Latest / Limitless Living with Fredricka Davis / 066: What to Do When Business Gets Hard: 5 Steps to Find Your Next Right Move

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066: What to Do When Business Gets Hard: 5 Steps to Find Your Next Right Move · Limitless Living with Fredricka Davis

• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever had one of those moments in business when something happens and for a minute you think, oh my gosh, I have no idea what I'm gonna do?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've had one of your key employees leave, or a client gets angry with you, or sales suddenly slow down, or you've got unexpected emergency expenses, something that lands right smack in your lap, and maybe something you've spent months on creating and you launch it and it just does not sell the way you thought it would.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: These are those moments when your emotions are really high, your mind is racing, and parts of you just want to fix everything immediately.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And another part of you wants to crawl back in bed, pull the covers up, and pretend nothing is happening.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever experienced that?
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I call these the big girl panty moments of business.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And boy, I've had more than my share of them.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not because I'm telling you you should ignore your feelings in that moment necessarily or slap a fake smile on your face and push through at any and all cost.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: But there are those moments when you have to let yourself be human and then muster the energy to find a way toward the next right move.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm giving you five practical steps to help you do exactly that.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome back to the Limitless Living Podcast.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is for women who are ready to feel better, live more fully, and create success without losing themselves in the process.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Freddie Davis, and on Tuesdays, we talk about sustainable success.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: We talk about building businesses, careers, and lives that can grow without requiring us to sacrifice our health, our relationships, or who we are along the way.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Today, what I want to talk about is what to do when business gets hard.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I learned something about hard moments very early in life.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this was when I was six, and my daddy died suddenly.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: At that time, my mom, who was still recovering from cancer, she was left with the two of us on a 17-acre farm with 11 horses and ponies.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Responsibilities were endless.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can just imagine.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there was no plan for how she was going to manage it all on her own.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: She was recuperating from cancer at the time.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: They never planned for him to die first.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: They always thought it was going to happen.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: It would be her, and they planned for that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: So I watched her cry.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm six, picture it.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I watched her cry and cry and cry.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I watched her scream at God, question God, look up at the sky and scream and question and beg to my dad and to God.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I watched her talk to my dad in heaven and tell him that she just did not know how she was going to go on, how she was supposed to do this without him.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then I watched her begin to pull herself together and figure out what had to happen next.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that does not mean that she stopped grieving.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: My mom, she pretty much grieved until the day she died at almost 99.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a lot of years.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm a person that does not believe we just get over grief.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just believe that we learn to carry it with us in a different way as we move forward.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: So that's for another podcast.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: But when I watched her figuring these things out and navigating her way at the same time as she was grieving, it did not mean she was becoming all of a sudden fearless.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: It really didn't mean that everything was fine.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was pretty awful, to be honest.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: It meant that after the crying and the fear and the disbelief, there was still a child to care for, animals to feed, bills to pay, and decisions to make.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: She had to begin somewhere.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: And this was probably my first experience of what I now call a big girl panty moment, if you will.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't think of it back then like that, but as I look back to see where I've gotten this ability to put the big girl panties on in those situations, it started there.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes life gives you time to prepare for the hard stuff.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: However, almost all too often it does not.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you get to carefully consider your options and talk to five people and sleep on everything and develop a beautiful plan.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: But there are those other times that life drops something completely directly in your lap and says, okay, what are you going to do now?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: Business does this too.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: The truth about pushing through is what I want to talk about.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: We hear a lot of conflicting advice about what strong women should do when things get hard.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: One message tells us to push through, work harder, stay positive, do more, never let anybody see you struggle.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: Make it look easy.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know I can relate to that.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Can you relate to that?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yet there's another that's telling us that we should never push through anything and that every difficult feeling means we need to stop and process that feeling.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: I do not believe, nor do I teach, that either of these extremes serves us particularly well.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: In my experience with myself, my life, watching my mother, and with my clients.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: It just doesn't serve you well when you are living too long on either side of this.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: There are moments, though, I have to say, when we do need to push through.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: If payroll is due, a client is waiting, or an immediate problem threatens your business, there may be something that genuinely needs to be handled, even though you're tired, disappointed, scared, or just plain upset and fed up.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is part of leadership.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: But pushing through a moment is different from building an entire business around constantly overriding yourself to push through.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can do what needs to be done without pretending it does not affect you.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can be responsible without abandoning yourself.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can have a human response and then follow it with a strategic response.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is not that we occasionally push through.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: The problem comes when pushing through becomes the only way we know how to operate or simply habitual because we've gotten good at it.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's when everything begins to feel urgent, and we react instead of responding, and we make decisions from fear.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: We try to fix five problems all at once and often create three more in the process.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Have you done that?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, what do you do instead of this?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you five steps today that can help you find your next right move when you're in a moment like this.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, let yourself react.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Your first response does not have to be polished, productive, or strategic.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, notice I didn't say overreact, but I did say react.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're human, you're allowed to have emotions, and it will serve you to feel them, acknowledge them, and work with them versus burying them.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to be disappointed, you're allowed to be angry, you're allowed to cry.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: You are allowed to say, I cannot believe this is happening.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: You are a human being before you are a business owner.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to immediately suppress your reaction does not necessarily make it disappear.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: And doing that repeatedly and burying things, that's when things start to come out sideways, or they just keep resurfacing and resurfacing.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: It might come out in the email you send too quickly.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It might come out in the way you speak to an employee, it might even show up as a sudden urge to cancel an entire order, lower all your prices, spend money you do not have, or make some other dramatic decision because you want relief from the discomfort and you want it now.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself somewhere appropriate to have the reaction.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Plan to do this ahead of time.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: As we're talking about this today, I want you to be thinking, okay, if you've had these moments and you can relate to this, then you know you are likely to have another one at some point.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're human, if you're dealing with people, if you're in a service business, if you are doing almost anything, honestly, in the world these days, you're going to have a moment like we talked about at some point where it's hard and you're reacting.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: So think about how you can handle it, how you can step away for five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, go into your office, close the door, take a walk, call someone you trust, invent, write down everything you want to say before deciding what actually needs to be said.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now, before something like this happens, I want you to have an idea of how you might be able to handle it, to process it, to acknowledge those feelings, and then come back to it.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Work with the time you have, but give yourself permission to be a person inside the experience.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, step number two, I want you to separate the facts from the fear.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: Once the initial wave has passed, ask yourself two questions.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, what do I know?
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, what am I afraid this means?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Those answers are often very different.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: The fact might be that you had three clients canceled this week.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you know.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: The fear, what are you afraid this means?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: The fear might say in your head, oh, business is failing and nobody wants what I offer, and I'm never going to make enough money.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or the fact might be that one of your employees gave notice.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: That is what you know.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: What you're afraid this means, the fear might say, I'll never find anyone else.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone always leaves.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to have to do everything myself.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Or we'll use another example.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: The fact might be, what you know is that your launch did not reach the sales goals you had.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: The fear is going to come right behind that and say, oh, this offer is terrible.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm terrible at marketing.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: I should give up on the entire idea.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to start from scratch and do something entirely new.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Our brains are very good at turning one difficult event into a prediction about the rest of our lives.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: But before you make a decision, put the facts on paper.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's the what do I know?
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: What are the actual numbers?
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: What has been said?
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: What has not been said?
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: What do you know for certain?
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And what are you assuming?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And don't dismiss your intuition on this.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Your instincts may be telling you something important, but intuition and fear are not always the same thing.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, they're often not the same thing.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Facts give you something solid to work with versus fear.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Fear makes you react.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at the facts helps you act.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: So step three is identify what actually requires your attention right now.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: When we feel threatened, everything can begin to look urgent.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: And it's usually not.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself what must be handled this moment?
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: What must be handled today?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: What needs attention soon, but maybe not today, or maybe not this minute.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: What can wait until I have more information?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: What might not need to be handled at all?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Let's say an employee unexpectedly resigns.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: What requires your attention now might be confirming her final day, protecting the appointments already on the schedule, communicating with the clients directly affected.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: You probably do not need to redesign your entire staffing structure or rewrite every job description, hire the first person who applies, and decide what this means for the next five years all before dinner when these things happen.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you need to take a breath, look at the facts, and then decide.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself the questions I listed.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: If your sales are down, today's priority may be looking at the actual numbers and identifying the size of the gap.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: You may need to contact prospective clients or send an email or promote an immediate opening or follow up on some unpaid invoices.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: You probably don't need to create four new services, uh, three new discounted offers, change your entire brand, buy a new marketing program, and rebuild your website all this weekend.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's fear reaction.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So solve the problem that is actually in front of you based on the facts.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Do not exhaust yourself solving every possible version of the problem your fear can come up with.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because boy, fear could invent all sorts of things.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Step four, choose the next right move.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_00: Once you know what it is that requires your attention, ask yourself this.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: What is the next action that would make this situation slightly better or safer or clearer or more stable?
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily perfect, not even necessarily completely resolved, just better than it is right now.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: What can you do with one next action to make it better, move you in the right direction?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Your next right move might be taking just one phone call.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It might be looking at your bank account, it might be apologizing, it might be setting a boundary or asking for help, or contacting three people who you know have already expressed interest to work with you.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: It might be simply that you decide you will not respond to what's going on until the next day, giving yourself the time you need to process it, digest it, sleep on it, and come back fresh and renewed.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And a next right move doesn't have to be big.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: It is often small enough to complete, but meaningful enough to change the situation, even if it's only slightly.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: This really matters because when business gets hard, we often try to develop this full recovery plan before we have processed the feelings, had the reaction, gathered our senses, you know, all the facts, and come up with the next first step and gotten clear on how we were going to move forward with whatever is in front of us.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And clarity, it really frequently comes through movement.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll give you an example.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: My wellness center, Massage Wellness and Beyond, had been in a location for 13 years.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we really liked the location, but the old owner sold, new owners came in, things changed.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when it was time for us to renew our lease, the second go around, we were a little sideswiped when they chose not to renew the lease.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they've repurposed the space when this happened.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was not a real long lead time here.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: They gave us the bare minimum 60-day notification.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to move a business, if you have never moved a business, can be pretty tricky, especially if you have a business that requires a certain setup, such as a spa does or a wellness center does.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And you've got two months to find a place, build it out, find the money to build it out, and uh doing all this over November and December, the busiest months, the two busiest months in the entire year for your business and for your family and for your life.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And during a winter where we had some of the most frigid cold temperatures and some snow.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: We don't always have that.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: This was pretty daunting.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I talked earlier about walking away, stepping away, taking that moment if you need it in the beginning of a crisis.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: So when this happened, I have this maximum 72-hour window for big, devastating events or big challenges, we'll call them.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Whether it's a massive breakup or a challenge like this was presenting.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, don't get me wrong, it doesn't mean you're not feeling whatever you're feeling long after that.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: But this is kind of my max window that I will allow myself to wallow or feel defeated or think, geez, what the hell am I going to do?
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And usually it's quicker than that, but for the really big ones, it can be a couple of days.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I allowed myself that for this.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, oh my God, what am I going to do?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is my livelihood.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: My family relies on this.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: My clients rely on this, my team relies on this.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Where, oh my gosh, where are we ever going to go?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: And as a small business recuperating from coming out of the pandemic, being shut so long with no income.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: This was a tricky period.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: Any other time might not have been quite so unnerving.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I allowed that.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: I allowed that moment.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a couple of days where I cried, I got angry, I felt like somebody had just kicked me in the gut again and thought, wow, what in the heck am I ever going to do?
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then I had to sit down and look at all the facts.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: I had to look at all the numbers.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I had to look at all the facts.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I had to look at where we needed to be.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had to look at the radius.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I had to look at how many rooms do we need.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: Blah, blah, blah, right?
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: You get the picture.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at all of the facts, just like I'm describing to you when you're faced with something in your business.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then I decided, okay, what's my first right step?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: What will help me to do this first as I'm regrouping?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm still seeing a whole host of clients.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've got my coaching clients.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a busy schedule.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: This was not in my game plan to be going around hunting for places.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing I did was call a real estate agent.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I cannot do this alone this time.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot find the perfect place.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I so I called a couple of trusted real estate agents because I knew I needed help.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So that was my next right move.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: My next right first move.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then I continued on from there, solved the problem, and we were moved out on time in an actually fantastic space, better than before.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: So everything happens for a reason.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: But there is an example for you.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: As I'm talking about these things, I promise you, these are things that I have lived through, these moments that you might have.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: And some of them are littler than that.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: It might be an employee that doesn't work out who leaves or changes their career or whatever.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever the problem is, you don't have enough revenue coming in this month, whatever it is.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: The steps are still the same.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And this is how you begin creating your way forward through whatever it is that you're going through.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, step five is going to be looking for the lesson after the crisis passes.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: This step happens after the immediate situation gets settled.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do not force yourself to find the blessing while you're standing in the middle of the fire.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not going to happen.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard, and I've tried, it's a challenge.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you can, but it is a challenge.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: But once you get to the point where you can breathe again, you can take a breath and look back.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's when you want to ask yourself what made this situation harder than it needed to be?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Was there a warning sign that I ignored?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes there will be and sometimes there won't be.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no right Wrong to this.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: This is just you gathering information with these questions.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: Was I relying too heavily on one employee or one client or one offer or one source of revenue?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Was I missing a system?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is that part of the problem?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do I need more systems?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Did I avoid a conversation for too long?
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Did I say yes when I already knew the answer should have been no?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: What support would have made this easier?
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: What do I want to have in place before something like this happens again?
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, these are all great questions.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put them in the show notes.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to hop on over, you can grab them in the show notes.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose is not to blame yourself here.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is simply you gathering information.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes hard things happen even when you have done everything right, everything responsibly.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes things happen.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like I had no control over them not wanting to renew the lease because they had a different plan for the space.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose is to let the experience make the business stronger in the future.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe you need to have a bigger emergency fund.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need written procedures.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need to have a clearer cancellation policy.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you need to stop holding information that someone else on your team should have.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need to train your team better.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you need to train your team better.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Or have another source of revenue instead of being reliant on only one.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you need relationships with people you can call before you are in a crisis.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: People who you would respect their answers and maybe have lived through things themselves.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Cultivate those relationships.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe this lesson is just more personal for you, and you're realizing that you have a tendency to wait until everything is falling apart before you're asking for help.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you have a tendency to procrastinate and you're creating some of the reason things are falling apart.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you are learning that you make every business disappointment means something about your worth as a person.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Not true, by the way.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you're the one that everybody else turns to in their emergencies.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you're always calm, you've always got great answers.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: But the moment you have an emergency, you have nowhere to go when you need the support.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is important information, too, as you're going through this.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want to give you a realist example here.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine you have spent weeks creating a workshop, you've chosen a topic, made the graphics, written the emails, and told yourself this is going to be the thing that brings in new clients.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Registration opens and almost nobody signs up.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Your first reaction might be embarrassment or disappointment.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's anger or panic.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let yourself have that response, but then separate the facts from the fear.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: The fact is that the registration is low.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: The fear says nobody wants your work and the entire offer is a failure.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now, is that really true if you've got some people who did?
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Next, identify what requires attention right now.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have enough time to personally reach out to people and invite them?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: Does the message need to become clearer?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Could you speak directly to the women who have already shown interest?
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there a reason to continue or change the date or cancel?
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you gather your information and then choose the next right move.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps ask yourself, how did they sign up?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: They signed up by talking to me directly in person.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: So that's information that's helpful for you.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe you go and you talk to five other people and give them personal invitations and explain it instead of creating just another graphic, right?
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: You reach out because that's your next right move.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then after the workshop, look at the lesson.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Was the offer not communicated well enough?
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Did you rely on only posting instead of actually inviting people?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Was the topic too broad?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Did you give enough time?
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Did your audience understand the result that the workshop would help them create?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Now that is more of a strategic response.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: It allows you to learn without using one disappointing result as evidence that you should quit.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell you, I've had workshops that I've run where I just kind of ran out of time to do as much of the proper outreach and marketing as I should or could have had I given myself a little bit more lead time or booked it into my schedule a little bit better, where I still wound up with people, but it wasn't a packed out the door event.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where we learn.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where next time you know, okay, I need a little bit more of that.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you change your strategy, figuring out your next first steps, the ones that are the right ones that are going to move it, even if it's just a little bit in the right direction.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: There is no version of entrepreneurship in which nothing goes wrong.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: There just isn't.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: People leave, technology will fail, expenses will appear, good ideas sometimes underperform.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: You make mistakes, other people will make decisions you cannot control.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is not to become so strong that nothing affects you.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: The goal is to become steady enough that what affects you does not automatically control your next decision.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: There is a difference between reacting and remaining stuck in the reaction.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a difference between pushing through one necessary moment and pushing yourself past your limits for months or years on end.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: And a difference between having a hard season in business and deciding that the hard season defines you as a business owner.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's okay to cry first.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's okay.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: You can get angry, you can take a breath, you can pray, you can journal, you can call someone, walk around the block, or sit quietly for a few minutes.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Then you can look at what is true.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Decide what needs your attention and take that next right step.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to see the entire path to begin moving again.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: So before we close today, I want you to think about something that feels hard in your business right now.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And then I want you to ask, what are the facts?
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: What am I afraid those facts mean?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: What genuinely needs my attention now?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: What is one next right move I can take?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And when this immediate pressure has passed, what might this experience be here to teach me?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Write those questions down.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Return to them whenever your business starts to feel bigger than you can handle.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because you are stronger than you think and you can get through it.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode spoke to you, I would love to continue the conversation with you inside my free Facebook group, Limitless Living for Women Who Are Becoming.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's a space for honest conversations about all things wellness, identity, creating business, and so on.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: You can find the link in the show notes, visit Fredericadavis.com or connect with me on Facebook and say hello.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know another woman in business who is facing one of her own big girl panty moments right now, send this episode to her.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we don't need someone to fix everything for us.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: We simply need someone to remind us that we are allowed to feel what we feel and that we are still capable of taking the next step.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: So until next time, be rooted, be resilient, and be limitless.