089: Thinking Work Vs. Doing Work

Stuck in busy work? Gone down another rabbit hole… again? And now you’re frustrated with yourself?

You sit down to complete one simple task; write a newsletter, send a proposal, create a case study - and somehow it turns into five other tasks that suddenly feel urgent in order to complete the original task.

This isn’t a discipline problem. It’s a mode problem.

In this episode, I break down:

• The difference between thinking work, translating work, and doing work
• Why action without clarity creates more noise (not more results)
• How to increase ROI by giving the right type of attention to the task in front of you
• A simple process to help you move from stuck → clear → complete, faster and with more impact

If you’re an established service-based business owner who feels capable but scattered… this will help.

Enjoy!

For your Complimentary Consultation click here or visit: shannonstone.com.au/consult

Resources:

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If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.

Transcript

Thinking work vs. translating work vs. doing work

Example: Increasing your prices

Action step

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Have you noticed so much business and marketing content out there is so abstract and airy fairy? Like what they're saying sounds good, but what do you actually need to do? That's where the Good Marketing Good Business Podcast comes in. This is where I share practical strategies to help you grow your service-based business. And in case we haven't met yet, I'm Shannon Stone, award-winning business and marketing consultant. And for the last decade or so, I've been diving in deep with small business owners, helping them to make more sales and get more done in less time. And today's episode is no different. Enjoy. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. Very excited for this episode today. As I have been preparing for it, if I were to kind of reflect back on what it's going to look like, I feel like I'm giving you a method to be your own strategic consultant in your own business. So you definitely want to have pen and paper for this episode. As always, there is a companion article that goes with every episode. So it's always titled the exact same as the podcast episode. And the best place to find it is on my LinkedIn, which is obviously in my name. So if you like to have written formats, definitely check that out. But what we're talking about today is thinking work versus doing work. And so many people and business owners, we all just think that, you know what, if I can just get more done, then I will complete this sentence. And they often just think it's about execution, it's about getting things done. But I know so well that there's way more to that. And you probably know that as well, that it's not just about sending an email to your list. It's not, especially in this time and space that we're at with things like AI, I definitely believe it's the year of intention and being very like sharpening your sword, I think. And what I mean by that is if you're going to send an email, if you're going to do marketing, if you're going to be in business, like use this year as an opportunity to refine the things you do so that the offers that you sell, they're really the right offers for your clients and they really speak to them. And you're marketing, like you're marketing everyone's time, like I never take people's time for granted. At least I hope I don't as it comes across. But the emails you're sending to people, for example, if they're taking the opportunity to be on your email list and open your email and sometimes not even open it, but people still pay attention. If they're giving you any of that attention, like let it be for positive. I don't want people to take those opportunities and interactions that they have with your business and just dismiss you in their mind. Like we have to, I think, be so mindful of the attention that people are willing to give your business and not take it for granted and not slump into it's a numbers game. I just have to get as many people as I can seeing this, and you know, whatever comes of it will be the clients. I'm like, mm, I'm like, how can we get higher conversions, not just kind of plow through the the numbers game side of things? So I feel like that kind of pretenses, like if you don't have time for what I've just spoken about, you're not gonna, you're probably not gonna have any interest in anything I say from this point onwards definite on this episode, because there is a big difference between thinking work and doing work. And for those who want to be really intentional, really purposeful, and tend to work with like businesses who and people and attract people who have that little boutique flair to them, to their business. Like one of my clients called it like a blue ribbon. So it's almost like that boutique, blue ribbon, white glove. Like they're very invested in their clients, they're very invested in their business. Like they're not sitting in an ivory tower throwing dictations down the line. Like they really want to see their business succeed, they want to see their team succeed, they want to see their clients succeed. Like they want everyone, like there's no gray, shady things anywhere. It's like they're very transparent, they just want everyone to win. And so if that is you, then I want to see you win too. And this episode, I think, can be it is kind of giving you an opportunity to be your own strategic consultant and to approach your work with a bit more intricacy so that you see greater results as well. So let's get into it. So thinking work versus doing work, and there is a bridge in between, which is the translating work. So when you're working in your business, and this can be for you, this is literally for anyone, for you, for your team, your contractors, feel free to share it with them. When you're working, if you find that you get really frustrated when you're working on a certain task, or you know, you go to sit down and work, and then 30 minutes goes by, 60 minutes goes by, and then like at some point you're just noticing there's all these tabs open and you're a long shot away from where you started. You thought you sat down to work on something, like maybe send a newsletter, but then as you got into it, there was like this snowball effect of things happen. Like maybe it was you were planning on sending a newsletter, and then you know, the thoughts come up. Oh, who who are we actually targeting? What's the messaging that a good angle for this? Or what is it that we're actually selling again? Or maybe we should do that thing. You know, you start to second guess. There's no super clear, I'm going in to do this thing and come out the other side and it's done. And there's definitely tasks that I know you've done where you've felt that, where it was like real, like that task got done in a flash and it was so easy. And then you look back and you're like, wow, why can't why can't all my days run like this? Why can't everything that we do and work on run as smoothly as that particular thing did? And while that's the utopia, that is definitely the dream, we can have more of that. Is it going to be like that all the time? No, it's not. But we can do things to make sure that the precious time you have for your business is really spent wisely, even if you are on the tools and you are jumping in there with the team as well. However, it is that you're working with your business, like everyone's time is important and precious. So let's make sure that when we get to doing execution work, it's getting done as quickly as possible. And there's a forecasted return on investment of that particular task as well. We want to know that the time we're putting into that task is going to have an impact in some kind of way. So I want to take you away from doing busy work and, you know, the busy work that leaves you feeling frustrated into really feeling clear and almost like energized about the things that you're going to work on. Like work is work, business is business. There's things that we have to do, but I feel like there's always a feeling to it. It's like, oh, I'm dreading doing that thing, or I'm just going to do it so I can get it done. But I think when you're really clear on it, you're like, you know what? I am doing this newsletter because it's going to lead to this. You're going to have the full picture around it. So I've got some examples for us. And I could honestly go to town and talking about this forever, but that's why I do what I do as a consultant. But I just want to give you the concept of it so you can apply it yourself. So the best way for me to demonstrate this is through an example. So I've got a few different ones for us. So one of the things that people will often want to do in their business is they want to increase their prices. So, and I've seen like every way people, the words they use to describe all this, but they might just say, yep, we want to increase our prices. And for some people, they'll pick a number and then they'll move forward. But have you ever done that? And then it gets to maybe your sales conversation, and you're like, eh, backtracking, we're not doing that. Often that is because there's been no substance to it. There's been no plan behind it. You just said, I'm gonna increase my prices, and then it went when it came down to the wire, you didn't. So this is a really prime example of when and where applying this concept, the thinking, the translating, and the doing, can be really helpful and very evidently clear an impact it's making on your bottom line as well. Because if you have decided we haven't increased our prices for five years, for example, and now we're gonna do it on the next call. Everyone, guys, prices are up by 20%. Like no bars about it. It just doesn't always happen that way. Sometimes it does, but a lot of the times it doesn't. In this example, you got to start with the thinking. That is the first step. So if we're talking about specifically increasing your prices, you know, asking the questions of what results do I consistently create? What are the type of results and the value we bring to people? You might want to ask, you know, what space of the market do we want to sit in? You know, the higher end, the lower end, like what does that look like? You want to really just investigate the the notion behind wanting to increase your prices. You might decide, you know what, we don't want more clients, we want fewer high caliber clients, we want less is more. Well, that's why we want to increase it. We want to work with less clients at a higher rate, maybe earn the same amount, but work less or work more in detail with people. So when you give an opportunity to think and soundboard and talk out tasks that might seem very surface level of and very simple, want to increase the prices, go off and do it. Like how hard can it be? Type of thing. When you strip it back and sit back and really talk it out, think these things through, it helps the where the rubber hits the road, it helps it to actually land. So there's a lot of there's obviously a lot more depending on the task, but a lot of things that go into the thinking and the strategizing of any type of task in a business, like what I do in my consulting practice, I focus on growth levers. And there's so many different ways to do it, but it's got to be bespoke to that person, bespoke to that business. And, you know, if someone wants to increase their prices, there's so many different ways to do it. So at the very least, you want to just start that conversation and that thinking phase and think it through. What does that actually even look like? It also helps with the purpose and the direction of what you're doing. You know, some tasks like increasing your prices can really speak to the direction that your business is going in or needs to go in. Maybe you've got a really big vision and increasing your prices is part of that. So giving space and opening up that conversation for you, for your team, the advisors that you have around you allows you to get the clarity so that when you get to the doing, you've revealed like the gems and the strategy and the pieces that will help the doing, the I increase my prices, allow it to actually stick. So the first bit is you might well, you always start with the end goal of like, okay, we want to increase our prices, but that's not really it's not even a task. It's like too simple of a task to even execute. Like it's you're doing yourself a disservice by just jumping and thinking that is the execution, by just saying we're gonna increase our prices by 20% and no bars about it. Like the gems that come out from giving people the space to talk things out, it increases like, and it's why I'm sharing it with you. It it increases their return on investment and allows them to not miss any opportunity. And that's why there's a bridge between thinking about and teasing it out and doing that foundational work. There's a bridge between that and then jumping into the doing, which is the translation phase. So that comes in second. So this is where you make sense of what you're thinking or what you've what you've just been thinking and talking about and soundboarding with your advisors and your team and such. It's like here's what we actually need to do. Part of that, if it's for someone who is wanting to increase their prices, part of that translating and that translation phase is one is you get that pricing rationale for yourself and for your team. So the people who actually have to say that number or those numbers to your clients, like they have to have that belief. It's not, it's it's not always about just being able to say a number, like they've actually got to have that confidence, they've got to have the rationale, they've got to understand this is the value we bring to people. This is, you know, we haven't increased our prices since well beyond the world was a different time. The translation phase allows you to almost solidify the things that you were thinking. So when you get to the executing and the doing, it comes so easy. So if someone's increasing their prices, part of this translating is, you know, what's going to happen with our current clients? Do they pay the same rate? Or are we going to increase it at a certain date? Is it going to be a gradual increase? What happens with the future clients? I'm guessing they're all paying. Are we paying the new price? This is where you might talk about any marketing that might come about because you are increasing your prices. There's a lot of marketing campaigns around price increases that I often work out with my clients. Like you can definitely do promotions to say, here's our current price promotion. Prices will be going up at the end of the month. So if you want to take advantage, X, Y, Z, like that's a very loose way of explaining one option of a price increase campaign. But it takes you from, okay, we're just going to increase our prices by 20% to firstly thinking about it. Second is translating it. And this is where you're solidifying it. You're like making a plan, you're making sense of what actually is going to help you when you get to that execution phase. And then that only leaves you to just doing the actual work. So I think it's so helpful because now we've gone from someone just saying we're going to increase our price. Like we're almost like taking it from a hope type strategy, like thinking hope is a strategy, into something that is, you know what, we're actually really savvy and really strategic and thoughtful about our business and our operations and the way that we do things. So, yes, we are increasing our prices, but we've actually done the foundational work to make sure that's going to stick. And we're also maximizing our opportunity here to see that, you know what, there's a lot of ways we can be really profitable in this move forward. We can see how it's helping our clients as well. And here's all the different ways that we're doing that. So, what can start as, or what can present as someone saying, you know what, we need to increase our prices, margins just don't seem big enough. Here's like almost like the process you can go through that thinking, that translating, and then into the doing. And it makes the doing and the execution run so much smoother, so much cleaner. And I think, especially if you have a team, it has them really invested in that transition and that change and that work that they're doing. They can start applying the things that you mapped out. So there's like a dummy run through, I guess, of this phase of number one thinking, number two, translating, and then number three doing. So there is a big difference between the thinking work and the doing work. So when you're coming up against tasks that you're really finding it's frustrating, or you've got all the tabs open, or you know, you start with one task and then you're kind of, you know, thinking, oh, I wanted to send that newsletter, but oh, who are we targeting? How often are we sending these newsletters? Should we use active campaign or should we use clavier? Like, you know, all the things start to come up. That's like a red flag to say, you know what? We need to pause this doing work for the time being, and we need to work out what the strategy is. We need to do this thinking, this translating, and then we can do the doing. And I think the more times and the more pieces we can apply this into the business, like you hopefully could see in the example of a price increase, how it strengthens and creates more opportunity for your business. And this is where I say there's so many ways to grow a business. It's it's not just about more clients, more customers, even though that is a very big part of it. It's taking all the intricate moments that happen throughout your business and using that as an opportunity to strengthen it, make it more maximize it as well. And like it's not from a greedy point of view. Like I think, you know, a price increase is at the end of the day, asking your customer to pay more, pay more for maybe the exact same service. But if you do that exercise, you can tease out the foundations of it, looking at the value you you create, the results that you create, you know, being a better service operator because maybe it is you want to work with less but higher caliber clients because you want to go really deep. You don't want to be churning out clients all the time. So it allows you to do everyone so much more justice. So that's a really nice exercise for anyone to do for lots of different tasks in your business. Maybe you want to create case studies in your business and like everyone, everyone always is like, yeah, I got to get onto my case studies. There's so many that I haven't done. And they just know the opportunity that it has for their business. But again, if we did a quick little run through of what that exercise could look like, it is that thought or agreeing that, yeah, I should create case studies. And so then how does that look? Well, these days they're probably popping into Chat GPT and how to create case studies for XYZ business and then it spits out a plan. But that is still missing the substance of the thinking work and the translating work. And I love AI, but I also love human interaction. And I think we we have so much wisdom and scope and ability, like we bring so much to the table that AI, at least at the moment, just does not bring and maybe will never bring. And a lot of people are probably like, hopefully, never brings. But no, there is a lot of benefit to AI. But say creating case study, someone's like, Yep, I I've got to do that. Okay, how am I gonna do that? Well, here's our best couple of clients, or here's the ones I'd love to showcase. So let's just come up with a template and then we'll go off and do it. But that dismisses the thinking work, the translation work. So a thinking work in that. And this is really like this is consulting. This is the work that I do type of thing, or like it is not type of thing. It is the work that I do. It's like looking at qualitatively but quantitatively, strategically, what are we actually looking at here? So, in the thinking, it's why do we want the case studies? Like, where does this fit in? Because that everyone's time is precious. I want to always make sure this is the highest and best use of someone's time and investment as well. And then with the case study in that thinking phase, you know, what do you want to be known for? Like you can tell the same story a hundred different ways. You know, that same case study can be told a hundred different ways. But what way or ways do you want to tell that story? Part of it could be, you know, what what are the strategic clues that these case studies are revealing about your clients? So you might start to in that thinking phase of someone who wants to actually. Start publishing case studies. It's you know what, we don't just want testimonials. We want to really create a certain reputation for ourselves. And also by doing so, we want to improve our services as well. So you can kind of like kill two birds with one stone with it, but you can get so much clarity when you create the time and space to think about something. So if someone in the case studies go from the thinking, then how are we going to translate this? Okay, here's going to be our template. Here's going to be our structure. And also, you know, what where are you going to publish all these case studies? So some people might run ads and things, some people might create funnels, some people might have a service PDF with all their service offerings, with a case study in that as well. Like you really want to tease it out, like so that you understand how is this going to even have an impact on my business. Like I said I wanted to publish more case studies, but I'm sure you don't want case studies that just sit in a Google Drive not doing anything. So translating it and working out where is this going to sit? Where am I actually going to publish this? And what are the angles and the messages that I want to tell with it? And then the last piece is actually collating the case studies, talking to the clients, and then starting to publish those case studies. So really great way for you to also apply that same concept, thinking, translating, and doing to a task that can have a really positive return on investment in your business and a really strong impact. So to start to wrap things up for this episode, I really believe that sometimes the most productive thing to do is to see clearly. When business owners can see clearly, that's when they can be productive. Otherwise, we're stuck in the busyness, we're stuck in the tabs, all the tabs open, we get the mental fog, we get the procrastination. And I don't know about you, but I definitely don't want to live in that state all the time. Running a business is a feat in itself. And if you can slow things down, like I said, sometimes the most productive thing to do is to see clearly because what comes after that is all the very clear tasks and actions for you and your team to complete. If you would like any help with this, if you would love to book in for a consulting session, I would absolutely love to help you with this. It's always something that is most helpful when you're talking to the right person. If you're talking to the wrong person, this is can be the flaw of an AI. If you're talking to the wrong person, it can lead you straight down the wrong path. So if I can help, definitely do reach out. A link to book in to have a chat to see how I can help you is always in the show notes. Otherwise, you're always welcome to send me a message on LinkedIn or email me shannon at shannonstone.com.au. But as far as this episode goes, and I guess in order to apply this, a bit of there's almost like two pieces of homework I could give you. One is the awareness that if you jump into or you find yourself in a thing of busyness, all the tabs open, feeling frustrated, like you're probably trying to do something, like you're probably trying to get an email out, trying to post something on social media, like you're trying to do something, like pause and just say, you know what? It's probably because I haven't done the thinking work that's required in order to effectively get this task done. So that's when you can stop, pause, and think about what needs to be done. Start to translate that, which is making sense of your thinking and what what you need to do. And then you can then go back and actually do the task. And I would probably create some space between the thinking and the doing. And and don't think that you're getting less done by like adding, like, uh I'll tell people, okay, you need to sit down and work out who you actually want to target before we even do any marketing. And they're like, no, I just want to get the, I just want to get the marketing out there. I just want to like, yes, but I think you saw in the price increase. Example, if you can do it right, it's going to pay you dividends. So if you get in that frustration piece as you're going through your day to day, your weeks to week, stop, pause, tell yourself, you know what, I probably haven't done the thinking work that is required. Um, so I'm going to sit down and do this. So that is one part of the homework where you can kind of just do it in action. It's on an as-need basis. The other way you can do it is almost start to prioritize a list of different areas in your business that you need to sit down and do this approach to. You might have some things already in mind. You might have a to-do list of uh things you want to work on in business. But yeah, you could start to have a list and then you'd start to slowly go through each of those using this concept: thinking, translating, and doing. I hope you found this useful. I think you would definitely find the companion article on LinkedIn highly, highly useful as well. Like I said at the start, it's like giving you an opportunity to be your own strategic consultant in your own business. But yeah, if you have questions, if you get stuck on it on any of it, always do reach out. If you have any requests for the podcast or want me to cover anything in particular, always reach out with that as well. I hope you have an amazing week and I'll chat to you really soon. Do you know what would be amazing if you were treated as the only business in the room where all eyes, attention, and focus was on you and your business, and it's not to a crowd of other people. It's just you and me having lunch together, talking out your business. If that is something you would love to do, to see how you can get more clarity in your business, simplify what you need to focus on, solve some of those problem areas, even pull up and look at your marketing so you know what you need to do in order to achieve your goals. I think that's going to give you a world of relief as well as the return on investment to come. So if you would like to sit down together over lunch and go through your business, either in Brisbane or online, food included with both, I would love to do that with you. If that sounds amazing, visit shannonsone.com.au forward slash lunch. You can fill in your details, I'll reach out to you. There are limited places for these, they are purely one-on-one. So just you and me or your team member or business partner. And I am only doing this for a limited time. So if it's something that piques your interest, I've invited you enough times now, it would be really good to get that locked in in the calendar. We could be sitting down as early as next week going over your business and getting you the clarity and the results that you deserve that you've worked so hard for. Sometimes it just takes a really good conversation to help you with that. So visit shannonstone.com.au forward slash lunch.