Using breakthroughs to improve business outcomes
A story about forcing my own breakthroughs
The very first PappyClub Member live event was on August 12th, 2020, my birthday. I picked that date specifically because I wanted to create a “breakthrough” in a couple of areas:
Giving myself permission to do work I love on my birthday and promote that it was going to be on my birthday.
Putting myself out there more actively—this has been a big challenge for me when I have spent most of my career “behind the curtain” making other people look good and perform well.
Getting over the fact that PappyClub did not have to be 100% complete in its content or have an overwhelming abundance of promising content.
A specific threshold of Members who get the “Live Events” as part of their membership.
I had a breakthrough in these areas by “forcing” myself to move forward and doing my first Live Events as Open Houses. I said to myself, “This is my Club. I can run it however I want—there’s no right or wrong because I’m doing this the way I want to do it.”
Frankly, that was a big breakthrough in that statement, no matter how insignificant it may seem.
And that’s the rub: breakthroughs don’t have to be major, life-changing events. Often, they are subtle gems we take for granted and only notice once we’ve moved past them, realized the result and looked back to trace the impetus of the result we celebrate.
As you can see, using a “breakthrough” approach when tackling business challenges can yield enormous benefit to your confidence, professional (and personal) growth as well as contribute to the bottom line.
A video recording that I did during a PappyClub Live Session where I ran through the ten steps to set the stage for a breakthrough.
Changing the context
When you hear the term “breakthrough,” it implies that what you’re “breaking through” is an impenetrable or formidable obstacle. The term itself is an obstacle! You can change the context of having a breakthrough to soften the experience and allow inspiration and your creativity to find the solution you seek. You will be able to move through this challenge and arrive at an outcome you love. You just need the guidance to do so. The first step is owning that the solution lies within YOU.
Being “cause” in your own breakthrough
As a solopreneur, we have tunnel vision. What I mean by that is because we don’t have coworkers or peers who can provide feedback or input to inspire improvement or change. We are not objective about our perceptual experience of who we are and what we’re doing right or wrong to achieve the outcomes we want or don’t want. We suffer nearsightedness which prevents us from seeing our obstacles as well as our value.
Because of this solopreneur hindrance (I think it’s a goldmine of opportunity, frankly), we are even more challenged to be the source of our own breakthroughs. This is where working with a transformational coach or similar type of trained professional can be incredibly beneficial. Also, spending time in a community of likeminded professionals who are about forward movement and creating breakthroughs can also be beneficial.
However, in those in-between times when you’re not working with outside guidance or when you want to complement outside guidance with self-work, what do you do? How can you train yourself to be “cause” in creating your own breakthroughs?
What follows is a solid strategy to do just that as it relates to your business outcomes and you can also use this strategy to cause a breakthrough in your personal life as well.
Click to download PDF worksheet
Creating your breakthrough strategy
The following prompts will help you create your own unique breakthrough strategy so you can nip those challenges in the bud the minute they show up, and they’ll always show up. But the better you get at it, the easier and faster you’ll progress into the business reality you most want. Take a moment to work through these prompts:
What is the exact nature of your challenge that you wish to have a breakthrough about?
What’s going on and what are the results (or lack of) you are experiencing? Can you distill it down to a final situation or outcome? For example, your challenge may be, “I’m having financial challenges.” That’s a symptom, so you’ll need to describe it as a specific situation. Why are you having financial challenges? Is it because you’re spending more than you’re bringing in? Is it because you are not landing enough new business? Is it because your product offerings are priced too low? Is it because you have high turnover of existing clients? Clearly identifying your challenge allows you to more easily discover solutions which lead to breakthrough ideas for solutions. So, if you are having financial challenges because you’re not bringing in enough new clients, what is the action you’re taking or not taking that’s creating the situation? Is it because you’re too busy taking care of existing clients and have not been actively marketing and doing sales calls? There is always a direct action or inaction that is leading to your situation. And that is anchored in a narrative (next step).
What story or narrative is the challenge rooted in?
This is a simple step and relatively easy to address once you’ve isolated the nature of the challenge and the action or inaction that’s keeping you stuck. Ask yourself this question: “What am I afraid of happening that’s keeping me stuck in this situation?” If we were to continue using the above example of “Not making sales calls,” the question would be, “What are do you fear will happen if you do make sales calls?" What are the stories, beliefs or thoughts you have in your head—regardless of where they came from—that are keeping you in a state of inaction (in this case)? When you explore your situation this way you can get to the root issue fast. So let’s say your fear is rejection. A very common fear when it comes to sales. You don’t necessarily need to understand or explore where that fear came from to have a breakthrough, unless that’s really important to you to understand. You can explore that separate from this exercise as it may be beneficial for you from an awareness and understanding perspective.
Where are you from a survival and sustainability state in your business and life?
Another important aspect to evaluate is your overall health and state of mind. If you are in “survival mode,” and barely keeping afloat, you may not have a lot of options because you’re so hyper focused on survivability. Do a quick check-in on your physical, financial, mental and spiritual health. Do you have adequate balance in life? Are you maintaining a level of self-care that supports your work and lifestyle? This will be more challenging if you are distracted by extreme conditions where you are feeling stress. So take care of YOU first before trying to solve for some of these other situations. If you’re healthy, balanced and have something to give, you’ll be more apt to experience a breakthrough that moves you forward. Otherwise, focus on self-care first and get yourself a level above surviving.
How may you possibly be expecting your breakthrough to be huge and profoundly life-changing like some big movie climax?
Be willing to be open to the subtle shifts that the most powerful breakthroughs provide. Make note of the nuances around what you are discovering regarding this exercise. Allow your expectations to soften and look for the subtleties of your awareness improving as you sharpen your thinking around your challenge.
How strong is your desire to get relief from the challenge?
This may or may not be true for you, but you’ll know if you isolated the right situation by how you feel about it. If you have strong negative emotion about your situation/challenge such as frustration, anger, resignation, worry, stress, confusion, fear or a similar set of emotions about it, you know you’ve isolated something important. If there’s a lot at stake if you don’t solve the challenge or have a breakthrough, you’ve done the right work to discover and isolate what it is. Having a strong emotional condition when you think about the situation will motivate you to do the work necessary to create a breakthrough. You may have to do something that’s uncomfortable for you or that you are resisting, which will make the emotion around it that much more intense. This is good. It will make your breakthrough that much more rewarding and fill you with relief and empowerment.
What would happen if you just let go and gave up?
As you think about this situation, make a list of the outcomes that would potentially happen if you just walked away from the challenge and let it all go. For example, if it were the sales issue which is about driving revenue into your business, what would happen if you totally stopped the sales effort? What would happen if you decided to just close your business and go get a regular work-a-day job? Sometimes we can get so fixated on the problem and how to fix it that we lose perspective on radical options. This part of the exercise isn’t to inspire you to quit and give up, it’s about connecting with the emotional feeling and sensation of ease and relief that you’d be living if you didn’t have the challenge anymore. Another “let go and give up” option is to outsource your sales. Wouldn’t that relieve your tension? Wouldn’t that be an option if you could work out the details in a way that fueled your pipeline? Wouldn’t it be great if someone else was responsible for generating leads and sales for your business other than you? Make note of how this part of the exercise makes you feel.
What approach are you taking to create your breakthrough and have you questioned if it’s the best approach?
Brainstorm approaches on how you can solve the situation. So if it’s lack of sales activity, the first natural response is to either get busy doing more outreach and sales conversations. But what if there are other approaches you can take? What if outsourcing was an option? What about partnering with complementary solopreneurs? What about changing your target so one outreach connection could lead to multiple clients for you? What if you invested in advertising and created more automation in your business? What if you adjusted your product offering so you could sell to higher-value clients which would bring in more revenue per client? What about getting your current and past clients to buy more from you? What about improving your referral process? There can be many more creative approaches to solving your challenge. Choose the one(s) that feel good and excite you.
What would happen if you never solved this challenge?
This part of the exercise is to allow some pressure to release. Just like a pressure-cooker, emotions have likely built up around your situation, especially if it’s something you’ve not dealt with or are very frustrated about. Imagine for a moment if you never solved the situation. If the challenge never went away, if it was something that was virtually impossible to deal with. What would happen? So if we looked at the sales situation that is resulting in a financial challenge, if you never changed what you were doing (or not doing), what would happen? How would your business change? How would you otherwise increase your income to offset the sales you don’t want to address in your business? When you do this part of the exercise, you will reacquaint yourself with the downside of not taking action. You also may get a shift in perspective at how “silly” it is (not to make light of your situation, however) to not be in action to fix the situation and that you realize inaction is killing opportunity for you to thrive in your business. It also may reveal that you’re trying to force yourself to do something you really don’t want to do. And that’s okay, too. Just find another way.
Where in the past have you had a breakthrough and what happened to bring it about?
If your past breakthrough was inspired or coached by an external person or event, how can you recreate on your own the impetus that brought about the breakthrough? Often taking a look back over your shoulder at a past experience of a breakthrough where you were able to move through a challenge and solve it in a unique way, what were the circumstances of that breakthrough? What can you learn from that experience that can inform how you’re stuck today? How can you apply the actions, thinking or shifts you used back then to help see new opportunities for solving your current situation? Often a past success can inform a current challenge and also bolster your belief that yes, you can do it again. If it’s challenging to find the correlatives to relate to your current situation, write out step by step what you did. The actions you took will help you find things you can do again to move the needle forward.
What will your world look and feel like after your breakthrough and your challenge is resolved?
To allow your inspiration to flow more openly, it’s important to what I call, “Future Forward.” What I mean by this is for you to write about or visualize what your world could look like after you have your breakthrough and resolve your challenge. What new things become available? What opportunities could present themselves as a result? How will you feel about the situation and about your business? What new doors could potentially open up as a result of you doing this work? This is the funnest part of these prompts is to imagine how awesome things will be once you’re on the other side. The more time you spend focused on where you’re going as opposed to what sucks right now will open up the flow of energy and allow inspired ideas to more freely flow into your mind. Those new ideas could be the exact solution you’re looking for. But if you’re so focused on the problem, there’s no way the solution can present itself to you. Have fun with it! Be imaginative and even a little silly with what life COULD look like for you. This prompt should make you feel great, by the way. Repeat as necessary!
You can do this. Grab a coffee or a glass of wine, curl up in your favorite spot and savor the experience of each of these questions. Trust that your inner guidance will help you along the way and you’ll be amazed at what surfaces, and simply capture what’s there. You can also make this a regular practice for any issue or challenge you’re facing. By getting in the habit of answering these types of probing questions, and giving yourself permission to do so, you’ll create a stronger connection to the guidance that wants to lead you to the success you want.
After you’ve completed these divergent and exploratory exercises, you will feel differently about your challenge. You will feel more empowered, lighter and eager to be in action to address the challenge. Lay out a strategy that includes a step by step plan of what you will do to accomplish the desired result. Get in action and watch things transform before your eyes!
Congratulations. You’ve opened avenues that allow for breakthroughs!
