I often say, oh, I'll just think about it whenever I'm facing a
challenge, hoping that I can avoid thinking about it until the solution just pops
into my mind at three am one night. But the reality is that we
can't avoid deep thinking if we want to come up with creative solutions to the
challenges we're facing and new ideas for growth in our business. Welcome to Imperfect
Action. I'm Steph Taylor. For years, I read all the books,
downloaded all the freebies, and did all the courses, but it wasn't until
I started taking imperfect action that my business had its first million dollars. Here,
imperfect action is about doing things before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over
perfect action, and moving forward even when you're not sure you're doing it right.
On this show, you can expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips and
strategies to build a business that brings you more profit, more freedom, and
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forward Slash, DBB or at the link in the show notes. Hey,
welcome back to Imperfect Action. This is episode six hundred and ninety two.
Today I'm sharing five harsh truths that I have recently learned about growing to
that next level in business. So I recently just got back from a little
ski retreat business event kind of thing where I got to hang out with fifteen
other entrepreneurs business owners. And it was really different to a lot of the
communities that I've hung out with the events that I've been to most of the
time in my business, because they were very different businesses. You know,
there were software businesses, agencies, really only like maybe one or two other
line business owners in the style that this business is, right, So it
was really nice to step out of the normal echo chamber of other online business
owners and here different perspectives from different industries. And especially because many of the
other ones who were there were miles ahead of me in business. You know,
some of them had been in business for twenty thirty years. And because
their businesses were so different and they had this experience, I was able to
learn a few things that I realized might have been holding me back from growing
my business to the next level. So I'm going to share five of these
harsh truths that I realized while I was there. Number one, twenty percent
of what we do in our business usually delivers eighty percent of the results.
This is the Parado principle, but I'd never really thought about it in a
business concept, right, the Parado principle being that roughly eighty percent of outcomes
or consequences comes from twenty percent of inputs or causes. And you might notice
this in areas of your business where twenty percent of your clients are the ones
who are delivering eighty percent of your revenue, or twenty percent of your students
in your course are the ones who are asking eighty percent of the questions,
or twenty percent of your Instagram posts make up eighty percent of your engagement.
And this happens also in a broader business environment right where maybe twenty percent of
the businesses online I'm making eighty percent of the revenue. I don't know,
I just made that one up, but it's quite an interesting concept. So
what I am reflecting on is what is the twenty percent of effort that I
am putting in right now that is delivering eighty percent of the results And then
looking at how can I double down on that? So rather than trying to
do more new things, which we all love doing more new, shiny things,
but rather than trying to do those new things, how can I then
put an extra ten percent into that effort and leverage that for growth? Number
two. Deep thinking time is essential for coming up with new ideas. I
often say, oh, I'll just think about it whenever I'm facing a challenge,
hoping that I can avoid thinking about it until the solution just pops into
my mind at three am one night. But the reality is that we can't
avoid deep thinking if we want to come up with creative solutions to the challenges
we're facing and new ideas for growth in our business. When I was at
this retreat, one of the guys there shared his deep thinking process, which
I intend to steal, and that is forty five minutes a day of written
thinking. So taking forty five minutes to reflect on one question, for example,
what is the twenty percent of effort that's delivering eighty percent of results?
And what are some ways I can double that? So then writing free flow
writing without stopping for forty five minutes reflecting on that question, thinking about that
question and then taking a bit of a break review refining the ideas that come
from that and saving those for later or to implement. And a really interesting
thing that came up for me is actually deep thinking is very different to overthinking.
And I can be very guilty of overthinking. I know a lot of
us overachievers can happily overthink till the cows come home. And overthinking is usually
what happens when we try to solve a problem without the facts, simply by
trying to think our way through it, and it usually ends up in this
thought spiral where we just go round and round and round in this never ending
loop. And in the case of overthinking, the solution is to take action
so that we can get the facts that we are missing. For example,
if we're overthinking about whether we might spend some time creating a course and we're
not sure if anybody will buy for it, like will anyone pay money for
this course that I'm creating? You can overthink, but you're not going to
get to a solution. You're never going to figure out whether somebody would pay
money for it until you actually ask people to buy it. So in that
case, the solution is taking action. Asking people to buy it, and
the facts that you are getting is either yes, people are paying money for
it, or no, they are not paying money for it, whereas deep
thinking is then reflecting on ideas creative solutions rather than trying to solve something without
the facts. Okay, number three, I realized I'm still wasting a lot
of time doing lower value tasks in my business, and the sooner that I
can stop doing these, the sooner I can start focusing on the higher value
tasks. And one of the ideas, or one of the concepts that was
brought up at the retreat was the concept of ten dollar tasks hundred dollars,
thousand dollars, ten thousand dollar tasks in terms of how much value they are
creating for the business. And then looking at my to do list and I
realize how much of my list is still ten dollars one hundred dollar tasks simply
because I've been too lazy to delegate them to my team, because it's like,
oh, it's going to take me five minutes to do this, whereas
it's going to take me twenty minutes to document it and explane how to do
it. So there's so much there where It's like, Ah, I need
to get these ten dollars one hundred dollar tasks off my plate because my value
to my business is in idea generation, it's strategy, it's content creation,
and it's showing up live and teaching my students. Those are my one thousand
and ten thousand dollar tasks. And the more that I can get those ten
and one hundred dollar tasks off my plate, the more time that I will
have to focus on the tasks that actually move the needle. So that's another
thing that I will be reflecting on, is what are my ten and one
hundred dollar tasks and are the one thousand and ten thousand dollar tasks I can
replace those with number four. I realize that the most successful people read a
lot, and I realized that I actually need to read a little bit more.
I'm not reading enough books and I'm a total bookworm. But you know,
the one thing that I realized from this retreat was everyone was throwing book
recommendations around, and so many of these recommendations had been on my list of
books that I wanted to read for a very very very long time time,
and I had just not got around to it. Because you know, in
the evenings, I get to the end of the day, I'm like,
oh, I just want to watch melrose Place reruns, right So, and
most of the time I'm not even focusing on what's going on in the show.
It's just background noise while I'm doing other things. So instead of doing
that, I know I need to carve out a little bit more intentional time
in my evenings to read a little bit more. And a lot of the
books that were suggested they're not even business books, they're books around mindset,
spirituality, autobiographies. These were all really commonly recommended ones, not just practical
business books. Okay, And then number five. This one was a really
interesting one for me, and that is that you won't grow into pain.
So if something is really painful in your business right now, you're not going
to grow in that area. You need to fix that pain first before you
will be able to grow into it. And in hindsight, I can see
how obvious this has been in the past. For example, back when I
was working with one on one clients in a marketing capacity, I found it
really exhausting. For each new client that I signed, it created a lot
of extra work for me. So I was starting to dread the new clients.
Even though I knew a new client meant an increase in revenue, it
was really painful, so I would dread it, and then I would sort
of subconsciously push these new clients away because I didn't want to grow into that
pain. So another thing that I'm going to be reflecting on is what are
the pain points in this business as it currently is, and how can we
fix those before we try to pour more fuel on the fire and add new
things to the business. So there you have it, five harsh truths.
Twenty percent of what we do usually delivers eighty percent of the results. Deep
thinking time is essential for coming up with new ideas. How much time are
we wasting doing those low value tasks? And the most successful people read a
lot. And lastly, you won't grow into pain. If you're not already
subscribed to this show, hit the follow button in Spotify or plus in Apple
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app every Monday, Wednesday and Friday as soon as it is released. Thank
you so much for listening. Catch you next time.