Broken or Bored? How to Tell and What to Do Before You Break Your Business

Tinkering with your business because you’re “just making it better”? Be careful! You might be unintentionally setting fire to something that wasn’t broken to begin with. In this episode of The Business Fix, Josh Troche and Chrissy Myers explore the surprisingly common problem of business owners who shake things up out of boredom: leading to mission drift, marketing misfires, and flatlined sales.

If you're a small business owner, marketing manager, or CEO trying to build authority with podcasting, grow your brand, or improve your content strategy without blowing up what’s already working, this one’s for you.

You’ll learn how to recognize whether your business is truly broken or if you’re just bored and craving a dopamine hit. We’ll show you how smart delegation and a clear mission can keep you from making unnecessary changes, what marketing metrics (like customer acquisition cost and lead pipeline) you should monitor before declaring your funnel broken, how to avoid “pod drift” when using podcasting for marketing, and when it’s time to realign with your vision versus when you just need a networking event, a nap, or a boredom buster experiment. 

This episode offers real-world advice for staying engaged in your business without breaking what’s working. If you’re a small business owner, marketing manager, CEO, or team leader trying to level up without spiraling out, this one’s for you. 

And remember: any machine can be a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough.

We’ve heard it: “Nobody wants to work anymore.”

People do want to work. They just may not want to work for your company, your culture, or your leadership style.

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If you're looking to start your own podcast or maybe you just want to add the next level of professionalism to your podcast and brand, you should be working with the producers behind The Business Fix at Pedal Stomper Productions. Click the link to learn more about how you can get your podcast to the next level. https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com

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Transcript

Josh Troche: I am a tinkerer. Are you?

Chrissy Myers: No. Sometimes.

Josh Troche: Really? I mean, there's, like. Not especially, like, motorcycle stuff. What happens when I click this one more thing to give me some more compression or rebound?

Chrissy Myers: Oh, no. I'm a re-organizer. I'm not a tinkerer.

Josh Troche: Really?

Chrissy Myers: Yeah. I will just rip everything apart and put it back together.

Josh Troche: Just to see if it's better.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah. I'm an arranger by nature.

Josh Troche: I would put those in the same category.

Chrissy Myers: Really?

Josh Troche: Yeah. Because it's it's like, hey. Or like, let's make this better. Yes. But was it broken? Probably not.

Josh Troche: Probably not. Yeah. There's many times where I'm like, hey, I'm going to make a few clicks, a suspension adjustment, and I take it down the road and I'm like, am I writing a pogo stick? I try not to do that in my business. I know you try not to do that in your business, too.

Chrissy Myers: It can be painful if I do.

Josh Troche: Yeah, that is what we're going to talk about this week. Stay tuned.

Josh Troche: She's the CEO.

Chrissy Myers: He's the marketing and operations guy.

Josh Troche: If it's broken, you need.

Chrissy Myers: The business fix. Okay. Let's break our businesses. That's because report.

Josh Troche: The fact that you even just said that we have to start the podcast with it. I mean, we have to leave this in, and I know we're going to talk to Nick about editing. That is how we are starting the podcast, not with Chrissy, just willy nilly saying, let's break our businesses because we're bored. Because that is I mean, this literally, it's it's what we have in mind when we're talking about this.

Chrissy Myers: It is it's exactly what we're talking about. And there's so many business owners. I just want to let them know that you're doing it wrong. Don't do that. I mean, it's one thing to be bored. It's another thing to break things because you're bored.

Josh Troche: Okay, so just because we're skipping the banter here, I. Okay, but I don't I still want to hit a personal note on this.

Chrissy Myers: Yes.

Josh Troche: I made the motorcycle reference. I'll make another reference here too. What's something in your personal life where you've been like oh let's try this. And you're like oh I just created a disaster.

Chrissy Myers: Oh I like hit home reorganization projects. Like oh I'm going to, I'm going to reorganize this closet which then turns into I'm going to reorganize this closet and every closet. And then I've pulled everything out of the house, and it looks like we're having like, it looks like we're hoarders, but we're not, because I've cleaned out every closet. And then my husband comes home and goes, what is going on? That's also when, you know, I'm in high anxiety and I might be on the edge of burnout.

Josh Troche: Does he just walk into the room, turn around, and walk right back out of the room?

Chrissy Myers: Yes. There has happened occasionally.

Josh Troche: Yeah. No, I cannot blame him.

Chrissy Myers: Or. Yeah. Or if I have, like, I clean with trash bags and that's it's just like, oh. Oh my.

Josh Troche: Oh Kim does that. She's like, I mean, as soon as I see her, like as soon as I see trash bags, I'm like, oh, she's she's stressed out. She's getting cleaned.

Chrissy Myers: Car goodwill for getting the trailer. It's going.

Josh Troche: Wow.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Yeah. No, I it's funny, I like I said, there's I, I like to adjust things. I like to tweak things. Let's do this a little differently. Yeah. There's been numerous times. One of my favorite ones is when I adjusted something on the lawnmower. Let's adjust this a little lower, and I didn't get the side to side right adjustment on it. This is years ago. My lawn had a bunch of steps cut into it, then, completely scalped on the one side. And somehow I didn't realize this till, like, 15 laps in.

Chrissy Myers: It's a good thing you're not in an HOA.

Josh Troche: Oh, yeah. know it. Definitely not. I do you think I could live it? No, I don't know. There's no way.

Chrissy Myers: No, I could. My husband could not.

Josh Troche: Know that we. Yeah. There's there's no way I could live in an HOA. That being said, personal fatigue, structural failure, sales slow up their cycles. Business feels heavy. The first reaction is, is, oh, my God.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: We all have that reaction. We talked about being resilient last time we did. And so you hopefully don't have the let's change everything reaction. Often cases the business is fine. Needs an owner who isn't like, hey, what happens when I turn this knob? Whenever I turn this knob? And the problem is, it isn't the small adjustments. It's like the. Hey, we're going to take a big swing for this random thing that has nothing to do with what we currently do. Yes, you focus on long term vision.

Chrissy Myers: Mainly I do.

Josh Troche: Because you can see down the road. Not my forte. I'm short term operational marketing stuff.

Chrissy Myers: Okay.

Josh Troche: I love that we're going to be, like, talk about this from those two angles. When do you see, like, there's longer term mission drift that needs to be corrected? Or when is it just the owner's like, let's switch things up just because I'm bored with this. I've done this for ten years. Why the hell do I want to keep doing it? Well, and.

Chrissy Myers: I think sometimes business owners don't realize they're bored.

Josh Troche: Oh, no, I, I wholeheartedly agree.

Chrissy Myers: The problem is, you don't have the self-awareness. I've had those moments of where it's like, if there are moments where I am really frustrated because something isn't moving fast enough, that's usually when I have a coach that looks me goes Chrissy. You're bored. You need to find something else to do while this is working itself out, because you've set the system in place. Don't break it because you're bored.

Josh Troche: Don't get watched. Pot never boils.

Chrissy Myers: Exactly.

Josh Troche: Give it time to boil. Walk away.

Chrissy Myers: Yes. So, signs of mission drift. So, like when the business itself is misaligned. So if your people don't believe in the mission anymore, you don't have a messaging problem, you have a direction problem. And so that's really, I think, mission critical to anything is mission drift where the team doesn't understand it. So when the mission no longer resonates, or if it doesn't resonate internally or externally, you're going to hear employees say, why are we doing this again? Or worse? That's not who we are anymore. So if they say that's not who we are anymore, I think you've probably got some some red flags there.

Chrissy Myers: And I think this one probably goes along with you and talking about some of the marketing stuff, you're losing relevant relevance in the market. So, you know, sales are declining, referrals are slowing down, the value you offer feels outdated or unclear. And that's really an indication that the company's drifting toward revenue at the expense of purpose. So saying yes to anything and losing your North Star. I think it's something that as business owners, especially early on in our entrepreneurial journey, when we say yes to everyone, it happens. And then we've got to kind of narrow things down. So we can drift and be like, yes, we market to this and we can do your podcast and we can do your print media and we can do it. No, no, don't do all the things. Do a couple things. Well, I think that's really important.

Chrissy Myers: Another one is when it becomes crappy wall art. So when your vision statements that used to inspire people and everybody understood, when they start to feel stale or disconnected, they they've become the crappy wall art. And you've got to revise. And if your culture isn't energized by the work that you're doing, your vision needs a reset. And I will say, as a business owner, it's really easy to be like, I want to change it because it's lived in your head way longer and it lives in your head all the time. It doesn't live in your employees heads all the time. No, no, they're not sitting there going. We provide peace of mind by simplifying the complicated. We provide pieces. They're not saying your purpose statement every day the way that you are. Does that resonate? Do I want to change it? Should I do something different? Do we want to sell shoes? Stop it!

Josh Troche: So I want to go back to the vision statement because I feel like this is so important. This is why in the podcasting side of things, and this is basically analogous, is what I'm going for with this. We talk about what is the purpose of your podcast and what is the specific thing you talk about. Yes, because pod drift is the same thing.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah, absolutely.

Josh Troche: Like the podcast, we talk about culture and fixing business problems for business owners and things of that nature. We're not talking about and we accountings a piece of that, but we're not we're not going to end up as an accounting podcast. No, because we know what our lean is and we're staying in it because we have it written down and we have it stated clearly. So that way we can look and be like, oh, we're headed north. Yes, that's.

Chrissy Myers: North. And we've agreed that that is north.

Josh Troche: Right? And it's okay to go north northeast and north northwest. Don't go south. No, don't drill no.

Chrissy Myers: Two things the right way. Another thing that I think is really important in looking at, you know, staying. Are you are you bored or are you going to break your business is looking at owner burnout. So it's.

Josh Troche: Burnout. It's been a thing.

Chrissy Myers: It has. And I feel like I feel targeted. You should feel targeted work. It takes the average person ten times to hear something before it aligns. So sorry audience, you got seven more time to go talk about this because I want Josh to learn it. So I want to learn it, you know, modeling what we want to say.

Chrissy Myers: But I will say, you know, burnout doesn't always look like collapse. Sometimes it also looks like disinterest, especially for a business owner. So when you're canceling your strategic meetings, big picture planning falls off the radar. Owner starts micromanaging not because they're needed, but because they're bored and they need a dopamine hit. That's the other part of this is as a business owner, you've got to be able to monitor your own mental wellness. If you are addicted to the adrenaline of everything being in crisis, you are probably going to break your business so that you can save it. Don't do that. No. Go find something else to do. Find something that challenges you on the growth side.

Chrissy Myers: I mean, a lot of times two business owners get frustrated because there's no excitement for what's next. It's like they want what's the next thing that's going to break? What's the next thing that I can say when the business is stable, maybe even successful, sometimes a founder can get really restless or resentful. And that's where, especially when you're hiring people and let's say they do the job better than you ever did. Just be thankful.

Josh Troche: Oh, yes.

Chrissy Myers: It's a. You want to hire people that are better at these things than you are. I want to hire sales and marketing people that are way better at sales, and I am. I want to hire people who are way better at doing these things. Same thing with insurance people. When I have a prospect that is calling, they're like, we want to talk to Chrissy. I get on the phone and I go, you do not want to talk to me. I want to talk to you, to tell you, hey, this is great. Great to hear that. You're, like, famous for the business. But like, I have a question about what the stop loss should be for this carrier and this kind of like time out, I am dangerous, I know what I need to know, but there are people who are experts at this instead of me.

Josh Troche: So I know just enough to screw it up.

Chrissy Myers: Exactly, exactly. But I'm smart enough to put really good people in place that know how to take care of you. And my job is to take care of those people so that they can continue to take care of you. When you get to that point as a business owner, be thankful and excited about it. Don't screw it up, because delegation sometimes stalls out because the owner either doesn't trust the team or has redefined their role. And so that's the other part of this. So you get drift in owner burnout because they're going, well, I don't feel needed anymore. So now I'm just going to break it.

Josh Troche: It's funny you say that because to me it's having the right mindset for it. Because Nika, our editor, who's listening to this now as she's editing this for us when she does some of like the intros and the animations and the intros, the first time she did one and it came back like a thousand times better than what I would have done. I'm like, oh, I did this right. Yes, I did the hiring right. That's it. And that that's what I needed. That's what I needed to focus on. Not that, oh, she's better than I am.

Chrissy Myers: No.

Josh Troche: I was like, I did something else. Right.

Chrissy Myers: Exactly. It's time for you to level up your skill set in the other things that you need to be good at delegation, making sure that your business can be stress tested and and resilient. We talked about that. We have I love talking about it. We do. So the other thing I will say is like that cure for being broken versus bored is really working at, you know, reconnecting, redefining or releasing.

Chrissy Myers: So whether it's burnout or mission drift, the antidotes really the same. It's real alignment with your why. So the step one is reconnection. So revisiting your original mission, does it still hold up? Do the things still excite you? I mean, if you're like the thrill is gone, then okay, then hopefully you have a salable business because if you don't like it, don't break it. Build it so that you can sell it. Yep, that's the whole point. Then move on to the next thing. And if it's not, if you're not tied to original mission, then it's probably time to either evolve the vision or to sell the business.

Chrissy Myers: And if the mission is intact but the owner's burnout, then the answer may be delegation, development, or redefining what that role looks like for you. Whether it is moving you from manager to truly CEO, or moving you from integrator to visionary, you've got to kind of move up and down where you need to be. And I would say two broken versus board is to create some of those times that you need for strategic thinking. And so this is why when people like you do a lot of professional development. Yeah, because I want to make sure that I fall to the level of my training. And also because I don't want to break things. So if I go develop myself and build my skill sets, it enables me to continue to level up as the organization grows.

Chrissy Myers: So that's through, you know, if you do retreats, if you do coaching, I mean, or even simply like stepping out of day to day ops for a season, you want to see how your business works without you in it. Don't work on a Friday. Pick a random Tuesday and you say, hey, I'm not going to show up. Give yourself a pajama day in the middle of the week, and don't bother anybody. Don't call them to is everything going over? Just that don't get in your email.

Chrissy Myers: And when you're doing your strategic thinking, the other thing that I will tell you, and this was something that when I was young in my career, I was notorious for because they would be like, oh my God, she's clearly somewhere thinking about all these things, because I would just start sending everybody an email about a new project that we were going to do, and they hated me when I came back. And I would have hated me too, because it's like, oh, I've got time to think here. This is how we're going to reorganize everything. Not every idea needs to be presented to your team, especially if you are. If you have a really high quick start where you're constantly going to new things and you got shiny object syndrome, I have trained people that I work with that do not have high quick start, but a very high follow through. If they're working with somebody that that quick starts all the time, they have to say it three times before I will act on it, because what would happen to me is I would have some. It'd be really nice if we could do this. It's done. And like, oh, I didn't really mean that. I was just thinking out loud. You don't think out loud with me because I will execute. So that's really important.

Josh Troche: That explains how the podcast got started.

Chrissy Myers: [Laughter]

Josh Troche: Because I was like hey do you want to do podcast like yes. It's like whoa.

Chrissy Myers: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then it happened.

Josh Troche: I mean that. Yeah. That happened faster that I can like pull start a lawnmower Yeah. No that was the it's funny when you say like when you go through some of that because to me the one thing that I see with that is that quick start piece is rather than presenting it, go deeper into the planning.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Map that thing out before you send it to everyone.

Chrissy Myers: Yes, yes. If you're the person that you start it and then they have to do it or bring everybody in and have a dialog, I think that's where it's really important. As your team gets bigger, to have team alignment around certain things when there's only three of you, you saying, hey, I need you to do the thing is probably going to be a lot easier, correct? If you have 30 people, you saying, hey, go do the thing and.

Josh Troche: Five people have to be involved with it.

Chrissy Myers: It's going to get a lot harder. And you can you can move faster when you develop a team that communicates that, can understand, that can ask questions and can get clarity around what they need to do, and then they can build. Yep.

Josh Troche: Yeah, totally, totally makes sense.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah. So Josh, you tell us shorter term measurable outcomes. So I, I kind of want to know what metrics tell you whether the business is truly broken, leaking cash or just in a slow, boring rut that needs a tactical boost.

Josh Troche: So new people don't keep track of their customer acquisition costs. Because it's fuzzy, I this is not hard accounting. This is not $9 and 98.5 cents went to this.

Chrissy Myers: No, most of it's a feeling.

Josh Troche: Correct. It is. But you still need to know some of that. There are some ways with like Google Meet others where you are pouring money directly in and you can see if that goes to your website and that creates an appointment, creates a sale, whatever. So you need to see that. But if your marketing funnel is just leaking cash, what I would say is if you've got a funnel that has a couple of holes drilled in it, guess what? Not all that's going where you want it to be. Now, granted, no marketing funnel is a perfect funnel. Not everything you pour in the top is going to come out the bottom.

Chrissy Myers: No, I wish it would.

Josh Troche: No, I wholeheartedly agree with that. It would be nice if I just put $4 out into the world and somehow got back eight. Yes, that would be that would be.

Chrissy Myers: That's marketing. Just like my money tree. It's in my backyard, right.

Josh Troche: Right, right. I have one of those also. I just, I guess the soil that it just hasn't produced yet. Yes. But with that you have to look at that return on investment.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: The problem is when people look at that, so many people don't have a timeline for it. So they look at that customer acquisition cost. They're like, hey, I bought Facebook ads this month and I didn't get any. I didn't get any revenue from it.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. What was your timeline for this? This is not once again, stick the money in and more money comes out. You have to realize that this has to go in there. The other thing to look at it with that, too, is channel flatlining. To see, like, are you getting growth in areas if it is perfectly flat, we need to look at something else. Now, we talked about the last episode, how like platforms can shut down, algorithms can change, ad spend can change.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Look, consider all those things when you're looking at this to wonder if it's broken or if you're just bored.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah. I mean, I would think we've been doing a lot of research around AI, SEO and what's the right type of like. There's a lot of changes right now. Oh, it's I think it's easy to say.

Josh Troche: It's kind of wild West. Yeah.

Chrissy Myers: You're probably not bored if you're looking at some of these things. Cool.

Josh Troche: Right. And you should be looking at and learning about these things.

Chrissy Myers: Don't bury your head in the sand right now.

Josh Troche: Right. In the same sense, you should not be taking wild swings at things. No. And to me, I would equate it to, my dad would occasionally buy some penny stocks and he would call them his lottery tickets. Yeah, because he's like, this is my throw away money. If it hits big, awesome. If not, I realize I just spent $200 to have a little bit of fun. If you have that and you're okay with that, then great.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Take the wild swing. But otherwise, do not do that. The other thing, and this is the biggest one. How many clients are you getting compared with? How many clients are you losing?

Chrissy Myers: Oh, that's a good one.

Josh Troche: I see it all the time where people get this stagnate. And the other problem, excuse me, is we get. And I know everyone has this. Things are a little slow. So you market like mad. You you send out salesmen, you're laughing because you already know where this is going. Suddenly, in three months, you are busier than a one legged man in an ass kicking, and I.

Chrissy Myers: Can't do anything. Turn it.

Josh Troche: All off. Right. So you turn off all the sales and marketing. Three months later, you're like, why am I only hearing crickets?

Chrissy Myers: Peaks and valleys?

Josh Troche: Yeah, you get this vacillation back and forth, small adjustments. I mean, once again.

Chrissy Myers: We don't turn the faucet off.

Josh Troche: Right.

Chrissy Myers: Don't not all the way.

Josh Troche: You make small adjustments here and there because like like I said, whatever you do now, it's on a wave. So whatever you do here is amplified down the line. That's that's the big issue with it. Excuse me. The operational side of this, I see it's and I know you've seen this ignoring the low hanging fruit. We've got simple problems that we just need to fix. We've got 15 tiny little things in our business. That boy would make any super easy, super simple to fix. And instead, someone's swinging for the fences.

Josh Troche: Fix the small little things that take care of those. The other one is to. Is it once again, is people are doing the same as last year. And hey, we're going to do the same exact thing. That is a little bit of that broken piece.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Because if you're doing the same as last year and it's it was sort of effective. No, no.

Chrissy Myers: The world has changed dramatically.

Josh Troche: It weekly.

Chrissy Myers: If you keep up with velocity right now.

Josh Troche: Yeah. No. If you, if you look at I mean, if you look at what social media platforms did two years ago compared with where they're at now, oh gosh, it is a completely different ballgame.

Chrissy Myers: It is it is.

Josh Troche: Totally different ballgame. That boredom, it leads to that predictable, uninspired marketing. So go in and turn some knobs. But once again, turn knobs don't take wild swings. And I'm going to make it another mechanical example here. Let's say like you're in your car, you're going on the road. You're a little bit hot.

Chrissy Myers: [Laughter]

Josh Troche: So we're not going to adjust the temperature, but you're going to adjust the fans and you're going to adjust where it comes out of. And you're going to change your seat.

Chrissy Myers: Yes.

Josh Troche: What fixed it. No idea.

Chrissy Myers: Good point.

Josh Troche: No idea. So adjust one thing at a time in small increments because that's what's going to tell you. Someone taught me this about once again, motorcycle example years ago. Carburetors don't go and change the needle position, change the jetting, and then change another screw.

Chrissy Myers: What fixed it?

Josh Troche: I don't know. No go in. Small changes on one thing at a time to see what you've got.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: The other thing that I like to tell people, like I said, if if you want to buy a lottery ticket, I typically tell people to do this on the 90 day marketing experiment. It has to fit with your language. It has to fit within all of your stuff. Yeah, but try something new. Yeah. If you're willing to buy the lottery ticket.

Chrissy Myers: I like it.

Josh Troche: If you have if you have that cash and things like that to to work with those, those are the big things from the marketing aspect that I look for with broken or bored.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: So many people, they once again they want to do the same thing as last year and hope it's as effective as last year. You need to start making small tweaks.

Chrissy Myers: Well, and I will tell you to those of you who may be bored, if you're an extrovert or an ambassador and you're causing havoc in your office, or you're trying to tweak everything and you're driving everybody crazy, it might be time for you to go to a networking event. This might be time, because that's one thing that, I mean, out of all of the things that are changing, the one thing that still isn't changing is human interaction. So take take thyself to a marketing event. Go learn something. Go talk to other business owners.

Josh Troche: My now my only worry is when you say marketing event.

Chrissy Myers: Or networking event.

Josh Troche: Okay, so networking networking event networking event some good with the. Yeah. And I love going and learning about new marketing stuff. I mean there's always at least every week I'm in a webinar talking about some of the new marketing stuff. Now additionally though, what I caution some is if you're in it, that's fine. Kind of. You have some. Your best filter is on.

Chrissy Myers: I want you to go talk to other humans. That's all I want you to do.

Josh Troche: They go talk to other humans about what's going on is a great, great, great thing to do because then you're going to get some filtered input.

Chrissy Myers: Yes.

Josh Troche: That isn't going to strike you with all the bells, whistles, lasers and pyrotechnics.

Chrissy Myers: Correct?

Josh Troche: That you're going to get someplace else that's going to amp you up. That is going to have, you know, acting like the bored business owner that is going to go in and break their business.

Chrissy Myers: No, go find a networking event, go meet other people, go make some other friends. That's it.

Josh Troche: I would start with a friend.

Chrissy Myers: Okay, fine.

Josh Troche: That you have to have one to have others.

Chrissy Myers: Let's go. Network. If you're. If you're if you want to change a whole bunch of things and you're, you're causing havoc, go network.

Josh Troche: I, I totally agree with that. The other one is to me too, is to say it's just to once again, if you put more of the burden on yourself, suddenly that that becomes less.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: If you just are a stream of different ideas and you're like, oh, we're going to do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and I mean, we talked about this before we recorded.

Chrissy Myers: [Laughter]

Josh Troche: The thing about Jeff Bezos at Amazon.

Chrissy Myers: Yes.

Josh Troche: He said he goes, if you put me in front of a whiteboard, I am going to come up with 150 ideas. And people told me, like, you're going to break Amazon.

Chrissy Myers: Yes, I almost.

Josh Troche: Did. Right, right. Because there were so many ideas and no iteration. There was no execution. So if you feel that you have an idea that you need to do, you may need to take on the full execution of.

Chrissy Myers: That.

Josh Troche: To make sure that it goes slow enough that you can see things, you can pull it back, you can do all those other things. What is something that is that what's something like delegating?

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: How does that alleviate the boredom.

Chrissy Myers: Because then you're training someone in how to do it. So you're you're you're oh you're training. So there's part of that. So delegating enables you to kind of you've got the training piece. But then it also says, you know, as you're scaling, whether you're building an org chart accountability chart, you're visioning for the next five years, where do we need to be delegating enables you to really do some of the heavier thinking that's not just, you know, quick shot here. We're going to we're going to do this quick start, get it done and wreak havoc. It's really more intentional and focused. And it really it gives you capacity to be able to work on yourself and then truly work on the business in the way that you need to, because if you're going to, if you're going to take an engine apart, you need to really take the whole thing apart. Don't just like, stop halfway through my game, just shove it all back together. Be fine.

Josh Troche: You know what makes me think about this too is this is a great distraction. Because in most cases, when we most of us neglect a lot of the basics in our business, that when you delegate.

Chrissy Myers: You don't anymore.

Josh Troche: That is going to give you that chance to go back and look and say, okay, what are some of these things that aren't necessarily broken? Yes, but maybe a little bit squeaky?

Chrissy Myers: Well, I'll let you overhaul the system. Right. How is our client? If I'm teaching someone how to deliver client services, we're looking at our service delivery model and going, okay, is all of this working? How do we optimize it? So when you're delegating and then you're having conversation with that person that you've delegated to of like, let's have a conversation as to this is what I've trained you to do, I want you to do it this way, but we're going to have dialog in a week or a month and talk about, you know, are there other efficiencies, do you think there is a better way to do this? And let's think about that.

Josh Troche: Yeah. No, that totally, totally makes sense. The one thing that I always find is just so funny is when people don't audit their cash flow.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Because that is, that is that broken or bored thing. I mean, people think it's broken before they've ever looked at their cash flow, before they've ever looked at their profit and loss before they've ever looked. They're like, oh, this isn't working. Is it or isn't it or isn't it?

Chrissy Myers: Can you be patient for 90 days? I mean, no, no. But here's the thing. Especially with your if your business runs in arrears, like if you don't get paid until 90 days or 60 days after the work that you're doing, sometimes it's really hard for you and you've got to pay attention to where your numbers are. Yeah, because it's like, oh, everything's great, but you didn't put anything in your pipeline and now it's not so great. So it's really or oh my gosh, we're going to be homeless tomorrow. And it's like, well, you have a $500,000 check coming from this client. They've already said they've mailed it. Your bank account is zero right now, but tomorrow it's going to be a half $1 million. Like, you've got to be able to understand where you are in your cash cycle.

Josh Troche: That totally makes sense. And it's it's that thing that people don't. I mean, we all look at the numbers. Is there or isn't there money?

Chrissy Myers: No, that's not how it works.

Josh Troche: Right? I mean, we all we all look at that.

Chrissy Myers: You know.

Josh Troche: Looking at where that money came from. It's going to be far more educational in terms if you're bored or if your business is broken. When it comes to that sense.

Chrissy Myers: What are the revenue streams?

Josh Troche: What's, oh, there's one. We're talking about actionable steps here. Yeah. A boredom buster experiment is what you have here. I hear this, and I'm like, I could have used this would a lot when I was, like, 12. Yeah. What is the boredom, buster?

Chrissy Myers: It is one new thing. Whether it's small marketing thing or, you know, a test, something that you're going to do something different with your training or you do something small with service delivery, one thing, one you commit to one new thing, and it's for the next 90 days. And then once those 90 days are over, you audit and say, did this work? Did this not work? And it's tiny enough that it's not impacting anybody on your team other than you. That is a boredom buster.

Josh Troche: I like that, yes. And like that. Don't don't make everyone else go through your head.

Chrissy Myers: No, do not make everybody else miserable because you're bored. And honestly, if you're really that bored business owner, I think you should get into some community engagement and go find a nonprofit to help that will take up some time. If you have too much time on your hands, I can give you a lot of things to fill it with. Different types of professional development, different types of community service. You you will be much better off doing those things and then you'll build your resilience skills.

Josh Troche: I agree. Yeah. According to the what was it two episodes ago when we talked about burnout? Excess time is not an issue for me. Neither is boredom.

Chrissy Myers: No.

Josh Troche: That being said, the other one that that, we've got down here is delegate the drag.

Chrissy Myers: [Laughter]

Josh Troche: I like that because you said identify routine tasks you hate doing.

Chrissy Myers: And delegate it. Yeah, it's the stop doing list. The stopped Michael Murray from textbook painting. He is like he taught me this a couple years ago, and he's like, I have to stop doing this. And I'm like, what is a stop doing list? He's like, it's the things that I'm going to a delegate or that I don't really want to do any more in my business. So I'm in the process right now for this quarter. Moving into to 2026, what is my stop doing list for 2026? And what am I not going to do anymore? Because then I'm going to find people that can either do it, we're going to hire, we're going to outsource whatever we need to do so that I can focus on the things that I really love doing, because another reason why you get you think your business is broken or you're bored is because you're doing things that you don't like doing.

Josh Troche: You're a 100%. Yeah. One that I like to is don't confuse mere motion with progress. Yes. I see we talked about this in the burnout one. I'm working on stuff. I'm sitting in front of my computer, but I'm like, I'm surfing eBay, so I'm in the office, but I'm, I'm and I'm clicking the mouse, but I'm not actually doing anything productive for the business. And that is something where I see in so many cases where people are like, we're going to do things and do those things. Align with your mission statement? Do they accomplish goals that you're looking to do it to do? Yeah, that's why it's stuck. So much stuff. And why we talk about those mission statements and the core values and things of that nature. Everything has to work backwards from those. Does it fit with those? Does it? If it doesn't, then why the hell are you doing it?

Chrissy Myers: Exactly?

Josh Troche: You have to work backwards from that though. And if those aren't solid.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Then that's just not going to work. I love the boredom buster that is the it's just it's it's got bored.

Chrissy Myers: It's alliteration.

Josh Troche: The boredom buster.

Chrissy Myers: Maybe experiment.

Josh Troche: The boredom buster that.

Chrissy Myers: If it makes you do it great. Right?

Josh Troche: Right. If you need me to record that for you, for anyone out there in the audience, let me know. We can. We can have that as your, What's the fastest owner for a business owner to reengage with their vision when they're like, they're drained.

Chrissy Myers: Okay. When they're drained.

Josh Troche: See that I that this is this this shows you that sitting in the same room with me is so training because you see, it's just like, oh, God.

Chrissy Myers: What we're doing. That's okay. I would say the fastest way I know to reconnect with your vision, especially when you're drained, is to get quiet and go back to your why. It's really it's to me that. Why, why are we doing this.

Josh Troche: Shut up and think.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah it's really I mean it's it's not hard. You just got to do it.

Josh Troche: So this to me is a big part of our podcast too you say especially when you're trained it's to get back. It's to get quiet and go back to your why.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: You put that so nicely and so eloquently and I'm like, shut up and think. This is our juxtaposition.

Chrissy Myers: This is this is why. This is why Josh does marketing and I do HR training and development and insurance, all the things.

Josh Troche: Yes, yes, yes.

Chrissy Myers: So Josh, what's the single most important marketing metric that every small business owner should check every week?

Josh Troche: Qualified lead pipeline all day long. Are there leads coming in? If not, you done messed up. The. And it doesn't matter what business it is. It doesn't matter what your sales cycle is. There has to be something new in there for you to read every single week. If there's nothing new for you to read in there, you got a problem?

Chrissy Myers: Generate some qualified leads. Get going.

Josh Troche: You have a problem? So yeah, that is I mean, one of the things that I've got in here, you do not need a vision if you do not have clients.

Chrissy Myers: I love that, right, right. No, you do not.

Josh Troche: Write the mission statement, the vision state. None of that matters if you do not have people coming into your pipeline now. Because your pipeline will get smaller.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Clients will leave. Clients will go to business. Things will happen. Hopefully. It happens at a very, very slow rate. Yeah. You need new people coming in.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: If you don't see that every week, fix it because it's. It's done. Busted.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: That being said, boy, week eight. That's it. I feel like we have covered a lot of different ways that people like throw I mean literally see a machine working and they're like, I'm going to stick a wrench in here.

Chrissy Myers: Exactly. Self-sabotage.

Josh Troche: Yeah, yeah. And without even thinking about doing it. Oh, this wrench will look good here.

Chrissy Myers: No self-sabotage without any self-awareness.

Josh Troche: Yeah. Turn this screw and. Oh, why is it smoking now? And that I this. I'm going to. Before we close out, we will use one of my favorite sayings. And I think this can apply to business.

Chrissy Myers: Yeah.

Josh Troche: Any machine can be a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough. I'll bet if you are trying to avoid turning your business into a smoke machine unless you build smoke screens, then it's fine.

Josh Troche: But, we really do appreciate you joining us. Go to the business or business tech podcast.com. We've got resources. We've got past episodes. I know we mentioned burnout. We mentioned resiliency, we were mentioned what was one of the other episodes that we really hammered on? I mean, we really brought.

Chrissy Myers: About I mean, consistency on substance.

Josh Troche: Yeah. We've really brought a lot of those things together in this. And I am I mean, I'm truly here for it. Do us a favor. Give us a review if you're willing. We'd love to talk to more people. And we want to hear what you have us, what you talk, what you want to hear us talk about. We would we enjoy this?

Chrissy Myers: We do. It's fine.

Josh Troche: Yeah. We have a ton of fun with this. I didn't fill in the topic for next week yet.

Chrissy Myers: No.

Josh Troche: No. And, Chrissy, look, if you can see the camera, Chrissy looks nervous, I do.

Chrissy Myers: What's it going to be?

Josh Troche: You have my like if I'm walking into a shitstorm, I want to know which way the wind's blowing. You have no idea which way the wind's blowing. And I think I have a couple of ideas, okay, that we're going to talk about later.

Chrissy Myers: Okay?

Josh Troche: But we really need you from the audience. We really need your input for it, because we really want to hear what you want to talk about. As always, do us a favor. Take care of yourself. Can't take care of someone else too. We will see you very, very soon.