Donna 0:00
Have you ever felt that heart pounding moment, right before you're stepping into unknown territory, or today, I'm diving into the world of business growth. We've all hit that wall, you know that point where we look ahead and we think I know the results I want to get, but how do I get them? Or maybe you've started to try something new. And it just feels really unfamiliar and uncomfortable. And you're wondering whether you should continue to do it. Or maybe you've been coasting along for a while. And now you're ready to grow your business, but you don't know where to start? Well, here's the secret. It's in those very moments that leaders are born, empires are built, and you get to become your potential. Yes, it's scary as hell. But you know what, that's where the magical starts. It starts with embracing the unfamiliar, gaining new knowledge, and then mastering it. So get ready to grow your knowledge and skyrocket your confidence. Because that's what I'm talking about today. Let's jump in. This is the shoes in business podcast, where every week I'll explore topics and have real conversations around what it's like to run a regional business, the advantages and the unique challenges. I'm Donna Han, a seasoned regional business owner, and certified high performance business coach. I'm here to make training and professional development easily accessible for regional business women everywhere. So join me and guest experts, as we share tools and insights to elevate your business, boost your mindset, and ensure that you never feel alone on this journey. No matter where you live, I'm fired up. And I'm here to educate you on what it truly takes to grow your business and your mindset beyond what you thought possible. So this is a juicy topic. And I want to start by bringing you the I guess the formal definitions of knowledge and confidence and bringing that into context for personal and professional growth. So the definition of knowledge is the accumulation and comprehension of information skills and experiences that can be applied to various situations and challenges in your professional life. Right. To me, knowledge isn't just about, you know, collecting the facts, it's about understanding the concepts and how to really apply what you've learned to different scenarios. And encompassing, you know, both the hard skills like, you know, financial analysis, and marketing and all that sort of stuff, along with the soft skills, like effective communication, and you're developing your leadership style. So business ownership is a continuous journey of learning, and also developing your adaptability and being open to new experiences. And it's about evolving with the world around you and staying proactive in seeking out new information and skills, right. On the part of confidence in the context of professional growth, that definition is self assured belief in your abilities, your decisions and the value of your contribution stemming from both internal validation and external experiences. So to me, what this really means is having trust in your own abilities, based on the accumulated knowledge that you have, and the experiences in which you applied them. So you know, it really involves recognizing your strengths and your your weaknesses, and then navigating through different challenges that might come up or different opportunities that might come up with a belief that you can either overcome them, or learn from them. And when we have confidence, it feels the level of risk that we're willing to take. And being in business, there's always going to be risk involved in what we do. And it's also, you know, having the innovation, that confidence to take the innovation when we want to act upon something when we want to change things up. And it can really be the difference between shying away from opportunities or seizing them. And as a business owner, you want to be seizing opportunities wherever you can. Confidence for me is also about resilience, right? It's bouncing back from setbacks. It's using the setbacks as stepping stones, not stumbling blocks. And when you put these two things together, knowledge and confidence, that's where success really happens. As your knowledge grows, it often builds a foundation for confidence and when With that greater confidence, it's more likely that in the future, we're going to seek out new opportunities. And then we're going to need to grow our knowledge again and continue to level up again and again and again and again. And every time we level up, it increases our confidence, you know, and it's this beautiful synergy that happens. And I want to share a snippet from Jodi's journey. So Jody is a client of mine, she's inside soaring to success. And after changing the way she operated her business from being a fully mobile accounting service, so she would travel all over the place, providing accounting services to a client's COVID really changed that for her. For obvious reasons, she couldn't go to people's businesses or to their homes to help them with their tax. So it forced her to run her business more from an online space, which was a blessing for Jody, because all of the traveling added a huge amount of amount of time to her week, right? Also really bloody tiring all of that traveling. And so in making those changes, thanks to COVID, one of the one of the positive things that came out of COVID, it saved her bucket loads of time, right, she had all this kind of extra time on her hands, that was spent traveling could now be booked up with additional clients within her business, right. So she wanted, she realized that she had this space. And so she wanted to intentionally grow the number of clients on her books, and grow her business and grow her income. Jodi knew that one of the best ways she could do that was to increase her knowledge of marketing, particularly social media marketing, social media had always been like a big stretch out of her comfort zone. And maybe you relate to this as well, right. So she knew it was important, but she had no idea what to do how to do it. But she knew that she needed to write. So we've been working together on building her knowledge and her skills around this particular area of business in marketing. And then, over time, that has helped her confidence in being able to show up on socials and actively promote her business and grow her clients, right. And seeing her get results is so fun, you know, really seeing her sees opportunities absolutely makes me smile. And as an example I want to share with you a few weeks ago, she joined me on Instagram, we did an Instagram live together. And she shared some tax tips and offered to share a spreadsheet that was going to help with business owners to help them reduce their tax. And what she what she's learned about social media, and what she's learned about the importance and how to build her email list. She's turning the spreadsheet that she offered into a lead magnet opt in. So before she joined soaring to success, I don't think Jody, and I'm, you know, she would laugh at me saying this, but I don't think she would have known what a lead magnet was. And she's now embracing the unfamiliar of getting on an Instagram Live, you know, and, you know, when I suggested to her to jump on a live with me, what she said, what came across her face versus the yes, that came out of her mouth, like you could see it was a real stretch out of her comfort zone, but she was willing to get in and give it a go, which is so great, right? So she's now you know, getting the confidence to be able to show up and show up differently to how she has in the past. But also, you know, she's now got the knowledge of how to build a landing page that's going to capture people's email addresses in exchange for the tax spreadsheet that's that she's so generously offered to provide. And then from there, she can nurture them. And hopefully she can convert them to clients to grow her business, right? Because she now understands that building her from from building her knowledge that social media marketing is really powerful, but it doesn't stop there. We don't own social media accounts, they can get hacked or disabled. And so it's you know, risky, to only build your audience on socials, you have to also take your audience from socials into your email contacts, because it's less likely that we're going to lose, you know, the entire email contact list. So it's just one example of how growing your knowledge and stepping beyond your comfort zone out of your, you know, out of what you would normally do. And embrace that confidence and skyrocket your confidence and also the opportunities for growth inside of your business.
Another way that this can work and this is like actually the complete opposite way. So, for Jodi this example I just shared is how she's intentionally doing more But looking at it from another angle is actually pulling back on the areas of your business or the things that you offer because it no longer serves you. So another example that I think about here is Trudy. So, Trudy has been in business for nine, almost 10 years, she's coming up to her 10 year celebration of being in business. And that's around the same amount of time as Jody as well. Jody has been in business for nine years going on 10. Trudy is a photographer. And she was has been very fortunate that her business has organically built over the years, mainly through referrals. Much the same as Jodi right, which is amazing. And just like Jodi, Trudy, she wanted to grow her business in a way that worked for her and her family. As a newborn photographer, she often worked weekends, which, as you can imagine, is taxing on her own family. And she wanted to make a big change, she no longer wanted to offer weekend appointments, something that she had done for nine, almost 10 years. She knew what she wanted, she knew what she wanted to do, but she wasn't sure and how to make the change, without it hurting her business or affecting her bottom line profit or affecting her client satisfaction, which you know, obviously leads to, you know, potentially affecting her business reputation. And I wonder if you've ever been in a situation like that with your business too. Because, you know, sometimes, the way that we build our business over time, as the seasons in life change, you know, maybe that's served Trudy when the kids were smaller, but now that our kids are a bit older, doesn't necessarily work with their family dynamic anymore, you know, like things change. And it doesn't mean that just the way that you started your business is the way that you have to continue to do your business, right. So here's what she did. She developed her knowledge, she got really clear on her numbers and a profit margins and our price points, she tweaked a few of those things. She bounced her ideas of moving her schedule around, she played with some scenarios to remove weekends from her booking system. You know, she looked at adding some additional revenue streams to reduce the risk that maybe she might lose a few bookings, and which would obviously affect her bottom line. And so if that was the case, she'd make up the revenue by offering other things, she was creating some add on packages, and looking at how she was going to upsell, some of her products and things like that. And she also worked on a marketing strategy, which is something that is really smart for educating her clientele on the change. And we call this change management, right, something that I also did, when I've, you know, particularly with my dance studio, when you're making a change, that's quite a significant change, we need to do what we call change management. So she worked on that. And then she also worked on her own mindset for managing the change, you know, because it's one thing to kind of know exactly what you're going to do to make the change but in your own mind to, you know, prepare yourself for maybe any pushback, or, you know, those self beliefs that come up, and that negativity that can sometimes arise. So she worked a lot on her own management in preparation for that change. And doing all these things gave Trudy the confidence to step beyond her comfort zone and to make that big shift. And she made the change. She took the option of weekend bookings off the table. And guess what happened? People understood. In fact, the level of support that she received for her decision was amazing. She was floored by how well the change was received. And like people in her particularly I'm thinking one particular post that she put out there when she made the announcement kind of publicly was like, This is so great for you. It's about time that you, you know, really put you and your family first, like it was amazing. It was really great to see. And that's because she made the change by sharing her intentions that were aligned to the values of our customers. So they were coming to her to capture beautiful moments in time with their newborn. Right. So obviously, valuing those special times with their with their family. And meanwhile, treaty was missing out on valuable time with her own family on weekends because she was taking pictures of other people's families. So when she kind of explained it that way. And she explained it really well. People resonated with that. He or she also knew that financially she had taken all the measures possible to minimize any impact. You know, and there was no financial impact people just booked her During the week, they made it work, they wanted her to be the photographer. They knew how good she was at what she did, she had an a mate, she has an amazing reputation. And so, you know, they just made it work. So, like I said, when you put these two things together, knowledge, building the knowledge around either what it is that you want to develop in your business, or there's a change, and you need to figure out how to make that change, whatever it is, develop the knowledge around it first. And the confidence the confidence comes by educating yourself in that space. And by knowing that even in stretching beyond your comfort zone, that yes, initially, it's going to feel uncomfortable. But that is part of the process, right. And when we marry together, knowledge and confidence, that's where the success happens. And as your knowledge grows, it builds that foundation for confidence with greater confidence, it's more likely that you're going to, you know, seek out new knowledge to continue to grow your business, to continue to grow your confidence to then level up again and learn more and test it and build that confidence again, and again and again. And it's it is that beautiful synergy. Now, when I come back, I want to share a few more tips to really boost your knowledge retention. Because maybe it's just me, I don't know. But in the last couple of years, I've had to work really hard on my ability to remember things. Maybe that's Peri menopausal, I don't know. But if you're like me, running your business isn't the only thing you do, right. So there's a lot that we hold in our head at any one time. So I've got three tips for you, that can boost knowledge retention, and consequently lead to better business results.
If your interest in the soaring to x. If your interest in the soaring to success membership has been sparked, why not add yourself to the waitlist by joining the waitlist, there is no commitment to buy, it just means that you'll get exclusive earlybird opportunity to buy before everybody else. Plus, I'll add some extra special free bonuses should you choose to join every month is something different to support you in fast tracking your success. And the best part, the investment is less than the cost of a cup of coffee a day. And not only will you get all of the upcoming future content that I have planned for you, you'll also be able to watch all of the previously recorded content that's already uploaded in the members library. And you can access it anywhere, anytime. So if you want to get in on it, here's what you need to do. Go to your browser and type www dot Donna hand.com forward slash success. That's Donna hand.com forward slash success. And you'll also be able to access this in the show notes. Looking forward to seeing your name pop up on the waitlist. Okay, so I've covered how growing your knowledge and skyrocketing your your confidence goes hand in hand. But how do you boost the retention of your knowledge, the stuff that you've spent so long learning, you know, all of that time that you've invested in that? How do you try and retain all of that, so you can apply it now and into the future to get the results inside of your business? Well, my first tip for you is around active learning and application. So instead of just passively consuming information, I want you to engage with the material actively. So this could be through discussions. And this often often happens inside the soaring to success Facebook group or in our group coaching sessions, where, you know, someone will ask a question around something that we've learned, and then we can sort of table that and have a discussion around it. And it just really helps to solidify some of that learning and lock it in are also directly applying what you've learned in the real world context of whatever it is you've learned about. So test it out in real time. And in testing it out, be okay with making mistakes. So some of the time when we've learned something new, there's then resistance to actually put it into place because like what happens if I make a mistake, but mistakes can be also an invaluable part of the learning experience. Because whenever we make a mistake, we learn from that mistake, right? So it's okay just get it out there do it you'll get better and better each time. You also want to make sure that there's action steps, clear action steps and after learning something new, like immediately start to think about how you can apply it to your business or to a project maybe that you're working on. And that's why with all of our master classes, there are action steps that are given usually at the end of the master class to get you started on whatever it is that we've learned because it's the application of whatever it is that you've learned is the thing that will help you to remember what you have learned. So you can do it again in the future. The second tip is spaced repetition and review. So spaced repetition involves reviewing the information that you've learned at intervals over time. So basically, this method really exploit exploits the psychological effect where information when we review it, and we go over it, it reinforces that long term retention, right? Just what a basic 101 for studying, go back to, you know, high school when we did our exams and stuff, right. Also, you know, for businesses, it's important that the training isn't just a one time event, knowledge becomes ingrained, when we are using it for long term improvement. And also, we're using whatever we've learned for decision making. So the action steps here for you to apply this tip is review what you've learned regularly. So for instance, maybe after day one, after doing the training, like go back, have little flick over your notes, put something into place, like take one of the actions and actually apply it, and maybe you know, month or a week later, come back and have another look at your notes, maybe pop a recording of one of the master classes in your ears as you're going for a walk, and just keep, you know, really refreshing, refreshing the information that you've learned. My third tip is to connect new knowledge to your existing frameworks or systems within your business. So our brains are better at retaining information when we can relate new knowledge to something that we already know. So by associating new information within an existing system within our business, it can become easier to recall the thing that we've learned about. And it's always great to use new knowledge to innovate something that you've already got existing inside of your business. And it can help you to come up with some really great new ideas, some unique solutions to maybe some of the problems and challenges that you've got inside of your business. And here, it's all about like, one of the things that I have found really helps with this when you're trying to combine new knowledge to existing frameworks or systems within your business is to do a mind map, like get a piece of paper and visually draw out, you know, the process or the system that you have inside of your business. And how can you work this new information into that mind map visually down on paper to see if you can, you know, build, streamline your systems and processes or create a refined, elevated strategy for your business. So to recap those three tips. So active learning, timely application, getting there, give it a try. Reputation, repetition, and reviewing your new knowledge on a regular basis will also help you to retain what you've learned, and connecting new knowledge to your existing frameworks, systems, strategies, that sort of stuff. So, with all of this that I've shared with you today, what I want you to remember, always remember that the knowledge you gain, and the experiences you can you accumulate and the confidence that you build. They aren't just steps on the path. They're the very essence of growth. And with each day with each challenge that you face with each new thing that you learn, you're adding a chapter to your business journey to your business story. So stay curious, be cruel, or be courageous. And always keep learning and pushing forward because you've got this. You've absolutely got this. And I am right here. cheering you on. Thanks for tuning in. And I'll see you next week for another episode of the season business podcast. But thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the shoes in business podcast. Make sure you hit follow so that you are the first to know as soon as a new episode drops. And if you really want to deliver me smiles send me a DM find me on Instagram at Donna Han underscore coach and tell me what you loved most about this episode. Also, feel free to let me know what topics you need to learn more about if you are a regional businesswoman, ready to rise and soar towards success. I'll see you back here next week for another episode.
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