Sarah, welcome. Welcome to Episode One in season three of uncomplicating business. I am Sara. I'm so happy to have you here. You probably know me, because you've probably been with me, but if you're new, welcome. And this year, we are going to spend the whole year talking about trust. 

There is a reason I'm choosing this as a topic to go through the whole year, and what I want you to know is it's not just going to be me like saying, Trust yourself, trust yourself, trust yourself, over and over and over again for a year. Well, it might be, but it's going to be more than that. 

So the plan for this is some initial episodes with really practical questions and tools that you can use to work on and start practicing more trust in your business. And then some interviews with clients and people I think do a great job in trust, people I know who have been working through it and who have been in it, like you and I, and some just outside perspectives on trust. 

We are going to talk about this so much because I think I know from my own business and from the work I do with clients that trust in yourself and your value and your expertise and your message and the work you do is the single visit biggest difference maker in long term success when you work on building this trust muscle, just like you work on your quads when you do squats or your butt, when you do squats or your biceps when you do curls right, this is the muscle that makes the biggest difference, long term in a business, because you can have today's success without having totally flexed this muscle and practiced it a ton. You can have today's success.

 You can have short term success really effectively, without trust, and you can probably have long term success, however, it is not the kind you are I want, because it is painful and it is anxious and it is hard and it is difficult to sustain a version of business and success that feels like constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. And that is what it feels like without trust. It is constantly being unsure, constantly worried, constantly anxious, constantly uncertain, afraid of nobody's coming. The next thing isn't going to work. How am I going to do this? When we flex this trust muscle, a lot of those things go away. 

Trust is the ingredient that you can add and and strengthen as a skill, because it is both a belief. It's something you can decide I trust myself, and a skill that we can strengthen over time with practice. I was listening part of this came out of this podcast I was listening to recently with this woman named Rachel Botsman, and she is a trust researcher, and she's a thought leader, and she does all sorts of speaking and things all over the world. And she works on trust, and thinks a lot about trust, but she defines it in a way that I found just like amazing. And so what she does is define trust as a confident relationship with the unknown, and that is magic, because here's the thing that clients and business owners and people tell me all the time, I just want the proof that it's going to work, right? We want data. 

We want evidence, but trust is pre data. Trust is pre evidence. It is confident relationship with unknown. And in business, this matters, because we have a lot of unknown we have. Basically, I wrote this thing down. It sounds going to sound crazy, so I'm going to say it twice. In business, we have unknown results of known expertise using known and unknown skills with known and unknown people and unknown challenges. So we don't know how it's going to work. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like at the other side. We know only what we know and what we're good at. We know some of the people that we're going to help and others will be new to us. 

We know some of the skills that we're going to need and others will be new to us or will strengthen and develop them. And we don't know the challenges that are going to come along the way, because we're. New, because we're learning as we go, just like we are in parenting or business or wherever else in parenting, we don't get much of a choice, so people just kind of suck it up and do it. But in business, we chose to be here. So it's like, oh, man, did I lose my mind. Tolerating unknown is a huge deal. And when I look at my most successful friends, my most successful clients, my most successful colleagues, they are people that do a really good job of tolerating the unknown. That can be like, Okay, I don't know how exactly that's going to work or look or what I'm going to need to do, but I'm going to figure it out, and they trust that they're going to figure it out, that they're going to know what to do, that they're going to know how to continue forward. 

Trust is about believing you will have success even when the path and the result of the exact plan is unknown. And listen, I have a teaching degree, basically in teaching school you learn to, like, make the exact plan for every day, for 365, days, and follow it to the letter, right? You got curriculum guides. You got, you know, sometimes you got scripts, right? It was like, say these words on january 15, say these words on April 2, say these words on June 12, and the scriptedness and the plannedness of it is really comforting for so many of us. I like a plan, but I also know that in business, in parenting, in life in general, the exact path and how it's really going to look isn't able to be scripted or planned like that. Maybe I'm going to a conference in April, and I know where I'll be on April 4, but I don't know what's going to be happening when I get there. I don't know what the weather is going to be like. I don't know who I'm going to meet. I don't know if it's going to work for my business. I don't know any of that, but I have to be able to tolerate the unknown, to go to the conference right? Without trust. I was thinking about this, and I started making a list, without trust, what we get are all the greatest, what I think of as the greatest hits of business.

 Time sucks, right? Like we get imposter syndrome is a result of not trust in your value, right? Not trust in your expertise. We get shiny object syndrome, not trusting your path and that you're going to figure it out, and that the way you're doing it is right? The questioning the like, Is this good enough? Is this the way you're supposed to say it? Is this the way it's supposed to be done? How should I do it? What should it look like? How is she doing it? The comparison, lack of trust, the stopping and the restarting, it's like I started. I didn't trust that it was going to work. I stopped. I started. I tried again. I didn't trust that I was doing it right? I stopped. Perfectionism is about trust, right? It is about do I trust that even if I'm not perfect, if I don't do it perfectly, it's still going to work out. When I started making this list, I was like, whoa. How all these things come back to the same place? One of the ones I am super good at is deflection, right? Receiving help, asking for help. One of the things that can happen teachers, great at this, business owners, great at this. Moms, great at this. It's like, Nope, I got it. I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna work double and do as much as I can. Like, I was talking with a client yesterday. She was like, I will have this done for you next week. We will talk about it then. And I looked at her and I said, You know what? I love you. I would love to talk to you about this next week. And if the cost of that is your sleep and your ability to spend time in yoga and practice like you'd like, it's not a trade I'm willing to make.


Don't make that trade for me. And she was like, Oh, right. She was going to work extra to do this thing. That wasn't what she needed. She needs to continue to work forward for sure and also take care of herself, right? She was going to deflect taking care of her in effort to do this next thing. Uncertainty is just the nature of without trust, right? Of not being certain what you're going to do next, versus being okay with the unknown and knowing you're worthy of trust. Anyways, this is a worthiness thing. This all of this, all of these reasons, all of these things are the reasons that we're going to talk about trust forever, basically all year long. And the other thing about this that I think is really important to note is that trust is multi faceted. There are lots of versions and faces of trust. 

There are lots of. Areas of your life and your business in which you can work on trust, where you know you trust yourself in this version, but not that version. That's actually the next episode. So we're going to talk about that next so stay tuned. That's coming before we go though, I think it would be really useful for you to just think a little bit about trust and the unknown for yourself right now. So the questions I would pose to you, and these are in the transcript, if you want them. 

So just make sure, if you want to pop over in your podcast app, if you grab the transcript and scroll to the bottom, these will be in the transcript. How do you feel right now about the unknown, either in maybe in general, in your business, when it comes to money, when it comes to success, when it comes to plans, right? What's your relationship with the unknown? Where is it confident? Where is it not? What are your current thoughts about whether or not you trust yourself? Do you believe that you are worthy of trust? Do you believe that I don't care what anybody else has told you? Do you believe you are worthy of trust more in some areas than others? Like I actually was doing this, these questions for myself today, and I realized that sometimes, for the most part, I really do trust myself as a parent, as a mom, but I don't always trust myself as a partner, the same way, which I don't know that I realized until I wrote it out today, I trust myself as a coach, and I don't always trust myself as a business owner the same way.

 So, like, there are versions of this. And then the last thing is, like, what are the things you struggle with that might be connected to trust or lack of trust? Like, I know for me, it is enoughness, it is making feeling like I'm doing enough. It is feeling like I'm getting far enough, fast enough, contributing enough, doing enough in all the different directions. And what I've tried to really work on over the last couple of years is like sitting back and just knowing, trusting, that I'm always doing enough. It's a practice. Does it always go perfectly well? No, but has it made a huge difference to practice knowing that? Yeah, it really has, because I don't spend nearly the amount of time I used to on wondering that or spinning in circles around it. I get a lot more done because I'm not spending that time. So think about these questions.

 Use your journal if you're feeling crazy, and if you want to send me an email and tell me your answers. I am sara@torpeycoaching.com or you can find me on Facebook or LinkedIn, and we can talk about it. You can also come into my Facebook group. It's called uncomplicating business for teachers, helpers and givers, like this podcast, if this is stuff you want to keep talking about, you know, this is a big topic. It relates in every facet of business and life, so we're going to give it its due this year. But there are lots of other parts of business we talk about in the group, and we do fun stuff in there too. 

There are often prizes, because I like prizes. So come join us. If you're not already with us, if you want to send me a note, please do. And I look forward to taking this journey with you this year. If this is something you feel like a friend needs to hear too, please feel free to share it with them. 

This is a fabulous way for more people to find this podcast, and you can subscribe or rate and review, which is another fabulous way for people to find this podcast. All of your support is appreciated, and I look forward to doing this this year with you. I'll talk to you in the next one. See you. Then you.