Welcome to uncomplicating Business. I am Sara Torpey. I am the creator of selling weirdos and a business coach, and I help people simplify growing a successful business. Today, we are going to talk about what I think of as trusting your actions. This is one of the biggest problems in business that I can come across, something I come across time and time and time again. And the way you know it's something that you are doing is if you're great at the planning part and not so great at the follow through.

 Because what happens when you follow through is you look at your plan, you start to do the things, and then you start thinking like, well, what if this isn't the right thing? What if I didn't make the right choice? What if these aren't the right actions? What if it's not working fast enough? What if it's, you know, me on the wrong path, and you go back and plan again. This is about doubting the things that you're doing, even though you know they're the right things to do, right because you sat down and intentionally made a plan, and then here you are back to planning again. So it's not trusting that you made the right choices to do the things and allowing yourself to do them. 

When this happens in business, it causes us all kinds of problems. And I keep looking at my notes because I had good words today when I made my notes. I think not trusting your actions is really one of the most effective ways out there to slow down your success, to stop your progress and to kill your confidence, and nobody wants to do any of that like that doesn't help anybody. When we stop trusting our actions, everything else kind of feels like it's falling apart, and so that's not what we're hoping for today. What we're going to talk about is how to stop doing this. Because clearly, life is better if we are trusting the actions that we're taking and allowing them to work. So for me, I think there are four things to do here now I'm going to try to keep them straightforward. Number one is to actually notice when you're doing this, when you make a plan and you start to implement it, and then somewhere in the first week to 10 days, usually, sometimes it's even a little sooner, you're like, oh my god, maybe I did it wrong. 

Maybe this wasn't the right way to do this. Maybe in the doubt loop starts when that happens, be like, oh, there it is. Sara said that was going to happen. I have clients tell me that all the time where I'll say to them, okay, you know, 567, 10 days into this, you're going to be like, I think I should start over. And they come back to coaching, and they're like, damn it. There it was. I found it. I My brain was like, we should start over. And I thought, like, Oh my gosh. Sara predicted it. It's because it happens to everybody, and it is indeed predictable, which is, you know, not everybody's favorite thing, but also kind of comforting in some ways. So the first step is to notice that you've been like, ooh, doubting your actions. It's like, did I pick right? Okay, you picked right. That's the first thing. 

Number two is to be really aware of the amount of time that has passed between when you made your plan and when you started doubting the actions. What I find most of the time, even in myself, is that the window between when I started and when I start to doubt is not long enough for anything to have made any impact, right? Like if I am trying to build, you know, generate leads for a new lead magnet, if I'm trying to sign people up for a workshop, if I'm trying to whatever it is I'm trying to do five days in, there's proof of nothing, because there's nothing to prove yet, 10 days in, right? If you're working on a new offer, if you're selling something like group coaching or tutoring, or, I don't know, professional organizing, all kinds of things, if you're selling anything that is a service, and it's a new service that you're offering. 

Even if it's related to a current service, it can take up to a year for you guys to get really good at selling it. Same here for me. So if you are five days in 10 days, in three weeks in and you're like, man, it's broken. I can't trust that I'm doing the right thing. You're not giving it enough time. And so I often say to clients, like, they'll be like, I think I should change gears and be like, Alright, when did we start talking about this? And we'll look at the calendar, and it will be of like, it'll have been, like, 20 days. Do you know what if? Or three weeks or four weeks? And I'll say to them, because I say this to people all the time, like, what? A four week old baby capable of and the answer is, nothing. Do anything. They're little blobs, and we're expecting the actions that we take to be immediately result creating. And while that does happen, that's not what we're trying to do. When we create a business that's sustainable over time. 

We're not trying to just get results today from our actions. We are trying to create them for the long term. So the actions you often take, like networking, like making invitations, like staying grounded, like helping people by introducing them, to know their people, those are long term actions. They're not today actions, right? You invite people to a workshop, and then eventually those people get good out of your workshop, and then they buy the next thing. That's a longer term thing. It's not a five day thing. So if you're not giving yourself enough time for things to bear fruit, well, we have a problem. 

One of the ways to work around this is a, to notice it, but B, when you are doing your planning, and I do this all the time, it's like, How long am I going to do these actions for before I decide to question them? Often, for me, it is six months for most things, or 90 days. Depends on what it is. But it's like, I'm going to do this 100 times before I decide I'm doing it wrong. And if you know, and people are like, well, but what if you need to change gears sooner? Well, listen, if I'm building a business that I want to have for 30 years or 10 years, three months, one way or the other, is not going to change anything like, I'm not going to be so far off course in those three months that you know everything's going to go to hell in a hand basket, but if I continue to change gears every 10 days, nothing's ever going to work. So what you do is you can decide when you're making your plan, how long these are the actions that you're going to take for, right? Is it six months? And then, actually, I often go into my calendar and put it in my calendar, and it's like, Am I happy with doing X, Y and Z right now? How do I feel about it? Put it in my calendar, and then I only get to question it when that comes up on my calendar.
Like, schedule out doubt, which is great, but it's one way to work on it. 

Number three, if you are worried that you are going to doubt your actions, create some accountability for yourself, get a buddy. Tell give yourself a tracking tool. Talk to a friend, tell your spouse, tell your best friend, tell your mom, get a coach. Do what you gotta do. But that kind of accountability, where it's like, Listen, this is what I'm going to do for the next three months, where you've said it out loud, you've said it to another person, and it's like, oh, now if I don't do it like Charlotte will know, right? I do this with one of my dear friends, and the two of us will be like, Okay, here's what I'm working on. And we both know that we are annoying enough to bother the other one about it, so we don't let each other off the hook, which is great, and also really irritating. When she's like, Hey, have you done that thing? I'm like, oh god, why did I tell you? But it moves us both forward. 

So I often have a tracking sheet of some sort on my desk with the just little check boxes on it, because if I have a tracking sheet, I am more likely to remember to do the thing. If I have some accountability in terms of a friend, if I talk with my coach about it, I am more accountable because it is not just me that knows it. So for you make some accountability arrangements, whatever that is, like, right now I'm running a summer accountability group for people who are doing sales things this summer, and when they meet me, or when every week we're checking in, I'm like, what the plan is, how the plan's going, what we learned, all of those things. So that you know, when they are like, I don't want to do this, they know an email from me is coming and we're going to have conversation. And then they're like, Okay, I gotta do the thing, and I don't need to change gears yet, because Sara will tell me, or my friends will tell me, if this is, you know, me just doing something that's never going to work, right? So when we share those things, the other the rest of the world gets to be like, Yes, that sounds like a good plan, and that helps. And then the last thing is to once you have a plan, once you have a timeline, once you have some accountability, and you notice the Stout is going on, let the actions be the win. Here's the thing. 

You made the plan and you put the actions in the plan, because you know they are the things that lead to the result you want. Is it the sales? Is it the connections? Whatever it is, it's the income you're trying to create. If you did that on purpose, then those actions are what create those results, and you can focus on those making those actions. So when you take the action you have won, it is. Not the result that's in the wind. Because you're the result is not in your control. So if my actions are meeting new people, like having one on one conversations with new people, I control that. Do I control if they sign up for coaching? No, but I control if I ask them if they want to have a conversation. I control getting those things on my calendar. I control sharing with them what I do. I control making posts about my offers. I control all of those things. And those are the actions that count as wins. What comes out of that are the results I'm looking for. 

But if I'm not taking the actions, then they're not going to work, and if I don't have a way to feel like I'm winning, I don't want to do anything because I am motivated by winning. So for you, you know, remember that the action is the win, right? I say to people all the time, they're like, Oh, the action is the thing in your control. Your job is to do what's in your control. Okay? So if you have thoughts about this, trusting your actions, let me know. I'd love to hear them. Feel free to reach out. You There are a million ways to contact me. 

You can go through my website. You can come join my Facebook group on complicating business for teachers, helpers and givers. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can come all the places. If you have questions, reach out any of those places and ask them, and if you're interested in working on these kinds of things, in coaching, the next round of group coaching, which is groups of four, capped at 412, weeks at a time, where we really focus on implementation and accountability, is kicking off in the fall, and you should keep your eyes out, because it's coming soon. All right, I'll talk to you on soon. Bye.