How to decide where to put your energy | GB72

In this episode, we’re talking about decision-making. Specifically, how do you decide where to put your energy around self-promotion when resources feel limited and it feels like you need to be everywhere all at once?

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Good Business is hosted by Illana Burk, CEO of Illana Burk Consulting llc and strategic coach and advisor to entrepreneurs, creative leaders, and industry disruptors the world over.

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0:41

Welcome back to the Good Business Podcast. I'm your host, Illana Burk. And today, we're talking about decision making. Specifically, how do you decide where to put your energy around self promotion when resources feel really limited and it feels like you need to be everywhere all at once? Like, how do you decide? When this, increasing pressure to kind of show up in all the places and everybody has a new opinion of, like, what's the hot new thing, and where does everyone, everyone's over here now, and no, everyone's over here now, and you're missing out if you don't do this one and that one, right? We all experience that to some degree or another. So we're talking about both, promotional opportunities and also, content engines. You know, where are you going to put your ideas? Because those two things are starting to, like, really bleed together in a pretty significant way. So, a few days ago, I published a post on Facebook, um, about my experiences after three months on TikTok. As I've mentioned before, I'm kind of starting this TikTok experiment. So for me, it was just like an off the cuff recap of what I've learned so far, but the response was really surprising. It caught me really off guard. A whole bunch of people commented and a whole bunch of people reached out in appreciation of the post, in curiosity, and they just had this, like, really, heartfelt response that I just, like, Honestly, I wasn't expecting from just like a these are things I've noticed on TikTok and these are my thing, the things that I'm thinking. But apparently it was really illuminating to a lot of people that have wondered about TikTok. Um, one of the people that reached out was, uh, a friend of mine, an internet buddy who I've known for like over a decade. And I really, she's somebody I really, really respect. She's inquisitive, and really intelligent, and a really humble leader, and somebody who has been published in some really prestigious, amazing places, well earned, and she's just somebody I'm consistently really impressed by, which, as most of you know, is, uh, a pretty high bar for me, when it comes to folks on the internet. So that gives you a little context. So my post about TikTok, uh, expressed some overall cynicism and disappointment with the platform overall. Like I just sort of expected more from it and was not, you know, I just, it was like, wow, this is kind of, shitty overall, really. And I'm not sure if I want to stay, and I'm not sure if I want to devote my attention here, and I'm not sure if I want to put my energy here. So there was a little bit of that, and also some recognition of just, like, it's only been three months, I'm not exactly sure how it's going to shake out, and also I'm kind of having a bit of fun with it, you know? It's been sort of interesting. I surprised myself with how much I enjoy doing video. So, my friend asked me a bunch of really excellent questions to follow up, and among them, she asked what my filter was for deciding where I put my promotional energy, before she listed off hers. And I started thinking about it, and I realized, like, I sort of froze when she asked me, which that in and of itself surprised me, because it's something that I teach a lot, right? How to develop filters around decision making, it's something I do. Number one on her list, though, was, is it fun? And it hit me really hard. Because I realized that my number one used to be the same thing. It used to be, is it fun? And It kinda hasn't been for a long time, and I don't think I even really noticed when it stopped being that. My relationship with that idea went all the way back to a keynote talk that I saw years and years ago, I mean we're talking like 20 years ago, with Bill McDonough. And it was at a huge sustainability conference in the Bay Area. And Bill was like, he was one of the writers of Cradle to Cradle, which is one of my favorite sustainability books. And he's just a leader and a teacher in the world of sustainable commerce. Like he, he's done huge projects and his talk was all about his super impressive projects with Ford Motor Company and China, like the country, hired him to help them be more sustainable. So that's kind of the level this guy plays in, right? And he's a man who even 20 years ago had already made a career out of being really keenly aware of just how finite our time on this planet actually is. But what struck me about his talk, and the relevance here, is about a joke he cracked at the very beginning. So, he comes out on stage, kind of doing the like, the lumbering, of the professional speaker who does lots of talks like this. He's kind of just like, lumbering on stage, looking a little jet lagged, and, you know, getting his notes together, barely even looking up at the audience, because he just struck me as somebody who does this a lot, right? And what I can only assume, he starts with this opener, that like, it, it, I assume that it was his standard talk opener, right? It struck me that way. It was, it felt well rehearsed, but sort of rehearsed, spontaneous. You guys know what I'm talking about? And he talked about how his secretary tells all new people who show up at his office for meetings, a a bit of a word of caution before they go into meet with him. She tells them, if Bill just gets up and leaves, he's not coming back. He left because he's decided that he isn't having any fun, and has gone to go find something that he'll have more fun doing. And everybody kind of chuckles a little bit, you know, and then somebody in the audience, like way in the back, yells, Whoopee! And everyone starts cracking up, and then the audience member, you know, everybody kind of looks back to see who said it, and the audience member yells back, just trying to keep Bill interested so he doesn't wander off. And everybody laughed more. And Bill laughed, and it cracked this, like, speaker facade, you know? And his demeanor totally changed. His talk went from, like, cool but maybe a little canned, you know, starting with, like, stories that he probably told other places, you know, to being, like, really spontaneous and inspiring. He ignored his slides. He stopped even bothering looking at them. His welcome slide stayed up for the whole thing. And he came out from behind the podium and delivered this, like, really funny, This is a really fun, innovative, interesting talk. And he told stories about his experiences doing these really amazing projects. Rather than it just being kind of this braggy, like, Look at this slide of this! Before and after. Look at this slide of this, you know. So, 20 years later, I am still telling that story for the umpteenth time. I may have even told it on other episodes of the show, so stop me, I guess, if you've heard this one. But the point is that fun really matters. It really changes everyone's experience. It changes the person delivering its experience. It changes your audience's experience. It changes everything. Somewhere along the way, I had admittedly had kind of forgotten that. A lot of people forget that along the way. I think the longer that you're in business, the longer you're pushing to create something and accomplish something, the more by the wayside that stuff tends to fall. Like, in the hustle and the relentlessness of marketing and self promotion, decision making about what we do and where we do it can become like a product of calculation and need and chasing a desired outcome rather than chasing The experience as human beings that we want to have as part of our work, right? As active participants in our work. And fun can get, like, really lost in all of that. Which is why we need these kinds of compasses. We need a filter to help us decide what works for us and what doesn't. And fun might not even be on your list. I'm not even, this isn't about, like, you should have more fun. That could be a whole other episode on somebody else's show. But like, that's not really the point. The point is that, like, whatever's on your list. Can start to fall away if you don't continuously pay attention to it. And that's more the point here. Decision making can be based on all kinds of things, right? It can be based on values and desires and experience and legacy and all kinds of other stuff, right? And depending on what area of your life you're making decisions for, the influencing factors might be really different. My work as a coach and consultant, creating decision making filters is, like, one of my core functions with clients. Once I have taught it well, clients stop needing me, and that's actually always my goal, is to get them to a place where they have well developed filters and a well developed foundation so that they can make really good decisions without needing to talk to me a couple times a month or once a month, right? They start hearing that voice in their head, and they have their own measures for discernment. So, when that's my measure of success, You know, I'm pretty good at this, right? Like, I want people to make rock solid, well aligned decisions so that they don't just grow, but grow in ways that are really right for them. And since the bulk of good leadership is based on sound decision making, getting good at this is, like, really, really important. But it's a soft skill that nobody really knows that they don't have, or that they need. Most of us just sort of assume we know how to make good decisions, but that's not really the case. It's a skill like anything else. I mean, how many times have you been like, I don't know if I should do this or this, and you have absolutely no idea how to decide, right? So we do things like pros and cons lists and stuff that doesn't usually help anybody make any kind of decision because if you, you know, you already know the pros and cons. So like, That doesn't actually help you weigh anything. So you have to understand, like, what you're actually trying to achieve so you know if you're on the right path. So that's why these filters are so critical. So you would think, knowing all of this and teaching this on literally a daily basis and writing tons of courses and materials about it, that I would have this down, right? for myself. And I am good at it for myself, but I'm also just as susceptible to losing the thread on what's most important to me as anyone else's. You know, I can get just as caught up in my work and forget to look at those notes in my journal and forget to pay attention to those things or even actively dismiss them because I'm like, nope, I don't want that anymore. I'm not going to even listen to that little voice in my head. I'm just going to barrel forward because I have the shoulds get louder than the don'ts. The deep knowing and wisdom, right? I think we all are susceptible to that, and recognizing that I am just as guilty. Guilty? That's not really the word. Right word. Susceptible is probably the right word. Like, as anybody else, you know, even though I teach it, even though I know this stuff backwards and forwards, because after all, circumstances change. Needs change. Business changes. Life changes. And it means filters need to change along the way too, but usually what we do instead of changing our filters, or really deeply adapting them to our current conditions, is we just start ignoring them because they don't feel relevant anymore. So it's something that we have to make a proactive practice that happens on a regular basis. You know, I actually have it in my calendar now to like, hey, I need to go through some of my decision making filters and see what's still true. So like, I probably do it once or twice a year. You know? And it's something that, like, it is really helpful to kind of just ask yourself, is this still true? Does this still hold water? And are the things that I'm doing lining up with this or not? So that you can make better decisions, right? So the key is to get really proactive about recognizing the need for updates before the responses to changing stimuli become reactions that aren't based on anything but emotional impulse. That's the kicker, right? That's why you put it in your calendar. So here's my refreshed list that I want to share with everybody after my friend's question. I really looked hard at this, and these are the questions that I ask myself when I'm evaluating a new place to put my attention or energy. The first will not come as a shock. It is, is it fun? The second, does it feel worth sacrificing time with my kid for? If that's, that's Probably the most important one, honestly. Does it offer the opportunity to lead or participate in interesting, juicy conversations that I genuinely enjoy and that feel interesting and innovative in some way that aren't just the same conversations being rehashed in a new way? And do I look forward to spending time with the people who are there? If there's a there there, like if that's relevant. Do I like the ecosystem is essentially that, right? So if I answer no to any of those questions, then the answer to whether or not I'm going to pursue that is just no. Full stop. Right? Because we get what we choose, right? We get what we put our attention towards. We get what we What we make choices about. So this is a way of making conscious choices about what we pursue and what we don't in a way that works for us. And, and like almost accidentally puts your priorities in line. So what does your opportunity filter look like? Do you know? If you don't, this is your cue. It's time to think about it. All right, everybody, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a ball. I hope to see you all again soon. Have a great week. Bye.