Episode 93: My Wish for You in 2022 (+ What Might Be Holding You Back)
Welcome back to Making Good, the podcast for small businesses who want to make a big impact. I'm your host, Lauren Tilden. And this is episode 93. Some of you might be thinking what? an episode of Making Good already came out this week. What is this doing here? Well, in Episode 91, I announced that my holiday gift to my amazing Making Good community is double the episodes in December. Instead of the regularly scheduled for Tuesday episodes, there will be eight coming out this month at random times. Yay, happy holidays.
Okay, so today's episode is a bit of a heart to heart, I want to share the number one thing that I want for you in 2022. And if I'm honest, I want this for me too. And if you're on board, I share some ways to move toward it. But before we get into the good stuff, this episode, one more big update from me. The doors to Making Good Happen are officially open. And I am so excited. I've had such amazing business owners sign up from all kinds of different business categories. And I cannot wait to work with those of you who have already signed up. If you haven't, and you're wondering what is Making Good Happen? Well, let me tell you.
One thing that I know all too well is that it's one thing to learn the things that will help our businesses thrive. And it's another thing entirely to actually take the actions that we need to take, the action that changes things for us not the learning by itself. And that's what Making Good Happen is all about, Making Good Happen as a monthly membership designed to help you custom build a marketing plan for your business and more importantly, actually take the steps necessary to see the results you dream of.
Making Good Happen includes a private members only podcast called you guessed it Making Good Happen. There will be short and sweet episodes every weekday ranging from many pep talks to journaling prompts to action item. It includes deep work sessions. So these are kind of like co working on Zoom but with no video or audio to minimize distractions. It includes guided monthly marketing plan creation, an online community of other like minded small business owners, accountability tracking of your most important deadlines, guest expert presentations each month and more that is a surprise and bonus.
And so that we can all kick off 2022 with a bang Making Good Happen is officially launching the first Monday in January, January 3 2022. If you want to start 2022 with an intentional strategic marketing plan that you actually execute, come hang out with me and some other really amazing small business owners in Making Good Happen. Now because this is the first time I'm ever opening the doors to Making Good Happen, I am celebrating by offering a ridiculously low monthly price you can lock in for good if you sign up before the end of Day on December 18. So this episode comes out December 17. That's tomorrow, at the end of the day. If you're sure that you want to be a part of it then head to makinggoodpodcast.com/MGH. If you're listening after December 18. No problem, the doors will still be open through December 31. And I've got some fun bonuses for everyone who signs up in this first round. You can get all the details at makinggoodpodcast.com/happen. Or if you know you're ready to sign up, you can go straight to the checkout page at makinggoodpodcast.com/MGH.
Let's get into today's episode.
So one of my favorite things about hosting this podcast is hearing from listeners. And I've gotten to know a lot of you pretty well. Here's what I know about you. You are big hearted, passionate, talented people. You love what you do. You want to market your business, but you don't want to feel like you're pushing it on people. So you often tend to hold back. You struggle to be as consistent as you want to be in your marketing and your business overall, because you don't want to put things out into the world that aren't perfect. But you have so much heart, so much talent and you make such an important impact on the world around you. And I want to help you expand that impact by continuing to get better and better.
I read two amazing books recently both for the Making Good book club that have given me a totally new perspective on how people do incredible things. Whether it's business people who lead great companies, record breaking athletes, artists, whoever they are the world's highest achievers have one thing in common. These two books Mindset by Carol Dweck and Atomic Habits by James Clear have led me to my number one wish for you in 2022. And again, if I'm honest, this is my wish for me too in 2022. And that is this, to take action every day. And by taking action I mean the tasks that actually directly move us in the direction of our goals and dreams. I want you to take action no matter how good you think you are at it, no matter how much you feel like it in the moment.
No matter if you feel like you're ready, I want you to take consistent action every day. This sounds really very simple, but it's not. So few people take action consistently. And as I learned from the two books, I just mentioned, Mindset and Atomic Habits, both books that are backed by data and science, those that do take action consistently see the best results. And it's not just data, when I asked folks who have joined to Making Good Happen already about their biggest marketing challenges, the answer that I see over and over again, is consistency. We all take action sometimes. But how many of us do it every day, most of us probably know, on some level that putting in the work day in and day out is what we need to be doing to move toward the results we want to see in our businesses. So what holds us back? Well, I've put together our list of six things I've noticed holding me and other small business owners back from taking action consistently. And after I share this list, I'll share some ways that we can move past these blocks.
So the first thing I've noticed that holds us back is fake work. And kicking this list off with a doozy because fake work is a trap that I fall into all the time. And I know a lot of you do as well. Fake work is when we spend our time doing things that feel like work, but they're actually not directly moving us toward our goals. The number one culprit on the fake work list, at least for me is ''researching''. And I put that in quotes. So that searching on Google, taking a course or otherwise, believing that someone else has the answers and can just tell me what to do. I also throw in this category, the tasks that simply aren't top priority. For example, I can fall into the trap of sorting through my emails instead of creating content, because it feels easier and more doable in the moment.
Then second thing that holds us back is a lack of a concrete plan. We can get held back from taking action when we don't really know what we need to be doing specifically, oftentimes, we'll make a plan but it's not concrete or specific enough to be useful to us. And when the time comes to actually sit down and do the work. For example, let's talk about creating a content calendar. Maybe you're good at looking at the month ahead, picking out the days are going to post on social and send your marketing emails. But then you sit down to actually create the content and you find yourself staring at a blank screen with no idea what to say or where to start. It might all of a sudden feel really important to go do something we talked about in the first example, to go research and look at what someone else tells you to do.
The third thing that holds us back is perfectionism. Perfectionism is my personal Achilles heel. I've been working on this hard the last few years because I've so clearly seen how being a perfectionist has held me back. When you aren't willing to do things until they feel perfect, you tend to have a really hard time putting anything at all out there. I've struggled with this when it comes to art and making things that I released into the world. I've struggled with perfectionism when it comes to this podcast and the content I release. I've struggled with perfectionism when it comes to decorating my house for the holidays and wrapping presents, just about anything you can think of I have seen perfectionism show up for me. And you know what it normally does, when it shows up, it stops me from taking action and moving forward.
The fourth thing that holds us back from taking action is the fear of putting ourselves out there. This shows up for a lot of business owners when it comes to putting their work out into the world, but especially when it comes to marketing their work. Not to mention the kind of marketing that we talked about here on the podcast a lot, which is to show the person behind the business. Have you ever have those thoughts like oh, what are all these people? I went to high school to think about this? Or what would my family think if I posted this, then fear of putting yourself out there might be showing up for you.
The fifth thing that holds us back from taking action is believing that only huge efforts make a difference? Well, hello, you're listening to the queen of all or nothing, go big or go home thinking. But guess what the huge efforts we make occasionally are not what determined the results that we see in our lives. And my early 20s, I decided that the only way to get healthy was to not eat solid food for three weeks. But over 10 years later, I don't think that these three weeks I spent drinking juice and blended soup had any long term impact on my health. What does have a long term impact on my health is the everyday things that I do every day, for better or for worse. The small actions we take every day, Atomic Habits as James Clear calls them are what mean the most in the long run and determine the reality that we live in. And the last thing on this list that holds us back from taking action is simply not feeling like it. Sometimes you have something you know you quote unquote, should be doing but you just don't feel like it. And because you work for yourself, you say I'll do something else right now. And I'll say that for Monday, when I'm more inspired, less tired, in the mood, whatever it is, and then Monday comes and you probably still don't feel like it.
So we've talked about some things that hold us back from taking action. Now I want to address each of these roadblocks and provide some suggestions that have helped me and that I hope will inspire you to approach taking action a little bit differently next year. So let's talk about fake work. If this holds you back, listen up, I think a lot of fake work comes down to the fact that we're not convinced we know enough or are enough as it is, without doing a bunch of learning or having someone else tell us what to do. If you're struggling with this, I can relate and here are a couple of things that have helped me move through this. First, I've started to notice and be aware when I'm doing what I call fake work, researching things, I don't really need to research looking for answers outside of my own brain when I really know what I need to do. So I would suggest that you try to create some awareness to when you find yourself doing this, do some thinking and reflecting for yourself on this topic and start to notice, what kind of fake work do you do? Where are you looking for answers instead of taking action. And then if you're open to mantras, or affirmations, you could try a sticky note on your desk that says something like ''I have what I need'' Just to remind you that taking action doesn't require you looking outside of yourself. It just requires you to take the next step.
Let's address the second roadblock, which is a lack of concrete plan. Having a vague plan or no plan at all can also stop us from taking action. But this is one that is really, really easy to remedy. When you're planning out what you're going to do, especially for things that you notice yourself resisting, make the plan as specific and concrete as you possibly can. I use the example before of creating a content calendar and then you sit down and have no idea what to write. Well, let's go back to this example and say that you're creating a content calendar. But instead of leaving it at setting dates and actions for posts in your emails, you detail out what each piece of content will look like. So instead of saying I'm going to post on Monday and Thursday and send an email on Friday, you will get super specific about what each of these pieces of content looks like. So on Monday, I'll post a carousel tutorial of how to clean brass jewelry. On Thursday, I'll post a behind the scenes reel of me creating my best selling necklace. And on Friday, my email will include details on cleaning brass with links to my favorite brass jewelry pieces. When we can sit down to work and take action and we already know exactly what we need to do. A lot of that resistance will fall away.
So let's talk about addressing perfectionism. Perfectionism has started to lose its appeal to me, mostly because I've done so much reflecting on my life and seeing how many times I've been held back or stopped from doing something because I didn't think I could do it perfectly. Here are a few of the tools that I use to fight perfectionism. First, I tried to keep in mind my why, why am I trying to do this anyway? What impact am I trying to make? How does this relate to my business making an impact? If I let myself be stopped by perfectionism, I'm not only holding myself back, but I'm stopping myself from making the impact and helping those that I want to help. Let's use this podcast as an example. There have been so many times where I've been trying to put together an episode on something I felt was really important. And I just felt like I wasn't up to the task of making the episode as great as it should be. But then I bring myself back to why I'm doing it. I do this podcast because I believe that it can help people do better marketing, have a more successful business and therefore make the world a better place. If I let my own mental stuff, hold me back, I'm stopping myself from possibly helping someone. And the ripple effects of helping just one person are huge. So when I can get out of my own hand and focus less on me and more on who I'm serving, the perfectionism feels a little bit easier to set aside. The other big tool I use for perfectionism are a couple of simple affirmations and mantras that I find myself repeating. They are number one, start before you're ready. Number two, perfect is the enemy of the great. And number three, Done is better than perfect.
So let's talk about the fourth roadblock that stops us from taking action. That is the fear of putting ourselves out there. It's hard to put yourself out there. But this is another one where it can be so helpful to focus on who you're serving, or creating your products for rather than getting stuck in your head about some random person from your past and how they might respond. I hate to admit this, but here we go. I often have specific people in my mind that I think are going to be judging the things I put out into the world. So let's give one a fictional name of Sheila which is part of the name of my stationery business, Good Sheila. Something that really helps me with this idea of avoiding judgment and fear putting myself out there is to make it a real question and choice that I can make. Is it more important to me to avoid being judged by Sheila or to promote my new line of skincare that will help my customers detoxify their skin and heal breakouts? I find that when I actually spell out the question and make it a choice. It's a lot easier to move forward and be willing to put myself out there and possibly be judged.
The fifth roadblock is believing that only huge efforts make a difference. Well, here's the absolute data backs truth. It's not what we do occasionally that matters. It's what we do consistently. Occasional spurts of energy and massive action are great. But if they aren't followed by a consistent action, they're not going to change our world. Showing up every day, or every workday is what changes things for us. The best way to convince you of this is to assign you a book to read. And that book is Atomic Habits by James clear, I promise you will walk away from reading this book, absolutely convinced in the power of the small, everyday action. And as a bonus Atomic Habits is the book we're reading next month in Making Good book club. So there will be an episode coming out in mid January all about it.
And the sixth thing that stops us back from taking action is simply not feeling like it. Okay, is this a big one for anyone else? Many of us have spent a lot of our working lives working for other people, and having to spend our time according to other people's priorities. When we start our own businesses, we are thrilled to be doing what we want to be doing. Unfortunately, for me, sometimes what I feel like doing is not the same thing as the consistent action that will drive results for me. And this can be a real sticking point. However, the truth is that you don't need to feel like doing something in order to do it. What matters isn't that you feel like doing it, it's that you do it. So a couple of things that helped me follow through when I don't feel like it. The first is that I remind myself that just because I'm not in the mood doesn't mean it's not a good thing to do. Being willing to be uncomfortable is one of the most powerful things we can do when it comes to growth. And sometimes being uncomfortable looks like doing the thing that feels hard and less pleasant in the moment, because we know it will lead us in the right direction. The other thing that helps me do things even when I don't feel like it is accountability. Having someone else who knows that I said I was going to finish XYZ task this week makes me so much more likely to do the task, especially if I know they're going to be checking in accountability is a hugely motivating force for a lot of people, myself included and if you are looking for some accountability, I would love for you to check out Making Good Happen, my brand new membership program designed to help you keep accountable and take the actions you want to be taking to move the needle in your business. More details can be found at making goodpodcast.com/happen.
Okay, so to sum up my tips for taking action consistently. Number one, know that you have what you need to take action. Number two, create a specific concrete plan before you sit down to work. Number three, stay focused on why you do what you do and who you're serving in your business. Number four, repeat affirmations like start before you're ready, done is better than perfect, and perfect is the enemy of the great. Number Five Ask yourself if it's more important to avoid judgment by a specific person or to make an impact. Number six, remind yourself of the power of the small everyday action and read Atomic Habits by James clear. Number seven, know that you don't have to be excited about it to take action anyway. Number eight, built in accountability. So there you have it. My number one biggest wish for you in 2022 is that you take action consistently. I truly believe that more consistently taking the right actions can revolutionize your business in the next year. And I hope that you are on board.
If this episode connected or resonated with you, I would love Love, love, love to hear from you. Take a screenshot and tag me on Instagram @LaurenTilden. That's L a u r e n t i l d e n. Notes from this episode can be found on the show notes page at makinggoodpodcast.com/93 And finally, I would so love to work with you inside of Making Good Happen. My brand new membership kicking off in January to reserve your spot and lock in the lowest monthly rate that will ever be available. Get the details at makinggoodpodcast.com/happen And to lock this pricing for good be sure to sign up before December 18. Thank you for being here and for focusing on making a difference with your small business. Talk to you next time.