Make Marketing Suck Less

What to Do When Your Business is Amazing & Terrible at the Same Time

This is not the podcast that I planned to record. Oh no, not at all, but then nothing has gone as planned this week.

As I record this, it is a Friday afternoon, the week of my book launch for The 3 Word Rebellion book and I'll be doing a full debrief of that launch and trust me it is going to be epic. There were highs, there were lows, there was a lot of learning and if you're ever planning to release a book, you won't want to miss that episode.

But today I wanted to talk about all the emotions of going through something like this, of creating the best work of your life, putting it out into the world, making sure you had all your I's dotted, all the t's crossed, you are doing everything you can to guarantee the success of this book.

Then all of a sudden things outside of your control feel like it's going to tear it all down and meanwhile there are still some amazing things that are happening.

Tune into the Audio:

I think we as humans tend to think in dichotomies, right? So everything is either awesome or everything is complete crap.

But the truth is messier and honestly, for most of us we are somewhere always in the middle and it's about embracing what is good while acknowledging and addressing the suck but not getting pulled into the vortex.

My friend and client, Karena de Souza, is the founder of Tilt the Future and she teaches her clients scenario planning to manage their uncertain future, which is going to be very important with the future of work. And don't worry, I'll have her on the show to talk to us about scenario planning soon cause I think it's something business owners definitely need to know about.

One strategy she teaches is embracing the aunt and here's the truth. During this book launch, it's all about that, life can be amazing and stressful.

Life can be so rewarding and completely demoralizing. Life can be full of opportunity and overwhelming unimaginable.

Good things can happen and be incredibly frustrating and make you want to bang your head against your desk. Things will happen all at the same time.

And here's the deal, you and I, we've got to keep going to get our work into this world, to get our message out.

We have to keep moving and navigating and acknowledging the good and dealing with the crap and embracing the good and bad because it is the fuel that drives us because it actually provides us with an opportunity to see that positive and reflect and assess on what we need in the future.

So personally, the first thing when I realized that I was in this amazing and horrible time all at once, I got out my journal, which is a brand new habit for me this year. And I started thinking about what kind of support do I need because I realized that my business is changing rather rapidly and I need support on the personal level but also on the business level.

When all the crap started going down, I couldn't help but think about Gay Hendricks and his book, The Big Leap. In it, he talks about upper limit problems.

He says is that each of us has this internal thermometer for how much good will let in.

So how much success and wealth and love and creativity will let ourselves experience before we get super uncomfortable with it? And when we hit our upper limit, something happens and we sabotage ourselves. Sometimes we don't even sabotage ourselves because it's things that were out of our control decisions that we made that we didn't know would be self-sabotaging at the time.

So for me, the week the book launched, it was amazing. The book was doing super well. It was selling really well. People were picking up the book who I have never even imagined would look at my work and bam! I was like, wow, amazing. And then all of a sudden something happened.

I started having distribution problems with my publisher. A leak. Oh my gosh. How terrible is that? Like people can't get the book or they have to wait two months to get the book. I thought it was print on demand, not printing. Two months. I mean, come on. And so when that started happening, I took my foot off the gas of promoting the book.

However, I didn't go into hiding.

So I may have let up on the gas, but I didn't take my foot all the way off.

I decided to meet the challenges head-on, which means I was on phone support a lot this week. But not only that, I told people about it. So I went on Facebook and I told people not to order the book until the distribution problem. Can you imagine an author going on Facebook and saying, hey, don't order this right now? I'm like, holy crap. I talked about it in my Instagram stories and it was a way for me to keep the momentum alive while acknowledging what was going on behind the scenes.

And the truth is, is that I can do a d0-over of the book launch. I mean that's the beautiful thing. I'm in it with this book for the long haul. So when I started talking to other people and sharing on social media, I got an outpouring of support and I started evaluating like, why is this coming up?

So lucky for me, I see a great energy worker, Jenny dawn and I had an appointment with her, which was amazing and releasing and I felt so much better afterward.

But I also realize that I might need personal help going forward.

So I've reached out to some of my clients who are amazing, amazing coaches because I know I'm going to need that support because I'm not stopping getting this message out into the world and getting this book into the hands of every single person who needs it. But I know that I'm going to need personal support to do it.

The other thing that came up for me was that I was feeling so overwhelmed during the book launch. There is so much stuff going on in social media, my inbox, the distribution, and a lot of it good and beautiful and amazing stuff. And I realized that I'm at this point, like some people, you know, gradually over time they come to the realization like, oh, I've got to get some help.

For me, it was like hitting the mountain like I've got to get some help in my business. What I did first was I leaned into my team more. So I have a team who helps me with this podcast that you're listening to. So I asked them to do a little bit more work, more work that they probably should have been doing to begin with but I was not letting go of it.

And now I'm thinking of more ways that She Can Coterie can help me with my business, whether that's managing my inbox or my calendar or something else.

I know in order to be successful I'm going to need more help than I currently have.

The final thing that I realized I need to let go of is hanging on to something that no longer serves.

This was causing people to be confused about who I am and what I do and it's a hard thing for me to let go of.

I realized that I need to let go of the identity of being a speech coach.

I still get a lot of requests to help people with their keynotes speeches and some of those people are only looking for speech coaching. They are not interested in the 3 Word Rebellion.

What I've noticed when these people have come to me, they have not been really ready to do the work because the work I do is deep and it's meaningful and it's transformative.

It's not like what a regular speech coach does and I also noticed that these people wanted free coaching on the call. They were violating my boundaries because I don't do free coaching and consulting about speeches because frankly, I don't know enough about them, their business or their audiences to make good recommendations. It feels like professional malpractice to me, so I need to start saying no to those calls and to those requests.

If people are interested in working with me on their 3 Word Rebellion, then they want to branch off and do a keynote speech as well. Oh my gosh. So happy, happy to do that.

But if they're approaching me through the old speech coaching identity, I have to start saying no to that because I need to lead with my message.

And this also means I need to eradicate all the mentions of speech coaching from my website, which is a ton. So that's going to be a chore, but it's okay, I can let go of it.

So, although this week has been amazing and awful, it's been a great opportunity for me to reflect and see where I can grow further. Because the truth is the 3 Word Rebellion book is successful and that success is only going to grow.

This is just, this is a hiccup along the way. When you are in it and when there are things that are going well and things that are full of bullshit, take a moment and reflect.

First, ask yourself where do you need more support to navigate your and where do you need it personally and where do you need it professionally.

Second, ask what do I need to let go of? Is there anything that you are holding onto that needs to go and when you see that it's time to start letting it go.

I feel like I'm in the movie Frozen right now, but trust me, you will be better for slowing down and taking the time to reflect when your business or life is both amazing and sucks at the same time.

There are opportunities for you there.

And hey, if you haven't, please go grab yourself a copy of the 3 Word Rebellion and create a one of a kind movement that grows your business into a movement.

If you love this podcast, if you love listening to it week after week, one of the best ways to support me and the podcast is to get yourself a copy of the book. So there is more information on my website or you can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and if you're international, the Book Depository.

I believe this book can change your business and even the world.

So until next time, embrace the AND, and keep on moving.