You're listening to Elevated, the snackable weekly podcast, helping kitchen and bath designers build a better business. I'm your host, Brandy Lawson, and in this episode, we're tackling the million dollar question. What's actually broken in your business? Maybe you think you know, and maybe it's not what you think it is. Let me tell you about Maria's design firm. She came to me convinced she needed new proposal software because proposals were taking too long. Sounds pretty straightforward, right? But when we actually dug into the problem, well, let's just say we discovered something completely different. I'll tell you what we found in a minute, but first, let's talk about how to figure out what's really broken in your business. You've got your worksheet open to the problem definition section, right? Perfect. We're going to walk through this together using Maria's story as our example. And don't worry if you haven't downloaded it yet, just head to fieryfx. com slash choose and grab it now. I'll wait. Got it? Let's dig in. First question. What specific problem are you trying to solve? Now this is where most people will say something like my CRM sucks or project management is a mess But that's like a client telling you my kitchen doesn't work. Okay, but what does that actually mean? Here's how Maria started. Proposals take forever. I need better software. But when I asked her to get specific Here's what came out. It takes three hours to create each proposal. I'm doing them on evenings and weekends, and I'm still falling behind. Now we're getting somewhere. But here's where it gets interesting. I asked Maria to play the And Then What? game with me. It goes like this. Proposals take three hours. And then what? I have to hunt down all the product specs. And then what? I have to find them in different folders and manufactured websites. And then what? Because we don't have a central place to store them. Ah! Bingo! See what happened there? The proposal software wasn't the problem at all. The real issue was a broken product information management system. This is why getting to the root cause is so crucial. The next question on your worksheet, How significant is this problem? This is where I need you to get real about impact. We're talking time. How many hours per week is this eating? Money. What is it costing you in lost opportunities? Resources. How much team energy is it consuming? And frequency. Is this a daily headache or monthly annoyance? Here's where Maria had her big revelation. She thought about the time only in terms of the 3 hours per proposal. But when we dug deeper, we discovered 3 hours times 2 proposals per week is 6 hours. Plus 5 hours of team time hunting for updated specs. Plus another 3 hours fixing mistakes from the outdated information. That's 20 hours a week. At her billing rate, this was a 60, 000 per year problem. And let's not forget to consider the emotional costs. Maria was spending every Sunday doing proposals instead of being with her family. That's a cost that won't show up on a spreadsheet, but it matters just as much. Last question. Who's impacted by this problem? This is where involving your team becomes golden. When Maria asked her team about product spec issues, she discovered her designers were maintaining their own separate spec spreadsheets. Her admin was double checking every proposal against current pricing. Her project manager was fielding constant questions about product availability. Sometimes the best way to find the root cause is to ask the people dealing with the symptoms every day. Your team often sees things you don't, especially if you're the owner and not always in the day to day trenches. So, what happened with Maria? Well, once we identified the real problem, no central product information system, the solution became obvious. And it wasn't new proposal software. Instead, we'd set up a digital product library that automatically updated specs and pricing. Proposal time? Dropped to 45 minutes, and her team stopped maintaining separate spreadsheets, and she got her Sundays back. Here's your homework. Pick one business frustration, and run it through these three questions. What's the specific problem? How significant is it? Who's impacted? And then play the and then what game until you hit something that makes you go, Aha! Remember, get specific about the problem. Then quantify the impact and don't forget to value your own time. Then ask your team for insights and keep digging until you find the root cause. Next up, we'll talk about how to measure this impact in a way that makes the decision to invest in a solution. Ready to find out what's really broken in your business? Download that worksheet at FieryEffects. com slash choose and let's start solving the real problems, not just the symptoms.