The NiceJob Podcast

Challenges or Opportunities - What do you embrace more?

October 14, 2021 Shawny Hill Season 3 Episode 13
The NiceJob Podcast
Challenges or Opportunities - What do you embrace more?
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Shawn Hill asks our Season 3 guests one question, "What do you embrace more, challenges or opportunities?" Here from Wes McDowell, Seth Donlin, Dean Steinman, Mark Ritter, Bryan Kaplan, Meaghan Likes, Kedma Ough, Curt Kempton, Jon Szafran, Royce Ard, Adam Arkfeld, and Bill Gallagher. 

Submit your own answer to podcast@nicejob.com.

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Shawn Hill:

Welcome to another episode of the nice job podcast. I'm your host, Shawn Hill. We are going to try something a little different here for Episode 63. Sort of the halfway point here in season three, and our guests. Well, our guest is going to be everyone has been a guest already this season. Yeah, technically, it's a clip show. However, it's all focused around one question, the question that I've been asking exclusively in season three, and if you're a subscriber to the podcast, you're actually only able to hear it in our audio only form. I haven't included the question on our YouTube version, and the question that seem to get these types of reactions.

Meagan Likes:

It's a good question. Half a trick question.

Seth Donlin:

Wow. I don't know that I've ever thought about it this way.

Jon Szafran:

Well, that's a really good question, Shawn.

Shawn Hill:

We'll explore that question and the answers on this episode of The Nice Job Podcast. As I mentioned in season three, I've asked every guest so far the following question, but do you embrace more challenges or opportunities? back while editing this particular episode? I also noticed I tend to ask it the same exact way. What do you embrace more challenges or opportunities? What do you embrace more challenges or opportunities? What do you embrace more? What do you embrace more? What do you embrace more challenges, challenges, challenges or opportunities? mean? You always want consistency, right? While the question remained the same, sometimes we got strong, definitive, but opposite answers. Here's kedma OHS response from Episode 56. Don't wear burnout as a badge of honor challenges was that,

Kedma Ough:

because challenges allows me to continue to master my mind. And I see the world like a chess game. And the more I understand the pieces, how the game is played, the strategies I can choose to win the game, the better the opportunities that show up, that I can choose, like, I'm in a position in my world. It's not that I can't find opportunity, I have to choose which opportunity I want to play with. So the challenge helps me to just get really clear on not just any opportunity, but the opportunity that's going to give me the life I want the values I want to support.

Shawn Hill:

On the other side of things. Here's our guests in Episode 51. How to build a small business website, West McDowell

Wes McDowell:

opportunity, I would never go for something just based on it being a challenge. I think some people I always look for the next opportunity, like how can I reach more people or reach a new level in my business? So yeah, opportunities all the way and if it comes with a challenge, I'm usually ready to face it. But yeah, I'm not I'm not a challenge for challenge sake, kind of guy,

Shawn Hill:

both West and kedma we're ready to go with their answers like it's been something they pondered long before they even came on the podcast. Kirk Kempton, however, took us through the entire thought process in Episode 57, how to sell your services better and six steps, and maybe even came out with a different answer, the more we discussed it.

Curt Kempton:

Well, let me run a couple examples. In my mind, real quick challenges would be an example of like, an employee that you're counting on leaving and you got to like, figure out how to fill that role. Opportunities maybe meeting somebody that could open up a bunch of doors for me? Yeah, I gotta be honest, I wish I was the kind of person that embrace the challenges more I see a challenge is something that starts negative and can turn positive. But man, I I like things just going straight to positive. And if I'm being completely honest, I'll just be I'll be in the camp of I worship the people not don't worship anybody, but I, I wish wish wish I was the kind of person that could embrace the challenges as much as I embrace the opportunities.

Shawn Hill:

Yeah, I love that answer. And again, it's it's the cause of there's almost not a wrong answer. But you know, I also appreciate you kind of breaking it down in your head and stuff like that, because part of the reason I want to ask us questions about the seasons, we have so many experts coming from different backgrounds, different experiences, almost different, you know, emotional bravado, from time to time in diving into that question, because I don't think there's anyone that's like, well, I fear challenges or like I get nervous opportunities, but I feel like there's always deep down you know, there's one you might embrace more while still feeling confident enough to take on either so I appreciate that honest response. Yeah,

Curt Kempton:

I think that you're you're 100% right, like a challenge. I've seen so many times. There's no way I could even come up with a count on it. challenges. Almost always end up being better once you've gotten through it. Where opportunities don't want p&l, you know, like, Oh, I met someone who could really open a bunch of doors for me, oh, they're just blowing smoke didn't happen, you know? So. So actually, as I'm thinking more about, like, maybe I am that cool guy that that embraces challenges more, because they say that Necessity is the mother of invention. And I think that that's what challenges do they crop up, they make your life a little bit miserable for a moment, you have to sit down, calculate what what I'm going to do next. And you're basically guaranteed to conquer and be at the top of the mountain, where an opportunity could be pie in the sky, that that maybe won't turn into anything. But you know, very rarely I don't, I can't think of any opportunities I've ever lost.

Shawn Hill:

First, I'll go out and say for certain that Kurt is a cool guy. But his explanation of the question had proved for certain that this is a this or that style question. And we'll have this or that style outcome. Bill Gallagher in Episode 60, to make your leadership, your legacy. He's quite so certain.

Bill Gallagher:

I'm not sure I see those an either or kind of a thing. Every opportunity brings with it challenges, right. And every challenge has opportunity in it. Those seem like two sides of the same coin.

Shawn Hill:

Bryan Caplan felt similarly and offered an example from his past that crafted his answer, when he joins us to discuss understanding growth and maintaining profitability in Episode 54.

Bryan Kaplan:

I mean, to me, they're a bit one in the same, you know, we would I it's, it's actually funny that you use those two exact words, because I, in my last role, as a GM, we had a standing Thursday morning meeting with my project management team, and we would sit down, and we actually even changed the language of how we spoke about these things. One of the teams might say, have a challenge or something, and we'd always be like, hey, let's call this an opportunity. And I think that that is, you know, not to not to be cliche, or anything like that. But the truth is, is that, you know, there's so many scenarios in my mind that I can think of, and experiences I've gone through where these were definitely direct challenges, but they presented themselves as opportunities, I kind of just shared one a moment ago, with a lot of the clients that came to me, you know, February, March of 20, decided hey, like, or more like March April, like this is going to be an opportunity where I'm going to go into this estimating class, or I'm going to go and, you know, take this numbers course, or I'm going to work with consultant, one on one or a coach one on one to help improve myself in my business. So I really do think that they are kind of one in the same. And I think that every opportunity is going to have specific challenges in it, there's, you know, the classic line of like, if it was this easy, everyone would be doing it, and everyone would be succeeding. And there's a reason why that isn't the case. So I think in every opportunity, there are challenges and every challenge I do look at as an opportunity. And it may not give you a tangible outcome, but it always gives you the opportunity to you know, so look in the mirror and say, Well, what, how did I handle this? What would I what worked? What didn't work? And how would I want to change that for the future? How do I want to respond could be simple thing like, how do I want to respond better? How do I want to, you know, treat my team better or treat my vendors that or whatever it is, or it could very well be a success that becomes an opportunity to learn from as well well, how did we succeed, you know, so we can repeat this like a recipe as opposed to try and just make it up every time that we, you know, we start a new

Shawn Hill:

project. So that question turned into an exercise and became implemented into Brian Kaplan's business strategies. Yep. When I asked Megan likes that same question, she thought it was

Kedma Ough:

half a trick question. I feel like every challenge is an opportunity. So I'm gonna say opportunities like I every challenge to me is an opportunity. I probably learned more from challenges than I do victories. So I don't know how to answer that.

Shawn Hill:

Megan did have plenty of quality answers. We explored creating a paperless office in Episode 58, including this book recommendation for those who feel they may not have an answer to our season three question.

Kedma Ough:

Can I throw in a book recommendation with that something that really helped me with that mindset? So mindset by Carol Dweck, and she talks all about the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. And I really feel like the fixed mindset is a challenge is a hurdle, right? And the growth mindset is a challenge is an opportunity. And so really having this framework when I find myself like digging my heels in the mud, like this is hard, I'm stuck. And I'm like, oh, growth mindset opportunity. How do we get unstuck? So if you find yourself getting stuck in the mud checkout mindset by Carol Dweck, absolute game changing book,

Shawn Hill:

not sure if you have any space on your list of books to read, but we welcome you to add that recommendation. Now Dean Steinman our guests in Episode 54 become a household name with social proof. Nice job can help with that. Didn't reference any literature, but channel the musical legend Jerry Garcia and his response,

Dean Steinman:

challenges, challenges, challenges leads to opportunities if done correctly. Life's life's too short and life is gonna make it exciting and to have Have a challenge makes you feel better when, you know 30 COVID? You know, I had I was having an office and my staff was here. And obviously now that are those remote? So we have the zoom meetings constantly. And how do you communicate? So we basically talk about what makes you smile? What makes you happy in your job? What? Why do you communicate differently? And what challenged? And I asked this question, anybody this morning? What challenge let last week did you overcome? And how did it make you feel better about yourself in your job? And you know, because you always have to face challenges, no matter what if you're going to the store, you challenge the light, you know, if you, if you're gonna live in the challenge, you're mad, you're in a bucket and business challenge of helping your prep your business, your clients get more, more business, you know, every business is a commodity, every business, you know, it's always somebody knocking you down the aisle trying to poke holes in what you do. And that's a challenge there because without even people who are not educated that way, every dentist could try to find a hole in somebody else's business. I could find a hole in services marketing, but can you go to find no issue with somebody else's paint job, auto mechanic and find the issue with that. So that's a big challenge there is to make it so people think about it. But to answer your question, I love a challenge because it makes it makes me think, and at the end of the day, when I overcome that challenge, makes me smile. And that's all about man is the great Jerry Garcia said nothing to do but smile, smile, smile. And that's what I like to

Shawn Hill:

do. From the smiling man himself to another guest with a positive mindset and attitude will shift to Episode 61. Broussard came to the show to talk about small business software and building an efficient stack. And he offered his take on our question, I tend

Royce Ard:

to be a glass half full guy, so so I probably looked for the opportunities, but I will tell you, that probably one of the things that that you learn most about in business as you get experience is there are always opportunities and the challenges that you face, you do not have, you do not have the opportunity to just show the difference between your company and the next company until there's a problem. And we, because we clean houses, right? The next company, cleans houses, the next company, cleans houses, but if we, you know, help us, but if we were to break a $2,000 mirror, how we edit how we action that is going to be different than the other companies probably. So if you've decided to be, you know, go with the low cost leader instead of the value company. Chances are they don't have the money to replace your mirror. Yeah, that happened to me, because I mean, I'm using a real example that cost 2000. But I think it was about 600. We replaced the mirror. It's just a cost of doing business, but I had the margin to do it. So that's probably a terrible answer, cuz I use both level, but your opportunities are in the challenges that you face.

Shawn Hill:

Personally, I like that answer. Don't worry, rice, you have some company in the camp of both choices are my answer. Thank john saffron from Episode 59, open the door to sales with your reputation,

Jon Szafran:

man one or the other opportunities or challenges, I would say opportunities. And that doesn't mean I'm scared of a challenge because I really love a good challenge. But you've got to understand that when the doors been knocked on, you got to know and open the door. And I look at that as my career, my journey and how I ended up here if I didn't take some risk and open those doors. When opportunities not, I would have never had an opportunity to share my story on the nice job podcast or have met the amazing business owners that I work with on a daily basis. Every single time my career has morphed into a different level or a different field. It was because I saw an opportunity and I embraced it, I embraced the challenge of accepting that opportunity.

Shawn Hill:

Can I answer both ways that way, along with Seth donlin, from our conversation on how to confidently use social media for service businesses in Episode 52.

Seth Donlin:

You know, I, I'm a very kind of, you know, positive and glasses half full. So I like to say that, you know, in life, I'm always I'm always focusing more on opportunities than challenges. That said, this may not be fair, because I'm going to answer this question both ways. But that said, um, I also teach my clients that one of the things that we should be striving for is we should always be not trying to avoid failure, but actually kind of seeking those failure points out, you know, not that, not that you're obviously wanting to fail, but in any success, there's going to be lots of failures along the way. So then rather than spending all this time and energy to try to like avoid all this failure, just blast through Do it, get it fail, reiterate, move on fail again, reiterate and get to your ultimate success. You know, you never know how strong your product you know, your your new phone glass is going to be until you throw it on the ground a bunch of times and smash it until you break it, you don't know where that's, you know where your success point is. So, you know, I always say to, to, to, to actually kind of like pursue failure in a way. And so for that reason, it's like, I actually do seek out the challenges because I want to be able to push that envelope, grow my skill set, grow my business, always be pushing into an area where I'm not confident that I'm going to succeed. And that in the challenges allow you to do that. But I don't like to just focus on the challenge like, you know, life's nothing but a series of challenges. Oh, woe is me, you know, I like to keep a little more like, you know, life is, is full of boundless opportunities, and I'm blessed to have so many of them

Shawn Hill:

throughout the season. With all the different answers you've heard thus far. There were some themes and similarities and almost all the answers. Take us on the mark Ritter, our guest for Episode 55 financing for small businesses, as he shared a story that guided his answer.

Mark Ritter:

I'm a definite challenge guy. I am a builder and I love to get in and fix things. So my last two positions, I started up a program, a business lending program, where this credit union hired me and just threw me at a desk and said, We want Here you go. And with my current position, I was the fifth CEO in five years, and they lost money, every single month

Shawn Hill:

of this exists quite quite the the lead in for you.

Mark Ritter:

So we grew from three employees to now over 50 we grew from, you know, just a failing money sucking institution to now very prosperous. So I and to be honest, that's the reason I took the job is because I wanted to get in and build and fix and so that's, that's more my slant and focus in life.

Shawn Hill:

And compare that to Adam arc Feld from Episode 60. Better advertising for small businesses who focus his answer on just that, his mental focus.

Adam Arkfeld:

I think my mindset generally leads towards opportunities. And the reason is, you know, as an entrepreneur, a lot of people that are entrepreneurs listening to this, or I think entrepreneurs get the messaging, I think it applies to everybody, I think just we tend to get the message a little bit more focus on on your superpowers and the things that you're good at, and really double down on what you love and are passionate about and what you're great at, and then build a team around you, that does the things you don't want to do. And so in my mind, I'm like, I like challenging myself. I mean, you know, I'm like training for half marathon right now. Like, it's not that I don't like challenging myself. But I prefer to really double down on my strengths and look at opportunities, rather than solving, trying to like solve all the challenges. And there's also just like a general mindset around challenges that I think is, I don't know, in my mind is like a little bit negative, and I tend to try and focus on the positive.

Shawn Hill:

In the end, I found that most of our guests spoke to how they look at problem solving and their excitement or anxiety in those situations, or answers offered us a deeper understanding of the diversity of entrepreneurs along with a connection that relates them all. So before we wrap things up, it's time for me to ask you the question. I've asked all of our guests. Now all of our listeners, what do you embrace more challenges or opportunities? Send your answer to podcast at nice job.com. Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of The Nice Job Podcast. Until next time, we're being healthy, over being safe. And don't forget to have a little fun out there as well. Take care

Intro
Kedma Ough
Wes McDowell
Curt Kempton
Bill Gallagher
Bryan Kaplan
Meaghan Likes
Dean Steinman
Royce Ard
Jon Szafran
Seth Donlin
Mark Ritter
Adam Arkfeld
Wrap up