Business Minded Bonus 3: Take an Educated Guess

I’m Jody Moore and this is Business Minded Bonus podcast episode number 3.

This is Business Minded, a series of bonus podcast episodes designed to help you achieve your business goals, whether you’re a photographer, you participate in a network marketing business, a coach, or any other kind of entrepreneur. Join me where I will be sharing my best tips and practices to achieve what you want to in your business. Let’s go.

Hello everybody. Welcome to another Business Minded Bonus episode. So last week I taught you the first part of the Business Minded framework. There are six parts total. And today we’re going to talk about the second part. Last week we talked about setting a 30 to 60 day goal. If you missed it make sure you go back and listen to it because you’re going to need that. You’re going to want to build on each of the parts of the framework. I’m going to give them all six to you over the course of the summer here.

So, the second part, once you’ve set your 30 to 60 day goal is to take an educated guess. Now, we’ve all heard that saying before, let’s make an educated guess, we all use it probably pretty casually. I want to take a deep dive into it today. And we’re going to explore both of those words. We’re going to talk about the word ‘educated’ and we’re going to talk about the word ‘guess’ because they are both important in the way you think about how you’re going to proceed once you’ve set your goal.

So last week I talked to you about the two types of goals. We might have an outcome based goal or we might have a project based goal. Either way we’re going to take an educated guess about how to achieve that goal. So, let’s talk about the word ‘educated’ first. I love what Marie Forleo teaches, which is everything is figureoutable. It is natural for your brain to want to tell you that you don’t know how to do it. You don’t know what to try.

I remember this especially when I first started my business and my brain was not conditioned to think differently. My brain was conditioned to think I don’t know how. I remember after I went through coach training, coach training at The Life Coach School looked very different back then than it does today. And we didn’t get the extensive business training that coaches get today.

But, Brooke, did give us a little bit. She gave us what she could in the time that she had allotted. She definitely wanted to see us succeed. And she was very clear with us that you’re going to need to go learn how to build a business. You’re going to have to learn that side as well. And I remember even thinking I don’t know where to go to learn it. I remember thinking I’m in, I’m willing to learn it, somebody teach me. But where do I go? How do I learn it?

And I was like, “I don’t even know where to begin. I don’t even know what to Google. I don’t know who to ask. I don’t know where to start.” Listen you guys, I don’t know is just a thought. It’s not a fact. This is, I know, challenging to wrap your head around. I know you want to argue with me. You want to be like, “But I don’t know.” It doesn’t really serve us. I can’t think of very many times when it would serve us to keep the thought, I don’t know. If it’s something that I want to know how to do then thinking I don’t know doesn’t serve me.

And so, Marie Forleo’s thought, everything is figureoutable became a really valuable replacement for me from I don’t know because it allowed me to sort of keep the thought I don’t know. But instead of walking around thinking that I was thinking everything is figureoutable. Once I adapted that thought I started thinking about the fact that not only is it figureoutable but a lot of other people have done what I’m trying to do or done some version of what I’m trying to do. And so, I could just start listening to them. I could just tune in.

I mean we do have Google and YouTube, we have so many things that we might want to know right at our fingertips. And that is where the educated part of taking an educated guess comes in. Take a class, read a book, take a workshop, hire a coach, go through a program, enroll in a school, educate yourself. I’m all for you educating yourself about how to achieve your goal. Ask a friend, call a neighbor, email somebody, direct message somebody, ask for advice, ask for help. Go get yourself some education around what you’re trying to learn, do it.

Now, I like to always begin with Google and YouTube because I should say I’m trying to get myself to always begin with Google and YouTube. I don’t always do that, let’s be honest. Sometimes I just say to my husband, “Oh my gosh, my computer’s not working right. This program it’s all frozen up and nothing will go through.” And I want him to come in and just fix it and figure it out because I don’t want to have to learn. I don’t want to look it up. You know what he usually does? He Googles it or he YouTubes it, if he can’t figure it out after playing with it for a minute.

And then I always realize, I could have done that, I could have looked it up. And I find this to be true with a lot of the questions that people ask me too when it comes to this type thing, when it comes to building a business, is I always think, that’s one Google search away. Now, you can ask me because I’m your coach. It’s what coaches are there for. But I want to empower you to be able to figure stuff out on your own because I might not always be available or that your coach or whoever may not always be available. Might be faster and easier for you to go figure it out.

And it gets your brain thinking everything is figureoutable, I can figure this out, there is a way. So, we want to take an educated guess, yes, we want to educate ourselves, we want to learn some things. That’s why I actually created a whole program called Business Minded, that if you don’t know where to begin and you want to learn to build a business, it’s going to be awesome for you.

But the second part of that equation is super important too, it’s the word ‘guess’. Take an educated guess. Do you know what the word ‘guess’ means? It means that we might be right and we might be wrong. It means that we’re not going to spend tons of time trying to find the right answer. It means there is no right answer, it’s just a guess. And you have to know that when you go to build your business my friends. You have to know that we are all just taking guesses.

My sister works at Amazon and a company like Amazon is taking educated guesses about what to try next, about what people want, about what’s going to help them achieve the goals that they’re trying to achieve as a business. And a little itty bitty business owner like myself is taking educated guesses over, and over, and over again. And sometimes I take a guess that turns out the way I hoped it would. And other times I take a guess that didn’t turn out the way I hoped it would. But it was always just a guess anyway.

And I’ll tell you that I have done more for my business and my own brain when it comes to being an entrepreneur by guessing than I have by asking people. Here is the problem with asking people. This is a little insight into the craziness of my brain. I don’t ask people very much. When I say I don’t ask people I mean I have lots of friends and colleagues who are coaches, I know lots of business owners who have done various things.

And I don’t very often ask those people their opinion. And it’s not because I don’t value their opinion. It’s not because I don’t think that they’re smarter and wiser than me. I do think that they are. It’s just that I know that whatever they tell me is going to impact me in terms of what I’m going to believe about what I’m trying to do.

And it’s so important to me to protect my own beliefs about what I’m trying to do. I know those beliefs are fragile and I don’t want to make it harder for myself to believe it by having somebody’s opinion who I respect come in and sort of taint the waters. See what I’m saying? Let me give an example. There was a time when I asked my mentor, Brooke Castillo about a funnel I was thinking of running, a funnel.

You’ll learn all about this in Business Minded, you’ll learn all about funnels in marketing. But basically, it’s a way to let people know that you can help them and bring them into your world to potentially become customers. And I said to her, “Hey, I’m thinking about running this funnel. It’s going to be a Family Home Evening lesson.” Now, Brooke’s not a member of my faith. So, for any of you that aren’t, Family Home Evening is just something that we do Monday nights. We get together as a family, spend time together, maybe have a lesson.

So, I said, “Listen, it’s a Family Home Evening lesson about the brain and it will be free. People can download it for free.” Which is awesome because I know as a mom you’re constantly like, “What are we going to do for Family Home Evening?” And you also are constantly worried that you’re not teaching your kids the things they need to learn to be successful adults. So, I thought, this will be great, we’ll kill two birds with one stone. I’ll make it really – there’ll be coloring pages for little kids. There’ll be activities for older kids, free download, who wouldn’t want that?

And then there will be a second step in the funnel which will be if you want to purchase the rest of the lessons, you can do so, I think it was going to be $8 or something like that. I don’t know. And I was like, “What do you think of this idea for my funnel, Brooke, do you think that this is a good idea? Do you think this will bring clients in?” She probably doesn’t remember this conversation at all. But she said to me, “I don’t think that’s going to attract the kind of client you want because you’re not a parenting coach.”

I mean I end up coaching people about their kids. But I’m not really trying to draw in people that want specifically child development type tools. And that was just her quick – I’m pretty sure we were in between something casually when I asked her this. It was more as a friend. So, I was pretty excited about this funnel. I was excited about this idea. I felt confident that it was going to be a successful funnel. And Brooke just casually was like, “I don’t know if I’d do that if I were you.” Now, look at the thought work I have to go do.

I either have to abandon the idea or do thought work around it because the most important part of me getting that funnel to run successfully is my belief that it’s awesome and will help people because that will come through in the way I talk about it, in the way I write about it, in whether or not I share it, in what I say and my energy behind it, it will come through, I promise you. And so, me asking her that meant that I had to do more thought work to believe in the power of what I was offering. Do you see that? Good news is I was able to do that thought work.

And that was one of the most successful funnels, in fact my Facebook Ad team uses that funnel as an example a lot of times to teach people some of the components of a successful Facebook Ad funnel. Now, it doesn’t mean Brooke doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She doesn’t know my clients as well as I do. My clients are a version of me and Brooke is like me in some ways but not like me in other ways.

So, I don’t ask other people’s opinion very much, not because I don’t think that they have good advice, but because I know then I’m going to have to work on my belief system around what I’m doing. And that is the most important part you guys. There is no right thing to do. There is no wrong thing to do. The people that are successful as entrepreneurs are trying things. They’re taking guesses.

And instead of a friend, or a colleague, or a coach even telling me whether this is right or wrong, I want my clients to tell me. I want them to tell me if they get value out of it or not. And ultimately does it bring in the right customers? That’s how I’ll know. But that means I have to be willing to be wrong. So, I always call it a guess because a guess by definition might be right and it might be wrong. And it doesn’t have to mean anything about me and whether or not I’m going to be able to achieve my goals.

And it doesn’t have to mean anything about my business and whether or not it’s going to be successful. It was just a guess in the first place. It was an educated guess, meaning I learned a little bit about how to run a Facebook Ad. I learned a little bit about the types of things that tend to convert and different strategies. And I spent a little time learning but I spend way more time guessing than I spend in the educated space.

And I’ll tell you that the entrepreneurs I see that are successfully reaching their goals are spending more time guessing than they are educating themselves. When I say guessing, I mean creating work, putting it out there, seeing what happens, and then tweaking it if necessary. Some of you are spending a lot more time in the educated side than you are in the guess side. You’re taking another class, you’re reading another book, you’re getting a certification, you’re studying, you’re asking, you’re researching before you go put your guess out there.

Listen, if I thought you could research your way to the right answer, okay, I’ll be in. But I’ve yet to see that happen. I’ve only seen people be successful by guessing, and then guessing again, and then guessing again, and then guessing again until they get it right. And even then it’ll be right for a while and then you’ll have to start making new guesses again. This is why, like I said, a company like Amazon is still making educated guesses about what to do and what to try, and how to proceed.

So, listen, when we are educating ourselves, our brain believes we’re working on our goal. Our brain thinks that we’re progressing, I’m going to work on my business today. I’m going to go read a book. Don’t fool yourself. You’re not growing your business at all when you’re educating yourself.

So, I mentioned before that I used to work for the University of Phoenix. So, I had students sometimes, potential students I should say who wanted to be students, who would want to talk to me because I was an enrollment advisor. They would want to talk to me every month about the degree programs that we offered and about how financial aid worked, and funding options. And about what it was going to be like when they’re in school, and about how they were going to juggle it. And about what they were going to do once they had their degree, what it was going to offer to them.

We would talk every month. And every month they had a reason why they weren’t ready yet, it wasn’t the right time, things at work were too busy, things at home were too chaotic. The kids needed to get out of school. The kids needed to start school. It was the holidays. It was summer. There was always a reason why it wasn’t the right time. And they’d say, “Yeah, but I’m totally working on it.”

And I’d say to them, “Listen, I know you think that you’re working on getting your degree because you talk to me, because you have a counsellor. You probably go to parties and tell people, “Yeah, I’m going to go to the University of Phoenix. I’m going to get my degree, or I’m going to finish my degree.” But I want you to know the truth, because I love you, I’m going to tell you the truth. Until you step foot in a classroom and earn some credits you’re no closer to getting your degree. You’ve got to step foot in the classroom. You’ve got to earn some credits.”

And that’s what I want to tell you about your business. Yeah, I want you to take the shortcut of learning from people that have gone before you, that’s again, why I created a course. But in this course we are going to do work together. We’re not just going to sit back. Yes, I’ve created a whole bunch of amazing videos and modules. And I’m giving you behind the scenes of my business, all my best stuff, what worked for me. You’re going to get all of that which I’ll explain later when we get into the program.

But it’s not just for you to sit back and watch the Jody Moore show, I’m glad you want to watch that, that’s very nice of you. I’m personally really sick of my face and my voice. But some of you just want to watch that, great. But until you take a guess, until you make a decision about something you’re going to try and then you create it, and you put it out there, and you see what happens, you have not progressed towards the goals you will have as an entrepreneur.

So, are you with me so far? Businesses Minded framework, number one, create a 30 to 60 day goal. Number two, take an educated guess about how to achieve that goal. Next week we’re going to talk about the next step. Make sure you’re following along. Please share this episode if you’ve found it to be helpful. I’d love for you to share it with all of your entrepreneur friends. Alright, thanks, you guys. I’ll see you soon.

Thanks for joining me today. Don’t forget to sign up at jodymoore.com/business so you don’t miss out on any of the exciting things I have coming to help you achieve your business goals.