Candice (00:06.008)

Hey, hey, it's your coach, Candice. Have you ever had something just sitting on your to-do list that you know you need to deal with? But every single time you think about it, you feel that little ugh, that little ick, that little pit in your stomach, that little flutter of anxiety, that little, ugh, I don't want to do that. So you tell yourself, okay, I'll deal with it tomorrow. What a human experience, by the way. I think we've all experienced that. Well, today, today is a big coaching episode. And I think

Every single person who listens to this episode is going to think about how they make decisions much differently. Because today we're talking about something that I personally think is one of the most underrated skills you can develop as an entrepreneur. And it is becoming a loop closer. And today's episode matters for you because after years of doing coaching for business owners, after years and years and years of

Seeing this play out over and over again. I have actually noticed something about the people who succeed, who move forward, who say they're going to do something and then actually get to the finish line of doing it. These are the people that are building brands you admire, the people who are making money doing something that they love, the people advancing in the industry, launching things, creating opportunities for themselves, others, and building a beautiful business. They close loops.

They don't keep loops open. And I'm going to explain to you what I mean by that in a second. But today's episode is for you if you are feeling stuck, overwhelmed, if you find yourself procrastinating on things all the time or waiting to feel ready before you make a move. I don't think you have a productivity issue. And most people who come to me say, Candace,

I think I need I'm not productive. I need better systems. I need to manage my time better. That is going to help me close all these loops to do all the things. And so you might think that you have a productivity problem, but what you actually have is a discomfort problem. And once you understand what's actually happening in your brain.

Candice (02:23.882)

When you avoid the thing you know you need to do, you can actually start training yourself to respond to loops differently. Let's get into it. Hey, hey, friend. Welcome back to the Power and Purpose Podcast. If you're a returning listener, as always, thank you for joining me here for another week of No BS Business Advice. This episode is going to be a special one and one that I really hope sticks with you long after you listen. Maybe something we even

back to. If this is your very first episode of The Power and Purpose, welcome. I'm Candice. I'm a business coach. I'm a former luxury wedding planner. I've been coaching wedding pros, all wedding pros for a very, very long time. I have a high-level mastermind for women in the wedding industry. It's called Wedding Pro Insiders. You can go check out, check it out, and learn more. I'm so glad you're here. Do me a favor, make sure you follow the podcast and subscribe wherever you are listening.

And listen, whether you're new or an OG, if there's something you hear in today's episode that you think someone else would benefit from, I'm asking you to share this episode with a business bestie or somebody on your team or somebody who you think needs to close loops. And even better if you listen to this episode with a friend and it sparks conversation between the two of you. Ultimately, when I think about creating podcast episodes, I want these episodes to spark conversation.

In the real world. So feel free to sub this episode to somebody who you think would benefit from it. And before we get into the crux of what I'm gonna talk to you about today, I want to do a little Q update. If you don't know what Q is, Q is my new software for wedding planners. I am building intelligent wedding planning software. I announced this on the podcast just a few weeks ago. So feel free to go and listen to that episode if you haven't. And this week's update is we are rocking and rolling, friends.

We have released so many new features in Q in just the last week or two. And this is all because of the feedback that we're getting from our incredible beta testers who are sharing with us problems that they encounter, things they want solved, and making really smart user experience requests and feature requests. So we're ever so grateful for all of our Q beta testers. And this week I am personally trying to untangle the absolute monster of guest lists because.

Candice (04:51.572)

I as a planner, I know guest list management is always so cumbersome and very nuanced and very detailed, but trying to build software that does this in an elegant and intuitive way has been extremely eye-opening. This is like the ultimate puzzle. In fact, building software in and of itself feels like building the ultimate puzzle. There are so many things that I feel like I naturally just understand about how this all works.

And in in building guest lists, I have been challenged in how to make this work. So the good news is though, we've got some really exciting guestly guest list features rolling out to our beta users in the next week or two as I continue to build this behind the scenes. So that is my Q update. If you are a planner and you are interested in getting on the wait list to be the first to try Q, I want you to go to planwithq.com.

And you can sign up, you'll be given your special number in line, and we'll let you know when Q is ready for you to try. All right, friends, let's talk about closing loops because I think successful entrepreneurs are loop closers. And I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And I've been thinking, what separates the people who make consistent progress in business? What separates as I look at at the women I work with? What separates the people who are making consistent progress, who always seem to be moving forward, versus folks who

Seem to always remain stuck in the same place year after year. And obviously, there isn't one thing. Talent matters, strategy, your offer, what you actually do, your market, your marketing, money, your access to money, timing, of course, luck, your personal circumstances, the circumstances in which you operate, all of these things absolutely affect success.

But after coaching business owner business owners for years, and after being an entrepreneur myself for basically my entire adult life, I think there is one skill that doesn't get talked about enough, and it's the ability to close loops. And when I look at the people I've coached who are building brands and advancing, growing their business, making more money and actually getting what they want out of their business, this is a skill that they possess. They don't stay stuck for very long, they move.

Candice (07:13.048)

They make decisions, they have conversations, and they deal with the proverbial shit that always makes its way to a business owner's doorstep. And that doesn't mean that they never struggle. It doesn't mean that they aren't scared or that every decision they actually make in their business is right. It just means they don't require the discomfort of making the decision to disappear before they act. And that is the huge difference.

And it's sort of the crux of what I'm gonna talk to you about today. What do I mean by open loop? Let's talk about that first. An open loop is anything in your business or in your life that requires some kind of resolution from you. So it could be something like maybe you know that your price needs to increase, but you haven't decided on a new price, so you haven't done it. Maybe you know you need to fire someone, but you keep waiting for the right time to do it.

You know you need to follow up with a lead in your inbox, but you're afraid they're gonna say no. So you don't do it. You haven't looked at your PL statement. You might not even know what that is. And you don't do it because you're scared of what it says. You know you need to tell a client no, you know that you need to send a proposal, or maybe offer someone an apology, or ask someone for money, or address a problem with an employee, or cancel something, or hire someone.

You need to make a decision and you know the decision is there, but every time it pops up into your head, there's this small little emotional charge attached to it. And that's the loop.

There's a reason why we leave loops open. And this is where it gets really interesting to me. Because avoiding things isn't because you can't do the thing. Unfortunately, we learn at some point that avoidance works. Avoiding the thing that makes you feel discomfort works. Think about it like this: you have something uncomfortable that you need to deal with.

Candice (09:25.382)

And you think about dealing with it, right? Your anxiety goes up. And so you say, I'm gonna do it later. And immediately you feel better. You're like, yeah, that's a tomorrow problem. I don't have to deal with that right now. I don't have to send that email today. I don't have to look at my bank account. I don't have to tell the client, no, I don't have to make a decision. I don't have to potentially hear something that I don't want to hear. And so your brain goes, yes, babe, this is great. That worked.

When we feel this way, we're just gonna avoid the thing. We're just gonna avoid anything that makes us feel this way because when we do, we feel better. And that immediate reduction that you feel in discomfort reinforces why you avoid things. Can you see how this becomes a not so great cycle for business? And here's

A big problem attached to it. The external problem that you are avoiding, the email, the client, whatever, it didn't go away. It's still there. And in many cases, it gets bigger. And so now we're in this cycle. We feel discomfort. So we avoid. We refuse, we feel temporary relief. The problem gets bigger behind the scenes. That makes us more uncomfortable. And so we avoid it hard.

And then we add another layer. We also feel shitty about it because we know we're avoiding it. So there's shame now added. We feel uncomfortable, we avoid, we feel temporary relief, the problem gets bigger, we feel shame, we get more uncomfortable, and so we avoid it even more.

And so we've taken one uncomfortable decision that we need to make, and we've turned it into many uncomfortable things. And this is a cycle that I see lots of business owners finding themselves in. And to be honest, it can feel it can actually be easy to fall into this trap. You could have been a loop closer for a large majority of your professional or personal life, and then you get sort of.

Candice (11:40.586)

Warped into this avoidance cycle. And it piles up pretty quickly. I mean, think about all the open loops a business owner has on a daily basis. Think about all the unmet decisions and all the things that require a decision from you, from the moment you wake up in the morning to the moment you go to sleep. And we're just talking business decisions, then you layer on parental decisions, relationship decisions, personal decisions.

Familial decisions, and you know, you're making upwards of 30 to 60,000 decisions a day. So you naturally you want to avoid some. But there is a a unique dynamic here that I want to illustrate, and it's about the avoider versus the loop closer. The person who avoids get relief gets relief right away, but they pay for it later. So they get that relief up front.

But in the long run, there are big consequences for avoiding decisions. Now, the loop closer actually pays for that discomfort up front. They have to deal with the discomfort of the decision or the work associated with whatever loop they're trying to close. But the reward is that they actually feel real relief, not temporary relief.

And the loop closer experiences the same level of discomfort. So I want you to know a loop closer isn't some magical entrepreneur who isn't afraid of anything. But there is a difference in how they approach discomfort. The avoider says, discomfort, get me out of here. I feel so much better. The loop closer says, discomfort. Okay, I gotta deal with it.

Probably feel more uncomfortable for a minute dealing with it, but then I feel resolution and resolution brings me relief. So one person gets their reward immediately, the other person is delaying the reward, but actually gets the ultimate reward, which is resolution. And I have to be the bearer of maybe bad news, but entrepreneurship disproportionately rewards the second person.

Candice (13:54.784)

Rewards loop closers because business gives you an endless supply of uncomfortable open loops. There's always another decision, another conversation, a risk you have to take, a number you need to look at, a question you've got to answer, a thing that isn't working, a thing that is working, that is providing lots of excitement, a person who's disappointed. There's always an uncomfortable open loop.

And so, if your coping mechanism is to avoid anything that makes you uncomfortable, entrepreneurship is going to be very difficult for you. Very difficult. And so, arguably, being a loop closer is one of the most important skills you can possess. Because if you can get good at sitting in the discomfort of the decision that needs to be made and you act on it, you make the decision.

Clarity comes next and you feel the resolution and the ultimate relief. Now, I don't only know this because I see it in folks I've coached over the years, but I'm also a loop closer myself. I recognize this in myself. I am a very quick action taker. When I decide I'm doing something, I'm doing it. My husband says, when you decide, when I, when I, when you tell me I'm doing this, he's like, it's done.

I know I know it's not done, but I know it will get done. And that's because I'm a loop closer. I I have not always been this way. I have been an avoider in certain aspects of my life, but for the majority of my entrepreneurial journey, I have been a person who says, if I want something, I go after it. If I'm buying something, I buy it. If I'm going to h help somebody, I help them. If I'm gonna launch something, I launch it. So when I say it, it's happening.

And sometimes there's literally like a split second in my brain where I instinctively know it's a yes. I don't have to think about it. I know. And I think back to recently, my most recent I know it's a yes is when I met with Martha at Flowdesk and she offered me this great opportunity to build my own software. In that moment, I knew this was a yes. Could it fail? Absolutely. But I knew.

Candice (16:15.126)

I had to be a yes. I didn't have to go and think about it to my with talk about it with my husband. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, but I just knew in my gut that it was a yes. And when I get that feeling, I go, I move. Has it gotten me into trouble? Of course. Sometimes I move too quickly. Sometimes I put the cart before the horse. Sometimes I make a decision and I realize later, like I think I need to change my mind on that. Sometimes my

Willingness to move quickly means I'm correcting course while I'm already halfway down the road.

But I don't spend a lot of time standing at the beginning of the road for six months trying to guarantee that I'm moving in the right direction. I would rather move and adjust. And I genuinely believe that that skill has contributed enormously to my success as an entrepreneur.

enormously. And I see this skill in others. And I also see where there's a gap in this for people and how keeping loops open and letting them pile up and letting the avoidance of them mount really keeps people stuck in place.

Candice (17:41.998)

So if you have heard yourself in this episode, if you know that you are sitting on a list of things that need to be done, either things that you're genuinely excited about, but you're avoiding them for some reason, or you are genuinely not excited about, but they have to get done. Decisions have to get made.

I would love for you to ask yourself this question. Are you actually stuck? Or are you avoiding the discomfort required to become unstuck? Because as a coach, I hear all the time, I don't know what to do. And truth be told, sometimes that's completely true. You like genuinely need information, you need a little bit of context, you need a strategy, right? You need some help.

But a lot of the time you know exactly what you need to do. You just don't like what doing it requires. So you don't like the fact that you are gonna have to raise your price and that somebody will eventually say no because you'll be priced outside their budget. You know that an employee is not working out, but you don't want to have the conversation because it makes you feel uncomfortable. You know your service isn't selling the way it should be. You don't wanna admit it because that would mean that you have to restructure.

Parts of your business. And, you know, that's not easy to do. And so it's not that you need more information, you need some course, you need somebody to teach you. It's more that there's discomfort around doing the thing. And there is a big difference between information, needing the information to do it, and actually needing to move through the discomfort you feel about it.

Candice (19:31.958)

On that note, what I would like to share with you is how you can start to become a better loop closer. And this is where I want you to get out a pen and a piece of paper or circle back if you're not in a position to do that and write some things down. I want this to be on a notebook that's always face up on your desk. I want it to be on a sticky note. I want it to be visible to you. So the next time a loop is opened and you're presented with an opportunity to make a decision to close it.

You think about these questions, okay? So here's where I want you to start practicing becoming a loop closer. First of all, identify your open loops. Ask yourself, what am I currently carrying around that I know needs resolution? And I know you probably have a few things that immediately came to mind. Just stick with those. You don't need to make a 47-item list. Think about a couple of things that you know needs resolution.

That you've been carrying around, and maybe focus on the ones that have an emotional charge attached to it. The thing you keep thinking about, the email you keep seeing in your inbox that you haven't responded to, the decision you might revisit on a daily basis. These loops are costing you a lot of energy. In fact, it would take less energy to close the loop than it does for it to remain open.

And continue to haunt you and the temporary relief you feel from avoiding it. Next, I want you to ask yourself, what am I actually avoiding?

Not why haven't I done this? That's not that's not specific enough. Ask yourself, what it what feeling am I avoiding by not doing it? Am I avoiding rejection, embarrassment, conflict, uncertainty, disappointing someone, finding out I'm wrong, bruised ego, looking stupid, losing money? Those are all very valid reasons why we avoid. Once you can figure out the discomfort.

Candice (21:44.172)

It becomes so much clearer how to solve the problem or even how to make the decision about the thing that you're avoiding.

Candice (21:54.292)

Next, I need you to ask what I like to call the killer question. And it's this is it that I don't know what to do? Or do I not like what I know I need to do? Hmm. This is this one, it even hits me because I'm like, damn. Most of the time is that I don't like what I know I need to do.

I don't like that I have to sit down and do all this work. I don't like that I have to untangle this problem and confront it. I don't like that I have to spend all this money to solve this issue. And you know something? That's really honest. I can work with that. You can work with that. Most of the time, you actually know what you need to do. You just don't like.

The steps required to do it. And I see this a lot of time with coaching where, you know, people come to me with a great question and I tell them what they need to do. And I can tell that they don't love my answer because they don't respond right away. And that's okay. That's all right. I do the same thing to my coach, you know. She'll give me, she'll be you need to do this. And I'm like, that's uncomfortable. I'll come back. But I do close the loop. So the killer question: is it that I don't know what to do?

Or do I not like what I know I need to do? And be really freaking honest with yourself. Then I need you to decide what closes the loop. Sometimes it's gonna be taking action, sometimes it's a conversation, sometimes it's just making a decision. Yes, no, I'm not doing that. Here's what we're going to do instead. Sometimes it's deciding not to do something.

And in some cases, it's actually just gathering information and setting a deadline for the decision. Not most cases though, because that is delayed and avoidant. Not something I want you to get in the good habit of doing because boy, isn't that a fun dopamine? You're like, yeah, I close that loop. And then the this the deadline still looms and the decision still has to be made. But you can pull that out once in a while.

Candice (24:04.374)

Now, when you're closing a loop, that doesn't always mean yes. It doesn't mean you're always saying yes to something. No closes loops, too. So keep that in mind. And once you decide what closes the loop, I want you to do the smallest thing that moves you towards resolution. As entrepreneurs, and I've got a lot of type A people in my orbit, a lot of people who, you know, really think through things. When I think of

Most entrepreneurs in the wedding industry, you think pro you think through every single step, right? And the point I'm trying to make here is that sometimes we think through every step and it causes so much anxiety because we see the work that is required. But if you do the smallest thing first that just moves you towards the resolution, you're going to find that you're

You don't get lost in the 50 million things you think you need to do in order to make the first step to make progress. So that big, big, big idea in your mind of, I'm gonna have to do all this work and email all these people or talk to all these people or figure all these things out actually isn't true. Andor because you take one small step, it feels so much easier to get to the finish line.

So that's why I want you to do the smallest thing that moves you towards resolution. Send the email, open up QuickBooks, ask the question, schedule the meeting, make the call, say no, make the decision. And then experience what happens afterward. Actually sit in your body, experience it. You're gonna feel relief. You might even feel excitement, like holy shit, I just closed a loop. That's exciting.

Pay attention to how that feels in your body. Pay attention to how that feels because if you do it again and you get the same feeling, you're going to be attracted towards that versus attracted to the temporary relief you feel when you avoid. Do you see how that can completely change the scope and the dynamic of your business? A simple thing closing loops, making decisions.

Candice (26:22.712)

Can actually have the greatest impact on how you grow your business, how you book fantastic clients, how you make money, how you elevate your brand, and ultimately get to the life and career that you want. Now, before you move on with your day, I want you to think about one open loop in your business right now. Just think about one. What's the thing that you've been carrying around that you already know needs your attention?

It's been haunting you. You're feeling that sense of shame. I haven't made that decision. And then I want you to ask yourself, am I actually stuck or am I avoiding the discomfort required to become unstuck? If you're actually stuck, great. Seek out somebody who can teach you or do it for you. But if you are avoiding this discomfort required to become unstuck, your next move is to face that discomfort and close the loop.

Candice (27:24.142)

Tell me how it goes. All right, friends. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I really, really, really, really hope that the conversation we have here today sticks with you. And every time you are faced with whether to put it on the shelf or deal with it right now, I hope you hear my voice. And I hope you go back to those questions that I've asked you to ask yourself. And I hope that you face the discomfort up front of closing the loop.

So that you can feel true relief, resolution, and in many cases, joy and excitement on the other side. If there's a decision that you've been avoiding making and you would like my support or help, shoot me a DM on Instagram. Maybe I can help you close the loop. All right, friends, thank you so much for listening to today's episode of the podcast. I hope you have a great week. I want to remind you, there's so much power in your purpose. I'll see you next time.