290 5 Things I STOPPED Doing When I STARTED MY BUSINESS
Top 5 things I STOPPED doing when I started my business
That truly changed the game for me
As an entrepreneur, you've probably made a lot of mistakes and wasted a ton of time trying to figure out what works and what doesn't when it comes to maximizing your success, productivity and joy!
You've added in new habits (like 5:00AM wake ups!)
You've removed habits (like hanging around toxic friends)
But which ones have had the MOST impact on your growth?
In this podcast episode I'm going to share with you the top 5 things I STOPPED doing when I started my business that truly changed the game for me.
Be sure to let me know which ones resonate with you!
In this episode, Kelsey chats about:
Things you need to put on pause in order to get the results you want
What I stopped doing when I started my business
What it’s like to work with private business and marketing coach
Why you need to strop seeing your career path as linear
To connect with Kelsey:
Access the transcript for this episode:
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You're listening to the visionary life podcast. I'm your host, Kelsey Reidl.
Each week, I'll bring you conversations with the most visionary humans on this earth, in hopes that you'll be able to absorb their wisdom, avoid their failures and feel less alone on the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship.This season, I'll be chatting with creative thinkers, masterful marketers, brick and mortar shop owners, brand builders, and people just like you who have a story to share or a vision that inspires if I can share one quick secret with you before we get into the episode is that we all have a little bit of visionary inside of us, you know, that spark that nudges us to pursue our full potential in this lifetime.
But perhaps somewhere along the line, it got covered up, I'm here to tell you that it's never too late to explore that inner voice and access the brilliance deep down inside of you. It's in you, it's in all of us. Let's dive in. Hey, visionaries.
Welcome back to another mini episode of the visionary life Podcast. I'm so excited that you're here.
And I actually recently put out a poll on my Instagram, those are so fun, because it's a great way to interact with everybody. If you don't follow me on Instagram. I'm just at Kelsey Reidl.
And I'll pop that in the show notes. But I put out a poll and I kind of said, What would you like to hear about on the podcast? And one of the topics that I suggest suggested was the topic of things I stopped doing when I started my business. And I left it intentionally vague, but I had recently recently watched a YouTube video of somebody who did something similar.
And I thought this is really intriguing, like, what would I say, are the things I stopped doing when I started my business. And as I got thinking about it, it was actually quite profound the things I've given up over the last eight years, and not given things up that I felt a void, but actually things I gave up that gave me so much more in return, whether that was time or energy or money, or productivity, and I want to share these things with you. And I think that so often in life, our goal is to add in, we want to add in more joy, we want more money, we want more success, more abundance, but sometimes I do think we need to look at the other side of the equation. And ask ourselves, what is it that we need to put on pause or stop doing or say goodbye to in order to see really big results.It's kind of like if you are equating this to the diet industry or like wanting to achieve a certain health goal, you will probably start by adding things in, it's like okay, add more greens, add some supplements, start drinking more water. And you'll probably see results, right. But eventually, your body is going to hit a point where if you keep hanging on to the 7am bagel with butter and cream cheese, and the nine coffees that you're drinking with cream and sugar, and you're still hanging on to the late night dessert and the all day snacking and the excess chips.
No matter how much you add in, you're probably not going to see those final results, right? So sometimes in life, we actually have to take things away in order to be able to accomplish that next level of our goal goal. So no matter where you are in your business journey, I want to share these things with you because they have had such a profound impact on me. And my guess is that you're actually already doing a few of these things or you've given them up already. But I think it's a worthy conversation regardless. Alright, so the very first thing I stopped doing when I started my business was that I stopped being responsive with my iPhone notifications. Okay, so how many of you see your iPhone light up every time you get a new follow on Instagram? Every time there is a news alert from Yahoo News.
Every time you get an email every time you get a text message every time somebody posts something on Twitter. This is such a reactive way to live. And I don't know about you, but it gives me so much anxiety to see a phone that's lighting up, or the anxiety of hearing a phone go. And it's like buzzing to tell you somebody's trying to get a hold of you. To me that pulls me completely Get out of flow state, there is no way that my neurodivergent brain can concentrate. We are already in a distracted world as is. So to have a phone by you that's constantly lighting up. Personally, I think that's going to steal your productivity and momentum. And if you are constantly checking in on Instagram, you're constantly seeing that, you know, there is some big news story that's dropping every 48 seconds, there is no way you're doing deep work. Like there's just not. When I started my business, as many of you know, I built a 90 day course called the visionary method.
And this is to help new online business owners to launch and grow their business and generate their first 50,000 in revenue. And building this program. It's a very robust program was so intense, you guys, it required all my brain cells, I created hundreds of pages of workbooks, it was equivalent to writing a book, in my opinion, I created tons of video trainings, I was doing so much research. And I remember I was working at a co working space in Toronto. And that alone was really helpful because I was around other people who were focused, and who were in this space to accomplish things, right. It's not a coffee shop, or some people are chatting, some people are, you know, munching on a croissant and some people are working at a co working space people are working. So that was helpful. But even still, I noticed that I was kind of distracted. And anytime I didn't want to do the work. Anytime I felt frustrated or like things were feeling hard, I wanted to pick up my phone. And it's shocking how many times I wanted to do this, like it was almost like every five minutes. You cannot do deep work if you're picking up your phone every five minutes or if you're distracted by it. So at this point, this is when I shut it all down, no notifications are able to come through my phone. And that I started seven years ago.
Nobody can text me or call me the only people that can get through are my husband, Dave and my dad. I know it's kind of crazy. So all notifications went off. So I stopped being responsive. But the other thing I started doing was that I actually powered down my phone for the majority of the work day and I would only let myself turn my phone on on my lunch break when I had time to catch up on life. So yes, I was basically unreachable. And I think there's this crazy, weird anxiety. When people become unreachable. They're like, well, what if someone needs to call me? That is like a very rare situation. There is not there are not too many emergencies in life. And I think the benefits of having no buzzing, no notifications, no distractions actually outweigh that small chance that you might be a few hours late to the party, if you don't hear the news right away. There are times in life where being unreachable is actually so much more nourishing to the soul than being reachable 24/7. So you can start small on this one, you can just you know, put your phone on sleep mode when you go to bed. Do not sleep with your phone in the bedroom that is so awful, and so distracting. You could just set hours of work mode on your iPhone, and maybe they activate from 9am until 3pm. That means nothing comes through.
You can set it to phone calls only. But something you'll need to stop doing in my opinion. And something I stopped doing when I started my business seven and a half years ago was that I stopped being responsive so I could do really good work and do the deep work that not many people are willing to do. So that's number one. Let's get into number two. The second thing I stopped doing when I started my business is that I stopped complaining about my job I stopped being a victim of my career path. I want you to think when was the last time you complained about your day job, complained about your work. My guess is if you're an entrepreneur, you don't complain about your work very often. If you're employed by someone, it's very normal. Right and no shame about that because I get it. Your work probably takes up the majority of your waking hours Monday to Friday.You might have toxic colleagues who wow they deserve to be complained about because they are Totally rubbing you the wrong way, every time they pop into your office, you might be completely bored and unfulfilled at work, right? So of course, you're gonna complain about it, you are not lit up by this job anymore. And this job may consume your Monday to Friday. So you literally have nothing else to talk about. So if you complain about your job, I get it. I've been there, I understand. But when I started my business, I stopped complaining about my job, I knew that if I'm the boss, instead of complaining, go change it.
Don't complain, make change, I think that was my motto that constantly ran through the back of my head. And complaining, as we know, it's just such a low vibration. It's kind of like gossip, it's one of the lowest vibration emotions or states that we can be in. But it's interesting, because when I would hang around groups of people who were complaining about their work, I'd find myself wanting to bring things to the surface, like, oh, yeah, this is going on, I have a shitty client, or, Oh, man, the Instagram algorithm changed again. But you realize that complaining about this beautiful job that you've created for yourself, this beautiful opportunity that exists as an entrepreneur, it actually does nothing, and it pulls you out of that visionary state. So I don't think I've complained about my work all that much in the last seven and a half years, because I know that I'm in charge, I am the one that's creating my reality, my future. I'm walking out the career path, the daily tasks, the annual outcomes that I set for myself. So if I don't like something, I'm just going to change it rather than complaining. So that's been a very interesting one. I know it's easy to default to complaining and just those more negative emotions, but I think we all know that they don't do us much good. And if anything, it just robs you of that higher vibration that you know, you need to stay in, in order to do really good work. So thing number two that I stopped doing when I started my business, was that I stopped complaining. Hey, visionary, I want to quickly interrupt this episode to ask you if you've been curious what it's like to work with a private business and marketing coach, if you're a business owner, and you feel like your marketing plan is all over the place, you haven't figured out your search engine optimization or your SEO strategy, you have no idea what your social media marketing plan is, and you are not doing so well. On the self Express content front. I call these the marketing trio. It's the three S's SEO social media self expressed content.
And by dialing in all three of these pillars, you too, can get more visible, generate more income and increase your lead generation where you're actually turning your followers into paid clients. And you're constantly bringing new people in at the top of the funnel. If you're not familiar with my work, I am a private business and marketing coach. And I have spent the last 13 years working in the marketing industry, many of those years doing consulting with clients like you who want to finally get more visible and get in front of their dream clients. So when we work together, you have me for four months, as your marketing partner, I'm going to do a full audit of your business, put you on a private project management software with me. And then based on your innate skill sets based on your strength, based on where you are curious and where your dream clients are paying attention. We're going to build out a custom marketing strategy. We're going to track it, we're going to optimize it. And by the end of the four months, you have a plan that works and you're seeing results. It's truly incredible. Christina crook just landed a $100,000 consulting contract after implementing just one of my marketing strategies. Emily Fraser signed multiple new clients in one day after just one month of working with me.
And now she is having consistent five figure months. And Natasha, she started leveraging her email list in December, and 30 days later in January, she pulled in $25,000 from one single email that we created. So these results are possible for you too. But don't sign up yet. Just had to Kelsey rydell.com And check out how we can work together learn all about it. Make sure you feel informed and if you'd like to book a discovery call with me just fill out the application on my website. We can get on the phone and see if it's a good fit for you. So anyways, I don't want to interrupt this episode anymore. I cannot wait to work with you to support you and getting you more visible and let's get back into the show. So let's get into thing number three that I stopped doing when I started my business. And that is that I stopped seeing my career path as linear. And I started to see it in the exponential field. so hear me out on this in the corporate world, and I spent many years working in a more regular structure as a marketing specialist.
And as a marketing manager. In that world, there's a trajectory, or for some people, they call it the corporate ladder, because you climb up one rung at a time. And it's very rare to skip rungs, right, like, if you're climbing the corporate ladder, you don't go from being the junior technician at the bottom of the ladder, who just got hired, who gets all the dirt kicked on them. You don't go from that to all of a sudden, you're top of the ladder looking down on everyone, you're the C suite executive, that takes time that might take you 20 3040 years, you wait your turn in the corporate world, you sit through annual reviews, you wait for your boss to notice you, you wait to be anointed as a specialist, as a manager, as an executive, whatever title you're waiting for. And that's very normal, right?
Like, there has to be some sort of succession plan for employees in the corporate world. And I get that. But when you are an entrepreneur, and you are deep into personal development, like one tip that I have is if you're starting a business, this is a personal journey, work on yourself all the time, always spend your money on it. Don't be shy about investing in you. So as an entrepreneur, you're constantly investing in yourself, you're growing your business, you are hitting new levels, you are promoting yourself, because you're like, oh, my gosh, I have to take on more responsibility, my business is growing, you have an ability to actually have an exponential leap. So instead of seeing your career path as linear, when you start your business, you actually want to see it on this infinite playing field. Because you guys, you can start something, feel like a total newbie, and Junior. But in a year or two years or three years, you can actually be running a million dollar business. But you have to have the mindset that it's possible. And of course it is we've seen success stories, people who seem to accelerate through the journey. But that's because they've done the work. They're able to skip steps on the ladder because they've invested so much time or they have experience or they've been building their audience for years. And yeah, they might have started their business a couple of years ago. But as they get going, they're literally just like soaring up the ladder. And they don't see a limit to how fast or how often they can promote themselves. So something that I stopped doing when I started my business was seeing my career path as linear. And this hasn't always been perfect. I've often find myself upper limited of like, oh, I can only ever make 150k a year, oh, I can only ever make this much, oh, I could only do this with so much time. And then I have to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, where did this come from? I am still very ingrained. And like that nine to five like slow growth. And you know, this is a normal salary. This is what a normal workweek looks like. But when you play in the entrepreneurial field, your leaps are exponential, they are not linear necessarily. So this can be exciting. This can be very scary. If you are used to waiting for somebody to promote you or give you a raise, and then you become a business owner, you have to do that to yourself, especially if you feel like you deserve the upgrade.
And you have to know that when you start a business you can 10x or 100x your success in a matter of weeks. You don't have to wait until somebody tells you it's time to sit down and review review your KPIs and review your performance. You don't have to do that. So that's a big one. I hope that helps to expand your horizons a little bit. So thing number three that I stopped doing when I started my business was seeing my career path as linear and instead starting to see it as exponential.Okay, number four, something I stopped doing when I started my business was trying to force work When work wasn't happening, how many of you either have a desk job or had a desk job, and you often found yourself with like a bunch of tabs pulled up, and you were pretending to look busy, but it was three o'clock in the afternoon. And all you wanted to do was get out and go sit on a patio with your friends. And so you found yourself just looking busy, even though nothing was coming through. Nothing productive was being done. But obviously, like you had to stay in the office till five, right? And he kind of looked around and you're like, is anybody even working right now? What are we doing? Why are we all sitting here pretending to look busy? Pretending that we're able to work eight hour, nine hour 10 hour workdays like robots, when in reality, our brains are done, we've done the good work already. So it's funny because and I talk about this all the time, like I am still very much on the journey with you guys. So I have noticed over the last seven and a half years that I often do have my calendar blocked off from nine to five, I often still assume that the workday looks a certain way, and that I'm not allowed to go to a Pilates class at lunchtime, I'm not allowed to go meet a friend for coffee. And for many years, I did love the rigid structure.
And I think that served me but then I started to realize like, I don't know that I'm able to work a nine hour shift. Especially things that require a lot of creative output and content, marketing and strategy. So something I stopped doing when I started my business or I'm still stopping doing is trying to force work when work isn't happening. You don't have to stay chained to your desk. You don't have to pretend to be busy, when in reality, you should be out for a quick 20 minute walk, you should be doing a 10 minute peloton class to shake up your energy. When you're the boss, when you run the business, you don't have to force it. In fact, forcing it is really that masculine energy that doesn't always move the business forward. Sometimes you need to sit back, lean into what's actually needed of you in this moment. And maybe that is self care. Maybe that is sitting in silence for half an hour. Maybe that's taking yourself to a business conference or a retreat, and taking an entire week off. Because you're like things aren't working right now. I gotta shake things up. That's amazing, you guys. So thing number four that I stopped doing when I started my business was that I stopped trying to force work when work wasn't happening. Okay, let's get into the fifth and final thing, actually, I might have some bonus stuff for you. Now that I know that my wheels are turning, we'll see what comes up. But thing number five that I stopped doing when I started my business was that I stopped postponing things, delaying things and waiting till everything was perfect. So when you run a business, it's interesting, because you can act quickly you can launch and modify on the go, you can put content out there and edit it afterwards.
Whereas I found what the corporate world taught me was that we go through months and months and months and months of planning. And we sit down and we have meeting after meeting and approval after approval. And we have to go through every hierarchy before we even activate an idea. And even then we might just say you know what, squash this project, all those hours you spent on it, we're not even going to do it. And that always ticked me off because I'm like, I have a deep knowing that this is going to work. What do you mean, we're not going forward with it? So I think I had it in my head that things have to take time and everything has to be built perfectly behind the scenes. But when you're an entrepreneur, you have this unique ability to test and experiment with the people in front of you to soft launch things and to really see what's landing with your community. And you don't have to wait till Everything's perfect. You can actually put out the minimum viable product and start seeing is this something people want is this catching on. So I think the tendency is that I want things to be perfect. I don't want to jump into things but I also think there's so much magic and just diving off the deep end, saying You know what I really want to win Launch a course on prenatal nutrition, and putting together a curriculum and saying who wants us? Let's see, are there five people? Are there 10 people? Are there 100 people? All right, let's start on July 15, I'm going to prepare all the materials. But trust me, we're going to do this, we're going to have so much fun, you're gonna learn everything you need to know.
So that is by far, the most casual launch you could do. It's not perfect. You're not delaying and postponing, thinking, oh, you know what, I need to go into my dark cave for six months and create this. No, we should postpone the launch, because I don't know how many. It's like, just act quick. You're gonna get so many more results. So number five, the thing I stopped doing when I started my business was I stopped postponing, delaying making excuses for why I wasn't showing up, I stopped waiting till things were perfect and said, I thought, You know what, I don't want to be perfect. I don't want everything that comes out to be a success, because I want to learn by trial and error. I want to be able to test things to see whether they are viable or not. And that's the magic of running your own business is that you get to engage in these conversations. You get to test in real time. And you don't have to wait until, you know, five years from now to launch that thing. That is an idea in your head. So those are the main things that I stopped doing. When I started my business. I'm curious which one resonates most with you. So one, the notifications being turned off, I stopped being responsive. Number two, I stopped complaining about my job. Number three, I stopped seeing my career path as linear. Number four, I stopped trying to force work when a work wasn't happening. And number five, I stopped postponing things, delaying things and waiting till it was all perfect. So let me know I'd love to hear on Instagram, which one resonated 1234 or five. A few other bonus things. I feel like I've given up or stopped or just evolved into over the past seven and a half years. I've stopped being a late night party gal, not that I ever was, but I am so conscious of my sleep, my brain power. I cannot stay up past 930 or 10:30pm.
And if I have clients the next day, I'm sorry, but I'm not coming with you to the late night concert. I'm lame. I'm a grandma. Okay, what can I say? Another thing I stopped doing when I started my business, I stopped being afraid to invest in me. Not that I ever really was. But I think I had this innate knowing that like, when you run a business, like you're the one that's hosting your annual conference, you're the one that's investing in your education fund. And when I worked for companies, they usually gave me say $500 for learning and development. So when I started my business, I thought, You know what, I have an unlimited budget to invest in me. So I'd go to conferences in LA and in Utah, I would buy courses on how to run Facebook ads or how to build an email list. I would invest in masterminds like the mastermind that I now run, which is for high achieving women who want to build businesses but also want to be in their best health, build wealth, have the best relationship of their life. A lot of these mastermind women are parents, if you do want to learn more Kelsey rydel.com/mastermind, we enroll a very selected limited number of people. But if that sounds interesting to you. And if you're not afraid to invest in yourself, that I'd love for you to apply. So I stopped being afraid to invest in me and my development. I stopped feeling the Sunday scaries oh my gosh, when I had to go into my last corporate job, downtown Toronto on Bathurst Street. Honestly, it was a beautiful office.
It was casual, great company, beautiful office with bright windows and restored brick and like I really can't complain much, but I'm not gonna lie. I dreaded going in dreaded, dreaded dreaded, so one thing I stopped doing was dreading my weekdays. Now, I friggin love my Mondays. My Mondays are my content creation days.I don't take calls on Mondays. I've intentionally crafted Monday to be such a beautiful, high productivity day and I love it. But I intentionally did that right. Another thing I stopped doing when I started my business was doing the bare minimum. Like I feel Like in previous jobs, I'd be like, okay, like, how quickly can I do this? Or what can what do I have to do to scrape by today, and like, I was never a Slack worker, but you know, there's this level of like, whatever, I just don't care anymore. In my business like I am, like, I just want to do things all the time. So I stopped doing the bare minimum. And now I'm like reaching for what's my maximum output in the least amount of time. It's crazy when you're inspired by your work? What comes of it? So there you have it, I guess it was nine things I stopped doing when I started my business. But those last few are just some bonuses. So this was all just kind of like a riff, it all came to me very quickly. I don't know if this resonated or not, but I just wanted to share my truth. It's all a work in progress. I am by no means someone who has figured it all out.
But I do love sharing bits and pieces of the journey with you. So I hope this was helpful. And definitely take a screenshot of this epi and share it on Instagram. And let me know what resonates. So have a visionary day and I will talk to you soon. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of visionary life. I love bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis. So it would mean so much to me. If you could help me out by rating and reviewing the show on either iTunes or Spotify. It just takes a second. And if you don't want to rate the show, you could also just take a screenshot of the episode and share it on your social media platform of choice tagging me at Kelsey Reidl. I'll catch you in the next episode.
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