3 Invisible Barriers Blocking Your Business Growth | 018

Sharon, welcome to the profit connections Podcast. I'm Sharon Galluzzo, your host, and I'm really excited that you joined me for this episode, because you're going to get some juicy nuggets that you can put to work right away in your business. The reason I'm bringing these items to you today is because, literally, this week, I have interacted with business owners who have put these specific barriers in front of them so that they cannot move forward in their business. They can't reach the success that they want, they can't reach the goals that they want, they can't move forward, and they're stuck. So I'm going to bring these to you so that you can self identify, see where you might be causing this in your own business, and how you can get out of it. So the first barrier that I experienced this week was with a business owner who could not decide which direction they wanted to go. So they could go this way, they could go that way. So that could be anything in your business. If you're standing in indecision, you're actually creating a barrier that is preventing you from moving forward. So it could be what direction you want to go, what kind of marketing you want to do, what products you want to carry. It could be anything in your business where you are standing at the crossroads of indecision and you're not moving forward, because by staying in indecision and confusion, you actually can't move forward. You cannot move forward because you can't decide. So this is how I explained it to the person I was talking to this week. It's like you are on a stream, and you're floating down this stream, and you are just going to go where the stream takes you. There isn't there. You have no paddle, you don't have a rudder. You just go wherever the stream takes you, and that's okay if that's what you want from your business. However, if you want something more, if you want to move forward, if you want to achieve things, if you want to make the difference in the world that you want to make, you're going to have to get out of the stream, because if you want to go to say, Paris, that stream might not be taking you to Paris. So if you want to get to Paris, you're going to have to get out of the stream, and you're going to have to make a decision to head that direction. Now it's okay if you don't want to go to Paris, maybe you want to go to Rome or New York, that's totally okay. You get to decide where it is that you want to go, but you have to make the decision. And here's the thing that I see people do, I don't want to make the wrong decision. I don't want to be be incorrect. I don't want to what if I ruin my business? What if my business fails? What if people don't like me? What if my customers get upset? What if? What if? What if we get stuck in that? What if, and it's actually paralyzing you and keeping you stuck. So what you need to do is make a choice, and I will tell you that any choice that you make can be the right choice. You can choose to go to Paris, you can choose to go to Rome, you can choose to go to New York, or you can choose to stay in the stream. And know this, if you choose to stay in the stream and do nothing and remain an indecision, that that is a choice you have chosen to remain stuck. So I'm going to reiterate that when you make a choice, it's not a wrong choice. You can't make the wrong choice. You just decide, and whatever you decide, then you work towards making that decision, that choice, the right choice for you, so you don't have to worry about the wrong thing. Because it doesn't matter what you choose, things are going to go great, and things are going to go wrong, and you're going to learn something, and you're going to move your business in a direction, and it doesn't matter. And you might say, well, I if I make the wrong decision, I'm going to lose money, or if I make the wrong decision, I'm going to lose time, or if I make the wrong decision, I'm going to lose face, and I'm going to lose my reputation, and all of those things could happen. They could happen if you don't make a choice. So go ahead and make that choice, and move your business towards its goals, instead of standing there, stuck, overwhelmed and frustrated in indecision. So the second thing, the second barrier that I've encountered this. Week, I'm going to call it false hurdles. These are things that we have put up in front of us. And business owners are like, well, I can't do X until I accomplish y or until Z happens. I can't move forward until and a lot of times these hurdles that we think we have to climb over are actually just invented by us. For example, the person I was talking to this week said, Oh, I have to get my website done, and I have to write a book and I have to and I was like, no, actually, you don't. You can actually take steps towards the goal that you want to achieve without having those things. You can move your business forward. You can go in the direction of your dreams without accomplishing all of the things. Because sometimes business owners get stuck in the doing and the creating and the oh, I have to have all of the pieces. I have to have the website. I have to have the shiny objects. I have to do what everybody else is doing. And they put these false hurdles in the their own path. And so instead of being able to move forward, they have to climb over the hurdles first, or jump over the hurdles, or crawl over the hurdles, or, honestly, stop and not move forward, because they can't overcome that hurdle. And a lot of things in this area can be related to perfectionism. And honestly, perfectionism is the enemy of a profitable business. No one is perfect. Nothing is perfect. There will always be things that go right, and there will always be things that go wrong, and it's all okay. So if you wait until something's perfect, you're always going to be standing still. You're always going to be stuck standing in front of that hurdle, looking at it, and seeing your goals way far off, and wondering why. It's because you put a hurdle there. The world didn't put that hurdle there. The business community didn't put it there. You put it there. So because you refuse to let something go until it's completely perfect, and it will never be perfect, there is no such thing as perfect. So you need to release perfection. Strive for excellence. If you need a word, strive for excellence. And you can do things that are done and not perfect. So even if it's not excellent, if it's done and it's pretty good and it works, then go ahead and move forward, and then you could refine as you go along. However, if you stand there and wait for it to be perfect, since it never will be perfect, you can't actually refine it, because you've made no progress towards the goal. So perfectionism, not your friend. Strive towards Done is better than perfect, and excellence if you need a marker, the other thing that you can do is with this, with these false hurdles, is you can have put them in place because of something going on in your subconscious. So there's a reason why you can't move forward, and maybe you don't actually know what it is. And this is really valid. People have a lot of subconscious, unconscious beliefs about money, about sales, about business owners, about success, about, you know, being a billionaire or a millionaire. There's all kinds of things that are wrapped up in our subconscious that actually keep us stuck as well. So here's what I recommend. I recommend that you actually work on what is called your mindset. So that's the stuff that's going on in the background. You know, the things like on your computer that are running in the background, that are slowing your computer down because you have 47 tabs open on your web browser, and so everything you're trying to do is super slow. That's kind of what's happening. It's it's going on in the background, and it's keeping you slow and stuck and not performing at the levels at which you know that you can, and you that, that you actually want to. And there's lots of people that can help with mindset. I do a little bit of mindset work with my clients, and there are people out there who do amazing things. The other thing that hurdles are sometimes are they're just excuses. Well, I can't do this because I haven't written my book yet. When I write my book, then I'll be able to do it.

But what's actually happening is maybe you don't want to do it, maybe you are afraid to do it. Maybe there there's another reason somebody in your family doesn't want you to do it, or there's external pressure, and there's all these reasons that are going on. So you say, Well, I can't do it until I write my book, but that's just an excuse. Excuse. So get really clear about where you are putting excuses in your path, where you could actually say, You know what, if I'm totally honest with myself, that's not actually what's going on. And you also need to realize that you are probably more experienced, more expert and more ready for what the next thing is. Then you think you are, because we, all the time, will play down our own accomplishments. We look at the staircase and we like, Wow, look how many stairs are left to go. And we forget to turn around and look behind and see how many stairs we've already climbed. So know that you are probably way more ready than you think that you are because you are, you know, not looking at yourself objectively. Here's what I did with with the person I was talking to this week. I asked her to Google herself, and she was absolutely mortified. She's like, Oh, I don't want to do I'm afraid what I'm I'll be embarrassed. I'll be embarrassed. I don't know what it says. I'll be embarrassed. So I googled her name, and I handed her for her phone, and lo and behold, there was all this positive stuff about her that made her sound like an expert, which she is that she didn't even know about, because she was too afraid to just Google her name, and even if there hadn't been anything on Google that was that spoke to her expertise. You can create those things, whatever it is you need, you can create. So remember that you are more accomplished, expert and advanced and ready for the next step than you believe you are. And the third thing that I saw people doing in their business this week was delaying what needs to be done. So I was talking to this woman, and she was really excited. This was a few weeks ago. She was really excited about getting something accomplished in her business. And she said she was talking to a bunch of different vendors, and she was talking to a lot of people, and she was trying to decide what she wanted to do. And when I talked to her the other day, she was like, Oh, well, you know, then this came up, and this came up, and I've kind of, you know, I haven't resolved that yet, and I haven't worked on that. And the thing that she was putting off was not something minor. It was actually critical to the success of her business that she accomplished these things. And yet she put it off. She delayed it, and so I talked to her about it, and I was like, oh, you know, I know how that is, and that happens, and I kind of let her off the hook. And as I was driving home, I thought, Wow, I did not do a service to her. I did not call her out on that and say to her, this is an important thing that you need to do in your business. It needs to be done. And she actually is in an industry where this happens all the time. What she does is really important in people's lives. So whenever people walk away from her and don't work do business with her or or buy from someone else the thing that they really need in their lives. She that was a good parallel for her. She she can see very clearly that their lives are going to be less because they didn't take care of the thing that needed to be taken care of. Yet she couldn't see she was doing the exact same thing in her business. So what I did was I called her up and I challenged her, and I said, if you're willing, here's my challenge. In the next 48 hours, make a decision and go ahead and pull the trigger on that thing, do that thing that needs to be done in your business, and I'm going to call you after the 48 hours and make sure you did it. And she agreed. It was a very friendly conversation. There was no there was no animosity at all. She just needed somebody to say, hey, this needs to be done, and hold up a mirror. And we do that. We do need that. We need somebody in our lives and in our businesses to hold mirrors up for us. Because I firmly believe that if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to build a business, and you should not be out there doing it on your own. So get help, get somebody to come alongside of you and hold up the mirror whenever you need need it to be held up and keep you on track, so that you are not delaying things that are really crucial to happen in your business, and so that you are not creating another focus, so that you can put that off. You can delay it again. You can delay it again. So here's what we talked about. We talked about number one, the number one barrier that we talked. About today is indecision, not making a decision, and staying stuck at the crossroads. We talked about false hurdles that we put up and prevent us from moving forward in our businesses. And the third thing we talked about was delaying what needs to be done. And you know what needs to be done. And I'll tell you what, it's probably not the fun thing that you want to do, and if that's why you haven't been doing it, or maybe it's hard, or maybe it's really overwhelming and it needs to be done. So honor yourself. Treat yourself like you. Treat your customers. Treat yourself like you treat the people in the world that you are trying to change the world for, treat yourself like your your legacy that you want to leave behind. Give that honor, that treatment, that consideration and that power to yourself. Don't let yourself off the hook that easy. So here's my encouragement to you today, I'm going to challenge you to change indecision to choice. You get to decide. You get to decide anything. You decide if you're going to Paris or Rome or New York or staying in the street. You decide, and then you make that decision, the correct decision. And if you're worried about FOMO, I have a friend, Shiraz, and he says, If it's meant for you, it's going to come back around you. Take the thing that that you want to do, and the other stuff is going to come back around to you eventually. So you're never missing out on anything. So don't let FOMO get you down. Number two, own your expertise and build on that you are more ready than you think you are. And the third challenge is to take action. Do not keep letting yourself delay and delay and delay action is the solution for almost every business problem that you have. And sometimes I know it's scary to make a decision, to say, we're going to Paris, and so you will say that. So you're like, Should I do it? And then, okay, Sharon said, do it. So I'm going to go ahead and do it, but I'm not so sure. So it's okay if you say I'm going to work on going to Paris. Paris is my destination. It's okay if you say I'm going to go in this direction for a period of time. I'm going to do it for six weeks, or I'm going to do it for a quarter, for three months, or I'm going to do it for a year. And as you are commit and commit to that time, no matter what you commit to that period of time, and as you get towards the end, maybe two thirds of the way there, stop, look at what's going on and see if everything is still correct. Are you go with getting the results you want? Are you moving the direction that you want and knowing that you still want to go to Paris? You can adjust how you get there. You can get to Paris many different ways. You can walk, you could swim, you can fly, you can take a boat. You can take a train, depending on where you are, you can get to Paris many different ways. So the way doesn't matter. Taking action matters, and the destination matters. So make sure that you have done those pieces, make the decision, remove the hurdles, get the false hurdles out of the way. You're you're better than you think you are. You've got this. You already have what you need. If you will move forward with what you have, you will have so much momentum and so much progress, and you will realize as you're going that the thing that you thought you had to have will come along and join you when it's ready, like as you're moving forward, those things will come and sometimes you will get stuck, and you'll need to go, Oh, now I need to go back and fill in those gaps. And I need to make that, you know, make that path more smooth, so that I can move forward even further.

The point is, go ahead and get out and move because action cures everything. So here's my challenge to you. I would like you to just choose one thing, one barrier that you've set up for yourself in your business this week, and work on eliminating that barrier. And if you can make the commitment to yourself and honor it and go forward, then I would like you to do that. If you're the kind of person that needs someone else to link arms with or to hold you accountable, find somebody, find a friend, find a business associate, find your accountability partner or someone that you. Live with or love, or somebody in your community that you can count on that will come by and be that accountability sort of buddy person that will say, Hey, you said you're going to do this. And then you have an external person that you have to sort of checking your homework. Honestly, I love to have somebody that comes by and checks my homework that keeps me moving forward and keeps me accountable. I am that person that needs the external person that needs the external help and support. So that's what I have for you today. I really hope that you got some really juicy nuggets, because I would love for you to be able to eliminate these barriers so that you actually can set yourself free. And of course, there are many more out there, and these are just the ones that I saw this week, so I encourage you to choose one thing, get some support, and let's get rid of that barrier. And as always, I encourage you to join our profit connections community. The community is called profit connectors dot club. It is a website. It's profit connectors, C O, N, E, N, E, C, T, O, R, S, dot C, l, u, B, profit connectors dot club, because you are the profit connectors. And inside that community, you'll see all of our episodes. You'll see gifts from any of our speakers and from myself. There's bios in there for our speakers. There's lots of resources and tools inside the community that you can use to make your business better. Thank you so much for joining me today. I encourage you to keep showing up your future self will thank you for it, and remember it's your business and your impact. Go make it matter. Thanks for joining us. You