Meet Sara Nelson-Johns

[00:00:00] Sara: I feel a sense of calm at the concept of, oh, there’s room on the team for a team member. That doesn’t mean a partner. It just means there’s sort of a next step, that would be important to take.

[00:00:29] Linzy: Welcome to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast, where we answer this question: how can therapists and health practitioners go from money shame and confusion to feeling calm and confident about their finances and get money working for them in both their private practice and their lives? I’m your host, Linzy Bonham, therapist turned money coach, and creator of the course Money Skills for Therapists.

[00:00:50] Hello and welcome back to the Money Skills for Therapists podcast. Today we have a coaching episode with a recent graduate of Money Skills for Therapists, Sara Nelson-Johns. Sara is lovely. And today we are digging into her side business that has sprung out of her main private practice. In her main private practice, she works with folks with ADHD, relationship challenges, and perfectionism, and out of that work, she has developed an adulting planner.

[00:01:21] I’m going to put a link for it in the show notes, for folks with ADHD to organize their lives in a way that works for their brains. So today, Sara and I talked about some of the dilemmas concerns, and questions she has about scaling that second business. We get into that fear of exposure, the fear of being invalidated, which is, I think, a very common thing that we therapist types experience when we start to be seen. It’s very safe to sit in a therapy room and have these very attuned, as we talked about today, basically quite controlled conversations with folks.

[00:01:52] It’s a big step, and it’s a different way of being in the world to put something out there to thousands of people, and not be able to control how they’re going to respond, or whether they find it helpful, or whether they get it or not. So we dig into that today as well. Then we started to explore and play with the idea of what scalable even means.

[00:02:11] What does Sara want her business to look like? Helping her to connect with what she wants in this chapter and season of her life. It’s so easy with scaling when we build something that is quote-unquote scalable to think that it has to be this big thing, to think we have to do it a certain way, to do it right.

[00:02:26] Sara and I dig in today to find out what the right next step for her in this business is and let herself lean into that. 

[00:02:34] You can also watch this coaching episode, if you want, on YouTube. All of our podcast episodes are now also on YouTube. So if you prefer to watch your podcasts, if you want to see Sara and I’s facial expressions, then you can also check out this episode on YouTube. Here is my coaching episode with Sara Nelson-Johns. 

[00:03:09] Linzy: So Sara, welcome to the podcast.

[00:03:11] Sara: Thank you. I’m happy to be here. 

[00:03:13] Linzy: I’m very happy to have you here. So to give folks a little bit of context, I think, on the work that you’ve done so far, before we dig into what you want to work on today, you finished Money Skills for Therapists. Where are we now in time? Was that like… 

[00:03:26] Sara: Five or six months 

[00:03:27] Linzy: I was going to say five or six months ago.

[00:03:29] Okay. So you did Money Skills for Therapists and focused on your private practice, but you also have a second business. You have, that dream kind of side hustle that many therapists want, and that’s what we’re going to focus on today.

[00:03:43] Tell me about your questions about this second business for us to dig into together today.

[00:03:48] Sara: My second business, I work with a business partner and she is the creative on it and I am the writer on it. So she handles design and artwork and software, and I handle all of the treatment interventions that we offer, which include a day planner for middle and high school students with ADHD, and an adulting planner for those that are in the adult world and don’t need semesters and things like that.

[00:04:17] And then we additionally have an emotions journal we’ve been working on that we want to release on a subscription

[00:04:22] basis. 

[00:04:23] Linzy: Okay. So this is like work that’s spun out of the clinical work that you do. 

[00:04:29] Sara: Yes

[00:04:31] Linzy: It’s a beautiful planner, by the way. 

[00:04:33] Sara: Thank you, it’s like writing down the interventions that I offer to clients.  For about seven years, I was doing ADHD interventions with schools and teachers and parents and kids, and I started to realize I was saying them all over and over again, just on one, and that didn’t feel good.

[00:04:55] But I wanted to get the Planner put together in a way that was accessible for a much wider audience but was the same interventions that I use in treatment.

[00:05:04] Linzy: Yes. Yes. Yeah, and I think this is, like, you’ve moved into that scalable space where you’ve taken that one-on-one conversation you’ve had over and over and over and over that works, and you’re turning it into something that could reach thousands of folks.

[00:05:17] Sara: Yeah, that word feels scary it just made my heart go whew.

[00:05:25] Linzy: Okay. So I think this is part of what we’re going to follow today. So tell me then about your dilemmas, or the stickiness with this second business at this point.

[00:05:35] Sara: One just very practical hitch is we need to put either money or time in, to make it big. 

[00:05:45] We can keep it small, and we can stay small. And we would be fine. But that goal of, we wanted to help more people with a very valuable and useful tool is going to involve time or money, and either one is going to impact my finances at home for a while until we either invest ourselves or get an investor.

[00:06:10] Linzy: Right. Okay. So there’s this, investment piece coming, an investment of either your time or your money to get where you want to go. And I mean, that’s a question here, Sara, is where do you want to go with this? What is your hope or your vision for it?

[00:06:26] Sara: we made it last year 

[00:06:27] Linzy: Okay. 

[00:06:28] Sara: And we sold it last year. Very small channels of marketing. Very, very small. We’d love for it to be regional or national marketing, and scale up the production of it. 

[00:06:42] Linzy: Okay.

[00:06:43] Sara: So it wouldn’t be made in my business partner’s basement. So that we’re not spending our time punching paper.

[00:06:51] Linzy: Yes, because right now you’re physically making the planners. 

[00:06:54] Sara: Yes, they’re handmade. They are artisan. 

[00:06:58] Linzy: I was going to say, yeah, beautiful. You can charge more for that, I hear. Okay. So right now, you’re making them by hand in your business partner’s basement. That’s not the long-term vision.

[00:07:08] You don’t plan to be doing that for the next 20 years. So it sounds like at the very least some, some manufacturing, right? Like getting them manufactured somewhere.

[00:07:16] Sara: Yeah. So it’s manufacturing, then there’s marketing, and then there’s the concept of this is the product, but the product is the design work and the intellectual property behind it. You receive a product, but the effort goes into all these other pieces about it. And so it’s not as simple as just being a planner.

[00:07:38] And I think I feel some confusion about how to sell a planner when it’s about treatment interventions. 

[00:07:45] I have some difficulty with it, I want to be able to sell the planner as a product, but the value is all in what you receive with the interventions and with the actual layout and design of the pages. Those are designed for people with ADHD.

[00:08:02] Linzy: Yes, and tell me what the dilemma is there. Like, what do you find difficult about this aspect?

[00:08:11] Sara: It’s overpriced for a planner. So I don’t think that we’re emphasizing enough, or effectively, that this comes out of many years of experience and that this is some very specialized content, and that we’re trying to give people the tools that if they put it into practice over the year, they’ll have better executive functioning skills.

[00:08:34] Linzy: Yes, what I’m hearing is the value of the product is really about your clinical expertise. Right? And your business partner’s creative gifts that can, can make that into something beautiful and usable. But this is about your seven-plus years of clinical interventions that you’ve done and the clinical expertise that you’re packaging up for folks to access.

[00:08:56] Sara: Yes.

[00:08:57] Linzy: Okay. And. that is an interesting piece to emphasize because as you say, like a planner itself, like I could go to the bookstore and buy a planner for 10 bucks,

[00:09:05] Sara: Yes, you can buy them on Amazon probably for seven. 

[00:09:08] Linzy: Yes, but that’s probably not going to be a very viable business model for you unless you’re going big scale, you don’t want to be selling these for 10, right? And what is the price point at this moment?

[00:09:23] Sara: For the adulting planner, it’s 45 and for the student planner, I believe it’s 38. The adulting planner has additional technology attached to it with QR codes.

[00:09:34] Linzy: Okay, because what I’m hearing here is, another kind of business dilemma, which is how you put across the value of what it is that you’ve created, to charge what makes sense for you to charge at this moment. Right. So that’s the one piece. And then I’m hearing there’s this other question about investing, right?

[00:09:50] Like if you want this to go big, you have to invest.

[00:09:53] Sara: And I think part of the value is then, you know, being okay with occupying that space personally because that means selling ourselves and our expertise and that feels like exposure.

[00:10:10] Linzy: Okay. Yeah. Let’s talk about that. Cause when we talked about scalable, too, that was not a word that made your heart happy. 

[00:10:18] Sara: I’m worried about losing control. 

[00:10:20] Linzy: Perfect, jumped right to the right to the core. Okay, so let’s talk about losing control. This is what I’m also thinking, too, as you’re talking about the value of the planner is really about your clinical expertise and your business partner’s creative gifts.

[00:10:33] It’s selling yourselves, right? Like what you offer, right? They’re basically in a way getting an experience of working with you through this mediated form, like through this book, this workbook that they get, right? They’re not all going to see you one-on-one for a session, but thousands of folks who buy this book and get these great interventions baked into their planner.

[00:10:51] So tell me then when you think about being seen, right, like owning this expertise that you bring to this product, what comes up for you? Like I’m hearing exposure. I think the word was naked. Tell me what is, your full response. Let’s dig into that.

[00:11:12] Sara: Vulnerable, I do worry about the imposter piece. That’s in there. That I’ll get called out or criticized or that someone will say I’ve done something bad. But I also think there’s that piece of like, if I put myself out there with something that I think is great and the world doesn’t, feels, oh, that’s like an ego blow. That would hurt a lot. This is like a baby that we made.

[00:11:39] Linzy: Okay. Gotcha. So there’s also this vulnerability around the product itself like you want it to be loved.

[00:11:46] Sara: We do, we want everybody to embrace it, and I think it’s beautiful.

[00:11:50] Linzy: Yes, which like every mother thinks that their baby is the cutest in the world. The reality is there are only a few babies that are the cutest baby in the world. Just statistically speaking. So with this, like, yeah, it sounds like very, I mean, the word that comes up for me is like, it doesn’t sound like it feels safe.

[00:12:10] Sara: Yeah, it doesn’t feel emotionally safe, and I think the glory of being a therapist is that I can have and share vulnerability with people on one and share that intimacy, and if there’s a misstep, part of my job is dealing with the repair of a rupture. Like there’s all this opportunity to make right, and I love that kind of connection with people. And this is an important product to us.

[00:12:43] Like all of the ideas we’ve come up with we’re like, oh, these are really strong ideas But it does take away that intimacy of the relationship and turns it into that much more of a business transaction.

[00:12:57] Linzy: Yes, it’s no longer an individual, relational experience that you’re having with a specific person who you can, like, adjust, and read and slow down or speed up, match their language, match their humor. 

[00:13:12] Can’t do any of those things when you’re writing something down on a piece of paper.

[00:13:15] In those one-on-one conversations, to go back to the word that you used earlier, there’s a lot more control,

[00:13:22] Sara: Yes, and the ability to tweak the message. If I say something too broad and the person says, I don’t understand. Can you explain that differently? I have that opportunity. So that is very in-the-moment stuff. And I hadn’t ever thought about it as controlling, but it is, it’s very, I can be very controlling of my message.

[00:13:45] Linzy: Yeah, and I mean, I think control, you know, gets a bad rap. Control, another thing would be managed, attuned, you know, like, there’s a lot of skills. Attuned there’s the nice version.

[00:13:57] There’s a lot of skills that go into being able to meet that person where they’re at. But it is this one-on-one exchange that’s happening.

[00:14:06] Right? And as you’re moving into this space of having you, I mean, you’ve already moved into this space by having the planner, the two planners, and all the things that are baked in, you don’t get to see how folks are reacting or receiving or understanding or not understanding.

[00:14:21] Sara: That’s true. And we did receive some feedback from people who had questions or felt like, Oh, this is never going to work. And we realized like, Oh, we need to be clear to parents that they’re going to have to be involved in this with a middle or high schooler. There were some tweaks we did have to do.

[00:14:37] Linzy: And so after I processed it, I was able to take it as information and then be able to respond to it. But I practically had to go for a run to deal with my anxiety about someone saying they didn’t like our planner. Yeah. Because what does that mean if someone doesn’t like your planner? What is the anxiety about?

[00:14:55] Sara: nobody’s going to like it. That one person is the predictor of everybody else. I’ve been doing this job for 20 years and I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. 

[00:15:06] Linzy: Because of that one person.

[00:15:08] Sara: The one person took away my whole career.

[00:15:10] Linzy: Yes, of course, and that is what happened, right? Your career ended after that.

[00:15:14] Sara: Right, I was completely invalidated and I was all done.

[00:15:19] Linzy: All your clients quit. Nobody talks to you anymore.

[00:15:21] Sara: That’s it.

[00:15:22] Linzy: But yeah, this is, the scary part, right? Of exposure is like, there are going to be folks who don’t connect and don’t get it. Some folks are not going to be your target audience, who like dip in and check out your product and are like, no, that’s not what I need.

[00:15:36] Right. And so I’m curious, like, if that’s part of the game and it is, I’m gonna tell you it’s, I know.

[00:15:43] Sara: That just makes me wanna shrink.

[00:15:46] Linzy: Okay. Why?

[00:15:48] Sara: I just had a little bit of a revelation on why that makes me shrink. And the revelation was, you know, but this is a product that we’re putting out there. This isn’t me.

[00:16:01] There’s no reason I have to… I don’t have to invalidate myself. I don’t, and I’m getting caught up in this emotional thought around it, and the reality is this is going to have life cycles, too, just like a therapeutic relationship would, where there’s that introduction, and there’s that initial buy-in or initial resistance.

[00:16:24] Then there’s taking in a little bit of education and maybe really reflecting on you know, why is it that I want, you know, this Emotions Journal or the ADHD planners that we’re asking people to, to be vulnerable to for themselves. And I hadn’t thought about it in both those ways, both that it’s the product is not me and the other part of there are life cycles and relational pieces that still occur.

[00:16:56] And so that is an even a really good selling point.

[00:17:04] Linzy: Yeah, and tell me about that. How could that be a great selling point?

[00:17:08] Sara: You know, it’s as basic as saying we want a to-do list to be a living document, and then making it as big as, and so if you want to make changes, you have to be honest with yourself. And that’s part of what we do in this planner we ask people to reflect on what is your reason for wanting more organization in your life.

[00:17:29] Because the motivation has to come from the person, not from the product. We can give them tools, we can educate them, but we cannot give them the motivation. And so we ask people to do some really deep reflection on what kind of year they want to have. That’s sort of our tagline, is a different kind of year.

[00:17:48] If I’m looking at what my year could be versus just continuing on the way I have been, there are some deep truths in there for most people.

[00:17:56] Linzy: Sure, Yeah and I mean, something that I’m thinking about as you’re talking about the real work that’s involved for folks, right, of like really facing like, this is why I need to do this work. This is why it’s important on multiple levels. And then all the clinical expertise that you’re bringing to this conversation and the fact that you’re trying to bottle that up in a, in a product, which

[00:18:19] You need to make clear that the value is there. It makes me curious about how you augment this product to make it more of a maybe supportive experience for folks. 

[00:18:31] Sara: We have been playing with some background technology that when people in the adulting planner go on to use the QR codes for the individual skill-building pieces, there is the ability to comment and there is the ability, if we wanted to, to build a community. Another thing we’ve thought about doing for just people who learn a little differently is to put together videos for each of the skills.

[00:18:56] You know, two-minute videos, and that that honestly would, would be a really good one for the academic part of the planner as well. So it’s something we know we want to build out for the adults, but probably is a good idea for the younger ones.

[00:19:10] Linzy: Because I’m thinking here about the psychoeducation involved in this product. And as you mentioned, the parents need to also understand, their role, right? And what they’re trying to help their child, the skills they’re trying to help their child develop. And so yeah, like I’m… To me, that seems like a very rich area for you to start to dig into.

[00:19:29] And you mentioned like two-minute videos. I was thinking the same thing, like videos, podcast recordings, like how do you bring more of yourself?

[00:19:36] Sara: Yeah, and be present.

[00:19:36] Linzy: And by yourself, I mean your skills. I don’t mean Sara, like the vulnerable, you know, like, this is who I am, love me or reject me and my life is over, right?

[00:19:44] Like not those parts of us, but that clinical, expertise, that professional part. How do you maybe infuse even more of that into your buyer’s experience, of the planner?

[00:19:54] Sara: We’ve even talked about doing like webinars and having, you know, a launch day that we would say to people, we’re going to set up our planner today. Come join us for an accountability hour of setting up a planner for the year. 

[00:20:07] Linzy: Yeah, which your audience needs. Right? Like that’s, that’s a very valuable gift. 

[00:20:15] Sara: Plus it’s body doubling and accountability.

[00:20:16] Linzy: I was going to say it’s body doubling like it’s all you know, yeah. Like if I think of so many folks in my life who have ADHD like they know what they need to do, but it’s very hard to make themselves do it by themselves right, so it’s like, that’s, that is a beautiful addition, you don’t get that with a typical planner.

[00:20:30] To have the opportunity to have, the container to set it up, right, and the co-regulation to set it up.

[00:20:39] Sara: Ooh, that’s a, I like that selling point. That feels good and feels less about, am I good enough.

[00:20:47] Linzy: Yes, because, you know, the other thing that you mentioned is that it feels like a baby, Right? It’s not a baby.

[00:20:57] Linzy: It is an expression of some ideas that could also be expressed in many different ways, right? But it sounds like you’re hitting on an iteration that you feel really good about.

[00:21:07] But I do wonder about how you create a narrative around this business or the relationship to it that allows you to be resilient, right? And like take some risks with it and try things and, and fail and make mistakes and not have it be about you or not have it be about, you know, the most vulnerable form of life, which is a baby.

[00:21:27] Sara: Little extreme. I’m, I’m hearing it. When I first started a private practice, it was part-time and I remember being just very afraid to launch it. I had just actually had my child and was also learning how to run half marathons, and I was launching this, and I worked full time. And I remember saying out loud to a lot of people, Oh, this is my fall season of fear.

[00:21:52] I’m doing all these things and I’m very afraid of it. I’m doing it anyway.

[00:21:57] A business would fluctuate or we move to a different part of town I realized, Oh, I couldn’t make it to that office. I would like to close down that office. And then I would do it somewhere else, just part-time.

[00:22:11] And my husband asked me one time if I was upset about closing it down after, I think, the first one, I said, Oh, that’s just 1. 0. And now I would tell you I’m on like 4 or 5.0 because now I do it full time and I am, you know, half of our income for our household and that feels amazing. And so I wonder if I need to be thinking about these books.

[00:22:36] as 1.0, 2.0 and knowing that the business itself, the core part of it is always going to be me and my business partner and that we’ve got a really strong relationship and a really strong concept of how to keep our priorities in line, because we’ve always, in the last year and a half of working on this, we have been very clear and supportive of one another when parenting or life gets in the way to say that’s the goal is not to stress about this.

[00:23:12] The goal is to live life and also do this thing at the pace that works for us. We want there to be a flow. And maybe that’s part of what I’m emotionally reacting to is like, what if it interrupts the flow?

[00:23:27] It’s nice right now in life to be able to say when people are like, well, what’s going on with you?

[00:23:32] I’m like, not much. It’s great. That’s like success to me to not have a whole lot of drama happening.

[00:23:39] Linzy: For sure. And that is a season that you’re in, it’s a chapter that you’re in, maybe it’s the rest of time you’ll want it that way. Or maybe at a certain point, you will look for more challenges, right? And this is what I also think about as we’re talking about these different versions, you know like you’re at version 5.

[00:23:55] 0 of your practice and we were even chatting a little bit off-camera before about some changes you want to make, which would maybe make it your practice 6. 0 version, right? And so if we think about this business the same way, you know, something to consider as you’re thinking about what you want and investors and having it manufactured elsewhere, regional reach, statewide reach, all this stuff is what do you want in this season?

[00:24:16] Sara: I want to set this up so it’s sustainable. I don’t know if this is the year if this is when we can achieve that, and I want to be able to hand off pieces of that elsewhere like the marketing of it to bring it to that sort of level. I don’t want to do that.

[00:24:37] Linzy: Yes, So there’s going to be a certain amount of growth that you need just so you can start to delegate some of these pieces that you don’t want to be running anymore.

[00:24:49] Sara: I like learning about pitch decks and business plans. It’s interesting to learn that I’m good with the small-time parts of that. I would like to let a marketer be a marketer and let them take care of 

[00:25:03] Linzy: Highly recommend. Marketers love marketing. It’s very confusing to me, but they do. We are very grateful for them. Yeah. Okay. So bringing, it sounds like there’s room on your team for another team member. There’s a gap there to fill…

[00:25:17] Sara: I hadn’t thought about it like that.

[00:25:18] Linzy: With someone who loves marketing. And that doesn’t mean they’re a partner to be clear, there are all these tasks, these marketing tasks that like, you’re happy to dabble in, but this is not your happy place.

[00:25:29] Sara: Right. It’s not. And I find myself thinking about it in very distracted ways. Like I just avoid, like I’m resistant and I’m a little bit avoidant of it and then I try and buckle down and it’s like, I’m going to do this thing, and that doesn’t feel fantastic.

[00:25:44] Linzy: That’s how I feel every time I try to make an Instagram Reel. Which is why I pay people to make me do it. So as we’re thinking about this then, you know, and these, kind of your next steps, the next version of this, you know, what I would encourage you to think about is maybe what is that next sustainable point for this business where there would be enough.

[00:26:06] revenue generated that, you know, you and your business partner are getting paid what you want to get paid. There’s room to also pay a marketer to be planting these seeds for you, setting some strategy. You can think about what that position needs to look like. Is that like a project? Is it just they’re helping you launch?

[00:26:21] Is it somebody who’s around five hours a week? You know, like what does that look like? And also what level of skill are you looking for? Could that be an administrator who, you know, is implementing your ideas, or is that somebody who’s coming in with their strategic expertise, right? There is going to be an equation here, surprise, surprise, for what this next sustainable step looks like.

[00:26:41] But what I’m not hearing from you at this moment is that like, I’m not hearing explosive growth is your goal.

[00:26:48] Sara: I’d be open to it, but then, the imaginary leap that would take, you know, the investment in money would be pretty spectacular

[00:26:57] Linzy: Yes.

[00:26:57] Sara: Because it would, it would effectively mean me cutting my client load in half, and so the investment would have to come from outside.

[00:27:09] Linzy: Yes. Yeah. You would

[00:27:11] Sara: I’d be open to it.

[00:27:12] Linzy: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A loan or an investor like a silent business partner or a grant. You know, there are lots of funding opportunities there. And that is a door that will continue to be open to you. Right? In the future. That doesn’t have to be a decision that you make this year or next year.

[00:27:30] Sara: But what I’m hearing from you is like, right now you’re enjoying this season of your life where there’s not a lot going on. There’s no urge to change that. You’re not bored. You don’t feel like you’re like, We’re humming along. We’ve got the flow.

[00:27:43] Linzy: You’ve got the flow. The flow is nice. Right? And right now it doesn’t sound like there’s a feeling of flow of wanting to go huge, but there is, there is some flow towards the next level. It’d be nice to get some of these things off your chest.

[00:27:53] Sara: I feel a sense of calm at the concept of, oh, there’s room on the team for a team member. That doesn’t mean a partner. Is there’s sort of a next step that that would be important to take

[00:28:09] Linzy: Yes, yes. And coming back to that, that word that we talked about at the beginning, scalable,

[00:28:15] Sara: Yes

[00:28:16] Linzy: This is a version of scale. Scale gets to be whatever size you want.

[00:28:21] Sara: Yeah. It can be 20%.

[00:28:23] Linzy: It can be 20%. So when you think about that, this is scaling, right? But it’s scaling at a pace that lands you where you want to be. How does that sit with you?

[00:28:33] Sara: Oh, that feels lovely. And it feels, you know, like just I’m going on a cruise. It’s okay. We’re just taking the next wave as it comes.

[00:28:42] I don’t have to think about the ocean voyage. We’re just taking the next wave as it comes.

[00:28:47] Linzy: Yeah, and one day you might decide you want to take the ocean voyage and like get this into national bookstores and, and you might not, right? And you get to choose that.

[00:28:57] Sara: Oh, that feels good. I’m holding onto this idea of like, oh, I want it to be a cruise.

[00:29:03] Linzy: Nice. Okay. So coming towards the end of our conversation then, Sara, what are you taking away?

[00:29:10] Sara: Well, that’s my own. Stepping back and becoming a bit more objective about what it truly is versus over-identifying, with it, is a really important concept, I think, for my brain to wrap around and one that I’m going to need to remind myself about. I also think it’s really helpful for me to think about steps as opposed to I know what the big version of this is.

[00:29:40] I just didn’t know what the scalable steps were. Each little individual step. I know Mount Everest, but I just didn’t know the base camp kind of thing.

[00:29:47] Linzy: Yes, and I am a firm believer that we can find sustainable points where we want to find them, right? By like, looking at the numbers, you know, looking at the balance of how much energy we have, what we want this to look like in our life, doing the math. And putting in the effort to get you the numbers you need to make it work. It’s not like the smallest version of the product works and the biggest version works.

[00:30:10] All these points in the middle can also work. We just need to be thoughtful about what those points look like.

[00:30:16] Sara: We have the opportunity to present, a pitch deck, but we literally have no written out business plan, but we actually could just do the pitch deck in 10 days.

[00:30:31] Almost feel like I want to do it just for the experience. Just to see what it’s like and just to see, that one of them is that you do an elevator pitch.

[00:30:41] Sara: Established business, which probably wouldn’t be us since we don’t have a business plan. And then one is for a new business. And I feel positive about just trying it without expectation. And before I was thinking I don’t even want to register for this thing because then it’ll be putting myself out there.

[00:31:01] And now I feel much more like, oh, maybe we should just try this. I’ve got the day. I can go do it.

[00:31:07] Linzy: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like something you can now just be curious about. Try it out. See what happens.

[00:31:13] Sara: Yeah. And I don’t think you’d get any better at it unless you try it at some point in time. You’ve got to be an amateur. 

[00:31:20] Yes, you do. Yeah, like all of these skills we build through actually doing, right? And there’s, there’s this phrase that I heard recently that I like, which is like, a ship in motion can adjust course, right? But a ship that’s still can’t. Right? It’s like when we’re in motion, we can shift this way, we can shift that way, right?

[00:31:39] Like you have the opportunity to explore and tweak and feel into something and be like, ah, it doesn’t feel right. I’m going to go a different way. Right? But when we’re frozen trying to make the perfect decision, we’re not moving at all. We’re not experiencing anything.

[00:31:50] Sara: Yeah, I can feel like I’ve shifted forward in very positive ways today.

[00:31:56] Linzy: Beautiful. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Sara, for coming on the podcast today.

[00:32:00] Sara: Thank you. I feel great about this. 

[00:32:18] Linzy: In my conversation with Sara, I noticed how once she started to shift the narrative around exposure and what that means, right? And we, we kind of had that joking exchange about like, you know, somebody didn’t like her planner, and then obviously her whole career ended, which it didn’t, right?

[00:32:37] But once we start to make friends with that exposure and find ways to tolerate it and shift our narratives around what it means if somebody doesn’t like or get what we do… As we chatted about removing this language around something being your baby or being you, that you’re putting yourself out there and more it’s you’re putting product out there, you’re putting an approach, you’re putting something out there that could also have many, many versions and iterations.

[00:33:02] Once we move into that more distanced, curious, strategic relationship with our business and what we do, so much more becomes possible, right? We shouldn’t have the most vulnerable parts of us out there leading our business. We need to take care of those vulnerabilities.

[00:33:18] It’s the parts of us that can be resilient and creative and curious and see failure and trying things as the way to move forward and to grow and to learn. Those are the parts and aspects of us that can help us in our business and build a business that works for us, and a business that we want.

[00:33:38] And those parts of us that feel more scared or exposed, you know, we can take care of those and hold them back. They don’t need to be running the show, right? They shouldn’t be the parts that we’re putting out there to everybody. Because the reality is not everybody is going to like or get what we’re going to do.

[00:33:51] So I’m excited for Sara, moving into doing this pitch that she’s now decided she’s going to do. I’m excited to hear how that goes for her because moving forward is how we figure out where we want to go. You can follow me on Instagram at Money Nuts and Bolts. I mentioned at the beginning, that all of our new podcast episodes are also on YouTube.

[00:34:11] So you’re also welcome to subscribe to our YouTube channel so that you can watch the videos, get that whole other visual aspect of the podcast experience, and see me, see our guests, our facial expressions, our backgrounds, all of that good stuff. And if you’re enjoying the podcast,

[00:34:27] It’s super helpful for me if you tell your friends and colleagues about it, tell them about an episode that was specifically impactful to them. If you’re listening to an episode and it makes you think about one of your colleagues, just send it along to them. That is a helpful way for the right folks to find this podcast and get value from it.

[00:34:45] Thank you so much for listening today.