Hey, it’s Bob Negen. And in this episode of Real Retail TV, we’re going to explore whether all of your hard work might actually be holding you back.

So for several years, Susan and I were in a mastermind with a a number of brilliant entrepreneurs. And one of them, his name was Chris Knight, during dinner one night said something that I still reflect on. I’m sharing with it with you here. He said to me, he said, Bob, you know, in the beginning of a business, the more you do, the more you make.

But there comes a time in every business where the more you think, the more you make. And since you can’t think and do at the same time, the challenge and the opportunity together is to do less and think more.

Let that sink in for a moment. Do less, think more.

You’re probably thinking, but I’m too busy, Bob. Right? That’s the whole point. We’re entrepreneurs. When I’m suggesting that you find time to think and become creative, to quit working so hard, you probably feel anxious, you probably feel a little stressed out. We’re wired as entrepreneurs, we’re wired to be focused on our to do list, whether it’s digital or analog or both. We’re wired to to accomplish, we’re wired to achieve, we’re wired to try to beat last year and I get that.

But again, all of this striving, all of this driving towards something may be holding you back.

Maybe what you need to do is to open up your brain, give it some chance to think, give it a chance to be creative. And I totally one hundred percent agree with what Chris said.

And if you do too, let’s explore it a little further. Because as I just mentioned, because we’re so busy, because we’re so achievement driven, we tend not to find or make the time to think. And so let’s explore a couple of ways for you to proactively set up thinking time. And the first say, a tool I wanna share is something that we learned from EOS.

At Whizbang Training, we are an EOS company, meaning we run our company on the entrepreneurial operating system. And if you don’t know about EOS, I would encourage you to check it out. It will free up time for you to think about your business, but that’s neither here nor there. One of the tools that we learned in EOS is this thing called a clarity break. And a clarity break is defined as ninety minutes where you don’t have a screen in front of you, where you allow yourself to think. Typically, you have a pen and a paper and you’re just sitting there and it’s a little uncomfortable in the beginning. We’re not used to just sitting there and not doing anything.

And it’s just an opportunity to for you to reflect, to ponder. And you may reflect on a particular problem you’re having. You may reflect on a particular opportunity you’re considering pursuing. You may reflect on nothing at all.

You may just ponder. You see, if you go into a clarity break with no real expectations, sometimes your subconscious will tell you what you should think about. That the real problem or the real opportunity is in your brain already. You just haven’t given it an opportunity to breathe.

You haven’t given it an opportunity to come forth and be dealt with.

So a clarity break is an incredible way for you to proactively think more and do less.

To become a more efficient, more effective thinker.

So that’s one way and I recommend it. In fact, I’m gonna have a clarity break today. I haven’t had one in a while and this is inspiring. I have what’s called a focus day today, meaning I have no meetings planned.

Today is just working on important stuff. And so I have decided just now that one of the important things I’m gonna do today is a clarity break. It’s not on my schedule, but I’m gonna do that. So anyway, that just came to me.

The other thing that I wanna talk about here is being in a mastermind because being in a mastermind is a tremendous place to think.

And the reason that this has come up, in fact, the reason I’m making this episode of Real Retail TV is this past week on Monday, we had a meeting of our retail marketing club.

And we have a special guest, her name’s Maureen Doran. And Maureen owns two women’s clothing stores in the Philadelphia area. And Maureen is one of the best merchants I know. She’s one of the best thinkers I know.

And what Maureen shared in this meeting is that every major breakthrough she’s ever had in her business happened in the room at a platinum mastermind group meeting. Now this conversation isn’t necessarily about the platinum mastermind group, but if you’re an already successful retailer, this is something to consider. Why? Why is it so important to Maureen? Why is it so important to the other members? It’s because you they are getting we are getting out of our business to think about our business differently.

The days aren’t filled with tasks. The days are filled with thinking. The days are filled with conversations like we had with Chris at dinner that night. The days are filled with nonlinear thinking.

They’re not seminars, they’re not courses. They are opportunities to think. We intentionally set up the two and a half days. So there are lots of opportunities for people to share their problems.

And at the same time, while the group is helping someone solve their problems, people are thinking about their own businesses at the same time. So there’s this idea of linear thinking and there’s the idea of nonlinear thinking. Linear thinking is going from point a to point b and you go and you make a plan of the things you need to do to get to point b.

Wonderful. Every entrepreneur should be a good planner. Every good entrepreneur should have a process, should have a structure, should do something like EOS so that the trains run straight and on time.

But also in the spirit of not working so hard but thinking better, you also need to think nonlinearly. You need to be in an environment where your brain gets an opportunity to relax, where your brain gets an opportunity to be creative, when you get to see things differently and think about things differently.

So real quickly, you don’t have to join the platinum mastermind group to get the experience of a mastermind. Although you won’t find a better group. You can create your own mastermind.

You can create a mastermind with people in your community and that, you know, other merchants or other small business people and you get together regularly. And in the spirit of cooperation, you talk, you share, you learn from each other, you grow together. I know a group of people who were in the Uniform Retailers Association and it was a group of people who all had the retail mastery system. And they would meet to meet once a month to discuss something from the retail mastery system. Again, thinking non linearly, getting other people’s opinions, other people’s perspective, thinking not doing. And so if you’re working too hard right now, if you’re doing too much, my challenge to you right now is to do less and think more.

I guarantee you that that subtle shift in the way that you’re thinking will produce great results for you. Alright. I’m Bob Negen. We’ll see you next week.