Karen Davies [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome to the Digitally She Does It Show. This is episode 67. And in today's episode, I'm going to be asking the question, when is it the right time to shift in business? So let's jump right in, and let's get started. Welcome to the Digitally She Does It Show. I'm your host, Karen, and I'm here to lift the lid on what it actually takes to create a successful business. If you are an ambitious creative ready to build a business on your own terms and without compromise, then this podcast is perfect for you. With my award winning approach to marketing, an expert knowledge in creating online courses, this show will leave you feeling inspired, energized, and ready to bring those big dreams to life. Join me each week for a dose of motivation and marketing know how along with actionable step by step strategies to help you accelerate your businesses' growth.
Karen Davies [00:00:57]:
So let's dive in, and don't forget to subscribe to all my upcoming episodes which drop every Wednesday. Hello, and welcome. Thank you for joining me today. I'm your host, Karen, and I really appreciate you hitting the play button to listen to today's episode. Now in today's episode, I'm going to be talking about making shifts in business. And I'm gonna be asking the question, when is the right time for this? So we're gonna be exploring that in today's episode. Now the reason why is because I was recently having a conversation with a client, someone that I have been working with for many years and somebody that is very heart centered. And this topic came up which which kinda got me thinking.
Karen Davies [00:01:48]:
Now as I said, I've been working with this client for many years. I've worked with her on lots of design projects. We've worked on her branding. We've done other little things together as well, and I'm currently working on her website. So the idea of her making a shift and pivoting in business was being talked about because of where she is in her business. I love working with this client because she's so incredibly, deeply connected to what she does. Her business isn't just a business to make money. Her business is her soul path.
Karen Davies [00:02:24]:
It's the thing that she feels with every fiber of her being. It's her path that she needs to take to be able to help the people that really need her support. She gets to create impact in the world and she gets to serve others through her business, which I just love because I love working with heart centered entrepreneurs. The thing is, as I've said, we've been working together for a long time. So my client has made quite a few shifts in that time, And she's currently experiencing something shifting internally, which means that she's currently going through that process of evolving her business further. I think when things are happening inside, maybe thoughts, ideas, all of that that's going on, it's going to have an impact on the external factors of your business. And, of course, that's natural. It's just part of growth within the business world.
Karen Davies [00:03:25]:
I mean, it's just it goes hand in hand. But like I said, it did get me thinking about the idea of growth what this really looks like because in the world of business, growth is talked about in terms of making more sales and generating more there and growing your followers and building an audience and all of that good stuff. And we are often encouraged to measure our success by these external metrics. So we're looking at how many sales we've achieved in the past month, how many conversions we've got, how many shares, how many likes, how many followers, etcetera, etcetera. But these are external ways to track success. But because everybody's idea of success is different, what if success is more driven by internal growth because I don't feel like this is something that's often being talked about. So what if your growth that you are experiencing is coming from within. How do we track that and how do we know that growth is happening? Now the one thing that I have learned in business over the many years that I've been running my business is that business growth and personal growth go hand in hand.
Karen Davies [00:04:42]:
And you cannot run a successful business and not grow personally. There is nothing like running a business that's gonna make you tune in to who you are, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and, of course, what your fears are as well. It kind of seeps into all of those different aspects of your being. And I think running a business is something that it's like holding a mirror up as well. So when we're talking about growth, sometimes I think that the personal growth is often overlooked. Now I think starting and running a business it's like being on a never ending roller coaster because there are so many highs, there are so many lows, and literally, there's everything in between. Now over my time as an entrepreneur or a business owner, I've had so many different experiences that I would never have had had I stayed being employed? And a lot of these experiences have been amazing. I've had things that I've done and I've had conversations that were born out of so many different things that had I not been in this world, I'd like to say, I would never have had those.
Karen Davies [00:05:52]:
But having said that, on the flip side, there have been things that have been really awful and that have really tested my mettle at times. Now every time I've gone through something like, I don't know, dealing with a challenging a client or dealing with a negative review. Not that I have many. I've only got 1 negative review but one is more than enough. Thank you. Or even experiencing sexist behavior at a networking group, which I very much did go through, which was, like I say, very unpleasant. Whatever the experience, it has forced me to deal with it. So whatever's going on externally, I've had to deal with it internally as well.
Karen Davies [00:06:37]:
So it's not just about these things that happen on the surface. As human beings, we feel it underneath, and that's often what we're having to deal with. Now I remember through lock down. I was dealing with a client, and this client wasn't gonna pay their invoices. And so I had to get a lawyer on board to help me deal with this particular client. Now this was a really challenging time because the client got nasty. Everything in my absolute being wanted to just run and hide and not deal with the situation because it was just too unpleasant. But I had to show up and I had to stand firm and I had to deal with what was going on, and I was scared.
Karen Davies [00:07:19]:
I'd never dealt with sort of legal issues before because I've just never been in that place. So even having to have those conversations with a lawyer about, okay, what are my options? What are the steps? What do I need to do? Etcetera. Even that was quite challenging. It was very uncomfortable, and I felt like it wasn't actually what I would had signed up for. So it was taking me so far out my comfort zone that I just found the entire experience deeply unsettling. However, having gone through it, I left that that particular situation feeling, yes, mentally exhausted because it just seemed to go on for a long time. But most importantly, I felt really proud of myself because I stepped up to the mark, and I dealt with that situation. And I stood up to that client, and that client wasn't going to get away with it.
Karen Davies [00:08:18]:
So despite wanting to go run and hide and just bury my head, I stood up for what I believe because what I believed in my mind was true. So I think when I look back on that particular time, and I reflect back on exactly what it was I went through. That's growth. That's Not the kind of growth that we're encouraged to track because it's not tangible, but it is growth. And it's really important growth as well because here's the thing. When we experience growth internally, things do shift and amazing things happen externally. And so when we're looking at, like I say, tracking those metrics and all of that good stuff that we should be doing in our business. I think the broader picture and the stuff that's really important is checking in with ourselves and looking at what's going on within and how far we've moved going forward.
Karen Davies [00:09:19]:
Because when you're running a business and you're on your own and you're doing everything as a solopreneur. It's all on you. It's all on your shoulders, and that really sort of taps into your vulnerabilities, your fear, imposter syndrome, all of that stuff just boils up to the surface. And so we do need to take time to recognize when these moments of growth have happened because that's where, I think, that's where the magic lies. Now just going back to my client, she's been on her own personal journey over the past few years. She she worked in a corporate job, which she then left to start her own coaching business. The business she has today is so different from where she started years ago and what her original vision was. Because she's evolved, so has her vision? Her ideas have naturally evolved with her.
Karen Davies [00:10:15]:
And now she's doing things like running retreats abroad. She's delivering workshops all over the place. She's working with important people in her space, and that is not something that she even thought about a couple of years ago because she wasn't ready for it. She wasn't in that frame of mind where she believed it's what she could have. But now what I notice is that her ideas are so much bigger and they're so much bolder and she's really standing rooted in her belief that what she wants, she can have. Now personal growth is, of course, really important. We all know that. We we all know that as humans, we need to grow.
Karen Davies [00:10:59]:
But I think it's It's really important when it comes to business because I think when we're talking about business, I think mindset is everything. And, actually, I would go as far as to say that I believe that it's the cornerstone of any true and long lasting success because the reality is that you're only ever gonna go where your mind will take you. And so if you stay still and you stay stuck and you don't grow, then what you'll find is that the business that you're trying to grow won't grow, and you'll just stay exactly where you are. With that in mind, I just wanna sort of talk about when when is it the right time to shift in business? Because this can happen at many different stages, and I think it's something that is it's not a one time thing. It's going to continuously happen. And I think the way to think about this is not in a black and white sort of scenario. So a client needs a new product or a new service. I'm going to create 1.
Karen Davies [00:12:04]:
Therefore, my business is going to grow. I think we just need to take a step back and think about it more holistically. Personally, I think the best time to make a chief, is when you are at a point in your business where maybe you feel either like what you're doing doesn't give you the satisfaction that it once did, or maybe you're not getting the results that you used to get or you wanted to get, or maybe it's because you feel differently about what it is you now do. Because when we start a business, we're often starting from a point where this is what we used to do maybe in our employed life. So that's what we need to do in our business. And I think part of evolving is developing new ideas and also gaining insight into what is also possible. It's perfectly normal to start a business in the beginning with it being one thing, but then evolving it into something else. So I think that is just a natural course that you're going to take as you evolve your business.
Karen Davies [00:13:12]:
Now, of course, there are other practical reasons why you might wanna pivot your business. That it could be there might be changes in the market. Maybe it's because you are collaborating or maybe you just fancy doing something different. So whatever it is, only you can really decide when the right time to shift is. But I think sometimes it's the internal shifts that happened is what really makes us question what we're doing. So back in 2020 when COVID hit, I shifted my business. I pivoted. I was going through this awful experience with my client at the time when everything around me was going crazy, and it literally made me question everything, in my business.
Karen Davies [00:13:55]:
I didn't know why I was running the business. I felt like I was falling out of love with my business. I I have this real sort of mindset that what was the point of doing what I was doing if I'm only gonna attract clients that are not gonna pay their bills. So I'd gone from being really motivated and connected to what I was doing to a place where I was literally questioning what the point of it was, which is completely not me at all. At the time, my design studio was also being affected because in lockdown, clients were starting to put their marketing on hold because they were being affected financially. So my head was all over the place. Everything was crazy. Everything was up in the air, and nobody really knew what was going to happen.
Karen Davies [00:14:47]:
And I think looking back, because I was feeling like this, I gave myself permission to take a step back and to spend some time working on my mindset and taking a break as well. Because up until that point, I'd spent 3 years working on my business. So I was ready to take a break. I needed to take a break. And I think by doing so, Things started to shift internally for me. And I think looking back, that led me to start making changes in my business because I realized that there was another way that I could run my business that didn't require me to give everything I had away. I didn't have to give my time away, my energy away, my capacity away, or even my sanity. There was another way of doing what I wanted to do that would protect me.
Karen Davies [00:15:41]:
Again, looking back, I think a lot of personal growth took place during that time even though I didn't realize it at the time. And I think it's only through looking back, I now recognize that the things I did and the decisions I made around that time came from a place of growth, which then propelled me to create a whole new side to my business, which would not have happened had I not taken that time out? I think there were external factors that, of course, influenced some of the decisions I made, but I think the real movement came from what was going on internally. And because I allowed myself to zedah a different path. And I got okay with taking imperfect action as well And I consciously stepped into a way of being that enabled me to show up as the person that I wanted to be and the person that I also needed to be as well, and that's huge. So when we measure growth in business, I don't always think it boils down to numbers on a spreadsheet. Yes. An increase in sales and income is always welcomed but actually I think it's the shifts that happen within us that really puts us on a trajectory of true and long lasting growth. Now I wanted to share this episode with you, especially as we are coming to the end of 2023.
Karen Davies [00:17:14]:
And Maybe you are feeling as though shifts are taking place or maybe you're ready to make a change and next year's gonna be your year to uplevel your business? If this is you, then I encourage you to embrace it because change in business is inevitable. We can either resist it and we can fight it, which is just going to keep us stuck, it's going to keep us playing safe, and we're not going to get the results that we really want, or you can embrace it and open yourself up to a whole new world of possibility. It's completely up to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to today's episode. I hope you found this episode of value, and of course please feel free to share with others you may think will also benefit from listening to today's episode. If you are feeling inspired and would like to gain access to some freebies to help you build your business, then check out my website www.pinkhyphenlemondigital.com. I will be back next week with another episode, but until then, have a great the digitally she does it show. Don't forget to check out the show notes for all the links and resources mentioned in today's episode.
Karen Davies [00:18:35]:
New episodes drop every week on a Wednesday, so why not rate and subscribe so you never miss an episode? Thank you for tuning in day, and I will see you next time.