249: Holly Worton ~ How to Help Your Business Blossom in Creative New Ways

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

I’m back again, with another solo episode! Today’s episode honors the festival of Beltane, the third pagan celebration of spring, where the season eases into summer. Traditionally celebrated on May 1, this festival marks the beginning of the summer months and the warmer part of the year. If you’re in the southern hemisphere, of course, you’ll be celebrating Beltane on November 1. What does this have to do with business? Beltane is associated with fertility, blossoming, creativity, and union…and we’re going to talk about each of these aspects in relation to our business.

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

How to take stock of where you are and where you’re going
How to add new levels of creativity to your business and life
How to branch out of your usual circles and join new communities
How to get seen in meaningful ways, rather than being visible for visibility’s sake
How to create new unions and joint ventures in your business
Why you need to focus on generating revenue and not get lost in doing other things

Things I Discussed

Connect With Holly

How to Subscribe

Click here to subscribe via iTunes
Click here to subscribe via RSS
Click here to subscribe via Stitcher

Help Spread the Word

If you enjoyed this episode, please head on over to iTunes and kindly leave us a rating and a review! You can also subscribe, so you’ll never miss an episode.

Related episodes

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 249. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back for another solo episode.

Today is the Beltane edition of the podcast. Beltane is the 3rd of the pagan spring celebrations, after Imbolc and the Spring equinox which we talked about a few episodes ago. Beltane marks the beginning of Summer, Spring is in full bloom and here in the UK we can finally see that, we have had had sunshine for the last three days, it has been amazing so much so that I have forgotten how warm and sunny it can be here. Seasons are changing, things are starting to get ready for the warmth and the fertility of summer.

Beltane is traditionally celebrated on 1st May and it is a time of fertility, blossoming, union. And we are going to talk about how these elements play a role in our business at this time of year and always. But, I thought now was a good time to take advantage of the fact that we have got this date in the calendar and by the time this goes live it will have happened a week ago. Take a look at how we can make our businesses more fertile and blossoming.

But before we get into today’s episode I wanted to mention a podcast that I was recently a guest on and that is the intuitive leadership master podcast with Michaela Light – and if you go to https://www.hollyworton.com/ILM you can go straight to the show notes with the audio and the video of this interview. It is a really great deep conversation about full business beliefs, business blocks; we talk about where business beliefs come from, why they are so important and why they are vital for your success. How can someone find out what their belief system is? How do you know if your business beliefs are supporting you or hurting you? Why your business blocks might be interfering with your success and what to do about them. Like I said it is about 51 minutes long, I think it is a great in-depth conversation about business beliefs and business blocks; Michaela is a great interviewer and I think you will really, really, enjoy this episode. So, if you go to https://www.hollyworton.com/ILM that will re-direct you to Michaela’s website and you can check out the interview there. I think you will really enjoy it.

So, as I was preparing for today’s episode I found this really interesting, because if you have been following me for any length of time, you may remember when my business was called: Ready 2 Bloom. And I had, it is probably out there online somewhere still, a free opt-in gift, I think it was called: Make your Business Bloom; or: How to Make your Business Bloom, or something like that. So, I was really reminded of that as I was making the notes for today’s episode which is all about, as I said earlier, fertility, blossoming, creativity and union in nature, but specifically on this show in your business.

So, let’s start with taking stock of where we are.

We have just finished the first quarter of the business year, if you are in the US you have probably just gotten ready to pay your taxes or file your tax return. If you are in the UK, the tax year ended at the beginning of April and it is time to take stock of where we are in business. And this is something that I talk about a lot in my blog posts from ever since I think, 2011, where are you in your business? That is one of the three foundational questions that I ask over and over: who am I, where am I and where am I going?

So, where are we? – is the second question. Where are you? What’s been going in your business for the last three months? What have you been up to? Are things going the way you planned? Did you have a plan? I hope you had a plan? Did you have goals? Did you meet your goals? Did you fall short on your goals? And why? If things went differently to your plan, to how you had planned them, what happened, what went wrong? What went off course? And, maybe things went off course in a good way? So, what decisions did you make that led you on a different path?

The first quarter has been a huge time of getting clarity for me, for the past several months I know I have been hinting and talking about how things are changing up in my business and I finally did mention in a previous episode that I am going to be focussing more on my writing this year, and for the unforeseeable future, writing is my focus. So, the last few months have been kind of a process of getting clarity for me, and that has been really frustrating because I don’t like that messy middle, I don’t like that in between time, I find it really confusing even though I know that it is something that we have to go through. And I have also been in the process of shifting from the entrepreneurial mindset to the author mindset and there are a lot of overlaps there because I am a self-published, by choice, that’s the way I want it; there is a business element to being an author, especially if you are a self-published author, so it is not a massive shift. And yet, it is, it is. And I was just talking to a business friend the other day and saying: I want to start introducing myself as an author, as a writer, rather than as a business mindset coach, which is what I have been doing for years. And I was recently on a Lowland Leader Training course, last weekend, which is a course that teaches you how to guide groups, not just the leadership of the group, but also navigation of the group, kind of lowland conditions – which is low hills and valleys and that kind of thing and it was one of the few times that I was with a group that was totally non-business related. Most of the people were teachers, they were getting the certification, so they could DoE or Duke of Edinburgh training and it was such a different group, it was so refreshing. And I could hear myself, people were asking what I do, and I could hear myself as usual, introducing myself as a business mindset coach and then of course explaining what that meant, because they weren’t in the online business world that we are all in. And as I could hear myself saying that out of habit, I realise that I am still struggling to shift of the mindset of writing first, author first.

So, that’s where I have been for the last quarter, and it is frustrating because it is a time of not taking big action but getting clarity and that can feel so passive sometimes, even though I realise how important it is to have these times in our business. I am feeling good that I am finally coming out of the fog, and getting clarity, and stepping into this identity for myself and new identity for my business, and that’s where I am. So, taking stock of where I am, here we are.

What about you?

So, as I said, what have the last few months of your business been like? Did you meet your goals? Did you change your path? Did you not achieve your goals? Did you do things differently? Is there anything you need to do differently? Is there anything that you want to do differently? Where do you want to be headed in the next quarter of the year? What are your goals for the next quarter of the year? What are your plans for the next quarter of the year? What are your plans for the rest of the year? What is your focus? What do you want to achieve?

So, this is the third question: where are you going?

So, my suggestion to you, as we focus on this time of fertility and blossoming and creativity and union and making our businesses bloom, is, first of all, do something creative in your business, it could be something old, something new, something like writing a blog post that you have been meaning to write but you keep putting it off, because it is not important. It could be writing a book, starting a book, it could be doing a video, it old be any kind of creativity, do something that feels fun, something that feels joyful, something that feels nourishing and make that a priority, try to do something different. Try to step out of your comfort zone or ease into a new level of comfort. Try something new.

And, I would also like to encourage you to try to do something creative, outside of your business; because so often when we do creative things that aren’t necessarily business-related, we can stimulate creativity within our business. So, I don’t know, I say I paint, I used to paint, I used to make time for it, I haven’t painted in a long time, months, so you could paint something, you could draw something, you could get one of those adult colouring books, and you could colour a page in the book. I encourage you to try something new and creative that’s not business-related and that could be writing a poem, writing a short story, it could be playing music – I am totally a non-musical person, but I am sure many of you listening to this are musical. Write a song, play a song, play an instrument, dance, do something creative that’s not business related and see how that affects your business. Don’t do it with the intention that: I’m going to play this song on the piano and therefore my business my business is going to be amazing, just do it for the joy of it, do it for the fun of it, and then pay attention to what the results are because if you find that letting yourself play, whether it is through paint, through art, through music, if you find that letting yourself play brings added joy to your business, then that’s something that you need to pay attention to and do more often. So, I really recommend, suggest, that you do something creative, both within your business and creative outside of your business, something non-business related. So, that’s the creative side.

Another thing in terms of union is look at joining a new community or creating a new community, Facebook groups have been around forever, there are some great groups on there. I have been spending less time on Facebook lately, I am just sick of it which you have probably noticed because I keep talking about it over and over. One thing that has been growing in the last year or so, several months, is mighty networks, which was created by Tara Gentile who was a guest on this podcast. And she has created a platform where you can create your own social network, so it is kind of like how Ning was many years back. So, you pay a fee you set up your network and it is like a private Facebook group but outside of Facebook group, and that’s got its pros and cons. Pros because you are not on Facebook and you don’t have to abide by the rules and it is more your own closed platform; but cons because most people still hang out on Facebook and sometimes they might forget to visit your group. I joined a women’s walking group on mighty networks called Glamoraks and I keep forgetting to visit it, so maybe once a week I will go: oh! That group! And then I go in and visit it. And just last night I linked to join Elsie Eskobar’s Network on money networks and I joined that, so I am looking forward to having that kind of podcasting community outside of Facebook. You can go on Mighty Networks and search for communities that are of interest to you, that’s how I found the Glamoraks walking network. I recommend that you head over there and check it out, you might find a community that’s related to your business, or related to a hobby, or something like that which will allow you to join a community or you could use it to create your own community and unite with people there.

I think it is really, really, important to have a network of people that can support us in both our hobbies and personal life but also in business, because business can feel so lonely sometimes. So, check out Mighty Networks and see if you can find anything, or if you are a hardcore Facebook fan, check out Facebook groups, maybe there is a group out there that you weren’t aware of. Ask people for recommendations; you can join my Facebook group, if you head to: http://HollyWorton.com/group or elsewhere, life is not just online; so join a meetup group; start your own meetup group; meetup is great – that’s http://meetup.com is great for offline Meetups, offline groups. Find a new community where you can meet new people and I feel like, now we are at this time of fertility and blossoming, it is time to reach out and connect with new people, because it can be so easy to just move around within the networks that we already have and just engage with the people that we already know, which is fine, but if you want to expand your audience, if you want to expand your potential client base, you need to get out there and meet new people. And you are not going to get that by staying in the same places, so I encourage you in this time of blossoming, get out there, join a new community, create a new community and see what happens.

Speaking of union and speaking of doing things with other people, and blossoming our networks, try some kind of joint venture, so that could be an interview exchange, so you could interview someone on video for your YouTube channel, and then be interviewed by them for theirs. Or, if you have a podcast you could interview someone for your podcast and be interviewed by them for theirs. You could do a guest blogpost swap with someone, people still do that. You could do a joint venture, where someone promotes your online program and something that you offer, the other way round, you could do the same for someone else. You could do a joint webinar, those are always fun, find someone who teaches something that would be useful to your community and do a webinar with them, something where you both share your expertise in a way that’s complimentary in both of your communities. You can create a joint program, or mentoring program, or mastermind, or package. Find someone who offers a service who is complimentary to yours and put something together and then promote that amongst your communities. See what you can do, what fun new things you can do with people, to help your business blossom, to help your networks blossom, to be seen by new people in a wider arena and see what happens. I think doing these kinds of joint ventures is fun, it is exciting, it takes the pressure off of you to promote something, whether that’s piece of content, or a webinar, or a program package, or whatever and it is just fun to collaborate with other people. So, if you have never done that, give it a try and if you have done it do it again and see how it works for you. You may enjoy it, it may be something that you want to do more of, with more people. Last year I was doing a lot of joint webinars with people, I would invite someone on, we would talk about their area of expertise, and then I would talk about the mindset stuff that could get in the way when trying to do that. It was fun, I really, really, enjoyed it and those videos are up on my YouTube channel, you can find those I think it is in the video interviews playlist, but I will link to that in the Show Notes.

So, everything I have been talking about so far has been around fertility and blossoming and creativity and union; and continuing on that theme of blossoming, what are flowers? They are a way for a plant to reproduce, they are not just for our visual pleasure, they are to attract pollinators so that plants can reproduce. So, to me blossoms are all about getting visible, about being seen, not just flowers but metaphorically in the sense of business. So, how can you attract pollinators to your business? How can you attract potential clients, how can you attract people who are interested in what you have to say? And this all comes back to visibility which is something that people are talking about a lot because it is so important. If you are not seen, if people do not see you online, offline, wherever, people don’t know that you exist, how are you going to get clients? So, visibility is really, really, important but visibility in a meaningful way. I think because visibility has become such a buzz word, a lot of people are getting visible, kind of, in noisy ways. The daily Facebook lives where you just do a video about something and it is not necessarily deep, it is not necessarily meaningful, it is not necessarily useful, it is just someone blabbing online about something. So, when you think about getting visible, think about how you can do it in a meaningful way, in a way that’s useful to potential clients, it is useful to your community. It is not just being visible for visibility’s sake, however, if you find it useful to do daily Facebook lives, every day, for a week, or a fortnight, or a month or whatever to get over your fear, by all means do it, but try to make sure that your content, whatever it is, has some kind of meaning or utility to it. So that you are known for your good quality content not for just putting shit out there.

So, in this time of blossoming think about how you can get visible in a meaningful way, get yourself seen. Now a lot of the things that I talked about in the last points in terms of joint ventures, interviews, swaps, guest blog post swaps, joint programs, packages, content, whatever, that’s a great way of getting visible. Do a Google search, see how you can get visible in more creative ways. See what feels joyful, see what feels fun, see what feels easy, but also be willing to ease yourself out of your comfort zone and do something that feels maybe a little bit more challenging and when you are looking at getting visible, it is not just getting visible to the people in your network, it is also about getting visible in new networks, in new communities. That’s why the previous point thatI mentioned about joining or creating a new community is really useful because it gets you seen by other people, by new people. So, all of this stuff that I am talking about today is related: fertility, blossoming, creativity, union; it is all kind of interconnected. So, what can you do to be seen, to be visible, in new circles, by new people, in meaningful and useful ways.

Finally, in terms of fertility and revenue, business revenue, profit, let’s talk for a minute about new ways of generating revenue or simply bringing money into your business. What are the three things you could do to generate revenue? And that could be creating a new product, a new service, or getting clients in the same way you always have, one-to-one clients, group clients, mastermind clients, mentoring clients, coaching clients, healing clients, whatever. What are three things that you could do to bring money into your business this week? That could be cold calling if that is something you do. It could be reaching out to people that you have worked with in the past and offering them something new or offering them a discount or just simply reminding them that you exist, and you would love to work with them again if they have anything that they need working on. I think a lot of times we focus so much on marketing and not enough about sales, because sales can feel like a dirty word to people, which it is not, depending on how you do it and this could be a very important mindset piece for you. So, if you are the kind of person that doesn’t have many clients because you are terrified of sales or you don’t like sales, or you feel like you shouldn’t be doing sales, you feel people should just be flowing to you naturally and easily and effortlessly. That would be fabulous, but it doesn’t always happen that way, a lot of times at the beginning, most of the times at the beginning you have got to work, you have got to actually do work to get people in there and that involves reaching out to people and having sales conversations. So, if you are the kind of person that hates sales or hates marketing or is just put off by any of the things that I mentioned in this episode, do the mindset work you need to do to make this stuff happen.

So, to recap, it is a time for taking stock of where we are and where we want to be headed. Do something creative in your business, do something creative in your personal life, join or create a new community, do some kind of joint venture thing or swap thing in terms of content, get visible, get seen in meaningful ways and focus on generating revenue. If anything, that I have spoken about in today’s episode feels uncomfortable, or feels icky, or feels like: oh, but I don’t want to do it, then stop and think about why and what fears are there, what are you afraid of, what’s the worst that could happen if you tried one of these things? What’s the worst that could happen if you stepped outside of your comfort zone? What’s the worst that could happen if you proposed a joint venture with someone, or an interview swap? The worst that can happen is that someone says no and that’s really not the end of the world as long as you don’t take it personally, because it is usually not a personal thing. Sometimes you are a good fit and sometimes you are not but if you don’t reach out to people you are never going to know. Reaching out to people can be really, really, hard, it can be really challenging. So, if that’s an issue for you, work on that, identify what your blocks are, identify what your fears are, identify what your limiting beliefs are and do the mindset work so that you can take action more easily. And we hear so much about people; you have got to hustle, you have got to just do the work, you have got to feel the fear and do it anyway, you know how I feel about that, I think that’s fantastic for some people and I think it is totally useless to other people. It doesn’t work for a lot of other people and I am sure if you are listening to this podcast it probably doesn’t work for you. So, if you are the kind of person who can’t just push through the fear and do the thing, focus on the mindset stuff because sometimes we need to do the inner work to make the outer work easier. However, don’t get caught in the trap of thinking: oh well, I have done the inner work therefore I am set so the clients are just going to flow to me easily and effortlessly, no, you have got to do the outer work as well, you have got to take practical action, you have got to take inspired action, whatever you call it. The inner work and the outer work always go hand and hand if you want to see results.

So, that is all for today, I am going to wrap up this episode. I hope you found this interesting and useful and I would love to hear what you thought of it, so drop me a line and let me know what you thought of 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 also love for you to join me in my private Facebook group which I mentioned earlier in the episode, if you head over to: https://www.hollyworton.com/group you will be redirected the Facebook group and we can have a chat about this episode and other mindset stuff in there.

Thank you so much for listening, if you enjoy this episode please leave a quick review on Apple Podcasts or on iTunes it would mean the world to me.

Next week’s episode is a co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey, actually we just recorded that today. We are going to talk about: who heals the healers and who coaches and who coaches the coaches? I am so excited that I am doing this episode today because we just did that one this morning and it is going to be really interesting and useful, I think, we really enjoyed doing it. So, we talked about where do we go to get help when we need it? Oftentimes as coaches and healers we are not used to being vulnerable and oftentimes we feel like we have to show everyone that we have got our shit together and it can be really hard to reach out and ask for help when we are used to helping other people. People always say that it is important to be vulnerable but to share the shit when we are on the other side of it and we can talk about the learning aspect or the learning experience that we have just had but where do we go when we are in the middle of the shit? So, in this episode we are going to talk about why coaches and healers need support, even though we have our own tools to help ourselves. We talk about what happens when we don’t get the support we need, we talk about how to reach out and ask for help before we reach burnout or overwhelm, how to recognise when you need help, how to find places where it is more give and take where we can receive and serve, and we don’t have to keep up appearances, we can just put it all out there and be supported. Why we need spaces like this where we can show up as us, with all of our bits, good and bad, and where we can find those communities. So, hope you find that episode interesting and useful, again that is going to be out a week from now on 14 May 2018 and that’s it for now.

I hope you have a fantastic week and I hope you enjoy the Springtime I hope the weather is fantastic where you are. Try to get outdoors if you can and enjoy the sunshine if you have it and enjoy the blooms. I think also if we get out in nature, and I think you know that I spend a lot of time outdoors, but if you don’t I encourage you to do so whether it is to a park or to the woods or whatever, to the beach and just experience this passing of the seasons and the warming and see how that inspires your business.

So, thanks so much for listening, hope to see you next week and remember to visit hollyworton.com/249 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you.