Episode Transcription

37: Why Are You Only Dreaming Small?

Hello, lovely lady. It is so wonderful to have you here for another episode of Classroom to Business. Now before I kick off today's episode, I wanted to remind you of something super exciting that is coming up at the end of May. I am once again running the Teachers in Business Retreat. It is back by popular demand, 24th June.

Uh, Friday the 24th to Sunday the 26th of May, it's going to be amazing. If it's anything like the last one, there is going to be so much breakthrough, so many amazing deep conversations, heaps of problem solving and troubleshooting, ideas, spit balling, growth, lots of chocolate, a few wines, yummy food. And of course it is beach side.

So this retreat has been designed to help you. Step away from everyday life to connect and reset. So when we have our own businesses, often we're juggling all of the other things as well, and we don't ever put ourselves in a position to focus and give all of our attention to the growth and the future of our business, and that's exactly.

What this opportunity has been created for. So I want you to be able to step into a creative nurturing and inspiring space. where you can work on your business. So it's not the daily grind. It's not the hustle and bustle. It's an opportunity for you to do something that you may have never actually done before and map out the next six to 12 months of growth in your business.

So this exclusive beachside retreat is going to include, like I said, yummy food, drinks, coaching, so you'll get opportunity one on one to work with myself, but we'll also be working in a small group. There will be time to relax, rest, and rejuvenate, and you'll have the perfect blend of strategy, connection, and relaxation throughout the whole time.

I will put the link in the description. in the show notes. But if you are interested in checking it out, it is kirstygibbs. com forward slash retreat. Get in touch. There are limited spots. We are literally only have got a few left, but if that's something that sounds like you, if you've got any questions, please let me know.

I'd love to talk to you more about it. And if you've never had an opportunity before to actually work on your business, then this is for you. All right, let's get into today's episode. Why are you only dreaming small? So most of us, when we start our businesses, we have come from the classroom. So we're starting out small.

Okay. And we probably don't have a lot of skills, knowledge around growing a business, creating a business and running a business. And often we lack confidence in this area as well. And this often leads us to set limitations on ourself. And this is what I want to sort of get in and disrupt for those of you who are in this situation today.

I all too often have initial conversations with ladies and they say, Oh, I'm, you know, I just want to make some extra cash. Um, I, I, I don't want stuff that's, it's too hard. It's too much of a hassle. Um, I just want a few students. I just want some tutoring on the side. I want to challenge you today and say, why?

Why do you say these things? And I'm going to go into the reasons why in a minute, but if this is you, then really, you know, pay attention today because there is so much potential and out there for you. And I do think that that is the first reason why we go into this, um, limiting belief, holding ourselves back type behavior and attitudes and thoughts, because we actually don't know the full potential.

The other reasons why we end up acting like this is because we're playing it safe. So if we play it safe and we go small, then that means that we can't fail. It's harder for us to fail if we're only making little steps, right? If we're only taking little baby leaps, little jumps, then it's so much harder for us to slip and fall than if we are going big and going hard.

The chances for us to fail or fall are bigger, but if you flip that around, the outcomes and the opportunity to succeed are also greater. So often we play it safe because we are scared to fail. And also we don't like to be seen to be failing. And this is very much, um, a thing that a lot of, you know, Uh, our ladies that I speak to comment on is, what will other people say?

What will other people think? And nine times out of ten, those people that we are referring to are other educators. And how ironic is that? Because really we shouldn't be caring about what they think. We should be caring about what our, what our students think. Parents of the kids that we work with think, and how the, you know, how we can help them and make an impact with them, but we are worrying about what will my principal think, or what will my old teaching partner think, or what will the teacher who's been at the school for the last 35 years, who has an opinion on everything, think.

We need to get past that. Okay, and we need to stop taking the easy option. We can't be scared to try new things. For too long, a lot of us have been in the education system, and I don't mean that that's a bad thing that we've been there, but the fact that we've been here in that system and constrained, um, uh, or, or kept back by those constraints means that we, uh, have less ability, I guess, sometimes, or we don't, it's not that we've lost the ability, but we are less likely to think for ourselves and take risks.

We are less likely to think outside of the box. We are less likely to challenge ourselves and push ourselves in an area that isn't safe. So again, I want you to think about today, if you have, you know, got an idea of starting a tutoring business, but you are too scared because you know, you think you might fail or you don't know how to do it, or you're worried about what other people think, or maybe you're starting your business and you think, I just want this small.

I've decided I don't want staff. I've decided that I am not taking more than three students. Why, why has that been the option that you have come up with in your mind? Now, I'm not saying that this is for everyone. There might be some of you who are like, look, you know, I actually just want an extra bit of cash so that I can take the grandkids for holidays, you know, or take them out to do something and risk a holidays.

That's fine. That's not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about those of you who have this fire in your belly, this desire to do something more outside of the classroom, to make an impact with more students outside of the classroom and create a business for yourself that gives you more freedom and flexibility.

And I want you to believe in yourself. I want you to know that yes, it's scary. Yes, it's hard, but you can do it. So when you feel Like you've got these thoughts coming up into your mind and you've got these limiting beliefs and you, you know, jump on a call with me and you say, no, no, no, I don't want staff.

I, I just, I just want to do this by myself. Or I only want a couple of students or I only want to work weekends. I want you to stop and think about why. And then I want you to think about what you can do instead. So the first thing is you need to realize what you've done. You've just totally blocked your potential.

You have. Become your own worst enemy. So you can't now say, Oh my gosh, Kirsty, I don't know how to grow my business. Oh my gosh, I can't get any students. Oh my gosh. Because you've done that to yourself. You have put yourself in your own way of actually creating a business that can be more than just that little side hustle with a few students a week.

You have to realize that right now, you've got to get out of your own way. The next thing that you need to do is sit down and really consider what it could be like. And I find this, for some people, um, they find it really exciting, and for other people they find it absolutely terrifying. And I think that's quite cool, because once you get, you know, a mix of both of those emotions, it's a really exciting place to be.

And that's where a lot of growth and magic happens for people. So, I want you to dream big. I want you to, um, ask yourself, what could this be like? Now, To give you a bit of insight and a bit of an idea, have a look around at what others are doing. See what's possible. I mean, you may or may not know my story.

If you haven't, go back and listen to, you know, one of the first episodes where I talk about what I've done. But basically, in a nutshell, I left the classroom. With no idea about business, I did nearly buy a franchise. I backed out at the last minute. So, so, so glad that I did because I could run my own business the way that I wanted to do it without all the big franchise fees, all of those sorts of things.

So I created something that gave me more freedom and flexibility. But I had no idea what I was doing. Um, I dreamed big. I sat there and I thought, what do I want my life to look like? And then I worked towards that. Now I'm not saying it was smooth sailing all the time. You know, if, if you follow along, you know, there are always challenges that this is life, right?

But if you know what you want, you have a, a clearer path to get there. I want you to take some time, whether you pause this, or come back to it later, or just think about it tonight, while you're trying to sleep, and you probably can't sleep, and I'm really sorry, sorry not sorry, because I want you to dream big, I want you to think about what your life could be, what, what could actually be possible for you.

With your business, I grew my business to a point where I had, I think 20 plus staff, two different locations. I didn't have to go in and work at all. They were running themselves. I eventually sold both of my businesses. I was able to stay at home and raise my girls while they were little. I did all of the things that I wanted to do.

And I want you to know that. That that is possible for you as well, but you have to get out of your own way and you have to be able to see what you can create. And now that might be hard because if you haven't sat down and done this before, you might think, well, I've got no idea what I want my business to look like.

So let this be a little prompt to you to start thinking, well, You know, what do you want your weeks to look like? How many days do you want to work? How much money do you want to be making? How much time do you want to be spending with your kids? How many holidays do you want to go on? Where do you want, you know, do you want to be running them your sessions online or in person?

Do you want lots of stuff? Do you want groups? Do you want one on ones? Start thinking and creating like this ideal business vision and then from there what I would encourage you to do is break that down. So some people will, you know, are big into vision boards and they're, they're very visual type people.

Um, others like myself, not so much visual, but I like to map it out. So I will look at my one, three, five year vision and again, go crazy. Like think outside of the box, you know, what does your life look like in your ideal world? in one year, three years and five years. And don't be scared. Nobody has to see this.

If you don't want to share this with anyone, you don't have to. So it doesn't matter what you write. This is you. This is me giving you the permission to dream and go big. Get outside of those limiting beliefs that you have got, maybe that have been instilled in you through childhood or you know, previous careers or whatever, and just go for it.

From there, work back and figure out what your goals are for this year. So obviously we have our one, three and five year vision, but now let's look at just the first year. Three to four goals is, is probably ideal. Then we want to break those down into smaller quarterly goals or focuses. And then we go even further and figure out what is it that you need to be doing and focusing on each month, each week, and potentially even each day to get it done.

Now the benefit of this, and I do talk about these sorts of things a lot, is that you then have got a clearer path to help you get to where you need to go. Because it's all well and good to sit there and say, okay Kirstie, I've got these great dreams now, I've come up with an amazing vision, my life looks amazing from my one, three and five year visions, but I don't know how to get there.

All right, and, and yes, this is exactly where I come in, and I can share some, Points on that in a minute. What you can do or what I, what I do with my clients is help them then to break down that vision into goals with actionable steps. Then you have a pathway, you have a map to know how to get there. So if you think about it like using Google Maps, your vision is your destination, right?

It's where you're trying to go at the end. So you, you need to know that. And then once you've put that into Google Maps, it will give you directions to how to get there. They are the things that you're doing every quarter or month or day. So if we don't have those things, we don't know where we're going at the end, we, there's no way we're going to get directions, right?

You've got to plug something in first. And if you put in that final destination, but you don't ask for the directions, then you driving around in circles. You don't know how to get there. So have that vision, break it down, and then have those focuses and goals. Now, one thing that I want to also, um, step out in here is to keep yourself accountable.

All right. So it is easy for us to slump back into that safe zone. Mode and safe zone and it's just, it's too hard. Maybe I'll go back to teaching or, um, I can do relief work. You know, I can do TRS or supply, whatever you call it. Um, and that's great. I mean, I'm not going to lie. We are very lucky that, you know, if you're listening right now and you are a teacher, that is a great plan B to have in the back of your pocket.

And it is extremely helpful for a lot of people to continue with a little bit of that while they're setting their businesses up. But hold yourself accountable, whether it's in a membership like the tutoring growth membership, whether it's working with a coach like myself, whether it's having a friend or family member, come back to that point in a minute, have someone or a group of people who are helping to cheer you on and pull you up when you're either going off track or not following through with what you said you would do.

Now I'm going to bring up the friend or family member again because this is something that I think a lot of people um, make a mistake with and I definitely have done this before as well in that we We love our family and, you know, our friends, obviously, and we kind of, um, revert back to talking to them about things.

They are not always the right people to speak to. They love us dearly, they will support us, they are there for us, but they might not be. business owners. They might not understand the industry that you work in. They might not understand how tutoring works, how to deal with families effectively, how to manage students.

So just because you've got great friends and great family doesn't always mean that they are the right people to have holding you accountable and and those sorts of things. So just please keep that in mind. Um, okay, so we're dreaming big, we're looking what others are doing around us to see what's possible, and we're, we are looking at our vision, say, okay, so we've looked at what, what could life really be like, and we have started to take action, we're holding ourselves accountable, and the other things that I want to I encourage you to do are to reflect back each quarter and see how you're progressing and then adapt that accordingly.

So if you're kicking goals That's amazing. Reward yourself. And I mean, these goals don't have to be big. I, I've just shared recently. So every month inside of the tutoring growth membership, we come together and we share our wins, we hold each other accountable. We talk about the things that we're working on and focusing on the goals that we have for this next month.

Anything that we're stuck on and we sort of nutted out that I shared, um, the amazing breakthroughs and wins that we had last month, and they were so different. Every single one of them was so different from, you know, somebody employing a staff member, to somebody creating, uh, moving into a new premises, to somebody just learning how to reconcile their accounts, to somebody getting signage for their new premises.

Um, I can't remember. There were so many, but it was so cool. They were all so, so different. Oh, somebody else bringing in a cancellation policy. Like, All of these things are wins and we have to stop and celebrate them all because if we do a full loop and go back to the start and say, well, why are you only dreaming small?

It's because we're scared of failing and it's because we're staying safe and we're protecting ourselves and we don't actually know what's possible and all those things. Doing things like this, and reflecting back to see how you are progressing and, and, you know, giving yourself that pat on the back that you deserve for achieving those things that helps us to build confidence.

That also helps us to say, geez, I can do this. Like, you know, six months ago, I had no idea. Even how to reconcile an account, um, or had no idea what zero was, for example, let alone reconcile an account. Now look at me, I'm invoicing, I'm reconciling, I'm doing pays, I'm doing my bass, you know, like that might sound a lot to you right now and totally fine, but that is how we grow and that is how we build confidence.

And that's how we encourage ourselves to dream bigger and feel safer to dream bigger. So. Reflect back, um, adapt accordingly, reward yourself, and remind yourself of those big dreams. So if you've set those 1, 3, 5 year visions, make sure you go back to those. The number of times that I have, you know, written those down somewhere, somewhere safe.

Do what I say, not what I do. Um, but I've written them down and then I've come back to them later and thought, Oh my goodness, I'd forgotten that that was my five year vision. And look, I've, you know, out of the eight things I've written here. I've ticked off six of them, you know, like it is so empowering and exciting and rewarding.

So make sure you go back and you remind yourself of these big dreams that you've set that you're working towards. And just remember, even though you might not get them, so even though you might not get all of those goals, you need to keep in the back of your mind that, you know, things change. Life happens.

Now this is not like a scapegoat. I still want you to dream big. I'm, I'm nervous adding this point in here, but I guess what I'm trying to say is if you get to your three years and you've say got 10 points down for your vision and you're like, I've got five of them, that's still huge. That is still success because maybe the other five aren't even relevant, or maybe those five haven't actually been important because you've, you know, gone in a different direction.

So that's at the back end of things. Okay. But just a side note. Um, and also it is so much about the journey. It's probably more about the journey than actually the final destination. Because if we look at this and say, well, you We're creating a vision and this is a vision of success. That's always changing, right?

That, that bar of what is success is different for everyone and it's constantly moving and it's constantly changing, but you are becoming more successful throughout that whole journey in whatever you are doing, whatever area you are working on or focusing on. So it is just as much, maybe even more about the journey that gets you to wherever you're going in that one year, three year period.

You know, five years as that final destination that you end up, because we also know that it's not a final destination when you get to those three years, when you get to those five years, you're not done, you'll have more dreams. You'll have other aspirations. You'll have other ideas that have come along.

Structure of your business might've changed. Now you might be looking at selling your business. Now you might be looking at. Completely stepping away from your business. So that final destination isn't usually final. And so it's important to remember that, that it is just as much about the journey that is getting you there.

All right. Just to recap, I want you. To dream big. I want you to consider the options that are out there. You know, have a look around, have a look at the ladies who are inside of the tutoring growth membership. Have a look at the ladies that I'm speaking to in previous podcast episodes. Um, you know, have a look at my own story.

See what is possible. See what is actually achievable. If somebody else has done it, you can do it too. right? Be honest with yourself. Why are you playing small? What's holding you back? We've got to figure out those thoughts and then take action now to get beyond them. So create your vision board. Break them down into smaller goals and steps.

Stay accountable. Find somebody to help you stay accountable. Reflect back regularly. Reward yourself. Remind yourself of those big dreams. I believe in you. Okay. If you are here, if you are following along, if you're listening, if you have that fire in your belly to do something more than what you were doing in the classroom to make more of an impact, but also to create a life for you and your family, that gives you more freedom and flexibility.

It is so doable. It is so achievable. And I do honestly believe that the ladies who. who have that fire in their belly, who put that work in, nothing can stop them. the, the growth and progress that I've seen with so many women that I've worked with over the past four or five years, just continues to blow my mind.

And I want that for you too. Okay, so stop dreaming small, get outside of the box, forget everything that you've been taught previously, forget any of those things that have held you back. This is your day. chance, this is your, um, little gift of permission to get out there and dream big. And remember, only you get to decide at the end of the day, I can say all of these things, but only you get to decide how much you put into your business, how big or how small you play, and only you get to decide on how big a dreams you create.

And how big a dreams you follow. But I want to make sure that you aren't being your own worst enemy. Do not let yourself get in your own way because there is so much more out there for you. If you are great at going solo and you want to start your own tutoring business, then classroom to business is the course for you.

Go and check it out. It is a self paced five module course. You can nut it over in a week. Other people might take six months, but it has got everything in there that you need to start your own tutoring business. If you want more accountability, you want more one on one support and a more personalized approach, then I've got a variety of one to one coaching options, which actually now involves online and face to face.

I love working face to face with my clients because we just get so much done and it actually just lots of fun as well. But the growth. And the, um, progress that we can make in that time is there's nothing, nothing compares to it. So if you are in that stage and you're like, look, I've got these dreams. I just don't know how to turn them into reality.

Get in touch. There are options. There are different ways to suit your budget, to suit the way that you learn best, to suit the time that you have. I'll put the links in the bio, check them out. And if you. Enjoy this episode. Please let me know. I would absolutely love to hear from you and I would love to hear where you are going now that you are no longer dreaming small.