You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 100.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

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Hi, my strong friends. Oh my gosh. Can you believe it? 100 episodes! Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. I wanna thank you for being here with me during these 100 episodes.

 

You might not have listened to all of them and that's okay. Like you've got plenty of time. When I first started exploring podcasts, I found one that I absolutely loved and she had about 150 of them. And I love them so much. Like I found them like towards episode 150, and I thought I love this so much. I went back and I started to listen from episode one and then binged listened to all of them. And it changed my life. It really did.

 

In fact, I could even say it saved my life. So, for me to be at episode 100 is just blowing my mind. Because I had never even known what a podcast was like four years ago. And then to even think that I have one and I would've stuck through and done one every week until I got to a hundred episodes.

 

When I see some of my favorites out there and they're hitting podcast, number 300 or 400 thinking, oh my gosh, that is years and years of their life creating an episode every single week. That's pretty amazing. The amount of effort that goes into creating content every single week, or if there's interviews, it takes a lot. There's a lot of planning that goes into it.

 

And there's some people that can make an income off of a podcast. And that wasn't what my path was. You don't hear advertisements on my podcast. It doesn't mean that I won't do it someday, but that wasn't the intent of my podcast. My intent was to make something really easy to pull off the shelf as like an educational piece.

 

Because I found when I was coaching people that a lot of times there was a piece of knowledge that they didn't have yet. And that if I took our time during a coaching session to teach on the concept, there wasn't a lot of time left for the actual coaching. So, I decided that I wanted to create a repository of all of these different types of trainings so that I could just say, go to this episode and then they'd be ready to go.

 

And so it's great because now when I meet new people, a lot of times they show up and they have a whole bunch of different things, so I don't wanna overwhelm them. I might just give them a couple of episodes, but when you have one hundred episodes, it's fantastic because you can match up exactly what they need at that moment and just give them that. And the variety over the last couple of years has been pretty big. I try to stay focused still on the main core of what my mission is all about, which is great mental health and getting your business up and running.

 

But in order to have great mental health, a lot of times the obstacles we're facing involve all different aspects of our lives. So I create an episode for each of those.

 

Unintended Consequences of “Whatever It Takes”

 

So, in this episode, I wanted to talk about doing whatever it takes. Some of my favorite podcasts out there, they talk about doing whatever it takes. And I love the ladies that are doing this, and I'm gonna even shout them out by name because all three have contributed to me figuring out how to have a business up and running and to do really well.

 

And that's Brooke Castillo. And you know I've mentioned her a few times. I owe my life to this woman. She saved my life. Brooke’s podcast is The Life Coach School Podcast.

 

Stacey Boehman. She is a sales coach. She's a master life coach also, but sales coach expert at sales. And if you're gonna be an entrepreneur, that's one of the things you have to learn how to do is how to actually sell your products and services. So she has a podcast called Make Money As A Life Coach. And I've really appreciated it. I would not have been able to figure out how to make money because I had so many mindset blocks and Stacy helped me through a lot of them. And I know that I have other ones that are still out there and I know I can always count on her.

 

Simone Seol. So she hasJoyful Marketing Podcast. I haven't listened to it yet, actually, to be totally honest. I got on her mailing list instead, and her emails, so many of the things that she shared has been inspirational and has really put things into perspective, and I'm so grateful.

 

So the doing whatever it takes, there was a podcast episode that Brooke did interviewing Simone. (Episode 300, Extraordinary Success as a Life Coach)

 

She did this episode around December of 2020, I think it was. In the episode, Simone was talking about how she had decided to do whatever it takes to get her business going. She has had phenomenal success. She started off as a tarot card reader, and now she is a business coach in marketing and all about being authentic. So, you know, I love this woman, right? I'm all about being authentic.

 

Anyway, she had shared in that podcast about what her doing, whatever it takes looked like. And it was working in the middle of the night. My motivation really revved up that day. I was so inspired by what Simone said. So I decided, okay, I'm gonna do whatever it takes. And I got caught up in that adrenaline of doing whatever it takes and my definition of doing whatever it takes.

 

I did I for about two weeks period, I was working till like three or four o'clock in the morning and I got some phenomenal stuff done, but it had an impact on my mental health. It had an impact on my relationship too. When I start stressing out really bad, it goes straight to my gut. So I think I've shared with you on a few episodes that I have IBS. It's a stomach condition.

 

And for me, it's triggered by a few foods out in the world, but definitely triggered by stress. And so when this things, I get an IBS attack that can cause severe stomach pain for hours on end, it can result in me, blacking out in the bathroom, which is awful and I can't get any work done. And my quality of life is like zero at that point. It really, really is awful.

 

So I have a history with stress and doing whatever it takes. When I worked in biotech for gosh, 25 years, it was always about saving somebody's life. And so it was always all hands on deck. Everybody's doing whatever it takes all the time. Like there was never a break. And it was like a badge of honor, when you'd say all of the effort that you put into it to do whatever it takes so that a patient could get the medicine that they need, or the diagnostic materials that they needed. We were saving lives. It felt great.

 

But the expense came at our own mental health, our own physical health, our own relationships. Our quality of life was going downhill. And I say our because I'm talking about myself, I'm talking about my coworkers. I'm talking about our families that had to put up with us. So either they had to put up with a cranky version of us or really tired version of us or an absent version of us.

 

It was that adrenaline. It felt great doing whatever it takes, but the toll could be catastrophic.

 

I've mentioned in the past, I had a mini-stroke when I was 28 because I was doing whatever it takes. I worked 46 days straight without a break. I worked 16 to 23 hours a day. And this was right after I got married the first time, like within the first week or two. And that's not how you're supposed to start off a marriage is being absent from your own marriage and then doing whatever it takes at work. And then having a mini-stroke.

 

I suffered some brain damage from it. It took me 15 years to recover from that brain damage. I eventually did, which is great, but it wasn't worth it. It really wasn't to do whatever it takes in my definition of doing whatever it takes. All of the hours that I spent putting into doing whatever it takes. Then when I was working at Genentech, one of my coworkers, he did whatever it took, too.

 

There was an emergency that came up or how we felt it was an emergency. It was holding up releasing lots of our medicine that could then go on to get processed into the final packaging for patients. He was supposed to go to a company offsite. That was one of the great things with Genentech is they would also give us days of like forced fun. Like, go take a break. We know that you're working really hard, go off and play and have fun.

 

Well, he got caught up in that adrenaline of doing whatever it takes, because it feels like the right thing to do. And I tried to intervene, and I wasn't very successful. At work, he went into the bathroom and had a major stroke. He had to have part of his skull removed to save his life. He ended up in hospice care for two years.

 

And as a result, still paralyzed on one side. He survived it, barely. He's now on permanent disability. Like he tried to come back to work. The company saved his job opening for a while for him to come back. But there were certain things he just wasn't able to do anymore.

 

But he had done whatever it took. It felt great in the moment, it felt like the right thing, had catastrophic results. His daughter didn't get to have him actively in her life for that whole two years that he was in hospice care. That's not why we were put on earth. We're not here to do whatever it takes, including jeopardizing our own health.

 

Thought Community Influence on “Whatever It Takes”

 

I went on to have another client. And I was coaching him like he was officially my coaching client, and I could see all of the warning signs with him of doing whatever it takes. And he didn't wanna delegate to all of his folks because he didn't want to put that added pressure on them, but there was work to be done. So do whatever it takes. So he would step up to the plate and he'd do all of the extra work.

 

He'd work the extra hours, he'd skip on taking any breaks. And I was coaching him. I was like, Hey listen. Here's what happened to me. Here's what happened to my other co-worker. I don't want that to happen to you and there for a while it was working and he was starting to delegate. It was great. And then he got swept up in the adrenaline because when you're surrounded by a community of people that are always talking about doing whatever it takes and it's this badge of honor and everybody's patting each other on the back for doing all of this crazy extra work, you get caught up in it.

 

You're like, this is the way that it's all supposed to be. It's that thought community, you're all sharing that same thought. I'm over there trying to pull him into the thought community of take care of your mental health. I'm just one and they were many. So, of course, he kind of got swept up in all of it and he had a heart attack on Christmas day.

 

Now, this was years ago. So I had decided it was imperative for me to always make sure mental health comes first when it comes to business. You will be successful in business, but we have to take care of your mental health first. Because if you don't take care of your mental health, your business isn't gonna matter. If you're in hospice care, who cares about your business? You're having a heart attack on Christmas day, who cares about your business? Your family is there. Like this is when you're supposed to be spending time with them and enjoying your life.

 

So keep that in perspective. When you're doing your business, take care of yourself. Always put your mental health first.

 

Tip 1 - Define & Align to Your True North

 

I want share with you two things that I think will really help you when you're talking about doing whatever it takes. The first does defining your true north. What is your why? What are the really important things for you when it comes to creating your own business?

 

And then I'm gonna get into redefining whatever it takes. I'm gonna share some of my very specific things that I did that you might not have thought about for doing whatever it takes.

 

First is your true north, true north is deciding your top three metrics that guide all of your decision making. All of your other business metrics will somehow roll up into these three. But, if you can remember and stay focused on those top three, whenever you're trying to make any decisions in your business about what you should do and what you shouldn't do, you go back to those top three things.

 

My top three things:

1. Mental health.
2. To have a great home life where everything is comfortable.
3. For my business metrics is I'm working towards having a hundred members in my Unshakable membership program.

 

I put mental health first. I don't put money first. I see other business coaches out there that talk about creating a six-figure income and a seven-figure income. That'll be great! That can definitely come in your business. But, if you don't put your mental health first, you're gonna burn out the mental health part as you're trying to make that six to seven-figure. So I never go money first.

 

Money is a beautiful side effect of everything else that you're gonna do in your business. It's guaranteed. It's inevitable. It's always gonna happen as long as you put the other things first. So, for me, mental health is always first.

 

The whole reason I started my own business was for mental health. It was for my mental health. It was for my family's mental health and it was for my client's mental health.

 

It's pretty hard to make the decision to leave a high-paying six-figure job that has all of the bonuses that has all of the vacation, the sabbatical, the 401k, the insurance, all of the extra side benefits. All of those are so good. I call that the golden handcuffs. But what we were facing at the time when I made the decision that yes, I'm gonna go full-time into my business was mental health challenges.

 

Both my daughter and my husband were working in environments or going to school in environments too, where they were getting bullied for being who they were to the point where my husband was even feeling suicidal. I was in a work environment where, not only was there the do whatever it takes, and I was pushing myself and having a lot of my own mental health challenges as a result, I was also having a little bit of bullying from some of my peers.

 

We had gone through a big change where instead of working in silos, we were gonna work in a team environment. And I had a co-worker who was great with her. Like we were used to team environments. So we flourished in that, but my other co-workers were not, they were so ingrained in silo and competition that coming into a team environment. Mm no.

 

So it ended up not being the most pleasant environment for a while. And I was also getting a lot of flack from them for incorporating mindset coaching in with business coaching. So, I was basically being told by them that it wasn't my job to do that. That was for HR to try to help with. But honestly, who talks about their mental health with HR?

 

Most people are scared to death to go to HR because they think that it's gonna go on their employment record. They might get fired. People might find out and HR department are usually pretty small too. So finding time to get in, to talk with them can be challenging. All of this was happening pre-pandemic. So, I think a lot of things have changed now, including coaching virtually.

 

I knew that what I was doing was the right thing. I was seeing great results in my clients. My clients were really appreciative of me incorporating mindset coaching along with the business coaching. I knew I had a winning formula. I believed in my skills. I also believed in my ability to learn things, but it was that challenge to our mental health that really did it. And especially seeing my daughter and my husband getting pushed to their brink. I couldn't handle that. I wanted something different. I wanted a different life for all of us.

 

So when we came out to the coast and were there by the ocean, there was this instant relief on our mental health.

 

We knew this was where we wanted to be. The community out here, too, is also very welcoming to all of the differences. Very accepting and supportive. And we knew this was our new home, but it's also four hours away from all of the biotech jobs that I was used to.

 

So in order to make the decision to start a business. It took a huge act of courage. So I had to really think about this. Like, do I really have the skills to do whatever it takes and to make this happen? And I knew that I did, I really did. And I know that you do too. Sometimes you start to think that you don't and I see it in you. And I know you absolutely have the skills to do it. Otherwise, I wouldn't be working with you. Like if I don't think that you have the skills, I'm gonna say no. For your own sake, but if you've got it, you've got it.

And I believe in you and I will help develop you on that. So for me, having that balanced home life was also really important. When I was in by biotech, part of the doing whatever it takes was work-life integration. So we had heard about work-life balance for years, but work-life integration was supposed to be a great thing. So now it was flexibility with your schedule. So if you needed to do a life activity, you could do that in the middle of your regular Monday through Friday, eight to five job.

 

If you needed a few hours to go do something at your kid's school, go ahead. Because they knew that you'd make up the time later on that night or on the weekends or something. So it was supposed to create this ultimate flexibility. Instead what it happened was that badge of honor, most people are overcompensating for taking that time off.

 

So they're working 60 plus hours a week to try to compensate for that one, like a two-hour block that they took off for themselves. Or they're working through every single work hour. And I was doing that too.

 

So a balanced home and life. I still like that integration, but not at the expense of working all hours of the night. I had to figure out some healthy work-hour boundaries for me and also sometimes to fight the urge, to like do laundry in the middle of the day when I'm supposed to be doing something else in my business. So finding that sweet spot., It takes a while. A lot of experimentation, but that's part of true north is those are goals.

 

You have goals of what you want your life to look like. And you know that there's gonna be obstacles along the way and you're gonna work through them.

 

And then my final goal, my final true north goal is around having a hundred people in my membership. So people can choose all sorts of different business models. Having a membership creates a huge amount of flexibility for your schedule because you're doing a one-to-many model. You know, there's a lot of other components that go into it so that you can set people up for success. Make sure they're fully supported. It takes a lot of creativity, but once you can figure out what all of those unique pieces are, and you pull it all together, you've created something amazing in this world.

 

And so that's what my goal is to create this amazing membership that can support a hundred members. Now, anytime that something comes up or I get inspired by a podcast, I anchor back and I look at my true north and ask myself, does this align with my true north?

 

Or is this the adrenaline grabbing me and encouraging me to go do something else? That wasn't part of my plan.

 

So that's where we're gonna go to the next part, which is redefining, whatever it takes.

 

Tip 2 - Redefine “Whatever It Takes”

 

My very first one I wanna talk about was at the very beginning. When we decided that we wanted to move out here to the coast and we knew that there weren't the high paying biotech jobs out here, it was one of those of well, would we be willing to do whatever it takes so that we can live out here and support our mental health? So we had to look for inspiration. I started talking to strangers because I love talking to strangers. And just striking up conversations because I decided I had a question that I wanted to ask. And so I wanted to talk to enough strangers and ask my one question to get this piece of information.

 

And so what it was asking people had they moved out here at some point in their life or had they lived out here all their life? But they had moved out here as adults. How did they do it financially? Because the jobs out here like they're few and far between, at least that's what it looked like to me.

 

And I actually found two people in a row that said that they had just made the decision to come and move out here even without jobs. That they knew that the workforce was pretty small out here because it's more of a retirement community. So you retire, you don't work at the jobs, you need certain services to be able to support the people that live out here. So somebody has to work.

 

They had observed that most people that came out here didn't really wanna work anymore. So they knew that there would be job openings. So they made that courageous choice to move out here without having jobs. And my jaw must have hit the floor. The first one that told me that, I was like, you could do that? You can actually move somewhere without jobs and you can get jobs like right away and make work? And they said, yeah!

 

And then I talked to the next person and she said that she and her husband had done the exact same thing. So, it was just two data points, but the doing whatever it takes, moving to a place where you have no jobs. What?! That is something totally different. Usually, I was used to, you would secure a job and then you would move there. Not, you would move there and then find the job. So that was doing whatever it takes, something totally different.

 

 

 

1. Commit To Yourself By Eliminating Fall Back Options

 

So we moved out here without having a job. My business was not officially launched yet. It wasn't built yet. I mean, I had some of the pieces. I was already getting prepared for. I had already worked with a branding coach. I already had some experience with blogging, but I didn't have a website. I didn't have anything. I really did not have my business started before I decided to do this.

 

In fact, I had only had one paying client before that, because I was a coach in biotech. So that's where I had the experience. But it was someone in 2018, who was my first paying client. And that was before I was even trying to be a business. Like someone asked me if I would be their coach. And I was like, yes! Let's do this. Let's give it a try. So I based my decision on starting a business on believing that I had what it takes.

 

I was able to sell to at least one person. So I'd be able to do it again. And my husband that he was a hard worker and willing to work. And that there would be some job out there.

 

So we took that courageous leap of faith. We bought our house, overlooking the ocean and we sold our house. We used the equity from the house to be able to support ourselves and to pay our mortgage and everything. And we, we just did it.

 

That was definitely a doing whatever it takes. It was also a conscious choice on my part to create a fire under my butt by doing that. So doing whatever it takes is creating intentional discomfort. I needed the discomfort of not having that safety net of a job already to motivate me to keep doing it. To figure out all of the things that it takes to run a business.

 

It was me making a commitment to myself. Because by moving out here, I had essentially cut off my possibilities of driving to a job ever again or driving to a job with the income that I was used to. So, if I wanted the income that I was used to, I was giving myself one option. Which was to create a business and make it work by creating that fire under my butt.

 

Now, of course, I'm a logical person. I think things out before I do those crazy leaps of what will I need to replace in the meantime?

 

2. Allow Yourself To Be Temporarily Poor & Accept Help

 

 

And one of those big things was insurance. I had to put some thought into this and I didn't wanna dwell on it for, you know, months and months and years and make it this long-drawn-out decision because you don't get it very far. If you're gonna spend that long, trying to make one decision.

 

So healthcare, I knew that it was possible to have free healthcare. If you didn't have an income, I knew it was possible because I heard about it on the news. Like there are people out there that are low-income or no income and they have healthcare. Well, I had never known that world because I had been employed for over 25 years and always worked at companies that had really great healthcare. Sure. I'd have to pay my own premium for it. You know, my part outta my paycheck, but I never had to worry about it.

 

So I was scared to death that, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have to start paying a thousand dollars a month for healthcare but wait, there's another option. Now, here is where it's doing whatever it takes. I had pride issues. I have always had pride issues with accepting any kind of public assistance. I grew up poor. We had public assistance and I got teased for it. So, I had vowed that I would always be self-sufficient financially. So I would never have to rely on anybody to give me something for free.

 

But healthcare. I knew that we were gonna need it. I knew that a thousand dollars a month was not gonna be in our budget. So, do whatever it takes. I had to be willing to let go of my pride and to allow myself to have public assistance for a temporary amount of time. And that's part of it. The mindset shift was that it was temporary.

 

This was not my forever. This was something that I had been paying into for years as an employee. So why not go and allow them to help me for just a little while until I was up and on my feet and making enough income so that I could afford to purchase insurance for my family. So, out in California, we have something called Medi-Cal. And as long as you're making less than $2,700 a month, you can qualify for Medi-Cal.

 

And Medi-Cal has been pretty amazing. It's covered a hundred percent of all of our medical stuff. Even when at the very beginning of the pandemic, my husband got taken by ambulance to the emergency room because he had COVID symptoms. And that was back when people were dying, like immediately. Like on the TV, it was counting how many deaths. like it was on our TV all the time, how many people were dying. And so we were so scared.

 

I was so grateful to have that Medi-Cal insurance. But that's one of those aspects of doing whatever it takes. Are you willing to consider not having an income for a while and allowing yourself to get the public assistance that comes to you from having that low income? It's a different way of life. Like we're always trying to go higher. Shoot for a higher status in life, but to actually have a micro-goal, a temporary goal of allowing yourself to be poor.

 

I mean, seriously, I had zero income for a while. I had to embrace that I was gonna go from a six-figure income where I had plenty of money coming to me every month to having zero money. And what would that be like? So I had to allow my daughter to get on the free school lunches program. And I had had a huge issue with that in the past. Like that kept coming at me every time I'd enroll my daughter in school. Like every school year, they'd send the packet.

 

And when I was a six-figure earner, I was like, well, I'm not gonna fill that out because I'm making more than enough money. And the schools would often make me fill it out anyway. And I was like, no, I shouldn't because I make plenty of money. So now I was super grateful that that was available to us.

 

In fact, during the pandemic, they started sending out these debit cards to the students where they were getting hundreds and hundreds of dollars. In fact, my daughter at one point had over a thousand dollars of free money on these debit cards. And so we've got this great thing where she goes and she picks out all of her salads and her fruit boxes that she loves. And so then she uses her little debit card to pay for all of that. And I'm grateful because it does help to reduce what my grocery bill is. I'm still paying groceries out of my own pocket, but to allow that. And so I had to be willing to accept help for a while was part of doing whatever it takes.

 

3.  Keep The Goal, Be Compassionate With The Timeline

 

 

Timelines is another one. So we're used to the old way of doing whatever it takes where you just push and push and push and push so that you hit a timeline.

 

I do whatever it takes because I wanna stay aligned to my true north of my mental health being number one. I had to allow myself the time to write out project plan with all of the different things that I needed to do for each deliverable within my business. And to be flexible on those timelines.

 

One of the things that I learned the hard way is sometimes when I'm estimating how long it will take to do something that's new, that I've never done before. It takes so much longer than what I had planned. So sometimes my project plans are not accurate for the very first time.

 

What I do is I would have that all laid out. I'd write down what my actual amount of time was. So that next time that I went to go do it, I'd have a better idea of how long my project plan would actually take to complete.

 

 

 

4. Invest In Your Own Private Space

Investing in space for myself is another one of those doing whatever it takes.

 

Funny story. When I first started in 2017 with blogging. I was just experimenting. I didn't know if anybody would be interested in what I had to write. So I started off in my house. My office was a chair in my bedroom and I had this exercise mat and I would put it around this chair as if it was like a cubicle wall. And I'd sit in my chair with my laptop on my lap, writing out my blogs.

 

Because in our home there were seven of us. We didn't have any extra space. So I started off with that, but being in my bedroom and seeing laundry that needed to get done or seeing the bathroom that needed to get clean, it would be distracting. So I had to be willing to invest in that space for myself. And at the time it was really tiny, but the first few times I just felt so much self-love that I had created this little tiny space, my bedroom.

 

It was hilarious. I mean, this little mat was up against my knees, but I had created a space. Eventually, when things started to show momentum, that's like, yeah, this is actually gonna happen. I invested in creating an office in my backyard. Because I couldn't find the office space to rent.

 

So before we moved out to of the coast, I invested over $15,000 to have an office built in my backyard. It was a tough shed, a 10 by 10 because you don't need a permit to build a 10 by 10 shed in your backyard. And I had it retrofitted to be a she shed. I had a chandelier, I had wood floors, it was beautiful. I had a heater and air conditioning. My chandelier had a dimmer switch. Oh my gosh, I cried being in that space. It was all for me. I had invested in that.

 

I didn't know we were gonna move. If I had known we were gonna move, I wouldn't have done that. It was very permanent. So now that we're in our new house, I'm super excited. I'm gonna share this like breaking news. I'm investing in a wall and a door for myself. I know it's the craziest thing, but it costs a lot of money. Like this is $4,500 to build a wall and a door for myself, but I've earned that money in my business. So I'm willing to invest that for myself.

 

It's going to create a much larger office space for me. I work in the loft in my house. So I've created a sound wall for myself to create, you know, privacy and everything for my clients. But to actually have a full wall with a real door so my cats will stop opening my door that I've created. It's an amazing feeling.

 

That's part of doing whatever it takes. I've decided, yes, this is now my permanent space. This office space in a few years, I'll be in an office complex. There's something called Cypress Village that is in Gualala. But, I want to make sure that I'm doing it at the right time. I don't wanna spend money now if it's gonna create way too much strain on my business. Because then I show up with more anxiety. That doesn't work for me and my stomach. It doesn't work for my clients. So I'm pacing myself. So for now I'm creating this very permanent space in my house and my gosh, so excited.

 

5. Courage to Start With The Basics

 

So doing whatever it takes a little bit different. Having the courage to start with the basics. I see so many people feeling like they have to be a hundred percent professional, have everything rigid, right from the beginning.

 

You don't need that. I mean, doing whatever it takes could be that you're pulling out all of this money in loans and driving yourself crazy, trying to get perfection. But that doesn't have to be whatever it takes. Whatever it takes could be the courage to start with the basics. And that's what I did.

 

When I had my very first paying client, I didn't have a website. I just had a Facebook business page where I was putting my blogs out there. And that's how this person found me. And then we just started using Facebook messenger to talk and to nurture the relationship. And I didn't even know what zoom was back then in 2018. So I just used Google Meets. That's what I was using in corporate to talk with my clients all over the world. Google Meets it was fine and it was free.

 

I also just created a workbook for us to collaborate with using Google docs. Google Drive is a free service. All of the docs are free services, and being able to share with my client, it was super helpful for us. It looked pretty enough. The important thing was that we were able to collaborate together. We could see things, we could both edit it. It didn't have to be fancy and perfect. It was enough because really the value came from the coaching. It had nothing to do with all of the rest of it.

 

So doing whatever it takes is being courageous and willing to just start with the basics and allow that to be okay because it really is.

 

6. To Get Clients, Pause and Read A Book

 

One of the things that I've really appreciated is learning from other successful entrepreneurs who are willing to share what all of their struggles were along the way.

 

So, doing what it takes, takes some time to go and read other people's books or listen to their audiobooks. The ones that are willing to share whatever it took for them. So for me, reading Marie Forleo's Everything is Figureoutable was very helpful. Because as you start to go down the entrepreneur journey and if your business is taking a while to actually make money, because you're doing the longer route of like building all of your pieces to get it ready for your clients, money might start to be an issue.

 

Like I lit a fire under my butt. I thought I'd be making an income in four months and I wasn't. And it started to be really, really uncomfortable and stressful. So, I thought, okay, I'm gonna go read Marie Forleo's book. So instead of working really hard to get a client right then and right there, I decided, Nope. I'm gonna do whatever it takes. I'm gonna go and read a book.

 

A little bit different doing whatever it takes. Because I was looking to find, when was she in that situation where she thought she'd be making money and she wasn't making yet, how did she keep going?

 

Marie Forleo, for anyone that doesn't know her, she's the founder of B School. So it's an online educational platform where you can learn how to get your business up and running. She teaches you kind of all of the pieces, not quite in the detail that I wanted. And she does a lot of workbooks, which wasn't what I really wanted. I wanted to actually create the things in my business, not all the stuff just on worksheets.

 

7. Redefine the Side Hustle

 

Anyway, in her book, she talks about the side hustle.

 

So we think about having to go back and get another job as, oh my gosh, I failed in my business.

 

I have to go get a job, but that's not it. A lot of times we think that of our own business as our side hustle. Like we have a job and then our business is the side hustle. She flipped the script on that, where your business is the main thing, the other job is now the side hustle. So she helped herself by bartending and taking dancing jobs. Those were her side hustle things so that she could create some income to pay all of her bills and stuff and keep going with building her business.

 

And that was huge for me. So I started looking at other jobs that I could take when I was getting stressed out about money. And one of them was a job working at a novelty sock shop. So we're in a touristy area. So novelty socks, one of those tourist places. In fact, we have two of those nearby and the job was willing to pay $20 an hour because there's again, not a whole lot of people out here that are willing to work that are working age, not retirement. And that are hard workers and want to come in and do it. $20 an hour to sell socks. Really?!

 

So I thought, well, that's such a different type of job for me. Like I was a microbiologist, system specialist, business coach, all of that in making six figures. Was I willing to take a job that only paid $20 an hour selling socks? Yeah. Why not? That sounded like fun. I get to talk with all the tourists that comes in, who knows some of those could be my potential clients for my actual business, my full-time business. And it would be a way to earn enough money that I could keep going. As I was building my business.

 

Now I didn't get selected for that job, which ended up being a good thing. It helped me to really evaluate and go back and look at my money situation. Did I really need that part-time job? And every time that I freak out about money, I always have money there. That's the crazy thing is your brain can still freak out about something that isn't a problem. And then you go and you try to solve that problem that isn't really a problem. And you can create a problem by diverting your attention away from your business, by taking up your hours, doing something else. When really there was never a problem to begin with.

 

So something to consider. But if it really is a problem, consider getting that side hustle and just remember that it's not a career thing. Find something that's going to take a small amount of your mental bandwidth, where you really can go in, do the job and leave. And your brain is clear to focus completely on your business.

 

8. Be Willing To Suck At Doing Things

 

Are you willing to suck at doing things? We think that doing whatever it takes is you have to be perfect. But what if it's the opposite? What if doing whatever it takes is your willingness to suck at things.

 

When I first started coaching on servant leadership and lean leadership, I had never done it before. And honestly, I didn't really get the training. When I was in corporate, they didn't train me how to coach on that. So I had to be willing to suck at it and I had to be willing to get resourceful at how I was gonna learn how to coach it. So I was reading books. I was watching Brooke Castillo coach other people, and I was also willing to suck at it and be transparent with my clients about it.

 

Like I let them know this is the first time that I've ever coached on this. And it was even in a group setting. And so I asked them if they would be willing to give me feedback at the end, each time that we'd have a session. Like at the end, tell me what worked, what didn't work, how I could do this better. They were willing because they were gonna have to learn how to coach other people in the same thing anyway.

 

So they were more than willing and they appreciated that I was showing up not perfect. Because then it gave them permission to also not be perfect. Anytime that I'm doing something in my business, I'm willing to suck at it.

 

I have this term that I use, which is throwing clay. If you think of a Potter's wheel, if someone wants to make a vase or a mug or whatever it is, they have to start with a clump of clay. They have to start with something, they throw it on this pottery wheel. It's spinning around and they're poking at it to turn it into the vision that they have for themselves. So it's all molding. And so if they don't like the shape, they put their fingers somewhere else. And then it starts to adjust it.

 

The same thing is with our skills. In anything we're doing in our business, we have to start with something and we have an idea of what we want it to look like at the end. And we start making those small adjustments. And eventually, it's gonna be exactly what want, but it gives you that freedom to make those adjustments along the way.

 

It's interesting. I was watching an episode of Cobra Kai on Netflix this last week. And they were talking about how to trim a Bonzai tree. And they're saying that you start with allowing the Bonzai tree to grow however it grows. And it's not in that perfect little shape. You get that vision in your mind of what you want it to look like at the end. And then you just start sniping in little places until it eventually turns into what you want it to look like.

 

Very similar with the throwing clay analogy. So when you're doing it, you are the piece of clay. You are that Bonzai tree. You start with something. Allow it to be messy in the beginning and have that vision of how you wanna be at the end. And then just start making those small adjustments and you'll get there. You have to be willing to suck and not look perfect at the very beginning.

 

Schedule challenges, traditional way of doing whatever it takes. Sure. I'll throw on extra hours. I'll work all hours of the night. I did this too. At the very beginning of my business.

 

There are people all over the world that we can work with and the time zones are all over the place. There was a time I was actually coaching someone at midnight and although it worked out great, during that session, I kept thinking, what am I doing? I would prefer to be cuddled up with my husband in bed at midnight, instead of coaching. It was a choice. I made that choice in the very beginning that I was gonna do whatever it takes, but I really wasn't getting what I wanted. Like I was not align into my true north. I've made a lot of mistakes along the way of not being aligned to my true north, but I caught myself and I made that decision that yeah, doing whatever it takes means that I will get more creative with my schedule. So I pulled back.

 

I created some healthy boundaries for me. And when it gets to that time, oh my gosh, the urge to keep working is there. And sometimes I succumb to those urges. And I'm working towards getting there. I'm getting really close to actually being a hundred percent compliant with my own work hours, which is great. So again, it's like with that Bonzai, right? Like making those little adjustments.

 

Then when COVID happened, and my daughter had to do all of her schooling here. In fact, my son, his first year of college, he had to stay home, too. We had internet bandwidth issues. So we did a whole lot of time blocking. So we pulled out paper and pencil and we started blocking out who got the zoom at what time? And it decreased my availability for taking on clients. Which I start freaking out about and was tempted to start working in the middle of the night.

 

9. Get Creative to Fit Your Schedule

 

But I honored myself and I didn't and I had to get more creative. What are other ways that I can make this happen? And I had always planned on doing the membership anyway, but that really concentrates it down. It's like, oh, okay. If I only have one or two hours during the week where I can have a zoom call, why not do it where it's a group call, because then it's one to many. You're still generating that income, but you're getting more creative with your scheduling so that it fits with the rest of your life.

 

Now that involves a lot out of that upfront planning and getting all of the other pieces. But you can do that too.

 

10. Say No To Great Opportunities 

 

Being willing to say no is another one of those doing whatever it takes, you're gonna be presented with a lot of opportunities. Some of those are paid. Some of those are not paid. Some of those will open you up to a larger audience of your potential clients. Sometimes it's not the right time. Sometimes you're gonna have to say no because it's not an alignment with what your current focus is.

 

I experienced that a lot. Moving out here to the Mendocino coast, I was presented with all sorts great opportunities, including being a volunteer in the school and tutoring kids. Being on the school board, like an elected official position. And then to do a lot of work for the LGBT community, both at a community level and going into the schools.

 

Unfortunately, all of those were volunteer positions. Now, I love volunteering. I love giving back, but at the time this kept coming to me, I didn't have the income in my business yet. I was still trying to figure out how are we gonna pay all of our bills?

 

And although all of these were great opportunities that then I could get out and meet more people. Those people might be my, it was a very time intensive way of trying to get new clients. And it was definitely gonna take away from me getting my business up and running and working with a steady flow of clients.

 

So I had to say no to it, and it really broke my heart, especially the ones for the LGBT community. Something that I really love and I want to support. I had to communicate to them that I'm very sorry. Like originally the proposal was for me to get paid to do that kind of help, but it was with a nonprofit organization and they just did not have the funds to be able to pay for my services.

 

They asked me to do it on a volunteer basis and I had to communicate the timing just wasn't right. That at some other point, when I have my own income steady and at a great level in my business, that I would say yes to them. But at this time I couldn't do that.

 

I've also learned the hard way that sometimes opportunities come up, they're presented to me. And I was saying yes to them. And it derailed me from my original plans at doing stuff in my business. Although it's bringing in a whole audience for my business, I didn't have the pieces ready to receive them. So, learned that, yeah, sometimes doing whatever it takes is saying no to the opportunities. Taking the time, build the things that you need to, to be able to receive all of the audience that would be coming your way. Then you can go out and say yes to all of those opportunities.

 

11. Pick 1 Boat

 

The final one that I wanna talk about with doing whatever takes is being courageous enough to stay committed to one boat.

 

The boat analogy is something that I learned from Dave Moreno when I went to the Fearless Business Workshop, I forgot which war he was referring to with this. But the idea was that there was a whole army that was gonna go to this island. They were gonna fight this war. And then they were gonna like conquer that island and win. And then they could come home.

 

And the leader told them that it was gonna take courage to be able to fight in this war. So when they went over there, they had to burn the boats. Otherwise, they would get scared at some point when it got really, really hard and they left their boats that they'd jump into the boat and they'd go away. So, what they did is they got there and they burned all of their boats so that they couldn't leave.

 

And then once they accomplished what they came to do, they had all of the trees to be able to build new boats and then go home. So now that I tell this story, I think that I might get the boat part just a little bit off in my interpretation, but you'll understand.

 

So the idea is that, that I took away, is the boat itself was like the island. It's like the decision, the boat is your business. You've decided to do this. But if all of a sudden you're getting scared on that boat, you're not trusting it anymore. You're not trusting yourself to actually be great at making your boat work, that you might start building other boats. Like rescue boats. Instead of spending the time developing your own boat, you're diverting your attention to create a rescue boat over here, a rescue boat over there.

 

And eventually, you're gonna look, you're gonna have like this whole Harbor full over rescue boats for yourself. And you're still in your original boat, but it's leaky. It's not really functional. It's not working, but you've got a whole fleet of rescue boats. This is great, right?

 

So the doing whatever it takes is a recognizing that you're doing that and have the courage to let go of all of those rescue boats. To not build them anymore, to just stay focused on that one. Because if you had taken all of the mental bandwidth that you had expended elsewhere, all of the financial resources all of your time, and you had invested that into the original boat. Oh my gosh. It would be a yacht by now. But instead, you have a little boat with holes in it. That's like, oh, I don't know if this is gonna work, but you've got a ton of rescue boats.

 

Have the courage to do whatever it takes by allowing those rescue boats to go away, focus on the one boat, get it nice and sturdy and build it into the yacht of your dreams. You can make this happen.

 

Here was a whole bunch of different ideas for how you can do whatever it takes in a more creative way that supports your mental health.

 

Remember focus on your true north. What is your true north? What are those three things that are most important to you right now? And it might be goals that you keep for the next couple of years until you actually have that as your normal everyday life. Make all of your decisions based on those true north and get really creative with the do whatever it takes.

 

It doesn't mean that you're stressing yourself out and you're damaging your mental health, damaging your relationships. It's getting creative. What will you do to do whatever it takes to be courageous to stay focused on your one boat?

 

All right, my friends, if you need some help with any of this, you know, I'm here for you.

 

You can go to my website MyFreedomGrove.com, go to the contact me page, set up some time for us to talk. Even if you just want that first one time talk about just, what would you need for making that courageous leap into creating a business. Or if you already have a business and you're trying to figure out how do I get more aligned with my mental health and take care of myself and make sure that I'm building a business that can survive for the long haul. Go there, schedule some time with me. I'd love to talk with you.

 

And my friends, I hope that you have a great week. Go out there, do something that you never thought you would do. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

 

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast.  I can't wait to work with you directly. I'll help you to be your authentic self, to have amazing relationships and to live your purpose. I invite you to check out Unshakable Men and Unshakable Women. The Unshakable programs will give you all of the tools, the coaching and the community to help you rise in life, relationships, and business. To learn more, go to my freedom grove.com/workwithme. I can't wait to see you there.