Table for 1.
As an entrepreneur, it’s your job to call the shots, but when that call is an unpopular one, can you stand by it? Suz sheds light on how making the unpopular decision is sometimes the necessary one.
You’re listening to Episode 94 of the Music-Preneur Mindset Podcast.
Hello! You’re listening to Episode 94: Making Unpopular Decisions to Grow Your Business.
I’m your host, Suz, a mindset + productivity coach helping music professionals get clear on their goals, priorities, and next steps all while decreasing overwhelm and avoiding burnout.
This episode is brought to you by my free live training on March 3rd, Tapping into Your Vision.
During this 90-minute live training I’ll be showing you how to get super clear on your vision, identify your top priorities, and limit the amount of white noise and distracting tasks that don’t serve your vision so you can effectively reach your goals and make better decisions, the right decisions for you, more confidently.
You can register for FREE on this episode’s show notes page: http://therockstaradvocate.com/ep94. When you register you’ll receive my free checklist: From Flustered to Focused – a great pre-training for the event – so don’t wait!
I created this free live training because so often we don’t take the time to properly lay a foundation for achievable goals.
What I mean by achievable is a goal that’s aligned with what you truly want, because when it’s not, that’s when things start to snowball down a path that actually takes you further and further away from reaching anything that resembles a goal.
One of the ways that snowball begins is when you start making decisions based on other people’s beliefs, advice, or agendas; when you stop doing what you know in your gut you want to be doing because you’ve convinced yourself other people know better.
It’s so important to stay connected to what it is you want and why you want it so that you don’t get distracted by what other people want you to do. Even the most well-intentioned can begin to convince you to stay their course, and not yours.
In this live training we’ll discuss how to stand your ground and better trust your gut to ensure you’re living out your vision and no one else’s. And today, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned first-hand about making my own decisions for my business, even if it went against what many other people felt was the right course of action.
Now, before I share these stories, I want to be clear, none of this is easy and it usually doesn’t come naturally. You’ve got to develop a trust with yourself and your gut/intuition in order to stay your own course.
This trust comes with time and usually a lot of lessons learned, some of which can be very painful and/or messy. I will be the first to admit this trust was a lot easier to find and hold onto in my 30s than it was in my 20s. Everyone is different and everyone is on their own timeline, but understand that it first begins with trust.
Last summer, in 2020, I made the decision, after more than a year of deliberation and NOT trusting my gut, to close my Facebook group after more than four years of building up the community to over 2500 people.
After all of the courses and trainings on how to build an engaged Facebook group, after all of the many years of producing consistent, valuable content for the community, with ebbs and flows of stimulating engagement, after all of the rebirths and structural changes to make it not only something I could manage, but something I enjoyed managing, I closed up shop.
I started the group back in 2015 and two and a half years ago Facebook changed its algorithms which changed the way group members were getting the posts which changed the way they engaged in those groups and it just didn’t feel like the community it felt like when I started it. Even though it was a community of great people, many weren’t getting the posts.
Facebook constantly wants you to spruce things and pay for things and I was trying to create this free community and maintain it and it just wasn’t happening. Were there more courses and ebooks out there to show you how to ride the wave and create thriving Facebook groups even amidst all the changes? Yep.
Here’s the thing – I wasn’t interested.
For over four years I was building an online group on Facebook because I was told that’s what you do, and there were people who wanted it, so I created it. I was doing it for everyone else. And almost as if they were intrinsically tied together – the more I disliked trying to grow the group, the more the group grew with spammers and people who had zero interest in real engagement.
The initial intent behind The Rock/Star Collective was meant to redefine the hustle and help people who struggled with time management learn healthier habits and all it soon became was managing people’s posts and deleting spam and throwing people out who really shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Again, were there coaches I could have hired to help me turn it around? Yes. Were there tips and tricks I could learn to lead the group more efficiently? Sure.
The group didn’t deteriorate on its own – I was failing the community as a leader and the spammers were running a muck. And yet for a solid 18 months I dragged my feet, feeling like I’d be crazy to close a group of 2500 people, a group I spent over 4 years building. I fell into the vanity metrics of if all and finally my business coach said, “What do you want?”
Before I answered her I gave a list of all of the ways people grew income streams and engaged communities from Facebook groups and she asked me again – “What do you want?” I then went on to point out that there were many members who still enjoyed the content and how I wanted to serve them and be a better leader and she asked me again, “What do you want?”
I finally said, “I want to shut down the group.”
She said, “Great! Do it this week.”
I think I gave it a month, but I eventually closed the group and a huge weight lifted off of me. I wanted to build a community but I hated being on Facebook. I was never on it for myself so I constantly felt dragged there just to maintain this group.
I practically live on Instagram and I decided to create a private community there. Is it common to do that? Nope. Is Instagram meant to be for private communities? Nope. But Instagram is where I hang out and where I can be a better leader.
To ensure the people who enter this community are there for the right reasons, I made it so that every follower is accepted after showing proof of purchase of The Rock/Star Life Planner.
This wasn’t done to sell books – they can show proof of owning any version of the book, dating back to 2016. This was done because it tells me they care about time management and learning ways to better manage their music career. It’s a way to weave a common thread through the community and build lessons around shared interests.
Will it work? Well, it’s been 5 months and we are a small but mighty group who come together each week to plan out our next steps every Monday, deep dive into relevant topics every Thursday and end the week strong with a Productivity Power Hour on Fridays all via IG Live.
We’re still working out more ways to build engagement when people can’t post their own content onto the feed, using IG Stories and shared content from their own feeds.
It’s a challenge, but it’s one that I WANT.
Colleagues and other peers have cautiously wished me well. Some others have even told me it won’t work. That’s ok.
Sometimes you’re going to have ideas that won’t make sense to people simply because they’ve never had those ideas. You may also decide to do things that aren’t motivated by the same things that others are motivated by and that may seem odd to them. That’s ok, too.
You may make decisions that don’t turn out in your favor. I may find one day that this private IG community isn’t what my community wants. We’ll see. And it’ll be ok.
Here’s the most important thing – it will be your path. It won’t be you dragging your feet down someone else’s path.
I was so nervous to announce to my Collective this new move. All of the members who had stayed with me since day 1, who had been reading announcements for the last two years of me drastically trying to change the rules and change the setup and change with all the new ideas I was coming up with to try to save the group, to try to save my own connection to the group – would they think I was giving up or making a huge mistake?
And, on the other hand, I was just as petrified that they weren’t even going to care and that the group I had built wouldn’t even matter to anyone.
I felt like a fool, but at the same time I felt empowered. I was decisive. I was making a call that ultimately felt good to me.
I knew I could be a better community leader if I created a space that I felt confident in and enjoyed spending time in day after day.
It’s important to come from a place of service, but we also have to remember the Oxygen Mask Principle – if you’re constantly running on empty and depleting your tank by doing things you hate, you won’t be able to serve anyone.
Not everything is about numbers. 2500 members meant nothing when the space they were in wasn’t flourishing. Anyone can grow numbers, but it’s important to grow something that serves others in a meaningful way.
Another thing I did that wasn’t popular? I took my Planner off of Amazon. Why? Because even though I haven’t completely cut Amazon out of my life, I made a commitment to myself to no longer do business with a company I don’t agree with and I was also very disappointed in the partnership policies as well as international selling policies.
Would I lose out on sales? Would I lose credibility by selling on my website and not the biggest distributor in the world? Would I miss out on being a “best seller”?
Whelp, I raised the price of the Planner, enabling me to offer free shipping within the U.S. directly from my website, and wouldn’t ya know I sold out of the 2021 Rock/Star Life Planner faster than I did in all the years passed when I sold on Amazon.
Another not-so-popular decision? Not creating a digital planner or an app to pair with the Planner so that customers could stay digital with their planning. True, this year I began selling a digital version of the Planner, however, to be clear, it’s a printable PDF that you can print as you go or print in full and bind as you’d like. However, an app and fillable PDF will never be made by this company.
You serve your goals best by physically writing them down and that’s how it will stay in order to best serve my community. The funny thing? Those who “demanded” a digital planner all changed their minds after using the physical version.
Six years ago nobody was strictly doing mindset coaching in the music industry, that I know of, and it wasn’t something that was talked about or being pushed and promoted and I thought, “Woah, maybe that’s not a good sign, maybe that means I should continue to write bios for people and keep thinking of a new idea.”
But that wasn’t my zone where I felt super confident and effective, it was just the only option I could see in front of me, it was popular.
Here’s the thing – you don’t need proof of concept, you need faith of concept. You need to trust you gut not that it will succeed (you don’t always have control over that) but that it will be worth it – worth the success or worth the lessons learned.
That’s it.
You don’t need it to be a popular opinion. You just need it to be your opinion.
There are much worse things than being wrong. Chasing other people’s dreams and letting other people steer your dreams are definitely worse options.
Let me know in the comments of the show notes page if there’s anything that you’ve been hoping to do or a decision you’ve been hoping to make that maybe isn’t so popular, or maybe you’re afraid people are going to judge you for it, or maybe it feels a little scary.
Head on over to http://therockstaradvocate.com/ep94 and leave it all out there. You may surprise yourself – once you put the decision out there it may be easier to take action on and the fear may melt away.
Redefining the hustle means being bold enough to build a business model that looks nothing like somebody else’s, but that fully serves and supports your exact vision. If it works for you, if it’s gonna wake you up and motivate you so that you’re actually getting things done that’s what matters, because when you’re getting things done and you’re giving your best and you feel your best that’s when you’re going to attract the right people.
I encourage you, if you’re doubting yourself because it’s not the popular opinion or the popular thing to do, to let me know in the comments what you’re struggling with and we can help you tap into that courage to do what you know is best for your career.
Simply go to http://therockstaradvocate.com/ep94 and let me know what you truly want to do moving forward.
And, while you’re there, be sure to sign up for my free training I’m hosting March 3rd to help you determine what matters MOST in your life so you can block out the white noise and focus on reaching your goals your way, with clear intention. It’s a free event and the details can be found in the show notes page, all you have to do is RSVP to save your seat!
Thank you so much for listening and if you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe on your platform of choice as I’ll be back every week with a brand new episode! And if you like what you’ve heard I’d love it if you’d rate, follow, leave a review, or share from your favorite platform.
Until next time, Rock/Star. Keep planning, keep learning, and I hope to see you back here next week so we can get grounded to get rising! Take care.
Key Highlights
- Join me for a Tapping Into Your Vision webinar on March 24th at 4:00pm EST
- Trust is the basis of all decisions
- The time it took me 18 months to listen to my gut
- Why I closed a group of over 2,500 members and started fresh
- I took The Rock/Star Life Planner off Amazon and sold out faster than ever before
- Why faith is more important than proof
- What decisions do YOU want to make that feels scary to you?
Links/Rocksources
- Theme music brought to you by DC-based Indie/Pop band Sub-Radio
- More podcast episodes can be found here
- You can download a copy of the episode’s transcript here
- Our Sponsor: Tapping Into Your Vision webinar on March 24th at 4:00pm EST below and get my From Flustered to Focused Checklist when you sign up!
- Wanna work together?? Schedule your call here
Tapping Into Your Vision Rescheduled: Now March 24th @ 4:00pm EST.
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