Customer service

Making the right decision isn’t always easy. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s hard. It keeps you up at night. It makes you question what you’re made of. It makes you question lots of your character traits too. So if it’s doing all of these things, if it makes you feel horribly uneasy in your skin, then how do you know it’s right? What if these feelings are actually your gut instinct screaming no? It could be. But I think I might have found a way to help. It still feels horrible, but it allows you to see what the right path is. Having the balls to follow that path, to make that right decision, isn’t quite so easy.

Why do we need to make these kinds of decisions?

I don’t know your situation, but let me tell you about mine. This is a frank and open blog – much like any blog I write, but I know that when I make the decision to publish it (and it will be the right decision because it might help just ONE of you), I’ll feel sick. So stick with me here…

Sometimes we have to make decisions that mix things up. From the outside looking in, it doesn’t necessarily look like we’re making huge decisions, but they feel like seismic shifts and leave us feeling a bit wobbly.

As you’ll know, if you follow my blog or any of my social media platforms, not all that long ago, my business and the work I do made a slight detour. After running a very successful PR, marketing and social media business for longer than I care to admit, and doing a stint in house as marketing manager for one of the largest equestrian product manufacturers in the world, I started to dabble in another kind of service. It was closely related to the work I did and used a lot of the same skills and knowledge, but it focused on helping business owners to help themselves. Now, this doesn’t mean that the people I started coaching. consulting with or mentoring (more about those terms some other day!) HAD to do everything themselves, but for some people it meant that they had the confidence to do all of the above. It meant that they could look at what they wanted to achieve with their businesses and brainstorm with someone who had been there, done it (a number of times) and got a number of free t-shirts too! It allowed people to make any budget work harder. In fact, it meant that people with no budget could learn the skills they needed to put their business on the right course.

It sort of started by accident if truth be told. It felt like a good idea, I knew I could help and I love working with smaller businesses, so it ticked a few boxes. But when the results started to come in from the handful of coaching clients I was working with, more work in this area followed. I was delighted. Having people reach out to me, ask for my help, and being able to work with them, to empower them and create that all important strategy and plan. To be that brainstorming buddy. To be that coach and cheerleader. I loved it. The more work I did, the more work I got. It was brilliant, But being just one person and unable to clone myself was a sticking point as there really are only so many hours in the day. I’m not afraid of hard work. Far from it. It’s currently 22.51 on a Sunday night and I am writing this. I can (and do) work incredibly hard. And I love it. My brain whirls and I see things in an almost Sherlock Holmes ‘mind palace’ kind of way when things connect. I’ll regularly email myself with ideas at stupid o’clock or be inspired by something I see out and about. But I digress. I was already at a normal human’s full capacity when I started working with coaching clients. And now that side of the business was growing and it felt good. It felt right. But something was going to have to give…

But making the right decision is not always easy

In this case, it’s been an incredibly hard decision to make. I ADORE my clients. Some of my PR clients I have worked with for years and years and years. Literally. I have been involved with so much of their business and they have become friends as well as clients. I have been gradually reducing my PR clients when the time was right to focus in on just a handful because, in addition to many of my other beliefs, I also whole heartedly believe that one needs to be a practitioner (as Gary Vee would say!) as well as someone who coaches and consults. Having full PR clients allows me to do this, but in order to serve them correctly I can only have a limited number. And a number that was becoming more and more limited. Add to this the other elements of my life – a house to run, two small children, a slight mentally deficient trailhound, a husband, a father, and, you know, having some kind of life and the need for sleep and continuing professional development, and you can see the issues looming. Well, not so much looming in the distance, more like a flipping wall of issues and noise and stress.

I’ve been wrestling with what to do. What decision to make.

…I’ve known deep down what I WANTED to do. What the right decision was for me. But it felt selfish. It felt disloyal. I felt like a traitor (and that was the actual I word when I was speaking to my coach). These are not qualities I value in a human, let alone myself. I am fiercely loyal. It’s kind of one of my things. But I have a number of other attributes I value too. I HAVE to do my very best and can’t handle being anything that I perceive as below par. I don’t really ‘do’ dropping balls. I would genuinely rather give up sleep than let someone down. Mad, hey? I knew what I needed to do. Of course. Anyone reading this will know the answer. It’s simple. On the surface it’s obvious. If a coaching client came to me with this exact issue I would ask them some questions (the very same questions I have asked myself) and the answers would steer them to the solution. It was staring me in the face. But there was the emotional element that hadn’t been considered in the equation. My feeling about it all. How bad what I needed to do made me feel. But the truth there was only the one solution. It was the RIGHT decision to make. But it still felt horrible. It wasn’t easy.

So if I could offer you one tip about making the right decision

…it would be this. Try and imagine that you are talking to you, but you don’t have the emotional ‘stuff’ that goes on in your mind. Imagine you’re speaking to your best friend and they are in possession of ALL of the facts, but none of the emotion. What do you think they would say? Yep. It’s probably what you don’t want to hear, but it’s probably the right decision. But no one said it would be easy. Did they?

But onto brighter things…

Now I’ve made the decision, have acted on it and have a clear plan, I couldn’t be more excited about what the future has in store, for me, my coaching clients, my VIP members, my Small & Supercharged members and my PR clients. We’re all destined for big things. Let’s plan. Let’s make decisions (even the uneasy ones) for the sake of progress, happiness (and sanity) and if you ever need someone to give you a helpful nudge or someone to share your unease with, I’m really just an email away.