Candice (00:01.826)

Hey, it's your coach Candice. And today we're talking about a business pattern that I am seeing everywhere right now. It's something that I see inside coaching conversations with my students and my one-to-one coaching clients. I'm seeing it across the wedding industry. I see it a lot on Instagram. And to be honest, sometimes I see it inside my own business. And the tricky part is that this pattern looks like progress.

on the surface. This conversation matters so much right now as do all the conversations that we have here because when business starts to feel uncertain or slower than you expect, a lot of business owners respond to that by adding more. More services, more packages, more offerings, more ways to work with clients.

more marketing, more strategies, more education. And while that can feel like a smart move in the moment at the time, very few people talk about the hidden cost of all that complexity. And every new thing that you add to your business requires energy. It requires energy to sell it, to deliver it, to market it, and to maintain it. And over time, the expansion

The reaction you have to that uncertainty and all the expansion you do can start pulling you away from the parts of your business that actually generate the most revenue. So this episode is for all wedding pros, planners, photographers, designers, florists, any creative in our industry who feels like their business has started pulling them in too many directions. Let's get into it.

Welcome back to the show. If you're a returning listener, I'm so glad you're here as always. And if this is your very first time tuning into the power and purpose podcast, welcome. I'm Candice. I'm your host. And every week we talk about building a business driven by purpose in the wedding industry. So if you enjoy this episode, make sure that you follow the show or on Apple podcasts, Spotify.

Candice (02:22.466)

So you never ever miss an episode. And if something in today's conversation that we have resonates with you, I'd be so grateful if you'd share this episode with a friend in the industry who might need to hear it too. Maybe there's somebody who you've talked to recently who's expressed some of what we're gonna discuss today. I think they will really value the opportunity to listen to today's episode.

Now in preparation for this episode, I put together a lot of thoughts and a lot of notes and this really does come from years worth of mentoring and coaching women in the wedding industry. But even more recently over the last six to eight months, I've noticed a business pattern developing across students, coaching clients, and just people that I get the chance to talk to, including you, which by the way,

I love getting your DM. So many of you guys have reached out to me and DMed me listening after listening to some of the most recent episodes, whether it was the goal setting episode or last week's episode. I really enjoyed hearing your stories and hearing what resonates with you. So for all of you who've taken the time to reach out to me, I appreciate it. And guess what? That's an invitation for you. If you haven't reached out to me yet to do it and let me know what you think of today's episode, but regardless,

I've been seeing this pattern everywhere, and it's hurting revenue. But it's also hurting so many other aspects of your business that are just as important as revenue. And this problem will probably sound pretty familiar to you once we start moving through the episode. And it's what I like to call the side quest problem.

It's something that I'm seeing constantly in coaching and something that I've experienced in my own business. It's what I like to call side quests. Let me explain. You start with one clear path in your business and then slowly the side quests begin. Maybe you offer another service. You start experimenting with a new software. You add another service, another layer to your business.

Candice (04:33.1)

You start another marketing project. You hire another team member. You rebrand your business again. And none of these things are bad on their own, but suddenly you are running six different strategies at the same time. And none of them are getting the attention they actually need to work in your business. And the real problem is the foundation of your business gets weaker.

while the complexity of your business gets a lot bigger. So instead of going deeper into what works, you start building outward. Your business gets wider, not stronger. And in getting wider, for a lot of people, it gets weaker. Now I see this happen over and over and over again.

To give you an example, nobody in particular, but my Voxer, which is what I use with my private coaching clients is filled with questions and conversations on a million different things. But inevitably every single week I'll log into Voxer and I will be a participant in someone's side quest. We are running a strategy in their business to expand, to grow their team, to enhance their brand awareness.

We're running a strategy and suddenly now they're diverting from the strategy and giving me 10 other new things that they want to try. And this happens for so many reasons. And I'm often left kind of scratching my head thinking, okay, I thought we were going to work towards A, what is BCDEFG doing here in my Boxer? And...

I usually have a little laugh at it and try to correct someone back onto course. But I see this all the time in my conversations with my one-to-one coaching clients. And sometimes I find myself going on little side quests with my business coach and I have to reel myself in.

Candice (06:41.836)

One of the most common side quests that hurt your revenue that I see a lot of wedding pros go down is the myth of more revenue streams. The internet loves to glorify multiple revenue streams. And listen, your girl has multiple revenue streams. I'm guilty as charged, but here's the part that...

you might not be taking into consideration. It took me years to build all of my revenue streams, years, over a decade in business, five plus years of building out the education side of my company. And even now as a mature business, I still hit a ceiling with how many things I can juggle. And that's because there is a limit to complexity.

And what a lot of wedding pros don't realize is that every new thing you introduce into your business comes with an invisible and yes, visible costs. And it's not just time. You have to think about marketing energy, customer support, maintenance, updates, tech, the learning angle of something new, content creation, advertising.

And suddenly a side quest, an idea to do something takes up a considerable amount of your time. You're excited about it. You're energized about it. It's kind of like how it feels to add something to your shopping cart. You get that rush of excitement working on something and creating something. And you often neglect the things that actually

bring you money. So suddenly you're doing three times the work, but you're not making three times the money. And sometimes you're not making any more money at all and your business gets wider while your profit stays exactly the same. And at this point, you have to ask yourself a really honest question. What is the point of doing more in my business if the outcome doesn't change?

Candice (09:00.78)

What is the point of adding more, adding more layers, adding more complexity, adding more things to your to-do list. If the outcome of that more doesn't change your business, if it only actually makes you have to work more hours, work more weekends, work more late nights, and you don't have much to show for it. We're all so

guilty of this. there's a bit of psychology behind why we do this. And this is where this gets really interesting because side quests are part of our human nature. It is part of what makes us complex humans. And there's a few things happening in our brains when we start adding too many things to our business.

I did a lot of research for this podcast episode, but I was first very curious as to why I do this and why my clients do this. And this is what I discovered. The first reason why we love to go on side quests, and I've kind of already shared this with you, the novelty of it feels really exciting. New ideas release dopamine.

So that's why launching something new feels energizing. That's why a new notebook, a new day planner, a new year, a new Asana project, a new software feels so energizing. It gives you that hit of possibility. And I was really first introduced to this concept reading one of my now favorite books called Meditations.

for mortals where the author talks about this and so much more, but he talks about the hit of possibility and how we create, how just the idea of a new system, a new way of doing things, a new productivity hack, like scratches that part of our brain. And I guarantee last week's episode, part of your brain was just scratched when I was talking about, you know, creating a deload week and a decision day. You just love the hit of possibility.

Candice (11:22.72)

especially if the current strategy that you're operating from feels slow, it feels uncertain. And so instead of staying the course with what we know works or with what quite frankly feels boring, we chase the next thing. We do this in relationships, we do this in friendships, we do this with our buying patterns, our shopping carts, and you're doing this in side quests with your business.

The next thing that ends up happening is we create too many open loops and there's a psychological principle. It's called the Zygarnik effect. And boy, I could have butchered that. And if I did apologies to the person who that is named after, it basically says though that our brains hold on to unfinished tasks. So every time you start something new in your business, you've opened up another loop.

Think about how many open loops you have open right now just because of your inbox, just because of the sheer volume of communication back and forth you do in your business. And so whether it is a new client, a new email, an introduction to someone, a new event, a new marketing hack, a new podcast episode you just listened to, there are so many loops that just get opened on a daily basis. And now your brain is trying to keep track

of all those open loops. And that creates a lot of mental clutter. It's like the proverbial papers on your desk. And we talked about that last week. We talked about open loops last week. It creates anxiety, a ton of anxiety. And as wedding pros, we're under a lot of pressure as it is. This industry is exciting and a lot of fun, but let's not.

kid ourselves, the stakes are high. The stakes are high in the work that we do, especially when we aim for excellence in all things. So anxiety is naturally there. It's sort of the baseline in the work that we do. But now if you have all these open loops and these side quests you're going on, you are just stacking on top of that anxiety. And you're also creating a lot of decision fatigue. So your brain never fully rests.

Candice (13:48.472)

When you think about when you started your business, everything was new and exciting. You felt like you had limitless energy. There's so much to learn, so much to do. You were so energized. Fast forward five years later, you've opened up a lot of loops in five years. Now you're a little tired. And think about it, your brain has not rested since the moment that you decided to start your business. And this absolutely has a compounding effect on everything that we touch and do in our business.

Also, task switching kills a lot of momentum. And so when you're opening loops and going on side quests and constantly starting new things, every time you jump from project to project, you pay what psychologists like to call a switching cost. Your brain has to reset. And that slows down your ability to produce deep work. That's why we need deload weeks and fricking decision days, because we're so overwhelmed.

Ironically, the more projects you add, the less progress you make, the less meaningful progress you make. Task switching kills so much momentum. And some days we crush it with task switching. We're like an Olympic juggler. There's literally nothing we can't do. But I would venture to say that that might happen a handful of times a month. Most days.

We're drowning in open loops and lots of tasks, and yet we keep adding more things to our plate. And at the end of the day, this leads to the simple fact that complexity in business is very expensive. And I think that is something that so many people underestimate, myself included. Complexity has a cost. Every new thing in your business adds

operational weight to your business. Every software, every system, every expansion you do of something, more marketing, more customer journeys, more support, more team members, more subcontractors, more templates, more courses, and eventually your business becomes just harder to run.

Candice (16:13.482)

Meanwhile, you're thinking all these things are supposed to make your life easier, right? You're thinking, wait a minute. She has a freaking point. Simplification is part of our operating standards for this year. And if you haven't listened to that episode, I'm begging you to go back a couple of episodes and listen to my operating standards for this year.

Because part of what we're talking about here has a lot to do with those operating standards and simplifying your business should be the name of the game. Because complexity is expensive, which means your time gets consumed maintaining the machine of your business instead of growing the machine. So if I had to name one skill that I think matters today, matters this week and certainly matters for this year.

It is, it isn't doing more in your business. It's actually doing less subtracting things. The ability to say, this isn't the season for that. This, this, don't need to offer that. I don't, that is unnecessary. That can wait.

And boy, that's really hard to do. Discernment is a muscle that must be exercised. And this is a big part of what we're talking about at the WPI retreat. So shout out to the 18 ladies who are coming to Barbados in just a couple of weeks for our mastermind retreat, because I'm going to be delivering a very similar talk and having a larger conversation about discernment.

But this is a skill that you have got to be focused on. The ability to say, not right now, that is unnecessary, that can wait, that's not for me, this isn't the season for that, this isn't the time, this is not the place.

Candice (18:18.638)

Ahem.

Candice (18:26.112)

Over my many, many, many years of being an entrepreneur and making a million mistakes, and also in my many years of helping other entrepreneurs grow, I have seen one pattern emerge.

that can almost guarantee success, and that is focus. Focus creates a lot of power and a lot of leverage in your business. And what I've noticed, patterns across women I've coached and patterns in myself, is that when you are laser focused on the right things, the right things happen.

But what we don't talk about is how to narrow your focus and how to sharpen that muscle of discernment.

Candice (19:27.318)

And that is what I want you to focus on, at least for this week, but in the longer term of this year. And as you continue to own and operate your business, you have to get good at understanding where to spend your time. If you don't, you will spend your time and waste.

Some of the most precious hours of your day where you have the highest level of focus and where you are at your greatest ability to make things happen, you will waste it on the things that are not going to get you to where you want to go.

Candice (20:16.974)

So if you're feeling stretched thin right now, if you're trying to do too many things, if you acknowledge that maybe you have too many side quests running concurrently or running consecutively, and you are opening too many damn loops, and if just the idea of closing some loops makes you feel excited,

makes you feel 2 % less stressed. I want you to ask yourself one question. What is actually working in my business? What is actually making me money? What is actually bringing people in? Not what might work, not what could work, but what is currently generating revenue, clients, and real traction? And what would happen if you put

90 % of your energy there instead of scattering it across five other experiments, departments, and things. What would happen in your business if you put your energy and your effort into the things that actually work?

Candice (21:37.634)

And a little side note, just to help you find the things, because I know your brain is thinking and it automatically went to something. It automatically went to something. For those of you guys who are searching your mind for what actually works, a good place to look is at the most boring, the most mundane things that you take for granted. Because...

Those are often the spaces that are no longer exciting. They're no longer filling up our cup. But they are the things that actually make us the most money. And they're what our clients want. And if you put 90 % of your energy there instead of focusing on a million and a half shiny objects, I think circumstances would be so much different for you.

Now, before you move on with your day, I want you to pause for a moment and think about our conversation. And I would love to know what stood out to you in today's episode. Was there a project that came to mind? Was there a service that maybe you've been maintaining in your business out of habit, out of doubt? Is there a strategy that you've been going after that has been pulling your attention away from what's already working that you could scale, that you could

make generate more revenue for your business.

Candice (23:07.358)

If you are looking for deeper support in building a focused business, you can always explore my programs and the resources that I offer in the show notes. I would love to see you inside my mastermind and I would love for us to work together to help you close some of those loops and pay attention to the things that actually matter in your business, however boring they might seem. If you had an aha moment during today's episode, pull out your phone, get it right now. It might even be in your hand. Open up your Instagram.

And before you get distracted, before you start scrolling and the algorithm sucks your attention in, open up your DMs, search for me, Candice Nakopla, shoot me a DM, let me know what came to mind during today's episode. What did you think? What did you have an aha moment about? What were you like? Holy shit. She's so fricking right.

Because I am. But I want to hear your story and what this brought up for you. The goal this year is to simplify aspects of your business, to increase your discernment around all the shiny objects that are being thrown your way, to limit your side quests and focus on the things that actually make you money and will grow.

your business. Thank you for spending time with me today and thanks for letting me share with you a little bit more about what's been on my mind. I want to remind you there's so much power in your purpose. I'll see you next week.