Have you ever put all your effort into something, only to have it not go the way you expected?

In today’s episode, I share a powerful story about a friend of mine who faced that exact challenge while trying to grow their business through in-person workshops.

We’ll talk about what happens when you show up fully, even when the outcome isn’t what you imagined, and how trusting the bigger picture can lead to surprising, meaningful results.

If you’re looking to shift your mindset and find inspiration for your own path, this episode is for you!

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READ THE EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Emily Hirsh: 

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I guess yesterday was officially the first day of fall. So yay for that. Texas is not on board with it yet, but I see some potential in the future of cooler weather. I fly to Costa Rica tomorrow and I love going off grid when I’m there. So I usually delete social media, very minimal communication in terms of email and Slack and all those things. and I may work a little. I like to leave it open in terms of creativity and allowing that to come through, but I have this feeling it’s going to be a super powerful trip. I’m going by myself to do some work there with a practitioner and yeah, I think it’s going to be the biggest one yet to be honest with you because it’s such a deep experience with just me, which is different than what I’ve done so far. So I leave tomorrow early, and I am, I’m excited. I’m, I’m nervous but I know like once I leave and and get there, I won’t be as nervous with being on my own and everything. 

All right, today’s message I pulled to the front of the podcast list of topics that I have to talk about and want to share something that transpired this weekend that I think is such an important message so i have a friend who is here in austin and was teaching an in-person workshop and they are trying to get their business off the ground it’s very new and they have some clients and and we’ve spoken several times and i’ve kind of given them this strategy of like you know, you don’t have a lot of money for ad spend and growing your business that way. But what you do have is time to pour into relationships and getting yourself out there. So spend a certain amount of time every day and go build relationships, see if you can teach workshops, how you can get yourself in front of more of your ideal customer. And so they have been doing that. And one of the things that transpired was they went to a wellness center here in Austin and set up where they’re going to teach a workshop.

And it was a low cost like $55 workshop and they split it with that wellness center. And really the incentive behind it was to get people to the workshop who you could build a relationship with and they could potentially become clients. This is a life and health coach. So that’s what they did. And they had this workshop and they definitely put everything into trying to fill the workshop. Now, obviously it’s in person and it also was $55. So it’s not the same as a webinar strategy, but they reached out to every contact. They had friends, people who they thought might be a good fit for this. They shared it on social media. Like they put the effort into filling this workshop as best as they possibly could. They showed up a hundred percent.

And come the day of the workshop, which was yesterday, there weren’t very many people signed up, I think like two or three. And I guess the owner or whoever is coordinating the workshop at this wellness center emailed them yesterday morning and was like, there’s only a few people signed up like, do you still want to do it? And they wavered for a second and I was talking to them and was like, I personally like I’m not gonna tell you what to do but I personally think you need to go and do it because you did everything you could to fill it with as many people as possible and you have to trust at that point that the right people and the right number of people are gonna be in that room and if you cancel it you don’t know what could have transpired from that and so Go teach the workshop as if there’s a hundred people in that room and show up 100% play all out. So they’re like, you’re right. That’s what they did. And they go to the workshop, you know, and they’re like, I’m basically trusting and surrendering that what’s supposed to happen is going to happen.

And they go to the workshop, actually a couple more people ended up coming. So I think there was five or six people. But one of the people who attended the workshop was this woman who basically this workshop was teaching something to do with like defining your dream in your life. And this woman, I wasn’t there, but shared with the group and said that she’s in this situation where she has a four year old who had a brain tumor, they healed it or it went away and it just came back. And she’s actually not sure if you’ll make it, which is like, oh my God, as a mom, I said to my husband last night, I’m like, man, even just hearing that makes every single problem that I have today feel like nothing, like nothing matters when you’re in a situation like that.

So this woman was in this room and was crying and was like a really powerful. I mean, I’m, I’m speaking as a story because I wasn’t there. So I can’t speak to the transformation as if I was, but the point being this woman had a transformational experience in this room. She felt heard. I guess what she ended up saying was like, how do I define my dream when I feel like my life is completely out of my control in what’s going to happen with my four year old? Like how can I have a dream when I’m in this situation? And this person responded, my friend, the facilitator responded with something with, I think that your dream right now is to be able to show up in your life and accept what you are out of control of and what you are in control of and just kind of move through that. And I guess it was very emotional and she’s like, Oh my gosh, I needed to hear that. That’s so amazing. Okay. My point being this, that woman, in that room, the entire workshop could have been to put those two people together. My friend, the facilitator and that woman to allow her to hear something that she really needed to hear, to create a space where she was seen, where she was heard for the tremendous things she’s going through that I can’t even imagine.

And create the opportunity for my friend, this facilitator, to have this experience on her, for their paths to cross, and this to happen. So when we get so caught up in how many people are signed up for our webinar and how many people are going to buy our program and all these things and these goals that they matter. But we oftentimes go so deep in that, that we can lose the bigger picture and the impact. And I’m going to try to communicate this because it’s so much like this is a lesson I’ve learned the last year that it’s almost hard to put into words and it’s like once you know it, you know it. But there has to be an element in your business and your life of surrender. And if you can’t get to that place, you are missing out on potential of what could be. There is magic and power in the unknown.

And what I said to my friend after was, you put in the work, you put in the effort, you did everything you knew how to do and showed up fully to fill that workshop. That’s the only thing that you could control. That’s the only factor that you could have controlled is how you showed up and made connections and invited people and played full out. And then after that, there’s an element of you have to leave it in God, the universe’s hands. You have to trust that as long as I showed up as best as I possibly could, as best as I know how in this season, in this moment, because you’re probably going to, you know, my friend is going to learn more marketing techniques and is going to learn what works that next workshop, they might be able to show up even better, but not because of a lack of effort, not because of a lack of intention in showing up, but because they learned through experience and they’re able to refine how they show up.

But if you show up a hundred percent, that is the only thing that you can actually control. And then being able to pair that with trust and surrender around. I know that if I show up fully and I give it all I have, the right people, the right number of people and the right things are going to happen next. And I may not be able to see why in the moment there’s something bigger at play and there is so much magic in the unknown. And I was the person a year ago that was like, that makes no sense to me because I was so tightly gripped in wanting to control everything that I would miss out on things right in front of me because I was so focused on the way I thought it should be. For example, if you go into a training or like you’re hosting a webinar, you’re hosting an in-person workshop like this. And if you’re so focused on, I have to get X amount of people, right? That’s your main focus. That drives actions that are positive for sure. But then what happens if you don’t get that many people?

Do you go into the webinar, into the workshop with the same energy? Are you grateful for the people that are there? Are you open to maybe there’s a reason that there’s less people there? Or maybe there’s a single person there that is going to cross paths with you and change everything? Like you don’t know, we don’t know these things. We are not in control of these things. So in your business, especially if you’re in the beginning to the million dollar mark, you are going to have times where you gave all of your effort and did everything you could to meet a goal, and you maybe still didn’t meet that goal. It doesn’t mean you failed. As long as you showed up and did everything you knew how with the tools you had today, You cannot fail because you don’t know what is at play. You don’t know the bigger picture. Imagine if this friend of mine was like, well, I didn’t hit my goal of at least 10 people registered. And so I’m going to cancel the workshop. I’m not going to go teach it today. They never would have met that woman that they had a profound impact on plus the other five people in the room.

And they also would have really put out this message of like, well, if it doesn’t go exactly how I want it to go with 10 people signed up, then I’m not doing it. And that’s not what we want to put out. We want to put out, you know what? I did everything I could to fill this and I’m really grateful for this opportunity and I’m grateful for the people that are going to show up. And so I’m going to show up in this room as if I hit the goal of 10 people and give it my all. Because that’s why I’m doing it is to impact people. Marketing and business is actually not about the money. Money is a byproduct of the impact you have. And you don’t always get to be in the driver’s seat of what that impact looks like. So all this to say, I think there is something to this saying that I had in my head after yesterday, which is work like it’s up to you, trust like it’s up to God. Because there’s this balance where you don’t wanna go on the other on on the other side where you’re like, well, I’m trusting I’m trusting God, I’m trusting the universe and therefore I’m not gonna show up. That’s not what that means, right? You don’t manifest or have like, I know that it’ll be handled, it’ll all be okay. You don’t do that without putting in the work.

So you need to put in the work and you need to work and show up like everything’s up to you and you’re fully in control because you are only in control with how you show up. And then as long as you show up like that, you’ve got to trust that the rest is up to God. I saw a CrossFit athlete say this where they were going into the games and they, I think it was actually a Bible verse and I loved it. It was like something about, she knows that she did everything she possibly could to train for the games up until this point. Like she gave it her all. She did everything she could and now she was surrendering going into the games, knowing I did everything that was in my control to get here. And now at this point going into the games, what happens? I’m, I’m surrendering. I’m letting go control. All I can do is show up a hundred percent. So when you look at this in your business and you look at live launching or having a live webinar, launching a new product, and we all have that fear of. I don’t sell any, or I don’t get very many people on my webinar and I’m embarrassed. I’m discouraged. There’s shame. Like I’m not good enough. Why is it not working?

Remember that the only thing you can control is the effort you put into that goal. And from there, you have to step back and say, there’s something bigger at play and I’m going to trust it’s for my best and highest good. And I may not be able to see it now. I may not be able to see it for another six months, a year or more, but I’m going to have that trust. And I feel that when you have that trust, you are then able to give it your all without that ego attachment to, well, if if I don’t get 10 people in this workshop or I don’t get 100 people signed up for my webinar, then this is all not worth it and this sucks. It’s like, no, I’m gonna do what I can control, I’m gonna show up. And if you have a webinar with five people on it, you’re gonna teach as if there’s 100 people on it because you can control that, how you show up. And pretty soon you do that, you will have a webinar with a hundred people on it because what separates the people who continue to grow and move up to the next level are the ones who show up.

But when you’re able to show up and detach anything related to the numbers that you connect to your own self-worth and your abilities and what you’re capable of, and if you’re a good entrepreneur and if you’re going to be successful, because that’s a belief. That’s a meaning that you’re creating. It’s not real. All you can control is how you show up, work like it’s up to you, trust like it’s up to God. This is so powerful when you’ve got this in your business because all of a sudden things start happening, opportunities, ideas, inspiration, relationships, connections that you’re like, oh my gosh, if I wasn’t open to this, if I was so dead set on it being exactly how I wanted it to be, this never would have happened. And there’s magic in that. And when you, when you not just learn this, but embody this, everything will change for you. All right, my friends, I hope you found some inspiration in this. I was really inspired by the story because I just felt like it was such an important, important lesson for us as entrepreneurs. And it’s easy to get into them mindset of I’m failing or I’m not good enough or, you know, this means I’m not going to be successful. I’m just taking a step back and going, what can I control and what can I surrender? All right, guys, I’ll talk to you on Thursday.