Everybody, Justin Recla here with another episode of Incorporating SuperPowers and today, we’re going to be doing things a little bit different. I mean it’s kind of the theme of the shows, the recording days, doing things a little bit different. My guest today is Penny Zenker. She’s magic with just all sorts of ways of looking at business and doing things. And when I first met her, she was talking about time management and so forth. And she’s done a lot of things since she and I first connected about, I don’t know, it was probably about eight years ago now.
And she is just, she’s one of my favorite people. Every time we run into each other and see each other, it’s like we’d never really like we’re never apart. It’s just, when you find your tribe and you click, that’s what Penny is like. And I’m super excited today to have her on the show, because we’re going to be talking about a higher perspective of business and what that means. And so if you’re an entrepreneur, if you’re a business owner, you’re going to want to pay attention to this conversation because I know it’s really easy to get trapped in some of the things we’re going to be talking about today that really holds you back in your own growth for your business. So Penny, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being on today.
Thanks Justin. I’m excited.
This is going to be fun. So why don’t you share with our listeners a little bit about who you are, what you do, and so forth, your perspective of the world.
Okay. Well, I mean that’s what we’re talking about is about perspectives and it’s actually recently I’ve developed and understood that that whole idea of perspective is my superpower. And it really came about from when I was 20, my father was killed in an accident when he was on vacation. And, I think that any traumatic situation is never something that we want to have in our lives. And at the same time it provided me with I think my greatest gift, which is being under pressure to be able to step outside of myself and to be able to see other perspectives and ask myself what does this mean and be curious and open to what else could it mean. And I think, and I really only recently discovered that like in the last 10 years, that all of that, right unpacking it, and how I’ve implemented it into my business. And you said we met a number of years ago and I was talking about time, it’s people’s perception, right? It was never talking about time. I was always talking about perspective. I just didn’t know how to communicate that.
Right? Because it’s perspective that we take in terms of what we decide to focus on and how we look at anything and everything is really a matter of perspective. And then when we shift our focus, our questions change, the way that we approach something changes, and that’s really where I get my juice is to help people to challenge their perspective.
I like that, and as a business owner, somebody that’s been on that journey and been on that path myself, that’s something that we see across the board of the people that we help serve and whatnot and that we talk to, is that there are so many people that are in their business and they’re stuck, and they don’t know how to see what it is that they’re doing. So how is it, how do you go about helping people? How do you work with people in shifting their perspective, so they can get beyond where they’re at in their business?
Well, I think the first thing is to understand that that’s a natural progression, right? We’re going to have that level and we’re going to utilize all these skills and strategies that we’ve learned in the past, in our experience. And it brings us to that certain level. And in order for us to get to the next level, we have to change the way that we look at things. We need to change the way that we do things and approach things because it’ll get us to a certain point, and then it’ll start getting us frustrated because it worked for a while until it doesn’t. So, I help people psychologically to understand that, that whole idea of insanity is, if you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you’re expecting a different result, right? Then you’re just going to be sorry.
And just helping them to challenge their perspective emotionally, to challenge their skills, and to identify with them what is working and what’s not working, and what do they need in order to get to the next level. So what strategies, what approach, for some people it might be systems. For another person, it might be through innovation. And that’s the cool thing about perspective, right? It could be sales communication, it might be that they’ve hit a plateau in their conversion. They really need to up their conversation in order to make more conversions and it’s not about bringing in new leads, it’s about converting more, right? They’re bringing in enough leads, they’re just not converting enough, and it’s because of the conversation. So, that’s also perspective is understanding the perspectives of your prospects and the different segments of people that you’re talking to. So, I help them in those various different areas to identify which one is it? And, it sounds so much like duh, but when we’re in it, like you said, it’s hard for us to identify what the problem is, right? Because the presenting problem isn’t always the problem.
Well, and that’s what I have loved about the work that you do, is that there’s a lot of people out there building their business and they’re trying to either build it on their own or they’re building it with a team of people that they’ve been working with for a short period of time. So they’re all seeing the same picture, right? And so they’re all here, right? And oftentimes that even though you’re working with somebody, it’s all they’re doing is reflecting back to the same perspective. Having somebody like yourself come in and taking a look going, “You’re missing this. I know you’re missing this and you’re missing this.” And showing them different perspectives, it helps broaden it because what I find is that a lot of people that are in those situations are so emotionally attached to the outcome that they can’t see it.
Well, absolutely. I totally agree that they really are so attached. And sometimes it’s an aspect of some costs, where they’ve invested so much time and energy that they don’t want to let go, right? Because they’re like, “No, this has to be the path. I’ve invested so much, I can’t change directions.” And sometimes it does make sense to stay because you might be three feet from gold and sometimes you’re just crawling up the wrong lap.
Yeah. It becomes a self-perpetuated torture and people stuck. And we see it-
Been there.
Right? Yes, my goodness. I don’t think there’s an entrepreneur that does it, but the beautiful thing is folks, if you’re listening to this, it doesn’t have to be that way. And if you get somebody else in like Penny to help you get a different perspective of where you’re at, sometimes it does mean that the path that you’re on is no longer and you fall, but it’s a lot softer landing. If you’ve got somebody to go, “It’s not the end of the world. It’s just a shift.” It’s not really a fall. It’s just a shift into doing things differently. And so having somebody like you to come in and do that, it’s invaluable. Folks, it’s needed, it is so, so needed. Penny, can you share with us, I know you were talking about that you had some resources and some tools that you offer. Can you share a little bit about that with us?
Yeah, sure. In this context of helping people to… I’m really committed to entrepreneurs being successful because I had my own technology business and I built it from just me to a multimillion dollar business and I sold it to a public company and I made all the wrong moves and the big mistakes. And I really want to help people to do it easier and learn from best practices. So I created a free course that’s called Do More with What You Have, because I find that cash flow and time management are the two scarce resources that entrepreneurs lose their business over.
And so I want to help people to manage their cash flow and focus more on profitability with what they already had, the assets that they’ve already built in their business and how they can manage their time around that so that they can have more availability in the future to invest in longer term projects. And so it’s called Do More with What You Have, it’s a free course, and then following that course if people are interested, I offer a business dashboard so that people can track those items and see visually because there’s something about seeing it in chart and graph that goes bam, and like you might’ve known it was there but maybe not at the magnitude that it was there, of what the potential is that’s hiding in plain sight in your business. And then there’s online and group coaching opportunities.
Fantastic. Where can they go find it? Where can they go to find that information?
They can find that at growthaccelerationplan.com/domorefreecourse.
Fantastic. Go take a look at that. Go get the free course, download it, watch it, reach out, and connect with Penny. Stay tuned, we’ll be right back because I’m going to dive into this topic a little bit more and see if we can uncover some of the common mistakes that business owners make and how you can avoid making them for yourselves. So stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
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