How to Create Real, Lasting Sustainable Success in Your Online Business

When you cultivate sustainable success in your business, the natural byproducts of that sustainable success are the time, money and energy freedom that you desire. Not that someone else says that you should desire but that you truly desire and that actually feels good to you. Things are always going to change, you are always changing, you are always growing, you are always expanding. And so if how we define sustainable success is based on how it feels to you, then there’s a very good chance that how something feels to you right now may not continue to feel that way forever or even just five years down the road, sustainable success evolves as we evolve, which is actually great news because that means that we can experience sustainable success right now and in the future.

Hey, welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. This is your home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m Carly Jo Bell, the Sustainable Success mentor and your guide on this journey with self trust as your North Star and foundations under your feet, you’ll be able to look external for ideas, internal, for answers and build your business your way. Let’s dive in.

People come to me because they want to create sustainable success in their business. But the question that comes with that then is how do I actually make my business sustainable? If you look around this online business world, you’re gonna see a lot of different answers. It’s like, well, you need to hire, you need to work less hours, you need to have a big profit margin. You should have that time, money, energy, freedom to do whatever you wanna do whenever you wanna do it. But the reality is that every single one of those things are not sustainable success. They are by-product of sustainable success.

Around here, we define sustainable success as getting paid really freaking well to do the work that you most love doing in the way that you most love doing it with the people that you most love working with. And if you notice in that definition, the kind of defining characteristic here of sustainable success or what makes something sustainable is, how do you feel about it? It’s the work that you most love doing in the way that you most love doing it with the people, you most love working with. What makes something sustainable is not whether or not you have a big profit margin on it. It’s, is this work you love? Are you doing it in the way that you love? Are you doing it with the people you love. And when you do those things, when your business is you getting to do that work, you love in the way you love with the people you love. That’s when you can create all of these by-product of sustainable success if you actually want to create them. And that’s a big, if we’ll talk about that more at the end of this episode.

But what I wanna clarify here, you know, I wanna go into, yes, how do we actually create sustainable success? But I would need to clarify something here. First. Nothing about business is either sustainable or not sustainable. And you’re like, wait Carly, but you literally just said, we’re talking about how to create sustainable success and we are but part of learning how to create a really cultivate sustainable success is understanding that sustainable success exists on a spectrum. It is not a black and white, it is this or it isn’t this. It’s recognizing that a lot of what you’re doing is both sustainable and not sustainable and there’s never going to be a point. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that there’s more than likely never going to be a point that you come to where you’re like my business is entirely sustainable because the truth is, things are always going to change, you are always changing, you are always growing, you are always expanding. And so if how we define sustainable success is based on how it feels to you. Then there’s a very good chance that how something feels to you right now may not continue to feel that way forever. Or even just five years down the road, sustainable success evolves as we evolve, which is actually great news because that means that we can experience sustainable success right now and in the future and in the future, even after that, we can experience sustainable success right now because it’s a spectrum because it exists on a spectrum because it’s not a black and white sustainable or not sustainable thing. We’re gonna get into all of this. So stick with me.

So I wanna go through in this episode actually showing you how do we create sustainable success. And of course, I’m gonna also walk through some, you know, specific examples to show you this is what this journey actually looks like before we even get into that as all my invitation to you is to remember the whole co moto look external for ideas, but internal for answers because everything that I’m sharing with you here is what I see as the pathway as the journey to creating this sustainable success. But just because that’s what I see, just because that’s what I support our clients with doesn’t mean that every single thing is going to be exactly specific to or relevant to you. So my invitation to you as I share how I see that we create sustainable success is for you to really look at yourself, just notice yourself while I’m sharing these pieces and ask yourself, how does that land with me? And get curious, how does that feel to me? Is that resonating with me? Is that relevant to me, to my business to what I want to build? Because as you’ll soon see, that’s actually a very important part of this journey of cultivating ever expanding sustainable success. It’s awareness, inner awareness of yourself, being able to actually hear yourself and then trust yourself that what you believe that what you are experiencing, that what you desire is actually the right thing more than what anyone else outside of you might be saying is the quote unquote right way to do things. All right. So that’s my invitation to you.

Let’s jump in. Then how do we create sustainable success? It all starts with trusting yourself enough to notice, you know what I kind of think I’ve been caught up in a little bit of a race towards someone else’s definition of success. And then to explore, could there be a different way? I will be the first to own the reality that in our online business world in order to actually start to develop sustainable success in our own business, we have to decondition or unlearn so much of what we believe about success, about sustainability. There are so many voices in this online business world that say success is this sustainable success is this, you know, I started at the very beginning of this episode, sharing what some of the voices are saying. And so in order to even get to the place of recognizing, you know, I think I’ve kind of been following the shoulds, the shiny objects and the strategies Du Jour, we have to first recognize, hey, there could even be another way in order to create sustainable success and to exit out of the culture of speedy success that is so prevalent in our online business world. We have to actually allow ourselves to imagine that there could be another way early on in my business.

I was totally that person who was trying to do everything, right? Because I just felt like, you know, if I get this perfect, if I do it exactly how they say you’re supposed to, then I will finally be successful. But the problem was that I just kept trying things and they just kept not working. And so I honestly got to this place where I was so frustrated because it felt like everyone who was successful around me must have some secret strategy that they’re not sharing. And I remember like, I can feel this memory so viscerally, I was sitting at the very beginning of the pandemic at my parents’ house because I got stuck there a whole different story. But I remember I was sitting there and I was seeing yet another person marketing yet another webinar that was going to give me the secret to whatever. I don’t know what it was, maybe 10-K months or something. And I was like, oh, how many more of these do I have to go to, to figure out what this secret actually is? And I remember, you know, I don’t know if it was that one or if it was something else. But I remember around that time I signed up for this membership and they were teaching this is how you become a millionaire essentially. And I was like, OK, well, I, I wanna, I wanna make millions. So OK, I’m gonna do every single thing that you say exactly how you say to do it. And I am, I’m a good student. I did everything to A T and what happened? It didn’t work, it didn’t work how they said it was going to. And so I was left wondering what do I actually need in order to be successful in my business in order to have the business of my dreams as so many people in this online business world say, create the business of your dreams. And after of course, moving through some pity parties, I’m gonna be totally honest about that. I eventually came to this realization of like, you know, maybe there’s a different way and it was that recognition of, if I want different results, I have to do something differently. That led me onto this path of discovering that actually there is not a singular right way. In fact, there’s a whole bunch of ways, there’s a whole bunch of strategies and any of them could work for pretty much any person. But what actually is going to make any of them even capable of being successful is that there are foundations underneath every single strategy. And it’s these foundations that make that strategy actually capable of being successful.

This is what led me obviously to the work that I’m doing today where I support online business owners through our foundations focused and self trust led approach to building businesses that bring them as much joy as it does revenue. But I had to go through this journey, I had to go through this journey of trying to do everything right in my business, searching for that secret strategy implementing to A T and it not working for me to realize maybe there’s actually something else, maybe doing everything perfectly isn’t the way that I’m going to create success and sustainable success in my business.

If you feel like you’re maybe in this first step where you’re just starting to recognize, maybe there’s a different way. I have a couple of questions for you and you can take these however you want to, you can pause, pause me talking. If that’s gonna be helpful, you can answer them right away or just kind of sit with them and just see what comes up as you kind of let them percolate in your brain and being I have four questions for you.

Number one, what’s one thing you’re doing in your business right now because you should do it? A common answer that I hear here from clients is I’m posting every single day. I’m trying to show up on social media every single day. I have to, I have to be consistent. And the reality is that the biggest reason why they’re doing that is because they have believed that they should or another one that I hear from clients is, well, I niched down my audience to this like super, super, super specific audience because you should have a super specific niche. So what’s one thing you’re doing in your business right now? Because you should doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever that thing is is wrong. But if the motivation for doing it is because you should, then that’s an interesting thing to look at and get curious about and to see is this actually something I wanna be doing or am I just doing this because I should?

Second question, what is your family or culture of origin taught you is true about success and or how was success or maybe even how is success defined by these external sources? I know for me when I was younger and this is a much longer story. So I’m not gonna go super into this, but my family had a period of being extremely wealthy and then we basically lost everything kind of overnight. And So my family, my culture of origin taught me that success equals a lot of money. But when I look back, I realize that was actually only a part of success. And if that is all that, I’m defining my success on, then we’re going to run into problems. And I have more to say about that. But I wanna let you really answer this question for yourself. What has your family or culture of origin taught you is true about success and or how was success defined by these external sources?

Next question, where are you searching for the one right way or the secret strategy in your business? As you can see, I’ve gone through that exact same search. I remember seeing so clearly that it felt like I was constantly striving and was never going to actually catch the thing that I wanted, the success that I wanted. So if you are realizing, oh wow, I am still searching for a one right way. I am still searching for a secret strategy. You’re in great company because I think every single business owner ever has done the exact same thing. Here’s that question again. Where are you still searching for the one right way or the secret strategy in your business?

And last question, whose voice are you trusting above or in place of your own? Oh That’s a big one. Whose voice are you trusting above or in place of your own? The way that we define success for our clients here at WholeCo is really if they trust their own voice more than they trust anyone else’s, including mine, including any of ours here at WholeCo. Because as you’ll see, as we kind of move into these next steps of how we cultivate sustainable success in order to cultivate sustainable success, you do ultimately have to trust your own voice above everyone else’s and there’s nuance to that, of course, we could get into all of that nuance, but that is essentially the key to sustainable success. And it’s OK if you’re not there yet, we’re gonna talk about how to get there. But here’s that question again, whose voice are you trusting above or in place of your own?

These are just a few questions, of course. But if you are in that space of, is there a different way? I encourage you to actually answer at least one or maybe all four of those questions just to start seeing? Oh, wow, maybe there actually could be a different way. And once you start to see, you may not even fully believe it, but you at least see it. And part of you believes, maybe there is a different way to running a business that isn’t following all of the shoulds, all of the shiny objects, all of the strategies Du Jour at that point, in order to move into the next step of cultivating sustainable success, you literally have to or maybe you could say get to try things, you get to toss perfectionism out the window and you get to allow yourself to experiment and make a mess. This is going to feel terrifying. If you’re in a space of, you know, you’re kind of just coming from, I have to do things this one right way in order to be successful, the mere thought of making a mess of experimenting, of maybe things not working, of not getting it right of not doing it perfectly is very likely going to be terrifying.

A key characteristic of speedy success, which is the complete opposite of sustainable success and it’s actually really the traditional approach in the online business world. But a key characteristic of this speedy success is perfectionism. It is having to get it right in order to be successful. And so if you’re noticing that this is a thought that you’re carrying, which we all are to various degrees, then this is an opportunity for you to recognize that some part of you is still buying into speedy success. And I might even ask you to reflect here or invite you to reflect here on how is believing that I have to get this right or believing that there is one right way. How is that serving me?

I know for me, I still, of course we all do, but I still sometimes get into this kind of perfectionistic mindset where “I have to get this right, or else it’s not gonna work.” And when I find myself going there and I get curious around, how is that serving me? How is this belief that there’s one right way serving me? What often comes up is, well, it gives me an out because if I don’t get it right, if I don’t do it perfectly, if it doesn’t work, then I can just say, “oh, well, of course, it didn’t work because I didn’t implement it perfectly” or “well, of course, it didn’t work because I messed up. “And so it kind kind of gives me this like ability to pre empt being disappointed about the results. And it gives me this ability to say, well, of course, it was never going to work. And so I don’t have to ever get my hopes up and hope that it’s going to work because I’m like, well, I didn’t get it right. And then I can kind of also it serves me by, I get to get upset at myself and I get to really believe that nothing I do is ever good enough. And you know, all those things that we like to believe about ourselves, even though we don’t actually like to believe them about ourselves.

So the invitation here in this second step of how we cultivate sustainable success is to try things. It’s to make a mess, it’s to experiment, it’s to play and know that as we do each of those things, we actually will begin to decondition ourselves. We’ll actually be able to start removing these kind of dredges of the culture of speedy success. And what that does is open up so much more space and really ever expanding space to cultivate and experience sustainable success. Now, here’s the thing with this stuff. This is why a lot of people don’t like this step of making a mess of throwing perfectionism out the window of experimenting. And that’s because they’re like, well, “I feel like I’ve already been doing that. I feel like I’ve been throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks but nothing is sticking.” If that’s you, then here’s the difference. There is such a thing as making a mess unintentionally and there is such a thing as making a mess with intention. And when you make a mess with intention and with awareness, which is our next point which I’ll get into in a moment, you’ll actually find that your progress toward ever expanding sustainable success is so much more ease and enjoyable. And even when you do hit challenges because we’re always going to have hard things in business. Even when you do come up against that obstacle or that challenge or that sticking point, you’re actually then able to more usefully contextualize that challenge and see it as part of your journey of sustainable success.

Our clients in EXPAND are a really good example of this. The EXPAND journey is set up to literally lead them through this pathway that I’m sharing with you here to create this ever expanding sustainable success. And through that journey, they actually are supported to build the foundations that will continue supporting them to expand. And so as they build each of these foundations, their audience, their offer, messaging, marketing, lead gen, sales. As they build these foundations, they’re able to start meeting all of their challenges with new eyes, they’re able to meet those gremlins or that imposter syndrome or whatever it is, you know, their maybe lack of organization or whatever it is. I don’t know why I can’t think of more examples right now, but that’s fine. They’re able to meet all of their challenges with new eyes and see that all of these things, these kind of like self judgments, these resistance patterns, whatever it is, all of these things that used to throw them off track now are still showing up as they continue on this journey of sustainable success, but they don’t have power over them anymore because they’re able to recognize, “this thing that’s happening, it’s part of my journey of sustainable success, but it is not my full journey of sustainable success.”

When we are in that kind of unintentional making a mess phase where we’re just trying everything, what we’re kind of lacking is the context for how all of this fits into the puzzle. But also we’re lacking awareness around what actually do I want to be doing and do I need to be doing and that’s why our next step is awareness. So as you try things, as you make a mess, as you look at, you know, just experimentation and play and allowing yourself to not get it right? Allowing the perfectionism to slowly but surely melt away. You’re gonna want to ask yourself, you know, do I like this? Do I not like this? Does this feel good? Does this feel miserable? Why does it feel good? Why does it feel miserable?

This third step of how we cultivate sustainable success is essentially awareness. It’s trying things, it’s doing things, it’s experimenting in that last step, but it’s being aware while you are trying, doing experimenting and not only aware but being curious and this is important, right? Because it would be so easy to say, you know, well, “I hate social media so it’s not sustainable for me to show up on social media. I tried Carly, you know, I marketed on social media and I just hate it. So it’s not sustainable. I’m just gonna get off social media.” It’d be so easy to say that. And I mean, I know I’ve said that I know clients have said that I know so many business owners have said that like so many other online business owners right now are making so much money from this messaging of “you hate social media, so just quit social media.” And that’s fine if there’s awareness happening with that decision.

This third step of cultivating sustainable success looks like trying things and then noticing how does that feel and then getting curious about why it feels that way. So instead of just saying, “I hate social media, I’m gonna jump off social media.” It’s saying, “you know, I don’t like social media but why don’t I like social media? what is that really about?” And then from that curiosity, it’s actually discovering if this thing, let’s say social media to continue the example it’s discovering, “is social media actually sustainable or is there actually something going on underneath this hatred of social media that is causing it to be unsustainable?”

An example of this is a few years ago, I quit Instagram. And literally my reason for quitting Instagram was I hate Instagram. And so I just started marketing purely on my Facebook group and to my email list, which were both tiny audiences at the time. I think I had about 200 people total in my audience at that time. But what this ultimately did was it has severely limited my visibility and in many ways because I quit Instagram all those years ago, I have had to kind of make up in recent years for that lack of visibility because a Facebook group and an email list are not greatly visible ways of marketing your business. And so I’ve had to now start thinking even more intensely about how do I cultivate visibility in my business? Because I made this decision all those years ago when I look back at that decision, I was in that place of, I hate Instagram. And so this is not sustainable. I’m quitting Instagram.

But the reality was I hate Instagram because I feel really unsafe being visible. And I’m terrified of what people are gonna think of me. So I’m just gonna go to my Facebook group and I’m gonna go to my email list where I can see every single person who is looking at my content. And so I know exactly who those people are. I feel in control. I feel safe and I am not so afraid of the visibility here, that hatred that I was putting on Instagram wasn’t actually about Instagram. It was about a fear of visibility and because I quite Instagram did that fear of visibility go away. No, it followed me into other places. It followed me into my podcast that I released last year where I struggled to record episodes for the podcast because I was so afraid of being visible in a way that I couldn’t see who was seeing me. So it was the exact same problem that was showing up that was showing up originally on Instagram, but now is showing up in my podcast.

So this is why I say the second step is about being aware. It’s do I like this? Do I not like this? Does this feel good? Does this not feel good? It’s about that awareness, but it’s also about curiosity. It’s why does this thing feel good or why does this thing feel miserable? Then what can we do about that? By the way, if that story about my decision to quit Instagram? And you know, actually it wasn’t about Instagram, it was about visibility. If that’s resonating, I really encourage you to go check out Social Media Reset. It’s our audio course and this is literally exactly what that course helps with. It helps you create awareness around what’s actually going on in your relationship with social media so that you can heal that. And then from that place, make empowered decisions about your social media usage, which may look like you deciding to quit Instagram or it might look like you realizing, “oh this is not actually about Instagram, this is about something else entirely. And I can, you know, work on healing that while still using Instagram or whatever social media platform it is as a tool to really, you know, move my business forward and create that visibility for this awareness to actually cultivate this increasing sustainable success.” Though you have to make a decision to then follow those things that you enjoy and that feel good and release or heal those things that truly do not feel good. This is really that moment where the rubber meets the road. If you truly desire sustainable success in your business, you have to make a decision to go down that path of sustainable success and you have to have the commitment to keep putting 1 ft in front of the other, in front of the other, in front of the other.

I’m nearing the end of my fifth year in business right now. And through this whole time, truthfully, maybe not the first year or two, but at least the last three years I’ve been really cultivating, consciously cultivating sustainable success in my business. I’ve been using even the language of sustainable success, I think for about three years now, but about a year and a half ago—So I guess halfway through this process—I had an 80 K sales month. It was my 1st 80 K sales month and that month actually became an invitation to me to go even deeper and to look even more intensely at the question of what is sustainable success to me previously, I had been, you know, doing work I love doing and the way I love doing it with the people I love working with, I had already made a lot of decisions to follow those things to do, the things that felt good. I had made pivots and the type of work I was doing, I had made pivots and the type of client I was working with, I had made pivots and all sorts of different things to create a much more sustainably successful business that I actually enjoyed showing up for. But I had this 80 K sales month and I was invited to go deeper and to look at what is sustainable success, what else needs to shift in my business to make it more sustainable. And that year journey really led to me making a ton of changes, a ton of shifts in WholeCo in this business. And I even shared about what those are in a previous episode when this podcast was called Selling Chocolate About WholeCo’s Messy Middle. So if you’re curious, you can go back and listen to that.

But just to give you kind of a insight from this new, much more deep exploration of what else, what still needed to shift in my business to make it more sustainable. I ended up really drastically changing my messaging and my positioning ended up really drastically changing my price points. I ended up pretty drastically changing my business model. I was already up until that 80 k month doing things that I loved doing in the way that I love doing them with the people that I loved working with. But because I am committed to this journey of sustainable success and because I am committed to actually putting 1 ft in front of the other and continuing down this journey, I came to this realization of it’s time to nuance these things even more. And so I, I kept going through the same process. I still to this day, continue to go through the same process. I made a mess. I tried some things through that. I did step two, I asked myself, what do I like? What do I not like? I got curious around that awareness. Step three, I trusted myself to keep making choices, keep making changes and keep moving my business down this journey of sustainable success.

Eventually, what happens as you keep moving through this journey, which happens in a cyclical way to be honest as you can see, even from what I just shared, we will create a version of sustainable success. But then in that process of creating that, we’ll realize, oh, hey, look, time or even more depth and nuance to this and we just continue kind of moving around this cycle. But as you keep moving through this whole journey, you begin to integrate self trust as a way of being rather than as a thing that you do. I shared at the beginning of this episode that the defining characteristic of what makes something sustainable is you and how you feel about what you are doing. And what I really mean by that is that the defining characteristic of whether or not your business actually can be sustainably successful is whether or not you trust yourself. And this is not a either or situation. It’s not a either you trust yourself or you don’t. This too exists on a spectrum. But even just by moving through the process that I’ve been leading you through in this episode of how we create sustainable success. You have been cultivating this self trust.

The first step of deciding to drop his perfectionism make a mess is self trust. The second step of asking what you actually want and then hearing yourself and getting curious about it is self trust. The third step of rubber meets the road, actually taking those actions is self trust. And the more you take these steps and the more you trust yourself to keep taking these steps, the more you actually begin to operate from self trust rather than having to try to trust yourself.

Now, it’s not a bad thing to have to try to trust yourself because we all go through that phase, we all have to go through this journey of learning that it’s OK to trust ourselves and that can be really small, right? Like even in those questions I asked you toward the beginning about like whose voice are you listening to more than your own? Even just allowing yourself to answer that question is you taking a step of self trust? So it’s ok if you’re just taking step by step by step in this journey of developing self trust, because guess what? That’s the only way to develop self trust. But eventually, as you keep taking these steps, this is where self trust integrates as a way of being rather than as a thing that you do.

If you look at the sustainable success system, which you’ll see on our website home page. It’s a circle and you enter the circle through the doorway of self trust. And then as you move through the sustainable success system and build each of the foundational elements of your business—your audience, offers, messaging, marketing, lead gen, sales—as you move through this circle around these elements over and over and over. It’s not just a one time thing. You’ll go deeper and deeper and deeper into that center of the Sustainable Success system, which is self trust as a way of being.

I just actually wrapped up working with a one on one client for a couple of years. Actually, she just graduated and in our final session working together, we were really just reflecting on her growth. We were celebrating things that happened throughout these couple of years. And she shared with me that one of her biggest kind of takeaways or biggest expressions of expansion is that she’s able to now know “this is my business and I get to do what I wanna do. I get to show up and serve my people, how I want to, even if there’s 30 business coaches somewhere out there saying that whatever I’m doing is wrong. I’m only focused on how do I do this.” That is an expression of self trust as a way of being rather than as something that you do. It’s operating from this deeply rooted place of power within ourselves, of awareness of curiosity of, I got to trust myself first and foremost always. And it doesn’t matter what people outside of me might be saying because I trust myself first.

Now, that’s something that yes, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could always be there? But we’re not going to be always there. And that’s totally fine. And it does take a while to even get there in any capacity. As I told you with this private client, we worked together for over two years. So you know, it’s a journey but when you arrive at a place where that begins to become the baseline, that’s when building your business actually can be full of so much more ease and actually can be full of so much less drama. We’re still gonna have obstacles, there’s still gonna be hard things. But when you have cultivated self trust as a way of being by taking this exact journey, I’ve been leading you through, this is cause for such a celebration because this is essentially that fruits of your labor paying off in cultivating that ease cultivating that just much more grounded and centered approach to building your business. But just because that ease, that grounded, that centeredness isn’t how you feel right now, that doesn’t mean that something’s wrong with you. It simply means that you’re earlier on in the journey and taking the journey is how we come to that place of feeling, generally more grounded of feeling, generally more useful of feeling, generally more sustainably successful.

Now, this is all well and good, right? This is this is our journey. These are our steps to cultivating sustainable success. But how does this actually play out? What does this actually look like? I wanna share an example of our comprehensive business training program EXPAND just to show you what taking this journey actually looks like when you join expand, you’ve essentially just by stepping into the program, taken that very first step of self trust. You’ve said, I have tried doing all the things I have tried finding this perfect strategy. I’ve tried implementing to A T doing everything exactly how someone somewhere said I’m supposed to do it. I’ve tried doing all the right things, but I don’t wanna build my business that way anymore. I do not want to build my business based off of the “shoulds,” the shiny objects, and the strategies Du Jour, I wanna build my business my way. You may not even fully know what that looks like yet, but that is why our people join EXPAND because they know that they want guidance and support to uncover what is actually sustainable for them. What their sustainable success is actually going to look like.

At the very beginning when they jump into EXPAND, they do challenge number one and this challenge is all about let’s get your next client. And this challenge is an opportunity to essentially throw caution to the wind and simply make a huge mess. This challenge is your opportunity to experiment to play to try things. We give you a little guidance. But the goal here is for you to step in to this step of sustainable success of making a mess. And then at the end of this two week challenge, you’re guided to reflect on the experience. We ask some specific questions. We walk you through this reflection process and our clients walk away from this having so much more clarity on what they actually like, what they don’t like, what feels good, what feels miserable? Why something feels good? Why it feels miserable? We lead them through this next step of cultivating sustainable success and that awareness alongside the curiosity that they have just practiced, allows them to have so much more clarity and direction as they then move into our core modules—audience, offers, messaging, marketing, lead gen, and sales—and through every single core module, they find themselves going through many versions of this process of cultivating sustainable success.

In the audience module, we literally start with who do you actually want to work with? And we make it very clear on how to tell if what your answer to that is something that you think it should be or something that you actually want it to be. Only once they get clear on who do you actually wanna work with. Then we begin to build on top of that and clarify the foundations and then add the strategy on top of it in the offers module, we literally start with what work do you actually want to be doing? We’ll lead you through a process to help you actually uncover what that even is. And then once you have that answer, we then clarify what that is through our foundational work, and then we add a strategy on top of it. Every single step of the journey is what do you actually like? Now let’s build that. Whereas when you look at how so much is done in the culture of speedy success in our online business world, it’s “what’s going to work? Now, let’s go build that.” Whereas here at WholeCo and inside EXPAND especially it’s “what do you like? OK, now let’s build that to make it work at every step of the journey, you are trying things, you’re making a mess, you’re experimenting and then we guide you through the reflection, through the awareness, through the curiosity and then you begin to implement and through this process, you are not only cultivating sustainable success, you’re also cultivating self trust.”

And this is so amazing for me and my team to like witness and be part of because the further our clients move through, expand, the more naturally that self trust comes to them. At first, it’s a lot of, you know, very natural kind of, I don’t know if I can do this or, but wait, can I actually even do the thing that I want to do or I don’t even know what I actually want. But then as they continue on this journey of sustainable success, it becomes more of, oh, I see where that external voice has been defining what I want for me. But now I know what I actually want and I am going to go and create that. And by the end of their time in the program, they’re starting to more consistently operate out of this self trust rather than out of these shoulds, shiny objects, and strategies Du Jour. Of course, it’s still practice, but it’s becoming more natural and this is how we cultivate that real lasting sustainable success in our businesses.

Just last weekend, I was driving 17 hours. Oh my gosh, my dad and I were driving 17 hours. He came with me to help with my cats because, you know, all sorts of things, but also to help on a 17 hour drive because who wants to do that anyway. So I was driving 17 hours with my dad and we got to talking about why I do the work that I do. I actually, I brought this to him because I was like, you know, I’m, “I don’t even know why I do the work that I do. “Not in like a, a bad way or like a, I don’t know if I want to be doing this work. It’s like, no, I, I keep showing up and I want to keep showing up, but I don’t know why.

In the past it’s been, you know, like more impact, like, do great things in the world, big vision or it’s also been make more money, you know, I gotta get rich or whatever it is, you know, but it’s no longer impact or income. So why am I doing this work? And through that conversation, I realized that it’s basically because more often than not, I enjoy this work. And, you know, when I first said that out loud to my dad, I was like, huh, maybe that’s enough more often than not. “I enjoy this work. And so that’s why I keep doing it.”

We so often think that we have to have this huge why behind our work and if you do have a really huge, why? Awesome, right? Like not knocking that, I’m totally celebrating that. And yes, of course, I have a big vision for how I’m going to continue using my platform as a force for good in the world. And I also intend to make a heck of a lot of money from this work. But neither of those things are why I do this work at various points in my business. One or both of those things was why, absolutely. But these days that’s not why anymore. Now, I simply do this work because I enjoy it more often than I don’t enjoy it. And that makes it worth it for me. And so I keep going.

When you enjoy your work more often than you don’t enjoy it, it’s sustainable. And from this place you’ll find that naturally you’re working however many hours you actually want to work. Not I, oh, I only work 15 hours a week because that is sustainable from this place. You’ll find that naturally you’re bringing in the right support and you’re not just hiring a team because that’s what successful businesses do from this place where you enjoy your work more often than you don’t enjoy it. You’ll naturally bring in the income and the profit and the revenue that you desire. And that feels great to you instead of just, oh, I’m, I’m running this multimillion dollar business because that’s what I’m supposed to strive for as a business owner. When you cultivate sustainable success in your business, the natural by-product of that sustainable success are the time, money and energy freedom that you desire, that you truly desire, not that someone else says that you should desire, but that you truly desire and that actually feels good to you.

If you’re listening to this today, you may not actually know what that sustainable success looks like or feels like yet. But the truth is that that’s ok because you are not going to know what your sustainable success actually practically looks like until you commit to taking the journey, until you commit to making a mess, until you commit to cultivating that awareness. And that curiosity until you commit to actually implementing and taking the steps and until you commit to keep doing all of those things so that you can cultivate that self trust as a way of being rather than as a thing that you simply do. I always think about when I go on a hike, I don’t know what every part of that hike is going to look like. I don’t even know what the quote unquote end of the hike is going to look like. But even without knowing, I choose to take the hike because I know that that’s something that I want to do. And I also know that if I pay attention along that hike, I will be enamored with every single flower or tree or critter or rock or vista that I see along the way. Literally, I probably am one of the most annoying people to take a hike with because I’m just like, oh, did you see that? Oh, look at that. Oh, that’s so cool. Oh, no, because I am on that hike not for the destination, but for the journey. Every single part of that hike, even the hard parts is worth it because every single part is beautiful or has something for me to see. And therefore every single part of that journey is worth celebrating because every single part is a necessary part of the journey.

This is the journey of sustainable success. It’s 1 ft in front of the other. It’s making a mess. It’s staying committed to the awareness and the curiosity and staying committed to keep putting 1 ft in front of the other and allowing yourself to not fully know what it’s going to look like. But to know that every single part, every single piece of clarity that you get, every single step that you take is worth it. Because of this, this sustainable success is what you actually want. This is the journey of sustainable success and this is how you create it.

Thanks for listening to the Sustainable Success podcast. You’re home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I truly believe that these are the conversations we need to be having more of in our online business community. If you know too, would you leave me a review and/or share this episode with the friends?

While the review or share would absolutely be a cherry on top, I am already so beyond grateful for you tuning into these episodes, which is why I would love to gift you 25 self trust bucks. These are a dollar to dollar discount to all things WholeCo. All you need to do to claim them is head over to wholeco.media/podcast and drop your name and email in the form. You can see our terms for more details.

I know that so many of you are ready to take your next step in your journey of sustainable success, and I’d love to invite you to work with us using self trust as your North Star and foundations as your path. Me and my team are here ready to support you in getting paid really freaking well to do the work that you most love doing in the way you most love doing it, with the people you most love working with. We have freebies courses, group programs and even occasionally private coaching all set up to meet you where you’re at in business and with what you’re looking for. Head over to wholeco.media/everything to take your next step on this journey of sustainable success.