BBP 117: Momentum Magic: Keeping the Business Ball Rolling with Michelle Ponvert
Shownotes:
In this podcast episode, Michelle Ponvert shares how an overemphasis on mindset and strategy can sometimes obstruct progress in business. Michelle argues that while these elements are important, they can lead to analysis paralysis, preventing action. Instead, she advocates for taking immediate action on ideas to maintain momentum and achieve success. Listen to learn more!
About Michelle
Michelle is a Life-First business strategist & educator obsessed with helping passionate entrepreneurs with limited capacity build businesses that truly support their unique life, circumstances and goals! She’s also runs the Business Chic Shop, is co-host of the Marketing Like A Mother podcast, co-owner of Like a Mother Movement and a hands-on Mum, and life-long Aussie expat living in France.
Synopsis
Today we’re diving into a topic that’s bound to resonate with many of you: how mindset and strategy might actually be getting in your way. Yes, you heard that right. Sometimes, all the mindset work and strategic planning can stall your progress. To help us unpack this, we have insights from Michelle Ponvert. Let’s get into why sometimes, just sometimes, it’s best to stop thinking and start doing.
The Overinflation of Mindset and Strategy
Michelle Ponvert kicks things off by challenging the heavy emphasis on mindset and strategy in the online business world. While these aspects are undeniably important, they can sometimes become obstacles rather than aids.
Time, energy, and money are often poured into mastering mindset and strategy, but this can lead to overthinking and inaction.
Michelle argues that these elements, though crucial, aren’t always the primary focus needed for success.
The Spark and the Wobbles
Every great idea starts with a spark. But what happens when that initial excitement meets self-doubt? You have a brilliant idea, and you’re eager to get started. Questions about your audience, your qualifications, and the potential for failure begin to surface. This leads to overthinking, causing the momentum to grind to a halt.
The Power of Taking Action
Michelle encourages us to flip the switch and focus on action. Taking action, even imperfectly, creates movement and progress. Embrace the excitement of new ideas to maintain momentum. Sometimes, you need to step out of your comfort zone and make executive decisions for your business.
Bottom Line
The key takeaway here is simple: action trumps overthinking. While mindset and strategy are important, they shouldn’t paralyze you. Embrace your ideas, chase that initial excitement, and take steps forward. Your version of success is waiting on the other side of action.
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Transcript
[00:00:00].00] – Liz Stapleton
Welcome back to another episode of the blog, Breakthrough Summit podcast, where I share snippets from our annual virtual summit. And I’m your host, Liz Stapleton. Today we’re diving into why mindset and strategy actually might be getting in your way. Yeah, you heard me right. I’m going to go ahead and let Michelle Ponvert explain why sometimes, but just sometimes, all that mindset strategy stuff is a bit overinflated. Let’s dive in.
[00:00:21].20] – Michelle Ponvert
okay, let’s get started. Why the mindset and strategy stuff can sometimes get in the way. Particularly in this online business world, but honestly, in most places where we’re trying to build something on our own, a lot of weight and a lot of energy, time, money gets invested in helping you master your mindset, get yourself in the right space mentally, and then figuring out, scoring the right strategy, figuring out the how to do things the right way. Both of those are super important parts of building a business, ultimately. But I’m going to take devil’s advocate here today and argue that they aren’t actually the big piece that you should be focusing on most of the time to get to your version of success. Basically, I think they’re a bit overinflated, and I’m here to share why I think they get overinflated. Here’s what I see, and I’m I’m 100% guilty of this, too, so don’t worry. Here’s what I see happening as most people try and build their business or grow as they’ve actually got a business started. You have an idea. It’s an idea you’re super excited about and you love it, you want to get started like yesterday.
[00:01:49].09] – Michelle Ponvert
These can be all sorts of ideas. I’m talking about things as small as a piece of content you want to create and something as big as a whole new offer, even the direction of your business. But there is spark, something has lit you up. Then what happens, usually, is we start to have some wobbles. We start to feel some feelings about this idea and start to maybe question ourselves, wondering if Our audience, the people we have looking at what we’re doing, maybe you won’t like it, maybe you don’t even have enough people in your audience anyway to pull this thing off. Maybe if it doesn’t work, you could have wasted your time, which is something you’re conscious of as a solo business owner, and definitely if you’ve got all the big life stuff going on, I do what a lot of people in my world do. Maybe some inferiority complex comes in and we start to worry that we’re not qualified to do the thing in the first place. And that maybe even someone might judge you for doing it. You get the idea. Basically, we get stuck in this analysis, paralysis space where we’re just worried and anxiously questioning the idea and of that great momentum you’d built up with the spark, the idea, stops.
[00:03:06].22] – Michelle Ponvert
It just grinds to a halt as we start to dive into those big, big questions, start to question our mindset, question our strategies. And some of those things are super valid. I don’t want to bash mindset work, I don’t want to bash strategy, those are really important and valid. And some of these questions are important and valid. I personally struggle a lot with rejections sensitive dysphoria. I know a lot of this, even if it isn’t the scale that maybe we feel it at, is still coming from somewhere real. But what happens, regardless of how real or not those questions are, is that we put a pause on the idea to start working on some of this bigger stuff, to examine those strategies, work on the mindset, and sometimes, often, start to outsource the decision making of whether to do this idea and how to do this idea to other people. This is where we often see people getting stuck in using other people’s frameworks, going through a lot of working on ourselves, working on the big picture, and it pulls you out of actually doing the doing. Often this comes from, again, really understandable places. This comes from those bigger picture questions sometimes seeming safer or smarter or just easier in a weird way than actually doing the hard thing and doing the doing.
[00:04:37].18] – Michelle Ponvert
Because what you’re creating, what your idea is, is unknown. Sometimes we can’t know it. How it’s going to turn out is something unknowable until we’ve tried it. That’s really scary, especially if you have other life stuff going on, if you’ve lived a life that causes you to question things, or if you’ve been born with a brain that tells you to question things. The result of all of this questioning is that you can start talking yourself out of the idea and fall out of love with it, and you’ll start to see the cracks, see the potential pitfalls, see the work you maybe need to do on yourself, the things you need to learn, the things you need to do before you can actually do the doing of this very first spark of an idea. Ultimately, what truly ends up happening is nothing. Sure, you may be working on some big stuff, really working on figuring yourself out, figuring out your big picture. But let’s get to brass tacks. Nothing’s happening to move that idea forward. You won’t have created anything new. People won’t know about it, so you won’t know if they’re going to like it.
[00:05:50].03] – Michelle Ponvert
We don’t ultimately know if it’s going to work. We’ve just been thinking. After all of this, I feel like most of the time, and myself very much included, you start to feel even more stuck now because you’ve added these extra hurdles in your way of doing the doing and moving forward. Basically, by trying to outthink ourselves, we actually get in our way of doing things to show ourselves what’s possible and what could happen. I don’t love sitting in the negative. So let’s flip the switch and I’m going to talk about what can happen when we start leaning into just taking action. That’s honestly the point of all of this is that we can’t get anywhere without trying, without doing something. If you sit still, a body in motion will keep moving. If you sit still, it’s very unlikely that things are going to move forward for you, particularly move forward in a way that you want them to. That’s why I’m here to advocate for a cheer lead. That first gut reaction, that step one I mentioned, the spark, the excitement, the motivation, the momentum that sometimes comes with the new and the shiny. I’m a big fan of chasing the shiny in my joint business with my business bestie, created entirely on the whim.
[00:07:12].22] – Michelle Ponvert
We have a membership called the shiny squirrel chases. I’m not going to hide. I love me some shiny. But it’s because ultimately, behind that shiny, behind that excitement, is movement. It is momentum, and it is something that helps you take action. Taking action is truly the only way to make things happen in your business. They’re not going to happen for you. Now, I know that doesn’t come as easily for some of us as it does for others. It’s super understandable. As I said, we’ve all lived life. We’ve got experiences of traumas and neural pathways that have taught us to mask, to shrink, to hide, to play it safe, because we needed to stay safe as people. But as business owners, We do need to step out of being the squishy humans that we are sometimes and start putting our CEO hats on and start deciding what we want to do with this business that we control, that we get to decide. And how do you want to change that?
[00:08:19].20] – Liz Stapleton
All right, that’s it for today. Remember, it’s about doing the doing. Take the first step, chase that shiny idea, and let the momentum carry you forward. Don’t let overthinking paralyze you. Your version of success is waiting on the other side of action. Be sure to join me next time to learn about guest blogging from a pro-copywriter.
