Why the If/Then Strategy Is Your Secret Weapon For Better Business Outcomes

Welcome to The Scalable Expert, the podcast where we unlock the secrets to building a business that grows with you, not around you. I'm your host, Tara Bryan, business strategist, mentor, and creator of the INFINITE SCALE Method. If you're a coach, consultant, or service provider who's maxed out with one on one work, overwhelmed by the grind, and ready to scale your expertise into a business that works for you, then you're in the right place. Each week I'll share actionable tips, inspiring success stories, and proven strategies to help you reclaim your time, grow your income, and create a business that delivers results without sacrificing quality. Let's dive in and make your business INFINITELY SCALABLE. Hey everybody, welcome to today's episode. I am thrilled that you're here. In this episode, I want to talk about the if/then statement. Now, who would have known that we would actually use some math concepts from our school days. But this is one that I love and and I won't admit a lot of times, but math is not my favorite subject, I'm just gonna say. However, the, if/then statement is one of my favorites, and maybe it's because I am a closet computer nerd. But it's so powerful and so I want to walk through a couple of exercises with you today on the podcast around some if/then statements because I think it's really powerful to use as you're trying to work through various scenarios or challenges or just things that you're trying to solve in your business. Now, I will I will give you the caveat that one of my favorite things right now to do is when I'm using ChatGPT specifically, but it could be any AI tool, one of the biggest benefits of those tools is it becomes your checks and balances. It becomes, you're, I always say that it organizes my brain, right? If I'm writing something out, I'm like, okay, so here's a scenario. Here's what I'm thinking. Here's what I wanted to do. How do I make that happen? I can put that in ChatGPT and it spits out a couple of different options for me. And I'm like, oh, interesting. Okay. So that's great. And what I end up doing most of the time with ChatGPT, just so everyone knows is I'll be like, okay, yeah, that's great, but I wanted to do this. Or what if we didn't use this piece for this? Or, what if we looked at it this way? And every single time it comes back, oh, yes, that's such a great idea. Or, that's such a great addition to the conversation. Yes, Let's go with that scenario. And then it will write out a new scenario. And so I always love it, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm so smart. But what happens is in my point in bringing this up is that it's a great tool to help you work through the if/then statements that are going on in your brain around things that are happening, right? If we do this, what's the consequence? If we do this, what happens next? If we do this, then this is the outcome, right? And, you could do that on your own, right? Or you just write out, okay, let's think through how all these pieces work, but the fast way to do that is to put that kind of if/then scenario into ChatGPT and have it organize it, and format it, in however way you want it formatted and then use it as a way to either validate your thinking, challenge your thinking, or just come up with a different easier, or even more complex approach that will help you not only articulate what it is you're trying to work through but also give you the step by step framework for what that is, or the step by step guide for how to implement. So let me give you just an example to bring this home. So we're working on a really large certification program, where we're automating a number of different tools and they have to talk to each other. Which is a really fun, juicy project. So if anyone is geeky like me and loves to talk systems, give me a shout, and you and I can talk about it all day long. But there's some complex things that we need to have happen in this, particular, use case with this customer that they're asking for. And and so we know the tech, we know the if/then statement, right? If somebody puts this in, this is what needs to happen. This is what needs to be spit out. But as you are aware, in most cases, there are a number of different ways to accomplish one outcome. Especially in Techland, right? Like you, there's lots of different ways to get to the answer. And a lot of times, the way that we used to get to the answer was, I have experience with this, or, someone else has experience with this. Or we can do some custom blah, blah, blah, right? So everyone comes from a different perspective. So my developer is going to have a completely different way that they're going to look at it than the way that I'm going to look at it, because I'm looking at it from a different lens than he is. But, when we can put it into ChatGPT and be like, okay, so what is the most simple, the easiest, the least expensive, whatever your criteria is, for how to accomplish this? Then you can start looking at it from the different perspectives without that communication barrier, right? And so I love to use ChatGPT for this purpose and diving into those if/then statements. So what was really cool is what we ended up doing was we put in our parameters, we put in our inputs, and said, if this happens, then we want this to happen, what is the most streamlined and effective path to go from here to here? What we got from that whole experience was something that was much more simple than we had even anticipated at the beginning. And so it's so exciting when you think about, not only, like, how do you leverage if/then statements, because ,they're super powerful in everything that you do. If you're struggling to make a decision, if you're struggling to figure out how something works, put it in an if/then statement. I promise you, it will help you. Even old school, this is the way that I work a lot of times, is I'll grab a piece of paper and I'll be like, if, and then, a blank line, and then, and then a blank line. And then I can start putting in various scenarios to try and get what is in my head and download it out into something that, can be usable. And then if you have other people do that, then everyone is putting their own lens through the problem. And then you can start having the conversation. So I had a conversation with my developer and he said, and, you know, let's do it like this. I had a conversation with another developer who was working on a different part of the project, and he said let's do it like this. I put it in front of somebody else who is more like a systems person, a project management person, and she said, do it like this. Then I put it down and I came up with do it like this. And then we put all of those scenarios into ChatGPT and said, okay, so look at these scenarios and then decipher based on how this works, what is the most simplified easy and the least you know, complicated approach using this specific tech stack. Tell us how we would do that. And it came back and it was like, oh my gosh, that is amazing because it was completely different than all of the responses that we all had. But what it did is it put it all together, right? And it said, okay, based on your requirements, based on what you want, based on what's available, here's the best approach to do that. And then the cool thing around that, other than how cool it was that we got to that outcome of what we could do. And I will tell you that even the two developers I talked to, both of them were like, oh, that's really complicated. I just don't know if we can do that, blah, blah, blah. And then what actually got spit out was just a lot more simple because we didn't, like the system didn't have all the garbage in our head of all of the things. I've done it this way, and I've done it that way, and I think I can do this way, and I think I can do that way. And the system doesn't have that, right? And so it was able to really create something that was much more streamlined than any of us could come up with separate. Then, what happened is that then you can say, okay, great, now put together a step by step guide, and you can say a non technical step by step guide, and give me all the things that, that we need to do step by step, like in an SOP, very specific around implementing this particular approach. Super. Then it goes through and it does that. It's all organized, it's all formatted, it's great. So then you have that, and then you can hand that off to the person who's gonna be doing the work and that they have a now a step-by-step path to follow. Now, the best part about all of this is all of that work got condensed into a very small window of time so that instead of taking, days and weeks and months and sometimes longer to build things, we're able to build them very quickly, very easily and in a way that minimized the amount of complexity, minimized the cost, and allowed us to have something that was scalable without being so totally randomly crazy that it was too complicated. And and again we have the skills, we have the expertise to be able to look at it from that filter and say, oh yeah, that makes sense, that's how we would do that. And and that is, in fact, the best way to do it. So don't just trust ChatGPT that they're going to tell you the best way, but put it through then back through the lens of, poking holes in it to make sure that it is the right approach. And so that if/then statement, matching it with the simplicity of having a tool that helps just take all of the mess that we, our brains bring to a project and put it into a succinct format and then be able to quickly give those instructions to yourself or to other people, will help you so much as you're building things and moving forward in your business. And so if you are in that place where everything feels a little overwhelming, and you're stuck in your head, I do totally 100 percent recommend that you use ChatGPT as sort of your filter for simplifying. And it could even just be like, hey, ChatGPT, mine has a name, maybe yours has a name, I don't know, but hey, ChatGPT, take all of these random thoughts and organize them for me into some, pattern so that I can move forward. And see what that does for you because the number one reason why we don't move forward is because we're overwhelmed in our heads with all of the things. And so let ChatGPT organize those for you. And for those of you who are like, oh, AI is taking our lives and we shouldn't be using it for anything. I'm telling you that you don't need to use it to write something for you, but using it to do this will so help you just stay connected and unoverwhelmed. We'll use that as a word so that you can keep moving forward. So go use it. Let me know how it goes. I would love to get your feedback on that and how you have used it to move you forward with something. All right, thank you so much for being here for this episode. In the meantime, if you like this episode, go give it a a subscribe, do all the things, no matter where you're watching. I appreciate you so much and we will talk to you next week.