BONUS EPISODE: Allowing Business to Feel Easy

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Hey friends, I’m popping in today with a bonus episode, because I want to have a very honest and real conversation with you around a recurring theme that has been coming up is started a few months ago in my own business. I noticed it and I’ve realized that it’s coming up for clients, students, friends, peers, of having these conversations in my DMS, be it email everywhere. And so there’s a good chance that you’re feeling the same way. There’s a good chance that you need to hear this conversation out loud. And so I want to have it with you today. This episode is going to be shorter than my normal episodes, and we’re going to be talking about what if business could feel easy and why, why is it the right now? We are preventing it from feeling easy and what is it could, we can do to allow our business to feel easy.

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You’re listening to Entrepreneurial Outlaws. I podcast for creatives, introverts and paths and spiritual folks who want to grow a sustainable and impactful business on their own terms together. We are paving the way for a new normal in online marketing and business. One that allows you to lean into what makes you and your business unique. And I’m your host, Melanie nights, storyteller Pinterest, strategist visibility, coach and CEO of content are, can be marketing or nontraditional marketing agency for creative business owners who don’t want to compromise the creative integrity to make money, get ready because each week we’re having the messy, honest, and transparent conversations about entrepreneurship, the kind that’s missing from the highlight rails of our social media feeds. And you’ll learn how to create intention and connection behind your content marketing so that you can sell without selling out. We’re uncovering the real stories behind what it takes to run a sustainable online business, the highs, the lows and everything in between, ready to break the rules and become an entrepreneurial outlaw. Let’s do this.

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Okay. So in this bonus episode, we’re going to just cut right to the chase. Okay. So there’s a common theme coming up. I’m seeing it. I saw it in my own business a couple of months ago. There’s a lot of overthinking happening. A lot of self doubts. Our inner critics are getting noisier. Now for many of you just like me, this is not necessarily new. You probably over-thought your business before. You’ve probably doubted yourself. And your inner critic has probably already been around. But I don’t know about you during most of 2020 during the six or seven months that we were in quarantine or that we were isolated. And in lockdown, my inner critic wasn’t as noisy that the state of the world was so much louder. What was going on externally? It was so much bigger than me. And so my inner critic wasn’t really that loud.

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She was there for sun, but she wasn’t that loud because there were so many more important things going on. There were so many other things out of my control that actually my business felt like something really controllable. My business felt like something that I could walk on and I could control that. I knew that it was going to look this way or that every single day, but as we have really entered this new landscape, and even though it looks different for so many of us, you know, we’re all in the same storm, but our boats look really different.

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As we’ve navigated this new landscape. I’m seeing out in a critics stepping up the backroom action, right? Because when our external world feels noisy and it does right now, our internal world becomes really overcrowded with thoughts and feelings. And then when we can’t rationalize those fears, which often we can’t often our fears can not be rationalized. We have very hard on ourselves. We criticize our inability to get shit done or to focus or to work through the pain. And what this looks like in our businesses is we stop allowing business to be easy. Now I’m going to presume that some of you may have just rolled your eyes at me and said, Melanie, my business never fell easy. I hate you, right? I hate you. But I do believe that every single one of you has an element of your business that is replicate is replicable. Replicable. Is that the wet repeatable? You can replicate it. There we go.

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And it doesn’t need to be changed. It doesn’t need to be complicated. But so often we want to add bells and whistles. I mean, want to make things more complicated than they need to be. And this happens because of that noise. It happens because every time we open up Instagram or Facebook, there is noise. There are advertising, there is posts. There are people telling you, you need this thing or that thing, right. It happens to all of us. So how do we cut through the noise? How do we allow our work to feel easy? How can we ensure that we have the space to think plan, envision, and then create, because you are a creative, you may or may not take a paint brush to a canvas, but as an entrepreneur, you are creative. You are a content creator. And it’s our responsibility as content creators, and as small business owners to be the voice in our industry and niche, it is our responsibility to create value in our businesses and in the lives of others. And so often we can’t see what is right in front of us. I am the same, right? I’m really fortunate to have a number of people within my business, who I can turn to, to talk to.

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I often start a conversation with, I need you to tell me and call me out on my bullshit, right? It’s really important. I call these people out West best friends. And I always talk about this in my membership. I say that I am your West best friend. I’m going to call you out on your shit, but I’m also really, really loving and supportive of you because I want to see every single person that comes into my business. I want to see you succeed. Whether you pay me or not. I don’t care. I want to see you succeed. The world needs more people like you, but we can’t always see what’s right in front of us because it’s our business. It’s our livelihood. And our own fears are woven into what we create. Every time we press publish. Every time we hit record, our fears are there. Sometimes they’re quieter than other times, but they’re still there. And so finding people who you, who can support you, finding people who can guide you and help you is so important.

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Wow.

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And what is really, really important is that we don’t focus on adding more to what we already have working for us,

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Because I guarantee that you have something in your business that has worked really, really well. In my experience as humans, when we find something that works, we look for the next best thing that’s going to work, right? We find something that works and then we’ll let cool that worked. Let me find something else that works. I want you to go back to that thing that works. I want you to go back to that. Whatever is that piece of content, that strategy, that, that challenge, that master class, that blog, I don’t know, whatever it might be in your business, that thing that worked for you. I want you to go back to that. And I want you to ask yourself this question, especially if right now you are feeling a little overwhelmed by reaching out by maybe acquiring new clients or new customers. If you feel like the world around you seems to be so overwhelming, but you want to continue making money in a sustainable income in your business, but you’re not sure how I want you to ask yourself this question, where are your clients or customers coming from in your business? Where are your clients or your customers coming from?

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And I want you to answer that question honestly for yourself, because what I have noticed is a clients or customers are coming from one place, but we don’t give giving that platform or that place attention. We’re focusing on something else. We’re trying to figure out a new platform or a new way of working because we’re not allowing business to feel easy. Business can only feel easy if we do what is working for us as individuals jumping between strategies, always looking outside of ourselves for something new that does not allow us an easy path that doesn’t create an easy path. It keeps us playing small. It keeps us trapped. It’s one of my biggest frustrations in the online business space, especially around business coaching is that this constant desire for us to look outside of ourselves, this constant need for us to focus on the next best thing in the beginning.

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Yes, we don’t know. So we learn, but once you have learned, and once you have tested, keep doing the thing that works for you and your business, and that may not be the thing that your business coach told you to do. It may not be the thing that’s super sexy right now. It may not be the theme of that person is advertising on Instagram. It may be entirely unique for you. And I know this to be true because I did it to myself just a couple of months ago. And I’ve seen it coming up with clients and students and friends. And I’m having this conversation on Instagram. And in my emails, the external world is noisy right now. And so our internal world is becoming overcrowded, but the only way that we can allow our businesses to feel easier and to really question and say, Hey, what if this could feel easy is to do what walks and so look at in your business over the last few months, six months, year, whatever it might be, look, how, what has worked for you? Where are your people, where are you having the most conversations about what you do? Where are you getting clients or customers? What did you do to make that last sale and then stop and pause and reflect on what that process was? Because what I’m going to say to you is that you don’t need to do more, whatever it is that works for you, you could do that again and again, and again, and again, you don’t know have to make it extra fancy with bells and whistles on it. Fuck that seriously.

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So whatever it is is working for you, focus on it. And if you are overwhelmed by thoughts and ideas right now, give yourself time, put those thoughts and ideas down, keep them safe and come back to them when the time is right, we are living in this strange time, a time that needs our attention and our time that needs us to be able to adjust pivot and evolve. And that can feel very overwhelming. I know that, but I want you to know that whatever works can continue working if we allow it to. And I hope that this episode as short as is, I hope that it has allowed you to realize that you are not alone and that it is okay to feel this way. And you are allowed to step back challenge the rules, be a rule breaker, and do what works for you. Because friend that is being an outlaw. That is what an outlook would do.

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Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode of entrepreneurial Outlaws. If you see yourself as an entrepreneurial outlaw and enjoy this episode with you do me a favor, it would mean the absolute world to me. If you could take a moment to subscribe to the show and leave a rating and review by leaving your review, you are helping me to grow out little community and together we can show other entrepreneurs that breaking the rules can actually be good for business. Don’t forget. You can find the show notes for today’s episode, along with any of the links that I mentioned on my website@outlawcreatives.com forward slash podcast. And if we’re not already virtual busters, you can come and hang out with me on Instagram. I am the one with the country music playing the lukewarm coffee in my hand, and I’m dishing the doubt on how we can make entrepreneurship more inclusive and transparent. Plus I’ll probably send you some fun gifts. So until next time Outlaws.