When the ship’s taking on water, it’s, uh, gosh frustrating. Um, and. It’s, it’s not always easy to know what to do because as the ship’s taking on water. Uh, you see all the places that are leaky. Um, and the natural reaction is, is, well, I’ve gotta fix all of these, all of these things.

Um, and the reality is, is you, you can’t fix all of those things at the same time. Um, if you do, you’re not gonna be able to fix any one of ’em. And so. When, when things are falling apart, the, what you’ve gotta do as a business owner is you have to find out what’s that most important thing that’s falling apart, um, and tackle that.

So it’s, I I think about it in terms of football, right? Um, or any sport, any team sports from that perspective. Oftentimes when one of your players gets hurt, you’ll hear the coach come in and say, it’s the next man up mentality, right? Um, and so it’s the same thing with the, the, the business that’s struggling.

It’s the next thing, right? What’s the next thing? Like go tackle that, fix that, make it right, and then look around and say, what’s that next most important thing that’s gonna help us stop taking on water? And you fix that, and you fix that, and you fix that. Um, it’s one of the things I learned from startups.

Doing my podcast that we did for, you know, seven or eight years interviewing 167 founders, um, is they’re really good at focusing in on one thing at a time. Like, we’re gonna do this and then we’re gonna do this, and we’re gonna do that. And it’s one of those things that I think small business owners struggle with is because.

When they first started the business, they did all the things. And so that mentality of I’m gonna pull this boat forward, continues to stay with them for a really long time, if not forever. Um, but you can’t pull the boat forward anymore. You’ve got to, when it’s taken on water like that, you really have to focus in on what’s that next thing that I need to fix?

And then go fix it, and then what’s the next thing? And fix that as well.