Today I share how I'm feeling as I navigate through a messy part of the business process: choosing not just the long-term future direction of my business, but also the short-term. It's uncomfortable, unclear, and I wish I could skip it. But I'm in it, and the only way is through.

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Have you ever heard the phrase, it's like building a plane while you're

flying it? Because that's what my business feels like right

now. I have left the ground, I'm in the air, I'm the pilot,

but I'm also the mechanic at the same time. And

I have a general sense of the direction I'm heading,

but I'm, I'm still working on the blueprint and the

path and figuring out exactly what's going on. And it, it can be a lot.

And I refer to this as the, the messy middle right now when

You are in charge of your own business and you are the one deciding

what you're doing. Uh, I don't like it

if I'm being honest, but you can't skip it. I can't

just skip over the messy part. I, I have to be in it and actually

work through it. So today's episode, I am

sharing what that actually means when I say I am

flying a plane while building it. What am I actually facing right now? Mm-hmm.

But then of course, more importantly, what do I plan to do about it? And

as you know, here on this podcast, me saying this out loud is actually

part of the process for what works. And if you are new here,

welcome. I'm Kat. On this podcast, I do share behind the

scenes. I try real-time experiments that help me to

follow through on what matters and find momentum as a speaker and

writer, but especially as one who has ADHD and actually works

better when I have a boss. But I am my own boss,

so I've gotta figure it out. And that's what we're doing here today.

Now, what is actually going on right now? So as I

shared at the opening, I do feel like I am building a plane

while I'm flying it. But another way I could say

this that I've heard other people say is that I'm working on the business

while I'm working in the business. And although

that's always gonna be the case to some degree, if you are responsible

for your own work, if you're self-employed or you run a small business,

You're always going to be figuring out what that business looks like, and it's going

to be dynamic. Things are constantly changing. But I'm

at that point in the early stages where,

let's be honest, the plane is questionable. I might be in the air, but I

am not far from the ground, and I feel like any sudden movement

could cause a crash. And there are days that I

have where I'm thinking, should I just land this thing and just do something else?

Maybe just get on someone else's plane instead of flying it on my own.

So the other way I could say it is that I just, it feels a

little bit precarious right now. Now, what does that

actually mean in plain language? So when I

think about flying the plane or working in the business, that

is me creating content, doing this podcast, running workshops,

having appearances, doing webinars. And it also

looks like doing client work because I do have some active clients.

It's also things like outreach that I share each week of

me trying to plant seeds and get out there and try and find

opportunities. Now building the plan. So actually working

on the business itself. The big thing right now is I'm

trying to decide what is the business

model, both long-term and also

short-term. But it's also because I'm still in the

earlier stages of this pivot that I've made.

I'm also exploring and experimenting because I don't have it all figured out. And

one of the ways you figure out what works is by trying things firsthand and

seeing, does this work? Is this landing? Now,

with my business model specifically, I have stated here before, and I will

state it again, that speaking is definitely a big part of this,

where I want to be in rooms, in front of groups, and

sharing my message and trying to help shift people's perspectives.

That is a really big part of what I aspire to do, and it has

been for a very long time. I remember

when I was, I think, still a university student, and I learned

that you could actually make a living as someone who speaks in front of groups.

And at the time, it was more someone introduced the idea of

being a facilitator and running workshops and helping people with

professional development. I already did that and loved that, within the

university environment. And so I knew that was something I aspired to do.

And when I first had my first engagement at a conference

in my early career, and I spoke to a group, and then they, I think

they gave me a bottle of wine from the area. And I remember thinking,

I'll consider this a form of payment. I just got compensated

to speak. And it felt so good with that experience. So that

has been a very long-time thing for me, decades. And

that's unlikely to change. The other thing is that I

am going to be publishing a book. I can

share, I think I'll share more about the book on a separate podcast because there

has been some updates with the book and the progress of the book

that I don't want to get into today, frankly.

But maybe I can do that on a, on a, an upcoming episode pretty soon.

Now in the long term, so speaking, the book, et cetera, I know that that's

part of my business model. But right now in the short term,

I do not have a clear vision of a bunch of

paid speaking engagements. It, I am still in the earlier steps

of the, the speaking component. So then I need to decide, okay,

what does my business model look like for the next, say, 3 to 6

months or even next year or 2 as I build up longer

term and knowing that you have capacity

constraints. So at the moment, for example, I have coaching clients. Um,

I also have a business client that I help on with, with Notion,

because that's something that I really enjoy doing. And frankly, I'm pretty good

at it. And that is one way that I am bringing in

some revenue, but it's not something that's necessarily consistent, but it also

has constraints. When you're working one-on-one with people, there are only so many that you

can work with. But then I've also been playing around with offers

when I'm playing around, just experimenting. So I have run a

public workshop that I did last week, and that was a

paid offering. It was $99, and people could come to the live

workshop, do the work together. And so

experimenting with that, how does that feel? But when it comes to

offers, there are sort of 2 ways that I could see this going. When I

say offers, generally for my work, I'm talking about running a workshop or

leading a session or maybe a group program where I can help multiple

people at once. And There's one direction,

which is the more B2C or straight to

consumers. And that is where I, that's what

I did last week where I opened up the doors and said, hey, here's this

immunity change workshop. You can come to it. Anyone can come to it. But then

there are also B2B or business to business where I am

maybe having, I'm getting in front of an audience of people, but I'm doing this

by working directly with the person who organizes that group. And

so I actually do have an upcoming workshop that I will be running

where I'm being paid by the person who coordinates the group

instead of individuals from that group who have to pay. So there are

different models and different ways for me to do this. And so part of this

experimentation is saying, okay, what works? What

do I like? What can I sustain? Because as I mentioned

recently, that when I think, why do I do this to myself again?

It's whenever I'm trying to go B2C, like direct to

a consumer and saying, hey, I'm running this thing, will you sign up? My

nervous system is just dialed up

so high that there, I do have that question of why do I keep doing

this to myself? Because there is a stressful component to

that, which is a different type of stress when you're

trying to work directly with people in more of like a business-to-business

context. Where I'm just trying to say, let's book a workshop

where you bring me in, you pay me, and I help everybody who, who shows

up. So those are some of the, the challenges is how do

I make sure that I've got my eye on the long term and

work towards that long-term goal while also saying, what am I doing right now?

Because I need to earn a living and this is actually my business.

And so some of my biggest challenges. that I'm facing.

One is that I have a framework that I believe can

help in so many different contexts. It can help

people in their personal life with making changes. It can help people in

their professional life. It can, it really can help

so many people, which if you know anything about entrepreneurship, you know

that that is a challenge because you're not narrowing down who exactly are you

helping. Now I know that the type of person I want to help most

is the person who does struggle to be self-directed.

They often put off their own stuff and focus on other

people's or more urgent things. And then they have this sense of, why

can't I just do the things that I care about, that I want? Because I

know personally firsthand how difficult that can be,

and I know the pain and the shame that can come along from it.

So as far as the actual person and their experience, I know

that that's the person that I want to help most. However,

what specific problem and how do I reach them?

And one of the issues that I bump up against is that some

of the other entrepreneurs, authors, creators that I admire,

they are helping so many people. You know, if you think of Atomic

Habits and James Clear, he, his book

helps countless people. It has, is one of the bestselling books across the world.

because it helps with habits, and everybody has habits, both personally and

professionally. And I want to reach a

large group of people with this perspective of understanding

the 3 different ways that you can get stuck and looking at how to overcome

those roadblocks using my momentum formula. But

should I be starting smaller, more narrow? And I have asked these questions

around for people who help a really wide array of people

with many different issues. where did they get started? Because they

probably didn't start casting a really wide net. And

so how do you start more narrow, but without also restricting myself

early on? So it's just this balancing act, and I'm not the first person to

deal with this, and I will not be the last, but it

does cause me to pause when I'm trying to make decisions

about what my business actually looks like, especially as someone who's just barely off

the ground. So I really do need to pick a flight

path. And also a, a plane blueprint. What is

the plane I actually want to be flying? And I need to try it

for long enough to see if it works. But I am

also a business owner who has ADHD, and I struggle to follow through on

my own internal expectations. But I'm also my own boss

and the buck stops with me. And so I am ultimately

responsible, and that is one of the challenges. It's also why I do this

podcast because I am not self-directed. I

do struggle to follow through on my own things. And so that's why I'm actively

experimenting with what works and I'm saying it publicly in

this forum so that I have that level of

accountability of saying it out loud to other people, because that does

actually help me. As for the, what am

I going to do about it? Because I don't want to just come on here

and complain and say, these are all the things that are stressing me out. I'm

in the messy middle. I have to make a decision about what that

means. So first and foremost, I am going to take advantage of

resources I already have access to. I've mentioned a

couple times, I think, in recent episodes that I joined

a community that is run by my friend Jessica Lackey,

and it's called Deeper Foundations. Now I initially, and I've said to

her, the attractiveness for me is that she has

accountability and coworking sessions for specific things. Like

on Mondays, there are calls specifically for outreach to make

sure that you're constantly staying connected to people and that that is a thing you

are not delaying in your business or that you're making it a priority to

network, outreach, et cetera. Having those detailed sessions or

those specific sessions for things that I tend to put off is very

important to me. However, within that that

membership, she also has incredible content. And

I have read her book called Leaving the Casino. And the whole

basis or kind of the foundation of the book is that when you

are starting your own business, especially creating a business online,

it is, you are bombarded by all of these

messages about, oh, you should do this and this and this. And everyone's got

these promises of riches. If you only do this, then you will have

success. And look at this amazing story. And it is very,

it's like being in a casino where it's just all of this promise of riches

and people are trying to grab your attention over here, play this game, play this

game. So this leaving the casino concept is you

have to figure out what kind of business you are running, and then you have

to put on some blinders and just stay focused on the actual business you're

running and work on techniques that work for that business

and not for every other possibility, because there are so many ways.

to run a business online. And if you don't know, you are

constantly going to be pulled in all these different directions. The

other thing that I am going to do is actually read a

book that I just picked this up from the library. This is called The Long

Game by Dori Clark. And actually I had the

opportunity to see Dori speak at an event last November. It was,

it was about running a sustainable business. And

I really appreciated her talk so much. There were some things that really landed with

me. And this idea of the long game of what do you pay

attention to when you are building something out and you don't know if it

works yet. So what are sort of these leading

measures that you can look for? What are the little, little

evidence that maybe you're in the right direction? Because it can feel like you are

just building in the dark and have no idea if

you are even headed in the right direction, but you need to give it a

try for a little while. You can't just, you not try anything. So I

haven't started yet. I literally just picked it up a couple days ago. The

other thing I find that's helpful when I'm in this kind of mess, this

messy part, and it has worked in the past for me, is asking a

question inspired by the former CEO of

Intel, Andy Grove. I believe he's the former CEO. And

he asked this question, you know, if we had a new CEO who came in

tomorrow and they were in charge of running this business, what

changes would they make? And I think this is a really, really

rich question because as soon as you look at your business from

the eyes of an outsider and what would they do differently,

you can usually address some of the more obvious things of, well, okay,

it's clear that I got to change this part of my business. However, I

don't want to ask that question just yet. I am first

going to work through a lot of the questions that I already have access to

in the Deeper Foundations membership. And work through

that slowly. And this is also embracing the whole concept from

Jessica's book around, you know, you have so much advice, so

just kind of narrow it. I don't want to be skipping between, okay, this person's

idea, this person's idea, this person's idea. I just want to

ask some really important questions about what is the business that I want

to run and that works well for me. And also just once you

understand the business you're actually running, Then I make decisions around

that, and then I think it's appropriate to ask the CEO question

that I have. Um, the other part that's really important right now

during this messy middle is that I need to be patient with

myself and just know that this

is kind of sticky. I might feel like it's a really tough slog. It does

feel like that. I do feel like that right now. And

this won't be this way forever. Yes, I will always

be keeping my mind overall on the business,

but there will be moments where it is a bit more stable, where I have

figured out something and I need to trust the process.

And that's what I'm trying to do. So speaking

of trusting the process, let's go to the tracker and see how

things are going with my monthly tracking. We're in a new month. I

recapped last week how the month of August went. So let's take a look

now at September so far. Keeping in mind that

I did embrace the Labor Day long weekend that we just

had here in North America, where Monday was a holiday, and I said, yeah,

I'm taking this. I am going to actually fully relax.

And so for September, my posting, so my overall

monthly posting goal is 25 posts. And so

far in September, I have 6. So I'm 24% of the

way towards that goal. And then if we look at outreach,

outreach is a little slower and that's because Monday is my outreach day and I

took off Monday. And for my outreach goal

for the month is 25 for outreach. And so far I've

had 1 outreach. Now I have had some inbound and

some of that is coming out of, coming out of the fact that I do

talk about this more and I am putting myself out there more. So I actually

do have a conversation this week about a speaking opportunity.

If that gets booked, then I can add it to my tracker under outreach

results, which as of right now for September, I've had one

appearance that was last week. And then I have not officially

booked any speaking gigs yet, but after the conversation, hopefully I can

add at least one to it and we'll continue to, to add

there. And for my outcome tracker,

which for September, the number of people I've spoken to in an

audience, so a countable number of people. Is

111. Last week was a great week for getting in front of people.

And then so far, 15 new subscribers to my

newsletter since the start of the month. And so

overall, 126 is the, the total

count so far for September. And so it is nice to

see, see those numbers and that tracker, and I will

continue to kind of keep that updated on the progress. It does

every week, but when I prep for this podcast and I fill it

out, it does remind me, yeah, I am,

I'm using public accountability. I am sharing out loud what I am

doing and I am feeling, I am feeling good about it.

Even in spite of this kind of messy middle, this

trying to figure out what, what works, what I wanna do long-term.

These are not easy questions, but they're really important questions.

And the last thing I'll say to the important questions part

is that I really, for me, it's important to have

physical space and mental space to ask these questions

and answer them. So it's often pen on paper, sitting

by a window, maybe going to my favorite cafe, and just having

that time and space to work on it. And also, I think

protecting time for me to work through

questions that are guided, like the Deeper Foundations work that I

plan to do. So that needs to have a small, simple plan

of, okay, space in the calendar. When am I working on that?

And luckily, because this is something that I joined recently and Jessica

does calls with everyone who joins, I do have a call on the calendar with

Jessica, which helps me to also prepare knowing, okay, we're going to be on a

call. And so these are some of the things I want to work through.

However, I'm also debating whether I see if there's

anyone else in the Deeper Foundations community who might be

interested. If maybe they've been putting off going through the course

material, maybe we could start up a little— you know, I love an

accountability group and I love a pop-up group, so I might see if

anyone else is interested in that. So those are the things I

am trying right now as I figure out to try and keep this

plane in the air. And not nosedive

into the ground. And I know that sounds very dramatic, but there

are days where it kind of feels that way. There are

stakes to this. This really, really matters to me, and I don't wanna mess it

up, but I also know I'm going to hit some bumps. It's gonna be

rocky. There's gonna be some turbulence, but I'm still gonna keep showing up.

I'm gonna keep sharing my message so that I can follow through on what

matters and build momentum as a speaker and writer.