Acting from Fear or Love - Christine Kane

I got a great question from one of our Uplevel Cafe members right before our group coaching call last week. It’s one of those questions I’m hearing across the board from entrepreneurs during these bizarre times we find ourselves. 

Her specific question was about hiring a VA (Virtual Assistant) or a full-time employee. But underneath that is a question raising to the forefront for many – it’s a sneaky one that can catch you off guard. And it has everything to do with your mindset and your power.

So in this short and sweet episode, I’ll walk you through the differences between contracting and expanding in business and how to step back into yourself, decide where your talent and your heart need to focus right now.

Episode Transcript

Am I playing small here? Am I constricting here? What is my supposed message?

Welcome to The Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Podcast, unconventional business advice for the highly creative, secretly sensitive, and wildly ambitious entrepreneur. I’m your host. Christine Kane. Let’s do this.

Well hello, my friends and welcome to The Soul-Sourcedâ„¢ Business Podcast. We are on episode number 60. I feel like I’ve been gone forever, but I haven’t. I just took a vacation which was delightful and wonderful. And we’re going to dive in today with a topic that I think is pretty important for everyone running a business at this time. And it was inspired by a question I got, I am about to do a coaching Zoom with my Uplevel Cafe students and clients and peeps. And one of the questions that was sent into me by Victoria, and Victoria, I hope you don’t mind me using your name, but I’m actually not going to cover your whole question.

What, um, Victoria did was she gave me some backstory and it’s the backstory that I think a lot of people are going through right now. And it really made me want to just do a little episode where I ask you to really check-in and look at what’s motivating you because I think that we are at a point right now in our culture, in our world, where it is very easy to contract, to constrict, to pull in and to kind of play all the games that fear would like you to play as opposed to the truth and the actions of what we could call love, or expansion or growth, whatever you might call that. A lot of times it’s set up as in the course in miracles as fear versus love. And I don’t want to be so completely black and white with it, but I do think that fear makes us pull in and love makes us expand.

It’s where we’re coming from in all our actions and Victoria sent in a question, and the real question was asking about how to choose between a virtual assistant or an employee, and as is always what I do with my students and clients, which sometimes pisses people off because they just want a fast answer, but I always go for looking at the context. And as I’m reading a question, I kind of go inside myself and see where the red flags come up. And so when I’m talking to you, Victoria, on our, on our call this week, I will probably dive into some of this. But what I did spot here was that Victoria mentions that a current employee is leaving the firm. And she’s sad to see that person go, but it wasn’t the right fit. And that’s great. And that’s something we call necessary endings. And we have to be able to realize that in business endings happen, completions happen. It’s part of our growth and the sadness, of course, is there, but it doesn’t mean it’s a failure on anyone’s part.

But where I really saw the growth possibility here is in the Soul Track, because what Victoria pointed out is that she has a senior partner in her firm and that they’ve been in a place of feast or famine, like so many people during COVID, and there is a lot of hesitancy in her company about rehiring and where Victoria is coming from is this sort of fear that, oh my gosh, all the added admin and marketing stuff is going to fall on me, including all her normal work and then dealing with this, like, should we play small and just get a VA when an a for those of you who don’t know, a VA is a virtual assistant and it’s not somebody who’s going to be a full-time employee. And the question is around that choice.

But what I wanted to do since I’ll be talking to Victoria this week probably is I wanted to look at this thing that happens, that I’ve seen so many times, especially with my clients who have companies. And what happened when COVID hit was a lot of them had to let go of team and where they were spending too much or where they were just throwing money at problems, or more often than not where they were tolerating people. And they let go of people. And there was a certain amount of freedom. It was hard. It was scary. A lot of people were kind of freaked, but there was a little bit of like, well, I kind of have no choice. And there’s freedom in that, in that you, you are forced to play your hand and get really clear and let people go.

And then what starts to happen as we begin to rebuild, is that what lingers is this fear of whether, you know, it could be, am I going to make a mistake again? Or, oh my God, what if the tides turn in the world goes back to horribleness and we can’t handle it, or what if this famine stage stays forever? And so what we do, and in the case of this question is someone is like, oh my God, the admin, all this stuff is going to fall back on me. I have a partner who’s resisting me and everyone in the business is playing small. And then, therefore, I want to play small. And I can’t necessarily step into everyone’s company and everyone’s business and say, Hey, you got to start thinking big.

But really I do think that at a time like this, it’s very good to have a little bit of, you know, self summit, we’ll call it or Sunday Summit. Some people call it a come to Jesus moment where you really saying, okay, wait a minute here. What, what is this company all about? What is this business all about? And am I going to shrink? And am I going to start doing admin? Is that really where my talent and my heart needs to be focused right now? Or would it be more expansive if I continue to do my genius work? And we took the time and the potential tedious process, time to hire a full-time employee. And that’s not my answer. I’m not saying a VA or an employee or the, or the best thing. What I’m really here to do is to say to everybody right now is that it’s so easy to shrink. It is so easy to say, I’m going to do the safe thing and I’m going to not hire anybody, or I’m going to hire just any old person to have someone there, and, and not really look at my business as something that could potentially expand. And all it really is the mindset of construction versus the mindset of expansion. And all of our actions usually come from one place or the other place.

And so where I would start in answering this question is not the tactical discussion, which I’m willing to be, you know, to have with anyone who’s considering hiring. But it really is the step back into yourself as the business owner and ask yourself, am I playing small here? Am I constricting here? What is my, what is my supposed message all about? And what is this work all about? And what am I here to model to people? And if I am going to kind of, if it’s half assing it, if I’m going to half-ass it, if I’m going to take a smaller route, is it coming from a place of fear? And if it is, can I see my way through to what the action would be if I were coming from a place of expansion and really coming from a place of love. And there’s no business coach in the world that can tell you what the answer is going to be to that, but any great coach is going to look at you and say, you have to find that energy within yourself. And then in the case of somebody who has a partner or other people in the company who are decision-makers is having that open conversation with the other person.

Because a lot of times when you are in a situation, and I’m now speaking directly to Victoria, where you are, uh, the, the person who is seeking coaching, who is seeking different strategies and different ways of looking at your business, and you have a partner who’s not doing that stuff, they’re often going to see you as the one who’s out drinking the Kool-Aid and that something must be wrong with you because they’re so caught up in their fear. And they’ve been in feast and famine and they’re all freaked out. And so then you come in with all your wild quick starty ideas and say, we’re going to go with the path of love. And they’re going to say, screw you. I don’t know what the hell you’ve been doing, but stop it. And so this is where a really great communication system is going to be real beneficial to you. And in this case, it would be something where I would say for you to sit down, to really breathe into it and to ask yourself whether it is hiring, whether it is a marketing step of creating a new program, writing your book, whatever steps that you’re taking and really exploring and saying, where are these coming from?

You know, on our last, uh, Sunday Summit, when I did the Sunday Summit series in August, I talked about how, when we come to something like the Sunday summit, we aren’t just looking for, you know, what we’re looking at. We’re also looking at where we’re looking from. And in this case, it’s a really, it’s a really big challenge to say, where am I coming from here versus what am I looking at here? And that’s one of the best places to start is first getting clear. And more often than not the minute I have a client do that, they know like they know what they need to do. They know what it looks like to act from love. They know what it looks like to act from expansion. They know where they’re constricting and contracting, and they get it. They understand they just needed somebody to take their shoulders and set them back on the path and they go.

But if you have other people that you need to get on board at that time, it’s really worth sitting down with that person and outlining what’s going on, what your concerns are and what you’ve decided that you need to do and what you’d like to get for them to get on board with. And again, this is not the answer that says, oh, definitely a VA or, oh, definitely a full-time employee. That’s not the, the coaching answer, but it is the starting point that has to happen, Is that, do you want to build your business from that constricted place? Do you want to keep moving forward, all pulled in and Gollum, like, and holding on to whatever little crumbs you can get, or do you want to open up and expand into something bigger and know that your company has been around a long time, in this case, you’ve been doing very well and it’s not because you’ve, half-assed it, it’s really about the growth has come from whole asking it as I call it.

And that’s, it’s just something I wanted to bring as a reminder to people right now because I’ve seen this theme so much of, you know, oh, I’m just starting to get back under the, I’m getting my feet back under me and I’m just kind of getting some bit of clarity and I don’t want to hire anyone. I just want to keep playing small. And the truth is, is that all of this is a big dynamic and it’s life, it’s breath, it’s inhales, it’s exhales and it’s growth and it’s deciding when someone needs to go. But at any given time, our minds are going to want to play tricks on us. And our survival instincts are going to kick in and we’re going to want to go back into fear and we’re going to want, you know, play small. And it’s really unnatural to stay in a place where you’re saying, you know what, I’m going to expand. I’m going to grow. I am going to open up and trust that my business is going to do well and that I fully deserve to have a batteries included, wonderful employee or wonderful person that’s worth paying because we are set up to succeed. And that’s how I’m going to operate my business. And I get it. I’ve been there. I’ve had many people join my team, leave my team, uh, lots of different, you know, times where I landed on my ass and people have left or whatever it might’ve happened. But at the end of the day, the entrepreneur, the power behind all of the things in your business, which is you, it all comes down to you aligning with one of those energies, with the fear or the love with the contraction or the expansion. And that is going to be the starting point to every piece of growth that you have.

And does it mean that if you align with the expansion, then everything will work out just the way every book tells me it should? No, but you keep realigning with that expansion. You keep realigning with that love for lack of a better word. I know sometimes people think that sounds very woo when it comes to talking about business, but I think that not enough people talk about aligning with love when it comes to our businesses and our work in the world. And I mean, a pretty practical approach to love, not, not the dysfunctional, Oh, I, I give a little bit and I get a little bit and all that kind of thing, but really, truly expansive love of what you do, love of the work you do, the people you serve, the person you are, the courage you had to build this thing. And the ultimate service you provide in the world through this thing, that is your business.

And I know this is going to be kind of a short episode, kind of short and sweet, but I wanted to just let it serve as a reminder, because I think what Victoria brought to the table and what I’ll be working with her on this week for our Uplevel Cafe coaching call is, you know, now the steps she needs to take in her strategy track, but all of us need to continue to realign with that Soul Track and remember who we are and remember the power of our intention and the power of our energy in every single thing we do in every single choice we make and every action that we align with.

And with that said, I’m just going to leave you with that and simply say, Hey, thanks for staying here with me and sticking it out and letting me have my vacation. And I’m glad to be back. And I will see you all next week.