Successful entrepreneurs often begin with a clear vision and unwavering belief in their ideas. However, it’s easy to get trapped in your own thought patterns, operate with a limited lens, and develop a tunnel vision often missing critical insights that could take your business to the next level.
In this episode of Influence by Design, Tim and Samantha uncover ways of getting out of your own head: the value of different perspectives in business.
Surrounding yourself with people from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets offers perspectives that foster innovation. When you collaborate with people with varying viewpoints it leads to groundbreaking solutions that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
With interesting examples and actionable tips, this episode dives deep into why seeking outside opinions is imperative for growth – while warning against the overwhelm of too many voices. Discover which perspectives matter most so you can make progress unhindered by your own biases.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Reasons business owners may lack the ability to see the big picture (03:16)
- The perspectives from friends and family (07:53)
- The value of getting input from your team members (10:38)
- The importance of getting client feedback (13:18)
- Finding good accountability partners (14:57)
- Hiring coaches and consultants to give tailored advice (18:05)
QUOTES
- “We need to be vulnerable to take feedback from clients, from partners, and from people who have been through with what we’re going through and that may give us a different perspective.” -Tim Hyde
- “Ultimately, it’s your business and it’s your life that you’re driving. You are in the driver’s seat with the safety and reassurance of someone sitting in the passenger seat to navigate you.” -Tim Hyde
- “It’s important to understand that there’s a big picture and your perspective can limit you unless you’ve got the help of other people helping you see different perspectives.” -Samantha Riley
- “Family and friends that aren’t in business are there to keep you safe because they care about you. So they’re not the best people to get a different perspective about your business.” -Samantha Riley
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Influence by Design episode 521: Free Yourself Through Systemization
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
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WHERE TO FIND TIM HYDE
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CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
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TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley Snippet (00:00):
A lot of people that I see that get caught not looking at those other perspectives, it’s usually from a fear of feeling like they’re wrong or being called out. Like it does take a little bit of a thick skin, if you take things personally, to realize that your way maybe isn’t working, that you haven’t seen a different perspective, that you need to sort of remove yourself from the feeling that “Oh, my goodness, I’ve made a mistake.” It’s taking that feeling away and just going, “Oh, I hadn’t seen it that way. All right, let’s give that a go.”
Tim Hyde Snippet (00:36):
Unless you’re talking to other business people, your friends and family – they’re going to give you conformational bias. They will echo your concerns and fears back to you. That’s not necessarily the perspective you want, right? Because they’re just viewing it through your lens because they’re not familiar with the exact circumstances. They’re just going to view it through the same lens that you viewed it from, with all of the conformational bias that you will bring to that conversation.
Samantha Riley Intro (00:34):
Welcome to the Influence By Design Podcast. I’m Samantha Riley, authority positioning strategist for coaches and experts. If you’re ready to build a business that gives you more than just a caffeine addiction, and you dream of making more money, having more time, and having the freedom to be living your best life, then you’re in the right place, it’s time to level up.
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence by Design. I’m your Thursday co host as always summit the Riley and joined by my fabulous friend, and accountability partner and podcast co host Tim Hyde. How are you Tim?
Tim Hyde (01:39):
I’m good. I was about the concern or whether you changed your name since our last episode.
Samantha Riley (01:44):
I’m not I don’t even know what to say.
Tim Hyde (01:47):
We’re doing just just as you heard it here, first people were doing a rebrand. Gonna be Samantha Riley, we’re gonna call it something else. I don’t know. What’s a good name for you?
Samantha Riley (01:58):
I don’t know where you’re going with this. So I can’t
Tim Hyde (02:01):
I just see you as Sam or Samantha. I don’t really see you as something else. You know, Christine, or no, Janice or something? No.
Samantha Riley (02:10):
genossen Christina, perfect for genossen. Christine, I’m definitely Summit. Anyways, I didn’t introduce you like that, because that’s something we’re going to talk about today, the different people in our business.
And really, in the context of seeing the big picture in your business is you know what we’re talking about today. Because I think it’s really important to see, or understand that there’s a big picture and that your perspective can often limit you unless you’ve got the help of other people helping you see different perspectives
Tim Hyde (02:48):
It’s it’s a, it’s a definite skill. I think, too, that not all business owners possess. Right, we’d like to think that we do, but we don’t always possess the ability to jump between the weeds, where we do the stuff to the 30,000 foot vision, where we get to think and act more strategically.
Samantha Riley (03:14):
Do you know, I’m interested to hear your perspective of why you don’t think that there are people that do this? I’ll give mine in a sec. But I’d love to hear yours first.
Tim Hyde (03:28):
I think it requires you requires a completely different skill set for staff. That’s that’s probably the first thing. And whether you possess that skill set, as well as sort of the detail oriented.
But you know, if we if we break this back to I guess some of the fundamentals, I think is that Gerber who talks about it must be Gerber talks about it, right? You’ve got the the entrepreneur, the mechanic and the manager. I’m not sure the exact terms of it. I’ll have to go and have a look another look, but
Samantha Riley (04:01):
you’re referring to the book just to confirm this, you’re referring to the book, the E Myth?
Tim Hyde (04:05):
I’m referring to the E Myth, which is seminar reading, right, everyone?
Samantha Riley (04:09):
Absolutely. If you haven’t read it, you must go and read that book. I think that’s almost the Bible for starting a business.
Tim Hyde (04:16):
Yeah. Well, certainly for growing your business anywhere, but you’ve got the different skill sets, right. And people are naturally better at one of these particular skill sets than others. Right.
So it’s very unusual to find someone who’s good at starting things, which is that entrepreneurial, visionary, creative kind of mindset that so many of us possess, right? That’s a skill that got us to where we are right now.
But when it comes down to the managerial role, the kind of the grind the everyday I was like, Ah, this is terrible. This is boring.
And then the technician, which is another area that a lot of people start out you’re good at the thing you do and you suddenly find yourself having a business that you don’t necessarily appreciate Is that entrepreneurial, bigger picture? skill set.
And those often, you know, sometimes they exist in the one person that’s donated not.
Samantha Riley (05:12):
Absolutely couldn’t agree more. I think that a lot of people that I see that get caught not looking at those other perspectives, it’s usually from a fear of feeling like they’re wrong or being called out.
Like it does take a little bit of a thick skin. If you take things personally to realize that your way maybe isn’t working, or that you haven’t seen a different perspective, that you need to sort of remove yourself from the feeling that Oh, my goodness, I’ve made a mistake, or Oh, my goodness, I saw it and and it was wrong.
Is it taking that feeling away? And just sort of going? Oh, I hadn’t seen it that way. Alright, let’s give that a go.
Tim Hyde (06:00):
Yeah, it is we do have this conformational bias, right, we’ve only got one lens to view things with. Okay, so one that sort of, you know, there’s two of them in your head, right? You weren’t getting one perspective.
And I think this is why we see businesses, let’s call it unicorns here. Right? That’s there’s a lot of household brands that we all know of. The unicorns and the super unicorn businesses very rarely only have one founder.
Samantha Riley (06:26):
Yeah, we talked about a few episodes ago, right?
Tim Hyde (06:30):
Right, they’ve generally got a couple of people involved in the business. And I think if you were to look at that, you’ll probably find the same thing. Right? It’s all of a sudden, we’ve got a common scenario, ie business growth, or, you know, particular market conditions or whatever.
But all of a sudden, you’ve got more than one perspective, looking at it, which gives you a greater understanding of that scenario, and what and how to address it. To anybody got one perspective, you as the business owner yourself, right?
You’re kind of wearing all the hats, but you’ve only got one perspective on something. And that may not necessarily be the correct perspective.
Totally. Well, if you were to draw a line on a piece of paper, and then, you know, turn it in a way that you could actually see only see it from the end, it’d be important. Right? When it’s actually a line, both perspectives are correct.
Samantha Riley (07:22):
Now, there’s many of us that don’t have two or three founders, or that aren’t unicorn companies. I wish I was a unicorn company. But I’m not. I’ll bet you also wish you are a unicorn company. It’d be nice.
But we’re not. And neither are the people that are listening to this podcast. So generally, we are, you know, the founder, we are the person because we don’t have other founders, there are other places that we need to go to get these perspectives. Before we talk about the perspectives of the people that we want to bring in.
There’s probably one perspective that we want to say right up, don’t consider, right. Yeah. And that’s friends and family. And this isn’t fret your business friends because I consider you a friend, Tim, but you’re a business friend.
So that’s different to a friend that isn’t in business. And the same with family. I’ve got a client whose dad is extremely successful in business. He listens to his father, very smart move, because his dad’s very, very successful in business. But my parents, for example, have not ever been in business. So
Tim Hyde (08:33):
I actually know what you do. Really, my parents actually
Samantha Riley (08:36):
have no clue they cannot get their head around what I do whatsoever. None of my family understands. I stopped talking about business with them, because they just look at me like we got no clue what you do.
My brother, actually, I wouldn’t stay with my brother in Alice Springs a few years ago. And I stayed with him for a week and I was sitting on his bed. He just had a little one bedroom apartment.
And I was sitting in his on his bed doing all these coaching calls. And at the end of the week, he said, I’ve listened to you all week, on calls to clients. He said, I still have absolutely no clue what you do.
Anyway, that was a long way around to family and friends that aren’t in business. They’re there to keep you safe, because they care about you. So they’re not going to be the best people to go to get some a different perspective about business. I think
Tim Hyde (09:25):
the other thing there unless you’re talking to other business people, and the coming from an employee mindset. And so inherently employees, as opposed to entrepreneurs are more risk averse.
Now, there’s not a global rule. But it’s a pretty good generalization, right? If you’re going to seek the safety and security of a job, you will view employment as a source of consistency and reliability, and kind of you know, security, and more.
So I guess your friends and family they’re going to give you conformational bias, they will echo your concerns and fears back to you stare right
Samantha Riley (10:06):
back at you like a mirror. That’s right. Okay.
Tim Hyde (10:09):
So that’s not necessarily the perspective you want, right? Because they’re just viewing it through your lens, because they’re not familiar with the exact circumstances, they’re just going to view it for the same length that you’ve you feel wrong with all of the conformational bias that you will bring to that conversation.
Okay, so not only are they risk adverse, but they’re also viewing and only through the lens that you tell them about,
Samantha Riley (10:31):
because that’s the only lens that they know, because they haven’t seen another lens. So let’s talk about the different people that can help you get different perspectives around your business, probably the ones you should be talking to.
Yeah, totally. And I think the first one is one that is underutilized. A lot of times and that’s the team, the people that you have working with you in different areas,
Tim Hyde (10:56):
team can give us perspective. Yeah, because they again, they’re coming from that from a different perspective, right, we’re coming from it from an issue from a strategic standpoint, and we’re coming at it from the the owner, we’re there to make money for us and our family, you know, to do whatever higher purpose that you’re in your business for the, you know, the people doing the work.
Well, they bring different skill sets, they bring different perspectives to and actually sometimes they bring better outcomes, than we might be able to come up with a sauce. Now, we’ve talked a lot on this show about, you know, whether you should be a micro manager or macro manager, I think universally, we all agree that micro managers suck.
But there’s still an element of micromanagement that is required. We can’t be all macro, right? Someone needs to kind of get down into the detail, whether it’s you or your team. But when we kind of coming out of perspective, perspective, and particularly, I guess, looking at how can we understand what’s happening in our business from different perspectives?
Absolutely. The team, are there people they’re doing the work, they’re at the coalface they will give us a different perspective. Right, then we will have coming at it from a different standpoint.
Samantha Riley (12:08):
Absolutely. I think that being able to ask all of your team, how they see it from different angles, is a really, really great way to get some sort of perspective on whatever it is you’re talking about.
Tim Hyde (12:22):
What what I see from a team perspective, and this is a question that I know, Sam, you ask your team, and I like to ask them of mine as well. So this is the outcome that I’m looking for, from this thing, function, roll task, whatever.
You know, how would you approach that to get the best outcome? Okay, because what I think is necessarily the best outcome that maybe just for me, but I’m not the one doing the work. Right, they might have a different idea on how to achieve the best outcome.
Samantha Riley (12:53):
Totally, I’m sure that you’ve had this before. I definitely have where a team member said something and it’s just, you think, Wow, that was so left field, I wouldn’t have even thought of that in a million years.
But wow, okay, that’s taken my brain going in a completely different direction. And then that opens up a whole new conversation really valuable.
Tim Hyde (13:15):
Yeah, absolutely. Second one, I think is probably one. That is going to be a little bit left field for a lot of people. And that’s your client.
Yeah. And I think, you know, getting perspective from clients is, in some cases, almost the most important one, right? Because that’s the real litmus test, if your clients don’t come back to you, and also you did a good job. Well, you know, maybe you’re not hitting the mark, or you’re selling to the wrong people.
Samantha Riley (13:46):
It can also show you a perspective that you hadn’t considered before. I did ask my clients a few weeks ago, what are their top three things that has moved the needle for them, or that they’ve seen the most impact from?
And to be honest, there was one of them that I got from every single person that I actually didn’t consider. Yeah, so that was really, really interesting.
Tim Hyde (14:12):
I think it’s also having the courage to ask, right? So it’s like having the courage to ask for or say, Hey, I’d love to get some feedback from you about what’s working, and what’s not working so well. So that we can address that.
But, you know, again, we talked about systems last week, but you know, making sure that you’ve got a system to do that. And if you have to get someone else in to ask the question, because it might seem a bit awkward or your hope your clients are a little bit more open with someone who’s not you.
It’s much easier to talk about someone and you know, call out their flaws than talking to them to their face. But you know, maybe maybe that’s a process you put in your business, like ask your clients and say, What do you like, what don’t you like, what can we do better?
Samantha Riley (14:54):
Totally, totally. Let’s talk about the third one. This is something that I have I’ve had in my business for probably about 13 years. So only a third of my business life, and it’s made a big difference. And that’s accountability partners. Yeah, I
Tim Hyde (15:14):
think this is a an underutilized one. As well, a little bit like clients is probably an underutilized one. It’s really difficult to find good accountability partners.
Samantha Riley (15:24):
I would agree with that. Yeah, we do. That’s probably our perspective, or
Tim Hyde (15:34):
from my perspective, it’s hard to find good accountability partners, but you know, echoed by you, as well, Sam. So you know, finding good accountability partners, where you can get people who, you know, are in a similar space to you.
And we told this, this, this peer mastermind, these peer accountability, kind of things is actually really good. I think the thing about accountability partners is that not only do you want perspective, and perspective is good, how have you approached this business, you know, this challenge in the past and so on.
But accountability partners requires an element of vulnerability, you as the business owner yourself as the absolutely right, absolutely, we need to right, we need to be kind of hardened as much as we can, because we get knocked around a fair bit.
But we also need to be able to be vulnerable, to take feedback from clients, from partners, and from people who have been through with what we’re going through, that may be able to give us a different perspective and actually hear that message.
And if we’re not a with the right accountability partners, or be vulnerable after hear some perspective, that is a react on right, but here a different perspective, we can never look to how we grow.
Samantha Riley (16:50):
Yeah, I think that what constitutes a good accountability partnership, is someone that you can have very vulnerable conversations, someone that absolutely keeps that or you feel safe with, you need to know that person takes that information and uses that only within the conversation and you know, isn’t going to leave that anywhere.
And I think that they need to be in a fairly similar place in their business journey. Otherwise, one or the other partner is going to feel like they’re taking over more of a coaching role. And that’s happened to me before I joined an accountability group, actually to in the last couple of years.
And both times that because those people weren’t at a similar place in their journey, I felt like I was actually in a free coaching position. And I had to withdraw myself from both of those groups. So you know, I think that you do need to find someone that you’re able to help each other.
Tim Hyde (17:55):
Yeah, yeah. And again, coming from different perspectives. That’s, that’s the key, right? The key here with any of these things, is giving us a different perspective. Absolutely. Now, the fourth one, you’ve just touched on there already, Sam, and that’s actually having a coach or consultant come into your business, right, without particularly professional skill set and expertise to deliberately right, coach, mentor, you know, advise you through the challenges that you face as an entrepreneur?
And we all know, or should know of this one? And because certainly, if you’ve listened to our podcast over the last 500, and whatever episodes it is 550 540. I don’t know how many there is. And there’s lots of them. Right? Yeah.
You know, you effectively this is when you’re listening to this podcast, and this is what you’re seeking, and as coaches and consultants ourselves, we are giving you perspective on some of the challenges that you may be facing in your business. Now, natural the podcast, we’re making it pretty generic.
If you wanted specific advice on your business and your business growth, you would get someone like Sam or myself into your business to advise you on specific challenges that you’re facing. Again, using Thrive perspective.
Okay, but giving the you know, prescribing a solution based on our experience with lot working with what some similar businesses to where you’re at right now. Totally gives us perspective and viewpoint on the challenges that you might be facing.
Samantha Riley (19:32):
It’s really important that there are people able to show you or point out different perspectives because it’s very easy to go down a lane way and only see one, you know, one way and not see what’s hiding behind the corners.
Tim Hyde (19:46):
Yeah, absolutely. Okay, because those people have been there before. They’ve seen that either in their own business or in the other people that they’ve coached. Right? So, you know, you’re kind of following the footsteps of people who have done it.
They’ve done it before. seen it before firsthand. And that gives you again, that perspective of, well, if you do these things, you know, nine times out of 10, this will be the result.
Totally, you could be the, you know, you might get number 10. But more often than not, this is the result if you take that course of action, but as you know, you haven’t done it. And I think where, what you’re looking for is someone who’s done it a lot.
Done either done it previously or done as a lot for other people previously, in the same way that buying a house, the reason you go to a real estate agent, is because they sell lots of houses, and they’re probably much better out of the new.
Samantha Riley (20:39):
Yeah, they know things that you don’t know, I think it’s really important, just as we’re sort of winding up this episode, is it’s really important to have these different perspectives shown to you.
And that it’s, I would even say, if you want to grow your business, it’s absolutely crucial and imperative that you do have these different perspectives.
But at the end of the day, don’t let this send you into a tailspin of overwhelm, because you have all these different perspectives. It’s still your business, use those perspectives, but then go with what feels right for you.
Tim Hyde (21:19):
Yeah, yeah, you’re absolutely right, Sam, you know, you can get overwhelmed with too many voices. You know, the the adage, too many chefs in the kitchen. Yep. Right. Yeah, ultimately, it’s your business.
It’s, it’s your life, that you’re driving here you are in the driver’s seat. But you’ve got the safety and reassurance of someone sitting in the passenger seat to navigate, you.
Samantha Riley (21:44):
Absolutely. Help you plug in the coordinates into your GPS, if you will. So yeah, definitely tap into the people in your world to get some different perspectives so that you can grow your business. It is like I said, it’s crucial, it’s imperative to do that, for the growth of your business.
Tim has been fabulous to hang out with you here again today. And thank you for listening. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone in your world that would get value from this episode. And please follow us on the podcast platform that you’re listening to us on so that you are notified every time an episode drops. We’ll see you next Tuesday for another episode of Influence by Design. Ciao.
Samantha Riley Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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