Stop Boiling Like A Frog

Former Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Schultz once said, any business today that embraces the status quo as an operating principle is going to be on a death march. Let's talk about what is keeping you and your business stuck in the status quo and five ways to kick start some meaningful change.

Welcome to the Business Brickyard Podcast with Howard Mann. Concise lessons learned the hard way about business, strategy, and life. You

probably know the story of the boiling frog. Scientists learned that if you drop a frog in boiling water, it will immediately leap out. But if you put that same frog in cool water and slowly bring it to a boil, it will stay in the water until it boils and dies. A quick aside here. Could you imagine the conversation that went on when they decided to try this experiment?

These scientists are wild. Yikes. I digress. I had two initial conversations with two established business owners last week. Business owners who have built meaningful businesses, one eight years old and the other over 10.

After they each told me the standard intro about their companies, I asked a question that does not usually get asked in a business context. You have been running this business now for many years. How do you feel? After some surprise, a bit of resistance, and then a long pause, I heard about how the early years were filled with growth, but the past three to five years have been, for lack of a better word, flat. Revenue had stayed the same or dropped a bit, profit was not moving, and it had been this way for enough years that their view of the future was now only some variant of this known past.

They did not feel good about it, but it both chalked it up to just being the way it is. Business should be a struggle. Right? I've had this conversation in different ways with dozens of business owners in the past year. Some have businesses that are doing marginally well, but not at the level that is close to their potential.

When pressed, they really are not happy about it, but have become used to this level of frustration. They are all slowly being brought to a boil and do not see it yet. You see, frogs do not have the market cornered on staying put despite growing discomfort. We humans, despite or maybe because of our bigger brains, habitually choose known pain over unknown change. I have endured years of known pain at different times in my life and career.

In retrospect, you can barely perceive the protracted and subtle descent. After years of slogging through the recession of the nineties, I needed someone else to tell me that I had lost my smile to even recognize how resigned I had become to the struggle. It had simply become my normal. It never should have been. There is a well studied phenomenon that when pain becomes familiar, letting go of that pain can actually cause more of it.

Why? Because we've grown accustomed to what we know. Leaving it behind for something new can feel like leaping off a bridge, even if we realize that that leap would likely take us to a better place. American scientist Jared Diamond calls it creeping normality. It is how major change can be accepted as normal if it happens slowly enough.

We understand it when we think about making small steps towards positive change, but seemingly accept it as normal when it moves us to stasis or slow decline. Since I am in the business of igniting massive change for businesses, I have been thinking about this dilemma and why a better future is not a big enough catalyst, especially when compared to a stagnant business. It reminded me of the end scene from the movie Willy Wonka. You know the one. Charlie Bucket is flying over the village in the Walkovator, and mister Wonka turns to him and says, don't forget what happens to the man who suddenly got everything he wanted.

What happened, Charlie responds. Willy Wonka smiles and says, he lived happily ever after. But the question and Charlie's worried what happened response is part of the problem. The idea that getting everything you ever hoped for could actually be a bad thing is what holds so many of us back. Do I really want to have it all?

Wouldn't the pain of losing it all be horrific? Why in the world would I want to ride that roller coaster? So we sit in the pots of our own making and simmer. In many cases, things will get to a point where the pain is so great that the wrists are no longer worse than the current pain, and we make a move. That is simply way too late.

More often, the pain never gets too great and we waste a decade or five. Given this, how can we change our thinking about where we are and where we truly want to be so that we are compelled to make the leap we want for our business so that it can finally fuel the life we want? Well, if you want a different outcome, you need to try a different approach. Here are five ideas. Number one.

How do you feel? That question demands an answer even if you are asking it of yourself. Is your business what you wanted it to be? How long have you been accepting the status quo? How long will you give the status quo such exclusive status?

Bring these thoughts out from the back of your mind into a place that forces you to deal with them. Write about your particular case of status quo and how long you've been locked in it. Number two. Think bigger. What would it take to double your business in the next three years?

Double the growth and double the impact. What would your life be like when that became real? What could you do then that you cannot do today? Write it in vivid and measurable detail. The specific metrics you measure now just all doubled.

When every year is just a little bit better than the year before, we lose sight of any outcome that can be more audacious. Now reverse engineer that result into the smallest possible steps you can take in the next month. Big goals are great to talk about, but they can become overwhelming. Too many things to do and too much to juggle in our minds. Set that big goal and then take a thousand small steps with determination.

Number three. What are the risks? Make a list of everything that scares you about this larger future. What could go wrong? What could you lose?

Now, next to each risk, write one or two strategies that could mitigate it. Tony Robbins points out that most suffering is due to either fear of loss, less, or never. If you think about the downsides that we most worry about, you will see that they are often connected to losing something or everything, having less than before, or the fear of trying and never actually getting what we want. Label each of your fears as either loss, less or never. Get clear on what risks are holding you back and take away their power by rationally thinking through solutions for each one.

Number four: Do it anyway. Your subconscious mind is making sure you are aware of the risks involved in leaving your comfortable pain behind. It does not need any more help from you. What is needed is the space and time to let your cognitive brain think rationally before your fears and worries stop your progress. It is possible you will endure some more pain in the process of getting what you really want.

Do it anyway. You may lose some revenue as you ditch lousy clients so you have time to work with your ideal clients. Do it anyway. The reasons you will come up with to not get out of your known pain will be limitless. Do it anyway.

Number five. Fuck your pride and ask for help. Before you can get out of a rut, you need clarity about what is keeping you in it. As I like to say, it is hard to read the label when you are stuck inside the bottle. Find someone who can see more clearly than you and actively listen to hear what they have to say.

If you could have done it all alone, you would have done it by now. You know the person I told you about that told me that I had lost my smile? That nudge, which was really more like a hard slap across the face, flipped my normal to unacceptable. Everything changed for me and my business after that. We all need a leg up if we wanna do something truly great, but you have to be willing to ask for help and be receptive to taking that help.

You know the phrase, better the devil you know than the one you don't. It assumes that the unknown is evil. Consider that you get to decide what the unknown means to you. So what will you choose? Familiar pain is the devil.

It is painful but tolerable hot water. Leap out of it.

This has been the Business Brickyard Podcast with Howard Mann. Be sure to subscribe wherever you like listening to your podcast or hop on over to businessbrickyard.com.