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The Conscious Entrepreneur | Leadership, Self-Awareness & Mindset
EP 120: 2026 Business Planning for Entrepreneurs: Future Self Identity, Limiting Beliefs, and the “How Can We” Framework with Debbie King
00:51:53
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- [00:00]
A
If you're doing your planning sessions the way you've done them in the past, by looking at what happened last year and stretching yourself to 20 or 30% better. My guest today, Debbie King, says there's something you should do instead. And what you should do instead has everything to do with what you're thinking and what you're feeling and who you're being, and less about the results that you're trying to accomplish. This is a really great conversation about your mindset as an entrepreneur and how that mindset actually has maybe the biggest impact that any choice has on the business results that you create. Let's get into it. You're listening to the Conscious Entrepreneur and I'm Sarah Lockwood. This is the only podcast completely dedicated to the well being of entrepreneurs. It's where we do the inner work to become the leaders our businesses truly need. A thriving business starts with a thriving you. Let's Get Into It. We are here today with Debbie King and we are talking about something that is so crucial to setting ourselves up for success for 2026, and that is planning, thinking about, envisioning our future. And one of the things that is very common is to look at what happened this year. So looking at 2025 and thinking to yourself, well, what were our revenue goals? What, what was our profit margin? You know, what do we take home? You know, what, what kind of big accomplishments did we achieve? And then you're kind of using that as your baseline and saying, okay, let's add 20%, let's add 25%, let's get crazy and make a stretch goal of 30%. And Debbie, can you tell us that that is a completely wrong way to approach our planning cycles for the next year? Tell us more.
- [01:54]
B
Well, thanks for having me, Sarah. I'm so happy to be here with you. I don't know if I would say it was wrong, but it's not optimal. It's not going to get you really the results that you want. So the way I like to think of it is an analogy. When you see a wake behind a boat, the wake is not pushing the boat. We understand that it's the boat that causes the wake. So who you're being now is what caused your past. So you wouldn't want to use the past to decide where you're going to be. You would want to use the future where you're going to decide where you are now. So if you put a timeline and you think of the past informing the present, and then the present's going to inform the Future, it's so limiting. It's so linear, it's not even real. Instead, I advocate, and this is what I do, you picture the future that's already happened. Like, you have to feel that in your body. Whether it's a future forecast or some other goal that you have, you. You picture it, you visualize it, you feel it, you believe it, and we'll talk more about how to do that. And then you pull it to you in the present. You pull the future to you in the present. You don't try to make another version of the past be the future.
- [03:36]
A
What I'm hearing you say is that the results that you had and that you enjoyed this year are a lagging indicator based on the things that you did, and those things have nothing to do with what's possible in the future. Exactly.
- [04:05]
B
Oh, that was brilliant. That's so great. What a great way to start off, right?
- [04:09]
A
I think so. That's why I wanted every single person who's listening to this podcast to, you know, go into a planning cycle with a completely different view on what's possible. Because the idea that we anchor our future on some, you know, 1.20, you know, sort of vision of what's possible is so wrong, and it creates a limit on what we believe is even possible for ourselves. And when you listen to people like Dr. Ben Hardy and the things that you teach in. In your book, loving your business, you realize that your mindset of how you even approach planning either sets you up for something really expansive or it. It caps you in what you described as a very linear path of, like, you know, just a little bit get a little bit better, and that's as good as it can be, and even a lot better is, like, impossible. You know, this is your stretch goal and how wrong that is. And so I just would love for, you know, us to be able to understand how to walk into planning and even thinking about, like, next year in this more expansive mindset that, you know, you can teach us about. So how do we approach planning, you know, before we're with our teams? What is the inner work that we need to do before the planning meeting?
- [05:55]
B
Well, first of all, I just have to say, though, that you encapsulated that brilliantly. And the idea that the results that we have now are the lagging indicator of the person that we were. That's the key thing that you highlighted here that I want to draw our attention to. So if we keep being the person that we were, we'll keep getting variations, very small variations of the results that we got in the past. So if you want a different future, the idea is to be a different person. And the reason this is so important is that who you are, being at your essence, your self concept and who you are naturally drives what you're doing. So many of us, and there's a lot of books out there that talk about what to do, right, all this strategy, you know, do this, do that, do this. But being is the cause and doing is the expression. So when you're trying to do something that is not in alignment with who you are, it doesn't work. That's why so many people don't have success with diets and this, that or the other strategy or whatever, it doesn't jive with their self concept. So, so I just wanted to highlight that again. And now we'll talk about how to become a different person, which is not as hard as we think. But, but that was the key there.
- [07:34]
A
Yeah, and your point's such, such an important one because it is, you know, the actions that you're taking. Obviously results come from actions. We know that. We're not dismissing that as a reality. You know, it's the, it's the work you actually did, the things that you actually put into place is what drives the results. Those are the lagging indicators. But what you're saying, that isn't a, is a new wrinkle that I think is the powerful wrinkle that we're trying to talk about today is that the beliefs that you have and the thoughts that you're thinking are the fuel of the actions that you actually take. And so the trick for me, and this is something. How do you make yourself think a thought or believe something that isn't real yet?
- [08:23]
B
Yes, that's a very good, I mean if, if that was evident to everyone, everyone would always have what they wanted. Okay, so. So this is obscured from us, it's obscured from view. So it's a brilliant question, Sarah. How do we become someone different? Really, if we want to get different results, we need to be the person who does the things naturally, as in an, as an expression of who we're being that gets those results. So let's talk about what a self concept is. And it's another word for identity. I just prefer self concept, but it's the same thing which is really what you think about yourself, who you believe that you are. Okay, so what makes up our self concept is a collection of beliefs. And many of them were not consciously chosen by us. They were inherited as children. Many of Our strongest beliefs come from childhood. They were in. They were like, almost. We inculcated these beliefs before we made decisions about whether we wanted to or not. We just accepted them because of the way our parents modeled things or said things about us or society or school or any number of things. So we have beliefs that are hidden from view that we think are just facts about the way the world is. Like, nobody can. I love Ben hardy and the 10x concept because that is not a belief that people had really. Until he started really talking about that. That 10x is easier than 2x. Okay? So a belief is a thought that you accept because you've repeated it so many times or someone you respect has told you and you've accepted it. A belief is not a fact. It doesn't even have to be true. This is why we see so many different people that believe different things and won't fight to the death actually for their beliefs. Right? So we have to decouple the idea that a belief is a true statement of reality, because a belief is always true to the person who has it. So instead, what we want to choose is our beliefs that will get the results that we want. So, and this is. I get some pushback on this, so feel free to, if you want. With my clients, it. And they're like, well, I can't do that. That's not. That's not true. And I'm like, there is no real independent true. One thing. There's the belief that you have, and then it becomes true for you because you act in accordance with your belief and reinforce it. Do you see what I'm saying?
- [11:29]
A
Yeah. And I, you know, I think one of the things that's hard about this is exercise. I guess two things that I wanted to express is we're not trying to be someone different. Right?
- [11:42]
B
We're still.
- [11:42]
A
We're still trying to be ourselves, but we're trying to. When we want something. First of all, when we, when we. When we want something that we don't have, that is a fine thing. It. You know, wanting something and seeing something that someone else has that you want or having an aspiration for yourself is a beautiful thing. And it is something that in order to get that thing, you need to believe different things and act in a way of the person that would have the thing that you want. Exactly right. So it's. It's not that you're being a different person. You're still you. You're just making choices to believe things differently than you believe today that are going to help you do the things that are going to help you get the thing that you want. Is that right?
- [12:40]
B
I would, I would go even further. Yes, it is. But I would go even further that it's not that you're trying to become a different person, you're actually becoming who you really are. The, the seed of the expression, of having the thing is embedded in the desire. Like different people want different things. Like, I don't want to be a rock and roll singer, right? I mean, you know, I don't, I don't want to have a Lamborghini, you know, I like, we want different things. I don't want to be a scientist. So whatever the thing is that people want, the amount of money or the type of relationship or the, the business, the seed of the having of it, the actualization of that desire is embedded in you or you wouldn't even want it. So it's not about becoming someone different. It's about allowing who you really are to come through.
- [13:39]
A
And that feels so different to me than saying, okay, let's figure out how to be someone different because that feels inauthentic. But when you realize that something that you want is in you and it's just the actual, it's almost like self actualization. It's you getting to be your best vision of your own dreams. That's so exciting. Then you say, okay, I am fueled by this idea of being. I want to be different because I want to get the thing that I was meant to have, meant to have.
- [14:10]
B
Meant to have, or it wouldn't even cross your awareness. It's really freeing to realize that, that there's a, there's a way to express yourself that's in alignment with that desire.
- [14:29]
A
So I love that, that, that framing makes it feel better to me to talk about how to be different because I don't want to be different. I want to be me. So I like that framing a little bit better and clear my throat. I like that framing a little bit better. It feels better to me. And then I like the idea of understanding that having the belief that you're talking about, figuring it out is sort of about what does the person who has the thing I want think about and how do they. I mean, I guess it's not just what do they think about, but it's like how do they show up, how do they feel? How do they move through the world in their own consciousness to get the result that I want to have?
- [15:21]
B
You just nailed it. It's how do they think, feel and act? So again, it comes Back to the model. So it's what are they thinking and how are they feeling and what are they doing? And what is that version of me, which I call my future self, when I was talking in the opening about the future, pulling it toward you in the present, that's the future you who's already has the thing that you are desiring to have. What are they thinking, feeling and doing so that that's even a little bit closer than imagining some other person. But it is possible to borrow a belief. Borrowing a belief is very effective because what happens to almost all of us, Sarah, is that we don't have the evidence. Like we want this thing, but we don't see the evidence that we can have it. So then we doubt, we delay, we don't commit, or any number of other things that are really blocking the energy. And so sometimes a strategic borrowing of a belief by looking for evidence of someone else who has the thing and noticing how do they think, feel and act is one way to soften that Runway.
- [16:40]
A
And that's. You were talking about people that you coach, you know, pushing back on you. And that might be where they're pushing back, is that they don't really believe it's true. So what you're, the tactic that you're sharing is if it can be true for someone else, it could be true for you. And using that evidence, using that evidence to, to help you get to that place.
- [17:06]
B
Yeah, I mean, I mean it's just we have all these examples like, remember like they talk about when the four minute mile was broken, then all of a sudden like 20 other people within the next couple of years did it. So there's sometimes it's helpful initially. So we build that muscle ourselves that we can create our own beliefs. We can just declare, you know, who we will be in, in the face of the goal, you know, who, who we will be. So it's really more about being. And the doing will flow from who you're being.
- [17:46]
A
So when we're kind of be, as we were saying earlier before we're walking into those planning meetings, what does the leader, the, the, the person who's kind of heading these conversations with your team, I mean there's more work, there's pre work before you're even a room with anyone else, you need to spend some time with yourself. Right. So walk us through what you think the steps are. You know, maybe do we need to go kind of lock ourselves in a hotel room for a day? What, what do we do here? What's your approach to you know, planning for next year.
- [18:19]
B
Well, we've talked before about the thought downloads, and I think one of the most important things is to get out of your. The resistance that may exist about why it's hard or it can't happen, because that stuff is there anyway, and it actually affects the ability to create. It creates interference in your field a little bit. So I recommend, and I do isolate myself when I'm doing a strategic planning session in my mind, which is more about creating the version of myself that will take the actions. And it's me describing in words the future that I want in a way where it's already happened. So I picture. I remember Cameron Herold once said something about, like, the painted picture, like, this vision of who I am, what I'm doing, what my life is like, what. You know, what. What is around me, what are my customers saying? What are my clients saying? What's my team doing? What's. What's the money in the bank? How am I feeling? Like, it's. It's this whole circle. It's not just the money goal. It's like everything about what my life is like. And then after I paint that picture in words, then I ask myself, what could get in the way and what gets in the way? It's going to be a version of beliefs, believe it or not. And there's four places that things get in the way. Our beliefs about ourselves. You know, like, maybe in the past, we've set goals and didn't do it, so we don't trust ourselves. So, you know, I did this once before, and it didn't work. I don't know if it'll work now. Like, get all that out. You're getting it out of your head so that it's not working in the background the second you're writing those things down. Writing it down. Writing is my preference, but a lot of my clients want to do it on the computer. It doesn't matter, as long as you get it out so that you can see it. Because what. What's happening is that we don't see our thoughts. We're like a fish in water. We don't. We realize that they're there. And if we do notice our thoughts, we think that they're facts. We don't question them. So it's only when we get them out of our head and in an external way, either on paper or in the computer, where we're like, whoa, I can't believe I believe that. And we can see how much it limits us. So there are these thoughts and beliefs. Because a belief is just a thought that you've accepted because you've repeated it enough. They're very self similar. A thought can be more transient and a belief is more permanent. That's the only real difference about yourself. And the second one is about your team or whoever's supporting you. You know, they won't step up, or they let me down last time, or they don't know how to do this. Like, we have a lot of thoughts about our team and many of them are good. But when it comes to what you might call a stretch goal, um, that's a place where a belief will surface that could be limiting and you want to get them out of you. And then the third one is beliefs about your market, like your clients or your customers. There's all kinds of beliefs about those. Like, you know, they don't, they're not going to pay this new fee. Because here's something really interesting. Forecasting is very similar to pricing. And I tell people that the price that you charge is a function of your belief in four things. And it's these same four things that we're talking about here. Your belief in yourself, your belief in your team, your belief in your customers or clients, and then your belief in what you're offering. So that's the fourth one. Do you believe in what you're offering? Do you believe it has value that will be worth the amount that you're wanting it to or the forecast? There's a lot of hidden beliefs that people have. They don't even realize my clients won't pay, that they don't understand the value. They're looking for ways to use AI instead of people. And then about the solutions, you might even have doubts yourself. Like for example, in my first business, we did very complicated high end data analytics solutions. And there were times where everything wasn't perfect and systems were not quite connected. Right. And you know, the entrepreneurial thing, you're kind of building the plane while you're flying it. And so those inner feelings of incongruence and inauthenticity that come from like knowing that underneath the COVID it's not 100% perfect. Those are deadly. Those are deadly because they, they make you feel less than. So you got to get, and you got to get all that out so that you can look at it and go, wait, this is totally normal. Everybody, you know, it makes sense to build it while you're flying it, because otherwise you could build it and it might not be the right thing. So you have to get it out so that you can question it.
- [23:56]
A
And so it sounds like, you know, the first step is having spending some time with yourself to identify what you want. The second thing is to write down all of your thoughts and feelings about what might keep you from achieving that goal in these four categories of yourself, your team, your market, and your product. Awesome. And then it sounds like there's this challenging phase of reading it and saying, is this true? Is there evidence that this is true? And then I think, better than, is there evidence that this is true? Is there evidence that this is not true? Right. Of, like, well, you know, my clients will pay that much. You know, or maybe it isn't perfect, but it's really good. And there's nothing else better that I know of or, you know, I mean, going through that process of reading it and challenging what you've just written down.
- [25:07]
B
Is, yes, that was one of the things that I had to do myself, you know, And I had to say, I know it's not perfect, but I know that we will deliver the best value for this customer and they can count on us, et cetera. So, like, by the end of reviewing the things that had surfaced as resistance or impediments to this new being that I am reaching for, what you hit on was super important, which is this idea of, is it a fact or is it a thought? So we can revisit that just briefly here, because a fact is something that's categorically true in all cases, and there's never a time where that isn't the case. That's how I define a fact. And you so eloquently said, you know, could it ever be that this wasn't the case? And the answer is almost always going to be yes, even if you haven't experienced it yet, there will be a case where it wasn't that way for someone, and that opens up the fact that it can be that way for you, too.
- [26:18]
A
So important. So once we've done that, once we say, okay, well, actually, you know, maybe this is possible. Maybe that thing that I wrote isn't true. Maybe there's a vision where, you know, something that I was afraid of could not come true. Maybe people do want people and not AI robots, you know, so then what? Then what do you do?
- [26:41]
B
So the master question of all is, how can I? And it's even better to say, how can we? Especially because most entrepreneurs try to do everything themselves, but how can we? So why that's so important is that your brain is so much smarter than any computer. Still, in my Opinion, because it has so many different inputs and it has the body, the wisdom of the body, and intuition as well. So the brain will answer any question you give it always, unfortunately, most of the time we ask ourselves really bad questions like why does this always get screwed up? Or how come no one does it right? Or these kinds of questions that of course, course your brain's going to give you an answer, you know, because that's what it does. And those answers are very disempowering. So when you ask it, how can we. It's going to give you answers. And then your job is to just take that download from your higher self, your own wisdom from the field, whatever you want to call it, and capture it. And how can we? Isn't limited by the past. It's about how can we? So you're reaching into the future. How can we? And it's almost like a brainstorming, although that sounds like such a trite word for what it really is. It's commanding your mind to answer your desire. How can we? And you come up with as many ways as possible things that you never would think of before. And you will notice in the process the things that you discount, oh, that'll never work, you know, because you'll say, how can we? And you'll write something, oh, that, that won't work. Those things are gold because they show you a limitation of what you're not willing to do. It's sometimes like, for example, I remember in my first business, we didn't do a lot of email marketing. And as a SaaS, we were moving to be a SAS solution. That was a big thing a lot of people were doing. And I thought, I didn't like it. I didn't like how people were blasting emails. And I remember one of my mentors once told me that my attachment to not being seen as somebody who was blasting out too many emails was preventing me from letting people know about what we were doing. And I thought I was being authentic, but actually I was limiting the reach of people who knew about what we really had. So once I became really convinced that what we had was really good, you know, and that was a belief, then I wanted to tell more people about it. So the point was I had a hidden belief that pinging people about my product was needy or bad, and that was holding me back.
- [29:38]
A
Okay, so how can I meet or brainstorming? And again, this is just us. This is our own not going to the team, not saying, hey guys, let's all put our our thoughts on this problem. And come up with ways that we could do it. We're still alone. Okay, so how can I. And we've come up with a list of things that might be possible. Yeah.
- [29:58]
B
And then you prioritize them based on, you know, I mean, you let your body give you some wisdom there and your intuition and your experience about what you're willing to do. The biggest impediment to becoming someone new is going to be these beliefs that we have about why it won't work. So the real challenge there is, you know, what if I did kind of thing. So how can we. How can I. You've got this long list.
- [30:31]
A
You can't.
- [30:32]
B
I don't recommend doing 30 or 40 different things because it's too stressful for the system. So you go through and you prioritize and you pick maybe the top five things that you're going to do differently. And then I still fall into the category of sort of back engineering from the future. So from the future goals. So if your forecast, say, is 2 million this year and you're not thinking about what you did last year, you've come up with the how can I to the 2 million? And that includes, what am I offering? Like every. There can't be a holy grail. You have to be willing to consider something totally different that you've never done. You know, most people, again, are trying to think of some more, better version of what they've already done. But if in the process of coming up with your list of all the things that are impediments, like the customers who won't pay the new amount or something, you come up with the idea, but there are some who will. I need to find them. And you come up with an entirely new concept for a new market or a new way to package what you do, then you. You use that future end result of 2 million and then you back engineer what. What needs to happen. I do it by quarters first and then by month.
- [32:06]
A
Mm, that's a. I mean, I think that what you're describing is an outstanding process. And then the being part. Where does the being part come into that? So now that we've gone through these, you know, steps, where, where are you kind of doing the work of imagining that future self?
- [32:29]
B
It's a daily process because who you're being is with you all the time. So it's noticing because like they say, there's that famous book, wherever you go, there you are. So, you know, it's why geographical cures don't really work. So you, you become someone New by the way you think, feel, and act. So the minute you feel a negative emotion like fear, anxiety, stress, overwhelm, these are some of the common ones for entrepreneurs. Disappointment. Those negative emotions always point to what you're thinking. So you cannot feel bad if you're thinking about what you want. You can't always. 100% of the time. I have found that when we have a negative emotion, we're focusing on what we don't want. We don't realize that we're doing that. We think we're just, you know, stating the obvious fact or something. But what we're actually doing is focusing on what we don't want. Anxiety is, you know, we don't want to not hit it. You know, fear, we don't want to look stupid, you know, disappointment, you know, we don't want to be betrayed or whatever. There's. There's always a what you don't want. We don't notice what we're thinking, but we can notice how we're feeling. So if you go through your day and you notice the feeling of stress, anxiety, any of these negative emotions that we have, the time is to stop right then and ask, what am I thinking?
- [34:11]
A
So this is an amazing connection to an episode that we just did with Scott Britton. I'll put the link in the show notes where that episode was called Inner Work Belongs at Work, something like that. And the idea was in your day to capture, you know, just in a note on your phone or put it in your notebook when that body feeling comes up that you feel it in your body, that. That resistance, and then spending time with that, you know, at the end of the day or at a different time to understand, like, hey, what. Just following on what you're saying, Debbie, is what was I thinking? What was I feeling? What was. What was going on for me? Because that. That little cue is so, so valuable. Where normally I think people kind of squish those feelings down and try to pretend that they never happened or get away from it and buffer actually against all those bad feelings. You know, it's the come home and have a. Have a cocktail because you don't want to think about all those bad feelings you had in the day. The different way of approaching that is to actually lean into them and understand those more. So that's just a great follow on a great connection to something we were talking about in a previous episode.
- [35:27]
B
I'm so glad you brought that up, because all that negative energy in your body, when we try to push it down and double down with more effort, okay, we're not allowing it to go out of us. It's staying in here. It's staying resident. The negative emotions, they're not going away. When we try to buffer or push them away, they're still there. And what that is, it creates, like, a resistance that you're pushing against. So you're. You're trying to get where you're going with all this baggage. But if you allow, I say for 90 seconds, so I take it a little bit one more step further even, which is in the moment that it happens, to feel it fully and allow it to go through you, to feel it and allow it out and say, oh, there's that anxiety again. I know that's because I'm thinking about, it's not going to work. Okay, I'm feeling anxiety. I'm just going to let it be there. It's not wrong. It's trying to protect you. Any feeling you have is your nervous system trying to protect you. So I actually talk to it and I say, you know, thank you for trying to help me, but I got this. This is a lot of, believe it or not, childhood stuff, you know, stories that we have that are just embedded in our psyche. And I've been really working on explaining how sometimes we try too hard. When we don't feel confident and secure, we overcompensate by trying too hard and efforting too much and trying to. I used to try to be the smartest person in the room, and that was another, you know, thing. I had to. I had to allow myself to feel occasional inadequacy, to see that it wasn't really true. Like, allow it to flow out of me instead of trapped in my body, which then I would push against by trying to prove how smart I was all the time. Does that make sense?
- [37:40]
A
Well, and then. And then, doesn't that only reinforce a belief in yourself that it isn't true? Like, the whole process of not of all the trying, all the effort, all the, you know, carrying that baggage with you, all it does is prove. Prove to your body, to your brain, that the thing you're afraid of is true.
- [38:06]
B
Exactly.
- [38:07]
A
Yeah. It's so unhelpful and not. And if you have a choice, it's so much better to process that and use it to say, okay, I'm. I. I understand that moment. Why, you know, why did I feel so angry in that meeting? Why did I feel so defensive when that person said what they said? And then think about, well, why. Why did that trigger me so much? What am I believing about myself or believing about what they said or what am I so afraid of? So that then you can say, well, is that true? Maybe it is true. Like, maybe it is true and maybe that's why it bothers you so much. Maybe somebody says, well, I don't, I don't think you're right about something and, and maybe you're afraid you're not right.
- [39:01]
B
And you think you should be. That's the thing. It's okay to not be right all the time. I don't know why we as entrepreneurs think we have to know everything, every answer, all the time. It actually limits us a lot. It's so much better to just be curious, to not make it mean anything when somebody says, I don't see it that way, instead to be, oh, tell me more about that. Like to actually want to know. Why do they see it different? Why do they think we're mistaken without feeling the need to defend ourselves? Because we love who we are. I could go on and on about self love. I think the, the root of a lot of the. Every person I've ever worked with and every entrepreneur that I know is an achiever and the achiever personality. It's a great thing. We advance the world, okay, but most of us have it because deep down we're trying to prove something that we are worthy, we are good enough, we are worthwhile, et cetera. And you know, it takes a lot of energy to create reality that way. It's so much more enjoyable and less effort to believe that we're whole and complete, even with our foibles and flaws and that then we're choosing still to achieve for the joy of growing and evolving, not because we're trying to prove that we're good enough.
- [40:29]
A
Beautifully said and so true. I mean for entrepreneurs and most people. And it is a powerful thing to actually acknowledge the negativity or the fears or the friction that we feel in our days and then use that in a, in a better way to move forward. And what you're describing, I think is a tool that we can use dayto day and that my past guest Scott also talked about is how to, how to activate those moments in a, in a move forward so you can believe something different. And what you're talking about is, I believe when we, when we have this, this future self vision, right, Is there an actual exercise of sitting down and actually writing out, like, what would this person think and what would they feel like? Can you explain what that part of that process would look like?
- [41:35]
B
Yes. I mean, what I did because I completely recreated myself several times, my identity, and most people do throughout their life. And you know, from, you know, creating the entrepreneur in my mind and then creating the author and then creating the coach. The, the exercise that I went through was one about what does that person, that version of me who already is resident inside because I desire it, what do they think, feel and do? And writing down, like what they think is that their life is an expression of what's possible. They think that. And so, and I would, I'd make a whole long list, like several pages of beliefs which are really thoughts that I would actually read them every day. And so what we're trying to do is, is not reprogram the brain, because that sounds so cold, but we're trying to reinforce the new way of thinking, which as a little flower, you know, it's not going to grow if it doesn't get nurtured. So this new way of thinking has to repeated because that's all a belief is as a thought that you've repeated long enough so that you accept it as true for you. And so in, you know, in alignment with that, you can take it from another direction. What. And I did. What does this version of me feel? Well, they feel confident, they feel certain, they feel excited, they feel happy, they feel curious. These feelings. I would look for places in my day where I was feeling that way and sort of turn the dial up on those feelings because we can amplify positive feelings. Sometimes we forget about that. And then also, what are they doing? You know, what is this person doing? One thing for sure that they're doing and I was doing as I started to practice this is they're making decisions with conditions, confidence. Okay, second guessing is deadly to entrepreneurs. So I'm glad that I came to this point because doubting ourselves is the worst thing we can do. It will never help us get what we want. And we think that we're just being responsible by being skeptical or that it's. We're avoiding danger by thinking of all the things that could go wrong. That's not the same thing at all. Identifying potential risks and overcoming them is separate from doubting your own ability to achieve something. So what happens is that when we doubt, we start to loop in our mind about why something won't work. And it causes us to second guess and hesitate and sometimes not decide at all. Or even worse, we'll decide, then think it was the wrong decision and change it. So all of this back and forth, forth is very, very draining on the entrepreneur's energy. We cannot afford that. So instead there's a four step process that we do. Decide, act, evaluate and iterate. That's it. Make the decision with the best information that you have at the time. Take action immediately of some sort, then evaluate. You just figure out, well, did that give me closer to what I wanted or not? If so, do more of it. If not, don't do. And then iterate. Right. Decide, act, evaluate and iterate. So you never have to worry again about making a bad decision. As long as you're evaluating and iterating. You will get further faster by making decisions and iterating than second guessing or stalling or doubting.
- [45:36]
A
I totally, I totally agree with that. And when I visualize that process, I think of it like a spiral staircase that just goes up. You know, you're doing those same things and you're just going up each time. And that each thing that you try that doesn't work only is another step towards what will work. So it's not a bad thing to, you know, take an action that doesn't work. It's a good thing. And only taking action will make you move forward in advance. That's wrong or right.
- [46:12]
B
Yeah. You won't get any information just by sitting and thinking about why it is or isn't going to work.
- [46:17]
A
Oh my gosh. And it's such, I think it's so prevalent in this time of so much information and so much people are so prone to like study and research and you know, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn, learn. And it feels like you're doing something but you're not doing anything if you're not taking action.
- [46:43]
B
Yeah. You'll get further faster with taking action than you ever will by reading about what someone else did.
- [46:49]
A
Well, and it's almost just a form of procrastination. It's actually fear based. Right. When you're just researching and researching and learning and thinking and planning. I believe that that can actually be a form of procrastination that will keep you stuck. Even though it feels like you're doing something positive, you're actually not.
- [47:15]
B
We all know people do that.
- [47:17]
A
Yeah.
- [47:18]
B
But the good news is that when you make a decision, the thing that decides whether it's going to work. This is a belief I have, it's 100% true for me because I believe it is not the decision itself, it's the way you think, feel and act after the decision. So in other words, you have the ability for any decision to turn out because you're going to get information that you need to take the next action on that spiral that you're talking about.
- [47:49]
A
That's right. It will work. It will have an outcome.
- [47:53]
B
That's right. And you will be better for it.
- [47:56]
A
Right. Whether it has the desired outcome or not. Right.
- [48:01]
B
It has the what. What's necessary. The precursor for this to be possible for someone to do instead of just hearing us talk about it is related to how safe they feel being wrong. So. Or ostensibly wrong because you're not really wrong. But this whole idea of there is no fail, there's only information. But everybody understands this intellectually. But most achievers don't like the feeling of something not working or having a mistake occur. So getting comfortable with being uncomfortable is the best way to grow.
- [48:42]
A
Yeah. Yeah. Great advice, Debbie. I could talk to you about this kind of thing forever because I just am such a huge fan and I love how you explain these ideas because some of the stuff can feel kind of, I don't know, woo woo or you know, a little bit out there. But I feel like you're very good at making these ideas very actionable and something that you can actually sit down and try. So I think in this episode today we really did outline, I think, a great process that an entrepreneur can use individually before they're out in front of the team and before they're doing, you know, conducting or facilitating planning meetings with their executive team or you know, leaders within their team. And I think that this is actually a step that people miss. And you have to be able to be the leader of your company. Right. You, if you do your planning sessions with the extended team without being really clear on what your own vision is and what your own desires are, sometimes I think you can kind of the momentum can take you a place that you didn't mean to go. I've been in those rooms many, many times on both sides of the table and kind of walked out not fully believing in maybe decisions that were made or as you said, sort of second guessing and being a little bit not fully in. Okay. Is what I'm saying. And I think as, as the. Being the leader that your company needs you to be means that you walk into the room with more clarity about where you're willing to go and what you really want to have happen and that you, you're controlling to some extent the conversation that's going to happen in a bigger room so that it only happens within a circle of what works for you because it's your company.
- [50:47]
B
Yes. And the key to that is starting again with the. This is the direction and how can we. That's the frame. So what we're going to talk about today is how can we. And these are the ideas that I have, but I'm open to additional ones. So those are the ideas that you want to hear from your team. How can we?
- [51:07]
A
How can we? Thank you. What great advice, Debbie. Thank you so much. And again, the book is loving your business. And if you want to talk to Debbie, can you let. Let the people know how they can kind of connect with you?
- [51:21]
B
One of the best ways is on LinkedIn. You can DM me there also on my website. Loving your business.
- [51:28]
A
Awesome. What a great resource, Debbie. Thank you so much. It was a pleasure to talk with you again and I hope we'll do it again in the future. Yes.
- [51:35]
B
All right, thanks.
- [51:37]
A
Thanks for listening to the conscious entrepreneur. Every episode here is meant to sharpen how you lead and how you live. If something landed for you, please share it founder to founder. I'll meet you here next week.