As a business owner with a million things to do at any given time, one of the most important tools in my toolbox has been an outside perspective. Let me share an embarrassing story with you that demonstrates exactly what I'm talking about.

A couple of weeks ago, I went out to lunch with someone on my team, and on the way back, he accidentally kicked it over his to-go box, leaving a little stain on my floor mat.

And of course, he said, Oh my god, I'm sorry. I accidentally spilled food in your car.

I said, Hey, listen, no big deal.

Immediately, I registered in my head that I needed to clean the car. I need to go take it in for a detail because it's dirty anyway, and I also need to get the stain taken care of.

So now, among the million other problems that I have, and I'm sure you have as business owners now, this was one more thing added to the list of things that I needed to do.

Then, of course, life got in the way. Things got crazy. And over the next week, I didn't have time to go take it in for a detail. And then the next week came, and I didn't have time to go take it in for a detail of that week either. And so now, two weeks later, there's still this little stain on my floor mat because I haven't taken my car in to get a detail.

It's driving me nuts on two levels. One, because I have another thing on my list that I'm not getting to, and two, I have a stain in my car.

After the second week, my fiancée went up to the car, saw the stain, and solved my problem in about 10 seconds. She pulled the floor mat out. She grabbed the hose, sprayed it down, and washed the stain off.

I saw this problem and immediately added it to this list of things to do, with the solution being to take my car in for a detail. Whereas my fiancée saw the problem and had a completely different perspective.

She said, "I can solve this in 10 seconds," and sprayed it down with the hose. For me, this is why I said this is embarrassing; that thought never even crossed my mind.

The lesson that I continue to take away from this is that, as business owners trying to solve a million problems at once, sometimes the answers are right under our noses. We just need someone with an outside perspective to point them out to us.