But I didn't feel like working. I felt lazy. I was like,
why everyone else around me is working so hard, why can't I just do
the thing. But I'm learning that some seasons i will want to work on
my business and I'll be super productive, and then other seasons I'm not as
productive and I will try and just do the bare minimum, And both of
these are okay, though I am still working toward that end goal of just
as much balance as possible. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor.
For years, I read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and
did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect action that
my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect action is about doing things
before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even
when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this show, you can
expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips, and strategies to build a business that
brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy. Are you
on the list to get my daily businesses? Every day, I'll send you
a bite sized prompt designed to help you grow your business in a more Intentional
Way. Sign up at Steph taylor dot Co, forward slash DBB, or
at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to In Perfect
Action. This is episode seven hundred and forty one. Today I'm reflecting a
little bit on twenty twenty three. I know we've still got a couple of
weeks left of the year, but I I guess this is the kind of
the time of the year when I start to take my foot off the pedal
a bit everyone else does as well. And then going into the next couple
of weeks, we'll be sharing some best of twenty twenty three episodes, so
if you missed them the first time around, you can go back and listen
to them when they pop up again in your feed. But today I'm sharing
a couple of lessons that I learned this year so that you don't have to.
And I know that when I say that, it's like I can tell
you the lessons, but a lot of the time when you when you hear
them, it's not quite the same thing as when you actually learn them yourself
the hard way. There've been so many times when I've heard the lesson,
I've read the lesson, and I'm like yeah, yeah, yeah, of
course, and then the situation appears in front of you and I go to
apply the lesson and it's almost as if I didn't know it. So sometimes
you do have to learn them the hard way. But today I'm going to
share a couple of them in the hopes that it helps for you as well.
So lesson number one, Your business operates within an ecosystem, and you
can't control everything, so you just need to focus on what is within your
control instead. So we recently launched a group strategy Intensive which was going to
run through December, and a lot of people showed interest, but only one
person signed up, and I obviously reached out. I wanted to know why
were you interested but you're not signing up? And the feedback from that was,
well, there's just too much else going on right now. I can't
come to the live calls. And here's the thing. I can't control what
is going on in everyone's lives right now and in their businesses right now.
But I can control where I put my time, my energy, my focus,
and I could focus on freaking out about the fact that nobody bought and
I could be like, ugh, this means my business is doomed everything's going
to fail, or I could accept Okay, great, this is where they
are choosing to spend their time right now, or this is what their other
priorities are right now. I can't control that, so I'm going to instead
put my time and energy and attention on the launch of our membership that's happening
next year. Right So, I have this post it note on my computer
screen that says what is in my control, and it's a nice little reminder
whenever you get into that stressing about something that you can't control, instead just
shift it back to the things that are in your control, because it's a
waste of time to focus on things that are out of your control. We
can spend so much time and energy trying to control things that were never within
our control. Anyway, especially in our businesses, there is so much that
is not within our control. For example, the Instagram algorithm, whether somebody
buys from us, how much your Facebook ads are costing, because sometimes they
go up and they go down. Right, There's so much that is outside
of our control, and it's just exhausting and demotivating to focus on the things
that we can't actually influence. Number two lesson number two, The only certainty
is uncertainty. So learned to embrace the unfolding of your business and your life
as an adventure. This one's been a big one for me and realizing you
don't always have to know how everything turns out. There's a beautiful quote that
I love that I also have stuck on my computer screen, and that is
what are what grows without needing to know what it will bloom into. And
we want to know what's going to happen because we are attached to certainty.
We're attached to it being a certain way, and if it's not that certain
way that we want it to be, then we think we're going to be
unhappy, or we end up making ourselves feel unhappy, make ourselves selfer unnecessarily
because it's not what we wanted. Whereas the concept of non attachment is being
okay with it not going the way that you want it to and just trusting
that it's going to unfold as it should. There's never really any certainty anyway,
right, We never can be certain about anything. And if we did
know exactly how life would turn out, then how boring would everything be?
It wouldn't be very fun, Okay, less than number three. The reason
you are overthinking is because you are trying to solve a problem without the facts.
So either you need to go and get the fact or you need to
shift to focus. Most problems, especially in your business, cannot be solved
by overthinking, But yet we try so hard to. We think that if
we can just think about it some more, then the answer will come to
us. But most of the time we need a little more information before we
can get that answer, and thinking more and more and more probably around the
same thought loop, the same spiral that's not going to give us the information
that we are missing. For example, one that comes up a lot with
my students is they'll say, well, I want to create an online course,
but I need to think a little bit more about how best to structure
it for my students. But you're missing information in this case, like where
your students might get stuck, or where they might need extra support, or
what questions they might have, And you're only going to get this information by
actually starting to teach it the first time. A way to get those facts
would be to teach it live and then get feedback from the students, watch
what questions they ask and tweak the content before you then go and spend all
of this time recording all of the lessons and the modules. Lesson number four.
The solution probably isn't to do more or add more. And look,
this is a lesson that I keep continually having to learn. I'm not sure
if I've completely learned this one yet, because it is just so easy to
keep piling more things on, adding new things, doing more things in your
business, and then you wonder why there is just so much on your plate
and you're feeling exhausted. So instead of always adding more, sometimes we can
do a little bit less, less but better. And some of the best
businesses that I've seen are the ones that do a couple of things, sometimes
even just one thing really really really well, so less but better. Number
five. If you can keep doing more, you will probably burn out.
So I've been very guilty of doing the same thing that I see many of
my students doing, which is, you know, you have this period of
motivation where you're just wanting to work on your business day and night. Everything's
going well. You're doing more, more, more and more more, and
then you get a little bit exhausted, and that's followed by period of demotivation
and you don't want to do anything, And I think the goal here is
to balance those ebbs and flows as much as possible. But this also does
lead me into less than number six, which is roll with the seasons of
your business and your energy. You're not always going to have those seasons where
you have so much energy and you want to work really hard on everything,
and likewise, you're gonna have seasons when you just don't want to work,
and those will pass naturally. I used to feel so much guilt and shame
when I didn't want to work on my business, when I didn't feel like
working, I felt lazy. I was like, why everyone else around me
is working so hard, why can't I just do the thing? But I'm
learning that some seasons I will want to work on my business and I will
be super productive, and then other seasons I'm not as productive and I will
try and just do the bare minimum, and both of these are okay,
though I am still working toward that end goal of just as much balance as
possible. And then lesson number seven. There is always a lesson in the
things that you want to avoid. It's really easy to look for the lesson
that confirms the things we already know, because that feels really comfortable. But
it's not quite as easy to look for the lesson in the things that we
don't want to face. And I'm starting to learn that the lessons or the
things I want to avoid are the things that I need to lean into the
most. And even just asking the question why am I trying to avoid this?
What am I really avoiding? What is this here to teach me?
Is a huge, huge question to reflect on, because avoiding things doesn't make
them go away, And in my experience, the problems just get bigger and
bigger and bigger until you can't avoid them anymore. So the sooner that you
can learn that lesson face the thing that you are avoiding, the easier it's
going to be, and then hopefully it won't show up again. So there
you have it. Seven little lessons that I learned in twenty twenty three.
If you have learned anything from this show so far, please take thirty seconds
to leave a quick writing and a review. I read every single one of
them. It means a lot to me when you do. Thank you so
much for listening. Catch you next time.