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#313: Thinking Big Picture in Your Business

If you feel bogged down by the day-to-day casework in your law practice, today's episode of Be a Better Lawyer is a must-listen.

When we don't devote even a small time to thinking big picture in our businesses, we aren't running the business. The business runs us.

In this episode, you'll discover how I think about my business that's helped me get a 10,000 foot view and think big picture.

It's helped me calm overwhelm and see opportunities for growth that I didn't have before.

Listen in and be inspired to think big picture in your law practice.

 

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Big Picture Thinking in Your Business

We seldom take the time to think about the big picture of our businesses. But doing so not only makes our lives easier, but it saves us so much time and pain going down paths that we could have avoided with a little strategy and with a little thought. In this episode of Be a Better Lawyer podcast, I am sharing some of the thoughts and questions I ask myself to see my thoughts and then strategize problems hiding from my everyday brain, the everyday brain that's busy doing all of the things and taking action. Instead of getting that 10,000 foot view of the business and seeing what it needs most to go in the direction I want it to go, use this information to apply to your own law practice and grow your practice with more intention and feel better while doing it. Hi, I'm Dina Cataldo, a master coach and ex criminal prosecutor I created.

Be a Better Lawyer podcast for driven lawyers like you who want more from life than sitting behind a desk. You've been playing by other people's rules. Those rules have left you overwhelmed, unfulfilled, and feeling like a hamster on a wheel. I've been there. I was doing everything people told me to do to be successful, working late nights, weekends, and trying to make everyone happy. So why wasn't I happy and I wanted more in life? When was I going to find time to find and pursue that? Well, I did, and I'm sharing with you my secrets to living a happier and more fulfilling life. This podcast gives you a lifetime of wisdom, mindset, principles, and bedrock strategies to give you unshakeable confidence, more time to pursue your goals, a powerful sense of purpose to uplevel your life and law practice and so much more. These are things we were never taught in law school.

This podcast bridges the gap between law, school and life. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started. Hello, how are you doing today? This episode was so fun to think about because it helped me realize the shifts that I have made thinking about my practice over the years. I mean, when I was building my business on top of my prosecutorial career. And then as I matured as a business person and as I continued to grow my practice, I see the way I think about everything in the work that I do differently. And I wanna share these with you because I know that when my clients apply these to their own practices, they mature in their businesses and they grow them. And I know I keep seeing progress, I keep seeing the direction I want to go in, it keeps happening, so I know it works.

And so I wanna share this with you and give you a place where you can begin really thinking about your business in a way that feels so empowering and helps you intentionally make decisions in your practice. Before we dive into today's episode, I wanna share with you that I have put up on my website, access to my business strategy calls, and you can access the library that I have created from doing these monthly business strategy calls and really gain that insight that you want or need in your current business. Now, the whole reason I started doing business strategy calls is because I was noticing that when I spoke to my one-on-one clients, that there would be gaps that they didn't have, some understandings that I had simply by virtue of being in business for so many years and learning so much. And so what I wanted to do was just share some of these things that I have learned to make their lives easier.

And then of course, as I work with my one-on-one clients, I started learning more too because it starts to open my mind up to possibilities. And so I begin doing more research and diving into things, and then I start practicing a lot of them as my business matures. So as I started doing that, I saw, ah, yes, I've gotta start doing classes on these. These are something that I really want to create for my one-on-one clients. So I used it as a bonus, right? So you would sign up for me, you can still do this, right? So you sign up for with me for one-on-one calls, and then as a bonus, you get access to the full library of the business strategy calls. And our one a once a month calls that we have. They're so much fun. I spend a lot of time really curating information and teaching in these classes.

And then I also get to do some coaching and answering questions at the very end. There's so much fun for me to create. And as this library has grown, I decided I wanted to offer it to you. I wanted to give you access to this. So now you can go to my website at dina cataldo.com/resources. And one of the resources that I offer is access to these business strategy calls. And not only that, but you also get access to six months of these live monthly business strategy calls where you can get coached, where you get to be there, live with me with a group of heart-centered lawyers. And you get to be working on your business instead of just working in your business. Because that's another thing that I've noticed that we're so good at doing. We're really good at doing all of the hustle work, doing all the case work, doing all of the things, doing all of the things that we know we need to be doing in our practice.

But I wanna share something with you, you've gotta think more big picture this. That's what this whole episode is about. And that's also what these business strategy calls are about. So right now in the library, here's what you can expect. You will find forces on hiring dream employees confidently, raising and communicating your rates, maximizing money decisions with minimal mental drama, another class on your visibility mindset strategy, and your content structure. So if you are in business and you're creating any kind of content, whether it's a podcast or social media or emails that you send out monthly or blog posts, anything like that, that is content and there's a certain structure that you want to ensure that you can create for your people so that they get the maximum benefit. Since the people that I attract are heart center lawyers, which I know you are, that's what you are doing, is you're offering a service by creating content.

And so I want to, I wanted to show those who maybe haven't had access to that kind of structure before, how to structure your content so you can really benefit the people reading it and attract them to you. How to make it easy for new clients to find you. That's another course that I did. Another class that I did was content creation and how to grow your practice organically. And another class that's inside of that business strategy call library is a class on funnels and making email sequences. It's all about lead magnets. So that is what is currently in the library. And then each month you're gonna get access to a brand new class. So if you wanna gain access to that, you wanna go to dina cataldo.com/resources. And that is going to be your key to joining me every single month. And I really wanna encourage you, if you're not already making time to work on your business, that you sign up because then at least once a month, you are blocking time for yourself to work on your business, to think big picture about your practice.

That is what we do in these calls. So go to dina cataldo.com/resources and join me in this six month session. Alright, let's jump into this episode. Alright, so let's just start with what I used to do that I don't do anymore. And I'm so thankful that I don't do these things anymore because I would find myself spinning. I would find myself overwhelmed, and it felt horrible. So I used to feel totally helpless as I was first building my very first business. It, it felt horrible. I felt devastated because I really thought I had no clue what I was doing and that I couldn't figure it out. Now, maybe the, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. That could have been true, but it was definitely not true that I couldn't figure it out. And the way I compensated for this belief that I had that I couldn't figure it out was by overworking myself.

And it was by overworking myself in areas of the business that didn't really have a big impact. Basically, they weren't money making <laugh>. And if you have a business, you need to make sure that it's creating income, otherwise you don't have a business. You just have a very expensive hobby. And I would also find this manifesting in me quitting on things. So I might start a really big project and then I would quit partway through because I believed I couldn't figure it out. I really just had this thought in my head that I didn't know what I was doing and I couldn't figure it out. And I let that thought run my life. It felt horrible. And then because I didn't see the progress that I wanted, I blamed myself. I said, I suck at this. I'm not working hard enough. I should know better for those mistakes that I made over and over again.

And I just wanna share with you that if you're going through this right now, this is normal, but you don't have to stay there. If I had had a coach early on, I wouldn't have stayed there so long. But because I didn't even know about coaching at the time that I had started building at the time it was a loose leaf tea business that I started, I don't even know, maybe it was like eight, 10 years ago while I was a lawyer. And I just, I, I felt so consumed by it and I just did not see it make the progress that I wanted based on all of the time I was putting into this business. And so that's, that prompted me to be really hard on myself thinking that somehow that was gonna move the needle. Well, it did not. And another thing that I used to do was be impatient with my business.

I was very mean to my business. When I think back on it, I really wasn't cultivating a very compassionate relationship with myself or with the business. I always felt in a hurry. I felt very urgent in my body. You, you might recognize this feeling of urgency by you feel like you have to do something, even if it's not the thing that you know you're supposed to do on your calendar, you feel like you have do something to feel productive. So maybe you get up and you do the dishes, or you go and you work on another file that has no due date in the next several months, <laugh>, but you're doing something. And so your body is kind of getting that release of dopamine. 'cause You're like, yes, I'm doing something. But because I wasn't working on anything that was really moving the needle in my business, it led me to feel stressed.

I felt a lot of worry that it wasn't gonna work. 'cause I was thinking it wasn't gonna work. And I would also be very easily distracted by shiny objects because I could not focus. I felt so horrible. My focus was shot. And I would focus on things like the design of my website or a font or a color or something like that. Something very tedious that felt like I was doing something. I'll put something in quotes, but I wasn't really thinking about the product I was creating or how I could make it more accessible to people or how I could market it better. And so those were things that I sim simply could not get on my radar because I was so overwhelmed with all of the ways that I was thinking. And so my nervous system, you could probably guess, was highly dysregulated at that point.

I had a lot of anxiety. I was having a real tough time. And I actually did a full episode on nervous system dysregulation and episode number 2 28. I will link to that in the show notes. But if you recognize yourself in any of this, I want you to take heart because you can change. I did. And I will share with you some of the thoughts that I have really cultivated over the years to help me better understand myself, better understand my business, and think more strategically about my business instead of getting caught up in the spinning, getting caught up in the ruminating about my business and what I'm not doing, and all of those things which are so easy to focus on. So easy to focus on what's not working or focus on what's not going the way you want it to go. And then not focus on what is working and where your business is going and where you want your business to go.

So we're gonna talk more about that in a little bit. But as I went through some of the old thoughts that I had, did you notice something about them? What did they have in common? One of the things that they had in common is that there was a total lack of curiosity. It is almost impossible to get curious when you feel helpless or like a victim in your business. And curiosity is really what moves us forward, because if we're not curious, we can't make change. So imagine a scientist, if they just get information, they get data, but then they don't do anything with the data, then they're not a scientist. They're just looking at data. And that's not helpful for moving anything forward if you're not doing anything with the data. What I was unable to do, because I was so busy beating myself up, is I was unable to look at data.

I was unable to see my business as data because I was so emotionally involved. I really identified with the business like it was me. If something didn't work in the business, it meant it, I wasn't working right? If something wasn't the going the way that I wanted to in the business, it was, it was because of something bad I had D done right, or something I didn't do that I should have done. There's a lot of blame there versus me just looking at data and saying, oh, that's interesting. What is that data telling me? And what might I do differently in order to make the data go in the direction I wanted to go? But because I was so intimately and emotionally involved in my business, I couldn't get that 10,000 foot view, which is what you really need in order to see what is going on in your business.

So if you don't have that 10,000 foot view, if you don't have that perspective, if you don't have a light shown on the data and the direction you need to go with the data so you can use it to your best advantage, then you're kind of like in a box. You can't go anywhere. You're in a bind, right? So I just wanna offer to you that if you notice that when you are thinking about your business, that you are not curious, that you are not coming at it from a perspective of, huh, that's interesting. I wonder what would happen if, if you're not noticing your language sound like that, it's a real gentle, interested kind of tone that you have generally about your business. I wanna offer to you that you may not have the perspective that you need in order to think big picture.

You may not be thinking how you need to be thinking. What changes over time as you begin maturing in your business is how you think about your business. So if right now you're noticing that you don't have curiosity, we're gonna start shifting that today in this episode so that you can get from where you are now out of curiosity and then where you wanna go, which is in curiosity. In fact, a lot of what I'm gonna share with you are some of the questions I ask myself before I make decisions in my business. So here are some of the thoughts that I really shifted and it took the help of a coach for me, but maybe it will click with you. I want it to click with you in this episode, because if it does, then things will change for you fast. And one of the biggest thoughts that I needed to learn was, it's working.

Everything works. I like to say everything works. We just wanna look at the data and then adjust. But first, I just had to start with ev it, it's working. I just needed to start with that thought. It's working. And so I would focus my brain on creating evidence that it was working. And what does that mean? It means instead of looking at at something and saying, this isn't working, or not even looking at data, but just saying it's not working. It's not working, which is what my brain was saying constantly. I brought my brain back to it is working and how. And so I would force my brain to show me where in my business it was working, where I could see progress, where I could celebrate, where I was seeing my business move in the direction that I wanted to go. And sometimes it was difficult, but when I started telling my brain, look, it's working.

Show me where it's working. I could start seeing it. So for instance, if your brain's saying, it's not working, I, I, it's too hard, I can't do this. Ask yourself this question. Where is it working right now? It might be that you had consults booked last week. It might be that you hit a number target last month. It might be that you had a great review from a client. But it's so easy for our brain to get fixated on one little thing in our business that isn't going the way we want it to go. And then our brain just starts putting on repaid, it's not working, it's not working. And then we can't see where it is working. So if you are noticing this, I want to offer that this is a really powerful thought to start integrating into your daily thought work. And your daily thought work could be as simple as you putting a thought on your desk on a post-it like it's working and looking at that post-it every single day.

And using that to help you now cultivate the thoughts that you want. It's just step by step. It's working. Where is it working? Here are all the places so that your brain can begin gaining some confidence in your business. And that's really important. So you can have curiosity in your business. 'cause If you don't have that confidence, if you're not seeing where you're making progress, your brain is going to have a really tough time getting into curiosity. Another thought that I cultivated was I configured this out. So remember my thoughts used to be, I don't know how to do this, or I can't figure this out. I don't have the capability to do this. Well, I started recognizing that I could figure things out. And if you are having this thought that you can't figure things out, I wanna offer to you, you have lots of evidence around you that you can figure things out.

You went to law school, you figured that out. You took the bar, you passed, you figured that out. You were a practitioner, you figured out how to start a business, right? All of these things you have figured out. And so we have to recognize where in our life we have evidence that these thoughts are true. So we can begin integrating these beliefs into our bodies and we really, really believe them so that they're in our bones and we're not fighting with them. And so we want to make evidence. We wanna show our brain, look, hey, there's evidence that I can figure things out. And then when you have a problem in your practice, you can look at that problem and you can say, ah, I can figure this out. As you're also creating these thoughts, right? You're actively integrating these thoughts into your brain, into your nervous system so that they feel true to you in your bones.

You're also going to notice that there's practical things that need to get done, right? So that's just some foundational work for us. But there's also just the practical day-to-day aspect of our jobs, of our work. And one of the things that we tend to do as us high achievers is we wanna just get everything done all at once. And so I needed to remind myself that I don't need to get everything done all at once. In fact, it's absolutely impossible to, but for some reason, my brain expected me to. And so I needed to really sit down with my brain and, and let it know, no, this is not how it's gonna play out. And that's why my calendar became such a go-to tool for me is because my brain said, you can do all of your work this week, but my calendar said no.

You can maybe do four of the things you wanted to do on that list. So what is so important to us is to recognize when our brain is telling us we've gotta do everything and start to calm the brain down. Remind your brain you don't need to do everything all at once. In fact, that would be completely impossible. And then go into the tool that you have. Hopefully you have a calendar, but if you don't, maybe you have a task list and make it make sense to you what is actually gonna get done in the next week, in the next month. Another thought I needed to cultivate with myself was be patient somewhat on the, in the same vein as I don't need to do everything all at once. I was very impatient. In fact, I still notice this come up because I want to do more things.

I want to be able to do everything, but I can't. And that's simply not reality. And when we fight reality, we lose every single time. And so what I like to ask myself is, if I knew that the result was gonna be inevitable, whether it's a goal that I have in creating an email sequence or a goal I have in terms of numbers of clients created or podcasts created, or whatever my goal is, right? If I knew the result was inevitable, would I be in a hurry? Well, the answer's always no. It never is of benefit for me to be in a hurry if I know it's gonna be inevitable. I just take, you know, write down the progress I wanna make and then I just make the pro progress. I just do it, do it. But it's so fascinating because our brain gets in a hurry and then we wanna skip steps.

We want to rush things, and it does not benefit the finished project. So I ask myself sometimes, like, what do I think I'm gonna feel if it's all done at once? And my brain will tell me, oh, I think I'll feel better. I think I'll feel calmer. Well, I know that's a lie because taking action does not create a feeling. We have to feel a certain way in order to take the action that we wanna take in order to get the result that we want. So I always know my brain is lying. If I ask myself, do I think I'm gonna feel better once something is done, I know it's lying. And I can say, okay, hold on. How do I need to feel in order to take action on this project? Usually the feeling is something like calm or committed, but I need to take a step back.

I need to get that 10,000 foot view of the project and really think to myself, what do I need to, how, who do I need to be? That's actually what I'm asking myself. Who do I need to be in order to complete this task in order to complete this particular goal? So that's where you really wanna see your brain and where it lies. We wanna understand, are we doing something that feels urgent and we're in a hurry and we're stressed out and we're just grinding? Or are we slowing down, taking a breath, sitting with that feeling of urgency and then strategizing how we wanna take action. And that's usually where I see this happen with my clients, is when they're in such a hurry to get something done that they can't take a step back and then strategize the simplest way to get it completed.

And that could be where they're missing, where they could be delegating something they're missing, where they could be creating a an SOPA standard operating procedure so that they never have to think about this again. And this can be completely delegated. They're missing where they are kind of being hold by their feelings and going after a shiny object versus being able to take a step back and think clearly about the actions that they wanna take so they can hit their goal. So there's all kinds of problems we simply can't see when we're not patient with ourselves, when we're not patient with the result that we're gonna create. So the biggest thing I need to do whenever I notice myself feeling impatient is to take a breath, remind myself that this is gonna happen inevitably. How do I want to go about doing it? And ask myself those questions like, how can I make this as easy as possible on myself?

How can I make this a sustainable practice within my business so that I can be more hands off with it? Those are the kinds of problems we can start solving for when you get into this big picture mindset. Then when I notice that if there's a problem in my business or there's something that's not going the way I wanted to go, I can look at the data. I can see, okay, I'm not making the numbers that I wanna make. I'm not hitting the goals that I thought I'd be hitting at this point. What is happening here? Like what, what's going on is, what is it that I can do to help this progress the way I want it to progress? And I'm always looking at what is it that I could be doing? And so then if I look at that problem from that perspective, I can see where maybe I can have a conversation with someone about how to get things done.

Maybe I can hire somebody to get some help. Or maybe it is a task that I've taken on that really isn't necessary in this moment, and I need to just pause and ask myself, am I spinning my wheels on this project? And do I need to just put it aside so that I can work on the more important tasks in my business? Another question that I ask, and I ask this question every single week. I ask, what is the most important thing to implement this week, this month, this quarter this year, and every single week, I'm looking at what do I need to complete for the month? Because I've already decided what I want to create in the month earlier on in the year. And so when I look at that month, I can say, okay, what is the most important thing that needs to get done this week to further along a goal that I have this month?

So for instance, one of my goals actually changed for the month of May because I was hired for a speaking engagement. And so rather than take on another project that I had already planned, I decided to replace that one with preparation for the speaking engagement. So what I decided I was gonna do is just plan it out on my month, just the same way that I would've done for the prior project. So all of the time I was gonna devote to that prior project is now gonna be devoted to the speaking engagement. And I looked at this first week of May and decided, okay, how am I, what do I need to do in order to create the finished project project at the end of the month of this completed speaking engagement? Everything I need from the outline to the practicing to the slides that I'm gonna have everything that I need.

What do I need to do? And I just plan it out. What's the most important thing this week? How about next week? How about the week after? So I am asking myself those questions ahead of time so I know where my time is going to be spent. I'm not sitting there worried about it because I'm just allocating time. That's it. Now, if I had decided that I was gonna take on both projects, then I would probably be an overwhelm. But I just made a decision that the other project was less important, right? It was something that I could do later. And instead I implemented this new project. And that is something that you have the ability to do when you're doing things in your, on your business. When you're thinking about your business from that 10,000 foot view, you do not have to do everything.

In fact, it is impossible. And if you wanna maintain your sanity, I highly recommend against it. Don't do everything. So that is how I think about it. I think about, okay, what is the most important thing for me to implement this month and then this quarter, and then this year? So on. Just think about that as you are making plans in your business. And if you join me for those business strategy sessions, we talk about different things that you can do to work on your business, but you really wanna make sure that you are constraining, you are making decisions for your business that are needed right now. You are able to implement things in a priority. You're not just doing everything all at once, right? It's really easy to consume a lot of information. But rather than that, you could take one lesson that you learn and then you take that and you implement it in your business and you just take them one at a time.

Another question I like to ask myself is, what is the domino in this scenario? What's one thing that will help make everything else in this project easier? It might be something like creating an SOP for my assistant. It might be something like planning out everything that needs to go in this project. It, it could be any of these things. So just ask yourself, what is that one domino? And if you sit with it and you allow yourself to sit with it calmly, instead of just trying to do all the things as fast as you can, you will save so much time because your brain will be able to see, ah, well, you know what would actually be easier is if we totally eliminate this task instead of trying to force it. Or maybe we delegate something and let get the ball rolling in this area while I'm working on something else.

You will just start seeing so much time open up for you. If you just ask yourself that question, what's the domino? What is the thing that is gonna make everything else easier here? Another thing that I like to ask myself is, why do I believe that this task is most important? So oftentimes my brain will say, okay, I'm prioritizing. I prioritize A, B, C, and D. And then I look at those and I ask myself, okay, why? Just, why? Because I know my brain lies, so I'm always checking in. And so I look at that list and I say, okay, why is this a priority? Why is a a priority? Oh, 'cause it just sounds fun. Okay, well let's look at the other priorities. B, C, and D. Well, BC and D are ones that I've already made commitments to, and they are ones that, you know, keep my clients happy.

<Laugh>. And they are ones that bring in new clients. And so BC and D are really the priorities. A sounds fun, which I love, but does a get the priority? It doesn't move my business further along in the direction I want it to go. But it does sound fun. Is there a way that I can implement this later? Or is this something that needs to get done right now? Like, I ask myself these questions and I heard this really great quote attributed to Steve Jobs, which it, it makes so much sense. So much sense. He was all about focus. And one of the things that he said was, Hey, we have a lot of things that we wanna do. I'm, I'm saying this in some, he doesn't talk like I talk <laugh>, but he said, we have so many things that we want to accomplish.

And a lot of them are gonna be things that we deeply desire to do. But in order to stay focused, we have to say no to some of those things. We have a deep desire to do those shiny objects, basically. Yeah, we may get to them later, but if we have items B, C, and D that are taking priority and we simply don't have time to implement a, then a's gotta be put on the back burner for now because it is not a priority. So I just wanna offer that to you as a way of thinking about things, is that we need to say no to even the things that sound like amazing and so fun. Sometimes because we have prior commitments on BC and D, that may not be a necessity for you. If you have extra time, of course do it. But I don't think I've ever spoken to a lawyer that just has extra time.

So know the direction you wanna go in your business and know what needs to be implemented. And as you are implementing BC and D, you can also ask yourself, how can I make these more fun? You don't have to make everything in your business a drag, right? And I, I talk to so many people who really just look at the work as a grind and a drag. And I just wanna share with you that yeah, there's gonna be things in your business that you don't wanna do. I have a lot of those things on my calendar, but I want to do them. And I look at ways at how can I make my life easier? How can I make this fun? How can I bring in some energy? I ask myself those questions. So if you're noticing that your work kind of feels like a drag sometimes, try to bring in some fun, bring in some lightness and it will impact how you show up in your business.

But it does take sometimes some work to make those things fun. 'cause You do wanna, you have to think about this intentionally. You don't wanna just let your brain go on autopilot. You wanna think about this intentionally and start bringing in that energy, bringing in that fun. And it'll take your brain in different directions and it may even take your business in different directions. Alright? So another thing that I ask myself when I'm looking at my big picture business plan is, how am I gonna feel when I'm doing that? And one way of doing this is say, look at your calendar for the week and ask yourself, when you look at your calendar, how do I think I'm gonna feel this week? And if your answer is overwhelmed, why? What part? Right? You really wanna look at it and say, why am I gonna feel overwhelmed this week?

Okay, well, I see that I booked myself back to back to back appointments. Well, let's not do that, right? You really wanna do this in every part of your business, but I'm just giving you an example of looking at the way you've laid out your week. And if you've laid out a week where you're gonna hate life, go back into the calendar and rearrange it. You do not have to do it just 'cause you wrote it down the first time. Go back, break things down into simpler parts, give yourself some space, move things off until the next week, right? Think about yourself when you are creating a calendar for your business, because you're not a robot, you're a human being, and we want that humanness reflected in your business. There's no point in owning your own business if you're not creating a business that you feel good in.

That's the reason that I created a business for myself, is because I wanted to run my own place. I wanted to have my own rules. And if what I'm doing is setting myself up as a task master, well that's the opposite of what I wanna create in my business. So really go into your calendar and use it as your own to create the business that you want intentionally. I also think about questions in my bi, my business in terms of my clients, or in terms of my assistant. So one question might be, how can I get my clients' results faster? And that gets my brain thinking in different ways, right? I start thinking about, okay, well what do I see some common speed bumps that my clients have? Or what do my clients need most right now? Or how can I make their lives easier?

And so it just kinda lets my brain go in this direction of, okay, how can I help? How can I help? How can I help? And I mean, that's how the business strategy calls was born, is me thinking about this. So if you're doing that, you're thinking about your clients, you're creating more value for your clients, you are able to create value where your clients say, I wanna keep coming back to you, or I wanna keep referring people to you, or I wanna create a review for you so somebody can decide to work with you. Like that is how you create value, is really thinking about your clients and thinking about what they need and then implementing those things in your business. Another question I ask myself is, how can I make my assistant job easier? So I even ask him at the end of the week, I say, Hey, you know, how did that work last week?

Did this go smoothly? Do you have any suggestions? Or if I come up with an idea that I wanna implement in my, my business, I'll say, okay, this is what I'd like to do. Here's how I'm seeing it. This is the, the SOP that I have laid out for it. This is gonna make your life easier. Hopefully. If it doesn't, let me know. And then we'll, we'll check in on that and make tweaks. But I always wanna think about that in terms of him. Like last week I was looking at my social media and I wanted to implement new fonts for the captions, right? <Laugh>. And, and I wanted to think, how can I make my life easier so I don't have to do all the captions and I, I don't have to waste any time on that and I, I can just do the copy for the social media and then post it.

And so I purchased a program that would be cheaper than my assistant's hourly rate, and I just said, okay, well let's get this program for him because then this program is something that he can work with, he can use on the social media that he's creating, and then he can put it into the software program where I can just type out the post and send it. So I'm thinking two steps ahead so that I can save him time and then that's also saving me time and it's saving me money. So it's those kinds of things that you can start asking yourself so that you can begin problem solving in your business at different levels. Okay, so, huh, that was a lot. There was actually a lot in this episode. And I wanna share with you that this is a process that you will do this slowly but surely.

And if you just take one or two thoughts that you got from this episode and start implementing them, you will see a difference. And if you wanna take this work further, if you really wanna get that 10,000 foot view in your practice and understand where you're having some holdups, maybe you're seeing some bumps in the road, I can help you book a strategy session with me. You can go to dina cataldo.com/strategy session and we will talk through exactly what's going on. Alright, I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for being here, and I hope you have a beautiful rest of your week.

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