The Biggest Realization I Made that Contributed to Me Tripling My Sales

Kathryn Thompson  00:00

Hey, welcome back. Super stoked that you're tuning in to this week's episode. And I cannot wait to dive into today's topic because I'm going to share with you a very personal story about why I believe I was able to triple my sales and my online business after years of continually hitting this income tab, and not being able to bust through it, but also feeling like, in order to create and generate income in my business, I had to work bloody hard to do it, I had to create a ton of content, I had to show up all the time on social, I had to give away a ton of stuff for free, I needed to create complicated funnels, it all felt like this upward battle in order to attract sales.

And to me it felt like it wasn't sustainable. And I had experienced this massive success in the offline world, both personally and professionally, I grew up playing competitive sports. I did really well at university graduated top of my class in my master's, earned multiple awards there had a very successful 15 year corporate career before ditching that to open our brick and mortar wine business where I sold close to a million dollars in sales in three and a half years before selling our business at the height of COVID. With a single email when the world had literally shut down in June of 2020, we sent out that email, and by August of 2020, our business had been sold, which was unheard of, you know, people thought we were crazy that it would take way longer for it to sell. And I hit experienced all of this amazing success and things just sort of like working out for me in the offline world. It literally drove me nuts that I couldn't replicate or duplicate that in the online world.

And I'm stubborn if you've been following me for a while, you know, I'm probably stubborn, and I'm like, I'm gonna figure this out come hell or high water, even though I had people, you know, asked me to go back to corporate offering me beautiful packages that, you know, were hard to turn down. And I spent days looking on LinkedIn jobs and seeing what was out there and putting my name in the hat for a few I was offered a really beautiful job, I turned it down I know. And I but I had spent so much time building this online business and attracting beautiful people into my world and having some of the most amazing clients ever. And I was so grateful for that. And I knew that the online business and what I was doing, and what I was here to do was that and my mission behind why I do what I do. And I and I couldn't turn my back on that I was like, Okay, what is it? We've got to get really curious about what is it in your online business, it's different than perhaps what's happening in the offline world. And I was sitting in the bathtub one day where I usually go and write a lot of my content because it just sort of come flows out of me. And it dawned on me that majority of everything else in my life that I created the success had a very different motivation than my online business.

And it was in conversation with my husband about hiring a personal trainer, I had left the brick and mortar I spent days on my feet there hauling wine. And so when I started my online business, I was like, I need to stay moving, I need a reason to like get out and to move and whatnot. And he was like, I don't get it. Like we've got a bike in the basement. You go for a walk around the block, you know, there's weights, a full weight set in the basement, like, what is it about the personal trainer that's going to like actually get you to be motivated to work out. And I said, Well, it's commitment to getting in my car every day and driving there. And it's my commitment to her that I show up. And that's when it dawned on me. Everything in my life, every area of success that I had created, always had an attachment and a commitment to something or someone else. The motivating factor for me to do the thing I was doing, always had an attachment to somebody else. My personal trainer, if I didn't show up, I'd be letting her down. If I didn't show up, I'd be taking a spot in her day that she could have filled with somebody else. University. My parents helped me through university. So if I didn't do well in university, it would be wasting their money and resources that they were giving me to support me and getting my degrees. competitive sports if I didn't show up if I didn't stay fit. If I didn't stay healthy. I didn't go to practice financial games.

I'd be letting my entire team down my brick and mortar if I didn't show up, the doors wouldn't open. If I didn't fulfill my orders. I'd be disappointing my customers corporate which was the same you know if I didn't show up, I mean yeah, I wouldn't have a job. I get fired, but I'd be letting people down. And what I realized was, I had none of that accountability in my online business. I had spent so much of my life giving to all of these other things that I absolutely loved and adored, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have done it. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have played competitive sports if I wasn't motivated to play. But there was always that attachment there. I was doing it not only for myself, but I was doing it for others as well. And in the moments when I didn't feel like getting out for a 6am practice, I had the motivation to do it, because there was a level of responsibility and accountability on me to show up. Very different in an online business, when you're running it solely, or if you have a small team, the only person that's going to hold you accountable to show up and to do the work is yourself. And I had never really looked at it that way. But I also realized that I wasn't very good at holding myself accountable. But I was really good at being accountable to everybody else and what they wanted and what they needed. But also setting goals and doing things in my life that were like had that attachment or accountability. On the other side, I had no one to hold me accountable. In my online business.

And I often will say this to my clients, I can't hold you any more accountable than you can hold yourself. And yet, I wasn't I wasn't showing up for myself. And I wasn't showing up for myself on the days I didn't want to. I definitely when things got hard or when I'd have a bad day, or I just didn't feel like posting or I didn't feel like I had anything to say or I was sick or whatever it was, it was really easy to not follow through. I'm really good at following through on promises I make in relation to somebody else. But I'm not that great on holding or keeping promises to myself. And that's where the work started. So about a year ago, that's when it sort of dawned on me it was probably about a year and a half ago because I started at my personal trainers about a year and a half ago. And that's when it dawned on me was like holy shit. No wonder my online business hasn't seen the success because I have nobody else there that I'm needing to show up for other than myself. And I had spent the vast majority of my life self sacrificing myself to some capacity or degree in order to appease or to do things that maybe I didn't want to do or to agree to starting businesses that I didn't even maybe want to do. And that's when it dawned on me. But that's not where it ended.

Right? It wasn't it starts with awareness like okay, I get it now. So how do I hold myself accountable. And I will tell you this, and you might have heard it, that there is no way that you will stay motivated or accountable to anything. If you're solely driven by the money, if you're solely driven if you have this like shallow sort of vision or promise, when things get really freaking hard, you aren't going to sustain anything. If you don't have some bigger vision, bigger purpose, bigger reason for why you're doing it. And about a year and a half ago, I realized that I had built my business, my online business from pure trauma response. I built it as an escape from my brick and mortar. And I realized that that was a pattern that I had had in my life. If I didn't like something, I tried to get out of it. I tried to escape it I would run if I had bad breakups. I usually buy a ticket somewhere around the world to escape India, Ireland, just to get away so that it didn't have to deal with it. I could just forget about it. That's what I did with my corporate I jumped from my corporate into a brick and mortar because I was so fed up with corporate I wanted out I knew I wanted out but I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't stop long enough to figure out what I actually wanted. And then do my brick and mortar. I was like this, isn't it? I need an out. I need an escape plan. Let's build an online business because I'm really good at marketing. I'm really good at communicating. I'm really good at helping other business owners do the same and put words to what they do.

But my MO motivation to build the business was pure trauma response? Well, no wonder when things got hard or got tough or whatever, I hadn't really grounded in any other bigger mission. It wasn't that I was out of integrity, or I was selling something that I didn't know how to help people with absolutely did. And I'm really, really good at it. It's just the motivation behind the business was done from a place of needing to escape. And so I hadn't stopped long enough to go, what do I actually want the online business to look like? What do Who do I ultimately, who am I here to serve? Why am I here to serve them. And so a year and a half ago, that's when the work started. Because I had this business. I had beautiful clients. But I knew that if I wanted to scale, and if I knew that I wanted to bust through that cap, I needed to start holding myself accountable. I needed to start valuing and promising to myself and keeping those promises to myself, I needed to stop saying yes to projects that weren't in alignment alignment with me like 100% in alignment, right, it's really easy to take a project, because you need to make the money. But that creates a lot of frickin havoc. And I had done that, right? Again, I've always delivered phenomenally to my clients. But it doesn't mean that every project is in alignment. So it's about not saying yes to everything. It's about knowing what you value where you want to spend your time how you want to spend your time. And it's about really grounding in that vision. And I hadn't stopped long enough to ask myself what the hell I even wanted, you know, I had been running nonstop.

From a very young age, right, I played competitive sport, started playing competitive sports at 14 competitive soccer. And that consumed a big chunk of my life until I was about 2021. And then I didn't want to give up the competitiveness. And so I started training for half marathons. So I'd spend my my evenings and my weekends running long distance. And then I poured myself into corporate right over gave or delivered you name it stayed late. Then I ran into my brick and mortar, which was like turning a corporate job into multiple, multiple corporate jobs, right as working hours and hours and hours over giving over delivering. I didn't stop long enough to go what is it that you actually desire and want? What do you want your life to look like? What type of work do you want to be doing? How do you want to show up in the world? And why do you want to show up in that capacity? Because nothing will motivate you. Or to keep the promise to yourself. Nothing will motivate you to keep doing it in the hard times and the hard moments and in a way that is required to bust through that. And that's what's allowed me to literally scale it was no marketing strategy or nothing. It was the fact that I was like, Holy shit, I'm not keeping my own promises. Why am I not keeping my own promises? Why am I not valuing myself enough? Why am I sacrificing myself for a project for a client or whatever, again, my clients were phenomenal. But I was taking on multiple projects, cramming my schedule, all of that, and I was doing it was a distraction. Again, it's a distraction from what it is that you really, truly want. And it's that introspection. And we cannot do that.

When our time and our mind and our space and everything is crammed all the time. And constantly distracted with what's going on. Which brings me to my next point is I'm going to record an entire episode, the next episode on what I believe is an epidemic in the online space. And why I believe I got even further caught up in not being able to sort of bust through that income cap was because I had got so caught up with, you know, consuming and not creating. So that's a whole other topic. But back to this one is I would love for you to pause for a moment if you if you're if you've created a reality in the online space or the offline space for that matter. And you have experienced success in all facets of your life but for whatever reason, the thing you're working on right now in your business, feels hard or feels like you haven't been You're not able to bust through that cap or you're not experiencing the success that you want. I'd love for you to pause for a moment and just take a bird's eye view of your life, and see if you can spot any patterns and see if you can connect the dots because for me, that's what it was, it was connecting the dots from the fact that every other thing in my life, although, although my online business looked the same, like I was doing the same things, and I was showing up and I was committed, I was committed in relation to other people, I was committed when the sale happened, I was committed to deliver when I was in relation with clients. But I wasn't 100% committed around the clock, I wasn't 100% committed to show up online to create content to be of service to share value, when it wasn't in relation with somebody else. And so sometimes it can feel like you're speaking into the void. And you might be like, What the heck am I doing? And why am I doing this?

You know, what's the point? What's the point of creating the content? What's the point of writing the emails, if people are just opening on them, but not taking action or engaging. And that, for me was probably the biggest heaviest weight was, I didn't have that relational conversation. That's that disconnect that can happen in the online space, which ultimately caused me to forfeit my own vision and my own promises and my own. I had I didn't have the motivation, and that had to be reworked. And that is reworked through your vision and reworked through Why are you doing it? And why are you creating the life that you're creating? And are you agreeing to what you're agreeing to? In alignment with that bigger vision? Are you agreeing to projects that, you know, we're gonna bring you to that bigger vision? Or to your highest potential? Or are you taking on projects, or saying yes to things, or doing things that are ultimately out of alignment, but are going to give you some type of validation? Like, clients hiring you money in your bank account? Whatever it is, right? Is getting really clear on what are the motivating factors behind every decision that you're making?

And are they pure with what it is that you want? And I realized, because I had built my business out of trauma, response and escape, I hadn't stopped long enough to even realize, or ask myself, why am I motivated to do what I'm doing at the time of starting the online business, I was motivated, because I wanted out. And then when I got into the online business, I had no one to hold me accountable. I didn't have a retail hours that I needed to show up. I didn't have you know, a boss telling me I needed to do something or fulfill something, I didn't have a team looking at me being like you're gonna show up today for practice. I didn't have that. I would wake up in the morning, pour myself a cup of coffee, and I had to motivate myself to do the work. Right, similarly, is what my husband was sort of getting at when he asked me, why do you need a personal trainer, what is it about the personal trainer that's going to be any different is because I didn't have the intrinsic internal motivation to get up and work out in our basement. There's nobody holding me accountable to ride that bike in the basement other than myself.

And I didn't have that accountability. Regardless of how much of a high achiever I am, and this was a hard pill to swallow was like, Holy crap. I'm not accountable to myself, I have a really hard time holding myself accountable. And I really love breaking promises to myself, even if it means that I'm, you know, not moving all day long, or taking nourishing myself in the way that I need to be nourished, and deserve to be nourished. You know, it was a hard pill to frickin swallow. But that was the missing piece, so to speak. I even hate that terminology, because I don't think there is like a missing piece. But that was the pattern, or that was sort of like the uncovering that was like Holy smokes. This is the difference between the offline world and my online business is that nobody is here to hold me accountable. Nobody's here to tell me to show up in the face of struggle or obstacle or whatever. The only person that's here to do that is me. And you might be feeling the same way to in your business in your life, that you're really good at giving to everybody else. You're really good at showing up and delivering and over giving and over delivering when you're in relation with somebody else. But when it comes to being in relation with yourself and holding yourself at the highest priority. That doesn't happen. And that was the turning point for me. That was ultimately the thing that transformed my business.

That was ultimately the thing that helped me triple my sales. Because everything I started to do in my business and every action I took, I took it. Because I was, I had the pure motivation behind why I was doing it. And I was doing it ultimately for myself, and not for somebody to praise me or somebody to pay me or this reward of being paid for my services, right. I was showing up purely because I wanted to. And I desired to do what I was doing for that bigger vision or mission or purpose that I had set forth for myself in my business. And it didn't matter how many people were paying me, it didn't matter who was paying me, it didn't matter how many clients I had, none of that mattered. That was all sort of became the byproduct, I had to work less. I still had to work, I just had to work less at marketing and selling myself. Because I was so clear on what my motivation was and why I was motivated to do what I was doing. And it was more intrinsic, than it was somebody else driving the ship, the boss, the coach, the team, the retail hours, you name it. And that was like I said, the turning point that is what has ultimately helped me catapult my business. It also helped me realize something really, really powerful we often hear be the seven figure person, right? And I'm a proponent of that it's why I started this podcast be the sought after entrepreneur. And I ultimately thought I was being that seven figure business earner or that multiple six figure business earner I was like I'm being that person, why am I not seeing the results.

And the reality was, it was so much more nuanced than than that than I had realized. And that boils down to identity that boils down to behaviors, that boils down to like really deep rooted beliefs that have been ingrained in you for your life. You know, when you go to corporate, you're paid for your work, there's a reward, there's this attachment to if I deliver value and my corporate job, I will be paid. That was the motivating factor in a lot of what I was doing in my online business was like I show up, I deliver i over deliver and someone will pay me you know, and that's the reward. And I had to separate, separate myself from that as well. That the work that I do, and who I am at the core of who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing isn't driven by the money isn't driven by someone praising me or tapping me on the shoulder isn't, that can't be the driving force. Because when that's not their use, stop doing it. And in the online world, like when you're working in your house by yourself, there is differences in who you're connecting with, and all of that, and my brick and mortar and people walking through my store doors every single day. So I had the connection, I had the conversation. In the online world, it can feel very lonely working at your desk, creating content for social media, talking to people through the DM where you can't really see them or hear their voice, right. It's a very different relationship building and cultivating. And so when that's not there, at least it doesn't feel like it's there. It feels like maybe you're speaking to avoid or you're just like communicating via, like text message. It can feel really hard. And so it's like, you need to be able to show up for yourself and your business without all of the other things that are attached to it.

It's like Where can I start to detach not just from the outcome, but from expectation, attach from validation, Attach, detach, I should say detach from validation, detach from all of these things that are driving you and then what's left. And that's what I've spent doing for the last year is really doing that. And in the process of that my motivation for my business and why I'm doing what I'm doing has allowed me to really still see clearly what it means to be the person you want to be now embody that person now so that you can achieve the things that you want, and unpacking all of the things that have gotten in the way and that's the work, right? And that's what makes marketing and selling and all of it so much easier. And feeling less like a grind because you're in like hyper alignment, right? You're only doing things in your business and motivated by them. For I don't want to say pure intentions because pure intention sounds like you're out of integrity and I don't feel like I was out of integrity. To the people I was serving, I felt like I was out of integrity to myself. So I wasn't in integrity with me, which again, was a small like a hard pill to swallow. Because integrity is such a core value, like the biggest core value of mine. And I was like, I'm always in integrity when I'm working with clients and delivering to them. But it's hard to be in integrity with yourself when you when you're not holding yourself accountable. Or you're not keeping promises to yourself, or you don't set that big vision for yourself and stay with it, right? It's really easy to get distracted. When somebody a project lands on your plate that's like, looks really juicy. But you're like, oh, that's going to derail me from the thing that I ultimately want. But that paycheck would be really, really great.

And I know I can deliver it in a really beautiful way. But and so you take the project, and it does derail you from where you ultimately want to go. So I hope that that reflection of my own journey and taking a look at what it meant for me and what was different for me in my online business and why I wasn't able to duplicate or replicate results until I ultimately went inward, like literally deeply inward and got really curious about my life and why I was able to achieve the success and what was different about that success in my online business. And it all had to do with self accountability, keeping your own promises and holding that vision for yourself. And not having a boss or somebody else that is kind of there as a way of showing up and almost being like I don't want to say forced but it's like it's it almost is like a forced reason, right? It's like why are you going to the gym? Why did you hire a personal trainer? Well, I want to stay healthy. Well, that should just be a driving factor in and of itself. Well, the the personal trainer is there to keep you accountable when days get hard when you don't feel like it. But can you cultivate that within yourself so that you can stay on track, in your business in your life? When things are, are hard. So without further ado, I cannot wait to dive into next week's conversation, which is an epidemic, I believe is the biggest reason why people don't stay on track other than the fact of motivation, accountability, all of that, but how it's so easy to get swayed or pulled in multiple different directions. And I'm gonna share with you on next week's podcast so be sure to subscribe to show so you don't miss it. Cheers