The Key to Sustainable Growth: Embracing Simplicity and Gratitude - Woman of Influence

Summary

The Influencer Podcast: Episode Summary Title: The Key to Sustainable Growth: Embracing Simplicity and Gratitude
Host: Julie Solomon
Release Date: January 8, 2025

Introduction

In the inaugural episode of 2025, Julie Solomon sets a reflective and intimate tone, recorded on a cozy, rainy day in Nashville. She emphasizes the significance of beginning the year with a grounded mindset rather than solely focusing on goals and achievements. Julie shares her personal experiences and insights gained over more than a decade in the online coaching and education industry, aiming to guide listeners toward sustainable growth through simplicity and gratitude.

Reflecting on Success and Overcoming the "Gap" Mindset

Understanding the "Gap" vs. "Gain": Julie introduces the concept of the "Gap," a mindset where individuals measure their success against what they haven't achieved yet, leading to feelings of inadequacy and perpetual dissatisfaction. She contrasts this with the "Gain" mindset, which focuses on celebrating progress and accomplishments.

Julie Solomon [05:30]: "Instead of measuring yourself against what you haven't achieved yet, which is the gap, you have to measure yourself against how far you've already come, which is the gain."

Personal Struggles with the Gap: Julie candidly shares her struggles with burnout, self-doubt, and the relentless pursuit of more—whether it's more clients, higher revenue, or greater visibility. She acknowledges that even with significant achievements, the constant chase can lead to unfulfillment.

Julie Solomon [08:45]: "There will be moments where I'm struggling to just be happy and satisfied with what I've built for myself and for this community."

Impact of Social Media and Comparison: The host discusses how social media exacerbates the "Gap" mindset by presenting a seemingly perfect highlight reel of others' successes, making it easy to fall into comparison traps.

Julie Solomon [10:15]: "That comparison trap is deadly, my friends. And it is one of the biggest reasons why people feel so stuck."

Shifting from "Gap" to "Gain"

Adopting the Gain Mindset: Julie encourages listeners to shift their focus from what they lack to what they have achieved. This perspective fosters gratitude and appreciation for one's journey, enhancing overall satisfaction and reducing burnout.

Julie Solomon [12:00]: "So let's stop chasing. Let's start embracing allowing now to be enough."

Practical Steps to Embrace the Gain:

Reflect on Past Achievements: Julie suggests taking time to look back at where you were a few years ago and acknowledging the growth and successes since then.

Julie Solomon [06:50]: "Ask yourself, where was I one year ago, two years ago, five years ago? Ask what have I accomplished that my past self would be so proud of."
Celebrate Wins, Big and Small: Instead of waiting for the next big milestone, recognize and celebrate every achievement, reinforcing a sense of progress and fulfillment.

Julie Solomon [14:20]: "I'm celebrating the enough and not the perfection. So instead of chasing the next big thing, I'm really taking time to acknowledge the wins, big and small."
Align with Core Values: Julie emphasizes the importance of staying true to one's values, saying no to opportunities that don't align, and protecting one's energy to maintain focus and authenticity.

Julie Solomon [15:30]: "It's really about protecting my energy and staying true to my vision so I can really pour into my incredible community of clients."
Trust the Timing of Life and Business: Embracing patience and trusting that growth will happen naturally when one is rooted in gratitude and clarity.

Julie Solomon [16:10]: "There is no rush. I am exactly where I need to be and so are you."

Embracing Simplicity for Sustainable Growth

Minimalism in Business Planning: Julie advocates for simplicity in goal setting and business operations, arguing that doing less can lead to more sustainable and impactful growth.

Julie Solomon [13:00]: "My word of the year is simplicity. In order to become sustainable, we got to do less. We got to honor the enoughness in the now."

Practical Applications:

Refining Planning Processes: Focusing on sustainable growth by prioritizing essential actions over endless expansion.
Celebrating Life Beyond Business: Julie shares her personal practice of celebrating life events, such as travel and milestones, without tying them to business achievements.

Julie Solomon [14:50]: "I really allowed myself to just celebrate life and not be always chasing this achievement of, oh, I'm traveling to this speaking event."

Building a Sustainable Sales System

Integration of Gratitude and Clarity: Julie connects the mindset shift to practical business outcomes, explaining that a grateful and clear mindset can lead to a more effective and sustainable sales system.

Julie Solomon [15:00]: "Instead of going from that place of lack, we're going to move from that beautiful place of alignment."

Upcoming Growth Collective Planning Session: She invites listeners to join her Growth Collective members in a planning session aimed at recalibrating and mapping out an aligned and achievable year.

Julie Solomon [15:45]: "It's really going to be the opportunity that we all need to step back, recalibrate and map out a year that feels both aligned and achievable."

Conclusion and Listener Challenge

Challenge to Listeners: Julie issues a call to action for her audience to reflect on their gains, celebrate their achievements, and commit to shifting their mindset from the "Gap" to the "Gain." She encourages practical exercises like writing down accomplishments and using tools like ChatGPT to find ways to celebrate these wins.

Julie Solomon [16:30]: "Write them down, celebrate them, put them in a spreadsheet, put them in chat GPT and ask ChatGPT ways that you could celebrate yourself with all of those wins."

Final Encouragement: She reassures listeners that embracing their current state as "enough" will naturally lead to further growth and abundance, fostering a more aligned and confident approach to their business and personal lives.

Julie Solomon [16:45]: "Let's root into the clarity and confidence that comes from knowing that we are already enough."

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

Julie Solomon [05:30]: "Instead of measuring yourself against what you haven't achieved yet, which is the gap, you have to measure yourself against how far you've already come, which is the gain."
Julie Solomon [08:45]: "There will be moments where I'm struggling to just be happy and satisfied with what I've built for myself and for this community."
Julie Solomon [10:15]: "That comparison trap is deadly, my friends. And it is one of the biggest reasons why people feel so stuck."
Julie Solomon [12:00]: "So let's stop chasing. Let's start embracing allowing now to be enough."
Julie Solomon [14:20]: "I'm celebrating the enough and not the perfection. So instead of chasing the next big thing, I'm really taking time to acknowledge the wins, big and small."
Julie Solomon [15:30]: "It's really about protecting my energy and staying true to my vision so I can really pour into my incredible community of clients."
Julie Solomon [16:30]: "Write them down, celebrate them, put them in a spreadsheet, put them in chat GPT and ask ChatGPT ways that you could celebrate yourself with all of those wins."
Julie Solomon [16:45]: "Let's root into the clarity and confidence that comes from knowing that we are already enough."

Final Thoughts

Julie Solomon's first episode of 2025 serves as a powerful reminder to prioritize gratitude and simplicity in both personal and professional growth. By shifting from a scarcity mindset to one of abundance and celebrating existing achievements, listeners are encouraged to build sustainable and fulfilling businesses. Julie's authentic storytelling and practical advice provide a roadmap for coaches, service providers, and online educators to elevate their messaging, visibility, and authority without falling into the trap of endless comparison and burnout.

Join the Journey To dive deeper into the topics discussed and connect with Julie Solomon's community, visit juliesolomon.net and sign up for her weekly newsletter. Engage with like-minded individuals and access exclusive resources designed to support your journey toward aligned and abundant growth in 2025.

Transcript

A (0:00)

Think about where you were five years ago. If your past self could see you now, the business you've built, the incredible clients that you've served, the growth that you've experienced, no matter how big or small, she would be in awe. But instead of celebrating that progress, we often focus on what's missing right now.

B (0:19)

Welcome to the Influencer Podcast. I'm your host, Julie Solomon. If you found yourself here, it means you are ready to unleash the powerful visionary that lives inside you, turning you into an authentic leader who creates influence, impact, and change. Let's get started.

A (0:41)

Hello, friends, and welcome back to the first episode of the Influencer Podcast for this new year, 2025. We are here. Oh, and it is the perfect day to welcome this new year in on this podcast because it is a rainy day here in Nashville, and I always love recording podcast episodes on rainy days. It just feels so cozy and so intimate. It's just me and you and the mic, and it's just really, really nice and cozy. So I'm so happy to be here. Welcome back. If this is your first episode. Joining in, so grateful that you're here. I'm Julie Solomon, and today we're going to kick off the new year with a conversation that feels deeply personal and incredib relevant to what I know so many of you are feeling right now. I have talked to so many of you, and if you're anything like the people that I've talked to and like myself, you have probably spent the last few weeks reflecting on where you've been, where you are now, and where you want to go. And I think it's so important to start this year by really grounding ourselves in something real. Not just goals and achievements, but a mindset shift that will carry us through this year with clarity and confidence. So with that, let's get started. I have been in this industry for over a decade now. I started my journey in the online space way back in 2013, and I began coaching in 2016. And let me tell you, I've seen it all. I have experienced the highs of launching successful programs, hitting revenue milestones that I once thought were literally impossible, building an incredible community of women who trust me to guide them in their business and in their leadership. And with that, I have also experienced some deep lows. I've experienced the burnout, the self doubt, the comparison, the revenue months that weren't so great, the revenue years that weren't so great, the pressure to keep growing and keep evolving, even when it feels like you're already running with MD and here's the thing that I was really grappling with a lot. I want to say definitely in 2023, but there was still residue of it last year that I was processing. And now that I feel that I'm more to the other side of it, I'm really ready to bring you in and share because I think that you will relate to this as well. And I want to just be really honest with you. I have reached a point in my life and career where there will be times, there will be seasons, there will be moments where I'm struggling to just be happy and satisfied with what I've built for myself and for this community. I will catch myself comparing where I am now to this imaginary version of me that hasn't even arrived yet. And I find myself thinking, okay, Julie, but what's next? What's the next big milestone? What's the next launch? What's the next achievement? What's the next thing? What's the next version? And honestly, when you go there, even though it can be exhilarating and it can keep you focused on goals and movement and taking action, it can also be really exhausting. And I know that I'm not alone in this. I know so many of you listening right now feel the exact same same way. Maybe you've hit a big milestone in your business, but instead of really just feeling it and sitting with it and being proud of that, you're already looking at what you haven't accomplished yet. Maybe you're scrolling through social media, seeing what others are doing, especially as we just went through the holidays. I mean, my goodness, seeing everybody's amazing businesses and amazing lives and all of this stuff, like it's so beautiful and it's so great. But we also know that it's a highlight reel. And if we don't catch ourselves, we can start to see what others are doing and we can wonder if or why we're falling behind. And it's this constant chase for more that leaves us feeling unfulfilled no matter how much we achieve. And there's this idea in our culture, especially in the online business world, that success is this never ending climb. And I have seen it just perpetuate over the decade that I've been in this industry, right? You hit one milestone and instead of celebrating, instead of just honoring it, boom. You immediately look to the next thing. You made six figures, great. Now you need to make seven. You launched a successful course, awesome. Now you need to scale it. You hit 10k followers, now you need 20. You hit a hundred k followers, now you need 500. It's this endless pursuit of more. And here's what I've realized. That pursuit, if it goes unchecked, will keep you completely stuck in misery. And I see this pattern with so many of my clients, and I have been through it myself. They come to me feeling stuck, not because they aren't successful. In fact, they are so successful. They are successful by every external metric, whether that means that they've made $50,000 in their business or $5 million in their business. They are phenomenal women that have done phenomenal things. And they lead not just in business, but in their families and in their marriages and in their friendships and in their lives. But there's just something that makes them not fully happy. They feel like they're constantly chasing something just out of reach. And the reason they feel that way, and it's the same reason why I felt that way heavily in 2021, 2022, 2023, and really started to work through it last year, it's because they're living and what I call the gap. So the gap is where we measure ourselves against what we don't have. It's where we say things like, I'm not where I want to be yet, or I haven't hit that next goal, or I've got to do something or change something in order to get what it is that I want. It's a mindset that keeps us focused on lack. And I've actually talked about this before. It was a couple of years ago that I found a book called the Gap and the Gain by an author named Dan Sullivan. I'll put a link in the show notes for you if you want to check it out. And it really shift how I started to think and feel and view success. The premise of the book is simple. Basically, Dan says that instead of measuring yourself against what you haven't achieved yet, which is the gap, you have to measure yourself against how far you've already come, which is the gain. And this shift can change everything. So, for example, I want you to take a moment, close your eyes if you can, and think about where you were five years ago. If your past self could see you now, the business you've built, the incredible clients that you've served, the growth that you've experienced, no matter how big or small, she would be in awe. But instead of celebrating that progress, we often focus on what's missing right now. We say things like, I still don't have enough clients. I'm not making the income that I want. Yet I. I'm not getting the visibility. No matter how much content that I create. This person's over here having, you know, million dollar months, and I'm over here barely scraping by. We live in the gap. But what if instead you started to look at the gain this year? What if 2025 was different because you started to measure your progress by the transformation you've already created? What if you reminded yourself that you are living the life today that you once dreamed of? Now, this doesn't mean that you've gotten to the end and you've gotten everything that you want. Of course not. We still have a lot of live. But really honoring how far you've come. When I look back at my own journey and I see how often I have fallen into this gap mindset, I mean, I am telling you guys, there were moments when I was so focused on what I hadn't achieved that I completely overlooked all of the incredible things that were happening around me. I completely overlooked how far I had come. And really, when you think about that, that is the quickest way to burn out, because you keep getting farther and farther away from the gratitude. Let me give you an example. Years ago, when I first launched one of my coaching programs, I had this vision of making a massive impact, right? Like, we've all been there, right? When we're first launching something and we want to create that lasting impact. I wanted to help thousands of women transform their businesses. And cut to today. I have done that. I'm not done. There's still thousands of other women out there that I want to support. But when I look back at what I've done, I have done that. But for the longest time, and it still creeps up now, I don't allow myself to fully celebrate it. Instead, I focus on the next thing. Right? Okay, but what's next? How do I scale even more? How do I get in front of more people? How do I help more people? How do I make a bigger impact? Because the impact that I've made is not big enough. And in that constant pursuit of moreness, we miss the opportunity to celebrate who we are, who we've supported, and the incredible gains that we have made in our business, in our lives. And it happens to so many of us. I know that you have probably thought in the last week or so I should be further along by now, but. Says who? Based on what metric? You know, someone else's 2024 Instagram highlight reel. Someone else's version of success. That comparison trap is deadly, my friends. And it is one of the biggest reasons why people feel so stuck. So as we step into this new year, I want to invite you wholeheartedly with me to shift your mindset from the gap to the gain. Ask yourself, where was I one year ago, two years ago, five years ago? Ask what have I accomplished that my past self would be so proud of? Ask yourself, how have I grown not just in business, but as a person, as a partner, as a parent, as a friend, as a leader, as an entrepreneur, as a visionary? Because here's the truth. Your business will only grow as much as you grow. And I've seen this time and time again with my clients. The ones who experience those big breakthroughs, the ones that experience those, you know, time collapsing. It feels like these lightning in a bottle moments aren't the ones who hustle the hardest or work the longest hours. They're the ones who do that inner work and they don't ever stop doing it. They're the ones who let go of the stories that no longer serve them. They're the ones who stop comparing their journey to some imaginary place that they're not at yet, or to someone else's and they start owning where they're at today. And that's what I want for you this year. That's what I want for me this year. That's what I want for us this year. Here's another powerful question you can ask yourself. What would happen if you stopped chasing more and started embracing enough. Enough clients, enough income, enough visibility? What if you allowed this to be enough? What if you allowed yourself to feel worthy and successful right where you are? What if you trusted that more will come naturally when you're rooted into the simplicity of gratitude and clarity and just taking that next indicated action? This doesn't mean you stop setting goals. It doesn't mean you stop striving for growth. But it means that you stop chasing from a place of lack. This is truly how abundance can show up in your life. Instead of going from that place of lack, we're going to move from that beautiful place of alignment. And here's how I'm practicing this shift in my own life. I have been refining my planning and goal setting process to focus more on sustainable growth. I've talked about this already. My word of the year is simplicity. Simplicity reigns. In order to become sustainable, we got to do less. We got to honor the enoughness in the now. And really it's about first things first. Not just in my business, but for myself as a person and as a leader. It's just about taking that next indicated action and remembering that we can always make a different choice. It's about aligning my vision and my values and making decisions from a place of clarity and from a place of really keeping my eyes on my own paper and staying in my lane and really what works based on the data that we have, what feels right and not from comparison. And this is something that I have the privilege and honor of diving into more deeply with my Growth Collective members during our 2025 planning session on January 14th. It's really going to be the opportunity that we all need to step back, recalibrate and map out a year that feels both aligned and achievable. If you're curious about what that looks like, you can find more in the show notes. There's details there. And I'm also focusing on a few key practices that really keep me grounded. So the first is I'm celebrating the enough and not the perfection. So instead of chasing the next big thing, I'm really taking time to acknowledge the wins, big and small, that have brought me to this point. I did a lot of this last year in 2024, one of which was with travel. I traveled a lot last year. I turned 40. I had friends that turned 40. I think I went on like 16 trips, but only three of those were business related. I really allowed myself to just celebrate life and not be always chasing this achievement of, oh, I'm traveling to this speaking event, I'm traveling to go speak at this podcast. And it's such a flex. Like, of course those things are so incredible and I'm so grateful for them, but really allowing myself to be in the moment and celebrate the progress and not always looking for the next thing. So that was huge for me. The next thing that I'm doing to keep myself grounded is really remembering my core values. So this means saying no to opportunities that don't feel right even if they look good on paper. It's really about protecting my energy and staying true to my vision so I can really pour into my incredible community of clients clients and really give them more intentional time and presence when I get to do work with them. And then the other thing is trusting the timing of my life and business because there is no rush. I am exactly where I need to be and so are you. So here's my challenge for you as we kick off this new year. If it feels aligned, I want you to spend some time reflecting on your gains, my friend. Write them down, celebrate them, put them in a spreadsheet, put them in chat GPT and ask ChatGPT ways that you could celebrate yourself with all of those wins. Commit to shifting to your mindset. No matter what you have to do from the gap to the gain, remember that you are already living the life that you once dreamed of, even if you have so much more life to bring into fruition. And if you keep comparing yourself to a future version of you or to someone else's journey, you're going to miss the beauty of your own. So this year. So let's stop chasing. Let's start embracing allowing now to be enough. Let's root into the clarity and confidence that comes from knowing that we are already enough. Thank you so much for being here with me today. I'm so excited to continue this journey with you in 2025. If anything resonated with you today or something that you think a friend would really love to hear, I would love it if you would share that with your friend. And as always, if this episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can send me a message on Instagram again, share this episode with a friend, leave us a note in the review section and let's make this year our most aligned and abundant year yet. Until next time. See you soon.