#527: Are you Bootstrapping or Sabotaging? - Tash Corbin, Heart-Centred Business Podcast

Full article and show notes available at: tashcorbin.com/527

Have you ever had a friend, client, or maybe even a family member come to you with what they see as a completely unsolvable business problem, and you can clearly see the answer staring them in the face? Or maybe, you’ve had that moment yourself? That’s exactly how I felt recently, and it inspired this episode of the Heart-Centred Business Podcast. I want to talk about self-sacrifice, bootstrapping, making do—and how those habits might actually be huge mindset blocks in disguise that are sabotaging you.

The Facebook Post That Sparked Everything

This conversation started when I posted a question on my Facebook page: "If you had all the money you needed, would you still run your business? And if so, what would you do differently?"

The responses were fascinating, and some even turned into deeper conversations in DMs, client sessions, and emails. I want to shout out a big thank you to everyone who jumped into that conversation—you’ve given me so much food for thought (fabulous fodder, as I like to say) for this episode.

From all those comments and conversations, three things really stood out to me...

Read the full article at: tashcorbin.com/527

Join us in Noosa at the Heart-Centred Business Conference in September!

Find out more and secure your ticket at: tashcorbin.com/conference

Transcript

4:31

Have you ever had a friend, a family member or maybe even a client describe what they see as an unsolvable problem to you and to you. The answer is so simple and easy and obvious. Or well, I feel like I've had one of those moments and I want to talk it through in this episode of the Heart Centered Business Podcast. I want us to talk about self sacrifice, bootstrapping your business, making do with what you have, and how it may actually be a revealer of a huge mindset block. I'm calling it Are you bootstrapping or sabotaging? And this is episode number 527 of the Heart Centered Business Podcast, which means you can find all the relevant links and the show notes for today's episode over@tashcorbyn.com 527 let's jump into this one because I want to explain how it came about and also what we can do if we recognize that potentially there's some self sabotage at play. Let's do it. Hello, I'm Tash Corbin, a business strategist and mentor based on the Sunshine coast in Australia. The mission of this podcast is to help Heart Centered entrepreneurs to make more money and in doing so change the world for the better. This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Gubbi, Gubbi and Djinnaburra people. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land. So this came about because I posted on my Facebook page asking the question, if you had all the money that you needed, would you continue to run? And if so, would you do anything differently? And it got quite a lot of comments and we had some spectacular conversations. In fact, some of those conversations went to the DMs and into client sessions and emails as well, because I was fascinated by the response and I had made some observations. So I wanted to say thank you to everyone who engaged in that conversation. I want to say thank you to everyone, everyone who reached out because it really is the origin story of this podcast episode and has given me some fabulous fodder, as I like to say, for the podcast. And I wanted to particularly touch on three observations and then dive deep on one conversation in particular. So my top three observations from that post were that number one, most people said yes, absolutely. I would say still run my business even if I had all the money that I needed. There's still this sense of I want to do it for finding purpose. Some people said yes, I would still do it, but I wouldn't charge if I didn't need to. Some people talked about just their desire to still show up and serve and help Others, it was just absolutely gorgeous to see how many people would still run their business even if they didn't necessarily need the money from it. Now, one little thing I will say is that even if you don't need a cent from your business, I think there is a strong case for still charging for your services because there's something powerful about that energy exchange. I know several people who don't need to make money from their business, and they have actually played with and experimented with doing some of the work that they do for free. And most of them have landed back at no. I do need there to be some form of actual exchange for the work that we're doing together. So I just wanted to quickly touch on that one because I think if you have that sort of as a vision that you're working towards, I'm making so much money, I don't need to charge for it and I don't charge for it. I'm not sure that there is actually an energetic alignment there, but that's totally up to you. If you want to give it away for free, that's totally fine. So that was observation number one, was most people said yes to still being in business. And I just love that. Like, that's such a powerful thing to be able to witness people talking about. I feel exactly the same way. Number two, the people who said, yes, I would still be in business, but I would do things so differently. Oh, I do things wildly differently. And then went on to describe the key things said do differently. Things weren't that different to me. I was like, you could do that now or you're not that far away from that. And I think I commented that exact comment like, you're not too far away from being able to do that. Next week, on about 15 people's comments, because I was just like, you can do that. Let's do it now. You don't have to wait until you don't need money from your business to have that kind of change in the way that you run it. And then the third observation was that there were a few people who I would actually say kind of gave me the impression that what they were looking for was actually just to have a job doing the work that they do and, you know, doing the work that they do with clients. And I had this conversation with a client of mine in the very early days of my business, where she ran a yoga studio and was a massage therapist. And she was constantly saying in our sessions, I. When we would work on her marketing and her sales strategies, I get so Excited about it. I'd be like, oh my gosh, you're gonna have so much fun doing this content. Oh, this is so fun for you to be able to pop this into your emails. You know, we were really finding some playfulness in her marketing, but she would still say, oh gosh, I just cannot wait for the day where I never have to do the sales and marketing stuff. I just wanna massage people and teach yoga. And I was like, at some point you need to make a decision about whether you want to do this as a business owner or not. And if you're not at all interested in what makes your potential clients tick, what attracts people into the work that you do, what differentiates you from other providers in similar spaces. I think that for me, like, that's kind of the core part of why we do it as a business owner. And I know that marketing sales isn't everyone's favorite part of being in business, but it's kind of, for me, like, it's the fascinating part that makes you a business owner rather than an employee. And it's the part that makes you, you know, it's the, it's the business case for doing it as a business owner rather than doing it for someone else. And I do think that the job landscape has changed a lot in the last 10 years. And there are jobs in these industries. There are people looking for part time workers, full time workers, who are yoga teachers in their studio, who are instructors, who are coaches, who are in, you know, some really diverse fields. And more and more job opportunities are becoming available for people to do this kind of work. I even saw there's a Reiki practitioner school that's based in Southeast Queensland and they have clinics that they have around the Gold coast, the Sunshine coast and in Brisbane. And when they advertise their practitioner training, they also share how many available roles they have for practitioners in their network. And you know, for me that's really fascinating to see that there are, you know, huge vacancies available. I think the last one that they shared, they, they only have, I think it's 15 people go through the program at once and they had like 28 full time vacant Reiki practitioner positions. And they also had they that roles could be job shared so people could do part time with someone else and share a. And so there are opportunities to work as an employee in some of these fields where you would have to go in business for yourself maybe 10, 15 years ago if you wanted meaningful employment in that kind of work. And so I did want to make that Little observation. And I'm not here to have any judgment or, you know, based on one random comment on Facebook. Tell someone like, you're not cut out to be a business owner. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I would say though is if there is no way that you can even picture yourself getting excited about the marketing and sales side of your business, the deep understanding of your target market and your audience. If you're not truly fascinated by what makes someone want to book in with you versus not want to book in with you, and you don't ever see yourself getting fascinated by that and by the biopsychology side of your business. I don't know that you'll find the ongoing, long term sustainable joy in your business because it is the reality as a business owner that you need to be across that regardless of how many team members you have, regardless of how much you try to outsource in your business. Ultimately if you're the business owner and it comes down to you having that decision making capacity and having that insight and sure, you can hire a bunch of marketing experts and sales experts to work for you, but to get to the point where you can hire them, you need to get good at it yourself. You put yourself in a little bit of a like chicken and egg situation. Of what? I can't grow my business to the point of hiring a marketing person because I don't want to do marketing and sales and I can't do marketing and sales because I need a marketing person to come and work in my business. And you kind of put yourself in a little bit of a limbo there where you can't have either. And so I just, I just found that really interesting to see that still there are so many people who, they just cannot get excited about marketing and sales. They cannot get curious about it. They cannot get excited about it. They just wish that it didn't have to exist, that they didn't have to know about it, that they didn't have to learn about it. And you know, for me, that would be a really hard thing for me to sustainably keep connecting with in my business if I couldn't find the joyfulness in it, if I couldn't find the part that lit me up. And the last thing I will say on that is that I think for a lot of people, they have been told they need to reserve their best work, their zone of genius and being in their preferred mode as an operator for paying clients only. And I've definitely had business coaches and marketing mentors Try and tell me this, that you know, my, one of my best modes is in teaching mode and I shouldn't be giving any of that away for free. But the reality for me is, is that if I didn't allow myself to be in teaching mode in my podcast, in my marketing, in the sales work that I do, I wouldn't enjoy my podcast, the marketing and the sales work that I do. I've got to find joy and fulfillment in the areas of my business in which I am most involved. And in order to find that joy and fulfillment, why wouldn't I show up in my zone of genius? Why wouldn't I show up and do my best work there as well as with my paying clients? And so, you know, I think that there is a lot of fear behind that kind of approach of that if I do that for people for free, then they'll never be incentivized or motivated to pay for my services and work with me. That's actually a value proposition issue. That's not a giving away too much for free issue. You know, I do often have people who come to work with me and that's something that they say or my problem is, is that I give away too much for free. And I very quickly shut that down and I say, no, no, no, no. You can give away multi millions worth of insights and training and resources for free and still have a very vi sales level and strategy in your business. That is an absolute myth. What we need to do is ensure that what you are doing for free and what you are creating and giving away does a good job of qualifying the people who engage with that who would be the right fit for the next step and also demonstrating and articulating the value proposition of the paid options very effectively. And if you're not doing that, if you're just giving away for free everything you've ever thought of, every little request that someone gives you for, oh, you could do a training on this and you just do it, you do it for free. It doesn't have a validated pathway to how it connects in with your paid services. Then yes, you are going to really struggle to generate income from all of that free content and all of those free resources that you're creating. But the problem is not that the resources are free. The problem is not that the content is free. The problem is that it's not structured in order to do the job that you want it to do, which is to make sales for you. So that is that they are my top three observations from this conversation. But the Conversation I really wanted to dive into with this episode today was based on point two, which is that you do things wildly differently. And so I thought, what a great time for everyone listening to this podcast to really consider that if you had all the money that you needed coming from your business or from another source, and you decided, but I still want to be in business, I still want to do my business, what would you do differently? If your business ran really smoothly, it was generating the income that you wanted, what would you do differently? What can you think of that would be different for you about the way that you ran the business or the way that you worked in the business? And you know, you might like to even pause the podcast and journal on that for a little minute. That's totally fine. And the reason why I think that this is such a great conversation for us to bring to the podcast and it's a great thing to just stop and ask yourself, maybe it's something to do on a quarterly basis, is because it can really uncover where you are making do with something that could be fixed fairly easily and quickly. It can uncover mindset blocks or self sabotage in the form of all or nothing thinking, or in the form of denying yourself the resources, tools and operating strategies that would actually make things feel easier for you, make things feel more sustainable for you as well. So the question that I would be asking, when you've got your top three things of how you would run your business differently, what would it look like on a day to day basis that would be different? The next question is, well, what parts of that are actually doable now? Because some people said, oh, I do things so much differently, I would have a full time virtual assistant. And I was like, that's not that different. That is not that different. And that is not that far away. And do you have a part time virtual assistant? Do you engage virtual assistants on a temporary project basis from time to time? There's some all or nothing thinking in that for some people where they think, if I'm going to hire a virtual assistant, I want them to be a full time team member. I want to hire them permanently. I want to have them in my team and only working for me and Therefore I need 40 hours of work per week for that person to be able to do. And so it's not, not the hiring of the team member that is the issue. It's not, that's not the challenge. It's actually letting go of this, all or nothing thinking, letting go of this. Well, I can't hire someone to help me Right now because I'm bootstrapping it. But are you bootstrapping it because it's a smart financial decision to not have someone help you in your team right now, or are you bootstrapping it because, well, I should be able to do all of this myself. I even had a VIP client at the start of this year. We were going through her quarterly plan for Q1 and she had in there hire a VA by the end of the quarter. I said, why don't we do it now? I think you've got, definitely got the workload for it, you've got the cash flow for it. Why don't we set about bringing in a virtual assistant in January? Because so much more of what's in your plan would be far more easy for you to achieve. It would be far less effort for you. And also you could be really focused on some of the projects and ideas, the launches, the content creation that only you can do and there's so much that a VA could do for you. And her response was, oh, no, no, no, no, no. Right now I am not giving enough to my business. I need to be more deeply involved in my business. And I was just quite flabbergasted by it because I, I couldn't understand what she was, I couldn't understand what she was saying. I was like, but wait a minute, like you're a mum, you're quite busy, your business is doing quite well, she's, you know, making between five and $7,000 a month. And she said, yeah, yeah, but like I binge watched all of Bridgerton when the last season came out. And I was like, what has that got to do with it? So we ended up spending probably 20 to 30 minutes of her session diving into why she thinks she doesn't deserve a virtual assistant if she watches Netflix. And it was really revealing of the mindset that she had that she wasn't worthy of being supported if she was not giving it 110% of her effort and energy. Despite the fact that she's a mother, despite the fact that she has, you know, a fairly decent client load, she definitely has capacity for more clients. But I was just like, I cannot fathom being so self sacrificing that it is self sabotage. And I am pleased to report that she does now have a VA who works for her 10 hours a month. We're starting small, but I really want to hit this one out of the park, this message, because I think that people see not being able to access big changes in their business, as you know, that's a really valid and viable reason why the business is not growing fast as they'd like. But when it comes down to it, they could be accessing the things that would get them closer much sooner than they're allowing themselves to access it. Similarly, someone said that they would buy a new computer. And I'm just like, you run your business in if your computer is slow, if it's taking you 45 minutes to start it up in the morning. I actually was speaking to someone on one of my Facebook lives and they shared and divulged silly billy. They shared that they don't close and restart their computer each day because they're worried it won't turn on. And I'm just like, and you're running a business off that thing, right? Like, you need to prioritize having the appropriate resourcing and tools that you need in order to run your business effectively. Because that was the same person who six months ago was having a huge old whinge in the heart centered community about losing an entire day's work because of a computer malfunction. And I just assumed that computer had been replaced and it had not. And we don't tolerate those kinds of things. I've had a bunch of email issues in my business and I have had words with my provider that if this happens again, I will be moving everything, including my website hosting, which is no teeny tiny job. But this needs to be prioritized and I will not suffer from server issues moving into the future. And so we need to ensure that we have a rock solid business underneath us. We need to ensure we have rock solid tools underneath us in order to be able to take the leaps that we take as business owners and, you know, work on these creative projects and new ideas. We're birthing new things into existence all the time as business owners and trying to do that with things that don't work well, that aren't the right fit, that's really challenging. And the number one reason people give me for not investing in these things, especially computers and tools and that sort of thing, is cash flow. You know, confidence in their cash flow, not having the income. But I know for a fact that these same people have had a few thousand dollars come in in their business and given every cent to sending their kids to a theme park or taking their family on a fun two day outing and trip somewhere. And I understand that we want to do those things right. We want to have fun lives to, you know, get money out of our businesses and use that money to be Able to have a life of adventure, to be able to look after the people that we love. But this type and this level of self sacrifice is sabotage. You are actively sabotaging your future success. You are actively sabotaging the success of your business if you do not prioritize investing in the resourcing and tools that you need for that business to be able to be sustained. And if I said to you, you know, just like, you know with those kids, you can have one marshmallow now or two marshmallows in five minutes, right? Just like those little kids who really struggle. But it's the same thing, it's okay, well, you can go. And I, I had a client and she took her kids to go and shop for fun new outfits. They weren't unclothed, they didn't have no clothing whatsoever. It was just, oh my gosh, I've got a bit of spare money, I'm going to go and take my kids and we're going to go and do this huge big shopping spree together. And so they went and did that big shopping spree and then she didn't have the money to pay for her email marketing system. And it's like at the end of the day, they can have the clothes now and the fun new outfits or they can have more time with you and you can have more financial security, stability and freedom in a few months time if we actually invest that money wisely in supporting you to run your business effectively. And you know, I don't want to talk too much to the kids thing because I don't have children. And I also know that I've done the exact same thing. I, when I first started my business, I was yoinking money out of that business as quick as it came in to help support Davey and I having an adventurous lifestyle. But I also recognize where that was a self sabotage that was sabotaging the future success of my business. And there were a couple of times where I had to go to Davey and say, oh, I need an extra $150 please, because I've taken too much money out of the business and I need to be able to pay for this tool or I need to be able to enroll in this next round of this program that I'm doing. And that's one side of it, right, is where you are choosing to invest money and whether you are choosing to spend money on other people's needs and other people's priorities and being honest and real with yourself, is that actually the right decision for you to make or are you making that decision because of potentially some mindset blocks about worthiness or it's a self sabotage or you feel like you should be able to cope and survive without it. And then the second side is, well, go make the money then, right? If I, for some reason my laptop broke down and I needed a new one in order to run my business or my laptop was starting to get a bit glitchy and I needed a new one to run my business and I didn't have those funds readily accessible, that would be my mission. Until I did, I would be focused on income generating activities. And if that meant I needed to offer some VIP sessions at a day discount, if that meant I needed to really focus on my follow ups and my hot lead generation and I had to maybe put a couple of extra hours in in order to do those activities, I would do that. And one of the things that I am very proud of when I first started my business was I made it my mission within the first year of my business to develop my own go to strategy for short term cash injections. Because I knew that being a business owner meant income was fluctuating. And so I knew that I needed a way to say, okay, I need an extra $5,000. I am going to set about crafting my 5k in 5 days process. If I ever need a quick $5,000, these are the steps I will take. This is what I will do. And I know that if I do that, I am highly likely to generate $5,000 in five days. That was my mission when I first started my business. And I think a lot of people are denying themselves and denying their capacity to be able to do those things. They say, oh, well, it's all well and good for you to say that, Tash, but I can't do that in my business because I don't have a big enough audience. My mailing list was a hundred people for the first eight months of my business. A hundred people. I had a teeny tiny audience, but I had access to other people's audiences through Facebook communities. Guess what? That still exists today. Oh yes, but the algorithms were better back then. Yeah, but you know what else was really tough back then? People didn't trust people they met on the Internet back then. And there was a lot of drama with, you know, being seen as someone who was being too proactive or too loud or, you know, people would even comment if I shared a selfie in some Facebook groups. This was back in 2013. If I shared a selfie with a post in some Facebook groups, I would get eye roll emojis in response. I even had a man call me a vacuous self obsessed bimbo because with an offer post I shared a selfie. I shared a selfie because selfies were considered to be very narcissistic when I started my business. So I could absolutely help find you 15 excuses if you wanted them. But I want to know are you more focused on finding your answers or are you more focused on finding your reasons and excuses of why you can't? Because there were several people who I ended up having conversations with in the DMs and on emails after that post where I said, I think you're self sabotaging. I really called it out because it really hurt me to see them deny themselves something so simple, so basic, so accessible in the name of I need to wait until I've got a lot more money before I do that. When I knew actually hiring that VA is the way you'll make the money, or someone talked about investing in ads and growth, I was like, you can do it for $5 a day. Why are you not doing it? Now I've shared an entire training on boostie posties. Why aren't you doing it? Oh, well, I did see someone on the Internet said, you know, you should never use the Boost post button. Okay, cool. So someone's told you to never use the Boost post button, but they've given you no valid or viable alternative for you to get in front of the people you need to get in front of. You think that you need to get in front of more people and that you need to start investing in Facebook ads, but someone's told you that you can't do it until you've got$5,000 and you chose to believe them over the person who step by step walked you through how to do it for $5 a day. Why did you choose to focus on what they said over what I said? And I'm open to hearing your reasons why. And the person just said, well, I guess I just assumed that what you were sharing was too good to be true. It's like, okay, well you can choose to to believe that it's too good to be true, or you could choose to give it a go. You're not going to kill your Facebook algorithm for all time if you one time use the Boost post button. But what if it actually works? What if you stumble across a post that you boost for $5 a day on Facebook and that post for the rest of time generates a few new people onto your mailing list every single day. And out of every hundred people who join your mailing list from that ad, six of them end up buying something from you that is also a possibility. But you're choosing to focus on the most unflattering, un unsuccessful potential outcome of engaging in that strategy. And so that person is now running Facebook ads. Right? I. I turned so many people around, which is why I wanted to bring this conversation to the podcast. Because whether it's ads, whether it's working less hours, whether it's outsourcing, hiring a va, investing in the right tools that you see as the things that you would do if you had more money, I say number one, find ways that you can do it now with the money that you've got. Number two, go make that money. Which brings me to a little invitation. If you are listening to this podcast when it is released, I am literally running a program called get your money in May and June of this year. And I think that if you haven't got a go to strategy to generate a few thousand dollars in a short period of time, if and when you ever need to, this is your opportunity to be able to develop that. And I will walk you through how to develop that process for yourself. Because different businesses have different assets that they can lean on, different business owners have different strengths and skills that they can lean on. But I truly, deeply in my bones believe that every single business and every single business owner can develop their short term cash injection strategy and use that short term cash injection strategy if and when they need to and have confidence that they will be able to generate the income needed. And I have not yet met anyone who I haven't been able to help to make a burst of income in a short period of time. And usually the main thing that stops someone from actually having that at their disposal is actually the belief that they can do it. They would rather collect evidence that they cannot than collect evidence that they can. So if you want to collect evidence that you can, I'd love for you to come and join us in the Progress Art Gym. Get get your money. I'll make sure that the link is with the show notes of today's episode. If you miss out on enrollment, because it does close on the 27th of April, I'll make sure that there's a link there for you to be able to join the wait list if we do it again. I don't think we'll be doing it again this year, but if we do it next year, you'll be on the wait list and you'll be first to be notified so come and check it out. The payment plan is $90 per month for three months I've made at such an accessible price point. It's a two month program and I would really love for you to be able to transmute and turn all these self limitations and self sabotages into the self confidence and belief and the evidence that it's all available to you and that you are the one who is in charge of the trajectory of your business and getting to that point where you invest in yourself and your business in the spaces where you need to because you know you are worth it and you are worthy and you will make it happen. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of the Heart Center Business Podcast. Until next time, I cannot wait to see you shine. Don't forget to go and grab those show notes@tashcorbyn.com 527 I'll see you next week. Bye.