Episode 137: How To Make Better Decisions In Your Business

With an uncanny knack for connecting quickly with warmth and humor, plus years of practical relevance and experience (ex-Google, ESPN, HubSpot, NextView VC; current founder/show host, Unthinkable Media), Jay Acunzo delivers keynotes that move people to action. Whether it’s with 40 global brand executives, 400 fire chiefs, or 4,000 fired up marketers, Jay challenges others to break from conventional thinking and supposed “best practices” in a way that drives greater results for companies and careers alike. Show Highlights How can an entrepreneur differentiate themselves in the market? [2:15] How do we find what works for us and what doesn't work for us? [7:45] What is an aspirational anchor? [13:30] Can we have an example of how to break the cycle? [16:50] What's one final thought Jay wants to leave with our audience? [18:35] Where can our audience find Jay online?[19:25] Special Offer Check out Jay's book, Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work:  http://jayacunzo.com/book. Get a free chapter of the book by tweeting Jay: @jayacunzo Links Jump & Scale Webinar: jumpconsulting.net/scale Share The Show Did you enjoy the show? We would love it if you subscribed today and left us a 5-star review! Click this link – Bella In Your Business Click on the ‘Subscribe’ button below the artwork Go to the ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section Click on ‘Write a Review’ Transcript: This is episode 137 of Bella in Your Business. Do you feel like your business is going around on a merry-go-round? Well, I've got news for you. This episode is sponsored by my incredible webinar series called Jump in Scale. It gets you off that merry-go-round and up to the next level in your business. It's called Jump in Scale and it's free for you right now. Just go ahead and sign up at jumpconsulting.net. You will learn how to grow your business, increase your staff, and not be held hostage to business. So go ahead, sign up for free. That's jumpconsulting.net/scale. I'll see you inside. Welcome to Bella in Your Business, where Bella will discuss anything and everything about your pet sitting business to help you land on target. So get ready — Bella's got your chute. Let's jump. Welcome to Bella in Your Business. My name is Bella Vasta, and today I've got a little bit of a different topic or road we're going to go on. We're going to stretch your imagination and get you out of that everyday monotony type thinking. My guest today is Jay Akunzo, and he is an author of an incredible book that I suggest you all check out. He has an uncanny knack for connecting quirky with warmth and humor plus years of practical relevance and experience. Jay delivers keynotes that move people to action, and whether it's 40 global brand executives, 400 fire chiefs, or 4,000 fired-up marketers, Jay challenges others to break from conventional thinking and supposed “best practices” in a way that drives greater results for companies and careers alike. So what do you say we take the pet sitting and dog walking industry and flip it on its head because everybody and their mother seems to do things the same way. Welcome, Jay. Jay: I love that you brought up that last point because I, as a longtime pet owner who has purchased services in this industry for years, feel that sting as a consumer. So I'm happy to speak to this audience. Bella: It's not just about another picture of a cute puppy or kitty, right? It's about the user experience — or you tell me, what is it about? How can an entrepreneur who's growing a business really start to think about how they can differentiate themselves in the market and do what you say to do? Jay: So for two and a half years, I started interviewing people that did something that looked crazy in their industry on my podcast. I would run these episodes and it would always look crazy. I'd reach out to the guests and say, “Hey, you do something that looks atypical or refreshing or unconventional. Can I speak with you?” And routinely the issue was that my perception of crazy came from lacking their context. These individuals just made decisions based on their context instead of based on best practices or the status quo in their industry. We get caught in that in every industry — certainly in pet sitting and dog walking, and even up to veterinarians with full staffs. We have a certain cycle we fall into when making choices at work — we cling to best practices or conventional wisdom, or we trend-hop. We're on an endless wheel — hence the title of the book Break the Wheel. We need to escape that and make decisions not based on what works on average, but what works for us. What I set out to do in the book was learn from these stories and find a system to make decisions based on our unique situations, the people we serve, and who we are — instead of what a competitor or an “expert” says works. In this era of endless possibilities, the real skill is how to vet them. Bella: So how do you vet them? Is it knowing securely who you want to be in your business and matching it up — not blindly listening or following the cycle? Jay: Yeah. It's about switching your mentality from “I have to be an expert” to “I have to be an investigator.” Experts profess to know the answer — they have absolutes and theory. That can be helpful as a starting point, but those are incomplete equations. The variables missing are your specific context. Investigators, unlike experts, are masters at asking really good open-ended questions and hunting for clues in that context. It doesn’t matter if their conclusion is a best practice or not — what matters is they’re on the case, figuring it out. For example, when I lived in New York City, we had a dog walker named Craig. I work from home, and when the door opened, it felt like a 13-year-old girl walked in — he was that excited. He had this quirky, high-pitched voice when greeting my dog, and my beagle loved him so much that he’d bark excitedly out the window from four stories up whenever he spotted him. Craig looked at who he was — this fun, quirky guy — and decided to use that in his work. It wasn’t manufactured; it was authentic. Bella: I love that example because there’s this unspoken stereotype in the pet sitting field that female clients don’t want male sitters. I’ve heard many say, “I can’t hire a man; my clients won’t like it.” This example really challenges that. Jay: Exactly. Maybe that’s true in general, but Craig isn’t operating in a generality — Craig is Craig. We’re too focused on blueprints and precedents, but we don’t pressure-test them for our specific situations. You don’t make decisions based on finding a “best practice.” You find the best approach for you. Bella: You mentioned testing. How can we find what works — and what doesn’t — for us? Jay: Creative freedom is a misnomer. If I told you to “write an article about anything,” your brain immediately creates constraints — topic, length, setting. We’re incapable of acting without constraints. Yet in business, we wish we had fewer. The key is to be clear about your constraints and then test within them. For example, my friend Camille Ricketts used to run the blog for a venture capital firm called First Round Capital. There were 120 competitor blogs doing the same thing. She had no writers, no budget, and a month to prove herself. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, she transcribed the most popular conference speeches onto her blog. That small, constrained move worked — it fit within her limits and differentiated her. Every study on creativity shows that when you know your constraints and test within them, you generate more and better ideas. Bella: So if we apply that to dog walking or pet sitting, maybe it’s like running targeted Facebook ads — setting constraints to test what performs better, right? Jay: Exactly. You constrain who you’re talking to. But there are other constraints too — like truth and personality. You could write an ad that says, “Your dog isn’t special — and that’s a good thing. We’ve walked 70 dogs, and here’s what we’ve learned.” That honesty stands out far more than “We love your pets like our own.” When you show truth, quirks, and constraints, you differentiate. Most people think being different means being rebellious or extreme, but it’s really about being specific to your context — who you are, who your audience is, and your resources. Bella: I love that. And I encourage everyone listening — ask your team what makes your company different. Ask clients why they prefer you. Push past surface answers like “we care about the animals.” Ask how you care in ways others don’t. Jay: Exactly. And while talking to your team, ask what your aspirational anchor is. Goals tell you what you’ve achieved, but not how you’ll get there. Your aspirational anchor is an intent for the future plus a hunger or dissatisfaction today. For example, Merriam-Webster Dictionary’s marketing team had an aspirational anchor: “Let’s show the world how fun and relevant we are.” That shifted their boring Twitter account into viral fame — remember when they tweeted “A hot dog is a sandwich”? It showed their real personality and mission: documenting pop culture, not just defining words. Bella: That’s incredible — taking something mundane like a dictionary and making it engaging. Do you have another story like that? Jay: One of my favorites is Death Wish Coffee — “the world’s strongest coffee.” It sounds rebellious, but every step was logical. The founder, Mike Brown, noticed his customers — truck drivers and entrepreneurs — wanted strong, dark coffee. That’s hard to achieve because darker roasts lose caffeine, but he found a bean (Robusta) that solved that. Most coffee shops avoided it for flavor reasons, but in his context, it made perfect sense. Now Death Wish Coffee is thriving and even sending coffee to the International Space Station.