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SUMMARY
- This will be a mini masterclass on a decision-making framework that has been very valuable to me in my life and I want to share it with you. I’ll also be talking about why I decided to pause podcasting and why it’s now back on.
- Whether you’re a business owner or someone who’s trying to balance multiple things (e.g., job, side hustle, creative endeavor), this episode will help you know what to put first. This episode will be all about making the right decisions at the right time and knowing what to do next so you can get to where you want to go.
- We’ll be using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to help us with the decision-making process. There are four sets of needs that must be taken care of in a specific order before we can reach happiness or self-actualization.
- Need #1: Physiological
Making sure we have enough to eat, that we’re sleeping, and that we’re able to manage or prevent illness. - Example: You’re trying to decide between three different ways to earn an income: your job, a creative endeavor, and a freelancing business. The first decision you make should be to ensure your physiological needs are being taken care of. Ask yourself if your physiological needs are being threatened or made better by pursuing one of those three things.
- Book recommendation: Why We Sleep by Matthewr Walker
- Need #2: Safety
The easiest way for us to think about this is in terms of financial security. - Example: You have a job but you’d like to pursue an artistic endeavor and a side business. The first thing you should do is to not jeopardize or threaten your financial safety. Maybe there’s 10 things you want to do right now, but if you’re not financially secure, pursuing those other things will not give you the benefit you’re hoping for.
- Need #3: Love and Belonging
- Need #4: Esteem
Do I enjoy what I’m doing, and do I like who I’m doing it with? To get here, we first had to start with physiological and safety needs. A lot of people get it backwards. - Example: I build for you a machine that brings in daily phone calls of potential customers, but you only want to work one day a week. That’s a great goal, but by skipping over financial security, you continue to unnecessarily suffer the feelings of having one of your lower level needs unmet.
- It’s important to be able to objectively identify where you and your business are actually at in the hierarchy of needs. This is why I stopped podcasting. I love it, but my business had an operational issue; I had to step back from the higher level needs so I could fix the lower level needs.
- How to know what to do next:
Step 1. Figure out where you or your business are at on the hierarchy of needs. Get outside opinions if you can.
Step 2. Ask yourself, “Is this threatening any of my needs or is it making things better?”
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INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Hello, my friends. I hope that you are doing well. It has been a very long time since we have been together here on the podcast, I’m actually going to talk about why specifically we’re going to be talking about the decision I made to pause podcasting and the decision I have made recently to turn it back on and why I did that. This is going to be a mini master class on a decision making framework, which has been very valuable to me in my life. And I want to share it with you. Those of you who are noticing that the pandemic is. So if you’re a business owner that the pandemic is increasing both the volume of decisions that you have to make, and the complexity of the decisions that you have to make this episode will help you for those of you who are trying to balance multiple things.
Say, for example, you’re trying to balance a job. You’re trying to get your side hustle going, and you also have a creative endeavor going. This will help you to know what to put first, what to emphasize first, what to do second it’s it’s. This episode is all about making the right decision at the right time, knowing what to do next and prioritizing all of the choices that you have to make and all the things that you can and should be doing to get to where you want to go. Now, in order for us to talk about a framework that works, we need to, uh, have a quick lesson on motivational theory. In other words, how human beings, self motivate, um, how human beings operate, uh, so that we can establish ground rules for making decisions. Okay, so Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You’ve probably heard it many times.
Does it have its flaws? Absolutely. But as a general rule for how the human mind works, self-regulate self motivates. It’s a simple enough tool that we can use it fairly regularly, and it will provide for us a, a high likelihood of success when we apply it to our decisions. So specifically Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is simply a, uh, I mean, how he founded his, he used biographical assessment, which isn’t necessarily the most accurate, but essentially he deconstructed the set of needs that a human being must fulfill in the order that they must be fulfilled in. So that that human being can reach a, what he called self actualization or self fulfillment. Now let’s break this down. Most of the advertising, most of the political, most of the social media messaging that you receive on a daily basis is pointed towards self actualization. Now, what does that mean?
Okay, what the heck is this? What are we doing? Are we having a philosophy near? What, what, when, when somebody is trying to sell you a pill, for example, they use the picture of the young lady, probably in a swimsuit, uh, having the time of her life running in the beach, and then she has her summer dress on and she’s running through the field of whatever, and they’re showing you happiness, okay? But the pill doesn’t solve happiness. It solves a very physiological, the goal need, it solves a CA a biochemical reaction. It it’s something that is at the physical level level. And you know what they’re selling you is happiness politically. Uh, when somebody tells you that things ought to be this way, what they are selling, they’re selling you. What they’re asking you to buy into is the self actualization of an ideal. They’re selling you the best case scenario.
They’ll say they’re selling you another version of happiness, that this is the thing that will solve for your happiness marketing messages. It’s the same thing. The thing everybody is trying to sell you self-actualization fulfillment. Your highest level of, of being happy. All the webinars are by this program and you will be happy. You will achieve your highest level of et cetera, et cetera. Now inherently the idea of showing people how to become happy. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that idea. What causes problems, however, is that these commercials, these political arguments, these, uh, webinars and things, what they fail to, okay, what they failed to reveal is that there are a whole host of steps between where you are at now to actually being happy. And it’s not as easy as taking a pill, the pill will solve the physiological issue that’s going on, but you won’t necessarily be happy.
The course on the webinar might help you to develop a skill, but you can be quite miserable with a skill. The political idea might improve some aspect of something, but there’s still all of these other problems and et cetera, and et cetera. So a Maslow’s hierarchy of need does is it says, okay. Yes, self-actualization is great. And it’s something that we should aim for and we should go for it. And it is achievable. And many people have achieved it. They’ve lived their full purpose and et cetera, and et cetera. But there are a host of things that must be taken care of first before you can ever possibly hope to be happy. Now, why are we talking about this in the wall? We’re talking about choices and making decisions. It’s because if you believe that everything is one step away from self actualization, meaning from where you are, you just have to make one more right decision or from where you are, you just need one more thing and then you’ll be happy.
Then you’ll be self-actualized. Then you’ll be what you will be doing is essentially what a young child does when they look at a map. Okay? So the young child, you pull out the map, you say, we are here in Portland, and we’re going to go down to LA to go to Disneyland. And the young child says, Oh, wonderful. I see it on the map. It’s only three inches away. We can take a straight line, Portland to LA, we’ll be there before I even know it. But you, as the adult know that that’s not true. If you’re taking a plane, there’s a whole host of things you have to do. You’re going to have to wake the kids up. You’re going to have to pack. You’re going to have to get them in the car. You take the car to the, maybe you got to get a shuttle to take the shuttle to the airport. Then you got to do this. Then you’ve got to get on the plane anyway, on the plane. The plane goes like that. And then there’s this whole process. Then when you land the plane, then you gotta, so as the adult, you know, it’s not that simple. The child sees it. And they think it’s that simple. And the child is the one who feels disappointed when it isn’t that simple.
When you are making decisions, it is similar to becoming the adult for your own outcomes. Okay. Now, what I want to do now is described to you, like, if you were, let’s say to take a plane trip or, uh, or driver or whatever, and you were going from Portland to LA, there’s all those additional steps that must happen first before you can get to Disneyland. That is what Mazlow’s hierarchy of needs has already described for us, so that we can be the adult in the decision making process. And we can know what to do next by finding out where we are. So before we hit self-actualization Maslow’s hierarchy of need tells us there are four other sets of needs. That must be, uh, essentially, uh, taken care of before we can reach happiness. And there’s a specific order that these needs go in. Okay. So I’ll tell you what the needs are. And then we’ll run you through some examples, and then we’ll talk about the framework. So the four needs are the first need that must be taken care of before you can progress to any of the other things. So the first thing we gotta do or sin, we’re gonna, we first, we gotta pack our bags right before we take this trip to Disneyland for us as decision makers, the first thing we have to decide, the first thing that must be taken care of the first need. That must be satiated is physiological.
So for example, that is making sure we have enough to eat, making sure that we are sleeping, making sure that we are, uh, if we are ill, that we are able to manage that illness. If we are, uh, uh, to prevent future illness or injury, et cetera. Now, I hope that you are thinking about this in terms of decision making for yourself, because what a lot of people do, especially business owners, is they look externally for the thing that will make them happy. So let’s say you’re trying to decide between three different ways to make income. You’re deciding between your job. You’re deciding between a creative endeavor and you’re deciding between let’s say a freelancing business. Okay. How do you know which one of those to pursue first? Well, the first decision that you make isn’t which of those do I start first? It’s first to check in and make sure that physiologically those needs are being taken care of. It also means that you need to look at those three things and ask yourself, are my physiological needs threatened or made better by pursuing one of those three things. Let me give you another example.
If you have a business and you’re distracted and pulled in all these different ways, because there’s so many bright, shiny to pursue in your business, and this is common with business owners, I’m going to tell it to you. And you’re probably gonna to like that doesn’t make any sense. A lot of business owners get so distracted with running the business and doing all these funds side things that pretty soon the business isn’t making any more money physiologically speaking. If the business is a living thing, not making money is the same thing as not having any food. It’s the money is the life force that keeps a business alive. So physiologically speaking, if you’re thinking about, should I join this mastermind? Should I try this thing? Should I do that thing? Should I go on a vacation? Should I, well, first you need to take care of the physiological need of your business.
And you need to focus on that part of your business until it is consistently being met. Meaning that need is consistently being met for 90% of the people who run businesses. They’re worried about self-actualization, they’re worried about this like pie in the sky thing of, you know, whatever their big dreams are. And they’ve completely ignored. Sales is completely ignored, bringing in cash. They’ve completely ignored. Being able to deliver on the promises that they have made to people. So this, hopefully this is starting to turn some light bulbs on for you. And that you’re like, Oh, okay, I’m starting to see now that there actually is an order by which a good decision can be made, especially for businesses, right? Do you need to rebrand your logo? If you aren’t even making sales, do you need to worry about taking, like, how are you going to take Friday off every week if your business isn’t even making sales?
Well, no, you first need to take care of that base. Physiological need. Now, if you don’t have a business yet, and you’re sort of starting one and you’re getting it going on the, on the side, you have to think about, if I go this way, will it threaten the physiological needs of mine that are currently being taken care of by this job? And you can use that to frame your decision making, but there’s even a third way to consider this knowing that your physiological needs are the base core, most important. They’re the first thing that must be taken care of in order for you to progress to the next step and reach happiness. If you are currently, whether they’re business owner or not in a position in your life or your physiological needs yeah. Are not being met than it is now. Wonder that everything else is incredibly difficult.
And specifically, I’m talking about two things. Oh, really? Three. I guess you could say, I guess one, are you being, are you hydrated? Okay. I can’t tell you how many people would just feel so much better if they just drank more water. Okay. Put away the sugary drinks, drink more water too. Are you putting fuel? Yeah. In your body, are you putting garbage in your body? Again, people would, they would see tremendous benefits and energy and motivation and all the things that they’re trying to find tricks for. If they just took care of the physiological aspect, the thing that will actually solve the problem before trying to again, go for self-actualization in one big step. And the third is sleep, sleep, sleep asleep, really good book by Matt Walker. I highly recommend why we sleep. If you read that book, um, you also have some really good interviews on YouTube.
Read that book, watch his interviews, learn more about the power of sleep, and you will see why probably the things you were pursuing that you thought would make you happy. Uh, aren’t really the things that will make you happy. And that in fact, it could be as simple as fixing your sleep, getting the professional help to have better sleep. Now I’m not coming to you as some person who’s always slept well. I, uh, the way I was raised, um, we can skip that part for now, but there was just stuff that happened when I was a kid where sleeping became very, very difficult. And then I became a firefighter. And then I became a chef, which was just really all weird, odd hours, long shifts. And I worked night shifts for a company and [inaudible] et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, sleep has been something I’ve struggled with.
Uh, always. And so I am coming to you as a fellow person who can tell you that there is a big difference between sleeping and not sleeping, like a huge difference. Okay. So physiological needs first. So whatever you’re looking at, whatever decision you have to make first, you have to address the physiological need. Does it improve or does it threaten my physiological? Cause I am a human being. Those needs are real. If those needs aren’t being met, no matter what I do, I will either fail or I will succeed and be unbelievably unhappy. Maybe even made worse than I am now. Okay. Physiological needs. Next is safety needs. So this is for example, the, uh, I think the, the easiest way for us to think about it in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the safety needs is financial. We don’t have to talk about many of the other feelings of safety, um, because they’re very complex, but also we’re all here talking about business.
And so let’s talk about the thing that would make many of us feel safe. And I would imagine many of my listeners here don’t feel financially safe, especially not now during the Corona virus and the pandemic. So for those of you who have felt a shift in your own internal, happiness and anxiety and et cetera, it’s probably because your sense of financial security has been threatened. So again, we go back to Maslow’s hierarchy of need. Is this need of mine being made better? Or is it being threatened by whatever decision I make here, but whatever’s going on around me. So now let’s think about this in terms of a decision,
Let’s say that you have a job and let’s say that you have an artistic thing that you want to pursue. And let’s say that you have a, a side business that you’d like to pursue as well. And you say, what should I do? Well, first don’t jeopardize or threaten your financial safety. That’s step number one, being in this business of coaching and helping people to grow and start their own businesses has been very interesting for me because a lot of people will make purchases that they, uh, that, that threatens their they’ll make purchases and decisions that threaten their financial stability. In other words, their ability to feel safe financially, and then they will freak out.
Well, it’s no wonder it’s not a surprise. There’s nothing new or shocking or unique about that. That’s how human beings work. Now, the adult, remember back to our, um, example of, uh, of taking a plane trip to Disneyland. The child stays up all night. The night before forgets their snacks at home is on the plane, hits a little bit of turbulence and start screaming and crying. And just as flat doesn’t feel good and it feels horrible and can’t make any decision whatsoever. And you know, and it’s a mess. The adult in that situation says, well, of course the child feels horrible. They didn’t sleep. They didn’t bring their snacks. There’s some turbulence. They may not feel very safe right now. And that’s the difference. Understanding Maslow’s hierarchy of need can make you an adult for yourself so that you can self regulate, uh, because the child is not really helping anyone when they’re in that state, when they’re freaking out, they’re certainly not helping themselves.
So when you’re looking at what should I do, what should I focus on? Well, focus on the thing that makes you financially secure. Again, we go back to the business owner. Yeah. Maybe there’s 10 things you want to do right now, other than getting on the phone and closing sales. But if your financial security is threatened, those pursuing those other things will not give you the benefit that you are hoping they will give you. So for example, a lot of people ask me, okay, I’ve got this business going, how do I find time to be creative?
Meaning how do I pursue a side project? And my answer is step one, you work on the thing. That’s paying your bills until a point where ignoring it would not threaten it. In other words, building your business, creating systems, getting a virtual assistant, getting yourself there, financially referrals, whatever you gotta do to build your business to a point where ignoring it, because that’s what you will do by pursuing a side project. So ignoring it for however many hours a week will not threaten your financial stability because the second that your financial stability is threatened, what do you think is going to happen? That creative endeavor, it’s going to feel miserable, not fun. It will make you angry. It will make you confused. It will feel the thing that you wanted to pursue for fun. And you loved will turn into something horrible because now it’s a distraction. Now it’s actually contributing to threatening your safety needs.
So what should you do? You should focus on the thing that’s currently taking care of you financially strengthening it so that it never feels like you’re being threatened by it. And then you can pursue the other stuff. Now I’m not talking about work on it for years. In most cases, it’s just a few simple tweaks might take a couple of weeks, couple of months, but being able to make the right decision to protect your need for safety. In our case, financial security is the adult thing to do and is what will actually allow you to then pursue those other things. So let’s say you have a job you’re thinking about starting a freelancing thing. And you’re thinking about doing something like writing fiction. What should you do? Well, it depends and depends specifically on this.
You can’t inherit more financial risk without feeling that all kind of come apart. Right? In other words, don’t try to do fiction and a freelancing business while ignoring your job. The job is what’s paying you right now. Now, if you’re feeling like I might get fired from my job very soon, cause the pandemic or I’m, you know, maybe I was a commissioned sales person and nobody’s, you know, maybe I’m been real estate commission. Sales is no good. Well then go for the thing that you are going to do to replace what is now the threatened financial security and focus on just that. And you might say, well, Mike, so does that mean I should do a freelancing business? Well, it depends. What can you afford in terms of the threat levels to your finances? Let me give you an example. Let’s say that you do have a job it’s being threatened.
So you’re feeling unsafe, which is motivating you to start something new. You could start a freelancing business or a side business or whatever it is that you want to do. Um, and here’s some things we know about freelancing. You can get clients relatively quickly. They typically pay upfront or at least half upfront, which means the day you close the deal, you can make money. You can set a rate in which you get paid for whatever it is you’re doing. In other words, it’s not speculative in nature. You say, look, I charge $150 an hour. You know, when you get work, that’s exactly how much you’re going to get paid. So on paper that seems financially a little bit more secure than this, for example, fiction, all right, we’ll have is a fiction fiction. You could write 50,000 words, which will likely take you more than a month.
If you have something else that’s in the way that one book is certainly not going to sell a ton of copies. And even if it did one, you can’t predict how much it will make you back cause it’s different. And it just depends on how it lands in the market. So you can’t predict exactly how much you’re earning for that particular thing. And number two is you don’t get paid until 60 days after it sells. So the sales I make today, I won’t get paid for 60 days from now. And so in this decision making process, what are we doing? We are breaking down objectively the mechanics of the thing we’re trying to make a decision about. And then we are relating it to Maslow’s hierarchy of need and checking to make sure that we’re not just making rash decisions. So in this case, if your job was being threatened, so that’s that need to take care of your financial security. My recommendation would be to start a freelancing business or get another job, right? If that’s, if that’s an option, then you prefer to do that because Maslow’s hierarchy of need. If you’re pursuing fiction, because it, you just think it would make you so happy under these circumstances. Guess what? It will not because the lower set of need in our case, the safety need of financial security is there’s a very high risk that it’s not going to work out in the way you think it’s going to work out.
Now, does that mean that fiction is always the wrong answer. Of course not. If your job is all ready, satisfying your need for financial stability. Now you may not be as, as you want to be, but your bills get paid every month. Then the things I said earlier about it takes 60 days to get paid. You could write a book and you’re not going to get paid the same. It’s going to take a couple of books, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc. Those don’t matter because why, because those aren’t relevant to that need that need has already been satisfied by the fact that your job has kept you financially safe. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about financial freedom. Okay? Financial freedom is a self actualization.
It’s higher up on Maslow’s hierarchy of need. Having all your bills paid, knowing you’re going to be able to pay rent, pay your mortgage, put food in your belly, put food in the belly of the people that you love, that changes the, it really changes your ability to make decisions. So we go back to the business owner. What decisions did you make in your business right now? It depends on what your financial safety needs are and whether or not they’re being threatened or they’re being met. That’s the deciding factor. Okay? That is where you can steer your ability to make decisions. And then you can analyze whatever it is. You’re trying to decide about as to whether or not that’s the next right move. So you think, gosh, should I join this $50,000 a year mastermind where we’re going to talk about how to like achieve our blah, blah, blah, or you know how to be a better leader or how to do the dah dah, dah. It depends.
Are you making enough from your business right now? And if the answer is no, well then that’s probably where you should start before you get too worried about self actualization. And it’s not, I’m not coming at this of like, you must be a pragmatist. What I’m saying is that self actualization is impossible when your financial safety is threatened and you don’t even have to take my word for it. Just look at your own life. Right? How many times have you been, like, I feel super fulfilled when the bill collector is calling you 10 times a day.
I mean, unless you’re just completely detached from reality, in which case anything can be self-actualized self-actualizing right. And that’s a whole nother conversation for another time. Um, but again, it’s, you know, not everybody, uh, this stuff isn’t for everybody. Let me just put it that way. Okay. Next we have love and belonging and esteem. Now this, honestly, this is for me, tell me where you start to get into, do I enjoy what I’m doing and do I like who I’m doing it with? Okay. Cause we’re, we’re using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and in a business sense. Okay. So do I love my, the people that I’m working with? Do I enjoy these customers and clients? Should I change who these customer and clients are? Do I like what I’m doing right now? Do I like how it makes me feel? Do I like how I am operating in this business?
Do I want to work less? Do I want to focus on something else in my business? Okay. These are the decisions that you make at this point. Okay. But you’ll notice that to get here. We first had to start with physiological then safety. Now we can worry about all that other stuff. A lot of people get it backwards. They say this business must do X, Y, Z, and I’m just going to go. I’m going to go straight there. And then they’re freaking out because they’re not making the money. They thought they were going to make.
Um, you know, uh, I won’t name any names. I think about, for example, um, I’m working with someone a couple. Someone’s where the desire to run their business a certain way is causing them an incredible amount of stress because financially the business, isn’t where they want it to be. Even though I have paid for them, the mechanism that will solve the financial needs need. If they want, just let go a little bit on this higher need to solve the financial need. Then we could revisit the higher need. Okay. I’ll make up an example. Now that’s not has anything to do with anybody specific. Let’s say that I build for you a machine, which brings in a phone calls every single day of people who want to buy your stuff, but you only want to work one day a week. Okay? That’s your goal. It’s a beautiful goal.
It’s a wonderful goal. I love it. That’s a great goal. And you have made that decision, but the problem is that you skipped over financial security, meaning you just went straight to I’m working one day a week and I don’t care what anyone says. And so there’s this mechanism in your business, which is there’s a mechanism in your business, which is able to solve the financial insecurity that you feel. But because you’re stuck so much on this desire to work only one day a week, you continue to unnecessarily suffer the feelings of having one of your lower level needs unmet. And here in lies, one of the major problems of having one of your lower level needs unmet, those are significantly more powerfully felt than having one of your higher level needs unmet. Okay. Significantly worse to have a meaning in scope of consequence, but also just what it feels like.
So for example, um, many people can tolerate working at a job. They hate because the job pays the bills. Right? Very few people are able to tolerate starving for very long because they don’t have a job that pays the bills and you know, things like that. So let me give you another example. Okay. So this is a common example that I use because it, um, well, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. It’s interesting to me, the human, the way the human mind works in the first world. Uh, so many of, you know, I lived overseas in, in several places for several years in third world countries. And so my take on the first world is just, um, I don’t know. Some of it is very confusing to me. Let me give you an example.
Cold email will fix most, let’s say six figure business problems financially speaking, right? So if you make about 10 to $20,000 a month in your business, whatever is it, whatever it is that you sell, if you were to have a financially risky or maybe your financial situation was being threatened, I mean, a client’s left or something you could solve that problem very quickly by sending some cold emails, uh, selling a high value service to strangers, like very like within a week or two, the problem is problem is this. The problem is that individuals are often so focused on higher level needs that they will sacrifice lower level needs and then wonder why they feel miserable. So for example, in the cold email, they’ll say, Ugh, I don’t like how it makes me feel to send a cold email or I don’t like cold emailing on general principle, or I don’t want to be embarrassed by someone rejecting me or I don’t, I can’t focus on sending 30 cold emails right now because it’s boring, right? And yet financially lower level hierarchy of needs. Their financial sense of security is threatened.
This is the importance of being able to objectively identify within yourself where you are actually at in the hierarchy of needs. And you can take it a step further and ask yourself in the hierarchy of needs. Whereas my business at, and this is why I stopped podcasting. I love podcasting. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love making this stuff for you guys. I love making videos. I love doing all that. It’s why I got into this business. I love teaching. I love sharing. It’s wonderful. However, my business had a very serious problem.
It wasn’t our financial security or stability. That was the problem. At the time it was an opera. It was the safety of our operations. Meaning, um, operationally speaking, we had a situation with team that I had to step back from the higher level need, which for me was fulfillment within the no pants project. In other words, I was focusing because our lower level, these are physiological mean our sales were strong. Our safety nets were there. We had plenty of money in the bank. There was lots of great things going on. It was amazing. And then we try this new thing and we brought a bunch more team on which increased our costs and also increase our complexity. And so I had to step back from the higher level of, you know, self-actualization within the business that I could focus on fixing the lower level needs.
Now the lower level needs are fixed and being fixed and on their way to getting fixed to where we’re no longer in the state of threat operationally. So now back to podcasting, we’re even going to do YouTube videos now, but that’s an example of this decision making process, uh, at play. Now you guys have to know, I hate operations. I sincerely despise management. Um, I don’t like I don’t like creating SLPs and systems. I don’t like having to like find out that someone we hired isn’t actually qualified and that maybe they were allying. And like, I don’t like any of that, all of that stuff. And like having to babysit people who shouldn’t have been on the team in the front, none. I don’t like any of that. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. But what’s worse is pretending that everything’s fine focusing on the self actualization piece.
Cause that’s where we all want to get to turning a blind eye to a threat at a lower level need. How does a, you know, more, a foundational need in the business and then waking up six months later in the business being completely destroyed, that is significantly worse. And I have to on this podcast, give a shout out to the clockwork team. Um, and Emily and Adrian over there at the clockwork team, they were the ones who pulled me out of that funk. They were the ones, uh, along with our director of operations here, um, Kaylee who were like, no, we need to solve this now.
And that’s, you know, that’s a little side note, uh, when you are making decisions, it’s great to have people to help, help you to see objectively where you are actually at in the hierarchy. That can be very helpful as well. So that’s it. My friends, I would say this episode might be a little bit cerebral, just, I’m not saying like I’m not meaning that of like, it sounded smart. What I mean is this might seem super, um, theory based, meaning yeah, but what’s the actual Mike, what will, this is the step by step, step one, figure out where you or your business are at on the hierarchy of needs. Be objective, get outside opinion. If you can be objective about where you’re actually are at and then ask for whatever you’re trying to decide, is this threatening any of my needs or is it helping me to solve the needs?
Is it, is it making things better? Uh, the work that we’ve done in the no pants project has made my operational needs. Um, I mean the team we have now is incredible, incredible. Once we made some adjustments, once we sorted the systems, once we pushed through some pretty rough times, um, the, the team now is, is, is 10. X-ing the results, uh, that we ever were getting before. I mean, it’s, it’s incredible what will happen now for me in my mind that need is no longer threatened. So he can move to the next thing, which is getting the podcast, going again and getting YouTube, going again and et cetera, raising our price and doing new cold stuff and being like cold audiences and all the, all the next stuff that we’ve kind of thought that would be nice to do. But first we need to deal with this.
So hopefully this has been helpful. I know many of you right now during the pandemic are probably facing some similar situation where there’s something that you know, is, uh, probably threatening one of your lower level needs or more foundational needs. So physiological safety, um, and you may have been procrastinating, uh, PR you’ve may have been procrastinating dealing with those issues because they’re uncomfortable issues to deal with. And instead you’ve been focusing on higher level needs because those are more fun, but I can tell you, they will stop being fun very quickly. The longer you wait to address those more base level needs. So for those of you, okay, and give some exact examples for those of you who are kind of like, well, I want to do my creative stuff, but my business isn’t doing as well as I thought it should. I would say, fix your business or those of you who are in a job and the job is fine and you want to do a creative or you don’t know what to do.
The da will go, go. If you, if, if it’s fine, if it’s financially fine, it’s not being threatened, then great move on to the next level, go to your next thing. If it is being threatened well, address that and address it with the option. That makes the most sense for specifically addressing that need, right. Because if you say, yeah, but what I really want to do is write fiction with my life. Okay. Um, that’s amazing. That’s great. Self-actualization but it’s going to be very difficult to do. If in two months you’re fired from your job and there’s a, you won’t be working on fiction in two months, spend those two months getting business, which allows you to work on fiction. That’s what I would recommend. Um, that’s what I would, that’s what I would do. Okay. Anyways, that’s it. My friends has been the first podcast back in a while.
Hopefully it wasn’t too mumble jumble. We’ll get back into the groove of things. I’ll get better at podcasting. Again, I feel a little bit rusty for those of you though, who want help and want that sort of objective. Um, you know, that, that, that you want that outside look or more specifically for those of you who are looking for that map, um, meaning do this first, get this solid, then do this next, get that solid, then do this next and get that solid. If you’re looking for a plan like that for yourself, for your business. Um, there’s a link in the description somewhere here in the podcast that takes you to a training where I show you how I basically followed the same framework, decision making framework to take what was a hundred thousand dollar a year freelancing business, and turn it into a a hundred thousand dollar per month scaled com business, which we’re now, I mean, we’ve blown past a hundred thousand dollars a month quite some time ago, but I’ll show you how I did that in about two and a half months.
Okay. The process, the steps that you need to go through in order to get there again, um, there’s a link somewhere, depending on where you’re listening to this podcast, uh, click that link. You can watch the video. Um, and then if you’d like our help as a team, just book a call, we’ll have a quick chat, C, C we’ll, we’ll help you to analyze where you are in this process. And, uh, and we’ll have a call and we’ll see if we can help you with some other stuff you got done for you, options, coaching options, all sorts of different options. All right. So that’s it. Hopefully this has been helpful and I’ll talk to you later.
