I explore how the word 'realistic' can limit growth and how to move past invisible fences we set for ourselves. I share personal insights and practical steps to redefine success and take actionable steps towards our goals.

____________________

👋🏽 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 :-)

My training leans on tried-and-tested methods that are completely tailored to our niche.

Work with me to breathe life into YOUR definition of success:

#1 Bespoke 1:1 Mentoring

High-touch 6-month programme for tutors who want to make their business more lucrative, in a sustainable way for the future, while protecting the impact they make.

#2 The Tutors' Mastermind

The leading membership for tutors that combines tailored training (live and recorded), a community of like-minded business owners and exclusive discounts.

This podcast is recorded using Riverside. Sign up for your account here (free plan available)

____________________

Sometimes, I share links to resources and apps that I recommend. They are all based on my experience - if I don't love them, I don't recommend them. In some cases, I earn a small commission for my recommendation, at no cost to you.

© 2024 Sumantha McMahon

I want to start with a word we treat as being pretty harmless, and I don't think it is. That word is realistic. It's very natural to bring it into the conversation when we think about goals and growth because it feels safe. We want something realistic because realistic implies it's within our reach and therefore achievable. But here's the problem: what feels realistic to us isn't based on what's actually possible, it's based on what we've seen, what we've already done. Who's around us and often what we believe we're capable of based on our circumstances. So the word realistic becomes this invisible fence around us, and that becomes a limit, or at least a limit for now.

Now, if we haven't met, I'm Samantha McMahon and I help tutors earn more without working more and build a business designed around the life they actually want. Today I'm talking about the limits we often set on our own growth. Where they come from and what to do about them. Because I've had my own versions of this many times and I didn't spot them for years. And it's such a huge part of designing a business that gives you what you want, as well as creating impact for your clients.

Now, here's the part that causes a lot of frustration. And it's why I wanted to start with this word realistic. We tend to treat hard work and growth as the same thing, as though one automatically produces the other, but it doesn't. You have to work on the right things to grow, and that part is true. But you can work incredibly hard and still stay exactly where you are because effort isn't what moves a fence, it just fills the space inside it. So you end up being busy and tired and slightly baffled about why growth isn't coming. And because effort isn't the thing that you can see, you assume the answer is more of it. And that's why you can do everything right and still feel stuck.

Now, here's one of the ways that fence gets built. You see someone else in the online world doing something big, making big money, running programs, talking about their income in a way that makes you feel excited for them. But when you apply it to yourself, it makes you feel disconnected or a bit uncomfortable. Maybe they're showing a lifestyle that looks nothing like yours. And this is where that invisible fence kicks in. Because instead of thinking I could do that, we tend to think, well, of course they can. So for example, you might be thinking they're younger, they haven't got children, they've got a partner covering the bills, they started years before me, they've got more time, more energy, more runway than I have. Or maybe they've just been really lucky. And so that thing gets filed under lovely for them, but not for me. Sometimes it's softer than that, sometimes it's just — maybe my time has passed. Now I'm not going to pretend those circumstances aren't real. They are. Your life is different from theirs. All of our lives are different, and our circumstances do place certain limits on us. Well, I'll call them limits for now. But this is exactly where it goes wrong because we take those different circumstances and we turn them into conclusions about what's possible for us. The thing we want stops being something to work towards because it becomes something for other people. And the moment that happens, we stop looking for a route towards that kind of success because we've already decided there isn't a route for someone in our situation.

So let me tell you how I've lived this. For a long time, the one-to-one work I was doing with tutors was very traditional. People could book a power hour with me or they could block book four sessions. They were each an hour. And that was it. That was the offer. And I ran it that way because it felt the most logical thing to do at the beginning.

That's what everyone does. But after a while I realized my clients needed something different. They needed more structure, they needed more depth. And I knew that I could build that out, but it would also have to come at a higher cost. And I wasn't confident that anybody would pay that. I basically decided that if I offered more and I charged more, nobody would buy it. Now I want you to notice what I did there because I think a lot of us do this. I made a decision on behalf of my clients. They never told me they wouldn't pay more. I just decided it for them. I made that assumption. So underneath that was the disconnection I've just described. When I looked at people running higher price things and programs, I couldn't see myself in them. The word program felt a bit flashy for me. It felt like a performance and it didn't feel aligned. So I just stayed where I was.

What changed it was working with business coaches who looked at what I was doing and said, just try it. Go for it. Your instinct is correct. And if it doesn't work, we've got your back. There are ways to recover. And that's the bit I want you to hear. Not that they had this clever strategy, they just held the space for me to take that risk. And so I tried it. And you know, I pay that forward with my clients. I hold space for them to take risks. I tried it and it worked straight away. But the real change wasn't actually the money, it was realizing I'd had the whole thing the wrong way around. I thought growth meant becoming someone I didn't really want to be. And it didn't. It just meant building something I was excited about, something better for my clients than what I'd been offering, that also gave me the life and future I want.

Now I talk about my one-to-one work without hesitation. I talk about the price without flinching. And it isn't because I've become a different person. It's because I've created something I really believe in, and the results speak for themselves. So the reframe was that growth just looks different for me than it looked when I compared myself to someone I felt disconnected from. And it will look different from you for you too. And that's not a consolation. That's the whole point. That's where we remove that invisible fence of what we think is realistic. Which was only ever there because it felt safe.

If you're still with me, still watching on YouTube, then it means that you want to do something about this, just like I did. So this is the part where we move the invisible fence. But before we move it, we need to prepare ourselves for it because some people get stuck even after that belief starts to move. So I'll talk about that first and then I'll tell you exactly how to move it so you can find a route towards growth that fits you. One that you feel safe in, one that feels aligned. So you can decide that something is available to you and still have no idea how to get there. And when the gap between here and there feels enormous, the brain does something very sensible. It shelves it. Again, to keep us safe, it protects us from the overwhelm, let's say.

I had a conversation recently with someone inside the tutor's mastermind. He has an offering that could become passive income. It could be sold into schools. There are so many possibilities with it. And he's had those ideas for ages. He told me that every time these ideas came up, he just shelved it. And it wasn't because he wasn't excited. It wasn't because he thought they were bad ideas. It was because the distance between where he is now and getting there felt so big that he was just overwhelmed. He didn't know where to start or which direction to choose first. So when we talked about it in one of our mastermind circles, which is the monthly Q&A that I host, we didn't talk about finishing the thing. We didn't say, right, let's turn it into passive income. We didn't map out the whole route from here to there. We just broke it into steps. So his next step just took him a little bit closer to some of those possibilities. Basically, we reverse engineered it, but without needing to decide on the final version. We just took the first step towards it being something he could scale.

So, what's the first version of this? What can it be tested with? Who can you test it with? With people you already work with, maybe? What does that give you that you can use for the next step? And that's what broke the cycle he'd been in for years. And I meet so many people who are in that cycle. Have the idea, feel overwhelmed, shelve the idea, repeat. So here's what we all have to do in that position. We work backwards from the thing we want. And then each step we take has to hand us something that we carry into the next step. It might be proof, it might be a testimonial, it might be a new version, a conversation. If a step doesn't leave you holding something for the next one, it's not really a step. It's an activity that just feels like progress. And that's exactly what our quarterly road mapping is built on. In the mastermind, every three months we review the last quarter. Work out where we want to go and importantly break it into small steps that move us a little closer.

Now I've mentioned the tutor's mastermind a couple of times, so let me tell you about it quickly because the doors close today at midnight. If you're listening later or watching later after today, you're very welcome to join the waiting list. And I always give my waiting list people early access. The mastermind is more than a traditional membership. You get everything you'd expect, the training library. A really strong community because community is at the heart of everything I do. My one-to-one clients get access to it as well. But what happens inside is a bit different. I don't deliver live training every single month. Some months I do when it's needed. This month we had Andrew and Pete from Atomicon delivering a guest session. Next month, in October, I'll be delivering live training again because the topic needs it.

But what I really facilitate is headspace and the resources to reach a particular goal. Every month there's a theme packaged up on the first of the month, so you can follow it, but you don't have to. You can do your own thing. It's built around action. We have an action lab for implementation and questions and networking. We have masterminding every month in the mastermind circle I mentioned. We have quarterly road mapping, and we're looking forward to our first in-person CEO day at the end of October. So the doors close today at midnight, and you can pay monthly cancel any time. So the minimum commitment is just a month. If you'd like to join, the link is in the show notes or go to tutorsmastermind.com. Right, let's get back to what we were talking about.

Now I want to make this useful because none of everything I've talked about matters unless you can do something with it. I've got three questions for you, and here's how it will work. I'll ask you a question, then I'll give you a bit of an explanation around it, and then I'll ask it again and prompt you to just pause the episode and really think about your answer or make some notes if you're in a position to. So are you ready?

Question one. What have you shelved because it felt unrealistic for someone like you? Now I want you to be specific here, not I'd like to grow. The actual thing, the income figure, the lifestyle, the program you want to create, the way of working you stopped thinking about because somewhere along the way you decided it wasn't for you. Identifying it is the first step because you can't move the fence if you haven't worked out where it's placed. And once you've named it, have a think about the first step you could take towards it. Not the whole staircase, just that first step. So here's that question again. What have you shelved because it felt unrealistic for someone like you? Pause the episode here, reflect on it, and if you can, write it down.

Question two. What have you decided on someone else's behalf? Remember what I told you, how I assumed my clients wouldn't pay a higher fee, and I was wrong. So think about where you've made an assumption for someone else. Then ask where the evidence to support that actually is. Don't focus on the feeling, focus on the evidence. And find one small way to test that assumption this month instead of deciding it's fixed. Just a small way. Take a little risk and just test it. So here's that question again. What have you decided on someone else's behalf? Pause the episode, have a proper think, or make a few notes.

Question three. Whose ceiling have you absorbed? Look at who you talk to most about your business. If everyone around you is working in very similar ways, at similar levels, with similar challenges, that's the ceiling you will drift towards. It happens without anyone really meaning it to. The analogy I often use is this. Say you're singing a song and you're a bit out of tune and then you play the actual track, your voice automatically tunes into what you're listening to. All of a sudden you're singing along pretty much in tune with it. The same thing happens here. You tune into the people around you the most. I make a very conscious effort, and I'm lucky to have these friends in my life, to talk about business with people who are actually way ahead of me because they remind me of what's possible. They stop my limiting beliefs from getting in the way of what I want to achieve or what I think is possible. So the action is deliberate. Get closer to tutors and business owners who are aiming higher than you, doing different things. Look at the variety of what people are doing and do it intentionally. Don't just rely on it happening organically. So here's that question again: whose ceiling have you absorbed? Pause the episode to reflect and make some notes if that helps.

Now the growth you want probably won't look like the versions you see online. It will look like yours, built around your life, your circumstances, and what you actually want from all of this. And that's a far better outcome anyway. So I hope you found this useful. Don't forget to go through those questions, pause and reflect. And if you're interested in the tutor's mastermind and being around tutors doing lots of different things, now's the time to join before the doors close tonight at midnight. If you've missed the deadline, don't worry, just go to the website tutorsmastermind.com, join the waiting list and you will be the first to know when the doors open. I'll always tell you before I tell anyone else. Thank you as always for staying with me and I'll be back on Wednesday for our short PS episode.