In today’s episode of the podcast I talk about when things in your life and business get tough! I give you actionable steps on how to keep going and stay motivated when this does happen.

KEY TAKEAWAYS COVERED IN THE PODCAST

• As a business owner, we have to do everything! It is understandably tiring.
• There are so many different factors that contribute to how we are feeling about life and business and have an impact.
• When you put your value into external forces (e.g. amount of customers, money, clients, etc), you then lose control of your own worth and happiness because we can’t guarantee any of those things.
• You’re worth the money you want to charge and you’re great at what do – just because one person says they don’t want to buy or wants to cancel their membership does not change this.
• Remember why you started and why you do it! Who are you doing it for?
• Look back and remind yourself how far you have come already! Sometimes we can forget this.
• You did that! You are amazing.
• Find your squad and talk to them! We need people around us who support us and want to see us succeed.
• You need people in your corner to fight for you, cheerlead you and bring you back up when you’re down!
• Go back to basics – what is the bare minimum you can do right now to keep going?
• Keep ticking along, pull it back if you need to and then refocus.
• When you are your busiest and overwhelmed – this is when you need to step back and look at what is going on.
• Co-working sessions are great for motivation, accountability and keeps you focused.

THE ONE THING YOU NEED TO REMEMBER ABOVE ALL ELSE…

When you don’t feel great and everything seems tough – don’t be annoyed at yourself or feel ashamed. We are human and sometimes we don’t feel like it!

HIGHLIGHTS YOU SIMPLY CAN’T MISS

• What to do when things are not going as well in business
• Human brain vs your chimp brain
• How to keep going when things get tough – actionable steps

RESOURCES MENTIONED

Join the Club!

TRANSCRIPT

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. How's your week been? So we're now way out of January, which is good and nice, and we're into February and fingers crossed things are starting to look up a little bit because I know that quite a lot of you and myself included, struggled in January. I mean it's a pretty rubbish month. Doesn't it? You know, with all the things that are going on in the world, it's not easy.

And I'm sat here thinking about what to record for this episode, because I have all the interviews already batched up, but the solos, I kind of try and do it on the fly, which is a terrible idea. I should take my own good advice and make sure I plan my content for the podcast, but I didn't today. So I literally sat here before I hit record thinking about what can I talk about. And actually my kind of lack of inspiration of what I could talk about kind of worked out to be exactly what I should talk about.

Because as you know, I work very closely with my members and my members of the executive club, and I know them really, really well. And we have one of the parts of the executive club when you're a member, is that we have a telegram group that we have conversations in.

And what's really lovely is it's not just a work thing. It's also a 'Look, I've just done this. Hooray!' Or, 'Oh my God, the kids are driving me insane.' Or 'I went out for a walk this morning.' and it, you know, it sounds like it's really dull but it's not. It's a really good fun, and it's, it's, it's built the relationship of friendship and being in it together, which is lovely.

But because we're so close to member, because I'm so close to my members, obviously I know what's happening in their world and their businesses. And one of the things that I've noticed in January is a lot, a lot of people have struggled. And they've struggled for so many different reasons. They've struggled because they maybe haven't got the sales they were hoping for.

They've struggled because there was like the whole self-assessment tax thing that they were trying to sort out. They struggled because they can't get the motivation. They've had COVID. Their children had COVID, they've been off school. They've gone back to school. Just generally, it's being tough.

And I think, you know, I'm really careful not to talk too much about how hard things are, because I know that sometimes you can be sat there listening going all right. T bring us down, why don't you? And I don't want that at all. But I do want to talk about it because what do you do when things are tough in your business?

How do you manage? How do you make sure you keep showing up and doing the work and making money and being positive and being proactive when honestly you'd like to give up. And I know, and I will hold my hand up. There have been a number of times in my business where I'm like, I'm done, I'm not cut out for this anymore.

And they, you know, they feed properly, you know, not so long ago that you wouldn't imagine, but sometimes like your brain does some really rubbish things for you and it kind of makes you think certain ways or, you know, one little thing will happen and you suddenly go, 'Well, don't even know why I bothered. I just going to give it up.'

So what do you do when that is like that? When that happens, because if we try and ignore that it'll happen. Well, that's just pointless because it's going to happen to all of us at some point. So, and the other reason I wanted to do this episode was I was thinking about. One of the things I talk about when I say what makes a successful business owner and entrepreneur is tenacity, is the fact that they keep showing up. And showing up when no one is listening is one thing showing up when you don't want to feel like it or life has gone awry is another thing. So it could be anything. And I was thinking of all the reasons why you might feel like, 'Do you know what I'm done.' Not necessarily done, I want to give it in, but done I want to hide for a bit or sat at my desk, just looking at my computer. Don't know what on earth I'm doing and who I am type thing.

So it could be things like, you know, I think about my business. It could be people leaving the academy. So if people have left the membership for whatever reason, and isn't this interesting that no matter the reason I had someone leave the other day and she wrote the loveliest email and just basically said, as you know, my husband's been unwell and her husband has been unwell and it's just, she can't manage it now.

And therefore she needs to focus on that. And it's like, okay so my human brain would go. That is a perfect, perfectly reasonable response to her husband not being well. She's going to claw things back in and focus in on what is the most important thing, you know, in, in her, you know, her world. However, the monkey side of our brain, like the Chimp side goes, 'Oh my God. It's cause she hates me. What did I do wrong in the thing?'

Like, 'Oh, that's it, everyone's going to leave now.' And then suddenly you go down this whole spiral and I do it. And I know people who have bigger businesses than me still do it. So I think like something as small as someone saying. I'm leaving is one thing.

Not selling. That is huge, huge, huge, huge. So when you're not buying, when you're not buying, when you're not selling your product or service, or if you're having trouble selling your products and service, that is really, really tough. And you go into panic and you go into fear and I get it. Like. So being a, you know, I'm very honest, I put on my VIP event last year, which was amazing and I loved it, but it didn't make the money on it.

I should have done. And I knew I wasn't going to, and I was okay with that. Basically I got overexcited for the first one and spent too much money. Um, and that's fine. I knew I was going to do it. But this time I can't do that again. Like. I'm not trying to make loads of money on it, but I definitely, definitely have to cover my costs and make sure I cover my time and my team's time.

So anyway, I went and got the quote from the hotel, same hotel as last time, and it's going to be bigger and better. And the quote is huge. It's really big. Understandably. So we're talking like two whole days of exclusive use. Dinners. Drinks. Wine. Conference. Like honestly, it's just going to be amazing. And that's the thing I don't doubt for a second.

It's going to be amazing. But because the first one didn't make money. And, and although I've got a reason for it, although my human brain can go, you know, this is exactly why it didn't make money. My Chimp brain is going, oh my God, don't you dare put another one out because that's a huge amount of money in.

So, like I said, you know, not selling things. Things like when one person turned up to my webinar, like that can really throw you off your kind of, you know, let's go and do this. And, and I have had that just in case you're wondering. When you lose motivation, when you're tired, man, I've been tired, so tired and I don't think there's a single person listening to this, that isn't like agreeing or being like, 'Yeah me too.'

Like, that's hard, you know, when we're doing all the things that we have to do and even things like, you know, I only have my daughter every other week and, but like the week she's with me and I have to be like full on mum and do school runs and make sure she's got her things for school and stuff is washed.

And I don't know all that jazz. It's, you know, it's just another thing in your brain and it wears away and you lose motivation. Sometimes you get yourself on a Instagram, look at a competitor and think. 'Wow! Look at that, they're crushing it. I might've just give up now.' Like I could literally list hundreds of things that will throw you off your like, path that will take you out of flow that will put some kind of element of doubt in your head and make you go, why am I even doing this?

I might as well just give up now. And, and I wanted to talk about what do you do when that's the case? Because as I said, at the beginning for me, the thing that keeps one, well, what makes successful business owners entrepreneurs is that tenacity. So isn't there not always just tenacious and can go for it.

They have times when all those things happen. So how do they continue even when those things happen? When I look back, how have I managed to get to like eight years in business in this business? And still turn up every day and do it. And how have I recorded 200 and something episodes of podcasts when sometimes I really don't want to, because of whatever reason.

So, and, you know, even, and huge things, you know, for well, if you've been listening to the podcast a while that my mum passed away, uh, I think not last year, the year before and the podcast still went out. Like we can, we can still went out. So how do you do that? How do you keep going and keep the faith when you feel like you don't, you don't have it anymore and you don't want to do it.

So I'm going to give you a couple of like practical things that I would do, but also I want you to think about your, who do you allow to give your worth to? So like who is determining your worth of you and your business? Bear with me a minute.

So basically what happens is. When you put your worth and your power into external forces, and you might not have ever thought about this and you might be sat there thinking, what on earth are you talking about Teresa? But when you put your parent external forces. So for instance, I did some training, uh, about goal setting and we talked about, How do you want to feel when you get that goal?

Or what would that goal make you feel? So lots of people have financial goals and client goals or customer goals. And I said, and how would you feel you know that once you've got that and they were like validated, I would feel that I was, you know, that I'm good at this. And I'm, this is the right thing.

And I'm like, but we have no choice over making people buy from us. And neither should we quite honestly, uh, that goes into the realm of sleazy underhanded ways of selling. But we don't have a choice. Whether people buy from us and people don't buy from us for a million different reasons. People cancel their memberships for a million different reasons, lots of them not to do with us.

So if you're putting your worth and your value in other people, Being your affirmation that you're doing a good job or that you're validating you, that you are worth doing this, then that's a really dangerous place to put it. Because you're, you're relying on someone else's got all their own stuff going on in their head and their lives and their, whatever. You know, like I said about this one lovely lady, her husband's not being well.

The reason she's leaving is nothing to do with the membership. In fact like I said, the message she wrote, which isn't in front of me right now was lovely and very affirming of what I'm doing in that. However, it was just a circumstance that's happening in her world. And like I said, and rightly so. So if I put my value in her being in my membership and she left and I've just given that away and I'm now looking at me going 'Well, don't want me bothering anymore?'

Do you see, do you see what I'm trying to say? Like, we have to have our own power and our own value and we have to see it in ourselves. Because if we put it in someone else, they can break it. They can take it away from us. So the first thing you need to do is think about the fact of just because someone didn't buy, just because someone left, just because your competitor looks like they're doing a better job, it's a lie.

By the way, it's called Instagram. We can make things, look how we want to look. Um, but just because that's happening does not take away the value of you and your worth. You are still worth the money you want to charge. You are still, you know, good at what you do, just because that person didn't buy at that point doesn't mean that's not the case. So that's the first thing.

Another thing that helps me a bit kind of like on the more mindset side and likes to have got some practical things. Remembering why you started this in the first place. And we have a really good conversation about this in the executive club the other week. We were talking about these goals and how they want to make us feel. And we were talking about the fact of one of my goals, because I share my stuff as you know me I share was that I wanted to be paid to speak on a stage that had thousands of in-person attendees. I mean, I'm asking quite a big goal in the pandemic season, but, you know. And then I thought, why, why do I want that?

When, cause I was given this task to them to do, and I obviously, you know, play along as I'm sat there talking about it. And I was thinking to myself, well, I want to do that because I want to help lots of people and it would be good to get my message across. And then someone else got on and said, that she wants, not necessarily the same goal, but it's the same reason.

And she said, and I realized I could just go on to Instagram now and do a story and still impact people. And it hit me really hard, like, oh my goodness, that's my ego talking. That's not, if I want to help people, I can literally just turn up and help people. I can do extra podcast episodes. I can go and do an Instagram story about something.

It was my ego wanted to stand on a huge stage in front of that many people, even though I want to help people. So remembering the why, remembering what my, my goal is behind why I do this, humbles me back to actually, you can just do that now. You don't need to, I don't need to be validated by someone wanted me on a huge stage to know I know what I'm talking about or to give me the confidence to go and talk to people.

So going back to your why about why you started this, why you're doing it. And also when you're going back to your, why, think about who you're doing it for. So I think about my family. I think about my husband. I think about all the faith they put in me.

And how at times things have been a little bit riskier or a little bit more nerve wracking because I've taken a bit of a risk or I've paid out for something big, but they put their faith in me. So when I'm sat here going, I can't be bothered. Or man, I don't feel like this today. I have to remember them as a why.

And they're putting their faith in me. So I need to put my faith back in me and I need to. And that really helps me just basically get my backside and gear and go again. And then the other thing I want you to think about from a mindset point of view is how far have you come already. Like so very seldom looked back and I've had this phenomenal month of people joining my email list.

I don't know what on earth has happened, but it's been amazing. And I've had like 600 people join in a fairly short space of time, which is huge for me. And I just sat and looked at that and thought, God, I can remember the days where like I had less than 600 on my list. And the thing is like, You get used to things so quickly, and we're so hard on ourselves.

Like it needs to be more, it needs to be better all the time that we forgotten that literally six months ago, we weren't even halfway where we are now. So look back and remind yourself how far you've come and what you've done and what you've overcome already. You know, I don't want to keep hopping back to my mum dying, but you know, the fact of, I knew you done the same.

I know people who have gone through divorce, I know people who have had children. I know people who have had children that were ill. I know people who have parents that are ill and yet they've managed to keep it going. And it's like, geez, like you did that. That's amazing. And therefore, look at the strength you had.

You can do it again. So there's a few practical things that I've written down as well. So one of the first things I put down is find your squad and talk to them. So like I said, I am very lucky that one, I have lots of people in my world. I have a really supportive husband, which is great, but he doesn't always understand.

And interestingly enough, the more he's got busier in his job in what he does. The less he's had to do with mine. And at one point he was really in the business a lot and now not so much. And I find that I haven't told him as much, or I forget because there's lots of things that happen in a day. And then I forget that I've spoken to him about it. But obviously I'm very lucky that I have him, but I also am very lucky that I head up an amazing community of amazing people.

And it's always really lovely when I hear people talk about the membership and who's in there and...