In this episode, I highlight the importance of checking in with your own thinking before seeking external advice.
You already have valuable insight. By trusting your instincts and bringing your perspective into conversations, you get more from the support around you.
____________________
👋🏽 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:
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.
The leading membership for tutors that combines tailored training (live and recorded), a community of like-minded business owners and exclusive discounts.
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.
I want to ask you something. When you are faced with a decision in your business, what's the first thing you do? For a lot of tutors, the answer is to look outward, to search for the answer somewhere outside of themselves, a podcast, a course, a conversation with someone else asking in a Facebook group. And I'm not saying that's wrong. Getting external perspective is really valuable. Having someone in your corner who can see your business clearly from the outside is genuinely
Sumantha McMahon (:
one of the most useful things you can invest in. But I think there is something that needs to happen before all of that, which a lot of us skip over. And that is the moment of checking in with ourselves first. Because here's what I notice, both with the tutors I work with, and actually I noticed this in myself, we often already know more than we give ourselves credit for. We have experience, we have instincts that have been sharpened by years of working with clients.
Sumantha McMahon (:
We even have a sense, even if it's a quiet sense of what is and what isn't working. But we have got so used to looking for external validation before we trust our own thinking that we bypass that knowledge almost automatically. So I want to be clear, I'm not talking about going it alone. I genuinely believe that having the right support around you, someone who can challenge your thinking and to help you see your blind spots and hold you accountable
Sumantha McMahon (:
It makes an enormous difference. And that's not something you can fully replicate by yourself. That's why I have a business coach, for instance. What I'm talking about is something slightly different. It's the habit of reaching for an answer before you have sat with a question. Because sometimes the most useful thing you can do before you seek input from anyone else is to ask yourself what you actually think. Not what should you think, not what the advice you read last week told you to think.
Sumantha McMahon (:
It's what you, with everything you know about your business and your clients and your own goals, what you actually think. And then bring that thinking into the conversation, whether that's with a mentor, a coach, peer, a group, because the tutors who get the most from external support are rarely the ones who arrive empty handed, waiting to be told what to do. They're the ones who arrive with their own thinking already forming, and they use the conversation to just sharpen it.
Sumantha McMahon (:
That version of you, the one who trusts your own instincts enough to lead with them, isn't someone you need to become because you're already there. You already are that person. You just need to give yourself a bit more airtime.
