The Five Tests of Growth in Business

What if the hardest parts of building your business aren’t signs you’re doing something wrong… but signs you’re being stretched into a new version of yourself!

In this episode, I break down the five psychological tests you will encounter as you grow your business, and how each one reveals the next stage of personal growth required to reach the level of success you want in your business.

Nothing is random. 
Every test is there for a reason.
And every test will pop up multiple times.

The question underneath it all is simple:

What is my business telling me?

and

What does this require from me?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone and welcome back to episode three. In this episode, I want to take you back to 2007. Who remembers what they were doing in 2007? Well, I will never forget. It was a time in my life that I will never forget. I think this was a pivotal time and it really shaped who I've become as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, and how I see business and also really importantly how I tackle challenges. So let's go there. 2007. I was 21. I had just quit uni. I'd quit my full-time job, which was well paying at the time. Remember, I was 21, and I think it was paying me $40,000 or $45,000 for a year. So that was good money back in the day. I'd taken out an $80,000 business loan. I'd invested all of my life savings, every cent that I had worked, two jobs to save, over $20,000 at the time. I'd signed a five-year commercial lease, and I spent months buying all the equipment, equipping a shop so that I could run this catering business. I'd gone all in, and guess what? Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing happened. I'd spent months putting the oven in the right place and the dishwasher in the right place and digging out the floor with diamond cutters and jackhammers and putting in all brand new plumbing and gas work. And when the time finally came for orders to come in and for work to begin, there was nothing. Remember, this is 2007. It's a time pre-social media. Social media for business wasn't a thing. Pre-websites, one a single page, landing page website was about $20,000 and had to be coded from scratch. Uh in JavaScript or whatever, HTML code, whatever it was at the time. There was no online shopping, there was no shopping carts. Shopify and Square weren't a thing. None of the beautiful things that we have available to us today were available. And I had this massive investment that I'd made in time and in money and in effort and in, you know, the dreams and the hopes that I'd held for this business. And absolutely nothing happened. I went about four months in this business, turning up to this empty shop every day and waiting for the phone to ring or waiting for someone to walk in the door. And it didn't happen. It just didn't happen. And I'll never forget the moment. It was my sink or swim moment where I walked into my shop this morning. The three orders that had been booked in had cancelled, and I was looking around at all of my equipment, and I said to myself, Maggie, you didn't come this far to only come this far. And that was when I realized that the business was always going to wait on me to take that first step. And I realized in that moment that the business and life was testing me to see whether I actually was going to do what it took to get this business off the ground. What I realized is that that test of lack was asking me if I was going to listen and to pay attention and if I was going to do what it actually required to build the business. What I realized over time is that there are four main tests that we experience in business. And in this episode, we're going to explore them. So the first test that most people experience in their business is the test of lack, right? You're going to open your business, or you're going to list some classes, or you're going to put in some products, or you're going to put it out there to the world that you're in business and that you're available for taking these orders. And there are going to be crickets. It's going to be radio silence. And trust me, the panic will set in. You're going to ask the very rational question of, oh my goodness, what have I done? Why did I think this was a good idea? You're going to wonder if you're cut out for this and if you're meant to be doing this. What I want you to know is this is normal. This is absolutely normal. I remember that morning. I remember standing there looking at all of the equipment that I'd bought, all of the work that I'd done, and reminding myself that I hadn't come this far to only come this far. I knew that if it was going to be, I had to step up and do what it took to get myself out there. I'd already done what I was comfortable with. I could hide in my kitchen, but when there was rent to be paid, when there was a loan to be paid back, when there were over real overheads to be paid, money that had to be paid out, whether I made a cent or not, I realized that I was the one standing in my own way and that I needed to do something to get the business out there. Well, I do that the time, and I'm not saying this is what you need to do, but I'm going to give you an idea because I got out of my own way and I realized that nobody knew about me. I asked myself that question: who needs to know about me? Where are these people? Who are these people? What do they actually want? I was running a catering business at the time, and what I ended up doing was putting together some sample packs, printing out my product and price list, attaching it with my business cards, and I actually went out into the community and went to all of the different places physically that I thought would need catering. I went to education and development centres, I went to my local council, I delivered some sample packs to my local hospital, I went to the local builders' associations, I even went to the local television network. I went to councils outside of my local council. I dropped off sample packs to so many places and businesses. And I knew that I had to swallow my pride. I knew that I had to do something bigger, something bigger was required of me, and I had to get out of my own way. So what I want you to know from this test, the test of lack, is that it's asking you to think outside of the box. Who else? How else? Where else? Who needs to know about you? Where are they? How can you move out of your comfort zone and go out into the community or out into a wider network of people who need to know about you? It is normal to panic when lack appears. A hundred percent. But I want you to remember you didn't come this far to only come this far. If it's going to be, it's up to you. This is your business. And I want you to ask this question: what am I going to do about this? Remember, the test of lack is testing your ability to find abundance, to find who else, how else, where else, and to remind yourself that this is your sink or swim moment. You didn't come this far to only come this far, and trust me, there are people who need to know about you that don't yet. So who are they and how can you help them? How can you help bridge that gap between you, your beautiful product and service, and them? The second most common test that I've experienced in business are tests of temptation. Oh my goodness. Trust me, business is hard. It's one of the hardest things I think that we will ever do, especially if your goal is to build a business that is successful and that is profitable and that adds to your life, that doesn't burn you out. It's very easy to build a business that does all those things that burns you out, that doesn't make money, that uh swamps you and consumes your life. The challenging thing is actually building a business that gives you life and gives you freedom and gives you more choice and adds to your lifestyle and is profitable. That is the challenging thing in business and it will get hard. I want this to be, I want to be super honest with you because there will absolutely be challenges in business and you are gonna want to quit. And I always say to people, especially when they're newer in business, is that if you haven't wanted to quit your business at least three times this year, you're not doing it right. Something is wrong. Don't be afraid of the fact that it's going to be hard, right? But keep your eyes open for the tests of temptation because it's going to be very tempting to close it all down. It's going to be very tempting to want to burn it all down. It's going to be very tempting to want to start again, clear the slate, forget that it ever happened. These tests of temptation, and trust me, I know these two. I in my first business I had one foot out the door for a very long time. And in a in a big way, I had a team of 12 staff. We were catering multiple locations. We were working seven days a week, 20 hours a day, and I still went back to uni three times because the difficulties, the difficult things within the business were things that I didn't want to look at. And it was easier to say, I don't want to look at those problems and I'm just going to go back to uni, or I'm just going to go and get a real job, rather than to look at the problems that I was actually experiencing in the business, to face them head on and ask that question like, what does this require from me? So the test of temptation will present itself. You will be tempted in so many ways, either to quit the business, slow the business down, go and get a proper job that pays you for the hours that you actually work, to stop what you're doing and offer something else, something that looks easier, something that feels you think feels more aligned. From this end, 20 years in, I want you to know that it's all the same. All of the challenges that you experience in business, outside of business, in other workplaces, there are going to be challenges everywhere. There is no easy road, but you get to choose the hard. So in my life, I've chosen business. It took me a long time to say this is it, I'm going to commit to my business. But once I made that commitment, and the the test of temptation is actually testing your commitment. Once I made that commitment to my business, I said, no, this is it. It is this. This is my career path. This is my vocation. This is what I'm doing with my life. This is what I'm committing myself to. And I went all in. That was when it was actually easier to make all of the other choices, to make all of the decisions, because then they weren't really a, oh, I could do this or I could do that. It's well, if I don't do it this way, the business won't survive. And if I don't take this seriously, the business won't last and it won't do the things that I want it to do or need it to do, right? So the test of temptation is testing your commitment to your business. Trust me, whatever problems you experience in your business, there's going to be other problems that you experience in the other areas that you decide to pursue. In my opinion, it's all the same. And all that we get to decide is am I prepared to go all in on this? Do I choose these sets of problems? That's the thing, right? It's not about one thing being easier or the grass being greener. It's making that commitment to that set of problems, knowing that there are going to be issues and challenges and hard times and things that align with us and things that don't align with us and things that push us in any direction that we choose, whether we choose to be in business or whether we choose to work in corporate, whether we choose to run a physical bricks and mortar business or whether we choose to be from home, whether we choose to be a physical hands-on business, or whether we choose to be online, whether we choose to teach, whether we choose to only make product, whether we choose to expand, there is no easy road. There's only the road that we choose and the set of problems that we choose to tackle. So anytime the test of temptation shows itself, ask yourself which set of problems do I choose? That's the biggest thing. There will never be a pathway that doesn't have problems, but we get to choose which problems we want to tackle. Just as a side note to the test of temptation, there's another angle to this as well, where we're going to make a decision to only offer a particular product or a particular service or to remove a product or a service from our offers. And honestly, at the time that we remove it, that is also the time that you are most likely to experience the challenge. The challenge of lack might show its head where the orders don't come in. The challenge of temptation might come in where the orders or the requests coming in are for that specific thing that you've just decided not to make or sell anymore. Remember, these tests are normal. I always believe that it is that test of conviction, of that commitment to our decision, that I have decided not to do this anymore. And even when a request or an order or a somebody asks for that particular thing, if I then say yes to doing that thing, I think I always feel like I'm opening up the door and I actually wasn't convicted in my decision to no longer do that. If I said I'm no longer offering something in my business, but then an order request comes in, temptation, and I say yes, I'm actually giving mixed messages to my audience, to my customers, where I'm saying no in one way, but then yes in another, and I'm not actually standing true with what my decision was. So keep that in mind. We don't want to confuse the universe, we don't want to confuse our customers, and we don't want to confuse ourselves either. Because then you ask that question, well, what am I really? What is this business really? So when you make a decision, stand by it, choose it, and give yourself a time frame in which you will go all in just on that one decision. Alright, the next one is my favorite. These are all my favorites, to be honest. I've been in business so long that I can see these tests coming up over and over and over again. And here's the thing you have to remember is that you're not just going to be tested once. You will be tested over and over and over again. The test of lack will show up many times. The test of temptation will show up many times. You'll have to show your conviction and your commitment to your business over and over and over again. And this one, this is a good one because a lot of people don't think this is a test. It's a test in disguise, but it absolutely is. This one is the test of overabundance. When all of your ships come in, there's going to be a time in your business when you list something, an Easter promotion or a Christmas promotion or a birthday promotion. You put something out there and you will accidentally, generally, it happens out of the blue, hit the nail on the head and all of your ships will come in at once, and you will receive more orders than you had ever anticipated. Guess what? This is the test of overabundance. This test is asking you who are you when all of your dreams come true? And unfortunately, what I see a lot of people doing is they work so hard to get to this stage that when it finally happens, they burn themselves out. They don't ask for help, they don't create systems, they don't create processes, they don't invest again into the business to build it up with the equipment that it needs in order to handle the capacity. They try to do it all themselves and then they either injure themselves or they burn themselves out. And at the end of the day, once that time is complete, usually at the end of Christmas, I find business owners saying, I never want to do that ever again. I will never offer that much ever again. And that just breaks my heart because they are limiting their business based on their own capacity. The test of abundance or the test of overabundance is testing who are you when all of your ships come in? How do you cope with volume, more volume than you can actually cope with? Do you ask for help? One of the biggest things business owners need to understand is that we're not meant to do this by ourselves. When the test of overabundance comes in, bring in help and support. Create systems and processes and teach your systems to your support network. Be support, ask yourself what is my role specifically in this business, and what can someone else actually assist me with? And you'll be so surprised at how much someone else can help you achieve. Invest, reinvest in the business. This is where we are so lucky to work in an industry where we can buy mixes, large scale, larger volume. You can either have many smaller ones or you can have large volume mixes and ovens and baking sheets and baking trays and making sure that you're investing in multiples of those things that you're using the most. How do you cope with the volume? So a test of overabundance is one that actually knocks a lot of business owners for six. They don't see it as a test, they think it's something that they need to work through on their own and make happen on their own. And unfortunately, that is one of the biggest things that leads to burnout. And the thing is that I've noticed over the years, I've been in business for over 20 years now, is that people burn out for two reasons, or people generally quit business for two reasons. One is the lack that the orders aren't coming in, and usually when people say that to me, I go straight away and look at their marketing. Very easy to see a correlation between a lack of marketing efforts or a lack of connection with the audience and a business that isn't turning over or a business that isn't bringing in the volume of orders that they'd hoped, or they burn out. And when burnout happens, when they say, I can't cope with this, it's usually because they haven't brought in help, they haven't created systems and processes, they haven't then reinvested into their business in order to be able to cope with that expanded and create expanded capacity. And unfortunately, that's when a lot of business owners quit because they can't cope with the volume. So remember, the test of overabundance is 100% a test, and it's asking you to step into that leadership and create the space and create the capacity for the orders that are coming in because obviously you've hit the nail on the head with something that your audience absolutely want and absolutely love and are willing to pay for, amazing, and you're not meant to do this on your own. There are two more tests that I'm going to share with you. The test of lack, the test of temptation, the test of overabundance. I hope that you have found something within those three that resonated with you, that you've seen yourself in one of these situations before. Now, the last two I think are the ones that are easily overlooked. The first one is the test of boundaries. People are people. That's how I'm gonna phrase it. People are people. And unfortunately, when we work for ourselves, when we work from home, when we have flexibility in our days or perceived flexibility in our days, when we are small business owners, when we are a human brand, you know, we are both the business owner and the marketer, and we're on social media, and we're in our inbox, and we're everywhere doing all the things, you're going to experience moments where people push your buttons. This is a big one. It's a big test. And like I said, it's often time overlooked, but it's usually there hiding or you know, under your skin a little bit, and it usually just takes a little knock for this to come out. Where the test of boundaries is where people ask triggering questions, where people test your availability. Oh, because you work from home, I thought you'd be able to do this. Because you're my friend, I thought you'd be able to do this. What else could they ask? People will invariably say things that trigger you. And what I want you to know is that it's not necessarily what people say that becomes the issue, it's how we cope with what people say that becomes the issue. So the first thing that I will say is expect people to say the weirdest things. You will hear over the course of time I've been in business 20 years, and you know, we are in business to serve other people. And when we work with customers, when we work with people, we have to anticipate that we're going to hear things that do make us. Look twice at the email or at the text message and go, huh, that's interesting, or that's an interesting take, or I'll, you know, not not sure how you how we came to be here. The second thing that I will say, so it will happen, second thing I will say is don't immediately assume that everything is malicious. And I think that's a thing that in business we tend to overprotect our emotions. We feel very vulnerable because we're the ones setting the boundaries. We take a lot of things very personal in business because it's a reflection on us, and we all have really high standards. So when something happens, someone asks a question, or some something happens or we think people should know better, it's really difficult not to immediately think they have malicious intent behind it. But trust me, a lot of people, 99% of people, actually don't. We can be overly sensitive to some things, and I think one of the best things that I ever did for my mind, for my mental health, and my ability to cope with, you know, the human side of business is not naturally assume that everything is malicious. Some people ask questions just because they ask questions. Some people ask questions because they honestly don't know, and their unknowingness just comes, sounds like uh judgment or it sounds like a questioning when really they're just asking a question. And also, some people naturally push boundaries. Some people naturally push back a little bit and ask why, or ask, can you do this for a better price, or ask, is there any way that I could have a discount, or or say things like, Well, I know such and such, and I know that they're your brother, sister, mother, father, auntie, uncle, cousin, you know, uh, is there any way I could get a close family discount? Or something like that. Don't naturally assume that it's malicious. Some people just naturally push boundaries. One of the best things that you can do is understand that the test of boundaries is testing your tolerance level. Just because people ask doesn't mean you have to be triggered by it. You can just say they've asked this question, it is what it is. Uh just because people ask doesn't mean you have to say yes, you can absolutely say no. We get to learn beautiful ways of saying no and of letting people know that they've crossed our boundaries. So we get to develop the skill set of communication with the different sorts of questions that people ask us, and we also get to really understand where our boundaries are. What do we happily say yes to, and what do we happily say no to? And how well do we say no to the things that are a hard boundary for us? So the test of boundaries is sure to come up for you. It is always an opportunity for you to dig deep, dig within yourself and find that level of communication. How do I communicate this? Who am I when this happens? And how can I let them know that unfortunately this isn't something I provide? Unfortunately, this isn't something I can do, unfortunately, I don't have space for that, I don't have the capacity for that. This isn't my natural skill set. I'm not I'm not the expert in this. Who am I when I get the opportunity to say no? And don't automatically think it's malicious. In fact, that is one of the keys in business. The longer you're in business, the more customers, the more people that you interact with, the easier and the more opportunities you will have to practice these skill sets. It might come from someone who you know and it might come from someone who you don't know, but they are always an opportunity to practice and to find your own personal boundaries and then find the way to communicate those boundaries. A big lesson in communication. Finally, one final test that I'll talk to you about, and that is the test of identity. The test of identity is all-encompassing. It brings all of these tests in together, and it's not, you know, what you might find. I don't know where and what stage of business you're at, whether you've been in business for 20 years like I have, or whether you've only just opened the doors to your very first business and anywhere in between, is that a lot of the times you find that we're running our business based on someone we've been in the past with automatic responses and judgments and ways of communicating and mindsets of things that we've experienced in the past. The past us is running our brand new business. And what the test of identity allows you to really open up, a question that I love to ask myself is who am I becoming? And what does this next stage require of me? Finally, am I prepared to give that? So the test of identity is all-encompassing because every single decision that you make in your business, how you show up when lack shows up, how you show up when temptation show shows up, how you show up when overabundance shows up, how you show up when someone crosses your boundaries, all of these tests are going to be tested by your identity. Who am I as a business owner? Who am I in business? The question that I love to ask myself is who do I want to be? And you get to make that choice. That choice is yours. Who you want to be in business is who you get to become. And what I love about business is that it has expanded a version of myself and allowed me to do things that I know I could never do in any other form of employment, and it has really allowed me to carve out a character and character traits that I've wanted to develop and have found the most incredible community along the way. So, in my opinion, business is the most incredible thing that we can ever do. It will absolutely test us in many, many different ways. And what I want you to really take from this episode, and what I want you to really think about, is who am I? Who are you when these tests show up? And who do you want to be? And that is your choice. You get that beautiful decision, you get to make that beautiful decision from here on out. I hope you have loved this episode. If you have anything that you want to share with me after this episode, I am all ears. Feel free to send me an email or just hit reply to this episode, put in a comment at the bottom. And until next time, I hope you just have so much fun creating and building the person that you want to be in business and also being super aware of who you are being and how you are showing up when these tests show up for you as well. Until next time, I hope you have a fantastic week and I'll see you again really soon.