Welcome to the Get Your Act Together podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Reynolds, ob 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 the lives you dream up. 

Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 78. I wanted to come in here today and talk about how I don't know how business can be really hard sometimes. And how much I want to tell you that even when it's hard that you need to do the hard things. It is okay to be scared, it is almost guaranteed that you will be scared doing so many things for your business. And I have been doing a lot of really hard things lately. But that is the way I'm moving forward. And the hard things range from crazy things all over the place, personal, professional, and mental. And every time I'm doing these, I am maybe in a full-out sweat. But I want to tell you that today, you need to do the hard things. Because you know what, business isn't easy. And I know I talk a lot about finding the things you want to do that make you happy. And there's a large chunk of my business that I love doing. I love calls with my coaching clients, I love building out my program. I love all these things. But there are also things I do not love. I do not love at all. And they have to be done. If I want to run a business that is well run and profitable and sustainable, that makes me happy, there are going to be times that I'm going to have to do things that I don't like. And that is what I am trying to remind you today. It's been a rough morning, there's been a lot of things going on. And I just wanted to come on, I actually scrapped the notes that I had, that I was going to record this podcast because I wanted this to be a reminder to everyone out there. So let me give you some examples of hard things that I don't like doing. But that I am forcing myself to do lately. And the benefits there. And these have come up in coaching and my group coaching program as we're talking about things. And I want to be an example of doing them anyway, even when they're scary and hard. Okay, so things like making videos of yourself. That is scary. Do you know why? Because when you're editing that video, you see everything you don't like about yourself, everything on your face, the way that the light hits you, you don't like your glasses that day, your hair, it looks awful, whatever the thing is, your rain will zero in on all the things you don't like about yourself as soon as you go into the video. But you gotta do it anyway. At least I do. You can build entire businesses without video. But I have found that when I am putting out content and having videos, people want to talk, they want to hear from me, and they want to know about me, and what I’m like. In my group program, there's video content to help teach the thing I'm talking about. And to get messages across that what they are they wouldn't get across as well if they were just a written document. It also has this ability to create relationships with your audience that you can't get in any other way. They can see my face, they can see what's going on. I'm a person to them, even in a way that a podcast doesn't do. Like you can listen to me all the time. But when you see my face and talking and the amount of me that I use my hands to talk, it becomes a thing where you get to know a person just a little bit better. So that to me is very worth it. Going Live is a big one. This is a big one. It was really hard in the beginning. I got on there. I think I was in a cold spot the whole time. But going live in my Facebook group. Now I love it. Now I love checking in saying hello, having people comment, and I get to interact with people in a way I would not be able to do from my home office. So was it scary? Yes. Did I do it anyway? Yes. Did I have 1000 notes in front of me so that I'd have something to say? Yeah. Yeah, I think the first time I was like three minutes long, and I didn't know how the hell also felt at the time and that was it. But that was it. It was fine. And then I get to engage with people. I get to talk about the things that matter to me and have people see me and create that relationship with an audience or the group or whatever it is. These things are scary, right? This is another one that I think is really scary. And it's happened. I've been on both sides of this, when someone offers you some kind of access, like I was asked to be in a mastermind group and present on agency, what it is why you want one, but you don't want one what's, you know, the good things and bad things, all that kind of stuff? And I said yes, immediately, because I wanted to be able to talk to people, answer their questions and find out what people needed. That was a big part of my research process for creating the group program. I wanted to talk to people and ask what they needed to know, instead of me just preaching. But I've been on the other side of that, where I have asked people to be on this podcast or speak in my Facebook group. There are not a million people in that group. But there is a very targeted 75 people, I think, as of January, in that Facebook group, all in that same kind of audience. That would be killer. If you wanted to go in there and say, Look at me, I'm amazing. And I have been told, actually, I don't think anyone's actually told me no, they have just said, mmm, that sounds scary. That makes me uncomfortable. I don't think I could go live. I don't think I could be on a podcast. I don't know what I'd say. I don't like my voice, all of these things. And they haven't taken that opportunity. What are you missing? If you don't take this opportunity? It could just be that this could be practice. Right? One of my early guests, I kind of like, pushed her heart. I was like, you are going to be fantastic. I think you'd be great on the podcast, come on my podcast, come practice. I need practice, you need practice will be great. No one's listening to my podcasts in the beginning anyway. And she came on and we had a great conversation. And then, later on, she was like, so happy that I had invited her on. Because she kind of got over the hump. And she was like, Okay, now I know I can do it. So take these opportunities, when someone asks you to do something, especially in the beginning, say yes, get in there. If they're going to open up their audience to you, and you have something that may be interesting to them. Or they are interesting to you, say yes, it is scary. It's okay. It doesn't need to be perfect. Doesn't matter. I see a lot of people complaining that they can't get clients or leads in some way. Yet. They don't say yes to those opportunities as they come by. Right? Here is an audience for you. Do you want to come to talk to them? No, no, I'm just going to stay in my office by myself and not interact with anyone, and then hope that clients just find me. Right? That's what a lot of us do, right? We just want to hide here and hope that money shows up, and clients show up. And then we won't have to talk to anyone. And that's not the way it works. This is hard sometimes. And you have to take those opportunities, you have to, you have to, you have to kind of grab it when it's there. I want you to make decisions based on merit and intention, not because of fear. If the only reason is you're scared. And that's not a great reason. If you can say oh, well, that audience says it has nothing to do for me, right? Like I'm teaching finance, and they're all talking about marketing. Maybe that's not the right audience for you. And that's fine. If that's an intentional decision based on merit. Not Oh, I'm scared to go live in a group, I can't do it. And that sounds so simple right now, as I'm saying it out loud. But we do it all the time. We do those things because they're scary, and we're going to avoid them at all costs. Okay, so some other hard things in business, right? That we have to deal with sometimes ending relationships, either with clients or with teammates, members of your team as an agency or team, whatever. That's really hard. I think it's a lot easier to end relationships when there's some clear-cut thing, right? A client is so out of line with you that you refuse to work with them. That's easy, right? A member of the team messes up something so bad. It's so clear that you have to let them go. And those things are hard. But the harder thing is when it's kind of gray. It's that gray zone where they haven't done something big. But it's not working. Right. It's like dating a lot of people. They stay in relationships for a long time with things that aren't working because there's no inciting incident to say I'm done. Because it's hard. But if you aren't going to be the CEO of your business, then you are going to need to make those hard decisions. Get rid of clients who don't treat you well, who run you ragged, who don't respect your boundaries and things with team members who just don't fit. When you hire someone, you, hopefully, if you've listened to this podcast long enough, have gotten a job description to know what they need and what you want them to do. And when they're not fulfilling that role, and you don't have another role for them, you need to move on. And you don't need to be a jerk. You don't need to trash them, you can be as professional and friendly as possible. That's how you keep relationships. But it's hard. You gotta do it. That's being the CEO of your business. And this goes for other relationships, like groups that you're in. There are a lot of groups on Facebook that are really toxic. And you're like, Oh, well, I'm in there for the networking. But it's just really toxic. You haven't gotten any clients from that group, you don't make any money. And it just brings you down, as you get sucked into things. You're like, this is bringing me down, this is wasting my time, things like that. Get out of that stuff. Well, you're paying for a membership that you never use, because it's totally not for you. But you feel bad. And you don't want to quit. Too much money gets spent in this gray area of like, oh, I don't want to cancel. I don't want to end this relationship. Do the hard thing. Because no one else is for your business. That's the thing. When we were in corporate, there was a boss, a CEO who was making these decisions. So you didn't have to. But that's you now, you're the one who has to say, Okay, who are the people on my team, who are the clients I'm dealing with? What kind of things are we going to spend money on, you need to make these intentional decisions, even when it sucks. Even when it sucks? The best you can do is be tough. Even if it's just for a little bit, you only need to be tough for a short, short amount of time. You prepare, and you write it all down, I am a person who gets nervous and totally blanks out. So I write everything down. Like I write myself a script and nine times out of 10 I don't need it. But it also helps me collect my thoughts. If I'm gonna have a hard conversation with a client or a team or whatever, I write the script down, it helps me coalesce around my argument or my position. And then I have it in case I totally blank out and I don't know what to do. Prepare. But then you just do the hard thing. It's like little kids when they know they're gonna get a shot at the doctor. And the whole way to the doctor, they're freaking out. They're like in a panic, they know they're gonna get a shot, they've worried about it all the way to the doctor, they sit in the waiting room, they were the whole time the whole exam, they were the whole time. The shot takes like a second and a half. But they've worried about it for at least an hour, if not two days if they didn't, you know, remember before the appointment that it was coming. All of that worry is such a bad use of your energy. Make the decision, do the thing. Get it over with. I know it's hard. It sucks. I had a sucky morning of doing hard things more than once. It was a lot. I already want a glass of wine and it's 11:30 in the morning. Do the thing. I know you have big things in you. I know that you can create this business. That is your business, the one that's going to work for you. That's going to be successful. But as a CEO of that business, you have to make hard decisions. You can't just hide. If you hide, it's not going to go anywhere you're not going to make make a great business, you're not going to be happy. Be brave. And I'll talk to you 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 show notes more info and 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.