Episode 418: Do you have a fear of expansion? How I've worked through mine
In this episode, Fiona dives deep into the often unspoken fear of expansion as a business owner. She shares personal experiences and practical advice on how to navigate anxiety. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
Fear of expansion and vulnerability in business
Overcoming initial resistance
Strategies for managing anxiety and self-doubt
Launching and managing group coaching programs
Importance of humour and kindness
Creating a supportive and effective group coaching environment
Navigating group dynamics and ensuring participant engagement
Mental health resources for business owners
Challenges and successes in group coaching
Overcoming fears and insecurities
Strategies for maintaining momentum and structure in creative projects
The importance of focusing on helping others and sharing knowledge
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You've got this opportunity in front of you, and you can either give into other people's perceptions, but also your own insecurities walking down that path of, these people are saying that this is pointless or navel-gazing or whatever. And then you can start second-guessing yourself or you can focus on, I'm going to make this the best possible workshop they've ever been to and I'm going to win them over. And I did. I think at that moment, if I think back on like what worked, what worked well for me and what I have done many times since, is to focus on the problem rather than avoiding it.
Welcome to episode 418 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a coaching episode, and I'm going to go deep and vulnerable because this is something that is not talked about enough, sometimes when it is talked about, it's in this pseudo-vulnerable way rather than just being genuine. I'm going to get genuine with you today on something that I know I've talked about a bit, and I talk a lot with my clients and in group coaching about, and on my Sunday email. Today's podcast was inspired because I wrote an email on this recently and I had so many beautiful responses to it and people saying, I didn't realise that you still feel like that even when you years into business. And just some other lovely replies.
I thought, why not turn this into a podcast because I'm all about repurposing content? But I'm going to go a bit deeper in today's podcast as well because there's only so much you can say in a short email. And if you're not on my email list, please go and subscribe because that's where you'll get all the good stuff first. That is the first place that I put everything. And if I'm launching anything or there's an early bird for anything, it's always on the Sunday email first. You can subscribe to just mydailybusiness.com/subscribe. Before we get stuck into that, I will acknowledge, of course where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of these lands. These lands have been incredibly healing and wonderful and such a source of beauty and awe when things have not felt like that in my life, which I'll get into in today's episode. But yes, I want to acknowledge the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the traditional owners and custodians of these lands and pay my respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into today's coaching episode.
As I said, I recently sent out an email to my wonderful email subscribers and I got so many responses on this particular topic. What is it? I'm going to be talking about the fear of expansion and the fear of getting bigger or getting more well-known as a business owner. And for your brand to embrace that brand authority and brand awareness and that it's not always just this linear path where you feel great about every time that you put yourself out there. I want to talk about the times that haven't felt the greatest and how I moved through those because everyone goes through this, everyone goes through this fear of expansion and it's something that we don't talk about because so much of business information, podcasts, blogs, TikTok, so much of it is about how you should only be aiming for expansion.
Once you get to this place of expansion and every time that you get an opportunity to expand, it's the best thing ever. When it's not always, it doesn't always feel like that. Sometimes it feels riddled with anxious thoughts. Sometimes you feel so vulnerable to putting yourself into a position where more people are going to be able to judge you and more people are going to be able to critique you or your products or your services. It's not always this champagne and celebrations. It's just not sometimes. For sure it is. Of course when you get it through to the other side and you feel proud and you look back and hindsight's incredible, then yes, a lot of the time you want to celebrate. But when you are in it when you're in that moment of, I've been given this opportunity, or I've sought out and won this opportunity for myself, it doesn't always feel magical and incredible.
I want to talk about today four times in my business, which is in its ninth year where I've had my fear of expansion and how I work through those things because it keeps coming up. It's also not something that you arrive at some destination in business and you never feel fearful again. It doesn't work like that, unfortunately. I have clients who are making tens of millions and I have clients who are just trying to make their first five figures. Honestly, it happens to everyone. It is not something that you somehow get past, or get over, yes, there'll be more times that you've practised it. You know how to even identify those feelings and why they're coming up doesn't mean that it's easier to manage those feelings or get through them. I just want to put that part out.
Also, when I'm mentioning anxiety or feeling anxious or nervous, I'm talking about low-level, moderate anxiety that can be dealt with. But if you are listening to this and you are feeling like that at the moment about whether it's something in your business or in your life, please seek help. There is help available, please seek help. Go and talk to your GP, go and talk to a mental health professional. If you're in Australia and you have a business and you have an ABN, you can claim, I think it's six mental health coaching sessions for free. Just look for Beyond Blue new access program for business owners. If you Google that, you should be able to come to the site and I think they have another one if you don't have an ABN. These are sessions run with a mental health coach.
They are not a psychologist, but they have gone through a system of mental health coaching certification or something. They are there to help you. If that is you, please look out for that and we'll of course we'll link to that in the show notes. If you're in another country, then definitely look for your mental health help if you need it. When I'm talking about this stuff, I'm talking about it at a level that is tolerable and able to be managed myself. The first thing I want to start with is a quote. I have come back to this quote so many times in my life, and not just about business, but about other things that I was doing in life, whether ending relationships starting relationships or doing things that scared me.
The quote is from Andre Gide who said, “That man cannot discover new oceans unless he dares to lose sight of the shore.” That quote honestly has helped me get through so many situations in life and it's something that I've shared with my kids and it's something I've shared with many clients because when you start a business, you are diving into new oceans. You are leaving behind the security, although that's not always a fact that it is secure to be working in an employed role, you're leaving behind somebody else, being in charge of your pay packet somebody else being in charge of your hours to do your own thing, to go out on your own, to venture, to start a business, to maybe fill a gap that you think needs to be filled. There's this excitement in there.
There's worry, there's fears, there's anxieties, there's vulnerabilities, but a lot of it is excitement. And that excitement shadows a lot of those feelings of fear. Once you are into that business and it is working, it's like new fears come up because you could lose it, you could lose it all, something could happen. That dream that you were building is rocky. When I'm talking about that growth of expansion, it's not often at the start, it's often years into your business where you start to feel it because you have this fear around what is possible to lose because you've spent ages building it up. As I said, I'm going to pinpoint four instances when I had to do this and move through this stuff myself and discover these new oceans to look at that quote and lose sight of the shore and lose sight of the familiar to do something different and new.
It was scary honestly. The first of the four was when I began running workshops for corporates. I was running brand strategy workshops, and this was way back when I started my business, but I had a couple of clients who were bringing in the majority of what I was earning from the business at that stage. I knew exactly what I was doing in those client places. I was like, not exactly, but as in I had done the same work in multiple places that I'd worked and I knew what I was doing and it was building marketing strategies and building their brand platforms and looking at different avenues for a figurehead, profiling for the people that ran those businesses and owned them.
I had done this many times at different places where I'd worked, but when I went into brand strategy workshops where it was just me, it was me going into a large corporation and often preparing workshops when there would be like the executive team from the corporate, but also the board of directors. And that was not something that I had had to go through in my previous jobs, I had had to present often to executives and c-suites, but not a board of directors as well. What I found was it was just an entirely different atmosphere because in some way the executives and C-suites needed to almost suck up to the board of directors. After all, the board of directors could eliminate any of those C-suites at any time if they so wished.
There was also a huge discrepancy often in age. I'm not trying to be ageist or anything like that, but I found that in some of these corporates, the board of directors was pretty much always male, almost a hundred percent male. The men were in their sixties and I felt on at least two or three occasions that they thought it, in one occasion they said this to me, that brand strategy was just naval gazing. I did come up, I would say, against a lot of sexism at the start of this business, but also people not understanding the importance of brand strategy and saying we're just going to sit in naval gaze for the next three hours. Is this what we're, we've all been called out of our busy lives to come and do. I had that attitude thrown at me numerous times.
I remember in one particular case I had been working with the C-suite of this very large organisation and they had thousands of staff and they'd been amazing. They'd been lovely to work with, very open, very eager to learn to engage. They were excited about where the business was going, they were innovative. And then they said, we're going to have to do this big brand strategy session over two workshops and our board of directors will be there. Honestly, you could have cut the tension in that room when I walked in because there had been some real shuffles happening with the c-suite and yet they had informed me of this, but there were a couple of loud very vocal people in the board of directors that came in that were just making a mockery of what I was doing at the start.
Even with things like card sorting exercises, they were like are we playing poker here? And just making snide remarks and things. I remember I got people to do a bit of an exercise these guys just didn't want to be part of it. They were just like I don’t know if this is for me. And it just, it was uncomfortable. But I remember taking five minutes and I went outside and I had a glass of water and I thought, you know what? I can either just admit defeat thing and, and just get through the next couple of hours and just let them do whatever they want. Or I can go in there and try and command the room and prove myself but also try and deliver what I've been asked to deliver by the executive and c-suite team that I'd been working with for a couple of months before this.
That's what I did and I took a big deep breath and I was like, I know my stuff, I'm going in there and I'm going to win these guides over. And I did, to my credit, I won them over. At the end of it, one of them apologised for not being that excited at the start. In the end, about a year later, he was an angel investor in another company and he brought me in to do some brand strategy for that company too. It worked out. But at that moment, I think that's where you've got this opportunity in front of you and you can either give into other people's perceptions but also your own insecurities walking down that path of, these people are saying that this is pointless or navel-gazing. And then you can start second-guessing yourself or you can focus on, I'm going to make this the best possible workshop they've ever been to and I'm going to win them over.
I did. In that moment, if I think back on like what worked, what worked well for me and what I have done many times since, is to focus on the problem rather than avoiding it. In this case, this one particular person then went on and hired me later, and we joked about his behaviour the first time that I met him privately. If he's listening to this which I doubt he is, but if he's listening to this then it'll be fine. But I focused on him because he was the problem. He was the most vocal, he was the one riling up everyone else and treating it like he was some schoolboy even though he was in his sixties at the time. I thought I could either avoid him, I could just focus on the rest of the people in the workshop and I could focus on the executives and the main person that I'd been dealing with who was lovely and I could just win them over.
But I was like, you know what? He is the issue here so I need to focus in on him and get him involved. That's what I did. I focused in and was like, no, I'd love to hear. Like at one point I said what is your opinion on some of these things that we were doing? He was like, “No, you can ask somebody else and I'll just be an observer.” And I was like, “No, I have to hear your opinion.” You've told me your opinion about so many other things about this workshop, so I'd love to know what your opinion is on this particular card exercise we were doing. That idea of not avoiding the problem but looking at it head on and being solutions-focused, but also that whole kill with kindness helped.
In the end, I was able to win more work from this person later on despite the tricky starting point. I have had a couple of instances previously in my employed career where I've had people that are above me that have been a little difficult at times and I'm sure I'm difficult sometimes at times too. I think one of the ways that I have won those people over is through humour and through a bit of tongue-in-cheek kindness as well. I remember in one particular case, somebody was being full on I guess, and my response instead of also meeting them with that energy was to laugh and I said you just a ray of sunshine this morning? It just instantly cut through the tension that was there and they laughed and it was a way of mirroring back to them that hey, let's all take a bit of a chill pill here.
That has helped me in my career but also helped me even in coaching. I've had clients where they don't agree with what I'm suggesting. Of course, I will always say, it's your business, you can do whatever you like. This is what I'm guiding you in. I have a wonderful client who's worked with me for many years and when we first started, I was laughing because there was some tension in a couple of our sessions and I thought, instead of avoiding that and being like, maybe we are not the best suited, maybe I'm not the best coach for you. It was like, no, I strongly believe in what I'm doing and I know that it will help you. In the end, it has. This person has continued to work with me for years and we've laughed about this.
That's the first thing I think I would say that one of the best ways that I got through that fear of expansion and that fear of, am I going to look like an idiot in front of this whole group and this guy's he's commanding the room and I should be in charge of the room. And not that it was some fight, but like we should both be working together in this room to focus in on the problem and not avoid it, but also to go in there with humour, with good spirits, with a bit of, I'm going to give it back to you the same way that it's coming, but I'm going to give it with a big dose of kindness and a smile on my face. We worked together and then we ended up working together again.
As I said, he hired me later on. That first one was a case of digging deep and also thinking there are two choices here. There are two choices. One I can bow out and that will potentially mean that I'm not going to keep doing this type of work. Who knows, maybe in a year I'll go back to having an employed role and this this is not the direction that I want my business to go or, or I could dig deep and go, I feel bloody awkward right now. But what do I do with that awkwardness? Do I let it overwhelm me and consume me? Or do I take a couple of deep breaths and keep going and try and get people on my side? Often, I just think that humans are humans and if you can connect humanly, whether that's through sharing a joke, whether that is through a smile, whether that is trying to understand why they are coming at me like this and meeting them rather than like that whole, what does she say, Michelle Obama, when they go low we go high.
I think there's so much truth to that and that has helped. That first one, I don't know if that made any sense, but the fear of expansion was I wanted to keep doing these brand strategy workshops and in that case, I wanted to do them for this particular corporate and I wanted to, I knew that that would then bring more business into my business that was just getting started. I pushed through, I powered through. In those particular situations that I've had to face a number of times, I would say unfortunately at the top in big corporates, it is usually all men most of the time. I know that's changing, but it's not always in some places it's still got a long way to go. Yeah, you're going to have to prove yourself, but also by doing that, I am helping, I would hope other women that are coming up, whether they're employed, whether they are consultants, whether they're going in there also have that opportunity.
Also in some of these cases, there have been women younger than me in those rooms and by me backing down, what is that teaching them? That first one helped me. I should say thank you to that guy because it helped me then go into so many other workshops. And even sometimes when I was nervous about workshops, I'd be like, they're not going to be as bad as that one, they're not going to be as bad as that one. I got through it. I'm going to get through this next one. That is the first one. That took a long time to explain. The second time that I had a bit of a fear of expansion was when I launched Group Coaching. I launched that in 2018, I think it was six years ago now.
We have had multiple groups go through group coaching and at the moment I think we've got three groups running and they're just wonderful people. It's amazing. But that has not always run entirely smoothly in terms of me feeling completely confident and putting myself out there. When you do one-on-one coaching, there's an intimacy and you get to know the person and everything else, and you do get to that point with group coaching. But when I first launched it, it was so different to workshops, I'd been running public workshops where 16 or 20 people come to the workshop and you run it. I'd also been doing a lot of talks like presentations, keynotes, and panels. I was used to speaking to bigger crowds. It wasn't like I'm just used to doing one-on-one, I can't do group coaching.
But group coaching is very different to turning up to a panel or speaking to a keynote for 45 minutes to 300 people. It's different to be with people, the same people every two weeks for months on end. You've got 10 people on a call who all need your help, but also who all want to learn from each other as well as you, and you've got a certain syllabus to work through as well. That was a different level of expansion because I was thinking, are they all going to get what they need out of this? Are they all going to turn up on the calls? Are they all going to help each other? Are they all going to give feedback to each other? Is it going to be an actual group environment? And in that particular case, the first time that I ran group coaching, I had also just had a baby for the first six months we were not in lockdown, but then Covid hit and we were.
That also brought a huge level of stress and uncertainty to people. When you're dealing with that in a group environment, it's hard because people feed off each other's energy and stress levels. You're dealing with all of that and you have to be on top of it. Plus you're dealing with your own levels of uncertainty because you are also going through a pandemic and lockdowns and, and a huge level of uncertainty. That ability to be like this leader and this facilitator and hold space for 10 people at a time every two weeks for months and months on end is challenging at times and it pulls on you. Also, you can easily have your fears and insecurities brought up because especially if you've never run something like this before, which I hadn't, I'm like, did they get enough out of that session?
Should I have said this? Should I have not said that? Or if that person said this or that. In group coaching, we've had a number of times where somebody has said something and I have to be aware not only of my response to that but how everyone else in the group may be feeling. I also know a lot more about everyone in the group than, especially at the start than people know about each other. If somebody's commenting on financial wealth or somebody's making a comment that's political or somebody's making something else, you as the group leader need to read the room constantly, be aware of everyone's feelings, constantly be aware of everyone's backstories, everyone's experiences, everyone's thoughts and actions and create this safe space for everyone to turn up and feel open to share and, and communicate.
That expansion was huge and it's been an incredible thing for my business. But you do put yourself out there in a group environment in a way that is different to when you're doing one-on-one coaching. That has been huge for me. Also, every time you get a new group, you have to start from scratch again and you don't know how the group dynamics are going to go. The majority of the time, I'd say 99% of the time people don't know each other in group coaching. You're bringing essentially a group of strangers together and hoping that they get on enough to be professional, to communicate well, to give feedback to each other, to learn, to engage, to chat, and to do that consistently for a year, which is a lot of time. I always say to people, you can get more money but you can't get more time.
They're investing their time with me. They're investing money as well, but they're investing their time and they're hoping for particular outcomes. I have to put my hand up that in all the groups we have run, there has been one group, one group in particular where it just didn't gel. We had very different personalities in that group. Some people just didn't come. There was a lot going on during that time globally. There were people in there who had very different political viewpoints and it was difficult. We had people also that were like, these aren't my people. And that is a hard thing when you are running this, when you've all committed to 12 months and it doesn't work out the way that you had hoped. Every other group has been incredible and these people, each individually are incredible business owners.
But in that group environment that was difficult. That fear takes on some of the stuff that people are going through as if you are responsible. That can be difficult. I remember with that particular group, I questioned myself so many times and it was amazing. In the end, I had exit chats with a lot of people, like not exit, but when they finished the whole program we had an I was having chats with a lot of them and got beautiful testimonials and it was a reminder that sometimes what you think is happening is not the way that it's being perceived by everyone else. That was group coaching and that brought a lot of challenges, fears, all sorts of things. It brought up, and I have to say though, group coaching is one of my absolute favourite things to run in my business.
Outside of that one anomaly, every other group has run incredibly smoothly and well and engaging and everyone is becoming friends with each other and it's just wonderful to see. If you're reading this and you're in group coaching, thank you for being part of it. That is the second one. The third one is when I launched this podcast was a huge moment of expansion. It has been for this business, it has been massive, more than any other marketing thing that we have ever done for this business in terms of numbers, reach, and global reach. We have had so many people reach out from all around the world who listen to this podcast, which is incredible. I've talked about this numerous times. I didn't start this podcast for years because I let fears get in the way.
I was fearful of my voice. I've said it many times, but I have sinus issues and I've had lots of issues with my nose and my ears and I get colds easily. But I was worried because I'd had multiple operations on that part of my anatomy that I was worried, I sounded nasally and I'd had that feedback once from somebody. I was worried that I'd put myself out there and all these people would give all this feedback that, look at listen to how she sounds. And to date, I've never had anyone say that. And please don't be the first. But I thought about all of these things, I let so much fear get in the way. I was also worried about literally putting myself on a stage where anyone can listen in the world and anyone can leave a review and anyone can give feedback and it's different.
Well, I'm not born here, but I grew up in Australia, which is a very small place and we have a small population, especially in regards to how large the land mass is. But everyone knows everyone. Honestly, if you are in a particular industry in Australia, it doesn't matter if you're in big cities like Sydney or Melbourne or any of the other cities, you tend to know a lot of the same people. And even if you don't know them in real life, you know them through Instagram or you know them through friends of friends. I was worried about putting myself out there and having my peers say X, Y, Z about me. Or having just people in the industry say things like Thanks, Captain. That's an obvious topic for your podcast. Or just these silly insecurities that I have worked through.
I love doing this podcast. We get so much feedback. I'm not saying that every single episode is perfect by any means. I don't write my episodes ever, I'm just riffing. Half the time I'm just hoping that they make sense. But that was massive. How did I work through that? Well, one structure, I'm a big one for structure and systems. I set up a system, which is what we teach in the How to Start a Podcast course that we've had hundreds of people go through now. The system is set up so that we can create this podcast and send this podcast out twice a week, every single week. Now we're up to 400-something episodes. That system has worked, that helped, it helped to have a system, it helped to say, these are the episodes, this is what I'm talking about.
I also helped myself by having a consideration that if it didn't get anywhere if no one downloaded it if no one listened to it, then I would cut it after 10 episodes and I'd call it a series or a season and I may not come back for season two. But that hasn't happened, which is amazing. But I also didn't focus on, at the start, I had a goal of getting 150 downloads an episode because I had been told that that was a good amount and I think that's average or just over average. I had that in mind. But outside of that, I was like, I'm going to have fun with this. I'm going to just talk. I'm going to interview people that I know that are lovely. And honestly, the first probably five or six people I interviewed were friends or people that I'd known in the industry and I just wanted to have a chat with them.
I was like, “Awesome.” That mentality I think also helped because I wasn't putting this huge pressure on myself that it had to be the best thing ever and it's going to smash out all the other ones. In the end, it did go well. It has gone well. It's been picked up by Apple numerous times. It has done wonders for my business. In terms of downloads, we're hundreds of thousands above where I ever, ever imagined that it would get to. That has been incredible for our business. But that initial fear of expansion stopped me from starting, which I wish that I had started this year before I started it. I would just, if you are in that boat and you are doing something, whether it's marketing or you're going onto a new platform or you're putting yourself out there in some way, just start because I wish I had started this earlier than I had, but I also feel like don't put so much pressure because you are adaptable.
If things don't work, you can do something else. I think the things that did work, like I said, are having a system and process set up, and having a cutoff for it. Knowing that I'm going to give myself 10 episodes and let's see how it goes. I also have to say that I did that with this business. I gave myself 12 months for this business to work. I said to my husband if it doesn't, if I'm making nothing, then I'll go back and I'll get a job. Even if that job is what I used to do way back when which was check out chick at my local supermarket. I was like, I've worked at cafes, I've worked at cafes in the UK in Australia, I am fine to make coffees. And I knew that there would be a job out there somewhere for me, whether it was in marketing what I'd been doing before and brand strategy or if it was completely somewhere else.
But I knew that I wanted to give this business a shot. I gave myself 12 months. Likewise, with the podcast, I gave myself 10 episodes. I gave myself a limit, there was a point at which I could bow out I guess. That helped as well. Then the fourth thing that caused a big fear in me, but also was a point of expansion for myself and for this business was the launch of Passion Purpose Profit, my first book. The second book is going to come out later this year, and if you want to be on the notifications list for the launch and for the pre-orders and everything, please make sure you're subscribed to our Sunday email, you can subscribe at mydailybusiness.com/subscribe because you'll be first to know about everything to do with the second book.
But the first book, passion, purpose, profit, that came out in September 2020. And that has done so much better again than I expected. However, putting a book out into the world is a real moment of vulnerability because a book is printed, A book cannot be edited, and you don't have three little dots that you can press to edit. You can't delete it, you can't archive it like you can with a social media post or remove it like you can with a blog post or a YouTube video. It's a book and it is out there. If you are making mistakes, they are out there in print, not going to go away for everybody to look at. A book is a gigantic way of telling people about yourself what you value and what's important to you. In this case, what I thought was important for small business owners, now the book has done well.
I think it's at 14 or 15,000 copies sold, which is amazing. But when I was putting that out, before it came out, I was having nightmares. I was waking up thinking about all these horrible things. I was worried about all these just random stuff that never happened. Again, I think they say 90% of the things you worry about never happen. There's no point in worrying about them. But I worried about things like, I was worried that somebody would say, you are not an accredited business coach, even though there are no actual regulations around business coaching. Even though I'd been business coaching for years and the proof was in the pudding and it was in all the repeat visitors and all the referral traffic and referral business, I was worried that somebody would say, you do not have an International Coaching Federation stamp of approval.
I enrolled, I went and did a $7,000 course and I hated it. I argued with the teachers, I did not like how they were running it. To me, it felt very cookie cutter that these are the three questions that you ask and as if people are robots and everyone answers the same way. In the end, I passed and got some good marks, took a little while, and I did fail. A couple of examples, not fail, but they said you're giving, you're giving too much in your conversations and you need to stick to the script. I'm like, I'm not sticking to a script. These are humans. No, you cannot just ask the exact same questions to every person that you work with. To me, that is not business coaching. But I got through, I ended up passing, getting a good mark, and getting my little stamp of being an accredited business coach.
Did anyone ever ask if I was an accredited business coach? Absolutely not. That worry, and that $7,000 plus not just the money, but the amount of time it took 18 months to get through that. And it was not a great time in my life. I was pregnant then I had my son, my father died at that time. It was not fun. If I could take it back, I probably wouldn't do that again. If I know now what I, what I know, but these are the things I was worried about that expansion, about being publicly out there about some negative feedback that I'd get. The thing that helped, even though I didn't agree with the way that they taught at all, was to get this accredited business coaching to get that little tick that helped me.
Also, what helped me was focusing, and I know this sounds cliche, but honestly what helped me was to focus on an imaginary person that I was helping with this book. I would think about that person and they're going to get this book either as a gift or they're going to get it from their library and they're going to work through it and it's going to be helpful for them. And just focus on that. Do not focus on just stuff that was going through my head, insecurities, worries, anxieties about things. That book has done well. I'm always surprised when people are saying I bought it for not only myself, but then I bought a copy for my cousin, or I did this not surprised, I think I should say validated, that's a better word, validated that that hard work that went into it.
And knowledge and experiences, that's what I put it out. I put it out there for people to get maybe some learning that they didn't know before or maybe a reminder of things that they'd learned in the past that they wanted to have a refresher on. But I wanted them to feel that. I wanted them to also be inspired by the people that were interviewed in that book. I wanted to share their stories as well. When I took it back to that, as in I'm just sharing some knowledge that I have and you do with it what you want, that was such a better place to come at it as opposed to whatever, all the insecurities that I had around that book. That is the fourth one, Passion Purpose Profit. I have to say that with this next book that is coming out in September and in December, if you're in the UK, in the US I do still have the insecurities, but I've also reminded myself that all I'm doing is sharing knowledge.
You can either use the knowledge, take it, or enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, that's fine, but all I'm doing is sharing and I've shared and that's what I've done and that's my way of helping people and that's what I focus on a lot more now. That fear of expansion has been diluted by honing in on how am I helping people with these books. How am I helping people who may not have access to a business coach or a business mentor, or access to the knowledge that I've had and the experiences that I've had at all these different companies and in all these different small businesses and large businesses and corporations and startups? If I can package all of that in and it helps somebody, that's amazing. Like genuinely, that is amazing. There's a whole long list of other instances in which I've had to push past my fear of expansion and show up.
In every case, it has been beneficial, even though it did not at all feel like it at the time at all. Just to recap, it was that initial, not initial, but one of the first workshops that I did with a board of directors and won that person over. One of the big things that I learned from that was to focus on the problem. Don't shy away from it, focus head-on, meet it head and you don't know what amazing solution is going to come from that. The second one was group coaching and understanding that yes, you're putting yourself out there and you cannot control the situation every time, but you can put in place processes. I have to say to that point after the group where it still worked and a lot of those people loved it, but it just didn't go as smoothly as every other group.
After that, I sat down and changed a lot of the stuff in terms of the processes, the onboarding, interrogating, interrogating, that sounds awful, but putting information into people's applications so I could understand where they were in business, what they wanted from the group, making sure that the expectations were there, all of that and the interviews in place. Doing a much more thorough interview with people has been hugely helpful. The third one was the podcast and understanding that it doesn't have to be the thing that's going to break the internet, it's just me sharing. You know that having those, systems and processes in place to support it, but also having a deadline of like, there's a cutoff period here and let's just see. Let's just treat it as an experiment and see how it goes and don't put all this pressure on it.
That has been massively helpful. And then here we are on this podcast that's had 400 plus episodes, and then the final one, Passion Purpose Profit and now my second book as well. And just realising taking it away from this pressure again, of having to be the book that changes your life to this is some helpful information. I've found it helpful. I know that my clients have found it helpful. I know that people I used to work with in my career before I started my business have found these things helpful. Here they are. It's packaged into this lovely little book that's been beautifully designed again, and I hope it helps. Having that attitude has been so much more beneficial than worrying about things that half the time don't even more than half the time don't even come true. If you are reading this and you are in a situation right now or about to get into a situation where you are genuinely excited, but you're also a little worried about showing up, about putting yourself out there, about the expansion both for the business, but also for yourself and your personal growth.
I hope that today's podcast helps you and that you understand that this happens to everybody. It doesn't matter where you're at in business, it doesn't matter how long you have been in business. It doesn't matter how successful your business may appear, you'll still go through this and it doesn't end, unfortunately, it doesn't end. There will be other things that I do that are going to tear me open and bring out my insecurities and I will, I will meet them head-on as I have these other things. As I said at the start, yes, it gets a little bit easier. It doesn't go away, but it gets a bit easier because you know that you've done this before. For example, in the second book, I know that yes, all these insecurities will be there, but I will work through them in the same way that I worked through them the first time.
That's it. Thank you for reading my therapy session. I hope this made sense. As I said, I never write anything for these podcast episodes, so I just riff and I hope that it is just like a conversation with a friend of yours that is giving you some business advice. If you found this useful, I would love it so much if you could leave a review or hit the stars if it at all helped. And of course, we'd love to hear from you. I love hearing from people and what they've taken away from this. You can always send us a DM @mydailybusiness_ on Instagram or @mydailybusiness on TikTok. Or you can email us at hello@mydailybusiness.com. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time. Bye.
