Today’s Guest

About Jo Casey

Jo Casey has over 20 years experience of working as a trainer and consultant in the corporate, public and third sectors. Her flashy clients and workplaces have included Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PWC), The NHS, BT, Toyota Motors, Peugeot Business School, The Welsh Assembly Government, The Girl Guides UK, Vets4Pets/Companion Care, several Local Government Authorities, and The Department Of Work And Pensions. But she’s also worked with many no less wonderful smaller ventures, micro businesses and SMEs.

She’s a self-confessed nerd and has taught at college and university levels and is a visiting lecturer at the University of Chester. Jo has a Masters Degree in Coaching and Organizational Development and she’s an NLP Master Practitioner, MBTI qualified professional certified Emotional Intelligence EQi 2.0 consultant.

She’s been coaching for over 15 years now – clocking up over 1000 hours of coaching experience. Basically, she carefully treads that line between being passionate and a tiny bit obsessive about what she does (obsession often wins). Jo runs accredited coach training programs and coaches people from all over the world via the power of the internet.

Listen to this episode

  

What You’ll Learn

• What integrity actually means and how it shows up in business
• How to get clear on what acting from a place of integrity looks like for you
• How overextending ourselves can affect our business integrity
• Why it’s so important to make things right when we mess up
• How getting support comes into play when we’re building a business from a place of integrity
• What boundaries have to do with business integrity

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• BMP173 Jo & Holly Should You Guarantee Results For Your Clients
• BMP143 RM Harrison ~ How to Clone Your Favorite Client

Transcript

The transcript for this episode can also be downloaded here (no opt-in required).

Holly:   Hello, hello, this is Holly Worton and I am back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey. Today, we talk about integrity in business, and this is a topic that’s been coming up for me a lot lately, which you may have noticed from my solo episode – 224 – on how to establish credibility and trust as an entrepreneur. Integrity is so, so, important to me, possibly because my first business really did not feel aligned for me in terms of integrity. And I really feel like this business has been an exercise in making up for that.

            So, what are we going to talk about today, you are going to learn: what integrity actually means, and how it shows up in business. How to get clear on what acting from a place of integrity looks like for you, how overextending ourselves affects our business integrity. Why it is so important to make things right when we mess up. How getting support comes into play when we are building a business from a place of integrity, and this is really, really important, something you may not have thought of. What boundaries have to do with business integrity and if you haven’t listened to our episode on boundaries, that was 225, go and check that out, because that was a mega-episode that I really loved. And finally, why you have got to be constantly calibrating things in your business if you want to come for a place of integrity. So, I hope you enjoy this, I hope you find it interesting and useful and, as always, let me know what you think.

Jo:       Hello everybody, welcome, this is Jo Casey, and I am here with Holly Worton and we are here for our monthly bonus joint podcast, hi Holly how are you doing today?

Holly:   Good, how are you doing?

Jo:       Yeah, okay, it has been a weird few weeks on the Internet; so we are recording this at the end of October, and we have had the whole #metoo campaign, or movement that that’s been going in; there’s been some other stuff that has been happening in Facebook groups, and with some fairly high profile people that I am connected with. So it has felt like quite a torrid few weeks, which is why we have decided to talk about the topic which we are going to talk about today, which is around integrity. And, how to have integrity in your business, and what we mean by that, and some kind of guide posts around that. So, yeah, have you got anything that you want to say about the reasons behind why we have chosen this topic?

Holly:   Well, same as what you said, a lot of people have been talking about this lately, Natalie Sisson posted an article, a blog post…which we can include in the show notes, which I think is really interesting. And when I posted that to my Facebook group, lots of people were saying they had already come across it. So, integrity is a topic that people have been thinking about and talking about lately. And it is a topic that is very close to my heart, because in my first business, which I ran 10 years with a business partner, I did not feel like I was in integrity, and it felt so awful. And I ran that business for so many years with this business partner, our values were just not aligned, and it was so awful, and integrity is such an important thing to me that I think I have kind of vowed to be impeccable as possible in this business, because it is so important to me and I now how awful it feels to be out of integrity because of someone that you are working with.

Jo:       Yeah, it was probably one of the reasons why you and I got on so well, but integrity is one of my kind of core beliefs, one of my leading principles… And I have to say that it feels physically awful, not just emotionally, I feel like my whole system is out of whack if I am not in integrity. And that’s not to say: oh god, I am always in integrity… that’s not it at all, it just means that it is important for me to strive to do that, and I do have a…I think quite a strong internal reaction when I am not in integrity. And, you know, it is one of those things that always surprises me, continually, how sometimes people behave, not just on the Internet but in life as well. We spend so much of our time in this online world and integrity means different things to different people, but there are some people who I can’t see how they can be in integrity with things. And I think that with this theme we have been having in our discussions of late, about new marketing and new ways of doing things, the fact that we are sick of so many of the old ways of doing stuff, I think integrity really comes to the fore of the conversation. It is about what sort of businesses do we want to be building, not just ‘I want a business that is going to be making money’ but: on what basis? At what cost? And how can we be building businesses that do have integrity, that aren’t doing additional harm to people, that are building up more trust, instead of adding to the what can sometimes feel like one huge global shouting match.

Holly:   Mm yeah.

Jo:       So, I have just been over and googled the definition of integrity, cos I know my definition, but I wanted to go and find what the dictionary says, so it says:

                        The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles.

and:

                        The state of being whole and undivided.

Yes, and I think that both of those apply when it comes to the work that we do, and it comes to the way that we show up in our businesses, in our communities, in our world as humans.

Holly:   And, as solo-preneurs it is just us, we may have a team, but integrity is all on us. We can’t hide behind someone else, it is not a big organisation where there are so many other people at play, it is us. It is up to us run our businesses from a place of integrity or not; or anywhere in-between that spectrum.

Jo:       Yes, absolutely, because there is nobody else that you can go: yes, I am going to offload that, I am going to offload the integrity bit to my colleague or something like that. Or: nothing I do really affects how I show up for customers. It is like: everything you do affects how this shows up for customers. I think it is a juicy and a timely topic to dive into. So, Holly, what does integrity mean to you? When you think of that word integrity, when you think of you in your business, what comes up for you, what does that mean for you?

Holly: It means that I am acting in a way which is aligned with my values, I am being clear and coherent, when I say something I follow through with it, I am clear about what I offer; what I can and cannot help people with, and I stick to that. I think it is all about transparency and I think that I am very transparent person. So, being clear and transparent on these things is really important, because I think it makes the relationship really clear. I know I have used that word seven times in the last sentence, but… {laughing} it is all about being clear.

Jo:       Being clear, okay, we get it.

Holly:   And being ethical, and standing up for the things that I believe in, in terms of running a business and being an ethical business person.

Jo:       So, I think one of the things that makes this confusing for people sometimes, is the fact that integrity and how integrity shows up for you, in terms of the behaviour and things, would be different depending on the person. So, what is in integrity for me, may be slightly for in integrity for you, Holly; although actually, in reality, it probably isn’t, because I think that we are fairly similar. Someone else may have a very different approach to their business, but feel that they are in integrity with themselves. I think it is important to have those things in mind because, that idea of something being whole, undivided, I think it has to be from your personal set of morals and values. And that’s when it gets very tricky when you are dealing with other humans, because, I have seen the phrase: being out of integrity, being thrown around a lot at people. You know what, I think Donald Trump probably is fully in integrity with himself…

Holly:   Yeah, I think he lives by his values.

Jo:       He says what he means! But is it the same moral code that I operate from, oh god no! So, you need to have a level of self-awareness, I think a level of the ability and the willingness to look at your own stuff, and to own your own stuff, to be fully in integrity.

Holly:   And to also see how your sense of integrity, and your sense of values, fits in with other people.

Jo:       Yes.

Holly:   Including, of course, the people that you are working with.

Jo:       Yes, absolutely. And I think that’s why that word, being clear, is so important. Because if you are clear to people from the outset what your boundaries are, what’s on offer, what’s not on offer, then you are in integrity when you go back in and maybe have to reaffirm those boundaries or remind people of that. Where I see people coming a cropper with boundaries work is when they haven’t vocalised what those boundaries are, where they haven’t been clear about what’s on offer what’s not on offer. They have maybe over-promised. And that kind of whole thing of over-promising, I think very often you can read that is: oh they were just trying to manipulate you or something like that; but I know that for many of us women we over-promise with the best of intentions, because we really want to do the thing. And I know that’s something I have done in the not too distant past, and it is something that I am continually working on, because I want to help people, I really want to help people. And, part of being in integrity is sometimes taking a pause to say: have I actually got the time and the energy and is it appropriate for me to do that? And sometimes I mess up on that and I will hold my hands up and say that I mess up on that. But I think it is very important from the beginning to be clear on: what are your capacities, what are your offering and what are you not offering? And this goes back to the conversation we have had about offering guarantees, and contracts, and things like that.

Holly:   Yes. And also being.. when you read a sales page and you see: this is for you if; this is not for you, if. Like, that’s another way of creating those guide posts so that the potential client can be: oh yes, oh yes…no.

Jo:       I know that when you are not feeling 100% confident, or you are feeling a bit desperate: I will just take any client, I will just take any client going. Actually, even though you may be: well, I will work with them, it doesn’t matter how difficult they are. {joking} Yeah, yeah, and you go out into the street and hit people over the head, you know: be my client. But, that’s not in integrity, either, because there are people you will do great work with and there will be people who will just be a terrible fit. You can’t help everybody, no matter how much you want to, so part of being in integrity is being able to identify: who are the people I do great work with? Who are the people I do really lousy work with?

Holly:   And you can tell when you are on a sales call with someone.

Jo:       Yeah, yeah, definitely. Even if you are sometimes tempted to go: yeah, well, I’ll give it a go. I don’t know about you, but I know that whenever I have had a client who hasn’t turned out to be a great fit, and hasn’t got the result that either of us have wanted, I can kind of look back at those initial contacts and go: yeah, my gut told me this wasn’t going to be great.

Holly:   You can look back and identify the red flags that at time you were like: oh no, that’s going to be ok.

Jo:       Yep exactly. So you also said something about saying what you mean. Tell me a bit more about hat?

Holly:   So I think, that goes back to the word that I keep saying which is clarity, it is when you have the sales conversation, when you are writing the sales page, you say exactly what you mean and mean what you say. So, you clearly express what it is that’s included, what’s not included, what you can help people with, what you can’t help people with. It is about managing expectations and being really clear in exactly what it is that you are offering. And again, it is impossible with coaching to make guarantees and say: at the end of our six-month program, you will have achieved this, this and this; you can’t because you don’t know what work the client is going to do. But you can say: here are some things that are possible for you, here are some things that my clients have gotten as a result of this work, your results may vary, of course. But it is about being clear and managing the expectations, for what it is that you are offering.

Jo:       I think when it comes to marketing, that’s a tricky road to walk. Because, I can’t remember which, there is a really rubbish film with, I think it is with Dudley Moore, it is from the 80s or something; and he is an ad executive and something happens to him and he finds it impossible to lie anymore. And I think this goes back to this idea that all marketing is lying. He does these really honest ad and there is one of them for Volvo which is: it’s boxy, and ugly, but it’s safe. {Both: laughing}

Holly:   Exactly, exactly. You have got to make it appealing, but in a way that is really coherent and truthful.

Jo:       Yeah, and so I work with clients a lot around their marketing, and it is this real tightrope to walk around: how can I explain the possibilities of us, without saying: it will totally change your life. And how can I do that in a way… it is like a gauge, how do I gauge how much of the: imagine the possibilities is in there, and how much ‘rara’ do I put in, and how much of the benefit, or the potential benefits do I talk about… If you are coming at it…you have to kind of be in the right mindset to be able to do that. There is a danger that, we have all seen those sale pages, you know the ones that usually have the red writing with the yellow highlighting on: imagine losing 30 pounds in 21 days with never being hungry. It is kind of yelling at you!

Holly:   And eating cake for every meal.

Jo:       Eating whatever you want! With the kind of temptation to go at the other end of that and kind of go: I will work with you on this, and this, and this; and the results that you will get will be 100% your own. It is like… nobody is going to buy that, so you have to find that middle ground that’s going to be in integrity; and for me the way that I help clients to work with that is to look at: what are the benefits of that actions you will work with them on. So, for example, a lot of coaches will just focus on the process, but it’s then: what’s at the other end of that process.

Holly:   Yeah, what’s the purpose of doing the process, in the first place?

Jo:       Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, maybe it’s something like: I will help you look at all the relationships that you have and work out where your boundaries, or your fear of intimacy, is affecting them and come up with some strategies to resolve them. That’s not the same as saying: everyone will love you by the end of this program. But it is about saying: this will help improve your relationships by this, this and this; you will have… so it is focussing on the tangible, and the benefits of that, rather than just the most amazing benefits possible in the universe.

Holly:   Right, so it is not focussing on the benefits, that your ideal client is 100% turbo charged, and action taking, and perfect, will get; it is being reasonable, based on more experience with a variety of people.

Jo:       And it is also going back to that word, which I know we use a lot, which is being human. So, nobody talks in the way: everyone will love you, imagine being the person in the room that everyone wants to talk to (sorry, I hope this sound so with me shouting on the podcast!). It is more about how you would have it as a conversation, so: I am going to teach you some tools that will help you to just build better, easier, relationships with people; so that you are not going to feel really awkward in every social situation, you are going to have tools you can fall back on, that will help you to start conversations and build relationships. That’s a much more conversational style of marketing message, I think.

Holly:   Exactly, it is speaking like a human being and not like a, I don’t know, auctioneer…or sales person.

Jo:       The things you see at 3am when you can’t sleep.

Holly:   Yes, infomercial. Yes, yes, yes!

Jo:       So, that’s one thing in terms of marketing, but what about, one of the things that I know for me, is about integrity, sometimes it is not always easy. Sometimes it is easy to say: yeah, I can totally do that for you. Sometimes I have to say: no, I can’t guarantee that.

Holly:   And you don’t want to disappoint people!

Jo:       No, no! If you have a bit of a people pleaser thing, that an awful lot of us do, you want to say: yes, we could totally do that! And: ah, I can absolutely help you with that! I know that’s one of the things I have to work quite hard to resist sometimes, there have been times when I have been overextending myself and couldn’t deliver to the standard that I had wanted to, because I was so spent, I was so exhausted by the end of it.

Holly:   Yeah.

Jo:       And that’s a hard lesson to learn!

Holly:   It is, and conversely though, I think some people will go the opposite way and hold themselves back, because they are so afraid of overextending themselves because they have done it in the past.

Jo:       Yes, yes, it is almost like you need to calibrate, and recalibrate, and be vigilant about it.

Holly:   And that’s a constant work, because as your business grows, as you grow, as you change, as your business changes, you are constantly going to need to be calibrating, because you are going to be offering different things, working with different kinds of people; so you have always got to be aware of this. I know you said this earlier but it requires a tremendous amount of self-awareness to be calibrating to see where you are on the spectrum of integrity, and how much you can handle, and how you are managing things.

Jo:       Yeah, yeah, totally. And also I think, making sure that you have a reserve, because one of the things about running a business is: you can pretty much guarantee that something will come up, unexpected, at regular intervals. Whether it be the client relationship that was going brilliantly that suddenly hit a bump in the road, and you have to deal with it; or, it’s the I don’t know the unexpected bill that comes in, or it’s the tech that doesn’t work, or it’s finding yourself in the middle of the hurricane as some of my clients did recently. Actually, I did for a day, we lost power for a few hours.

Holly:   Ooh, did you?

Jo:       We did…in the middle of quite mild north of England, but yeah we did.

Holly:   Tropical England!

Jo:       So, having a reserve, one of the things that I have noticed in some of the fall out from some of the unfortunate, unpleasant, things that have happened in my online communities of late is, being able to stand back and look at people’s behaviour and think: they are not coming at this from a very resourced place, because if they were, I am sure they wouldn’t be behaving like this, responding like this. It is very easy to fire off an email when you are up to your limit of things that day, and one of my rules is: sleep on it. Just look at it tomorrow. Especially if it something that has hit me in quite an intense way.

Holly:   Yeah, and if you feel yourself wanting to lash out with that knee jerk reaction just stop. Wait an hour, wait two hours, or sleep on it; but give yourself some time to let it sink in and not just react, and get that email out of your inbox, or tick a thing off your list.

Jo:       Yeah, yeah and it is not something that you are going to get perfect every time, but it is one of the things that I really try and work on consciously. And also having other people who can give you a perspective…a different perspective, because when you are in the middle of something…

Holly:   You can’t see it.

Jo:       No, absolutely not, and that’s going back to on of our recurrent themes about having people in your corner, having a mastermind, having fellow entrepreneurs that you don’t have necessarily a business relationship with, maybe it is a paid mastermind, maybe it is a paid coach; but also just fellow travellers, people who are in a similar situation who get what it’s like when you get that email that feels catastrophic when you are first reading it. And then, you know, the can give you a different perspective, and help you get grounded about it, and help you get get to a place where you can respond from a resourced place, a place of integrity.

Holly:   Yes. So, one of the things that you mentioned earlier were contracts, and I think that’s a really clear and easy way to outline expectations. So, how did you learn how to do contracts? I know my documents have really evolved over the years, but how did you…? What do you include in your documents, how did you learn how to make a contract that you feel really comfortable with and you feel represents the boundaries and guidelines of the relationship?

Jo:       I think they do evolve. I learnt a lot from some great mentors, you know when you get to work with great people, you also get to think: what do they put in their coaching agreement, and their contract, so…they are the things that you can model, and I say model, I don’t say steal or copy. It is modelling. And then, I think it’s…so, there is the legal side of things, and I am not a lawyer, so I don’t attempt to do my of the legal-type stuff. So, I, initially, paid for a fairly boilerplate coaching agreement from a legal site, a couple of years ago, and I possibly need to get that reviewed because it’s been a few years now, so I use that for the legal side. Then I also have quite a large section which is a behavioural contract, so in terms of the way that I commit to showing up for you, the way that I expect you to show up as well. That’s things like: you take responsibility for your feelings, and for raising any concerns with me, as and when they happen; because, there is nothing worse, and also very little that can be done, if somebody saves up resentment of things that they weren’t happy with right until the end. When it is like: so, I can’t do anything with that now!

Holly:   And that goes back to clear communication. If you have a problem, you communicate it.

Jo:       Yes, exactly. Things like, owning your response to things, so that helps to not get into accusation mode; and that goes the same for me too as the coach. So things like, ideally we talk in: when you did that, I interpreted that as…, rather than: you made me feel… which is never very helpful. And this is something that I kind of do this behavioural contracting when I am running a group, when I am doing in-person events and there is this one event when we are going to be talking feelings and doing some of the tricky stuff; because I think stuff like that is very important. And then I also do things like: what is my cancellation policy, what is my refund policy, do I offer a trial period? No I don’t. Do I apply late fees? And, these were all things that initially I was a bit like: oh I don’t want to do any of that, that seems really harsh, but get one or two clients who don’t pay you and you learn really quickly, because you are running a business.

Holly:   Yes.

Jo:       Or, you get a client that takes forever to… is consistently late, and you are having to spend time chasing them, or reminding them and things like that. Then having something like a fee that you can apply for late fees can potentially pay to hire somebody to go and do all that stuff for you, because you do get to the point of, you have to be able to balance, being a good human showing up in your business, and it is a business.

Holly:   Exactly, it is not just a friendly little thing…

Jo:       And then I think one of the other things, from a coaching perspective, depending on who is listening to this, you may have a different methodology and a different practice; but certainly from a coaching perspective, it is really important to have some clear boundaries around the nature of the relationship, so it is a professional relationship, it is a friendly professional relationship, it is not a friendship.

Holly:   Yes.

Jo:       And I also learnt that the hard way, because I had an experience a few years ago where I had a case of transference, where somebody had decided that we were in this really intimate relationship and I was the only person he could talk to about things. And I was like: yeah of course, because you are hiring me, and that’s my job to listen to you. And he was like: no, I think we have a real connection now. And I was like: dude you know nothing about me, because this isn’t a two-way conversation; but he got that very confused in his head, and fortunately it happened when I was working in a workplace in an organisation, and I had the kind of HR backup and things like that, because it did get…So, I am really clear about that, this isn’t a friendship…it is a friendly relationship and there are clients that I have had that have then become friends with afterwards, but there has to be a very distinct change in the relationship, otherwise you just end up with a very one-sided friendship.

Holly:   Yeah {laughing}

Jo:       Basically you are just doing free coaching! And that’s not great from a professional point of view, it is not great from a financial point of view, it is not great from a human point of view either; it is not a healthy relationship.

Holly:   Yeah, exactly, and I think that’s a very clear way to express that, as you told that story it reminded me of years ago, I think I was in grad school, I was seeing a therapist and I show up for a session one day and she says: how are you? And I say: I am fine, how are you? And she looks at me and says: I ask the questions. And I was like: shit, I was just being polite {laughing} but that was her way of setting a brick wall between us… that was her boundary! Ever since then (I have grown out of it now) but for years I was terrified to have that friendly side to a relationship like that, you know: I get that we are not friends, but can we just be polite?

Both: {laughing}

Holly: So, I really like what you said about it being a friendly, professional relationship. You can ask each other how you are doing! {laughing}.

Jo:       But…I don’t know if you have ever had it, but I have had an occasion where I hired somebody and they have spent have the session talking about themselves and it is like: listen, it is my time.

Holly:   Exactly…no, I can’t think of that happening..

Jo:       So, I know a lot of this comes back to boundaries: what you will do; and what you won’t do. I think there is then something about how do you handle the fuck-ups?

Holly:   Yes.

Jo:       Because they are going to happen, because we are all human. I think that is always a real test of your integrity.

Holly:   I think that’s a major, major, part of integrity, when you make mistakes – and we are always going to make mistakes because we are not perfect – how do you deal with that? Do you own up to it, do you take responsibility for it? That can be really hard…but that’s a huge part of integrity. What are you going to do to make that situation right? How are you going fix it?

Jo:       Yeah; because nobody wants to, nobody enjoys saying…ah that’s not true, there are some people who are kind of emotional masochists, or on the victim: please rescue me type side of things. But, for most of us, we really don’t like it to go: I messed up, and I am really sorry, and this is what I am going to do to make amends and put it right. And so, I have seen people, recently, and from a little while ago, who have got the first part: I messed up; but then nothing came afterwards about: and this is how I am going to put it right. And, that produces a lot of resentment and loses a lot of goodwill.

Holly:   Yeah, and it really damages your reputation as a professional and makes you lose credibility.

Jo:       Yep, yep. And we are all running reputation-based businesses; and whilst there is always an inherent danger that your flavour of whatever you are putting out there is not going to sit right with everybody – you may occasionally get some people that you have rubbed up the wrong way, or just for their own reasons they are are not going to like what you are doing – I see a lot more damage done by the people who have really loved somebody’s work and then feel really disappointed by the way that they have handled a situation.

Holly:   Yeah, it is like you build the person up to be this, just ideal, you put them on a pedestal, and then they fall and…

Jo:       This whole kind of marketing trend that there has been, in recent years, of the whole gurufication, of ‘I am your saviour’, kind of saviour marketing: if you buy my 20-point blueprint then I will save you from having no clients, or not being able to get a guy, or… whatever it may be, because we are holding people up as being super-human, and then they go and do something very human which is mess-up and if you don’t then make amends for that, and put that right, then it is almost worse than if you had just shown up as a dick at the beginning. At least you knew they were a dick!

Holly:   Exactly! People knew what to expect.

Jo:       Yeah, and so, I saw a recent example, this is not nice to say out loud, but a recent example for me was, I know that I am not one of life’s very organised people, you know I am creative, I’m great in the moment, don’t get me wrong I know what my strengths are, but I also know that being organised, and being on top of the detailed stuff isn’t a strength of mine, I have to work really hard at it. And occasionally I mess up with that; and a recent thing was a program I was running, I had changed over to a new system to do things like send out contracts and just hadn’t understood how to use it properly and the contracts hadn’t gone out, I thought that they had, but they hadn’t. And so, I had to go back… I suppose I didn’t have to I suppose, but for me I had to, as soon as I realised I had to go back to the people involve and say: I messed up, I am so sorry, here is what I am going to do, I am going to manually send them all out tomorrow, and I did. And, you know: please contact me if you have got any questions or queries and we can have a chat about it, if there is anything that you want to discuss in private. And then I thought: how can I stop this from happening again. And so, I am at the point now where I am going: I need somebody to keep me organised, so I am in the process of interviewing and hiring somebody to help, almost like an online business mentor, or somebody I can have a meeting with each week and go: these are the things that need doing this week, she will do some of them (it is probably going to be a her, I am not just being sexist) it is because I am interviewing a woman for the role. And so I have the clarity, and the confidence, that those things that won’t naturally occur to me to do and to check up on, I have got somebody there who will be looking after that side of it. And so that will streamline, hopefully, my client experience, because it is not all reliant on just me. So, there’s also something about, not only making amends, but then learning from it and saying: ok, so how can I minimise the risk of this happening again in the future?

Holly:   Exactly, exactly, it is turning it into a learning experience and making sure that you stay in integrity and everything is under control for the next time. And that goes back to what you said before, what we were talking about calibrating: as your business changes, as you change your software, you are going to have to figure out what works, so.

Jo:       Yeah, it is also things like, two years ago when I could count the number of clients I had on one hand, then it was no problem sending out a contract, but now, you know, I have many more clients, I have many more people to look after, and so it does change; and you have to be aware of that. What are some of the other things that spring to mind when you think of integrity?

Holly:   I think we have covered a lot of it. Guarantees? You know the whole money back guarantee thing, or guaranteeing results, but again, that goes back to the same: what your expectations are; what you will offer, what you won’t offer, or will you refund money, won’t you refund money, that’s boundaries, that’s more of the same.

Jo:       I don’t offer a guarantee. We did a whole episode on this…

Holly:   Yeah we did. So, I think that pretty much covers it, it is all about self-awareness, being really clear on what your values are, what is ethical to you, and living by that, and clearly communicating boundaries with clients, and then upholding those boundaries.

Jo:       I think that one of the things that…as you were talking about that, I am thinkIng you know what, having integrity is not about feeling good, because I think we have this idea that when you are in integrity you just feel really great, nah actually, when I am integrity I get that urgh feeling that I know I have to do something difficult to remain in integrity.

Holly:   It involves difficult conversations which, as an adult, is part of being an adult. But sometimes, when someone pushes your boundaries, or when something is off, you need to have a conversation about it and that’s often uncomfortable.

Jo:       Definitely. And you need to have a think through about: what would I do if…? Or, if somebody gives me some feedback about an aspect of my work that they are not happy about, how do I respond to that? How am I able to sit with that information and be able to work out what is fair, what isn’t and what is mine to own, and then own it. Is something…yeah I could have done that better, I need to do that better next time, I need to own that. That’s not always comfortable.

Holly:   No, it’s not, it’s icky.

Jo:       Yeah! So, I think that being in integrity quite often does feel icky. Not: I just feel so aligned, this is wonderful.

Holly:   No, not necessarily.

Jo:       I feel aligned and it sucks!

Holly:   Yeah, exactly, exactly, and I think also we can learn a lot from other people’s mistakes, so when things blow up on the Internet and you see something happening, think: what would I do in that situation? How can I avoid that situation in my business? And use other people’s mistakes as a learning experience for yourself, so you can hopefully anticipate being in that situation yourself.

Jo:       That’s true, if it is a small silver lining if you are right now, or have at some point, gone through a situation where you are just like: oh my god it feels like my Facebook feed is on fire right now, and I have messed up so bad, and how can I recover from that; just think of all the people who are benefiting from your mistake. And learning… But seriously. At the moment, I have been watching somebody go thought that kind of visceration that can only happen on social media and when I am able to get some distance from it I can look and see what’s gone wrong here, I can see some of the things that could have been put into place to avoid this happening. How can I put some of those things in place so that it doesn’t happen to me? That’s really valuable learning.

Holly:   Yeah, it is, it is. And, when you are going through something yourself and once you come out the other side, that’s also something you can share, you can write a blog post about it, or do a video about it, you can say: look, this happened, here’s how I dealt with it, and here’s how I will deal with it in the future. Use that learning experience to help other people as well.

Jo:       Yeah definitely. The thing I always think of whenever we are talking, Holly, it is like if you’ve not listened to our podcast very much before, and you are not familiar with our work, we are not the people who are gong to be telling you: it is all going to be great, it is all going to be amazing; because that wouldn’t be in integrity either.

Holly:   Yeah.

Jo:       So, I know that someone’s one of the bits of pushback that I get, I don’t know about you Holly, is: why are you so positive about everything, if you just think positive it will all be fine. It’s like: no! I have been around long enough, and I want people to be going into this with eyes open. If you want to this work and here we do hard things and here we do transformative things, we are not by and large helping people get their whites whiter than white, we are helping people to make real, deep, changes. We are coaches, we are healers, we are holistic practitioners, we are consultants. We are doing deep work with people and so that isn’t: just stick a bow on it and it will be fine.

Holly:   And it is messy sometimes, it is not like a clean cut thing.

Jo:       Yeah, and also it wouldn’t be in integrity to pretend there are easy answers to this stuff, because there aren’t.

Holly:   There is no blue print, which is why I hate blueprints. So, I think we have done a pretty good job of helping people see what integrity means, what are the guideposts, what are the things that you need to be thinking about, and how are you can calibrate each situation and how you are going to respond to it. So it is not being too extreme on either end, it is being a friendly professional who has clear boundaries, clear guidelines and clear communication.

Jo:       So, we have now completely solved everyone’s problems when it comes to integrity and how to be in integrity {laughing}

Holly:   Just put a bow on it.

Jo:       Yeah exactly, exactly…! I hope this has helped, as usual we would love to know your thoughts about: what integrity means to you? I think sometimes we find out what is in integrity for us, is by noticing which behaviours from other people make us kind of go: ooh! They can all be good clues, and also, notice how it feels in your body. I think there is a real semitic response when you are in integrity and when you are out of integrity. That’s how it is for me but we would love your thoughts about it. Any last words?

Holly: No, I think we have pretty much wrapped it up. So, thank you so much for exploring this with me, because it has been a topic of conversation, as you said, we have been seeing online and people have been talking about, so I think it is really good to explore.n

Jo:       Thank you for listening and wee will speak to you soon

Holly:   Thanks again for listening, please drop me a line and let me know what you thought, about this week’s episode. You can email me at: [email protected] or you can find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram and get in touch. I would love to give you a shout out on the show if you send me some feedback. I would also love for you to join me in my private Facebook group: Business Mindset Alchemists, so we can continue the conversation there. Like I always say, podcasting is really a one-way conversation, it is just me talking at you, and I would love to know how you feel about this stuff that I am talking about, and what I have to say, and I would love for you to join the conversation in the Facebook group. So, if you head over to https://www.hollyworton.com/group that will redirect you to the group and you can join, I would love to see you in there. So thank you so much for listening, if you enjoy this episode please take a few minutes, a couple of minutes, to leave a quick review on iTunes I would really appreciate that. And remember to visit hollyworton.com/229 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.