086: Let’s Pause. What Business Do You Actually Want?

In this open conversation, I’m asking you the most pivotal question that has unlocked every great evolution of business for both me and my clients. I’m giving you permission to re-create your business and everything that follows into something that serves you so much better. 

By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:

• Why this is critical to ask ahead of any business decisions
• How line in the sand moments can solidify great changes 
• Why it’s ok to not know what you want

Even if you can’t change everything in your business right this instant, this episode will help you create a vision for an evolving business that will bring you greater fulfilment.

Enjoy!

Resources:

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If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.

Transcript

How answering this question helps with your strategy, hiring, opportunities etc.

Line in the sand moments

How the high highs and low lows bring up this question

Knowing what you don’t want

Book a complimentary consultation session

How this creates vision

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy? Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing Good Business Podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant, and for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time. And today's episode is no different. Enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. As usual, I'm very, very excited to jump into this episode. Today's episode is titled Let's Pause. What business do you actually want? I'm really excited to have this conversation, and it will be quite the conversation today. I feel like if my content had a tagline, it would be permission slips and perspective shifts. And that's what this conversation today is very much going to be about. It's something that comes before the tactile things. It's something that comes before the actionable things. And it really creates the fuel, I feel, for the strategy, for the tactics, for the action, for everything that you do. And if you're not taking pause to ask yourself, what business do I actually want? Things can start to get really, really clunky. Just as a, I guess, on this topic, but side note, one of the things that I do in my business as well as with clients is how would I say it? I guess you have to really play things a lot by ear. We can have quarterly reports and reflections and looking forward at what our strategy is and making the plans around all of that. But all of that is relevant and gets put in place. But I think the true reality is, and I think where something can go from good to great is when you really tune in, player by ear, notice when things are just not really working, are feeling really, really horrible and need that change. You can go steam full steam ahead with business, but you know when things are just not working and things need changing or evolving. And that's what this conversation is going to help you with. And I guess that's one of the approaches that I do take. As much as we can plan things out to a T, it really comes down to watching it and being a witness to how things are actually rolling out and making those adjustments as you go through. So the question that we are presented with is what business do you actually want? And I do ask this question a lot. I ask it a lot of my clients, I ask it a lot of myself. It's really been the, or it can be, the guiding light for, you know, the strategies that you're using in your business. You know, getting someone to utilize, say, video marketing versus maybe events, two very different strategies. I think it really comes down to what business do you actually want and what really works for that particular person or in that particular season as well. So it can be part of helping answer your strategy questions. It can contribute to your hiring as well. If you ask yourself, what kind of business do I actually want? What does that look like? Of course that's going to influence and impact your hiring. It's going to influence and impact your opportunities, whether they're opportunities you're seeking out or opportunities that are coming to you, allowing you to vet them, make decisions around them, or decide what ones do we want to go after? What does all of that look like? As well as your offerings as well. I think that's a really big one. What do we want to sell? How do we want to sell it? What does that look like? What market do we want to work with? What does the pricing look like? All these different variables, it really is supported by answering the question: what business and also life, what business and life do you actually want? So for me in business and in life, this has been a very pivotal question, or it's really come in the most pivotal moments when I first started my business in 2015 and then very early on started getting very busy, which is often where these crises happen. They often happen in the high highs and they often happen in maybe the low lows as well. But at that particular time, I was taking on lots of amazing clients. I just started, I was barely months in, I started hiring people, and then the question mark come up inside me. Have I started the wrong business? And that's when I started to question well, what business do I actually want? Because I've just started this amazing business that's forming into a marketing agency before I even know it, but now I'm having this personal life crisis or professional crisis around what is it that I want to do. And you may or may not know the story, but ultimately it it all led me to consulting, but which is what I hands down love to do all day, every day, any day of the week. And it came from what do I actually want in, I guess, a very different context. I I've shared recently that my partner passed away, and that was quite the journey. And so through that, because he did have cancer and taking care of someone through that where you know no one has a crystal ball, we don't know what is going to happen. For me, instead of asking the question, what business do I actually want? I asked myself, what life do I actually want? And if it were to turn out one way or if it were to turn out another way, I have a very small window I feel at that time felt like to come up with the decision of what I wanted to do next or for that particular season. And it was a very easy decision for me to, I guess, pull up on business, ease my workload, and then obviously take some time out, which my business allowed me to facilitate that, which was more than rewarding to be able to do that. But I'm just sharing this as an extreme of, you know, it's the high, high moments, and then it can be the low, low moments, whether you are, you know, burnt out or you've got a crazy client or a team member leaves. It's sometimes and often in crises where it brings up this idea of what business do you actually want. And I think it's it's a really good thing when these things happen. It may not feel like it at the time, but if things were perfect all the time, if things just trickled, you know, the same way day in, day out, would we actually make the changes that are, you know, most beneficial to us? I don't think we would have, or we would moving into the future. The next thing I want to share with this is something that most often comes up when we are having this conversation and it's drawing and having those line in the sand moments. So it might be, you know, from this day forward, we are no longer working with XYZ type of people, or from this day forward, our pricing is going to look like this, or from this day forward, when I delegate things to my team, I am never taking those tasks back onto my plate. And I'm gonna do what it takes to put the systems, the automations, the training, the this, the that, whatever it needs to be, in order for business to evolve into what we actually want it to look like. So I love line in the sand moments. It's something that I have always done so much of myself through my business journey and have extended that onto clients as well, because I think it makes a very clear distinction between today and yesterday. We're doing this, now we're doing this. We've made a real big decision here, and we're gonna stand by that and what's something we can do to make sure that we solidify this line in the sand moment, and that'll be very case by case, depending on what that line in the sand moment is even entailing. But I love line in the sand moments, and I love very frank conversations around this question as well. I remember a client who came to me and she wanted to grow one business. She had a couple of endeavors, I guess, but she wanted to grow one business in order to really then focus on the business she actually wanted to do. And I just remember asking, well, what business do you actually want? And I allowed her to share. And this is why I love very I love open-ended questions. I love giving people the space to actually just answer something not logically, like just tell me what business do you actually want? Like free reign, stream of consciousness, like actually let's just say words and see what comes out and see what feels super aligned, and maybe there's something we can do with that. And that's what this conversation with that client looked like because she said, you know, I want to do this business, so I can go off and do that business. And through this conversation, I was able to say, you know, we can just go off and do the business you really want to do. Like the strategy is there, we can absolutely do it. Like, why would we put time, effort, and energy into something when it's a means to an end? Unless there was some very big, promising reasons for it, then why would anyone do that? So I just know that that stuck with me because that really stuck with her, because she then went on and created a very flourishing business doing something she actually wanted to do. And it's that line in the sand moment that reminds me of this, and that's where it is that you know, today is different from yesterday. This business is different from that business, this market is different from that market, whatever it looks like for you. But, you know, borrow that line, line in the sand moments. This is going to be a line in the sand moment. Or when I answer the question of what business do I actually want, once you figure that out or come to what at least have an idea of it, drawing that line in the sand is something that can help you to bring that into reality. Now, I also have clients who struggle with even answering this question. If I say, you know, what business do you actually want? It's like they've never been asked it. I it's like I'm the first person to ever give them that permission to even dream up what that actually looks like. And I think it's quite almost um revealing. Revealing is probably the word, the best word to explain it when clients struggle with knowing what type of business they actually want. Because I I think it says a lot on a personal level that, you know, they may not have been given the opportunities to dream, or maybe their dreams and goals have been shut down in the past, or maybe they're doing things out of obligation to themselves, their family, their team, maybe the years and years that they've been running this business. So you're not alone if you struggle to answer the question, what do you actually want? Because maybe you've never been asked, or maybe you've not been asked, or even asked yourself in a really, really long time. And there can be a lot of different reasons for that. Clients who still can't get over that. The best way I found is to ask them, well, what don't you want? And straight away they can start spitting off the things that they don't want. I don't want to do this, I don't like working like this, I don't want to work with people like this, I don't like this about business at the moment. And so this is where opposites can be really helpful. So if you don't know what you want, maybe right now it's easier for you to identify what you do want and then start to make that vision from there. And vision is the key word because all of this, what it really helps you to do when you take pause, when you ask yourself, what do I actually want? However, business looks like right now, like at the time of recording, we're a month out of Christmas, and so it's a very busy time for a lot of people in business. And like we spoke about the high highs and the low lows, right now you could be very flat out. And if you are, I'm grateful that you're listening to this. And I hope it does help. But still by answering this question in this very busy season, it helps you to create the vision of what you do want in future, whether that's six months or six years away, or however long that looks. But even if you can't change everything right now, you can't change things overnight, which in a lot of cases you can't. But by getting clear on what you actually do want and that next iteration of your your business and how it can evolve to, it gives you, it's like it gives you the strength to keep going right now. It gives you the, okay, if I can't change things right now, but this is what I actually do want, I'm more than happy to put in the work today and leading up till Christmas. And I'm gonna keep carving away what this vision is and starting to make those changes. Like right at the start, we said, you know, this applies to your strategy, it applies to the people you hire and what all of that looks like. It applies to your offerings, your pricings, all the things. But it always starts with answering the question and creating this vision. And having a vision is amazing. Like I said, even if you can't change things right now and you're flat out, you're burnt out, you're all the different things, it still gives you something to keep going in this season. Okay, the last couple of things I wanted to really kind of close up this conversation on is one, it's often the case where you're going to have to do this over and over again. This is not going to be the one and only time that you'll ask yourself, what business do I actually want? And that can be driven by your business itself, things that happen within your entity. It can happen with the economy and the environment. It can happen with, you know, personal circumstances as well. So I think this is a great thing. If you are aware that you will you will ask yourself this, and it's not a negative thing when it comes up. And it gives you an opportunity to continue to evolve your business so that it matches up against the vision that you have created and are creating. Because I think it often continues to emerge as well. So it's not wrong that this is going to happen again. And I think it's actually a really, really great thing that strengthens your business. And, you know, sometimes we are forced to do things like COVID, for example, and the pandemic, like of a world at large, it really catapulted like that traditional everyone going and working from an office to then working from home. And, you know, as we know, post-COVID and post-pandemic, there's a lot of the hybrid working from home or working from other spaces has never been as big as it has today. A lot of people never return back to the office. So that crises, I you can definitely label it as that, but it definitely brought an opportunity. And so when you are faced with that where you're catapulted into making changes, it can be a really, really good thing. It can be beneficial to you in not just your peace of mind and your happiness, but even from a cost perspective, from an efficiency perspective. So never be afraid or whatever have you when in a verticomas negative things happen because it allows you to evolve your business that's going to serve you, your clients, your team, everyone you interact with for the greater good. That's how I see it. The last thing, I guess almost like a closing line, is that if you ask yourself this question, you know, what life do I want to live? What business do I want to have? These type of things can really craft that vision for you. And because you've gotten more clear on what that looks like, yes, we can't change it overnight as we've discussed, but it helps you to see, okay, I'm willing to do the work to make that happen. And if you're not willing to question, you know, what type of life and what type of business you want, like I almost don't understand what we're doing here, you know. Like we're not, we're not here to be robots, we're not here to only make money. Like, we spend a lot of time, we spend a lot of time living. We spend a lot of time in business if you're a business owner and so you have the full capability and capacity to make it look any way that you want it to look. And that could be your greatest advantage if you choose to accept that and actually adopt that rather than, you know, sometimes we can get really stagnant or stuck in our ways or do everything the same way the industry does. But this is going to be your greatest, one of your greatest advantages if you continuously ask yourself this question. And I think it brings so much meaning to everything that you do, and I think it can create a lot of fulfillment. And I think the snowball effect can be very, very powerful as well. So I hope you found value in this conversation. I hope it was a bit of a permission slip and perspective shift. I hope you do take pause, whether it's for 10 minutes or a day or whenever it is, to pause and actually ask yourself, what business do I actually want? None of this is dismissive work, none of this is fluffy work. It actually is what comes before, before all the tactile stuff, before all the strategy stuff. Because if you don't sit for a second and ask these questions like I do every time I talk to someone new, just the gold that comes out of it is like hands down, can never be dismissed as a strategy. Like this is ground zero. Nothing should happen before you even ask this. So I hope you found that useful. If you would love to see if I can help you beyond today's conversation and the podcast, I would love to invite you to book a complimentary consultation. If you're listening to this live, we've only got a couple of spots left for the remainder of the year, and I've had people reaching out to start booking in for January as well. But you can visit my website, shannonstone.com.au, and there's a link there to book a complimentary session. And in that, we have a look at what your goals are. I'm going to ask this question of you. So if you want to save that for that time in that session, we absolutely can. And we go through what it is that you're looking to achieve. I offer you some ideas and some strategies, but my promise is that you'll have more clarity than you've had all year. So have a look at the website shannonstone.com.au and you can book in your session. I hope you have an amazing day. I hope you find this helpful and useful. Definitely send it off to a friend in business or a peer, and I'll chat to you really soon. Hey, thanks for listening. If you found this episode useful, I'd love for you to send it to a friend. The best podcasts I have found have all been recommended to me. If you can spread the word by sharing this episode, I can spend more time helping you by creating episodes just like this one. Send it, text it, tell somebody about it, whatever you need to do. The more you spread the word, the more I can focus on creating needle moving episodes to help you and your friends.