7 things I needed to unlearn to grow my business to this level

We all have these beliefs and ideas that we've picked up over the years and taken them on as “truths” without ever really questioning where they came from or whether they still serve us and our business. In today's episode, I'm sharing my own beliefs that I needed to change to grow my business to where it's at now.

– Why trading time for money means that you're working harder NOT smarter.
– How trying to control the outcome can zap your creativity (and your energy).
– Why avoiding failure by over-planning and overthinking can actually slow down your success.
– Why learning to become more comfortable with uncertainty creates space for ideas and creativity.
– How to avoid getting stuck with finding the “right vision” and instead focus on what you want and how you want to show up in your business.

Episodes mentioned:
– Ep #467: Denise Duffield-Thomas on money mindset, launching and scaling to a multi-million dollar biz by doubling down on one product. DM me 467 on Instagram stephtaylor.co or listen here

 

Today, I'm sharing a bunch of the things that I had to unlearn for me to get my business to the stage where it is at today. Now I know it's really easy when you are looking at a business like mine from the outside, and it's very easy to think, oh, wow. She grew really quickly, without taking into account the fact that it's been about seven years since I quit my corporate job. 

And yes, I spent the first couple of years floundering around and the business that I have now is not the same business that I had when I quit my job. But there were so many things that came out of those first couple of years that I learned and that I needed to unlearn in order to get to where I am right now.

So it's not a super-fast process. It hasn't been a super fast process for me, but I hope that sharing some of these things that I needed to unlearn, will help you to unlearn them a little bit faster without making the mistakes that I did. Now, we all have these beliefs and ideas that we have picked up over the years, and we take them on as truths without really ever questioning where they came from or whether they still serve us.

 

#1: The harder I work, the more money I will make.

This was a big one growing up because I grew up in a family where my parents worked really hard, my parents made sacrifices to send me to a good school and university and all of those things, right?

So I grew up in this background where everybody around me worked so hard, and in my mind, I thought if I work really hard, I will make lots of money and I used to constantly add things to my to-do list for the sake of feeling really productive, really busy, because I thought that if I work 10 hour days, then I would make more money.

And when my business grew really quickly, it actually shattered this belief because here I was working less than ever before and making more money than ever before. And because of that, I felt so much guilt, so much shame. I kept thinking I should be working harder, I should be working right now. 

 

#2: It's shameful to want to make money or talk about it.

I spend so much money on courses and education, because I'm constantly trying to learn more so I can better serve my own students and my clients, right? More money has allowed me to invest in Facebook ads and a publicist, which means I can reach more people, can impact more people, more money has allowed me to grow my team, which creates time freedom for me so that I can create new programs. I was able to write a book. I've been able to do all of these things that I would not have been able to do.

 

#3: I have complete control over the outcome.

Whether that is the outcome of a Launch or a goal of a project, in reality, we have no control over the outcome of anything, and trying to control how your Launch turns out, how your project turns out, or how your goal turns out, it's exhausting and it zaps your creativity when we are so focused on something, turning out the exact way we planned it to, we missed the ideas and the inspiration and the opportunities that are floating past us because they don't fit the exact plan that we had for how this thing would look. 

And for me, accepting that I can't control the outcome of any launches or any goals, has been a huge shift for me because it means that I now place my energy on the things that I can control, my own actions, my own habits, rather than wasting my energy on the things that I can't control, worrying about the things that I can't control.

And then when things don't go as I hope that they would, I try to look for the lesson in them, or I try to look at the bigger picture. And you know, sometimes in hindsight, I'm really glad that things didn't work out the way that I wanted them to. 

 

#4: Failure should be avoided at all costs.

I've learned through many of my own failures that failure is actually the shortcut to success. Trying to avoid failure by over-planning, overthinking, and being a perfectionist. This is the long, slow road, and it doesn't actually guarantee that you're going to avoid failure.

Instead, being quick to take imperfect action, seeing what happens, and learning from it, is the faster way because you won't know the outcome until you take that first step, and you can't really plan until you are in it, right? There are some things you just can never plan for. I would never have been equipped for the quick growth that my business had in 2020 if it wasn't for the failures that happened in the four years before it.

And although these failures felt awful at the time, I now understand why they needed to happen for my business to get to where it is today. I now know the lessons that I needed to learn from these failures. There is no other way that I would've ever learned them had I not experienced them firsthand.

 

#5: Success needs to feel hard for you to be worthy of it.

You are no less worthy of a great outcome just because it felt easy. And at the end of 2020, I shared an Instagram post where I was writing a little note to my 2019 self about what 2020 was going to look like, and this is what I said. It's with hindsight:

“So, 2019, Steph. You're making things so much harder than they need to be for years. You clung to the belief that business is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to be a challenge. It couldn't possibly be easy confirmation bias had you looking for all the evidence that you have to struggle to be successful, and when you couldn't find any evidence.

You created some of your own. You self-sabotaged, you overcomplicated things. You started doing more, more, more until you melted into a little puddle of tears and overwhelm. 2020 is about to shatter this belief for you. 2019 Steph, it's going to force you to realise that good things can come easily and you're still worthy of them. But please, 2019 Steph, never forget how hard you worked in the last four years before success finally happened easily in 2020.” 

So looking back at that, when I found that in my notes app on my phone, I was like, oh, I need to share that because this is now a few years on from when I wrote that, and it's still so incredibly relevant. You know, easy can be such a good thing in your business. We don't need to overcomplicate and overthink everything. 

 

Thing #6: You always need to know the answer and you need to know the right way to do something.

Our brains love certainty which means safety, it means survival. If we can predict how something will turn out, then we will survive, we'll be safe. And it's why our subconscious keeps us repeating the same behaviours over and over and over again, even though we say we want to change them.

So when you are trying something new and it feels uncertain, your brain's going to say Alert, alert, danger, stop. And it's going to try to stop you from doing the thing. But being open to not knowing the answer, being open to that uncertainty, leaves us open to ideas and inspiration. But first, I needed to unlearn this need for certainty and I needed to learn to become comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing the right answer.

 

#7: There's a right vision I should be working towards.

No, there is no right vision. 

The only vision that is the right vision is the vision that is aligned with what I want for my business. And early in my business, I accidentally subscribed to other people's visions. And then that left me building a business I didn't enjoy. It left me feeling out of place, misaligned, wondering how I'd managed to build something that I hated, really.

And if you want to build a multimillion-dollar empire, great. If you want to build something that's small and gives you loads of freedom and not a huge amount of responsibility, that is also great. Your vision, it's about what you want. Not what everybody around you is telling you that you should want. And I think it's really easy to forget this in the noisy social media world where everyone's celebrating these amazing wins they're having in your life and you are like, why don't I have that?

Should I want that? But instead, the only thing you should want is what feels right for you in your business. The only kind of business you need to build is the one that feels right for you. So that is why vision setting is the first step in my free workbook.

 

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