There comes a point in every business owner's journey when lasting progress begins by trusting your own judgement. Learning from coaches, podcasts and experts is valuable, but constantly chasing new advice can leave you feeling stuck. Instead, choose trusted guidance, commit to a clear approach and give it time to work. Building a successful business comes from making intentional decisions and taking ownership of the direction you want to go.
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👋🏽 Hello! I'm Sumantha McMahon, and I've supported over 100 tutors and education business owners.
As a teacher 'dropout' turned professional tutor, combined with my 20+ years as a business owner, I'm in it with you! Yes, I'm qualified too :-)
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Let's talk about a particular moment that happens in most tutors' journeys. And it's it's the way that everything changes kind of once this happens. For a long time, a lot of tutors operate in a kind of waiting, waiting to be told what to do, looking outwards for the answer, the strategy, the person who will finally hand over the plan that fixes everything. They consume endlessly another podcast, another expert, another free training, another opinion.
Sumantha (:
There's nothing wrong with learning. I do it constantly. I listen to other coaches, I read widely, I listen to podcasts. I'm always taking things in. But there is a moment when something changes, and it's one of my favorite things to witness. The tutors who stop waiting from the right answer to arrive from the outside and they start trusting their own thinking, that's the moment that changes everything. they begin to arrive.
Sumantha (:
With their own ideas, their own sense of where they're going, their own authority over the business. They're not they're no longer being dragged forward by someone else and they're moving under their own steam. And I love that because I get to co-create with them. This is one of the most important things that can happen for us. Because when you do this, you move from running a business reactively, lurching from one piece of advice to the next, to designing it on purpose, from this really settled sense.
Sumantha (:
Of what you actually want with a bit of instinct thrown in there. Now, I do want to be careful because trusting your own thinking doesn't mean working it all out alone with no input from every anyone. I always have a coach or have some kind of support helping me with my business. I need that outside perspective. So that's not quite what I'm saying. We all need guidance, we all benefit from people who might be further along than us. The point is.
Sumantha (:
Not to stop listening to others. It's about how you listen and how you respond. Because here's something I've noticed. A lot of tutors taking advice from everywhere, all at once. A bit from this person, a bit from that one, a technique from a podcast, a tip from a Facebook group, a strategy from someone they admire. And then they wonder why nothing's quite working. The reason is often that they just have never properly committed to any one approach long enough to see if it works.
Sumantha (:
The advice is all mixed together, it's diluted, it's pulling in different directions. The truth is, most strategies can work and most strategies can fail. It depends almost entirely on how they're executed. A good approach, giving it a fair run with real commitment and follow through, will usually take you somewhere. The same approach, half tried alongside three others, will take you nowhere fast, and you'll blame the approach when the
Sumantha (:
Problem was actually the dilution. It was not giving it a go, not going fully in enough and being consistent. So I'm not encouraging you to figure everything out by yourself. You're not alone. I am encouraging you to choose who and what you're going to trust and then to actually commit to it, to stop gathering endless opinions and just start backing one direction. So, you know, to listen, yes, but listen.
Sumantha (:
Deliberately and to give the thing you've chosen a real chance before you go looking for the next answer. Trusting your own thinking and choosing your guides wisely are part of the same thing because both are about taking ownership of your business rather than handing it over to the loudest voice in the room. And both are how you stop drifting and you start designing.
