Pam: You’re listening to the flourish and grow to CEO podcast, episode four.

Are you a lady boss making $50- to $100,000 in your business? And you’re ready to break through that six figure barrier?

Jane: Have you done a great job of creating a nice life as the ultimate gig master but your inner CEO is calling you to greater heights?

You’re in the right place. If you want to create and implement solid fundamentals in your business without sacrificing fun.

Pam: I’m Pam Ivey, I’m certified in small business management and I concentrate in the areas of training and certifying real estate assistance, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs in online business, marketing growth and profit acceleration. And I take men and women business owners aged 40 plus two bucket list destinations around the world for a month at a time to work, explore, and live in community.

Jane: And I’m Jane, Gary known as the sales strategist for the non-sales person. And I work with business owners who want to increase their conversion rate, shorten their sales cycle and have more impact and influence with the work they do all while having more fun with selling.

Pam: Hey everyone. And welcome back. We’re so glad you joined us again for flourish and grow to CEO today. We’re going to talk about two of the foundational pillars that are super important. Not that any of the others aren’t, but we’re going to be concentrating today on inner game and vision and strategy and what inner game or mindset, if you will, might be another way that you’ve heard of it. But we really like the term inner game. What we say to ourselves is super powerful, so they can be positive thoughts. They can be negative thoughts. And there are a number of things that stand in our way to our positive thoughts. You’ve probably heard of some or all of these. So what’s involved with inner game. It’s limiting beliefs, money, mindset, scarcity, mindset, compare and despair, imposter syndrome, fear of failure. And yes, this is a thing.

Fear of success and fear of judgment. But today we’re going to focus on limiting beliefs. We absolutely all of us have them, but there are ways to change them. So we’re going to go over that in a little bit, but just know that there are good and there are bad limiting beliefs. Each one affects our lives in one way or another. For example, your good beliefs are created to assist you throughout your life while your bad beliefs can hinder you from being successful and they can stop you from moving forward. A limiting belief restricts you to what you believe you can do. You can have, or you can experience. So you can, as I said, eliminate these beliefs permanently, but you need to understand that they’re protecting you for some reason, they’re not inherited at birth. So you didn’t come into this life thinking it was difficult to make money or make friends.

You didn’t think you’re fat, or you’re not very bright. You never thought that you were a terrible person, right? I mean, this just didn’t happen when you were a baby. So many of our beliefs were instilled in us during childhood. They were all due to experiences that we had and things that we heard when we were kids, the majority of our beliefs, which is really interesting come about before you turn six years old. So it’s really possible to learn what led you to the belief. If you think back on the experiences you had or the statements you heard, when you’re a kid, for example, you may have heard that money doesn’t grow on trees. Most of us heard that from our parents. And you know, that actually makes us think negatively about money. So when your beliefs are being formed, it caused the subconscious mind to create an internal image of who you are because of those beliefs.

Every time a belief formed, the subconscious mind included it into your blueprint. And this blueprint affects every part of your life actions, your experiences and your thoughts. The only part of you that knows the blueprint is the subconscious. It’s going to work really hard to keep up that image. So unless you change the blueprint, it’ll stop you from getting what you want in your life. And that’s not what we want for you. So just know that these limiting beliefs, they really control your actions and your thoughts. So when you want or desire something, you need to think beyond that blueprint that we have, or else your limiting beliefs will rear their ugly head and keep you from attaining what you want. So think of these limiting beliefs as scripts that play over and over in our head. And it’s automatic. We really don’t think about them.

They’re made up of what you believe about yourself and your potential for success. So let’s see Jane, I bet you’ll identify with some of these. So let’s have a listen and see how many we identify with I’m ready. Let’s do it. All right. Anything you think of saying has already been said and much better than you can say it. Yeah. If people really knew you, they wouldn’t like you, those people saying nice things about you are so sweet, but they just don’t know you well enough to see how crummy really are. She has more experience than you do. She writes better than you do. How come you can’t be more like her? You have to do it the right way.

Jane: Yeah. The right way. And anything short of perfection is just an abomination. You can not do that. Right?

Pam: Wonder she’s more successful. Look at all. She’s done have so been there myself. You’re never going to be able to do everything that you’re aiming for. You just want too much. You’re not pretty enough thin enough. Young enough to be on camera. Hello? I’m sure. Every each and every one of us has heard that one inside her head.

Jane: Yeah. Everyone, nobody gets on. Camera goes, Oh, I look fantastic.

Pam: Isn’t that the truth. It’s not good enough. And I can totally relate to that with what I’m putting together, courses that I want to sell. Oh, it’s not good enough. It’s not perfect yet. I can’t put this out there, but you know, when I do good is good enough. I have to tell you because you can always be revising and upgrading,

Jane: Right? Absolutely.

Pam: You’re not worthy of being paid money.

Jane: Yeah. That’s a big one for a lot of people.

Pam: There’s a big one. It’s too late for you to try and make it big

Jane: The women that we really work with are 50 and above so, we hear this a lot, but it’s never too late to start something.

Pam: That’s for sure your success is not sustainable. You suck at business. You’re kidding yourself that people will pay for your services. Isn’t that ridiculous. But these are all the kinds of thoughts that all of us have had at one time or another, or that continue to play in our heads. So there are ways that you can beat these things up and beat them right out of your head. One of them is to pick a new script. So let me see for an example, let’s just stick with my courses. There’s no way I can create a course as good or as better as my last one. And you know, that’s actually an underlying fear of expectations and fulfillment kind of interesting, but replace it with I’m a creative professional, good ideas are abundant in me and I’m always improving. So these are things that you say in your head and reinforce and maintain that new script. So take a post-it note and write that down, post it on your mirror, on your fridge, on your car rear view mirror, or something that you see a number of times throughout the day. And just repeat that over and over again, because what we hear in our subconscious mind becomes a belief. And if we can erased those old beliefs with our new script, we’ll start to really believe it and erase that old.

Jane: That’s true. And Pam, I don’t know about you, but one of the things that I really have come to embrace is not taking a band-aid approach to the reframing meaning. So if I say something like nobody really needs the work that I do as an example, just to kind of take a deep breath and reframe it and go, everybody needs the work that I do, or my ideal clients need the work that I do. I always liken it to just kind of slapping a band-aid over a really deep wound. So when I think about inner game and reframing and changing things up, I really like to sink into what’s the root of that feeling? Why would I tell myself something like that? Where did it come from? How long has it been that way? And I’ve really discovered this has been pretty profound for me.

Actually, once I started digging down and asking myself, what am I feeling and why am I feeling it? And then that would cause something to pop up and then I’d ask the same questions. What am I feeling? And why am I feeling it? And all of a sudden what I was really starting to find out is that it had nothing to do with whatever limiting belief I was telling myself. It was really deep. It was really deep and it doesn’t have anything to do with the current moment, the current reality. So really giving yourself the space and the time and the permission to just go there, just go there rather than reframe really quickly and come up with some new language.

Pam: That’s very true. You know, I have a great example because when I was younger, I would go for jobs, like apply for jobs that were beyond my experience level or my education. I just always went for them. And my mom would always say to me, you’ll never get that. You’re not qualified for that. You know, you’re just not right for that job. And that kind of put in me that instilled in me kind of, I would put my back up and I would say, watch me. So that’s kind of interesting because that kind of led me to be extremely competitive. I think, because I have to tell you that every time she said that to me, I got the job or I got the job offer.

Yeah. But it’s things like that. And people don’t say that to be mean to you. It’s people that love us and they actually want to save us from hurt or disappointment. So my mom didn’t want me to go into these job interviews with my hopes that way up high. And then they say, you’re not qualified. We’re not hiring you. So that’s a really interesting one. But the other way that you can really help yourself along with this is really recognize a relapse. Just like you were saying, if it happens again to you, it is going to happen again. I mean, these are deep seated. And as I mentioned, a lot of these happen by the age of six, by the time we’re six years old. So they’re pretty deep seated. So you might have a relapse. So on those days, when you recognize that relapse, make your affirmations, if you will even stronger, like I am creative, and I have excellent ideas that people need to be exposed to. I mean, I can really help people or I take the steps to make powerful improvements to myself and my work. So really affirming with your affirmations will really help to dig that into your subconscious and change your story. Right?

Jane: It’s just a story. And I think what happens for a lot of us is the story always serves to some extent, there’s always some kind of payoff in that story. So the story of I’ll never be good enough that serves in a way, because if you think you’re never going to be good enough, then you won’t have to go do the work. Well, if you don’t have to do the work and the payoff is you can go do something else with your time. And the justification is I can go do this thing with my time because I’m certainly not going to go do the work. Why? Because I’m not going to be good enough for the work that I’m doing. Nobody’s going to want it fix it.

Pam: Exactly. And if I don’t do the work, then it can’t be proven to me that I’m not good enough.

Jane: Right? So there’s this justification. That’s very powerful. And that is the payoff. So going back to sitting down, when I really got serious about this, and I would sit down and say, why am I feeling this? Or what am I feeling? And why am I feeling this way? The other thing I started to ask myself is what is the payoff? What is the payoff of not doing this work? What is the payoff of me not getting on a stage? I mean, that doesn’t happen to be one for me because I love getting on the stage. But whatever your thing is, people will tend to say, well, there’s no payoff for being unhealthy or not working my business or pursuing my dreams. There’s, there’s no payoff because that’s what I really want. And what I discovered is that there always is a payoff, because if there isn’t a payoff, you’d have no reason to stay in that situation. You would go pursue your dreams. You would get more healthy. You would go do the work that you feel you’re called to do.

Pam: Right? The payoff, or what are you avoiding? I think that a big one too, but I just want people to think about it when you’re saying those things to yourself, like I’m fat, I’m not smart. Those kinds of things. If a friend could hear your thoughts, what would you want her to hear you saying to yourself instead that can really help you to turn things around?

Jane: I have a really good friend who, anytime she hears me talking in terms about myself, that’s less than flattering. She will always say, Oh, be nice to my friend Jane. And yes, that’s such a great thing to say to somebody.

Pam1: It is absolutely. But I just want to sum up inner game by saying to you that you’re not alone. Absolutely. All of us have these feelings. And I have a couple of really famous quotes from people that you’ll know to know that these people believe it or not have limiting beliefs to even the amazing Maya Angelou had negative thoughts. And these thoughts revolved around, believe it or not imposter syndrome. So here’s one of our quotes around that. I’ve written 11 books, but each time I think, Oh, they’re going to find out. Now I’ve run a game on everybody. And they’re going to find me out. That’s our Maya. Hello from Emma Watson. It’s almost like the better I do. The more my feelings of inadequacy actually increases because I’m just going any moment someone’s going to find out I’m a total fraud and that I didn’t deserve any of what I achieved.

Yeah. From Penelope Cruz. I feel every time I’m making a movie, I feel like it’s my first movie. Every time I have the same fear that I’m going to be fired and I’m not joking every movie the first week, I always feel they could fire me. And from one of my personal heroes, because she just seems to be able to do everything to me, Jennifer Lopez, I’m very insecure about my voice after being told for so many years that you’re not as good as this person or that person, it beats away on your insecurities. I always wanted to be a singer and a dancer, but when they start dissecting you like that, it does work away on your insecurities. You know, I’m like, wow. I thought it was good at this. It does get to you. I’m only human.

Jane: There you go. She’s only human. Jennifer Lopez. Only human intervene. Only human. Certainly the rest of us could have to be only human and not so much in admittance really, as rather an acknowledgement. I am only human.

Pam: Absolutely. So we’re going to be diving into inner game a lot more in upcoming episodes. And we’re even going to be interviewing some mindset experts around this subject because this is something we really got to nail in order to really have success in our business. The success that we really

Jane: Or looking for it is so incredibly important because without this piece, you’re going to do some tactics and then you’re gonna get in your own head and then you’re going to create a strategy. And then you’re going to fall into your limiting belief patterns. So I’m really excited for the upcoming experts that we’ll be interviewing later in later podcasts, because they’re all amazing. And they’ve just got some incredible stuff to say about this topic. Do they ever

Pam: Awesome. So you’re talking to us now about vision and strategy.

Jane: Let’s tee this up, cause this is some good stuff here too. So inner game, you always want to start there without your inner game. It’s going to be really challenging to implement any of the other foundational pillars and remember all of the pillars. They’re not in succession. It’s not a linear path that you’re following. They’re all interconnected. So we’re going to continue to remind you of the interconnectedness of these eight pillars. At times they tend to be more linear and it’s kind of necessary to follow them any more linear, but the fact remains. They’re always going to be interconnected and they’re all up in each other’s business without understanding that it’s a challenge really to get that business pulled together. So you can scale. You can leverage, you can build the business that you really have always wanted to build and create the vision.

Here we go. So let’s talk about vision first. You know, there’s actually, people have probably heard this. It happens to come out of the Bible, but it says where there is no vision, the people perish. And to me, that’s just straight up common sense. So every morning when you get up, it’s you have a vision. You have a vision of what you want to look like when you walk out the door. So you don’t wake up looking like you do. When you walk out the door, you get up out of bed, you look in the mirror and you have a vision. When I walk out of here today, I’m going to be wearing this. I’m going to look like this. My hair is going to look this particular way. My face will have this representation. So you have a vision. So first thing in the morning, without even thinking about it, you, you awaken and you arise to a vision.

So, a vision for a business is just one step further. It’s taking probably what’s already in your heart and mind the vision that you have, and let’s face it as business owners. That vision is so entwined with the vision you have for your life. So you have a vision for your business, which means you really have a vision for your life. You need to be able to sketch this out, to see it, to really be able to paint the picture. That’s one of the most grounding exercises I do when I’m training people, how to have sales conversations. At some moment in the conversation, the sales person will want to ask their prospective client. What is your vision? Paint a really clear picture for me of what this looks like. What are you going to be doing? Who are you going to be spending time with?

Where are you going to be living? What kinds of activities are you going to be engaging in? How much money are you going to be making? Who are you going to be serving and who is affected by the vision that you have in any vision, you really need to be able to see it. You need to be able to flush it out. It should be so clear to you that if somebody said, paint a picture for me of what the vision of your business would actually look like. If you just had a magic wand, if you can’t act, answer that question really clearly. And this would be one time where I would encourage you to babble on. If you can answer that question really clearly and have it take a good 60 seconds, your vision isn’t clear enough yet, right? A vision. I just want to make a lot of money, a vision isn’t I want to do the work that I want to do a vision is I want to get up every day and show business owners, how they can have these enriching conversations that are just as fun and comfortable as having a coffee talk with your BFF.

And the reason I want to do that is I want to ensure that any business owner who wants to stay self-employed can actually afford to do that because you got to generate revenue. It’s just as a fancy way of saying you’re selling stuff. I want to serve these people. I want them to embrace their business. I want them to get up every day and say, who am I lucky enough to talk to you today? Because they need my help. And I am here to serve them in that way. And it was a result of me doing that work. I have a vision that I will have the financial needs that I need to go live. The life that I want to live, which includes a lot of travel, which includes living and working all over the world, which is with my favorite people on the planet and doing amazing things.

It would allow me to Pam, you know this about me. It would allow me to go shop when we travel. It would be to live in someplace tropical during the winter. So it’s my vision. Very, very clear. So an exercise that we want you to do after this podcast, or you could actually put the podcast on hold right now and do this is write out your vision. And I want you to make this so stinking clear. It is ridiculous. Get an eight and a half by 11 notebook. And I just want you to write your vision for like four pages. Just keep going sensor the judgment, put yourself into a place of objectivity. And if this helps think of it in terms of, Hey, if I were Jane, this is what Jane would want. Like you can see into your own mind. So take yourself out of it so that you’re not censoring, you’re not judging yourself.

And you’re not saying some of those things that Pam just talked about with the inner game, which is that’ll never happen. I couldn’t actually do that. Why would anybody want to learn this from me or whatever it is that you’re telling yourself, but you need to be able to see your vision very clearly. And the best way I really think, and science proves this the best way to see something very clearly is if you have it written down, write that thing down, then you can print it, predefine it, make a copy, put it in a frame, snap it up on your wall, whatever you want to do, but really spend some time, no holds barred, dig down deep into your heart. What is it that you want? What do you see for yourself? What do you envision your business, your life and how it affects the people that you love most?

Right? Because vision is our goal, right? Yes. It’s the top tier goal. If we were to look at everything down. So we talked a little bit about this the other day, which is it’s the vision first. And then the strategy supports the vision and the tactics support the strategy, right? Leaning into point. Number two of vision. When I talked about who does it affect the most or who are the people that you love the most and how would it affect them is in your vision. You’re always going to be in some semblance of a who or a why. So let me explain that a little bit. Your, who is, who is going to be affected by this? Who are you doing it for? Who is this dream going to support who is going to benefit significantly from you walking into your vision, who is counting on you to make this happen?

So that’s being in some type of iteration of a hu. The other thing that typically happens when people are really getting clear on their vision is the why, why are you doing this? Why really are you doing this? I ask this question all the time in sales calls. And it sounds like this, Pam, you clearly could really pretty much do anything you want. So why have you chosen to do this? Why is this the work that you have chosen to do and that you want to do? And it really makes people take a step back for a second and think about it. Because if you think about it, that’s a really profound question. Why are you doing what you’re doing? It’s become very cliche over the years. What’s your, why find your, why discover your, why share your why, but the reason why it’s become so cliche is because it is so important. It’s really the who and the why. If you are not in a who or a why place in your heart and in your mind, it is going to be enormously challenging to get up and run a business every day. And it’s going to be even more challenging to get up with joy and excitement and run that business every day. So who is your, who and why is your, why your, why that’s your vision

Pam: So important. That’s for sure. I know my vision and your vision are very closely related because they both include travel. I mean, that’s how we met. So we both know we love travel, but I want my business to be able to support me in traveling all over the world. So I’m not tied to a phone all the time. That’s really important to me. That’s why we talked about, I think in the last episode that I don’t have very many one-on-one clients because I just don’t want that tie. There’s so many nuances to vision. It’s just so important that you nail it. Yeah.

Jane: So Pam, I’m wondering what was your vision or what is your vision?

Pam: What was my vision? When I first started my business was honestly just to make enough money to be able to leave my corporate job because I had a boss that I used to call quote, unquote, the devil’s wife or Satan’s wife. She was horrible.

I used to leave work often in tears and not only that, but I used to drive three hours a day. I used to commute three hours a day for that job. It was really well paying. I had a really high profile position. I liked the work, but that boss. So that was my vision was to get the heck away from Satan’s wife and pay my mortgage, still be able to pay my mortgage. And you know, my big wild dream when I first started my business was I wanted to be a multimillionaire. Um, today it’s as important to me today, as I said, it’s really to support my lifestyle more than creating a seven, eight figure business. It’s just not as important to me to be that, you know, Uber rich, I just want to support the lifestyle that travel lifestyle,

Jane: Seeing that’s key, because that is a why, the why of why am I doing this work? Because I want to have a seven figure, eight figure business and whatever goes along with that, that is actually a much different why than I want to support a lifestyle that gives me freedom and flexibility. And therefore includes a lot of travel. I don’t know about you, Pam, but the people that I know that are running the seven and eight figure businesses, especially in the coaching and consulting industry, they make a lot of money. They do make a lot of money right there, and they’re working too hard for me to some extent. But when I think about the traveling that you and I do, where we just go live someplace for four to six weeks, and really during that four to six week timeframe, we do work, but let’s face it. We’re not pounded it out every single day. And we don’t have teams to manage and we don’t have giant overhead and so on and so forth. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the beauty of having a vision. You can design your life. You can with intentionality decide, this is how I want to live, and this is what is going to be required of it. So yeah, that vision is, that’s why it’s so key.

Pam: And that just made me think of an upcoming episode idea for us. So I’m sure we’re going to be talking about this. Everyone is lifestyle design. Cause I think that’s so

Jane: Yeah, it’s huge. It’s really everything. It’s really everything. And you know, 10 years in this industry, again, specifically talking about the coaching consulting industry, I have worked with a lot of the big names. I think I may have mentioned this before. And if I mentioned the names, you would know them and they have great lives. They have great lives. They have phenomenal businesses. They’re absolutely multi seven figure. Some of them are eight figure businesses. They have impact. They have influence, they’re leaving a legacy. They have really great lives, beautiful homes. They do travel and it is still a different lifestyle than somebody who’s doing say multi-six figures and just has a little bit more freedom. Or as I like to call, feel free to move about the cabin, right? You just, you can go wherever you want the world’s your oyster because you just don’t have the same tethering that you do at different levels.

So you want to be really clear about the lifestyle that you want to live and what you actually want. Big picture long haul for your future. One more quick example around that my first ever mentor. When I first met her, she was making two 50. I started working with her. She was my coach and the next year she made 600,000. The next year she made a million dollars. So she hit the million dollar Mark and then she was starting to trend up. And we had a conversation one day, because at this point I actually become part of her team. And I said, you know, I just get the feeling that you’re not happy. And she said, I’m really not. I’m stressed out all the time. And I said, I had a feeling I’m kind of thinking, you’re probably not keeping as much money as you were.

And she said, I’m not. And I said, I also have a feeling you’re probably working a lot harder for the money that you’re not even getting to keep. She goes, I am. I said, yeah. And I think there’s seems to be kind of a stress factor there because now you have this big team that you have to manage because a million dollar business requires more support and more people power than a business that isn’t a million dollars. And she said, yeah, that’s exactly right. She ran her million dollar business for another two years and then just turn the whole thing off, just turned the faucet off. And the reason is, is she said, everybody kept telling me that I needed to build a million dollar business. So I figured that’s what I needed to do because that’s what the cool kids do. That’s what I’m gunning for.

You know, I gotta make this thing happen. But what she realized is once she got there, what was required of her to maintain that million dollar business was not interesting to her. It was in fact very stressful and she just wanted a different kind of life. And I always really appreciated her being so candid about that because it took the pressure off. A lot of people, a lot of people in her community to say, wow, okay, maybe I can give my permission myself permission then to live the life that I want to live, start there and then figure out what I need underneath it to make that happen. Again, there’s nothing wrong with a million dollar business, eight figure business, whatever rocks your world, right? Do the thing that you want to do. Just do it with intentionality. And just keep considering that it’s a whole package deal.

You got to figure out if this is what you want, there’s going to be some things that are going to come with it. And for some people, it’s exactly what they want. And for other people, not so much. So really dig into your vision. What do you really want? Not what other people are telling you that you should want, not what your parents say or not what your friends say that you should build it up as big as you want, make as much money as you want serve as many people as you want, or have a really great boutique business that just allows you to do the things that you want to do, but it’s your vision. So create it, flesh it out and commit to it.

Pam: It’s so true. You know, Jane, before we know it, you seem to blink and six months has gone by a year, has gone by, don’t just continue to go along with the flow, really design your life on purpose.

Jane: You know, when you take those value tests, I’m sure you’ve taken those Pam, right? Those, what am I top of them? So I’ve got, I’m addicted to taking those quizzes and especially the deep studies and everything, but freedom always is one of my core values. Now freedom can always be defined in different ways because the person who has a value of freedom gets to define freedom. But that’s exactly what I’m talking about. So freedom to me will mean something differently to somebody else who would describe their version of freedom. So all of us to some extent, really want freedom. What you need to figure out is how would you define freedom? So again, if you’re doing any journaling exercises off of these podcasts, which we hope you are in addition to flushing out your vision, very completely, I mean, take a good three to four pages, eight and a half by 11, just go for it.

The other thing that I would really recommend that you do is define freedom. Freedom to me means what does that mean? And just to give you two polar opposite extremes, freedom to some people would be a family and a home and an SUV and picnics at the park on Saturday with the family and et cetera, and kind of that lifestyle, which is a great lifestyle. It’s, there’s a lot of wonderful things to it. So beautiful. Now, you know what freedom means to you? The freedom to have a close family, the freedom to have safety and security, the freedom to have activities, watch your kids grow up. That type of thing. Conversely, all the way on the other side, somebody else’s definition of freedom might be, I want to be in the Mediterranean during Christmas freedom to me means I can go do what I want when I want, how I want.

And nobody gets to have an input on my life. So two polar opposites, but that’s what I really want you all to think about. Very, very deeply define freedom. What does freedom mean to you? There’s no wrong answer. It’s just, what does freedom mean to you? All right. Should we talk about strategy? Absolutely. Okay. So go back through this again. First comes the vision. Then the strategy supports the vision. Then the tactics support the strategy. So strategy, actually, according to the dictionary is defined as this, a plan or method for obtaining specific goals or results. So a strategy is a plan or a method for obtaining specific goals or results. Number one rule of the strategy. It must support the vision. If you have a strategy that is not supporting your vision, your out of whack and out of alignment immediately, and it’s going to get challenging really fast.

So, your strategy or your plan for obtaining specific goals or results has to support the vision. It has to be in alignment with that. Let me give you an example. Your vision is you want to let’s use the travel example, cause it’s just such a thing that’s so close for Pam and I. So your vision is you really want to be able to travel as much as possible. So your strategy then would not make a whole lot of sense. If it required you to sit in front of your computer 10 hours a day, it’s not going to give you a lot of opportunity to travel. Even if you can travel, let’s say that you do. You’re sitting in Barcelona, let’s pick, you’re not really going to be experiencing and enjoying Barcelona. If what is required of you, what your strategy is to sit in front of your computer 10 hours a day.

So, you need a different strategy. If what your vision is, is to go travel beyond the move, be able to get out and see during the day how they really flexible schedule. So the strategy needs to support the vision. What is your strategy? What can you do? What is your plan to ensure that how you are going to build your business, how you’re going to generate clients does not require you tethered to your computer for 10 hours a day, sitting down in the same spot. Why don’t you do that stuff out? And the faster you figure it out, the better off you’re going to be. So the strategy has to support the vision. Now point number two, this happens all the time and this is what drives people just cuckoo for cocoa puffs because they can’t figure out what the problem is. Do not confuse tactics with strategy.

Don’t confuse tactics with strategy. There are so many people out there, particularly in the coaching and consulting industry, who just frankly, having a clue between the difference of strategy and tactics. So they talk about the strategy of creating a Facebook group. They talk about the strategy of content, email marketing. Those are really tactics. Now both of those actually require a strategy, but here’s where people get tangled up. They go to the tactics, they go to the doing, yes, they say to themselves, you might say to yourself, I need a Facebook group. That’s my strategy. No, that’s actually a tactic. The tactic of getting a Facebook group is to fulfill your strategy of client generation to build an international business, because that is what is able to happen on social media, content marketing, same thing. Oh, my strategy is just to have some great content marketing.

No, that’s a tactic. The strategy is when you do content email marketing, it will again allow you to reach an international clientele. You can put it on auto responder. You don’t have to sit behind your computer 10 hours a day. And the reason, all of that is really important is because you are strategically coming up with a plan that will allow you freedom, mobility, flexibility, whatever juices you up. Don’t confuse strategy with tactics. The tactics are the things that you do. They are the steps that you take. It is what you implement. The strategy is the overarching theme. The plan, the difference.

Pam: Think of it as a blueprint, your strategy or roadmap. Yep.

Jane: It’s that big picture? Absolutely. The strategy a tactic. When you’re building the house where we talked about the building, the house analogy before a tactic, when you’re building the house is to put the cement floor down to get started. A tactic for the house is putting the lumber up. So you get the walls created. That’s a tactic. It’s something that you’re actually doing that the strategy is, this is the kind of house that this is going to end up to be. The strategy is creating a place to live that fulfills the vision that’s in your head. So you want to be really, really clear about the difference between a strategy and a tactic.

Pam: Yeah. I was just thinking my vision is to increase my email list by a thousand, by the end of the year, by a thousand people, the strategy is how I’m going to build that list. How am I going to do it? And then my tactics are the stuff I do. Social media speaking, podcasting, whatever it is that the actual things that you do to build the list.

Jane: Perfect example. All right. So we’ve covered some really important stuff today. Fairly intense. We have,

Pam: It is intense, but I, I think especially knowing the difference between vision and strategy and tactics, just to get that, I know it took me a long time to really understand the difference between them all is, was so helpful to me, an inner game. There’s just so much to it. Holy smoking’s between limiting beliefs and money, mindset issues, and fear of failure, fear of success. There’s just so much around it, but it’s really important that you have positive self-talk. I mean, I really want you guys to come away with that because your positive self talk leads to successful actions and a successful business. So we got to get those things right. Got to get those things, right. So I guess this is a wonderful place to wrap up episode four of flourish and grow to CEO. Thank you so much for that information about vision and strategy. Cause I really think that helped a ton of people. And next week, we’re going to be talking about branding and messaging something so cool. And Oh my gosh, the dreaded marketing, which makes me really happy. So that’s what we’re gonna be talking about next. Anything new with you on the business front Jane, anything cool and exciting?

Jane: Well, 2021 is going to be a really, really interesting year. I’ve got what feels like 3000 projects going on, right. Exaggerating. But yeah, probably for me, one of the things I’m most excited about is I’m actually going to be launching my showstopping sales salon, which is, yeah, it’s going to be an elite six month program for women who are really looking to break that six figure barrier consistently. And one of the fastest, easiest ways to do that. Once you have the foundations in place that got you of a sustainable business

Pam: Is to really change your selling strategies and then ultimately really master that sales conversation. So I’m looking forward to that for 2021. Oh, that sounds great. And I’ve been doing some planning for 20, 21 too, but a lot of mine is kind of working with what I already have instead of creating a whole ton of new. And that’s really different from me for me. So I’m kind of excited about that too. So awesome. Well, we’re so glad that you joined us today and we hope you have a great rest of your week and we’ll catch up with you.