10 things I’ve learned in 400 episodes, which have had the biggest impact on my business

Wow, I cannot believe that it has been 400 episodes of this podcast. It has been such a journey since hitting record on that very first episode just over three years ago where I was actually in New Zealand. At the time, I just moved back home with my parents for a couple of months to save up some money. And I started recording my podcast in literally my teenage bedroom. So, we've come a long way in 400 episodes. so today, I'm going to share 10 of the things that I've learned in 400 episodes that have had the biggest impact on my business and probably also my life as well.

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#1. You’re responsible for creating the business you want

If it's not what you wanted to look like, then it's your responsibility for changing it, whether that means firing clients, pivoting, niching down. Nobody else is going to do it for you. Nobody else can tell you exactly how you should want it to look and feel. And this can be a really tough truth to swallow, but it's really good.

 

#2. You get to make the rules

There's no right or wrong way to run your business. If you don't want to be on Instagram, that's cool. You don't have to be on Instagram. If you don't want to hustle and work 18 hour days, you don't have to. You get to choose exactly what you want your business to look like. And I wish someone had told me this years ago because I used to be terrified that I would do things the wrong way and it would stop me from doing things at all. So yeah, you get to write the rules.

 

#3. You can't wait for someone else to give you permission to do what you want

I waited far too long for someone to give me permission to go all in on creating and launching digital products. I waited far too long to niche down into launching. It felt like I was waiting for the sun, the moon, and the stars to align and the universe to give me this piece of paper being like, okay, you can go and do that now. And the truth is you have to give yourself that permission because otherwise, you're going to be waiting a really bloody long time.

 

#4. You have to back yourself

Whether you're investing money in a coach or a course, or you're investing time into creating a product, all of these things have a risk, right? You have to believe that you're going to show up as your best self, that you're going to take the action and you're going to get the results. Nobody else will do that for you. And let me tell you, when I first invested in my coach, it was a painful amount of money, but I chose to back myself. I decided, you know what? I'm putting this investment in. I'm going to get more than what I'm investing into this coach. I will get that in return. It's been the same with every high ticket course that I've bought. Every time that I've put time into creating a product, all of those things, I choose to believe that I'm going to get more than that back from and get more than my investment back.

 

#5. Mindset is everything

If only I had spent half as much time learning mindset strategies as I did learning Instagram strategies, I would've had a much more enjoyable first few years of building my business. I really only doubled down on mindset when I did James Wedmore's Business By Design course, that was the first starting point for my mindset work. And then unfortunately, that was at the end of 2019. And then when 2020 happened and my business grew so quickly, I already had a few of the mindset tools that I needed. But I was forced to work on my mindset even more because I found myself in this pattern of self-sabotaging a lot of the things that I built, because what I had created was inconsistent with these beliefs that I had these limiting beliefs around money, around myself, around my confidence. So, I tried to self sabotage my success back to my comfort zone. And that was when I realized, oh, I need to work with a coach here.

 

#6. Remember to have fun

I didn't leave my corporate job so that I would feel miserable working for myself. And I'm guessing that for most of you, you didn't start your business because you wanted to have a crappy time, right? So, ask yourself. Whenever something's feeling awful, ask yourself, how can I make this more fun? For me, that meant including a bit more freedom in my calendar so that I can experiment with ideas in my business, that meant giving myself freedom to create content that resonates with me and to speak a little bit more on the fly with my podcast episodes rather than scripting everything and planning everything down to a tee. I don't plan my content calendar more than about a month in advance. I used to try and do it quarterly. And it just didn't leave enough flexibility for me to add content that was exciting and to change things and experiment. And that's one of the advantages personally I think of having a really small streamlined team and business is that I have that flexibility to change things rather than having to plan everything months and months in advance.

 

#7. There will always be more lows and more highs

If only I had a list of every time that I wanted to quit my business because something went wrong, we would have a very interesting podcast episode on our hands. Trust me if I did have that. And I'm going to do a podcast episode shortly on…. It's going to be a bit of a pep talk if you're thinking of quitting your business because I've been there a few times. I wish someone would have told me that there would be lows, and that it's normal, and that often very shortly after the lows, there will be highs again. It just like anything in life. There will be low points and there will be high points. And you just have to stick it through the lows, stick it out through the lows and trust that it will get better again.

 

#8. You need to be okay with it not going to plan

Pretty much nothing in my business has gone to plan. And in hindsight, I can say that has been the absolute best thing. Planning ahead is great, but being flexible with the plan, being open to pivoting, being not so attached to things looking in exact way. This is important too, because usually when things haven't gone to plan, it's been a blessing in disguise. I look back on the things that haven't worked out and now, I'm like, oh, okay. The universe was just trying to save my butt there. I'm glad that didn't happen. Or I'm glad it worked out the way that it did.

 

#9. Failure is a great thing because it means that you tried

The only thing that I think is worse than failure is sitting on an idea for so long and not taking any action whatsoever. And believe me, I've been there, done that. I'm not criticizing you if that's what you're doing because I have been there and done that as well. And the fear of failure is a real fear. It can keep us stuck in that inaction, but sitting on that idea or not taking action is worse than trying and failing, in my books anyway. These days, I'm a lot more open to failing. I look at it as a learning experience. I think, okay, let me try this. Let me see. It's either going to work or I'm going to learn something, which I can then take everything back to the drawing board and improve upon it. It's never a full waste. No matter how big the failure, I don't think it's ever a waste

 

#10. Last but not least, you can allow it to be easy

We get so caught up in the little details, the little things that don't move the needle. We make everything so much more complicated than it needs to be. What if you just decided that your business doesn't have to be hard and you just allowed it to be easy? Because you can do that. You can take a step back and you can ask yourself. And this is not my question, Tim Ferriss came up with this question. But you can ask yourself, what would this look like if it were easy? What would this look like if it were easy, right? You don't need to overcomplicate things.

 

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