237: Holly Worton ~ How to Deal With the Unknowns in Business

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

I’m back again, with another solo episode! Today, I talk about how to deal with the unknowns in business. This is one of those aspects of business that can be incredibly frustrating: there’s often not a clear path to achieve our goals. Or we may think there is, but then reality doesn’t match up with our original plans. In this episode, I pick apart how business goals differ from other types of life goals, and what you can do to make achieving them a little bit easier.

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What You’ll Learn

Why it can be so challenging to deal with the unknowns in business
What you can do to make the unknowns easier
How to create a clear (and flexible!) plan to achieve your goals
What you need to do in your regular check-ins
How to know when to keep going and when to pivot

Things I Discussed

Connect With Holly

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Transcript

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

Holly: Hello and welcome to the Business Mindset Podcast episode 237, this is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode. Today, I am going to talk about: how to deal with the unknowns in business. And this is something that I have spoken about a little bit before, but it has been quite a while and I think this is a very important topic, so we are dedicating today’s episode to that.

But, before we get into the episode, I wanted to mention a quick shout-out to a listener who wrote in, to say:

A most excellent podcast on falling out of love with the business, I have been feeling that as well – and living in the San Francisco tech bubble I am beyond sick of all things tech. Message to self: that makes what I do all the more relevant! I have human contact with other humans, that is what I crave: connection. I crave it and I am sure that all others do as well.

I think this is such an excellent point, yes, we do crave connection. And, we are connecting with people. Social media has made it easier than ever to connect with people, but we have a lot of superficial connection, and I think that’s what a lot of us crave are the deeper connections, and we are not always getting that from social media. And I talk a lot about deeper connections and doing the deep mindset work. And, last Friday, I was having lunch with a couple of business friends, one of whom listens to this show and she said: you always talk about ‘deep’…what is deep? You talk about deep mindset work, you talk about deep connections, what is deep? So, I am sitting here at lunch trying to define what I mean by deep, and I realised: yeah, maybe you guys don’t know what I am talking about, when I talk about this deep stuff, but I think you do at some level. And so, by deeper connections, I mean, not just things like: yeah, I like your Instagram photograph, or your post on Facebook, or whatever. But, having deeper conversations, talking about important stuff, talking about the difficult stuff, talking about the uncomfortable stuff. Talking about the stuff that bothers us, talking about our fears, talking about our blocks, talking about our limiting beliefs. And when I talk about: ‘deep mindset work’ what I mean is working at the subconscious level specifically. So, using techniques like Heart-Centred Energy Work™, PSYCH-K®, NLP, EFT, TAT, all those acronyms(!) of deep work, deep ways of working that work at the subconscious level, at the energetic level and that dig deep to help you release those blocks.

So, thank you listener for sending in your comments. I totally understand what you mean about being, ‘beyond sick of all things tech’, I have been pretty sick of social media for a while now, and I wrote a blog post on this a couple of years ago, which people occasionally email me about; and I think I am going to be doing a solo episode on this as well. Because that’s how I market my business, social media is my primary way of marketing, and I have been kind of sick of it for a while so that’s not a great sign, so I will talk to you a little bit about what’s going on with that, and what I plan to do with that and what that means and what to do if you have fallen out of love with social media. I guess it is kind of similar to that episode on falling out of love with your business, you have got to find a new way forward and see what’s working, and what’s not working, but that’s a separate episode.

Today we are talking about: how to deal with the unknowns in business. So, what does this mean? I started thinking about this, because I was reflecting on my experiences last year, in 2017, with the Walk 1000 Miles Challenge, which I did last year. You probably know, if you have been following me online, or listening to this podcast, that I am a big fan of walking. I love walking, I love hiking, I love being out in nature. I love walking long distance trails and I love writing books about my experiences. So, I signed up last year for the Walk 1000 Miles Challenge, because I realised that I had never tracked my walking over the year, I had no idea how much I walked. And I thought, if I did the Walk 1000 Miles Challenge it would encourage me to write down how much I walk, and then I could see how much I walking a given year.

So, last year wasn’t really a representative year, because I didn’t do a national trail as I had the previous two years – but I ended up walking 1005 miles. This is a really interesting experience, because I had a very clear goal, I was going to walk a thousand miles in 2017, and I was counting all of my miles, so both urban miles and woodland miles, nature miles. So, I had a very clear goal, I had a deadline, and I set up a spreadsheet – and if you know me you know how much I love spreadsheets(!) – to track my progress. So, I tracked how many miles I had to do each week, how many miles I had done, I had a running total, I had a clear idea of how far behind I was, or how far ahead I was and how much more I needed to do, to not only stay on track but achieve my goal by the end of the year, and I did it. And the interesting thing about that was, I got to see how much I walk in any given year, and it did push me to get out more on days where maybe the weather wasn’t great, it was cold, I wasn’t really feeling like walking, but I did want to achieve that goal once I had signed up for it. So, I did it. And it took me the entire year to do it and I completed the goal on December 30th with my meetup group — that was the day that bumped me over 1000 miles, up to 1005.

Now this was a really interesting experience, because walking is something that I love, it is something totally unrelated to usual business stuff, it was a personal goal; and there is a Facebook group that goes along with the Walk 1000 Miles Challenge, which I will link to in the show notes. And so, I was seeing other people and what they were achieving along the way, and it was fascinating, because the usual stuff that comes up in business, the comparison game came up, of course. Some people had come up for the Walk 1000 Miles Challenge, and they were walking so much. One woman 5000 miles, which kind of sounds like a full-time job. Other people walked 2000 miles, 3000 miles – and people walked so, so, much. And I was thinking: I would love to walk that much, how do these people fit it in their schedule, I have no idea, but I would love to walk that much! And comparing myself and feeling kind of bad, feeling bad because it took me the entire year to walk 1000 miles. I completed the goal right before the end of the deadline, and just barely doing the goal. And as I was reflecting on this, a couple of days ago, I realised how ridiculous that was, my goal was to walk 1000 miles by 31 December 2017 – and I did! I walked 1005 miles by 30th December 2017. I achieved my goal, but I was still comparing myself to other people who did more, who did faster walking, walked further, whatever.

So, it was really fascinating to see how the comparison crap came up in something that was purely a personal goal; but, again, I want to reiterate why this is such an easy goal for me to achieve: I had a clear goal, I had a clear deadline, I had tracked my progress on that spreadsheet and that spreadsheet was vital to me achieving this goal, because I had the clear metrics of what I had walked, what I needed to walk, and where I needed to be to stay on track to do the 1000 miles, by the end of the year. The spreadsheet was vital – let me say that again! But that was such a clear experience. Two-and-a-half-years ago when I first started kickboxing I made a little video on something similar, I think I have got that on YouTube, so I will share the link to that also in the show notes. I talked about one of the things that I loved about kickboxing, was that you have the clear belt system, you advance through white belt to red belt to yellow belt and so on and so forth, up to black. And you have a very clear syllabus. So, I have a PDF or a word document that I have downloaded from my school, that clearly says: what things I need to practice, and demonstrate, at each grading to pass onto the next level of belt. So again, you have got clear goals, you have got clear deadlines because gradings are every three months, up until you get to your brown belt. Then it is every six months, then it is a year between brown-black and black – anyway details! So, you have clear deadlines, clear goals, and you have a clear syllabus of things to practice so that you can pass the grading and achieve your goal by bouncing up to the next level. Very much like the Walk 1000 Miles challenge and very different from business. Very, very, different from business, because in business we may set clear goals, we may give ourselves a deadline to the goal, we may track our progress, but we don’t know if the stuff that we are doing is actually going to work. There is a lot of trial and error in there, things don’t always work. And you can push, push, push, hustle, hustle, hustle, but if you are not doing the right things, in the right way, at the right time, it might not work.

And I think this is one of the things that can make business so frustrating – the unknown. You might try something that you tried, that worked last month, last year, might not work now – stuff changes. So you have constantly got to be aware of what’s going on, aware of where you are on your path to achieving your goals, tracking your progress, evaluating – and if you don’t have a clear system for this or if you are not even looking at it, you are just doing it like shot in the dark marketing: I will try this, I will try this, it can be really, really, frustrating. And I think this is one of the reasons why a lot of people decide that business isn’t right for them and go back to a job, because jobs are in this sense easy: someone tells you what to do, you do it and you get a pay cheque. Business has so many unknowns. And that can be really, really, uncomfortable; especially for people who are new to business, and who have had jobs for most of their lives, that’s a massive, massive, shift in working style, mindset. You have really got to get comfortable with the fact that you have so many unknown variables in business. So, what do you do about these unknowns? How do you provide structure, how do you create a clear plan in something that you don’t know if it is going to work or not?

So, I have decided to take some of the elements from both the Walk 1000 Miles Challenge, and my kickboxing syllabus, and kind of show you how those elements can be applied to business, even though we have got these unknowns:

#1/ So first of all, set clear goals, know how many clients that you want to work with; know how much money you want to be bringing in a month, or a year; know how you want that money to be coming in: do you want passive income, do you want to work with groups? Do you want to work 1:1? What are the ways of working that will make you happy? Because if you are pushing yourself to fill up your calendar with 1:1 work, and you hate 1:1 work, then you are going to hate your business. So, you also need to make sure that you are bringing in the money, bringing in the clients in a way that you love, that you enjoy, that makes you happy – assuming of course that you want to be happy with your business, which I think we all do. So, set clear goals, create a clear plan to achieve those goals. So, like I did with the walking, I usually walk one day a week during the week and I walk on the weekends. So, what’s going to be your plan to achieve your business goals? How are you going to get those clients? How are you going to get people signed up for your programs? How are you going to sell your books? Whatever it is that you do in your business. Create a clear plan to achieve those goals.

#2/ Next, you have got to track your progress. So, you have got this goal of x amount of books you want to sell, or x amount of people on your programs, x amount of money: where are you on your path to achieving that goal? How far have you come; how far do you have to go? And then break that down incrementally into how much more you need to get each week, between now and the date that is the deadline of achieving that goal. This is really, really, important, this is…tracking your progress helps you to see where you are in relation to your goal; where you need to be; and it also helps you see what you need to do differently, what works, what doesn’t work? And this is the part of business that you really need to be paying attention to and evaluating; you need to revise your plan and check-in on a regular basis. That could be a daily basis, weekly basis, monthly basis, depending on how long-term your goal is. So, you need to be checking in with your clear plan on a regular basis, seeing what works, seeing what doesn’t work, and changing what doesn’t work – trying something new – doing more of what does work and pivoting.

#3/ So, I keep talking about pivoting on this podcast, because of that book that RM Harrison brought out, towards the end of last year, I think it is called the ‘Pivot Map’ I will link to it in the show notes. It is an excellent book on how to pivot in your business and pivoting is a really important concept to have in business, so that’s why it has been at the forefront of my mind and I keep mentioning it. So, you have got to be flexible with your plan, and don’t just stick to it blindly, if it is not working. You need to try new things, experiment, until you see what works, and then do more of what works. And I think, as I said, this is the part that can be really frustrating in business; because even if you have a clear plan, and a clear goal, it is not necessarily going to work, and you are going to have to play around with things until you get what works and until you find what works for you, what works for your business, what works for your audience – there are so many variables. So, you need to have a clear plan and be flexible. And being flexible, and being able to pivot, being able to try new things, is really, really, important, but also unnerving because you don’t have a clear path to your goal. You can set one, but you are going to have to change things up along the way, depending on what’s working and what’s not. So, you also need to develop the ability to know when to keep going, like when to keep staying on your track because maybe you just need to do more of what you are doing, and when to change up and do something different. And that is something that also takes time to understand, but I think intuition can play a massive role in this and that’s why, a couple of years ago, I wrote my book on Business Intuition because intuition is such an important part of business for me. My gut, I always say, is smarter than my head, and my gut really helps me see whether something is right for me, whether it is not right for me, and it helps me make decisions more quickly and easily than I used to when I would try to use my head to rationalise everything.

And finally, do the mindset work (the deep mindset work!) in order to make it easier for you to deal with the unknowns in business. Look at your mindset, what are your fears around the unknowns. The unknowns of business can be scary, because you don’t know if the stuff that you are doing is going to work, you don’t know when you set your goals if it is going to be easy for you to achieve, or not. There are so many unknowns. So, get clear on your fears. Are you afraid of unknowns; are you afraid of not achieving your goals; are you afraid of creating a really clear plan and system and structure and then feeling boxed in by that. Are you may be afraid of flexibility, are you afraid of having too much wriggle room, are you afraid of pivoting, are you afraid of doing different things? What are you afraid of when it comes to running your business, achieving your goals, and dealing with the unknowns in business?

Next, what are your blocks, what things are blocking you from setting clear goals, creating a clear plan, tracking your progress, revising and checking-in regularly on your progress and on your plan and being flexible and pivoting and changing what doesn’t work and focussing what does work. What blocks do you have around those things? What blocks do you have around listening to your intuition? What blocks do you have around your ability to know what works and what doesn’t work? And what limiting beliefs do you have around your ability to deal with the unknowns in business; maybe you believe that because you have had a job for most of your life you just don’t have what it takes to deal with the unknowns of business, you don’t have what it takes to run a business, you don’t have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, which is BS by the way, you have just got to deal with the mindset stuff. Do the deep mindset work, it just massively, massively helps to deal with this stuff.

What are your limiting beliefs around creating a plan, having structure, being flexible? Maybe you believe that you are incapable of following through the plan? Maybe you believe that you are incapable of creating a successful business strategy? What are your limiting beliefs around your ability to create a successful plan, and to pivot and to change things up when things aren’t going the way you might have expected. What are your limiting beliefs around your ability to deal with unknowns in business?

As I said at the beginning, I always talk about the importance of doing deep mindset work, and again deep means working at the energetic level to release energetic blocks; working at the subconscious level to transform your subconscious beliefs, that’s what I mean by deep. And I cannot stress enough to the importance of doing this work, it has changed me from being a quiet, shy, fearful business owner, to someone who is confident and who can take action and can be visible and can sit here for a half-hour every couple of weeks and talk to you about business stuff. I mean, when I started this podcast one of the reasons that I started out doing interviews was because that seemed easier. I didn’t think I had enough to say to talk for half an hour, which again is BS because we all have things to say. So, doing this deep mindset work is incredibly important and as I always say, do it with yourself, or you can hire someone else to help you with it.

I do a lot of mindset work with myself, but I also work with other professionals, because they can help me see things that I can’t necessarily see. They can help me dig deeper, to the deeper mind crap, and limiting beliefs, that perhaps I can’t easily get to on my own, but I could but maybe not as quickly. So, it can be really, really, efficient to work with someone else. And, also, pay attention, and I think this is really useful, pay attention to how you achieve your personal goals. Like I was talking about at the beginning with my kickboxing, with my, Walk 1000 Miles Challenge, do you set personal goal for yourself? Do you create plans to achieve them? How do you deal with personal goals in your life? Do you completely ignore them? And see what the parallels are between: how you set and achieve your personal goals and how you set and achieve your business goals, because I am sure there is a lot you can learn from how you deal with personal goals. It was so clear to me when I was looking at my spreadsheet for my Walk 1000 Miles Challenge, exactly what I had done in order to achieve that goal. And when I look back to business goals, the times that I have had a really clear plan, and I have tracked the plan, and I have been flexible, and I have focussed on what works and what doesn’t work, those are the times that I have more easily achieved my goals. Whereas the times where I just set a goal, and I just kind of… I don’t know, {laughing} I don’t want to say forget about it, but I don’t really create as clear a plan to achieve it, those are ridiculous, and they don’t really happen. So, do pay attention to that. And if you don’t set plans for your personal life, how can you start doing that? How can you make sure that your personal life is as satisfying, and joyful, as you want it to be? How can make sure that you do the things that you want to do? Having personal goals for the stuff that is really important to me has really helped me to make my non-business life really enriching.

So, that’s pretty much it for today. I did want to ask you a question: Where do you listen to this podcast? I would love for you to drop me a line, either in the Facebook group, that’s: https://www.hollyworton.com/group or by email: [email protected] – drop me a line and let me know where you listen to the podcast. I find that really interesting because when I was talking to my friend last week, at lunch, she said that she listens to my podcast in the kitchen when she is cooking. Another friend just mentioned today that she is going to listen to one of my episodes in the gym tomorrow. So, I find it really interesting to know where you take this podcast, and where you listen to it, because it is kind of nice to envision you out there listening to this, while you are doing life stuff. I know podcasting is usually not the kind of thing where people just sit down and listen to it, we are usually doing other things when we listen to podcasts. I know I listen to podcasts when I am cooking, or when I am out in the car, or on a train. And, yes, I like to do know where you listen to this show, just out of curiosity because I think it is really interesting.

And that’s all for today, so as I always say, I would love for you to join me in my private Facebook group, which I mentioned a second ago: Business Mindset Alchemists, so we can continue the conversation there. I have just been talking at you for the last half-an-hour and I would love to get some feedback from you in the group. This is a group that is dedicated to exploring business mindset and how you can get the mindset you need to achieve your dreams in business and life because all that stuff is related. So, I would love to see you in there, if you head to https://www.hollyworton.com/group you will be redirected to the Facebook group.

Finally, if you have been listening to this show for a while, or if you just heard your first episode, if you are drawn to learning more about mindset work and you would like to learn more about how you can work with me, please get in touch and head over to https://www.hollyworton.com/call and you can book in a call with me or you can email me: [email protected]. Let me know if you have any questions and I would love to help. So, thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed this episode I would be so happy if you could just leave a quick review on iTunes, it would mean the world to me and remember to visit hollyworton.com/237 for the show notes on this episode.

Next week I will be back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey, we will be talking about how to find a business model that works for you as well as a style of working. It is so tempting to follow someone else’s blueprint, but you know what I think about that it rarely works for anyone. It is so much harder to create your own blueprint but that’s actually what’s needed for most of us; so, in this episode we guide you through some ideas on how to do this. I think it is an interesting and really useful episode, and you know how much I love my co-hosted episode with Jo, so I am very much looking forward to sharing that with you. Thank you so much for listening and have a great day.