Ep 124 Transcript: The 3 Gut Check Questions to Ask Before Changing Your Business Direction

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (01:50.846)

The Real Women Real Business Podcast. I'm your host, Shauna Lynn Simon. And today's episode, this came straight out of a recent group coaching call that I had inside the Real Women Real Business Mastery Program. And I knew immediately that I needed to make this into an episode. Because if you weren't in that conversation, you are missing out on some real clarity that we discussed as a group. Because what came up in that conversation is something that I see time and time again with women, especially in

business. And one thing I want to say is that women, we have the sixth sense. We have a level of intuition that is immeasurable. And it's something that has actually been documented over the years, that it is actually something that women are really, really good at being intuitive about things. The challenges that I find in women in business sometimes we're not doing enough gut checks. And so this actually brings us to what today's episode we're going to covering is

how to do those intentional gut checks when certain things are pulling you in a bit of a different direction. So let me set the scene a little bit for you. So one of the women in the group, she's a service-based business owner. She's been building her business for a few years now. And she came to the call with what seemed like a pretty straightforward question about marketing and updating her website. But as we dug into her question, it actually became clear that there was something bigger that was happening. The work that she'd originally

Planned to have as the core of her business, that had actually gone kind of quiet on her. And a completely different type of work that was, I shouldn't say completely different. It was related still, but it was still very different. It wasn't necessarily where she had intended to be. It wasn't what she had set out to do. That had started coming to her pretty consistently. It was paying her really well. And honestly, she was kind of loving it. So her question really was: should I be leaning into this? Should I start marketing it more intentionally?

Now, before we talk about websites or marketing for even one second, I stopped and I asked her a very different question. And that is what today's episode is all about because her situation is not unique. I hear versions of this story constantly from women in the program, from different clients that I've worked with, from women who listen to this podcast. You start with a vision, and then the market starts to give you some feedback, life

Shauna Lynn Simon (04:14.99)

happens and you find yourself doing something that you didn't quite plan for. And I myself have found myself being pulled into a direction that sometimes you didn't even realize was an opportunity that existed, was an option for you. And so we're going to walk through in this episode the three-part gut check that I use with my clients so you can figure out whether a demand driven shift is a smart pivot or a slow drift away from the business you actually want to build.

All right, so let's dive in. So let's take things back to the beginning. So when you're in the early years of your business, you know, the first one to five years, especially the first one to three years, I would say, you genuinely don't know what you don't know. You start with an overall vision of your business. And that vision is based on what you think the market wants, what you think you'd love to do, and what you think would work. But it's a lot of theory, right? Until you get into actual practice. So

A lot of people have told me, you know, in the first, especially first few months of building the business, that they were overwhelmed by the number of decisions that they were making and how many times they were finding themselves being pulled in different directions. Because reality has a way of revealing new information, a type of client that you never considered targeting all of a sudden starts hiring you, or a niche that you didn't consider starts really showing up for you. Something that you thought would be your main revenue stream, like in this situation, goes quiet.

Well, something that you are doing on the side starts to really take off. And this all happens all the time with my clients. And that's actually one of the things that tends to bring them to me is that they started one way and the market has given them some feedback, sometimes really loudly. And that feedback has value because market signals really do matter. But here's what I really want to stress in today's episode: that is that there is a difference between responding to the market and being led

by the market. Okay. There's a difference between responding to the market and being led by the market. One is strategic, the other one is more reactive. And from the outside, they can look exactly the same. And one of the things that I often find with clients is that when this happens, when they end up reacting to the market, when they end up being led by the market, they find themselves in a position where they're not enjoying the work as much. They're losing some of the passion. They're saying, like, this isn't what I set out to do.

Shauna Lynn Simon (06:39.81)

And they can't quite put their finger on why this business that they've poured so much into doesn't seem to fit them anymore, doesn't seem to feel right. And when we dig into things, oftentimes this is one of the big things that we find is that you had this vision, and maybe you're doing something that's really, really close to the vision, but you lost the real point of that vision in the first place. And you've been pulled so far away from it that you can barely even recognize it in your business. And that can definitely be a challenge. But

Like I said, this one client, you know, she came to the call. It's not always a bad thing where you're getting pulled in a different direction. So she came to the call about how her business was originally around one specific type of work and one specific type of client. She'd invested time, money, and energy into that model, but the traction just wasn't there anymore. And it's not to say that it's not still bringing in some clients, but she's, you know, the fizzle's kind of gone in terms of that passion.

Kind of fizzled out a little bit. And again, it's not bringing in the revenue that she really wanted. Meanwhile, a different type of work had started coming to her relatively organically. A different kind of client had found her. And that work was consistent, it was pain. And every time she did it, she felt energized. So she was starting to think, you know, maybe I should really lean into this. Maybe this is where I should be putting my effort. And before we even touch the practical question that she brought to the call, which was, how do I update my website and my marketing to better reflect?

This new service that I'm offering, I stopped her and I asked her this first question. This is where we get into the gut check. Okay, so the first question I said was: if money wasn't the issue, if the bills were covered, if you could choose what type of work you would do, is this actually the direction you would go in? Okay, so let's dive into my three gut check questions. Before you pour energy into marketing a new direction, before you update your website, before you invest in building.

the processes and the systems and any collateral that needs to go with this new service, you need to run it through these three questions. So question number one, we just covered if money didn't matter, would I still go in this direction? And I've asked you to use this question as a check previously because I think that when we take money out of the equation, like don't get me wrong. Money matters. Money pressure, especially in the early years, is very real. We're not dismissing that.

Shauna Lynn Simon (08:57.014)

You need to keep the lights on. Cash flow needs to keep the business is needed in order to keep the business alive. I get all of that. And I'm not saying like say no to everything. What I'm saying is we want to still be strategic about our long-term goals and our long-term growth. So if money wasn't an issue, if the bills were covered, if you had enough revenue flowing in, would you still actually choose this? If you only chase what pays right now.

You can end up seeing yourself in five years. Like you've built a business that you didn't actually want. You're serving clients you don't enjoy. You're doing work that drains you. I hear this especially from my home staging clients. For anyone who knows me knows that I have a background in the home staging industry. I I ran my own top-producing home staging business for over 15 years. And one of the things that I would find when I would meet other home stagers is they would say, like, I really want to be doing occupy stages. This is where we work with the homeowners' items for the most part.

Like everyone just calls me for vacant staging. And so they let the market pull them in that direction. Does that mean that occupied staging services wouldn't work in their market? Not necessarily. There are so many factors that could have gone into why they got pulled into this other area. Could be a miseducation on the part of the clients that are coming to them. It could be a misalignment on their website and how they're promoting their services. There are so many reasons why this happens, but here they've gone and they've invested tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Into building their home staging inventory, getting a warehouse, building a team, and ultimately they want to sell it all off and shut it all down and just do the consultations. And I hate seeing them so far into this, they get pulled into it. But that's what I thought I was supposed to do. And so that's why I want you to have this gut check. Ignore what you think you're supposed to do. What do you want to do? And so asking yourself this first question of if the money didn't matter, would I want to do this?

tells you, like, is this something I actually enjoy? Because trust me when I say that dollar signs can shine really bright in our eyes sometimes. And it can be so easy to be pulled towards what's going to pay the bills next month. The goal isn't to ignore money. It's just to make sure that money isn't the only reason that you're going in a particular direction. Again, if you need to service a few clients that are maybe on the outskirts of what you're actually wanting to offer in order to pay your bills, go ahead and do it.

Shauna Lynn Simon (11:18.114)

But not if it's going to be self-sacrificing. I can tell you that every business owner, and if they tell you that they didn't do this, they're lying to you. Every business owner has done this where they have taken on a client where they knew, they knew they didn't really want to take on that client, but the money was too appealing. They were like, I gotta pay bills, I gotta make payroll, I gotta pay my mortgage, whatever those bills look like for you. And what ends up happening is that client drains everything that's in you. So they end up costing you far more.

Than the money that they ever bring in. Like the cost of that is always far greater than the actual revenue that it brings. So if you ask yourself this question, if it wasn't for the money, if the money didn't matter, would I still go in this direction? The answer is going to reveal quite a bit. So if you say yes, money aside, I still want to do this. That is a signal to move forward and move forward with intention, not in a flying by the seat of your pants kind of way, which

Maybe the first time you're offering it or the first time that you're agreeing to the service, yeah, okay, you might be a little bit. But let's be intentional about this. But if you pause, when you ask yourself that question, if you pause, you feel a knot in your stomach, or you realize that the honest answer is, you know, probably not, that is really valuable information. It doesn't mean you can't do the work. It just means go into it with your eyes open. And again, maybe don't build your entire business around seeking more clients like this. And especially if.

There's a certain level of exposure going to get because of this. If you're saying, well, this client knows a lot of people and they can send me a lot more business. But if it's going to be more of the same business, the business that you don't really want to do, well, that's not serving you long term either, is it? And there's always got to be a balance between our short-term goals and that long-term growth. Because again, short-term, I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed, I got things I got to get done. And I need money to do that.

But I don't want that to ever take away from my long-term goals either. So if something's going to pull me too far off course, I want to make sure that I'm doing it with intention. So going back to my coaching client on the call for the Real Woman Real Business Mastery program, she didn't pause. She did not hedge whatsoever. She's at the lines of like, it's not about the money. I really like this work. And that clarity is everything. That's not an accidental pivot, that is an informed one.

Shauna Lynn Simon (13:35.01)

And it meant that we can then move forward with the next steps with confidence. So there's a second question. I mentioned that I've got three gut check questions here for you. So the second question: Does this align with the vision that I had for this business? Let me tell you why this question matters so much. Your original vision, it exists for a reason, but keep it in mind that original vision, of course, probably didn't have the data.

That you have now. It didn't have the experiences that you have now, but you did build it around what you wanted your life and your business to look like, the clients you wanted to serve, the kind of work you wanted to do, maybe even the lifestyle that you were looking to achieve. So before you pivot, you need to check in with that vision, honestly. And there's two possible outcomes. So outcome A, it aligns with your vision. Great. This new direction actually.

Isn't a departure. It's more of an evolution. It still fits the bigger picture of what it was that you were building. And in this case, amazing. Lean into it, market it, build it out, run forward with confidence. Now, option B, little bit stickier, but it doesn't mean that you can't still move forward. It doesn't fully align with the original vision that you have, but you're drawn to it anyway. Now, this doesn't automatically mean that you're not going to pursue this. It just means that you need to move.

To question three. Here's the trap that we want to try to avoid. Doing the work that doesn't align because it pays you, telling yourself it's temporary, and then waking up three years later to discover it became permanent without you deciding, that is a hard thing to come back from. So you want to avoid that trap. Now, inside the Real Women Real Business Mastery program, we help you. One of the first things that we do is we help you to build out this vision.

And it's meant to be a living document, not a monument that you set and forget. It's supposed to guide your decisions. That is exactly what it is for. And I will tell you, if you're saying to me, I don't actually, I didn't do a vision initially, I don't have a vision. That in itself is also answering a question that before you allow the market to dictate what your vision is, take some time to create this. One of the things that my clients find when they join the program, because we deal with the vision as the very first thing as soon as they get into the program.

Shauna Lynn Simon (15:51.904)

Even when they tell me they've got a clear vision, I am telling you, we go through this exercise and we get even more clarity to it and we answer questions that we hadn't really thought about previously. And what this does, this is the best part. What this does is it allows you to eliminate so many things that you thought were on your to-do list that actually all of a sudden, you know what? Maybe that doesn't actually make sense. Because the reason why we end up finding ourselves overwhelmed in doing more things than we actually

want to be doing or intend to be doing, we find ourselves overwhelmed, we find things really chaotic, is because we don't clearly know exactly where we're going. We think we might have a bit of an overall vision, but if you actually looked at your task list and you assessed it against the direction that you want to go and the work that you're actually trying to do, you will see that several of those items don't necessarily align or they don't necessarily need to be on your particular task list. They're not immediate, they're not urgent, they can be on someone else's list.

down the road or even now you can offload them, whether it's to a VA or someone that you already have on your team. But that is a very real option and something that comes out of having that really clear vision. So if gut check number two, if you don't have a vision, you can't do gut check number two, can you? And so that right there is a signal to you that something is pulling you back. All right. So I did mention that if you check in with your gut,

On question number two, which is does this align with the vision I had for the business? And you've got outcome B on this one, which is it doesn't fully align, but I'm drawn to it anyway. Then you've got to move on to gut check question number three. And we're gonna cover that after this really short break.

Shauna Lynn Simon (18:09.602)

All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business Podcast, where we are talking about what happens when your business is being dictated a little bit by market demand. And are you moving there intentionally or are you being taken there, not necessarily against your will, but unintentionally against your will, not realizing that it's actually potentially taking you.

Further away from your vision. So we've done the gut check now. We've done two gut checks. First one is if the money didn't matter, would I still actually want to do this work? And that one is critically important because if you say no to that, there's no point in doing the other two questions. The second question is: does this align with the vision that I created for my business? And if you say yep, it does, this isn't actually departure, that's an evolution, fantastic. Run into it full speed ahead.

I mean put a little bit of intention behind it, obviously, but lean into it, market it, build it out. But if you say, you know what, it doesn't fully align, but you're drawn to it, then as I mentioned before the break, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't pursue this. It just means that you need to now move on to gut check question number three. And here it is. Do I need to update my vision? Or is this just a detour? Let me tell you why this question matters, because here's the thing that

You know, early stage business owners often don't even figure out if nobody tells about this, is that it's okay to actually update your vision. In fact, in those early years, it's kind of expected. So when I first started my very first business, which was my home staging business, I created my business plan. I come from a bit of a business background. For those who are new to the show, let me give you a brief history of my previous career. I have a Bachelor of Mathematics degree with a minor in business, and I worked as an analyst for a couple of different smaller companies for several years.

Before shifting into home staging. So I had a whole lot of business sense and data collection and data analysis detail that I really wanted to lean into still. So I of course wanted to make sure that I created a business plan. I had done some market research in that business plan. Home staging was a relatively new term in my market. I saw so much opportunity here. And when you're creating a business plan, one of the things that you're going to identify is who is my ideal client. And this is an exercise that you're going to go through.

Shauna Lynn Simon (20:34.988)

numerous times throughout your business life, throughout the life of entrepreneurship, you need to constantly be checking in. Am I serving the right client? Who is my ideal client or my avatar? Can I dig into this a little bit further? When I started my first business plan and I asked myself that question, who is my client? I'm like homeowners and real estate agents. Boom, done. I thought that was pretty solid. The reality, I was barely scratching the surface with that. First of all, what I discovered,

Couple of years into the business was, you know what, homeowners, not actually my clients. Yes, technically I'm serving them. And yes, technically some of them are hiring me. But if I really want to grow this business, real estate agents are my true partners. That's where I need to be at. So that I wouldn't have necessarily known that when I was first getting into the business, although today's training programs teach us a little bit more than they did back in the day. But again, I'm aging myself a little bit here. Nonetheless.

The point is though that I needed to make some updates to that. And that wasn't anything to be ashamed of. It was just I had more data a couple of years into my business. So the same goes for your vision because when you first start, you got this vision of your business. You don't know what you don't know. You didn't know what to fully expect. You I gotta tell you, I remember get entering into entrepreneurship and remember telling everybody, like, listen, I know this isn't going to be easy. I know it's hard to run a business. I know the stats on how many businesses fail. And I could.

sort of predict some of the challenges I would face in entrepreneurship, but man, no one really prepared me. Did they prepare you? Cause I feel like no matter what I saw in my head as the challenges of entrepreneurship didn't even come close to what I actually experienced. So you really just literally don't know what you don't know. So it's understandable that your vision isn't fully formed, but there's usually a core to it. So for example, for my vision for my home staging business, I knew I wanted to help people.

That was a big thing at the core of everything that I was doing. It wasn't just about the money. I really wanted to help people. I saw people struggling to prepare their homes for sale. I saw people investing so much into this lifetime asset that they then turned around and sold and could have been getting more money for it. I saw people who were in difficult situations dealing with death and divorce and various life-changing situations that weren't always these happy, I'm upgrading to a new house type situations.

Shauna Lynn Simon (22:54.572)

And I could see that they really needed someone who could be a support for them, someone who could be in their corner, someone could be a part of their team. And I really, really wanted to lean into that. But the challenge was when I was building my business, of course, I now had to build relationships with the real estate agents because those homeowners that I got to serve weren't necessarily going to be my actual target audience. So I had to identify what my vision looks like then for the types of clients that I'm going to serve. And I wanted to serve the real estate agents.

Who were building strong relationships with their clients, who cared more about their clients than they did about their own bottom line, knowing of course that that would come with a deal anyway. Okay, so again, a little bit off track here. And I don't mean to, but the point is that in the early stages of your business, your vision is intended to be a living and breathing thing. It's intended to evolve. But go back to the core of it of what was the underlying thing that you really wanted to make sure that you maintained. You know, you learn things as you go. The market has taught you things. You've discovered what you love.

What you don't love. So updating your vision is a sign of evolution. It is a sign that you are moving forward. It is a sign that you are leading. It is not that you're giving up on something. It's not that you're failing at the current business. The difference between updating and abandoning your vision is that updating your vision means you've gathered real information, you've run the gut check, you're consciously choosing a new direction that still reflects who you are and what you want. You are still the navigator.

You've just decided to recalculate the route that you're going to actually take to get there. Now, abandoning your vision means that you've stopped leading entirely. You're just following whatever comes to you, you're following the market demand. You've handed the wheel over to the market essentially. And the market doesn't really care about your life, do they? They don't care about the life that you wanted to build with this. So how do you know if you need that update? I want you to ask, does this new direction, when I fully step into it, does it still feel like my business?

Is this something like, you it's like you get some new clothes and you you try them on? Sometimes you're like, like this looks great. And then you look at yourself in the mirror, you're like, this doesn't quite feel like me. You know, or someone suggests, if you're going shopping with friends and someone suggests that you put something on, you put it on, and they're like, my gosh, you look fantastic. But when you look in the mirror, just like, just doesn't feel, it doesn't feel like me. So when you fully step into this direction, when you try to wear that for a moment, how does it feel? Does it feel like your business? Can you see yourself in three years?

Shauna Lynn Simon (25:15.594)

See yourself following pursuing this and feel good about that. And are you excited to tell people about it? And I mean, I understand that sometimes, you know, we end up finding, you know, the most exciting business isn't the most lucrative business. And sometimes we have to pull in some of the less exciting stuff to pay the bills. I actually just ran into a colleague of mine last week and she's got a kitchen cabinetry company, and she's managed to actually get a ton of business with a local builder.

And she's like, listen, like there's no designing to it. There's nothing overly exciting about it. I don't enjoy doing it, but man, it's like a lather, rinse, repeat kind of thing. Like it's just on autopilot, consistent revenue that comes in. It's easy to do. I enjoy doing it. It pays the bills and it allows me to be able to serve my clients in the more exciting roles that much better because I don't have to stress about the money that's coming in and I don't have to chase down my next client. So I can really be present for them as opposed to putting all of her effort into marketing. So sometimes.

You're not super excited to tell people about everything that you're doing. But as long as it is something that is bringing you some joy still, I think that it's okay. So in order to determine if your vision needs an update, ask yourself, does this new direction feel like my business still? Can I see myself in a few years and feel good about that? And am I excited to tell people that this is what I do? And if the answer is yes to all those things, then go ahead, update the vision. Put it in writing, own it, be intentional, move forward. But if no, maybe just keep it as a revenue stream in the short term.

While you work the plan to get back to what you actually want. In the early years, especially, like I said, you know, it's it's easy to feel like you don't have the luxury of being super intentional. You kind of just got to take what comes to you. And I understand that survival is real. But here's what I want you to hear after listening to this episode. I want you to do these gut checks. I want you to really pay attention when the market is telling you something. I want you to think of this: following demand and leading with intention are not opposites necessarily.

You can respond to the market and still be the navigator. What you can't do is outsource that steering altogether to whoever is calling you that particular week. Because when we outsource the steering, when we give that to somebody else, let them take the wheel and let them drive things, that's when our business starts to get away from us and doesn't quite feel like the business that we want it anymore. And this is often where I find a lot of business owners find themselves getting stuck because they're in the day-to-day grind.

Shauna Lynn Simon (27:43.414)

Of a business that they didn't set out to build. The businesses that last, the ones you build on your own terms, are led by women who stop long enough to ask, is this the direction that I actually want to go? And if it's changed, have I consciously chosen the new direction? And that's not a once a year kind of question. It's an ongoing practice. And it's one of the core things that we work on inside the Real Women Real Business Mastery program, making sure that as your business evolves.

You're the one who's driving that evolution. If you want to learn more about the program, I encourage you to take a look. Go visit realwomenrealbusiness.com to learn more about how we support women in building businesses that are both profitable and aligned. And just remember, before you pour your energy into a whole new direction, I want you to make sure that you are the one who's choosing it. Okay, so let's recap real quickly what those three gut check questions are going to be for you. Number one.

If the money didn't matter, would I still go in this direction? Number two, does this align with my vision? And if not, do I need to update the vision? And if you answered, you know, this doesn't quite align with my vision, I want you to move on to question number three, which is am I leading this change then or am I just following demand? And how am I going to go about updating this vision? Asking yourself, does this new direction feel like me? Can I see myself here in three years? And am I excited to tell people this is something that I want to do? If the answer is no, doesn't mean don't.

Allow yourself to service those clients. It just means let's not fully lean into it. Let's keep that on the back, kind of on the side, behind the scenes, while you build out your true business. All right. Now, if this episode has made you pause a little bit, amazing. That is a good thing. I want you to sit with these questions, journal them out, talk them through with someone who's in your corner and see where you land on some of these things. And if you want that kind of conversation with a coach in a community who will ask you the hard questions.

While still cheering you on, of course, come and join us at realwomenrealbusiness.com. And if you know someone else in business, another woman in business who's in the middle of a drift or a pivot moment, I want you to share this episode with her because she needs to hear it. So thank you so much for tuning into today's episode and for tuning in with me each week and allowing me to be a part of your journey of entrepreneurship. You've got this. My Accidental CEOs, I adore you, and I hope that you will allow me to continue.

Shauna Lynn Simon (30:05.912)

To be a part of your journey each week. We drop new episodes every Tuesday morning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. Please don't forget to subscribe to us wherever you get your podcast. And I gotta tell you, this is such a big help for the algorithm. If you've got a couple of minutes, I would so appreciate it if you would leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. It really does help not only us, but to be more visible and to reach more people, but it helps other women to be able to find us. And that of course is what we're all about here. And as I mentioned,

Don't keep us a secret as well. If you know someone who can really benefit from this episode, the best way to continue to support not only this show, but those women who are in your corner and supporting you every day is by sharing this episode with someone that you know really needs to hear this message today. So thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, keep thriving.