The Three-Part Decision Framework CEOs Need to Cut Through Noise

TRANSCRIPT SUMMARY

00:01 — Host introduction and episode framing
00:44 — Decision making importance for CEOs
01:24 — Leadership impact of decision making
02:08 — Introducing three-step decision framework
03:30 — Signal versus noise concept
05:01 — Structuring priorities and timelines
07:31 — Small steps and petite practice concept
08:36 — Breaking big decisions into actions
10:22 — Alignment versus approval distinction
12:05 — Speed and momentum in organizations
13:27 — River crossing and execution analogy
16:08 — Fear versus readiness framework
18:19 — Overcoming fear and taking action
20:14 — Consistency and small-step execution
24:51 — Applying the framework as a CEO
26:10 — Team strengths and delegation insights
29:09 — Unique signals and competitive positioning
30:41 — Framework recap and closing thoughts

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Jeff Holman, Host (00:01.209)

Welcome back everybody to the Breakout CEO Podcast. I'm Jeff Holman, your host, and you're joining us for one of our advisory insights episodes. This should be releasing mid-March or so. So it'll be maybe spring will start to start to appear wherever you're at. So and today I'm excited to talk with Christiane Schroeter. Christiane, thanks for coming on the show.

Christiane Schroeter (00:22.662)

Thanks so much for having me here, Jeff. Audience is going to be a good one. You're going to get ready for the spring and we're definitely giving you some good insights here today.

Jeff Holman, Host (00:28.346)

Yes.

Yeah, I'm excited. I'm really excited to chat with you. And we were talking, we had a great chat beforehand. You were showing me some of the stuff about your TEDx talk and your company. And we talked podcast lighting backgrounds. Like, we're all good to go here.

Christiane Schroeter (00:44.846)

We broke out for you already and got all warmed up. So this is going to be really good because now it's just like us cheering all the best and you can tune in and gather all these amazing insights.

Jeff Holman, Host (00:47.875)

Yes, exactly.

Jeff Holman, Host (00:59.471)

Yes, I'm excited about it. And today we're going to talk about how CEOs make and evaluate and come to conclusions on big decisions. So we're talking about the decision making process. so Cristiana, you're going to help us and help our audience and CEOs who are out there facing big problems, big decisions. We're going to help them figure out how to maybe think about that decision making process a little bit better, right?

Christiane Schroeter (01:24.588)

Yeah, and I think that's really what it comes down to that you can only be as good as a CEO as really your decision making is. And we will help you today and maybe build a little bit more structure in making those decisions.

Jeff Holman, Host (01:39.397)

Yeah, yeah, I agree. I've worked with a lot of CEOs from the legal side of things and I see a lot of CEOs who are big visionaries, right? And they have all these ideas and, you know, despite whether you're a visionary CEO or not, because there are other types too, but nothing really ever happens until you make the decision, right? You can see big things, you can dream big dreams, but you've got to put things into action. And that's where decision making comes into play, I think.

Christiane Schroeter (02:08.92)

Right. And I also think that, you know, and we will talk more about this because I have this three step system that really comes down to it, that you can really, as you are making decisions, you can really inspire others to become a good leader because they will look up to you and they will follow your decisions. So your decisions are amazing to reach your goals, but they are also there to really impact the whole team. If you think of like in a boat,

where we all rowing together, like very much in sync. And that's really what it comes down to. I'm always amazed about these people, know, when you see them. And you might know this from Salt Lake City too, right? Where you have this person and it was like going all together. That's always think about decision-making, that if there's a really good CEO and a good leader, then it's very much in sync. It's just beautiful to look at.

Jeff Holman, Host (02:41.2)

I love that.

Jeff Holman, Host (03:00.873)

I love that. You're adding a whole other side to it. It's not just making a decision like in isolation, but you're actually leveraging the power of the team through the decision-making process. That's fantastic. Well, let's get into this and maybe let's start. Have you had some experiences, you know, working with company CEOs or executives where you've seen the decision-making process unnecessarily stall or get in the way of the business?

Christiane Schroeter (03:30.777)

Very much so. And I think it comes down to what you mentioned earlier, great visionaries. And I listened to them and it even starts in the very first meeting to where I'm like hearing a lot of great things, but it's so much noise. And my very first thing is actually try to differentiate signal. That's like things you can control and noise.

Because you can talk and you have great ideas, but sometimes it's like, you don't necessarily actually have the means to get there or control some of these things. So what is really the signal you want to send and what are maybe some goals that really align with your company's vision? Because there's a lot of things we can always do, but it's just like all these small tiddly little things that you lose your time and drain your energy. And at the end of the day,

You really want to focus on something where the whole team feels like this is really something we are working towards. And that's the signal we want to send to our customers. But it also feels we are all part of this one unique thing and everything else is just noise. And you just have to shut that out. You just have to say, we're working on this one thing. Let's break this down into small individual steps. Let's distribute the functions, but that's the one thing we are working towards. So we're really finding that clarity is the number one thing.

that you need to be completely solid.

Jeff Holman, Host (05:01.327)

I love that clarity of the signals. How would a CEO who's approaching their business, they show up every day in the office or they show up with their team and there's just so much in front of them, right? They've got the problems that feel urgent and immediate and maybe sometimes huge, maybe life threatening to the business. They've got the team, the internal things, they've got the new product launch they're working on or they're trying to establish partnerships.

Maybe it's just making sure money's in the bank, right? There's so many things that a CEO is trying to do. How do they distinguish between signal, like meaningful signal and noise?

Christiane Schroeter (05:43.011)

think what it comes down to is looking at the decisions in a somewhat structured timeline. Like, all right, what is really something I want to be known for a month from today, three months from today, six months from today? And I'm hesitant to sometimes say like a year from today, because to me, the shorter timelines actually bring things into a more urgent perspective.

Jeff Holman, Host (06:10.47)

Mm-hmm.

Christiane Schroeter (06:10.478)

So don't say, do I want to be known for in five years or 15 years, because things change very fast. But really like looking at, right, what matters in a month from today? And then you all of a sudden realize a lot of these things don't necessarily matter. They were just there, but they are really not going to make the decision so much more impactful. And sometimes we also have...

too broad of a vision where it really just comes down to finding the clarity and niching down and becoming much stronger in terms of, I always say it's niching down where really the focus comes in. Strong niche down is much better than being broad and just scraping the surface or something. So if you have a lot of decisions, maybe, I mean, like I'm a visual thinker.

I sometimes say, right, write all these things down on sticky notes. And then let's try to create like a little bit of an order here, right? What do you really feel will bring money in the bank of all these sticky notes and start putting them on a pile? And then even within that pile, what's the most pertinent decision? And all of a sudden, all these sticky notes, it's like, what was I even thinking? Right? It was like all these things, but they actually really don't make that much of a difference right now.

Jeff Holman, Host (07:10.983)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman, Host (07:24.423)

You

Christiane Schroeter (07:31.636)

And right now all that matters is maybe these three important tasks. So let's focus on this and let's keep going.

Jeff Holman, Host (07:38.425)

Is this is this similar then to EOS and finding your big rocks for the next 90 days? Is that that's what we're talking about here.

Christiane Schroeter (07:47.215)

For sure. I actually, I showed you my mug earlier. That's my trademark. I call it petite practice. Petite is French for small. And then practice is that first step that you take towards reaching your goal. So my tagline is, you know, small steps, but be creating a big impact because you take the small steps consistently and you're really looking at the big goal that comes at the end of multiple small steps.

Jeff Holman, Host (07:50.869)

Yes, yes.

Christiane Schroeter (08:15.022)

so much more meaningful than thinking, my gosh, I'm going to sit down on this one day and I'm going to crank it out for this deadline tomorrow. It's really just like chopping away at something consistently and looking at it in terms of really creating impact with small wins, consistently picking it up and creating momentum with that.

Jeff Holman, Host (08:36.049)

Well, so that's an interesting perspective then. Should CEOs be spending more of their time making big decisions or making sure the small decisions are being made well? Is there a distinction there?

Christiane Schroeter (08:47.944)

That's think big decisions broken down into small steps because you want to be the person that involves everybody, gives people the authority. And I always say, if you think about a good leader, right? listening, leading goes with listening, but also executing.

Jeff Holman, Host (08:55.067)

Okay.

Christiane Schroeter (09:12.846)

your J2A function and then giving authority is really important, but then finding the direction. So earlier we were talking about the boat, how we're all rowing together. So you need to listen, you need to find ways you can get to your goal. And sure, it can be a big goal, but you need to give authority and those authority steps could be smaller functions that lead to that big goal. And then you need to check in, have direction as like, all right, so

Can you give me an update on what you're currently working on? And I would love to hear how can I help you in getting to the end of the function you're currently working on? So really making sure you're distributing functions, but you're also creating an open communication line to check back in and how this is going.

Jeff Holman, Host (09:59.843)

I love that. I want to make sure that I'm not skipping around too much and that I'm keeping this straight for myself and for the audience. So you've got your three-part system. so help me understand where, you know, we talk about signals and then we talk about kind of these delegation functions, checking in, listening, all that. How do those all fit together within the broader framework?

Christiane Schroeter (10:08.153)

Yeah. Yeah.

Christiane Schroeter (10:22.083)

Yeah. Yeah. So we had the signal versus noise. And if you want to stick to our visuals, that was like writing down all goals, all things that seem pertinent right now on these sticky notes, and then maybe creating like an order and all of a sudden realizing that a lot of these sticky notes could maybe go a little bit into like a parking lot, right? Not that they're not important, but they are just like hanging out there.

Jeff Holman, Host (10:45.287)

Hmm.

Christiane Schroeter (10:48.449)

I actually frequently use the comparison like into a refrigerator. So we keep them fresh. We don't let them spoil. But at the same time, we don't necessarily need to deal with them at this very moment. And now the second step would be figuring about alignment versus approval. Like what really comes down to it? Where do you need to wait for approval? Or what is it maybe that you could already let your team work on right now?

because this is important. Sometimes there are so many decision makers involved and you really can't do anything about that and that's all right, but you can maybe already create some momentum with tasks with your team. And it's unbelievable what I've seen, how the motivation will really rise when there are these small, fast, quick wins. Because people really feel, all right, we're actually getting something done here. And then once you get approval, you can tackle the next thing.

Jeff Holman, Host (11:42.79)

Yes.

Christiane Schroeter (11:46.682)

So it's so important not to stall and wait and say, right, so I'm still like, you know, trying to figure this out over here, et cetera. See if there is something you can already chip away from and distribute those tasks because those quick wins will actually get the momentum then rolling and working on the next step.

Jeff Holman, Host (12:05.903)

Yeah, that's interesting. It reminds me of a, I was in a board meeting this morning with a client and you know, the board of directors, some observers, management is there and they're talking and they've got a new CEO and the new CEO was giving kind of a vision for where they're headed as a company. And one of the phrases she said, I think maybe aligns with what you're talking about. She said that, you know, we've been talking with the team, we've done good work, the prior CEO got us to where we're at, all this stuff, right? But,

as a team, they've been talking where are we headed now. And the phrase came out, you know, we're too, because I work with a lot of startups and scaling companies, they're not behemoth corporations, you know, they're expected to move slowly. These are smaller companies expected to move quickly. And she said, you know, we're, we're too small to be taking this long to make decisions and get things done. So she was just articulating that they have an advantage and they need to be taking advantage of that.

of their size and their nimble nature to be able to move quicker in what they're doing. And I think that aligns with when you have alignment in the team and you give people approvals and they're able to act quickly, get those quick wins and kind of move from task to task like a small company is sort of expected to do as opposed to a big bureaucratic organization.

Christiane Schroeter (13:27.855)

I mean, like think about like you're one side of the river and you're looking to the other side of the river and you're creating like these little tasks that are these stepping stones crossing the river and you're making them small enough so that everybody on your team can just hop from stone to stone right there. That's like really aligning your path and you're making it clear that all of your team sees it. All right, we're going to go this path right here and we all on board and we're going to take this step by step and

Jeff Holman, Host (13:44.262)

Yeah.

Christiane Schroeter (13:56.674)

sure you can look down you see river water it's not always great that's actually my third point to where we're coming but at the same time you also have to celebrate the win we are already halfway on this path because sometimes people are like my gosh here we are in the middle of this and it's like yeah but still i mean you could have waited on the other side of the river and just thought about crossing it and here we go you actually took the step so that's amazing you have to celebrate the messy middle

Jeff Holman, Host (14:02.961)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (14:21.009)

Yeah, it's sort of off topic, so I'm not going to go into details, but this river crossing reminds me of a time I took some inexperienced young men, some scouts into an area of Utah called the Hiawintas. It's an undeveloped area, and we ran into something called Swift Creek, but I think it was more like Rapid River that time of year. I wish we had had some small stones. We had to actually...

take a tree trunk and push it over and cross this. It was dangerous. was like small steps would have been so much nicer, especially for the team. Anyway, that's more detailed than we need to get into, but the vision of putting the steps in place, you know, small steps, like that makes so much sense to me.

Christiane Schroeter (15:09.047)

Yeah. And actually, I love it. You bring up the tree trunk and you didn't have the stones right there because I think good entrepreneur, that's just what they do. They're not going to be like, well, we didn't have rocks. We couldn't cross the river, right? They're going to be like, well, what else could we do? know, let's look around. Well, maybe find a tree. And it could be this was maybe not the first tree. Maybe you had to find

Jeff Holman, Host (15:27.321)

Yes.

Christiane Schroeter (15:33.353)

multiple trees to get the one that actually then allowed you to get all the way to the other side. Right. And that's just what entrepreneurship is. Right. It's, it's finding opportunities when you deal with obstacles.

Jeff Holman, Host (15:41.585)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (15:46.405)

Yeah, I will say it got us most of the way. There was a little bit of a jump at the end there, but it did its job. okay, so we've got signal versus noise, we've got alignment and approvals. And what's the next step there?

Christiane Schroeter (15:50.436)

Ha

Christiane Schroeter (15:56.079)

Beautiful. Now.

Christiane Schroeter (16:08.176)

Feeling fear versus feeling ready. I think that's actually the most important part right there. I personally think we always seem to be a little bit afraid. You can never just sit on the sidelines and say, I'm not ready yet. I don't think I'm ready yet. This is not really how life works, right? I actually personally define fear as face everything and rise. It's all right.

Jeff Holman, Host (16:27.484)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (16:35.115)

I love that.

Christiane Schroeter (16:35.972)

Yeah mean if if you are afraid that's great because it means a you care and be that you're just going to put yourself out there and if you wouldn't put yourself out there you would never see how it's going to be right.

Jeff Holman, Host (16:52.391)

Do you run across CEOs who don't utilize fear to motivate them, who get stalled by the fears?

Christiane Schroeter (17:01.104)

I get this a lot and I'm in publishing too, so can see if you watch this on video, you can see some books behind me. I get this a lot, especially with authors or people that write books or create content, Content creators, because it's fast to create content, are also very much into the stalling mechanism. It's like, I don't think it's ready yet.

It's maybe the fear that if you put yourself out there that nobody will buy it or nobody will be interested in it but.

Jeff Holman, Host (17:36.133)

Yeah, and nobody wants to have their baby called ugly either, right? It's like, put so much effort into this or this is coming from within and now I'm exposing it and what if people don't love it the way that I think they should love it? Like that's natural with a lot of inventors that I've worked with also.

Christiane Schroeter (17:53.84)

Yeah, and then I sometimes have only two words as a response. I'm like, so what? And they're like, what do mean? It's like, I mean, who cares? So nobody will love it. Do you really think 100 % of the people will not love it? Even if 99 % of them don't love it, there will be still 1 % that might. And wouldn't that be cool to reach that 1 %? And maybe then...

Jeff Holman, Host (18:01.979)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (18:05.99)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (18:18.683)

Yes.

Christiane Schroeter (18:19.937)

If you try it again, they promote a little heavier, maybe another 1%. That's all we're aiming for. We're not aiming for improvement that this like these giant leaps, we're just improving 1%. And if you think about that, a lot of famous authors, that's really how they got started, right? They, they just started small and then they, they like just ticked up from there, these petite practices. So if you don't put your book out there or your content or whatever.

We will never know how it goes.

Jeff Holman, Host (18:50.543)

Yeah, I listened to a book on tape once a while back when that was more common. I think it was a book on CD maybe at the time. This was, I'm giving my age, this was back when I was commuting, you know, an hour and a half each way in California, not too, you a little bit north of where you're at now. I was commuting back and forth to a law firm and I listened to, I think the book was called Stephen King's On Writing, if you've ever heard of it.

He walked through his process and what you're saying now, it really makes me think you don't, Stephen King did not start with a library of books that he'd authored, right? In fact, I think he started writing, if I remember right, this I'm going back a ways, this is 20 plus years ago. I think he started writing in Penthouse and he was writing articles or something like that. So he's just started small and started going and then went into books and other stuff. And of course he's developed a successful career, but you know.

What you're saying really makes me think people write books one page at a time. don't, you you don't write an entire book and have it done. And so if you're not going to start that page, if you're not going to overcome your, we'll call it writer's block maybe for some people, but maybe that's just another version of fear, right? If you're not going to overcome your fear to take that first step, then it's really hard to get the book written and published and out there and see the results of it.

Christiane Schroeter (20:14.372)

Yeah, when I wrote my dissertation, I remember very much thinking, because I looked at them in the library and I was like, gosh, these are like heavy. mean, getting a doctorate degree is not like writing a paper. Like we're talking like close to 200 pages.

all this in a foreign language, right? mean, I from Germany. was like... So then I thought, well, actually not that bad. So if you take whatever 150, 180 pages and divide it out by the length of time you give yourself to write this, you could do two pages per day. within three months, you have something pretty solid going. And that's really how it works, right? You just have to consistently sit down and write two pages per day, or depending on what content you create, keep that up. And you have to be honest with yourself too.

Jeff Holman, Host (20:35.079)

Yeah.

Christiane Schroeter (21:02.67)

Like after the two pages, you can give yourself permission to walk away. Don't like, well, well, well, maybe today I'm just going to edit what I wrote yesterday because it wasn't that great. You can't do that. You have to build, right? It's like knitting a sweater. I've not ended sweater, but I imagine, right? You're not like, well, let me open this up again. What I did yesterday, right? It doesn't work this way. You have to just keep going, building, building. And I know it's tempting because it's at least, at least.

Jeff Holman, Host (21:21.71)

Yeah, yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (21:26.31)

Yeah.

Christiane Schroeter (21:31.921)

Nobody sits there with a typewriter and actually like see the pages coming out of your machine. So it's tempting on a computer, just like use the back cursor and delete. But you have to do that. Um, you have to face everything and rise and you have to be okay with the fact that whatever you do, whether that's publishing or, you know, presenting or speaking somewhere.

Jeff Holman, Host (21:39.121)

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Holman, Host (21:43.6)

Yeah.

Christiane Schroeter (21:58.865)

in terms of like your fear of being on that big stage, you have to put yourself out there and you have to be okay with the fact that you inspired one person in the audience and maybe not all 1000 that were listening to this because that's just really what you have to go for and that will change your mindset too.

Jeff Holman, Host (22:17.159)

Yeah, I'm reminded of my youth when I used to do some piano and I was never very, I was okay as a piano player, but I was never very good as a performer, right? You do your recitals every year or whatever. And I always wished I could be more like the students who, when they would mess up, because we all mess up, when they would mess up, they would keep playing. And it sounded like it flowed. You might be like, oh, maybe they messed up. I'm not sure.

But it's the other kids like I was, and this is, I just didn't know how to do it better. When I would mess up, I would stop. I would think, I'd go back and try to replay. And that's just so disruptive compared to, know, minor mistake, keep playing. And everybody is like, I'm not even sure if you messed up. So that's...

Christiane Schroeter (23:08.122)

there's a beautiful comparison. helped somebody the other day getting ready for a big presentation. And so I was watching them go through the presentation. I kind of have like always like this, this look on, right. And they messed up multiple times, right. And they were like, well, we're looking at your face. And I was like, why? I mean, I, I'm just having this neutral face, but in between messing up, I'm just wondering.

Jeff Holman, Host (23:20.348)

Mm-hmm.

Christiane Schroeter (23:31.739)

Did you really think I would notice that you messed up? Because I don't think I would have, right? It's not like I'm, my gosh, I just messed up. But by saying, my, here's like this slide and it shows sales and I know it's too small for you to actually see it. It's like, I wasn't actually even looking at the numbers. I wasn't even thinking about the fact that the font is too small. But once you pointed this out to me, I was like, my gosh, that font is so small there. Why would you ever put this on the slide, right?

Jeff Holman, Host (23:46.799)

Yeah, yeah.

Christiane Schroeter (23:59.419)

But so don't even draw attention to it. Just move on. And quite honestly, it makes it more human if you just keep going because it makes you appear human, especially now in the age of AI, where we are feeling this is all progress and it always beats perfection. We don't need to stand there and give the most polished slideshow in the world. That's not why they came. They came to connect with you, right? And I think that's so important and it makes it

sometimes like so much less stressful if you just keep that in mind that messing up is really what the audience actually sometimes loves even more than a polished presentation.

Jeff Holman, Host (24:41.659)

Yeah, that's fantastic. So where does a CEO start if they feel like they want to use this framework, put it into practice? Like, what's the first step they should be thinking about?

Christiane Schroeter (24:51.888)

I think it's connecting with your team, really fine tuning who's part on your team. What are, you know, their inputs in this, this listening, you know, like I talked about the leadership example, listening, because you don't want to be the person just kind of like comes in with all these ideas. And I've been like, oh my, here we go again. Right. So a good leader, I think starts with listening and then talking. Listen first, speak second.

I think that's really important. Where are we right now? How do we feel about where we are right now? Okay. So that's maybe make a plan. Where do we want to go? Where do we want to go a week, a month and three months from now, really breaking it down into like the current state. And then after you assess that what worked well in the past, let's move some of the things that worked well into, can use those to move forward. It's like you turn around, you pick up the

solid rock that you just stepped on and you put it in front of you to take the next step across the river.

Jeff Holman, Host (25:57.755)

Yes. I love that. I love that. Rock, tree trunk, whatever you need to find. What do you think a CEO will see once they start to effectively put this into practice?

Christiane Schroeter (26:10.715)

Sometimes I think they see skills in people, they totally underestimate it. And I think that, and it comes back to what I talked about earlier with regard to aligning and approval, that frequently you're underusing your team members and you can maybe even delegate more to them, which gives them direction. But at the same time, it also allows you to really focus yourself.

Jeff Holman, Host (26:26.726)

Mm-hmm.

Christiane Schroeter (26:36.491)

on the steps that you're really good at. What is your unique value you bring to the company? You don't want to be bogged down with all the details. You could have these delegated to your team members. So by listening and really focusing and on like, okay, what are they really bringing to the table? Is there something I didn't previously know that they could do? You could take things off your plate and then distribute them effectively after you really listened in what their skills are. And I think that's

that sometimes when I see in meetings, like, did you actually ask them about this? It's like, no, it's like, why didn't you like, why you never talk to them? Right? It's so important to first like really do like this, quick pulse check and connect with them and really figure out, right, where are we here? What's really on the table right now? It's like, are we all feeling, you know, we bring things to the table and we getting hurt. That's so important.

Jeff Holman, Host (27:12.486)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (27:32.357)

Yeah, it's as I think about this framework that you're presenting and the ability for CEOs to implement it, it seems like it's probably self-reinforcing. The more alignment we get, the better we're going to be at getting more alignment in the future. And the more we overcome our fears and we give people authority to take actions, that's going to reinforce for them what they can do well. And they're going to do more of that well.

When we start to see the right signals, we're going to know how to, how to utilize those signals. fact, I was talking with a CEO of a, of a SaaS company yesterday and I said, what signals are you looking for in your business? And it's always interesting to hear what they say. And he gave a surprising answer. He had drilled so far down into the different, you know, the different metrics that he could within his company. He's like, Jeff, this is the one. If this one, and I was surprised, I'm like, how would you ever come up with that?

Like that's not revenue, that's not users. It was a very specific signal that to me as an outsider looking at it, I wouldn't have even thought that was a number you tracked. But to him, he's like, that is the one. That's the one that is the signal for the rest of our business. So it was really cool to hear, you know, I'm sure he's had practice, you know, prior to this to get to that number. He probably looked at users or probably looked at, you know, you know, churn or...

revenue or whatever before and he finally said, well, the one that I tracked that kind of helps measure every the health of everything across the system is this one. So this seems very self-reinforcing. Have you seen that?

Christiane Schroeter (29:09.403)

Yeah. And actually love that you're bringing this up because let's, let's look at this as like, there's a lot of water references that I use in California, but let's look at this as like, you have this pond of all these competitors in front of you that are all using these other metrics, but yet you are the one that's maybe measuring things a little bit differently. So you can actually attract.

companies that would align with the way that you operate. And that really is your differentiating factor, your niche that you are building. So in a certain way, being really aligned and being really niche down only makes you stronger in this pond from everybody else that's living in there and looking for customers and aligning and they're looking at others and then they do what others are doing. But sometimes it really helps again, not looking at all the noise, but really thinking about, right, what

Jeff Holman, Host (29:42.876)

Yeah.

Christiane Schroeter (30:04.518)

What is really that is something unique for us that really moves the needle and let's do more of that. And that's the signal we really want to follow right there. And that becomes really clear that that's becoming the niche that you really want to uniquely operate in.

Jeff Holman, Host (30:10.982)

Yeah.

Jeff Holman, Host (30:19.045)

Now we're coming full circle, we're back to clarity, focus, and the ability to really be effective in that leadership role. I love that. Well, Cristiana, this has been fantastic. I've taken a little more of your time than I intended to, but we had a lot of good stuff to go through. So I really appreciate you sharing that with me and with our audience.

Christiane Schroeter (30:41.426)

Yeah, and audience, course, keep in mind, it doesn't always even require you to start in like step one, right? Signal and noise. could even be that you are maybe at step two or step three. These could be uniquely interchanged, but at the same time, these are definitely the ones that even like on a daily basis, it helps to sometimes kind of reassess, where am I? Where are we going with all this? And then come back.

because it's so basic that you can cycle through them over and over again. So I encourage you keep going, but at the same time also figure out really how you can best utilize your strength with that, unique value. I will make you a good team leader.

Jeff Holman, Host (31:26.489)

I love that, I love that. And if somebody wanted more about this framework, they wanted to dig in deeper with you, what would be the best way to do that?

Christiane Schroeter (31:35.607)

Check out my website, https://doctorchristiane.com/. And I'm also on YouTube, dr.christiana. have my own podcast that's available everywhere. That's also linked on my website as well. That's called Happy Healthy Hustle. And then of course you can grab any of my books on Amazon and some of them have been bestselling there since a couple of years now. So I would love to encourage you and check them out there as well.

Jeff Holman, Host (32:05.529)

I love that. So many great resources. we're really lucky that you took a few minutes to spend with us in the audience and sharing this framework.

Christiane Schroeter (32:14.566)

Yeah, and then I have a free gift if you want to take your goals and maybe turn them around. I call it the do it anyway challenge. And it's a five day sequence that you can follow that cycles you through. It's a quick video. You get an email with encouragement and then there is an action item at the end. It allows you to maybe do something anyway, whether you weren't clear about it or certain.

Or maybe you were afraid off, it allows us this anyway. So we can share that link to the audience as well.

Jeff Holman, Host (32:44.997)

Yes. I love that.

Yeah, we can share all that in the show notes for sure. So, well, thank you for coming on and to our audience who's joined us today for this episode. Thank you once again for joining us on the breakout CEO podcast.

Christiane Schroeter (32:52.146)

Thank you.

Christiane Schroeter (33:01.458)

Thank you.

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