15: Solving Problems You Don’t Have

Kimberly Beer 0:23
Hey there business animals, it’s Kim with Be More Business

Cara Taylor Swift 0:26
and Cara Taylor Swift with Fast Horse Photography.

Kimberly Beer 0:29
And today, we have a really fun episode for you that we have giggled and had a good time in our planning discussion around and it’s called solving problems you don’t have. And I’m going to tell you the inspiration for this particular episode. And hopefully, it’ll be one that you identify with, but can also take away some really good tips on how not to solve problems that you don’t have, which really sounds very logical, doesn’t it? It does.

Cara Taylor Swift 0:57
Sometimes I sit down and I’m like, I got 99 problems, and they all need to be solved. But the truth of the matter is, is when I really sit down and break it down and take those little problems apart, I am sometimes just giving myself more work. So I’m excited about this episode, when we were laughing about it earlier, I was really self identifying here some things so I’m excited to kind of walk through because I have a feeling

Kimberly Beer 1:19
and I do too.

Cara Taylor Swift 1:20
Yeah, I’m not the only one. I have a feeling.

Kimberly Beer 1:22
Yeah, I’m not the only one either. But I’m going to tell you, you just gave me a terrible wake up call with that 99 problems. I have been listening way too much to tick tock because my brain filled in the rest of that song. Gosh, all the farmers love using that particular Tick Tock song. Really? Yeah, it doesn’t end quite so nicely. You just made it.

Anyway, so those of you who listened to tick tock probably got that joke. And the rest of you can just go, okay, it’s not, it’s not a problem you need to solve. You can it’s not that great of a discovery. Anyway, where this came from is I had a client that came to me, she wanted to do a webinar to build her business. And she had looked at other businesses, she’d been to some classes, she looked at her competitors buy other businesses, and she’d listened to some podcasts. And they all had great suggestions around developing a webinar. Well, they also went on because just telling somebody to do a webinar is usually not good enough, right? That doesn’t fill up 30 minutes of a podcast, it only fills up five minutes, go do a webinar, this is a great reason to do it. They had suggested all of these automations to help people with the number of people that would come to the webinar. And she was being a good entrepreneur. She was dreaming big. She was seeing lots of people coming to the webinar, she had a practice that was a service oriented business where she had a lot of service providers underneath her and she had all of this vision about she was going to host this webinar, and they were going to be inundated with business, right? Because all these people were going to show up to the webinar and it was going to be great. And what they contacted me for was to build automations to be able to handle the influx of people that would come from the webinar. Now mind you, they’d never they didn’t hold the webinar. They hadn’t tested the webinar. And when I started asking questions, one of my first questions was how many people are on your database? Well, we don’t even have one yet. That’s why we’re doing this. Okay. I interviewed her assistant because the client couldn’t answer all the questions. So she says I have an assistant that takes care of that. And I’m like, Oh, well, that’s great. Let me talk to her. And I talked to the assistant. And she’s like, all of these are very analog systems right now, one of the things they wanted to do was to offer online bookings. And they wanted people to be able to go to a page on a website, click a button, and then book their beginning appointment with whatever service provider they wanted right then and there, which sounds crazy. But when I asked the assistant, she’s like, well, first of all, we have all these intake forms that we have to do before we assign them to a service provider. And none of our service providers use electronic calendaring. They’re all on paper calendars. And I’m like, Okay, well, we would have to change that. Right? We would have to change the paper calendar over to electronic. So are they willing to do that? Well, no, they’re not. It ended up long story short, because I could go on and on with the things that happened. The number of roadblocks that got thrown up when we were trying to develop the automation was insane. And we all of a sudden got down this rabbit hole of we have to change this procedure in the office and this procedure in the office and then the employees were upset and the service providers were upset and then we had to look at the intake forms and how Could we change the intake forms and make them more consistent. And in the end, I saw this spiraling out of control. And I, I stopped the project and I said, Look, you know, you hired me to help you get a webinar up and going and to be able to get people signed up for that webinar on on your list. And all of the sudden, we’re down all of this rabbit hole. What happens when 10 people come to the webinar webinars are notorious for not having high attendance rates. And, you know, we’re trying to solve this problem for 500 people coming through your business, which I think is great, I want you to have that much business. But the reality is, you’re probably going to start off with 10. And 10, your assistant can handle she does that on a daily basis. So are we solving a problem we don’t have. And that was the conclusion is that needed to go back to square one and grow in the way that seemed a logical for that business. In other words, we needed to go back to the beginning. And we needed to not change everything to match this really fancy automation ended up the webinar happened with the client had a good attendance, but it was nothing that her assistant couldn’t handle. And they’re still in the process of figuring out how do they want to change the policies and procedures in their business to grow at the rate that their business can handle? Does that make sense and solving problems that you don’t have?

Cara Taylor Swift 6:28
Yeah, and you brought it like, there’s so many pieces of that, that we’re going to cover today, like everything from breaking down the problem into little problems. And you don’t have to completely reinvent the way you do business to solve problems. And I mean, there’s just so much of that, that gets me excited, because I’m sitting here thinking about like, all of those different pieces that came in with that. So absolutely.

Kimberly Beer 6:47
So do you want to go ahead and go over the Big Three? Absolutely. So

Cara Taylor Swift 6:51
today, we’re talking about solving problems that you don’t have. So the first one of our big three is stay in the moment as much as possible. Think about it as entrepreneurs, we really tend to have those big dreams, we dream big about where our business is going. And that’s what makes us successful is that dreaming part of that, but we really need to slow down and take all the steps to get where we’re going. So we’ll talk a little bit about that. Second, big three Be mindful of the triggers to solving problems you don’t have, we all have a tendency sometimes to look outside of our businesses and try to keep up with the Joneses as they say, and we’re gonna talk a little bit about that. And then finally for number three, meet your business where it’s at, and except that you will outgrow many things in your business. And that’s a good thing. It’s a really good thing and it’s perfectly okay, so we’re gonna start with number one. Kim, you want to start right there with sometimes you have to crawl before you fly. Maybe.

Kimberly Beer 7:40
Yeah, you have to Well, yeah, you have to crawl before Yeah, definitely before you fly, but I like the analogy for business owners of buying your kindergartener clothes that they’re going to need for high school. So, so when your child starts into school, you know, you need to go get them school clothes, and they start at kindergarten. But if you went to the store, and you said, okay, but my kindergarteners gonna grow, and eventually they’re going to be a senior in high school. So maybe I should buy them clothes for senior in high school, and they’ll they’ll grow into them, right? Well, yeah, they will eventually, but they’re not going to fit your poor kindergarteners going to be losing their pants, kindergarten class, which probably isn’t a good thing. And then you know, even when they do get to high school styles may have shifted something better may be out there, they’re not going to have gotten good use out of those clothes along the way. Well, you know, buying the expensive software package that has all of the bells and whistles for a CRM program or putting into place some really high end manufacturing system in your product where you’re selling five products a day, and this could manufacture 5000 in a day. Yeah, that’s a great place to go. It’s a great thing to look at. But sometimes we get down that rabbit hole way too far and we’re buying our kindergartener clothes for high school. In my own business, this showed up really are my own life, I’m not gonna see my own business because I don’t have that business anymore. Because of this very reason. The first business I started was a printing business. And it was in a little town called Clinton, Missouri. That’s right off side of the lakes. The thing was, I wanted to start the business kind of in my home and sort of do business with my clients at their businesses, because business owners sometimes have a little bit of difficulty going and spending time somewhere else. So I wanted to show up for them where they were at, which was a really, really good idea. The problem was, is that I had a business partner who is like, No, we need to have a storefront. We need to have all of these things to bring business in. We need to have all All these items in place, and we ended up renting a storefront on the square, which was an expensive item to have, then we had to outfit that with all kinds of office furniture. I mean, it was that that whole whole, it’s not just software, it can happen in real life stuff, right? Then we had to outfit the office so that we looked professional. So we ended up buying all this furniture, half of it we didn’t even use. And we had to have all of these fancy things that we wanted to impress people with. And so I had a cashflow problem that eventually landed me in bankruptcy court. So it was hugely detrimental to my business. And I was solving problems I literally did not have and it didn’t even fit my business model. You know, I didn’t, I didn’t mean that.

Cara Taylor Swift 10:51
Yeah, I think when we go, sorry, my dog is like throwing.

Kimberly Beer 10:59
Let’s, let’s just go.

Cara Taylor Swift 11:02
Are you okay with

Kimberly Beer 11:10
an animal based business?

Cara Taylor Swift 11:16
So I think you know, you were talking about the kindergartener and the buying the clothes and anticipation of that kindergartener being a 16 year old or graduating high school and needing big kid clothes. But when I think about that, I think about how when we all are ambitious, and we start our business, and we love the idea of we’re going to go from day one, and we’re going to grow so fast that we’re going to have this huge problem that we can’t keep up. And the reality is, is that most businesses grow really slowly. And there is time to create the programs that you need as you grow. So you’re kind of crawling along with your business and creating things as you go. It’s an awesome problem to have if you’re one of the few businesses that goes from startup to a seven figure business in like a month or a year, and you’re suddenly having to scramble to figure out how to deal with that. But the truth is, is that not most businesses

Kimberly Beer 12:05
No and that’s a fun problem to solve. That means that’s a fun problem to solve is a problem, and you will need to solve it. But you don’t want to solve it before it happened. And the detrimental part of this is it’s a lot of waste of your energy and time and concern and stress. Because if you’re stressed out worried about how you’re going to serve all of these customers that came to your webinar, and 10 people are all that show up to the webinar. It’s a huge letdown. And it’s a it’s a huge ding to you personally, and you’ve stressed out about it. And now you’re less likely to go back and do another webinar.

Cara Taylor Swift 12:47
Yeah, not only was it extremely costly for your business, that you’ve invested in programs and technology and materials and training, and you’ve done all of this, but then you have the letdown of you’ve done all this, you spent all this money and time and energy. And then it’s not that you did anything wrong, it’s just that you solve the problem you didn’t have. And now you’re in a position where you felt like you failed. Like, I would certainly be a business owner that felt like oh, my goodness, I’ve spent all this money and I launched this program or launched this product or this service. And I set this program up to be super successful, and to have a million people walk through the door and I had five, which is fine, it would have been fine if I was at that level of time and energy and money that I put into it. So that’s part of it, too, is setting yourself up for the mindset of that.

Kimberly Beer 13:36
Yeah. And staying in the moment. So you’re not beating yourself up about what has happened. So I want to say something to this. I think as entrepreneurs, it’s important that we dream big. It’s important that you look for the future. I believe in energetic exchange, I believe that we create and manifest what we think about the most and thinking about owning a seven figure business and dreaming about it. And happily thinking, Oh, I would do this, if I had that. Or I would do that if I had it. I think that’s great. And I honestly encourage people to do that to write visions that offer that big scary as a lot of the tech world says the B hag the big, hairy, audacious goal that you want to get to. I think that’s fantastic. And that’s not what we’re telling people to do is to not do that. I think that’s perfect. What I don’t want you to do is I don’t want you to get so stressed out and so worried about solving the problems of a seven figure business owner when you are a brand new startup and you’re still in the negative dollars, getting your business up and running. There’s a process to this and I see it in my clients all the time I I will have consultations with new clients that are brand new startup businesses and I’m like okay, here’s the deal for my entrepreneurial experience, business. Go through three very distinct phases, and they usually happen in the first few years of the business.

Cara Taylor Swift 15:08
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Kimberly Beer 15:54
There’s the business you think you’re going to create that you wrote your business plan around that you wrote your vision around before you actually worked that business, even if you’re coming from a technical background. So let’s say you’re a dog groomer who works for another dog groomer in a bigger salon, and you go, Okay, I’m going to go out on my own and be my own dog grooming business, you have a really good idea because you’ve done that business. But you haven’t run that business, you haven’t been the entrepreneur yet. So you know, the technical piece of things. But you’ve still got a lot of things that you don’t know. And I’m sorry to say that you’re going to learn them through experience, it’s you can read all of the books, you can look at all of the competition, and you can avoid some things, but you’re still going to have a learning curve getting out there into your own business and running it. So that’s phase one. Phase Two is you start to figure out, Okay, these are my people that are showing up for my business, this is how I’m doing it that that idea didn’t work, I need to modify it over here, we need to change this about what we’re doing, you have the middle type of business where you start to get a handle on it, and then you’ll work in that business for a while. And then you’ll go Okay, now I got this, I know what I’m doing. I know exactly who I’m serving, I know exactly what my brand is, I know exactly what I want to bring to people, and then you have that mature business that then is ready for the much bigger items that you can do. But if you’re starting it, the first piece of it, you’ve got to go through that process. So you’ve got to earn that knowledge in order for it to be effective. So with great power comes great responsibility, we can go to the Marvel Comics, and

Cara Taylor Swift 17:42
then you’re gonna have a much more reasonable idea about what’s going to actually work for your business. And hopefully you’re not out there, then investing in programs and tech, and all of these things that you can get sucked into without having any idea of what you really need. So that makes a lot of sense.

Kimberly Beer 17:57
Exactly. Yeah. And you don’t you just don’t know it yet. So let’s move on to talking about the triggers of how to recognize this in your business. Because I think that for a lot of us, we don’t even realize this is happening. It just sort of happens very organically in our entrepreneurial mindset sort of leads us down that path pretty easily. So one of my favorite ones is keeping up with the Joneses. So looking at your competition or watching somebody online, because we all stalk our competition. And if you don’t, you should be okay shadow sorry, got to use our right word shadow, no shadow. We’re not creepers. We’re just shadowing. But you should shadow your competition and see what they’re up to. But you don’t have to match them at every step of the road, especially if they’re a business that is in that more mature space than your business is, it’s good to look at it to say would that work for me? or How can I change it? And how can I step into it step by step. And second would be all of these cool tech tools that are intended to save you time, I’m gonna tell you, I’m a huge fan of business automation, I really am. Because I think it takes a lot of the things out of your way that people don’t do and it adds in a whole bunch of benefit. But if your business isn’t ready for it, it can be a time suck. And it can be a place that you just aren’t ready to go. It’s a problem that you’re solving that you don’t have yet. And yet it’s creating a whole herd of other problems that now you have to solve in the moment. Because you’re down the path of being able to do that. And I know Cara, you have a little bit of experience with that.

Cara Taylor Swift 19:42
Yeah, I mean, one way that this has shown up for me is that anytime you’re online or you’re doing training, or you’re talking to other people in the industry that are doing things different than you there is a lot of pressure, you know, to automate your systems that are coming from everywhere. And I do believe that automation is awesome and it’s useful and there are parts of that that I have in my business. But I have to be honest, I have personally been I don’t want to say suckered because no one suckered me into it. But the truth of the matter is, I was suckered, I guess I will say, to getting a sleek, new, beautiful program that will help me automate. And it’s just a lot of program for a business like mine, which in truth is really a low volume, high customer experience business. So for me to automate every part of that system and to use that program fully for what it costs and what it costs me and what it costs me to obtain and maintain. And the time that I have to put into it to make it work well doesn’t make sense when I want to have a very high end customer experience that’s really detailed per client. So it’s customized per client, my business doesn’t always lend itself to automation at all the levels at this point, I mean, it doesn’t mean I won’t get there. But at this point, that’s where I’m at. So that’s a great example for me, where I feel like I found myself pressured into getting a tool that maybe I just didn’t need at that capacity at that moment. It’s just something that part of the ways that I get triggered is I’ll be on social media, for example. And I’ll see other photographers, for example, using some of these programs in their business. And if I really sit down and look at the type of work they’re doing, and the volume that they’re carrying, it makes a lot of sense for their business. But it doesn’t make sense for me, at least at this, you know, stage of my crawl across my business lifecycle. So social media can be a big trigger for me,

Kimberly Beer 21:30
Well, yeah, and social media can also there’s another place this, I think shows up for photographers, and that’s in lens envy, gear envy. I know personally, I have bought lenses that I use twice a year. And really, and truthfully, they’re not anything but the creative piece. But I see on social media, some other photographer who took this one really cool shot and I’m thinking, Oh, I got to have that in my bag. Right, and then I’m going to worry. So I’m the worrywart, I worry that Oh, I’m going to come into a situation where I’m going to need that lens in my bag, because I will want to have that shot when it comes up. Yeah, here’s the reality, the shot maybe doesn’t come up. And I have a really pricey lens that I’m toting around in my bag that I never even use or use twice a year. And I would be much better off to rent that lens, and then create the shot I want and move on that is a trigger of of looking at other people looking at the things that come our way for social media. And it does make a difference.

Cara Taylor Swift 22:35
But we’re not the only ones. Like we’re not the only ones because I will tell you, if I implement something in my business, and it’s put out into the world, I will get four or five, six Dms or emails asking me where did I get that? What program Am I using? Who taught me how to do that? Can you show me how to do that? So or where you got that? Or you know, it’s just that is a great example of other people just like okay, maybe I need that for my business? And maybe they do. But a lot of times it’s like triggered by seeing something and it’s like a quick trigger. So it’s like stepping back a second thinking about it identifying your business and where you’re at, I think can I mean we all do it? I think to some extent

Kimberly Beer 23:14
we all do. And don’t beat yourself up. If you’re going, Oh, I just did that. We all do it. And I think it’s so organic. And it’s so kind of not conscious that we don’t even think about it. What we want you to do is to take a mindful moment and say, okay, should I really walk down this path? And if I do go down it am I going to realistically take a look at what what is happening and say, I will pull the plug if if this or this or this happens,

Cara Taylor Swift 23:47
you can always file that information away for later for when your business is ready for it.

Kimberly Beer 23:51
You can buy those clothes when you get to high school when they’re in style. That’s right. Oh, another place another trigger that sometimes will get us is really good marketing from other businesses. And I think this shows up in one of these ways where it’s like how to become a seven figure business owner. The first question I have is, do you really need to be a seven figure business owner? Is that really in your business plan? Yes, we would all like to have seven figure businesses. But is that really where you’re headed? Or are you headed to a six figure business, you know, or even a five figure business for some people? It’s a point of of looking at what the pressures that society and the pressures that other business owners put on us and all of the quote unquote experts tell us what to do, then sometimes we get down the path of following that advice, and it doesn’t feel right. It actually creates way more problems in our business than it solves. And we want to keep up with it because that’s what the expert said or that’s what the author said about the seven figure build your seven figure business.

Cara Taylor Swift 25:04
Yeah, I get all I get all up in arms about this one sometimes because I feel like I get bombarded regularly by emails, you know, social media posts, podcast, advertisers saying things like, you know, this is how I built my seven figure business. And you can do it too. And a lot of times, it’s by this course, join my mastermind and pay this huge dollar amount to do that, well, I’ll tell you, that’s probably part of the way that they built their seven figure business right is by getting all of us to pay that big chunk of money to participate in that program, so that we can learn to do that as well. So I get a little up in arms about that. So it’s a trigger, it’s something that you’re going to come across, I come across it all the time. And we’re always going to be tempted, because it feels like a get rich quick scheme, or it feels like God, if I could just watch this program and spends the $7,000 that I need to spend to be a part of this group, then all also get that return investment. And the truth is, is you might, you probably will, there’s going to be some value in that for sure. But Gosh, it’s also an easy thing to jump into and not know if it’s right for your business or not. So I just want to caution people like these things are out there doesn’t mean they’re not right for you, and that they wouldn’t leap your business forward in a big way. But just just really spend some time thinking about it and researching it and making sure it fits your business before you jump into something. Yeah, my tip on the

Kimberly Beer 26:29
courses and classes like this, I think that there is a value to them. And some of the ones that I’ve participated in when I did my due diligence and researched it, and found that it was a good fit for my business have been helpful, I will say that they are and they have been helpful. But here’s the key aspect, if you’re going in this because the seven figure caught your attention, you’re probably in it for the wrong reason. And you may not be able to do the things that the person suggests to get to that. So when I sign up for these, what I do is I just mindfully set for a moment. And I think, Okay, I’m going to go into this with an open mind and an open heart. And I’m going to take the things from this that are going to work for my business. And I’m going to unattach myself from the result right now, if my business doesn’t make seven figures, I’m good with that. I’m going to take away from this, I’m going to invest what i say i’m going to invest, but then what I’m going to take away what works for me, and I’m going to make it mine. And I’m going to unattach myself from this person’s expectation of my business, I need to match my expectations for my own business, not somebody who wrote a book or who is doing a course or running a mastermind, this is my business and the way that I want to do it may not match up with the way they do. And usually what happens with that, especially in the bigger masterminds is that if you don’t do things, the way that they say if they have the guaranteed seven figure thing, it’s like, Okay, well, you didn’t do exactly what I told you. So that’s why you didn’t reach seven figures. So that’s why you got to let go of the result.

Cara Taylor Swift 28:08
That makes a lot of sense. Because it’s otherwise it’s another area where you’re not stacking up, you know, in your life or in your business and can none of us need more reasons to not feel good enough, or like we’re not doing something well or that we’re failing somewhere else again, like none of us need that, you know, we got enough places in our lives most of the time, where we’re struggling with that kind of thing. So if you can do your research, or go into it with the mindset that Kim’s talking about, where I’m gonna take the pieces of this that work for me and forget about whatever they tell me the outcome should be, then that’s a great way to do it, then you’re going into it at the right place. You’re crawling before you’re flying. You know, you’re walking the walk that your business needs you to walk

Kimberly Beer 28:09
exactly and you’re trusting the process that’s going to get you from where you are to where you really want to go. Like I said, it’s great to dream. It’s perfect. You should vision you should dream, you should go to these courses, you should listen to people, you should look to your mentors. All of that is great, but there’s a process for you to get from where you are to where you need to go. It’s a process you’ve got to live through, you’ve got to earn your way to the next step. That’s the fun part.

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To me if you can, it goes back to that old quote that you see about you know, it’s the journey, not the dust. donation. In. Honestly, it sounds corny and kind of stupid. But if you shift your mindset to enjoying the journey or the process, you’ll have a lot more enjoyment out of your business, because you don’t set yourself with those expectations that are unrealistic. Another trigger that I see, this happens to my clients a lot. And honestly, it’s happened in my own business, you’ll run across that one problematic customer who complains about your business model, and they’ll give you all kinds of advice, like, you should do this. And you should do that. And you should do this. And the truth is for the 99 clients ahead of them and the 99, after them, the way that you’re doing business is absolutely perfect, then the one person comes along and wants you to change everything about how you’re doing business. And because you’re a small business owner, and are very conscientious of making sure all of your customers are happy, right, we all want our customers to be happy, then what you do is you go back and take a look at changing all of the stuff that was working, and you’re solving a problem you never had for one person,

Cara Taylor Swift 31:11
I think that’s an easy thing to fall into. Because we all want to make all of our clients happy. And we take it really seriously and to heart when somebody doesn’t fit into our program. And I think the quick like fix is okay, we need to change something or change everything to make our programs fit for everybody. But the truth is, Kim when you really sit down and think about that process. And if you can think through the process that that client went through with you? And did they have the same level of service and experience that you provide to your other clients that were happy, you know, if you can answer those questions, then it might be just a case that they weren’t vetted well, for your business in terms of are they a good fit, and that’s okay. And being able to be okay with that yourself sometimes is half the battle, I guess, you know, having this people pleaser mentality, like a lot of us have, especially if we’re just trying to serve people and create great experience, then we can fall into that. So I definitely agree with you challenging folks to you know, don’t write it off and blame the customer. It’s not their fault. nobody did anything wrong there. But take a look at yourself, look at the process, really analyze and make sure that all the steps were followed, if you have employees that they follow the process, and if everything checks out, then it’s most likely just not a great fit for the client. And that’s okay.

Kimberly Beer 32:24
And you don’t have to change your whole business to handhold one customer either. So if you have somebody who needs some special attention, it’s good customer service, you can go ahead and give that person this special attention. But you don’t need to change the system of what you do. Just because one person didn’t walk through that system as easily as the others did just call it an outlier. I have been called on many times for particularly websites, one person will have a difficulty with a piece of the website like they can’t find something or the form was not as clear for them as maybe for someone else, or they didn’t understand one piece of something. And the client will call me and be like, Oh, we need to rearrange the entire website. And I’m like, wait, hold up a second, let’s go back and look and see. Is it was it really this one person? And can we just serve this person by providing a little bit of extra above the top customer service, personally, and then everyone else seems to be fine with it. So it’s just something to be mindful of. And it’s another trigger that happens when we’re working with it. Now I’d like to shift over to if you don’t recognize the triggers, like if one of those triggers didn’t identify, or you’re like, Oh, that’s not me, I don’t do that. I also want to give you some more generalized ways for you to know that you’re probably solving problems you don’t have and one of them is feeling overwhelmed. And I know small business owners that’s just state of chaos that we live in, it tends to be overwhelm.

Cara Taylor Swift 33:57
Isn’t that just the standard state?

Kimberly Beer 33:59
Yeah, but overwhelm can be a true piece of this. And I see this in a lot again, with people who are trying to step into, especially tech that they’re not really ready for yet that it’s so overwhelming. And it just it creates the Pandora’s box of problems that just keep coming up and coming out and coming out. And your I think I called it in my blog post about this atomic whack-a-mole. I mean, just like oh my god, there’s another one and there’s another one and there’s another one. And the overwhelm gets to be so much with when you get to that point and you feel like you’re playing whack-a-mole with problems, especially around when certain things sit down for a moment and ask yourself, Am I solving a problem that I didn’t have? Do I need to go back and take a look at this and maybe pull the plug on it another one of these signs that you might be solving problems that you don’t have is low energy to work on a task like you just can’t muster that you don’t even want to think about it. I mean, I bet you feel this way with that tech program that you have around on animation is just like, you know, you should be doing it. But you may even put time on your calendar for it or you try to take little steps around it. But you can’t get motivated no matter what you do to want to work on it.

Cara Taylor Swift 35:16
And like you said, the Pandora’s box just keeps opening up more and more questions that I need to answer. But I really don’t need to answer because they’re not problems in my business. It’s just a constant. It’s like the cycle is never ending.

Kimberly Beer 35:27
And then the next one is I call this particular phenomenon. And I, this is not my name for it, somebody wrote a book about it. It’s called structured procrastination. And what happens is, it’s usually it’s a backwards Domino fall. So this is what happened with my client with the webinars. So she wanted to do the webinar, that was the thing that needed to happen. But in order for that to happen, we had to change this process. In order for that process to change, we had to change the next process. And that’s where you start going so far backward. And every single step takes you away from the goal that you started out for. It’s a process a lot of times there’s value in that structured procrastination in the backward processing, because it gets you to think about things maybe you didn’t think about, but when you find yourself kind of falling backward into that structure, procrastination, and you’re getting further and further away from the goal, it’s time to say, wait a minute, is this something that I should pull the plug on? Or wait for later? Is this really what I need to be doing at this moment in time? Or do I need to go back to the original goal, and get that thing done, I’m gonna raise my hand up and say, this happens to me a lot. So I I am very much a structured procrastinator. And I have learned to kind of let myself off the hook for it a little bit, because I do find value in some of those experiences that I have when I’m kind of getting further away from the goal. But I catch myself doing it faster now, because I’m aware of it. And I’ll come back to my goal and reassess. But I don’t beat myself up for it. Because I know that that process is a process that helped me probably get to the next step. Does that make some kind of weird sense?

Cara Taylor Swift 37:24
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So for you, you are learning from that process of backtracking a little bit. And probably further identifying what you really need. Yeah,

Kimberly Beer 37:34
I am a next shiny object person. Anyway, I have ADD, I get distracted very easily. And sometimes that opens up the doors to opportunity. And sometimes it wastes time. It’s kind of a crapshoot as to which way it’s going to go. Another sign that you might look for, like in the way that you feel is when you’re feeling resentful of a person or a task that you have in your day, you might also look at that and go, yeah, that’s kind of your intellect telling you, hey, there’s, there’s something up here, you know, you believe that it’s going the right way. And now you’re, you’re changing something for somebody else, or you’re solving a problem you don’t have it can also be other things. So you got to be careful with that. But it’s an indication that you might want to examine why you’re feeling resentful of that person or that task. And then finally, feeling like a failure. Like we’ve talked about this in several points throughout this episode about feeling like you’re a failure, when, when that certain to come around, take a look at it and see if if it’s not this phenomenon of solving problems you don’t have the third of our big three is to meet your business where it’s at, and accept that you will outgrow many things in your business. And that’s a good thing. And it’s okay. So that’s probably the simplest to say. And the hardest to follow, I would say,

Cara Taylor Swift 39:04
I think at this point, it’s a good time to kind of jump into thinking through some steps that people can take to really determine you know, if they have a problem that needs solving. And so what what I’ve done is I put together a few things that I use in my business or try to use in my business consistently when I’m trying to determine if I have a problem that needs solving, or if I have a problem that I’m trying to solve that doesn’t actually need solving. So a problem I don’t have. So here are a couple things that you can do for your business. So the first thing that Kim and I have talked about several times is just slowing down, it can be real easy to just hit that little Buy button and they make it so easy these days. I mean, they connect it to the PayPal and they just make it so darn easy. And the next thing you know you’re saddled with this solution, and I’m putting that in quotation marks that you’re saddled with the solution to a problem and you may or may not actually have that problem or it may or may not fit your needs. So you know it might look like something that new tech or training a one size fits all solution. For that perceived problem, so just slow down a little bit and think through the problem and some of those steps. The other thing that I think people should think about is actually listening to the problem that you’ve identified. So be real critical about where the problem is coming from, is this something that has happened in my business that is problematic? Or is this something that I’ve seen somewhere and I’m worried it’s going to become a problem? Or is it something that I’ve identified that I think I need in my business, because someone else is doing it, you know, so be real critical about where that problem is coming from, like, actually sit down and identify that because I can be the one to see something and be like, that’s gonna be a problem I’m gonna have or I need that right now, I need that. That’s amazing. So, you know, you just have to think about it a little bit. So is this something that’s holding you back, you know, what made you realize that you actually had this problem in the first place, ask yourself those questions. And then I like to recommend for people to actually break the problem down. So you’ve listened to the problem, you’ve thought through it, but now break it down into smaller bite sized problems, because those bite sized problems tend to be a lot more easily solvable. And those are going to be the steps that are going to take you down that road of your business, solving those little baby problems. And hopefully, will ultimately help you solve the bigger problems that are gonna come up in your business. And then think about what your end goal as a business owner looks like. It might be different and completely different from someone else that is out there that’s running a similar business. So if you’re seeing a solution that someone else is used, and you think that is something that I need for a problem that I’m going to have in my business, hold up again, slow down and think about, you know, what does your end goal look like? Where do you see yourself in two years or five years or at the end of this process? And then, you know, Kim has mentioned this before, you can always go back and change if it seems okay, at first, if you were thinking it was the right fit, or that you had this problem, and then you start opening that Pandora’s box of problems and more problems are jumping out and you’re creating new issues, you know, and it shifts into something super awkward and heavy, you can back up and take a step back and reset and rethink

Kimberly Beer 42:10
you can change your mind. Yeah, there’s no law that says that, once you’ve invested in some type of a tech issue or a process and you go into there, and you go, oh, gosh, this is not working for me. You can change your mind. And you know what, here’s something else. You can change your mind back later on. Doors don’t close like that. I mean, you can you can go back and look at things. And my biggest part with this is trust your gut, trust your intuition when when it feels like you’ve opened that Pandora’s box and you’re going Oh, can open worms everywhere. Go back and say okay, open worms everywhere is that we can open worms everywhere. When you see those worms everywhere go, Oh, gosh. Maybe I need to back up a moment and let the worms go. Be free. Be blessed and be free. You enjoy me right?

Cara Taylor Swift 43:12
Yes, you crack me up. Some of this stuff you say is justso funny? Okay, you guys, I think that is what we’ve got for you today. Before we start talking about worms again. We have labored we have really created a lot of problems out there. So

Kimberly Beer 43:29
we probably have created a whole bunch of people.

Cara Taylor Swift 43:35
That’s right. Okay, so solving problems you don’t have. We hope. So we’ve asked you guys to stay in the moment as much as possible. Go ahead and dream big. But you got to remember, you’ve got to take all those baby steps to get there. You can’t always fly as Kim likes to say sometimes you have to crawl. You can’t buy the clothes for the kindergartener that are sized for a size 16 year old. So think about those things. We really got ourselves laughing now.

Kimberly Beer 44:06
We have some really crazy ass metaphors. hope you guys have enjoyed those. Major mixed up things there’s worms kindergarten. Okay, though bigger businesses. And I think there were a few more

Cara Taylor Swift 44:29
Wack-a-moles. Okay, so we have we have really gotten off here. So be mindful of the triggers to solving problems you don’t have. You don’t have to keep up with the Joneses.

Okay, and then the last one,

meet your business. We love you guys. We hope you join us next week. Have a

Kimberly Beer 44:53
great week. We’ll see you next week.

Jaz 44:56
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Business Animal. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you learned something today, leave us a review. To learn more, find us at The Business animal.com we’d love to hear from you. Until next time, keep your business well trained with The Business Animal.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai