[Transcript starts at 0:40]
Hello, hello, hello, my podcast people. Thank you for joining me for yet another episode of my favorite online business podcast. If you're listening, if you are watching, if you are tuning in on the day that it drops, it is Monday, August 10th.
I am recording this now officially in August. So official, official, welcome to August. So fair warning, right off the jump, right off the bat, this episode is going to be more musings than answers.
Okay. Put it out there right now. So I want to chat today about a discussion I recently have with my bestie Jill and a discussion that I had with my very good homie, Lauren, and just a topic that I think is somewhat inevitable in your business, right? It's something that just, it's a state that is, in my opinion, you do it long enough, it's inevitable.
And that is when things stop being exciting. All right. Jill and I discussed probably in this podcast, actually, uh, some time ago.
And it's, you know, we've talked about it. I've said it, you know, she said, she said, especially a bunch, like your business isn't there to entertain you. And that statement is largely in response to a sentiment that we see a lot of beginners hold and like these beginner online business owners, they want everything to be fun.
And when it stops being fun and entertaining, they're like, this is the worst I'm bugging out. All right. And I think this is a quote that she heard from maybe her, one of her business coaches, but it's, it's, it is the truth, but your business isn't there to entertain you.
If it does, that's amazing. But harboring that and hoping for that and needing that is, it is a recipe for struggling, right? And perhaps there's, you know, this is semantics here, my own semantics here, but something to understand and something that we all know is that not all parts of your business will entertain you, right? As a solopreneur, especially as a solopreneur or, you know, when you, when you're wearing all the hats, there will be things that don't entertain you. There will be things that you don't enjoy.
Right. And lots of times things that aren't entertaining, you just do them because they have to get done. So hopefully you just heard in that little sentence there, when I was outlining this episode, it struck me that there are actually three E's that we're talking about.
Enjoyable, or that at least I'm talking about. Enjoyable, entertaining, and exciting. And what I want to focus on in this episode is exciting, but it's definitely worthwhile to discuss the other two, right? That being enjoyable and entertaining.
So there's lots of overlap between enjoyable and entertaining, but they do have different definitions in reality and also to me, but it's also in reality, right? And they feel different in my body. So as I was sitting to like outline this, I was like, these are different things, right? And so to me, enjoyable speaks more to like an internal state, whereas entertaining leans more towards an external stimulus, right? So enjoyable speaks to how something makes me feel. Whereas entertaining speaks to what it does for my attention.
They are different things. There's overlap for sure, but they are different things. To that end, as it relates to action items, tasks, this is to me, tasks that aren't enjoyable, I will recommend outsourcing them at some point.
And if your whole business isn't enjoyable, you have a problem, right? And it is worth saying, like people are like, I want to have an online business, but I don't want to be online or I don't want to be on Instagram or social media, or I don't want to do tech. And I'm like, what this makes, what you're going to be miserable, right? But when you go to audit your things that you're doing, and if you're like these things, I just really don't enjoy doing them. I will recommend outsourcing them at some point if possible, because they will drain your life force.
And that makes the business unsustainable as well. If you don't enjoy anything, you try to outsource everything, also a problem. And on this side, if you're trying to hold on to so much and you're just like, I just really don't enjoy it, also not sustainable.
The other side of this, that other E word, entertaining, tasks that aren't entertaining, I'm going to recommend that you batch them and you just get them done all at once, right? Like just the admin side of things, especially in the beginning, like you can't hire someone, they are not entertaining, but you're like, they have to get done. They may not be enjoyable either, but more so they're not entertaining. You're like, I just, I gotta get through this thing.
Right. So we see there's overlap, but at the end of the day when it comes to like going through and auditing things, I would say first outsource things that aren't enjoyable, figure out why they're not enjoyable. And then we go to outsource them and things that aren't entertaining, just look to get them all done at once, right? Eat the frog.
I almost said bite the frog. It's not bite the frog. It is eat the frog.
Both are bad phrases, but bite the frog doesn't sound that's even worse. Right. So if we zoom out, however, I mean, look at the bigger picture here.
That is where I think excitement can come in. And again, my semantics, my language here, my feelings around these things. So, you know, maybe these three E's play very differently in your mind, but this is how they all coexist in my mind.
Right. So as it relates to this episode and what I've been thinking about and feeling and discussing, right, is that this idea of excitement and excitement in your business. And to me, excitement relates to a force that pulls you forward.
When you're excited about something, you can't sleep. You wake up early. You have a countdown for this thing.
You spend a ton of your time, thinking about it, planning for it, investigating it. That feeling about your business, being excited, it will ebb and flow. It will wax and wane.
And that is okay. Right. That is really the big sentiment that I'm trying to deliver with this episode is that it's okay to feel this way.
It's okay that the excitement has faded. Right. And I suppose it kind of ties into this whole, like that's that, that phrase that's out there.
It's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Right. Because it is definitely an honor to have been excited about your business.
Right. Because my guess is that it's not, you know, it's absolutely not a universal experience, like being excited about your business, being excited about your work. So if you have experienced that by all means, let's celebrate it.
If you are currently experiencing that and you are in this excitement phase, lean in, enjoy it, ride that wave. And if you are looking for it, if you're looking for the excitement, let's listen up because this episode is largely for you. Right.
So I enjoy what I do. I am incredibly grateful for what I do. I have the best clients, period.
I'll fight anybody. I have the best clients. I truly the fucking best.
And I get to make a living with something that I literally built. It didn't exist before. And now, you know, I made it.
My creation pays my bills. My livelihood is dependent on me and I love that. But full transparency, I don't have the same excitement that, you know, younger maestro circa 2015 to 2019 had.
And that's okay. And I don't think it's purely a function of age. I think it's a function of time, right? Time spent doing something.
But it's not like, oh, well, I was younger and that's why, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. All right. You know what I'm deeply excited about? Fixing shit.
Why, if you follow me, you saw last weekend that I fixed Lex's sink. That was really fun. I put in a new drain and there was no surprises.
The surprise was that I had to put in a new drain because I thought it was just moving really slow. And I was like, oh, I can just take the p-trap out and then like it'll be fine. Surprise needed to put in a new drain.
But that went off super smooth. Everything went great. And I love that stuff.
My feed is literally my Instagram feed is literally just DIY. Folks, you know, a lot of women DIYing stuff. And I legit get excited when I have a project to work on.
I'm a little bit nervous. I have one for my Jeep. The light keeps going on and off.
And like when it goes off, I'm like, yes, but I will have to replace that thermostat sensor as a thermostat at some point. I will have to do that, but I'm like a little nervous. But I also am excited about this.
I like and even, you know, it's like a fun, nervous and we're gonna come back to that in a second. Beach volleyball. Very excited about that.
I had a breakthrough last week with looking and I will report back on that because that's one of the things with beach volleyball. You like get it for one session and then you're like gone forever. Never to be seen again.
So we'll report back on that. I'm excited about lifting. All right.
Tactic programming is definitely bringing back a type of fitness and a level of fitness that, you know, that was my maestro levels of fitness circa 2015, 2019 at same time period. You know, and that's cool. It's exciting to me.
And to me, you know, thinking about that and realizing that and experiencing that is in and of itself a little bit of an action item, right? Which is. If you're not finding excitement in your business, find excitement in other areas. And make peace with that, right? Make peace with not having it in your business in this season.
That's fine. I debated making this episode because I just launched crew 52 and I don't want any of my enrollees, maybe that's you, to think that I have anything but the most positive feelings towards the program, and I do. I'm extremely fucking grateful for everyone that signed up.
I've already had a super dope time building it out and planning the things and planning out the calls and building the tracker. I know I'm going to enjoy it. I'm already enjoying it.
All right. But I also know how it's going to go. People will get results.
I will fucking make sure of it. That's literally the program. Program is not guaranteed.
You're going to get consistent with this. I'm going to be in your shit. All right.
I will show up 110%. I will over-deliver. I will be in people's shit.
I will do everything I can to make sure that every single person gets every single thing that they want out of our year together. Yep. It's a year.
Look at me growing up. No more commitment issues, right? But I know all of these things. And I think that that knowing is in direct competition with excitement.
Right. It said, and going back to my PT roots, and you may have heard this, this, I'm going to like give a loose summary of it or what is the word we'll call it summary. It's not the right word, but this phrase I have talked about it in courses I've taught, but if you're in, if you're in the PT world and anything with breathing, then you may have heard this quote, which is largely that the difference between excitement and anxiety is a breath or you can make it the breath.
And the exact quote, there is an exact quote from the founder of crystal therapy that says fear is excitement without the breath. And I bring this up because we're equating, you know, physiologically anxiety and excitement, fear and excitement. Anxiety is concerned with the unknown.
It's concerned with the future. It's concerned and focused on what might happen to me. Then logically it follows that excitement being a similar physiological experience is concerned with the same things.
What might happen? What's going to go on in the future. Right. So when you know the outcome, when you know what's going to happen, when you know the future, Ms. Cleo is here, I think again, that it is in direct competition with excitement.
And real talk, it is tough to not know things and not know the outcome when you've been doing this thing for 10 years and you've worked with hundreds, about hundreds, almost thousands, or maybe in thousands of people and knowing the outcome is a good thing. It's a great thing. I encourage people to run the same launches, launch the same offers, do the same thing over and over again so that they create this predictability in their business.
We want that. And those things that you're doing can absolutely be enjoyable and parts of it can absolutely be entertaining, but having excitement towards them, that is tough and that's okay. All right.
So like I warned at the beginning of this episode, today is more musings than action items, but the big thing that I want you to take away that I'm taking away myself, and this was really helpful for me to outline this episode and kind of work through these things, but the big thing here is that a departure from excitement and being excited about your business is okay. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. It doesn't mean that you need to fix something.
It doesn't mean something's broken. It doesn't mean that you need to burn it down or change something, right? It isn't inherently bad, right? Excitement ebbs and flows. I cannot say when it will return, right? Because that's still in the future for me.
Um, and you know, me leaning into different things and into the messaging side of things is part of my attempt at, at bringing excitement back in. Absolutely. I still enjoy it no matter what that's played the same, but bringing some excitement in, you know, and I saw it in myself when I leaned hard into the messaging stuff and started doing that and I was buying some new books and reading new things.
And same thing happened with, uh, you know, the AI side of things, right? We're looking for that unknown. We're looking for that. What might happen? There's nothing wrong with that.
I will say as an action item, as it ebbs and flows with your business, again, it's okay, and one thing I think we can do is look to find it elsewhere for me, those home DIY projects, beach volleyball, lifting, right? I'm finding it there and I am leaning in. My work, I enjoy it and I can let that be enough. I will stop things that I no longer enjoy.
I've done that. You saw me, I've taken you through that. Spoiler, you can bring those things back and you can bring them back in an iteration that fits better for you, you know, wherever you're at.
Absolutely. Right. But the, the, the big message here, the big take home is that it's okay that the excitement ebbs and flows.
Um, that's it. That's the point of this episode. It is perfectly okay.
If the excitement in your business, the excitement about your business, being excited about your business ebbs and flows. Alrighty. I'm going to go lift.
So that is all for today. As always, endlessly, endlessly, one more time, endlessly appreciative for every single. One of you until next time, friends, Maestro out.
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