Just Try Something

You know those times when you can see a pattern repeating? It's really not working for you, but you just keep letting it play out.

In the early days of my business, for three Decembers in a row, we had really low revenue. It was stressful and daunting, being unsure if I'd have enough to pay the rent and the team and to make it through this yearly ebb. 

So, rather than just waiting for the same pattern to repeat again, one year I decided I had to just try something.

It worked! And completely changed the shape of my business. 

In this episode, I’m talking about that moment when you move from overwhelm,  helplessness or resignation into action. It's about making an empowered attempt.

From this episode:

First Peoples' Assembly Victoria

Website: firstpeoplesvic.org

Instagram: @firstpeoplesvic

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Transcript

Annie: Welcome my friend. Lovely to have you here. I'm Annie. I want to acknowledge where I am on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and to pay my deep respect to Elders past and present as I look out my window and just appreciate yet again this beautiful land, this beautiful country on which I get to live and work.

And we're in a really historic, exciting time in Victoria, the state that I live in. Treaty legislation has been passed in the lower house of the state government and is at the time that I'm recording being debated in the upper house, which is huge. So treaty is about First Peoples in Victoria being able to make decisions that affect them, which seems like a no-brainer to me.

It also means they can hold government accountable to its promises, which also makes sense, and to continue the truth-telling process, which is really, really important for all of us. If you are in Victoria and you haven't already jumped on board in support of treaty, please do. You can support First Peoples Victoria who are leading the way in this process.

You could follow them on Instagram or head to their website. Both of those are firstpeoplesvic.org and get involved there. So today's episode is going to be a Biz Chat one. A few episodes ago I shared about how I'm introducing some episodes that are like mini mentoring sessions where I address questions or challenges that business owners are facing, and I said at the time that I wasn't quite landed on calling them mini mentoring sessions. 

Because the format of these episodes are one way in that it's just me here sharing my thoughts, whereas when I'm mentoring business owners, it's very much about conversation and actually loads of what I do is just about asking good questions to help to draw out the answers that you probably already have inside you, but just haven't quite accessed or have got a little clouded at this time.

So for now, let's call this episode a Biz Chat ep, while reserving the right to change it again, if that feels best. And it's kind of been a bit of a year of that for me, to be honest. It's been a great year, but in lots of ways it hasn't been quite what I imagined. And it would be fair to say that it has been rich in challenges and lessons.

And part of that has meant that I have changed tack a bit here and there. So there have been a few times where I've started out in a particular direction with life in general or with my business, and then quite soon realised that it wasn't quite right for me at this time and made a change. And that can feel quite vulnerable doing that in a visible way.

Of course, it's one thing to kind of make a decision for yourself and then change your mind when nobody else witnessed you doing that. But it's another thing to do it where people are seeing you do that. So for instance, where I've shared something on this podcast, I'm gonna do this, and then too many episodes later, I'm like, no, I'm not.

And so I feel like there's a vulnerability in that. Like I run the risk of being perceived as flaky or unfocused, but I have to let myself be okay with that. I make the choice to be okay with that, and maybe you witnessing that in me, if you have, also gives you permission or encouragement that it's okay for you as well, if that's what you need to change your mind or do something different.

So anyway, back to this Biz Chat episode. If you have listened to this podcast very much, you will know that the business-focused episodes that I share also have plenty of application for general life and vice versa. So I trust that there is something in here for you, and I'm super grateful to you for listening.

If you have a business question or a challenge or a life one that you would like me to speak to in a future episode, please DM me. The links are all there in the show notes and I'd love to hear from you, but for now, let's hop into this one.

You know those times when you can see a pattern repeating something that is not really working or really not working, but you just keep living it out over and over. Maybe it's a dip in sales or a stressful season, or just coming back to that old over-committed feeling. You tell yourself next time it's going to be different, but nothing really changes.

Or once you're out of the intensity of that tough time, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind and you forget about it, or you just enjoy that respite for a bit, but you know it's coming back around because it always does. I've had plenty of those moments in my business and in my life. One of the big ones in my business happened in the early days of Eve.

In case you're new here, Eve is my business. I have two studios for women and non-binary people to come together in a community-oriented space to move their bodies. So we have all sorts of classes — yoga, dance, fitness, Pilates, barre, all the good stuff. So in the early days of Eve, I noticed that for the first two, or maybe even three years when we got to December–January,income for the business just plummeted, like really, really dropped off. And in those early days, cash flow was pretty much always challenging and was really just kind of month to month or even week to week, sometimes feeling like day to day. And there wasn't the room to move to have some really, really, really low-income months.

It was enough to put me in a position at that time in the business where I was like, I don't know that we're actually going to make it through this little period. I didn't have the reserves, in terms of money to draw on, to carry us through those times, and so cash flow became a really big issue. I'd be like, I'm not sure I can pay the rent.

I'm not sure that we'll pay the team. And all of that meant I'm not sure that we are actually going to survive this time. So after kind of going through that a couple of times, that very stressful period, at the end of the year into the following new year, I was say in October and seeing that coming, and it's like I was looking into the future a couple of months down the track and just knowing it's going to happen again.

I've seen it happen. I've seen this pattern, and so it would be very, very reasonable to expect that it's going to happen again. That revenue is going to dip into dangerously low territory. And at that point I was like, I've just got to try something. So what I decided to try at that time was a sale. So it's been part of my approach with Eve that we don't do sales in general because I really believe that it's incredible value that we offer, and I just don't want to get stuck into that cycle of just constantly offering sales and then when people start to question the value of your regular prices.

And so anyway, that was something I didn't want to go into. But at this point was like, well, I've got to try something. So maybe we do an end-of-year sale. So. I was like, who knows if this will work. Let's see. So I did it that December, offered just over a 10-day period or so, really great rates, a special discount on memberships, and it turned out to be incredible.

It brought in a whole lot of money and became a really, really strong month that year, and it just meant that cash flow was more smooth and even throughout the year. You could query whether it actually brought in any more money throughout the whole year by doing that sale. Like probably it would be money that people would've spent at another time anyway.

Maybe it brought in a little bit extra, but it addressed the issue that I was having, which wasn't just so much about overall income. It was more about cash flow and not having that money at that time. So it absolutely addressed that. I was like, oh my gosh, how amazing. And I really learnt in that moment and that experience that sometimes you've just got to try something when you can see a pattern repeating itself that's not working for you.

You can just kind of sit there paralysed in fear and overwhelm and a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, and just let it play out over and over again. Or you could make an empowered attempt at something. That's what we're talking about in this episode, that moment, that pivot point where you move from helplessness or overwhelm that's resulting in you doing nothing about it, to just trying something, what it looks like to stop waiting for clarity and confidence or something external to change and just try something.

You might recognise a version of this in your own business or life. Maybe it's something that has been niggling away at you for a while, a pattern that you can see, but you haven't quite found the energy or clarity to change yet. For example, you might have a feast-and-famine cycle where the big months are great, but then everything goes quiet again, and you find yourself just holding your breath, waiting for the next rush to come.

It can be really stressful and exhausting, and it can really stand in the way of you growing in all sorts of ways when you're stuck in a cycle like this. So you've noticed that it happens again and again. So maybe your empowered attempt could be to build in some kind of recurring income or to have a look at your cash flow across a year and plan to space it out more, or to pre-book some work ahead of time or plan a promotional campaign for the quiet months instead of just hoping that they'll fix themselves.

Or you might go down the track of planning your holidays for that quieter time, if that works well for you, though you probably would still need to look at your cash flow to enable this, if cash flow is the issue. Maybe it's a team pattern. You could have an amazing group of people working with you, but find that everything still somehow just bottlenecks with you.

I can definitely relate on this one. So everyone's waiting for your sign-off or a decision from you, or a “quick chat”, so you can't just take a break because all of this just needs your attention and you can't get any deep, productive work done yourself because you're just in reactive mode.

Oh, I have really been here. It's an ongoing challenge for me. The try-something here might be as simple as giving someone else permission to make a decision, to actually trust them with it and to let them know that you trust them with it. Or maybe it's a bit bigger where you need to take a look at the systems and the workflow within your team and give that a bit of a rejig to make it work better for everyone.

It can feel like a lot, but if this is an ongoing challenge, it's time and effort really well spent to get you and your team, because this probably sucks for your team too, out of this pattern. As I said, for me this one has been an ongoing one, and so it's just meant that I've had to address it repeatedly.

So actually, each time that I have addressed it, it has made a difference. But then the work has grown, things have changed, and we kind of find ourselves back there in a slightly different way. And so it needs attention again. And it's something that I think is worth giving that time and attention to. Or maybe it's about your energy. You tell yourself every month that you're going to slow down, have clearer boundaries, rest more, but you find yourself here again, overbooked, overtired, running on caffeine, perhaps, and maybe feeling resentful that you've landed yourself back here again. The pattern is really familiar and the just-try-something could look like just blocking out one non-negotiable day for creative work or rest, and actually keeping it. Just one day, like literally one day on your calendar. Yep, you could move to one day a month or maybe one day a week, but for now, maybe just breaking that pattern for you is literally one day and sticking to it.

Maybe you are seeing some patterns, but not in business. It could be in a friendship or a family relationship that always leaves you feeling drained, but you just keep on showing up in the same way and hoping that it'll be different, but knowing that it probably won't.

Or it could be your health, maybe the afternoon crash that you feel every day, but you just keep ignoring, or the hip pain or lower back pain that just keeps coming back. What would happen if instead of waiting for something external to change or waiting for the perfect conditions, you tried something — not necessarily the perfect thing, not even the right thing if you let go of all of that, but just an empowered attempt. A step towards change. It may be that you try something and it's not quite it, but then you learn something and then you're even more empowered to just try something else.

You know, they say the definition of insanity is keeping on doing the same thing but expecting different. Also, no doubt, you've heard the quote from Thomas Edison who invented the light bulb, but had made so many attempts that hadn't worked, and so it could have been considered a failure, but he said, "No, I've discovered a thousand ways that don't work — like a thousand ways not to make a light bulb." So even if your attempt isn't fully successful or successful at all, you've learnt something, and that in itself is empowering and enables you to make another attempt — to just try something else. And apart from that, taking action feels good when you have a challenge; it's really stressful and daunting if you don't do anything, and you just feel the hugeness of the challenge, almost like it's just this wave that's crashing over you and there's nothing that you can do about it. So just doing something to get up and surf that wave, rather than just letting it crash all over you, can in itself help you to feel better about it and to help get you unstuck.

So give it a go. If you can see a pattern that is not working for you, rather than just letting it be, watching it play out over and over again, just try something. I'd be keen to hear how it goes for you. Sending you loads of love. I'll chat to you soon. Bye.