How to Be Consistent

Welcome to the podcast. This week, we're going to talk about consistency, which is possibly my favorite thing. I firmly believe that consistency is like the secret sauce of business. It's like, you know that thing you love to put on everything. If for some people, that's ranch dressing, for me, it might be butter, or chocolate syrup. I mean, it's the thing that goes on basically everything. So don't put chocolate syrup on anything. But really, is there anything that isn't better with butter. So we're going to talk about consistency and what it means really to be consistent this week. But before we do, I want to tell you a little bit about one of my favorite client wins. from the past few weeks, I have a client who has been really thinking hard about money. For a long time, she has thought about money in her business, and in life as a necessary evil. You know, we talk about pricing or any of those things. And she'd go well, you know, it's just a necessary evil, I don't like to deal with it. And what we have realized working together recently, one of the things she's seen is that set of thoughts that it's like a necessary evil to be sort of put to the side and not dealt with, isn't really helping her, especially now that her business is growing. And she's really starting to make more consistent money than she has ever in his, you know, approaching some of her monetary goals. One of the things she's shifting to is I love to pay for things. Now, for her. What we've talked about is this idea that for people to love to pay her for her to be able to think people love to pay me, she also has to think that she loves to pay for things. And the example I use all the time is the wonderful folks that clean my house, I love to pay them. Like it's one of my favorite things to do, because I love that I don't have to do that work. And so I understand loving paying for a service that you really valued. I understand that feeling. And I think we all do if we think about it. But what the hope is that my clients also feel that love when they pay me. And that's what we're working on. For her, it's been a really big realization. One of the other thoughts she has is this idea of I hate the money part of everything, like I just don't want to deal with it. One of the alternate that she's really developed in the last few months, is being clear about money makes everyone more comfortable, including her. So the more upfront she is with pricing, the more she gets the value that she really deserves that she's worth, the easier it is to talk about money, because it doesn't feel imbalanced, like anybody's getting the short shrift. What's happened is her thinking about money has evolved. Her money has evolved in her business, which has been amazing to see it's been such a pleasure.

She is like right on the edge now of having more clients than she can handle she's getting ready to potentially add help into her business for the work that she does. And that's going to be another big shift because she's gonna have to pay somebody to do that. Right. So if you have thoughts about money, right, we all do, we all have plenty of thoughts. She's a really good example of working together how we together in a coaching relationship can sort of pick apart those money thoughts, and build them more effectively into a more effective set of thoughts that help her to generate money and also enjoy paying for things like you get more joy out of your money. It's totally worth it. Right. Okay. So now let's shift gears into consistency. So as I said, consistency is the secret sauce of business. It is like literally everything. I think it is all things wrapped up in one.

But it's actually a really tricky thing. Because we put a lot on consistency, like we put a lot of thoughts on to that word. What does it actually mean to be consistent? And you mean, this is the first question you're gonna ask yourself, like, What does consistency actually mean? In so many cases, when I ask clients or myself about what it means to be consistent, we have all kinds of perceptions about when it happens, how often Like to be consistent, I have to do it every day, religiously like clockwork, or every week at the same time, the same bat channel every week or two, or whatever.

And actually, if you think about really what it means to be consistent, what it means over and over again, one of the things that consistency is not is necessarily tied to time. It doesn't have to be time driven in any way. And I know that sounds crazy. But it's so useful to expand the idea of consistency, beyond time, to have it mean something other than every day at two o'clock, or every week on Mondays at one, or what have you. To take the time element out of consistency is a really interesting thing to think about. The other thing that comes up with consistency a lot is this idea of regularity that, you know, I'm consistent if I do it every other day, if it is every week, if it's every month, if it's always on the same pattern. But also, it's not required consistency doesn't necessarily mean regular. And so like since I now just stripped away all the things you know about consistency, what does it actually mean? It just means that you did what you intended, right? It doesn't have to be regular, it doesn't have to be daily, it doesn't have to be tied to time. Consistency, you're consistent, you're internally consistent. If you did what you intended to do, period. However that happens. The other thing that consistency is not and we get this a lot I hear this a ton from clients is consistency is not a have to consistency is hurt. Actually, when you feel like you have to do something, think about this, like I tend I try. This is why it's inconsistent. I tried to get up most days and work out at 6am. And in the last 10 since we hit daylight savings here in the US, I have gotten up at 6am to work out zero times. But it is lately felt really like a half to like have to get up I have to do the workout at that time. And the more feels like half to you, the less likely I am to do it. It's like you have to eat this many servings of vegetables a day. How many of us actually do that? The more you feel the pressure of half to that you're using consistency as a stick against yourself, the more likely it's not going to happen. Because if we're using something like Well, I have to be consistent to beat ourselves up with it's no longer a useful tool. So if you drag yourself to consistency, like there's no point, you know, and I do understand that sometimes like I get up, I do the workout in five minutes and I'm like, Okay, okay, I'm I'm okay. There's a little bit of a difference between like, sort of pushing yourself to the first step. And the like, Oh my gosh, I can't do this one more time. But I promised I'd be consistent kind of thing. Consistent can and should be fun. It is fun, to continue to show up to do something and get the growth that comes with consistency. That's what we're going for. So if consistency is not about time, and it's not necessarily about regularity, and it's not about have to what the heck is it? For me, consistency is about showing up period. In you get to decide this is the craziest part, you get to decide what showing up means to you. End of story, you get to decide what's showing up means to you. You get to decide what consistent means for you. We get to write our own rules and our own definitions for how that works in our businesses. Period. I redefined a new word the other day the word came into my work was polished. And I realized that like I didn't know really understand what that meant for me. And so I sat down and did some thinking about what it meant. For me in my business to be polished turned It has nothing to do with what I'm wearing or how much makeup I have on.

Who knew? So when I say that you get to decide what consistency means? And also, what showing up means? How do you decide what that means? That's the question, right, the million dollar question? Well, here are the things I asked myself. There's two questions. The first is, what's my goal? What's the point of whatever thing I'm thinking about doing? Is it to get a new client? Is it to make a sale? Is it to get values to be really useful? Great. Whatever it is, set your goal, not 26 goals, one, you know, this one goal at a time? And then the second question, if, if that goal was already achieved, if you've already done it, if it's in the bag, it's already money's counted, jack is in the bank paid for whatever. What would you be thinking, feeling and doing? Then once it's finished? Okay, so sit in that for a minute. Here's my example. If I have my goal right now is to sign one new client, for example. I imagine I signed that client, paid, paid in full contract sign we've started, everything's great. What do I think, feel? And do? I think my price is perfect? People are thrilled to pay me money. I feel certain I feel ready. And what do I do? Well, I share offers to coaching in the podcast, in my group, and teachers business lunch and learn in the lives I do in Facebook. If I know my price is perfect, I have that thought. And I know people are thrilled to work with me. I'm certain that that's the case, then I talk about it. Right? It means I talk about it all the channels that I have to talk about it.

That's what showing up looks like in consistency is that I talk about it every chance I get that. Maybe I do it every day in my group. Maybe not. Maybe I make an offer at the end of every teacher's and business lunch and learn. Maybe I make an offer at the end of every live. Have you ever seen my lives? That's you know that I don't. It's certainly my intention, though. And on most episodes of this podcast towards the end, somewhere in the middle, I say, look, if you want to coach together, we should. That's it. That's me showing up consistently, period. So what's your goal? If it was already done, what would you be thinking feeling and doing? As I often want, as often as I want is really my like consistency. Showing up to do the things that I want in the places I want in the way I think is fun. So for example, I love doing this podcast I like gives me a little thrill every time I think like somebody is walking around with their headphones in their ears listening to my podcast, How fun is that? gives me a little bit of joy to think that I could share this and be useful for you. Like and not even know you. How fun is that? I do them weekly because it makes it easier for other people to find. And like I would do them like three days a week if I thought that I had that kind of time. But consistency. For me weekly works. But I love it. For a while I do these bi weekly webinars for my email list called teachers business lunch and learn. They're like a half hour on Friday. And when I started doing them, I was doing them weekly. And pretty quickly, I realized that weekly was not going to be fun. And so I changed it. It's now bi weekly just is it's way more fun

that way I

get to think about like the new thing I want to teach and what would be helpful for people and like I spend a week thinking about what that is and part of the next week, working out the slides and the rest and then it's done. That's a great cadence for me. They're posting daily is fun for me. I have billions of ideas. I have a note app full of like insane things to say. So I post a couple of times a day or else I feel like my head's gonna explode. That's fun. For a while I was trying to be live in my group daily. And it just felt like oh my gosh, I forgot to do that. I have to do that. And that's not consistency. That's not fun. It's not showing up in a way that I want to show up. So I stopped. Now I do them when it like when I have an idea. Or when it's something I think like, oh, that would be really useful to share. I popped on earlier and talked to in my group today and talked about scrolling, versus intentionally participating in Facebook, because they're really different things. But like, maybe tomorrow, I have something to say, maybe I won't. Okay, it's a couple of times a week where I'm like, overly inspired to say something. So for me, I show up, when I'm want to have something to say, when I think it's fun. And that's my consistency. That's my definition. I show up when it's useful, and when I enjoy. So I get to make the rules. And the interesting thing about that, since I make the rules, it's actually impossible for me to be inconsistent. Like I am never not consistent, because I frickin decide what consistency is. The same could be true for you, you don't have to think anymore. Oh, gosh, if only I could be more consistent. You can think like, well, maybe my brand of consistency is posting once a day. Maybe my brand consistency is not posting on Facebook ever. Great. Go to LinkedIn, go to Instagram go where you want to go. Your brand of consistency is the kind of consistency that feels super fun to you. That feels like you showing up in the best possible way, in a way that you love it. That's consistency. And yes, sometimes you are gonna have to push yourself slightly out of your comfort zone to do that. But it's like a little scary, but it could be fun versus like, Oh, I don't want to do this, then don't. If we all stop dragging ourselves kicking and screaming to things, the whole thing will be easier. Excuse me. So the two questions once again, what's the goal? And if it was done, what would I think, feel? And do? How would I show up? from there? You get to make decisions. Like I decided I do a podcast weekly. Great. And then when you roll forward, and that's not working for you, you get to decide again, just like with teachers business, lunch and learn. When I decided to do a weekly I lasted like three weeks and was like, Oh, this doesn't work for me. And I made it bi weekly, I decided again, totally fine. The nice thing about all of this, the joy of it is that you are the freakin boss of your business. So consistency is whatever the heck you decided is not what the expert on the internet says it's not what I say. It's not what anybody else says their opinions don't freaking matter. The only opinion that matters is yours. So be consistent in the way that makes you happy. Do that that way all the time. And good things will come. And listen. Here's the offer part. Consistency is my jam. This is what I teach people as a coach, how to be consistent and show up in their business in their best way as their best self on the regular in the way that works for them. Whatever regular is to you. If this is something where you think oh my gosh, I need that. Please let's talk about it. Send a message calm find me on Facebook, I'm all over the place. Come join my group Teachers in Business. Come check me out on LinkedIn, or send me an email. It's sara@torpeycoaching.com you can also go to Torpeycoaching.com and book yourself a time to just talk one on one for an hour about your business. And here's the thing. I am here to listen, to help you get clarity to have a conversation one on one. If we get to the end of that conversation, and we're not a good fit, like I am not going to banish you forever, like I'm not going to be mad. There is zero chance that that conversation was a waste of my time or yours.

It will be useful no matter what because that's how I show up consistently. I promise that it will be worth your time, even if you decide not to work with me. So come, let's set up a time to talk. And let's talk about consistency and how it can be literally magic in your business and what that would look like happy week. I'll see you next week.