How to Fix Anything

Hey everyone, this is Julie, hope you’re doing amazing. It’s been a while since I’ve done a podcast and that’s mainly because life has been so busy, but I wanted to take a minute today and talk to you about something that I notice in all the coaching groups that I manage. And that is that when stuff doesn’t work, your business idea, your offer, your team, whatever it is, people get paralyzed and they don’t know how to solve the problems. And the funny thing about business is that stuff not working is more normal and more expected than stuff working. I think today’s episode, hopefully, it will be a little bit of a paradigm shift for you.

Alright, so the first thing is that we often as business owners think or when we get into this game, we think you know what things are going to go well and once in a while there will be an obstacle. And this is what we think in real life. You know, we get married, we have kids and life is pretty normal. And then there’s the occasional crisis. That’s not the way business works.

In fact, business is just a series of obstacle removal moments. Which sounds kind of depressing, but if you flip the script and you think about businesses like, okay, every time I remove this rock, now I’m going to advance to the next level. And every rock that you remove out of your path usually gets you more visibility, more money, more freedom, all those kinds of things.

It’s kind of like a video game. I used to play Mario Brothers all the time when I was little and I would go to level one. I’d have to beat the Bowser at level one, then level two, level three, and I never was under the delusion that there wouldn’t be a Bowser. Right? That’s the whole point of the game is to beat the next Bowser. So I think that instead of looking at business and being like, oh, this didn’t work, oh, this client…I can’t get clients, or oh, this offer didn’t work.

Instead of seeing it as a unique problem that only you’re experiencing, realize that you’re in a business video game, and this is your Bowser. This is level one Bowser, right? And then once you beat that, it’s going to be level two and level three. Just changing that alone will change the way you handle business obstacles.

And case in point, my traffic got shut down with Facebook and Instagram. This is my Bowser, right now. This is the level I’m on. And once I clear that rock, there’s going to be another one down the line. All right?

So let’s figure out some easy ways to diagnose when stuff isn’t working. Here’s what I would say. The very, very first thing is that most people have to make sure that it’s actually a true problem and that the expectation around the problem is correct. Here’s what I mean.

I see people all the time who come to me and say, oh my gosh, I tried this in business and nobody bought it and I don’t know what’s working. It’s not working. And they just kind of spin like a tornado and there isn’t actually a problem. It’s just that their expectations were mismanaged and they were mismatched.

And so first we got to get expectations out of the way. And then if we’ve done that assessment first and something’s still not working, then we can figure out how to solve it. All right?

So there’s three expectations in business that you have to satisfy first and make sure that those are all aligned. Expectations on difficulty, time and capital. So if something is not working in your business and I don’t care what it is, the reason why you are seeing it not working or you’re perceiving it as not working is because you had an expectation that was different and was that expectation reasonable to begin with?

So for example, maybe you expected making $100,000 was going to be easy or maybe you expected that building a funnel was only going to take you two hours or maybe that you expected that $500 in ad spend was going to get you 500 leads. Are your expectations around difficulty time and capital realistic?

And if you are not in a mastermind or you don’t have a coach or any sort of network that can keep you accountable, you’re going to come up with ideas in your head and these expectations are going to be out of whack.

This is one of the primary reasons that I feel like having a coach and a mentor is so important because they will help manage your expectations with difficulty, time and capital. Okay. So assuming that you’ve gone through those three expectations and you recognize, yeah, actually this is reasonable both for difficulty, time and capital.

Then now you’re like, okay, there is actually a problem. So to identify what exactly isn’t working, there’s really at the end of the day, only five possible problems in your business. No matter what’s not working. The first is that your offer, whatever you offer the marketplace isn’t working, it’s not converting, right? And that’s either because you have a terrible offer that the market doesn’t care about or you’re not messaging that offer correctly. Right?

So in one case, it’s the actual product or service itself and the other case, it’s just the way you’re creating that sales message. So I would say that would be an offer funnel problem, right? That’s the problem.

The second problem is that you have a great offer and a great message and you just don’t have any traffic, right? You’re not in a crowded marketplace, you’re selling on the side of the road in the cornfields of Kansas and nobody’s there. Right? And so you just can’t get money. So that would be the second problem.

The third problem and this is probably 90 percent of problems and very, very closely related to expectations. Your mindset. Your mindset is off. Either your expectations are really out of whack or even if your expectations are in line, the most common mindset issues are procrastination, not good enough, perfectionism, overwhelmed, comparisonitis, paralysis or confusion. So all of that just kind of go under mindset and that’s why again, having a coach is so unbelievably important.

The fourth thing that might be the problem is money. Mismanaging of money. Either you thought that you could just quit your nine to five and make 100k in the next month and so now you’re strapped for cash or you’re just not managing your money properly.

And then the last one is systems. And as my friend James Friel says, a system is simply a combination of a person, a process, and a tool. And if your systems are out of whack, this can create problems in your business.

And so at the end of the day, when you feel that sense of like, ah, this isn’t working, right? And you’re overwhelmed and you’re just not sure why, the first thing is to go through your expectations on difficulty, timing, and capital to make sure that your expectations are actually reasonable and there is a real true problem and just not an imagined one in your head because of the expectations you had.

And then the second thing is go through what’s not working. Is it the offer or the message of the offer? Is it the traffic that you’re in a deserted cornfield somewhere? Is it your mind that you haven’t exercised your mind and gotten yourself in shape mentally to be a business owner? Is it your money that you just literally lacking in capital or mismanaging your capital? Or is it your system? The people, the process and tools that are in place to help you manage your day to day?

I hope that’s helpful for you because then all of a sudden that swirling tornado and that sort of paralysis that happens when you hit a problem. It’s usually super easy to figure out what the problem actually, where that root is. Once you know that, then you can solve it. And just remember every problem you solve is like killing another Bowser in level one, level two, level three of Mario. And you’re going to go to another level and then there’s going to be a bigger problem and a harder battle. And that’s part of the game. So don’t be one of those business owners that just goes back and plays level one over and over and over again because you’ve learned to avoid problems instead of seeing it as part of your journey.