Latest / The Breakout CEO / 54 - The Three-Part Decision Framework CEOs Need to Cut Through Noise
Transcript
- 0:00You can only be as good as a CEO as really your decision making is.
- 0:05Try to differentiate signal, that's like things you can control, and noise.
- 0:10What is really something I want to be known for a month from today, three months from today, six months from today?
- 0:18What really comes down to it?
- 0:21Where do you need to wait for approval?
- 0:23Or what is it maybe that you could already let your team work on right now?
- 0:28Welcome back everybody to the breakout CEO podcast.
- 0:31I'm Jeff Holman, your host, and you're joining us for one of our advisory insights episodes.
- 0:36This should be releasing mid-March or so.
- 0:38So it'll be maybe spring will start to start to appear wherever you're at.
- 0:43So and today I'm excited to talk with Christiana Schroeder.
- 0:47Christiana, thanks for coming on the show.
- 0:49Thanks so much for having me here, Jeff.
- 0:51Audience is gonna be a good one.
- 0:53You're gonna get ready for the spring.
- 0:54And we're definitely giving you some good insights here today.
- 0:58Yeah, I'm excited.
- 0:59I'm really excited to chat with you.
- 1:01And we were talking, we had a great chat beforehand.
- 1:03You were showing me some of the stuff about your TEDx talk and your company.
- 1:07And we talked podcast lighting backgrounds.
- 1:09Like, we're all good to go here.
- 1:12We broke out for you already.
- 1:16Warmed up.
- 1:17So this is going to be really good because now it's just like us cheering all the best and you can tune in and gather all these amazing insights.
- 1:26Yes, I'm excited about it.
- 1:27And today we're going to talk about how CEOs uh make and evaluate and come to conclusions on big decisions.
- 1:35So we're talking about the decision making process.
- 1:38so Cristiana, you're going to help us and help our audience and CEOs who are out there facing big problems, big decisions.
- 1:45You're going to help them figure out how to maybe think about that decision making process a little bit better, right?
- 1:51Yeah, and I think that's really what it comes down to that you can only be as good as a CEO as really your decision making is.
- 2:00And we will help you today and maybe build a little bit more structure in making those decisions.
- 2:06Yeah, yeah, I agree.
- 2:07I've worked with a lot of CEOs from the legal side of things and I see a lot of CEOs who are big visionaries, right?
- 2:14And they have all these ideas and, you know, despite whether you're a visionary CEO or not, because there are other types too, but nothing really ever happens until you make the
- 2:26decision, right?
- 2:27You can see big things, you can uh dream big dreams, but you've got to put things into action.
- 2:32And that's where decision making comes into play, I think.
- 2:35Right.
- 2:35And I also think that, you know, and we will talk more about this because I have this three-step system that really comes down to it, that you can really, as you are making
- 2:46decisions, you can really inspire others to become a good leader because they will look up to you and they will follow your decisions.
- 2:55So your decisions are amazing to reach your goals, but they are also there to really impact the whole team.
- 3:01If you think of like in a boat.
- 3:03where we all rowing together, like very much in sync.
- 3:07That's really what it comes down to.
- 3:10I'm always amazed about these people, you know, when you see them, and you might know this from Salt Lake City too, right?
- 3:15Where you have this person and it was like going all together.
- 3:18That's always think about decision-making, that if there's a really good CEO and a good leader, that it's very much in sync.
- 3:25It's just beautiful to look at.
- 3:27I love that.
- 3:28You're adding a whole other side to it.
- 3:30It's not just making a decision like in isolation, but you're actually leveraging the power of the team through the decision-making process.
- 3:39That's fantastic.
- 3:40Well, let's get into this and maybe let's start.
- 3:43you had some experiences, you know, working with company CEOs or executives where you've seen the decision-making process unnecessarily stall or get in the way of the business?
- 3:56Very much so.
- 3:57And I think it comes down to what you mentioned earlier, great visionaries.
- 4:04And I listened to them and it even starts in the very first meeting to where I'm like hearing a lot of great things, but it's so much noise.
- 4:16And my very first thing is actually try to differentiate signal.
- 4:21That's like things you can control and noise because
- 4:25You can talk and you have great ideas, but sometimes it's like, you don't necessarily actually have the means to get there or control some of these things.
- 4:35So what is really the signal you want to send and what are maybe some goals that really align with your company's vision?
- 4:44Because there's a lot of things we can always do, but it's just like all these small tiddly little things that you lose your time and drain your energy.
- 4:53And at the end of the day,
- 4:54You really want to focus on something where the whole team feels like this is really something we are working towards.
- 5:00And that's the signal we want to send to our customers.
- 5:03But as also fields, we are all part of this one unique thing and everything else is just noise.
- 5:10And you just have to shut that out.
- 5:12You just have to say, we're working on this one thing.
- 5:14Let's break this down into small individual steps.
- 5:17Let's distribute the functions, but that's the one thing we're working towards.
- 5:21So we're really finding that clarity is the number one thing.
- 5:24that you need to be completely solid on.
- 5:27love that clarity of the signals.
- 5:29How would a CEO who's approaching their business, they show up every day in the office or they show up with their team and there's just so much in front of them, right?
- 5:39They've got the problems that feel urgent and immediate and maybe sometimes huge, uh maybe life threatening to the business.
- 5:47They've got the team, the internal things, they've got the new product launch they're working on or they're trying to establish partnerships.
- 5:57making sure money's in the bank, right?
- 5:58There's so many things that a CEO is trying to do.
- 6:01How do they distinguish between signal, like meaningful signal and noise?
- 6:08I think what it comes down to is looking at the decisions in somewhat structured timeline.
- 6:15Like, right, what is really something I want to be known for a month from today, three months from today, six months from today?
- 6:24And I'm hesitant to sometimes say like a year from today, because to me, the shorter timelines actually bring things into a more urgent perspective.
- 6:35So don't they?
- 6:36What do I want to be known for in five years or 15 years?
- 6:39Because things change very fast.
- 6:42But really like looking at, right, what matters in a month from today?
- 6:47And then you all of a sudden realize a lot of these things don't necessarily matter.
- 6:53They were just there, but they are really not going to make the decision so much more impactful.
- 6:59And sometimes we also have
- 7:01too broad of a vision where it really just comes down to finding the clarity and niching down and becoming much stronger in terms of, always say it's niching down where really the
- 7:14focus comes in.
- 7:15Strong niche down is much better than being broad and just scraping the surface or something.
- 7:22So if you have a lot of decisions, maybe, I mean, like I'm a visual thinker.
- 7:28I sometimes say, right, why do all these things down on sticky notes?
- 7:32And then let's, let's try to create like a little bit of an order here.
- 7:35Right.
- 7:36What do you really feel will bring money in the bank of all these sticky notes and start putting them on a pile.
- 7:42And then even within that pile, what's the most pertinent decision and all of a sudden, all these sticky notes, it's like, what's I even thinking?
- 7:49Right.
- 7:50Uh, it was like all these things, but they actually really don't make that much of a difference right now.
- 7:57And right now all that matters is maybe these three important tasks.
- 8:00So let's focus on this and let's keep going.
- 8:03Is this is this similar then to EOS and finding your big rocks for the next 90 days?
- 8:10Is that that's what we're talking about here?
- 8:12And I actually, um, I showed you my mug earlier.
- 8:15That's my trademark.
- 8:18call it petite practice.
- 8:19Petite is French for small.
- 8:22And then practice is that first step that you take towards reaching your goal.
- 8:26So my tagline is, you know, small steps, but be creating a big impact because you take the small steps consistently.
- 8:33And you're really looking at the big goal that comes at the end of multiple small steps.
- 8:40So much more meaningful than thinking, my gosh, I'm going to sit down on this one day and I'm going to crank it out for this deadline tomorrow.
- 8:47It's really just like chopping away at something consistently and looking at it in terms of really creating impact with small wins, consistently picking it up and creating
- 8:59momentum with that.
- 9:00Well, so that's an interesting perspective then.
- 9:04Should CEOs be spending more of their time making big decisions or making sure the small decisions are being made well?
- 9:12Is there a distinction there?
- 9:14Beautiful.
- 9:15I think big decisions broken down into small steps because you want to be the person that involves everybody, gives people the authority.
- 9:27And I always say, if you think about a good leader, right?
- 9:31So listening, leading goes with listening, but also executing.
- 9:37your J today function and then giving authority is really important, but then finding the direction.
- 9:42So earlier we were talking about the boat, how we all rowing together.
- 9:46You need listen, you need to find, you know, ways you can get to your goal.
- 9:51And sure, it can be a big goal, but you need to give authority and those authority steps could be smaller functions that lead to that big goal.
- 10:01And then you need to check in, have direction as like, all right, so can you give me an app?
- 10:06update on what you're currently working on.
- 10:08And I would love to hear how can I help you in getting to the end of the function you're currently working on.
- 10:15So really making sure you're distributing functions, but you're also creating an open communication line to check back in and how this is going.
- 10:24I love that.
- 10:25I want to make sure that I'm not skipping around too much and that I'm keeping this straight for myself and for the audience.
- 10:32So you've got your three part system.
- 10:35so make sure, help me understand where, you know, we talk about signals and then we talk about kind of these delegation functions, checking in, listening, all that.
- 10:44How did those all fit together within the broader framework?
- 10:48So we had the signal versus noise.
- 10:50And if you want to stick to our visuals, that was like writing down all goals, all things that seem pertinent right now on these sticky notes, and then maybe reading like an order
- 11:03and all of a sudden realizing that a lot of these sticky notes could maybe go a little bit into like a parking lot, right?
- 11:10Not that they're not important, but they're just like hanging out there.
- 11:13I actually frequently use the comparison like into a refrigerator.
- 11:17So we keep them fresh.
- 11:18don't let them spoil, but at the same time, we don't necessarily need to deal with them at this very moment.
- 11:24Right.
- 11:26Now the second step would be figuring about alignment versus approval.
- 11:31Like what really comes down to it?
- 11:34Where do you need to wait for approval?
- 11:37Or what is it maybe that you could already let your team work on right now?
- 11:41Because this is important sometimes.
- 11:45There are so many decision makers involved and you really can't do anything about that and that's all right.
- 11:51But you can maybe already create some momentum with tasks with your team.
- 11:55And it's unbelievable what I've seen how the motivation will really rise when there are these small, fast, quick wins.
- 12:03Because people really feel, all right, we're actually getting something done here.
- 12:07And then once you get approval, you can tackle the next thing.
- 12:11So it's so important not to stall and wait and say, right, so I'm still like, you know, trying to figure this out over here, et cetera.
- 12:19See if there is something you can already chip away from and distribute those tasks because those quick wins will actually get the momentum then rolling and working on the
- 12:29next step.
- 12:30Yeah, that's interesting.
- 12:31It reminds me of a, I was in a board meeting this morning with a client and you know, the board of directors, some observers, management is there and they're talking and they've
- 12:39got a new CEO uh and the new CEO was giving kind of a vision for where they're headed as a company.
- 12:47And one of the phrases she said, I think maybe aligns with what you're talking about.
- 12:51She said that, you know, we've been talking with the team, we've done good work, the prior CEO got us to where we're at, all this stuff, right?
- 12:59But,
- 13:00As a team, they've been talking where are we headed now?
- 13:03And the phrase came out, you know, we're too, cause I work with a lot of startups and scaling companies.
- 13:08They're not behemoth corporations, you know, they're expected to move slowly.
- 13:12These are smaller companies expected to move quickly.
- 13:15And she said, you know, we're, we're too small to be uh taking this long to make decisions and get things done.
- 13:24So she was just articulating that they have an advantage and they need to be taking advantage of that.
- 13:30of that, uh of their size and their nimble nature to be able to move quicker in what they're doing.
- 13:36And I think that aligns with when you have alignment in the team and you give people approvals and they're able to act quickly, get those quick wins and kind of move from task
- 13:45to task like a small company is sort of expected to do as opposed to a big bureaucratic organization.
- 13:52Completely.
- 13:52mean, like, think about like, you're one side of the river and you're looking to the other side of the river and you're creating like these little tasks that are these stepping
- 14:01stones crossing the river and you're making them small enough so that everybody on your team can just hop from stone to stone right there.
- 14:09That's like really aligning your path and you're making it clear that all of your team sees it.
- 14:14All right, we're going to go this path right here and we all on board and we're going to take this step by step and
- 14:21So you can look down, you see river water.
- 14:23It's not always great.
- 14:24That's actually my third point to where we're coming.
- 14:27Yeah.
- 14:28But at the same time, you also have to celebrate the win.
- 14:31We are already halfway on this path because on this, you'd be like, Oh my gosh, here we are in the middle of this.
- 14:37And it's like, yeah, but still, I mean, you could have waited on the other side of the river and just thought about crossing it.
- 14:42And here we go.
- 14:43You actually took the steps.
- 14:44So that's amazing.
- 14:45You have to celebrate the messy middle.
- 14:48Yeah, it's sort of off topic, so I'm not going to go into details, but this river crossing reminds me of a time I took some inexperienced young men, some scouts, into an area of
- 15:00Utah called the Hiawintas.
- 15:02It's an undeveloped area, and we ran into something called Swift Creek, but I think it was more like Rapid River that time of year.
- 15:10I wish we had had some small stones.
- 15:13We had to actually take a tree trunk and push it over and...
- 15:17It was dangerous.
- 15:18was like small steps would have been so much nicer, especially for the team.
- 15:22Anyway, that's more detailed than we need to get into, but the vision of putting the steps in place, you know, small steps, like that makes so much sense to me.
- 15:33Yeah.
- 15:34And actually, I love it.
- 15:35You bring up the tree trunk.
- 15:38And you didn't have the stones right there.
- 15:40Because I think good entrepreneur, that's just what they do.
- 15:43They're not going to be like, well, we didn't have rocks, we couldn't cross the river, right?
- 15:48They're going to be like, well, what else could we do?
- 15:50Yes.
- 15:51Let's look around.
- 15:53Well, maybe find a tree.
- 15:54And it could be, this was maybe not the first tree, maybe you had to find multiple trees to get the one that actually then allowed you to get all the way to the other side, right?
- 16:03That's just what entrepreneurship is, right?
- 16:06It's finding opportunities when you deal with obstacles.
- 16:10Yeah, I will say it got us most of the way.
- 16:14There was a little bit of a jump at the end there, but it did its job.
- 16:19So, okay, so we've got uh signal versus noise, we've got alignment and approvals.
- 16:29And what's the next step there?
- 16:31Feeling fear versus feeling ready.
- 16:34I think that's actually the most important part right there.
- 16:38I personally think we always seem to be a little bit afraid.
- 16:42You can never just sit on the sidelines and say, I'm not ready yet.
- 16:47I don't think I'm ready yet.
- 16:49That's just not really how life works.
- 16:50Right.
- 16:51I actually personally define fear as face everything and rise.
- 16:58I love that.
- 16:59Yeah, I mean, if you're afraid, that's great because it means A, you care and B, that you're just going to put yourself out there.
- 17:09And if you wouldn't put yourself out there, you would never see how it's going to be.
- 17:14Right.
- 17:16Do you run across CEOs who don't utilize fear to motivate them, who get stalled by the fears?
- 17:24get this a lot and I'm in publishing too, so can see if you watch this on video, you can see some books behind me.
- 17:31I get this a lot, especially with authors or people that write books or create content, right?
- 17:39Content creators, because it's fast to create content, are also very much into the stalling mechanism.
- 17:49It's like, don't think it's ready yet.
- 17:52It's maybe the fear that if you put yourself out there that nobody will buy it or nobody will be interested in it.
- 17:59Yeah, and nobody wants to have their baby called ugly either, right?
- 18:03It's like, put so much effort into this or this is coming from within and now I'm exposing it.
- 18:09And what if people don't love it the way that I think they should love it?
- 18:13Like that's natural with a lot of inventors that I've worked with also.
- 18:17Yeah.
- 18:18And then, um, I, sometimes, I sometimes have only two words as a response.
- 18:23I'm like, so what?
- 18:24And you're like, what do mean?
- 18:27It's like, I mean, who cares?
- 18:29Nobody will love it.
- 18:30Do you really think 100 % of the people will not love it?
- 18:35Even if 99 % of them don't love it, there will be still 1 % that might.
- 18:39And wouldn't that be cool to reach that 1 %?
- 18:41And maybe then if you try it again, they promote a little heavier.
- 18:46Maybe another 1%.
- 18:47That's all we're aiming for.
- 18:49We're not aiming for improvement that dislike these giant leaps.
- 18:53We're just improving 1%.
- 18:55And if you think about that, a lot of famous authors, that's really how they got started, right?
- 19:00They just started small and then they just ticked up from there, these petite practices.
- 19:07So if you don't put your book out there or your content or whatever, we will never know how it goes.
- 19:14Yeah, I listened to a book on tape once a while back when that was more common.
- 19:19I think it was a book on CD maybe at the time.
- 19:22This was, I'm giving my age, this was back when I was commuting, you know, an hour and a half each way in California, not too, you a little bit north of where you're at now.
- 19:31I was commuting back and forth to a law firm and I listened to, I think the book was called Stephen King's On Writing, if you've ever heard of it.
- 19:39But he walked through his process and what you're saying now, you know, it really makes me think,
- 19:44You don't, Stephen King did not start with a library of books that he'd authored, right?
- 19:49In fact, I think he started writing, if I remember right, this I'm going back a ways, this is 20, 20 plus years ago.
- 19:56I think he started writing in penthouse and he was writing articles or something like that.
- 20:00So he's just started small and started going and then went into books and other stuff.
- 20:06And of course he's developed a successful career, but you know, what you're saying really makes me think.
- 20:12People write books one page at a time.
- 20:14You don't write an entire book and have it done.
- 20:18And so if you're not going to start that page, if you're not going to overcome your, we'll call it writer's block maybe for some people, but maybe that's just another version of
- 20:27fear, right?
- 20:29If you're not going to overcome your fear to take that first step, then it's really hard to get the book written and published and out there and see the results of it.
- 20:37Yeah, when I wrote my dissertation, I remember very much thinking, because I looked at them in the library and I was like, gosh, these are like heavy.
- 20:47mean, getting a doctorate degree is not like writing a paper.
- 20:51Like we're talking like close to 200 pages.
- 20:56all this in a foreign language, right?
- 20:58mean, I came from Germany.
- 20:59was like, then I thought, well, actually not that bad.
- 21:04So if you take whatever 150, 180 pages and divide it out by the length of time you give yourself to write this, you could do two pages per day.
- 21:12within three months, you have something pretty solid going.
- 21:15And that's really how it works.
- 21:16Right.
- 21:17You just have to consistently sit down and write two pages per day, or depending on what content you create, keep that up.
- 21:24And you have to be honest with yourself too.
- 21:26Like after the two pages, you can give yourself permission to walk away.
- 21:29Don't like, well, well, well, maybe today I'm just going to edit what I wrote yesterday because it wasn't that great.
- 21:34You can't do that.
- 21:35You have to build, right?
- 21:37It's like knitting a sweater.
- 21:38I've not ended sweater, but I imagine, right?
- 21:41You're not like, well, let me open this up again.
- 21:43What I did yesterday, right?
- 21:46This way you have to just keep going, building, building.
- 21:49And I know it's tempting because it's at least, at least I think.
- 21:55Nobody sits there with a typewriter and actually like see the pages coming out of your machine.
- 22:02So it's tempting on a computer to just like use the back cursor and delete.
- 22:06Yeah.
- 22:07You have to do that.
- 22:10Um, you have to face everything and rise and you have to be okay with the fact that whatever you do, whether that's publishing or, you know, presenting or speaking somewhere.
- 22:22in terms of like your fear of being on that big stage, you have to put yourself out there and you have to be okay with the fact that you inspired one person in the audience and
- 22:33maybe not all 1000 that were listening to this because that's just really what you have to go for and that will change your mindset too.
- 22:40Yeah, I'm reminded of my youth when I used to do some piano and I was never very, I was okay as a piano player, but I was never very good as uh a performer, right?
- 22:53You do your recitals every year or whatever.
- 22:56And I always wished I could be more like the students who, when they would mess up, because we all mess up, when they would mess up, they would keep playing.
- 23:04And it sounded like it flowed.
- 23:07You might be like, maybe they messed up, I'm not sure.
- 23:10But it's the other kids like I was, and this is, I just didn't know how to do it better.
- 23:15When I would mess up, I would stop.
- 23:17I would think, I'd go back and try to replay.
- 23:21And that's just so disruptive compared to, know, minor mistake, keep playing.
- 23:27And everybody is like, I'm not even sure if you messed up.
- 23:30So.
- 23:31Beautiful comparison.
- 23:32helped somebody the other day getting ready for a big presentation.
- 23:36And so I was watching them go through the presentation.
- 23:39I kind of have like always like this, this look on, right.
- 23:43And they messed up multiple times, right.
- 23:45And they were like, but we're looking at your face.
- 23:47And I was like, well, mean, I, I'm just having this neutral face, but in between messing up, I'm just wondering, did you really think I would notice that you messed up?
- 23:56Because I don't think I would have, right?
- 23:58It's not like I'm, my gosh, it just messed up.
- 24:01But by saying, my ears like this slide and it shows sales and I know it's too small for you to actually see it.
- 24:09It's like, I wasn't actually even looking at the numbers.
- 24:12I wasn't even thinking about the fact that the font is too small.
- 24:15But once you pointed this out to me, I was like, my gosh, that font is so small there.
- 24:19Why would you ever put it on the slide?
- 24:21Right.
- 24:21But so don't even draw attention to it.
- 24:23Just move on.
- 24:24And quite honestly, it makes it more eerie.
- 24:29If you just keep going because it makes you appear human, especially now in the age of AI, where we are feeling this is all progress and it always beats perfection.
- 24:39We don't need to stand there and give the most polished slideshow in the world.
- 24:44That's not why they came.
- 24:46They came to connect with you.
- 24:47Right.
- 24:48And I think that's so important and it makes it sometimes like so much less stressful.
- 24:54If you just keep that in mind that.
- 24:57messing up is really what the audience actually sometimes loves even more than a polished presentation.
- 25:04Yeah, that's fantastic.
- 25:05So where does a CEO start if they feel like they want to use this framework, put it into practice?
- 25:11Like, what's the first step they should be thinking about?
- 25:13I it's connecting with your team, really fine tuning who's part on your team, what are their inputs in this, this listening.
- 25:23I talked about the leadership example, listening, because you don't want to be the person that just comes in with all these ideas and I've been like, oh my, here we go again.
- 25:36So a good leader, I think, starts with listening and then talking.
- 25:41Listen first, speak second.
- 25:43I think that's really important.
- 25:45Where are we right now?
- 25:46How do we feel about where we are right now?
- 25:48Okay.
- 25:49So that's maybe make a plan.
- 25:50Where do we want to go?
- 25:52Where do we want to go a week, a month and three months from now, really breaking it down into like the current state.
- 26:01And then after you assess that what worked well in the past, let's move some of the things that worked well into, can use those to move forward.
- 26:11It's like you turn around, you pick up the
- 26:13solid rock that you just stepped on and you put it in front of you to take the next step.
- 26:19Yes.
- 26:22I love that.
- 26:22love that rock tree trunk, whatever you need to whatever you need to find What do you think a CEO will see once they start to effectively put this into practice?
- 26:32Sometimes I think they see skills in people, but they totally underestimate it.
- 26:36And I think that, and it comes back to what I talked about earlier with regard to aligning and approval that frequently you're under using your team members and maybe even delegate
- 26:49more to them, which gives them direction.
- 26:52at the same time, it also allows you to really focus yourself on.
- 26:58the steps that you're really good at.
- 27:00What is your unique value you bring to the company?
- 27:03You don't want to be bogged down with all the details.
- 27:06You could have these delegated to your team members.
- 27:09So by listening and really focusing and on like, okay, what are they really bringing to the table?
- 27:14Is there something I didn't previously know that they could do?
- 27:18You could take things off your plate and then distribute them effectively after you really listened in what their skills are.
- 27:24And I think that's
- 27:26That sometimes when I see a meeting, it's like, did you actually ask them about this?
- 27:30It's like, no, it's like, Oh, didn't you like, why you never talk to them?
- 27:35Right.
- 27:35It's so important to first like really do like this, this quick pulse check and connect with them and really figure out, right, where are we here?
- 27:44What's really on the table right now is like, are we all feeling, you know, we bring things to the table and we getting hurt.
- 27:52That's so important.
- 27:53Yeah, it's as I think about this framework that you're presenting and the ability for CEOs to implement it, it seems like it's probably self-reinforcing.
- 28:03The more alignment we get, the better we're going to be at getting more alignment in the future.
- 28:08And the more we overcome our fears and we give people authority to take actions, that's going to reinforce for them what they can do well.
- 28:18And they're going to do more of that well.
- 28:21When we start to see the right signals, we're going to know how to utilize those signals.
- 28:26fact, I was talking with a CEO of uh a SaaS company yesterday and I said, what signals are you looking for in your business?
- 28:32And it's always interesting to hear what they say.
- 28:34And he gave a surprising answer.
- 28:36He had drilled so far down into the different metrics that he could within his company.
- 28:44like, Jeff, this is the one.
- 28:45If this one, and I was surprised, I'm like, how would you ever come up with that?
- 28:49Like that's not revenue, that's not users.
- 28:51It was a very, very uh specific signal that to me as an outsider looking at it, I wouldn't have even thought that was a number you tracked.
- 29:01to him, he's like, that is the one.
- 29:03That's the one that is the signal for the rest of our business.
- 29:06So was really cool to hear, you know, I'm sure he's had practice, you know, prior to this to get to that number.
- 29:13He probably looked at users or probably looked at, you know, you know, churn or...
- 29:18revenue or whatever before and he finally said, the one that I tracked that kind of helps measure every the health of everything across the system is this one.
- 29:27So this seems very self-reinforcing.
- 29:29Have you seen that?
- 29:30Yeah.
- 29:30And actually love that you're bringing this up because let's, let's look at this as like, there's a lot of water references that I use in California, but let's look at this as
- 29:40like, you have this pond of all these competitors in front of you that are all using these other metrics, but yet you are the one that's maybe measuring things a little bit
- 29:52differently.
- 29:53So you can actually attract.
- 29:55companies that would align with the way that you operate.
- 29:58And that really is your differentiating factor, your niche that you are building.
- 30:03So in a certain way, being really aligned and being really niche down only makes you stronger in this pond from everybody else that's living in there and looking for customers
- 30:15and aligning and they're looking at others and then they do what others are doing.
- 30:20But sometimes it really helps again, not looking at all the noise, but really thinking about, right, what
- 30:25What is really that is something unique for us that really moves the needle and let's do more of that.
- 30:31And that's the signal we really want to follow right there.
- 30:34And that becomes really clear that that's becoming the niche that you really want to uniquely operate in.
- 30:40Now we're coming full circle, we're back to clarity, focus, and the ability to really be effective in that leadership role.
- 30:49I love that.
- 30:51Well, Cristiana, this has been fantastic.
- 30:54I've taken a little more of your time than I intended to, but we had a lot of good stuff to go through.
- 30:58So I really appreciate you sharing that with me and with our audience.
- 31:02Yeah.
- 31:02And, and audience, course, keep in mind, it doesn't always even require you to start in like step one, right?
- 31:10Signal and noise.
- 31:11could be that you are maybe at step two or step three.
- 31:15These could be uniquely and had changed, but at the same time, these are definitely the ones that even like on a daily basis, it helps to sometimes kind of reassess, where am I,
- 31:27where are we going with all this?
- 31:29And then come back.
- 31:30because it's so basic that you can cycle through them over and over again.
- 31:36So I encourage you keep going, but at the same time also figure out really how you can best utilize your strength with that, unique value.
- 31:45I will make you a good team leader.
- 31:47I love that.
- 31:47I love that.
- 31:48And if somebody wanted more about this framework, they wanted to dig in deeper with you, what would be the best way to do that?
- 31:56Check out my website, drchristiana.com.
- 32:01And I'm also on YouTube, dr.christiana.
- 32:05I have my own podcast that's available everywhere.
- 32:08That's also linked on my website as well.
- 32:11That's called Happy Healthy Hustle.
- 32:14And then of course you can grab any of my books on Amazon and some of them have been best selling there since a couple of years now.
- 32:22So I would love to encourage you and check them out there as well.
- 32:25I
- 32:26that.
- 32:26So many great resources and uh we're really lucky that you took a few minutes to spend with us in the audience and sharing this framework.
- 32:34Yeah.
- 32:35And then I have a free gift.
- 32:37If you want to take your goals and maybe turn them around, I call it the do it anyway challenge.
- 32:45And it's a five day sequence that you can follow that cycles you through.
- 32:51It's a quick video.
- 32:52You get an email with encouragement and then there was an action item at the end.
- 32:57It allows you to maybe do something anyway, whether you weren't clear about it or certain.
- 33:03Or maybe you were afraid of it allows this anyway.
- 33:06That link to the audience as well.
- 33:10Yeah, we can share all that in the show notes for sure.
- 33:11Thank you.
- 33:13Well, thank you for coming on and to our audience who's joined us today for this episode.
- 33:16Thank you once again for joining us on the Breakout CEO Podcast.
- 33:21Thank you.
- 33:23Be sure to follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform.
- 33:27And if you enjoy the show, a rating or a review goes a long way.
- 33:32Our mission is to promote the stories of breakout CEOs in scaling, SaaS, e-commerce, and tech companies to equip peer CEOs with valuable perspectives and confidence.
- 33:45Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the breakout CEO.
- 33:50I'm Jeff Holman and I'll see you next time.