Day Old Bread Brain

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone and trying to find solutions to various challenges or opportunities and no matter what you come up with, the person or people you’re chatting with keep dismissing your great ideas because they keep finding reasons why they can’t do them or if you listened to my show on July 18th “won’t” do them.

They find all kinds of excuses why your ideas just won’t work.

Recently I was talking with someone who came to me, looking for some solutions to their challenges and no matter what solution I offered this person had an excuse, “Well… yeah but I can’t do that because of…”

Finally, I said to this person, you’re dissing my ideas like they’re day-old bread. I’m providing you piping hot ideas, fresh out of the oven and you’re discarding them like they’re yesterday’s loaves. I actually said, “You have day-old bread brain.”

And thus was born the phenomenon of day-old bread brain.

Then I was talking to another person who was thoroughly convinced they needed to shut down the beautiful new website we built them a couple of years ago because they just couldn’t keep up with it, they didn’t have the time, they didn’t have the staff, it’s not making them any money.

When I unpacked the situation a little bit further with this business owner, it became very apparent they were stuck in a business rut.

They were back to business as usual before the pandemic. Their store was bustling and busy and they had all their store systems humming like a well-oiled machine except they didn’t include their website in their well-oiled machine.

I thought about my day-old bread brain and I said to this business owner… you have day-old bread brain. You’re so stuck in your “business as usual” that you’re not making room for new ideas and new possibilities. Anything new that comes along – you’re discounting it like its day-old bread. You have excuses and you’re just not into it.

A new website is piping fresh hot bakery it’s a new opportunity to grow your business but you don’t see that because you’ve discounted it like its day-old bread.

My day-old bread brain phenomena is really growing.

Day-old bread brain now has another definition: when you nestle into your happy place in business, you find yourself submerged in your ruts and routines. The fresh piping-hot ideas are readily discarded like day-old bread because these ideas would disrupt your flow, and your business as usual.

The next time you find yourself in a conversation with someone who is poking holes in all your ideas just know that you’re talking to someone suffering from day-old bread brain.

Or if you, yourself start finding more excuses why you can’t do something stop yourself and say, “Self, today is not a day for day-old bread brain it is a day for piping hot ideas only.”

How do you get those fresh, piping-hot ideas flowing?

How do you stop day-old bread brain?

First… know that everything is figureoutable. If you haven’t read Marie Forleo’s book, Everything is Figureoutable, grab it on audible after today’s show. It’s an 8-hour listen on audible.

Everything, no matter what … is 100% figureoutable.

Step 2. Stop asking yes and no questions regarding your business.  When you ask a yes or no question, you get an immediate answer. You get instant gratification. You get yes or no.  

But you don’t necessarily get a solution. You just get your question answered. 

Start adding the words “how” and “what” to all of your questions.

For example instead of asking your Accountant, “Do we have it in our budget to hire a photographer?” Ask your Accountant, “How can we hire a photographer?” Or “How can we figure out a way to hire a photographer” or, “What do we need to do to hire a photographer?”

Many stores need more staff, stop right now saying, “We don’t have the money for more staff,” and start asking, “How can I hire more staff?” “What do we need to do to hire more staff?” Or, “What do we need to change to hire more staff?”

If you own a Furniture store you may have a day-old bread brain when it comes to shipping if you’re coming up with lots of excuses on why you can’t ship a sofa across the country.

Stop with the excuses and immediately start asking, “How can we ship a sofa across the country?” “What do we need to do or change in order to ship a sofa across the country?” Don’t assume the shipping costs are so expensive no one will pay them. You just provide the opportunity to ship and let customers determine what they will pay.

I have a glass nail file company and I have shipped small $8 nail files to Antarctica, Australia, and New Zealand. These are the most expensive places I’ve shipped to and the furthest away. Shipping was $24 – $30 for one $8 nail file. But they wanted the file and they paid the shipping.

Recently a customer living in Chicago found online the exact buffet table she’d been looking for, located at Too Good To Be Threw in San Antonio, TX. She paid the freight to have it shipped to her because she wanted that specific buffet table. I think it was from West Elm or Pottery Barn or something. She wanted it and she was willing to pay the shipping on it.

Divine Consign ships large pieces of furniture all over the US and so does Consign and Design located in Florida, they’ve actually shipped an entire container of furniture to another country. The point is… keep an open mind. Treat every idea, every solution like it’s fresh, piping hot bakery, and find a way.

Step 3. Be open to all ideas, don’t immediately discard them like day-old bread. Write them down. Noodle them. Ask open-ended questions about them.

When you ask thought-provoking questions you get thought-provoking answers.

Step outside your current “business as usual” and look at how things could be if you did something different.

Step 4. Be willing to try new things. Don’t discard a fresh, piping-hot idea based on someone else’s bad experience or based on something that happened in the past, or preconceived notions and ideas. Times change. People change. Technology changes. You need to be open and willing to change yourself.

Right now, there is a popular software being used by a lot of the Resale Stores in NARTS to go live and this software is having major technical challenges.

There are so many other softwares out there and yes they are different and yes some of them cost more, but try them out. Have a new experience. Is it going to be a little bumpy at first, but you had to learn your new POS software when you first got it and you had to learn how to use a computer when you first got one, and new cars now have so many gadgets and bells and whistles you have to learn how to drive again when you get a new car… but you do it because everything is figureoutable.

Yesterday I participated in a new LIVE shopping app that Article Consignment was trying out. This shopping app was new to them, but thousands of people are already using it and making small fortunes on it. It made a lot of new people aware of their brand and their website that they had never been exposed to before and it was kind of fun.

Will it 100% replace their previous LIVE software? Maybe not but it’s another platform they can sell LIVE on, and they can get more customers into their email database and build a relationship with.

The Vault Luxury Resale is getting ready to launch with a new LIVE shopping software. It’s a whole new platform that will allow them to go live from their Shopify website and then they can live stream on FB, IG, YouTube, and even Amazon if they want to.

Large international brands are already making millions of dollars using this software. It’s going to open new doors and opportunities for them and increase their revenues.

Divine Consign started listing furniture for sale on other platforms. She had to look at things a little differently in order to figure out how to make it work and she did and now these other platforms are driving more traffic to her website. Some people will buy the items directly from the platform while others are going to her website to make the purchase.

Divine Consign is also the first store to start using a virtual employee. We worked together to identify a list of things her virtual employee could do and with a bit of additional training and putting some new systems in place she is able to take advantage of ridiculously affordable labor and use a hiring agency that finds the perfect staff member for the job.

There you have it. Stop with the day-old bread brain thinking and start welcoming those piping hot fresh ideas. Put the excuses out with the day-old bread and find new opportunities to open up new growth and more money-making trails in your businesses.

Interested to watch the brief summary? Click here.

For the complete training video, tap here. Be sure to join the Consignment Marketing FB Group to have access!