Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #46| How To Make Quick Progress & Stop Procrastinating Using Time Management & Mindfulness
Transcript
- 0:04Michelle Gauthier: Hey, I'm Michelle Gauthier and you're listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 0:09Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for joining Overwhelmed Working Woman.
- 0:13Michelle Gauthier: Today, I have a guest with me, Sarah Arnold- Hall.
- 0:17Michelle Gauthier: Sarah is a coach as well, and she helps entrepreneurs who have trouble procrastinating get things done and meet their goals.
- 0:26Michelle Gauthier: She has a special place in my heart, and this is a full circle moment, because I was in her coaching program and the whole thing that I focused on was starting a podcast.
- 0:35Michelle Gauthier: So thank you, Sarah, for the way that you helped me to get this podcast out there in the world, and I thought you would be a great resource for our audience of Overwhelmed Working Women.
- 0:45Michelle Gauthier: So thanks for joining us.
- 0:47Sarah Arnold Hall: Thank you for having me.
- 0:48Sarah Arnold Hall: It's so fun to be here on the real life podcast that you created.
- 0:52Michelle Gauthier: That's right, that you heard all about before it was even a thing.
- 0:55Michelle Gauthier: I just have to share for fun, because we have lots of US listeners that Sarah is in New Zealand.
- 1:02Michelle Gauthier: It is summer, she's wearing a tank top right now - we're on video - I'm wearing a sweater and she's wearing a tank top and it's also - is it like noon on Wednesday?
- 1:11Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, that's right.
- 1:12Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, and it's Tuesday at 5 pm, so it's dark here where I am in the Midwest in the US.
- 1:18Michelle Gauthier: So just had to share that fun fact with you.
- 1:20Michelle Gauthier: But here we are, connecting like we're next door to each other.
- 1:23Michelle Gauthier: So good, yes, so great that we have that option.
- 1:26Michelle Gauthier: So tell us a little bit about - because I think most of the women who are listening to this podcast are people who get a lot of things done and do a lot of things, but the way in which they might procrastinate could be because there's so much all the time.
- 1:42Michelle Gauthier: So I don't know if that's something that you typically see from your clients or if you can just tell us a little bit about what's usually behind procrastination.
- 1:50Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah, 100%.
- 1:50Sarah Arnold Hall: You hit the nail on the head.
- 1:52Sarah Arnold Hall: Like majority of the people that I work with, they are what I call productive procrastinating, which means you're like doing all the things, but you're not doing the things that actually move the needle forward.
- 2:05Sarah Arnold Hall: They're not the needle- moving activities, they're not creating results, and so, even though you're working really, really hard, it feels like you're on a little hamster wheel all the time, never actually getting to where you want to go.
- 2:15Sarah Arnold Hall: So absolutely having too much to do, having an overall sense of overwhelm, is like one of the biggest, if not the biggest, cause of procrastination, and it never really feels like procrastination either.
- 2:28Sarah Arnold Hall: It's like I'm getting all this stuff done, but you're not feeling like you're moving forward, and so that's how you know that that's really what's happening.
- 2:34Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that's good.
- 2:35Michelle Gauthier: That's a good difference, because I know when I get overwhelmed, if I'm going to start taking action, it's going to be on something totally random, like cleaning out a drawer or - not move- the- needle activities.
- 2:47Michelle Gauthier: It's just like a sort of senseless, just something that makes me feel like I have control over something, versus like doing something really important.
- 2:55Michelle Gauthier: So that makes a ton of sense.
- 2:56Michelle Gauthier: So can you tell us, first of all, is there anything more behind procrastination?
- 3:01Michelle Gauthier: Like, is there - could it be more than the overwhelm?
- 3:03Michelle Gauthier: And then, what do we do if we're stuck in that?
- 3:07Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah, absolutely.
- 3:08Sarah Arnold Hall: So there's five main emotions that I see.
- 3:11Sarah Arnold Hall: After coaching hundreds of clients on procrastination, I'm like, oh, these are the five emotions that come up again and again.
- 3:16Sarah Arnold Hall: So overwhelm is definitely one of them, but there's also confusion.
- 3:20Sarah Arnold Hall: "I feel like I don't know what to do.
- 3:22Sarah Arnold Hall: There's no way you're getting it done.
- 3:23Sarah Arnold Hall: If you're doubting yourself whether, or doubting if, it's possible to achieve the thing.
- 3:28Sarah Arnold Hall: For sure you're going to put it off.
- 3:29Sarah Arnold Hall: If you're in fear like what if something bad happens?
- 3:33Sarah Arnold Hall: Or what if something good happens, and I don't want that to happen?
- 3:35Sarah Arnold Hall: Or if you're feeling lethargic, just like I don't have any energy - and that's often linked with overwhelm - like okay, I know what I need to do, and I know I need to do it now, but I just don't feel like doing it.
- 3:46Sarah Arnold Hall: There's just so many other things I would much rather be doing right now.
- 3:50Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay.
- 3:50Michelle Gauthier: So when you work with someone, do you try to figure out which one of those it is so that you can help them overcome it, or do you have a formula to overcome no matter what?
- 4:00Michelle Gauthier: Like, is it important to know what's causing the procrastination, or can you just start working on not procrastinating?
- 4:07Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah, so basically, I think everybody experiences some or all of them at different times.
- 4:12Sarah Arnold Hall: So I address all of them with my clients, and some days you're going to feel more confused and some days you're going to feel more lethargic and some days it's more overwhelm.
- 4:19Sarah Arnold Hall: So I definitely have a process for helping my clients overcome all of it, because it's really the same no matter which emotion you're facing, you have to shift out of your emotions to get into a new - or shift what emotion you're feeling to start taking it.
- 4:33Sarah Arnold Hall: okay.
- 4:34Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay And Sarah.
- 4:34Michelle Gauthier: and I used to be in a group coaching program together, I don't know, maybe three or four years ago, that we were in that group coaching together, and our coach at the time would tell us that we weren't - basically weren't allowed to be confused.
- 4:47Michelle Gauthier: She would say, don't indulge in confusion, don't say "I don't know", because when you say I don't know, it's like you're just buying yourself time, but really you probably do know a little something.
- 4:57Michelle Gauthier: So when you said confusion, I was like that's true, because that will prevent me from working on stuff sometimes where I'm like, well, I don't know how to solve it, so I'm just going to choose something else and I'm going to, you know, bake some cookies, 100%, something totally random.
- 5:10Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, exactly, exactly Okay.
- 5:13Michelle Gauthier: So if any of those resonate, I think what I heard you say, Sarah, and I want to make sure I understood it correctly, is that if somebody's listening and they're like, okay, I feel like I mostly do this one, but you're saying they probably do all of them at some point, and that it's important to recognize your emotion, but that the solution is the same, no matter how you got to procrastinating.
- 5:31Sarah Arnold Hall: Mm-hmm.
- 5:32Sarah Arnold Hall: Okay, I'll dig in now.
- 5:33Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, okay.
- 5:34Michelle Gauthier: So then what do they do?
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: How do they get out of procrastination?
- 5:38Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah.
- 5:38Sarah Arnold Hall: Well, I think it's really important to know what *not* to do.
- 5:40Sarah Arnold Hall: So I think a lot of us, we try to push through those emotions using willpower and, I heard, I think, Brooke Castillo, who's another coach, she talked about it like using willpower is like pushing a beach ball underwater and you're like holding the emotion down to try to get the thing done, but eventually it's going to pop back up because you're going to get too tired to hold that ball underwater.
- 6:02Sarah Arnold Hall: And so we're kind of like constantly, like well, I'm overwhelmed, but I'm just going to push through, and I'm going to do it, and then eventually, you just - like the overwhelm just comes up even more.
- 6:09Sarah Arnold Hall: So what we don't want to do is to just try to force our way through it, and what we want to do is really shift and change the emotion so that you actually transform it, so that emotion melts away and you go into a new emotion.
- 6:23Sarah Arnold Hall: And the way that you want to do that is by picking what emotion you actually want to be in, and it's usually the opposite.
- 6:31Sarah Arnold Hall: So if you're feeling overwhelmed, usually it's probably going to feel like calm is the emotion you're looking for.
- 6:36Sarah Arnold Hall: Or if you're feeling lethargic, maybe it's determined.
- 6:40Sarah Arnold Hall: That is the emotion you want to be in or energized.
- 6:43Sarah Arnold Hall: And once you've identified what the emotion you want to be in is, you have to find what I call a direct antidote.
- 6:50Sarah Arnold Hall: So an antidote is a thought that will completely melt away the other thought.
- 6:56Sarah Arnold Hall: So I imagine it like taking a potion.
- 6:59Sarah Arnold Hall: I always think of that scene from Shrek when they - or Shrek 2?
- 7:02Sarah Arnold Hall: - and they're like running through the potion cauldron place and you take the potion or an antidote to completely melt away the experience that you're having.
- 7:11Sarah Arnold Hall: So a lot of people will say, like, I'll just think positive, right, like, oh, don't be overwhelmed, just think like everything's fine.
- 7:17Sarah Arnold Hall: But everything's fine may not overcome the thought there's too much to do.
- 7:20Sarah Arnold Hall: You might be able to think there's too much to do and everything's fine at the same time and still be like yeah, but there's still so much to do.
- 7:27Sarah Arnold Hall: So if you're thinking there's too much to do, you're going to have to come up with an antidote that directly lets the other thought go.
- 7:33Sarah Arnold Hall: So, for example, 'I can get the important things done'.
- 7:37Sarah Arnold Hall: This is like a direct antidote for 'there's too much to do' or 'I can handle anything'.
- 7:42Sarah Arnold Hall: It's like a direct antidote, so something that directly addresses the thought that you're having and helps you feel the emotion that you want to feel.
- 7:51Michelle Gauthier: Okay, okay, that's awesome.
- 7:53Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 7:53Michelle Gauthier: And even when you said, 'I can get the important things done' it made me feel more calm and it wasn't even my thought, so I think that's a great example of how that can work.
- 8:03Michelle Gauthier: All right, fantastic, I think, one that I use, and I'm sure I learned this from you, I'm sure I learned this tip from you, but I will use 'I can do the first thing', like I can take the first step, and I think what I really learned in working with you is that once you just get yourself in, you're so much more likely to take the second and the third and the fourth step, even if you don't know what those are.
- 8:27Michelle Gauthier: Like trusting that you can figure that out.
- 8:30Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah, so often we want to have the full plan and know exactly how to achieve every single state before we begin, yeah, but it actually - that usually hinders us.
- 8:38Sarah Arnold Hall: It's so much easier to get the ball rolling and then face the next challenge and the next challenge.
- 8:44Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah.
- 8:45Michelle Gauthier: But I always would like the full plan, please.
- 8:48Michelle Gauthier: So I have to like talk myself into, okay, I don't know exactly what this is going to be, but I'm sure I can figure it out.
- 8:55Michelle Gauthier: So that makes a lot of sense.
- 8:58Sarah Arnold Hall: Well, one thing I would add to that is you can create a plan, and you'll know from what I teach in my program, Michelle, is that I teach something called the All it Takes Plan, and an All it Takes Plan is a list of non-negotiable things that have to happen to achieve the goal, and nothing else.
- 9:15Sarah Arnold Hall: And so, instead of having the perfect plan of a hundred steps, of all the little pieces, you can know off the top of your head, just by guessing, what are the things that are probably going to have to happen in order for me to achieve this goal or get this task done, and that way you can have the full plan without having a detailed, tiny, I need to know the solution to every little step, plan.
- 9:38Sarah Arnold Hall: You're still like okay, I can see the main chunks.
- 9:41Sarah Arnold Hall: So, for example, for starting your podcast, you would have created an All it Takes Plan, right?
- 9:45Sarah Arnold Hall: Do you remember what that was?
- 9:47Michelle Gauthier: Oh, yes, I lived off that.
- 9:48Michelle Gauthier: It was five steps.
- 9:50Michelle Gauthier: My All it Takes Plan was five steps and when I would get overwhelmed I would just go back to those five steps.
- 9:56Michelle Gauthier: I can't remember exactly what they were, but I can take a pretty good guess.
- 9:59Michelle Gauthier: It was like, the podcast has to have a name.
- 10:03Michelle Gauthier: I have to have a way to record it, and record some episodes.
- 10:07Michelle Gauthier: I have to have a place to put it, like to publish it, and I have to tell people it's available.
- 10:12Michelle Gauthier: And that was my All it Takes Plan - something to that effect.
- 10:17Michelle Gauthier: But when you write it down that way, it's like oh, or even I know you work with a lot of entrepreneurs, so when you're thinking about people starting a business, it feels so overwhelming.
- 10:26Michelle Gauthier: I feel like - at least people who I've worked with starting businesses - they want to know, do I have to get a business bank account?
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: Do I need an LLC, which is like a certain designation you have to get here?
- 10:35Michelle Gauthier: Do I need this?
- 10:35Michelle Gauthier: Do I need that?
- 10:36Michelle Gauthier: You get so mired in those details that it's hard to do it.
- 10:40Michelle Gauthier: It's like no, you just need to decide what you're going to do.
- 10:42Michelle Gauthier: Tell people you have a business.
- 10:44Michelle Gauthier: Start seeing people.
- 10:45Michelle Gauthier: H ave a way for them to pay you.
- 10:47Michelle Gauthier: There you go.
- 10:49Sarah Arnold Hall: That's so simple and we often are trying to think of like the million dollar business when we're starting and one of my friends he gave me the saying 'don't try to scale before you've made your first sale'.
- 11:03Sarah Arnold Hall: I love that that's so good.
- 11:05Sarah Arnold Hall: L ike just do the things that need to happen to start.
- 11:09Sarah Arnold Hall: So you're in business the moment you take a payment for something.
- 11:13Sarah Arnold Hall: So if it's a dollar and you're teaching someone something or you're delivering your product or your service to them for a dollar, you've just started in business.
- 11:20Sarah Arnold Hall: You don't have to have the entire thing set up before you're in business.
- 11:24Sarah Arnold Hall: And, in fact, if you do what I did, which is I spent months and months and months setting up shops, setting up my business, planning the website, doing all of the business cards, thinking about all the things that I thought I needed to have to feel like a real business owner.
- 11:39Sarah Arnold Hall: It had everything except money.
- 11:41Sarah Arnold Hall: Right, it's much easier to do the thing that creates the money.
- 11:46Sarah Arnold Hall: I actually call this the result- producing action.
- 11:49Sarah Arnold Hall: So I categorize actions into three different types.
- 11:52Sarah Arnold Hall: You've got the result- producing action, which is the action that comes directly before the result.
- 11:58Sarah Arnold Hall: So in basketball - I always use this analogy - the result- producing action is shooting the ball into the basket.
- 12:05Sarah Arnold Hall: You can run up and down the court, you can pump weights at the gym, you can defend really well, but unless somebody in your team shoots the ball towards the basket, there's no chance of getting a result, and so you have to think about what that is for your business or for your task.
- 12:21Sarah Arnold Hall: What is the result- producing action?
- 12:23Sarah Arnold Hall: And then there's a second type of action, which is called the support action, and you need the support actions oftentimes to create the result- producing action.
- 12:32Sarah Arnold Hall: So if we're thinking about in business, the result- producing action is often inviting someone to buy - just actually asking someone.
- 12:41Sarah Arnold Hall: The support action might be to create something for them to buy, but just creating something for them to buy isn't going to produce a result.
- 12:49Sarah Arnold Hall: It just - you could do that activity and have nothing happen.
- 12:52Sarah Arnold Hall: And then there's the third type of actions, which is the nice to have actions, and that's the lovely extras that we usually get distracted doing.
- 13:00Sarah Arnold Hall: When we're feeling overwhelmed, like I'm just going to do all this other stuff, or we're feeling confused - any type of procrastination, we go and do the nice to have activities.
- 13:13Michelle Gauthier: Revisions! A hundred revisions of things, I would put that 'nice to have' category.
- 13:13Michelle Gauthier: It's like, I just had to get myself to the point where, I can send out an email with an error in it, you know, I can have the wrong word or miss a period or something, like people are still going to get the general gist of the message that I'm sending, you know, and it's not - it's not worth it to obsess about those things.
- 13:31Michelle Gauthier: Okay, that's awesome.
- 13:32Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 13:33Michelle Gauthier: That's great advice and a great way to think about it, and it just makes it feel so much more doable.
- 13:38Michelle Gauthier: Even small tasks can be broken down that way too.
- 13:43Michelle Gauthier: One of the things that I remember that you taught us a lot about in the group coaching that I did with you was how you take action.
- 13:52Michelle Gauthier: I can't remember exactly, but there's two stories that stick with me that I hope you'll tell.
- 13:56Michelle Gauthier: One was when you're trying to get a certain number of followers on YouTube.
- 14:01Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, oh, on YouTube.
- 14:02Michelle Gauthier: Okay, will you please tell that story?
- 14:04Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, I just love it so much because your dedication when you're trying to hit a goal is off the charts, and you've had so much - I should have said that first, actually - is that you've had so much success in your business because you just go for your goals and you don't stop until you get them.
- 14:24Michelle Gauthier: So will you just talk a little
- 14:27Sarah Arnold Hall: Yes, okay, so this is in the year 2020.
- 14:30Sarah Arnold Hall: I think it was July.
- 14:31Sarah Arnold Hall: I decided that I wanted to hit 600 subscribers on YouTube.
- 14:35Sarah Arnold Hall: I think I had about 490, something around that, so I need about a hundred and ten subscribers.
- 14:41Sarah Arnold Hall: It had taken me two years to build up to 490.
- 14:44Sarah Arnold Hall: I was like, I'm gonna get a hundred and ten in one month and I initially was like, well, how am I gonna do this?
- 14:51Sarah Arnold Hall: And so what I did is I wrote out what I call an epiphany list, and an epiphany list is a list of every single idea you could possibly think of, even the craziest ones, and you come up with at least ten.
- 15:04Sarah Arnold Hall: And the reason you do ten is because after two or three, your brain is, like, I can't come up with any other ideas for how I'm gonna get YouTube subscribers.
- 15:10Sarah Arnold Hall: I've thought like asking people and like trying to make better videos.
- 15:14Sarah Arnold Hall: That's like the two that my brains come up with.
- 15:17Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah, I'm like, no, I'm gonna force myself to think of eight more.
- 15:19Sarah Arnold Hall: And I was thinking about, well, what would guarantee it?
- 15:22Sarah Arnold Hall: Like, if I had to, you know, my life was on the line, what would I do to create these, these subscribers?
- 15:28Sarah Arnold Hall: And so I made a list of all the things I was willing to do, and well, one of them on the list was just asking people at the mall.
- 15:36Sarah Arnold Hall: Like going down to the mall and just asking people, and I was like, oh, there's no way I'm gonna have to do that.
- 15:41Sarah Arnold Hall: Like I have all these other things that I'm gonna do instead that'll, that'll get me the subscribers.
- 15:46Sarah Arnold Hall: So we're one day out.
- 15:47Sarah Arnold Hall: It was the 31st of July.
- 15:49Sarah Arnold Hall: I have one day left and I still have like 13 subscribers or something still to go.
- 15:54Sarah Arnold Hall: I had tried every other method I could possibly think of.
- 15:56Sarah Arnold Hall: I had already asked every friend on the internet that I knew.
- 16:00Sarah Arnold Hall: People had created YouTube accounts just to follow me, just to subscribe.
- 16:04Sarah Arnold Hall: Like I had got everyone to do everything I could.
- 16:06Sarah Arnold Hall: My sister had already asked everyone at her school through her snapchat, like I had done everything, and so I was like I'm gonna have to do - I'm gonna actually have to do this.
- 16:15Sarah Arnold Hall: So I went down to the mall and I started asking complete strangers if they would subscribe to my YouTube channel and something really amazing happened.
- 16:22Sarah Arnold Hall: It's because I was actually filming myself doing this on Instagram.
- 16:25Sarah Arnold Hall: People were like getting behind this.
- 16:27Sarah Arnold Hall: They were like, this is so cool, and so while I got those 13 from the people that I asked, when I got back and I checked my actual subscriber count, they had gone up by like another 20 or 30, because people who are watching and engaged were like, this is so cool that she wants to do this, were helping me.
- 16:43Sarah Arnold Hall: So the thinking behind this is something that I think about - I don't have kids, but I know you have kids, right, Michelle?
- 16:49Sarah Arnold Hall: Yes, I do.
- 16:50Sarah Arnold Hall: It's like this concept of picking your kids up from school.
- 16:53Sarah Arnold Hall: You're committed to the outcome of the kid coming home from school.
- 16:57Sarah Arnold Hall: You're not committed to like putting your shoes on and getting in the car and trying it out.
- 17:00Sarah Arnold Hall: You're committed to the outcome.
- 17:02Sarah Arnold Hall: And when you commit to the outcome, you start to think differently about ways that things can get done that you would never think about if you're just thinking about the process.
- 17:12Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, that's such a good point because if I went to go get in my car one day and my car wouldn't start, I wouldn't be like, oh well, I guess I'm not gonna do that today.
- 17:19Sarah Arnold Hall: That kids can stay at school tonight.
- 17:20Michelle Gauthier: That's why, yeah, exactly, I'd start texting my mom friends, or I would call my own mom and ask her if she could do it, or borrow somebody's - borrow a neighbor's car, or whatever.
- 17:29Michelle Gauthier: I would absolutely figure out a way to do that, like, the exact steps don't matter, but I would get that outcome.
- 17:35Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, that's great.
- 17:36Michelle Gauthier: And then I think the other thing you talked about was getting - maybe it was followers or something for your blog that you blogged like every day for two years, or something like that, to hit one of your goals.
- 17:50Sarah Arnold Hall: I did.
- 17:50Sarah Arnold Hall: I set out - I think back, and I was like what did I do?
- 17:54Sarah Arnold Hall: Why did I do that?
- 17:55Sarah Arnold Hall: But I'm so grateful that I did.
- 17:56Sarah Arnold Hall: I set out to blog every day for two years.
- 17:59Sarah Arnold Hall: You know, one year would have been enough.
- 18:02Sarah Arnold Hall: Yeah, why two?
- 18:03Sarah Arnold Hall: Why did I think I wanted to do two?
- 18:07Sarah Arnold Hall: I think because it felt so impossible and I was like I'm gonna state an impossible goal, something that just feels like there's no way.
- 18:14Sarah Arnold Hall: A year seemed nice, two years seemed crazy.
- 18:17Sarah Arnold Hall: Who commits to that?
- 18:18Sarah Arnold Hall: Why would you do that?
- 18:19Sarah Arnold Hall: And it helped me build the self-discipline and the self-trust to be someone who, no matter what, every single day, I published a blog post.
- 18:29Sarah Arnold Hall: When I say no matter what, I'm meaning when I have absolutely no ideas.
- 18:33Sarah Arnold Hall: I thought the hardest thing was going to be when I was sick.
- 18:35Sarah Arnold Hall: No, no, the hardest part was when you've already written 372 blog posts and you're like, I actually have nothing left in my brain to write.
- 18:44Sarah Arnold Hall: There's nothing.
- 18:45Sarah Arnold Hall: One of my blog posts, it's three words long and it says hold for more.
- 18:49Michelle Gauthier: Oh, that's great, but you published it.
- 18:51Michelle Gauthier: I love it.
- 18:52Sarah Arnold Hall: Hold for more.
- 18:53Sarah Arnold Hall: Because the deal was I had to publish a blog post every day, and so I was measuring my success not by how many people were reading it, not by anything else other than simply did it get published.
- 19:04Sarah Arnold Hall: And so if it got published, if some words got onto a page, then I was like this totally counts.
- 19:09Sarah Arnold Hall: And the beauty of that is I really started to understand how much momentum matters more than perfection, how much just keeping going and telling yourself that this counts, today counts, today counts.
- 19:22Sarah Arnold Hall: It stops you from thinking, oh well, I haven't done it for a week, so what's the point in me doing it this week?
- 19:26Sarah Arnold Hall: And you kind of fall off.
- 19:27Sarah Arnold Hall: If you can just decide, even the minimum amount counts,
- 19:31Sarah Arnold Hall: but you did something, then you keep that momentum, and that actually ended up becoming a little graphic that I created and it went totally viral.
- 19:41Sarah Arnold Hall: It was like a little bunch of little circles saying like what we think consistency is, and that's like filling them in perfectly, like all of these circles filled in, and then what consistency actually is, and it's all of the circles filled in different amounts, like some of them are only like half colored in, some of them are like a quarter colored in and that went totally viral and, like I think Ariana Huffington shared it and I had like people from Dragon's Den, which is like the UK equivalent of Shark Tank, they shared it and it had like millions of views and I constantly still get messages today of people putting it up in their classrooms and their therapist offices and so doing that, blogging every day, it had the huge ripple effect on my business that I had no idea that it would whenI
- 20:27Michelle Gauthier: Yes, and you just committed to doing it because you were committed to - what was it ?
- 20:30Michelle Gauthier: Starting your business?
- 20:30Michelle Gauthier: Was it getting an audience?
- 20:32Michelle Gauthier: Like what were you committed to at that point?
- 20:35Sarah Arnold Hall: I was committed to doing something that was going to create an impact.
- 20:38Sarah Arnold Hall: I think at that point I didn't even know where it was going to lead.
- 20:40Sarah Arnold Hall: What I knew was that I kept changing my mind about what I was doing.
- 20:46Sarah Arnold Hall: So every day - if you ask my boyfriend, he jokes about it.
- 20:48Sarah Arnold Hall: He's like every day she would wake up and she would write on that whiteboard, you know, and create a new plan on that whiteboard and I'd be like the plan, the solution is funnels, the solution is this sales page, the solution is YouTube, the solution is blogging, the solution is, you know, some random business opportunity.
- 21:03Sarah Arnold Hall: And every day I would change my mind about what I was going to do.
- 21:07Sarah Arnold Hall: And so it was really a deliberate decision that I'm like I'm just going to do one thing and we're going to do it until I see results.
- 21:14Sarah Arnold Hall: And the actual initial inspiration came from this post by a guy named Sean McCabe (seanwes media), and he wrote this post that said show up every day for two years.
- 21:24Sarah Arnold Hall: It's going to make you money, it's going to get you customers.
- 21:26Sarah Arnold Hall: Like, I didn't even know how.
- 21:27Sarah Arnold Hall: I just knew if I showed up every day, if I took his advice, I believed it.
- 21:31Sarah Arnold Hall: But he says something so powerful.
- 21:33Sarah Arnold Hall: At the end of his little post that he made, he said most people won't do this because this advice is not microwavable.
- 21:41Sarah Arnold Hall: Interesting.
- 21:42Sarah Arnold Hall: It just hit me, because I was like, that is what I've been doing.
- 21:45Sarah Arnold Hall: I'm looking for the microwavable version of building a business.
- 21:48Sarah Arnold Hall: I want the quick results and anytime I'm not seeing a result, I think, well, that must not be the solution.
- 21:54Sarah Arnold Hall: I better change.
- 21:55Sarah Arnold Hall: Even though blogging itself didn't directly build my business, it created so many opportunities that helped me build my business.
- 22:04Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, exactly, like your viral posts.
- 22:07Michelle Gauthier: I saw on your website - these might be outdated numbers, but I saw that you now have an audience of 30,000 plus people.
- 22:15Michelle Gauthier: You've crossed the 200K revenue.
- 22:18Michelle Gauthier: You're getting headhunted by Olympians and Silicon Valley CEOs.
- 22:22Michelle Gauthier: I mean, you are really killing it, so to speak.
- 22:26Michelle Gauthier: So that's just awesome.
- 22:27Michelle Gauthier: And I think it's cool to go back to those when you first started, how dedicated you were, because if you would have been like, oh, 500 followers is good enough, or I'll just try to do it for like sometimes for a year, it just doesn't seem like you would have gotten the same results because you didn't have the same resolve.
- 22:45Sarah Arnold Hall: Well, I didn't.
- 22:45Sarah Arnold Hall: Because I had a blog.
- 22:47Sarah Arnold Hall: I had a website since 2016 and this was in 2019 that I started this challenge.
- 22:51Sarah Arnold Hall: I had maybe posted ten blog posts that whole time since 2016.
- 22:55Sarah Arnold Hall: I knew it didn't work to just do it sometimes.
- 22:59Sarah Arnold Hall: So, yeah, the ripple effect that it had was really huge.
- 23:03Sarah Arnold Hall: It really did make it so worth committing to something every day and have a deadline.
- 23:08Sarah Arnold Hall: Like two years is a very long deadline.
- 23:09Sarah Arnold Hall: But I knew I wasn't blogging every day for the rest of my life because if I had decided that, I would have probably stopped it like 30 days.
- 23:16Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, absolutely.
- 23:17Michelle Gauthier: Kind of like how your brain offered those two solutions.
- 23:20Michelle Gauthier: 30 days is like okay, might be kind of painful, but it's doable.
- 23:27Sarah Arnold Hall: I also had - because I knew I was in it for two years, I knew I couldn't do this.
- 23:32Sarah Arnold Hall: I had to make it sustainable.
- 23:34Sarah Arnold Hall: I had to do it in a way that I knew I could keep doing.
- 23:38Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yes, and my experience too is when you sort of force yourself to produce content like that, you get so clear on your own ideas.
- 23:47Michelle Gauthier: It's like when you have to explain them to the world in five different ways, 10 different ways.
- 23:52Michelle Gauthier: It just makes you so much more clear on them, which makes you a better coach, and it just makes the whole thing make so much sense to me.
- 23:59Sarah Arnold Hall: Well, and it creates you results to show people too, right?
- 24:03Sarah Arnold Hall: Like I think one of the reasons that I got head hunted by an Olympian was because I had this track record of results that I had created, even though they're in different area.
- 24:13Sarah Arnold Hall: It's like I'm someone who can show up and be disciplined and that's what they were looking for is like someone to help them be more disciplined.
- 24:19Sarah Arnold Hall: So, like I think it makes sense to choose something that's in your realm, like in your business or in your life, whatever area of your life you're trying to improve.
- 24:27Sarah Arnold Hall: Like choose something that matters.
- 24:29Sarah Arnold Hall: If I were to go back, I probably would have maybe made a video every day for a year.
- 24:33Sarah Arnold Hall: I think that might have been more, potentially even more powerful.
- 24:36Sarah Arnold Hall: Asked someone to work with me every day for a year.
- 24:38Sarah Arnold Hall: Like ask completely directly asked someone.
- 24:41Sarah Arnold Hall: I think that would have exploded my business much faster.
- 24:44Sarah Arnold Hall: But if you can pick something that's in your realm that you think I did this activity, even the smallest amount, every day, the opportunities are endless of what might happen.
- 24:54Michelle Gauthier: Yeah, yes, I'm thinking about.
- 24:56Michelle Gauthier: For lots of the women listening here and the people who I coach, one of the hardest things in their life is balance the balance between work and being at home, family, children, those kind of things.
- 25:09Michelle Gauthier: And so I was thinking about that as you were talking, like if someone were to say I'm going to commit to leaving work by 5:30 every single day for a whole year and I'm just going to see what happens, because normally clients are afraid to change that, like that they will not get as much work done, or that they will be seen as whatever they'll be seen.
- 25:31Michelle Gauthier: You know there's all these worries about it.
- 25:33Michelle Gauthier: A nd when people have the courage to start doing that, I mean people get raises all the time, they get accolades.
- 25:39Michelle Gauthier: It's like they get better when they actually do that, because their life becomes more balanced.
- 25:45Michelle Gauthier: So I would challenge everyone to think about what is something that you could do every day that would move you towards one of your goals.
- 25:52Michelle Gauthier: If there's just one step people could take, or like one little takeaway that you would give the listeners today, what would you say?
- 26:04Sarah Arnold Hall: I would say, from what we've spoken about, you want to pick a result- producing action for you.
- 26:10Sarah Arnold Hall: So, like, leaving at 5:30 is going to produce results for you.
- 26:12Sarah Arnold Hall: Like, directly, you do that and you're going to have more time with your family.
- 26:16Sarah Arnold Hall: Something that you don't have to do anything else, and you're going to get a result.
- 26:20Sarah Arnold Hall: And what for you that thing would be, and then find a minimum version, the tiniest version, of that.
- 26:27Sarah Arnold Hall: So, even on the hardest days, how can you make sure that you're still always doing that?
- 26:31Sarah Arnold Hall: Sometimes you can do more, sometimes you can do less, but how can you do the thing that you want to do and commit to that and put a deadline on it?
- 26:38Sarah Arnold Hall: Be like, I'm going to do this for 30 days, no matter what, or I'm going to do this for two years, if you want to, every day.
- 26:42Sarah Arnold Hall: But give yourself that, because it will completely change the way that you see yourself, because you're going to build so much self-trust in your ability to say you're going to do something.
- 26:52Sarah Arnold Hall: Even nothing else in the whole world gets done, but you leave at 5:30 every day, that's a really great way of building self-trust.
- 26:59Michelle Gauthier: Yes, yeah, exactly, if that's your number one thing.
- 27:01Michelle Gauthier: I love that.
- 27:02Michelle Gauthier: Thank you so much for being a guest.
- 27:05Michelle Gauthier: Everything that you shared was so helpful and I know it's going to resonate with everyone, and thank you, just personally thank you, for helping me get this podcast out into the world.
- 27:14Michelle Gauthier: I'm so glad.
- 27:16Sarah Arnold Hall: Okay, it's so fun.
- 27:18Sarah Arnold Hall: I love listening to your podcast, so it's very fun for me to be on.
- 27:21Michelle Gauthier: Oh, good, good Well, thank you so much.
- 27:24Michelle Gauthier: Tell us a little bit more about where people can find you if they've got some big goal they want to reach and they are really digging what you're saying here, or they're an Olympian and they know that you work with such people.
- 27:35Michelle Gauthier: Where did they go?
- 27:36Sarah Arnold Hall: Yes, yeah, you can come and find me anywhere under my name Sarah Arnold Hall, so that's saraharnoldhall.
- 27:44Sarah Arnold Hall: com, @ Sarah Arnold Hall on every platform, and then also my podcast you can find under Sarah Arnold Hall as well.
- 27:51Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so all they need to know is your name, which will be everywhere on this episode.
- 27:54Michelle Gauthier: So that's perfect.
- 27:56Michelle Gauthier: Okay, good, well, thank you so much.
- 27:58Michelle Gauthier: I really appreciate your time.
- 28:00Michelle Gauthier: Have a great day and we'll talk soon.
- 28:03Michelle Gauthier: Thanks so much for having me, Michelle.
- 28:05Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 28:13Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 28:17Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 28:18Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.