The Most Valuable Question in Business

Every morning, your brain starts with a question. Most entrepreneurs start with the wrong one.

In this episode, Dr. Dave breaks down the five common morning questions that trigger stress, narrow your thinking, and sabotage your best decisions—before the day even begins.

You'll also learn the one question that immediately restores clarity and puts you in a position to win. 

You'll discover:

• The Hidden Triggers: How sneaky morning questions create reactivity and scattered focus before your first cup of coffee.
• The State Reset: The one insanely valuable question that shifts your nervous system out of survival mode and into calm, high-performance thinking.
• The Decision Advantage: How The Possibility Protocol upgrades your timing, confidence, and the quality of every profit-driving decision you make.

Listen now. If you start your day with the wrong question, it becomes very expensive.

Grab The Possibility Protocol™ free

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Transcript

It's 2005 and Tony Fidel is standing in a cramped Apple app staring at a phone that feels heavier than the plastic it's made of seven months of work, maybe eight, and the damn thing still dials like a rotary phone, scroll to the four click, scroll to the one click, scroll to the seven click. Everything else was working, Fidel would later say, but dialing, it was so cumbersome. They tried everything, more buttons, different layouts, a circular Nokia pattern. Steve Jobs had found every attempt made the device worse, a gangly thing Fidel called it. Meanwhile, a few doors down, another team wasn't even building a phone. They were shrinking the Mac's operating system into a sheet of glass wired to a computer. A rough early multi touch demo, nothing polished, nothing ready for prime time, just a strange, glowing surface on a ping pong table that responded when you dragged your finger across it. One afternoon, Fidel walked into the room and stopped in one hand he was holding the problem the Click Wheel phone they had been trying to force into existence for nearly a year on the table, he saw something else entirely, an idea that wasn't even meant to be a phone, but felt like the future the moment you touched it. Steve Jobs stepped beside him, eyes on the demo, and said, We're going to put that in a phone. No speech, no inspiration, just a quiet decision in the middle of a normal work day. And here's the part that stuck with Fidel. Nothing about that moment was dramatic. Nobody cheered, nobody took notes, nobody predicted the iPhone, but everyone in the room felt the same thing. This is the direction, not because the tech was ready, not because the plan was clear, but because in a single glance, the possibility was undeniable. Fidel later said that there was no doubt after that moment, they didn't need more hours, they didn't need more features. They needed a different question. They had spent months asking, how do we make this work? But the real breakthrough only appeared when they finally stepped into what else could be possible right now?, and that's the part most business owners forget. Sometimes the future doesn't show up as a plan. It shows up as a moment, a shift, a different way of seeing what's already in the room with you, if you've been building your business from the wrong question, this conversation will be the reset you need. Let's get started. Welcome to flow driven. The number one problem in business today is flow deficit disorder. You see the symptoms everywhere, burned out. Teams, high turnover, employees, sleepwalking through their work and profits that never rise to match the effort. Proof the old way of work isn't working at all. For a century, business ran on industrial age rules, efficiency, consistency, compliance. Then came the information age, where knowledge processes and titles defined value. But those rules no longer apply, because we've entered the transformation age, an era of relentless change fueled by AI. And if you're still using the old playbook, you're experiencing a very bumpy ride. The Cure, of course, is flow. Flow is the state where high performance and deep enjoyment collide, where human flourishing meets business excellence, and it's the only way to keep up in the transformation age. Your host and coach is Dr Dave Maloley, former Army officer, retired dentist and now a flow obsessed performance coach. And let's be clear, if you're an entrepreneur who's okay wasting your team's potential, this show isn't for you, but if you're committed to unleashing genius and building a business that wins in the transformation age. You're in the right place each week. Dr Dave shears, strategies, stories and science to help you beat flow, Deficit Disorder, grow profits and reclaim your time freedom. Want to go deeper. Go to flow code, dot news and subscribe to flow code, your weekly prescription for flow deficit disorder, one sharp idea, one strategy and one GPT prompts to help you build a high profit business that makes people better, all at no charge. The link is also in the episode description. You. It before we go any further. There's something worth noticing about how most of us start our day. We don't wake up with a blank slate. We wake up inside a question, usually one that shows up on its own. And these questions matter because they quietly set the tone for everything that follows in the day. Let's see if you can relate to any of these. Question one, can I handle everything today? That's a small question with a big impact. This one triggers a subtle layer of self doubt right out of the gate. Question number two, what do I need to catch up on? This question creates urgency before anything urgent has actually happened. Question number three, what needs my attention first? It sounds responsible, but it drops you straight into reactivity. Question number four, where did I fall short yesterday? This one quietly pulls yesterday's shortcomings into today's decisions. Question number five, who needs something from me today? This one's a little sneaky and very common amongst entrepreneurs, because it looks like service, but it often turns into over responsibility before you've even found your footing. Different questions, same pattern, each one nudges your system in a particular direction. Self doubt will slow you down. Urgency will narrow your attention. Reactivity will keep you scattered. Self critique makes you second guess. Over responsibility drains you before the day has even begun, not because you're doing anything wrong, simply because the brain takes the first prompt it gets and starts to build your day around it. And for most people, that prompt is old. It's inherited. It's unconscious, just the familiar question that shows up every morning without you choosing it. So before we talk about possibility or performance, here's the shift that matters if you want a different day, start with a different question. And I would argue the most valuable question you can start with is what's possible today. This is a way of opening your attention instead of bracing and stepping into the day with clarity rather than a bunch of pressure, and this is exactly why I created the possibility protocol. On Page 19, you'll find the am calibration ritual, six simple prompts designed to interrupt those old questions and reset your mind before the day takes over. On page 16, you'll see the flow triggers this possibility question activates such as novelty, autonomy, clarity and purpose. And on page 10, you'll see how running this question through five realms, mind, body, spirit, relationships and business grounds you in what's actually available today. If you want the guide, you can grab it anytime at possibility protocol.com, now let's talk about the first shift, the shift that changes what your brain does in those crucial early moments of the day. The first shift we should focus on is moving from threat mode to choice mode. Let's talk about what actually happens in your body the first thing in the morning, long before you're thinking clearly, your nervous system is already taking the temperature of the day. It's doing a quick scan asking, Are we okay, or do we need to brace carrying some unfinished stress from yesterday, your system leans towards the brace yourself side. This is just how humans are wired. When the brain senses even mild uncertainty, it defaults towards protection. Your attention will narrow, your internal pacing will speed up, and you get a little bit more reactive and a little less creative. Now this is useful if you're actually facing a threat, but it's not so useful if you're trying to lead a business or a team or your own life from a place of true clarity. But here's the encouraging part, you can interrupt this pattern far more easily than most people realize. One simple, well placed question can shift your physiology into a much more favorable direction when you ask what's possible. Today, you're giving your body a completely different cue. You're telling it we're not gearing up for battle. We're stepping into something that we can shape and that shift will show up fast. Your breath will slow down, your attention will open up. Your mind stops scanning for danger and starts considering options. This is very powerful. You haven't changed the day itself yet. What you've done is change the state that you're bringing to the day, and that's the first shift, moving from threat mode into choice mode. If you're used to bracing for the day, you're really going to enjoy meeting it with grounded, intelligent agency. Now let's move into shift number two. Shift two is all about moving from yesterday's noise to today's moment. As I mentioned before, most people don't start the day in the present. They start it in yesterday, sometimes even weeks, months and years ago. It can be past tension, past pressure, yesterday's unfinished conversations, yesterday's thinking, and it usually shows up fast, a memory, a tightness in the chest, a conversation you're replaying something that you avoided. None of it's happening right now, but your brain treats it like it is, and please don't take it personal. This is just how the human brain works. It's built to protect you, so it pulls the past forward if it thinks any part of it might matter today. But this is expensive. There's a real cost here. When you start the day inside yesterday's noise you can't actually see today for what it is. You're reacting to a story that's already over. Now, elite performance doesn't require perfection, but it does require presence, and that level of presence will be impossible if you wake up inside old residue. That's why having a couple rituals a day really matter. On page 19 of the possibility protocol, the am calibration ritual, gives you six questions that pull you out of yesterday and into the reality of this moment in a grounded, practical way that clears your internal state. You identify what's real today, what you actually have to work with today, and the one move that meaningfully shifts the trajectory today and the way you end your day matters too. That's why. On Page 23 I've included the pm extraction ritual that helps you close the loops your brain would otherwise drag into tomorrow, all the friction, all those open tabs, the emotional leftovers, that's how you keep today's weight from becoming tomorrow's starting point. Put the am and pm pieces together on the regular, and something significant will change. Your mind will settle. Your nervous system meets the day at the right altitude, you stop being pulled into the past, and you start seeing the real potential of today. Now let's move on to shift number three. Shift number three is moving from obligation to agency. Listen, I've been an entrepreneur for a long time. I've worked with entrepreneurs for years, and most of them don't wake up in agency. They wake up in obligation before they're fully conscious. Their mind is already running the list, the team, the customers, the deadlines, the decisions, the people who need something, the problems waiting to be solved. And I know it feels responsible, it feels like you're being an adult, but there's a quiet cost you begin the day already claimed by everything outside of you, and when you do that, you give away your agency before you've even had a chance to really access it. And to be clear, agency isn't control. It's really more of an orientation. It's the difference between starting the day as someone who's about to get pulled into 20 different directions and starting as someone who chooses how they're going to show up. You stop asking who needs something from me, and you start asking, How do I want to lead in each of these areas, mind, body, spirit, relationships and business. You move from obligation into choice, you move from pressure into clarity. You move from reacting to being that flow, orchestrator. Now this doesn't mean that your responsibilities magically shrink, but you will stop entering the day as the person everyone else needs you to be, and start entering as the person you choose to be. And when you stack the three shifts that we just talked about, physiology, presence and agency, what's possible today? Stops looking like a three word question, and it starts becoming the way that you move through your life. It starts becoming the way that you drive profits in your business. So before we wrap up, let's review those three shifts. Shift one gets your system out of threat mode so you can actually think clearly. Shift two pulls you out of yesterday, so you're not making today's decisions with leftover mindsets. Shift three moves you out of obligation. So you stop building your business around everyone else's expectation and start leading from your center. And all of this matters for one reason, you can't make those high level, profit producing decisions from a constricted state. When you're tight, rushed or reactive, your decisions are going to get smaller. They're going to be safer, incremental and defensive, but when you can access a clear, grounded possibility driven state, your decisions will get sharper. That means cleaner thinking, better timing, stronger boundaries, smarter bets. And let's not forget that you'll be role modeling the way for your entire team. Everything that we talked about today and everything inside the protocol is built upon the most studied high performance state in the world, that, of course, is flow and group flow, where strategic thinking, intuition, emotional regulation, creativity, courage and execution all rise at the same time, where the brain and the body finally work together instead of competing with one another, where performance skyrockets and friction goes down. The question what's possible today is the front door to flow. It's the way you shift out of survival physiology and into the state where great decisions are born. And here's the part I haven't mentioned yet, the possibility protocol is completely free. You can download it at possibility protocol com. But before you do, I think I need to be honest with you, because I really understand human behavior. So I already know that most of you won't download the guide. And then there are some of you that will download the guide and never read a single page of it. And then there are some of you that will use it for a few days. You'll start to feel better, and then you'll drift back into old patterns. But there are a select few of you who will schedule it, and the ones who treat the am calibration and the pm extraction rituals as non negotiables, those entrepreneurs will make much different decisions moving forward, the profit decisions, the strategy decisions, the hiring decisions, the boundary decisions, the focus decisions, all of these decisions will be made from flow instead of fatigue, From clarity, instead of pressure from possibility instead of fear. And trust me, those decisions compound over time. That's where momentum comes from, and that's where profit lives. If you want to build a business that performs at the level, you know it can start with the state you bring to each day, and build from there. So download the guide, use it, schedule it, and watch what happens when you start leading from the place your biology performs at its best. Listen. I'm proud of you for doing this work. Thank you for being here, and I'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for being a part of flow driven the movement to build high profit businesses that make people better. If this episode brought you value, share it. It's an act of generosity helping other ambitious entrepreneurs navigate AI disruption and thrive in the transformation age. If you want the upgraded experience, make sure you're subscribed to flow code. At flow code, dot news until next time, stay focused and flow driven.