Camille: Good morning, George.
George: Good morning, Camille.
Camille: Wow. You look like you're ready to hit it.
George: I'm punk for a reason. I don't, whatever we're didn't understand about myself. However, we did recently get a new espresso maker. And next time you come visit you, come check it out. It's fantastic.
Camille: What... what'd you get?
George: I will tell you what it is, is a proper espresso maker. It's programmable. It's got a digital front. It's compact, it has its own beans hopper, and it's grinding beans.
George: So we're always getting fresh ground stuff.
Camille: You're getting the real stuff now, so I'm jealous. I'm gonna have to get one.
George: Wire cutter loves them.
Camille: You know, what, that might be relevant to today. I might be able to segue this because, okay. Let's see. This, we're, we're gonna talk today about basically the small changes that you should make, well, should, maybe I shouldn't use the word, should.
Camille: Small changes that you are invited to make in order to achieve your big goals. We talk a lot about goals on this podcast, so we need to talk about the ways that you can make it easier to achieve those goals.
Camille: For some people it's, I struggle even getting started and for some people it's, I never seem to finish or I don't have time.
Camille: Like there's all sorts of reasons. So we're gonna talk through some pretty straightforward stuff. And I'm gonna preface this with, these aren't things that you haven't heard of before. Like, I don't have any earth shattering thing that you can do except okay, except maybe a new espresso machine that could be helpful.
Camille: See, I told you I'd work it in. But seriously, these are not new things, but I am talking about them because, I want people to really think about them and if they're using these effectively.
Camille: And if they're not, I hear this resistance to things that I think is the important thing to work through, like the resistance to some of the guidance and advice.
Camille: And this gets back to what we've talked about before with when we try to take any of these steps or advice or things that we're supposed to do to the extreme and then we're like, oh, I can't do that. It doesn't work for me. And so I wanna talk about this in, it's, again, these aren't new, or probably most of them are not new to people.
Camille: There might be one or two you haven't really thought about as being useful, but it's mostly about the approach that I want us to think about in doing this a little bit differently.
Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
Camille: I'm your host, Camille Rapacz: small business coach and consultant who spent too much of her career working in corporate business performance.
George: And I'm George Drapeau: your co-host and her brother. I'm a leader in the tech world bringing my corporate perspective, but mostly my curiosity.
Camille: Together, we're exploring beliefs about success and how to achieve it. But mostly we're bringing practical solutions so you and your business can thrive.
Camille: So I have this feeling like we spend, we, not you and me, but we, people in general, people of the world, people of the planet, we tend to spend more time talking and thinking about our goals than we do actually pursuing them. Do you ever feel like, I feel like that with my goals sometimes.
George: Yeah.
George: What I do notice is when we're talking about goals, there's endless talking and no writing down goals during the goal meeting. You know what I mean?
George: Oh, well that's a very good issue. Well, what is, does everybody have input about this? What do you have to say about That's a good, we should take that offline in discussion and come back like, yeah, yeah. Goal. Write a goal. Write a goal. You know what I mean? It's not that we're not doing it. Yeah. It's not that we're not thinking about it.
George: The team that I'm in, and I wish I had this idea, we have an Elmo doll, you know, Elmo from Sesame Street. Mm-hmm. to stop that. Elmo the acronym. Enough Let's Move On. ELMO. So, oh, ooh, is brilliant. That's good. So we'll be doing one of these things. We're talking endlessly about stuff.
George: Instead of taking the action, somebody will throw the Elmo doll on the middle of the table and say, Elmo. Little shock is like, oh, okay. You're right. Yeah. Yeah.
George: In enterprise land. What I see more often is not so much that we don't start goals, but when we're doing the exercise, we don't get to them and finish them.
Camille: Yeah. I think that's a lot of us and a lot of what's happening is we do the exercise. So if we get as far as actually planning, so I love what you said about like running into people that don't even have goals and how it's a cardinal sin in corporate small business owners. It should be a cardinal sin in your business to not have goals.
Camille: Mm-hmm. Like your business should have goals, targets. You gotta be working towards something because you cannot improve your business if you don't know what it is you're trying to achieve. Like, what am I improving on if I don't know? So I love that you have to have the goals.
Camille: But let's say you get that far. Okay. The talking about it, it's so satisfying. And this is one of the things I wish I could remember. Maybe I'll find the source for this and put it in the show notes. But I read about, and I think it's back to some of this like behavioral science stuff, where if you are talking about your goals too much, you are less inclined to work on them because you got the satisfaction of talking about them.
Camille: Really? Yes. I need to find the source for this because it gets down to Yes. When we talk about our goals and they say, oh, share it with lots of people. Well, there's a limit to how much you should share your goals in part because some people you're gonna share 'em with are gonna be like, whatever, or they're gonna poop pot, right.
Camille: there's always a naysayer in there. Especially if it's like, Hey, I'm gonna start a business. Oh my goodness. Be careful who you tell that to because you know, who knows what skeptical I you're gonna get on that. But the other reason is this one, that if we keep talking about it, it's very satisfying.
Camille: Like, yeah, I have goals, I'm gonna do this stuff. And then we're like, yay me. And then we move on. Because setting a goal is an accomplishment, and so you should celebrate it. But sometimes we get caught in the loop of like, that's all we're doing is talking about what we're planning to do and not actually doing the thing.
Camille: Yes. So today we're gonna talk about doing the thing because everybody should be making tons of progress by now on their goals for the year. And I bet you pretty much everybody who's listening right now is gonna look at their annual goals and be like, Oh, I didn't, I'm not, I'm not nearly as far as I need to be at this point in the year if I don't make these happen, like you're already starting to feel this tension of there's not enough time.
Camille: How am I gonna get it all done?
Camille: What am I gonna do?
Camille: There's so many things I still wanna do.
Camille: This also relates to we're really focusing on the process. Process over outcomes. You already know what the outcomes are that you want. Stop talking about that. Now let's talk about, and do, the actual process.
Camille: So here's how we're gonna go through. I have these eight things that I've come up with. I mean, again, they're not new, but I picked the eight that I thought were most relevant for our audience to really focus on in order to make it easier to actually achieve your goals. Okay. And so what I wanna do is I want to have you pick from the list.
Camille: We're not gonna have time to go through all eight, because that would be a forever long podcast, but I am gonna have a way at the end, so you're gonna wanna listen to the end people, because I'm gonna have a way for you to actually get all eight of these and be able to use them yourself. Today we're gonna pick George's favorites.
Camille: It's all about, I'm ready. George Day. Uhhuh . What's your first one? What's the first one? Avoid distractions.
Camille: Avoid distractions. Raw, you mean like when you kept sending me all those TikToks the other day that I was supposed to look at, for example, that's
George: one of many, many, many examples.
George: My son comes in the room
Camille: or Nico Cat, Nico Cat or
George: other human. I like humans a lot.
Camille: Yeah. See this is interesting cuz humans are a big distraction. I have no problem blocking out the humans, but I really have a problem blocking out the furry ones.
George: May I tell you a story about myself?
George: Mm-hmm. ? Mm-hmm . Long time ago I was working at Sun Microsystems. Great people, a great place to work. And I was in an engineering group. And where I was in the building back in the days when people used to go into office buildings to work every day, I was at the end of a building and a round a corner. So there was this long hallway and at the end of the hallway it was a t and there were more offices at that t and I was around that corner, like the last, pretty much the last office.
George: On the T, there was only a couple of them. So I had been along the long hallway, which I loved because people were always walking down the hallway and I'd say, hi, you know, or they'd say hi to me or whatever. But then I was in the T and nobody comes down to the end of the T to say hi. Well, I worked in a multimedia engineering group and I had gears. So what I did was I took one of our cameras and I hung it from the ceiling around the corner so it could face down the long end of the hallway. So, and then I've always had the video capture window up so I could basically be working and see who's walking down the hallway,
George: And sometimes I'd say, hello. People know we're Hi Chris. And at, at first, they'd wonder like, oh, what, what is it, George? Where are you? And I'd tell 'em, Hey, come, come say hi. That's how badly I wanted distractions of people.
Camille: Wow. That's great. Okay guys, you got the biggest insight into who George is, that he set up this whole device to be around people.
Camille: Cuz that's who he is. He wants to be around the people all the time. I'm Cooper. Yes. I was gonna think you're like my little black lab wanted all the attention of all the people. That is fantastic. Yeah. , okay. That is not a tip for how to avoid distraction and get your done. I need help against that thing.
Camille: That's the anti Do not do that.
Camille: So eliminating distractions like this seems obvious, right? Everybody's like, yeah, duh. I've not let, I haven't heard this before, right? Yeah. So, you know, the usual things you turn off the phone, but notifications that are showing up all over the place, like that's a pretty straightforward one that I am surprised how many people don't do it.
Camille: But please, people turn off all these notifications, you don't need them. You already are an automatic checker of email. You don't need your email to tell you it's showed up, right? Yeah. And when you're working on stuff, like close your email. Close down, the texting, close things up while you're gonna focus on your goals or whatever it is you're doing.
Camille: I think this even applies to, I wanna be present in this meeting. Close the other stuff. Be present in the meeting. You know, when you're like multitasking, trying to do email while you're in the meeting cuz it's boring. I get it. But. Maybe it won't be boring if you actually focused and contributed and paid attention without the, no, I wanna, I wanna
George: talk about that when you, I remember you and I have had conversations about that specifically.
George: I remember a few years ago when we talked about our different meeting habits, and I will multitask sometimes in a meeting if there's a part of the meeting that's doesn't interest me. And I remember you telling me no, when I'm in a meeting, I don't care how boring it is. That's the only thing I'm doing during that meeting.
George: And that was mind blowing to me. Like, first of all, how can you? Secondly, how do you? How do you manage to do that? And with a lot of the meetings, I think at that time you're still working corporate. And so a lot of these meetings are really ill design. And a lot of them really, you're either listen only or a small percentage of your time as participation.
George: Most of the meaning is not designed to keep you involved. They're like, how do you manage to do that? That is a big distraction bait, but not for you apparently.
Camille: Yes. Oh no. I mean I had to struggle against it to stay focused. But I would think what really turned me around on my thinking about how I wanted to show up in meetings was when we really were leaning into a new set of values and beliefs in the organization, and the biggest one was respect for people.
Camille: And in my brain it was how disrespectful of me to show up, how do I feel if I'm the one leading this meeting and everybody's sitting around the table with their laptops and I know they're doing something else.
Camille: Yeah. Even if that person's not doing a good job in the meeting, I have the skills to help them do a better job. You have the skills to help somebody do a better job by asking great questions. Yeah. You're like, oh, thanks George. Thanks for asking that question. Sparking a conversation. So that's how I try to pay attention in those meetings.
Camille: So it's not like I've never done that multitasking thing, but when I do it, I realize now that's me being really selfish that I'm trying to use this time to my advantage to get other work done while I'm also present in this meeting. Sorry,
George: I don't mean to, you know, that shifts my belief.
George: I'll tell you right there from, let me think, what it, from productivity to respect. Yeah. It really does. I feel shame of myself now. But that's great. I mean, that's, that's a great way for me to think about changing my behavior. Maybe we can talk about this later, how to run a good meeting, because that still loses me to the problem with, okay, I do this, but now I'm in a one hour meeting that's not being run well and it is boring most of the time and I'm not in charge of it.
George: So of course it's not great. That's painful.
Camille: It is painful. It is painful. And we will talk about meetings both from the perspective of how to run them well, but also how to participate, pay well. Like how do I help someone else run one well, so Awesome that that's a whole podcast for sure.
Camille: But outside of meetings, back to the distractions, this not let meetings distract us from the topic at hand.
Camille: So areas of resistance that I hear and maybe you have some more you can add to this, George, but some of the resistance I hear to this idea of avoiding distractions is like fomo. I don't wanna miss out on something. Like what if I need to answer the email that they sent to five people, I need to be the first to answer or Yeah.
Camille: What? I don't wanna miss a phone call. I need to be available to everybody all the time. Like, oh yeah, that's, that's how I feel like I should be responsive all the time. And I'm good at multitask. Yeah, right. This is a time when I should be multitasking. These are the areas of resistance, which I'm gonna flat out say it.
Camille: These are excuses. We're making excuses for avoiding hard work, which is to focus on a specific task and push through it. That's not easy to do. So we're not bad people for like wanting to resist getting rid of distractions. What we're about to do is hard, cuz I'm talking about making time to work on your most important strategic objectives here.
Camille: So you can apply this to lots of things, but I really wanna hone in on the idea of I need to sit down and do hard work on a goal. And that typically means I'm gonna work on something new. I'm going to get outside my comfort zone. I'm gonna feel incompetent because I'm doing something I haven't done before.
Camille: I'm, yeah, waiting into an, an area of work that I'm not as familiar with. This is typically what goals represent, right? Doing something I'm not currently doing today, I have to change something about what I do otherwise. Why would it be a goal you're already doing it? So when we talk about working on a goals immediately, like all this resistance shows up because we're trying to avoid that uncomfortable space of, I'm not even sure if this is the right thing to do right now.
Camille: Is this the right step? Do I know what I'm doing? All of these, all, all of these doubts and concerns show up. And so we put these other things in the way. That's really what the distractions are for, right? Yeah. They're keeping us from that place.
Camille: I like to think about that, you know, fomo, when you have that fear of missing out, I was like, well, what about your fear of missing your goals?
Camille: Don't we have a fear of that? How could you make that a bigger fear than your fear of missing out? Like imagine yourself at the end of the year having not made these goals happen. If I don't focus now, that's leading me down that path of I'm not gonna make this goal happen. And in business that translates to I'm gonna make less money.
Camille: Cuz all of your goals are about enhancing your business in some way, toward making more money, right? Yeah. Cause I've think the business is for. Yeah. So if you translate that missing my goals means I'm gonna make less money. Means, oh, I should definitely have a fear of missing out on money. It starts to change the thing that I should really be worried about.
Camille: And part of this is the challenge of, I don't ultimately have control of this outcome of the money. But I do have control over the steps I do today that increase the odds of success in me hitting that goal. Yeah, and that's what I think I want people to focus on.
Camille: The other part of this is I also like to think of turning FOMO into JOMO. What I am an expert at JOMO, this is the Joy Of Missing Out. You haven't heard this before? I didn't make this term up. No. I don't think I have Somebody else made this term up. Yeah. The joy of missing out. Boy introverts, were really good at this one, huh? Yeah, it's so say more. It's so satisfying to choose myself and my own time to work on things that are important to me over all the other demands in the world.
Camille: It's really satisfying. And if you can get to that place of, I'm gonna choose me and my priorities, I'm gonna choose that right now. That's like a really cool space to get into. So I would invite people to really think about how can I find some joy in the idea that oh, I'm not actually missing out on anything.
Camille: I'm actually. Really working on the thing that I wanted to work on by saying no to the other thing. So like you're a meeting example, even. The ideal choice would be if I'm really gonna work on something that's more important to me in this time, I should say no to that meeting.
Camille: Yes. Right. You prioritizing, you choose something. So finding a little jomo in your life is very important. And then of course, this idea that we can multitask. Look, nobody's good at it. Yeah. Like when you're in that meeting and you're doing email, you are not actually multitasking. You're sitting in the room pretending to be present, but actually ignoring what's going on and working on some email.
Camille: And every once in a while you're participating, but that's not good multitasking and nobody is actually good at it, especially when it comes to working on something as intense as a goal.
Camille: I can listen to a podcast and do laundry, that level of multitasking. Yeah, no big deal.
Camille: There's no risk in that. Nobody's testing me on the how well I listen to the podcast and. You know, laundry is laundry, cleaning is cleaning. So there's a low risk there. I'm talking about goals and multitasking and there you wanna focus on doing fewer things better.
George: I have a test for people, by the way.
George: Oh good. A test or a trick to show you that you're not good at multitasking. Like nobody is good at multitasking. And that test is get with somebody and get a pencil and paper, something to write with. Not typing, but writing.
George: And have them tell you a story about their day. Something that you don't already know and take notes. And at the end, tell the other person in your notes and you will see how much you missed. Because what's happening is there's the part where you're listening and then you're switching context. You don't think you are, but you're switching context to writing what you heard and summarizing.
George: And during the period of time that you're writing, you're missing the next set of dialogue that's coming along, but you don't even realize it and guaranteed you will hear the holes that will prove to you that you can't multitask.
Camille: Right? Yes. Very simple test to show you. I will admit I do that in this podcast.
Camille: Sometimes you're talking and you make me think of an idea and I'm like, shoot, I gotta write that down, or I'm gonna forget to talk about it later. And then I realize I missed the last two sentences of what George said.
George: Well, I wanna let people off the hook for this one. I do it too. Although I've got a device that helps me with that. Maybe if we have time at the end, I can tell you about the digestive gadget thing.
George: I'm using this as an example because everybody does this. We're all taught to take notes. Yeah. We're never told, since we're like in first grade, we're never told. Oh, and you can't multitask.
George: So be aware that while you're writing, you're gonna miss stuff. No, we're never told that. We're all told this is what we should do. It's best practice behavior. It's the clearest everyday example that shows you that your brain is split. It's very difficult to have a, a perfect solution for that thing.
George: And let's say, okay, stop your story. That's really great. But I'm gonna write down the last sentence. Okay. Go ahead. And after you stab the person, then what happened?
Camille: Wow. Who are your friends? If it's about stabbing people, they're really interesting friends. Yeah. Fascinating.
Camille: This is such a good point because some of what we're there is some multitasking in our lives that has to happen. We are gonna be taking notes while we're listening.
Camille: In fact, we'll talk about this in the episode about meetings, the struggle that I have with, I want people to be present and focused in the conversation, but I also want those people to take their own dang notes. Don't make me have to summarize everybody else's to-dos and send them to you.
Camille: If I'm doing a retreat, I either set it as an expectation or sometimes I bring them their own notebooks. Here's your notebook in your pen. Like it's very clear what my expectation is. You be taking notes and I'll pause. I'm like, I'm gonna pause when you guys finish taking notes on that.
Camille: It's also a great way to take in the information and have it stick. There is a science around the idea that when we write something, it actually connects in our brain differently than if we're typing or listening.
Camille: But that extra connection of actually having to write things out, I mean, it makes sense cuz there's this physical activity of our hand that's creating words and that translates into our brain. So I often ask people when I'm doing work with them to like, write this work down, write those goals down, because that's gonna make a better connection for you.
Camille: It's why when people journal, they're typically writing, not typing those journals.
Camille: I'm doomed.
Camille: Bummer for people like you who have chicken scratchy writing, I mean, nobody else has to be able to read it. So that's the good news. That's a good point.
Camille: I know that you're like, writing is slower than typing, but sometimes slower is better.
George: That's absolutely true. Yeah.
Camille: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It depends on what you're doing.
George: This is good. Just being fully present here, I find. I strive for that, but not all the time. And it works differently, for me in different contexts. For example, at family dinner time, we have a rule. No cell phones on the table, no cell phones at dinner, and both my wife and I have a hard time doing it.
George: But we do it. We have that role and we're accountable for it. That was not an easy thing for me to do, but I'm there now. I can have a dinner when I'm fully present. It is much harder for me to do in a work context. I don't know why, but it's harder to have the same discipline.
George: Do you know why?
Camille: I suspect it's because in the workplace , it's pounded into our brains to be productive, and we don't think of productivity as being present.
Camille: We think of it as I'm busy producing things. Listening as not part of productivity. And so I gotta be cranking out an email.
Camille: I think it's pretty common across the board. I need to look like I'm busy all the time. How many times are you, you know, you're having a chat with somebody, having a conversation and you realize if my boss saw this, they'd be like, George, get back to work. But you're actually having a productive conversation.
Camille: Yeah. So it's a tricky balance I think that we don't value the connection and the conversation and communication as much as we should. And we just focus on the productivity. That's my guess.
Camille: And then at home you are more focused on being present. Like there, that's clearly the key is be present with my kids, present with my, you know, it's true, significant others.
Camille: It's that we value different things in those spaces. That's
George: true. And they're more important to me too in these work people.
Camille: Of course. Yes.
George: I make one more comment about avoiding distractions I think part of it, for me, when I do get distracted is I haven't stepped back and asked myself, and I think you mentioned this, basically, what's the more important thing to be doing here?
George: What are my priorities? So I get distracted because maybe I'm on autopilot, or in the meeting, I do the meeting all the time, instead of standing back and say, wait, is it more important to be doing this thing or that thing? And I don't always stand back and explicitly have that priorities discussion, which might cause me to give up a meeting.
George: And then the, the follow on from that is I somehow think that when people are calling me right then I'm their highest priority. When maybe they're not, oh, I asked George's question. If he answers, great. If he doesn't answer, I'll figure it out. But I think of it is urgent. I don't know if it's really urgent to them it might not be.
George: Am I making sense? Mm-hmm.
Camille: Yes.
Camille: So does that mean we should talk about prioritization next? I think so, yeah. Yes. Yes. And you'll find that when, when you guys are listeners are able to see all of these, you will find that there's a lot of connection between them. So as you were talking about that, you know, avoid distractions is connected with the idea of prioritizing.
Camille: So thank you for the segue.
Camille: So prioritizing. It's just identifying the the most important critical task in the moment and in the moment is, I'm choosing to work on my goals now.
Camille: Again, back to what we're really focusing this discussion around is working on our goals. But it does apply in any of these spaces, like what you were talking about, right? Yeah. But we wanna make sure that the strategic, you know, planning activities that are aligned with your overall business objectives also align to the time that you spend working on them.
Camille: Yeah. Cuz that's how you're gonna deliver value in your company, right? Am I spending enough time working onto the goal versus chatting about it with a bunch of people? And making time to do that is challenging. I wanna say that upfront. It is not easy to carve out time to work on the things that are working on the business that aren't obvious to be worked on.
Camille: It's not an email to respond to. Everything else in your business is mostly demanding your attention. Everything's saying, I need your attention now to pay this bill. I need your attention now to see this client. I need your attention now to respond to this query. So there's always stuff pulling us into working in the business.
Camille: There's really nothing pulling you to work on your business except you. I go back to this idea of even when you're your own boss, you still need a boss. You still need somebody who helps you with the priorities, with the growth, with the, we'll talk about this later, how do you be your own leader to yourself, because that's what you need. You need some leadership that's helping guide you through this.
Camille: But when it comes to prioritizing the areas of resistance that I usually see, show up and I wanna hear if there's other ones that you would add to this, George? The ones that I hear are, again, fomo, fear of missing out. I don't wanna prioritize cuz I don't wanna say no to anything. And prioritizing means I gotta say no to something.
Camille: Also, I hear people be like, but it's all important. Yes. But it can all be important, but you can also prioritize how you work through that list. Yeah.
Camille: The other one that comes up a lot is that I don't wanna let anyone down. Yeah, I need to do all this stuff cuz so many people are prioritizing other things for me.
Camille: I love this one. What else? What else do you hear?
George: That one was a big one to me and it's the one that , for me was part of the, the segue from distractions to priorities because as a manager, I feel like if you're a good manager, you're in service to your team. And the other thing is managers are interrupts driven a lot of time, you said it a minute ago.
George: We're responding to incoming stuff. And if I'm a good service led manager, yeah. This one is a huge one for me. Not wanting to let anyone down. It is very difficult to overcome that for the best of reasons.
Camille: Yeah. But can you imagine a world where you're able to prioritize your own most important goals to work on and also not let anyone down?
Camille: Real world
George: example this week.
Camille: May I tell you? Ooh,
Camille: yes. I do wanna hear.
George: Avi and I are going to Disneyland this week. His first time ever. It's gonna be great. He's got a week off of school and we've arranged it. So I'm gonna take a week off of work. And it's different than like, when I go visit you for a week, when I go visit you for a week, we can sit on the couch and both be doing screens and I can respond to people and all that stuff.
George: No, no, no, no, no. We are going to Disneyland. I'm not bringing my laptop into the park. And even, even the phone, like, I, I really, really want us to watch every single moment of this kid experience the Magic Kingdom for the first time. I don't wanna miss a second of that. Even if it's , just, we only last half days, we'll see how much stamina he and I have.
George: But, so I've been so excited about this. What I've told my, my whole team is not only, Hey, I'm gone, but I actually took a vacation day on Friday. To prep for the week and I said, look, I'm gone for Friday and all of next week, so Friday I'm doing stuff around the house. I'm reachable if you need me, send me a text.
George: I'll respond pretty quickly next week. Minimum response time is four hours minimum. Probably not until that evening. Different from normal. George, I am not gonna respond or get back to you that same day during working hours. I'm probably gonna get to it after he's asleep at night and I'm doing stuff.
George: And so I've created this space and everybody's like, oh yeah, absolutely. Wow. Send pictures. Tell us we can't wait to hear about how it goes with you and your son. We really don't wanna hear from you.
George: I had to really convince myself. And then I told the team, and of course when everybody in the team heard like, don't worry about it, we're probably not gonna bother you anyway.
George: It was easy. Rarely will people respond badly to that. And the people who do respond badly to that, you need to run away from as soon as possible. Either fire them or stop working for them.
Camille: Yeah. I mean, immediately in my head was why do you have to be available at all?
Camille: It's a vacation.
Camille: I see this a lot where again, we don't want to let people down, right? So we say that we're available. But what if instead, we're going off on a different topic here, so we'll, we'll go deeper into this Yeah. Another time. But I would , as we're thinking about this, I would love to challenge people to think, but what if instead of, I need to be available to help my team, what if instead I was, I need to show my team, I trust them to handle things while I'm away.
Camille: You got this, you don't need to contact me. Yeah. I'm going on vacation. Then you also set the expectation by your actions, not by your words, that it's okay for them to do that too. Yeah. I do have a client right now that struggles with that, where they're not setting good examples of how to take vacation and their teams, they're like, well, one of these teams set a goal of not working while on vacation.
Camille: And these are like low level managers, right? So Yeah, and they're doing that and then their leaders are like, well, we're not asking 'em to do that. I'm like, no, but you're demonstrating that that's how one happens here cuz you do it.
Camille: Yeah. None of you absolutely shut work off when you go on vacation. So you know it's happening when they go to a funeral. It doesn't matter what it is, they're still connected to work and yeah, I would love everybody to break that because Yeah, you're not actually taking a break.
George: I had this conversation with one of my directs earlier in the week about exactly that. He's started reporting to me a few months ago. Great guy, and he was talking about upcoming vacation and how he's gonna take two weeks. He actually took two weeks recently for the first time ever in his 25 year career, which is mind blowing to me.
George: He had never been in a support system where people encouraged him to take a while and he had never felt okay doing it. And I asked him what it was like, you know, it was mind-blowingly great.
Camille: Yeah. I didn't really appreciate what it meant to fully be in vacation mode without taking all the baggage of work til I quit my job.
Camille: Actually I'll say it was until I made the decision to quit my job because I was on a cruise when I made that decision and that cruise forced me to not work. Like there's no way you can work when you're in a different time zone and on a cruise ship. Like there's no way to do anything.
Camille: I was forced into cutting ties with work and it was so fantastic. Mm-hmm. And then after quitting my job and going on vacation, I was like, oh, it used to take me, you know, a few days of vacation before I got into vacation mode. Yes. Like I had trying to unwind myself from it.
Camille: And now it's no problem. Yeah. Because I'm in control of my work, like I know that vacation's coming and I can control the flow and the cadence of work and how I do it, and when I record podcasts and all of the stuff that I have to do. I make those choices and I choose to do that. Whereas before it didn't feel like a choice.
Camille: I had more control than I was willing to admit. Yeah. And I think that's, most people working in a company, especially in the corporate world, we do have more control over that than we're willing to admit because we don't see anybody else do it. And so we're afraid other people are gonna be like, what's that lazy person doing?
Camille: When actually everybody will be like, how do I get some of that? How do I have more time away like you had, right.
Camille: So that's a little bit of a tangent on the prioritizing, but it is related to it in that we're trying to really decide what's important. So when you're trying to prioritize your goals, I mean, it does start with the goal better be good enough that it is important to you, right?
Camille: Yes. Yes. I mean, maybe it's not a good enough goal and you don't care about it enough. Sometimes I talk about when people set smart goals. Yeah. And so what it specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time bound. I think that's right. Yes. So, smart goals. What I think is missing is, is it inspiring?
Camille: Is it motivating? Do you even care about this goal? Mm-hmm. Because as a small business owner, if you don't care, this is gonna be really hard to work on it. So you need to find your why of that. As Simon Sinek talks about Find your why in a business you gotta do it for your goals. Like why does it even matter to me?
Camille: That's the start of getting good at prioritizing. But also some of these other things we talked about, like do embrace the jomo. Like really discover this joy of missing out.
Camille: There is joy for you and missing out on responding to the emails that come your way because people are gonna solve problems themselves. And that is joy when you have a team who can do that and they feel great about having solved those problems without having to go to the boss, right? We forget how great that is for people. Yeah.
Camille: There's something you said once too, George. I think it was something to the effect of we tend to confuse the urgent for the important.
Camille: Yep. Absolutely. I think that's part of this too, especially when we think about the role of distractions, like, oh, but this seems urgent. This person doesn't normally call me. I should answer. Yeah. We tell a story to ourselves about what's urgent as a way to distract from working on what's most important, what's the priority in that moment.
Camille: And so I think that's a really important part of this. And then there's a quote that I had found from Adam Grant that I really like, huh. He says, we carry too much guilt about letting others down and too little fear of letting ourselves down. Oh, wow. He says, the most important commitments to uphold are the ones you make to yourself.
Camille: I know. Leave it. That's great time grant. Right? I know it's such a great way to think about things and I think it is really at the heart of a lot of these challenges with prioritizing our goal work because that goal for a small business owner should represent one of the most important things to do right now.
Camille: It's a commitment to yourself for this business that you're building. And yet we still struggle to do them. We still tend to put them on the back burner, like, ah, but I'll get to it like when I get the work done, which is not a thing. You don't ever get all the work done. So , anybody who's saying that as a thing you're gonna do before you work on your goal, that's why you prioritize.
Camille: Like, in this moment, I need to prioritize this goal. Later today, I will then prioritize other work. But how do you work that?
George: This might be a different podcast or a different topic, but that brings to mind a question. So the work is never done. That's certainly true in my industry.
George: However, I've always wondered about people who have the kinds of jobs where they can leave their work at home healthcare professionals, and this is a very long background to my question to you, you worked on introducing lean to healthcare professionals. Take surgeons, you know, these arrogant gods who have these extreme capabilities.
George: I mean, is goal setting even relevant to them? Don't they get scheduled to go and do their cutting. Do they even have this issue at all?
Camille: Oh yeah. I don't believe you. They have targets to hit too. They have goals in number of new patients they have to bring. It's still a business.
Camille: This is the problem with healthcare is that it is a business. And so it's about how many people we can see. And so the challenge we always have is the tension of we have to operate a business and yet put the care of patients at the center. This is the tension that every healthcare system is running under.
Camille: But yes, they do have those goals. And also I would say especially for anyone who's at any level of leadership in healthcare, they are all taking work home with them. Even surgeons.
George: I mean, what bring a patients call and
Camille: when do you think they're answering all their emails? They saw patients emails. Oh yeah.
Camille: They saw patients all day long. Now they have all the administrative work to do. Yeah. They've got documentation to do. They've got stuff to file and papers to sign and emails to answer, and it is never ending for them. It's actually worse for healthcare I think in terms of, when they are on the clock, they are expected to be 100% taking care of patients so they don't have any other time to work on the administrative side.
Camille: And every one of them has some level of administrative work to do.
George: That's interesting in itself because that goes right against what we're talking about here. Yeah.
George: I'm sure these people would tell you, yes, I do prioritize things out of my current context because I'm not given a choice, but that includes things that must be done. I'm not allowed to be doing equally important things right now. I don't have a solution.
Camille: We constantly had this problem.
Camille: Well, first I will say this isn't healthcare. I think every single industry has their version of this. Yeah. Every industry has their version of this. Right. But it's when I'm at work, I'm supposed to be delivering. So we would say in a lean perspective. I should be delivering value to customers.
Camille: That's my main job. And that's true. Yeah. So what there's no time for, is any of this goals work. Any of this improvement work. Working on the business, working on improving the business, that we don't have time for that. So we struggle with this in healthcare because with the physicians, we wanted them in the room, like when we were gonna redesign some process that was directly affecting them.
Camille: It was their process. Right, for seeing patients. Yeah. Our biggest challenge was how are we gonna get physicians and nurses in the room to do it? Cuz they're seeing patients all day. So we had to get really creative. We would do workshops on the weekends. This is how I became a morning person, reluctantly.
Camille: Because the only time you can meet with physicians is before they start their day. Six 30 or 7:00 AM Oh, their administrative meetings would be at 7:00 AM Before they started their workday, that's when the physicians would, would have their administrative meetings.
Camille: So my point in this is there is always a way to prioritize that. I was skeptical that we could do it when we were working in that system, especially the healthcare system.
Camille: Yes. But we did it. We found a way to prioritize that work and still do good by our patients. Not break the system, right. Not screw up the day, not create chaos. We found a way to do it in a very thoughtful manner, and I 100% because of that experience, believe every single industry can figure that out.
George: I apologize for getting us so far off target, but you and I have, I'm, you and I have talked about lean over the years when you've doing it, but I, I really would like to learn more about this. I really would like to learn more about how it applies here. I'd like to hear you talk more.
Camille: Well, we are going to talk about it.
Camille: It's in the big plan. I think we're gonna dial in on that as the next phase of topics that we'll talk about. Cuz I've been thinking a lot about how does lean work in small business. Yeah. Because of this challenge of lean is about working on the business, it is about doing improvement work so that you can have more value.
Camille: So yes, I think we'll talk about this more. It'll be a few episodes of different conversations, which will lead us right back to leadership, which is my favorite conversation. So Cool.
Camille: But yes, this idea of prioritizing to do that work, 100% connected. Thank you for taking us to that place because it is about that bigger picture of how do I prioritize these big things I've gotta do to improve the business.
Camille: Small business owners, when they come to me, this is really the challenge that they're having is, I know I need to prioritize this work. And for them, sometimes the answer is, I'm gonna hire a coach. Cuz once I'm paying, it's like I'm paying for accountability and prioritization.
Camille: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. I'm gonna put my money where my mouth is. I'm gonna stop talking about what I'm gonna do and I'm gonna pay somebody to help me drive this goal to completion. And that's what I do. Yeah. Okay. And everybody's, this is cool.
Camille: Let's do at least one more.
George: Accountability ability. Account accountability. Accountability. One of my favorite tricks for myself is to get an accountability buddy for something.
George: I think accountability is a good one.
Camille: It is a good one. Because it's almost too simple. Mm-hmm. And yet it's still really hard for us to do, especially if you're trying to do it by yourself. So there's two versions of this, right? You can create systems that accountability for yourself. But accountability partners way better.
Camille: So let's start with the way better one. Okay. Let's start with the accountability partner, since that's where you went. And so how does that work for you? How do you find the right one? How do you do it?
George: Well I'm not looking for a universal accountability buddy for my whole life, for everything in my life.
George: First of all, it's really localized to one thing that I want to be better at. So maybe there's one initiative at work. Not even all of work, but one really important initiative that I should be spending time on, and I'm finding, ah, I'm not really getting to it week after week.
George: In that case, what I will try to do is find somebody usually in that group who is also involved in the project. I feel like they're good and responsive and I will say, Hey, look, I need an accountability buddy here. You know what I'm supposed to deliver. Would you be my accountability buddy?
George: Bug me, hold me responsible, ask me questions about if I'm falling behind, why I'm falling behind. There's usually somebody you know in any of these groups whose decent at that and is willing to have these conversations with you.
George: That's usually my technique. Somebody in that area who's involved, who knows enough about what's going on.
George: And I'll ask them upfront. I'm having a hard time keeping myself accountability. I need an external person to encourage me. Will you be my accountability buddy?
Camille: So something that I heard you say in there, I think is important to call out, which it sounds like you have a clear agreement, right?
Camille: So you said, yep. You know, I tell them to ask me these questions, ask me, you know, if I'm on track, ask me if so, why not? I think that is an important aspect of accountability. So instead of having an accountability partner and having it turn into you guys chit-chatting and about how things are going, yes, I did this, I did that.
Camille: Great. Having that structure even down to a very specific agenda. I wanna hit this, then this, then this, this is what I wanna do every time. Absolutely. Do that for accountability, partnering. Cause I think that's where some people doing it may go where they're like, well, it doesn't work for me.
Camille: Well, probably doesn't work for you cuz you're not doing it with that structure in place. I think that's something you and I have learned over time. So we naturally know, like of course that's part of accountability. But if you're really new to doing this with somebody, then really think about like, what is the objective here?
Camille: And then you do wanna give permission to that other person to question you about those things. Hmm. Otherwise they might hesitate. Maybe they really don't wanna make you feel bad, so they don't wanna ask those questions. Yeah. That also might mean they're not a great accountability partner if they're too worried about your feelings.
Camille: But somebody you can trust to ask really good questions and help you move forward is great. And not shame you. They also shouldn't shame you. Yeah.
George: That's cool. That makes a lot of sense. You're right. I don't think I'd made that explicit. The other thing I think in my mind as I think about this is when I think about my accountability buddies, they are, they might be friendly, but they all coming with this mindset of, look, I'm holding you accountable, otherwise we're canceling the project.
George: They'll be forgiving for me, but really they're very practical about, Hey, you're not doing this thing, is it not important to you? If it's not important to you, why are you even in it? Get out or cancel the project order. That kind of attitude helps them be harsher on me, as harsh as they need to be.
George: For them, the stakes is high, higher than apparently I'm treating it.
Camille: This is actually a great point in just as people working with coaches, right? So that's one of the things that I will cue in on is if somebody's continually not making progress, I'm like, why did we pick this?
Camille: Why are you working on this goal? What are we doing here? Like, it have to reflect it back. It apparently is not that important to you. And you know, it's when there's excuse, after excuse after excuse. One of the points of the accountability is maybe reflect on why am I struggling so much?
Camille: Back to the idea of we gotta reflect all the time, right? So reflecting on like what's working well and what can be improved as part of the accountability cycle, but also if it's not working well, going a layer deeper to why not? Why am I continuing to struggle? And maybe it's, cuz it really isn't that important.
Camille: You picked the wrong goal, you picked the wrong Yeah. Priority in the moment. That's a thing. Absolutely.
Camille: So you're talking about being in an environment where you have access to a lot of great people to be accountability partners with. Mm-hmm. I find that a lot of people struggle with finding a good one.
Camille: Yeah. How do I find a good accountability partner? Especially if you're a small business owner, you're not gonna do that with one of your employees. That feels awkward. Probably isn't the right person to have your strategic goals, accountability partner with. Mm-hmm. But this is where the idea of you could use the idea of having a mentor to create some accountability for you.
Camille: Obviously coach is the ultimate level of accountability, but you could also find other, business owners. They don't even have to be in the same industry. People who are struggling at the same level of business that you are to be an accountability partner. Those are some of the best.
Camille: I know people who do that. They have enough structure. They're at similar, not identical places in their business, but they're both solo partners and they meet every week and talk about, you know, how's it going with your business and that process, one of the other things that happens when you have these accountability partner con discussions is that you talking about your work is this great self-coaching moment.
Camille: Cuz as you talk, you'll again, you've done this here on the podcast or you're talking and then you're like, huh? Like, I see that a little light bulb went off as you were talking through something. Yeah, for sure. That's, by the way, the best moment for a coach ever is when you realize you've got somebody talking themselves through to their own solution.
Camille: So you can do that in an accountability conversation as well. That's what I would ultimately tell everybody is find somebody to do it with. Because it, it actually is a way to use the idea that we don't wanna let other people down to your advantage. This is a place where it works for you. Because accountability should go both ways.
Camille: Yeah. Right. And now how can I help you? So especially a small business owner doing that with another small business owner, you should equally split that time helping each other. I'm gonna ask about your goals and then you're gonna ask about mine. Yeah. And so the idea that you don't wanna let people down, ugh.
Camille: That plays into it. And that's why the partner works, we all have this sense of not wanting to let somebody down. And so we've got this appointment, we're gonna show up. This is why they tell you, get a workout buddy. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, I've made this appointment to go to the gym with so-and-so.
Camille: Well, n n I'm not gonna go to the gym because the gym cares. I'm gonna go kiss the person. I care about them. Mm-hmm. So that's a great way to do it. Now. What if you don't have anybody? You've gotta start accountability now. You don't have time to wait to find the right person. Is accountability to yourself like a thing?
Camille: Do you think you could do that?
George: Yeah, absolutely. But I mean, the whole point of view is getting a buddy is to externalize. If you're having trouble being accountable, the easiest way to deal with it is to externalize the accountability. So I will make one more comment about those lines.
George: Two more ideas here. Three ideas. One is hire somebody, hire an accountability buddy. If you don't know anybody, pay somebody to do that. Find a coach and say, I don't care about the coaching, I care about accountability. Let's start with that. I think that's fair.
George: Number two, use tooling. So, For accountability, for doing my workouts, to use something tooling that's maybe fun and easy. You don't wanna get into a whole rat hole about, I wanna find the perfect tool and a whole big setup. Like I have this watch that helps me track my runs. I can see how much running I'm doing and it's easy for me to see how I'm doing and keeping patterns.
George: Third, we haven't talked about this, but you gave me an idea. This is something I can use my virtual admin to help me with. I could tell my virtual admin here, I'm not gonna ask you to be exactly my accountability buddy, but here's a task. I'm supposed to do it every day. Our everyday check-ins ask if I've done that thing and I want you to keep a spreadsheet of my yes or no answers or something.
George: And then every once in a while you'll show it to me and say, look, you said you were gonna do this. And turns out it was only done one out of every five times. Making somebody else gather the data for you and then reflect it back to you. Those are three quick ideas about that.
George: But none of those are like me, completely on my own. It's still rely on 'em. Well, the tooling one is me.
Camille: The tooling one is pretty you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I like that one. You know, it's interesting as you said, those three I know I said there's eight of these, right? So we're not talking about all of them, but you named off two of the other ones that are really important.
Camille: Yeah. Which is using technology and then deligating. Yeah. I use my virtual assistant also as my own sense of accountability because we talk about what's the plan for the week, and she's gonna do X and I'm gonna do Y and then when I come back next week, I need to have done my part on those things. Right?
Camille: Yeah. So it's this great way to help me stay on top of what I'm supposed to deliver. And when. I start thinking more about when I'm gonna do it, because it's, oh, I shouldn't wait till the last minute, cuz then that puts her into a crunch. So I need to start getting things much more in time where we talk about having better schedule for that so that we're more respectful of each other's time.
Camille: I think that's a great way to do it. And it actually, it hits on multiple aspects of how you can make this go better. So, very cool.
Camille: The other simple thing I would say to do it for yourself Yeah. Is the idea that you should have regular check-ins with yourself. Mm-hmm.
Camille: And that's the, I'm gonna plan out what I'm gonna do for the week or the day. I do this every morning. What's happening today? What are my most important things? And then at the end, I assess how'd I do? I think we underestimate the value of that little tiny cycle and it's minutes a day, right?
Camille: To be like, well, okay, what's important today? And then at the end of the day, how did I do? Okay, so what's that mean for tomorrow? And you keep that little cycle going of with yourself, what worked and what can you improve? Yeah. So you can do some of this for yourself and it could be as simple as, what's the one thing I wanna do for my goals today or this week?
Camille: Make that note and then at the end of the week go, how'd I do? Right. You can do it for yourself.
George: Okay. So this is gonna seem like it's way outta left field. I've heard Elton John talk about songwriting.
George: And he had the saying once about when he stuck, he says, whenev, when in doubt, write a hymn. And if you think about a lot of his songs, especially his old songs, a lot of songs are really hymns. Like, don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me as totally a hymn. It's got that same structure as a gospel when and doubt, write a hymn.
George: And the reason I'm saying that is cuz again, for you when in doubt go to reflection. I mean, your principle here is reflect for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Does this come up again and again and again through these 30 episodes reflection?
Camille: It's so important and I think it's such an underutilized tool because we don't do it consistently enough to get the benefit from it. Yeah. But it's there and it's. , it's like the easiest thing we could do. Right? It couldn't be more simple than to reflect on, oh, what happened.
Camille: So we, what? We did three. Did we do three of these? Eight? Yes.
George: Did three. And touched on
Camille: several others. Yes, we did.
Camille: So a couple of takeaways that I want people to think about with this, which is, yes, there's eight of these and any single one of them will be helpful.
Camille: Like you don't have to do all eight of these things or even all three that we talked about today. Mm-hmm. Start with one that you want to work on, right? Yeah. Also, you don't have to do this exactly like, I don't know any of these productivity gurus would tell you to do it online. Do it your way.
Camille: Get to the essence of start prioritizing or get to the essence of creating some accountability. Like we didn't give you all the possible ways to do it today. Customize your own approach here is my point. Work to your strengths.
Camille: Use the idea that you don't wanna let people down to your advantage and not to your detriment. Figure out what all of that is. That's cool.
Camille: Which leads me to the other point here, which is that really the only thing that's standing between you and your goal is your beliefs about any one of these things, huh? And whether they'll work for you or not. Huh? So if you walk into this and you're like, nah, that accountability stuff that never works for me, it will never work for you
Camille: Yeah, that's true. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So it gets down to our whole concept of belief shifts. This is a shift in beliefs and mindset that you might have to take, cuz some of these you're gonna resist more than others.
Camille: Everybody has their different places of what they resist for their own reasons. Mm-hmm. , your job is to really understand like, what is my resistance to that?
Camille: And then how can I let go of some of that resistance and actually embrace this idea as something that could work for me. I have to find my own way to do it. That's the main thing is if you out of the gate decide that none of this is gonna work for you, it's not gonna work for you.
Hey listeners. I am jumping in here to the end of my own podcast because I realized as I got to the end of this while I was in editing mode. I was talking about this, working for you and not working for you. And I needed a way to give you the list of all eight of these things that you can do, so you could go do some of them. So.
Check out the show notes where you'll see all eight of the things that I referenced today listed, but also there'll be a link. So you can grab a quick guide on how to do it. So I just put them down on some paper for you. So you could also just have something to download and work from because as I said,
You don't really want to try and do all of them at once. And you probably were listening to this podcast and trying to figure out how to do any of them while you were listening and walking, or driving or whatever you do while you listen to podcasts. So. Hopefully that will help you make some progress. All right. Thanks so much for listening. Please be sure to, , if you're not already following or subscribed to the podcast, please do that. Also, we'd love to hear from you. You can leave us a voice [email protected] There's a little voicemail widget where you can leave us a note about what do you think of the podcast? What do you want us to know about in future podcasts or, you know, whatever you want to have would say to us?
We'd also love, love, love it. If you would give us a review on apple podcasts, because that's really how this podcast can get seen by others. Which of course you can also just share it with your friends. Which we would love as well. So thank you for listening and we will be back in your ears next week.
