Welcome to the Get your act together podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Reynolds, op strategist and agency coach at the Reynolds OBM agency. This podcast is all about building well-run and profitable businesses, so that we can create lives and dreams. 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 68. I am in the midst of a self-inflicted experiment. And I'm sharing this with you today because I am just past the middle mark of my experiment. And I want to tell you about it, some of the myths of this experiment, and I'm calling it the four months of uncomfortable, it is indeed uncomfortable. So what it is, is I decided in the beginning of September, that I was just going to be uncomfortable for the rest of the year, I was going to make decisions in spite of my uncomfortableness. And it's a lot. It's hard. But it's also, it's also been really cool. So I wanted to tell you about it today, partly because I want to share about it, and partly because I need a little accountability. Because it's so easy to be like, I don't really have to do that. But if you all know, then I kind of have to. So I'm gonna start at the beginning. Over the summer, I mentioned in other podcasts that I was on this kind of journey of intentional growth. I wanted to work out really what kind of business I wanted, what I didn't want, what kind of work I personally want to do, and what kind where the team should do all of those things. I was working out, sitting by the pool all summer, really trying to deep dive into all of that. I think a lot of us build businesses that we don't actually end up liking because we pick things that we think other people want instead of ourselves. So it's really trying to figure out what I want for myself, and then build that. So I get to the end of August, beginning of September, and I realized that a lot of the things that I want to do, I'm kind of putting off or thinking in my head, oh, I couldn't possibly do that. That's for someone who's bigger than this. This is for a bigger business. Oh, well, they're doing it, but they're way bigger than me. Or they're way more important than me or whatever. I'm not gonna do that. I'm not there yet. And I realized I was saying that a lot. I was putting a lot of scary things off because I was scared, and I knew they were going to be uncomfortable and hard. And there was going to work to do. And I realized I was sucking back into whatever work was comfortable. Often. My coach actually called me out on it because I said something about being really busy. And I don't know, I was making spreadsheets or making SOPs, and she was like, You're sucking back into this work that you know you're very good at because it's comfortable. And that's great, but that's not where you want to be. You're only there because you want to be comfortable. So I decided to not be comfortable. For someone like me, who really does like to have a plan and research everything and be on top of it. That's hard. It's really, really hard. So it is now the beginning of November. And I'm a little past the halfway mark, I realized my avoidance of being uncomfortable, was really holding me back. There were things that people were like, You should do this, you should do this next in your business. And I'd be like, Oh, no, no, no, I'm not gonna do that. And I started to think why? Why am I not doing these things? Like, do you really not want to do these things? Like, I don't want to be a person who sells slimy courses that don't actually help people. Like, I actually don't want to do that. But then there were other things where I was like, Well, why don't I want to do that? Most of the time, the reason was that I was uncomfortable. And that seems scary. And I didn't want to do it. So if I decided to be uncomfortable, it took out a huge objection to whatever I was going to do. Like if I was like, Alright, I'm gonna feel like I want to puke all the time. Well, then you're kind of past an enormous objection to getting started. You already want to puke. You may as well get something done and get something good out of it. This shift in my head has been awesome. I mean, I'm terrible, because I feel awful all the time. But it's awesome. Everyone tells you to get out of your comfort zone, right? I mean, it's like on every meme and every business group. Get out of your comfort zone. That's where the change happens. All that makes total sense. But that means you're uncomfortable. And that sucks. But it's necessary. In the beginning, it was going to be uncomfortable, but I had absolutely no idea what that meant.

And then it was little things like as I would talk myself through problems on a coaching call with my coach, I would say like, oh, I need this and this and this. And she kind of looked at me and I'd be like, I need to have a Facebook group. The idea of that terrified me being responsible to curate a group of people, and make sure that they were all engaged, and they had stuff to think about, or talk about or whatever, all the time, like, every day, that's that terrified me the responsibility of that. And she did remind me that, you know, if it doesn't work, you can just stop doing it. You're not like signing up for marriage for the rest of your life. Like, it's not that big of a deal. Stop freaking out. So I did the Facebook group. And I was like, there's no one who's going to want to join a group, talking about agencies. Who the hell is gonna want to do that? Apparently, lots of people. If you are one of them, you should come join us at the Get your agency together Facebook group. It'll be in the show notes, but you can find this pretty easy, just search. And then like a whole bunch of people signed up and I was like, oh, people do want to talk about agencies. Okay. I would never have done that. Or it would have taken me another year, if it was just me going, Oh, no, that's scary. Right? I mean, my coach is a coach, she's not demanding, I do think she's kind of helping me see things. No one was gonna make me do it. That's the thing about being an entrepreneur like you, you kind of have to do it on your own, right? So you've got to get out of your own way. So I had to get out of my own way. And now I love that. I love the group. It's all these people that have the same like thing is me, right? Like, we want to talk agencies where a lot of like ops people, it's, it's my people. They're in there. Great. I didn't know everyone's out there. The funny thing is, last night, I was scrolling through Facebook, and I realized how many really, really niche Facebook groups there are. And it's a little scary, but that's a different story. Then there are other things like personal things. So I live in New Jersey, I live like less than a mile from the water, a very beachy town. There's lots of like rivers and things like that. There's water everywhere. I don't swim well. I grew up riding horses, on dry land. I don't swim. Well, I didn't have a pool when I was growing up. I didn't really have that kind of opportunity to like be swimming and be strong. So I generally avoid lots of water that I'm scared of. And if I go out in like the ocean, and it's even slightly rough, I have a panic attack. It happened a couple months ago, like freak out sick that the whole like ground is going to swallow me kind of thing. But I have always wanted to learn how to paddleboard and those two things don't really match up, right? I might die because the Earth is gonna swallow me. And doesn't that look awesome as a new hobby? Like they don't match, right? Both of them happen in water. My friend Shawn had gotten a second paddleboard. So he had this extra and he had mentioned it to me and he was like if you, you've mentioned before that you want to learn. If you want, I'll bring you out and we can both be on a board. And you can try it and I had had a couple glasses of wine that was like, Yes! I am in. And he was like, great. Why don't we go tomorrow? It's gonna be 75 degrees. And I said, Great! You should always make decisions when you've been drinking because you have to be held to them. And that will keep you from saying dumb things and you're drunk. Next day,  I literally am shaking. I'm terrified. By the way we go to a place where it is like a big puddle, basically. I mean, it's a lake but it's dead quiet. There's nothing there. There's some fish in there. But that's it. Like it's the the calmest most safe place to go ever. I have a life jacket on. I am terrified. But that morning, I said to myself, Oh, now I'm sober. I'm going to cancel. But then I remembered I had agreed to be uncomfortable. I can't cancel. So I get there, terrified. lifejacket, huge flotation device, basically, like there's not the water barely moves. It's the safest place I could ever try to get on a board. I'm out there for four minutes. I tried to stand up animals face plant. I tried to stand up again, and I'm fine. There's a fish that flaps on the board with me. I don't freak out. I get the fish off. I'm fine. And we paddle around. I'm standing up paddling around. And I'm like, this is the best thing ever. I love it. I get to be in nature. I don't actually have to be swimming. This looks great. And I would have canceled that morning. I would have just said Sean there's no way I'm coming.

But I didn't because I promised myself that I was going to be uncomfortable. And I had such a great time. We just kept going around the lake. I was so excited. I came home that night and was looking online for paddle boards. And there were some crazy good sales because it's the holidays, and everyone's you know, got all these deals going on. I bought a paddleboard that night. And the next week when it came in, we went back out. And I got to go on the river, its tidal and I was stuck in seaweed, and I figured it out. And I wasn't terrified. I was more terrified about the pump. It's an electric pump being so loud driving everyone crazy. That was the thing bothers me the most. But I got right on the water. And I went right out. And I paddleboarded on these beautiful, beautiful places. And now it's I mean, it's November. I don't think I'm going to really get out very much at this point. But I have all next year, I have my own paddle board and I'm ready to go. And that wouldn't have happened, none of that would have happened. Without promising myself, I was going to make decisions without considering how uncomfortable it was going to make me feel because I was already uncomfortable. And it's been incredibly freeing. Plus, I have a new hobby, that is great. I get to go out. It's quiet out there. I get some exercise, right. Like when when all around. I don't want you to think that this is just all roses, because it's hard. It is hard to be uncomfortable. And to not suck back and just stay in your comfort. Right. It's like, it's like going on that windy, blustery storm in the winter, and just wanting to go right back under the couch and under the blanket. And I'm forcing myself to stay out in the storm. But once you're out in the storm, and you already have snow all over you, you just start doing things because you're already out here. So the things that have been coming up are it's exhausting to be uncomfortable and to be have that nervousness a lot. It is. And I'm not 24 hours a day panicking. But I'm not 24 hours a day, not panicking. So that's it like that physical uncomfortable sucks. I kind of want to puke all the time. I have like a little bit of a nervous stomach. I just want to throw. But that's okay. Like it's not killing me. And there's these things that you find out, you're like, oh my god, I could never do that I would be terrified. You're not. Once you get past the nervousness, you realize that you're not going to die, then you get a lot accomplished. The other thing you realize is that once you start moving, and you start being uncomfortable and going to the places you want to go to that growth. You can't go back, you know too much. You can't go back to just doing spreadsheets, or doing the thing that's just comfortable. Because you've seen the other side, you've seen the things you could do. And you can't go back. So now even if you are uncomfortable, you have to keep going. Which is a little scary, too. But also pretty awesome. Like, oh, no, no, you're in it. What does that old phrase? If you're in if you're in hell keep going. Yeah, you can't go back. Sorry, I just messed that up. Damn it, if you're going through hell, keep going. Damn it, you're all gonna hear that one. He's kept an eye on them. So I'm two months in. And I'm trying not to like check off the things I've done. Because a lot of things are building on other things. The fun things are like the paddleboarding stuff. And then there's the harder things where you're really kind of putting yourself out there, which Oh, that's so scary. I've built my business really on referrals, long term clients, I have never been the one who was dancing on a real on Instagram. And I gotta tell you, I don't think I ever will be. Even with my all my years of ballroom dancing. I'm just not that girl. I don't want to be doing those certain things. And I know that maybe that's another block. But that's only black, we'll get to another day, putting yourself out there that is massively uncomfortable. And that is a huge chunk of what's happening right now. I'm getting much more visible, I'm just putting myself out there much more on social. And that just the every day of that is uncomfortable.

I've never had to do that before. And as my business changes, I kind of have to. So there's these like subtle things that are uncomfortable. And then there's the big things. And I've mentioned this before here, but I'm in the middle of creating this program for the beginning of next year. And I'm so excited about it. But it's so uncomfortable, like the massive amounts of imposter syndrome. All of that kind of stuff has come up. And if I hadn't made that commitment to myself to be uncomfortable, none of this would be happening. I would be researching it. I'd sign up for some kind of class on how to start a program or whatever. And it would be pushed off at least a year. Easy. I'd never would get to it. And then I'd be wondering why isn't everything growing as fast As I want it to be. And that's why I need to be uncomfortable. So all these little uncomfortable micro movements of putting myself out there or getting on a paddleboard or little things feel huge. And then there are the bigger things that are much more substantial, like this program that I'm putting together. That isn't just the idea of teaching something and coaching somebody. But I also have to make videos filled out, like a portal where all this stuff would live. None of which I ever did in my business. So it's learning everything, we're hiring people to do things for me. And then building a funnel, building sales pages, all of this kind of stuff, there's just an enormous amount. The other day, like I was sitting there working, you know, a web page, and I'm like, this is hard, I don't want to do it. And then I set it all out. And I was like, alright, well do it anyway. If any of this rambling mess of a story about uncomfortable resonates with you, I highly recommend agreeing to be uncomfortable for any amount of time. Even if it's just a day, start with a day, I gotta tell you four months is a lot. If I had really thought about how much I was really going to commit to be uncomfortable, I might have made this a little shorter. In September, this didn't seem like that big of a deal. But once you really commit to saying like, Alright, I'm uncomfortable. Let's see what we can get done. Now, you get a lot done. I'm really happy to have two more months of crazy, this constant tug between I'm want to run away to somewhere comfy, and no, you can't, let's get something done. And I highly recommend it to any of you highly. Even if it's just a little bit here and there. Maybe you're just uncomfortable on Fridays. I don't know, whatever works for you. But I think that it's really, it's really made me understand how much of my life I block out or miss a little bit. Because I'm scared. I'm scared to go do that thing. Maybe it's because I'm older now and not 20 jumping off of courses and things like that. But I highly recommend being uncomfortable. I will keep you guys posted on my progress, mostly for my own accountability. But also I hope to inspire you to be a little uncomfortable, and try to see what kind of decisions you can make if you're early agreed to want to puke all the time. And if you want to talk agency, please come join us in the Facebook group, get your agency together, all of the new stuff that's coming, that's going to be announced in there first, and everyone's gonna kind of get a big heads up. So if you are at all interested in agencies, come on over. And I will see you guys next week.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. If you have an agency or want to create one, come join my Facebook community. Get your agency together, where we talk all the things growing and scaling your agency for shownotes more info on all the things head over to Reynolds obm.com Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Reynolds OBM. And finally, if you enjoy this podcast, I would love for you to give us a review on iTunes.