← The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
737. Your Business Isn’t Stuck — You’re Avoiding the Next Version of You
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Quick question. If your product based business sales are inconsistent or not where you want them to be, is it really your product? Is it really where you're selling or how you're selling? Or is it that you are avoiding the next version of you, the version of you that gets to be seen, the version of you that gets to hit those goals, the version of you that's all in on your business. Because today I'm going to hold up a mirror for you. A mirror that's going to reflect back to you if you're brave enough, so you'll know exactly why you feel stuck. And yes, it's going to be the most loving call out that you've ever gotten, but it's also everything that you've ever needed. So let me give you some examples. Maybe you're selling 27 products or 270 products and you're not sure which ones to push or which ones to focus on and which ones you're actually going to get rid of. Or maybe you post all the time on social media and you never ask for the sale. Or perhaps you're just scared to look at your numbers, you're scared to look at your cost of goods, you're scared to look at your margins, you're scared to look at your bank account because it feels personal. These are some of the things that we're going to look at and reflect back because there's something else getting in the way. Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into a successful business and what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dream, no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Welcome back to the Product Boss Podcast. I am your host, Jaclyn Snyder and this show is for product based entrepreneurs who want to build real businesses with real strategy and it doesn't matter what you sell or where you sell it, because if you want more consistent sales, whether you're selling on Etsy, on Amazon, on Shopify, E Commerce, in person markets, wholesale, even on things like fair and a mix of all of that, you are in the right place. And today we're going to do something a little bit different. It's not going to be follow these five steps or five tips or 17 things you can do on Instagram today. Today is going to be what I call a mirror episode, okay? Because our businesses are always trying to teach us something, and our businesses are truthfully a mirror. So that's reflecting back something to us. So if scarcity is something that comes up for you oftentimes in your life and things feel scarce, like whether it's money scarcity or time scarcity, you're going to see that show up in your business as well. If you have a fear of success or a fear of being seen, you're going to see that show up in your business as well. And so that's what we're going to go deeper into in this episode. And a lot of times people are coming to me and they're saying, my sales are inconsistent. Whether they're inconsistent from a day to day, they might be inconsistent monthly or seasonally. It just might feel like you're not yet sure how you can rely on your business. Whether you're in your first few hundred dollars that you've earned in your business, or you've got $5,000 months, $10,000 months, $80,000 months, there's always going to be a sales channel that you want to get more consistent. There's always going to be a way that you're trying to get consistency in your business. And a lot of times there's a deeper reason as to why that inconsistency is there. So let's talk about that inconsistency. It's not because you're lazy, you're not good enough, you're not smart enough, you don't know all the things. It's not because you need another product most likely. Right. It's actually when you're still operating from this identity. It could be a maker identity of I just need to create new things, or I'm such a creative and I and I want to create new things, I never can do the same thing over and over and over. Or makers got to make but not sell. Maybe you're still operating from a. A side hustle, right? Or a hobby mindset. Maybe you're operating from that. That version of you that got you to your first $50,000 or your first a hundred thousand dollars, but you're not yet operating at a level that's going to get you to your first seven figures, your first million dollars or beyond that. What we really have to do is move from that, that identity, that identity that maybe worked for you in the past. And we get to start to shift. Because this is what your business is asking you to do, asking you to shift into a CEO identity, right? The CEO, the chief Executive officer, the one who makes the big decisions and guides the business forward. So by the end of this episode, you're going to identify what the avoidance is that you're currently having in your business and know exactly what to do to shift into that CEO mode. And if you've been loving the show, this podcast, maybe you're listening to it on Spotify or on Apple or. Or perhaps you're watching it on YouTube. Would you do me a favor? Cause I don't want you to miss another episode. Make sure that you're following the show or subscribing. This is a way for you to build consistency and build that Runway of consistency, to feel like you are supported to be a part of this community when you subscribe to the show. So do me a favor, subscribe, do yourself a favor. Because we have over 700 episodes in the backlog and you get a new episode dropped every single day, single week. Okay? So before we dive in any further, I want to first start off by telling you there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken, you're not wrong, you're not behind. You're exactly where you're meant to be today, in this moment, listening to the show. But the thing that you get to do is we sort of start to shift our identities, right? Shift into that CEO mindset or shift into a real business owner is we get to start to reflect back because there's always the action that we want to do to hit our goals, right, to have what we want to have. But we also get to work on the level up of ourselves, the identity, the who's doing the doing. You do not have to earn your right. You do not have to earn an education. You don't have to earn anything to be successful at this. You get to first start by holding the identity of the person who can have the outcome that you want. And the mirror, the mirror in your business is not here to judge you. There's no shame. It's really just reflecting back what's True. It's kind of spotlighting parts about you, ways of being about you that might be keeping you stuck that you actually will be able to lead yourself out of. So shout out to all my perfectionists out there, how many of you are such perfectionists that you will not like such a tight grip on your business that you will not release anything or do anything until it's perfect? Right? You might be hiding behind this concept of I'm still figuring it out, or it's not ready, it's not enough, it's not this, it's not that, and you're just not sending, you're not sending the email, you're not releasing the product, you're not going to that new market, you're not calling that buyer at Nordstrom's, for example, Right? But really what that's reflecting back to you and you get to kind of identify this for yourself right now. Are you afraid to be seen? Are you afraid to actually put yourself out there? Are you afraid of rejection? Like, well, what if I do put myself out there and they don't respond? What if I do send the email and they don't buy? What's it going to mean about me? Right? So I've seen that come up. I used to work with a client for a pretty long time and I mean, she was a one on one client, so paying her investment into working with me was quite high. And, and most of the time we worked on the emails that she was never going to send. I know, but I helped her develop this brand. We created it, we had production, we had all of the product waiting to be sold. It was beautiful. We had the photos, we had everything. But the thing that we were missing was actually selling them. She was afraid to send the email if it wasn't perfect. She was afraid of judgment from other people. She was afraid of what people would think. She was afraid if she sent it, what would happen. And I was like, can we just send the email? Right? So if you're, if there's a fear coming up for you, I want you to pause for a second, ask yourself, what's really behind me not doing this? What's really behind that? Perfectionism. There's also this version of us that shows up that's like, I can't settle in on one idea, one product, one thing. I'm a creative, I just have to make. I've worked with students that are just like, I get bored. I'm doing this because I wanna, I wanna make all the things so I never make the same thing twice. Okay, well then you're really building a hobby, right? Because there's nothing boring about making money, finding consistent sales, right? Actually, boring is how you build a business. Boring is the thing that's the backbone to a business growing. Boring is having $10,000 deposited into your account every month. Boring is having a hundred thousand dollars deposited into your account every month. So if you're finding yourself resisting this idea of focusing or honing in, being known for something, what's really coming up for you? What is behind board? Is it that I don't want to do the same thing over and over and over or my creativity is going to get squashed? You know what, what is it? What's the fear that's there? Maybe it's a fear of turning it into a real business. Because what if it does become a real business? It's going to take over my life or I won't have enough time, or I won't be with my kids. I won't be living the life that I want. Right. This also happens for people who have a fear of success or a fear of failure. Right? There's that part of not putting yourself out there at all because you're afraid of failing or afraid of judgment. And then there's the, well, what if it does succeed? Do I know enough? Can I keep up? Do I know how to run a business of this size? My friends, when I was 26, when I started my first business, I had no business starting a business. I was 26 years old and I started Designer Consulting Co op where. And I started Cuffs Couture. So I was like, I have a, I have a accessories brand that I want to launch and I'm going to start consulting people and building brands for them as a designer. And I just did it. And I was like, well, what do I charge? And I just made it up. It was like $60 an hour at that point. How do I track it? I like wrote down every phone call I had with him. Like I was a lawyer. What do I do? I figured it out. You just have to be like one step ahead, one step ahead of where you want to be, not where you want to be, just like thinking forward. So I used to say, and people say it, fake it till you make it. I used to think, well, by the time I'm 30, I'll know more. Right? By the time I'm X, I'll know more. And one day I woke up a 30 year old talking to people who had been in the industry for decades. And I was like, oh, I actually know what I'm talking about. So the thing here is I had no business starting a business, but I did. I had the audacity, I had the courage, I had the parts of me that like, didn't know what I was really starting. And I just learned on my way there, if you've got a fear of success, I want you to trust that every level that you level up in success. Now I've helped. I mean, I'm not sure how many millionaires I've created in the last eight years of this business, but a lot. And I'm thinking about one particular millionaire, like someone who's, they're at almost $2 million in their product business. And I was working with them when they were still an Etsy shop. And just thinking about all the levels, right? It was like, okay, we want to jump off of Etsy. We don't want to only be relying on Etsy. Great. What was that next step we needed to take then? It was like, okay, we can't keep up with orders and what do we need to do? So it was like, okay, well we need to find a manufacturer to create this product so you're not hand making it all. And we grew in increments. So we added a sales channel, we added wholesale, for example. Great. It started to do really well. We built a website. Amazing. It started to do really well. They got to I think like a million dollars within the first year, one and a half million by the middle of the second year. But they, after working with me, not all the years they were on Etsy by themselves. And the thing is, is like they just needed the support and accountability, the community, they needed it like, like me, I was their consultant, their strategist, their advisor through every step. And even now when they're close to hitting $10 million in total sales, they still work with me and come back to me at every level up. And so that's the thing I want you to know. You could be hand making your product today and five years from now, it could be manufactured and you could be generating millions of dollars a year. And this particular company that I'm talking about, they work three days a week. They have an entire team. They're still very family first and family focused. They still travel. One of the owners came to me and was like, I've got another idea for a business. So they have such spaciousness that they're starting another business, but it really just takes that success and stepping into it and stepping away from what the mirror is telling you is like, I'M afraid that if this does work, I won't be enough. I'm afraid that if this does work, I won't don't trust myself. I don't have the confidence. And when you see that, you know it's coming up in other places as well. This is not the only place that you feel this way. So I want you to ask yourself, where do I have these thoughts that come up in my business? Right. I've given you a bunch of examples that are holding you back, that are keeping you in that mindset that whether it's like the side hustle mindset, the maker's mindset, the hobby mindset, or I have $100,000 business, I have a six figure business, but I can never get it to a million dollars or I have a million dollar business and I could never get it to $10 million. Right. What shifts do you get to make to step into CEO, Right. That CEO mindset. And what are you avoiding because it requires you to step into another version of yourself? It's scary. We would rather stay suffering and in misery than making a change into the unknown. My mom told me this back in the day. She said if everyone had their baggage and they took their baggage out in the street and they put their baggage in the street and then you could go and pick up anybody else's baggage, most likely you would go and pick up your own. You'd go take your own right back. Right? No matter what you've lived through, no matter what the situation is. Because people are more familiar with what they know than what they don't know. They're more familiar with the misery and the suffering that they live in than what's on the other side of that. I mean, this is something that comes up for me that was reflected back to me recently that I was like, oh, you're right. It's so much more comfortable sitting in this version of me that I know than the version of me that gets to step into joy and abundance and freedom. And like, what would it feel like to be free and abundant and passionate and joyful and all the things that come with that. Right? That's all really scary because as much as those words sound amazing, they're also really scary words. When I'm so used to the other side, you get to ask yourself, like, what am I avoiding? Why am I afraid of that? What's my business trying to teach me? And then how do I stretch out of it? What's something that I can do? Who can I be so that I can step out of that. Now, we'll also sometimes take these ideas of, like, confusion being a strategy. So a lot of people, a lot of my students, I hear this inside of the collective. I hear this inside of the sales accelerator. A lot of people just say, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what to do next. I don't know what to offer. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Right. And really, that I don't know might be an avoidance of fully committing. It might be like not listening to what your business is telling you right now or feeling like, well, there's something else and somewhere else and someone else doing this, and maybe I should do that. I mean, social media is the worst place for this. When you go on social and you start to take on, like, all of the content, maybe you're looking at other product bosses, other. Other brands out there. Maybe you're following people that are influencers or that are service companies, and you're seeing the kind of content they create, and you're thinking, well, I gotta do that too. And that overwhelm of all of the ideas is what really breaks us. And that's why at the Product boss, I teach in this format. This is really strong in the sales accelerator, where we talk about focus, fix, and then scale and multiply, right? So focus is like, well, what do you get to focus on? So confusion of I don't know versus, okay, well, what's working? Focus. What's working Like a bestseller. People are buying that. Or people really love this category, right? Like, how do you focus? And then it's the fix. All right, well, what gets to be fixed? What feels broken? Not all of it. What's one thing you can work on immediately? And then how do we multiply that? What's working? How do we multiply that? How do we do more of that? See, if you never fully commit and you never really sit and focus and commit, and you stay lost in that confusion as your strategy, that's where you're never gonna really grow. And you are also avoiding that risk of failing versus getting curious and thinking, okay, well, what if I did look at this thing? What if I focus on this one thing for the next, I don't know, six weeks? One thing that I focus on, one thing that I fixed, and then once that was stabilized, I could grow my business. I could scale. Scale. I could multiply. What would be possible for you then? Okay, so I want to get into some other ways that you might be buffering other ways that your business is mirroring back to you. What's keeping you inconsistent and stuck. So one thing might be like, you're constantly changing your product photos, right? You're like, I got to fix this, I got to do this, or I got to change my email, right? There's something you're constantly fixing and tweaking and fixing and tweaking, but you haven't actually emailed your customers in three weeks, right? So it's like, I gotta keep doing this. And you're really hyper focused on something, but it is not the lever to pull for your business. Maybe you're redesigning your labels again and again and again, but you're. You never say, like, here's what I sell and here's how you buy, right? You get stuck in those cycles. Maybe you're constantly in research mode of all the retailers you wanna sell to, but you never actually pick up the phone and call them or send the email and follow up. Maybe you've been stuck in brand registry for Amazon and never actually posted or, or tried to become fba. There's so many different things that you might be working on or focusing on that are not the needle movers in your business. Because there's a fear of what's on the other side if you actually do the thing that you need to do. One shift that you can take right now is that I'm waiting to feel ready. Okay? So if you've felt like that, you're like, I'm not ready yet. I can't do it. I'm not ready. Well, then the CEO in, you guessed it, say, I decide, I start and then I build the proof. Okay, I decide, I start and then I build the proof. If you're watching this on YouTube right now, we've been on YouTube this entire time, but we never had videos. We always had, like, we just aired our audio. And so now in the last few months and moving into 2026, we're really building our YouTube strategy. Not even YouTube, we're just building on YouTube. I'm starting to do videos, so if you want to see me, come watch on YouTube. But the thing is, is that all I know is that I had to get started. I had to do the first video and then the next video, and every time I might change the way that the camera is or how I'm dressed or what my setup is. I mean, watch the show, right? Follow the show, you'll see it. And the thing is, like, I couldn't wait till it was perfect. I just decided I was going to start and then go, and then I'm building as we go. The first time I launched the podcast, like, our voices recorded, I couldn't even listen to myself on voicemails from back in the day for my friends. Like, remember when you listen on your cell phone, like an answering machine? Social media. I just started when I launched my product business. Remember I told you I started at 26. I had no business starting a business, and I still did. And I learned as I went. I went from charging $60 an hour, right? And people paying me, like, between 500 to $1,000 a month to work with them, to people paying me 10 to $20,000 a month to working with them. This was built incrementally. And this is something that, like, confidence is built through action, through steps, not just from thinking, okay. Another belief that you can try on is clarity isn't something that you find, but it's something that you choose, right? So clarity is something where you step into creating a plan, feeling confident, and deciding that things are going to happen as they should, right? Like trusting the process. And so clarity comes with that focus. Clarity comes with setting a plan and then saying, okay, I'm going to choose clarity. Because we also can choose chaos. We can choose, you know, throwing all these things in the air and saying, I'm going to do all the things and be all the things and be in all the places and all of that, which is chaos. But what would it be like if you chose clarity? If you simplified, if you said, I'm going to focus on this in this time and I'm going to get really good at that? That kind of clarity is something that you choose. Another thing, you know, we talked about in the very beginning about making all the things and doing all the things. Another choice point, another mirror that you could have here is really thinking about being known for something is better than being invisible. I'm going to say that again. Being known for something is better than being invisible. My friends, if you keep resisting this, this is going to keep your business stuck. It's going to keep your business small. It's going to keep you from the growth that you desire. I have so many examples of brands that started with either a product and multiple variations or a small core collection. They were known for something. Go watch the Nike movie, you know, Air, or the movie about Joy where she created all the products for qvc. Listen to the podcast. You can listen to Jamie Kern Lima of IT Cosmetics has been on the podcast, or Susie Weiss Fishman with OPI Nail lacquer. Who's been on the podcast, Suzy. They started with one product with OPI Nail lacquer. They started with the rubber band special. Jamie Kern Lima started with this one foundational stick. I've heard this over and over and over from billion dollar brands. Sarah Blakely, she didn't have all of the products we know her to have. Now she had the one product or the collection around what Spanx were when they started. Okay, so would you rather be known for something and stay focused and put on that CEO hat or would you rather stay invisible and overwhelmed and not making money? I think I know the answer to that one. Knowing the mirror, knowing like some of the fears, like your business is trying to tell you. I'm going to tell you that I've seen three major things that my students avoid in their product based business and I want you to listen because the one that stings a little, the one that kind of stays with you a little bit, that's the one that's probably usually true. Okay? So I like to think about this as like trying them on as shirts. Like you could try it on and try it on, see if it fits and if it doesn't fit, take it off. Trying another. Okay. And maybe I don't even mention one for you. And then you're like, you come up with your own. If I missed it, message me over on Instagram, right? Let me know what it is. So one avoidance that I see a lot of product based business owners make is avoiding a flagship offer, a hero product, a core collection, something that's going to give you the data to what your bestsellers are. Now bestsellers can change seasonally, they can change by category. But a lot of times that avoiding of your hero product or your core collection is really an avoidance of being lost in it, right? Maybe you're lost in the creativity and it feels like it's going to keep you stuck or you actually have a fear that that product's not good enough and it's not the thing to grow you. So when you don't have this like flagship product, right, we call it known for something that you're known for. Your core collection, your hero products, the thing that you're known for, that they could be like, oh, that's the cake pop lady, that's the unisex candles person, that's the chunky jewelry lady, like woman, whatever, leader, CEO, whatever it is. But when they can't identify you like that, then they don't know what to buy. And I've said this before, but customers just want you to tell them what to buy. The avoidance of not being known for something could be your own avoidance of feeling bored and. Or it's like you don't want to bet all your, you know, all your chips on black, right? It's like roulette. You're like, well, what if they don't want it? Well, what if you just got really good at selling those things? What if you were focused? How much easier would it be for you to create? Create your marketing plans, production, right? Your cost of goods, your raw goods, your labor. How much easier would it be if you were more focused instead of spread out everywhere and creating like chaos in your business? So you'll see this a lot of times when a. You know, I've heard stories of this happening for people before they start working with me. You might have experienced as well. I have when I'll go to in person markets and I walk into a booth and it's all the things. It doesn't make any sense. Now, yeah, sure, it could be a T shirt brand with a bunch of T shirts with different variations, different colors, different prints. It could be a gift shop, right? Like something that's giftables, like stickers and hats and, and mugs. But the thing is, is that people know what sells best. I've had gifts gift shops that I've worked with that they've made 40, $50,000 a month by narrowing down to really leaning into their bestsellers, which would be prints, tattoos, stickers, and getting rid of things like keychains and hats and other stuff that people never wanted, right? Like staying in paper products and coming up with better versions of that. But you'll never really know what that is until you decide to look at your numbers, look at the data, which is also another avoidance and really kind of say, okay, well, what if I do go all in on this? What if I pay attention to the clues? Let's say you sell face and body products all at once. I sell face lotion and toner, but I also sell body scrub and bath bombs and skin oils and gua sha stones, right? You've created your own mini Sephora. But if you think about brands that really were built out of Sephora, I'll say Sol de Janeiro, for example. They started with the Bum Bum cream. They started with a cream and a great scent that had. It was a body cream that like, was an act, had active ingredients, and then they came out with three body creams, same tubs, different colors, different active ingredients. And that's what Started them. Then they realized people loved the scent. So then they came out with those same three scents from the body creams and created three body scents, sprays. Okay. From the same sense. Now they're really known as a fragrance brand. Like they've really kind of like they're leading with fragrance, but they're not jumping into a ton of products, right? Maybe they've come out, I think they've come out with sunblock. They have gotten into some other things lately where they've gone into shampoo and conditioner, body washes, body creams, but they're staying within a category. They didn't also launch makeup and face creams, right. They stayed within the body category. So this is really this idea that when you're thinking about your business that you can grow slowly. And a lot of times the companies you see now are more advanced, but they didn't start out that way. So they talk about this a lot in like authors talk about killing your darlings. And this is something as a CEO of your business that you get to do. You get to kill your darlings. So again that, that idea of, of choosing the products that you're going to lead with again, hero product or collection, even if you love all of your products, you get to kill your darlings. Even if you love them. You might love them, but people might not be buying them. We go further into this. Like if you're a student of mine or you've been in the Bestseller Secrets challenge or sales accelerator, we go deeper into this. But the first part is it's okay to let it go. Or maybe you don't let it go fully, but you shift your focus to things that are working. And for my friends out there that were like me, who are really creative, that don't want to be bored and do the same thing over and over and over, I want you to know that being known for something, this product, it may not even be the thing that you're known for long term, but it's the thing that kicks your business off or it's the thing that gets you to your first million dollars. I've done this so many times with my students, right? Whether they were one on one students, whether they were students in my higher level promot programs like the Collective or my Masterminds, or in the sales accelerator, they started out being known for something like Niniko, which were pacifiers. And we helped them kind of rename the colors to flavors and really helped them expand. And they had just pacifiers. And we said how? Well, how do you make a million dollars off pacifiers, you sell bundles, you sell kits. They even at one point were selling pacifier holder clips. And we're like, cut those. They don't need those. Because they could really build this business on just one product. Brighter year with her coloring books. Ashanti, right. She, her coloring books are still the thing that's making her money. She actually just sent me a screen grab recently about the huge percentage of revenue that was created from her bestseller bundle. I was like, I love seeing a bestseller and a bundle and like how many hundreds of thousands of dollars are created from that. But then there's a jewelry line like Sarah Cornwall Jewelry and she's known for dainty jewelry. Her earrings and her necklaces are her bestsellers. Another million dollar business in five years. After 10 years of never being able to cross $100,000 on Etsy worked with me year over year. We kept lifting her identity. We kept reflecting back to her what was keeping her stuck, keeping her in that kind of maker's mindset or Etsy mindset and started to kind of peel those layers back. It took five years. She has a brick and mortar. She made a million bucks in her in revenue back in 2024. I don't even know where she ended. 2025, if you're listening Sarah, let me know. But this is the thing, right? They focused, they were known for something and that's where they really grew and hit it. Okay? Another avoidance that you might be doing is visibility being seen. Maybe you're posting just to post cause you feel like you should post but you're not really promoting anything or you're staying vague or you're not sending the emails cuz you hate emails. Or you're not asking for email addresses when you're live because you're afraid to bother people, right? You might be hiding invisibility. So what we really have to think about with visibility, which is truthfully marketing, is it's okay to be seen and it's okay to have marketing pushes that flop and ones that do really well. You just want to have the mindset that it's okay to be seen and that you're not going to be judged on the results that happen. The only person doing the judging is yourself. And I've told this to people all the time. Like let's say you do a huge launch, a big promotion and then nobody buys, nobody knows but you. It's okay. Cry under your pillow. If you're in one of my programs like the Collective, for example, come into the community, we Will, we will talk about the breakdowns and, and build you back up to do it again. But that fear of failure or that fear of being seen is the thing that's keeping you stuck. Versus I'm just going to go, I'm going to keep trying to be seen, seen, seen, seen and see what happens. Or I'm going to run a promotion or create an offer or call the person or ask for the thing and if it doesn't go the way that I want, that's okay. I'll just pick myself back up, dust myself off and do it again. A lot of times I see this happening where people are like posting behind the scenes but they don't have a call to action, right? They're not asking for the sale. Or you are posting all this other stuff, right? Like you might be posting pictures of your kids or I don't know, graphics that you create on Canva that's like come to this market but you're not actually wanting to build a brand online. So I see this with not working with creators perhaps, or not calling up retail stores, right? It's that, that avoidance of being seen and avoidance of being heard. So when we're thinking about marketing, marketing is not being pushy, it's being clear. It's making an offer, it's gathering community, it's building a brand. It's. It's building your version of like the thousand true fans. If you've ever heard about thousand true fans, it's building your version of a thousand true fans. Because you could build a beautiful business off of just a few people. I have people making a couple thousand dollars a month now with a few hundred people on their email list because they just got started who said, okay, I'm gonna put print out the list of my in person market. I'm gonna ask people to sign up and then I'm actually gonna email them and email them and email them. The idea here is that you're clear on the outcome that you want and you're creating marketing that is useful to your customers. They want what you have to sell them. They just don't know you exist and that's your job. Okay. Avoidance number three is avoiding your numbers. Oh, this is a, this is a good one. For someone with a lot of scarcity that I keep having to work through and work through. It's like avoiding opening my bank accounts or looking at my bank statement statements or looking at my mail or understanding the cost that it takes to make a product and saying like, am I making a margin? Am I Not making a margin, like anything to do with your numbers and avoiding them. This is something that you really get to break through. And a lot of times looking at your numbers can trigger shame, can trigger a way of feeling inadequate. I know for me, I'm like, I just don't know enough about numbers. My parents didn't teach me about balancing a checkbook or anything to do with money, right? Like my parents are bad with money, I'm bad with money. Like these assumptions that I've taken, which are actually a hundred percent not true, right? A hundred percent not true. First generation American woman, right? Women, like, we're changing these numbers, but only 12% of women owned businesses make it to a hundred thousand and two percent make it to a million, by the way. That's my mission, to change it, that we're going to change that number. But obviously, even with all my scarcity, I got to break through every level of numbers. Afraid that I wouldn't be able to make the money, afraid I was going to lose all the money, afraid that I didn't know to handle the money, Afraid that my bank account, you guys, I just bought a new car. This is how much avoiding the numbers comes up. And I'm so silly. And I worked through this with my life coach. So I'll bring it to you here. We bought a beautiful new car. I bought a Land Rover. And we're sitting there at the dealership and I've picked out the car and we're, we're, we're, you know, filling out all the paperwork and I look at my husband and I'm like, I don't know if my credit's good enough to buy this car. I was like, he's like, well, why do you think that? I was like, I don't know. Like, I keep getting those alerts that my credit course score keeps changing. And so like, I swear to God, it's all going down. This is just my brain avoidance. I didn't open up the credit score. I didn't look at any of the numbers. I just was like, oh, it says it's changing. It must be bad. So silly. So I'm sitting there in the car dealership and, and he, I fill out all my information. He's like, I'm gonna go do the credit check. And I look at my husband, I'm like, maybe you'll sign for the car if I don't get approved. Because I'm afraid my credit's going to be terrible. There's no baseline to this. It's just my Brain goes to bad versus good. A lot of times, I really have to work on this. This is a mirrored thing that happens everywhere in my life. I have to always, like, work against this. He comes back in. He's like. And I'm, like, waiting for him to tell me I'm not good. Like, I have no place being in a Land Rover dealership. Like, this is, like, not meant for, like, all of it. Like, who do you like? I was gonna be found out that I was a fake, right? This is my brain because I avoided the numbers. I wouldn't look at them. So he comes back in. He brings it in. I'm waiting for him to tell me, well, your credit is not approved and you don't get to buy the car. Are is that. He comes in and he's like, okay, great. Sign these papers. And I was like, wait, what? And I was like, well, what's my credit score? And I look, you guys. I was one point off of perfect credit score. One point off of having a perfect credit score. This is like, my credit went up higher than the last time I bought a car. And, like, last time I bought a house. So silly. And it's because I was avoiding the numbers. I. I got these emails. Like, credit score keeps changing in my brain. It's like it's going down. I just don't want to look at it. And then cut to, I'm sitting there in a dealership, and he goes. And it's literally one point off of perfect, which is insanity. I don't know anyone. I mean, if you've. If you're there, great, awesome. Like, this is incredible. But that is shame. That's feeling inadequate. And that mirror, to me is so huge in so many different ways, and also kind of feeling dumb, honestly, like, I'm an artist. I'm a designer. I did well in school. I went to uc. I transferred to an art school, so. So I've got all the data points that, like, I had. I don't remember if it was, like, a 3.8 GPA. I got into a great school. Like, all of these numbers that told me I was good enough. Maybe not as good as I could be, right? Like, I didn't get into usc, so, like, maybe I wasn't good enough, right? So there's, like, all this crap. I'm still pulling Forward from, like, 20 years. Over 20 years ago when I was going to college. So I say this because that avoidance is going to come up at all points until I start to look at it, okay? Until I start to look at numbers. As my life coach, Stacy says, math, not drama. You've heard me say it here on the show. Stacy comes in and she's an advisor inside of the collective. So many of you that are in the collective are working with her as well. And it's the math, not drama. It's just, look at the numbers. And the numbers are just data sets. They're just telling me something. They're telling me, okay, you get to earn more, you need to save more, you need to pay off credit card debt, you get to sell more. You did a great job. Oh, you missed that. Target it. But it has nothing to do with me but avoiding those numbers. Right? This is super sneaky. It might feel like you're protecting yourself, but you're actually abandoning yourself and you're abandoning the ownership that comes with it. And I didn't take my own advice of math, not drama, not my advice, my life coach's advice. Right. But something I share with all of you. It's like I avoided instead of just looking at the numbers and separating myself from it. So the thing that you got to really think here is these numbers mean nothing about you. Your business means nothing about you. Your goals and your revenue mean nothing about you. You get to hold your business as an entity that's separate from you, and you just get to be the guide. You get to guide it along, you get to shepherd it. You get to learn like you're doing on the show right now. You get to invest in yourself so that you can take care of the business. I think about our businesses sort of like our babies. Whether you've got real children, babies or pets or plants, Right? Like whenever you started the first time with, you know, the first time I got a puppy or a cat or the first time, I mean, I'm really not good with live plants, but I have some, some live plants or my own children. I read books, I listened to podcasts, I watched videos. I asked for support from other moms that were ahead of me. I asked my own mom for support. I asked my sister, my sister in laws, my friends. Like, I didn't do it by myself. How was I supposed to know? So I learned by being supported, by getting the support, by educating myself. And then, you know, you know this as your kids get older, that they'll start to act separate from you. Like, the choices they make are not about us because they're separate entities. But my job and my responsibility was to help. I'll talk about my kids, like, make sure my kids are safe, make sure that they're kind and they're loving, you know, educate them, feed them, like all of the things that you do with a kid and then raise them so that they can be adults that function on their own. And that's what you're doing in your business. Because long term, for all my product bosses out there that have probably in that six figure multi, six figure, multimillion dollar range, this is the point that you're starting to hire team members. Things are happening that you're not doing all the things. Things are happening without you. There's even things happening in your business that you have no idea about. Like no idea. But there's a procedure and it's happening. And that's the same thing. Like my kid, when he brushes his teeth, does he brush his teeth? I hope he brushes his teeth. I taught him how to do it. But that's going to be something that he does. Right. So that's really the way you get to start to think about your business. So we're going to do a quick integration. So what's the biggest avoidance for you right now? Right. Which avoidance is really sticking out? That you're avoiding being known for something, that you're avoiding visibility or that you're avoiding the numbers? I want you to pick one of those. You might be like all of them or two of them. Let's just pick one that feels the biggest for you right now. Like the biggest thorn in your side and the one that if you overcame it would actually unlock. It's kind of like a hose and like a hose that has a kink in it. It's, it's blocking the water from flowing through. If you un kink that hose, all of a sudden things will start to flow. So what I want you to reflect back to yourself is that you are the one doing the doing. You are the CEO. You are the one that's holding this entity and the growth and, and the one, you know that that's responsible for it. But it's not a reflection of yourself. So what I want you to do is take a look in the mirror and say, okay, I can handle this truth and I can choose my next step that's going to break through. What I'm avoiding, I call it like being stretchy or a stretch. So a stretch would be something where avoid. Okay, if I avoid my numbers, I'm actually gonna look at my bank account once a week or I'm gonna have a team member create a like. Actually I do. This is my, my financial team. They send me a weekly Report my profit and loss, my cash flow, where things are at in terms of, like, credit, like, all the things, right? So they send it to me and I get to really look at all of my numbers. It's a dashboard. It's just giving me data. And so from that, I get to make decisions. From that, I get to break that cycle of avoiding numbers, avoiding visibility. Right. I avoided learning YouTube forever because it felt overwhelming. Well, eventually I was like, I'm just gonna do it. I'm just gonna get better and I'm gonna hire a team to do it for me. Right? Like, that was the privilege that I got to have at this point in my business. So I really want you to think about what you're avoiding and how you're gonna break through it, right? That you can handle the truth and you're gonna choose your next step that's gonna break through. It's gonna unkink the hose. And so here's your homework for the next seven days. It's simple and it works if you do it. I want you to pick one avoidance, one thing that's being mirrored to you, one avoidance. And I want you to pick an action on the other side of that that's different. So if you're avoiding being seen, then what's one action you can take that starts to that you start to be seen. Okay. And you practice that for the next seven days. If it's avoiding numbers, is it? I'm going to go look at my cost of goods of my bestsellers and make sure that I'm hitting the right margins. I'm going to go open my mail. I'm going to go look at my bank account. If it's an avoidance of sending an email to the list that you already have, but they're getting no emails, you're going to send an email, okay? So you're going to pick that avoidance that stands out the most, and then pick an action that's going to counter that avoidance, and you're going to take action in the next seven days. So if you've been listening to this episode and you're thinking, okay, what am I avoiding? How do I want to install this? If you're not already following the show or subscribers subscribed, make sure that you follow the show. You can also follow me over on Instagram where we're constantly sharing tips and mindset and you can see behind the scenes. But just make sure that your consistency that you're doing here is subscribing to the show and listening to it. Because when you do, you're gonna start to unravel, right? It's like a necklace that's all balled up. We're gonna start to pull it apart and unravel it and start to see it, like get really clear and really easy. And that's what we want to create for you here at the Product Boss. So thank you again for listening to the show. If you know someone out there that you know that they're getting in their own way, that they're avoiding something and if they could really look at it, look in the mirror and make one simple change, it would unlock everything for them, would you do me a favor and send them this episode? Just forward them this episode, send it over and let them them know like, hey, this is the one to listen to so that we can help inspire someone else in their business journey. All right everyone, until next week. I'll see you then. 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