Hello, and welcome to episode number 124 of The Shine Show. 

Today's episode is called how to get to the next level in your business. And I just wanna say, spring has sprung here in Brisbane. It is warming up, there are beautiful flowers everywhere. The world is full of colour. And I feel like there's some new life being breathed into me and into the world around me. And I hope that wherever you're listening, even if it's being autumn, even if autumn has sprung for you, that you are also feeling optimistic and feeling like there's a new life about to come. Well, on that note, let's jump into the episode. 

Giving up your time and freedom to make money is oh, 2009. Hi, I'm your host Salome Schillack and I help online course creators launch, grow and scale their businesses with Facebook and Instagram ads so that they can make more money and have an even bigger impact in the world. If you're ready to be inspired, to dream bigger, launch sooner and grow your online business faster, then tuning because you are ready to shine. This is the Shine Show. 

How do you know that it's time to let go of something? In today's episode, I want to give you a little bit of guidance as much as I can or share a little bit of my story with you about times when I've had to let go of things. And they aren't always just things that you lose or things that are taken from you or relationships that end or contracts that end or students that opt out or it's not always that kind of letting go.

Sometimes you're in a group that you love and it's very comfortable and it feels good and you love hanging out with them and it's a business group and it is standing in the way of your growth. Where can I explore a little bit of that today? And I'm gonna share a little bit of what I've learned about being in the wrong group or staying in a group for a longer time than you should. And at the end of this episode, I'm hoping you'll have a little bit of a framework.

Then you can sit down with your journal or sit down when you're meditating or when you're dreaming about your future and just really use this framework to ask yourself some really honest questions, because sometimes it's being in groups or situations or places where we are most comfortable, that is actually standing in the way of our growth. 

Most of you, if you've been here with me for a while know that I live in Australia, I live in beautiful sunny Brisbane, I love Brisbane, it is my absolute favourite place on this earth. And I grew up in South Africa. Now I lived in South Africa until I was 23. So my entire childhood until I was a young adult was in South Africa. Then I moved to the UK, spent a little bit of time there, back to South Africa and then moved to Australia. 

But where I grew up in South Africa, I grew up in a mining town called Witbank. It is not far from Pretoria or Johannesburg if you've ever been there. Now Witbank is a good, I'd say five or six hours drive from the nearest beach. So let's call it an inland town. Like it is a town where we don't have access to beaches in the ocean, as freely as I would say, we have here in Australia. 

And in South Africa growing up, I was a very good swimmer. I used to really kick butt at the swimming carnivals, especially backstroke. Man, I was good at it. And I think one of the reasons I was good at it is because I have ginormous feet. And my ginormous feet, meaning that I got teased a lot at school, but it also means that when I got in that pool, you better watch out because I am going to use my ginormous feet to win the swim carnival. 

So back in South Africa, I was one of the base swimmers in the school. And I was really proud of it. Fast forward about proper 30 something years and about a year ago, one of my friends here in Brisbane said to me, she is gonna start swimming. And I thought, what a great idea! I'm gonna start swimming with her. I live right on, for those locals who know I live right next to Mount Coot-tha. Mount Coot-tha is a beautiful, beautiful hill, call it a hill. And there's a school right at the top of Mount Coot-tha. And that school has a swimming pool on the top of that hill. And that hill overlooks green, beautiful green trees with a fabulous view of the city in the morning. 

So idyllic as can be every morning, not every morning, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we now go up to the school and we watch the sun come up and we swim. And there's a swim school there that had open sessions for adults who want to come swim. So we decided we're gonna join the swim squad.

And what I didn't realize is that this adult squad is filled with mostly triathletes. Yeah, there's some serious dudes in that pool who swim like nobody's business. But that's okay because there's one lane and that lane has a little sign at it that says for those where every lap hurts. So I started in that lap, in that lane, I was like, okay, I haven't swam in a long time, but I was a good swimmer, I can do this. I'll start in the lane where every lap hurts and I'm sure I'll make my way up pretty quickly. 

So the first day, I get in the pool and the guy who's the coach says, "All right, we're gonna start with 475 meter laps, and we've got to do them in under two minutes. Go!” Oh my goodness, I nearly died. I thought at the end of that first session, I drowned probably about three times nearly drowned. But I was like, okay, I clearly haven't done this in many years, I suck. 

Now today, fast forward to today, I have been swimming for a year. And the other day I walked around with my friend after swimming and I say to her, I know I'm not doing this because I wanna be good at it, I'm doing it for a health and wellness for my mental and my physical wellbeing. But I say to her, "I am still in the lane where everything hurts."

The coach told me the other day after he said, we're gonna do braced stroke, like after we've done the braced stroke, he looks at me and he says, "Yeah, Salome, we're gonna have to teach you how to do braced stroke." I mean, what? Do you have to teach me? I thought I'm really good at it. Now, I'm not. So I was walking with my friend afterwards and I said to her, I don't understand this. Back in school, I was the best swimmer. And then I come here and I'm the worst swimmer. And a year later, I'm still one of the worst swimmers and I'm still not getting it. 

And she looked at me and with the most clarity, she just said, "It's because you were in the wrong pool." And I thought about it, and I realized, yes. Back in South Africa, I was in the wrong pool because even though I had a little bit of maybe natural talent, I was in a pool with a bunch of kids who live inland and hardly ever get to swim. 

So, what I was doing back in school I was probably swimming and most of the other kids were just not drowning. But I think about that and I go, I thought I was really good at it, but I was in the wrong pool. I was the base swimmer in the pool with the kids who don't know how to swim. And that gave me false confidence because when I moved to Australia, I learned that Australian kids are taught to swim from when they were babies, because Australia is all around the coast. 

Everybody lives pretty much within an hour's drive of the ocean. And Australia is such a health and safety focused country, it is important that our citizens don't drown, that our kids don't drown. And so swimming is a skill that gets taught here to little Aussie kids from the moment they open their eyes. So for me to get in a pool with a bunch of not just Aussies, but Aussie triathletes, of course I'm still in the lane where everything hurts. 

I am by far the worst swimmer, because I didn't learn it as a kid, the way that they did, they've had 40 years of practice on me. And so even now, I mean the wrong pool, but this is a pool I choose. I choose to be in this wrong pool. I choose to be the worst swimmer in the pool where I'm swimming with other people who know how to do it, who can push me to be better, where there's a coach who can look at me and say, "Dude, you don't know how to do brace stroke "we got to fix that." 

And even though my ego, like kind of cringes in the moment, I go, "Wow, I never knew "that I don't know how to do this properly." But when the expert looks at me and says, "You don't do it properly," you bet I'm gonna pay attention because this is important to me. So what I realized is, back home, I was in the wrong pool and I was basing my confidence on my performance, in the wrong pool. And right now, I'm also in the wrong pool or maybe right now, I'm in the right pool. But being in the right pool now, feels very uncomfortable. It hurts, I'll tell you my butt has been hurting for two days from the last swim we did. 

So I tell you this story because I want you to see that sometimes being in the wrong pool holds you back sometimes staying in a group where you're the based in the group or staying in a group where you're comfortable or staying part of something that you committed to, just because you committed to it or being part of something, because you feel like the other members of the something it relies on you to be there, or just because you made some kind of commitment and that's no longer serving you that could be holding you back from growing. 

And I would rather, if you're gonna be in the wrong pool, I'd rather have you be in the pool where you're with the triathletes and you're the worst one in the pool, but you're the one who gets to make the most progress. So I wanna tell you about a couple of groups where I have had this moment, where I realized that if I stay here, I'm gonna stagnate and I need to move somewhere. 

The first time was back in Perth when I lived in Perth and I just started my business and I thought that the best way to grow a business, this is back when it was a sales coaching business is by attending networking events. Oh man, tell me you've been to a BNI meeting. Oh, I would rather stick a fork in my eye. 

So I was sitting at a table at 6:30 AM with some MLMs, some lawyers, some accountants, some real estate agents looking around the room going, what am I doing here? I don't wanna work with any of the people in this niche. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just that I don't wanna work with them. I wanna work with creative people, I wanna work with marketing people, I wanna work with artists, I wanna work with teachers, I wanna work with educators, I wanna work with people who are pouring their own energy and their own love and their own creative talent into other people. And not that lawyers and accountants don't do that, it's just not my jam. And I looked around and I saw that, the business that I was building was the wrong type of business, if I needed to be at 6:30 AM networking events. 

And that's when I started looking around and I found social media and I realized that what I actually wanted was a business where I don't have to go out of my house to meet other people so that I can have business because I had two young kids. And it wasn't fun for me getting up before they're up in the morning, going out to a networking event, hanging out with people that I had no interest in doing business with, and then by the time I get back, they would have already gone to daycare or to school. 

So my question to you is, does your business serve your life? Or do you need to swim in a different business pool? And sometimes it can also look a little bit like, you started your business and you just did the thing that brought in the base to money at first. So maybe like a coaching business. And then as it grew and grew, it turned into a monster. And now, even though it makes money, it does not serve you anymore. 

So sit down and think about your business model, the offers that you have. Is there anything in there that has now become the wrong pool that you may be you need to find a new pool? The second one I wanna tell you is my realization. The day that I realized that social media is the wrong pool for me. 

So after these networking events, I realized that I need to build a business online. And to me online, all I knew about online is social media. And all I saw are influencers and a lot of online course creators building mega platforms on Instagram and then it looks like they're making money. I mean, if I look at their photos on Instagram, I think they're making money. 

So I thought that was the answer. And I joined a group, I joined that kind of like a mastermind for social media. And I was in the group for about six months. When one day I had had a particularly like sort of moment where I was just so desperate to figure out how I'm gonna make money with this thing. And I thought social media is gonna help me make money so I joined this group and the group was expensive. And I had to pay for all these apps to schedule things on social media. And I was just, I wasn't bringing in any money. And the money was flowing out really fast and I was desperate and crying. 

And I joined the group, I came to the station and that day I will never forget it, that day, the topic of conversation was how to create Plaid on your Instagram story. How to create Plaid on your Instagram story. And I had this moment where, when you feel like you leave your body and you float above your body, and you're looking down at yourself, going, what are you doing here? You're in the wrong room. 

Because I was sitting there going, oh my goodness. Like how am I gonna monetize making Plaid on my story? That is the most useless skill, no offense to anyone who makes Plaid on their stories. And if you do, and you make beautiful stories, good on you. But for me, I was in the wrong pool moment. I did not wanna pay someone to teach me to do that. And frankly, I realized that that is not the skill that's gonna get me closer to making money.

So I wonder for you, are there skills that you have invested in learning that you need to pull the plug on? That you need to say, "I know I committed to this, "but this is not what I thought it was gonna be." "Or this is not gonna get me any closer to where I wanna go." Or they're online courses you've bought that you're spending hours going through, even though you already know that that is not the thing that's gonna get you closer to making more money in your business? 

Are there memberships that you keep paying for every month that you don't use? Either because you're not really interested? And it kind of doesn't jive really with you almost like the networking events? Like there's nothing wrong with it, it just wasn't for me. What educational programs, educational content feeding your brain with input or you committed to that you need to get out of? That you need to move into a different pool? So think about that a little bit. 

Maybe you have a social media pool just like me, that you needed to get out of. And to this day, if you go into my social media you'll see, here you won't see any Plaid. Let me put it this way, you won't see any Plaid 'cause frankly, I have better things to do with my time. 

The last pool that I wanna share with you, that was a pool that I realized I needed to get out of. I have been part of many accountability groups/ masterminds. I have probably been part of at least 10 or 12, and I've only been in one that has, and I'm talking about a small group, like a less than 10 people or less than six people, little accountability, let's get together and hold each other accountable and help each other build businesses sort of thing group. I've been in many of those and I've really only been in one where it's been really helpful. 

When I found one of these groups, I found them at a live event that I went to for an online course that I loved and that I'm part of. And I felt that I finally found a group of people who really understood my challenges and who really understood the things that I was going through trying to build this business. So I felt like I'd finally found my people. And so we formed this little group and it was great at the start, but then as it unfolded, I started seeing some people bringing the same problem to the calls over and over and over and not making any progress in between calls, which drives me nuts. 

And about six months in, I wanna say six months, maybe it was four months, I'm not sure, but four months in, I started noticing that there's a lot of gossiping going on in the group, like a lot of gossiping about industry, industry leaders, industry experts, and this group had access to a lot of communities where that belong to some of the bigger most well-known online course creators. And it got to a point where I kind of one day maybe also had this sort of when my mind leaves my body and hovers over words, looking at us, masterminding. And the only topic of conversation was gossip. What's happening to this one? What is this one done? Did you hear this once had this failure? And oh my goodness, get me out of there. I could not run away from that fast enough. 

And I will say to you that I have also had, I've worked with a coach who towards the end of our sessions together, started gossiping and sharing negative information about communities that that person has been in. And I'm out, like I am out when you start gossiping, and I want you to hear this as well, because if you're learning from someone or masterminding with someone who is tearing other people down, who are walking the walk, talking the talk, having blood on their faces in, what's the expression they're in the arena, getting dust and blood on their faces and you gossip about them, that tells me just one thing. And that one thing is that that person will always be afraid to put themselves out there because they will be too afraid to be judged the same way they have judged other people. 

So run my friends. Don't walk, run when you're in an accountability group or a mastermind group or any kind of friendship group inside all these online course communities where people gossip, shut your ears to the gossip. It is easy, it is very easy to become part of the gang. Part of the rock throwers, to have that gang up mentality do not do that. Because people who are in the arena, don't have time to pay attention to people who are gossiping. So be someone who's in the arena, don't be someone who gossips. And if you're in a group where that happens, run. 

So I think a lot of what I've shared, it might be a little bit on the negative nelly side, 'cause I'm just pointing out to you all these things you need to run away from. But I want you to see that there is a really positive side to this. There's really a light to this and you need to figure out where you're in the right pool as well, because that matters just as much. 

And it is often the way that our brains are built and created is, it's easier for our brains to see the negative than the positive just because of the way that our little animal brains are programmed to identify things we need to run and hide from. 

So when you sit down and you think about these things, it's probably gonna be super easy for you to come up with a list of at least I wanna say, come up with a list of at least 10 places in your business, in your community, in your learning, in where you're spending your energy and your time where you're in the wrong pool, and do that first. 

And then, I want you to come back and use this framework to decide proactively where you wanna be, which groups you wanna be. And so, I wanna give you some guidance here. The first thing you need to ask yourself is, what are my values and what are the values of a group I wanna join? For me, if you're in the launch lounge or in A-Lister, or if you're one of my clients, you know that for me, please and thank you it's a non-negotiable, you say, please and thanks. Particularly if you're writing something because the nonverbal cues get lost. 

So appreciation and gratitude is one of my key values. Kindness is one of my key values. If you come into my community and you are unkind to someone else, I will not have it. So I am always looking for leaders who show kindness. I am looking for mentors who show kindness. I am looking for students who show kindness and clients who show kindness, because it's one of my values. 

So if there's a kindness pool, you know I'll be swimming in it. And that is one of the filters that I put through, when I'm asking myself, which pool do I wanna swim in this year? Where do I wanna mastermind? Where do I wanna hang out? Where do I wanna spend my energy? Are the people that I'm looking at in this group or are they kind and do they treat people with kindness and with gratitude and appreciation. 

The second filter to use is the community filter. Do you feel like you belong? Do you feel like you fit in? And be a bit careful here, I thought a couple of times about including this, because some of us just never feel like we belong anywhere. I'm one of those people, I'm an introvert and I'm a loner and I on the disc profile, I'm a high D. So I'm very happy being by myself, which means I often feel like an outsider wherever I go. 

But, if I lean in to a group in the first month or so after forming the group and I build relationships with one or two people, I very quickly get a feel for that community. And whether I like being in the community. Very quickly get a feel for the friendships and the circles and how inclusive or exclusive those circles are and whether I can bond with them or not. 

Now, I also wanna add a little word of warning here about COVID because if you're like I have actually pulled out of a lot of communities because I am zoomed out. Like I cannot build relationships with people in a big group via Zoom in the middle of the night anymore. So I'll just hang in there until I can get on an airplane and fly somewhere nice and hang out with people in real life. 

But are you getting the community that you need? Ask yourself that from your groups. The third thing you can ask yourself is, what is the level of support I need? And what do I want in a group where I can offer support? What is the level of support I need? And what is the level of support I can offer that group? Because in some groups you might be the expert in your area, which is great 'cause you get to add value to that group. 

And then the question is, where do the group members add value to you? Because if you're the expert in most things, it's gonna be hard for you to feel like you're getting value. But if you're in a diverse enough group with diverse enough businesses or people who run different funnels or people who launched in different ways or people with different niches, then there are people who can look at your needs and your desires and apply a different filter to it and be incredibly valuable to you. 

So be clear, ask yourself what support can I give and what support can I receive from a group that I'm in? And then finally, the last thing is, the last kind of filter that you need to apply is, how will I know that I am really being challenged to grow? How will I know that I'm really being challenged to grow? When I was in the group where we learned to use Plaid on Instagram stories, I think by the definition of the person who was leading that group, the idea was to challenge us to grow, the idea was to challenge us to grow creatively and to challenge us to grow and try new things, but what I wanted to be challenged in terms of growing results in getting clients or in making sales. And so, because we had different things that we felt is the important thing to challenge each other on, that's why it didn't work out for me. 

Now, I want you to think about, think about when you prune a tree, think about if you have a tree and you cut off the dead leaves. What happens to that tree? It's like that tree suddenly gains like steroids. It's like the leaves, all of a sudden just grow so much faster, so much newer, so much greener. And that's what I want for you. 

I want you to opt out of things that holds you back, even if they're comfortable and familiar. I want you to really sit with yourself and ask yourself, what is it that you really, really, really want? What do you want for your time? What do you want for your energy? What do you want for your results? What do you want for your business friends? What do you want for your coach? What do you want for your mastermind? What do you want for your education? And what do you want for your finances? And if what you've got now is not challenging you towards getting what you want in the future, it's time to prune it. It's time to get out of the wrong pool and start proactively searching for the right pool. 

Even if that means, when you find that pool, you're gonna have to stay in the every lap hurts lane for a year. Sometimes, when loss happens as it does, whenever you leave a group or a program or people, or something that you spend your energy and your time in, that shows us very, very clearly where we really want to be after all. Or are you swimming in the right pool? Is it time to move to a new pool? Sit down, evaluate the pools you're in use this framework, and my wish for you is that this will really challenge you and help you grow into the absolute best next version. 

You're already the absolute best of this version, and I know that the absolute best of the next version is already inside you, and it is just waiting to be uncovered. So my friend, take this framework, go and spend some time with your journal and may you all be swimming in the pool where every lap hurts. 

Have a lovely week. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I would love, love, love it, if you send me a DM and tell me that you've listened today and tell me if any of what I said resonated with you, or if you just want to share with me that you are committed to doing this work and sitting down and figuring out which pools you should be getting out of and which pools you should be getting into. 

Sometimes, this podcast feels a little bit like a one way conversation if I don't hear back from you, so please send me a message. I wanna hear from you, I wanna know that you've listened, let me know. I look forward to reading your message. 

You can DM me on Instagram, that's probably the best place to find me. On Facebook I might take a while to respond 'cause I'm not there that much. Or send me an email, hello@shineandsucceed.com, I would love to hear from you.

Have a lovely, lovely week. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. If you had fun, please come back next week and remember to hit that subscribe button. So you never miss a thing.