Welcome to another episode of the Female emPOWERED Podcast with Christa Gurka. In this episode, I discuss why listening to too many opinions might harm your business and how to figure out which opinions to consider (and which ones to skip)..
Some of the topics I dive into include:
Looking for advice and resources to help you market and grow your clinic or client-based business? Visit my website or follow me on Instagram!
Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review for the show to help other female fitness and wellness professionals find our podcast!
Interested in being a guest on a future Female Friday episode? Email me at Christa@pilatesinthegrove.com!
Welcome to another episode of the Female emPOWERED Podcast with Christa Gurka. In this episode, I discuss why listening to too many opinions might harm your business and how to figure out which opinions to consider (and which ones to skip)..
Some of the topics I dive into include:
Looking for advice and resources to help you market and grow your clinic or client-based business? Visit my website or follow me on Instagram!
Thanks for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review for the show to help other female fitness and wellness professionals find our podcast!
Interested in being a guest on a future Female Friday episode? Email me at Christa@pilatesinthegrove.com!
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the female empowered podcast. I'm your host, Krista Gurkha. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about why listening to too many opinions could be killing your business and keeping you stuck. And which opinions you should be listening to, if any. So that's basically what we're going to talk about today, I get a lot of people that reach out to me asking me, do I do this? Do I do that? Do I do this? Do I do that, and even in our coaching groups, and mentorship groups, and things that I have learned over the years is I would encourage people to research information. And then ultimately, if you're going to ask advice, ask in a way that's like, this is what I'm thinking, here's why I'm thinking that. And does this sound similar to something that you might do? Or do you have an opinion on that? Versus what should I do? Okay, it kind of comes from that old saying, or that, you know, teach a man, give a man a fish, feed him for a week, teach him to fish feed him for a lifetime. I don't think that's exactly it. But that basically, you want to learn how to fish, not necessarily ask people for the fish. So one of the things that I'm going to talk about today is basically why listening to too many opinions will keep you stuck, or kind of like in this analysis, paralysis. And then if you are going to search out advice, ways that you can search out advice that will actually be helpful to you. And allow you to move forward. So one of the ways I'm just going to get to my own horn and give myself a shout out, if you're listening to this podcast, kudos because I think I do think that I share relative lead good information. And it is certainly information that comes from my experience. And my learning, which is, is, you know, not all business owners are not monolithic. And so it does not doesn't necessarily pertain to everyone, but I certainly will share things that have worked for me and things that have not worked for me. So as always, I say, Take what you like and leave what you don't. And so, I do feel like I share valuable information here. If I ever don't, I love feedback, too. I love to hear oh, that didn't really resonate with me or I did something different. And here's how it worked out. For me. I love learning. I consider myself a lifelong learner. And so I'm always curious to hear how other people navigate situations. So one of the reasons so first, I'm gonna go through really 10 different reasons why listening to too many opinions could be kept keeping you stuck. And I think it was like my grandmother, I don't remember who exactly was but I'm pretty sure it was my grandmother. She was quite the spicy lady. She said wants to me opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. And most of them stink. So it was She's funny. Anyways, I miss my grandma. So number one, one of the reasons why listen to too many opinions could be hurting your business is oftentimes you'll get contradictory advice. I mean, I hear this in our mentorship programs all the time. Well, my last coach told me XYZ, or even playing sports, like think about it, if you had a coach playing sports. Some people will tell you how to shoot a free throw one way some people will tell you how to shoot a free throw another way. I mean, I coached up played and coached volleyball. And so the way that I would tell people how to pass or block or read a play on the other side, or serve or where to serve to could be different than somebody else. Right? So oftentimes, if we listen to too many opinions, it could lead to conflicting advice, which again, is what leads you to confusion and leaves you feeling like unsure about the right direction to go in. Do you make yourself an S corp? Or do you not? Do you hire people? Or do you not? Do you take yourself off the schedule or do you not? Okay, ultimately, you have to know where you're going and choose the advice. It's going to get you there the fastest, I think or easiest sometimes. Fast. isn't doable for everybody. All right. The other thing that happens if you listen to too many opinions is overwhelm. When we try to process too many opinions, it certainly It overwhelms our decision making process. And think of if you've ever gone to a restaurant, and the menu is like 10 pages long, I used to get like this when I go to Cheesecake Factory, or there's another restaurant here in Miami called the big pink and the the menu is enormous. And so what it does is it leaves me with analysis paralysis, and I can't figure out what to do. I can't figure out what to have, because there's too many options. So when you have too many opinions, it can leave you feeling overwhelmed. I remember when I was building out my studios, I would tell the people that were helping me I'm like, bring me two options, and I'll decide between the two of them, if you bring me 10, I'm going to be overwhelmed. And then I'm always going to think that I picked the wrong one. So if you bring me two options, I trust you to bring me two options, and I'll pick from those two, okay, so you will get stuck, you will not make a decision, and you will not take action if you get overwhelmed. The other thing that sometimes happens is we lose focus, they could divert our attention from your real objective. Right. And so if you're doing too many things at once, oh, you should start an on demand library, or you should start a teacher training program. Or you should hire this other person. Oh, you need to do this, it dilutes your effort. We are all more successful when we are going all in on one thing at a time. I have learned this the hard way over the years. And so when we're doing too many things, it's like Jack of all trades master of none. it dilutes our focus, and keeps us from really achieving big, great things in one area, right. And it also makes us really feel like we have a chicken with her head, we're a chicken with her head cut off. Another thing that happens, and I say this a lot is inconsistent branding, incorporating too many opinions results in branding, messaging, website design copy, which confuses your audience. So if you're a Pilates studio, and now all of a sudden you want to start offering meal prep services, how does that align with your business model? Is it going to distract the business owner? Maybe, all right, or you want to start adding personal training, or you want to start adding yoga. Now, if you're an all encompassing gym, that's one thing. But sometimes we think, Oh, we're gonna get more clients. If we start to do this, oh, our clients will want this more. And usually what it ends up doing is it just confuses your audience. I love going to this one smoothie place. All they do is do smoothies and ice balls. And I know that they're really good because they don't do anything else. So when people come to Pilates in the grove, they're coming for exceptional Pilates, and movement experience. And we don't do anything else are there other ways to move 100%. But that's not what we do. And they know if they want to get the best of the best employees are going to come to Pilates and the growth. Another reason another thing that happens when we're listening to too many different opinions is we have we're very slow to implement. And that's one thing that business owners like me like you that are high achievers, we're full of ideas. Ideas are not the problem. We have lots of them coming out the wazoo. implementing them and taking action on them is the hard part. And so when we have too many messages coming at us, it really slows down the implementation of each individual initiative, and then it hinders the growth of our business. Not to mention, it confuses your customers and your team. They're like, What the hell is she doing now? Where are we going with this? How does this align with our vision and mission? Which is why I think it's so so so so, so important to really always lean back on your core values and really always lean into what is your number one initiative for 2024? If it's growth, does this opinion get you closer to your growth goal or farther away from it? Is it optimization is a profitability? Does this opinion gets you closer to be more profitable or farther away from being more profitable? It helps us stay moving in the right direction. Okay, here's kind of what I was talking about before. It also creates a lack of ownership. When you're asking too many people their opinions, you're basically abdicating your role as the owner and in the driver of the bus and erodes your sense of ownership. confidence and making your own decisions. Sometimes you have to make the wrong decision in order to get to the right place in your business where you have the confidence, the wherewithal and the hutzpah, so to speak, to continue to do that. So when we rely, again, we're asking people to give us the fish versus asking people to teach us how to fish. And that's one of the things that I'm really passionate about in my coaching programs is I want to teach business owners how to think, act and grow like business owners, not just like, task rabbits that are doing what I want them to do. No, I want them to think and act and make decisions as business owners. And so those are some of the things that we try to promote in our programs. And they are hard. I'm not saying they're easy. When I first started mentorship programs and working with different masterminds, I just wanted somebody to tell me the answer. I was like, tell me what to do. I'll do it. I'm really good at that. And I realized, the reason that I was pushing back on making my own decisions was, I didn't like the feeling of the possibility of being wrong. So if I took someone else's opinion, and it was wrong, I could blame it on someone else. So it's taken me a little while and a lot of growth to realize Ulta I can I do ask for opinions? I do. But it usually comes from a place of here's what I'm thinking. argue that for me and prove me wrong. And if they can't really prove me wrong, then I'm gonna go with my decision. All right. You know, you, when you listen to too many opinions, you could be missing the opportunity to grow with your opinion, that actually matters. All right, you also lose authenticity. We talk about this all the time, and you hear it all the time, when you start looking at social media, and looking at what other people are doing, and Ooh, I like that, Oh, I like what they just did. And you're just going to copy it. At some point, it doesn't work, because it's not who you really are. Now, it does take a while to find out who you are, who your voice is, when I first started creating this personal brand of Christa Gurkha, which is even so weird for me to say, like, I have a personal brand. I did follow a lot of people. And I was like, oh, I should sound like her. Oh, I should sound like her. Oh, I should say this. It took me a while to find my own voice. And now I feel really authentic in who I am. And yes, I can see other people out there. And there's enough coaches to go around. So if I'm not the right person, for somebody, that's great. There's lots of other people out there that can get you to your goal, and coaches that are like, Oh, I teach a, you know, proprietary model, um, maybe, maybe you do, but like, I don't have anything really proprietary. What's proprietary is me and my experience. What's proprietary is that I am a sole owner of a multimillion dollar entity of which I still own and operate. Not all coaches can say that. I also am a mother of two. And I've been growing my business since my children were foreign to and I'm the primary parent. Not all coaches can say that. And so it's why the audience I speak to are women. And whether these women have children or not women think act feel differently than men. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. And I'm not saying everybody does, right. And certainly I have a very certain way of talking. I am very assertive, I am very direct and straight to the point. That doesn't mean that I don't have empathy. I'm actually very empathetic. And I'm also very direct. So I attract a certain type of woman, a certain type of female business owner. And that's really what I want to be. I want to be an example to women out there that have children that are physical therapists or Pilates instructors or yoga instructors that do not have an MBA, maybe they didn't finish finish college, we can learn the skills that we need to be successful and profitable. Business owners. We can learn them. All right, so that is authentic to me. So if I try to create a different identity, it will never hit right because it's not really me. Right So listening to too many opinions could create a loss of awesome authenticity to you. And people can read right through that people can see right through that. Not to mention that will increase stress juggling all these different personalities, and it just doesn't feel natural. It doesn't it feels like you're always dancing and acting. And that's work. When I come on here and speak it. Yes. Is it work that I have to sit down for 30 minutes or 45 minutes to do it? Yes. But it doesn't feel really heavy work once I get started, because I'm being myself. And that's good. I feel good in my skin, especially these last several years. Right. And finally, you could start to develop strained relationships if you're constantly soliciting opinions from sources that don't align with your mission and vision. Okay, it confuses your team. It confuses your vendors. It it just you know, people can't get on the bus because they can't see where you're going because they don't understand. So those are a lot of reasons why listen to too many opinions really could be killing your business. Because it keeps you in inaction. It keeps you stuck. It keeps you wondering, Well, which one do I do? Which one do I do? Which one do I do? Ultimately, you can read you can listen, you but you have to make a decision and getting to many people's opinions is what's keeping you stuck. Now, what I want to teach you too is how to find the right things, the right opinions to listen to no help guide your opinion. Now we'll talk about the obvious industry experts and mentorship. How do you get to find industry experts and mentorship number one industry experts. You can search them we know mostly know who they are. You can listen to their podcasts, a lot of us have podcasts. You can follow us on social media, LinkedIn. Okay. There's lots of ways that you can listen to industry experts. You can go to conferences, or summits. How do you find mentors, you can join certain masterminds mentorship groups, my feeling when I look for a mentor or somebody and this is even been even from when I first came out of physical therapy school and I was starting as a young physical therapist, I didn't go to anyone say I want you to be my mentor. I've looked to people who I wanted to be like in three to five years, I would find people that I was like, I want to be a therapist like that. And I would just follow them around. Could I observe your session? Could I listen in on your eval? Could I stay later and see how you document that note? So I just said, I want to think and act and learn from this person. So when I started looking for mentors for my business, those are the kinds of people I sought out who is doing what I want to be doing in three to five years. And who looks like me, because at the beginning, what I had a really hard time with was, I was like nobody is me. That person. You know, the founders of SoulCycle were very successful in their own businesses prior to starting SoulCycle. The founder of bar three, I believe I may be wrong, but I believe was like an executive at Nike for many years. So there are people that I was like, Well, I don't have an MBA. And at the time, I thought that that was a limiting factor for me that I needed that or I couldn't learn from those type of people. And so one of the things that I wanted to create for people is I look like, like the women in our group. I have a partner, I have children, I have families and parents that I'm taking care of. I'm navigating, applying to college, I'm navigating, I'm still paying off my student loans. I graduated in the 1900s. I'm still paying my student loans. So I can relate to all of that. And so I want to find a mentor. So I would encourage you find a mentor that is doing what you're doing, how you're doing it and can guide you and can teach you how to fish so that you can be where you want to be in three to five years and if it's where they are right now. And I'm not necessarily talking about revenue. I'm not talking about because a lot of people that are in our groups don't want to get to a million dollars. And often I had a discovery call with someone this morning and she was like my goal is to get to a million dollars. I said why? Why is your goal to get to a million dollars? Well, because I feel if I get to a million dollars I can take home $250,000 And I said I I believe that that's the reverse thinking, I believe your goal should be up to $250,000 in your salary. And if the side effect is that is that you had a million dollars in top line, then you get to a million dollars in top line. But you could generate a million dollars and make 50 You could generate a million dollars and lose money every year. So if your thinking is that you'll earn more money, and when you achieve a million dollars, that's not actually true thinking I can tell you that firsthand. Okay, so not everyone in my group wants to hit a million dollars. And I would caution people to that want to get there to get there in a in a good way, okay, in a sustainable way. But what they want, what they want to learn from me is how I can do that. By only working in the clinic three hours a week, client facing patient facing teaching, and the rest leading in a high visionary type executive seat, basically. All right. So listen to industry experts, and get a mentor, asking for help helps. Now, other ways that you can find good opinions. Okay, getting customer feedback. Ask your customers, paying attention to what your target audience is saying, and how they're offering their firsthand experiences is really important. Okay, get your team's input. They're the ones that are on the front lines all the time talking to your clients listening to their problems, understanding things, they have a very good idea of what's happening on the day to day. So ask your team for input. Don't be above that, as a business owner, analyze your data, track trends, spreadsheets, that's why we keep scorecards. That's why we keep data, you do not have to judge it, you do not have to judge it, there doesn't have to be a judgment or a grade assigned to it. It's just showing you trends. Peer support, a lot of what's great in my mentorship group is the peer to peer communication. They have a Voxer channel together, they communicate to get to know each other. So the peer to peer interaction is great. In the masterminds, my personal mastermind, one that I'm in, I've met some very, very, very dear friends and that mastermind that I connect with all the time, I had two of them come and speak at the CEO Summit last year, and they were very valuable resource. So those are the ways that you can help really get good opinions that are very valid, and what's the word I'm looking for relevant to what you're specifically seeking out? Now, when we talk about market data and market research, I want to give you some some places, some websites, etc, where you can go and find information without just guessing the information. Okay. So one of the things we encourage people to do and most of you have done this, if you've done like an ideal customer worksheet, and all of that stuff is, you know, what, how does your customer think act feel? What do they want? What are their problems? And these, there's a lot of resources out there where you can actually find data, like very specific data on this. So one of the ones is STATISTICA, which is www.statistica.com. And we will link all of these in the show notes. So they offer a variety of statistics and market research across various industries. Okay, consumer trends and consumer behaviors. So for example, how is the boomer generation now? Seeking out personal care? All right, so those are things you can do. What are people in their 70s spending the majority of their money on? Another one is Nielsen and IE L. SC. n.com. It's a global measurement and analytics company. Most of you have heard the Nielsen ratings all of that stuff. So it really does also highlight insights into consumer trends and consumer behavior. I use this one a lot Mintel mi n t e l, it has a ton of detailed market research reports and trend trend analysis across multiple industries. So you can actually look into your individual industry. You can go to forrester Forrester is another one forrester.com Same thing, consumer behavior technology trends, market dynamics, okay consumer buyer and behave or buying behavior. Pew Research is another one P e w. They all kind of do the same thing. So Pete, we're going to link all of you those show notes. And last but not least, you can go to the SBA Small Business Association. All right. And look up various trends, buying patterns, age demographics, in your zip code in your area where you where you're looking to put a new location. Are you looking to expand? What are the buying patterns of people in that demographic? Right, I just read a report that said, people are now retiring earlier than they have before. And they're thinking that this is because, you know, people coming out of COVID. And people are just like, you know, what, I'm just going to retire early I, I've learned to live off of less. And so there was a report that said, whereas people before were staying to work in there have a certain this report was talking about a certain salary, demographic, so people that made over $100,000 a year, were starting to retire earlier. So anyways, these are things that I think sometimes are better, like, go look at actual research, versus going on social media and getting opinions from 20 different people. They not everyone knows your situation. Okay. And ultimately, you are responsible for that decision, you are responsible for putting it into action. And one of the things that I really, really encourage people to do is act faster, even if it's little act faster. All right. So like I said, this podcast, I think is full of valuable information. I have lots of guests on here, so you'll get differing opinions and information. And so one of the things I think you should do right now is like, review and subscribe to this podcast. So if you haven't done it yet, hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. And if you would be so so so kind to leave me a review that would be so great, even if you just give it a star rating. If you leave a couple words, that'd be awesome. It does really help me okay, and I am on a mission to transform the the boutique Health and Wellness Business one female business owner at a time. And so you if you want to get on that mission with me and you want to be a part of that mission, then review this podcast so we can help more and more women and and improve increase our individual impact throughout the communities we work live in and throughout the world. That's my mission. All right. Well, until next time, my ladies, I hope you all are doing well and catch you on the next episode. Bye for now.