Trial, Error, and Tenacity in Life & Business KDS: 070

I had a friend reach out to me on Facebook yesterday with a question that prompted this podcast episode.

And bear with me here… I think with this transition and move some of the upcoming podcast episodes are going to have more of a ‘life theme’ to them, but I’ll do my best to share how it relates to my business and where I’m taking things, and more importantly, how that can help you.

Here was the question I received:

“Hey Kim! Hope you’re doing well! I just read your email about the clean slate and it honestly got me thinking about my future on a lot of things. Things aren’t going well with my current job and I haven’t been happy in a while. My boss offered to pay me for one more month so I can find something else if my heart isn’t completely in it, and I don’t think that it is anymore.

I know you have a lot going on and I’m sorry to bombard you with that, but after your email it seemed like maybe you had some insight that I don’t on things! Hope you’re well.”

I’m going to give you my response, and then we’ll dig deeper into what I mean by it and how you might be able to implement this in your own life and business.

My response:

“Hey (his name)! You’re not bombarding me. My insight comes from lots of trial, error, and tenacity (hence the podcast title). From my understanding, you want to have your own business. If you’re not sure exactly what that looks like, that’s perfectly fine. And I get needing a job while you figure that out. However, if you’re enjoying the job, I’d start looking ASAP for something else that feels better in terms of a means to an end. When you focus on where you want to be as opposed to where you are, you’d be surprised at what shows up!”

We went back and forth a bit more, I sent him a link to a Dr. Joe Dispenza video on YouTube, and it really got me thinking.

I don’t know about you, but I used to put so much pressure on myself to be somewhere else, do more, have more, accomplish more, etc., that I’ve robbed myself of much of the journey and the joy that can only come from being present in the moment.

Obviously, with my decision to move to Costa Rica, I’m not doing that anymore (or at least if I do I can tell you that it’s a conscious decision), but it’s been through life experiences that I’ve figured that out.

I talk to both of my kids about this stuff a lot. I’ve told them both that they are so far ahead of the game if they can “get” this stuff now… the world is their oyster.

One thing I want to share that I originally shared with my son and also with my friend on FB yesterday (he’s about 20 yrs younger than me) is this: “What I do for a living didn’t exist when I was his age.”

My son is only 20, and my daughter is 24.

I want them both to follow their hearts, do what they love, and make the most of their lives, whatever that looks like to them.

I think it’s safe to say that my life is nothing like I thought it would be (when I said that to my therapist one time she was like “ya think?” Meaning… that’s the case for most people).

When I was 24 I was dating my husband, we knew we’d get married, have kids, and thought we’d live the typical, traditional, suburban life.

When all that was taken from me I did a lot of soul-searching.

It’s taken years (and a lot of courage & conscious work), to really own that I want something different.

The same can be said for running an online business.

When we’re starting an online business (and/or growing it), we all do the same thing (which makes sense). We do some research, we dig in, we study, we find some sort of mentor/guru/guide that helps us get started.

That could be in the form of finding someone you resonate with via a podcast or hiring an actual coach.

For the sake of this podcast episode, let’s focus on an online business in terms of being a coach, author, course creator, or e-commerce store owner.

When I first started back in 2008 I hired a coach and signed up for a social media course (which was pretty much in its infancy). I knew enough to be dangerous in that I was going to go all in with this.

I had attended a breakout session and a live event in San Francisco and had also listened to an audio program about becoming a speaker (yep, even back then I wanted to do this), and there was one speaker who talked about Internet marketing.

I was in.

I started thinking I’d be an information marketing millionaire…

I’ve told my story so many times, but the TLDR is I found WordPress, started bartering websites for things (while I learned), got better, hired a team, started an outsourcing company, launched a podcast in 2013… pivoted to my personal brand in 2018, tried to do a SaaS product, went all in on Content Marketing, launched the Content Creators Planner with Jodi towards the end of 2018 and here we are today.

My entire journey has been trial and error.

That’s how we learn.

I wish clarity came through pondering, thinking, and planning, but it doesn’t (at least for me it doesn’t).

It comes through doing the work.

If you had told me even 5 years ago that I would enjoy studying and practicing copywriting I would have thought you were on drugs. There was nothing about it that I enjoyed (probably due to the massive resistance I had towards it).

So, you might be thinking, great… what happened? What shifted? Why the change?

I started writing my almost-daily emails.

I had zero attachment to what that looked like, other than I was committed to doing it for myself. I wanted to see that I could stick with it and focus on the mastery of what I was doing as opposed to the desired outcome.

*Side note* Letting go of a desired outcome doesn’t mean you don’t have goals and desires. It simply means you focus on what you can control, where you should spend your energy, and how you want to get there.

Every single time I let go of the outcome I’m pleasantly surprised (which is a fairly new belief for me).

Back to writing.

I still prefer writing content (especially like this), because I get to simply be myself and it flows.

Writing copy requires a different part of my brain. Instead of thinking about sharing, connecting, or teaching, I need to think about the transformation of the person I’m making the offer to.

It can be an opt-in, registration, or sales offer. It doesn’t really matter, as long as I know what their pain is and how what I’m offering solves their problem.

Knowing that is just the first step.

Then you have to be able to communicate it in a way that the person feels like “YES! That’s exactly how I feel!”

I’m pretty sure I’ll never call myself a copywriter, but I can certainly say I enjoy the mastery of it now.

There’s something highly satisfying about being able to write something that inspires someone to take action.

Let’s talk Tenacity

Whenever I think of tenacity I think of something Tony Robbins said years ago when I used to listen to him. He said “how long would you give your average baby to walk?”

How long until you tell them “nope, that’s it, you didn’t get it, you’re done.”

The answer was “I’ll give them until they walk! There’s no time limit!”

Or what about learning to ride a bike? Or learning how to drive?

We stick with it until we get it.

End of story.

Tenacity doesn’t require any specific skill set. All it asks of you is to not quit.

I think if I had gotten out of my own way (i.e, my head) and worried less about what people thought of me and more about what I thought of me, I probably could have reached certain goals by now (or reached some faster).

BUT… we don’t know what we don’t know, right?

It’s easy to look back and make judgments about who we were, where we were or what we did, but what’s the point?

I truly feel we’re all doing the best we can.

Of course we make mistakes and screw up. We ALL do. Instead of judging it simply learn from it and move on.

For me it was realizing that being unkind to myself was getting me nowhere. I have never been able to berate myself into success.

It’s just not going to happen.

Which is when I decided to try the alternative.

What if I was kind to myself? What if I took a gentler approach?

What if I decided to CLAIM WHAT I wanted?

That’s the place I live my life from now. That’s where I create from.

What to do next

I want to share a few exercises with you that I think you’ll have some fun with. If any of this has resonated with you, all I’m asking you to do is be open to trying these things.

The other piece of this that will make a huge difference for you is to make sure you’re in the right frame of mind when you do this (my phrase of choice would be alignment).

The three exercises I want you to do are:

1. The “What if” game
2. Your ideal everyday day
3. Your business, Your Way
4. The “What if” game
5. I may have shared this in a previous podcast episode, so apologies if it’s a repeat. I know I shared it in an email. All I want you to do is set a timer for a minimum of 15 minutes and write out as many positive “What if” statements as you can think of.
6. Take every negative or challenging thought you have (you can do this for your life and or business, or both), and write the alternative.
7. As an example: using my earlier resistance to copywriting above. A new “what if” statement would be “what if copywriting was fun?” And you can keep going from there. “What if learning to write copy opened new opportunities for me? What if I created new friendships and relationships through my desire to get better at copywriting?
8. Your ideal “everyday day”,
9. from Frank Kern’s Core Influence talk
10. This is what your life would look like on any given day (i.e, not the dream vacation, wedding day, etc.).

Here are the questions from his talk:

1) Where would you live?

2) What would your house look like?

3) What would it smell like?

4) What time would you wake up?

5) What would you do in the morning?

6) What does the mundane stuff look like?

7) What are you thinking about in the morning?

8) What would you spend the first half of your day doing?

9) What would you have for lunch?

10) Who would you eat with?

11) What would your friends be like?

12) What would you talk about?

13) What would you do for personal fulfillment?

14) What life purpose would you strive for?

15) What would your business be?

16) What time would you start work?

17) What would you actually DO at work?

18) What is your relationship like?

19) What do you do for family time?

20) What would you do at night?

21) What would your thoughts be as you go to sleep?

3. Your Business, Your Way

This is a similar take on the ideal everyday day but do it specifically for your business.

– How do you earn your income?

– How much do you earn?

– How do you spend your time?

– Who do you work with?

– Where do you spend your time? (in-person and online)

– What else do you want to do?

You get the point.

Take your time with each of these exercises and see how you feel when you’re done.

Then simply sit with them. You don’t need to take immediate action or create a master mind map of all these things.

Just let them percolate and see what unfolds.

This doesn’t mean you stop taking action, you simply relax about it. You’ll find that you start taking inspired action and things #JustShowUP.

What’s the point if you’re not enjoying the journey?

If you decide to have some fun and try these exercises, let me know how it goes.