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I want to end this season with something a little different. It's not a strategy or a reframe, just a thought that's really worth sitting with. Because we spend a lot of time thinking about our businesses deliberately. The planning, the deciding, the creating, the problem solving, all of that conscious, intentional effort that goes into building something. But there is another kind of building that happens underneath all of that. It's quieter and it's a lot less visible.
Sumantha McMahon (:
and I think it deserves more credit than it gets. It's the building that happens in the very small moments. And one of the most important of those moments is how you respond when things did not go to plan. I work with a lot of tutors and I want to be honest with you about something. Not everything we try works straight away. That's just the reality of building a business. You launch something and it doesn't land the way you hoped.
Sumantha McMahon (:
You try a new approach and it doesn't get the response you expected. You put real effort into something and the results are not what you work towards. And maybe you have tried multiple things and it's still not giving you the results. And in those moments, I see two very different responses. Some tutors pause, they take a breath and they get really curious. They come back to me and they say, right, let's look at this. Why do we think it didn't work? What can we learn from it? What could we do differently?
Sumantha McMahon (:
They're a bit deflated, yes, but you know, because of course they are, but they don't let the deflation become the conclusion. They just use it as a starting point. And others, the second reaction is to go quiet. They pull back. They start to wonder whether they're cut out for this, whether they did something wrong, whether the whole thing was a mistake, whether they've wasted their time and money. The thing that didn't work becomes evidence of something much bigger and much more personal.
Sumantha McMahon (:
And here's what I want you to understand. The difference between those two responses is not talent. It's not strategy. It's not even experience. It's resilience and the willingness to stay in the conversation with your business, even when the conversation gets really uncomfortable. And this is not something a business coach can do for you. I can help you analyze what's happened. I can help you think through what to try next. But that moment,
Sumantha McMahon (:
of choosing to engage rather than retreat, that has to come from you. And it is one of the most important things you can really build into your habits and into your thinking. Because the businesses that I see thrive over time are rarely the ones where everything worked first time. They're the ones where the person running them just kept showing up, kept asking questions, kept believing that a setback was information rather than a verdict.
Sumantha McMahon (:
That quality, that willingness to stay curious when things are hard is being built every single time you choose it, even when it's difficult, even when you don't feel like it. So as this season ends, I want to invite you to look back. I don't want you to think about what you didn't achieve, but at how you responded when things were hard. At the moment, you chose to stay in rather than step away because that's the business you're really building.
