EP82: The Power of Persistence: When Success Takes Longer Than Expected

Ever feel like success is evading you no matter how fast you run?

This week, I’m sharing a story that’s been 14 years in the making. 

It’s a story filled with unexpected twists, major life changes, and plenty of obstacles. From moving continents to losing jobs and navigating through the chaos of a pandemic, this episode takes you on a personal journey that’s been anything but smooth. But after all these years, we finally did it — we sold our house and are making the move to the location we've been chasing for over a decade!

Why am I sharing this now? Because hidden in this saga is a lesson that I think many of us, especially in business, can relate to. It’s not just about moving houses or dealing with setbacks; it’s about something deeper that touches every part of our lives and our businesses. Trust me, you’ll want to hear this one.

Chapters

• 0:03 14-Year Journey
• 5:27 Trusting the Process in Business
• 8:39 Embracing the Process of Control
• 11:55 Success Without the BS

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Business Blasphemy Podcast, where we question the sacred truths of the online business space and the reverence with which they're held. I'm your host, sarah Khan speaker, strategic consultant and BS busting badass. Join me each week as we challenge the norms, trends and overall bullshit status quo of entrepreneurship to uncover what it really takes to build the business that you want to build in a way that honors you, your life and your vision for what's possible, and maybe piss off a few gurus along the way. So if you're ready to commit business blasphemy, let's do it. Hello, hello blasphemers, welcome back. I have exciting news we sold our house and we're moving. I'm very excited about this because this is something that we have been trying to do for the last 14 years. Now, if you're sitting there going, why the hell did it take you 14 years to do this? Let me explain a little bit. Here's a little bit of backstory.

Speaker 1: 0:54

So after I got married, I moved to England to live with my husband. He's from there. We moved there Long story it was just easier to go there and we were there for about a decade and what happened was when I had my first baby, while I was on mat leave, he got let go from his job. His company closed down and they let everybody go and so I'm on mat leave and in England at the time I was only making about the equivalent of $120 a week on mat leave. It wasn't a lot. So he lost his job. So I cut my mat leave short and I went back to work. But then I got laid off and it's like huh, okay, interesting.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Now we decided that at that point, because the economy was kind of taking a bit of a downturn, we decided you know what? We've got this new baby, let's try for a fresh start. We're going to go move back to Canada. I was moving back, he was moving too, because obviously he was from there, I was from here. So we moved back to Canada and my dad was gracious enough to let us stay with him for a bit until we got on our feet. We both got jobs, we started working. It was great. And we ended up thinking, okay, we're going to go to Ontario as soon as we save a little bit, because we'd had to dip into our savings to move all the way across the world to come and live in a new country and get set up and all that kind of stuff, get her registered for daycare, blah, blah, blah. And we both got jobs and everything was starting to work out again, and so we ended up getting a condo. And we lived in the condo and it was great, but we were still thinking. And we lived in the condo and it was great, but we were still thinking, like you know, we want to move to Ontario. The condo was never going to be a forever home and we decided, okay, you know what, once we're a little bit more stable, we're going to give it a shot. Excellent. So we sold the condo and we went back to stay with my dad for a bit, just to finish out the school year, cause we didn't want to move the kid in the middle of the school year. We're like it's a few months, we'll wait until summer and then we'll go.

Speaker 1: 2:52

I found out I was pregnant, had another baby. It was completely unexpected, but there you have it. I had another baby and while we were on mat leave, my husband again lost his job. He was laid off on boxing day. Not cool, but that's a story I'm not going to share. I mean, that's a story you can ask him one day.

Speaker 1: 3:04

The entire circumstances around it absolutely bananas. Let's just say there was a federal case involved against the company anyway. So he gets laid off and then a month later I get called into HR and I'm laid off. So now this shit's following us around. This is the second time we've both been laid off within like a couple of months of each other, both times just after I've had a baby. So I don't know what that says, but that was really discouraging.

Speaker 1: 3:28

So we had just sold the condo.

Speaker 1: 3:30

We're like man.

Speaker 1: 3:31

So now we're dipping into our savings again.

Speaker 1: 3:33

We're like, what do we do?

Speaker 1: 3:34

And then COVID hits. Right, what the heck. So then COVID hits and we're like maybe this is just not, maybe this is just a sign. So we ended up buying a house. We've been living in that house for a few years, but something still was pulling us to Ontario and every time we went it was really hard to come back. Most of our support systems out there, tons of my friends are out there. It just felt like the place to be, but it was just never really feasible, for whatever reason. This past summer we ended up going to Ontario for a friend's wedding and you know what it really really felt like home.

Speaker 1: 4:12

And so we decided when we came back. We're going to give it another shot. We'll give it another try. Now I got to tell you this has been going on for 14 years. At this point, okay, I had kind of told myself at this point maybe it's not going to happen. Like we've had so many false starts, we've had so many tries and it just didn't work. Things were always in the way, there were always obstacles, but it's something that we really, really wanted. We knew that we were meant to be there, but I had told myself it's never going to happen. I, you know, would like humor my husband when he would send me house listings and things like that. But we decided let's just give it a shot, right? What have we got to lose? We'll put the house up for sale If we have a minimum price that we want. If it doesn't work out. It doesn't work out when I tell you, we put this house up for sale. We got an offer within the first week and it was the offer that we wanted, and all of their conditions were met within another week. Like, this house sold so fast and it's not even that hot a market, but it sold so fast that I'm still trying to wrap my head around what all of this means. So, basically, we're moving. We're finally moving to the place that we've been trying to get to for 14 years.

Speaker 1: 5:27

There's a method to my madness. Why am I telling you this story? Because you surely don't care about whether or not I move, but there's a reason I'm telling it to you. A lot of the time we try to force things before it's time for them because we're ready for it, but things aren't ready for it. Whether you believe in God, the universe, whatever, that's not ready for it right. But now, in hindsight and yes, hindsight's 20-20, I get that but looking back everything that's happened over the last 14 years, I can see how it's prepared us to actually move now and be ready for it. Because if we had given up and we didn't keep trying and we'd allowed ourselves to be super discouraged by all of the false starts, all of the negative results, all of the obstacles, and we just gave up trying altogether instead of trusting negative results, all of the obstacles and we just gave up trying altogether instead of trusting and knowing that this is something that we want and we want it so bad, we'll eventually find a way to do it it never would have happened and we did keep trying.

Speaker 1: 6:29

There's the difference and I think when you look at business, so many people try things. When you look at business, so many people try things and if they don't work out the first time, they pivot right. If they launch a program and they don't get the number of people they wanted, if they launch an offer and people aren't buying it right away, they don't take the time to actually step back and go what can I change about this? What supports can I bring in? How can I adjust this so I still get my goal? If things don't work out exactly how we want them to, we pivot, we completely abandon it and try something else. If it doesn't work out the first time or the second time or sometimes even the third time, if you actually get that far, we pivot to something else.

Speaker 1: 7:12

And I think this is why so many people do not see the success that they want and the success, quite frankly, that they deserve, because they're not willing to stick it out. We have such an instant gratification society that if things don't happen exactly how we want them to and exactly the way we want them to in the timeframe we want them to, we don't stick it out, we look at something else, we think that it's not meant for us, we think that we're failures. Right, if there is something that you really, really, really want and you know it in the heart of your hearts this is something that I want, and I want this because I love it and I enjoy it. Don't gaslight yourself into thinking that it's not the right thing for you or that you made a mistake or you somehow miscalculated, simply because it didn't happen on your timeline. You have to trust the process and I think that's where the biggest obstacles in business success come from Trusting the process and understanding that you cannot rush the timeline Because the timeline is not up to you. It's one of the biggest fallacies in business today this idea of shortcuts and that you can control the timeline. And yeah, I'll be completely honest. In the past I've used phrases like that I can shortcut your path to success. The path, yes, the timeframe, no, and I've never promised shorter timeframes.

Speaker 1: 8:39

People think that if you just work harder or work hard enough, or you just invest more money, or you hire support, you outsource whatever, you can somehow shrink the timeline. You can make it happen when you want it to happen. But that's not how it works. Here's what you can control. Here's what is up to you. The work is up to you. The effort that you put in is up to you. Staying focused is up to you. What is not up to you is the timeline. You keep working at it because you know you're meant to do it, you're meant to have it. I know that sounds woo and it's probably more woo than you're used to hearing me talk about, but the reality is it's not really woo, is it? You're not in charge of the timeline.

Speaker 1: 9:27

As long as you have a solid plan, as long as you have the resilience and the support to bounce back and you cultivate that resilience, you work on it because that's the other thing, that's in your control the mindset understanding that very rarely, if at all, does something happen exactly how you want it to, and the first time. Very rarely does something even happen the second time. If you try it, sometimes you have to fail your way to the top, but if it's something that you really want, you'll find a way to make it happen, and sometimes it doesn't even need to be something that is like, really, really, really important to you. This can really be applied to most things. Your job is to find the necessary tools and the supports and the means to do it. Yours is to put the work in. Yours is to make sure that you are consistent with the actions.

Speaker 1: 10:24

We focus so much on things that are outside of our locus of control. We don't focus on what's in it, and so you figure out the plan and then you work the plan. And if the plan doesn't work, change the plan, don't change the goal. So if you've been wanting to accomplish something, you've been stuck trying to figure out how to control the timeline, how to make it happen quicker, how to make it happen when you want because you have a thing coming up or you have a deadline. I'm sorry to tell you that's not how it works. But when you shift your focus to those things that you actually have control over and you get support to deal with the mindset stuff that comes up, everything happens like magic.

Speaker 1: 11:05

It's about letting go of control of the when and focusing on the what and the how, because then you'll be surprised at how quickly it actually happens. Because I think that's what happened for us. We let go of needing it to happen within a certain timeframe, needing it to happen within a certain timeframe, needing it to happen within this year, because the kids are starting school or their older one's going to high school, or we have to do it within this time. We only have a couple of months, the interest rates, like all of those things that we didn't have control over. We're pushing this deadline, this timeframe for us, and every time it didn't happen in that timeframe we got so disappointed. But when we let go and just said we'll give it a try, if it works, fine, if it doesn't fine. We're not in any rush.

Speaker 1: 11:53

Everything happened so quickly that it was the stark reminder I needed for everything else in my life.

Speaker 1: 11:55

So if you have been struggling with it's not working out because it needed to happen, now I'm going to suggest maybe you let it go and you focus on staying consistent, taking the actions that you need to take, like actually doing the work and letting it happen when it's meant to happen, because sometimes the BS that we fight with is our own. So it's just another reminder that you can have success without the BS. You've just got to be willing to call yourself out on it and if you need support doing that, you know where to find me. I'll talk to you next week. That's it for this week. Thanks for listening to the Business Blasphemy Podcast. We'll be back next week with a new episode, but in the meantime, help a sister out by subscribing and if you're feeling extra sassy rating this podcast, and don't forget to share the podcast with others head over to business blasphemy podcastcom to connect with us and learn more. Thanks for listening and remember you can have success without the BS.