Hey guys, and welcome back to another episode of your Brain's Coach podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your Brain's Coach and it is my job here to share with you, deconstruct, learn together all the brain-body tools that science, researchers, journalists bring to our attention into the public realm so together we can master our emotions, we can understand our thoughts ourselves better and take better actions to shape and create the life path that leads to fulfillment and the vision of our life that we absolutely love living. That's what we all are about here. Folks just recently had food poisoning or some misfortune, I don't know. Went out to eat, ate something weird, and then had a couple of days where I felt like I'm about to die. I felt like I'm about to die right, and nothing like this makes you humble and understand true value of your health, Like if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. It also makes you realize how important it is to take care of your gut, For your energy levels, for your productivity, for your mood, for your personality. God holds the keys to all of that, so make sure you take good care of our God, especially in our today's world where a food environment sabotages and challenges our God with you and just and just mind-boggling how many inventions for our food industry comes up with without any sort of long-term research or backup of whether it's safe or not. We get that into our food supply, into our supermarkets, and then we just hope that it will work out for the best. So take care of your gut. Have less of invented, manufactured food-like substances. More of what your grandma would recognize like fruit and vegetables and meats, fish. You know the real foods, not manufactured foods. Have more of that Eat, probiotic-rich foods, your sauerkraut, your kimchi, your kefir, your yogurts with live bacteria. Manage stress. Exercise regularly these are also important for your gut and be cautious and understand that, yeah, sometimes things that you put in your mouth are not necessarily good for what's happening in your gut and then what's going to happen in your brain and with your health in general. So that's just sharing my personal experience and best practices for gut care. Just like you take care of your teeth and you have oral care and hygiene, we also start to understand that we need to have gut care and gut hygiene. And just because you can put something in your mouth and it passes through your gut without killing you doesn't necessarily mean that that's the best thing for your gut long term. So just remember that.
Speaker 1And now to the topic of our today's podcast. And I feel like with a lot of these business concepts, I'm late to the party. Concepts. I'm late to the party, but the mind-boggling thing for me is it seems like the rest of the world who claim to be experts in entrepreneurship, business and investing and fundraising and all this stuff, are late to the party as well and never admit that.
Speaker 1We created so many complex theories but very few people actually master the basics. It's kind of like it was nutrition or healthcare biohacking. People do all kinds of things to seemingly improve and empower health, from ice bath to the latest supplement to, I don't know, light, red light, like all kinds of light therapy but a lot of people don't do the basics like eat three healthy meals a day, eat enough fruit and vegetables, enough protein, sleep well, manage your stress well, exercise every day. These are the foundations. So the same with business, and that's why this podcast is called also Meal Plans and Startups. There are so many, at least in my world, because I come from a background of fitness and health coaching and nutrition coaching and now I'm in the executive and productivity culture building right. So I see a lot of parallels.
Speaker 1And I saw another parallel with this powerful concept of five whys analysis. That is one of the best practices in business. It actually comes from lean manufacturing back in Japan. I believe it was invented in 50s or 60s in Japan by Sekichi Toyota, and this 5Y analysis is a very powerful tool to figure out the causes of why things don't work and how do we make sure that the next time around they work better and we don't keep repeating the same patterns, the same mistakes, seeing a lack of progress. And I see a lot of similarities in terms of applying this strategy for succeeding in business, applying this strategy for succeeding in business, making progress, for example, making progress towards building consistent cash flow. And then I saw a parallel to health habits to building and creating and maintaining health habits. You can apply it in so many different domains and it's been around again for decades and it's still used in a lot of top companies by entrepreneurs the Lean Startup. It's a global movement by now. Smart startups do use it, and we already talked on this podcast about validated learning, something I learned from the Lean Startup book. That's where I also learned this and what it's all about this five why? Concept analysis, and we already talked about validated learning, and this is another concept that I'm now applying to the process of building my business to solve the problem that is currently present consistent cash flow.
Speaker 1I don't want to be in a cycle of feast of famine anymore and I don't want to feel like it's some strike of like of fate or a fortune to get certain amount of income or to get certain cash flow or to get certain profits, a certain amount of income or to get a certain cash flow or to get certain profits or a certain amount of clients. Great businesses figure out this one thing how, in the environment of unpredictable life and circumstances, still, with all this unpredictability and things happening all the time, how to still create and maintain consistent cash flow which grows or at least doesn't fall, unless there is something like real out of the ordinary happens and like the full economy collapses. But you know, greatest company actually managed to stay afloat even then, even through pandemic, et cetera, right. So I wanna be in that state, just like I am with my health. No matter what happens in my life, no matter where I live, what my financial situation is, what anything is.
Speaker 1I maintain steady streak of health habits. I always find a way and I talked to my clients about that and I say it's not like I have a very predictable routine or conditions. God, I lived in different countries for 15 years. I changed my environment dramatically and drastically so many times but I still managed to, for example, exercise and eat a certain amount of protein and eat all the micros and macros, and that's because I had different plans for different situations and also I applied different learnings to again similar, more or less similar situations in order to solve the problem.
But anyhow, let's get back to the 5 why analysis and how we can apply it to maintain and create great habits health habits, eating habits, fitness habits, no matter how unpredictable your life as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, as a creator, artist, leader, like no matter how unpredictable your life gets so you can still create sustainable habits and you can still create the progress you seek to make. And the same, how do we apply it as well, how I'm going to apply it to create consistent cash flow in my business and finally get to a point where I stop feeling like it's some sort of magic that some people figure out consistent cash flow or it is some sort of magic that I get clients at some point and I get great income and then I have nothing. I'm done with magic. I wanna create consistency that I can rely on, and Five Wise is what I believe. And again, there is like decades of experience, international and global, and manufacturing and tech industry. So it's not just a concept to like, a good concept to explore. It's something that works really well in the real world. It's kind of like OKRs objectives and key results. I'm going to get into details, but it's been used by Google, for example, to grow from zero to where they are today, and almost every great organization either use them at some point or uses them for the cycles of innovation and growth and when they want to take the challenge and take it to the next level. So you have five whys.
Speaker 1Five whys is a problem-solving method that explores the underlying cause and effect of particular problems. The primary goal is to determine the root, the root folks, the root cause of a defect or a problem, by successfully asking the question why? So how can you apply this concept, for example, to sticking with your meal plan or your fitness plan or any health habits? Let's take meal plan. For now. Let's say you created a meal plan, you decided to eat healthily, you decided to create some sort of program and then you failed again. And it's been a continuous pattern. So the next time it happens again let's say you created a meal plan and you then failed and you started eating crappy foods again you can ask yourself why did you fail with your last nutrition habit?
Speaker 1The answer might be I just couldn't stick with it. And why couldn't you stick with it? I didn't have the right food options available and I was hungry and I just ate whatever. And why didn't you have the right foods available when you were hungry? Because I didn't prep in advance. I didn't do grocery shopping or stack up on healthy options. And why didn't you prep in advance, didn't do grocery shopping or stack up on healthy options? And why didn't you prep in advance? I thought I'd wing it when the time comes. And you see, now we're getting somewhere. You thought you'd wing it, but it didn't happen, and probably didn't happen many times. So you know now that winging doesn't work. So the most leverage you have exactly at this point of thinking that you're going to winging, which never worked for you. So now, instead of winging it. You already have the answer. I need to dedicate some time, I need to plan it in my calendar to do prep, to do grocery shopping, to do meal planning, et cetera, and then test it out. And if this works, then that was the cause problem of me failing with my meal plan. And that's where you start getting results.
Speaker 1It's my personal experience, Again. I lived in 15 countries. Imagine you go to different countries and you don't have the same food supply, but I always had a plan and I always managed. And that's the key. I always had a plan. I always made sure to make a plan as soon as possible to get on a specific pattern, and then it would just flow because I made the plan, I tried it out, it worked and I would just continue for the time being until I'm in a new environment. So now the really amazing thing about five whys when done correctly, you get to the true cause of the problem, of the defect, the cause that, when addressed, solves the problem, solves the defect and you get a new pattern instead of repeating the same thing over and over again. So now, for example, in this example of meal planning, the real cause wasn't your willpower. The real cause was your lack of planning to provide yourself with good options. So when natural thing happens, like you getting hungry, you actually have great choices available right then and there to follow through with your intention of creating better eating habits.
Speaker 1Now let's get back. Well, let's get to business, to cash flow, to sales. Here's the question I'm asking myself why didn't you hit your sales goals, let's say, last week, last month? Why didn't you hit the sale goal for the week or month? My reach out efforts didn't work as planned reaching out to strangers, emailing, messaging, etc. And why didn't they work as planned? My assumptions about specific leads leads are potential customers and clients and their responses were incorrect. I also didn't put in the planned hours for reaching out to those potential customers and clients. And why were your assumptions wrong? One of the questions I'm asking myself these days because they weren't based on any good data, experience or research. And that's the key folks.
Speaker 1Now, before creating a plan for reaching out to different people, I'm asking other people who are in the same industry. I'm asking the same people who are similar to my potential customers to tell me, for example, I created a form and I sent it out to friends to contacts my clients. But to ask what do you think people like yourself and other people on similar executive leadership positions struggle with and where coaching can help, and so people choose. And so here I have a real-life data. Bear in mind what people say is not always reality, is not always what they're going to do, but it gives you a much better clue into what's on people's mind. So when you communicate a specific problem, your potential clients are much more likely to have on their mind. So you start speaking more of their language, and that will increase the potential return on investment of your time of reaching out, right? So I'm doing that. I'm asking other business owners in similar areas what they did, who they approached, what worked, what didn't work. Then I'm asking chat, GPT, with this specific package, with a specific coaching, who are most likely people to have this desire to this problem and to also have the capacity, have the financial resources and be at the stage of their life? They might be looking into that, right? So I'm collecting data points to create a better plan.
Speaker 1And then another question and why didn't you put in the scheduled hours? I would often put on my schedule, let's say, six hours of reaching out and then, at the end of the day. I had only three, and that was a repeating pattern. And so now I'm asking myself, why didn't you have those six hours that you planned? Because they were in the day, they were available. But then there is this gut schedule. This gut schedule.
Speaker 1Well then I'm and reassess was it bad planning or was it bad prioritizing, and what are your priorities for the moment? And then let your schedule reflect that. And what were the things that got in the way? And how, in the future, do we make sure that this doesn't get in the way? You see, now we're asking different questions all together, the honest questions, the questions not just why did I fail, Let me try again, but no, why did I fail? What exactly happened? And how can I address the root cause, the real cause? How can I do better based on underlying reason, not just the surface reason? Just try again and then repeating the same pattern until again, Some strike of luck gives you some results and you look, oh, that worked, but you don't even know what worked. So that's why it's important to ask all of these questions and get to the root cause and then design much better experiments. Now I'm asking myself how can I, for example, figure out the pain that my potential customers really want to be resolved and want to be resolved right now, and that's why I'm asking my contacts similar to my target audience to fill in this one question form so I get more clear understanding of what's happening in my potential customers head instead of guessing.
Speaker 1Asking better questions, asking honest questions, asking why, many, many times, until you get to the real reason to address. So then you can learn better and you can start making consistent progress, no matter how small, no matter how slow, but progress to the point where you get that consistent cash flow. But what's more important, you don't just get that consistent cash flow, you also get a ton of learning that hopefully you'll be tracking and registering and noting this consistent learning experience that you track and again, you note somewhere, you register. So you're going to have this richness, this treasure, which then will help you to navigate your business journey forward with a lot more experience, a lot more knowledge, so you don't repeat the same mistakes again and again and again, Because if we do something and it works, but we don't know why it works just like in my case after a while it starts feeling like some sort of magic and even though you had some successes, but you don't really understand why you had them, and that's why it's actually useless, because you don't know how to replicate that.
Speaker 1And that's where I feel a lot of startups fail. They get some luck, but they don't ever understand how they got there, and so they don't know how to replicate that, and that's why, sooner than later, they fail. I don't know about you, but I don't want to be in that lab. I'm committed to making my business a success, because that's how I can impact a lot more people. So let's leave the land of magic thinking and get to data, validated learning and 5Y analysis.
Speaker 1Another question that you'll have to answer after that is are you truly committed to results and getting the hard work done that leads to those results, or you're still looking for some shortcut, trying to avoid the hard thing altogether? And that's the first question I think you need to address. Because if you're looking for shortcuts in avoiding the hard thing, no matter what kind of methods you learn about, it's not going to stick, because something in you is still looking for the easy way out, and, guys, there is no easy way out to anywhere worth going. Whether you want to build an amazing business you're proud of or amazing body through health, nutrition and other health habits. There is no easy way out. You just have to figure out how to do the hard work, the smart work, the hard work, but again, hard work, the hard work. But again, if there was a shortcut to become the healthiest, wealthiest, most successful you, without work done, we'd be all doing it by now. But unfortunately, the work has to be done still, no matter what kind of technology, AI and gurus you have around, you'll still have to do the work. So, as long as you're okay with that, there are plenty of tools to give you progress, to get you started on the path upward towards your ultimate fulfillment and personal version of success. Ultimate fulfillment and personal version of success.
Speaker 1Folks hope this podcast was insightful to you, as learning about this five wise concept was to me. I'm like ah, this is how it works. This is one of the foundational pieces in my business building that I've been missing and nobody showed it to me. People showed me all kinds of fancy stuff about lead generation and about content creation, but there are these foundational things like eating your protein or getting eight hours of sleep that are out in the open and nobody talks about them and people think that the fancy stuff can get you around those things. But just like in health, it doesn't work in business either.
Speaker 1So five whys pick up the Lean Startup book. If you are in the business building and you haven't read it yet, it will give you a lot of foundational knowledge about how to iterate, how to learn the right things, how to make consistent progress, no matter how small, no matter in what unpredictable environment. So it's foundational book for any entrepreneur, no matter at what stage you are. So the lean startup and, the last but not least, stay tuned for our Friday's episode, where we're going to have David Allen, the author of GTD System, Get Things Done, Now his new book Team Get Things Done, and quite a few books on personal and organizational productivity, this global business phenomenon, in this chill manner, without having to manage all the overhead with a lot of people, a lot of I don't know technology, a lot of hustle, it might feel like. So he had an idea, he developed it, he wrote a book, he created this massive, value-added global business, but in a chill and natural way, and I wanted to talk to David about that.
Speaker 1How did it come to be and what is the playbook that creators like yourself, like myself, uh, what playbook we can use so we could also build our ideas into great value to the world and great businesses, to create great quality and fulfillment for ourselves as well. So stay tuned on Friday and, folks, if you find value in this podcast, please, please, please, do share with at least one person so we could help each other to do better, to create fulfilling, to make more impact, to learn to do things better, so we all unlock more of our potential and create a better world for each other. So please do share. It's the biggest gift you can give, Angela, as a creator of this podcast, and thank you for your attention. Thank you for learning, for keeping your ears open, for wanting to grow and improve and, till next time, keep asking why.