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Courage & Clarity
172: The 5-Minute Test That Reveals Why You're Stuck (And How to Get Unstuck)
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Foreign welcome to the Courage and Clarity podcast. I'm your host, Steph Crowder. I'm a former sales training director who's helped thousands of entrepreneurs earn a living doing something they love over the past 10 years. On your journey, you'll need the courage to be bold, to take risks, and to do what looks crazy on paper. You'll also need the clarity, the brass tacks, simple strategies that actually work. And on this podcast, we deliver both in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, we've got absolutely no time for bs, gross marketing tactics or get rich quick schemes. Just sustainable business strategies for good humans with big dreams. If that sounds like you, you're in the right place. Let's go. Hello, my courageous listeners. Welcome to our last podcast episode of 2025. I can't believe I'm saying that. We've arrived. 2026 is coming. We're almost there. And for today, in keeping with that, I want to share a pattern that I've been seeing in conversations I've been having with my clients and also folks who I've just been talking to all over the place. There's this thing that's been coming up and it is really tied to my year on the wall training, especially because this is something that I've taught and I've been thinking about it, and some people in my audience have already gone through the training and others haven't. And it's kind of create. Created this really interesting dynamic for me. And the truth is, I can tell, I can honestly tell within five minutes of talking to anyone, one of my clients is typically, it's my clients. They're the ones I'm, you know, spending facetime with. I can tell within five minutes when someone hasn't done my year on the wall training. Okay. And by the way, you've probably already heard this in my little intro, but if you are like, huh, what's that? Or, I didn't do it yet. I forgot to buy a ticket. Whatever. I'm actually doing an encore presentation of you're on the Wall. Super excited about it. We're going to do it on January 7th. So you can go to Youronthewall.com and get all caught up, because we're going to teach it. I'm going to teach it live again. Never done an encore presentation before, but I'm very excited. So we're going to do it on January 7th. You can go to yearonthewall.com and of course, yes, if you've already bought a ticket and you, even if you came the first time around, you can come again. So I really can tell within the first three to five minutes, honestly, when someone I'm talking to has not done their exercises in year on the wall. So you're on the wall is this process of putting up these giant calendar pages on your wall with this beautiful, fun, color coded sticky note system. And I always tell people the calendar pages is like, you come for the calendar pages, but you stay for the exercises, right? People love. They're like, I wanna learn how to do that. It looks so cool, it looks so interesting. And I. And that's awesome. I love it too. But where the real power is, is in the exercises that help you get really, really clear on what you actually want next year, right? And so the reason and the way that I can tell that someone has or hasn't done their year on the wall is because when, when you haven't, it. It's not that you don't have goals and that you don't have ambition, but there, there will be this ambiguity or this general confusion or haziness about what you are actually driving toward. Okay, let me say that again. When there's a haziness or an ambiguity or a mystery, I can tell when you haven't spent sufficient time thinking about what you are actually driving toward and what you actually want. Okay? And sometimes this will pop up in all different sorts of ways. But here's what it might sound like coming out of your mouth. You might be saying, I don't know what to focus on, right? I could I do this or could I do that? That. That's what I'm hearing a lot, is like, I could do it this way, I could do it that way. I could try this or I could try that, right? There's like this indecision. It's like there's this fork in the road, okay? Also, if everything is feeling important, it feels like everything is equally appealing or of equal weight and. Or final thing here is if you feel busy, but you don't really feel like you're moving forward, you don't really feel like maybe you feel like you're treading water. Like you can feel yourself doing stuff, but it doesn't feel like meaningful stuff, okay? This is confusion, okay? And you, in this case, you're not confused because you're unmotivated. In fact, it's typically the opposite. And I'll see my clients get really frustrated with this. They're like, I want to get stuff done. I want to have a great year. I want to know what I'M doing and I can't seem to get out of the muck of this. Right? So you're not confused because you're unmotivated. You're confused because you skipped the first decision. Okay. If you don't know the destination, every turn is going to feel wrong. Think about that. If you don't know where you're going, you're going to question every step of the journey. Right? So here's the question that I want you asking yourself. And we go much, much deeper into this. In my year on the wall training, I have had many, many people tell me that the first section that we do to help you get clear. If you're somebody who struggles with, like, your vision and getting clear on what you want and making these decisions, I have had so many people tell me that the cold, like the caught the 47 cost of year on the wall was worth it for just this section. Okay? So we get into it much deeper and in a much more rich, sort of fleshed out way in the training. So I encourage you to come be part of it. Whether you need to do it live or the replay is always available. Okay. But if you like just to kind of prime you and get you thinking about it. Now here's the question that you want to start to ask yourself. Where am I actually trying to go in 2026, specifically? Right. What are my specific decisions that I in terms of what I want for myself in 2026? And again, in the training, I help you figure out if you're like, dude, I don't know the answer to that. We have some exercises that'll make it just really smack you in the face, even if you've always struggled with this. I've had so many people tell me they've never done it the way that I teach it. And I'm pretty proud of that because I have, you know, seen so many different types of goal setting trainings and visioning trainings. And I do believe the way we do it in the year on the wall is so very different. So it is about figuring out what are you even trying to do next year? What is the goal? Where are you trying to go? I have had more conversations with folks in the past week or two who are climbing, climbing, climbing, climbing, climbing a ladder in their brain, only to discover that that ladder is leaning against the wrong wall. They don't actually want to go where they're climbing. They're just climbing because they know they should be doing something right. So before you start to get into strategy, which I know A lot of you love strategy. You want to talk about content plans, you want to talk about launches, your offers and like, the specifics of what you're offering, your habits, what, how, like, oh my goodness, this time of year, it's like, I'm going to be a whole new person next year. Let me plan exactly my hat, what my habits are going to be. Planners, the same thing. Should I get this planner? That planner? It all feels so new and fresh and juicy and full of dopamine, right? Resolutions, all of this stuff. Most of us skip right to these things thinking that they will fix us. But the reason they don't stick and the reason it doesn't do anything for you isn't because of some deficit on your part or because you're not good enough or because you're not motivated or disciplined enough. Doesn't have anything to do with that. What it has to do with is the fact that you've never answered key questions. What are you moving towards? What are you, what do you even want when you're trying to create forward momentum. Forward toward what? Right? Are you trying to go bigger, calmer, more leveraged, less visible? More visible, right? Like, think about all of the different directions you could be going in. Same business, different business, different role, different business entirely. Like, where are we actually trying to go? You can't optimize your movement if you haven't defined your direction, right? And so like I said, I feel like I really have been seeing this in a lot of my conversations with my clients. I might see a client who is torn, for example, between scaling. Like, do I want to scale my business or do I want to simplify what I already have, right? They might also feel like they really want to go towards visibility, but then they're also wanting to hide at the same time, right? They're also oscillating between delegating and then like clawing back all control. And it feels like this ping pong that's happening, right? And the other way it shows up is like, should I do this offer or that offer? Should I have a one on one offer or a group? Should I talk about topic A or topic B? Should I have a membership or a this or that? Right? And it's coming across as indecisive. Like to themselves, they're feeling really indecisive. It's not actually indecision, okay? It's just that they're trying to drive in two directions at once. When someone says, I don't know what to do next, or like, I could do all of these different things. And I'm having a really hard time determining which, which thing it should be. What that usually means is I haven't actually chosen what kind of life this business is supposed to support. Let me say that again. When you feel like I don't know what to do next, should I do this thing or that thing, what that usually means is you haven't chosen what kind of life this business is supposed to support. And beyond that, inside of the business, you haven't chosen what you are actually trying to create. So for me and my business, I know exactly what I'm trying to do next year. I know exactly how many clients I'm trying to work with. I know the math, I know what I'm doing from a revenue perspective. I have my big scary goal and I know what I'm trying to do. And I have personal like, I know, I know where I'm trying to go in my personal life. I know how I want to show up on a daily basis. I know who I want to be. That is every bit as important as what you are trying to do. Who are you trying to be? Isn't that so crazy? We spend so much time. If you're doing any kind of goal setting or reflecting on next year. I know you're thinking about what you're trying to do, but how much time are you spending thinking about who you want to be or who the person is that gets those results? I would argue that that is more important is who you're going to be, who you need to be. Who is that person that you're, that identity that you are going to need to step into in order to create the results that you actually want. So there's really two things you haven't defined if you're feeling this way. Number one, you don't even know what result you're trying to create. You haven't put that stake in the ground and say, this is what I'm trying to create next year. That's number one. And then number two, you haven't asked who, who do I want to be along the way? Who is the person that gets those results and in what way does she get those results? Right? So for example, for me, going after a million dollar goal, okay, I could do that as a whole bunch of different identities. I could do that as a frantic chicken with my head cut off miserable person. Or I could do it from a place of calm confidence, magnetizing, devotion, discipline, very, very different vibes. I am going to be journaling and coaching myself and getting coaching all next year on who I need to be, who this business needs me to be as the CEO. Right. I've talked about this a little bit in recent episodes about how we need to see our business as a company. Okay. And when you see it as a company, you can ask yourself, what kind of leader does this specific company need right now? What is he or she gonna be like? Right. What are. What do they need to be doing? What do they need to be thinking? How do they show up every morning? What are their habits? What are their thoughts? How much time are they spending with their kids? Where are they going on vacation? Right. There's the who piece of this that almost nobody talks about. And this is why I talk about it. Right. If you can focus on this and you can make decisions around this, you're going to feel so much of that indecision fall away. And again, this is the work that we do inside of the year, on the wall training. So you can do it yourself or you can just come spend some time with me, either live or in the train. The replay of the training and just get this knocked out and be done with it feels so much more clear. Okay? So when we're thinking about moving forward and being able to move forward next year, I want you to think about things. Three different types of forward. Okay? So if we've already talked about, you need to figure out what you are trying to do, okay? Like, where are you trying to go? What are you actually trying to do? And then super, super importantly, who are you trying to be in the process? Who do you need to be to go there? Who is the driver? What characteristics do they have? Okay, that's all key. But then we need to think about this idea of forward. I think it's also really interesting. I was thinking about this, that if your goal is to go forward, if your goal is to grow, and you're thinking about forward momentum, there's actually three different kinds of forward, and they're all great. But it can be really helpful for you to start to identify what is my personal definition of what forward momentum looks like. So let me give you these three types. The first one is more forward can equal more. Okay, this might look like more revenue. You just want to create more revenue in your business, more visibility, you wanna build more capacity, right? That's like you being able to handle more. Right? And in order to have more, you have to have different constraints, right? So the first idea of forward is like, maybe you're feeling like you've planted some really great seeds. You just Want to pour the gasoline on it. That would be you wanting and claiming more, more of what you already have. Okay? That's number one. The second type of forward is different. Okay? So it might be you want to do the same revenue or similar revenue, but with a different structure. Okay? You have the same business, but you are functioning in a different way. Right? So, for example, maybe let's just say that, like, you hit your goal this year, but you feel terrible, right? Or you don't care to repeat that goal. And like, maybe maybe the things that you did to get you here, you want to figure out now how to do it by showing up differently, right? This might look like less hustle, but more systems. Okay? So it's like, let's just say that you did a hundred thousand dollars this year, and you did it by just hustling and grinding your booty off, which respect, right? But maybe you're like, okay, cool. Now I created that and that's awesome. But this year I want to figure out how to make six figures without doing it that way. I want to figure out how to make six six figures with more systems. I want to figure out the operation side of my business. I want to figure out how I can create the same results. I'm not trying to make the get. Get more, but I want to have the same results but getting it done in a different way. Okay, so it could also look like, or maybe you got to a certain place by having a whole bunch of different offers and it feels like it was disjointed. Maybe you want to have fewer offers, but higher leverage, like 1 or 2 higher leverage offer offers. So notice that it could be the same from a results perspective, but different. Okay, so the first definition of forward was more. The second one was different. The third one is deeper. Deeper. Okay. Deeper would be fewer goals, but more consistency. Okay. It would be mastery over novelty. It would be just getting better at what you already know how to do without doing new stuff over and over again. Right? It would be going deeper into what's already working. And I think this would involve trust over urgency, right? Like maybe instead of feeling so urgent everywhere, all the time, it's about building trust with yourself, with your audience. Maybe it's instead of like trying to work with hundreds and hundreds of people, maybe it's you making the decision that you want to go deeper with a core, a smaller group of core people. That would be another way to go forward, would be deeper. So none of these are better than the other. But sometimes trying to do all of Them at once is where people get stuck. It's like you're trying to do more and different and deeper, and you wonder why you feel maxed out or confused or, like, again, I'm just picturing, like, literally, I'm picturing a fork in a forest, and there's three different paths, and y' all are looking at it, and you're like, I could go that way or I could go this way. I could go that way. And you're like, why can't I make up my mind? And to me, it's so clear. I'm like, you just haven't decided where you want to go and what do you want it to feel like and what matters to you right now? So that's why it's so, so, so important, incredibly important, Crucially important to spend some time thinking about what this next year is asking of you, right? And I really do think there is such a cost of skipping these decisions, right? What will happen if you don't make these decisions? What will happen if you're like, yeah, yeah, I don't need to do this. I'm too busy. I got it. It's in my head. I'm good. Right. Well, this is where I see over planning. Okay, probably sounds kind of counterintuitive, right? You're probably like, seriously, I'm sure you were expecting me to say, like, lack of a plan. Sometimes it can be that, but I actually see people, the most confused people are actually over planning, right? And that's because they're planning as a way of not having to make decisions and not having to do the actual work. So sometimes over planning will have you. Like, I. I see myself doing this sometimes where I try to schedule out my day or something, and I pack way too much into it. It's not even realistic. It's not even winnable because I haven't made the decision about what is the most important thing in my day. I'm just trying to do everything. I'm trying to squeeze every last minute out of the day, out of the day. And because of this, it's only a matter of time. Like, literally, it's like a game of Jenga. Only one brick needs to fall out before this whole tower just comes tumbling down. When you're really. This is actually really cool. The clearer you are about your decisions next year, the less you have to actually plan. I know it goes kind of counter against, like, what you would think I would say about year on the wall. It's just, like, all about planning. But I actually think the Clearer I am about what result I'm trying to get and who I need to be. The less important, the details, the fine details of my actual plan, because I. I'm just, like, not confused. I'm just, like, I'll know it when I see it. I still plan, don't get me wrong. But it's like, I'm not very tempted. This is why I'm not as tempted by all of those different pathways in the woods. Because if you're in the woods and you haven't made these decisions, you're like, well, that path looks good and that one looks interesting. And maybe that one goes to a waterfall, and maybe that one goes to the cliffs, and maybe that one goes to a cave. And I'll. If I have my decisions made, I'm like, no, no, no. We know where we're going. Blinders on. I'm sure the waterfall is cool, but, like, I'm going this way, right? And so I don't get as turned around with, like, really, really, like, overly planned, overly, like, fine tooth comb. I mean, guys, the number of times I've made a sauna. Boards and notion boards. And it's just, like, overkill. Oftentimes it's because you've actually skipped these decisions, believe it or not. Okay. You will also experience constant second guessing. Constant second guessing. Well, shoot. Like, it's literally, again, to continue my analogy, it's like you start down a path and then you turn back. You're like, oh, I don't know if this is. This is the one. Let me go try the other one. Let me walk down that path. Ah, I still don't like that one. Let me go back. Right? And it's just the pingponging. Instead of being like, nope, I've got my marching orders. I'm going for it, and there's no looking back. You may also have the sensation of feeling behind before January even starts. Like, do you already feel like it's not even January yet? And you're like, oh, my God, I'm already behind. That may be because you don't feel clear and convicted about these decisions. And then the last thing is choosing goals that aren't actually aligned. Like, if you're thinking about your goals and you're already exhausted thinking about. About them, that's something to think about as well. It probably goes back to the who do I want to be? Piece for that one. Right? Because here's the thing. A lot of burnout. We talk about the B word, right? Burnout. A lot of burnout. People are Like, I don't want to burn out, right? A lot of burnout doesn't actually come from doing too much. Fun fact, okay? A lot of times it can. Sure it can. But a lot of times burnout doesn't come from doing too much. It comes from doing things that don't match the direction you actually want. This is why you can have that sensation of working on something and time falls away like time collapses. You're like, you know what I mean, right? You're out, you're into a project, you're doing something. It could be work, it could be a craft, it could be many things. And you're like, holy smokes, four hours has gone by and you're not burnt out at all, right? If anything, you're lit up. This is what really like, like sets fire to the idea that burnout comes from doing too much has nothing to do with doing too much. Right? It comes from doing things that don't match the direction that you actually want. I think that's so helpful to think about. So if you'd like a simple. Again, we have so much good stuff that will get you crystal, crystal clear on this inside of your. On the wall. But I wanted to give you a quick, like five to ten minute exercise that you could do right now, especially because we're in that liminal space right now between Christmas and New Year that you could play with to help you get clear and make these decisions. Okay? So I actually have three little fill in the blank sentences for you. And what I want you to do is if you can safely, safely grab a piece of paper, do would be best to just jot down some answers. But if you need to do it in your head because you're driving or whatever, totally fine. But I want you to answer these questions without editing. Okay, let's give it a shot. Number one is in 2026, I want my business to feel more blank than blank. Okay? In 2026, I want my business to feel more blank than blank. Okay. Number two, let me give you a second to think about that, actually. Okay, we got it. Great. Number two, I want to be known for blank, not blank. Okay. You could actually leave out the not part if you want. You could do this either way. You could say you could just leave it as, I want to be known for blank. That might be good enough. Okay. But some of you are going to want to do the whole sentence. I want to be known for blank, not blank. Okay, got our answers there. Fantastic. Number three, if this year went the way I would like I would be doing less blank by December if this year went ideal. Ideally, I would be doing less blank by December. Okay, here's the homework. If you can't answer these, do not touch a planner yet. You got no business cracking open a planner. Okay, Planning. What. What are we planning if we can't answer these questions right? And I'm not, you know, being a little sassy with it, but really think about it. Like, if you don't know this, these are your compass questions. These are setting your direction. I always use this analogy. I know some of you have heard me say it, that if you're going on a road trip or you're getting on an airplane, you know where you're trying to go, right? You're plugging in your gps. Where are you going? Do you just get in the car and start driving? I mean, I guess that's one way to do it, but most of us, that. That's not at all the way that we would approach a road trip, right? What business do we have driving if we haven't decided where we are going? Okay, so, my friends, this is why Year on the Wall starts where it does. We don't actually start with goals at first. We get there. We very much get there in the training. But we have to start with that direction setting, with that map, with that compass question, we. And then we again, we go much deeper in the training, right? So if you're feeling confused right now, you're not at all behind. You're not at all behind. You just have more decisions that you need to make. And if you would like to go deeper with me and you really want to knock this thing out of the park, I really encourage you to join me for my encore presentation of you're on the Wall. It's coming up on January 7th. If you already bought a ticket to the first round, amazing. You get to come again. Or if you didn't get to come and you haven't gotten to it yet, no problem. I know how busy this time of year is. You have another chance to come see me live, and I loved how many of you came live last time. I hope we can have just as many people there this second time. You can go to yearonthewall.com and get your ticket if you're. If you already have a ticket, you just need to check your email. We've already sent you the details. I cannot wait to see you there. My friends, this is my last podcast episode of 2025. I am so grateful that you're here. I thank you so much. And by the way, if you listen to this podcast and you have never left me a review on itunes, would you consider doing that? I would really appreciate it. Apparently, these reviews help other people like you find my podcast. And it would mean the world to me if you would just take a moment, moment to rate the podc, write a little review, tell me and others what you like so much about the show. It would mean the world to me. Okay, friends, I cannot wait to see you in 2026. It's going to be an incredible year. It's going to be our best yet. And I'll meet you there. And until then, I'm wishing you the courage and the clarity to go after what you love.