Me, clinging for dear life to my perfectly fine branch instead of moving to a better one.
Everything is always changing. Yet, our silly human minds often try so hard to hold on to what feels comfortable today.
Things are fine, thankyouverymuch. And maybe they are.
Until they’re not.
It’s only then that we make a change.
I’d known for months that the way I was running my business wasn’t quite working. But it was mostly working, and so I carried on.
I love to jump in and help my clients implement when the thing to be done is so clear and obvious to me. And so I do. “This will only take me ten minutes to do for them,” I’d tell myself. But those ten-minute tasks add up quickly. And little by little, my to-do list was getting longer and my deadlines were slipping. I really hate that.
And I felt terrible: Terrible about letting my clients down. Terrible that I wasn’t keeping my word.
But somehow, feeling terrible wasn’t enough to push me to change. I just accepted the feeling as part of the job and kept pushing. This was normal, right? Usually, I’d get the most important things done before my clients needed them. I was surviving day by day. But it’s like living paycheck to paycheck. You never quite feel settled because you know you’re only one catastrophe away from a real crisis.
Want to know how I finally changed?
I ran the numbers.
It was simple: If I didn’t spend more time marketing and selling, my business wasn’t going to grow. It might stay the same. It could stagnate and die. And I literally had ZERO time to work on marketing and sales. So all of my feeling terrible about missing deadlines and not being able to keep up wasn’t even moving the needle. I was going to burn out and have nothing to show for it. That woke me right up.
Once I had clarity about what my inaction was costing me, I knew what I needed to do. And I had the motivation to do it. To change.
That’s not to say that the steps I needed to take were easy - they weren’t. But the choice was clear. Either I could choose to fundamentally (and uncomfortably) shift the way I operated my business. Or I could risk everything. It’s an easy choice to make, when you put it like that.
Are you tolerating a status quo in your business that isn’t working for you anymore?
Have you been hard on yourself for all the ways you’re falling short?
It may just be that you need to zoom out to get clarity on what inaction is costing you. And sometimes that can be hard to see on your own.
So ask for help.
Get clear on the shift you want to make and how your current “way” that’s holding you back. Lean into the discomfort...it’s where all the good stuff happens.
And don’t forget to be kind to yourself along the way. Sometimes we’re just not ready to change.
Until we are.
The Process Mavens helps business owners like you to identify and implement the shifts they need to make in their business to scale to the next level. We’d love to help you take a look and see what’s holding you back so you can grow.