You can listen to this blog post on THIS podcast episode too!

 

I stared at my computer screen in disbelief.  Not ONE person had commented in the chat below the live webinar video.  That’s never happened.  I had ended my webinar knowing it wasn’t the best.  Knowing there weren’t that many people in attendance.  Knowing the Facebook Ads I had concentrated on to drive traffic to the registration page had only garnered 24 sign ups.  And in webinar stats, that meant that maybe 12 people would actually show up to the live show and maybe one person would actually invest in the course I was offering.  

 

I knew all this when I started the webinar.  But I remained positive.  Don’t look at the stats, Katie…just concentrate on giving great information and offering them help!  If you can help one person by delivering this information, then you’ve done a great job!  And, it’s great practice for you!

 

So, I did just that.  I concentrated on delivering the best education I could possibly deliver about Facebook Groups and how powerful they are for business.  I concentrated on the one person who was listening and getting value out of my words.  

 

But when I ended the live feed, I noticed not one person had entered the chat.  When I checked the recorded video, it showed nothing but the first slide…the entire time during my presentation.  When I checked the stats on my leadpages to see how many people had actually landed on that live webinar page, it showed the number 5.  FIVE PEOPLE watched the first slide of my presentation while I talked through slides I thought they could see for 45 minutes.  

 

What the hell am I doing?

 

That question didn’t enter my mind relating to the webinar.  That question came from the core of me, begging me to answer for myself as an entrepreneur.  Seven years into running a business alongside my husband and two years into starting my own business, I was questioning whether I was cut out for this thing called business ownership.  I was questioning everything I was doing.  All because of a goddamn webinar fail.

 

That’s what this thing does, though.  Entrepreneurship jars you out of any sense of stability and normalcy and requires you to question yourself.  All.  The.  Time.  It forces you to take a harsh look at yourself in painful moments – when revenues aren’t coming in the way you want (and need) them to, when a marketing tactic you tried flopped horribly, when you have pages and pages of items on your to-do list and you feel like you’re drowning in them without any sense of where the hell you’re going.  

 

Am I focusing too much on the money?  Is this happening because I’m not truly in line with my purpose?  Is my husband right…am I standing in the way of my own success?  Am I blaming everything and everyone else for my lack of business growth? [I’m a mom, I’ve been running an entirely different business the past few years while I’ve been trying to get BWR off the ground, etc.]

 

Once the flood of self-deprecating and self-doubting thoughts slowed down, I cried. Hard.  I let myself bathe in a giant pool of self-pity and felt the cosmic shift of energies.  I had literally just felt like I could conquer the world yesterday.  What the hell happened?

 

This is the emotional underbelly of business…the self-doubt.  The second-guessing.  The constant recalibrating.  Sometimes we simply question the decision we just made.  And sometimes we question our entire entrepreneurial existence.  For a few seconds – or even a few days – the solid foundation of confidence and clarity that we rely on to build our dreams is unsteady.  And that can really screw things up.  Have too many of these moments and all of a sudden, the momentum in your business can come to a screeching halt.  

 

These moments of doubt are normal, although we don’t often speak about them publicly (we definitely don’t speak about them when we’re in midst of one!).  I mean, how much of an “expert” can I be if I tell you that not ONE person invested in my course after I spent $50 on Facebook Ads?  How can I possibly be seen as a great leader of the Biz Women Rock community if I allow you to see that I have moments of questioning what the hell I’m doing?  Of feeling like a complete failure?  Of having to do some serious personal to stop the internal onslaught of negativity that comes my way any time I perform less than perfectly (which is always, by the way)?

 

The good news is that I’m an eternal optimist.  That means, no matter how low I go, I will always find and live in the silver lining.  And SHARE THE LESSON.  Because I believe that taking you along my business journey may ultimately make a difference in your business journey.  

 

So here’s the lesson…3 steps I use to get out of the dark moments in business.

 

1. Extract Your Toxic Thoughts.

 

Before we can approach our situation with any sense of effectiveness, we first have to eliminate any of the darkness from our minds and our bodies.  We need to extract the negative thoughts and feelings that are swirling around inside of us.  In the Harry Potter movies, there’s a scene where Professor Dumbledore points his wand to his head and sucks out memories that he no longer has room for and places them into a mini pond of memories…a “storage” for them.  This is exactly what I envision…suck out those dark thoughts, comments, judgments and analyzations that are swimming in your head.  Here are a few practical ways for you to do this:

 

 

• Write in a Journal: If anyone were to read my personal journal, they would think I’m the most depressed and miserable person in the world!  It’s because my journal has a purpose…it’s the dumping ground for all the things I need to work out, the situations I’m not happy with, the things that enrage me, the negative thoughts and feelings I’m experiencing.  I do this because writing is therapeutic for me and the process helps me not only state the things that are often hard to verbalize, but come up with solutions, insights and ideas as I’m writing.  I often will have the answer to an issue by the time I finish writing a journal entry!  The power of a personal journal is the element of privacy.  No one can see your words and therefore, you are completely free to write down ever-y-thing…no matter how ugly it may be.  And when you can literally SEE what happened or what’s going on, you can take the power out of it and move forward.

• Write Letters You Don’t Send: Back in my 20’s, I wrote a lot of F*^% You letters to the constant stream of men in my life.  In these letters, I let myself say everything I was thinking and feeling because I knew I wasn’t going to send them.  I have coaching clients who write “you suck” emails to customers or employees when they are frustrated.  Going through this process will oftentimes reveal a massive amount of resentment, anger or frustration you may have with others and/or your situation that, once recognized and handled, can free you to approach your business as your best self!  

 

• Talk to Someone: While it may not be in your nature to tell everyone about the low you’re in, you most likely have at least one person you can turn to in moments like these.  Call them up.  Ask them to listen and let you vent.  Verbal vomit all over the place until you feel relieved and completely empty.  Similar to writing, putting your thoughts and feelings into words helps to minimize the seriousness of the moment and oftentimes reveals the answers you’re looking for as you talk things out.  

 

*** There is one very important thing to note here: make sure the person you’re talking to is either an entrepreneur or is 1000% supportive of your entrepreneurial life.  I’ve made the mistake in my early business years of entrusting this space to a friend who loved me dearly, but was not a business owner, nor did she ultimately support me being one.  So, in my most vulnerable moments, I not only got her sympathy, but her constant concerns about my business endeavors.  And believe me, you can only defend your decisions so much when you’re in tender moments like that.  So choose this person wisely!

2. Take The Drama Out

 

Now that you’ve extracted all the emotions and negativity from the situation, you can finally look at it without the drama.  It’s time to face the situation head on and see it for what is is.  Here’s an example:

 

Situation with Drama: I am a loser!  I completely failed that webinar.  I can’t make money.  BWR is a total failure.  Why can’t I get this right?  So many others are kicking ass in their online businesses and I can’t seem to move an inch forward!  What’s wrong with me!?

 

Situation without Drama: That did not work very well.  The Facebook Ads I created were not done that well and could have performed a lot better.  I didn’t sell any courses.  I didn’t have that many people on the webinar.  

 

The former is all emotion and perception.  The latter is all facts.  Plain and simple.  The power of taking the drama out of the situation is that once you do, you can see SOLUTIONS.  I can’t easily come up with a solution for “I’m a loser!”  But “the Facebook Ads were not well done” stares me in the face with a call to tweak the Ad to make it perform better.  

 

No drama.  Just facts.  Which lead to solutions.  

 

3. Get Up and Do It Better:

 

“Winners aren’t those who haven’t failed, winners are those who never give up.” ~ Autumn Calabrese, 21 Day Fix fitness program.

 

I listen to this every day as I work out with Autumn on my computer screen.  It always hits me square in the face as I recognize that once I extract my thoughts and take the drama out of the situation, my only job is to continue moving forward in business!  That’s the only thing I can do…keep taking action the best way I know how in the moment.  And THAT’S where we all experience success.  When we simply keep working and making progress.  

 

It may take me a few more times to get those Facebook Ads to work…heck it may take me months to find the precise equation of Ads, webinars and back office funnels that produces the visibility and sales I’d like to see for my Facebook Groups Rock ecourse.  And, as my mom always likes to point out, once that perfect combination is found is when it’s all going to change.  

 

The point is that this ENTIRE game of business is just that…a game.  And, just like a game, it has it’s painful moments and its moments of ecstasy.  But every day we show up to play, the better we get and the more memories we make.  

 

A CHALLENGE

 

These low moments are very normal in business, yes.  But, a big goal of mine is to have less and less of them.  Because every time I have to go through this process, it takes me out of my game for a bit.  

 

So, I’ve given myself a challenge that I want to extend to you.  

 

MAKE THIS DECISION TO SIDESTEP ALL THIS BULLSHIT

 

This 3 step process has been very effective for me, but there is a way to completely sidestep all of them and just jump into the place of action:

 

Recognize how unproductive this is and then simply decide to step into the ACTION that comes from your inner purpose immediately.  

 

This takes a lot of work and discipline, but the bottom line is this:  wallowing in a low moment in your business is ultimately unproductive.  While you’re “out” dealing with the emotional recovery from this down moment, you’re taking away energy from the forward movement of your company.  

 

Self-pity and self-doubt give you absolutely NOTHING in return.  But they take everything…time, energy and fun.

 

So, just decide that you’re awesome and that you’re going to get up and play the game.  

 

And then GO.

 

MOVING INTO ACTION

 

After I sat and cried my eyes out, I worked through this 3 step process and it produced a few things.  

 

1. I realized that I needed a better lead magnet for my Facebook Ad.  The one I used was called “7 Facebook Group Leader Hacks That Will Inspire Your Community to Action!”  It didn’t perform very well.  My brilliant husband asked me, “what’s the number one question people ask you about Facebook Groups?”  “Easy!” I answered, “they always ask me how they can get their current group more active or start a group with a lot of activity.”  So, my new lead magnet is called “7 Secrets to Jumpstarting Your Facebook Group: Easy Ways to Get Your Group Active and Engaged Now.”  We’ll see how that performs, but my guess is that this is more in line with what my avatar is looking for.  

2. I realized I needed an in-depth meeting with my good friend who does my Facebook Ads.  He’s a genius and part of the bad performance was me not getting him everything he needed to make the ad perform at its best.

3. I saw there were some tweaks I could make in my funnel – on my sales page, within my email nurture series and within my webinar presentation.

4. I was reminded again to enjoy this journey.  I have every confidence that my business system will hum beautifully sometime soon.  But until that day, I want to enjoy building it.  

 

As you continue along your business journey, know that all of us are experiencing low lows and high highs.  You are not alone.  But YOU are ultimately in charge of how you handle them.  And my wish for you is that you handle them by reminding yourself what a badass you are and doing everything you possibly can to enjoy this game.  

 

I love you…

 

~ Katie