Denise:                                 Hey there. It's Denise here and welcome to another episode of Chill & Prosper. I'm so excited to talk to you as always. I love doing this and I love hearing your feedback. So today we are talking about a question that a lot of people put to me is, when should you quit a failing business? When is it time to throw in the towel? When is it time to acknowledge that it's not going to work? And when's the time just to let things go? So you know what, I'm all about the quit sometimes. I'm all about the Zen quit. And I've seen this the last couple of years when big profile people have quit stuff, like when Sarah Wilson quit her business, I Quit Sugar and it was very successful, very financially successful when Samantha wills quit her jewelry line. When people that have been known for something for a long time, when they let it go.

                                                And I actually find it very exciting. I find it energizing. Oh, when Sarah Blakely sold Spanx. I was like, "Ah that's so cool." So obviously none of them quit a failing business. They quit successful businesses which is even a better lesson in a way, because it's all about discernment and what feels good and sometimes money is not good money. So that being said, that's what I'm really excited about. And sometimes it can be really fun to quit a failing business too but not always, okay. So let's have a chat about if that is you right now or if you've had it happen to you in the past, or you could see it coming in the future. Hopefully you'll get something out of it either way. Okay, so I'm in a lot of business groups and I see this... Yeah, it's just seeing people, I feel like I want to quit so I've got a couple of questions for you to ask yourself before you throw in the towel.

                                                Number one, has the business for you just run its course? Has it just like, "Yeah I'm done?" Because sometimes you start a business for a reason or a season. Sometimes you start a business because you didn't know what to do so you just started the first idea that popped into your head. And sometimes you totally do outgrow a business. So what I found for a lot of my practice businesses is that I lost steam pretty quickly. I just couldn't be bothered doing the work or it's just like, I kind of ran out of things to talk about. And I was just like, "I don't really know."

                                                So one of my first ever blogs I was like, "I love movies. I love movies." I still love going to the movies. I was like, "I'm just going to write movie reviews." And it was when blogging was still quite new and so the monetization plan wasn't quite there necessarily, but that was when probably, it was the start of the heyday around ads for blogs because they would just get heaps of views and then they would make money off ads, bit harder now. But I was like, "Oh, I love movies. This is my thing." And so I went to the cinema with my notepad and pen and I went, "No, this is not fun." So it only took one go really. It was probably a week's worth for that one for me. I went, "No, it's not my thing." And then I loved green stuff, as in frugality and saving money and saving the environment because I worked for a consultancy that did sustainability.

                                                And again, I was just like, "Ah no, I'm kind of done." And then my next blog was about weddings and losing weight using raw food. And after I got married, I was like, "I don't want to talk about weddings anymore." So sometimes it's a practice business and you've just outgrown the topic or you've said everything you have to say about it. And I would even caution that just a little bit because sometimes I think with money I go, "Oh my God, I've said everything I can possibly say, what could I possibly say?" But that's also block in itself thinking that you always have to be a hundred percent original in everything that you do. And now I just go, "Well, I'm going to repeat stuff all the time because it's a new audience. People might not have heard it before. They might not have heard that particular story before."

                                                And it's totally okay for me to find nuances within my content. And so I still haven't run out of things to say about money and it's been 10 years. So for me I'm like," Yeah, that's pretty much a good business for me." But you might have started a business about kids because you had a baby and then you're like, "My kids are older now." I even noticed this for myself when I was pregnant and my babies were really small. I wrote a lot of articles about business and babies and now I'm like, "I can't even remember what that was like." So one said to me, "How do I prepare for my maternity leave?" And I thought, thank God I wrote about that. Go read that old article because I cannot remember that feeling anymore.

                                                So it's totally okay for you to graduate from particular businesses and it's totally okay for you to move on. And it's totally okay for you to find new nuances within that. Sometimes your audience grows with you and you don't have to talk about babies anymore because you can all talk about toddlers together or you can talk about teens together. A friend of mine, Sarah Leather, who's also in bootcamp, when she went through menopause, she was like, "Holy crap, this is bad. Oh maybe other people are going through it." And so she's talking about how do we make millions in menopause? So she's going into a new phase of life and her business can grow with her and that can attract new audiences or it can attract the same audience who might be in the same stage of life as you.

                                                Okay, so don't necessarily have to throw out everything, you could just shift and change what you talk about and graduate and just start moving on. Now what about if you are in a business but you're just increasingly burnt out or overwhelmed or irritated, okay? And this is just such a beautiful opportunity, if you are going to throw it out anyway and you're literally ready just to chuck everything out, why not then experiment and try to do things in a way that works better for you? Now when the global pandemic happened, I'm trying to say it in past tense even though it's still kind of now, I'm hoping by the time you listen to this, it'll be long gone. But a lot of businesses who had never done online before had to learn to pivot their business model. And I was seeing my psych who prescribes me ADHD meds.

                                                And he started offering zoom appointments and I was like, "This is probably going to be so much better for his people who have got ADHD." And because some of their clients come from two hours away and no one ever thought and he was still trying to figure out zoom, bless him. But so many businesses can change their delivery methods now. So maybe you just don't like the way you deliver it anymore. I've had clients who did tarot readings in person and they hated people coming to their house because it felt really unsafe. And for a long time they were resistant, "Oh, I can't do it online. I can't do tarot online. It's not the same." Pandemic happened, everyone had to do it. Naturopath, same thing. Lots of naturopathic clients, health practitioner clients, they had to learn to do things online. And so you are allowed to choose the delivery of how you run your business.

                                                If you're going to chuck it in anyway, what would feel better for you? And this could be boundaries, it could be that you don't like seeing clients every day. So it might be that your client days are Wednesday and Thursday and you take Monday and Friday and you work from home. What would feel better for you and make this a more pleasurable business for you? What about your business model? Maybe you love your topic but not your model. So I love money, right? I love talking about money, but one-to-one coaching isn't my preferred method. I'm not a great one-to-one coach to be honest. I like group stuff. Yours might be the other way around. You might hate group stuff and you love one-on-one stuff. So it's totally okay for you to take your topic, take what you're good at and choose a different business model for it and do things in a way that's different.

                                                And that you might come against stuff of like, "Oh no, no. It can't be done or my mentors say it can't be done. Or it's taboo in my industry to do things like that." But if you're going to chuck in a business, why not? Why not salvage it by trying it for a couple of months and seeing how it goes? Maybe your clients won't like it but some might like it better. And they will love that. A really good example before we go to the break. So I follow this lady, her name's Mystic Medusa and she does tarot and astrology. I think she still holds astrology. And I booked a session with her and she was like, "Yes, here are my Skype details." So I got to the Skype and I thought, Oh I was about to call her and she goes, "Oh no, we do this Skype chat."

                                                So it wasn't video and it wasn't even audio. And I got off that, it was an hour, I got off that and I just went, "Wow, that was such a great model for me as a client," because I type really fast and I had questions ahead of time. She typed really fast of course because that's her business model. I never saw her face. I never heard her voice. Some people wouldn't like that. Some people want to connect and see and look in your eyes. But for me I found it an amazing experience but more than that, I found it an incredible experience in setting up your business in a way that works for you, setting up your business in a way that helps you thrive. And it's your choice.

                                                And as long as you're honest and open about what you offer to your clients, why not try something a little bit out of the box? Some people offer Voxer coaching and it's just voicemails back and forth. I'm not saying just because that really works for some people. There are no rules in how you run your business, you can just do it in a way that works for you. All right. I'm going to take a break and I'll be right back with some more tips about, should you quit or should you keep going?

Speaker 3:                           Hi Denise. I just wanted to share something that happened with regards to Lucky Bitch. So we started reading it and wrote down my ideal day. And part of the ideal day was that I was about to get on a plane to run a retreat. And the next day someone inboxed me and asked me if I could create a retreat for them for eight people for September. So yeah, really exciting. It hasn't panned out as we'd hope because of all the crazy restrictions and stuff like that but it was something that I called in and obviously things were out my control. But yeah, I just wanted to share that with you. It was absolutely amazing.

Robin McNeil:                    My name is Robin McNeil and I'm a leadership coach from Kamano BC, Canada. I read Get Rich, Lucky Bitch and this book changed my life and my business. Denise, I was never one for manifestation but you gave such easy, actionable steps that I could follow. And let me tell you, I have surpassed my goals. I've reached my 10K month and I'm on track to be a multi six figure entrepreneur this year. I really truly believe that your steps help create the dream that I've always wanted so thank you.

Denise:                                 Okay, welcome back. We are having an honest, real conversation about when you should quit a failing business or when you should chuck it all in. And the last thing we talked about was the business models, right? If you don't like one-to-one, you can change it. You can deliver it however you want, but there's a couple of other things as well. So sometimes you need to change your environment, right? So a lot of people go into entrepreneurship and then they realize that they miss human interaction. They miss coworkers and so would you feel better about your business if you were in a co-working space? If you had a dedicated office? If you had some more quiet? If you had some more peace? Because that can be... You might not even realize if you are someone who needs a lot of people, how the absence of that might have made you feel really down and it accumulates over time and then suddenly you're feeling depressed and you just want to chuck your business out and it might be just a little tweak.

                                                It might be a tweak. For me, I love working by myself. It's always just been my preferred way of being. I can be by myself all day. I love just hanging out with me, but I notice for more extroverted people, it can really pull them down. The cool thing is though that you can join programs that you can just jump on zoom with people and work, do co-working with them. That could be cool too. So there's every different ways. Don't go, "I live in a small town and there's no one here." Great then do it on zoom. You can get videos where it's just body doubling of someone working on a video. You can just put that up there. I've even heard people have just worked in front of a mirror and they can just be like, "Hey, Bitch. Hey. You working hard? Yeah, sure am"

                                                What's that movie Storks that's so funny? Where she's plays the janitor and anyway, if you don't have kids, you probably don't know what I'm talking about. Another couple of things, is it the right business but wrong clients? I've said different life stages, maybe you've got clients where you've kind of moved on a little bit and you need to upgrade to clients that work better for you. Not upgrade as in like... That sounds mean and elitist, but it's like... So for me, I struggle working with beginners on a lot of business stuff because I don't remember what it's like. I can work on mindset issues with people at all levels of business, but I couldn't be a business coach necessarily for someone starting out because the tarot is so far gone for me. Someone who's a little bit closer to it might be a better coach.

                                                So for me, I'm really careful and personality wise, I'm really careful too. So when it comes to people joining money boot camp, I don't care what they do or how much money they make but I want people who realize that their transformation is their responsibility and they just want to get some nuances. They want to get some coaching and the framework from me, but they'll do the work. And I can't work with people who are like, "I don't know what to do. I feel helpless. Help me. I don't know what to do." And that's not related to income, that's totally a personality type sometimes. And I love working with people who go, "Wow, I did that assignment and I got this. And now I see how it works with this." And they're making the connections themselves.

                                                And I find hard when people are just like, "I don't know what to do." I go, "Do the course." And I go, "I can't be bothered." It's just tricky so would you have more pleasure in your business if you are working with clients at a different stage of life or business, different kind of personality, different problems? Sometimes you don't want to fix a particular problem. Naturopath I worked with, she hated working with skin conditions. She loved working with fertility. She loved working with poop. She was like, "I'm doing a poop test." She did those poop tests for all of her clients. She's like, "Give me all the poop." Someone else might hate working with poop. So you can choose. You can choose and before you chuck out a business, just see if you can make some tweaks in the types of clients that you want to work with and the problems that you can help them with and be very honest about that.

                                                Okay. So is it the right business but the wrong price? Would you feel better at the business if you earn more from it? And this is where you're in a perfect position, because if you don't care and you're probably going to chuck the business anyway, why not try and increase your prices? And if you think, "But no one's going to pay it." Well, you're about to chuck the business out anyway, you may as well try. And so often you'll feel much better if you're actually felt like it was more win-win for you. I've known florists who have undercharged and they're just like, "Well, obviously I can't be a florist anymore." I go, "No, there's florists at every price point. It's okay for you to not be everybody's price point. It's okay for you to be a little bit more expensive than maybe your competitor. That's fine too. And then maybe you'll recapture your joy again of your business."

                                                But if you are undercharging, over delivering, feeling like it's not win-win, feeling like you're responsible for your clients all the time and you're not getting enough back then of course, you're not going to love your business. Of course, you want to quit it. Yuck. So where do you need to increase your prices? Where do you need to add a bit more buffer? Where can you give yourself more profit? Can you pay yourself more? Lot of money stuff there.

                                                Okay, so is it a bad business or is it bad boundaries? I've seen so many people quit their businesses because they don't want to set boundaries. I've seen it so many times. They're like, "My clients contact me day and night. I got to quit my business." Or you could set some boundaries. You could set some boundaries and say no. Because the problem is whenever we think we're setting boundaries, we're like, "The people won't like it." And some people won't and sometimes your clients, your ideal client changes after you set boundaries. Like I said for me, I want people who are self aware, who take responsibility. That takes some boundaries of me going, "Hey, what lesson in bootcamp are you up to? Hey, I'm not going to answer your question if it's in the course." It takes that energy of me doing it first and then suddenly you attract those people who it's a really good fit for, right?

                                                So what boundaries might you need to put into place with your clients so you have more energy? My first year in business when I was a coach, I trained my clients that they could contact me day or night. I trained them and if they sent me an email, I would respond within three minutes. I'm joking, but not really. And so I had to set boundaries around that, "Hey listen, you don't have unlimited email coaching as part of your package so we can talk about that on our next session." They'd send me a question that they could have googled. I say, "Great, we can talk about it on your next session." They say, "Oh no, I don't want to waste our time on our session." Yeah cool, but you want me to Google it for you? So I had to set boundaries around my time. I had to be clearer in my terms and conditions, you don't get unlimited email coaching.

                                                I set up systems so I set them up a questionnaire that they could put in, what are your burning questions for the week so we can talk about it on your call. I set boundaries around time because I was so burnt out because of course it was my fault, not my client's fault that I was doing two hour sessions with them instead of an hour. That's my fault. It's my job to look at the clock, not theirs but I was burnt out and I was like, "Oh, I'm obviously not cut out for this business. How am I supposed to make more money? I don't have any more time." I had to set some boundaries. So bad business or bad boundaries? All right and then the last one I want you to ask yourself is, have I had at least 20 customers? Now I pulled that arbitrary number straight out of my butt, straight out of my butt.

                                                But if you are selling something, if you've had at least 20 experiences of that, you know if it's for you or not, right? So you might have one client and go, "No, I didn't like it." But you learn from every client and we get a lot of rejections, right? And I've heard that... You know that Row Row Your Boat song? It's like row row your boat. This is what business has been in. It's like, (singing). And so don't quit before you get your yeses. You might go, "Oh, everyone's seen this. No one's bought." Well` cool, tell more people about it. Have you had at least 20 freebie customers and asked them all if they want to work with you? Have you had 20 conversations with prospective clients?

                                                Have you done 20 episodes of your podcast? Have you written 20 blog posts? As I said, I'm just pulling it out of my butt, right? But no one tells you when your apprenticeship is up in your business, you have to graduate yourself. But you have to do that work at the start, it's not just going to come to you. Okay so they're my questions for you, right? Have you lost passion for it? Is it a lifestyle business? Do you need to change the delivery? Do you need to change your business model? Maybe the environment will make you feel better. Maybe you're working with the wrong clients or the right clients, but the wrong stage of life. Maybe you're not charging enough. And maybe you're just quitting before you can get to that next yes. So of course, I love hearing your thoughts about this. Comment on my Instagram post for this or on the Facebook, wherever you've seen it or send me a message. I love hearing from you. All right, I've got one more final thought before we wrap up so I'll see you straight after this short break.

Speaker 5:                           My name is [inaudible]. I am currently building a new business, Phoenix Rises Counseling. I am going to facilitate after death communication. I have also written books and I use Denise's books and courses all the time. She addresses limiting beliefs that may have gone unconscious that stop us from manifesting and her system works.

Nina:                                     Hello. My name is Nina [inaudible]. I live in Romania and I help my clients get featured on podcast interviews. I'm a daydreamer, wife and mom of two kids. I'm reading Chillpreneur and it was recommended by Secra. This book really helps me tackle my mindset issues, mainly how to overcome imposter syndrome and the fear of being criticized. When you show up knowing that there's someone out there that needs to hear your voice and your message, you won't feel like an imposter. What I also love about this book is that you learn to choose the best model for you. And that is the one that works for you because Chillpreneur, it's all about giving you more time with your kids not less. I really recommend this book if you want to start, grow or scale your business.

Denise:                                 Hi, and welcome back to my final thought. So the word of the day is gifts. How is your relationship with gifts? Are you uncomfortable with receiving gifts? Are you someone who doesn't like to set boundaries around gifts? Maybe you are in a relationship where you always get horrible gifts from your partner and you just feel bad about it. And it reminded me this kind of word today about my auntie. So my auntie would get these extravagant presence from my uncle and she would say, "Oh, that's so lovely. It's so kind and generous but do you mind if I return it and get something that I like a little bit better?" And I remember as a kid just going, "Oh my God, you're not allowed to do that. You get what you're given. You get what you're given, you get what you get and you don't get upset."

                                                And so she would go, "Well, you know what? These are really beautiful, but I actually don't like rubies. I'm going to take it back and get something else." And it was just a really good lesson in that and I did this recently. Mark likes to buy me jewelry as well, but I don't wear a lot of jewelry. And so I said to him, "Feel free to sell that if you want to, because I'm not going to wear it. And I appreciate you thinking of me but that doesn't mean I have to keep it out of guilt and obligation." And then I went and bought myself my own gift. So you might have seen in photos, I wear a gold coin necklace. And I actually, for a while, I was buying them from cheapy stores because gold coins were a trend for a little while and they would give me a massive rash.

                                                And so I went to this jewelry store and they were selling gold coins that are legitimate gold coins and it's from the 1634 or something like that. It's like a Greek coin and they gold played it and put it on a chain. And so I bought that gift for myself because it's symbolic and it feels really good. So where are you holding onto things that other people have given you that aren't meaningful? And then you can see the layer behind that of I have to be grateful for what I'm given. I will be selfish and ungrateful if I say no to something. So it's totally okay. You don't have to receive everything to show the universe you're serious about receiving money. You can choose. You're allowed to have discernment. You're allowed to say no. You're allowed to let things go. You're allowed to declutter things in your life that are not meaningful for you, because it's just stuff at the end of the day.

                                                So I would love to hear what your relationship is with gifts and what it brings up for you around money. Let me know. Hit me up on social media or comment and I will see you next week on another episode of Chill & Prosper. Have a great week.