Episode 235: Are you afraid of change?
Do you know anybody who is stuck in their ways and didn't want to be open to learning new things? In today's episode, Fiona shares a quick tip and talks about the importance of growth and change. Are you being a Terry? Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
On Fiona's university experience
Are you being a Terry?
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 235 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today, you're listening to a quick tip episode, and that's really where I share a tip tool or tactic that is going to help you. And hopefully, one that you can implement immediately into your small business. So before we get started on that, firstly, I don't know if you can hear the thunder. I don't know if it's a recording, but it is about to pour down where I live in North Warrandyte in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. And I'm hoping that that sound does not carry over to this. And secondly, speaking of where I live, I'm literally looking out into beautiful bushland and the rain is coming down and I want to pay my respects to the traditional owners and custodians of this beautiful land that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. And I pay my respect to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who may be listening or to people from other indigenous groups around the world who might be listening in. So let's get to today's episode.
So today, is it a tip tool or tactic? It is probably more of a tip. So I have worked at numerous places in my career. I am in my forties, in my early forties. I've been working since I was 14 years and nine months old, which is when you could work back in the day. And I got a job at Kohl's supermarkets and ever since then, I have worked at all sorts of places. One of the places that I did work in my more recent career was at an open university in the UK. So I was working there on the MBA program. So that is the Master of Business Administration, the MBA program. And my job was to consider how do we pull together all of this great information, and how do we do it in a way that is accessible and able to be easily digested by people who are doing an MBA in their own time.
So a lot of people will do an MBA as part of their corporate career. And a lot of people will also do an MBA on weekends in the evenings, whenever they can fit it in, around running a business or maybe even as part of their career, but it's not part of their work paying for it. In this case, they have to be able to take on that information and not be overwhelmed by it, but also still learn a huge amount. So my job was to look at the audience engagement and to look and work with the faculty that was pulling together the MBA program and create it in a way that made people enthusiastic and encourage them to keep working on the MBA because in MBA can take years and years to complete.
But what I wanted to talk about today was something that I noticed when I worked there and this is nothing about any of the people that I worked with. They were wonderful. But when I worked there, I was kind of newer to the UK. I mean, I was born in the UK and I lived there in my early twenties, but I had gone back. It was the global financial crisis and I ended up getting this job, the open university is very strange, it's a university, but it doesn't have students. So I mean, it might not be that strange now with pandemic times, but back in the day, this is 2009. It was really strange. You go to this place, it's got all of the different faculty buildings. It has the cafeteria, it has these beautiful grounds, but don't have students because it was all online.
So it was quite a beautiful place to work. Imagine a university with no huge amount of people there. It was really relaxing. There were beautiful grounds. It was a beautiful building. Everything was modern. It was really great. And so you have that coupled with the type of work was really interesting and different, but you also had a whole lot of awesome policies. So one of the things that existed there and I wasn't privy to it because I didn't have children at the time, was that there was free childcare and there was free onsite childcare. So you had people who had taken predominantly a lot of women that had taken up a job there to work around their children, get free childcare and they'd stayed on. And so there'd be people there that had worked there for like 27 years, 32 years.
It wasn't unusual to have people working with you for 15 or 16 years and I'm not talking about academics who maybe get into a university and get tenure and stay there forever. But I'm talking about people in marketing, people in graphic design, people who are looking at media development, creating all of the internet software programs. I sound like an IT wizard there, but you had a whole lot of people that had just worked for years and years and years and years there. And in that, there were one or two people I remember that just was hilarious to the point where we would be both laughing because they would have these catch cries of, “That's the way we've always done it.” And I remember one particular person who I got on with really well, but every time that I suggested a change, I would be met with this and she had the most beautiful accent and she'd be like, “No, that's the way we've always done it.”
So that's what we're gonna do. That's the way we've always done it. And I'd be like, “But don't you wanna change?” And she'd be like, “No, babe.” And she'd be laughing as well. And just be like, “No, we're not gonna change. That's the way we've always done it.” And I wanted to kind of think about that person today, but in relation to your business, because I think that we can all get caught in a trap of doing something the way we've always done it. And maybe sometimes that works for us, but a lot of the times it doesn't and yet we keep doing it. We keep doing something in a really tedious way or we keep doing something just in a way that we've always done it. And we haven't thought about, could this be more efficient? Could it be more enjoyable? Does it really align with our values and beliefs?
Is it something that potentially could be delegated to somebody else? I think so often we can get caught in thinking, “Well, this is what I do.” So even if you build this big business and you have multiple staff, whether they're remote or with you in person, and yet we don't let go of things that potentially, if we let go, would free us up to do something even more important or more meaningful in our own businesses. And so I'm not gonna shout out what this person's name was, but let's just call them Terry for the sake of it. Let's just call them Terry, that was not their name, but you wanna kind of question your own inner Terry and you wanna think about in my business, are there things that I'm doing because that's the way we've always done it, babe. And yet I'm not open to changing things up and your business is like any relationship you want to change things up every so often not just cruise on by not just let things slide, let things be exciting, and have that spark again.
And so today in today's quick tip episode, it's about investigating your inner Tery, thinking of my coworker, who was lovely by the way, but just was really stuck in their ways and didn't want to be open to learning new things. And it wasn't mean about it or rude about it, but just was like, this is the way we're gonna do it and we are doing this for the last 15 years. And so that's what we're gonna keep doing and thinking about your own business and looking at the different departments, whether it's finance or product or operations or marketing and thinking, what would it mean if we changed things up, what would that look like? What would that free up? Whether for your own time or somebody else in the business, maybe it would free up some finances. Maybe it would free up some more aligned ways of looking at your business through the lens of your values and beliefs.
So I guess the first thing is to look at how long you have been in business. So maybe looking at it, I know I've been in business for seven years. So thinking about if I look at those umbrella terms of finance, product operations, and marketing, which areas of those kinds give me the greatest pain, which is the most tedious, and then looking at the outputs of each of those and thinking, have we tried something new? When was the last time we changed things? I'm not saying you need to go and change everything in your business, but all of us have parts of the business that are tedious or that would really do with a fresh pair of eyes. And the second thing is once you've got that list happening, it's about thinking, “Do I delegate this to somebody else?”
Could I invest in automating this potentially with a platform or even working with a VA or somebody else that can help you implement that change? Or is it something that we can actually get rid of altogether? It is actually not helping the business grow or move towards your goals, whatever they may be. So that is really it. I know it's a really simple one, but it's thinking about how often are you changing things up. Are you doing something because you've always done it that way? And how open are you or receptive are you to looking at what could be done differently? I know so many times when I work with people, whether it's in Marketing for Your Small Business or if they go through the course in coaching program, which is actually open. Now, if you're interested in that, you can find all the information just at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com or it's in one-on-one coaching or group coaching.
In group coaching, It happens quite often. You hear not even necessarily me, but somebody else in the group responds to, let’s say, someone’s talking about an issue in their business. And someone else in the group might say, “Have you tried this?” Or we had that same problem. And we moved to this platform or this type of solution or this process, and you see the person talking about their issue light up and being like, “I haven't thought about it that way, but I could do it that way.” And then you definitely hear this feedback a couple of months later of them saying, “I actually implemented that. And it's working really well.” And that is what I think I love about group coaching. I love the same with the group from Marketing for Your Small Business, the course, and the coaching program, because you get this input from other people.
And I think particularly when you work by yourself, a lot of the time you may well create this list and think, well I'd like to change these, but you don't know where to start. So it could be working with a business coach. It could be coming into a group program. It could be just me reaching out to a business friend and sort of saying, “These are the things that feel really stale in the business.” This is where I'd like to change, but I don't really know how to, you could look through this podcast. You could look through our website for help or information. You could always send us a DM on Instagram, but thinking about, “Am I being a Terry?” Am I just keeping things the way they've always been? And which of those things are really not adding value to the business and what could I change up?
So I really hope that has helped you today. Again, nothing on the open university. I thought it was a great place to work. I learned a lot. I still have friendships from that amazing place where I worked, but I always kind of look back and with good feelings towards Terry, again, not their real name, but I always just laugh at the conversations that we used to have because it was just sort of sometimes like butting my head against a brick wall. And of course, some of those things really worked and so they didn't need to change, but some things definitely could have been changed. So that is it for today's quick tip episode. If you found this useful, I would love it. If you could hit the subscribe button so you don't miss out on any other useful stuff.
And if you've got a couple of seconds, we'd love you to leave a review. You can do that on Apple or Spotify. And it just makes it easier for other small business owners to find this. And maybe somebody really needs to wrestle with their inner Terry and find this particular episode. So thank you so much. If you can do that as always, you can find the show notes and you'll find them for this particular episode at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/235. Thanks so much for listening again, as I mentioned, Marketing for Your Small Business is open. Our course and coaching program starts on the 20th of September. And you can find all the information at marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you wanna get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
