered this? Would you like to me to help you with this? And there's all these potential other directions I could invest in to. To grow my business, to collaborate with someone, to partner with someone, to.

Let someone else help me, right? And every time.

We say yes to that, it takes us off our goal. Okay? And it's not that it's bad. It's just that it doesn't produce the results that we want. So when we, when, when we start to grow and we get more successful, and of course, we're feeding our own success because our success came from our own brain in the first place, your discipline with your brain has to increase.

Because your brain is never going to slow down. We just have to tell the truth. You're always going to be brilliant. You're always going to have ideas. That's not at issue. It's that we don't want to follow every idea because we have to make sure that our idea is filtered through some very important questions. So the first thing I always want you to be able to tell me, like if you and I got on a call today, the first thing I'm going to ask you is what is your goal for this year? What are you trying to create? And we're going to focus on revenue. So what is it that you're trying to build? And then what is the plan to make that happen? Right? How are you going to achieve whatever your goal is? If you want to make $5 million, $12 million, $80 million, right. And then what is.

What are your key arteries to that success? Where do you make and generate the biggest part of your revenue? Where does it come from? How invested are you in driving the goal that you want through these key avenues of your revenue right now, when you get new idea and you want to try something new, or when you get a new offer, or when you Have a client who says, oh, have you thought about this? Right. Using your goal and your plan as your filter is so exceptional. Because sometimes ideas sound great.

But they don't align. And the thing is, we have to think about our time, right? Our time and our brain are our biggest assets as entrepreneurs. So if we're really thoughtful about.

I'm down the road, this is how I'm going to generate my revenue. This is how I'm going to achieve success this year. And then this new idea presents itself. You have to realize that you're trading mental time, mental space, mental capacity, brain space and time to now invest in this new idea, which means it naturally will take away from what else you were doing to execute on the original revenue goal, the original plan. It has to. There's only so much time in a day, okay? So the constraint around ideas has to have a filter process that reminds you, remember, we're doing this over here. Remember how we were doing this over here? That doesn't mean ideas have to be kicked to the curb and ignored. It means that we don't just react to our own brain and decide.

We'Re gonna do whatever we feel like, whenever we feel like it, because we're an idea generator, and that's what our job is. No, your job is to generate revenue for your business. Your job is to serve your client.

Your job is not to just indulge every idea that you have. It's not sustainable. Now, where this becomes a factor is when we have a team. So if you're just a solopreneur out there and you chase all your ideas every day. Look, here's the thing. The only person that's going to really affect is you and maybe your clients. Because if you are constantly kind of going in different directions, that's going to have an impact on you, and it's going to have an impact on the clients that you serve, right? But as soon as you start adding people to your business, you changing your mind or you having new ideas all the time, that is so hard on a team, especially if that team is already engaged in implementing this, another. This other plan that we had in place.

Right? If you redirect them, you're taking them off of something to put them onto something new. And what I do hear a lot of my clients will say is like, well, but I need all of it.

I need you to put all of these together. Well, what are we doing when we ask people to do that?

How are we tapping into our team in a way that is either productive or not? Productive. Are we burning people out? Visionaries are really, really good at this, at burning people out. Because nobody works at your pace like you're a unicorn.

Right? We get that about you.

All unicorns.

That's why we all like to hang out with each other, right? But your team, people who work as an employee, not necessarily as a visionary, they're not unicorns and they only have so much capacity and it's hard to keep up with you, which is exhausting. And what you need as much as anything as a visionary is a really capable, trustworthy.

Available, but in their own way, with boundaries, group of people. And if we burn through people, it's hard to re, it's always, it's exhausting to keep rebuilding that team. So visionary constraint is incredibly important for you to learn how to discipline your brain and really indulge the ideas that are for and supporting your current objectives.

Visionary constraint is essential for your brand and making sure you stay focused. I've watched a lot of women who they were this person and now they're, what are they doing? Why, why are they over here? And a lot of times I think we make decisions to do other things and say yes to other things out of scarcity.

Because we think, well, I better say yes because I don't know if something else is going to come along. So I better say yes. Bird in the hand, right? Better say yes to this.

And that. That is confusing to your market.

Just as it's confusing to employees.

What is your brand? Is this aligned with your brand? Visionary constraint is important.

Because it reminds us, follow me with this one.

That.

In order to really achieve what we want, we have to go all in on the belief that what we want to achieve is possible. So if I said to you my goal is to have a $15 million business supporting seven figure female entrepreneurs.

Dealing with the human capital challenges in their business.

My job is to go all in on believing that.

And then identifying. I use the word arteries. I know that. I think Christine Caine says money needs a map, right? Like what is the map? What is the artery? I am choosing to funnel revenue to that goal and I have to believe ahead of time in the goal, in the result that I want.

Because if I don't believe in the result that I want, then everything else that comes up in my mind is a possibility and I start entertaining. Oh, I could do this and I could do this and I could do this and I could do this. Because I'm in scarcity, I'm not believing ahead of time in my result. I need to believe so hard in what I want to achieve. And then I have to identify, okay, these are the key arteries I'm going to pursue to get that. And then be all in.

Do not entertain all the other distractions that will inevitably come your way, even either through your own brain or through someone else who comes to you and says, hey, have you thought about this? Right, like, no, this is, I am all in. This is how I'm going to achieve what I want to achieve. I am all in. And as soon as you make that decision, then all the other stuff is just noise, right? So when you grow and when you grow because you are an idea generator and you are a visionary, it's like, it's. I understand that if you're listening to this, you're like, wait, what? But that's how I've been so successful. It doesn't mean we turn it off. It means that we use constraint. We have filters that we set up for ourselves that really help us know, like, is this actually going to get me where I need to go.

If I'm typically generating X amount of revenue in what I do, but this is just not a lot of money, why would I do that? It's a distraction. You're trading mental time, brain time and time time to invest in this other idea that then is taking away.

From the key objective you want to achieve.

Right? And that can be. There are so many potential outcomes. All of my clients, I have people who are all over in different things that they want to achieve. Some of them want to expand their franchise. Some of them want to work less and generate more revenue. Some of them want to pursue a whole other kind of brand in their business. Some of them want to get, become to elevate to thought leadership and get out of the tactical work.

Whatever that result is that we're trying to achieve. So then when we know what that is, it helps all these other potential ideas that sound really amazing fall in a filter.

Visionary constraint requires you to say no more than yes.

And that's to yourself and to others. And I also believe that if you are a visionary and you don't have somebody in your life as an employee or team member who you let say no to you, you're setting everybody up for a lot of frustration and a lot of overwhelm and burnout. We need to be told no.

No, we don't have time. We're focused on this. Remember, we're doing this. We have to have people in our life who can tell us no.

And why.

Visionary constraint is so Valuable.

To your growth. Which I know really does sound.

Counterintuitive.

Because we think the ideas, we know the ideas have generated our success.

But it's a, it's a muscle and a discipline that I really want to invite you to consider practicing. So ways to do that, right? Like I know for myself I have notebooks, right. I write so much stuff down that I never do anything with. But I will always honor the ideas when they come to me. I think it's important that you have a time where you vet your ideas with other people and let them tell you that's a great idea, that's a bad one. How does this align to the goal? How will this distract us from achieving what we said we wanted to achieve?

Is this idea aligned? Is this taking us off left field? Is this something we could do in the fourth quarter instead of the first quarter? Anytime I think you're in a hurry to get something implemented. I think you got to pay attention to yourself. I just think that being in a hurry comes from scarcity.

It's like this weird level of urgency that we have to be. We have to just be on to ourselves. I don't know that that's always true, but I do think that that can be very true. And the last thing I want to say is I've listened to a lot of thought leaders for female entrepreneurs and there's a lot, you know, I've heard Bert Castillo talk about this, I've heard Ali Brown talk about this. And I really do believe there something to women who are very successful running multi million dollar businesses who do less, they go all in on their key area, right? It's like Gay Hendricks talks about in the Big Leap, right? Your zone of genius. There's a lot of things that you're good at. There's the zone of excellence and then there's your zone of genius. Right? And excellence is all the stuff you can do and you have ideas for and that you're capable of. But then there's your zone of genius. That's the thing that nobody else does as well as you. And when you go all in on your zone of genius, you're unstoppable. But it requires you to pull your brain back and not let your brain behave like a two year old and not pursue every shiny object that comes your way. Being willing to say no from abundance and not saying yes from scarcity. I'm going to say no to this idea. I'm going to say no to this offer because I know I'm all in on pursuing this and making this amazing.

So I invite you to really think about as you're going through your list, Madame Visionary, who I know that you are and you're so, so brilliant and successful and really make sure do you have a filtering process to go through these ideas to really make sure that they're aligned with the big idea, the zone of genius, the thing that it is that you have committed to or is this a distraction? Is this distracting you? Is this distracting your team? Is this taking away vital resources from the thing that you know is the thing that's the one thing that's going to drive the success so being really, really practical with your creative visionary brain. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I'd love to hear from you, as always, and I'll talk to you next time.

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