Ever feel like the fire you once had for your business has dwindled to a mere flicker? Fear not, fellow entrepreneurs, as Jennifer Dawn steps into our studio to reignite that flame. We tackle the all-too-familiar scenario where the daily grind saps your energy and your business begins to feel like a demanding boss rather than a labor of love. Jennifer's wisdom on ownership and accountability isn't just a breath of fresh air – it's a gust that'll transform your business perspective and help you reclaim the reins with confidence and strategic clarity.
Strap in as we shift gears to understand why practicing grace with yourself can be as crucial as any financial strategy you employ. This isn't about coddling – it's recognizing that entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes you need to ease off the throttle to maintain control. I share personal experiences, like my quest to master riding a motorcycle, to illustrate how patience and self-compassion are key. Plus, we discuss how mentors can act as your pit crew, providing the support and accountability needed to apply what you know to the track ahead.
Wrapping up, we don't just talk shop on cash flow; we cut to the heart of emotional intelligence and its pivotal role in breaking through barriers. Embracing the Profit First system revolutionized my approach to finances, but the real game-changer was pairing it with emotional intelligence work. By the end of our chat, we're handing over practical tools like journaling to help you challenge those limiting beliefs and step into the potential you've always known deep down you possess. So tune in, and let's put you back in the driver's seat of your entrepreneurial journey.
Jennifer Dawn Coaching:
https://jenniferdawncoaching.com/
Ever feel like the fire you once had for your business has dwindled to a mere flicker? Fear not, fellow entrepreneurs, as Jennifer Dawn steps into our studio to reignite that flame. We tackle the all-too-familiar scenario where the daily grind saps your energy and your business begins to feel like a demanding boss rather than a labor of love. Jennifer's wisdom on ownership and accountability isn't just a breath of fresh air – it's a gust that'll transform your business perspective and help you reclaim the reins with confidence and strategic clarity.
Strap in as we shift gears to understand why practicing grace with yourself can be as crucial as any financial strategy you employ. This isn't about coddling – it's recognizing that entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes you need to ease off the throttle to maintain control. I share personal experiences, like my quest to master riding a motorcycle, to illustrate how patience and self-compassion are key. Plus, we discuss how mentors can act as your pit crew, providing the support and accountability needed to apply what you know to the track ahead.
Wrapping up, we don't just talk shop on cash flow; we cut to the heart of emotional intelligence and its pivotal role in breaking through barriers. Embracing the Profit First system revolutionized my approach to finances, but the real game-changer was pairing it with emotional intelligence work. By the end of our chat, we're handing over practical tools like journaling to help you challenge those limiting beliefs and step into the potential you've always known deep down you possess. So tune in, and let's put you back in the driver's seat of your entrepreneurial journey.
Jennifer Dawn Coaching:
https://jenniferdawncoaching.com/
Welcome to the Profitable Painter Podcast. The mission of this podcast is simple to help you navigate the financial and tax aspects of starting, running and scaling a professional painting business, from the brushes and ladders to the spreadsheets and balance sheets. We've got you covered. But before we dive in, a quick word of caution While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date financial and tax information, nothing you hear on this podcast should be considered as financial advice specifically for you or your business. We're here to share general knowledge and experiences, not to replace the tailored advice you get from a professional financial advisor or tax consultant. We strongly recommend you seeking individualized advice before making any significant financial decision.
Speaker 1:This is Daniel, the founder of Bookkeeping for Painters, and today I'm here with Jennifer Dawn. Jennifer Dawn coaches business owners to go from overwhelmed to laser focused, escape from the hamster wheel of constant doing and build an unstoppable mindset to manifest their boldest business vision. She's the founder of Jennifer Dawn Coaching. She is the founder of Jennifer Dawn Coaching, creator of Best Planner Ever and author of two books the Joy Guide Finding your Joy in a World of Crap and the Apple Stand how to Rekindle the Love for your Business. Welcome to the podcast, jennifer. Thank you, daniel, I'm super excited to be here with you guys. I'm super excited to have you.
Speaker 1:There's definitely some key points I want to dive into with you today. One of the things that I like to ask you about is that I often see working with folks is like there's this honeymoon phase. When you first start your business, you're like super excited to get things started. When you first start your business, you're super excited to get things started and then, after the first year or two, things start to seem a little monotonous. You get caught in the day-to-day Instead of you owning your business. It's almost like the business owns you in certain ways and I see a lot of folks getting distracted, not having that initial love for their business. Do you have any guidance or ways we can get ourselves out of those ruts and kind of focusing on the long-term and getting refocused?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. And I well gosh. I've been a business owner since I was 23. When I was 23, I started my first business. I didn't know anything and I just knew that I could do it better because I'd seen other people in the industry. And it was a software company that I started and I remember, you know, I jumped in just super, super, gung ho. Here we go.
Speaker 2:And of course, when, if you're especially if you're funding all your startup costs yourself, you're highly motivated to like let me get some money coming in, and it's almost like this, just adrenaline, you're just kind of really running on adrenaline to get that business going, to get it off the ground. The problem is that we can get ourselves into a rut with it, we can get burned out and we can start to sort of like lose that love and feeling for our business. Now, this doesn't just happen at the beginning of business. This can happen at any stage of our businesses. I've been through periods my current business, my coaching practice I've had for about 12 years right now and I've probably been through four or five times in that period of time where it was just like I'm loving my business and it's so great, and then it's just like, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I need to just go get a job. I just need to have somebody pay me. I've got to go back into corporate. If any of you have ever just been like, okay, let me just get on Indeed and see what jobs are out there, because I can't do this anymore, you know what I'm talking about. You've just sort of like fallen out of love with your business, and so the good news, though, is that there's absolutely something, there's many, some things that you can do about it, and it's not. It doesn't have to be business. Ownership does not have to be this grind, this drain. It doesn't have to steal our personal lives. It doesn't have to be financially difficult. It it doesn't have to be financially difficult. It really doesn't.
Speaker 2:But in order to change it, it really always starts from within, and I know nobody usually wants to hear that, but, at the end of the day, it's the truth, and I'm all about truth and speaking truth, and so, at the end of the day, it all starts with us.
Speaker 2:It starts from inside us, and once we own it and we acknowledge hey, wait a second, these things in my business that aren't going so great, that are causing me to maybe even hate it are on me, but the good news, though, is that it is on you, and that way you can actually do something about it. So I really feel like the very, very first step in starting to turn things around is to take ownership, because too often we are just blaming circumstances, people, places things, all these other things. Then we want to make ourselves right, so we just make up a bunch more nonsense to tell ourselves, and it just sort of keeps us stuck in that rut. So if we just really take a moment and check the ego and just say, all right, you know what, I created this mess and now I'm going to fix it, taking ownership is really the most powerful first step, because once you own it now, you can change it. Now you can really do something about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's an excellent point. I know I've fallen guilty to this. When things aren't going the way that I'd hoped I'll have some excuses. Well, it's not my fault, it's some other circumstances. That's why it didn't pan out the way that. And it's giving yourself those permission to give you excuses kind of takes ownership off yourself, which is not the mindset. I think that is appropriate for running a business. You got to take ownership regardless of what's going on around you. You know, kind of have like a no excuses type attitude. Almost. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Our businesses came from our idea to. So it was our creation, like we decided to create this business. So they are an extension of us. And so anytime that you are tempted to blame all these other things and things do happen absolutely it's not that circumstances don't happen, but how we react to them. That's really a hundred percent within our control. So the business is an extension of us, and so we. It always starts with us. It always starts with us, no matter what.
Speaker 1:So if we just start there, that's a good place to start and then from there now we can take actions that will get us the result that we're actually after practical steps that can kind of revitalize your enthusiasm or motivation to fall back in love with the business that you like, the initial love you had when you started your business.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one most important step we've mentioned is to take ownership, because when you are feeling out of control, when you're feeling powerless, you're really kind of in that victim mindset, and from a victim mindset you are not going to feel better. In fact you're going to be way more tempted to just pile more stuff on top to just keep yourself feeling worse and worse and worse. So to really get out of this, we've got to start by getting out of victim mindset. So one taking ownership. Get out of this. We've got to start by getting out of victim mindset. So one taking ownership. Two get some help.
Speaker 2:Because as entrepreneurs at least myself for sure there have been so many times in my business where I felt like the world was on my shoulders and I had to carry it all alone and if I asked for help it was a sign of weakness, which it isn't, and so I would just suffer in silence and that's really just my ego keeping me in this place where I felt like I couldn't ask for help and I was all by myself. But again, it's another lie that we tell ourselves. And if you're telling yourself this lie right now, like, oh, I can't ask for help for whatever reason, it's baloney, and so toss that out the window and get some help with whatever it is that you're struggling with, even if it's well. I'm a business coach, so I get business owners all the time that come to me and they're just like I already know all this stuff, but then why aren't you doing it? And that's really the gap that we have to get past. Is you know why they're not actually taking those actions? But when you're working with somebody, in whatever fashion it is, now you're not going through it alone. Now you're starting to take action which is going to get you the result, and you might even learn some different ways of doing things that you hadn't thought about. So that'll help you to be more efficient and can help you get your mindset and things like that back on track. So take ownership of the issue, get some help, no question whatsoever.
Speaker 2:And number three, give yourself grace. We can be so hard on ourselves as entrepreneurs, and the more that we beat ourselves up, the more our mental and emotional space takes a hit and we just start feeling worse and worse. And so just it's okay. Like there's going to be people listening to this and I just really want you to hear it. You know what it's okay. It is okay.
Speaker 2:We don't have to create like this huge like right and wrong and I'm doing wrong things all day, or, you know, these are the only right things I can do. It doesn't have to be so quite so black and white. We can give ourselves grace, we can take a big deep breath, we can work at a pace that actually feels good for us, and it doesn't all have to be done today. I remind myself of this in my business every day when I start getting like a little like I got to get it done a lot faster. It's like wait, just take a breath, I have all the time I need. I get to choose the pace that I'm going to work at no-transcript.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the second step. You said you know, get help, and then you mentioned that you had that distinction of already know all this. But why aren't you doing it? I think a lot of folks. I think I was reading, I think it's for Charlie's Almanac, charlie Munger's book, I think.
Speaker 1:If I might be misremembering, but, he was making the distinction of you know, knowledge isn't just about what you know, but it's what you know and actually implement. So the key part to knowledge is not just the thing that's in your head, like oh, I know I should be doing this, but you haven't learned anything unless you've actually put that knowledge into practice. And so I know I'm guilty of that, like I know I should be doing something different, but then you know I have, so I therefore have not actually learned it yet because I haven't put it into practice. I think that's like a super key point. And to your point of getting help, one of the things that's helped me with coaches that I've worked with is that kind of holds me accountable to doing those things and helps me learn, you know, even though I know like, yeah, I should be doing this, but then I have to kind of meet with my coach and I better have done something towards that goal, you know.
Speaker 2:I do, and you're so right about the difference between. There's a big difference between awareness and knowledge, and and then the practical application. So I one example I love to use so I learned how to ride a motorcycle last year. Me and my husband we've been riding together for years and years and I finally, like, learned how to ride my own motorcycle. And because I had been on the bike with him as I was learning, you know, I was just like, oh, I know, I know, I know, right, I found my safe place because I've seen him do these things.
Speaker 2:But then, when I had to actually do it and I'm like, uh-oh, I could really get run over by a car because I might know it, but I don't really know it.
Speaker 2:So we can see somebody do a flip on a motorcycle and now have an awareness that it's possible to do these things, but until you actually practice and start doing it and then have the you know, that experience of actually learning how to do a flip on a motorcycle, which I have no intention of doing, but, like, actually put it into practice, we don't really know. So there's a there's a big difference between, like, I have an awareness of these things, I have an understanding of these concepts, but until we put it into practice, until it literally becomes second nature or becomes a habit for us, or that's just how we do it. We really don't know, we really don't. So it's just, I think it's so important to just like kind of throw that out with you know a little bit that like I know, I know I know important, to just like kind of throw that out with you know a little bit that, like I know, I know, I know it's like you don't until you you're actually doing it, practicing it and have mastered it.
Speaker 1:Then you know, yeah, and going back to what you had mentioned before, the third thing, as far as the practical steps you know to to fall back in love with your business the third thing you mentioned was giving grace to yourself. Uh, because I know you know to fall back in love with your business. The third thing you mentioned was giving grace to yourself Because I know you know, in my business we use traction to kind of as the framework to run the business and we have a huge list of issues like it seems like it's never ending. And you know, I always have the tendency like, oh, we got to fix this all right now. And when we're going through our level 10 meetings and we have to put it down, we have to say, okay, well, we don't have to solve all the problems today, we can save it for next meeting and try to work through these things. So I think that's a key thing, because I feel like I know I've gotten overwhelmed with you have all these things you got to do, overwhelmed with you know you have all these things you got to do. You just have to figure out what's the most important and and tackle those first, and and and realize that you're not going to. It's a never ending.
Speaker 1:I think it was Ray Kroc. I just read his biography. He's like you know, your business is always. You're always having to improve it. It's not like a painting, like you can't just finish a painting and hang it up on a wall and be like, oh yeah, that's my painting or that's my business. You know it's, isn't it nice? It's something that you're always having to to work at. So it's true.
Speaker 2:Right. I mean, think about, um, we, we have children, and children grow and as they grow they outgrow their clothes, their shoes, their everything. And as parents, it can be like man, when's this kid going to stop growing? Like they just outgrew this and outgrew this. Business isn't much different. So we birth a business and as we're growing it, it's going to change and it's going to outgrow what used to fit and now it doesn't. And so we don't get upset that, like our child has grown and we need to give it. You know we need to. Hey, here's a new pair of shoes and it'll serve you until you need the next pair.
Speaker 2:And for our businesses it's not any different. I mean, a business that's growing is going to be changing and it is not going to be stagnant, versus a business that's dying. You probably won't need to, you know, change that much stuff anymore. So I always like to embrace business growth. It means my business is growing. The change is a good thing. We're always getting better.
Speaker 2:One of the things I love traction.
Speaker 2:We use kind of a version of traction in our in in my business, and one of the things that we added to our meetings was wins, and so we always start all of our meetings with like wins, what have we done, what are we most proud of, what have we accomplished.
Speaker 2:And it's a nice tone to kind of set that meeting so everybody gets into more of a solution focused mindset instead of man. We have so many problems, they're never ending and it just it's. It's been a nice shift for my whole team to just like we get to start with positive, get into a solution-focused place, and now we're in a much better place to handle these challenges and these issues that are going to come up, because we're a growing, successful business. So it's not a bad thing, even though it can feel like ah, you know, if we do treat it like a painting, thinking that it'll be done and we don't have to do it anymore, nope, nope, nope, nope it like a painting, thinking that it'll be done and we don't have to do it anymore, no, no, no, no, no, not going to work that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think part of it is just needs to be reframed, Like enjoying the journey is really a mindset. Mindset changes. You have to enjoy the journey. It's not. It's definitely not a destination running your business is. You have to enjoy the journey. It's definitely not a destination running your business. You might have these goals like if I can just get to 2 million in revenue or whatever the goal is, everything will be great. That's definitely not how it happens.
Speaker 2:If, then oh, that's a killer of happiness. The if then cycle if I just get here, then everything will be fine. And if you've grown a business, you know that. At least in my businesses it was like oh, I thought, if I just get to that first million, it'll solve all my problems. And the second, no. The second million, no, it does not happen that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah and uh, I know you're, you're, um, I guess during this this process, that we're falling out of love with your business and trying to fall back into love with your business. What are some financial, because this is a financial type podcast. So do you have any guidance for someone that's having some financial issues in their business that maybe they can employ something in their business that helps them kind of find that love again?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say that the three biggest things that I see for business owners that cause us to really fall out of love or even start hating pieces of our business are usually going to be around time, our time management, people, the people in our business it could be our clients, it could be our employees, vendors, whatever and money right, and money can be. In some ways, money can often be one of the biggest challenges in business that cause us to feel like I don't want to do this anymore. So there's a lot of things that we can do with our money and we always have to remember that whenever we're tempted to say I don't have enough money, there's not enough money, like these things that we tell ourselves. That's actually a lie. It's not true, and the more lies that we tell ourselves, the more deeper we're going to bury ourselves in a lot of very negative emotions. But the truth of the matter is that you are a business owner, you have a business and there are things that you can do to improve your money situation until money becomes a joy in your business and it absolutely can be. So you can look at your profitability when you're doing a job and think this happens all the time with clients that I work with where we think we're making more money than we actually are. But when we sit down we look at all of the overhead, the expenses, all those things involved and we actually run the numbers and see the true profitability on a job. It's often very shocking Like, oh geez, here I was going thinking it was this thing and it's actually this thing.
Speaker 2:So sitting down and really looking at your profitability will often answer a lot of questions about why I don't have any money. It's so funny. Next month I'm getting ready to teach a workshop and it's called Where'd my Money Go? Because what do I get asked all the time it's like Jennifer, we're doing so great on revenues and where'd all my money go? Well, the way that I answer that question is with an operating budget, and so I've created a template for an operating budget. It's just a really nice Google sheet, but in the budget you can see the flow of money as it comes into your business. So we see where it flows in from the top, where you know materials, cogs, you know to come out, the money that we have left, what our operating expenses, our payroll, if we owe any debt, and then at the very bottom the field. It turns red or green and it calculates your net profit margin, and so it's just a really easy way of answering this question where'd my money go? So if you find yourself hating your business and you're just like I don't know where all my money is going, put your fanny in the chair and run through something like an operating budget where you can actually now see this is where my money is going, and now you can make some empowered decisions, some empowered choices that are different in your business, to make sure that more of that money is actually going to your bottom line.
Speaker 2:Another tool I love using is Profit First. So I've been using Profit First for over a decade in my business. It's a system of cash management. It's not an accounting system, it's a cash management system that was developed by a gentleman named Mike Michalowicz, and he wrote a book. You can get it on Amazon for whatever it is 10, 20 bucks, something like that but it's a great way of running your business on a system of percentages. So, as the money's coming in, you're earmarking it for what its intended purpose is and then you're putting it into a series of accounts. So that way, as a business owner. We're not making financial decisions based on one balance, one big balance in a bank account that's how I used to run my software company is like if I had money I'd hire people, I'd go buy whatever. And then it's like crap, no, I can't make payroll. Well, because there was money in that account that was earmarked for payroll that I wasn't taking into consideration. So the nice thing about Profit First is it really does help you to kind of earmark that money for its actual use and now you can make decisions based on a way more accurate bank balance than just all of the money sitting there.
Speaker 2:So I absolutely love Profit First.
Speaker 2:I use it so often.
Speaker 2:Actually, the way I found out about it was I ran a networking group and I brought Mike in as a speaker before I even knew about him or who he was or what he spoke at.
Speaker 2:And I'm in the audience and I'm listening to him speak about Prof first and he's a great speaker. And I remember sitting in the audience even though I was running this association, and I was just like man, if I had used this, I would have literally spent millions of dollars better. So I started using it with all of our entrepreneur members and then I went out on my own and started my own practice and Mike reached out and he's like Jennifer, you know, will you start my mastery group? And I did. And so I worked with him for two years to start his mastery group for Profit First, and then I stepped away because my business was so gangbusters. But I kept using Profit First and I just I think it's one of the most powerful tools out there as far as, like our finances are concerned and can really help us, when we implement a system like that, to bring that love for our business back in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really intuitive and because I use it in my business we have several clients that use it as well and it's just like it's very intuitive, you know, because, like you said, without it, unless you're super savvy with looking at even if you are savvy with looking at financial statements it's just easier to look at your bank account balance.
Speaker 1:Easier to look at your bank account balance, like you just pop it open on your phone or whatever, and you can see oh, do I have money or do I not have money for this thing I'm trying to invest in, or whatever. And just having separate bank accounts one for profit, one for payroll, one for operating expenses, however, you're splitting it up and just at a glance you can easily understand okay, I have this much money allocated for payroll or whatever the case is. So it's just super simple, a simple idea that just makes decision-making a lot easier and also forces you to plan ahead of time how much money am I going to put? What percentage of my money am I going to put us? What percentage of my money am I going to put towards profit or towards paying my employees or et cetera, so that that planning piece, that forcing mechanism to do profit first, in the beginning, which is the planning, is really impactful as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I love profit first and traction together, because traction as much as I love the system and the whole thing they got going there they don't do very much around profitability and so I think when you add profit first to a system like that, now you're really keeping your eyes on the profitability and running that business on a system of percentages. So those two really go together quite well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good point. I hadn't thought of that, but it makes sense, as you say that, because you're right. Yeah, traction is great. I love traction, but it doesn't have like the financial. It talks on financial stuff but not like in depth, it doesn't give you a framework and profit first plugs in nicely because they don't overlap, so they work well together. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, um, one of the interesting things I came across looking at your, your website and and some of your content was that, uh, this concept of emotional work. So could you define what that is, what that means, means and why you think it's crucial for entrepreneurs to prioritize that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. We can call it emotional intelligence, we call it like our inner work that we need to do. We can call it mindset Whatever labels, terms that we want to put on it. It's that work that we need to do on ourselves, which is usually at an emotional level. So often, as business owners, we are thinking our way through the day and we are often trying to think our way through problems. But many of these problems that we face as business owners are actually deeper emotional issues. For example, because hopefully we're not going to lose everybody, they're like ah, she's going to start talking about going back to my childhood and I don't want to talk about that. It's like okay, fine, we don't have to talk about that, but just hear me out for a second.
Speaker 2:We just came back from our retreat. I host a retreat twice a year and we just did one in Sedona, arizona, and one of the people at the retreat she was really, really struggling with sales and she happens to be a therapist. And as we talked a little bit further, she had this underlying belief therapists don't sell. And I'm like okay, so you're a therapist sitting here asking me to help you grow your business and you know that you need to build up sales. But you've got this underlying belief therapists don't sell. And as we dug a little bit deeper into it, it really was an issue around her self-confidence not feeling good enough. And so that's what I mean of I can sit here all day and I can share with you a tactical action that you can take to sell more right. We can look at your script. We can look at your lead gen. We can look at your right. We can look at your script. We can look at your lead gen. We can look at your paid ads. We can look at all of these different tactical action things.
Speaker 2:But if you've been trying to solve a problem for a while and you're in this repeating pattern, it's just not getting solved. There's usually going to be a deeper, underlying emotional component to it. So to help this client of mine solve her problem, we have tools that we use to go in and look at the underlying confidence issues. Let's work on those. And now, once we fix that issue at the core, we're not band-aiding it, we're fixing it at the core. Now it's fixed, now, like with that new self-confidence, now she can really start to work on her sales from a very, very different perspective. So that's one of the things that we do a lot in our coaching is we're combining the inner work with the tactical action to get the desired result that the business owner is after.
Speaker 2:And sometimes, you know, they come in and I actually have another client. He just like Jennifer, is this going to be therapy? I'm like no, it's not therapy, but like this is a feeling problem. This is not a thinking problem, and you're going 100 miles an hour trying to think your way out of this and is it working? No, it's not working. So that's where we have to slow down for a little bit and do a little bit of that feeling work, that emotional work, that inner work on ourselves, and that's what's going to blast through all those limiting everything, so that now that tactical action that you're taking is actually going to get you the result that you're after.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the idea of limiting beliefs, or, you know, you give the example of the therapist like she could have been.
Speaker 1:Maybe she's the best therapist in the world, but nobody knows about her because she doesn't want to market or sell herself.
Speaker 1:So, you know, just because she had that limiting belief like therapists aren't supposed to sell her, or whatever it was, so like it's a, completely even though her potential is, you know, maybe making a hundred million a year cause she's such an amazing therapist and all this stuff, versus where she is, where she was then, because she had that limiting belief, it's.
Speaker 1:It's something that I see often, uh, with working with painting contractors who have a limiting belief about their pricing. Like they think, okay, I can only, I can only add a markup of, you know, 40% or 50% or something like that, and you know the market's not going to take anything more than that and I'm like, well, hate to break it to you, but you have competition, uh, competitors out there that are charging, you know, marking up their stuff by a hundred percent, and they're they're doing just fine and they're profitable and everything is going well for them. So you know, it's it's and and I've fallen into this too having limiting beliefs on what I could accomplish or what the business could accomplish, and it's just. That was literally the only thing. Stopping us from getting to the next level was just something that I thought was true about myself or the business. That wasn't true and that can just be a huge bottleneck.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, we can tell ourselves whatever we want to tell ourselves, but at the end of the day, if we're not getting the result, it's usually something deeper that's going on. Or I use the word lie because it is what it is Like it's a lie that we're telling ourselves, that it's a pattern that we're stuck in. So if anything like in any area of your business, you're not getting the result, maybe you're doing the work you're not getting the result it's usually a deeper issue and it always starts with you. Always Sorry, guys, those you don't want to hear it, but the truth is it always starts with us.
Speaker 2:And if you start there and you work from there and you you work through whatever emotional junk um is is clogging things up, right, I mean painters if you have a paintbrush and there's a bunch of junk on it and you try to paint paints, you're not going to get a good result. So it's kind of like sometimes we just need to like clean those brushes, like do a really, really good job of cleaning those brushes, and then the same effort you were putting into painting is going to have a way better impact because you've got you're working from clean brushes is going to have a way better impact because you've got you're working from clean brushes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Do you have any recommendations on how someone can revisit this idea on a regular basis, Like, how do they evaluate it? Do I have these limiting beliefs or, you know, have some sort of way to evaluate or self-reflect on? On incorporating that into their regular schedule so that they're catching those limiting beliefs as they they move through life?
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the most powerful practices that you can do is and I do it in the morning, you can do it whenever is a good time of day where you feel really good. So it needs to be like a good time of day for you. But often in the morning I will just sit down with a journal pad of paper, whatever works, because I love using a little bit of the writing to kind of help me work through it and figure out what's really going on. But anytime I'm not getting a result that I want, I just start with okay, this is about me, something's going on in me which is creating this external stuff that I don't really like, and I'll just start by asking myself well, what is it? What is it within me? How am I feeling? When we ask ourselves how we're really feeling, sometimes that can be a great clue as to what's really going on. So we ask ourselves you know, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? Are there any other times maybe in my past where I've also felt this? Because from there we can start to kind of identify some limiting beliefs.
Speaker 2:I have a tool that I use in my coaching practice. It's a coaching technique where we go back and we identify this stuff and then we correct it so that we don't carry it forward. It's way more in depth than we can go into on the show, but the idea behind it, though, is to really start exploring and understanding ourselves. How long we've been telling ourselves these things, and I'll ask myself how am I lying to myself? And I'll just sit with it and kind of journal it out.
Speaker 2:Of what lie am I telling myself and we know it's a lie if it doesn't feel good in our bodies. So a simple one would be like well, this is why, sometimes, affirmations won't work too, because if you've ever had an affirmation that says I am rich, but you're not actually rich, it feels bad, it doesn't feel good. So then people say, oh, affirmations don't work, and it's like that's not true. Actually, words have a lot of power. Our thoughts, our feelings and our words really create our reality, and so an affirmation can work, but it needs to be true.
Speaker 2:So I am rich might not feel right, but I love having money. That probably is pretty true, and that probably feels really good. I love having strong cash flow, and so if you don't have these things starting to just sit and ask you know, how am I really feeling? What lies? Might I be telling myself, when has this come up before? And just kind of journaling through it a little bit can be a great practice in awareness of of what's really going on. And then you can always for that from there, go and get a little bit of help from a coach, a therapist, a mentor or somebody who's actually some professional that does this kind of work and can help you through it. Because once you move through it or you learn tools on how to correct it, it empowers you the rest of your life to be able to do this kind of stuff for yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what resources, like as far as books or mentors or podcasts, have been helpful in your journey of prioritizing emotional wellbeing?
Speaker 2:Oh, Daniel, so many, so, so many. So a few of my favorite books Byron Katie, so so many. So a few of my favorite books Byron Katie, Lo, ready to dive in, and you start to really be like, okay, this problem isn't going away. If I listen to Jennifer and she says it starts with me and I accept that, okay, this starts with me. Often, when you start to get out there and you start to look, you're going to find things that are going to resonate for wherever you're at. So I just really just it's you. I promise it starts with you, and even from there you can get out and you can just kind of start Googling and looking for answers. Come to my website, shoot me an email, whatever. I can always help point you in the right direction, to a tool or resource that you can find to start some of this work on yourself.
Speaker 1:A tool or resource that you can find to start some of this work on yourself. So how can folks reach out to you or learn more about your consulting practice?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. You can find me online at jenniferdawncoachingcom. From my website you can have there's links there to my books my upcoming book, the Apple Stand how to Rekindle the Love for your Business it comes out April 30th. Sorry, a little plug there. And on my website, jennifer Dawn Coaching, you can also link to my podcast which is called Happy Productive, and we have a contact page there. We have a schedule, a call page there, so we're very easy to reach and if you have any questions or anything like that, just feel free to reach out to me and I'm more than happy to share a resource or point you in the right direction or help you.
Speaker 1:Excellent, and we'll include the links in the description of the podcast. So I really appreciate your time, jennifer. It's been super informative and with the folks listening, we will see you next week.