Vita's Tip in 10: Can Your Visionary but Disorganized Personality Handle Systems?
Hello, hello, friend! Welcome to a new episode of Vita’s Tip In Ten.
If you are someone who thinks systems are too difficult or that you don’t have the personality to implement them, I have a great tip for you today!
The tip is actually a question. That question I ask myself often. Especially if I find myself in a state of wallowing, I try to ask myself one of my favorite questions: “How is this serving me?”
And the flip side of that question is, if I were to change my attitude about it, would it serve me better?
Some of the situations where I find myself asking a question like that is when something doesn't go my way, and I get upset about it. Or maybe when someone does something that I don't agree with, and I throw my hands up in the air and go, “Oh, I can't believe this happened!”, or “I can't believe he said that and she did that.” And this customer such and such, and this vendor is blah, blah, blah. And why can't it be in in a different way?
So anytime I find myself throwing a pity party, or wishing for something different, succumbing to negative self-talk, I do my very best to catch that and become aware of it. And then I ask myself, “How is this self-talk serving me right now? And what would serve me better?”
I have to tell you a story of something that recently happened in my life, where I was able to ask that question to somebody else. It was during a phone call that I had with a prospective LuAnn University student, who was wondering whether my Systems Driven Operations class was for her, whether it addressed her pain points and was appropriate for her business. They were all really great, wonderful questions.
Before spending the resources, it’s always a good idea to do due diligence and find out whether your needs are going to be met. And then she asked me a really interesting question that at first caught me off guard because nobody had specifically asked me that question before. And the question was, “Well, if it's just in my personality to be all over the place, and to fly by the seat of my pants, and to maybe be a bit disorganized, it's just the way I roll. If it's in my personality, can that ever change? Will your class help me?”
It was a really, really interesting question. And I love that she asked that, and how perceptive this prospective student was to ask that question. And even now, a few days later, after some self-reflection, I still maintain and stand by how I responded. So much so that I wanted to share it with you guys.
So here's what I said to her on the call.
I told her, “How great of you to know yourself so well! And even though self-awareness is the first step to any kind of change, the question that really needs to be asked here is after realizing and being that self-aware and understanding how you tick and how you function, the real question is, how is it serving you? How is it working for you? How hasn’t it been working for you? And if it has worked for you to get you to this point, will it work for you to get to the next point?”
And interestingly, the pain points that this student came to me with, which are very indicative of the pain points that all of my students come to me with, is that she's exhausted, tired, rundown, running herself ragged because she's the only one doing all the things in her business.
She goes on appointments, she puts together the estimates - manually most of the time. She is the product knowledge person, and she is the salesperson. She revises the estimates multiple times because that's how our clients work sometimes. And then she's the one who places all the orders and answers all the phone calls and checks in all the packages and then communicates with the clients. And then installs everything and then looks at the numbers and manages financials and pays the insurance and cleans the office - the proverbial chief cook and bottle washer.
That is essentially why and how prospective students come to my Systems Driven Operations class. They no longer want to do all the things because they no longer want to feel the sadness, the exhaustion and the resentment that this type of lifestyle ultimately brings.
And so when this perspective student asked me the question about her personality, my question was, how has this personality been serving you? And didn't you just say to me how sad you feel and how tired you are?
And so, if that's the case, how can we ask a different question? Instead of saying, “Will my personality be able to deal with your organization and your systems and your processes?”, what if you were to say, “If I no longer want to feel exhausted and run-down, and I don't want to be the one doing all the things because I want to have a staff to do things for me, if I want to take a vacation and not worry about business coming to a halt, if I want to get the joy back of running my business, if I no longer want to look at the new phone calls coming in and cringe because I don't want to take them because I have so much on my plate, if I no longer want to feel that way, what do I have to do?” That’s the question!
Ask yourself, “How can I wrangle my wonderful, random, spontaneous and beautiful, fly by the seat of my pants personality, just a little bit so I don’t feel all the stress that it sometimes creates as I run my business?”
And the answer to that is, drumroll for the big reveal here: The answer is that we create the systems that make our lives more predictable. We create the processes that allow us to take step one and then step two and then step three, every single time. We create ways of documenting the way that we do things so that somebody else can come in and learn how we do things.
What if you were able to rein in your extemporaneous tendencies to see the light and the beauty of creating structure and following predictable steps, with a little bit of discipline, where there is a light at the end of the tunnel, that you are not always the only one doing all the things, so that the lifestyle that you want to have for yourself can actually happen.
I know for a fact that if we completely let our spur-of-the-moment, impulsive personality traits control our lives, then it controls our business too. And then the business controls us, not we control the business, and I know my friend, when you listen to this, you do not want your business to control you.
You want to be able to work so that you can live so that you can have some balance, so you can go on vacations, so you can have free time, so you can pursue your passions.
Having a free-spirited personality is an amazing thing. And that is most likely what makes you a great salesperson and what attracts people to you. It is also what lights you up and gives you joy, and what started you on this path of entrepreneurship to begin with, and the thing that got you where you are right now.
But in order to get you to where you want to be, you’ll have to find and deploy different angles of your personality, perhaps the ones that are not so much on the forefront, perhaps the ones that are a little bit more difficult to summon. But I know that they are there, and especially when someone is giving you the tools and the way to get yourself more systems driven and more organized.
So my friend the next time you let your amazing and freedom loving personality ask a question like that, try to catch it, become aware of it, and ask “how is this serving me at this very moment?”
And if you are someone who needs help with engaging these hidden facets of your free-spirited personality; if you are looking for ALL the systems to run your business like a well-oiled and organized machine – I invite you to check out my VIP experience. It is a 2-day in-person intensive, where you’re treated like royalty and where you get the back-stage pass to ALL the back-end operations of my business.
And in the meantime I’ll be looking forward to bringing you a new episode of Vita’s Tip in Ten next Thursday. See you next time!