Podcast

Episode 393: My Growth Goal Quarterly Review For Q1 2023

Today’s episode is my first Growth Goal update for 2023. I share the Growth Goal I chose to set (and whether we hit our Q1 milestone), as well as how having twins impacted our business growth last quarter.

Power Planning helped me figure out what my real needle movers were in the 13 workdays I had in Q1, so that the work I was putting into my business will truly pay off.

I also chat about how my role as a leader has shifted this quarter, along with what I’m working on to develop the skills I need to achieve my Growth Goal.

Find the full episode transcript and show notes at samlaurabrown.com/episode393.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

  • Our Growth Goal for 2023 and whether we achieved our Q1 milestone
  • How having twins (and 3 kids under 2) has impacted the growth of the business
  • How to know whether the work you’re putting into your business will pay off
  • What my role in the business looks like now that we have a marketing manager
  • The professional development I’m doing and programs I’m currently in

Featured In The Episode:

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction

Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project, a podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release that perfectionism handbrake so they can get out of that way, and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Power Planning Course and Perfectionist Getting Shit Done, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.

Sam Laura Brown

It feels so good to be sitting down to record this quarter one, Growth Goal update for 2023. In this episode, I’m going to be sharing what our growth goal is, as a company for this year, our milestones, what we accomplished in quarter one, as well as some personal updates. If you have been listening to the podcast for a while, you might know that I just gave birth to twins a few weeks ago, twin boys, Jack and James and I also have a daughter Lydia, who is two and a couple of months.

So there has been a lot going on for me personally, in a really good way in the last few months in the first quarter of this year. And I just want to share with you my update on how this goal is going, and what I’ve been working on what things have been looking like behind the scenes, and I hope it is helpful, and that it gives you some insight into what it looks like to be building a business and working on your perfectionism at the same time, and how the two of those things can really go hand in hand to support you in accomplishing what you want to create in the life that you want to and all of that.

So I’ve got a few notes here, I’m just gonna jump right on in and chat with you about my growth goal, our growth goal as a company, and where we’re at currently how it’s going, what’s been going on. So the growth goal that we have for 2023 is a million Australian dollars in revenue. And this is in the context of having two bigger goals as well. So there is a goal we have in 2025, which is $5 million in revenue, Australian dollars. If you didn’t know, I’m Australian businesses in Australia, even though most of the clients that we serve in PGSD are actually in the United States that we operate in Australian dollars. So that’s why the goals are set that way.

And then in 2031, which will be the year that I turned 40, the goal for the business is to have $50 million of revenue or more in that year. So that’s what we’re working towards. And it has been so incredible to have those goals as a filter for decision making. I talked about this in an episode, I think that came out. I don’t know, a few weeks ago now maybe about having the courage to create a bigger vision for the business. And initially, when I started the business, I could really only think about the next milestone ahead whether that was my first 10k month and then 100k in a year, and then 100k in a month and then a million dollars in a year.

And like, I couldn’t really think beyond that it didn’t really feel safe, I had a vague idea of what I wanted to achieve beyond that. But it felt so vulnerable and scary to just say like actually have really big goals that I want to achieve, always in alignment with our values or pursuing our goals and achieving them. It’s never at our own expense, or the expense of others. And having now set those goals and being so committed to those goals. It has made growing and building a business so much more fun.

It has felt like really a skill set that I’m developing of leading. And also with my coaching skill set as well. Rather than just having these short term milestones to meet as quickly as possible. Having this bigger picture has really helped me to feel more grounded when I’m making decisions, it has allowed me to make a lot of decisions that are really not going to have a short term payoff, but are required to get us to where we need to go.

And I’m gonna be talking about some of that in this episode. But this goal that we have this year as a business is in the context of those goals. And if you’re in PGSD, you will already be familiar with how we break down the milestones for our growth goal that we set. And the growth goal really is a container for your growth. And we’re not setting this goal because we should be making more money just because we should be and that kind of thing that you know, people often ask this question of like, when is enough enough. And it really is a container for growth.

And the revenue that we set for that goal because it is a revenue goal. The revenue that we set really just becomes a filter through which we make decisions and really call ourself into the next version of ourselves the next iteration of our growth, rather than it just being making a certain amount of money for the sake of it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it creates this really nice container and decision making filter.

And I know for sure that I am thinking about a lot of things in the business that I wouldn’t be thinking about if I had a growth goal and I wouldn’t be thinking about, sorry if I didn’t have a growth goal. And I wouldn’t be thinking about if we didn’t have bigger goals and there’s a lot of personal growth required, hence why it’s called a growth goal we need to grow to in order to achieve it. So there’s a lot of growth required.

So in terms of, for me, for example, really stepping into being a leader of the business. And that requires me to show up in a different way to how I shown up before and, and really leading the team that we have in the business and networking and doing those things that I’ve just been able, like, if I have small goals, I’m able to avoid a lot of uncomfortable things. And so this is really helping me to develop personally, and also professionally, and it just has made it all feel so much more fun and really put me into much more of a growth mindset, where it doesn’t feel like everything’s a test of whether or not I’m good enough, it’s really about developing this skill set.

So, in PGSD, when we’re setting these growth goals, we have quarterly milestones that incrementally increase over each quarter of the year. So for the million dollar goal, rather than having it be 250,000, every quarter as a goal, it’s 100,000, in quarter, one, 200 in quarter two, 300, in quarter three and 400 in quarter four, that might be the case. So for me, for example, when I was looking at this growth goal, it was an option to say 250 each quarter because we regularly make over $100,000 per quarter.

So there might be a situation like that where it makes sense to change it and not do the incrementally increasing ones. But given that I was going to be giving birth to twins in quarter one, that it seemed to be fitting to have it be 100k for quarter one while that was going on, and then have it incrementally increase over the year. Also, we have Renae who has been appearing on the podcast as well. So you probably familiar with her already.

But Renae joined as marketing manager in December last year. And so we just went I talked about it with her having that goal ramp up over the year seemed to make the most sense, as well. So that’s a goal that we have. And in terms of where we landed with that goal, our revenue for quarter one was $112,000. So we exceeded that quarter, one milestone. And our expenses for the quarter were 87,000. So profit, this is all rough, but 87,000, roughly.

So profit for the quarter was about 25,000. This is all in Australian dollars. And the main expenses were team. So it was about 70,000. Between myself, Renae and the contractors that we have most of that though, I think just over 50,000 was between Renae and myself. So that’s where most of that expense is sitting. We have some software subscriptions and different things like that. But most of it is team. So that is just a little look at where we landed with the quarter one milestone.

And now I’m just going to be sharing with you what I think contributed to that. And yeah, just a few reflections on things. So as I mentioned, I had a very big life event happened in quarter one, which was welcoming two twin boys into the world. And that really had an impact, obviously on my involvement with the business and what that looked like. And I’ve talked about this in previous episodes that I did, at the end of last year, beginning of this year, talking about preparing the business, and a lot of my growth, goal updates and things like that, and does the podcast generally I chat about that kind of thing.

But I didn’t work very much in quarter one. So I actually went into my power planning and how to look at exactly how many work days I had in quarter one. And I had 13 work days across that three month period. So of those 13. On four of those days, I was doing work. So four days in quarter one I was working. And a work day is typically well. It’s changing at the moment because I am feeding breastfeeding, feeding on demand. And so that’s about every three hours, I need to spend about 45 minutes feeding the boys.

So it’s quite broken up at the moment, I’m using my power planning and to really be able to plan fully and have plans I’m committed to but having flexibility there with my little tweaks so that because they change the times they feed, there’s no set time. So I’m really able to easily drag and drop and if something unexpected comes up, I’m able to adjust my plans and it’s not stressful. So that’s been really great to have that but my workdays at the moment, needing a bit of a different approach because I’m not able to do deep work in the same way that I was before the twins came though, having said that I was I mean I’m currently great for dig.

I have to say, but also at the end of the pregnancy, I was fatiguing in a different kind of way, and was needing to take that into account. So I feel like you know, for the last few years of being pregnant with Lydia than having Lydia being pregnant with the twins having the twins each time, my situation has changed. And also, as a business has grown significantly during that time as well, that I’m needing to really have a look at where my time has been spent.

And also taking into account what I need personally. And having those having all of that be reflected in my planning. And so it’s just been such a great tool to have that. And you can learn all the power planning things, and all of that inside PGSD. But that has been super helpful. So anyway, for like working days. So on some of those days, I was doing like podcast episode recording, and things like that.

I haven’t really had any of those working days since the twins came. And then there has been four days where it has been me and Renae in person together in my house and my home office, mainly standing at the whiteboard that I have in here and talking about all the marketing things relating to like the PGSD launch the power planning course, which is now closed. And it’s just exclusively inside PGSD, but marketing relating to that, and just all the things marketing wise.

And then I had five work days of high level thinking about the business and also me figuring out what my role is in the business now that Renae is doing the marketing, because I spent a lot of 2022. And like, all the time in my business before that, doing marketing things, posting on social media, thinking about the marketing message and who we’re serving, and all those different things. And I’m still involved in that. But Renae is leading the charge on that.

And so now I’ve been left with like, Okay, what is my job now, I really feel like I’ve been, especially in April. So this is kind of I am now talking about what’s been happening in quarter two. And I’ll go into this more in the quarter to update. But really just thinking about, like, what is my role and defining that, and really looking at what are my needle movers now? And it’s taken a bit of time to reflect on that and make decisions around that.

It has been worthwhile, but it hasn’t given me any kind of dopamine hit to spend this time, super thinking about it feels, I still feel much more comfortable and gratified in a way when I’m just busy working and ticking things off my like in my power planning and because we add a little checkmark once we complete something. So doing that kind of thing. It’s there’s that, that feel good feeling that comes when we do that, versus when it’s just this like high level deep thinking about things.

But that’s so important to do. So I’ve been spending time doing that. And I am really just thinking about as well like with our PGSDers how and with you as a podcaster. So how I can support you to when you are going through changes in your business and changes in your personal life as well. What process you can go to when you do need to have that high level zoomed out look and kind of recalibrate and ask yourself like where is my time best spent and what that looks like.

So that’s something that I’ve personally been doing. And I think the results that we accomplish as a team, for quarter one of 112,000 was really the result of the team. And also the work that the team and I did last quarter and also in previous years, especially since like, it just feels so obvious. That’s the case when I worked like had four working days in that quarter. And just what the team has been able to accomplish during that quarter, but also it been off the back of or I guess in a way like the compound effect of work that was done in previous quarters and previous years.

And I just want to mention that as well. Because sometimes when you were in a period of creating the foundations for your next stage of growth or different things like that, that you can’t see the benefits of it yet like you’re planting the seeds but the fruit isn’t anywhere inside and so it really just feels like in a lot of ways. We are getting that fruit now but also planting seeds for the next stage. And it’s just really fun to be in that experience.

So just a little reminder, in case you have been feeling like the work you’re putting in, hasn’t been paying off to just know that like, if you are doing your needle movers. And if you’re doing them consistently, then it will pay off, it does pay off, but it’s just not always an instant result that you’re going to get. So yeah, so that was fun to just really see that and credit to the team that we have and for the way that they worked as well over that period.

And also in terms of just for context with quarter one for my working days, I finished all my major work related things on the 12th of January. So the twins didn’t come until mid February, obviously you don’t know what time babies are going to come. You didn’t get to choose when they come. But also with it being twins, and there being more of a chance that they might be premature. It wasn’t clear when they would come I ended up making it all the way to the date that I had for my C section, which is when I was 38 weeks.

But by the 12th of January, I can’t remember how many weeks pregnant I was in 30 something weeks, I was so over business, I was so uncomfortable, I was just ready to go into my baby bubble and to just, I just, I was ready, I was ready to just take a break and be focused on welcoming the boys into the world and preparing for them and then being with them and all of that. And so I’m really glad that I ended things. when I did in that sense. I was still getting updates and different things like that. But I didn’t do anything major whatsoever after that date.

And I did a podcast episode talking about how I didn’t get done everything that I had hoped to get done by that date. Like there are a couple of things, it was mainly just a few podcast episodes, I wanted to record that I didn’t get to record because I was prioritizing other things. And how I created a sense of completeness for myself so that I was able to go into that time with the babies not feeling like oh, there’s all these things I didn’t get to do. But I really felt complete. And that was so helpful.

So if I will put it in the show notes. But you can go and listen to that episode, if that is something that you struggle with if you’re talking about clean rest. But if you feel like you constantly have incomplete work hanging over you, it’s really important to know how to create a sense of completeness for yourself. Because when you are the boss, and when you’re running a business, and there’s always more to do, unless you have the skill set of intentionally creating that sense of completeness for yourself, you’re never going to experience that you have to learn when to say or how to say enough is enough. And I am done. And this is complete. And I’m moving on to the next thing.

So I talked about how I did that in that episode. So it’ll be in the show notes for you if you want to go back. So gave birth to twins in mid February. And then I began doing little bits and pieces of things besides just getting updates and that kind of thing in the middle of March. And this is when I was really starting to explore like, Okay, what do I need to be doing in the business whereas my time best spent now that I’m not leading the marketing efforts anymore. And yeah, and also just because we’ve had a lot of people asking, everything went really well with the birth of the twins. And it is such a joy.

I feel so full of love for my children, Lydia, Jack and James and just that whole experience and to be able to have a business that supports me in being fully present in that experience has been so incredible. And also having a job, so to speak, that I love so much that I want to return to it. And being able to do that because I work from home and I am the boss and I can do bits and pieces and all of that it’s just been so incredible.

And I felt so supported by my past self, who did the brave things that when needed to be done in order to create that for present day me. And so I think part of the reason as well that I have been able to return when I have and really be doing a lot of high level thinking and, and really like continuing to have big goals that I feel so driven to to accomplish is because I didn’t have pressure on myself to have to return to full capacity within a certain timeframe, or little bits and pieces that had to be done by me that having the team that we have who I love so much and just my past self also making a lot of brave decisions and like delegating and impairing others in and letting go and all of that, that I have been able to choose when I return.

And I think as well like when I had Lydia, because I didn’t have a toddler yet, when I was pregnant with Lydia, I think I worked up to about 38 weeks, and then I was doing little bits and pieces. Whereas in this case, I stopped working quite a bit earlier because I just, I like physically, just I was like maxed out with and it makes it like, even just a single teen pregnancy, it’s very taxing on the body. And so I just, I was ready, but it meant by the time the twins came, I’d already had quite a few weeks off and that I missed what I was doing.

This is like, one of the benefits of clean rest is that you get to miss what you do and absence makes the heart grow fonder, so to speak. And so I was really excited to be in thinking about business again. And when I’ve been feeding the boys, I am often watching something on YouTube related to business or just thinking about different things like that, it’s just been really helpful to have something for my brain to be thinking about. And, yeah, and also knowing like, you get to define like what clean rest looks like for you.

And that gets to be okay, if you want to do that. Which is what has felt good to me, I experimented with, like just watching whatever, on Netflix, and whatever other ones, Steve and I watched Ted Lasso on Apple TV, like the first few seasons of that we’re watching season three now, but the first few seasons of that thing in the first couple of weeks of the twins being born. And that was lovely. But there’s only so much of that that I can do. And we both were kind of in this place of like, Okay, now we’re ready to start like accomplishing things and having projects, even if they’re just home projects, or whatever to work on.

So we both quite quickly after they were born, and they’ve been great sleepers and feeders, and we’re so grateful for all of that it’s made it a lot easier, it’s still challenging, for sure, feeding them feeding any newborn, they need a lot of food consistently milk every few hours, including all through the night. And so that is tiring, and taxing and relentless, and exhausting, in a lot of ways. But it’s also yeah, I’ve also been able to return to doing what I’m doing and taking that into account with my power planning with how I structure my day.

So I’m not trying to pretend that I don’t have three kids while I’m doing my planning. And Lydia is going to be starting daycare soon and will probably be getting sick and like that gets taken into account that I’ll probably be sick, the twins might be sick. So you might be sick, Lydia might be sick, all of that kind of thing, or she might not really be sick, but we wouldn’t be able to put her in childcare because of the rules they have or whatever like that gets taken into account. And so I think that’s really important.

And I had to just pay attention to that, that I’m not trying to plan as if I don’t have the personal life that I have, and personal commitments that I want to have, like I want to spend time with my kids, I want to be available for them. And I also want to work towards the goals that I have for myself personally, and also the goals that we have as a business. And to just remember that I’m a whole person with all those things, I think it can be easy to, especially as it comes to work trying to work as if we don’t have anything else going on or like plan is if we don’t have these other areas of life when actually if we lean into the reality of our situation, we can get rid of all of like any resentment or bitterness or anything that might be there.

And just actually make the most of what we have. And a thought that has helped me recently. With me working three days a week, which I’ve just started doing again. I kind of was figuring out how many days and like two days it just didn’t feel like I was getting enough momentum. And so I’m back to doing three days but just trying on like imagining if everyone who worked a full working week worked three days, like instead of a full working week being considered five days, what if that was considered three days?

And if I think about it in that way, then it just removes a thought I might have like, I wish I had more time to work on the business because the reality is if I wanted to have a five day work week, I could. I’m choosing not to, but my brain likes to have that thought still of like, Oh, what if I have more time and just being like, Well, no, like because, you know, when you have a five day workweek is to like well, if I have more time like we could just have that thought in any circumstance.

So it’s really been helpful to like just imagine a world where it’s everyone’s doing a three day workweek and what would I be thinking about the amount of time I have, and I’d be making it less of a problem that I’m working three days. So that’s just some mental drama I’ve had come about that and just, again, remembering like, I’m choosing to work that much, I’m choosing not to work more than three days per week. And I can also update that as that decision. If I choose to in the future. It’s not like I have to do that forever.

But actually owning that I’ve made that decision instead of feeling like, I’m a victim of my own circumstances, like I want to work three days a week. And I want to not work four days per week, at the moment. And so that’s just a tangent. But that’s something I’ve been thinking about. So what else are they going to say I recorded it just for context, well, what was going on recorded podcast episodes ahead of time. So up until January 12. So any episodes after that, or basically any episodes in quarter one that went out on the podcast were either created by me before that date, or the team put together a few episodes, and they have been fantastic.

And we’ve gotten a lot of great feedback about those episodes. And I wasn’t doing anything on Instagram, Renae has been in charge of that. And I filmed myself recording the episodes that I recorded. So snippets of that have been put on Instagram, that kind of thing, just to share in case that’s interesting. Like I haven’t been doing anything Instagram related or like podcast related once it got past that date. And in terms of revenue, I’m just reading through my notes. So in terms of revenue, where did that revenue come from for the quarter of 112,000. So predominantly, that was I didn’t have the exact split. But predominantly, that was from the power planning course.

And then we had also recurring revenue from people who signed up for PGSD in either October or December, when we did launches of people who did the payment plan option, their payments coming through for that. So that’s what that revenue was made up of. As I mentioned, the power planning course is now closed. So we don’t sell that anymore. At the moment, it’s exclusively inside PGSD. And we are launching PGSD is going to be open for enrollment for one week only in June, June 12, is when the doors are gonna open.

So if you aren’t yet on the PGSD, waitlist, you want to find out more about it, you want to sign up, make sure you get on that. So it’s in the show notes, but it’s Samlaurabrown.com/pgsd is where you can go to find out more about that. And then in terms of my professional development. So now that I’m talking about this, I’m realizing it’s kind of getting to like quarter two stuff.

But I just want to mention a few things as it relates to professional development, because as I said, I have been thinking a lot about like, Okay, now that I’m not the marketing person in the business, what role am I in? And what skills do I need to develop, so that we can accomplish the goals that we have of 5 million and 50 million in revenue. And so I’m really seeing there being two roles. I mean, the CEO role, I mean, the coach role.

And so in terms of CEO, and that role, is really looking at at the moment, developing my leadership skills, and the skill set of there’s like doing the work yourself. And there’s a skill set of doing the work through others and having others do that work in an even better way, then you could do it yourself. And so I have the skill set of doing work. And now I’m learning how to do work through others. And that is a completely different thing.

I mean, it’s helpful to know how to do the work yourself. But it really is a different skill set. And so I have sign up for a program called How to CEO by Kris Plachy. P L A C H Y and it’s K-R-I-S, like Kris Jenner. So I’m in her program, and I sign up for that in quarter two. So technically, we’re not in quarter one update anymore. But I signed up for that. And that’s been really helpful to just think about like hiring and starting to look at hiring the next team member that we’re going to be bringing on Brisbane base to help with the operations side of the business and all of that. So I’m in that program and working through that and also the Life Coach School certification.

So Brooke Castillo is the owner, founder of The Life Coach School. And if you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you will know the love Brooke Castillo, she is, has changed my life, probably more than most people have. Like, she just really introduced me to the world of coaching through her podcast, The Life Coach School podcast, one of my favorites still to this day. And I am doing that certification to really work on my coaching skill set.

And I’ve actually recorded like this episode, listen to his first full episode I’m recording since having the twins, but I recorded some snippets of an episode that will be compiled with other snippets, or other updates. It’ll come out later on, but talking about how I’m making time for that, like how, practically speaking, I’m figuring out how to fit that in with the other things that I’m doing and, and creating a container for myself so that instead of it being this like vague thing that I’m working, I’m very crystal clear now about exactly what I’m going to do and when I’m going to do it, and that’s when I can put it in my power planning, which meant means I don’t feel overwhelmed about and that kind of thing.

So that will come in the future, keep an eye out for that, I think it’d be really helpful. If you are, if you have a lot of ideas and things you want to work on. And then you might find you have a lot of things on your plate, and you’re like, how did this happen? So if that’s the case, how to actually really define things for yourself. So you can be doing a lot at once without having to feel overwhelming or like you’re wearing yourself thin is that the expression that you’re spread thinly, whatever that is, you know what I mean?

So that’ll be coming soon. But I’m doing that as well. And I’m not in so this is for people who have been listening to my updates from last year. So last year, I was in Stacey Boehman’s 200k mastermind, which was fantastic, loved it. And I’m not in that mastermind at the moment. And I’m really focusing on leadership skills and coaching skills, versus my marketing and selling skills, obviously still wanting to improve my marketing and selling skills. It’s very important part of business.

But at the moment, in this season, I’m really looking at my skills as a leader, and my mindset as a leader. There’ll be episodes and that coming for sure. Because there’s a lot of great work I have to do on that. And I’ve made so much progress over the years. But it’s just really fun to see that as a skill set, one that I’m really driven to create for myself. And also the coaching skill set is what I’m looking at at the moment and really those two roles that I’m in for the business so just wanted to mention that in case you’ve been listening to the past ones and you’re wondering about that, but I love that mastermind. So great and Stacey Boehman, her podcast is Make Money As A Life Coach.

So if you are a life coach, then I highly recommend checking that out. And Kris Plachy also has a podcast, which I can’t remember the name of but I will link that up in the podcast show notes as well. And Kris Plachy and Stacey Boehman are both students of Brooke Castillo so it’s all very related. And what’s the word for cohesive? This is this is a side effect of being relatively sleep deprived is that was the hardest to find sometimes.

But it all really supports each other and when I’m learning from people who teach with similar philosophies, but teach different things, so that’s been really fantastic. So that’s a bit of an update on quarter one. It was personally a very important and fulfilling quarter for myself. Having now a family of five plus Cotton in our Samoyed, he’s now three, so yeah, it’s been so satisfying personally. And there’s also been personal challenges with having three children under the age of two. But it has for the most part been a really, really wholesome period of time.

And yeah, just I’m very proud of my past self for setting my present day self up with the situation that we’re currently in. And yeah, it just it has taken a lot of courage to get here and I’m just grateful for the bravery that has been required to make decisions. For example, like with going to uni I have a Law degree and commerce degree and majored in finance, going to work in accounting and then leaving that job and building the business and really, in the beginning, not feeling like it was like a is that thing isn’t it have you have such deep belief in yourself, but also a lot of self doubt.

And I really had so much self doubt. But I kept going. And I didn’t give up. And I didn’t let myself give up. And even when it looked like nothing was working, I just kept going. And I was talking about with Renae, the other day about this actually, where if you imagine a scale, and there’s fear on one side and desire on the other side, and having the scale tips, so that even if you have fear, not fear can be a lot. But if you have more desire to succeed, then you have fear of success, that that’s really all you need. Like you just needed to be in that proportion.

And I know, a lot of people personally and people who are clients as well, like in the past who have that scale tipped where fear is just more than desire. And that’s really what creates a lot of inaction. Overthinking it, it’s not like that those things don’t happen when we have more desire. But it’s, we tend to be really moving forward. And taking action and doing the things when we have more desire than fear. But when fear is more than desire, when there’s more fear.

And it could be fear of lots of different things. And when that is there, and is stronger than the desire, that’s when someone over a period of years will not be able to see progress. And they’ll still be like, I’m deciding what to do. I’m thinking about it, or Yeah, I’m, I’m hoping to get started on that soon. Or that kind of thing that when like, I want to be the kind of person that when someone catches up with me. And so if we’re talking about business stuff that so much has happened since they last saw me because I’ve been growing and evolving and doing courageous things and putting myself out there and all of that.

And I’m not just in the situation where if someone was to catch up with me, I’m like, oh, yeah, same old, same old. It’s not same old. It’s like, oh, yeah, here’s all the new things I’m thinking about, here’s all the new things I’m learning, here’s the things I’ve done not that doing is the the marker for success. Because productive procrastination is a thing. And a lot of us hide out in being busy with stuff and overthinking and overworking and procrasti-learning and procrasti-researching, but we want to have it that desire, outweighs fear.

And that really is what I’m hoping to help you with with this podcast is to have it be that your desire is stronger, your belief in yourself is stronger than your fear, even if there’s a lot of fear there. And, and really, when you’re in that state, whether the desire is more than the fear. And then in PGSD, like or other programs like that, like it just adds fuel to the fire that’s there. But if that fear is stronger than this is really when people are working in spurts of motivation, and then doing nothing that there might be these breakthroughs. But then ultimately, if you zoom out and you look over a period of years, nothing has really changed.

There might be a few inspired moments, but ultimately, like things aren’t moving forward, is because that fire isn’t there. And it can be you just need to tip the scales in favor of the desire. And I don’t even know if desire is the best word to capture what’s on that side of the scale. But I hope you understand what I’m trying to say, which is that when you have that desire that drive that, that commitment, and it outweighs the fear, that’s when you’ll be moving forward versus just being in the same place and being busy with things but ultimately, not having things move forward.

So that’s something I’ve been thinking about, and just observing and different people around me and yeah, just grateful for myself, my past self that had so much fear. But I had just a little bit more desire than I had fear. And I was able to just keep going and talked about this before, but I really had the mantra of if I persist, I will succeed. And it’s kind of the same mantra that I’m having through this period of the business where I’ve decided that, okay, I’m now in the CEO role, and I’m in the coach role, and we need to hire our next person who’s going to be doing the operations and that’s going to be a full time role Brisbane based and all these different things that like, I’m just making that up, no one has told me this situation and even they have they’re just making it up and it’s just having the confidence to decide that for yourself and act accordingly.

And all of that flows from me being committed to those bigger goals which I like there’s nothing objective to say that I’ll get there except my level of commitment and resilience and resourcefulness ie growth mindedness. So it’s, we can be in this mentality of like, I want to know, it’ll work out before, I’m willing to put in a full effort, and it just doesn’t work that way. And the more you can be willing to put in the full effort in the face of uncertainty, that’s when it pays off.

And like, when I say I’m grateful for my past self, it’s because I did a lot of things in the face of uncertainty and not knowing for sure whether I would get here and the only way that I was able to get here was believing it was possible. And that happened in increments. And I didn’t fully believe it. And I had a lot of doubts, but I believed it enough to be able to move myself in the right direction.

So I’m in that, again, at the moment, I feel like there are periods where I’m kind of just going through like the next level of growth and other periods where it’s a bit of a recalibration. And so this really feels like a period of going through some turbulence in terms of needing to do things that feel scary. And I think when I’ve been busy having children, being pregnant, or having a newborn, and then being pregnant again, and having more children, that because that was those significant things going on in my personal life, that the business has been growing.

And that’s continued. But I haven’t done as many courageous things in the business. Though, I do want to give myself some credit, but I haven’t been doing as many things because having children and doing all of that feels vulnerable in and of itself. Just to love little humans so much, just, that’s the whole thing that you love them so much. And, and just, you don’t want anything to go wrong, or anything Bad’s happened, and like, going through birth, and all these different things, so you can feel in the business that I wanted to have that not be like have that feeling more emotionally safe, because I was feeling personally having those things going on that it would be, it would almost be like too much to be doing both things very courageously.

So now I really feel in a period of doing a lot of courageous things with the business. And I’m going to be reporting back on that on the podcast, as always, and I have really exciting plans for the podcast as well for different styles of episodes. So I’ll talk more about that in another episode, or you’ll witness it mainly in the episodes that will go out next quarter. So from July onwards, but really doing episodes that are going to be documenting the kind of stuff, the kinds of things that I’m up to, in the way that these episodes are, but really having it be super helpful for you.

And I’m just really excited for all of that. But I really, I feel like I’m about to go through this, or I am in this period of of real growth and courage when it comes to the business. So yeah, if you want to hear more about it, keep listening to the podcast. I hope this has been helpful for you to hear a little bit behind the scenes about what’s been going on in quarter one. And yeah, I will talk to you in the next episode. I hope you’re having a beautiful day.

Outro

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Author: Sam Brown