Something happens as we start to grow our business.
We start to face “problems”.
Clients leaving,
Slow leads flow,
Team members slacking off,
You feel “uninspired” and don’t feel like showing up.
You start feeling like something is wrong…
You have a problem to solve.
So you spend time working on it,
Coming up with solutions, implementing.
You even hire yourself a coach to help.
“BOOM”
You see a shift,
Leads flow back up,
The team are back on point,
You feel more inspired.
*Fast Forward 2 months
And you’re back where you were.
Head in your hands thinking, wtf…
I remember going through this over and over.
To the point where I just thought fuck it.
I even hand braked for 3 weeks,
On one of these days, I was watching the kids on the trampoline,
They were bouncing around, play wrestling, doing flips and laughing.
Until they were crying, yelling at each other and wrestling for real.
The trampoline had turned into a MMA championship fight. A backyard octagon.
It didn’t matter how often we spoke about the dos and don’ts,
Set rules and boundaries,
This same dynamic continued to play out.
Less often, and sometimes with less fire,
But it still happened.
This was not a problem to be solved; It was not fixable.
This dynamic was a dichotomy to be managed.
And then it dorpped in for me…
So were the problems in my business.
There are problems to be solved and dichotomies to be managed.
Problems to solve are binary. Once solved, the problem is gone.
Flat tyre.
Engine not starting.
Need to find $1000 to put into marketing,
You solve it,
The problem is solved. No management required.
Dichotomies to manage are not binary. They are often mistaken for binary, but are actually on a scale. And are often mistaken for being solvable, fixable, to be removed or gotten rid of.
They swing from one side to the other.
Peace and War.
Sales and No sales,
Kind and Cruel,
Saving and Spending,
The goal is to stack the chips so you can keep it as close to where you want it as possible.
But you will never be able to stop the swing.
When a coach fears clients leaving.
And they believe that it is a problem that can be solved or fixed by getting to a point when clients never leave.
They are mistaking this dichotomy for a binary problem.
This leaves coaches swinging from being excited because they are bringing on new clients while retaining current ones to feeling beaten and disappointed as clients leave while onboarding no one.
This will happen forever.
It is to be managed, as it has zero 100% solutions.
This is not solvable,
The goal in a dichotomy is to figure out how to keep the swing in check, in this case keep your clients as long as possible while minimising clients leaving.
This means you aim for the ideal and work on getting it, but know that you never can.
In this case you are managing the dichotomy of clients staying and clients leaving.
You can not get to a point where your clients ONLY stay. You are just working on increasing the probability that they remain for longer and longer periods.
Just as peace and war, you will never get rid of either one, you just work towards what your goal is.
Just as saving money, while spending it. You can’t just keep all you money, you must spend to survive, but you stack the chips in your favour to be able to save more.
Just as making sales and making none, you will never just make 100% sales, your conversion rate already proves this.
And so, with any challenge or problem in your business and your life,
You need to understand first,
Which one it is.
Is it a dichotomy, or is it a problem?
If it is a dichotomy, work on it, adjust it, increase the probability towards your outcome but don’t expect to get rid of the swing back towards what you don’t want.
If it’s a problem, you can solve it and move on.
What dicotomies in my life and business have I been trying to solve that I actually need to learn to manage?
Until next week,
Keep Smashing Growth Ceilings,
Justin Wiseman
