Jan. 10, 2024

Turning 2023’s Losses into 2024’s Triumphs: Harnessing My Setbacks for Your Success

Turning 2023’s Losses into 2024’s Triumphs: Harnessing My Setbacks for Your Success

As Thought Leaders, the biggest gift we can give to those who seek us for guidance and mentorship is to show the full picture; not just how we’ve won but how we’ve lost. 

Join me as I dive into a thorough reflection of 2023, a year that delivered undeniable growth and expansion, yet was also marked by its fair share of failures, challenges, pain, and healing. 

I’m taking you behind the scenes to give you a real and raw look at where I failed, what I learned from it, and how you can use my setbacks as your stepping stones to embody the most powerful version of yourself, rise to your next level of success, and enjoy the journey throughout. 

Don’t miss these highlights:

05:32 How I entered 2023 on the heels of a transformational year that set the stage for the many lessons that would follow. 

08:25 With big goals comes big responsibility and in order to be equipped for that responsibility, we must grow. Growth is uncomfortable. 

12:33 What I learned about the decision-making process and what to avoid before you approach your business from an emotional state. 

15:58 How to create a plan in advance so that you can give yourself more space to actually achieve your goals (versus sabotage).  

19:24 Navigating uncomfortable emotions I hadn’t experienced before. 

33:25 The resurfacing of an old pattern that led me to unintentionally break boundaries. 

38:38 How to safeguard yourself as an entrepreneur, CEO, and visionary. 

Apple Podcast | Spotify 

Connect With Kinsey Machos: 

Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Facebook 

If you want to stand out online and get clients, join our free masterclass, Newsfeed Masterclass: www.kinseymachos.com/newsfeed

If you’re ready to take your coaching business to the next level with a framework that will get you fully booked with top-tier clients, join us inside The Category Queen School Today: https://kinseymachos.com/thecqschool

About the Host

Kinsey Machos is the host and founder of The Category Queen, a podcast and community for coaches, consultants, and course creators. 

She left her six-figure corporate salary to pursue her passion for helping women unlock their unique brilliance and achieve success in their businesses. 

Kinsey's mission is to help entrepreneurs gain recognition, reach more people, and make more money while balancing success with motherhood and marriage.

Transcript
Kinsey Machos:

I'm Kinsey Machos is your host and founder of the category queen. Welcome to the podcast for coaches, consultants, and course creators who don't just want to dominate their niche, but they desire to play in their own way. My mission is to help you unlock the power of your unique brilliance, and use it as a vehicle to gain recognition, reach more people and make more money. Not too long ago, I took a bold leap, leaving behind a six figure corporate salary, with nothing more than a US MacBook, and a burning desire for more freedom. Today, our brand has become globally recognized helping 1000s of female founders to become industry leading experts. Join us each week as we go on a journey together to discuss mindset, marketing, and money. More importantly, the real life discussions about balancing success with motherhood and marriage. Because we're a community of women who build and scale impact driven businesses, but do it without sacrificing the things that matter most to us. Welcome to the category Queen show. Hello, my friends, welcome back to the episode, I am excited to be here with you today.

Kinsey Machos:

At the time of this recording, it's actually Christmas break winter break still. And I know that at the time that this will come out, it will be the new year. So Happy New Year, it is crazy to say that I actually had intentions to do this topic before the turn of the year. But I I actually was not quite reading, I have been taking a lot of time to reflect on 2023. And when it comes to even what I want to bring to you all and when I'm ready to share and really allow you to basically win from my losses, I needed just some time to really think about what does that look and feel like this year. And 2022 was just a very personal year for me. And I have come out on the other side of that. I truly believe that but there was a lot, there was a lot happening behind the scenes that most of you will, of course, never see. But I hope that in this conversation, you can really just see and understand that success is not all unicorns and rainbows. And in fact, it's it can feel like the opposite a lot of the times, and it's okay, if you are feeling like it's hard, or you're questioning some of it or you're doubting yourself, or you're wondering, you know, why does it feel like everybody else is crushing it, but me this is really, really normal. And so I hope that in me sharing my biggest losses for 2023, that you can use them as inspiration to walk into 2024, or I guess it's already 2024 and really allow that to be at the forefront. You know, as you start to create your own success. The truth is we get to have the our experiences the way that we're meant to have our experiences, I will never be able to fully help you avoid something painful. But if anything, learn from my mistakes, learn from your mentors mistakes, and really notice even what you see in yourself, in me sharing my own experiences in the things that were just again, kind of failures slash losses, of course, they were all again meant to happen. I believe that for I like so heartedly. But know that it's not just because you see people crushing it online, know that there's always things that you don't know that are going on behind the scenes. So just a little encouragement and reminder there now, real quick before I talk about some of my biggest losses for 2023 Just a little bit of a backstory. 2022 was a really, really big year for us as a team, and me personally. But we grew really fast. As we have spent most of the year launching a new offer growing a new offer, and really focusing on scaling like true scale. You know, there's a difference between growing and scaling. And I had no idea what that actually meant. You know, I know what scale means, but I didn't know that it would require the time the money the energy that it did. And nobody prepared me for that. And I know looking back I definitely tried this quote unquote skill too fast. I didn't I Just did not anticipate what what that was. And so at the by the end of 2022, I had this sort of perception that everything was wrong, and everything was breaking, or it just felt really, really hard. I mean, at the surface level, you would, you would see that, gosh, we had such major successes that year, I also had like a failed partnership that I've never really talked about. But it really, really threw me through, it just threw me off. And if I'm being honest, I haven't completely healed from that. And that was a big element of even 2023. And me sort of being in this really, really deep healing season, which has been a very quiet and slow, painful, but so beautiful, sort of journey. But I just felt like I had been doing it all wrong. Because again, nobody really told me that that's normal. And what you're experiencing is normal. And yeah, this and that. And so it coming into 2023. I was like, I can't I don't want to do that. This is not I I'm not really sure. I don't feel like this is right. And I had to just really go inward. I think that it felt like things were falling apart. I wasn't really sure what I wanted, even though I had gotten basically everything I wanted. And you had this feeling of like a little bit of emptiness. And I had made that mean a lot of things. And unfortunately, it really, really threw me off sort of my path towards where I wanted to go. And so that was one of the biggest, biggest things. And looking back, I realized that that if somebody would have just told me, No, this is 100% Normal. And you're just growing and scaling really fast. And here's how to really adjust that, I would have been fine. And I and it would all be fine. But there was nobody really normalizing that for me. And then of course you have the personal the relational things that come with a failed partnership, and then how that impacts the team and the clients. And it was a lot. And I hear about talking, I hear a lot of my peers talking about these sorts of seasons or moments when they've like reached a milestone and they're like, oh my gosh, like, this is not what I wanted, or this feels harder than I thought or this isn't as good as I thought it would feel. And so I think that looking back, I realized that's just normal. It was so normal what I was going through, but it did, it threw me for, like a curveball. And I spent a lot of time making these things mean something that they actually didn't. And so it put me into a season, which I believe that I was meant to be exactly where I needed to be to learn the lessons that I learned this year. Because we're going to go back into another base, like quantum leap, if you will. And what you're about to witness is going to be really incredible. And I'm excited for you to come alongside of us as we do that, whether you're a student or a listener, or just you know, somebody in our community. But I feel so much more equipped for that. And here's the thing, you have to know that the things that you want, come with a responsibility. And a lot of times we think that we're ready for those things, but we're actually not, you're not ready for that responsibility. And so you go through things that grow you to make you be ready for those things. But we kind of look at that is like, Oh, this is wrong, this isn't for me, I need to slow down or I need to turn away. And that's what I had thought. But looking back, I realized that everything that I was going through was to stretch me and grow me so that I could expand myself and be ready for more of that responsibility. Okay. And so the goals that you have your eye on for 2024 know that the it's not just what that goal is, it's about who you have to become to achieve that goal. And it's about growing that responsibility and what that means to you. So you're going to have to go through things, and I'm the first one that's gonna say like it does suck, a lot of it does suck. And it's like super not sexy to even say that. But this is why it's so important to have the right people in your corner. I think that was probably the biggest gap for me is I didn't have the right mentors really guiding me in the way that I needed to. And so it was a little bit of that figuring it out on my own. At the beginning of this year. I had always had a mentor guiding me up until that point, but you reach a point where again, not a lot of people are that has successful as you think they are right and they And I was kind of at that level where I had outgrown a lot of peers, a lot of mentors. And so I really needed somebody different, somebody bigger, bigger as far as what they've gone through their own journey, what they built. So, all that being said, let's dive into some of these losses and what this is going to mean for you winning in 2024. Okay, again, I really took some time to think about what I'm a ready to share and be making sure that it is meaningful for you, because I don't want to just sit here and vent about what didn't go well, I also am not one to share sort of the dark without sharing the light. And so I wanted to be really thoughtful about what this looked like as far as unpacking the losses for this year. So the first one was emotional decision making. This was so huge. And because you've probably heard me talk about this a lot. And it's something that I know too well. And yet I fell so hard for this cycle of emotional decision making. And because of the turn of 2022 into 2023, I really stopped paying attention to how my emotions were impacting the decisions I was making. Now I'm very emotionally aware, if you ask anybody that are going to tell you the same thing, this is something that I'm really, really good, I spend a lot of time studying my thoughts, understanding how they create the feelings that I have, and how that's impacting my results. But I, I always use that almost as a justification, when I went to go make a decision, but wasn't doing it from a place of actual fact. Now, this is huge, because I think that this is just the human tendency, we get wrapped up into an emotion, even whether that's negative or positive, right. And we let that obviously, it'd be the thing that drives us immediately to that next step. I mean, if you think about even how we move through life, right, we have a thought that creates a feeling and that feeling is going to drive a behavior and that behavior drives a result. But if we're constantly going through that cycle on an without awareness, this is where we create those rinse and repeat results that we don't really desire. But I would experience a negative emotion, and immediately make some pretty big decisions from those emotions without giving myself some space or time to really think about a is this coming from a place of like, actual fact? Am I making decisions here based on data? Because again, you know, me, I'm so data driven, right. But I, I, I again, I used that too, as justification, which is so funny, right? But am I using? Am I making this decision from data? Or am I making this decision from emotion? I didn't stop enough to ask myself that question. We made a lot of big decisions that were from an emotion that wasn't necessarily something that needed to be there, it's from if you think about it, right. But you know, our thoughts create our feelings, and our feelings create our behavior, and our results.

Kinsey Machos:

And we're having thoughts that are not aligned with where we're going. That's where we have an undesired result, right. So if I'm thinking that this isn't working, and I have an emotion of frustration, or defeated, or feeling defeated, that is going to drive me to make decisions that are not necessarily the best for myself, for the company for our clients. And I did that many times. And what frustrates me the most was that I would actually catch myself after the fact. And remind myself that I wouldn't be doing that again. And then I would do it again on it like without really the true awareness to it. So I'm just be totally transparent, honest, this is this is, again, behind the scenes of my crazy brain, and where I, where you know, the holes I have to cover, and I noticed so much of this this year, and I am loving on myself so hard, because I know that again, I needed to learn this lesson this year, because I can't carry that over into the new year and into our and where we're headed that would literally destroy us. And so I know that I needed I know I was meant to learn this lesson in the very hardest way this year. But what does this mean for you? First of all, I'm going to say what I always say in that you have to make sure that you're making decisions ahead of time. What happened? This is we'll we'll kind of go into this unintentional action and then it creates an emotion and we kind of just like spiral up. But I want you to make a plan ahead of time, you're going to decide ahead of time, what is it that you want? What are you going to do, right? Let's say you are launching a new offer, and you're gonna plan ahead of time, what are the results you want to create? What is this going to look like? What are you going to do if a, b and c right, we have a risk mitigation plan in place as a project manager, I would have to put these plans in place before we ever executed a project. And we would have to decide if this happens, then this is basically assessing worst case scenarios and deciding ahead of time, what that looked like, because what happens is, it's actually hard to mitigate your risk, it's hard to pivot, it's hard to know what's right when you're in the thick of it. And so when you make decisions ahead of time, you make a plan ahead of time, and you really take that space to know what you want to who you want to be and what you want to do through that process, you will avoid a lot of this. But the other obvious most important piece to this is if something doesn't go your way, then you need to just pause you need to step back and you need to pause. Most people, including myself this year, make decisions from that space of Oh, this isn't working. This isn't, I'm so stuck, you know, thinking about, you know, maybe your audience isn't growing, or your emails aren't converting, your content is not converting, right. And every time you focus on what's not working, and then you make decisions from a lack mindset, you're, you're going to go off the beaten path, okay. And that's what keeps you that's what's gonna keep us from keeping that momentum and moving the needle forward, not everything's always going to work all the time, you have to learn how to, like regulate your emotions, and then make decisions huge. This is my biggest takeaway from 2023. And it's something that I have created a framework around so that I can stop doing this, because I can look back and see where this has sabotage my success. And I know, you could probably do the same. The other thing to this component is broadening your scope. So when we get so in the weeds of something we create, we put a lot of pressure on ourselves or a lot of pressure on certain things. Because it's so narrow scope, right? Let's go back to launching a new offer or doing a launch altogether. And the launch didn't go as planned, and you're so focused on that. And you're, you're frustrated that it didn't go right, you're, you're frustrated that you didn't bring in the revenue you thought. And so all you're doing is you're feeling frustrated in your angry came? Well, first of all, we're going to do what we had said before, and we're going to give ourselves some space. And we're actually going to critique. So in our launch Aquaclean method, we have an evaluation process, because this is this is exactly why from an emotional decision making is that if something doesn't go away, we're really, really biased. So it's like this all or nothing thinking of like nothing is working. But you have to force yourself to see what actually worked came. And you're going to give yourself space to do that. And you're also going to give yourself some distance from that negative emotion. But you're also going to broaden the scope and you're going to broaden the timeline. If you're only focused on that one launch. Like it is going to give you too much of a narrow lens of like actual big picture, right? What is that one launching compared to the next year of your business. Don't sabotage your success based on one tiny milestone on the overall journey, you have to look at the full scope and the full timeline, pull out, zoom out whatever you need to do. So you're like out of the trenches of that one thing that will massively help really regulate those emotions and make better decisions that don't sabotage your success. Okay, so let's talk about the next loss of 2023. And how you could use this to win in 2024. This is another big one. I shrunk when I was being called to grow. So this is huge. And this is along the lines of really what I was feeling at the turn of 2022 and 2023. In I felt like everything got really hard and I got everything I wanted. But I had basically convinced myself well, it's not what I had thought it was. And this created a lot of negative emotions and created a lot of insecurities in me Right, when you have things that are breaking, or you have things that are failing, what's going to happen, right, you're going to start seeing yourself in a new lens, you're going to start, you know, having old stories come up old healed stories, which you thought, right? Maybe new ones, insecurities, maybe you hadn't experienced before emotions you hadn't experienced before. I'll tell you that shame was something I carried really heavily. It's something that I still feel it in me. And it, it's actually never something I ever resonated with. I never resonated with shame, that feeling. And I felt it so deeply this year. And again, I know I was meant to feel it. I know, I was meant to heal those parts of me and continue to heal those parts of me. But what happened was, I let a lot of that consume me and basically paralyze me. And when I should have seen everything that was happening as an opportunity to continue to grow, I made it mean things that it didn't need to mean. And I basically shrunk. I shrunk, I started to see myself smaller, I started to compare myself to people I'd never compared to, I started to take less risks. Because that apparently is too hard, right? And as you know, you have to take risks. If you want to succeed, you have to take risks, everything that you do, right, if you think about doing things you've never done before, you have to become someone you've never been before, and that that alone is a risk. But I stopped, I stopped, I really, really started to become someone I hadn't recognized. And then that really perpetuated that cycle. I was like, What am I even doing? I don't like this is not me. And it spiraled. It really did spiral. And so what this means for you is that it really goes back to what I opened with in that when things are not going your way, when you are being called to grow. When you are feeling like things are getting harder. This is your time to lean in. And instead of doing what I did in pulling away and shrinking, which again, sabotages your success.

Kinsey Machos:

I want you to freaking lean harder in all the way. Right, this is the time where you may question you may question if this is possible for you, you may start doubting yourself like you've never doubted yourself before. I mean, I I'll be honest, I, I never really doubted myself. I think that maybe I was overly confident. And then when things started to happen, it was like, oh, you know, I'm not invincible. So it was very humbling for me and very, very important for me to go through that. But for you, what does that mean for you, when you are starting to maybe be like there's things that you need to look at head on you need to face these are things that you're being called to face and not turn away. Each level of it of success for you will feel hard. Each new level will bring new heart it will bring new feelings, new emotions, new thoughts, new insecurities, and instead of shrinking down to the level that you're at, or a level before you need to rise up, it's time to rise up to that level, which means new responsibility, and new things to heal, and new things to address. These are not barriers, these are not indicators that this is not meant for you. These are indicators that you are growing in your success. And you need to expand yourself in order to be ready for more of that success. So if I could go back, I would I would keep leaning in. But I did stall myself quite a bit. I stalled myself so much because I started to really feel less competent and insecure. And really, really started to play smaller like I had never before. So do not make that mistake. Do not make that mistake. I hope that you have peers or mentors that can really be your mirror here because I did I finally had some of my good friends really call me out on this. They're like, dude, if I complain small, what happened to you? Right? And so, for you, you need somebody, sometimes we need that voice. But either way, just to reminder that there's nothing wrong with you. In fact, your identity is not built in the success of your business. But you are becoming someone new, indifferent and part of that process can feel painful. It's not a bad sign, I promise. Okay, let's head into the next Next one, this one is also, I even just feel my body tensing up a little bit, because it has been a really big, I'd say issue in the company as a whole as a team. So not enough planning and too much executing. So this was a big loss for us in 2023. And really put a lot of pressure and stress on the team and myself, because of fast, going fast and not really thinking thoroughly thinking through these things thoroughly. And I'm at the level in the size now that I can't, it's not appropriate to, you know, change your mind, like change your underwear, or, you know, do these last minute things. Now, we'll always be nimble. And that's something that I really value in my team. If we need to pivot, we will. And we have the ability to do that. But we have to be more thoughtful and intentional in our execution. I got certified as a project manager, and I would plan these big projects and initiatives. And we were always taught that you should spend more time planning than actually executing. And it frustrated our leaders so much. So I would be leading his initiatives with, you know, C suite executives who just want to see the result like yesterday, but we would have to really force them to sit down, do the planning, work through the questions, work through the requirements, look through the plan, look through the owners, the accountability partners, like all the elements, and they will get so frustrated. And it was really, really hard to really keep that temperament, hat, you know, a neutral place, because they're like you and me, right? It's like, well, no, I want to do this now. And I want the result last night. But that's not how it works. You have to spend more time planning, especially if you're in a big growth season, or you're starting to really see yourself as a CEO, you want to look at yourself and your team differently. And you want to go to maybe seven figures, multiple seven figures, there's going to be a point where you just can't get away with it anymore. And even if you're just getting started, this can play out for you in sort of like waking up deciding your business plan or your your plan to get clients is this one day, and then deciding the next day, it's something different, this is the same thing. Maybe you don't have a team, but you're constantly changing your plan. You're constantly changing your mind, and it's creating no momentum for you. And when it comes to having a team, even if it's only one VA, if you're not giving spaciousness for your team and you to actually think through all these things, and it goes back to even the decision making. Do we even know what these types of decisions will do? What kind of impact they'll have on our stakeholders, right, our team, our clients ourselves, and really assessing what these decisions are, what the plan is? And how does this fit into the overall longevity of the business? And really, really talking through all the details we've learned as a team to talk through things more often. More often, there's no question that's too dumb, because what we found is, when we make a mistake, it, it had actually already been in someone's brain. But they were too afraid to ask because it sounded too dumb, or it sounded too small. So if we take more time to just like thoroughly just think through our decisions and plan out our projects, whether that's a new launch, or a shift in a content strategy, or a new platform or operational component, really, really making sure that you've just given yourself the due diligence in the space to think through what that looks like, what it's going to impact and just making sure that it does get you to where you want to be in the long run. And that's probably what a lot of you are not doing is thinking more long term versus short term. What does this gonna get me today or next month, or even six months from now versus how does this fit into the overall plan in scale like a queen, we build out your three year plan, because even a year, sometimes is just too small of a scope. And if we're only looking at it through a years plan, this is where people I find are changing their mind all the time. But if you just really stick it out and you see it more of a three year stretch, you will do yourself so much service, right and really allow yourself to see that plan through in a longer period of time. And this will also from a microscope, right when you think about meeting your three year plan and your three year goals and how you're going to get there Are and the little things along the way those offers and what that delivery looks like the marketing, the fulfilling, then you can also on that, on that note, give yourself more time, more planning efforts to really understand how, what this looks like, and does it align with your company values and how you want to be really working as a team and as a company. So this might feel like it's too advanced for you if you're just getting started, or you're under six figures, but the habits you built now will carry over. And these are habits that some of these habits I've been carrying for a little while some of them are a little bit newer, the planning piece has always been something I'm really good at looking actually broadly at the broad scope, scope, and seeing the like three year plan has always been so helpful for me. But I have used my ADD as an excuse, notice how I'm a very good, I'm very good at justifying any any of my downfalls. But I was using my ADD as an excuse. And I would constantly be doing this procrastination, or I would have a new idea. And I was like, let's launch it tomorrow. And there was these new things especially like this is one of the biggest things that I've had to really watch is I was really, really consistent and disciplined in 2022. And I kind of bounced the other way this year, and just testing and experimenting, which, again, I believe that I needed to do that and really kind of settled back into the vision of category clean and what that looks like. And just that transition created a lot of new decisions and gray for us and accompany and so opened me up to some new vulnerability, if you will, and some of these decisions. So when we went through this transition, and really looked at the full scope of these things, I kind of just assumed that I was doing due diligence, but I continue to have these same patterns of procrastination, and new ideas. And I really had to tame that. And I I know the now that I cannot continue to

Kinsey Machos:

make decisions on the whim or execute without enough planning because it actually hurts the team. The worst. And I don't want to have a company that has a bunch of burnt out employees. I don't want to do things half assed, I want to have high quality experiences, I want to deliver things in excellence. And that does require more thoughtful planning and more of this last minute procrastination. So huge, huge loss. But it's going to be a huge win for you and for me in 2024. Because I learned it the hardest way this year. And I see my blind spots and even like using my ADD as an excuse, or believing that I can't change because my brain is this way. But that's just a story. Now, the last one, the last loss of 2024, although these were really big. So there's technically four here, but I feel like they were so heavy. And it's like I had to learn all the hardest lessons in the hardest way, all at the same time. But the gift is now we all get to win in 2024 from these losses. So the last one is boundaries, this one continues to come back and haunt me. You know, I used to say I'm a recovering people pleaser. But that's literally a lie. And I'm realizing that people pleasing is still so deep, so deep in me. And it comes to team, it comes to clients and students it comes to you know, family members, I would say though, in this setting in this particular context, it continues to really come strongly through team and clients and students and it goes back to worthiness. And feeling like you have to be doing something a certain way or being a certain person in order to make people happy. And I really thought this was healed, but it really it showed up in 2022 for sure. And I thought I was done with it. You know it's funny, you think that you can just like see it like, like a bad habit and decide that you're done and tuck it away in the closet. But it just doesn't work like that, unfortunately. And this one really really slid in hardcore in 2023 and in different ways. But what it really what it really did for me is just show me a that this really is a journey. Healing is an Infinite Journey. You don't heal some once and never have to deal with it again. And there's always be a reason. There's always a reason why this is happening and why this is coming up. And so to stop and pause and really just understand what is happening, what is happening, right? So when it comes to boundaries, I think it's, I'm being kind of vague here, but I don't really the point is to stop breaking the rules. And you have to, in order to break rules, you have to set the rules. So depending on where you are in your boundary journey, you may have to set the rules first, what does that look like? What does that look like for your clients, your students, your family members, your team? What does that look like for you, and then you have to commit to the rules. And I know that maybe some of you when I say that might feel like that's easy. But that's actually the hardest part. I think setting the boundaries and setting the rules or the expectations are easy. That's the easy part. But holding to those, especially when someone's telling you that they're not getting what they want, or someone's blaming you for something, it can really be hard to stick to those rules. But when it comes down to it, I've never once had a situation where I broke my own rules and said, Oh, yeah, that was a really good idea. And it reminds me of the fact that I still need to continue to heal that little girl inside of me, that pops up every so often, and says that she's not good enough. And she's not worthy enough of this success. And it's never really about the person who I broke the rules with, when it comes to boundaries, it's all about that little girl in me. And so what does this mean for you, it means that you also have a little girl in you, that is pleading with you a lot of the times and really just waving her hand saying I don't feel worthy, there's this part of you that likely there will always be some element that you don't feel worthy of success, or you don't feel good enough, you question or doubt, the desires that you have on your heart. And I see it as just again, that little girl, she just is afraid. She's very, very afraid. And so when it comes to boundaries, you have to really look at this as you protecting you. And protecting the other person, when people know what to expect. That's good on them. And don't you. But when you break the rules, all shit hits the fan, and everything goes out the window. And so you have to do both, you have to set the rules, you have to set the expectations, and you have to hold to them. And you don't do it. Because you're making more money or you're making people happy, you're doing it to protect yourself, because you are the most important asset in this business and in your life. And so while sometimes it can be one of the hardest things to do, to either say No, when you feel like you should say yes, or to hold to the rule when it feels like maybe that's feeling really hard or uncomfortable, or letting somebody go or firing a client, or billing parameters, maybe in your coaching pro program that it doesn't feel good to you anymore, right? These are the things that will come up. And you have to at the end of the day, do the things that are going to fill your cup and protect you as an entrepreneur, as the CEO, as the visionary. And also continue to really give yourself that freedom that you desire with within the business that you created. So let that be your winning plan. What I just gave you was a lot of dark side lot of darkness. And it's the dark side of me in 2023. But what came of this was really the most beautiful transformation I've ever experienced in my life. And I know I'm not all the way on the other side of it. I know I'm kind of at the tail end of it. And I've been in it for most of the year, which is why I haven't shared much about it. But I am on the other side enough to share you know some of these losses. But what I what I gained from that was so much more and I realized that I have I had and have still so much room for growth when it comes to the things that we're shooting for the things that I desire. I have to become a different person. And this is what this looks like this is exactly what it is. And I just had lessons in 2023 Because I took the risks that I took and because I went for the things that I want to do Go for these were the lessons that were delivered to me so I could actually achieve them. And I think, I think that I think the process, I think God for being like, Hey, girl, you're not ready for this. But here's what you are ready for, and showing me where I needed to grow. And this is exactly where I need to grow. And this is where maybe you are being called to grow as well. And so just sit with this if you need to get out a notebook and kind of take notes on a few of these things and just reevaluate them in yourself. Great, do that. But you may need to come back to this even a year from now maybe a couple years from now and be like, Oh my gosh, I know what this is what this is because can you describe this so you may not even know what this feels like yet, but either way, I hope this gifted you some nugget so that you can make 2020 for your best year ever. Because I know for me, it's going to be our our best year ever. My best year ever. And I am so excited. I'm so excited for what's to come. And I'm so excited that you're here on this journey with me. All right, my friend, I will talk to you next week. 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