How to Up-level Your Business and Life With Jo Casey + Holly Worton

Transcription

1 Thank you for downloading this transcript! You can listen to the original podcast here: Background I'm back with another co-hosted episode with the fabulous Jo Casey! This week, we're talking about how to easily up-level your business and life. I'd love to hear what you think of this format! Please comment and let me know. Also, we've got a whole list of topics that we want to discuss on this show, but please drop us a note in the comments and let us know what you'd like to hear us talking about. Thanks! About Jo Casey Jo Casey is a certified life coach, trainer and coach mentor. She s British, slightly nerdy and allergic to the marketing bullsh*t in the coaching industry. Founder of jocasey.com, podcaster, speaker, and writer for Coaching Blueprint, Mind Body Green and Tiny Buddha. Things that make me scream with glee: Freshly washed bed linen, watching my husband get all handy' around the place (DIY I mean), yellow wedge sandals, fabric stores, the sound of my kids giggling, Jesus Christ Superstar the musical. Spirit Animal: Lesley Knope Why you should listen to me about coaching: I've been training, coaching and mentoring coaches for 14 years and I built my own coaching and training business after a lot of initial trial and error. I've been where you are now and I love showing coaches like you how to pull out all of the things that will make your business stand out and attract the right clients to you, without wasting a lot of time on useless and expensive shiny objects. What You ll Learn How to uplevel your business and life What is upleveling? What does it look like? How to think bigger and uplevel your goals How to get a new vision for your business that stretches you How to know when it's time to uplevel Things We Discussed The Mentee Podcast with Geoff Woods Cara Wilde's New Identity Masterclass Transcript Holly: Hello and welcome to the Business Mindset Podcast episode 207. This is your host Holly Worton, and I am back with another co-hosted episode with Jo Casey. This week we are talking about how to easily up-level your business and life. So, some of Page -1-

2 the things that we discuss in this: how to up-level your business and life; what the heck is up-levelling and what does it look like what does it feel like? how to think bigger and up-level your goals? How to get a new vision for your business that stretches you; and how to know when it's time to up-level. So, hope you find this episode interesting and useful, this is something that Jo and I are both kind of going through and, as always, when we are going through something, odds are a lot of our listeners are as well. So, hope you find this useful and thank you for joining us. Holly: Hello this is Holly Worton and I am back with Jo Casey and we are here to talk about a very timely topic for both of us, but also for a lot of our business friends and people who are in our community. So, we are going to be talking about how do you up-level your business; there are so many factors, and so many things that need to be shifted as we are stepping up into new levels of our business. So, we are going to explore some of those things today, so that hopefully we can inspire you to expand your vision in terms of your own business. So welcome Jo, hello! Hi! Holly: I am so excited to talk about this! I know! This is going to be interesting, because I think we are both in this place. It is not like we are on the other side of it, this is where we are at, so it will be interesting, we are almost getting live insights into what's going on and what we are discovering. Holly: Yes, and also, I think this is kind of a nice path forward from our messy middle episode, which people really seemed to resonate with. I get so many people commenting on that to me, so I am really looking forward to taking people a step further on our journey with us. So, let's get talk a little bit about up-levelling, so how do we define up-levelling our business, what the heck does that mean? For me, there are like different seasons in a business, or different phases in a business, and I think that when you are in the first couple of years of your business you are really just focussing on sustainability. So, there are lots and lots of moving parts, which we have talked about on many different podcast episodes around: you have to have a clear message, and you have to have a clear product; and people need to know what it is that you are offering: what services and what products you have. You need to have some systems in place, you need to have some mindset stuff, but the focus really is: how do I get enough clients, how do I get enough income coming in so that I can sustain myself? And once you get to that level it is fantastic, but once you are at sustainability what's next? And that for me is the uplevel piece, certainly I think for where I am at, I don't know about you, but for me now I get to think about what's the next stage? What do I want to create next, how do I want to be working? It is not just about bringing in a certain amount of income, I have bigger income goals, but I have also got different goals as well, around: How much time am I going to be spending? What type of work do I want to be doing? What do I want to create? So, it's like a new phase of your business. Holly: Mm, and it is also about how your business fits into your ideal lifestyle, because as you said in the beginning you just want to pay the bills, but as your business grows you want to make sure that you are growing your business in a direction where it fits into the kind of lifestyle you want; because I know I have seen so many friends who have built really successful businesses one friend in particular I am thinking of, multiple six figures but created a business that was so stressful and a team that were kind of dysfunctional [laughing]; she really struggled with her team. So, she had all these people that were helping her, but she was spending so much time managing the team and managing the person who was supposed to be managing Page -2-

3 the team, so that she had no lifestyle, her life was her business. And so, that's also something that we need to think about and make sure that we are growing our business and up-levelling it in the right direction which coincides with how we want to be living, because of course everything is connected. Yes, absolutely. I think that is something that is really important to be thinking about as soon as you can, even when you are at that: how do I make this sustainable phase, because it is a lot easier to go and have a job, it really is. And so, there have been many times when I have kind of thought: why am I doing this, because it is so hard and I am working such long hours. I think there does come a point where you have to go: if I am going to be swapping out things like security for creativity and being able to set my own hours, and be able to create things that are important and have meaning to me, then I am kind of defeating the object if it then requires me to work 12/13-hour days, six days a week, and I am exhausted all of the time. Holly: Mm and especially if you have a family. I think a lot of women go into selfemployment, entrepreneurship, because they want to have flexible hours, and be around for their kids, but then they create this monster business which pretty much replaces the corporate job. Yeah, for sure; and whilst you know very well that I rail against the whole: I just work 4 hours on my laptop on the beach type of thing, because that is just BS, I don't know anybody who actually does that but there are also, there doesn't need to be that one eye on the actually how do I want my business to be running, or do I want to be on the regular doing client calls at 9pm at night? Do I want to be able to have a day off? Do I want to be able to take school holidays off? Things like that, the earlier you start thinking about those, the better. And, you Holly, you still go and do your walks, I know that's a big part of your life, but I would argue that actually feeds into your business, because that's how you stay connected, that's how you stay healthy, that s how you tap into that spirit and that soul and the meaningful stuff. Holly: Yeah, and that's how I stay connected to myself, which to me is one of the most important things in my business, the more connected I feel to myself, the easier it is to run my business, to serve my clients, to see where I am going and to stay on my own track. Mm yeah. Holly: Go ahead No go on! [Laughing] Holly: We have so much to say on this topic! I was going to say: so, what does up-levelling mean to you? You might have a slightly different definition to me? Holly: Yeah to me it is about growing my business, I hate to say taking my business to a new level because that's so.but that s what it is, it is growing your business, but taking it to that new stage, expanding my vision, perhaps working with a slightly different client-base, or clarifying the specific client-base that I want to work with; because of course the longer we are in business, the more people we work with and the more we determine who we can best help and how. And I think it is also about thinking bigger, and you know as you said, expanding your goals, it is a lot is about expanding my vision, and really thinking bigger and seeing new possibilities for my business. Mm I like that! Page -3-

4 Holly: [laughing] So, speaking of this new vision: how can we tell when we are getting to the point where it is time for us to expand our vision and start thinking about new things and new ways or new paths to take in business? Holly: Yes. I think there are two ways that people tend to come to it; they either come to it from a very strategic, very head, very logical: I am going to take the big picture view and this is the next step that logically makes sense for my business. I think people know me well enough by now to know that's not how I tend to come to these decisions, for me it is just like, I can t do it like that anymore, for some reason that has run its course, and my heart and my gut isn't in it anymore And I think that was one of the things that was so powerful about the up-level, rebrand, the up-level, that I kind of went through a few months ago, is just that my business had been working really well but suddenly it just wasn't working for me, on a soul-level, on a gut-level, anymore and so I wanted to be speaking about, and working around issues that just had more resonance to me. And no matter how much I logically said: this is crazy you are burning your business down, no one will hire you again my heart and my soul said: this is what I need to do. It was almost like I couldn't keep doing it the other way, it felt hollow, it felt inauthentic; I know a lot of people come to it that way as well; it is like: I feel like I am wearing a mask now, I feel like this isn't me and one of my big drivers for building my business is that I want to be doing meaningful work, I want to be doing stuff that means something to me and feels authentic, and that I can pour my heart and soul into. It is a much more deep-rooted, grounded, gut approach to things intuitive approach to things, rather than that kind of logical side. So, that was my approach to things, how about you? Holly: For me it was very much the same. It was like, I got to that point where I couldn't stand to look at my website because it felt like it didn't reflect me anymore and it was like an ill-fitting shirt that was too tight, and I had outgrown, or it was too big, and it was not fitting right. It just didn't look right, and it didn't feel right, and I could tell that energetically I was changing. It was like when I got my headshots redone last year, I specifically remember contacting the photographer and saying: my energy has changed so much since we did the last head shots two years ago, and they don't look like me anymore my hair had changed, but aside for that my energy was different and it wasn't reflected in those photographs. So, I needed new pictures that reflected my new energy; so, I am a very visual person so obviously my brain first goes to graphic things: the website and the headshots, but I think those are kind of very clear, tangible, representations of how my energy was up-levelling and changing. Holly: Yeah. Actually, because we are doing this on Skype and so I have your little picture on my screen right now, as we are doing it, and I think back to your old picture and as you were talking I could see exactly what you mean by that the energy and everything about those head shots are so different. So, I think you kind of know in your gut when it is time for a change, and for me, I think it is important to recognise when is this fear coming up, is this just far because I am kind of thinking: it feels risky to continuing to do it this way, or maybe it is fear of success, as you are growing? Or, whether it is that much more grounded, rooted, almost coming up from the earth, like: no this is out of alignment now I need to be going off and doing something slightly different. Did you know what the next level was for you? Page -4-

5 Holly: Yes and no. So, part of my up-levelling recently was, letting go of the method, the technique that I was using with clients and bringing in my new technique which I channeled late last year. So, that was part of it, like the concrete, specific way of how I work with clients has changed enormously; but, it is also that part I knew, but the part that I didn't know was that I would be working with the kind of different energy, or different level or different kind of vibration of clients, with this process. My guides did tell me at one point that I was going to be attracting a new level of people with this technique. I wish I had some guides! [laughing] Holly: You do, you do, you just need to talk to them! [laughing] Maybe we need to do an episode on that, and you can help me tap into my guides, but that sounds so...sometimes I feel like I am trying to work all this out on my own and you have your guides who are there helping you Holly: Well a friend of mine who channels her guides, also just helped me yesterday to call together my spiritual board of directors [laughing] so I have a whole team now! [laughing] Holly: Yep Well you see I have an inner board of directors that I have kind of identified, so I wouldn't say that they were spiritual, they are more things that my psyche has conjured up So, I do kind of work on that kind of parts level as well. I always think we have different parts of ourselves maybe that should be an episode? Let's note that down. Holly: Okay, on the list! [laughing] And listeners let us know what you think, do you want this? [laughing] [laughing] Do you want Jo s wrestle with her woo. Okay, when we are talking about up-levelling then, what are some of the things that we have to stop doing, and what are some of the things that we have to start doing? Holly: Mm, well I think we have to start thinking bigger, thinking differently, perhaps surrounding ourselves by different people or with different people. Perhaps uplevelling our peer groups, and the Facebook groups that we belong to for example. As you said before setting new goals. I mean, what do we need to stop doing? We need to stop playing small. I think this is all about stepping into our highest potential and stepping into our greatness, so we need to leave behind that tendency sometimes we have, to cling to our smallness. And that's a big ask, and that's a big thing. And I think this could be a whole separate episode on its own, but, I think we need to be ready, willing and able to let go of that smallness and to break out of our comfort zone, and in to consistently taking action outside of our comfort zone and I know that's a regular part of doing business, but when you are looking at up-levelling you have got to do better things and new things in a bigger way. Holly: Yeah Yeah, and one of the really interesting things, is that I think before I had got to this stage I probably thought: ah but those people at that stage, when you have got consistent money coming in then it is so much easier to be able to take risks but actually it's not, because actually it now feels like I have got all this to lose. I have worked so hard in the past few years to build up some income so that I can pay my bills; so now, I am potentially going to, like I say, burn that down, it is almost like you have a reputation that you have established, a community that you have Page -5-

6 gathered will my community embrace what I am doing or will they think that I have, you know, lost the plot, somehow? The fear is still there, but it changes, morphs and takes on a new shape. Holly: I have changed my business drastically over the last few years, so you know I went from tribal publishing, helping authors with social media; to socially holistic, helping holistic women entrepreneurs with social media; to the mindset stuff. I am actually quite shocked that over the last few business shifts, I have kind of kept my same list going, and there have been 100s of people who have followed me through that journey. And I was really surprised and I almost thought about starting my list over from scratch each time but then I thought: no these people know me and if they are not interested in a new incarnation of me, they can just unsubscribe, because you can do that but it is surprising how many people will follow you on this journey into a new thing and I think it is because they like you, they are drawn to you, they are drawn to your energy. So, I find it fascinating to see how other entrepreneurs have grown over the years, so I am sure other people do as well. I can remember when I shifted from being a resilience coach to working with coaches, and I remember saying to the coach that I had hired at the time: I am really scared, I have spent all this time building up this list - I think my list at the time was 500 people or something, it really wasn't big but it had taken me a long time of sweat and tears to gather those people. And she was saying to me: well you will find about two thirds will stick with you, a third will drop off and will say oh no, not for me and a third will follow you to the end of the earth anyway and a third will stick around to see if the new incarnation is kind of what they want, you will be amazed, because people are attracted to you as much as to the service. Now, that's not the same people that would necessarily hire you, but a lot of what we do is around timing, the timing needs to be right for people. I don't know about you, but there have been people that I have been following online for years, four, five, six years, and you know, I haven't hired them yet, but may well do in the future, or may well buy some stuff off them in the future. So, I think that is really interesting, I really haven't noticed a drop off in my community at all I have had a couple of guys me, to say: Jo you seem to be focussing a lot more on women and this feminine conditioning thing, so does this mean that we are not allowed in your group anymore? And it is like no! You are more than welcome. Groovy feminist men are the best kind of men! but I really haven't seen a drop off, in fact I think most people who have commented on it have just said: it just feels like you are becoming more you, this was there all the time we could see it, it I just that you are being more explicit about it. Holly: And being more overt about it, and just speaking more about it, and speaking in a more unfiltered way about it. So, let me ask you a question; so, do you think that as we up-level our businesses and as we shift into this big vision for ourselves, do we also need to be up-levelling our business coach and mentor? Possibly, I think it depends. I have hired coaches because I wanted some strategic help with a business thing, but I have also hired coaches to help me with my mindset, and I kind of think that kind of the mindset stuff isn't necessarily business specific or stage specific. So, you for example Holly, I know that you are also good at helping people with their mindset regardless of what level they are at, and you and I have had conversations over the years, you have helped me out with stuff when I was really just starting and scrabbling around for clients and you have helped me much more recently. Holly: Mm hmm, with up-levelling. So, I have helped you at different stages in your business. Page -6-

7 So, I don't think that if you have the right coach to help you with things like mindset and being able to step into your bigness and losing see of the beliefs that are maybe holding you back, I don't think it really matters so much about the coach; what's great about having a. good coach is that they can help you to see that bigger vision for yourself, that you are not yet able to see. I think when it comes to strategy though, it may well be that you will need different coaches to help you with different strategies that I would give my clients who are in the first couple of years of their business tend to be around: how do you get those first clients, how do you get some systems in place? How do you get that messaging right? The help that I give around somebody who has been in business four or five years, is much more around: how Do you start scaling that? How can you help more on a broader scale? How can you take yourself out of that need to be hands on so much? So, you might need different specialists, at different times. But I think in terms of mindset if you have got a good coach who can help you to continually see that bigger vision for yourself, and help you to step into that, I don't see why you might necessarily need another coach. Masterminds might be different, because it is that thing of: we can only really see what s possible when we can see other people who are doing it. So, if you are surrounded by people who are really struggling to make a living, and earn clients, it is really difficult to believe that you can make a living from doing this. If everyone you know is making just under six figures, it is really difficult to see how you can get to multiple six figures, unless you have got people around you who are kind of going: yeah, and this is how I did it. I do think there is sometimes a need to up-level those kind of mastermind relationships, how about you? Holly: Yeah, the interesting thing though is, how do you insert yourself into these mastermind relationships of people who are at a higher level than you? I think you can be quite explicit about it; so, I remember talking to Geoff Woods who had a podcast called the Mentee, and I had him on my podcast a couple of years ago, and he talks about being very deliberate about seeking out people to ask to be mentored by them. And seeking out masterminds of people who are at that next level and saying: I want to be connected to people who are making a million plus a year for example; I want to be connected to people who are running retreats in foreign places and I would like to know how to do that. And so deliberately asking people already in your circle for introductions to people like that and being very specific and explicit about it. Holly: Okay, because that's another conversation I am having with some of the women I know is: we are all aware that we want to up-level, but we are not even sure where to find those communities online of the people at the next level; so it is like we are in all these Facebook groups and in all these communities, and we are kind of, as one friend says: all moving around in the same soup but we want a new level of soup [laughing] but we are not even sure where to find this soup. [laughing] Holly: We can't even think of what are the names, or how do we even...what's next and what does it look like? I think it is about maybe they are not necessarily on Facebook Groups...so, maybe they have a different way of communicating. I think there does come a time when you think, okay I am really going to have to be more conscious and deliberate about seeking people out, and maybe they are in these big six-figure mastermind groups that you have to pay to play? I don't think so, I think actually those people are hiding in plain sight, but as you say if we are all swimming around in the same soup, that's all we can see right now. Maybe, it is about consciously looking a bit further afield maybe? Page -7-

8 Holly: Yeah, and I think that does have to do again with expanding your vision and pulling yourself up out of the soup and seeing what other soups are out there [laughing] Clearly, it's lunchtime as we are recording this! Yes [laughing] Holly: Which business soup are you in? [laughing] Holly: Yeah. Yeah, a nice leek and potato or something [laughing]. I think it is an interesting question and that type of question is going to hit us whatever stage of our business we are at. How do we find those kind of next level people who can support us? Whether that be people we are going to hire, whether that be people who are going to be our peers? And looking further afield, things like conferences, networking events, courses even... Looking at what coaches are out there who one of the things I always stress to my clients because obviously I work a lot with coaches, and they will say: yes, but everyone out there is just selling to coaches, but I say no, they are not it is because we have these algorithms, when you are something like Facebook, the only ones that you are seeing are the ones that are targeted at you, the ones targeted at you are going to be the ones selling things to coaches. If you were into knitting, the only ones targeted at you would be the ones selling you knitting supplies or needles or yarn or something like that. Sometimes we have to buck the algorithms, we have to look outside, we have to be quite deliberate and almost take off those glasses that are filtering everything for us. Holly: Yeah and I think, what just popped into my head, another thing I feel I need to bring up is, we are not talking about this ruthless moving forward in life, and I will leave everyone else behind and I rise above them It is not that we think that we are better than anyone, it is just if you are into personal development, and I am going to assume that most of our listeners are, and if you are into professional development, business development you are constantly growing, you are constantly up-levelling yourself, and it is just natural that some people are going to grow with you and some people aren't. And I think perhaps an interesting story to tell is, I have this kind of online business friend/woman, and we used to Skype every month and we would have these great chats, you know, just one of those online friends that I just really love talking to. And we were, I think, probably at similar places in our business, and at one point we had a call coming up and she got in touch with me and she said: I just wanted to see if we should maybe cancel our calls, or postpone them, because I am working with a new coach, and I have got so much in my calendar, I am going to be very busy so can we just maybe put this off for a while And I was like: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, good luck with everything and then I kind of never heard from her again [laughing]. And then of course I am still connected with her online, so I have seen how she has grown, she has really sky rocketed her business to the point where she is now making six figure months, which is beyond where I am now [laughing] - let's be honest! Six figure months?! Holly: Yeah exactly! And she really sky-rocketed in the last year and a half, or two years, I can't remember when it was. I remember having that distinct gut feeling that was what was happening, like she was about to up-level and I wasn t where she was heading [laughing] She was dropping the people who were holding her back [laughing] Page -8-

9 Holly: [laughing] Not exactly that but you know what I mean she was moving up and she needed to up-level herself around other people, and she has, we have grown in very different directions, so that totally makes sense. And I just wanted to say: that's okay, I have no hard feelings for that. Six figure months is not where I am at now, because I am still refining the way I work with people so that's not my goal. That would be nice at one point, but that s not where I am right now. So, it makes sense that we would be growing in different directions because we have different priorities for our business. So, for people who are listening to this, this is just a reminder that that's ok, to move on and to see new friendships and things I hate that whole kind of: you are the sum of the five people that you spend most time with because it is like, well that really depends on where you land in life, but I think in terms of business it is important to not kind of ditch the losers, or the negative people, because we are all humans and I believe the more variety of humans you have in your life the better we are and the more empathy we have, but I do also recognise that we need to have some people who are further ahead, are more successful, whatever that looks like to you. So that we have something to kind of model something to learn from. And that would be in all different areas in life, I have a friend who is such a great mum for teens, and I learn so much from just observing her with her kids, because I feel like that's not an area where I am great, I am just fumbling my way through it like most people. She is fantastic, it is great to have her in my life, because I have learned so much for her, that's not to say that I ditch all my other friends that aren't that great with their teens, you know... Holly: Exactly. It is important to have people around you who from a business perspective can show you new ways and new horizons - you don't know that they are there unless you can see it, unless you can see other people doing it Holly: Yeah, yeah and I think it really helps to expand your vision. Absolutely. Holly: To see what's possible because I think I'm really good about dreaming big and we were just asking about this in my master-gut last week, about how we are all really good about dreaming big [laughing]. But some people aren't, some people are so stuck in their smallness, it is hard for them to expand that vision. So, it is really helpful to have those examples in your life of people who can dream big and can take their business bigger. So, to wrap it up, is there anything else that we need to add to this topic, that we haven't mentioned already, about up-levelling your business? The only thing I would add is, and we touched on it, I would say it is important to say what beliefs do I need to change in order to get to the next level? Holly: Yes, that's a massive thing, and that's one of the things that I work on most with myself and with my clients. It is: who do I need to be, what aspects of myself do I need to focus on, what do I need to bring out of me, and what do I need to believe about myself and my abilities in order to step into that next level? A friend of mind, Cara Wilde, has this really good, it is a free opt-in called the new identity masterclass, and it basically takes you through all the different questions you need to ask yourself to step up into this new identity and life. Ah you have sent me that, it is so good, really good, we can include that in the show notes I think that's really important, and what's interesting from a personal development point of view, I find it brings up all the stuff that you think you have dealt with, it just comes at you from a new level. It is like money stuff, I always thought my Page -9-

10 money stuff was around: I can't make money, I am not the type of person to be able to run a business Well I have kind of dealt with all that now. Then it is like: I am not the kind of person who could make that much money...and it s like this again! Holly: Well it is like the second time I was interviewing Denise Duffield Thomas for my podcast, we were talking about that and she said it is not new level new devil, it is: new level old devil, the old stuff comes up but in a slightly different flavour because you are at a different level. Yeah, totally. So, it's like this spiral that we go on I think, it is not like you just cut through and you are in a video game at a new level da da da, you kind of get to where you think is the next thing and think ah, I have to revisit all this stuff again, and work through it again, another group opportunity, another learning opportunity. Holly: And you have to be willing to do that growth work, because otherwise it is just going to be really painful. For sure...definitely. Holly: All right, well I think that we have fully explored this for now, please let us know if you have any comments, questions; if you would like us to discuss a deeper or different aspect of this, or what would you like us to talk about next? We are very much open to suggestions. Thank you very much this was a really good topic, I am really glad we dived into it. Holly: Yeah, me too, thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this episode and remember to visit hollyworton.com/207 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you. Page -10-