Chelsea:
This episode is a little different. First off, happy Thanksgiving! We're releasing this on Thanksgiving, a little strange because we are not recording on Thanksgiving.
We practiced gratitude for a couple months and we want to talk about what we discovered, and why we believe you should reflect and practice gratitude as a small business owner. We just want to have this conversation about why being grateful can actually help your small business.
Vivian:
So first, let's start off by talking about what the physical practice of this was, Chelsea. We have a meeting once a week. Every meeting, we had to at least discuss for some portion of that time what we were grateful for. It wasn't just one sentence, "hey, I'm grateful for X, Y, and Z". We actually told ourselves we were going to talk about it in depth. So every week when we'd have our weekly discussion, Chelsea would say, "should we do our gratitude practice? Do you want to go first? Do you want me to go first?" We'd say, okay, this is what I'm grateful for. Here are the reasons why. What I found was it was a really nice opportunity to be able to talk about the stuff that sometimes you don't find super important, right?
Chelsea:
We made sure every time that we came up with something different. We actually took the time to think and reflect instead of just saying one sentence. Every time I told Vivian, "you go first" is because I hadn't prepared anything, I'm telling on myself.
It's so wonderful to be able to work with a family member, to work with my sister who is like a second mother to me. We have such a special bond and then also to be able to...this is my full-time job. So I get to do everything with Vivian, which seems like a lot, but to me it's fine.
We would take the time to think about everything that we have going on and everything that we have to be grateful for. It was very moving. It was very eye opening. And I'm going to be honest, it helped me be more productive. I don't know about you.
Vivian:
It was very nice. I think too, for all of you out there that are listening that are the owners of your small business, it can be tough some weeks. Whether that be because you missed out on an opportunity for a contract, or you had an expense that you weren't planning for, life just happens at times. Well, not sometimes, it never happens on our timeline, okay? We are not in control of the way sometimes the dominoes stack up. So it is nice to have a practice like this in place because I will tell you that from the perspective of someone who's owning a business, when Chelsea and I are talking about this, I love hearing her feedback and her perspective on it because she's in it day to day. She has access to me. She knows she can ping me. She can call me. She can text me, whatever it is. She does a fabulous job of emailing me saying, this is what I need from you this week. It's nice to also know that she's looking at the positive. Then that helps me understand and keep a pulse on things.
It does help to gain perspective and then also be able to pivot if you need to in some areas. For me as the owner too, I think it's nice to focus on the good instead of always feeling like there's a timeline attached to something. It's not always about the timeline.
Chelsea:
Y'all, how often do you talk with your employees or if they're not employees, your volunteers, your significant others who got roped into this?
Vivian:
That's a very good point, Chelsea, because we know some of y'all out there are roping your significant others into markets and whatnot.
Chelsea:
Yeah, how often are you guys talking about, this is how far we've come, look at all the good that we've done, look at where we are. How often are you just talking negative. There's nothing wrong with having that conversation. Obviously you're going to have to talk about it, but remembering to actually bring up the good is so important.
Vivian:
Another thing that I really liked about this is I felt like it forced me in particular to think outside the box. Sometimes when you're having a week and you feel like it's slim pickings, you're having to shift your mindset and you're like, okay, there's good in everything. To some extent. So what is it that I'm overlooking? What is the good in this? Before we hit record on this episode, Chelsea and I ran through our weekly gratitude practice. It was nice because while we had a very similar thing to be grateful for, it was nice to see that our perspective was not the same.
I do think that it's forced me in particular to dig deeper.
Chelsea:
Yes, and I think that's really important. I also want to bring up the fact that when we started doing this, Vivian and I had stated, we're going to try this out for a month. So we're going to do this four times and see how it goes. Now it's just clockwork. Now it's something that we do and we're going to continue doing because it is so helpful.
I also feel personally, it helps me. I don't want to say I have imposter syndrome, but sometimes you ask yourself, am I really good at this? Do I actually know what I'm doing? It is very helpful to look back and to think about all the opportunities that you've been given because it helps, at least for me, it helps me be more aware of what I'm capable of. This is what I am able to do. I was given these opportunities and this is what I did with those opportunities.
Vivian:
We sometimes equate growth with it being linear. It is not, I think that's the one thing that I've learned the most over the last couple of years. It's always this nice little graph of peaks and valleys. Throughout the year, we'll have times when we're at the peak, right? Last week, we had a conversation about an upcoming opportunity for 2025, which I hope does pan out. Peak day for us. We're super excited. The funny part is immediately afterwards, Chelsea said something like, "whoa, but now I'm a little nervous about X, Y, and Z". She was looking ahead to that experience, that hopefully comes to fruition. So even in the same conversation, we could go from peak to valley really quick.
I think it just reminds me that what we see in our heads as linear growth for a small business, for your marketing, for whatever it is. It's not like that. Sometimes when you're doing this gratitude practice, it forces you to have a higher perspective. Then you're looking back across the board and saying, well, wait a second, let's look at the growth. Instead of looking at the growth, from month to month, right? Instead of comparing September to October, let's look at the growth from January to October. What does that look like?
That's where sometimes it helps when you keep going back to this, because it's not so much imposter syndrome because I feel like everybody's an imposter. Okay, every single one of you listening. You're all imposters, okay? Let's just be real. Yes, all of you, all of us. Actually we have grown, it's just not been super linear. Sometimes it'll dip.
Chelsea:
For small business owners who are thinking about practicing gratitude, you obviously don't have to do this and you can absolutely do it on your own. I will say for me, it is very helpful and I think it's much more meaningful that I have Vivian with me and that we're sharing what we're grateful for together.
It helps to hear Vivian's perspective, because we are not the same. We think of things differently and it helps me change my mood. Maybe I was a little moody that day. Can you believe it? Sometimes that happens. Sometimes I'm moody.
Vivian:
I think the only time you're not moody is when My Chemical Romance announces they're going on tour again and then you're not moody.
Chelsea:
If y'all are wondering when this episode was recorded, if you're a My Chemical Romance fan, you know exactly when this was recorded because they just announced their tour and I am living for it. I'm so excited.
My point was it helps give me perspective. It helps hearing things from Vivian's perspective. It also helps us figure out if we're on the same page when it comes to The Seasoned Marketer and SOB marketing. It really helps strengthen our relationship. My point is, if you have a business partner, a significant other that may go to all of your markets, maybe you want to practice gratitude with them. Because I promise you, if you ask your significant other, hey, what are you grateful for in terms of what we're doing together, they're going to say something that you hadn't thought of, and it's going to be very meaningful.
Vivian:
Yeah, and I want to touch on that point that you brought up. It does create that line of communication to ensure that we have a commonality and it does allow us to check in and to keep this top of mind. More importantly, what it does too is it gives us an avenue if there is an issue.
It also helps us from taking each other for granted. Not that we ever do. I think you and I have a healthy balance of that. But if you're doing this type of practice, it prevents you from only going to that person when you're complaining about something or when something didn't work out. You need to have more to talk.
It's kind of like having that BFF that you talk sh** to all the time. If your only commonality with your BFF is that you guys talk sh** about other people, then you probably need a new BFF. You need more things than that. You want to share your good experiences, your good thoughts with that person.
That's going to lead me to my next reason for really loving this practice. I think it sparked creativity. I can't tell you guys how many times when Chelsea and I were going through our gratitude thing and it literally turned into a conversation about ideas we have. It literally turned into a conversation about an upcoming idea or something. We got so excited about saying what we were grateful for that then it sparked other ideas. So then that would lead to another discussion. I think it just kind of interjected this excitement into our weekly check-ins. Whereas before maybe our weekly check-ins were more of crack, that is the whip. That is Chelsea whipping me in shape because she does this full-time. I still have a full-time job that I'm doing.
On a weekly basis we're able to check in, but that's usually the time where she's going to lay down the law and she's going to say, this is what I need from you. So it becomes this dynamic of, she's saying, "I need to tell Vivian the six items that I need from her and she needs to get it done by this date". Then for me, "I'm going to hear my to-do list. I've got to interject the stuff in my weekly life". This has changed the discussion a little bit.
Chelsea:
It was nice to have that back and forth, to be able to have that conversation so that every week we can sit down and say, this is what we're grateful for. This is the past. This is where we're going.
Vivian:
I was thinking about this the other day. Someone had in a conversation mentioned having lofty goals, ridiculous, insane lofty goals that you'll never be able to reach. And I think for some people, for the type A personality where you want to set a goal, you want to reach it, you want to feel like you can check that off the list and then you can move on and set another bigger goal. I think we don't often enough set ridiculous goals that we know we're not going to meet. The reason is because it kind of takes the fun out of it, right?
Let me give you a perfect example. The unattainable goal for the SOB community or for The Seasoned Marketer business would be to help move the needle and keep more small businesses in business. There's a lot of small businesses that will start and then I forget the exact percentage, but a good bit fail every year. So the unattainable goal that I want us to set, and I think that this practice of gratitude has allowed me to feel more comfortable in approaching the little baby sister about setting this unattainable goal is that we set a big lofty goal that we're never gonna reach. If we even just do our part to create resources to keep small businesses in business then I'm gonna feel good about it. I feel like I'm contributing to some end to helping at least one small business be able to keep going as opposed to them having to call it quits prematurely.
Chelsea:
I love that. Is that not a mission? I feel like that's our mission statement. If it's not, then it should be.
Vivian:
Another thing that this brings up is those important conversations.
When I started this 7 years ago, I didn't think I was going to start a business. It was just creating some YouTube channel or some YouTube videos. It's turned into a full blown business that now Chelsea is dedicating her full time job to. This means that the business changes too. It's not because of her directly, or it's not because we brought on a staff member, but it's because things change. Our target audience changes, the landscapes change. For us, we service small business owners. It would be ridiculous for us not to address the fact that the small business community has changed the last 7 years.
We talk about this all the time with regard to just the marketing changes. From year to year, small business owners and their needs are going to change as well. So if you're a small business owner, what Chelsea just brought up, every once in a while you need to be revisiting your mission and your vision because we are improving and getting better.
If you start this gratitude practice, I'm not saying that's where you're going to end up, but I'm just saying it could spark some really good conversation that leads to improving your small business.
Chelsea:
So y'all, this entire conversation is to say, if you are not practicing gratitude, if you're not being introspective, maybe consider doing that because it can be very helpful. It's definitely something that Vivian and I feel like has helped The Seasoned Marketer and SOB Marketing. Trust me, Vivian and I are not going to continue doing something that we feel like is a waste of time. So that's why we're bringing it up.
We feel like it was very useful for the business and what better time than now to begin to name and consider all the things that you're grateful for.
Thank you, and Happy Thanksgiving!
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