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Hello, my friends. Welcome to episode number 203. So excited to be here today. Please forgive the downgraded audio quality for the moment. I promise the whole episode is not going to sound like this. It's just that I am recording an intro for you from the side of a lake. I am watching my kids swimming in the water. They're actually kind of fighting right now. If you know, you know. And it is the end of summer and we are just enjoying one last vacation after a very busy summer. And it is just amazingly beautiful out here. Even when my kids are fighting, I'd rather they fight in a beautiful location than at home. So here we are. I have been thinking about what I wanted to share with you all at this exact moment in time, and I. I really want you all to hear an episode from the archives. Now, this was originally episode number 15 of this podcast when I came back to business in 2022. The episode is called where you left off. And you're gonna hear me explain what that means. And it's just I've re listened to it myself because I have sent so many clients to this episode recently. And it's just one that I think bears repeating and being heard again. You know, for a lot of us, the summertime is a time of less structure. Maybe you've been out of the routine. Maybe you're gonna be coming back to routine when school is coming back. And you may be tempted to tell yourself stories about how you're not where you wanna be or how you're behind, or you just might have drama about that. It's very normal. And so this episode is going to challenge that thinking it's gonna help you ask a really important question, which is what if you could just pick up right where you left off. I'm so excited for you to hear this episode again. You're gonna hear me talking about the messy middle, which is my previous mastermind. Today is known as sold out group programs. It's, it's, you know, four years later, essentially, which is wild. This is now the mastermind that has evolved out of that program. So it's also really cool to hear about that, I think. And I just hope you enjoy. I hope you can find the nugget of, you know, inspiration that you need right now in this episode. And I hope that you can challenge yourself to just pick up right where you left off. I hope you enjoy this episode. Let's go to the show. 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. 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. We'll. Let's go. I want to talk to you about this idea of where you left off. So I've been really thinking about this, and it's pretty cool. So I have been, as we all do in April in the United States, I've been spending a lot of time bothering my wonderful accountant. It's tax time here in the United States, and I have to give a shout out to Nakondra Moran of Exceptional Tax Services. We've been working together for years. She's been dealing with my. My financial literacy, or lack thereof. Something I'm working on. It's something I'm working on. But Nakondra is wonderful. She's so professional and she's just great to work with. And so we're going back and forth. You know, she files my taxes, she helps with our taxes, not only for the business, but also for my family. And, you know, she came back and she said something that I'm sure if she's hearing this, first of all, hi, Nakondra. Secondly, she probably has no idea the impact that this had on me, but it really did stop me in my tracks in the best way. We were talking about what I owe Uncle Sam, and she said this comment, she said, steph's business has really picked up right where she left off. Yeah. So for those of you, you probably know this if you're listening to the podcast, but maybe you're new. I have been a business coach. I've been running my own business kind of on and off since like, 2014 was my first foray into coaching. And I've worked, I've had some. Some great opportunities to work for other people. I've taken breaks from my business in that time. Most recently, I was the director of sales and marketing over in another company for a year. And so I came back to this business, gosh, just like six months ago, A little bit over six months ago, maybe seven months ago. And so what Nakondra is referencing there is. Is that, you know, looking at my taxes and looking at what we're doing, what the business is doing now, it's as though I never left. I took a year off. And if you all know, if you've been around, you know, I ghosted you guys. Sorry for that, by the way. It was a very unceremonious departure. I, you know, I've talked about this. I have a podcast episode you can listen to. It's. I think it's called I'm Back. It's the first one in your feed. It should be the oldest one available for listening where I talk about, you know, that decision to. To leave my business, the decision to come back to my business. And the truth of the matter is I really had no, like, shutdown plan. You know, I. I always thought it was possible, maybe even probable, that I would be back. But I've seen other people, quite a few other people make the decision to step back from their business, maybe close their business entirely. And I've nose noticed with a little bit of shame, if I am being completely honest. Other people seem to really do this in a very tidy way. They might do like a we're closing sale. They, you know, turn off all their stuff. I didn't do any of that. I just kind of was like, put up a post saying, hey, I got this amazing new job. Thanks for the memories. And I just kind of stopped. I just kind of stopped. And there's a lot of reasons for that. I didn't. I just didn't really know what to do or if I'd be back. And I was so excited about my new opportunity that I kind of just let things expire on the vine, wither on the vine, if you will. And that felt weird. It did feel a little bit uncomfortable to just leave it, like hanging open like a. Like a sentence with ellipses. And I share that with you because I want. Because I think it's relevant that that was kind of uncomfortable for me. It was like I was very busy in the season of life, young kids, new job, wanting to my best work. And I always had in the back of my mind, like, I should close my. Some of my stuff at one point. I mean, really, this was sloppy. At one point my domain expired. The reason you can't access all my old podcast episodes is because my podcast membership expired. I didn't know all my episodes would get deleted. And so all of this happened so imperfectly. And I just. This is relevant, I promise. But, you know, just to show you kind of the messy side of the decisions that I made. I don't regret that. It's just how my journey unfolded. I needed the break, I took the break, and I did it without a lot of forethought. Right. And so when a year later, I wanted to come back to this business, you can imagine I had a lot of questions and even some doubt about how possible that was going to be. I mean, after all, I just kind of left, right? I just sort of left the door open and wandered out and just left everybody wondering, like, what was going. I mean, I did say where I was going, but, yeah, just, you know, a website that doesn't work anymore, like all real messy stuff. Right. And so you can imagine that as I came back to. The first thing that I did when I came back is I took one on one coaching clients. And now, of course, I've launched the Mastermind. And through all of it, I had this burning question in the back of my mind, which, a few questions, really, but they sounded something like this. What if it doesn't work? What if everybody's moved on? What if all that success I had before is squandered? What if I'm starting from scratch? What if just because it worked before, it doesn't work again? And just overall, a lot of beating myself up about some of the time that if I wanted to look at it a certain way, I could say it was, I don't want to say wasted, because the opportunity I had to be in this role with another company was. It was a great opportunity. And I. I have said this and I will continue to say it. I have no regrets. It was definitely the right move for me. I learned a lot. It was a growth development opportunity for me. And let me just tell you, I have come back to my business healthier mindset wise than I have been in years. And that has a lot to do with the decision that I made to take a step back and just kind of breathe like I had a baby in the pandemic, y'. All, I built a house. A lot of stuff happened for me that just made me need to take a beat, you know, take a beat and let somebody else be the CEO for a while. And. But even still, even without any regret, I would not go back and do it, do it differently. I still had questions like, yeah, what's the plan if this doesn't work? And you can see, I bet you can see, right? You can see that my concern. I mean, it was legit. That's a legit concern. And I was thinking about what Nakandra said, that it's as though you picked right up. Up where you left off. And what she specifically meant with that comment was my business revenue, which is pretty cool, considering this is a business that does multiple six figures a year. No one's more surprised than me that I could take a year off, have this unceremonious exit, do it imperfectly, and then just come back and with a lot of hard work, for sure. And some grit and some elbow grease and some humility and vulnerability and a whole lot of mindset work, y'. All. So much mindset work. Help from coaches, help from friends. To have my accountant say, it's as though you picked up where you left off. And that has me thinking about how much drama a lot of us have around. Let's call it falling off the wagon, falling behind, Things not going according to plan. Let me tell you a little bit about how this shows up all the time in my coaching with my clients. And so just so everybody listening knows, this is not about any one client. I couldn't even pick just one. I've heard this probably from every client at some point in working with me. So normal. I can't even tell you how normal it is for them to come to me and say, oh, gosh, I had this plan. I was gonna do X, Y, Z. I was gonna send this email to my list, I was gonna post on social media, I was gonna launch. I was going the blank. And then life happened, right? My kid got sick, a hurricane hit, I had to move my parents, health started failing. And everything in between, y', all, life is gonna. Life. You know what I mean? Life is gonna be what life is. Life is going to happen. And I notice the shame and the beating up of oneself that happens when we come back to it and say, I fell off the wagon, I'm behind. And now. And a lot of times, our temptation is to focus on what we perceive we've lost. Whether it's a day, a week, a month, or a year. All that time, I could have been. I should have been, right? I didn't do what I said I was going to do. And now look at me. And I think about this, too. This. Like, there's so many places in life where this shows up. Like you have an exercise plan and you're gonna work out six days this week or something, and you miss a day. You miss a day. How often. And this is hitting a little too close to home right now. Cause I'm actually in a week like this myself where I've Just had some circumstances where I'm normally really good about getting to the gym these days because I genuinely enjoy it. Never thought I'd be the person who says that, but I enjoy the effects that I get from it from a mental perspective and, of course, physically, energetically. But I'm having one of those weeks where a day off turned into two days off turns into three days off, and now we're going on, like, five days off. What's happened here? Well, we make it mean something that we missed a day, that we fell off our plan, that life happened. And so when that happens, we kind of have a choice, right? We can choose to disrupt the very tempting pattern of, well, I didn't do what I was gonna say I said I was gonna do yesterday, so who cares if I do it today, right? Like, maybe you said you're gonna make your bed every day, and you miss a day. Now it's so easy to miss another day. Why is that? Well, you're making it mean something is what I've realized, right? The fact that you made your bed seven days in a row, but you didn't make it yesterday. Now your brain wants to be like, well, see, I told you. You're not the kind of person that can make your bed every day. Who cares? You, if you make it today, you didn't make it yesterday, probably not gonna make it tomorrow. So let's just give up, right? Let's just move on. We're not gonna be the kind of person who makes our bed. We're not gonna be the kind of person who goes to the gym. Maybe we're not gonna be an entrepreneur. Maybe I'll just pack it in and go do something that's a little less challenging. And this question has just come up for me, which is, what if you just picked up where you left off? What if that is an option? To just not engage in the drama that is oh, so tempting? Friends, like I told you, I'm on day five of just not walking my butt to the gym because I'm like, you know, I didn't go. I didn't go. And I was supposed to do arm day, and now I got leg day, and, you know, woe is me, right? What if. What if I just didn't? Didn't. What if I just opted out of that whole shame spiral and just picked up where I left off like nothing happened? So if the last time that I worked out was five days ago and I had, you know, for the following day, I had arm day programmed, I'm just Gonna go to the gym today and do arm day. I'm gonna pretend like those five days didn't happen, because who cares, right? Like, who really cares that five days have passed? Okay, Could I be a little bit stronger maybe, you know, maybe I could have, you know, I'd be further ahead in my plan. I'm five days behind. That is one way of looking at it. But one. Is looking at it that way really serving me at all? I would argue absolutely not. And number two, most importantly, does it really matter? Looking at my financial picture and having my accountant say, it's like, you pick up, picked up where you left off. It's like, the year that I took off, my business doesn't matter. And guess what? It doesn't matter now. Sure, you could argue. Let's just say, you know, let's just say I'm going to do 200k in my business this year, and maybe if I hadn't taken a year off, maybe I'd be doing 500k this year. We'll never know, right? We'll never know. And it's relevant. What is relevant to me is how freaking cool is it that I can just say to myself, I'm realizing now it's exactly, exactly what I did by leaving things hanging open for a year, which I had so much shame about. I felt super unprofessional. What I'm seeing now that I couldn't have known at the time is it gave me the opportunity to just pick up where I left off. I think about, you know, performers. My daughter just had a dance recital and she was nervous. Of course. She's six years old. She was super nervous, and she was like, mom, like, what if I forget a part? What if I miss a step? What if I get it wrong? What do you think my answer was? I said, just jump back in when you remember what to do next. So you miss a step, okay? You got two choices, right? You can stand there like a deer in headlights watching everybody else dance, and you know what moves come next, but you're not doing them because all you're thinking about is the one freaking step that you missed. Well, now it really is standing out that you're just standing there, right? Or you can put a smile on your face. You can just jump right back in and pick up where you left off as if it never happened. It happened, okay? So what? Would it have been better if you hadn't missed the step? I don't know. Maybe. But who really cares, right? So that's what I want to offer you today is like, what if, first of all, what if we play this game that it's not if you fall off your plan, if you miss a deadline, if you get sick, you know, how about it's when, okay? Because we're imperfect humans. We're. We have best laid plans. What if we plan for things to not go according to plan? And what if it's actually 10 times more important that you pick yourself up and jump right back into your plan? What if it's 10 times more important that you do that than it is to do everything perfectly, right? What if we just plan for things to not go according to plan and we say, okay, so something's gonna happen, right? Like, life's gonna be life. You know, things are gonna happen, and I'm just gonna go ahead and accept that, right Now. I remember when I was getting married, I had a mentor at the time who said, you gotta tell yourself something's gonna go wrong on that day. And I remember being like, what? My special day? I want everything to go perfectly. He's like, no, no, something's gonna go wrong. And things did go wrong. I didn't like something about my hair, for example, right? We had a fire drill about fixing my hair, whatever. Everybody's got probably some version of this for those of you who had a big event, like a wedding, like, like. But at first, I didn't like that he said that. I was like, no, but like, I'm gonna do everything I can to control everything and have it all go according to plan. What I see now is that he was completely right. And by just accepting that something was gonna go wrong, I was ready to just roll with it, right? And I might have had my little moment and been a little stressed, but it didn't. It didn't surprise me. It didn't catch me off guard as much. And I'm. I'm realizing this, that with almost 10 years of business building experience, I am so flexible and give so much grace to myself because I know I'm going to go off plan. For example, I'm recording this episode right now on a Thursday. I like to publish on Mondays, guys. And I didn't get to it this week because I'm serving my clients now. I try not to make a habit of breaking promises to myself, and I take my appointments really seriously, especially, you know, even when they're commitments to myself. Like, nobody cares if I break a commitment to myself, but I care at the same time. I know that things are gonna happen and that it's. It just does no good to wring my hands and think about all the shame that comes up about the fact that I'm now behind my plan, right? Instead, I just pick myself up and jump back in right where I left off. I could have said this week, you know, I didn't. Didn't publish the podcast on Monday, so, like, let's just hit it next week. Let's just wait for next Monday. Y', all, I want you to know that while that is a totally natural thing to think, it's totally toxic. It's toxic because it's perfectionism. Like, it's like a snake in the grass, right? That tells you that if you don't send your email newsletter that you promised you would send on X date, that you might as well just skip a week F that, right? Like, get in there now. I don't care if it's Friday afternoon. You write that email and you send it because you're gonna pick up where you left off and you're not gonna have any drama about it. Because I know I've said this before, but if you were to ask me what is the number one predictor of success in entrepreneurs, what I would tell you is, it's not the most skilled person. It's not the smartest person. It's not the best expert. It's not the richest person. It's the person who is most willing to stay in the game over time. And you are so much more willing to and able to stay in the game if you adopt that mentality of picking up where you left off. So I just want to invite you to think about this. Like, isn't it crazy that I'm just picking up my business where I left off as if the past year just didn't happen? I mean, I'm blown away by that. I never would have found out that this was true if I hadn't just tried, right? If I had allowed that voice that said, yo, you burn every bridge. People moved on. Nobody cares. You're going to have to rebuild. Like, it's all. All head trash. It's all baloney. And, you know, some people out there would. Would argue, like, time. Like, you know, what is the past? It's nothing other than our own memory. I mean, in a way, like, it's a figment of your imagination. Okay, so four days passed. Like, what is four days, right? What is it really? It's just a del. It's just a segment of time that humans have come up with to help us understand our world. Doesn't mean anything unless you make it mean something. So what would happen if you just, you know, put into place an attitude of picking up where you left off? Really want you to think about 6 year olds at a dance recital and imagine that fork in the road that emerges when that one little girl misses a step, right? She could make it mean something and get all up in her head and freeze and notice the lights are shining on her and then the tears are coming and we all know where that's headed, right? Right. Or she can just smile on through it and jump into the next step. Oops, I turned left. I meant to turn right. Oop, I fell on my butt. Okay, up we go onto the next eight count, right? Picking up where you left off. You imagine a, like a. A band performing, right? Like that happens all the time. They, they, you know, the guitar player, the bass player, the singer. They're kind of out of harmony for a second. What do they do? They just get back on the same page and they pick up right where they left off. So listen, dear listener, I don't care if you've missed a day, a week, a month, a year, 10 years. Doesn't matter to me. It really doesn't. I want you to know that you are invited today to pick up where you left off. Just pretend like that was five seconds ago, because who cares, right? Pick up where you left off. Okay, sure, you could have made more progress if you had. If, if, if, if, if. But that game's not serving us. What's most important is, is making it across that finish line, right? Doesn't matter. Just pick up where you left off. Give it a try. I'd love to hear from you. If this is a concept that is helpful to you today, you can find me on Instagram at. Hey, Steph crowder. I love DMs. I love to hear from y'. All. I love emails. Stephcrowder.com if you want to shoot me an email. Get out there, y'. All. Pick up where you left off. And I'll see you next time. Have a beautiful day ahead.