Part 1: From Chaos to Confidence: Building a Business That Lasts | Bob Negen

Welcome to Wickedly Branded: Marketing, Magic, and The Messy Middle, the podcast where real conversations meet real strategies. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, founder and fairy godmother of brand clarity at Wickedly Branded. With over 25 years of experience, I’ve helped hundreds of entrepreneurs awaken their brand magic, attract the right people, and build businesses that light them up.

Most entrepreneurs think they need a better marketing strategy. But what if the real issue isn’t strategy at all?

In this special episode, Beverly sits down with retail expert Bob Negen to unpack what actually drives long-term business growth. And it’s not quick wins, hacks, or doing more.

It’s habits. It’s mindset. And it’s learning how to stay in the game when things feel messy.

Bob shares his journey from starting a retail business with no experience and $2,000 to building a thriving company and helping thousands of small business owners succeed. Together, they explore the truth about the “messy middle,” why most people quit too early, and how real momentum is built over time.

Three Key Marketing Topics

1. The Long Game of Marketing Strategy

Marketing isn’t about quick wins or instant results. Sustainable growth comes from consistent habits and showing up over time, even when the results aren’t immediate.

2. Escaping the “Messy Middle”

Every stage of business growth comes with a frustrating middle phase where things feel unclear and hard. Learning to push through this phase is what separates businesses that grow from those that stall.

3. Mindset, Habits, and Momentum

Your results are a reflection of your habits, not just your strategy. When you shift your mindset and commit to small, consistent actions, momentum begins to build naturally.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_04 0:11

I'm I feel like it's not like a um a sprint. It is definitely like a marathon. You have to continue to make those steps mile after mile, mile after mile, and just you know, that grit comes back in the work.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

You're playing the long game. You're playing the long game. You're just building on habits. When I look, you know, I'm looking at all the journals and I I've saved them all. I'm looking at them on my bookshelf right now. And it's like, wow, that represents a lot of growth, you know. But what is it? It's a habit. And don't get me wrong, I got bad. Stupid. No Buddha baby, but I'm not trying to put myself out here as a paradigm of virtue, but I do have habits that move me forward in a meaningful way.

SPEAKER_04 0:51

Endependent brick and mortar retailers make up over 98% of retail stores in the United States. Yet most never receive formal training on how to run a profitable business. Which makes you wonder what is the real reason so many small businesses struggle? Isn't the economy or the algorithm or even marketing at all, but a lack of skills no one ever taught them. Welcome to the Marketing Magic and Messy Middle podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell, and the founder at Wickedly Branded. Today I'm super excited to welcome Bob Nagan, a longtime champion of independent retailers and the founder of Wiz Bang Retail Training and Retail Brilliance, which we have courses on. Bob has spent more than 25 years. You're only like 25, right, Bob?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

That's roughly 19 years in retail. That's 25 doing this. Yes, yes, correct.

SPEAKER_04 1:42

How these small and mid-sized brick and mortar retailers not just survive, but I believe really thrive by focusing on what really matters, the customer, the experience, and running a smart and intentional business. Bob isn't a teacher of retail. He has lived it. He isn't just a teacher of retail, he has actually lived it, owned it, struggled through it, and then built systems and frameworks that actually work in the real world. So I love his insights, his honesty, and his deep care for the people that he serves. Before we start the interview, I want to share a little behind-the-scenes context with you because if you've been around the Wickedly Branded podcast for even a little bit, you know that I mostly interview female founders, consultants, coaches, and creators, women who are building businesses who with a lot of heart and grit and a whole lot of courage. Today's episode is just a little bit different and very intentional. Bob is one of those people who's been in my orbit for several years now. We've collaborated, we've shared Zoom stages, we've had real conversations about business and leadership and what actually works when the noise dies down for business owners. And here's why he gets the exception card. Bob does not just show up as the expert talking at you. He shows up as someone who genuinely cares about small business owners, believes very deeply in education over ego, and has spent decades helping people get better instead of just louder. So while the podcast centers women, it also centers values, integrity, service, and mastery that I believe Bob has. So he's absolutely one of those people. And I am so glad to welcome him today. Hi, Bob.

SPEAKER_01 3:13

Hello, Beverly. Thank you for that uh that wonderful introduction. Uh I'm honored.

SPEAKER_04 3:19

Well, I'm excited to have you here because we had your wife on I think the first season. So it's been yans ago. Um, it's I think it's been two years almost. And uh she's fantastic. I love her, but you have uh uh another take on it, which I think is just as valuable. Talk about, I wanted to kind of start setting the stage for us. I like how did you get into business? What did that look like the early years and how you kind of evolved to where you are now?

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Sure, of course. So I got into business. So let me back up just a moment here. For 19 years, I was in the kite and toy business. So I had a chain of retail stores. Um, one notable thing is that uh in 19 for two years we sold yo-yos. We sold a lot of yo-yos in uh one week in December of 1999, we sold a quarter of a million dollars worth of yo-yo and accessories. So, you know, so I've done all this stuff, but so I was 23, I had just graduated from college, I didn't want to get a real job, and I had a hobby, a new hobby, a new passion. I really loved flying kites. Let's see. So, in my underformed brain, it was okay, I don't want to get a real job. I love flying kites. I should open a kite store because how hard can it be to run a retail store? So literally, I thought I would go up there, work, you know, and make a bunch of money in the seasonal store and go, you know, live in the tropics every, you know, travel. And of course, that's not the way it worked because I didn't have a clue of what I was doing. When I started, I had no retail experience. I started my business literally with $2,000 in cash. And this is before the internet, there were no podcasts that no one could buy a retail mastery system, or you know, there was just not access to information, wisdom, and skills. So uh I had to figure it out on my own. I hired my brother Steve that first year, and for 19 years, you know, we just kept growing, we kept grinding, we kept making mistakes, we had a ton of grit. You used the grit earlier, I mean, perseverance. We almost went broke twice. And, you know, we just we just our my story is so typical, but the the thing that happened that really changed the game is although the Mackinac Kite Company was a good business, I mean, we grew every year, we had a stellar reputation uh with our customers in the industry, but it wasn't working the way we knew it could. And then I met Susan, and Susan was had been a career retailer, she worked for department stores. So I met Susan, we met in a bar, an old girlfriend introduced us. That's what we call word of mouth advertising, right? And and she, you know, and uh I found out she was a retailer, you know, and we hit it off right away. And the next thing you know, she's sort of working as a consultant for us. And I clearly remember looking at her and thinking, somebody actually taught her how to do this. It was like it was a moment like this, and I know that your listeners, you know, uh, so many of your listeners are are just trying so hard to figure it out. And that really was a real shortcut to our success. She brought a set of skills into our really good business that made it great. And sort of the moment that made me realize I needed to become with uh we needed to transition, or I needed to transition into whiz bank training is I was at the Kite Trade Association meeting, and we're, you know, this is a crazy bunch of people. We're all in the bar having a good time. And I looked up and I'm sitting on a bar stool, turned around, facing, you know, the bar. And I looked up, and there's like this ring of people around me. And what what what what I recognized after a moment or two is they wanted they wanted what I had because my business was working, and everybody wanted a little piece of that magic. So uh, you know, and that's not to brag on, you know. I mean, so much of it was Susan just adding that magic last 20%. But then in uh on Labor Day of 1999, Susan and I were going up to our store in Mackinac City to work that store for the holiday weekend. And my brother Steve gave me a letter and says, Hey, you want to sell your share of the company? And we hadn't gotten an hour and a half into the ride. And I looked at Susan and I said, Let's do this. I knew that people needed what we had, and I mean, I went through so much heartache and so much stress, you know, all of these obstacles that all of your listeners can relate to. And I knew that to, you know, and I've always had a heart of service, you know. My father was a preacher, he was a freedom writer, he was deeply involved in the civil rights movement. So I've always sort of had that heart of service. And this was an opportunity for me to express it in a different way. So for the last, yeah, to your point, 26 years, Susan and I, Susan came with me, she didn't stay at the Mackinac Eye Company. For the last 26 years is what we've been doing. Every day we show up trying to help retailers run better businesses because we know that when somebody runs a better business, they have a better life, they have more impact in the world, they have more impact in their community. You know, I mean, the the the upward spiral of prosperity that emanates from a successful retailer or any small successful business person is tremendous. So that's the that's my story.

SPEAKER_04 9:20

The magic of the ripple effect, right? That yeah, it is that wonderful it affects them, it affects their team, it affects their community, affects their home, affects so many things around them. That is uh the the magic. I completely agree with that. And one of the reasons why I do what I do to you, I that impact is incredible. So I know that you talk a lot about um, let me see if I do do this right, mindset, skill set, and systems.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Structure, I call it, but yes, it could you could call it system, but I call it structure better.

SPEAKER_04 9:51

Okay, structure. But one thing you talk about is mindset, right? So is there if you could look back now on kind of your road, um, which is is, I think, rich with experience and learnings, what belief do you early on do you think do you did you have about retail? I you said something about you thought it was gonna be easy, but what belief or like mindset that you kind of completely rewritten over the years that you so in in the beginning, so the first time we almost went broke, I think we were about five years in.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

This is before Susan. And so there's a lesson here for everybody, and so we almost grew ourselves broke. So we had uh one store, two brothers, we were doing great, uh, two stores, two brothers, we were going break, great, three stores, two brothers, uh it was a whole different set of problems, and so I mean, we were in a world of hurt, we really should have closed it down, but the mindset, and you talked about grid and this whole idea of persistence, is we had a mantra during that time, and the mantra was you're never gonna be successful in business if you're not in business. So every day, every day, if we went home and we were still in business, we were one step closer to being out of the hole that we were in. So I think that in the beginning, persistence and just making a commitment to doing everything you can, right? To to is so incredibly important because in the beginning, you know, it's hard. It's hard. And so, you know, I mean, everybody gets into it, you know. Oh, oh, wouldn't it be lovely if I had a clothing store? Wouldn't it be lovely if I was my own graphic? Wouldn't it be lovely, wouldn't it be lovely, wouldn't it be lovely? But then reality hits you. And so the other thing, and this is something that came natural to naturally to me, and I it's it you cannot not have this and be successful right now, is my in my opinion, is uh a growth mindset. So there's a difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. A fixed mindset says everything is outside of your control, you know. Uh, you know, it's fixed. I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough, the economy isn't good enough, my location isn't good enough. Everything is blamed on something else. A growth mindset says you control your destiny, and that's where the whole mindset skill set comes in. Because if you have a growth mindset, or if you can, and and mindset is something that you develop, right? You know, it's certainly it's been uh instilled in you through your life, by your parents, by society, by your teachers, by your religion, but um you can change your mind. And so the the thing to recognize is that every problem is really an opportunity. And every problem, if you have a growth mindset, becomes an opportunity to develop a skill. So if you have that, then all of a sudden everything becomes challenging, everything becomes fun, but a good challenge, and that's where it really that's where that's what separates the people who are going to make it and the people who aren't. Because, you know, Beverly, you don't need to be told, your listeners don't need to be told. Things have changed so fast now. And if you're not adaptable, if you aren't, if you don't look at it and go, holy cow, I got a problem here. You know, uh, don't be bitter, get better. And if you have that, a long now, there's one more piece to this sort of mindset piece, and that is the understanding that you're playing a long game. We tend to look at things from a negative perspective. Oh, we didn't hit our numbers this month, we didn't hit our numbers this year. I had a cranky customer, I got us one-star review, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, you know, and then the my my friend Ryan Rapheus calls it the doom train. The doom train leaves the station. And the story just keeps rolling around and keeps rolling around. But really, you know, just recognize that things are gonna go wrong, things are going to be bad, stretches aren't going to be what you want them to be, projects are going to get derailed. You know, stuff happens. Well, happens, but you know, one of my favorite quotes, my quotes, is we're entrepreneurs, we figure stuff out. Stuff isn't the word I use, but that that you know, but that that's and so if you recognize that, and so you know, and and you're patient with yourself, and you recognize that okay, I didn't have a great year that this last year, you know, at WisBang Training, we did not have a great year. Our sales were okay, but we set out, we began the year, all these things we were gonna do. Guess what? We had to leave our office. It was like taking a month and a half of our company and ripping it out of the calendar. Our meeting planner quit. So we needed to hire a new meeting planner. It's an important position. This stuff happens, and if you take a look at from a long-term perspective, all of a sudden you can be a lot more patient with yourself.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

That grace is so important. One of my coaches talks about business being there's so many good things you talked about in there, Bob. About business is not a straight line, business is up and down, right? And you want more ups than downs, obviously. Like that's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:52

When you go up, there's gonna be some, like you said, readjustments. Maybe it's economy, maybe it's whatever, maybe it's a technology like AI, maybe it's what there's like a staff issue, maybe there's all there could be all these things that kind of like are like adjusters, right?

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:06

But what I have found, and maybe maybe because it's the growth mindset that you talk about, is that when something like that happens, whether it's COVID, I like readjust it in a way that actually was better for my business in the long run. Like those adjustments helped me see my business in a different lens and make adjustments maybe I wouldn't have made that were more profitable, or the opportunity that that I didn't see doing something online because it, you know, COVID required it. Or like those are ways that I have actually grown in such powerful ways, but it's uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_01 16:43

Yes. So, you know, what do the Marines say? Embrace the suck, but you're absolutely correct. So uh that is exactly right. And I and I, you know, so when I coach people, this is part of this is part of the the message in our platinum mastermind group. This conversation keeps looping around again and again and again. To your point, Beverly. When you go through a difficult time, whether it's external, you know, COVID, or it's internal, growing too fast, making making business mistakes, no matter what, the things, the lessons that you learn and the skills that you pick up during that time become embedded in your skill set. Right. And that's why I had to, on our Wizbang Retailers Facebook group page, I had to do kind of a professional stink eye to a bunch of people recently. You know, uh, all of a sudden the tariffs are happening and the uh economy is uncertain, and the and it was a chicken little, the sky is falling, right? Yes, and I got on there and I was like, look, everybody, for crying out loud, you made it through COVID. Right. You this is this this is one of those little, you know, shake it off your shoulders kinds of moments. But again, what do we tend to do? We tend to look at the at the results, not at the process. Can I share something with you real quickly here? So uh, you know, I I have been journaling every day, mostly twice a day, since August of 1998. And this year I sat down to do my annual reflections, and you know what I found was I was kind of stuck, right? I because I was thinking about how were sales, what did I do? It was all this external stuff, right? I was looking at my life through the lens of what I did, and it didn't feel quite right. So I went back and I reread all of my journals from last year, and there were five it was a lot. Well, and so it took a long time to reread those. But when I was done, and I just finished them yesterday, and I started on my reflections, and what I recognized is that I grew a tremendous amount last year. If I looked at the things I did, I didn't do that much. But if if I look at what I learned and what I became and how that will help me in the future, all of a sudden it went from ah, that was just kind of a year to holy cow, I've had some major insights. I've read some of the most important books I've ever read. You know, I've shifted the way that I think about so just it was like, whoa, okay. And I think that there's this idea that everybody has to recognize this. There's this idea of lagging performance because everybody wants to do the work and get the results. But really, what you have to do is you have to become a certain kind of person, and that certain kind of person does the right thing that gets you the results that you want. People get that wrong.

SPEAKER_04 20:06

That oftentimes as fast as they want. We're very impatient for that the six months ago you did the work that's gonna affect the next six months, right? So you have to like consistently do those steps. You can't like do I feel like it's not like a um a sprint, it is definitely like a marathon. You have to continue to make those steps mile after mile, mile after mile, and just you know, that grit comes back in the world.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

We're playing the long game, we're playing the long game. You're just building on habits. When I look, you know, I'm looking at all the journals that I I've saved them all. I'm looking at them on my bookshelf right now, and it's like, wow, that represents a lot of growth, you know. But what is it? It's a habit. And don't get me wrong, I got bad. Stupid. No Buddha baby, but I'm not trying to put myself out here as a paradigm of virtue, but I do have habits that move me forward in a meaningful way.

SPEAKER_04 22:08

So one thing that I I keeps coming up for me as you're talking is two things. When I first heard an out as a business owner, um, I didn't know what I didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:19

There's a lot of like maybe innocent and ignorance in this, right? But there's also this um, like, I shouldn't. And I don't want to admit that I don't know this yet.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:30

Uh it feels like really hard for business owners to kind of admit that. Why do you think it's so hard for us to like?

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Well, yeah, it's ego. So when you start a business, you have to protect your ego, right? You are going to be beat up badly. And so it's almost like self-preservation, right? Your ego is under assault all the time, and you don't know what you don't know. So uh our family owned a business, and my our oldest son ran it, and we just sold it. It was called Stain Solver, wonderful, wonderful cleaning product. Um, but what he and he and Joe is super smart. He's super smart. And you know, he was a business student for two of his years at the University of Michigan. And you know, he was we just kind of thought that he would take over this business and that it would just go. And, you know, it was much more difficult than we all thought it was gonna be. Uh, entrepreneurial ex entrepreneurial experience didn't it translated, but not not not not directly. Okay, and so but Joe said something that was really interesting. He said, Mom and dad, the frustration I have is first I have to figure out what to do, right? Then I have to learn how to do it, then I have to do it.

SPEAKER_04 23:58

The references and hope it's the right thing you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Hope it's right. So, but but let let's back up and I don't remember the name of the gentleman. Hang on one second. I'm gonna grab a piece of paper. Is valuable. And if you look, this has been stuck in my cork board at least a hundred times. It has traveled with me all over the place, and so it's four quadrants here. Okay, and one quadrant is stress, and that's working in urgent and important, uh, or you know, urgent uh and important. The other is effectiveness, and I can send you and you can uh so but really so what happens when you don't know what you're doing is you're working in guilt, you're working in not urgent, not important. But then there the next step here is frustration, and that's urgent but not important, and that's where most people live. When you're trying to figure out how to build your business, you live in this quadrant of frustration. It's urgent, you know. All you're doing is putting out fires every every day, but at the end of it, you go, I didn't do anything important. I was talking to a coaching client yesterday, and he's been working on his training program for 10 years, and he says, I know when it gets done, it's gonna be a game changer. It's like, dude, dude. So we just talked it through, right? But what happens is he's doing he's responding to whatever in front of him all the time, but then stress is urgent and important, and this happens a lot. You know, this is what's happening to us at Wiz Bank Training right now, right? We're growing, right? We have a lot of great things that we're doing, you know, brilliance is really taking off, and so everything is important, but because we don't have a big team, uh, we're not, you know, everything is also urgent, right? And and you know, and so, but that's where that's kind of where you want to get. I mean, because that the being in that stress sets the stage for effectiveness, and effectiveness, assuming you have a mindset, is not urgent and important, and that's where you want to be, right? You want to be doing your best work as much as possible, intentionally, right? Intentionally, yes.

SPEAKER_04 26:50

I feel like the last couple of years, I'm far more intentional about my time and the choices I make because I have a lot uh I have a lot greater clarity around where we're going, who we are, and what we want to accomplish as a company in totality, but also from my purpose and passion and why perspective, it's really centered. So that makes it a lot easier to show up the way you need to show up.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

I feel like sorry, no, no, no, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

Many business owners I see, like our clients, I see they have tons of purpose, but the stress is so high they can't get back to that purpose to create the intentionality. It's like this this conundrum of of I want to do all the things, Bob, when I I don't know where to even start sometimes. So I just and because we're entrepreneurs and builders, we're just like I want to build all the stuff, right? So it becomes this it it it's like it's a self-fulfilling full of prophecy of stress because we we we are so deeply passionate about what we want to do, right?

SPEAKER_01 27:57

And and and so the mistake that I see people make there is one so so there's a great book that I recommend that all of your listeners read. It's called The Gap in the Gain by Ben Hardy. And you know, and and so the gap in the gain basically says that if you are uh building, if you're determining the quality of your life by what you what you want to accomplish, you're always going to be disappointed. And and comparing your per your actual performance against your ideal is incredibly demotivating. But if you start by really looking at what you have accomplished, then all of a sudden, then it's motivating. You know, to me and my my this exercise I just did, I was going, what did I do? I don't know what I did, and then all of a sudden I start thinking about it. It's like whoa, you know, I internally I changed an enormous amount, which is very, very important. Yeah, and so I I think that you hit on something really important here, and it's this idea of addition by subtraction. Because when you don't really what especially when you're new, you're trying to do everything, right? Everything looks like an opportunity, and I've heard uh business experts say say yes to everything, and I think that that's not a good idea, yes. You you might you you might you know hit the lucky three sevens, but you probably won't. Really, the opportunity is to really, really, you know, edit what you're doing to your point, because the reason that you lose your passion and the lead reason that you lose your focus on your purpose is because all of your cognitive bandwidth is being chewed up by stress, yeah. Yeah, your brain only has, and this is this is physiological. Yeah, I can talk about think of your brain as a battery, and if you're you know, if your brain is, you know, it you're overwhelmed. Your brain is trying to do too much, and your brain needs that space, you know, creativity comes from space, yeah. Bruns. Well, uh you know, and and that's why, you know, when uh I teach this thing called the retailer's time system, and one of the four types of time is free time, and uh you know, and I learned the concept of a free day from Dan Sullivan. And Dan Sullivan uh defines a free day as 24 hours, midnight to midnight, where you don't think about your business. You I don't so let me tell you mostly hours, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 30:50

I could do that for all.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Just a second, and and and I'm not very good at it either. And but but so uh Susan and I joined Strategic Coach, which is Dan Sullivan's program, and he has it called the Entrepreneurial's time system. And I had created the retailers time system before I joined coach. And when our coach at the very first meeting talked about the entrepreneurial time system, she saw me in the back freaking out. That face that you just made, that's what I made. And she walked up to me and and I just laughed. I said, I can't imagine. You see, I thought, because I was an entrepreneur, that the trade-off needed to be that I was always on. So if we'd go skiing, you know, on over winter break, you know, I'd get up in the morning, I'd check my emails. At the break, you know, we'd come in for lunch and I'd check my emails. So I never turned off. And I thought that that was the trade-off. But what I learned is that you're really just burning yourself out. So we got home and my sons were young, but I remember Joe saying, looking at me, saying, So, what did you learn today, dad? And I told him about that. And he said, Oh, dad, you're always working.

SPEAKER_04 32:03

Oh, people my youngest, my oldest, who's 20 and in school in Michigan right now, in college in Michigan. Um, he when he was like in second grade, the teacher asked him to do like some assignment about their parents. And he said, What they said, what's your dad's hobby? And it's like football or something, and what's your mom's hobby? Working.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 32:25

Oh no.

SPEAKER_01 32:27

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_04 32:29

Horrible example I'm giving this child. Well, and I did. I I made myself take more breaks, take more time, take more energy to show to for that for him more than me. But then that habit, I think, was a good habit to get into. I'm far less. I mean, far less. I've taken two weeks of vacation, a little bit of work here and there. But the thing that you talked about, the space, even though I'm not working, and maybe this is a little bit different for female founders because maybe not. I'm gonna like make a little bit of course based on some statistics that I know. 75% of women's owned businesses is a relational business in some form. And we are inherently relational beings as women, and so we're nurturers and all the things, and so we're always like caring for others just by our very nature. And so, like, I think that comes from this idea of nurture. Anyway, um, what I have found is it's it's changed, it's evolved from the tactical, like, I need to do that thing, like check the email, to oh, I have this amazing idea for a chapter for the book or something. Like, it's evolved because that space is giving me, like, for example, I'm gonna use this example at Universal Studios. My son, he's nine years old, my youngest is nine years old. He pulled out his wand from Harry Potter World and pointed it at me in front of a crowd of people and said, one of the Harry Potter spells with such immense confidence that he was an actual wizard. Um I I took that and I was like, when and I I ended up writing a whole thing about when do we lose our confidence? Like what the happened.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:09

It's like the world shifted for me from this very practical, tactical type of work to that's a great lesson for my my clients. Is it when does our confidence leave us? So I I I I I actually really enjoy how I think about work now versus what I used to think about before. But I I can't imagine. I really I you're right, and maybe it's a mindset shift, but I it's like one of the things I'm working on with my therapist is what do I do when I sell my business? Who am I after I sell my business?

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Which I'm sure you had that kind of like so it was interesting because I was uh I was uh journaling about that's part of my reflection. So we go to our cottage in Canada for three weeks every summer. There's, I mean, it's on an island in the middle of nowhere. You, you know, uh, there's no no running water, you go to the outhouse, there's a pump in the house, propane lights, pro, you know, there's there's no internet, you know. I mean, it's it's wonderful. It's wonderful. And when I was going through my journal, it this this year was the first year when I started reflecting, what do I want for the rest of my life? Now, so it was interesting because I've had this conversation several times in our platinum mastermind group. People always say, and I always said, I never want to retire. Once I heard Randy Gage talking about an interview he did with the founder of Swatch, and he was older. And Randy said, When are you going to retire? And the guy said, I'm an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs are artists, artists never retire. And so I adopted that as my belief. But then the question is, does that belief still serve you? Right? Beliefs are here, but they're they're here to serve you, but they're only here to serve you until they're not anymore. So, right now that's kind of where I am. You know, it's like, I don't know. But to your question, Beverly, uh, that whole idea of changing who you are. You're an entrepreneur, and that has a whole set of beliefs that are associated with all of your listeners. They're listening to this and going, Yeah, this is me. Yeah, I'm working too hard. Yeah, I'm stressed out. Yeah, what am I gonna do if I sell my business? It's not what am I gonna do? The question isn't what am I gonna do?

SPEAKER_04 36:37

It's who am I going to be exactly without my business or in what capacity, or what does it look like?

SPEAKER_01 36:45

You know, that's really what I'm and there's so much ego around it too. So, you know, uh I have this conversation all the time with with people. I've had the well, not all the time, but this whole idea of people get so wrapped up, you know, you're building a business and it's taking up all of your energy, it's taking up all that emotional bandwidth. You're trying so hard to make it go, and then one day you just you look and you recognize that your entire identity is wrapped up in your business. Yeah, and the talk that I have, and the talk that I had to have for myself, I can tell the story of how I learned this lesson if you'd like later. But is this the whole idea of you are not your business? Yeah, you're a wife, you're a husband, you're a friend, you're a member of the community, you know, you're a father, you're a mother, but you are not your business. And if your business goes away, your value, your worth as a human being doesn't all of a sudden go poof. Right. So and I'll share one more quick story around this because it's also very relevant. We had a client, and um she had a third store, uh, or she had three stores. Now she has two, and she was thinking about closing one of them. And, you know, so I started asking her a lot of questions. And she's very successful, one of the best merchants I know, hands down. And so we were talking about why she wanted this prestigious store in this prestigious location. And what she said was, oh, you know, like if I'm at a party and I tell somebody I own, you know, she owns a boutique, they might think, oh, you know, that's cute. But if I have a store in this location, all of a sudden it will be validity. And I said to her, said to her, So wait a minute, you're basing this business decision on what somebody you don't even know might think, based on a fear you have of a feeling that you might experience them all. Yeah. She said, Oh, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so let me bring it around to something else here that I think is super important to this conversation. My my my number one focus for myself right now is presence, mindfulness. You know what I know for myself, and I know this for entrepreneurs too much past, too much future, not enough now.

SPEAKER_04 39:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:20

Right? We're always, I mean, our minds are going a million miles an hour here, and you know, and and presence is a habit, it's a skill. And when you develop that presence, and when you are where you are when you are, all of a sudden, when you're with a client, Beverly, or if it's a retailer, when you're with a customer on the floor, or when you're coaching a person, you're truly with that person as a human being. If you're doing work, you're not, you know, you're not bopping into email, you're not bopping into something. But that that whole concept of presence, when you become more present, you naturally start to see the beliefs that you have and whether they're serving you or not, or you see the fears that you have, and you can recognize how ridiculous they are or not. But until you're present, if you're if your mind is going a million miles an hour, the truth is never going to find you because the truth is being masked by the busyness in your brain.

SPEAKER_04 40:31

Yes. Yes. I think women carry so much emotional load, so much load for their families, so much mental load that you know, we're always regulating everybody around us. There's that busyness is so heavy. I call that part of it, that's part of the tornado overwhelm in my world that we carry. We carry legacy load of like our mothers and our and our grandmothers of women. The first time we're actually able to build legacy and wealth in ways we've never been able to. That pressure is immense. The should suitcase of you should, you know, act this way, you should be this way as a boss, your business should look like this. There's all the shut suitcase in there. There's the vanishing finish line of like you make a goal and then you succeed. It just becomes heavier and heavier and heavier. And that's such busyness in your brain. It is so hard to be present and to actually build the business that you want because it's just all this input that's happened in you. So this idea of presence and like slowing everything down a little bit and just taking some breaths is incredibly powerful, but also really hard for lots of reasons.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

But you know, but let's go back. Everything is a habit, right? So what what I I put, you know, uh, what does James Clear say? Never mind. But you know, this whole idea of you know, you you're a result of your habits. Yeah, I don't know what it is. Your perfect habits serve your now perfectly, you know. So where you are is a result of your habits. So let me share something that I learned from Michael Singer, and I sort of adapted it because I like what I how I teach it better. But uh, there's this whole idea of that, so it in in Hinduism and in Buddha Buddhism, there's um a term called samskara. Okay, and a samskara is something that has come into you that has not left you. So if your mother told you that you weren't smart, that comes in you and it stays in you, right? So all of these your your entire life is an accumulation of inputs. And it if the inputs uh samskaras can be positive, but they're usually negative, and so all of that stuff is stored in you. And the Buddhists call it the wheel of samskara, right? If your mother tells you you're not smart, that until you let that go, it's gonna keep coming up, it's never gonna leave you, right? It becomes part of who you are. So uh Michael Singer has this whole idea of just relaxing. So, what I did was I took his idea and and put it into a framework, and it's called catch, relax, and release. And so when you feel something, just relax. The minute you feel stress, take a breath. To you, that's what prompted this when you said take breath and then just let it go or move on. And this whole idea of catch, relax, release. And what Michael Singer did that was super interesting to me is he said, When I learned about this whole that I just have to relax, if I relax, I can come back to present. And so what he did was he said, for a couple of years, he just built into his day all of these triggers to relax. So he walked through a door, relax, he turned on the car, relax. So, you know, we were talking about James Clear, this whole idea of you build triggers for a habit. And so he did all of that, and so pretty soon you're relaxing automatically because and I shared that because you're right, until you develop some mechanisms to get out of the overwhelm, the overwhelm's always it's gonna bury you, and you're not gonna get anywhere.

SPEAKER_04 44:28

There's us that you and I always say, like, this is something that you have to create for yourself. You can spin in the tornado, or you can intentionally step outside of a tornado and decide. You talk about catch release, I say name, and then what do you want to do with that? Like, so if it's a should suitcase that you're carrying, um, about let's say, I'm just gonna use one that's very common for females. Women are bossy, you can't be bossy thing, right? You can you should be more pleasant or whatever that is, okay? Less assertive. So if that serves you, which it has served me well in my time to get it.

SPEAKER_03 45:05

Right, sure.

SPEAKER_04 45:06

Right? If it serves you well and you want to keep it, then you say, I desire it, I want it, and you keep it, and that's it. But if it's something that's not serving you well and it is causing you anxiety or stress or exhaustion or whatever it is, You can decide to move it, change the mindset, do something with it. You can decide intentionally to pull it out of the storm and send phone. And I say to a lot of my clients, I'm giving you permission to send down. Like they need sometimes permission to say, I don't have to carry that anymore. You know, I'm not perfect at this. Like I still carry probably a backpack size as opposed to y'all do. Right. But I have over the years learned that I don't have to carry that. I don't need to worry about that. It's not my responsibility. It's not something I have to hold. I don't have to build my business just like that other person over there. I can build my business the way it feels good for my military family. You know, we have a very um interesting set of circumstances with our life. We move every single year. I need to build it around my season, my my life in that way. I don't need to build it like somebody else who doesn't have those circumstances in it. But you have to take the breath, you have to name some of that and realize this is not serving me well, and I don't need to do this.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:22

You can't do that unless you are aware. And that's the thing that even about the um the question I asked earlier, Bob, about people don't know what they don't know sometimes, and they don't realize that they don't have that skill, whatever that skill is. And some of it might be around mindset, you know, understanding presence and bits and stuff like that, which I love atomic habits, I love the gap in the game. All these books you're talking about are great and fantastic, and I've read them as well. Um, but I think I think sometimes we get in our own way. Maybe it's the ego that you talk about, where we confuse lack of skill with this lack of ability or intelligence, and then we like feel bad about ourselves. And you know, there's got to be something that changes in us, and and maybe it's maybe it's things like COVID, or maybe it's things like there's uh uh obstacle or opportunity. I like the thing you call opportunity that says, Oh, I can learn this, oh, I can do this. Somehow it's like this this resiliency that's built over time that that allows you to uh to to believe in yourself and have the confidence. You know, I say confidence isn't something you're just given. You you actually have to build it. Like you have it's like a muscle you have to build over and over again and trust yourself, right? So um how you know when someone has skills or someone has a mindset shift or someone gets a structure in ways that they haven't had before, um how do you you witnessed it so many times, how do you see them shift in the way they show up in their business? Like whether it's their leadership or their marketing or whatever side of it, like what do you see shift when that happens?

SPEAKER_01 47:53

So uh there's a couple of things that let's talk about a couple of things. First of all, confidence is a result of courage, yeah, right? So you you know, uh, and and courage comes after commitment. So you have to, you know, it's not something that all of a sudden you wake up and you have. Confidence is a muscle too, right? You have to say, okay, uh I'm going to do this thing no matter what, which hard thing. Yeah. To have this hard to do this hard thing. I'm gonna have this hard conversation, I'm gonna do this hard thing, and then you have to commit to it. And then once you do it, even if it doesn't work, you've built momentum because you've tried.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

And if it works, you build more momentum, of course. But this is that persistence that we talked about before. But to your question, the shift comes from let me talk about it this way. We talked about this uh uh idea earlier that growth isn't linear, that growth isn't linear, and so we all think that it's gonna go like this, yeah, but that's just not the way it goes. What happens is that we get stuck in the messy middle to your to the name of your podcast, and I talk about the messy middle a lot because what happens is you you you do something hard, and then you're stuck in the messy middle. This always happens. You open your first door, learning those skills, there's a messy middle, and then all of a sudden you develop enough skills, enough insight, enough wisdom, you attach yourself to the right people, and all of a sudden it starts to work. Hallelujah, right? Hallelujah. I'm smart now. So then you open a second store. And running two stores is an entirely different animal than running one store. So then the same thing happens, right? All of a sudden, there's a messy middle. Whenever you commit to something hard, there's always a messy middle where it is difficult, where it is frustrating, and all of those things. And so, you know, to your question, where does the shift come? It comes that you know, you get into it and you get into it, and yeah, so I it think of it as a curve, right? You're not getting anywhere, you're not getting anywhere, you're not getting anywhere, you're not getting anywhere, you're getting somewhere. You know, so we talked about this idea of a lagging performance. So the shift comes from doing the work. So, you know, the shift comes from you know, uh building the habits, the shift comes from showing up because we expect to get results from the work we do, to your point, faster than it typically does. Yeah, so most people stop before they get where they want to go. And so, you know, this whole idea of you just gotta keep, you gotta build the habits and keep doing it. I'll share an example, and it might sound self-serving, but I'm not intending that to be this way. But you know, our retail mastery system, if you're a retailer, you know, the people who have the best success with it say, I'm gonna listen to one video a day.

SPEAKER_04 51:09

Wow, what an incredible conversation we just had. I hope that this episode lit a little bit of a fire under you to finally bring your brand to life in a way that feels true to you. Remember, clarity is the spark, but activation is that firing flame that keeps your message and your visuals and your strategy aligned and the confidence that follows, so does that lovely thing called momentum that you've been waiting for. So if today's episode, if you loved it, make sure you are subscribed to the Wickedly Branded Marketing Podcast so you never miss an insight or a conversation. Until next time, dare to be wickedly branded. Hey there, you've just finished part one of the Sparkle Night Your Marketing episode. How are you feeling? Excited, inspired? Well, we're just getting started. Next Tuesday, we're dropping part two, and you won't want to miss it. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you'll be the first to know when it goes live. Until then, take a breather. Let those ideas simmer, and we'll see you next week.