Episode 97: What Are The Challenges In Your Business Where Things are Overly Complicated and How Can You Fix Them?

In this quick tip episode, Fiona talks about encouraging everyone to stop and think about the mini little wars we create in our business. Are you making things way too complicated than they ought to be? What can you do to fix these problems?

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Introduction

• What are the “mini wars” you are facing in your business?

• Conclusion

Episode transcript: 

Hello and welcome to Episode 97 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast.

Today it is a Quick Tip Tuesday. So that is really I'm going to share a tip, tool or tactic. And I guess this is a tactic and it's something that I've literally just sort of gone through again many, many times. I've gone through this in the last six years running this business, but, you know, in the last 40 years being alive. So I wanted to share it with you. And I just felt really compelled to jump on and record this right now. So let's get into it, shall we?

So I am in a mastermind group in the U.S. and we just did an exercise on EFT, which is tapping. And I have done that previously. You know, for the last maybe six months, I've been sort of really investigating that. And definitely it makes a difference. And if you have never heard of EFT tapping, it's emotional freedom technique or, you know, you can just Google it. That's how I found it. I Googled it. I watched a couple of YouTube videos and I started utilising it. Anyway, we just did that. And something came up that I thought, you know, I'm going to share this in a podcast episode.

So we were kind of talking about, you know, ourselves and stretching ourselves and as leaders and what does that look like? And anyway, when I was journaling, a vision kind of came to me, which was the fridge magnet that we have on our fridge, which is based on the 1969 campaign by John Lennon and Yoko Ono. War is over if you want it. And we I don't know who gave us that fridge magnet. I think maybe my husband's friend Dave gave it to us and we've had it on in the centre of our fridge for years. And many times my husband has kind of tapped on it and said, you know, in relation to lots of different things, not just, you know, my business or anything like that.

But today I was thinking about it in terms of business. And the tactic that I wanted to go through is not EFT or journaling, although I think those things are fantastic. But it's really to stop and ask yourself, how is this my fault? And I've said that I've talked about this before. I often do this and come back to it. But I guess in line with the war is over if you want it. You know, things don't have to be as hard or as complicated as you might want them to be. And I guess keeping that in mind, it could be war is over if you want it. You know, in terms of your relationships making maybe with your colleagues or the staff that you have at work, you know, instead of sitting down and confronting situations, you're kind of brushing things under the rug or you're tiptoeing around staff or you don't want to be seen as a bad leader or not a nice person. So you're just not going to go there.

Whereas if you did go there, the war or the uncomfortableness would be over. Similarly, the whole concept of, you know, war is over if you want it, it might be applied to, you know, your own way of working.

It could be, “am I making this way more complicated than it needs to be?” Sometimes when I'm coaching people, I'll go through. So what would that look like to, you know, for you? And they'll explain a situation. And they do make it overly complicated. And when we kind of brush it back and like, “what if you just didn't do those three things? What if you just went from this section to this section” and they're like, “oh, my God, yes.” And in my own business as well, like sometimes we'll overly complicate things. And instead of just going, you know, I'm just going to put together a process for that and I'm just going to record my screen and show them what I want them to do, as opposed to spending weeks, you know, being annoyed or frustrated that things aren't getting done in the way that I would like them to be done.

And so, yeah, I guess the tactic is really to sit and think how not how is this my fault? The word fault sometimes could be a bit, you know, taken the wrong way. But how am I preventing peace and ease and you know that from happening.

And I guess really honing in on that war is over if you want it. When I look at the fridge magnet, the war is over, is large, and then the underneath is if you want it. And I think that's the hard part of business. Sometimes we can sit there and complain and vent and or, you know, look at what other people are doing and be like, oh, it's so easy for them when we're not actively making steps to make it easier for ourselves as well.

One of my clients, one of my beautiful clients, had the word simple as her word for the year. And a few times we'd come back to that when we were talking like all. Is that simple? Does that sound simple? How could that be more simple? And, you know, I think these are the questions that we need to ask ourselves.

So, yeah, the tactic is really to stop and think about the mini little wars, I know war is obviously, you know, I'm definitely not trying to make it out like anything in business is the same as an actual war. And I'm in a very privileged position to have never experienced war. But in terms of me, you know, tensions, things that are frustrating us in our business right now, things that seem overly challenging, overly difficult, how could we look at what we are doing to add to that, you know, what are we doing to make it worse?

And then on the flip side, the if you wanted part of the John Lennon and Yoko Ono message is how could we make steps to ease it to really think, well, that problem is no longer a problem or that challenge is no longer a challenge or that complexity is actually not that complex because I've done X, Y and Z.

So that is the Quick Tip episode today. I know it's a little bit maybe scattered because I'm just jumping straight on to record it. But yeah, it's really about thinking what are the mini wars that I'm creating that I'm basically responsible for in my business and what could I do to make it easier and just even, you know, nutted out on a page, you know, get a pen and paper.

You know, I'm a big one for old school stationery and just do a mind map or write it down, you know, what would this look like if it was easier? What would this look like if that challenge didn't exist? And, you know, maybe it's going to bring up some confrontation, confrontation, confront, confronting stuff. And it might be that you have to sit down with a staff member and go through what's not working. And maybe that's something you've never done and you're just not somebody that confronts situations like that.

But in order for the business to work and for everyone to feel better, that needs to be done. Or it could be that, you know, you need to put a block on apps like social media because those things and scrolling Instagram are taking you away from getting the actual work that you need to get done. It could be that, yeah, you need to look at your kind of hinder habits, I call them. So things that you're doing all the time out of habit that actually are not helping you at all in terms of these mini wars or in terms of just, you know, peace in your business. So that is it.

The Quick tip, tool, or tactic today really is a tactic. It's about sitting down and thinking what are the challenges in my business where things are overly complicated, where things are difficult, where are these kind of mini wars, if you want to say? And coming back to that Yoko Ono John Lennon campaign, you know, war is over if you want it. And it's the if you wanted part that is really important, what can you do today to fix these things or to work on them or to, you know, slowly chip away at them so that they're not such a big challenge, complexity or just frustration in your business?

That is it for today's Quick Tip episode. As always, you'll find the full transcript over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/97. If you found this useful, I would love it if you can hit the stars or if you even have extra time, leave a little review. It just really, really helps this podcast get found by other small business owners so they can learn and take in these coaching sessions and the interviews with small business owners and the episodes and really, you know, scale and start their business. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time by.

Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.