Ep #168: Grow Your Business and Relationships

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence Coach Kim Guillory, and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Hey, and welcome back to the show. This week I am talking about business and relationships. This is so important, guys. You know, we’ve got enough challenges just making business work, right? It’s such a big deal to line everything up, especially if you are going out on your own for the first time. So if you’ve maybe worked for someone else or you’ve done this part time but then you decide to go full on entrepreneurship, we all know this comes with lots of challenges.

What I have noticed with myself and also with my clients is that the relationships that you are in impacts how you succeed in your business. Bringing people on board that you are in relationship with, improving communication, really getting clear about what’s important to you, maybe setting boundaries, having conversations that are tough. You know, nothing like a hard conversation.

So what I’m talking about this week is the importance of aligning your relationships. Now, for some of you, you are super excited, you’ve been passionate about this project, or building this business, or having this passion to serve and maybe those around you are not so interested. Or maybe they’re pretending to be interested. Or maybe they’re rolling their eyes and saying, “That’s all you ever talk about.”

I get it, I’ve been there, I live it, I’ve experienced it for many years. It’s tough when you know you are here, you were put here on this earth to serve and you have something that you’re so clear about, you’re so passionate about, and it feels like you don’t have a choice. I call this like the no choice syndrome, like I just have to get this out there.

Especially for healing focused entrepreneurs who are breaking generational cycles and patterns. We know the importance of doing our work and offering opportunity to other people to really transform their lives to therefore transform our world, right?

So let’s just get that straight to begin with. It’s important, we can’t put it out. We try. We try to ignore it, we try to run from it, and then eventually we just give in to it because we feel like we’ve been called to serve. And yet we’re in these relationships, and maybe it’s long-term relationships, or maybe it’s relationships of the past. Like I’ll say who we grew up with, our family of origin, the conditioning of society that you grew up in, the way that you believe.

So for me in particular I’ve been married for 31 years, it’s my actual anniversary this month. And my husband doesn’t get what I do, he doesn’t get what drives me. I’m not saying he fights against it or tells me I shouldn’t do it, it’s just not of interest. And we don’t think the same, we don’t have the same vision or we’ve prioritized differently.

So for 27, I think it’s 27 years, I’ve been in business since 1997. When I first got into my own business it was just to have something to do while the kids were at school. Turns out I loved it, I became very passionate about it. And for many years I heard the same comment of it’s all you think about, you just work all the time. And I began to kind of dilute the desire. Like I wanted to weigh it down, kind of hide it, pretend that it didn’t give me so much satisfaction.

But the truth is, it gives me a lot of satisfaction. I love serving and I love serving with people who are receptive more than anything else, like better than shopping, better than vacation. Matter of fact, I think vacation is somewhat boring if I’m not having deep, intimate conversations.

And so I’m just curious if you can relate to this and if your relationships understand, if you’ve had the conversation. And then I’m going to give you a few pointers of things that you can open up the conversation with, maybe set some boundaries.

So for some of us it’s a matter of not talking business with certain people. So this could be your mother, it could be your sister or your sister-in-law, it could your friend from second grade. They’re maybe just not so interested and when you start talking about the bigger vision or you start talking about the dreams, what they say contaminates your belief. This is when it really matters.

And in that case you could have a conversation with this person and say, “You know, you and I can talk about bowling, or flowers, or maybe going out and have pizza and just talk about things that interest both of us. Maybe it’s about hiking, or traveling. But the conversation about my hopes and dreams, my vision and business are off the table. We just agree not to talk about that in order to protect the belief.”

Because the belief has to be protected. You’re actually setting up guard around this vision, around this passion or this drive of what you’re offering the world. And you have to make the decision, is this conversation going to take me closer or further from my target or from my goal, from what I want to achieve?

And if you ask that, you will get the answer and then you can determine what boundaries to set. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a deep, intimate, rich relationship. It just means that there’s certain conversations that won’t be had with you and this particular person.

And then for your partnership maybe, for your spouse or someone who is genuinely your business partner, hopefully they’re interested, right? But maybe not, maybe they’re just a silent investor. See, we can’t put labels on relationships, we have to treat them individually.

So for the partner, you may ask for what you need, and in my case I just said, “You know what? I need support, but I’ll give you the choice in how you want to support me. And then you can let me know what works best for you.” I seriously did this. And I was like, “This is how I see it, I would love physical support, so I would love to see presently in conversation, in the business helping me directly, maybe coming to some of the business meetings with me. But you would give me your physical support, you would be there in physical form.”

The second option was to give me emotional support, and that would be the belief. Like you believe as well as I believe, you support my belief when I start going down the rabbit hole and I start going into doubt, and fear, and disbelief, you will remind me why I’m doing this. You’ll remind me how it’s possible. That is emotional support.

And then the other option was financial support, which is just saying, “You know what, babe? I trust you. I know what you’re doing, I’m really not interested in being there, but I could back you financially.”

So you asking directly for what you need or giving options for what it would look like, because believe it or not some people really don’t understand what you’re looking for because we don’t tell them, we’re not being transparent. We’re afraid to ask for what we want because we’re afraid to be rejected or told no. Better yet we’re afraid they’re going to say yes and support us and then we fail, right?

And God forbid these people in your life continue to remind you of being careful, you better watch out, people are going to take advantage of you. You could lose all your money. You should save, you shouldn’t spend on that. You shouldn’t grow, you should just take it all in and just keep it small and safe. This is what we get from most people. Can’t you relate?

And they do it out of love, I think that’s the first thing to understand. Let’s just get really present here and understand why we are being warned. it’s because they are looking out for us and they want to make sure we don’t get taken advantage of, they want to make sure that they are protecting us, and they’re providing us with information.

The problem is they’re providing us with information according to their belief, to their perception, and they’re not fully understanding and being invested and committed in the vision or in the target. Does that make sense?

So their warning is actually driving in more fear and disbelief and this is what I’ve had to say to one of my people of relationship, is, “You know, you warn me very often and I just need to let you know that I warn myself all of the time. What you’re telling me is not new or different, these are the same disbeliefs and doubts that I have within myself that I’m trying to overcome.

So I would appreciate you not doing it from your angle also. Just trust me, I am concerned, I really am worried, I wake up sweating. I’m afraid I’m going to fail. I’m afraid I’m not going to do it right. I’m afraid it’s not going to turn out for the best. So I really don’t need you to continue telling me that.”

So, again, the key is to make sure that you’re being transparent, that you are being honest and open. And you really have to trust yourself. You have to trust that you can do it alone although the support would be great, that it’s non-negotiable. Actually following through, continuing to take action, is not something that you’re going to negotiate, right?

So another form of relationship could be in people who believe but then they don’t really support with their actions. So in other words they tell you how amazing you are and how great this is, and they’re really seeing you grow, and they’re so proud of you. And yet, the actions that they take or the lack of support that they provide is telling you otherwise.

These people are basically liars, right? But they’re doing it from your best interest and your best interest, like they can’t see that they’re lying, they just truly can’t believe what you believe, but they want you to believe that they believe. Got it? These are some of the worst ones, I’ve experienced a lot of this.

And so it’s like there’s this dissonance in the conversation of telling you to go for it, telling you you should do it, telling you to go all the way. But when it’s words, there’s no action supporting it. And matter of fact, some of the things that they say, it’s very clear that they don’t mean it. And so, you know, it’s just basically nice people are liars. We have to be very careful about this.

I would much rather have a conversation of someone who is being transparent and honest with me and saying, “You know, I’m afraid you’ll fail. I’m afraid you’ll make a fool of yourself. I don’t see how it’s possible, Kim. I get that you think it’s possible, but I just can’t see it.” Then at least I know where I stand and I know how to handle the relationship.

And then I can set up the proper boundary that says I’m not going to have these particular conversations with you, can we talk about something else? Maybe we can go on a trip somewhere, maybe we can go for a walk, maybe we can have tea and talk about the neighbors and ourselves, but it can’t be anything from this vulnerable space for me. In other words, it might not be an intimate conversation, because an intimate conversation is me bearing my soul, bearing my belief, and bearing my vision for the future.

So for those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while, have been hanging out on the show, have been following me around social media, you already know that I am on a mission to change generational patterns. I really want to rewrite some of this scarcity and disbelief so that my grandchildren can have a better future for their children and their grandchildren. And I belief that it’s my fault and I’m taking 100% responsibility for conditioning my children to disbelieve.

They had big visions when they were kids, you know that, so did you. Every one of us did, we believed until we were taught not to believe it was possible. And so I told my children I will rectify this. It is my fault and I am sorry that I conditioned you and I limited you according to my limitations.

But now that I see you’re holding that same disbelief for my grandchildren, it’s a problem. Because if you’re not teaching them that we’re limitless, if you’re not teaching them that something else is possible and the school is not teaching them, and the government is not teaching them, and the church is not teaching them, and the college is not teaching them, then who the heck is supposed to be doing it, right?

So that’s why I hashtagged myself million dollar grammy, because I’m on a mission to show my children that they can reach for the starts, they can reach for the moon, they can have whatever they believe is possible.

Now listen, it’s not an easy task and I can’t have this conversation with just anyone. Matter of fact, there’s moments of disbelief where my mind, my very own mind tells me I’m crazy, I’m going to lose the exact thing that I’m fighting for. I’m going to make a fool out of myself. I’m going to put us in debt, I’m not going to be able to make the investments back. I’m going to fall flat on my face. I’m a fool to believe it could be different.

These are stories from my mind and these are conditioned patterns. I was taught not to believe, just like you were, right? It’s all of us. And so for this particular episode I just want to have the conversation about being clear about your relationships, setting boundaries, having hard conversations and determining who will believe in you and who won’t and who you can have the discussion with.

So a few years ago I asked my husband, I was like, “I believe I’m going to make a million dollars this year, do you believe that I can?” and he said, “I believe that you believe.” And I was like, “Fine, I call that a win.” because all that matters is what I believe, quite honestly. But you want to be careful about when the messaging is contaminating the belief.

So in other words, he can believe that I can believe, and he cannot believe at all and I can still get it done. But when the messaging, when the habits and behavior of the past, the actions that he takes starts to plant doubt and disbelief, the remarks that he says starts to plant those beliefs, that is what I call contamination. Because my environment, my surroundings can’t support my belief, then I am therefore contaminated with disbelief, with doubt, with fear, with scarcity.

That’s what I have for you. Come to the More Than Mindset group, we’re having these discussions on a pretty regular basis. I am doing masterclasses and workshops and I’m actually teaching you how to have hard conversations. I’m actually teaching you how to set boundaries, things to ask, things to prepare for so that you are aware. Because if you are aware, you can do something about it. But if you’re being fooled, then you can’t because you don’t know what’s really happening.

So, I wish you a great week, thanks for joining. If you know anyone who can benefit from hearing this, please share. Leave a review on the podcast to help me spread the word that we can change generational cycles for good. If we were conditioned and our children were conditioned, we can actually uncondition or change the direction, the trajectory for our children, grandchildren, and generations to come. I love you all, have a great week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.