Knowing Vs. Doing

Note: This transcription has been generated with AI and there may be errors present. 

I’m Alan Donegan from the Popup Business School and I am here with Dr. Amell. AK Maddy of the Henley Business School. And she’s a post fellow Postdoctoral Fellow from the Henley business school in leadership, and entrepreneurship. And we’re going to be talking today about the knowing doing gap. And quite often for people starting businesses getting going, or even you might be quite away into your venture. Yeah, you know, what you need to do? What are you actually doing it? And that’s what we’re going to discuss today. Yeah.

So let’s start with the people that are just starting now. So it’s important to think of why it is you’re starting a business. So what is your motivation behind starting a business? Are you after a lifestyle, a certain lifestyle, So You Want To Live Your Passion, and that’s why you’re leaving a job or choosing to do this over a more stable job, because you want to live your passion, turn your dream into reality. Or you could be maybe after wealth, maybe you want to start a business that grows big and changes the world, something like Facebook, or you may be actually socially driven. So you don’t want you want to make start something that will add value to people’s lives, and change society. So just change the world and make it a better place. So how do I go about finding cash? How do I get the right people to help me out and work with me? How do I do this? Or that? How do I make something out of nothing. Basically, essentially, what you’re doing when starting a business is creating something out of nothing. And that can be really scary. And so a lot of the times you know what you want to do, but you don’t do it. And that’s where there’s a gap between you knowing what to do and then you actually doing it. And it’s a really big challenge that I think a lot of people can relate to. And I know we do this on our day to day lives. So we know we need to be eating well, sleeping more going to the gym, what do we know necessarily all the time? Some people are lucky and they can. But that’s what we’re going to talk about. So how do you actually do that? And quite

often in business, it’s about the doing. And what we’ve experienced in the pop up business, is the people who come on our calls, who just do it, they take massive action, they start to sell they do stuff, they make the most progress. Yeah, there’s quite a lot of intelligent people that come on the pop up business school, who don’t do anything. They’ll sit there and know intellectually know how, yeah, but they don’t do it. So I think we’ve got plenty of how is what leads to actually doing that, how that I think is the bit so we’ve got some top tips to help you get on and do stuff.

Yeah, well, the first I would think of is to just do it. So the ones that make it are the doers, not the thinkers, we need to do need to do a little amount of thinking and planning, but it’s actually going out and actually doing it.

I have a rule that I use, which is the three second rule. So if I know that I need to make a phone call. Yeah, I must pick up the phone within three seconds, dial the number and start speaking to the person. Yeah, if I don’t just do it, as Nike would say, if I don’t just take action, I get into this internal dialogue of what am I going to say to them? Yeah, how am I going to say it? And then all Should I bring them now? Is it the right time, and I talk myself out of doing it. So my rule is three seconds. If you’re going to do it, send me email, if you’re going to do it, pick up the phone and make the call. If you’re going to do it, just take action, instantly. If you don’t do that, you end up talking yourself out of it. The quicker the action, the less internal dialogue that happens before the action, you’ll just get on and do with mine would be the three second rule.

Yeah, that internal dialogue. If you get to overthinking things, you get to stress about them. And then you there’s a lot of uncertainty that comes in. And that just stops you. And so we’re going back to people who have started a business that this applies to people in different stages of the journey. So if you’re starting just starting out, you’re thinking, do I do this or not? How do I do it? If you’ve started it, you think, how do I grow the business? How do I take this to the next level? If you overthink that there’s a lot of uncertainties, a lot of stress and anxiety. So the fear of maybe I’ll lose cash flow will go out of control. Maybe I don’t win the next contract, how do I do this? How do I do that, and then that becomes a barrier that stops you from actually going out and doing it. So the three second rule would be really useful. Just do it now. Just do it

right now. So what we really wanted to give you is some ideas of closing the knowing and doing gap. A lot of you know exactly what you need to do next. It’s getting to do it. So please do leave us some comments below about what you’ve been procrastinating on what you’ve not been doing maybe what you need help doing

and do share your experiences with us. Tell us what you’re procrastinating because that makes us feel that we’re all doing this. So you’re not alone and we all experience that and once you commit and you tell us what you’re not doing and you say you will do it, chances are you will.

Definitely. We’ve all been through this and we’re here to support you.