264: Holly Worton ~ How to Bounce Back When Business Feels Terrible

Today’s Guest

Table of Contents

I’m back again, with another solo episode! Today, I’m going to talk about what to do when things get difficult in business. It can be all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking like a victim and getting caught into a downward spiral of feeling sorry for ourselves. Business has its ups and downs, and we must learn to be resilient so we can flow through the times of difficulty. In this podcast, I’ll talk about how you can reframe your situation and realize that what what you need is deep inside yourself. I’ll talk about how you can draw on your own inner source of power — your personal power — to turn your situation around. Finally, we’ll look at how you can focus on what you do want (personal power) not what you don’t want (weakness) and how you can get the mindset you need to make this all happen

Listen to this episode

What You’ll Learn

Why resilience is so important in business (and why it doesn’t necessarily mean tough rigidity)
How to pull yourself out of a downward spiral of business despair
How to reframe your uncomfortable situation
How to reach inside yourself and tap into your personal power
How to go within rather than seeking external help (although that’s okay, too)
How to focus on what you do want (personal power) not what you don’t want (weakness)
How to get the mindset you need to make this all happen

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 264. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with yet another solo episode.

Now you may have noticed if you have been listening for the last few episodes that it has been several weeks since we have heard from Jo Casey or Joanna Hennon. This is because I didn’t plan things very well before we went into summer holiday mode and everyone went on vacation.

So, Joanna and I were hanging out in England a couple of weeks ago and didn’t make the time to do the podcast episode because we didn’t plan before she went away for a month and a half. Same with Jo Casey, Jo is on holiday now and we didn’t plan it in time. We will be back in a couple of weeks with more episodes with Jo Casey and Joanna Hennon, it will not be an extensive podcast episode with me, which I hope you are enjoying, because I have been really enjoying them, a lot. I have really been enjoying delving deeper into a topic and looking at it more in depth. So, hope you have been enjoying them as much as I have, as always, if you have any ideas for future episodes, please let me know, pop them into the Facebook group or you can send me an email: [email protected].

Today’s episode

So today, I am going to talk about one of the shadow sides of business, it can be really easy to get stuck in The downside, because business has its ups and downs, sometimes everything is just flowing brilliantly and sometimes it feels like shit and it can be really easy to get stuck in those shitty bits and kind of get tapped in that downward spiral of business crap and feeling bad about ourselves, and putting ourselves down and judging ourselves and comparing ourselves and it can be really yucky. So, I wanted to talk today about how to get out of that, because we have all been there more than once, probably, it is something that can happen from time to time, it is perfectly normal, there is nothing wrong with you if you are experiencing it, but I think it is important for us to focus on getting out of those modes. Because it is fine, it is normal, but it is not useful for us to wallow in the depths of the darkness for too long. So, today we are going to talk about how you can climb up out of the dep dark well of despair that sometimes happens in business and get out of there and start moving on with this stuff.

Patreon / How I work update

Before I get into today’s episode I wanted to say a big thank you to our new patron Naomi, thank you so much for supporting me, for supporting this show, and for those of us who don’t know what I am talking about I would like to refer you back to the Patreon episode which I think is really, really, interesting and useful way of how you can use Patreon to put a new income stream in your business. So that’s episode 262, that’s just two episodes ago. So, if you want to learn more about Patreon, I would love for you to check out that episode and welcome any comments or questions you may have about Patreon and if you have any gotten value from this podcast if you would like to work with me in some way, but aren’t sure how, maybe ready for one-to-one sessions, please head over to http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton and you can support my work there. There are lots of ways you can work with me at all different price levels, or you can just support me for $1 a month or $5 a month, whatever feels right for you. So that’s http://Patreon.com/HollyWorton . And thank you again to the new patrons.

Next, I wanted to respond to an email that I got from someone who had asked me about my pay what you can pricing. So, a couple of months ago I offered I think it was three sessions that I offered to my Facebook group, my email list, pay what you can. Because, if you listened to my pricing episode that I did a couple of months ago with Joanna Hennon, and that was episode 257, if you wanted to look that up, I think that was a really good episode, we explored whether or not online prices are inflated and if we are all charging too much or not. And, as a result of that, I realised that I really wanted to make my work more accessible to people who might not have the funds to work one-to-one with me. Now I do think that I provide a lot of help to people via this podcast, via my books, which are very, very useful and practical and can really help you with your mindset, but I also wanted to offer one-to-one sessions at a more accessible price and I kept getting this intuitive nudge to do pay-what-you-can pricing and I had a lot of resistance to it because I know times that I have seen other people offer this and I have always thought: well, I don’t want to offer too low and insult the person, so when I sent out the email and put the message in the Facebook group, I made it clear that I was not going to be offended, pay-what-you-can, can even if that may be what you consider to be a small amount of money.

So, I wanted to, kind of give you an update on that, because I got this email recently and plus tons of other people have asked me about it, so again I did this because I had an intuitive nudge, and this was before I set up my Patreon account, and I am really, really happy with the Patreon account because it gives me a way to support people on a regular basis at any price point. So, I have got prices from one dollar a month to $1,111 a month. And that obviously includes a fair amount of one-to-one work with me. But, this was before Patreon, so I wanted to offer people a way to get one-to-one work with me at whatever price they could pay, and I limited it to two or three sessions and they had to be within a month, booked within a months’ time or something like that. So, they all booked, all three of them, and what happened was I had one returning client who didn’t have the funds to work with me again, but wanted to, so she paid me a certain amount, and then the other two people were new clients. So I had varying payments of different price levels they were all significantly less than my usual charge for a single session, which was fine, that was the whole point of offering this. I was really pleased to be able to help people that didn’t have the funds, but really wanted to work with me, they were all lovely to work with, the two new people were fantastic, and the returning client is someone I love to work with. So they were all lovely to work with, it was all just fantastic sessions. However, I felt guilt around people who had paid my full prices to work with me, obviously they could have booked an extra session with pay what you can, but I had a lot of conflict around these people paying significantly less and then other people paying more. And as a result of that it got me to thinking: what do I want to do, how am I going to offer discounts again, because I have always felt weird about discounts, because we have all bought something or signed up for something and then a week later it has gone on sale and you think: ah, if I had just waited, it doesn’t feel fair somehow. So, you may have this issue, you may not. Again, to recap, I am super happy that I did it, I am super happy that I was able to help these people, but I am going to do it differently in the future, so I have got, again, Patreon, which is the way that people can work with me on a regular basis for a variety of price points and they can get different things for different price points. But, in terms of one-to-one sessions, I don’t plan on doing another pay-what-you-can, again and I don’t plan on doing sales or discounts because they just don’t feel right for me, they don’t feel in integrity.

Discounted sessions for charity

What I will do is offer discounted sessions, from time-to-time for charity. So, I have done a few charity sessions via auction for my friend Sarah, who ran the London marathon this year and was supporting this cat charity which I love and care about and so I offered two session for that where people could book in for a discounted rate and there was actually an auction that went on for people to bid on The session. First one session and then another session and that was fantastic as well, I had one new client that came to me through that and one returning client. Fantastic experience. I also have a friend and client of mine who lost her home in the lava flow of Hawaii this year. She has got a go fund me, to not only help support her family find a temporary place to live, since their house no longer exists but also, she is helping with her neighbours and all the other people who have lost their homes in the lava flow and it was about a month ago, I offered discounted sessions to people if they donated $100 to Julie’s go fund me, they could send me the receipt and I would give them a one hour session. So, things like that feel good to me because that’s offering discounted sessions, but it is in a different format, again this may work for you, this may not work for you, but that’s how I think I am going to be handling it from this way forward. So, discounted sessions, for charity, or for helping other people out, and the Patreon. Again, the Patreon I am loving it, I really enjoyed setting up the different tiers, looking at different ways that I can help people on an ongoing basis, based on whatever they can afford. I am super excited about that and I would love to see you join me there. So, check out Patreon, not only for supporting me, but also to see how you can use it in your business. I think just check it out, I absolutely love it, as a platform, and I am really looking forward to creating more kind of community help around my work on Patreon.

Today’s topic

So that is the very extensive introduction to this episode, and now I want to get into the meat of what we are going to talk about, so what are you going to learn today? I am going to talk about why resilience is so important in business, I know that I have talked about this before with Jo Casey, but I really want to dig into it a little bit more and I want to explain why resilience doesn’t necessarily mean a stiff upper lip, and being tough and rigid, it is different, you can be resilient and still be kind of soft and feminine. I am going to talk about: how you can pull yourself out of that downward spiral of business despair. We are going to discuss how you can reframe your current uncomfortable situation into something else. We are going to talk about how you can reach inside yourself and tap into your personal power. We are going to look at how you can go within, rather than seeking external help, although that’s okay too if that’s what you need. We are going to look at how you can focus on what you do want, which is personal power, rather than what you don’t want, which is that sense of weakness. Finally, we are going to talk about how you can get the mindset you need to make all of this happen.

I am really excited about this episode, I was kind of struggling to come up with a topic for today, when I sat down to record, and I pulled a couple of oracle cards from one deck and they were both really random and I didn’t see how I could turn them into a podcast episode. And then I reached for me Druid plant oracle deck and I pulled the plantain card and it came out reversed, and the second I started reading the description for the reversed meaning of the card, I had my topic for today. So, I am very excited about this and I hope you find it interesting and useful as always.

What is resilience?

So, let’s start out with talking about: what is resilience? The standard definitions involve:

“resilience being the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, toughness, or the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape, elasticity.”

And I think it is really important to look at resilience from these two perspectives. I love that it includes only that definition of toughness, but also elasticity and stretchiness and bouncing back and more kind of a soft flow. I kind of see that first definition as being very masculine energy and the second definition being very feminine energy. So it is that tough elasticity, it is a perfect blend of masculine and feminine energies, it is being strong, it is recovering, but in a flexible, pliable, soft-flowing way. So, this was really important for me to start out the episode with, because I think oftentimes, when I think resilience, I think “tough rock” or “strong like a rock” but not necessarily, resilience is all about that soft, flexible, type of toughness and recovering and springing back into shape. And, I think that’s a really useful perspective to come at this from, because in business like I said, we have got our ups and we have got our downs, and it is important not to get stuck int e downs.

The Dip

Now, years ago, I read this Seth Godin book, called: The Dip, and I recently, I think it was on a podcast, and I don’t remember which podcast it was, but someone was interviewing someone else, and this person said that, every month, I think it was, or every time he goes into a dip he reads this book, the Dip, and I am going to link to this in The show notes. And I am actually going to go over and buy a copy myself because my old copy ended up in my previous life in Latin America, I think it is still in Latin America somewhere. So, I just popped over to Amazon and I am going to read you the description of this book, because I really highly recommend it and I think it is totally relevant to this podcast. So, it is called: The Dip, the extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit and when to stick. The description says: “every new project or career, relationship, starts out exciting and fun, and then it gets harder and less fun, until it hits a low point, really hard, and really not fun. At this point you might be in a dip which will get better if you keep pushing or a cul-de-sac, which will never get better no matter how hard you try. The hard part of knowing the difference and acting on it. So, this book explains just how to tell the difference, between a dip and a cul-de-sac. Again, I read this book, it came out in 2007 and I think I read it way back then. It is really, really, good, if I remember correctly, it is short, a lot of Seth Godwin books are really kind of short, to the point, and very powerful. So I highly recommend that if you are currently going through a dip.

So, if you are experiencing that feeling of stuck-ness, and you have kind of ended up in that downward spiral of frustration and despair and you are feeling sorry for yourself and you feel like everyone is doing better than you are, like you have worked so hard, and you are just not getting results and it is so damn hard, and why is it easy for everyone else? And why me? … you know that crappiness. It very much is a downward spiral and if you allow yourself to get stuck there, it feels like crap, the longer you stay there the longer it takes you to get out and it completely skews your perspective on your situation. And, it is just so damaging. Again, I said this at the beginning, it is totally normal, it happens to everyone, it will happen from time-to-time, there is a book about it, it is called The Dip. The important thing is not to wallow in that craziness and stay there and victimise yourself and feel like: everyone is better than I am, and I am absolutely shit and this is terrible. So, how can you recover from this difficulty, how can you spring back into normal business situations, where things are flowing, and things are functioning? I think it starts with re-framing your current situation. So, looking at the gifts of the situation, no matter how crappy they are and sometimes you can’t see that when you are in the dip which is why you have to make a conscious effort to sit and journal and focus on what might be going on for you.

Reframing

So, towards the end of last year, I remember I met up with a friend to go horseback riding, and we were talking in the car on the way there, and she was saying her business was amazing, and she was doing really well, and it was all fantastic and wonderful, and at the time I was going through an absolute dip, I didn’t have any paying clients at the time, I was going through a total dry spell. And, I remember telling her this and feeling really awful about myself, and obviously comparing myself to her, and I think I actually did a podcast episode about comparing myself, based on that conversation, because our situations were so different. And it wasn’t until a while later that I realised the whole reason that I had that space of no clients, that gift of having no clients, although I didn’t see it like that at the time, was to give me the space to realise that I wanted to focus on my writing and not focus on filling up my client calendar, with client sessions. And since then I have gotten more and more focussed on how I want to manage my time, and I am thinking, and I was just discussing this today with my master-gut group, is that I want to focus on A, B, weeks. So, have one week where I focus on my writing and one week where I do client calls and alternate it that way, because my brain works really, really, well when I am hyper focused, on one thing for a certain amount of time, big chunks of time, which is why my Workcation weekends are so useful and effective for me. So, I think that’s the way going forward, but this has been such a journey of moving to this understanding. And, it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had that dry spell towards the end of last year, when I had nothing coming in. But, that gave me the space, and the gift of that was the space to think and to realise: okay, this is not working right now, what do I want to instead? And it was like: oh, writing is really easy for me, maybe I want to do more of that. Something that was so obvious to other people, but not to me. So, maybe you need to start to reframe your situation, if you are currently in a dip, or if you are currently in a crappy downward spiral space. What is the gift? So, if you are not getting any clients, what is the gift of that? If you have had a lot of cancellations lately, or people rescheduling, what’s the gift in that has that given you space to work on something else? If your online program is not selling to anyone, what’s the gift in that? So, sometimes, when we have these dry spells, it is a sign that we are not focussing on the right thing and we need to be focussing on something else, but sometimes it is just a sign that we are being given the gift of time and space to re-evaluate and to focus on what we want and to focus on what are path is like, and whether we want to take a fork in the path, what do we want to do? So, focus on the gift of what you are currently experiencing, and this is a massive reframe, and sometimes when you are in that dark spot and someone says to you: reframe this, what’s the gift in the situation? And you want to like punch them in the face! If you are feeling that now that is totally fine.

I was having a slight moment yesterday of just urgh and I was talking about that today in my master-gut and I was saying I had had a couple of calls that weren’t what I had expected and I was hoping to find someone to help me with my book launches and these people weren’t a good fit, and I didn’t have anyone else, and I didn’t know who to go to and I was just really irritable and grumpy about it and it kind of messed up the end of my day yesterday. And, yeah, it happens, I didn’t get stuck in it, today was a different day, I feel a lot better, I went back and kind of countered with an email to one of the people to say: I really want to work with you, but I don’t need this whole gigantic thing, I just need this small part of it, do you do this? Do you know anyone else? So, I ended up bouncing back and looking at other solutions, other people I can work with. And I am going to, you know, if she says she doesn’t know anyone and that she can’t do it, then I will find someone else. But, I bounced back from that because after I had some time, overnight to rest and sleep, I was able to turn around my perspective by thinking about other things that I could do. So, yeah, think about how you can reframe your current situation. What’s the gift, you are being given? It feels like shit, things didn’t happen the way you expected, things didn’t happen the way you wanted them to go, but what’s the good side of that, what’s the bright side of that, what are you getting from that? And journal on that, channel on that, whatever you do to get clarity, do that because if you just sit there and stare at a wall and think: what’s the bright side of this? It is not that easy to come up with. But, spend some time looking at how you can reframe it.

Going within

So, the next situation is, again, along with reframing your situation and looking for the gift, it is about reaching in and going within and tapping into your personal power, your own power, your own strengths, rather than external help. Now I need to a little aside here, yeah, sometimes external help is really, really, useful, so if you have got a business coach, you have got a mentor, if you have got a mastermind, of course take this topic to them. But, don’t expect that other people are going to have the magic wand that is going to fix everything, or the magic idea, or the fairy dust that is going to turn everything around. Get help if that’s what you need, get help if you have that support, get help if you want to and that’s what feels right. Also, go in and tap into your personal power, this is really important because it teaches you that you can pull yourself out of these situations on your own. You can recover from that dark spot, you can bounce back into shape, you can get yourself out of that deep, dark, whole of business despair, you can. Now, personal power is something that can be really tricky, there is a really, really, old podcast episode, number 41, called: how to step into your personal power in business with Jac McNeil. So, tap into that if that is something you would like to check out in terms of additional information, or support, if you are going through one of those experiences right now. Personal power is something that I really struggled with. As I have said before when I first started on this journey of mindset, five years ago, I really struggled with self-confidence, self-esteem, self-worth, trusting myself, and I think that’s why the heart-centred-energy work that I am doing now is so focussed on self-love and self-acceptance and self-trust, because those three things are very much a part of your personal power of tapping into your sense of grounded ness and power and your ability to do stuff and take action in your business.

Business Mindset Books

So, what is personal power? Personal power and I think a lot of people say the word power is a negative thing, I see it as a very positive thing. Obviously depending on how you use it, but to me personal power is based on your confidence, your self-esteem, your self-trust, your self-acceptance, that kind of sense of grounded, that: I am okay with me, I like me, and I know what I am doing, I am taking action and I am doing it. It is when you are in that state that you can speak your truth, you can speak your opinions, you can broadcast your message out to the people who are here and ready to hear it. It is such a beautiful grounded state of power. Personal power is such a big deal that I included it in my Business Beliefs and my Business Blocks books, as one of the 15 categories of beliefs. It is that important. So, to me, one of the most important things is reaching deep inside yourself and tapping into this personal power. How the heck do you do that? So, I am a mindset person, so I am going to give you the mindset advice, which is do some work on your lower chakras, do some work on your beliefs in relation to personal power, do the mindset work related to that topic specifically. Use whatever techniques you use with yourself to change your mindset, work with someone else to help you with this. If personal power is too big of a topic for you, look at my books, Business Blocks and Business Beliefs to get some ideas.

The ideas to focus on are what I think are the primary ingredients of personal power which I think are self-confidence, self-trust, and self-acceptance, self-love, self-esteem. Those are also kind of abstract topics but if you go online if you look for resources, if you go through my books, you will get a clear idea of specific things that you can do to change your beliefs, to boost your self-confidence, self-acceptance, self-life, self-trust, self-esteem. So, work on those beliefs using whatever techniques you use, or when you work with someone else, and work on those lower chakras. Those are very much about rooting and grounding, do some guided meditations, guided visualisations, all that stuff will really help you tap into your personal power and feel that sense of strong and resilient yet flexible grounded ness, it is such a beautiful blend of masculine and feminine energies, it is strong, yet it is soft, it is tough, yet it is flexible, it is so good. So, I hope you are getting this concept as I am explaining it to you! {laughing}

So, again, go within, tap into this personal power, do the mindset work to boost your personal power and really focus on what you do want, which is that strong sense of grounded personal power, rather than what you don’t want, which is that sense of being a virtue and feeling weak and that nasty feeling that you get when you are stuck in that deep, dark well. Other things that you can do: you can again, get help from someone else, talk to your business friends, talk to your personal friends, talk to your masterminds, talk to your coach. Talk to your mentor, talk to your guides, talk to whomever is supportive in your life, your family, who can help pull you out of this and help you see this situation from a different perspective.

So, do what you need to do, practice self-care, read a book, go for a walk go to the gym, take a bath, put on some essential oils in your diffuser, do the little things that you do to make yourself feel good. Those little things can also really pull you up out of that dark well of business despair. So, do the things that make you happy, do the things that you enjoy, do the things that give you a sense of play, and, again, this can be hard when you feel like crap. Force yourself to do something. Again, if it is something as simple as putting some nice essential oils in your diffuser and reading a book. Listen to a podcast. Watch something that is funny. I don’t know, do whatever you do to make yourself feel better in situations like this. And if you don’t know what to do, make a list, make a list now, make a list when you are feeling better, make a list of all the little things that you like to do to make you feel better. Put some of the things that I have said today on there: talk a bath, go for a hike, go for a swim, go to the gym, go for a run, essential oils, incense, candles, play with oracle cards, read a book, watch TV, whatever, make a list of that stuff as kind of your feeling crappy toolkit and then turn to that list when you are feeling bad. Use that to pull yourself up out of the crappy space and then tap into your sense of personal power and really turn it around and start focussing on your inner power rather than your perceived weakness.

So, that’s all for now, I hope you found this episode useful, I hope that if you are currently going through some business crap you are able to pull yourself up out of that, tap into your personal power and do something different to move forward. If you have any questions please get in touch as always: [email protected] or you can also join the Facebook group: https://www.hollyworton.com/group that will redirect you to the Facebook group and we can continue the conversation there, I would love to hear about what you thought about this episode and I you have any ideas for future episodes. Thank you so much for listening, if you enjoyed this episode please leave a quick review on Apple podcasts or iTunes and if you haven’t yet subscribed please do so you can hear from me every week.

And I will see you next week. Please remember to visit hollyworton.com/264 for the show notes on this episode. I will have all the links to all the stuff I mention in there. Thank you so much and have a great day.