Camille Rapacz: Are you caught up on Picard?
George Drapeau: No, I, no, I haven't even started season two, so I'm way
Camille Rapacz: Just go right to season three. That's my advice.
George Drapeau: Uh, speaking about that was yesterday in our group was on our group Google Chat and he was late rejoining a meeting and said something about a Roomba is giving us problems. And I wrote back, that's how Skynet starts, dude.
Camille Rapacz: All right. That's not what we're talking about today.
George Drapeau: no.
Camille Rapacz: No, No, this is not Star Trek podcast
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: I hate to disappoint you. That would be fun though, right?
Camille Rapacz: Yes.
George Drapeau: But I already listened to several of them and they're more fun than we would be. They're crazy nerded out on Star Trek.
Camille Rapacz: How could you that? I know it's true. I dream of being able to have time to be that nerded out. I really want. I want it to be my job, so I have excuse to be that that nerded out.
Camille Rapacz: So let's stay in our lane and just talk about boring business.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Better than they exciting and fun.
Camille Rapacz: do you know this phrase working on the business versus in the business?
George Drapeau: No
George Drapeau: No I haven't not heard that phrase and I don't quite get it Let me think about this working, working on the business versus in the business sounds like the same thing to me
George Drapeau: same thing to me!
George Drapeau: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
George Drapeau: 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 Rapacz: Oh, interesting.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, this is kind of a small business thing that just shows up. I've heard this phrase a
Camille Rapacz: lot. I've seen it out there a lot. Yeah. And so, you know, I wanted to see what maybe the world really had to say about it. So I did what any good researcher does and I googled it cuz that was what you do.
Camille Rapacz: And there was, so I was su I don't, I was surprised. I was surprised by how much information came back on that topic. like almost to the point where I was like, I don't need to do this episode, you guys just go Google it and you'll be fine.
Camille Rapacz: And we're done. Yeah, it was a lot. As I googled it though, I like, oh, I see what's happening.
Camille Rapacz: And so it really made me wanna do this episode because I do think it's a even though the phrase is used a lot, I don't think it's used well. Well, there's all sorts of stuff that we'll get into, but basically yeah, don't Google it. Just keep listening because we're gonna break down exactly what means, and even better George doesn't know what this phrase means.
Camille Rapacz: Cuz then you'll ask me some really good questions that'll help me do a better job of explaining it, which is your whole purpose for being here.
Camille Rapacz: Yay.
George Drapeau: this.
George Drapeau: All right,
Camille Rapacz: let's get. into it.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: All right. So I wanna touch on, I realize I hadn't been touching on our belief shifts very much in the past few episodes. I wanna come back to that and just say that this really gonna touch on, I mean, it touches on a lot of belief shifts, but I think top three are foundations over quick fixes, systems over chaos and strategy strategy over spaghetti at the wall. So just keep those belief shifts in your head as we have this conversation.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: So this a really important concept for small business owners. Yet in my research there was just an over, it's almost like the more information there is the less helpful it is.
Camille Rapacz: Do you ever find that?
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: That was my biggest challenge with this. So what I decided when I started to look at this was maybe we should make this a two-parter in this topic. So this first episode that you're listening to now, we're just gonna focus on the what is it and why do we care? And then we'll do a second episode where we'll just talk about, well, how do I actually then do that?
Camille Rapacz: Because by the end of this episode, hopefully you will care and you will want to know how. So just keep that in mind. Two-parter.
Camille Rapacz: We've been having like nearly hour long episodes, so we're also trying to get our conversation under control. So, sorry about that, people, if you were like, could you guys not go on for so long? We can Go on for a long time. and We probably shouldn't. So...
George Drapeau: we get along great as brother and sister. Very lucky that way. But it has side effects.
Camille Rapacz: it's making our mom very happy, but she's not really, she's not really our core audience audience here, so we're gonna try and
George Drapeau: She might be if we keep going like this.
Camille Rapacz: true.
Camille Rapacz: All the moms are listening. Great. if they need business advice. All right. Maybe Mom will hire She could start a side hustle right now. She's only gonna be 80 this year. She has time for a side hustle.
George Drapeau: She does. That's amazing.
Camille Rapacz: I
George Drapeau: doing great. Okay. Hi,
Camille Rapacz: Let's not go on that tangent. Speaking of being, Thoughtful about our time.
Camille Rapacz: So let's talk about what I found on Google, because just for a second. I just think it's important to point out that sometimes we research these things and we get all these responses back, and then we because they're not helpful. And I get that and I had somebody tell me that the other day. I have, I Googled this topic and it really overwhelmed you and it wasn't helpful. Can you help me?
Camille Rapacz: Yes. That's what I'm here for, actually, is to help you when you're trying trying to, we, we do wanna just learn things on our own, but it's not always that easy to do. So when I googled this, I found what was most fascinating to me was the exact phrase. So oftentimes I Google a phrase and then the answers I get back in the headlines aren't that exact thing I Googled.
Camille Rapacz: This This time it was over and over and over again.
Camille Rapacz: So this is clearly an SEO thing,
George Drapeau: yeah.
George Drapeau: Oh, yeah,
Camille Rapacz: this is showing up for that reason. But it was also interesting to just see all the different types of articles that were using the same headline, but they weren't making the same point.
George Drapeau: for the audience by the way, please?
Camille Rapacz: You explain it techie nerd!
George Drapeau: Search engine optimization.
George Drapeau: People. If you wanna actually make your stuff more easily searchable or if you've got a web presence, you wanna make your stuff found, there are things you should know about the search engine algorithms that help zoom in on you and your thing only. And there's a bunch your stuff. So what you're saying is, when you saying the seo, it's clearly an SEO phrase. What do you mean by that, Camille?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, it's basically, it means to me it's pointing out, and I didn't research this, but it's pointing out that, oh, that's definitely high in search engine results. So people will use that phrase because they know people are searching for that phrase.
Camille Rapacz: And that
George Drapeau: that
Camille Rapacz: then my blog would be found. Right. So we would of course, title this podcast with this knowing that then people will find it. But then we're gonna talk about what it really means.
George Drapeau: So I think. Hot tip.
George Drapeau: We should now title every episode this now.
Camille Rapacz: Should just name the podcast everybody will find us.
George Drapeau: Or cat videos. Name it. Funny cat videos.
Camille Rapacz: That's true.
George Drapeau: Welcome to the Funny Cat Videos podcast.
George Drapeau: and about Belief Shifts.
Camille Rapacz: Not sure that would hit my target audience, but maybe.
George Drapeau: Hey baby.
Camille Rapacz: Alright,
George Drapeau: so interesting,
Camille Rapacz: an example of this.
Camille Rapacz: So Forbes, I tried to pick names that we know, right? So Forbes, Magazine. They had a title that was torn between working on or in the business, 11 ways to strike a balance. That was probably the most, like, the closest to having answers, but I didn't really like their 11 ways. So I'm gonna give you my own ways.
George Drapeau: I know,
Camille Rapacz: I know poo Forbes. How dare I. Inc. Magazine said, working on your business, not in your business. That was their headline.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: Entrepreneur Magazine said, work on, not in your business.
George Drapeau: Hmm.
Camille Rapacz: Not my advice. We will talk about why. Success Magazine said, working on versus in your business, what's the difference?
Camille Rapacz: And then they literally went on to say the opposite, which was, you should work in and not on your business. So they were all over the place. Let me just say, if you read all four of those articles, you'd be confused. There was a lot of fluff.
Camille Rapacz: So I wanted to dig into a bit like, well, where did this idea even
George Drapeau: Yeah. Please.
Camille Rapacz: Right? according to the eMyth and other resources, but mostly to the comes from the EMyth. So this is a book, there's a book called The EMyth, the E stands for Entrepreneur.
Camille Rapacz: And so it's this, the Myth of Being a Small Business Owner. So it's the latest book, it's the author is Michael Gerber. Again, I'll drop that in the show notes. It's a great book about building a small business. The full title is EMyth Revisited cuz he's updated it. Why most Small businesses Don't Work on what to do about it.
Camille Rapacz: Pretty straightforward what that book is about and it's really great, really clear about what you should be doing in your small business. The reason I bring this up is his phrase is actually work on, not just in it. So he versus he says work on it. Not
George Drapeau: Not just in
George Drapeau: it
Camille Rapacz: it. Yeah.
George Drapeau: Yeah
Camille Rapacz: So I'm curious as, and now that you hear that different phrasing, George, does that change a little bit of what you think that this means?
George Drapeau: It tells me a lot about why you put those other quotes in there too, because it sounds like I'm just gonna make a leap here. Sounds like in it kind of means immersed in it, but maybe not stepping back and thinking about what you've been talking about this whole time strategy and planning.
George Drapeau: You're just too caught up in the details. And I'm guessing then that means most of those other articles they're recommending you pivot from one form of thinking to shifting more of your mind to the other form of thinking. they're not explicitly saying, look, you gotta, you're gotta do both. You're not, you're doing too much of one.
George Drapeau: You need to start thinking another, but they're like, they're being too pivot about it.
Camille Rapacz: Hyperbolic about to get clicks. Cause that's what we do.
George Drapeau: what what we do.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, you are spot on. So for me, when I was looking at this, in addition to, yes, good, good job George. In addition to to that, what I was thinking when I read that was versus implies that these are in competition with each other. That one should be more valued than the other or that one is even an alternative to the other.
Camille Rapacz: Right? So Uhhuh. So that's what versus implies to me. When you change that phrasing to the just, you know, not just this, but also this, that brings in this idea of balance, which is also one of my big themes, is there this, this black and white, either or is killing us.
Camille Rapacz: We have to really think in terms of balance. So here's how I would reframe how we think about this idea of working on versus in the business.
Camille Rapacz: I would reframe it as there's two modes of working. And every business owner has to strike a balance of these two modes of working. And that balance will change over time as your business matures.
Camille Rapacz: So it's not static. It's not, now I figured it out and it shall forever be this way. And so then when I think about this idea of working on the business, I think of that as an act of leadership. So my phrase would be, don't just run your business, but lead your business.
George Drapeau: that's, yeah. That's clearer.
Camille Rapacz: That gives you little better understanding.
Camille Rapacz: We still have to define what we mean by lead your business.
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: But you at least have this term of, oh, it's more forward thinking. right?
George Drapeau: yeah like this. Say it
Camille Rapacz: gonna It's, don't just run your business, but lead your business.
George Drapeau: Don't just run your business. your Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And no no
George Drapeau: cool.
Camille Rapacz: Don't just do this, but also do this.
Camille Rapacz: All right. So let's break down what we actually mean by this.
Camille Rapacz: These two modes of working. So the work of working in the business or just running the business.
Camille Rapacz: This is all the day-to-day stuff. I'm paying the bills, I'm improving the website, SEO, I'm buying my office supplies. I'm doing all the day-to-day. I'm designing every product. I'm creating every product and service offering. While I'm also dealing with the daily like emails and incoming requests. I'm delivering on every customer need. I'm doing all of it, and I'm doing all the very near term reactionary work that's the, in the business.
Camille Rapacz: Makes sense.
George Drapeau: Absolutely. Makes perfect sense. In the I'm in it.
Camille Rapacz: I'm in it just like you described. I'm in it, I'm heads down. I'm just focused on what has to happen in this very moment, all the time.
Camille Rapacz: And then on the business or the leading your business work, is that bigger picture that you talked about? I'm setting a long-term vision. I'm determining strategies for the business, like around marketing or growth and scale of my business. I'm doing research even creating systems and processes that will help my business be more self-sufficient and consistent.
Camille Rapacz: Setting goals and creating plans. Even establishing a specific culture for your business. Still very important for a small business to be deliberate about that. That's this working on or leading the business.
Camille Rapacz: Some of the more obvious stuff too might be the hiring strategies and team development stuff, right?
Camille Rapacz: So, this is that long term big picture, proactive work that we have to. In order for a business to have this long-term sustainable profitability right.
George Drapeau: Yes.
Camille Rapacz: Now, as a small business owner, so start putting on your, I'm the founder of the Marching Magicians George, and you just started your small little business.
Camille Rapacz: And everything is going well, but you're realizing as you're you're learning about this concept of working on versus in the business that you really aren't spending enough time working on the business.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: imagine, like, why do you think that's happening to you?
George Drapeau: Oh, yeah.
Camille Rapacz: first years of this business.
George Drapeau: Well, the right off the top of my head, the first reason there's It's because I'm loving it. I mean, I'm doing it. I'm involved in the energy of like interacting with customers, which are, I think in any business that I've been in or been a part of, you just go talk to it's an adrenaline rush.
George Drapeau: Also it could be I'm stressed, like, ah, I'm so close to We've It Could be because I haven't, I've just been going so long thought I haven't stood up to catch breath. Those are a couple things. I could probably think of more reasons, but stuff like that.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. You hit the big ones. I think. I think a lot of it it is just like, yeah, cuz the, I mean, we got into running our own businesses, not because we're experts at business and we care about that. We did it cuz we're experts at the thing we do. Right? What the business is about, what the business delivers. And we love doing that thing. So when you said, okay, this is more fun. Yeah, it is. It's more fun if that's what your business is about. You obviously, hopefully you've picked a good business for yourself that you love. And so you're having more fun with it. So you think all of that is valid?
Camille Rapacz: I also think there are layers of, I just don't even know how to do any of that. Leading the business
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: don't know how to do strategy. I don't know what it means to hire well and do team development. I've never had to do that stuff before.
Camille Rapacz: So this long-term thinking, it's the harder stuff. And because it's stuff you've never done before for most business owners. They've just never had to wait into that space.
Camille Rapacz: And especially if they've been heads down on the business and the business is doing well, you can also be like, what do I even need to do that stuff? Do I need a strategy? I mean, things are going fine right now.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: maybe I
George Drapeau: that's a great point.
Camille Rapacz: I know lots of businesses are like, things are good. I don't think I need any of that stuff. Right.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And other business owners could be thinking about just, I just wanna keep it simple. I don't wanna get overly complicated with all this strategic planning and all this stuff. I just, I just wanna keep it to this. And while I 100% love the idea of just keeping things as simple as you can, there is such a thing. Is it being too simple? Cuz business is just not simple. It's not gonna succeed if it's overly simplified. So that can trap people into this, not wanting to go into this space of working on the business or leading the business.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: I think there's also some other underlying things that can come up for business owners that they might not consciously think about. So it's something for everybody listening to think, I wonder if that's been happening to me at all at a sort of subconscious level, which is sometimes we think just the fact that I'm an expert at this and I know what people need can lead to this idea that, so all I have to do is create this fabulous thing and then it's gonna be successful.
Camille Rapacz: I don't need strategy for it. I don't need a marketing plan. I don't need all these things. I just need to do it and put it out in the world and it'll do fine. And that's not how business works. It's not that if you build it, they will come world. It doesn't work that way. We're not unfortunately.
Camille Rapacz: unfortunately.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And then the last thing I think that can get in our way as I think about this, is just this bootstrap mentality that we have out in the world. If we take it to the extreme of, you know, I can do it all and do it all on my own, it leads us to not wanting to invite others into our business, which means we're never gonna have time to do any of that work on the business because
George Drapeau: That's fascinating.
Camille Rapacz: So any given business owner could have any number these. It's not gonna be just one these, that's the other thing. It's gonna be complicated mess of bits of some of these things. So unwinding that for yourself can be a little bit challenging, but that's every business owner also.
Camille Rapacz: So if you're out there thinking, oh shoot, this is me. Yeah. It's, it's everybody who's listening has had one of these things happening where that's felt this resistance to doing any of this work. It's very common.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And I is a small business problem, by the way.
George Drapeau: No, I completely agree. I mean, as you're talking about it, I can clearly see how this maps to big corporate business as well.
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: This is just a business problem. When we talk about how sometimes business just inherently comes with a set of problems for you to solve as a business owner, I think this is one of 'em.
George Drapeau: Yeah. I took it. right. Pressure rate. Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: course I'm right. Let's
George Drapeau: about it if you're wrong. Hey, today on the belief shift, we're gonna talk about something like totally wrong, and I wanna share that with you.
Camille Rapacz: I wanna find that thing. Actually, that would be kind of kind of but Not today.
Camille Rapacz: So let's talk about why this even matters. Hopefully we're starting to get a sense for this, but let's be really explicit about this.
Camille Rapacz: So these modes of working when they're off balance, so let's talk about when they're off balance in the initial direction, which is primarily what happens to small business owners. You're working too much in and not enough on, you're not doing enough leading in your business. And so the repercussions of this are the businesses just depending on you and you alone, which means, bye-bye freedom.
Camille Rapacz: I'm tied to this business forever. I can never walk away, I don't have any time for myself cuz I, I have to do it all. Which leads to exhaustion.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: If you want consistency in your business, it depends on you and you alone to deliver that. And we all want consistency. But again, this is this driver of, wow, it all depends on me.
Camille Rapacz: If you do have team, then your team isn't sharing in your vision because you didn't take time to create one. So they're not invested in doing their best work.
Camille Rapacz: So we wonder why our teams aren't performing well. It's cuz we haven't done any of this big picture leadership work. We just hired a bunch of people to hopefully do the stuff that we don't wanna do anymore. So at best what happens when you do this is your business just plateaus. Like it can only grow so much without any of this leadership work happening.
Camille Rapacz: At worst, and what's most common is I see business owners are burning out and business failure is imminent for them.
Camille Rapacz: And I wanna be clear what I mean when I say business failure, cuz it doesn't necessarily mean their business closes, it just means it's failing to deliver on the promise of the profitability, plus freedom that you got into this for .Because now you gave up all your freedom to just run the business, to make the money you need to make, and now you're trapped into this way of doing business.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Wow.
George Drapeau: That doesn't sound good, right? Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Do you have other thoughts about how this working on is bad?
George Drapeau: Well, I don't want to accuse you of stealing my thought about vision, cuz you already had it first. So that can't really be stealing if you did it before. But I guess I'll say two things. One, I'll re uh, say the vision aspect in my own words.
George Drapeau: And that is, if you're not working on the business, I mean working on the business is an opportunity for you to share your vision and let's is to together to that's if they'll, run out of that energy and there will be nothing to sustain them long term and build morale.
George Drapeau: Also it kind of related to that, you're not spending time on the business. You're not getting the team to help you plan for the future. If everybody is like you, then nobody. I mean, ideally you don't wanna be the only one doing the planning. You want everybody involved in some way.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, you're getting a little bit into the how that we'll talk about in the next episode, but you're spot on that it is about this team sharing of the vision. You have have one to begin with, right?
Camille Rapacz: And then How you then share that vision is really important. So just doing that work, I think we underestimate, even you're a solopreneur, you still need this long-term vision even without a team because you need this established direction in order be able to make better decisions in your business. So you're somebody who's struggling with, like, there's all these different directions you could go in your business and you're really not sure what to do and you kind of get excited about all of them because all of them look to you as like opportunities to grow your business.
Camille Rapacz: But if you're struggling to make good decisions, that's cuz you haven't established this long-term vision and strategy for your business to guide those decisions. That's really what it's for.
Camille Rapacz: So it helps you weed out the like, no, that's not for me. That's not for me. That's not for me. Cuz that's not what my business is about. My business is about this thing. I'm gonna go in this direction cuz that's what I've chosen to do.
Camille Rapacz: And so it's also, it's an accelerator for your business. Because
George Drapeau: Oh.
Camille Rapacz: And I know this is kind of the big one I think that we miss in. The benefit of doing this leadership work in your business because we think I don't have time for that.
Camille Rapacz: Well, what you're doing is you are making everything else in your future take longer. Everything that you're trying to do in your business, growing your business, you getting the more freedom that you want, having greater profitability, but having a more sustainable business, all of that is gonna take longer if you haven't actually made some of these key decisions and done some of this key work of doing the research, setting the direction, setting clear goals, having all of that stuff really clear, like this is the path we're gonna go down, is so important.
Camille Rapacz: Cuz without it, you can just keep randomly picking different paths, which means you could end up right back where you are now. Instead of, oh, I'm picking this path and I'm just gonna keep going down this path. It doesn't mean you can't have some zigs and zags along the way, but you've set a direction and it helps you stay focused, which makes things just go faster.
Camille Rapacz: Like why Yeah, right. As opposed to bouncing around kind of randomly.
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: So Ultimately, I think at the end of the day, that's kind of the big one for me. Whenever I talk to people about the importance of doing this type of work, when I say build foundations over quick fixes, that's because I see it as actually faster than quick fixes. Long term, it's basically the tortoise and the hare conversation. Foundations, that's the tortoise.
Camille Rapacz: And they're going to win the race at the end of the day. Cuz the hare is just the quick fix. I'm gonna be rapid, you know, fire all over the place, but it's not actually taking you anywhere.
George Drapeau: Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Camille Rapacz: Exactly. Yeah. I like that phrase.
George Drapeau: Yeah, me too. It's fun.
Camille Rapacz: Okay.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: the argument for why you should spend more time working on your business or leading your business.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: There is a flip side to this.
George Drapeau: Hmm.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. There is such a thing as doing too much leading and not enough doing. Or too much on the business and not enough in the business. And when you do that, you lose touch with customers and their needs and desires. You also lose touch with your employees and their needs and desires. And both of those things are critically horrible for your business. This one does tend to be more of a big business problem. I think.
George Drapeau: Oh
Camille Rapacz: Bigger it gets, the harder it is to stay in touch with what's happening on the ground, right?
Camille Rapacz: But I've seen small businesses make this mistake too, where they moved too quickly out of, they were like, oh, that sounds great. Yes, I wanna, I'm burned out. I don't wanna work in my business anymore. I'm just gonna do all the work off on the business and I'm gonna leave all those to my employees. And they just walk out.
Camille Rapacz: And then I realized business performance is tanking cuz I'm not involved. It's cuz they move too fast. So it can happen in a small business too. We'll talk about this more when we talk about the how in the next episode. But I just wanna emphasize, even though this is probably more commonly seen in a big business, it can happen in any business.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I can think of a couple instances right away where I'm feeling triggered because I can see this. I mean this, it was weird. This describes my previous manager and how he drove his whole team, you know, give you a quick example basically. He was spending so much time on strategy and planning and would keep on It was useless.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. I've seen that too, where it's like we're constantly coming up with a new better idea before we actually try and see through the initial idea. We don't even even know if it gonna work or not, cuz we didn't give it a chance.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
George Drapeau: I have another thought about this, if you don't mind. I know people who like spending time in their head like this. They love the planning and they don't really ever get to doing because they're trying to perfect their plans. I know the guy, for example, who wanted to build a to-do application, they wanna build the perfect to-do application.
George Drapeau: There's a million of them out there. many, it's almost an addiction trying new to-do, task management apps. And this guy wanted to write one and he never ever wrote it just, ah, there's some problem with this thing, let me go back and plan. And he never actually got to writing one and trying and figuring it out.
George Drapeau: Just never.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I think of this as I'm hiding in the planning. It's a form of hiding. So I'm spend so much time just thinking about the work and planning out the work, and it's also a little bit of that perfectionism getting in the way, right?
Camille Rapacz: It's like, because it's gotta be perfect when I launch it. And we've talked about this before, that there is just, there's no such thing. There's no thing as creating something perfectly in a vacuum. You can't do that, especially when you're creating, as business owners, something for someone else. Their idea of perfection is not your idea of perfection, by the way. There's no one perfect, perfect, right?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah
George Drapeau: That's for sure.
Camille Rapacz: So what I want, that would be perfect in a to-do app is definitely gonna be different from what you want.
Camille Rapacz: I think this is one of the trappings of I just create something amazing and everybody's gonna wanna buy it, because I know it's amazing and if I think it's amazing, everybody else is gonna think it's amazing.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: I love that example cuz I do think people have to be aware of that. Even if you think about the idea, you're gonna go out and start doing some of this work, I'm gonna start developing some strategy, I'm gonna start focusing on my leadership. Whatever these things are you wanna do, as you start thinking about doing that, if you're hesitating because you're like, I don't know how, and I want the perfect strategic plan. I want the perfect business plan, want the exact right long-term vision and I don't know what that is.
Camille Rapacz: If that's keeping you from doing it, you will never do it.
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: possibly know it until you try. You just can't know what those things are until you try some things out. So you know what? You're gonna develop a strategy and it's gonna fall flat. And you have to have that experience in order to then develop the next better strategy.
Camille Rapacz: You can't skip over the mistakes and the failures to get to that better state. You don't get to just skip those steps. So you have to go into this as, I just gotta put some stuff out there and see what happens.
Camille Rapacz: Right. But it does need to to this is my be like, I'm putting my best foot forward kind of idea, I guess.
George Drapeau: Huh? I like.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And that's all what we're all doing, by the way. Nobody knows how to do this well. Businesses big and small, that I work with businesses who have been around for decades or are brand new.
Camille Rapacz: They all have very similar struggles with this idea of coming up with good strategies and plans and doing this foundational work and business, or really just developing a strong culture or hiring and recruiting well, or just doing team development, like all these aspects of business. Even just doing good marketing and branding.
Camille Rapacz: And I like businesses struggle with this all the time. We see big businesses make branding mistakes all the time.
George Drapeau: Nova, telling Avi this, this story about the Chevy Nova and selling it in Spanish speaking countries. So Avi was, I think five years old, so our, our son is bilingual, he's amazing.
George Drapeau: And was telling him this story about this car, the Chevy Nova, this is a true story. And Chevy Nova was a great selling car here in the United States. And then general Motors tried to introduce it into Latin American markets. Well, Nova means doesn't go in Spanish and I think also Portuguese.
George Drapeau: And so it did horribly in those markets. And I was telling Avi, you know, they tried to sell this car and what does Nova mean in Espanol? And he was thinking, Nova doesn't go. And then he started giggling. Why are they selling a car that doesn't go? Ah,
George Drapeau: ah. And then he wanted to tell everybody, Hey, This car, the company tried to sell the car. That doesn't go.
Camille Rapacz: I remember he had to tell me that story.
George Drapeau: He did, didn't
George Drapeau: he?
George Drapeau: he
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Yeah so happy it made him so he giggled so much about it. So, yeah. And, and so these big car companies make, have these fails right? At this level of thinking that they were some, I assume people got in the room and really thought about how they were gonna market that.
Camille Rapacz: And it was a fail cuz somebody just didn't think about that thing. So you're gonna do it, you're gonna fail at some of this stuff it's not gonna work out. That's kind of the point. Like, we have to fail our way into success. That's really the only way you can get there.
Camille Rapacz: I love that story.
Camille Rapacz: Alright, we're doing good on timing.
Camille Rapacz: I'm gonna wrap this up.
George Drapeau: Let's wrap up.
Camille Rapacz: So my closing on this is just, you know, every small business owner starts out doing all the work in their business. You wear all the hats mm-hmm cuz you're it. You're doing all the stuff. But over time, your job as a business owner is to spend less time on that day-to-day work and a little more time focused on leading your business.
Camille Rapacz: Cuz a business that doesn't have a vision, a strategy, a plan, any big picture, it's only gonna last so Yeah. going to get you so far and you're never gonna get that business you really want, which is the one that's supposed to give you that freedom and that a little bit more consistency and stability that you're looking for to get out of that chaotic way of working.
Camille Rapacz: It's really the only way you can get there. So that's our whole reason for needing to do that, needing to spend more time in the leading, but it is always about a balance and it's always a striking, a balance that's changing over time. As your business matures and gets bigger, this balance will start to shift.
Camille Rapacz: You'll start to spend more time leading and less time working in, but you should never ever stop doing the work of, in your business, the work of running your business, there's always some aspects of that you've gotta do to stay connected to your business. So it's not an either or.
George Drapeau: Cool.
Camille Rapacz: Any last thoughts, George?
George Drapeau: You know, something that occurred to me, I think for the audience is that one thing I really like about what you do is you're not just helping people build a better business. You're helping them build a better life. What you just said about when you get this balance it's gonna lead to the kind of business that gives you a better life.
George Drapeau: You're just less of a rat race, more of a thing that you can own and control. I love that. Not just a better business people. My a Yeah.
George Drapeau: Yeah
Camille Rapacz: I always think of it as the reason that we got into wanting to run our own business was because we wanted a better life. And it's really easy to get caught in the trappings of what it means to run a business and forget that part. But you don't have to give up having a thriving, successful business, you don't have to sacrifice your life for that and vice versa. You don't have to just have a, you know meh, mediocre business in order to have, all this freedom in your world.
Camille Rapacz: So there is a way to do both. So yeah, that's really what I'm all about.
George Drapeau: That's awesome.
Camille Rapacz: All right, so that was all just the what's and the the why of this working on versus in your business, or as I say, leading as much as you are running your business. I want you to be leading your business, but in the next episode, so come back next are going to talk all of the how, because this all sounds nice on paper, right? But doing it is a whole other deal. So much of what we talk about
Camille Rapacz: is like, ah, that looks great on paper. Sure, but how do I actually do it? What do I actually do? So we will talk about that in our next episode.
George Drapeau: I can't wait.
Camille Rapacz: I can't wait either. All right, so if you have any questions, please leave us a voicemail on our website, thebeliefshift.com.
Camille Rapacz: We would also love it if you would rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. There will be links to both of those things in the show notes, so please do go do either one of those things to help us get the word out.
Camille Rapacz: On all this this cool business stuff, and then you can stop Googling things and getting really bad answers.
Camille Rapacz: All right. We will be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: See you soon, everybody.
