Unlock Powerful Problem-Solving Strategies to Transform Your Entrepreneurial Mindset | Ep 322

In this week's episode of Chasing Financial Freedom, we dive deep into the art of effective problem-solving and how it can revolutionize your entrepreneurial journey. As entrepreneurs, we often face roadblocks and challenges that seem impossible to overcome. But instead of pushing through these obstacles mindlessly, I’ll share how reflecting on your mistakes, learning from them, and making intentional changes can lead to lasting success.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• The crucial difference between “fixing” problems and learning from them is to avoid repeating mistakes.
• Reflection on past mistakes can sharpen your problem-solving skills and lead to smarter decisions in business and life.
• The power of patience and strategy in decision-making, and why rushing into solutions often leads to more problems down the road.
• Embracing vulnerability and sharing your struggles with trusted mentors or colleagues can unlock new solutions and clarify tough situations.

I’ll also open up about my own struggles with making hasty decisions, as well as the lessons I’ve learned the hard way. Through personal stories of past mistakes and what they taught me, I’ll help you understand how to reframe challenges as opportunities for growth.

This episode is about building a mindset that tackles problems head-on and transforms them into stepping stones for tremendous success. Whether you're dealing with business hurdles, personal challenges, or simply trying to improve how you handle tough situations, the strategies shared here can change how you approach life's obstacles.

Ready to make more intentional decisions and grow from your mistakes?

• Take action: Subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to let us know how these strategies are helping you overcome your challenges.
• Join the conversation: Share your own problem-solving strategies or ask questions by connecting with me on social media or through our podcast community.

Together, we’ll continue the journey toward financial freedom, personal growth, and success. Stay tuned and keep reflecting—your best decisions are yet to come!

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Chapters

• 0:40 Getting Back Up After Being Knocked Down
• 1:22 The Problem with Being a Fixer
• 3:03 Sharing Mistakes with Someone You Trust
• 4:47 Learning from Past Operational Mistakes
• 6:42 Making Decisions Without Rushing to Judgment

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:20

How many times you've been knocked down on a project? I know on several projects I'm working on, I've been knocked down more times than I can count, but I continue to get back up. We hit these roadblocks and we continue to face challenges. How often are you sitting back and reflecting on those challenges and what you're learning from them? Me myself, I'm thick-headed and I don't always sit down and really get into the reflection, the lessons, and then, where I can improve, I just continue to try to go fix the problem. Instead of trying to just fix the problem, I need to step back and reflect and be able to understand how that problem arose, how do we fix it and how do we mitigate it or wipe it out completely next time? I don't know if any of you are struggling with that, but I know that I've struggled with that for 51 years of my life. I'm a fixer and being a fixer isn't always the best outcome, because you're not changing your ways. You're not changing how the problem came about. You're not changing your past.

Speaker 1: 1:42

I have a saying that I've shared on this podcast many times take my past off of my today's plate. Guess what Part of that nuance or that saying is this I continue to have things happen from my past be brought in today because I haven't given myself enough time to reflect, solve the problem and then figure out a way to make sure it doesn't happen again. Now I know I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, so maybe something similar potentially could happen, as long as I'm not continuing to do the same thing over and over again. As we know, is the definition of insanity. But why do I struggle with this? From an entrepreneur standpoint, from a human being, I think it boils down to this is I feel like I failed, and when you fail, you beat yourself up, and then you decide that you're going to continue to beat yourself up and it's over and over again, which is the most unhealthy thing to do for ourselves. But we do it, I do it.

Speaker 1: 2:48

So, guys, this week I really want to focus in on mindset, but also improving on our mistakes, from our mistakes, but then also sharing those mistakes with one person. So, sharing those mistakes with one person, because I think with that mistake lies in here with me. Maybe you're embarrassed, maybe there's regret, maybe you don't feel confident enough that you have a solution, but I could tell you this Sharing that information with somebody that you can trust he or she, your friend, colleague, whatever should be able to allow you to vent that off your chest. Get it off your chest and maybe he or she has a better solution than what you have today. But don't we feel better when we get something off our chest and we're able to move forward? Yeah, we are. But the other thing that plays into this guys, and again, god, universe, all that good stuff, the things God is telling us is we continue to make the same mistake over and over again. He's trying to redirect us, so if we don't make that change, he will just make that situation even more painful until we divert and move another direction.

Speaker 1: 4:07

And I've been thinking about that, the last, I would probably say, a couple months of things that have happened from the past that still in my present. Have I actually stopped and thought about it and said, hey, I need to make a change, I need to do something different. On a lot of them, yes, on some of them I would say no. And then there's a group of them that are maybe I thought of about five that really stuck out in my mind, and the top two are I was embarrassed, I couldn't believe that I made that mistake and it's in a prior life. It's things that I did when I was working in corporate America.

Speaker 1: 4:51

But I just dumb mistakes operational. It didn't affect anybody, it didn't hurt anything. I moved staffing off of our phones and put them into the back office so we could actually do some additional back office work to get us back into SLA. And immediately I did not pay attention to the time on the clock and knew that it was prime hours and I should have never taken anybody off the phones. And we got hammered with inbound calls which messed up our brand promise, messed up our answer rate, messed up our answer rate, messed up everything. It took six hours to get that all rectified because I screwed that up.

Speaker 1: 5:29

And I know you might be thinking that's not a big deal, but I worked for a boss. That was a huge deal and when he saw brand promise tanking, he was calling me every five seconds and I was in a meeting and I didn't answer it. So we were probably about 20 to 30 minutes in and getting bombarded with calls. When he doesn't get ahold of somebody and if he's not on a call or in a meeting, he'll walk over your office and say what the heck is going on, but other choice words. So that is that's a big mistake.

Speaker 1: 6:00

But what I learned from that is really staffing and making sure you're looking at your ratios. We're so quick to go fix a problem, but is God in the universe telling us that's where we need to go? Take time to think about it, figure out what your strategy is going to be and then execute. Don't just willy-nilly it and move it on out, because that's what I did. I just went okay, we're going to go with this knocked out, we're going to make this happen. We can move quickly, take care of it.

Speaker 1: 6:34

But in life, when we struggle with making decisions, does that also lead us to the same place when we continue to kick a decision down the road that we know that we have to take care of, but we continue to kick it and kick it? In my mind, that's practically the same thing, because you're not wanting to address the situation when it's presented. I know there's times where I don't want to address it when it's presented, but it eats at me too much to let things continue to fester and kick it down the road. So my whole thing is let's make the decision now or let's make the actually opposite times where I'll let's make the decision and it might be too hasty so pulling back and making sure that I'm reflecting, as I said earlier, making sure that I'm looking at all aspects of the situation, but then also reflecting on why did this happen and could we have avoided it, or could we solve it going forward? That's the million-dollar question for me.

Speaker 1: 7:44

I don't know if you want to call it critical thinking, but it's the additional thought process that needs to be put into place when things happen in life, and this doesn't have to be just business, personal too. Maybe you get in an argument with your girlfriend or husband or wife or boyfriend what led you to that situation, what caused it and what could you do better, so you don't argue over that topic again, or maybe argue at all. How do we continue to apply making effective decisions in life not on the fly, but with some reflection and make sure that we're putting the right thought process in and not rushing to judgment or rushing to a decision, because in the end, we want to be able to solve the problem. If we take the time and step back and have some patience, we can solve the problem. All right, guys, that's it for this week. I hope you guys have a great one. Stay safe, stay healthy. I'll see you guys on the other side.