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You are listening to the Grow youw Local Business podcast where local marketing expert and life coach Leslie Presnell shares the strategies and the mindset to help you reach more people in your city and bring in a steady stream of clients. All right, let's dive in.

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Hey, welcome to episode 138. Today we're going to talk about not feeling motivated and how to still show up and get things done in your business. How to show up anyway, like for your business, for yourself, for your clients, for your future self, for what you're building. I recently had a conversation with one of my students inside the localpreneur Academy. And I know so many of you can relate to this conversation, so I wanted to bring it here and share it with you and just share the coaching that I gave her. I know a lot of my episodes are kind of perfectly laid out, like three simple steps and five ways to do this and they're just really organized. But in this episode, I just wanted to share my thoughts with you and really what I coached her through because it is powerful and I know you can get a lot from it if you struggle to take action when you're not feeling motivated. And I want to share her specific scenario. And in the coaching I gave her, I share some of the scenarios where I don't always feel motivated. But I want you to think right now for yourself. Where am I not feeling motivated? Or where do I make it a problem when I'm not motivated? Like, where do I stop showing up when I'm not feeling motivated? So this student, she's an amazing woman. She's a full time teacher and she has a home organizing business. So right now it's the middle of the fall, middle of the school year, and she isn't able to come to our live coaching calls each week. So she's able to just either listen to the replays or watch the replays or post in our community and get my coaching or get my feedback. So the way we were communicating was through written coaching. But she knew that I was also a former teacher. So for those of you who don't know, I was a teacher for seven years. I taught middle school English and I grew my business during that time up until I was able to take my business full time. And I come from a family of educators and I have, I had a lot of drama and a lot of thoughts about leaving a job with retirement and insurance. So I have an entire episode on how I left my job. The powerful thoughts I had as a single female in her 20s with a mortgage, who had to support herself and how I navigated that. I'm going to link to that episode in the show notes. That's not really the direction of this episode, but this client is a teacher and she's trying to grow her home organizing business in the time she has, just like I was and just like, I know so many of you with full time jobs do. And this year actually she got a new position outside of the classroom, which has taken a lot of her time, it's taken a lot of her energy, a lot of her attention and I mean she's essentially like learning how to have a new job in the past couple of months. And she told me because of this transition, it's been busy with long hours and she hasn't been working in her business at all because of it. And she asked me if, when I had a full time job, if I ever wondered if I was still doing the right thing by continuing my business. And she told me that she hadn't had the motivation to even think about posting or marketing her business. And she's actually hidden her profiles on some of the local apps that she's normally on. So that's where she usually gets a lot of her leads from. So now, right now, leads couldn't even contact her if they wanted to. They can't even find her. So she hasn't been getting any new leads, any more business from the normal places in the past couple of months just due to, you know, the lack of time and energy and her not marketing. So I told her, I said first I was like, not having clients right now makes sense. Like if you haven't been marketing and you hid your profile, it totally makes sense that people aren't booking. But also see that this is totally in your control. That is very powerful to see. Anytime you stop marketing, it is powerful to see that that is something that's in your control. You can start getting the visibility, the leads, the clients as soon as you just start taking action again if you want to. So about continuing her business, I told her, I was like, this really is just a decision that you get to make. Do you want to keep working in your business? Why or why not? Like there, there is no wrong answer. There's just your answer. If not like, we can stop here. But if yes, the problem happens when we wait for motivation to show up. Motivation rarely shows up. I don't have motivation 99% of the days that I am working. I did not have motivation to sit down and record this podcast. But I do have a commitment to myself to show up anyway. I want the result that I am creating. I have a commitment to you guys, to the business, to the vision. I don't need to feel motivated or to feel anything when I am committed. And this comes from making a decision to show up ahead of time. So if you do, and I told her this, I was like, if you do decide to continue working in your business or for those of you that might have full time jobs and you're also trying to work in your business, or maybe you just are working in your business, get clear on when you will work in your business. Make the decision ahead of time, make it once, and then you honor that time no matter how you feel. Again, this takes needing to feel motivated out of the equation. You're just committed. You're committed to show up. At the time you said, when I was a teacher, I decided that I would wake up every morning at 4am to work in my business before I went to school. I'm a morning person, I'm not an evening person. But if you are an evening person, maybe you give yourself time at night. Maybe it's just one night a week that you give yourself and you commit to that. Or maybe it's a few nights a week, maybe it's the weekends, like you get to decide. But again, it's about deciding ahead of time and then showing up no matter how you feel, without needing the motivation to be there. It feels hard. But you have to show yourself how you are capable. You have to build up this identity for yourself that you are the person who can handle having a full time job and growing a business. It's hard and I am capable of doing this hard thing. Think about how you are capable of doing other hard things in other parts of your life. Like what are other hard things that you've done without motivation? Like when I became a teacher, the first two years, my first two years in teaching and for any of you that are in education or think about any job, it's always the hardest when you're new at it, right? Especially when you're a new teacher and you're young. I was 22 years old, fresh out of college, I became a teacher. I went back to school to get my master's degree in my first year of teaching. So I went to night school. So after teaching crazy wild 12 year olds all day long, I would drive almost an hour to college and I would have class, night classes from 6 to 9 o' clock at night and then I would have to drive back home and then I would have to grade papers, do lesson plans, whatever I had to do to get ready for the next day. I did that for two years. That was hard. So when I need to remind myself that I can do hard things, I remind myself of that. I was 22 years old, and I did really hard things. And I will say I kept a 4.0, thank you very much. But if you're also thinking about, like, if you're a mom or if you're a parent, like, you have done hard things, you've gone on little sleep, you've gotten done what you needed to get done, you've taken care of everyone. Like, you have done hard things. So where in your life have you done hard things? And then show yourself. Also the tiny moments where you're just able to show up every day and do things without motivation. You just get it done. Like, I'm never motivated to brush my teeth, but I do it every day, multiple times a day, in case you were wondering because I want the result or, like, I don't like doing the dishes. That's never fun. I'm never motivated to do the dishes. I'm never inspired to do the dishes, but I don't want bugs or a smelly house. You have so much evidence, if you look for it, that you can do things when you are not motivated because you are committed to the result or you're committed to your word. So where are you waiting to feel motivated before taking action? Now, I also decided this year to run another marathon. At first, I was excited, but between me and you, I am not motivated at all right now. The marathon's in January, so I have a couple months. But this will be my third marathon. I did want. You know, you're always very motivated, excited for your first one because you're. It's just pure adrenaline, like, proven you can do it, really. And then I did one right after I had Amelia, like, 10 months postpartum. And that was all kind of proven. I could do it again, but now I'm not motivated. Like, it's not fun. It's not exciting anymore. So it's not motivation that is driving me, but it was just deciding at this point ahead of time that I was going to do it. It's deciding ahead of time now when I'm going to run, putting it on my calendar and then honoring it, even when the dread is there, even when I'm tired, even when I want to sleep in, no matter how I feel, because I do want the result. All the drama happens when we stay in the indecision of it all. Like, am I really going to do it? Will I do it? Am I going to work today? What if I don't feel like it? But if you just decide ahead of time I'm going to work, I'm going to do this thing at this time, all the drama goes away. It's so much easier. Here's another example that I shared with the student some weekends. And I got. I got so mad bad about this, especially once Amelia was born. I would stay in limbo of, like, I really need to get some work done this weekend. But I would never commit to it. I would never put it on my calendar, and I would never, like, officially decide to do anything. So all weekend, it would just kind of be spinning around in my head, just me thinking about it, like, oh, I. I could do this and hoping to get really motivated at some point. And guess what? I never got motivated to work over the weekend because I wanted to hang out with my kid. And then I would start the week feeling behind and be like, man, Leslie, you really should have done that over the weekend. And then I would beat myself up. So now I have a rule. I either plan to do something on the weekend, like it is on the calendar, and I schedule it ahead of time. I know exactly when I'm gonna do it, and I ask my husband to watch Emelia. Like, they go to the park or they go to the play place. Like, they do something. And I have a specific block, a time that I'm going to do something, and I'm committed to doing that, or I don't work at all, but I don't let myself stay in this limbo of thinking about it all weekend and hoping that I just get super motivated, that the motivation just strikes, or that I just get inspired and want to come hop on my computer or laptop, because that just doesn't ever happen. So, long story short, it is just a decision that you honor. But here's the thing. It's not going to be comfortable to show up. You are going to have to work when you're tired or after a long day or on the weekends. And you're going to have to work most of all when you're unmotivated. Very rarely do we have amazing emotions when we're working. In fact, it's a lot of negative, negative emotions a lot of the time. But it really comes from the desire to create the result you want in your business and the commitment to show up no matter what. So if you notice yourself waiting to feel motivated to show up in your business, you have to stop waiting. You just have to be committed. You just have to honor your word. So decide today. When will you work in your business? This week, put it on the calendar, and then show up for that time, no matter how you feel, whether you're tired, you feel busy, you feel unmotivated. Because that is just how you build proof that you can do the hard things. That's how you become the kind of person who keeps promises to yourself, who grows a business you're proud of, and who starts creating results that you want. All right, if this resonated with you and you want coaching like this every week, the kind that helps you get unstuck, take consistent action, this is what we do inside the LocalPreneur Academy. So you can join us with the link in the show notes and I'll see you inside. Hey, if you enjoyed today's episode, I want to invite you to check out my program, the LocalPreneur Academy. This is the only program for small business owners. Owners who want to become the local go to in their industry with a steady stream of clients. You can find more information@lesliepressnell.com and I'll see you inside.