I was so jealous of her that I wanted to block her on Instagram.
Recently I felt a wave of jealousy and resentment wash over me as I saw a colleague achieve something really amazing.
I was so puzzled because I am also so proud of her and what she's doing with her work, so I couldn't figure out why I was feeling that creepy green eyed monster that made me want to scroll through everything she's ever done and copy her and at the same time, dismiss everything she's done and block her on Instagram!
And after a little while of feeling the yucky, sticky mean girl moment I sat down to dig into WHY.
When I was younger I experienced jealousy all the time. I would find myself deliberately going to see what people I was jealous of were doing, and then spend weeks in this crazy spiral of shame because I wasn't doing what they were.
It wasn't until I understood what jealousy actually is that I was able to stop my secret hater stalking.
We think jealousy is about other people having something we don't, but it's actually much deeper than that.
It's not about the other person at all.
Jealousy is what we experience when we think that what someone else has or is… is not possible for us.
Experiencing jealousy really just means that somewhere in our subconscious, we have a belief about ourselves that limits what we think we’re capable of.
When I really understood that, I realized that feeling jealous was a great way to see where subconsciously I was holding myself back.
I Think of jealousy as a “check engine” light for our self image. When it comes up, it means something that I think about myself has surfaced.
In this case, I realized that I was looking at my friend's achievement and unconsciously thinking…
“Well that's great for her… but I could never do that.
So now I’m setting out to prove myself wrong,
because that is the power of being jealous. When you’re able to see it for what it truly is it can be a powerful tool to help you see yourself in a different and more empowering way.
Are you in a toxic relationship with your goals?
It’s the end of January, we made it!
January somehow always seems like both the longest and the fastest month of the year where everyone’s frantically wanting to make changes while still recovering from December.
It's a weird month!
And I wanted to share something that I've been seeing my clients experience all month.
“I’m already behind.”
The first time I heard a client say that was January 4th. Yes, seriously.
So many of us create our plans for our goals from the perfectionist fantasy mindset, which in my experience tends to be unrealistic and with zero flexibility. And when life happens, as it inevitably does or things don't go 1200% according to plan, we throw up our hands and go…
I’VE ALREADY FAILED
I’m behind now… and I’ll never catch up.
I have something to tell you my darling friend… you might be in a toxic relationship relationship with your goals.
Imagine if you went on a date and met some lovely person and immediately decided that THIS person was the answer. Being with this person was going to fix everything. This relationship was going to change who you are and finally allow you to accept yourself.
That's a lot of pressure! And the moment that person didn't live up to the huge expectation of changing how you felt about yourself, you'd get disappointed and either double down on the pressure for them to fix you or maybe you’d just give up.
Not the healthiest of relationships right?
But that's how we treat our goals. When we set goals we often have this idea that reaching the goal is the point. And that result we attain is what will make us happy.
So when things don't go perfectly we freak out because we make it mean that we won't get that result and we’ll never be happy.
But that's not actually how it works.
Our goals aren’t there to make us happy, but to change us.
In order to achieve a goal, to do something we’ve never done before we actually have to go through a process of transformation. We essentially become a new version of ourselves.
We become the person who can achieve that goal.
And THAT does not happen in a perfectly planned and executed way.
Transformation is messy. Transformation takes time. It takes trial and error. It takes practice.
There is NEVER “perfect progression”.
Who we become during that transformation is the purpose of our goals because that is what changes who we are and how we feel about ourselves.
So if you’re feeling behind or like you've failed… breathe… breathe again… and take off the pressure.
Change is a messy process, let it be messy.
I wasnt part of the problem, I was the whole problem.
This girl wasn’t part of the problem. She was the WHOLE ASS problem.
For no reason whatsoever I couldn’t sleep last night. So I spent some time on Facebook, as one does, and found myself reminiscing about old jobs, friendships and relationships I’ve not thought about in years.
A quick trip into my old messages reminded me of why.
It was an absolute drama filled mess.
Seriously though, I don’t know how anyone put up with me in my 20’s. (Thank you to those that did and have still stuck around )
The more I read through decades dead conversations and thought about so many difficult interactions, a common thread began to emerge.
I was always the victim in every experience.
I was always at odds and always misunderstood. I can see so clearly now how I was always looking for someone to acknowledge me.
The more I read and the more I played those memories in my mind, turning each one over looking for clues I realized the common denominator in all of them.
I was a liar.
The root cause of every single issue had been me not being honest.
I had people pleased, I pretended to be who I thought people wanted me to be. Did what was “expected” to be accepted or loved. Not honest about what I wanted. Dismissing what was important to me. Never saying no.
Never taking responsibility for my part in any mess.
And lying to myself.
Telling myself that things were out of my control and that I was helpless in my circumstances.
Always waiting for someone else to fix all the problems for me.
The problems I was actually causing.
Ironic isn’t it. And all the ingredients for a miserable experience.
I know I’m a VERY different person to that frightened, frustrated young woman I was…
but I also know that patterns repeat if we don’t actively change them.
So I started thinking about where it shows up now.
When I want to blame the economy, the social media algorithm, the alignment of the planets or anything else that I tell myself has more control over my life than I do.
The more I looked for it, the more I saw very clearly that there is only one real obstacle that I have to deal with on a daily basis.
Me.
When I lie to myself and tell myself that I don’t know how. Or that I can’t figure it out. Or that it’s too hard. Or I’m not good enough. Or that people will judge me and that matters. Or that it’s not fair.
It always comes back to me.
In the end, we will be either our biggest obstacle or our greatest advocate.
It depends on whether or not we are willing to do the work of facing ourselves.
Your past is not the key to your future.
This morning I was chatting with a client who is deciding what her next steps are and was struggling to visualize it.
We decided to do a creative brainstorming exercise where I asked her to imagine…if she could do anything as a business what would she want to do?
She started talking about a former job that she could potentially use the experience from but didn’t know how to make that a business.
But that wasn't what I’d asked her.
So I asked again.
If you could do ANYTHING, what would you WANT to do?
She started telling me about a different former job trying to figure out the same thing.
And that is why she was so stuck.
Often when we imagine our futures, when we want to make a change or when we think about what we want in our lives…
We think about now, but slightly better.
We envision our futures based on what we already have.
Which means that our vision of what's possible is based on our past, and limited by it. Because we are telling ourselves that what is possible for us is something that's only a few steps forward from what we already have.
Imagine if instead of “I want to be healthier than I am now”, we thought things like:
“I’m going to become a person who prioritizes their health and is in exceptional physical condition.”
Or instead of, “I want to have a bigger house than I do now, thinking “I want to become someone who has enough financial assets that I can live anywhere I want.”
Or even “I want a job that makes more money than I do now”, becoming, “I’m going to create a career shift that allows me complete control of how much money I can earn.”
If we limit the potential of our future by the experience of our past, we miss out on the vast possibilities that could be available to us.
It makes me think about when people used horses for transport. Hundreds of years worth of selective breeding and trial and error went into trying to breed horses that were faster, stronger or had more endurance than the ones before them. The future of transportation was limited to simply improving what had been done in the past.
And then someone said, “What if I created something that didn't require horses?”
And the engine was born paving the way for trains and cars.
Imagine what might happen if you stopped looking at your past to decide what's possible for your future.
I was a great coach, but I had ZERO clients.
The first time I decided to go “all in” on my business I spent several months putting a ton of effort into all the things I thought were important. I had a nice business card, a cute website with a blog I updated twice a week. My business Facebook page had 12 THOUSAND followers (something I was extremely proud of) and I went to so many networking events that my husband started to wonder if I was ever going to spend an evening at home.
I also had ZERO clients.
Not for lack of trying though! I was doing all the things that I was supposed to do, but nothing worked.
I remember sitting in my car outside of a networking lunch trying to get myself together before going in. I was in the middle of one of those “I’m so frustrated I'm crying hysterically” moments.
The thought of going into yet another meeting, standing up and awkwardly telling people what I do, then desperately making uncomfortable conversation to try to get clients before slinking out in defeat… It was all too much.
I left without going in and got a job the following week.
I didn't realize it then, but while I was a talented coach, I was a terrible business owner. I was lacking skills that I didn't even realize I needed.
I believed that If I was a good enough coach that word would magically spread and clients would just fall from the sky.
Turns out, that's not how it works.
But that's often how we talk about building businesses in the consulting and coaching space.
In order to build a profitable and sustainable business, we have to think like business owners and we need to build the skill sets needed for solid business foundations.
Something I now spend a significant amount of my coaching work helping woman to do in their own businesses.
It’s my mission to make sure that there is no more crying in frustration outside of networking meetings. No more Instagram accounts lying dormant because you don't know what to post.
No more mission driven coaches giving up on their dreams because nothing seems to work.
Over the next 6 weeks I’m going to be teaching the foundational business building skills in a group setting for all the coaches and consultants that can’t seem to get their business off the ground.
We start on Thursday Nov 9th, and I’d love for you to join us.
Today my To Do list put me in a bit of a panic.
I have a couple of big events and projects happening in October and early November, so this morning I spent some time planning out the rest of my month and everything urgent that I needed to get done.
After I’d put all the various tasks into my calendar and project managed everything I felt pretty good. It all fits. It’s busy but not insane.
Great!
And then I felt it happen.
A flutter of anxiety that snuck up into my body and whispered…
That’s a lot!
Do you really have enough time for it all?
As I listened to that little voice I could feel myself shrink. A project that felt totally achievable just minutes before suddenly seemed daunting.
What if it doesn't work?
What if it's not good enough?
I need more time to make it perfect.
Within minutes I’d gone from having a perfectly doable plan to wanting to cancel things, drop out of events and push out my deadlines another month. And if not for the fact that I am well practiced at dealing with those thoughts, that's exactly what I would have done.
Delayed the projects. Canceled the event. Not showing up to the opportunities.
That my friend is the power of doubt.
Our mindset is one of the most powerful tools that we have, and if you're not actively using it in an intentional way then it's going to use itself against you. The greatest business strategy in the world cant help you if your own thoughts are slowing you down.
Because it's not that I want to fail or focus on the negatives or the fears.
My brain is simply designed to do that.
It’s designed to show me the worst case scenario.
It’s supposed to argue for NOT doing things that require effort or sacrifice.
It’s always going to try to give me good sounding reasons to quit.
That's its job.
MY job is to see and understand it for what it is, and choose.
My job is in those moments to learn the skill of being able to see that the creeping anxiety, the playing small is just my brain saying…
“Let’s not do anything that feels scary or takes a lot of effort. Let’s stay small and quiet and safe.”
and say back to it,
“That wont get me what I want. So I’m doing this. I’ll find a way.”
Then get to work.
Don’t let your fears run your business!
I used to be an opera singer.
For many years my goal was to be a professional opera singer.
I was doing all the things. Bi weekly voice lessons. I studied music theory and languages. I even learned to play piano… rather badly to be fair!
I belonged to an opera company and did regular shows. I was on the competition circuit and did pretty well. I won several scholarships for being a “promising classical performer.”
I even made money from it, singing at more weddings and funerals than anyone ever needs to go to!
But despite all signs pointing to a possible career in performing arts I had two overwhelming thoughts about it.
I’ll never be good enough to succeed.
What if I fail and all this work is for nothing.
Not a mindset that I found particularly motivating.
What it did do was create massive anxiety and perfectionism. And impatience.
Every time I didn't win a role I thought I should have or saw someone else succeed, I told myself
“I’m never going to succeed.”
Every time I struggled with a song or didn't get the response I should have from an audience.
“See, it's not working.”
So I stopped trying so hard. I stopped working on my voice outside of lessons. I stopped being prepared for rehearsals. I stopped even auditioning.
The anxiety of thinking I might fail made practicing so uncomfortable that I avoided it.
So I got no more roles. Won no more scholarships. I stopped progressing.
And eventually, I stopped doing anything musically related, because why bother if it wasn't going to work anyway.
I stopped doing the very things that contributed to my potential for success.
The ONLY things that would actually create success.
And so, of course it didn't work. I did fail to succeed.
You’re probably wondering what this has to do with you…
I see newer business owners doing exactly the same thing.
When a social media post doesn't get the engagement you think it's supposed to.
When you don’t sell as many places in your program or course as you wanted to.
When you’re struggling to sign clients.
When it feels hard and there's so much fear of it not working.
What do you do?
You procrastinate.
Slow down.
Second guess yourself.
Stay stuck in frustration.
And you stop doing all the things that will make success inevitable.
Building a business takes a lot of resilience because things often don’t go the way we think they should, especially at first.
But if you give up because you’re afraid to fail, then YOU guarantee your failure.
If you believed success was inevitable, what would you be willing to do?
Why your business is like a cake fail.
Last week I was at an industry mastermind with about 1500 business owners all gathered together. AMAZING.
BUT
Something I noticed when talking to so many of my colleagues was that everyone is looking at the wrong place for inspiration.
And making themselves miserable over it.
I spoke to many people who were looking at coaches with very successful businesses, with all their slick marketing and funnels and programs and groups and memberships and money…
Asking themselves
"Why isn’t that me?”
“Whats wrong with me that I’m not there?”
The thing is that your first few years in business are never ever going to look the same as those bigger businesses do now.
If you want the truth of what your benchmark should be, you need to find out what those businesses looked like in their earlier years.
I rarely watch TV but sometimes my husband will put on an episode of a show that I delight in called Nailed It.
It features amateur home bakers attempt to recreate the stunning and imaginative desserts and cakes created by a master patisserie and chocolatier.
The results are HYSTERICAL.
It may be cake but it looks absolutely NOTHING like the experts version that they are trying to copy!
But here’s the thing that always intrigues me. The cakes that taste good are the ones that win. Even though they might look like they were baked by Frankenstein’s monster while he was blindfolded.
Your business is going to be the same.
In the first few years, it’s going to look like a little bit like a Nailed It cake.
Wonky, not particularly pretty and not at all like the more experienced business owners current business does.
But the true test of a business, is whether or not you are selling value to your clients.
Delivering Value is what builds your business. Not how big or pretty your business looks.
It’s just like the wonky cake that tastes good. It will still win because the value is there.
Which means that instead of comparing yourself to everyone else and despairing about what your business “SHOULD” look like, you need to put your focus on nailing a few key things and some foundational skills FIRST.
Strategy
Mindset
Support Structures
It's not grey hair. It's a reclamation.
Yesterday I stopped hiding my grey hair.
More than that, I actually had a stylist accentuate my grey streaks.
And if you watched my Instagram stories, you might have heard me talk about how uncomfortable I was as I sat in my car outside the salon.
I kept thinking, “I’m going to look old and out of touch.”
“People will think I’m weird”
“I’ll look like I've stopped caring.”
“I’m letting myself go.”
One of the hardest things I’ve had to continually work though in my own journey is worrying about what other people will think and trying to be good enough for them.
For years that meant trying to fit a vision that someone else had for me of who I should be.
No matter how hard I tried, I could never be thin enough, pretty enough, young enough, old enough, quiet enough, demure enough, smart enough, organized enough, social enough, cool enough…. you get the picture.
Trying to be everyone's expected version of me is a full time, completely unachievable job.
And it showed up EVERYWHERE in my life.
From relationships I got into because I needed someone to validate my sense of “enoughness”, to holding myself back in my business for years because I believed that what I did was never ever good enough for people to want.
I feel like I've spent decades of my life trying to dance on the fine line of always meeting other people's expectations.
Always at the expense of my own.
Always at the expense of what I wanted to say.
Who I wanted to be.
How I wanted to look.
Which is so interesting… because the more I let go of what I think I “SHOULD” be, the happier and more successful in all ways I become.
And the more I do it, the more I uncover ways that I’m still holding back.
Like feeling I had to hide my grey hairs.
I knew I was going to feel nervous and I worried about regretting it.
What I did not expect was seeing myself in the mirror with my “wise old witch of the woods”, hard earned grey stripes and having the sudden overwhelming sense of liberation
Of coming home to myself again.
It’s not just hair. It’s a reclamation.
It’s one more bold action towards stepping into who I AM.
It’s letting go of just one more version of not good enough.
It’s refusing to buy into the idea that a woman should age gracefully, and quietly.
Rejecting the idea that my value lies only in my youth or beauty.
I feel like I’m only just getting started with what I have to offer the world.
I have shit to say.
And I’m only going to get louder.
In the words of Captain John Paul Jones when he was told to surrender…
I have yet begun to fight.
Why mindset IS business strategy.
I was chatting to my mum recently about some of my earlier coaching work which was exclusively mindset and self development and she mentioned that she missed the focus being on that.
It was so interesting to think about because, about 90% of what I work on IS that.
But when people first find me, that's generally not what they are looking for.
When building a business people think that all they need is the right strategy.
Strategy is ESSENTIAL, without it you don't have a clear plan and your brain will just be running around feral, causing chaos.
Having a strategy means that you're spending your time and energy on things that actually move you in the right direction and are purposeful, intentional…
but strategy is maybe 20% of what makes someone successful.
Because the greatest strategy in the world doesn't matter if you’re not following through on it. If you're procrastinating doing the work.
No amount of strategy can save you from yourself if you give up whenever there are obstacles or failure.
There's no strategy that can fix you self sabotaging through pleasing people, or fear of what people might think.
And there is no plan that can prevent the fall out from believing that you're not good enough.
I love to be able to offer my people really practical support with their business strategy. In fact one of my most fun sessions recently was sitting with a client and friend and rewriting her website copy line by line until it felt like it really reflected who she is.
But without her mindset being in the right place, we could never have done that.
If she was still holding onto a belief like “I don;t know the right thing to say” we would never have been able to think clearly about what she wanted to truly communicate.
Or like a client I had a few years ago who wanted to publish adult coloring in books or original artwork, but who was believing an uncle who said “Nobody buys those things.” because it fed her own fears, and so almost didn't launch her book…
Finding the strategy that works for YOUR business also requires a strong mindset.
Because despite what people selling $20 business strategy templates online would have you believe in their marketing, there IS no one size fits all strategy. It's a process of educated guesses, some trial and error, and the skill of being able to evaluate results without letting your fears tell you that nothing is ever going to work.
It takes a willing and open mindset to be able to walk yourself through the journey of finding your perfect strategy.
And even if you create the perfect strategy, A plan is only valuable when it's supported by the mindset that creates action. That is willing to be uncomfortable and grow. That explores and resolves resistance.
The mindset that transcends our fears and primal desire to stay safe and not rock the boat.
A mindset that is committed to becoming the version of ourselves that is capable of achieving our potential.
THAT is the secret success to business. That is the magic formula to getting what you want.
Without it, all you have is a good plan.
And this is true not just of business building but anything you want to create in your life. Mindset plays a huge part!
I like to think of the work that I do not so much as helping people build businesses, that's a side effect. What I do is help build business women. By helping someone BECOME the version of themselves that IS capable of creating a successful business, the success becomes inevitable.
Someone was going to get slapped, and other stories about the patriarchy.
Last week I had dinner with some friends, among them a relatively new addition to the group who had been a stay at home dad for the first few years of his son's life.
With his son now heading off to school, his wife wanted him to get a job in order to help with the bills.
And he was having a really hard time with it.
He started telling the group that it was really difficult because he couldn't figure out how to manage dropping his son off at school, going to work, picking his son up and then coming home to deal with housework and dinner making etc. He was really overwhelmed and didn't think it was possible.
He was angry that he was expected to both care for his son and have a job…
Every woman at the table just stared at him. One of them looked so annoyed I was afraid she would slap him.
After the initial amusement and irritation of the women wore off, everyone started giving him advice on how to make it work and ways that they managed to pull it off.
It was quite the education for him.
Listening to the various pieces of wisdom everyone offered him reminded me yet again that the system we live in, was not designed for us.
The system of working and making money is not set up for the needs of caregivers. Whether you have children, or you’re the primary person who cares for your home environment, the system is not made for us.
In fact it works against us.
In the United States, nearly 40% of households now have a woman as the primary “breadwinner”, defined as the person contributing 60% or more of the total household income. While nearly 70% of women report still being fully responsible for child and home care.
Which means the system isn't changing fast enough to reflect the massive shift in economic realities over the last few decades.
This is just one of the reasons why I LOVE seeing more and more women owning their own businesses.
In no other environment do women have the level of control over their time and incomes than in self employment.
In very few other forms of employment do women have the ability to design their life, responsibilities and priorities in a way that actually works FOR them.
It's also well documented that in female owned businesses there is higher employee retention, partially due to more flexibility to allow for family priorities and a greater focus on the well-being of employees.
Which to me means that women owning and running successful businesses is part of the pathway to changing the system.
Business ownership is female empowerment.
And I’m here for it!
Another strategy wont save you.
A fellow coach asked me yesterday what the most common problem I help women with is.
She was expecting it to be something like how to market your business or the best strategy to get clients.
But that's honestly about 10% of the work I do.
The problem I help women entrepreneurs with most, is self trust.
Often when women start a business they go out and get a list of things to do and a basic strategy thinking that if they just follow it, then their business will be a success.
And in most cases that would be true!
Except they don't actually follow the strategy
They don't do the things that would create their success. 99.9% of the time it sounds like…
“I don't have enough time”
“I have too much else on my plate”
“I need another course / certification / training before I’m ready”
All of these are smokescreens. Reasonable sounding justifications that hide the real issue.
“I don’t think I can do this.”
“I’ve never done it before.”
“What if people judge me?”
“What if I fail?”
“What if people get mad at me?”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I’m not good enough.”
These are the voices of mistrust. The things I hear most from women before they are able to believe in themselves, and from my clients when we first start working together
And if you think about the things that YOU would like to be doing or achieving that you just can't seem to get any momentum on… listen very closely beyond your first layer of excuses.
You’ll hear these sentences. You’ll hear the fears that stop you from moving forward.
So take a moment to really check in with yourself before you decide you need a new strategy or that maybe being a successful business owner isn't for you.
Find the real reason, then get to work on challenging your fears and building unshakable trust in yourself.
Comparison is the thief of potential.
There's an expression that says “Comparison is the thief of joy” but I think it's far worse than that.
Comparison is also the thief of potential and of self belief.
Culturally we have this idea that comparison will push us to greater heights, that competition makes us strive to be better than we are.
And sometimes it does, but it comes at a cost because of what it does to our self of self worth.
When I was 10, I had a teacher who kept a star chart in the classroom. Every time we did something well we would be rewarded with a star. I think there was some kind of reward for the person who got the most, but to be honest I had no interest in the end prize, only in my own stars.
I was extremely proud of my stars and how hard I had worked to get them, until one day when I was showing them off, it was pointed out to me that someone else had more stars.
Which was true. And which was said in a very loving way in order to motivate me to strive for more.
Instead of inspiring me to try harder and achieve more stars. It shut me down.
Because what I took from that experience was that my stars weren't enough. I wasn't good enough.
So why bother trying at all.
I stopped even trying to get stars.
I had the same experience of being a classical singer, in my jobs, relationships and even in my early days as a coach.
Allowing myself to play the comparison game, or “compare and despair” as I've heard it called, shut me down and stopped me from actually making any kind of progress at all.
Until I stopped doing it to myself because I learned to understand the mechanism that it relies on.
The fear of not being good enough and risking being rejected.
When we compare we will always lose. Because no matter what, we can always find someone who does something “better” or who is smarter, more talented, more successful or whatever.
Which means that inevitably comparison tells us we aren’t good enough.
There are generally two responses to comparison. Drive harder to try to prove yourself, or give up entirely.
If you’re striving from a desire to see what you are personally capable of, it can be thrilling and motivating.
If you’re doing it to prove you’re good enough, it will never be enough.
If driving harder is your response, you’re also eventually guaranteed to fail and burn out, because you will always find someone who does it better, especially if you're always on the lookout for someone doing it better than you.
Every world record eventually gets broken. Every achievement is eventually surpassed.
I’d love you to take a look at your life, your work and what you believe is your potential and ask yourself where you're comparing yourself. Be honest with the impact that it has on you.
And I want to offer you a different perspective.
The world has plenty of space for all of us, with your various gifts and abilities. It’s only in allowing ourselves to truly be who WE ARE without comparison or judgment that we are most able to fulfill our potential.
Comparison offers us nothing of value. It’s literally just shooting yourself in the foot.
The freedom to allow your potential to unfold without comparison will lead you to a much greater level of success than you currency believe is possible.
The great productivity lie.
If I got a dollar every time I hear someone say “I’m not productive enough” I’d probably be retired and living in a castle in the south of France within 5 years.
This is one of the biggest things that women come to me for coaching on.
I have to be more productive.
And yes, most of us could benefit greatly from getting better at time management, being more strategic with our actions and more focused when we do work.
But that's only part of the story.
The other part is that often we’re striving for a perfectionist day dream about what productivity looks like.
We have this idea (largely taught to use by traditional business structures) that productivity means ALWAYS producing. We think that we’re supposed to sit our ass down at our desk and work for 8 hours or we aren't doing enough.
It's even worse when we run our own business. Because then we often tell ourselves that we should be working ALL. THE. TIME. or our business won't be successful.
That if we aren't the poster child for being productive, that we are failures.
We are taught to believe that our worth as people, can be measured by how productive we are.
I’m here to tell you that view productivity needs to change.
We need to stop believing that productivity is the same thing as how many hours we work.
Time isn't what creates productivity.
Strategy and focus is.
Strategy allows us to not only be working on things that actually matter, but we can be strategic about when and how we do our work.
The biggest mistake I see business owners make is not having a strategy, so they end up spending hours of their time on things that end up not actually making a difference. Using the “throw spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks!” method, isn’t strategic.
You need a strategy if you’re going to be productive.
Focus is also not something we do, it's something we create.
It's a combination of being clear about what we actually need to focus on, rather than having mile long to do lists.
It requires support structures like good time management, and being well rested. Because tired brains don’t focus! (And if you have ADHD like me, some the structures will include how you work around your brains obstacles)
It requires the mindset that we have to learn and cultivate in order to allow us to deliberately put our attention onto something.
Productivity is an environment we create for ourselves, not a giant dirty stick that we need to beat ourselves up with.
So as you start thinking about this coming week, try asking yourself…
How can I support my productivity this week rather than beat myself up with it?
Making decisions other people wont like.
Today I had a super uncomfortable moment where I had to make a pretty big decision that I knew other people weren't going to be happy about.
I spent most of my weekend thinking about all the ways that I could try to make something work, and I couldn't find an outcome that's actually in my best interests.
Every option I considered was really just a form of people pleasing.
So as I drove into town to my office, I took a really deep breath and imagined what it would feel like to just do what I actually want to do.
There was immediately a feeling of calm and being grounded.
Self trust embodied.
Quickly followed by all the thoughts of people being upset and disappointed, but that feeling of calm was too clear for me to pretend that it's not the right decision.
I bet you’re wondering what this has to do with being a business owner…
Being a successful business owner requires a huge amount of self trust.
It's probably one of the most difficult things to cultivate, and it's also one of the things that's most likely to slow down our progress. In business, you’re going to find yourself faced with tough decisions… and moments where its hard to trust that you know what to do.
A lack of self trust looks like:
Second guessing our decisions.
Constantly changing the plan when things feel hard or scary.
Asking EVERYONE for an opinion before we take action on something.
Doing things that other people say we should, even though there's a little voice telling us no.
Constantly doing “research, taking courses and training programs but never actually moving forward.
Waiting till we feel “ready”.
Telling ourselves we don't know what we’re doing.
Over explaining ourselves or justifying our actions.
Constantly feeling like we’ve done it wrong.
And if this is you, the good news is that it's totally normal.
Culturally we have been taught that there's a right and a wrong way to do things and that there's an expert out there who has all the right answers.
We learn from very early on that making mistakes or risking failure is bad so we shouldn’t do anything out of the box or that isn't the “right” way.
So we quieten down that little voice inside us that is so filled with wisdom and fire.
We tell ourselves we don't know enough, that we have to see what other people think we should do.
That we should only act if we are sure it's the right way.
And in the process, we lose the very thing that creates incredible success.
Our uniqueness.
If you look at any wildly successful person, they all have one distinct thing in common. Their uniqueness drives what they do.
They know that they have something extraordinary to do here, and they are willing to trust their own voice even when things feel hard.
I’d love you to try what I did this morning.
Close your eyes for a moment and imagine what you would be doing differently if you trusted yourself and didn’t worry about disappointing people or getting it wrong…
What do you think your life and your business would look like?
Business ownership is an emotional rollercoaster.
Some days you're on top with a HELL YEAH I GOT TWO NEW CLIENTS!!
And you spend the rest of the day being super productive because you just KNOW that it's all going to work out and your business is booming.
The next day you have 10 people unsubscribe from your email list and you get a negative comment on Instagram. Suddenly you’re face first into a pint of ice cream because this is the beginning of the end and you might as well give up because your business is going to fail.
The emotional ride of being a business owner is the craziest roller coaster.
And this is normal. Whenever something happens, our emotional response is always there.
But what we do with that emotional roller coaster can make or breaks our business.
Think for a moment about the days where you 100% believe that your business is actually going to work and make money.
When I have those days, I am the productivity fairy. I’m a business ninja!
I get SO MUCH DONE. Way more than I had planned!
I have ALL THE NEW IDEAS!
On the days where I believe my business is doomed however?
My brain tells me,
“Don’t bother sending out that email, no ones reading them anyway.”
“You might as well skip going to that networking event, no one wants to work with you.”
Everything that I have planned that would make my business succeed, my brain wants to cancel.
And this is why your strategy is so incredibly important.
If you left your business up to your emotions to run, it would be chaos. On the difficult days, we make random and frightened decisions.
Your strategy, your action plan, your accountability…
Those things are all in place to support you in the moments where your fear wants you to hide and not do anything.
Because it's those moments where you need the clearest path. The “set in stone” to do list. The coach that holds you to your strategy.
Your plan is what keeps your businesses growing when your humanness has its doubts.
Your plan is a support system. Use it!
Why your business overwhelms you.
When I first start working with business owners, overwhelm is one of the most common things they experience.
Which makes sense.
Most of us have been employees where we only have one small piece of a business to focus on, and we get given a very specific structure with a defined list of tasks to do… and then we do them.
Straightforward enough.
And then we start our own businesses where we are the CEO, financial controller, marketing department, IT department, product development AND the person delivering the product or service.
Suddenly you’re having to learn a bunch of new skills, which initially you feel like you suck at and you're just in a cycle of trial and error till you figure things out.
You’re responsible for everything that happens (or doesn't happen) AND there's no longer a steady, predictable paycheck at the end of each month.
People, it’s a LOT!
And what often happens is that we get sucked into the rush and hustle of DOING ALL THE THINGS,
or more specifically THINKING about all the things all the time which leads to confusion because we don't really know what's more important or where to start so we either try to do everything at a frantic pace (hello panic and burnout) or our brain freaks out and we start to procrastinate…. which just makes it all worse.
So what to do?
Resolving overwhelm is part strategy and part mindset.
Starting with a very clear plan for what you’re doing (and why!) is essential.
And especially at the beginning, keeping it as simple as possible by focusing on three key things.
Utilizing skills you're already really good at.
Things that will make a quick and significant impact.
An essential skill you're developing.
And then managing your mindset and your brain's fears over being in such an unfamiliar space.
When you do feel that fear when your impulse is to try to do all the things, just remember…
Everything we do, create, achieve happens one action and one decision at a time.
What if it doesnt work
As a culture we seem to have this idea that success is something that just happens to us. That it’s something beyond our control.
Yesterday I was coaching a new business owner on some very scary and unexpected things that have happened just a few weeks before the official opening of her new store.
We were working through some of the fears that it had triggered including,
“What if the business doesn't work?”
Because she was afraid she was starting to second guess herself and her decisions. She started to look for ways to minimize everything she was doing because going smaller felt safer.
She started considering canceling contracts for the inventory she was planning to sell in the store.
She talked about letting go of the employee that she had hired to run the store.
She considered delaying the opening of the business.
Her fear was leading her towards doing all things that would result in her business being less successful in its first couple weeks of being open.
As I pointed out to her, “How is the business going to work if you don't have products to sell?”
Fear makes us do some interesting things!
I then asked her
“If I could guarantee that you would eventually succeed, what would you be willing to do?
Her answer…
“I would do whatever it takes. “
Which is so interesting because being willing to do whatever it takes, guarantees success.
I didn’t need to guarantee her success, she could guarantee it herself by never giving up and always being willing to find a way to make things work.
In business, as in life, things don't always go according to plan. The path doesn't always look the way that we thought it would.
What makes the difference between success and failure is what we DO when that happens.
If we listen to our fears, we pull back, we get smaller, we stop doing the things that would actually make a difference. Our brain wants us to hide until it feels like the danger passes.
Hiding and not taking action guarantees our failure.
Learning to trust ourselves and keep moving forward with our plan, EVEN when things feel scary IS the thing that creates our success.
What would you be willing to do if success was guaranteed?
Business ownership is self empowerment.
The average person will spend around 1 third of their life working. An estimated 90 THOUSAND hours. Considering we spend around a third of our life also sleeping, that means that HALF of the waking hours of our life are spent working.
Half your life. HALF YOUR WAKING LIFE!
And if your experience of having a job was anything like most of my career working for other people. That means half your life spent showing up the way someone else wants you to.
Half your life living by the “rules” of what it means to be an employee.
Half your life being on someone else’s timeline.
Half your life doing “tasks” that someone else decided on for you.
Half your life with someone else having direct influence over your career progression.
How much money you earn.
How much time you work.
Who you have to work with.
HALF YOUR LIFE BEING a person you are required to be so that you “FIT IN WITH THE WORK CULTURE.
As if women don't already have enough cultural influences telling us who we need to be at home, we also get to have someone else dictating who we are at work too. Because being an employee doesn't just mean that someone pays you a wage in exchange for doing what they ask you to do, it means BEING who they ask you to be.
Which is so frustrating when you're faced with the messaging that tells you to just be yourself!
Except we need you to be less assertive because people don't like that.
Be yourself, unless you're a big personality then tone it down.
Be creative and innovative, unless your ideas are too big then you need to reign it in!
Be open and honest, but don't tell us anything that we don't like to hear…
When you’re playing by someone else's arbitrary rules, you just can't win.
I remember when I finally had the courage to let go of having a job, I felt like I could BREATHE again. It was the weirdest sensation.
Being self employed and running my own business gave me the space, freedom and permission to truly BE WHO I AM. TO show up as I am without fearing that I was going to be punished for it or forced to minimize myself.
It meant letting go of other people's rules and expectations.
Owning a business is about pushing back against a system that encourages us to disassociate from ourselves in order to survive. We are taught to put everything else before our own needs and desires. We’re taught to spend the fast waking majority of our lives dedicated to being something that someone else wants us to be.
Having our own business gives us the opportunity to use the time that we spend working, to decide how and what we spend our precious life creating, and who we want to be and become in the process of doing that.
For me, business ownership is one of the greatest pathways of self discovery and creation we have.
The importance of not doing it alone.
Rcently I got to do one of my favorite things, go away for the weekend with my friend and fellow coach/business owner Kate.
Not only is it a delicious balm for the soul to spend two days focused solely on good food and walking and just existing without expectations, but spending time with your peers is an essential experience for anyone who owns a business.
Especially women.
Especially women who shame themselves for not having everything figured out all the time.
It’s me. I’m women.
One of the biggest challenges I have as a person, but especially as a business owner is that I struggle to ask for help and to admit where I’m struggling.
My go to was always the “fake it till you make it“ strategy while I frantically worked to try to figure things (and myself) out, hoping like hell I could do it before someone found out and realized I was a big fat fraud!
It’s taken me YEARS to get to the point where I can acknowledge when I’m not OK and share that.
It’s why it took me so long to actually get coaching and figure stuff out because I truly believed that asking for help was bad.
Acknowledging that I need help means I’m weak.
That I’ve failed.
That I’m not good enough.
I have a perfectionist streak longer than US Route 20 and admitting when I’m stuck is the single hardest thing I ever do.
Which brings me back to my wonderful weekend with my friend.
Who not only gets it because she's a business owner herself, but also because she's a coach.
Having someone on your side and on your team is unbelievably valuable.
Having someone who can hear your struggle and go “yeah, me too. That's normal love!” is deeply validating.
And having someone who can look at you with love and say “OK, that's not working, let's work out a new plan.” is priceless.
Often I’m asked by people what my advice for new business owners and female entrepreneurs in general is, and this is one of the most valuable things I've learned.
Don’t let your insecurities and shame rob you of your support systems.
Get a coach.
Make some business owner friends.
Create a community.
This journey has moments where it can feel really hard and scary, don’t think that you have to do it alone.