Camille Rapacz: Welcome back, George.
George Drapeau: Hey there. Long time no see.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Should we disclose to our audience that we're just recording some back-to-back episodes?
George Drapeau: Just like the Dune movies or Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning. We're doing it exactly the same way.
Camille Rapacz: We are just as good as the Mission Impossible movies.
George Drapeau: Maybe even
Camille Rapacz: the big takeaway.
George Drapeau: Cause I'm not breaking my ankle during filming of this thing.
Camille Rapacz: I don't know. I think maybe you should go to the extreme and break an ankle for us.
Where's your Tom Cruise level commitment to my podcast?
George Drapeau: Good point.
Woo.
Camille Rapacz: I don't even think I have that level of commitment to my podcast.
INTRO
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Camille: Welcome to The Belief Shift. The show that explores. What you really need to know about building a successful small business.
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: All right, so today we are gonna do part two of this topic that started out as working on versus in the business, but is really about going from not just running your business, but also leading your business. That's how I like to phrase it.
But, You know, the Google searches working on versus in the business, that's the catchphrase that's out there.
So last episode we talked about, what it means and why you care as a small business owner. So this episode we're gonna just talk about the how.
So just as a quick, so if you haven't listened to that last episode, please do go check it out. I don't know if it's really a prerequisite to today's conversation, especially if you really get what this topic is, and you've seen this phrase a lot and you've heard it and you know it.
But if you haven't heard that phrase or you don't really know what it means, or you maybe think you know what it means, but you're not sure, I would go back and listen.
But maybe we can sort of catch people up and George. Can you remember from the, an hour ago when we recorded that episode, what were your big takeaways from that part One discussion we had of the what and the why of this idea?
George Drapeau: One takeaway I get is it's common for us to be so kind of heads down as something that we fail to stand back and think about overall planning and strategy and how we make the overall business better. Some people do it the opposite. Some people spend more time strategizing and never doing so they don't really learn what's going right and wrong and you have to do both. It's not just one or the other. You to do both, and that's my big takeaway.
Camille Rapacz: Yes, and I think this is, you know, don't just think of owning your business or running your business.
You're not just a business owner, you're not just running it, but you're leading it.
You're leading this business, but leadership isn't just a thought experiment either. So I wanna be careful when I say that term. Leadership is about taking action. So it's not just thinking about these things, it's actually things as well.
So leading does require you to do the work.
The name of the game though, like you said, it is about finding balance and also keeping in mind that that balance of how much time you're spending leading your business, it's gonna change over time as your business matures. So if you're thinking, well, how much time am I supposed to spend on that?
There is no ideal answer. Only you can have that answer for you and your business. On any one of these given activities that's required and at any stage in your business, it's, it's just gonna depend both on what stage of business you're in and the type of business you have.
I don't have any easy answer here for you.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: But the answers will come as you start to do the work. With practice, you will find the right balance in your business. So let's talk about how you do it so you can start practicing and get really good at striking this balance in your business.
George Drapeau: That's awesome.
Camille Rapacz: I'm gonna lay out here five steps.
So five steps to start leading your business. So the first one that we're gonna talk about, and when we do this, George, I'm gonna have some questions in here.
I want you to put on your founder of the Marching Magician's business. See if we can use that to kind of run through some examples here. So be thinking about that.
Step 1
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Camille Rapacz: Step one in this process is you need to know what the activities are that are involved in leading your business.
So you need to have this list of what, like what, what does it all mean? And we talked about the what in the last episode, but your job is to list all of those out, but we're gonna help you out with step one and just drop that list in our show notes.
So if you don't know what that is, you can just go to the show notes and you'll see a nice long list.
And it's things like, this isn't all of them. There will be more in the show notes, but it's things like developing your long-term strategic plan, understanding the financial performance of your business, so being able to do analysis on financial performance of your business. uh, Doing a marketing plan. Evaluating and improving on customer experience. Team development and leadership. And business systems and processes. So these are some of the things, not all of them. Again, full list in the show notes, so go check it out. But those are the things, so that's step one. You gotta know like, what are the things? Now me just listing them, you still might be like, what what does a long-term strategic plan even look like?
Totally get that.
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: So your job is to actually start to do some of this work so you can learn what it is. You have to learn by doing with a lot of this. And we're gonna talk a little bit more about what to do when you don't even really know what that thing means. Or you might not even know, like, what does it really mean to have a marketing plan?
Because I know that it's not just posting to social media or whatever. So these are things for you to explore and start to learn about. There's plenty of things here. I don't want you to try and do them all at once if you're not doing any of them. So the next question is, well then where do you start?
Because you can't do all of them at once. Yeah.
George Drapeau: yeah,
Camille Rapacz: two,
Step 2
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Camille Rapacz: Step two is to start with a purpose. And that purpose should be what problem do I need to solve in my business right now?
So George, you're marching magician business. It's getting some momentum, you putting all your energy into working in the business.
You're doing the bookkeeping and the sales calls, you're delivering the classes and you're serving as the company's IT support. Yeah.
George Drapeau: yeah
Camille Rapacz: What do you imagine your daily struggles are?
George Drapeau: Oh man, I've, well, first of all, I'm not even sure I have time to think about what my daily struggles are. Cause I'm doing know so much.
Camille Rapacz: Good.
George Drapeau: Good.
Camille Rapacz: You're so overwhelmed, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah, Absolutely. I mean, I'm joking, but not really. Not really. I'm not stepping back to breathe and think, okay, checkpoint. Where am I? How am I doing?
Camille Rapacz: What kind of problems do you think are showing up in your business because you're not doing that?
George Drapeau: Let me think about that. Well, I mean, two things come to mind immediately. If I'm just kind of going, I don't really have a growth plan, so maybe I'm going to to grow organically as people would say. I'm not really crazy about that phrase. But what, the, what I mean by that is, yeah, I mean, maybe a little world of mouth comes in or maybe I spent a little bit of time going in and looking for new clients and chasing them down.
But I'm not systematic about it. I don't have a plan for growth. I'm just doing it. So I'm not gonna, I'm for sure not gonna grow the way I want.
The other thing that comes to mind is because I'm doing everything, I don't have time to optimize anything. None of the aspects of this business are really improving as they could.
And if I spent time doing on that, that probably means I could be spending less time on some of those and get more time for myself.
But I'm not spending time optimizing. So I'm in a negative feedback loop.
Camille Rapacz: Yes. And that is the actual essential problem is that you do just get stuck in this endless loop.
I have a lots of business owners who describe this as like, I'm just stuck in this cycle and you don't know how to bust out cuz I'm just trapped in this way of working. Right.
So some other examples and with some of my clients that have come up is they're just scrambling every time they get a new client.
Like as soon as they get the client, they're like, oh, we got the client.
They don't have good processes or systems or anything for how they then deliver their services. And so it's always just this kind of chaotic scramble to do their best on the client side. It, it looks fine, but internally in the business is just a nightmare.
Right. It's just chaos.
George Drapeau: Yeah. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Another problem that I see is that businesses are, they'll say they're marketing like crazy, but nobody's biting.. Like, I'm out there all the time, I'm doing all the marketing, but nothing's happening. And it's cuz they don't actually have a marketing strategy and so they're not really marketing, they're just pushing a lot of noise out into the world.
And that's not marketing. So yeah, so that comes from , I'm doing the work, but I didn't create a plan or a strategy around it.
And then the other one that I think of is just this idea of not being on top of their finances.
They don't have a good sense for cash flow in their business.
So either bills get paid late or client payments that aren't gonna getting followed up on that. Clients are late in making their payments and just not having a good handle on it. When I, you know, talk to them about this financial performance that they kind of are just looking at like, well, I guess I have X amount of money in my bank account, so it's okay?
But they don't really have a plan around that. They don't have a plan around what happens when cash flow goes, you know, negative or what's my plan when taxes come up? Those kinds of things. They're just not really managing that well. So that's another place where it's like they didn't step back to really think that through.
George Drapeau: Yeah,
Camille Rapacz: Some of it is, you know, we sometimes we can have this mindset of just like if I just work hard and bring in all the customers and all the clients, the money stuff will take care of itself. And that doesn't really work that way either. You have to actually put a plan together about how you're gonna manage all this financial stuff.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: So this is all of that, just getting back to why you need to do it. And so you can start by looking at any one of these problems, which, and pick the one that's just most prominent. Like you're like, oh, this one is just killing me. This is really the problem that's happening in my business.
And use that as your starting point for then what work on the business, what leadership work do I need to do to help solve this problem? This requires you to get out of the quick fix mode, right? You're gonna have to have the patience to be like, okay, I have to somehow stop being in the weeds as you described it, right?
And just pull my head up long enough to work on this. But if you pick the right problem to solve, that can help make it easier to motivate yourself to do it, right? Like, I'm gonna solve this problem in this way. So that's why I say focus on making it purposeful by picking a problem that really is prominent in your business right now.
Cuz what this is gonna do is give you a long-term solution, not just a band-aided quick fix that's not really gonna sustain.
George Drapeau: Okay,
Camille Rapacz: And that's what we're after. So that's step two.
You've got the problem defined.
Step 3
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Camille Rapacz: Now step three is you wanna align that problem with the right leadership activity.
So George, starting with your problem, when you said, you know, you don't have time to optimize anything. Because you're in the weeds on everything.
What do you think when we talk about this list of all these leadership things, like what's the area that you would think to focus on?
When we talk about all the working on the business tasks, we talk about developing strategy, working on business systems and processes, team development, all those kinds of things. We've identified your problem in the business to solve as I'm in the weeds on everything.
I don't have time to optimize, it, which is frankly what's keeping you in the weeds. So all you have time to do is work on every little detail.
George Drapeau: I know, man.
Camille Rapacz: If you think about that and you think, oh, how do I do one of these bigger picture things that, what would actually help me solve this problem?
Does any one stand out to you?
George Drapeau: I'm gonna say, if I think about I'm in the weeds all the time with my team and we're just kind of doing stuff and I'm not optimizing anything. Maybe I don't have any guidebooks, like a runbook or something that describes here's how different tasks do.
So maybe like stop talk with the team and say, okay, look, we need to automate some of this stuff to save us time, or we need to be more systematized about we go about stuff. Because right now, every problem's coming to me, you guys are smart. It doesn't need to come to me, but I'm not giving you an opportunity to do anything on your own. So can we take a, a little bit of time and try to create initial guidebook for the various aspects of the business, not complete, just to start. And then that'll let me spread some of the workload to you and it'll help us maybe get a little bit more handle on things. I'm just trying that as a, as a thought.
Camille Rapacz: Absolutely. So what you just described, I put into the topic of business systems and processes.
George Drapeau: Oh yeah. Yep. exactly it.
Camille Rapacz: I need a guide, I need a set of instructions. I need a, a roadmap. When you talk about building business systems and processes, it is just how should this work actually get done?
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And how do I systematize it?
Create some consistent way of it happening that everybody knows, so that it's always happening.
George Drapeau: Can I make a comment about my own comment? Your comment about my comment?
Camille Rapacz: Sure. Wow.
George Drapeau: This is bringing to mind a problem I have in, at my current company right now, 20,000 person company, and we're spending time doing what some people think is a really stupid exercise.
There's several groups that I'm part of that all converge on the same partner, but we do different things.
The individuals on our teams know how to work with each other to, you know, get good coverage, but nobody's ever put it down on paper. And so there's all this confusion about, well, when do I call that team versus the team, or this is that team.
And the teams sort of know, you could call any of them and they'll sort of work it out, but it's not very efficient.
My point here is there's huge value. You may not think so, but there's huge value in just writing it down. just putting on paper what you do. Even if you think No, no, no. Everybody kind of knows.
Yeah, maybe.
But I don't know. There's something magical about just putting it down.
You wanna speak to that?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, I do think that this is something that businesses just really struggle to take the time to do and don't find it to be that valuable.
Partly because I think they missed the idea that, I think the putting it on paper makes it feel permanent.
Like, but but then what, what if I need to change it?
We'll then change
George Drapeau: it.
Use your eraser.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. This is called improvement is what you should do.
George Drapeau: Can you say that more slowly?
Camille Rapacz: I'm sorry. You, you're triggering me now with something that is so frustrating for me, which is the idea that you can't improve something that you haven't set a standard for.
George Drapeau: Ah you say that again. That's awesome. I've never heard that
Camille Rapacz: you, When you can't improve something. You have not set a standard for. If I haven't said, I expect when X happens that Y will be the outcome.
George Drapeau: Mm-hmm.
Camille Rapacz: If I haven't said that, that's what I expect to happen. That's the standard I'm going for.
Like I do that by then writing down, here's what should happen. X is what I expect you to do, so that Y will be the outcome of this.
And then I can test like, is that actually happening? And if it's not happening, then I go do improvement. If I haven't written any of that down, how do I even know what to improve?
Because I haven't even said what's happening.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: So yeah, it really runs up against this idea of being able to make improvement starts with We always talk about the idea of, I need to write down just what are the standards here, or, or another way to think of it is what are the agreements we have made about how this work gets done?
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: And sometimes that's easier for people's, like we all have an agreement that this is how we expect to do the work, and then if the outcome doesn't turn out to be what you expect, but I followed that standard or that agreement, then I know I, what to go improve on. Right? Oh, I gotta fix the process.
It's also a way to be more focused on improving the process and not attacking the people doing the process for mistake.
The process fails the people, not the people failing the process.
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: I am with you on the frustration of that because I just think.
Because we don't see through the full value of writing that down and what it can then do for you. We just don't do it.
We just see it as this very myopic like, well, I'm just gonna write it down. And then what?
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Okay.
Camille Rapacz: So your
idea is spot on, and that's really focused on, I gotta get some business processes written down. I need to make some agreements with how the work should get done. Agreements for how people are going to solve problems without me, or maybe it's with me, but less. I intervene here or here and how all of that would happen.
So you're less in the weeds and more tapped into when the team needs you.
George Drapeau: This is interesting to me. You talk a lot about systems and processes and sometimes I put myself in the, the place of the audience and think, yeah, but if I'm not good at doing that, how am I gonna get there?
And like this is right now, it's a very simple way of starting that. Just write down what you do. Try that. It's a great first step. It's a micro move. If you didn't think systemically, this will help you because you'll see it in front of you. You'll start to see patterns and stuff, right?
Camille Rapacz: Yes,
Yes. It's another good reason to write things down is sometimes you just realize either, oh, there's things in here I'm doing, I don't even know if I need to do them. Why do I still do these steps? It's a way for you to analyze how you're doing the work because we all get trapped in the I'm just doing the way I've always done it.
This is another thing that shows up in business a lot, right? Which is the response to like, why do we do it that way? I don't know. It's the way we've always done it. Oh, that's the worst answer ever. That means it's a horrible way to do it, by the way. Whatever it is. It's definitely the worst way to do it because it has never been improved on, right?
So yeah, don't fall into that trap.
Even as a small business owner, just start writing down what you do.
George Drapeau: Okay. What am I missing? What? else?
Camille Rapacz: So there's some other examples here for how to think about aligning what the problem is to the solution. So this one really found that category of things are just chaotic or inconsistent.
And so you wanna focus on systems and processes.
Some other examples would be if the problem shows up as you're struggling to make decisions. There's just too many different directions you could go on your business and every time you have to make a decision, it's just really painful and you're just never sure that you're making the right one.
Like painfully so, I mean, we're always a little unsure, but you really have a hard time and you don't have any good decision making algorithms or processes or filters for yourself.
Then you wanna focus on strategy. That means you don't have a good strategic plan. You haven't set a direction for your business, and that's what strategic planning will do for you.
So that's how we map that problem to what to do on the leadership side.
George Drapeau: Hmm.
Camille Rapacz: Another problem match to a solution example, would be that you need more clients. Or you need it to be easier to get more clients. Maybe you're getting them, but you can't sustain the way that you're doing it.
Then you need to focus on your marketing plan and the systems that support that.
My last example would be if you are just frustrated with the performance of your team, then you focus on team development and your leadership skills. Sometimes we focus on the person, like, I just need to replace the person.
But oftentimes it's, I need to focus on myself and how I'm developing them and how I'm approaching them from a leadership perspective. So those are some ways that you can think about, you know, what is that core problem, and then what's one of these bigger things that I can do that would really tackle this more permanently, foundationally, fix the problem, not just band-aid it or quick fix it.
George Drapeau: Mm-hmm.
Camille Rapacz: So that was step three.
This might be the hardest step for people, especially if you're like, I don't even know what strategic planning does for me, or, I'm not really sure what a good marketing strategy and plan actually looks like.
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: So if you don't know, that's why you wanna lean into this stuff is the only way for you to learn it is to start doing it.
And you can start researching and figuring this out.
So don't shy away from it just cuz you're unsure, especially if you're like I don't even know what good leadership looks like.
How do I be a better leader for my team? Just start asking these questions. That's the place to start, is to just know that's what I gotta start working on.
I gotta start figuring that out.
George Drapeau: Cool.
Step 4
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Camille Rapacz: Step four in this is you have to do this consistently. So every week you need to make time to do it. So George, when are you gonna do it and how are you gonna keep yourself committed?
George Drapeau: Well, for me, you and I have talked a little bit about how we manage our time. So I'll tell the audience a little bit about me. I'm gonna, Pick three times here.
Sunday nights is when I personally plan my upcoming week. I take 45 minutes, no more than that. Really just kind of talk about what are the big rocks that I wanna move?
What are the things I wanna focus on? So that's me personally getting ready for what I wanna do and how I want to work on stuff with the team.
And then I think personally, I know my favorite days of the week to do this kind of activity are usually Mondays and Fridays. I am just kind of talking this out.
Friday always seems like a refl. No, I'll say it and then I'm gonna take it back. I was gonna say, Fridays are kind of on a lookback, reflect and review. Mondays are kind of a look forward thing, but that's not actually true for me. Mondays I'll often start with a little bit. Okay, so how, what was last week like?
So we'll start with reflect. I'm wrong about my own thinking, but I would say pick a time, you know, Monday when people aren't traveling or people are ready, just starting a week and not too early in the morning. Give people a time, little chance to warm up and then get together.
Review. Talk a little bit about the plan for the week.
I think Mondays are a nice time to do it, not midweek. Midweek is tends to be you can, but you're in it. Give yourself a chance to stand up and get outside of it. So either a slow start Monday or a wind down Friday is what I'm gonna go with.
How about for you though? How do you do it?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. It depends on what it is. So all these different things they're, they will happen at different times, but on a recurring weekly basis.
The things that I wanna do weekly. I'm a Monday morning person, so I was having the same, yeah. I like the idea that I might reflect on the week on a Friday, but I don't I'm out. I'm moving on.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: So I actually, I've been developing a planner to use with my clients for taking their business strategic plan and turning it into daily activities. And so I'm sort of testing one out right now, and this was one of my big revelations was, oh, the end of week reflection work, it's gotta be like Monday. So it's the start of the planning process on Monday, just like you described.
George Drapeau: Interesting.
Camille Rapacz: I find that works better for me too.
Yeah. Because by friday you just, ready to move on. I think some people can do it well, I don't really do it very well, so I like Mondays as my day.
George Drapeau: Yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess we're the same, huh?
Camille Rapacz: to do Sundays when I had a day job because I had meetings right out of the gate. But now that I have control over with my calendar, I do it on Monday mornings.
So my Sundays I don't, I no longer have the Sunday scaries, or as they used to say.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: You know? I was like, oh, it's Sunday.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: The weekends coming to a close.
All right, so you've got your time to do it. So choosing a recurring date and time. I don't care when you guys do it. George just picked Monday. I like Mondays.
Having these bookends of the week is a great way to think about it.
Doing it on Sunday is also, some people like to prep for their week and do it on Sunday night. I think that's great too.
Like whatever works for you if middle of the week works for you, do that.
George Drapeau: Mm-hmm.
Camille Rapacz: Just remember it's not a one-time task. That's why I say weekly.
You need to make time for whatever you're gonna do in this space, weekly.
I do some of this on a weekly basis. I do some of it on a monthly basis. I do other tasks on a quarterly basis, so I have different levels of frequency for different types of leadership tasks.
So it depends on what it is, but you definitely want, at least every week, you're doing something in this space.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Make a conscious choice that that time in the week, you're gonna change modes from running the business to leading the business.
And then somehow build some accountability in there for yourself, with your team, with someone else, something. Right. A coach, whatever. However you could do that, cuz if it's new to you, just, it might be a little bit difficult to get into it and to hold yourself to, I actually did leadership work. Cuz especially I feel like I don't, I'm still not comfortable with doing this kind of work. It might be hard to sit down and actually do it because you're just kind of staring at your desk like, what, what am I supposed to do now? Right.
So just but starting to be consistent about it is really important.
Step 5
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Camille Rapacz: All right, so step five, make it easier to spend time doing leadership work.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Camille Rapacz: How would you do that, George? How would you make it easier?
George Drapeau: Wow.
I go back to guidebooks. For me, guidebooks are a way to explicitly share the load, and it's helps me set up systems for automating what can be automated. It helps me identify where I can and can't easily automate. I don't expect to automate everything. I don't wanna be completely out of a job yet. But there's, so creating these, these guidebooks helps me automate.
You know, actually another thing creating incentive systems for the team is a good way of getting, I'm, I'm thinking about Avi here. I'm thinking about my son and, and getting his behavior. When we give him incentives, you don't get screen time until you do these things, or here's the rules for how you earn or get less screen time.
Once I give him those incentives. He can do the stuff he needs to do on his own. On the same thing with the team. If you give them proper incentives, they are literally motivated to do stuff on their own. So not just the guidebook, but some sort of incentive system would make it easier for me to lead because I'm making it clear, I guess, what you gotta do and what gets rewarded.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
George Drapeau: that?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah, that's a great way. I love both of those things.
I really like this guidebook idea, cuz it is this, you wanna automate where you can. But not everything to your point, Cuz also sometimes you're automating and then you're putting more work into just maintaining the automation than you should be.
So there's a fine line, right? So automate where you can create the systems and the processes that are easily repeat. Right? Or in your example, also something that's gonna really sustain itself because you've created the right incentives with people. and just get rid of the wasteful work.
So some of it is just looking at the work and just saying, what am I doing That's just not adding value in my business. Like I should just stop doing it. I've had so many people, when they stop and look at their business, they're like, you know, I keep doing that. I don't, I don't know why I still do that. I should just stop
George Drapeau: Really?
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. And we just, cuz we're creatures of habit, right? And we get stuck into ways of doing things. So take a look at what really doesn't need to happen anymore or probably never needed to happen and I just kind of got stuck doing it. So didn't get rid of some wasteful work.
And then of course the ultimate one is that you hire and delegate work that isn't in your area of expertise. Right? And this is the little stuff like hire a virtual assistant just to do a couple hours of work a week. Doesn't have to be a huge investment out of the gate. You can get couple hours a week off of your plate. Gives you a couple hours to spend on leadership work, which is huge by the way.
That's a huge amount of time to spend focused in that space on a weekly basis. So just start thinking small when you start to think about hiring and delegating the work.
We really gotta get to this episode on delegation cuz that's a big topic.
George Drapeau: it's coming up a
Camille Rapacz: And the wrong way to do it.
I know. So we'll get to that. All right.
So you gotta make it easier to spend time on the leading, that's your step five.
George Drapeau: Okay.
Lead Thoughtfully & Strategically
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Camille Rapacz: Now, there is a right and a wrong way to approach this, so I wanna just spend a few minutes here talking about how to lead your business with a, a thoughtful strategy to doing this.
Like, how do you approach this in a way that's gonna be most effective, and that you're not just going through the motions of it. Like I'm not just making a strategic plan and then saying I did it and setting it aside, which I see lots of people who, well, we wrote this process and did this thing, but we don't do it like it's useless.
And because they're not following through on these things.
And so there's a way to do this, to help make sure that it's effective and that, again, you're not just checking boxes by saying, I wrote my marketing plan. I wrote like, this is the kind of the, the challenge of writing a business plan is you fill in all the boxes, but it doesn't actually help your business because you didn't connect the dots right.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: So the number one thing is gonna be what we just recently talked about, which is you gotta approach it with a growth mindset.
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Especially if it's all new to you.
You gotta give yourself some grace.
Nobody knows how to do this stuff well in the beginning, even some of my older and bigger clients, I mean, your business where you work, they still struggle with this stuff, right?
George Drapeau: Absolutely.
Yes.
Camille Rapacz: So everybody's always struggling with it, and I will just say, I believe that the struggle is the point.
That's actually where you get value in
this process,
because if this was easy to do, if doing this foundational work, if doing the work of developing a strategic plan and doing the work of leadership, doing team development, if all that stuff was easy, everybody would be doing it.
And then you wouldn't be differentiating yourself as a business by doing it.
So the fact that it's hard and it's a struggle, is why it matters.
George Drapeau: That's cool.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah. Cuz that's what keeps everybody from doing it. So you can stand out, you can elevate your business performance and your experience as a business owner can be better if you lean into this space.
So think of it as an investment in your business. And that you go into this growth mindset that you're just gonna approach it as a way to growth mindset will also deliver growth in your business, right?
George Drapeau: Yeah, absolutely.
Don't Do it Alone
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George Drapeau: So that's my number one strategy.
Camille Rapacz: My number two is don't do it alone. You said this in a previous episode.
Get input from your team people. You are not leading this thing by yourself. So when you are creating a vision, sure it's up to you, but involve your team in that conversation. right?
George Drapeau: Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Or just talk to other business owners. If you don't have a team, just involve somebody.
But this idea that you leading is gonna be you doing it alone.
It's not a position, it's a mindset. Leadership is a mindset. It is a way of working.
It's not just cuz you're the boss. You get to be a leader. So don't confuse being the boss for leading.
You might be sitting at the top of this business, but leading actually is a bottom up activity.
George Drapeau: Hmm. Yeah.
Camille Rapacz: Think of it as how do I involve others in this and give others opportunity to be leaders as well in my business.
George Drapeau: That's cool. Absolutely.
Camille Rapacz: Don't lead alone.
Get Expert Help
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Camille Rapacz: Number three is get expert help. Hire experts.
Again, back to the, I don't really know how to do a business strategy. Hire an expert like me who knows how to do that, and that's what I help businesses do, right?
So hire experts so that you can learn faster, and these can be coaches, consultants, trainers, there's lots of different ways you can do this, but when you choose to be a business owner, again, I said this in the last episode, but I can't emphasize enough that you are not an expert at business.
I mean, unless that is actually your expertise or you've done this before.
But for 99.9% of us, we go out there and we're starting our small business. We're not experts at this. We're experts is a thing we do in our. business.
So you trying to understand how to do strategy and business process and marketing and all the, these are all things that we have to learn, but there are experts out there to help.
And so hire the right experts in the right spaces.
And there's no one expert that can help you with everything, right?
Somebody's gonna be excellent at branding, somebody's gonna be great at technology. You're gonna need a financial advisor. So get the right experts to help you.
Don't be afraid to do that.
That's what they're there for. You learning it on your own is a super slow path.
Don't Overcorrect
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Camille Rapacz: And then number four, this is my last one, don't overcorrect.
So stepping away from the work, we talked about this before. When you step away from that work in your business too fast, it's gonna have bad results.
Because people aren't gonna be ready to do the work the way that you need it to be done.
You've gotta make sure the systems, the people, and the processes are all working properly before you really pull back from that work inside the business.
So if you decide that all the sales in your business aren't gonna be up to you, but are gonna be up to somebody else, you've gotta make sure they're prepared for that.
You can't just give it to them and be like, good look with that. So you have to make a gradual transition out of that working in the business. So have some patience with that. People need time to learn their job or processes, need time, team work effectively, right?
Sometimes you write 'em, you're like, that process didn't work.
I thought it looked good on paper, but it didn't work. Right.
So you're always gonna have to do some level of working in the business of running the business. We're not trying to remove that completely. We're not trying to say, just be a leader and don't do any of the actual work.
Find a balance.
Any closing thoughts on this, George?
George Drapeau: I like these steps. It makes it very tractable, actionable to me. Makes it clear about how to get started. I like this. This is great. I like tying these two things together, the previous episode, and this really gimme a good framework for how to think about kind of getting up out of the weeds.
Camille Rapacz: Yeah.
Your marching magician's business is ready to go.
Final Thoughts
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Camille Rapacz: My closing thoughts are just don't worry if you're not sure what you're doing. Because nobody does.
We want to avoid getting uncomfortable in this space. And also we wanna feel like, well, I started this business, I should probably know how to do all of this stuff.
No, nobody does. I have yet to meet a business owner who knows how to do all of these things. And didn't require some help in order to do it.
So just sit with that. Just be okay with that, that you are not gonna know what you're doing. And it's okay cuz nobody does and we're still all okay.
And then be patient with it. Be patient with the process. It's gonna take time to learn it, but it's gonna just pay off is gonna be so big. So while it's not a quick fix, it is an accelerator.
This is the foundation building, it's the investment in your business that is going to pay off.
And that can be difficult because we're, you know, humans don't do a good job thinking about long-term planning, right?
All think about all the things that we don't do well from long-term planning, from financial to health to, I mean, it applies in business too. So just know that that's not our natural tendency. But you know, that this, long-term foundational thinking is what's gonna help your business long-term.
So just approach it from that perspective.
George Drapeau: Awesome. that's great.
Camille Rapacz: That's all I got. So get out there and do people
George Drapeau: go do it. Spend some time.
Camille Rapacz: Lead. Go do and go lead.
George Drapeau: Yeah, do
Camille Rapacz: You have questions about this, please leave us a voicemail at thebeliefshift.com. You'll see a little voicemail widget where you can leave us a question or a comment or whatever you want.
And we would love it if you would rate and review us on Apple Podcasts so that more people can hear about us and get some more
how-tos on running a good business. What did you say last time? Not just improving your business, but improving your life.
better
George Drapeau: you, My sister's gonna make, not just make your business better, it's gonna make your life better.
Camille Rapacz: Makes me think of that phrase.
Happy wife, happy life.
This is happy business, happy life.
George Drapeau: Yeah, it is.
Camille Rapacz: what we want. All right. Thanks George.
George Drapeau: Thanks Camille.
Camille Rapacz: Thank you everybody for listening. We'll be back in your ears next week.
George Drapeau: See ya.
