The T Word

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Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the next episode of Teachers in Business. This week we are going to talk about the T word. The T word is one of my most favorite and least favorite words all wrapped up into one. And it is actually really, for me, the thing I am practicing in 2022 the most. So for me, this is my sort of crusade of the year and we're halfway through 2022 is still my most favorite and least favorite thing all wrapped into one. It is actually the thing that makes me most often want to either hang up on someone on Zoom when they say it or like, cry. And and if you haven't figured out what the T word is yet it is trust. So on this episode, and I'm Sara Torpey. By the way, I am the host of this podcast, we are going to talk about why we all have such a complicated relationship with the T word with trust, why it feels so hard for us to use, particularly in business, the role it plays, you know, what we think it should play and what it actually should do. And then I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I practice trust and how I help my clients practice trust, so that you can try it on to if you like. This week, when this podcast is episode is airing, it comes out on Tuesday, the 28th of June. On Wednesday, this week on the 29th I am holding a live in my group that you might want to come to. And it is all about how I make three offers a day. So for me, 2022 is legitimately about two things that I'm working on my business. One of them is making three offers a day, and the other one is trusting that everything else will work out if I make three offers a day. So what I'm going to do in my group tomorrow is actually take everyone through exactly how I keep track of all that. Because they're seven or eight different things that I'm offering at any given moment, how I don't confuse my people how I don't confuse myself how I do it all on the fly. And actually, it's worked incredibly well for me this year. But I'm going to share exactly how I do that in my group tomorrow. If you are interested in making more offers and invitations, and making it simple for yourself, because God It feels so complicated, right? And taking some of the decision fatigue out of the process, please come come to the live. Ask your questions. You can also watch it after the fact. But come ask your questions. And then what we're going to do in the live is I'll take you through how I do it. And then we're going to talk about how to make it yours because there's no point in you doing it exactly like me, you want to make it yours. So, back to your talking about trust. The first question is really what is so hard about trust? Why is this such a topic? Why does it play such an outsized role in our business? And you know, like, aren't we supposed to be using data? That's what my math brain says, every time somebody's like, you just have to trust the process. And my brain is like, I like data. So here's the thing, I wrote down my top three reasons why trust is so hard. One of them and I think I recently have come to this, even though it's like very obvious, it struck me recently, that what's so hard about trust is it comes first. Trust comes before data. So we have to choose to trust, before we can even do the thing that creates the data. So like I have to choose to trust the idea that I can create new clients to create data about getting clients. Like it's, it's real uncomfortable. The second thing is that we are taught like from a societal perspective, that when something isn't verified by data, it's not trustworthy. So we're taught that we have to have data in order to trust. But that's actually not the nature of trust. The nature of trust, is without data, right? That sort of it's like faith, you believe in something you don't see. Because you choose to trust works the same way it comes first. In comes without data and over time you build the data set and the evidence that you have to backup trust. But you know, right out of the gate kind of just is what it is. It's uncertain. But we do fight against this societal tendency to be like, well, but if that's not verified by data, it's not trustworthy. And from a like, I want to give my child this cold medicine or I want to use this skin cream on my face to make me beautiful. The data is important, right? I don't want to just use something that's not actually going to help me. So I trust the company because of their data set. But this is a different kind of trust. This is like the company, when it first started making the cream to put on my face had to trust that they could figure out how to do it. That's the kind of trust we're talking about here. The other thing that I think is really hard about trust, is that it is uncomfortable, like or uncomfortable to choose to believe and trust over and over and over and over and over again, like it is required to in business. So in a classroom, like we show up every day, I showed up every day, as a teacher, knowing my kids would be there, I didn't have to read decide, every morning that my kids were going to show up to school. But in my business, what I have to do every day is really decide that this is going to work, that I have the expertise and the knowledge and the value in that my clients value the work I do and that I'm going to create more clients and that showing up is important. And all of this, when I was going to a place other people were, you know, required to come, I didn't have to choose to believe and trust over and over and over again, I just knew they'd be there. Maybe there's some trust in there that I'm missing. But that's kind of how it works. I went because I knew they'd be there. Well, and for lots of other reasons. But to simplify it. In my business, and your business, we have to choose to trust over and over and over again, sometimes 50 or 100 times a day, we choose to trust ourselves, in our judgment, we choose to trust our people, we choose to trust our process, we choose to trust all of these things over and over and over again. And every single one of those decisions is uncomfortable. But when we make them all in series all day long like that, it's really uncomfortable. And it's more about that trust over time, we start to flex that muscle. But especially early on, if you're just getting started in your business, this is a really heavy lift in some ways to constantly re intentionally choose to trust. So it's hard, you get it, I get it. The question is like what why? Why do we need it? Like what is the role of trust in business, because, you know, like, they say we need data. But what I'd like to propose here is that we're not going to like put it opposite data, we're not going to battle them. Like it's not have trust or have data. Rather, trust is really a precursor to data. So it is the thing that lets you step forward before the data to get it. For me, I think it's a couple of things. First, it is this idea of and like I can be scared, or afraid and still try this new thing. I can be uncomfortable and still move forward, I can be uncertain. If this thing is gonna work and still try it. I can be confused. And also decide to keep going, assuming trusting that I'm going to figure it out. So for me part of trust, its role in my business is like, uncomfortable feeling. And so I can do the thing and have the feeling. The other thing that I think trust is really about in business, particularly as a teacher who has a really broad skill set in a classroom, like you run a classroom, you've done all the things right, you have managed the people in the stuff and the information, and the colleagues and the politics and the parents and the technology removed on all the things basically, for me, the role of trust in my business is knowing that I have expertise and value in knowledge and skills and abilities, and that those things are relevant and applicable and able to be used efficiently and effectively, even when I'm applying them in new circumstances and situations. So I may not have ever had a Pinterest account for business before I had a business Pinterest account. But I surely know how to learn and take a course I've done that before. I know how to Feel like follow a schedule, I've done that before. I know lots of things, I have lots of skills and expertise that I can apply to running a Pinterest account. So I get to trust that my expertise and my knowledge and my skills and my value can be repurposed into the new things, I'm doing that also true for you. The other thing that is, the role of trust in business is, you know, I find this for me, I find it for my clients, you know, I find all of these for my clients this and this trusting you can repurpose things. But also, part of the role of trust is trusting. And I do this with clients all the time, that we can do the thing before we have evidence. And then as we go, we will get the evidence we need to revise and revisit. So the first time you teach a new lesson, you trust that you know how to structure a lesson you trust that you know how to, you know, build the content and ask the right questions. And you know, the kids learn, even though you've never done that lesson before. And then if you have to teach it again to another set of kids, you look back and you go like Okay, wait. So that question wasn't great. I would do this before that I would change this example. you revise and review. So I think we forget that we had to just do the thing to start with we do before evidence to get evidence. And then the last thing I think that is the role of trust here that is really important it has been for me is that I trust my ability to commit. So you know, I have clients say things to me all the time, like well, but if I schedule that in every day into my calendar, I don't know if I'll actually do it, I don't trust that I will. And so in those instances, we talk about a how to make it easy for them to, you know, follow the schedule they set forth, but also how the role of commitment plays in this like for me, it's not motivation, it's commitment, I think motivation sort of ebbs and flows really strongly like, like the biggest ocean tides you've ever seen. Where commitment is a much more constant kind of thoughts, like I'm committed to showing up in my business. Does it look the same every day? No. Is it perfect every day? Absolutely not. Is it perfect? Ever? No, not a chance. But I trust my ability to commit and keep coming back. And building your trust in your ability to commit and knowing that you follow through on your commitments. That's your integrity, right? Is part of the role of trust in your business. You, you decided to run a business, you're just doing all this work, you keep showing up, then you're trustworthy, you trust yourself. And yeah, we just refine it, right? So the question here is like, how do you practice because to be honest, what I know to be true in my business, even just in the last six months, where this has been really a focus of my work trusting is that more trust, creates more success with more ease. That's just the truth of it. Like I see this with clients all the time. I actually had a client last week, you know, who was really worried about her numbers and about where she is for the year, when we sat back and looked at it. She's ahead. So she was you know, like, not only right on track, but ahead of a very, very large goal, like 10 times bigger than what she made in 2020. And for her, she trusts her ability to commit. She trusts her ability to decide things and follow them through. But also she she allows that trust to carry her so things feel easier. She was like, wow, you know, I didn't even really notice how much more success I had had. Because it doesn't feel as hard now actually, as it did at the beginning. So interesting, right? Because what's happened is she's gotten really good at her systems. She's gotten really good at her processes. She knows what works for her. She has the evidence because we've been working together for like 18 months. And now she just sort of trusts that it works. Except when her brain tells her it's been too easy. And of course she must not be making any money and then we go to the data. And we look and we see she's making boatloads like she's $100,000 into her year, and that's not a bad thing. So, you know, more trust really does create more success and more ease all together. So The question becomes how do you practice and like, I am not a total master at this, I am not the Yoda of trust by any means I am never going to be the Yoda of trust. But this is something I actively practice every day. And there are a couple of things I really do that are important. There are three. The first is when I start to do something, I actually asked myself, what would it look like if I totally trusted myself here in this situation? Like, what would I do? Or what would it look like? If I totally trusted this other person in this situation? What would I do? For example, I had a consult with a new potential client on Friday, last week, she was gonna message me afterwards, what days and times worked for a follow up call. I didn't hear from her during the day on Friday. And I was like, Oh, should I send her a message? Should I follow up? And then I was like, wait, what would I do if I really trusted myself? And I trusted her? And the answer was, I would just let her like, get her calendar when she's ready and send me a message. I would just like not think about it. And lo and behold, the next day there she was following up and now she and I are still working out the date and the time and this morning. It was like, Oh, God, should I pick her up? I was like, No, I trust her to get what she needs. I trust me to be here when she's ready. Said, like, that's what it would look like for me to trust myself here. Sometimes when I don't know the answer to this question, when I'm like, what would it look like to trust myself here? I'm like, my, I don't know, this is new, uncomfortable. I asked myself, what Sarah two years from now. It's a like the Sarah that I think of her has been there done that, Sarah, what would been there done that Sarah be doing right now? Like? Would she even be thinking about this? Probably not. So oftentimes, that helps break me out of like, well, I don't know what it looks like to trust you? Well, two years from now, and I have this cold, and it's not a big deal anymore? Will I be like freaking out about it? Probably not. That's number one. Number two, is to ask myself, if I'm learning something totally new, or I'm just applying skills that I already have in a new place, a new context, a new manner. You know, it's very rare for me at this point, as a business owner as human to have no heavy learning a skill that is entirely completely got no connection to anything I've ever done before. Right? As we age, like, I'm in my 40s, as we age, like we've had enough experience, that most things, we can connect you in some way. It's like, oh, I, I can draw a parallel to this prior experience. So for me, it'd be like, okay, is this like a totally new thing I'm learning or am I just treating it like one? Because if it's me just treating it like one, maybe I could go and trust my experience and my knowledge and my expertise and my skills and be like, Oh, this is just a new context. I always explain it to clients, like driving a new car, like I drive, like an SUV right now. And I had a minivan for a long time. I have the skill set of driving a minivan. And if somebody came up to me, and they're like, We would like to trade you your minivan for this Lamborghini, I wouldn't be like, Oh, God, no, I don't have the skill set for driving a Lamborghini Sorry, I'll keep the minivan I'd be like, cool. Let me give me the keys. And so, you know, it's, you know, just applying skills in a new context. And then the last thing I do to practice trust that you can do too, is I intentionally think about things I choose to believe related to trust. There are four that I go to time and time again, they are that I trust myself, my timing and my decisions. I trust my process. I trust my people, and I trust my voice. For me, those cover it because that's me trusting the people in my universe. It's trusting whatever I say is the right thing, no matter how I say it. And I trust the path that I'm on. You can choose intentional things to decide to believe that feel like you. Maybe it's these maybe it's other ones, but it's like, what do I choose to trust today? And sometimes I'm like, No, I got this. I trust me. I'm good. And other days. I'm like, Oh, who is this clown that showed up to work today. She doesn't know what she's doing. So every day is gonna be a little different. And that's fine. So for you think about how you want to practice trust, because really more trust more ease more success. I know that when somebody says yeah, you just have to trust the process. Do you want to slap them silly, I want to slap them silly. I want to slap me silly every time I say it. That doesn't make it not true. That's why it's so annoying. If you are interested in learning to really practice trust, and this is hard for you like it is, for me, one of the things that has been most impactful for me is working one on one with a coach. I have a coach right now she and I, this is very much the thing she and I talk about all the time. And she always looks like another instance where we just have to trust ourselves. And then I want to close the zoom on her honestly all the time. But to have someone to say to you like, Hey, this is an instance where we practice trust, this is how we do it. Here's what it looks like, here's how we do this together. Why don't you try it is really, really valuable. It is trusting your pricing it as trusting how you talk to people and all of the things that come with running a business. So if you are struggling with this trust part, let's talk about coaching together, I have a couple of one on one spots open right now. I will not have them for long. If you are interested in grabbing one of them before it's time for me to move to a waitlist which is going to happen over the summer here. Please, please please send a message you can email me at sara@torpeycoaching.com. Or you can come to my website and book a time to talk about coaching or you can Facebook message me or LinkedIn or whatever. reply to an email if you're on my list, whatever works. But the lesson today, really friends, there's a lot that you already have that is worth trusting. You are trustworthy, even if you don't have the data. The data is going to come when you practice the trust. All right. I know that isn't the most fun thing to hear, but it is the truth. Happy, trusting happy end of June. Maybe I'll see you all tomorrow at the live about invitations. And I'll see you next week here on the podcast.