Sam Vander Wielen: [00:00:10] Hey there, online business owners. So, are you feeling a little bit like you’re not exactly where you want to be with your business? Maybe you don’t feel like your business is far along enough, or your social media stuff’s not far along enough, or you don’t have as many clients as you hope by now, or you’re just not getting the amount of engagement and feedback, you’re not building that community that you thought you’d have by now. I can totally relate. I’ve been there. I have days still where I’m there, and I know so many people feel that with you, too. So, I’m really excited to chat with you today in this episode, all about feeling behind in your business, and what we can do to kind of process that and shift through it, and some of the things that have worked for me and others that I know.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:00:54] Before we get started today, could you do me a quick favor? If you think that this episode would be helpful for a friend of yours, could you just take a sec, and shoot them a quick text or shoot them a DM, and send them the link directly? Just tap on the link from sharing this episode, wherever you’re listening, so that they can listen alongside you. I would so appreciate you sharing this episode with them and I hope that it helps you both.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:01:18] And in case you’re new here, I’m Sam Vander Wielen. Welcome to On Your Terms. I’m an attorney turned entrepreneur who helps online coaches and service providers legally protect and grow their online businesses using my DIY legal templates and The Ultimate Bundle. So, I was a corporate lawyer. I was a super miserable corporate lawyer. I’ve talked about my story here on the show before, but for the purposes of today, it’s just important to know that I have been in the corporate world, and then since 2016, have been an online business owner.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:01:49] And I’m really proud and honored to say that, nowadays, in 2022, I’m running a multi-seven-figure online legal templates business, and I absolutely love it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a whole lot of days where I still even feel behind, and I’ve had a lot of those feelings and those days along the way. So, before we get into today’s episode about feeling behind in your business, I want to share the review of the week from ClaireFlip13.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:02:19] And Claire said, “I listen to Sam’s podcast, On Your Terms, on caring about what people think about your business, and I loved it. I don’t have a business yet, but I’m a content creator, so I could relate to a lot of what she was saying. She had a great perspective on internal validation versus external validation, and she reminds me to keep doing what I love, because we aren’t always going to make everyone happy.” Heck yes, Claire.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:02:43] Well, thank you so much for leaving that review. I so appreciate it. And I appreciate all of you when you leave a review. I read them all. If you want to get a future shoutout on an episode of On Your Terms, leave a review in Apple Podcasts of my show, On Your Terms, and you’ll even be entered to win a 20-dollar Starbucks gift card. I pick a new winner every single month, all you have to do is just leave a review and leave the rest to us, and I can’t wait to give you a shoutout on a future episode.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:03:09] Alright. With that, let’s get into it. So, it’s funny, like when it comes to entrepreneurship, there’s no timeline that particularly is right or like a standard rubric of like, this is exactly what’s supposed to happen within the first three months of your business or six months of your business, but I think there are kind of two major factors of things that happen that make us feel like we’re not following the “right timeline”, even though there’s not actually one, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:03:40] So, there’s our internal motivation, our internal like pressures that we put on ourselves. And I know my customers, my listeners, they tend to be go-getters. You’re probably the kind of person like me, who’s like, go, go, go. I always want to be achieving, and I want to be improving things, and tinkering with things, and doing better, doing my best, whatever that means.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:04:04] And that can be a fast track, especially in entrepreneurship, to being like, I’m behind, I’m behind, and just constantly feeling like you’re behind when there’s actually like no standard or no measurement of where you were supposed to be. The other big category in my mind, besides like just the pressure we put on ourselves is just so much of what’s being thrown at you, especially on social media, and it’s not necessarily that people are telling you that you’re behind directly, but I feel like indirectly, there is a lot of that language, where it’s like, first of all, whether it’s that they’re sharing testimonials that are like total outliers, where it’s like this client had no clients, and then she made 10K months in 90 days or something like that.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:04:52] And maybe that did happen for that person, but it might have been some really unique circumstances. And it’s also because of that constant marketing machine that is being thrown your way telling you like, here’s how to make 100K in your business or here’s how to make 10K a month, and then that plants in your brain, that 10K a month is a goal, right? And so, if you’re not doing that, then you’re failing in your mind, when meanwhile, like before you saw that post or probably before you got into online business and started like consuming all of this content, you probably didn’t even know what the goal was supposed to be.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:05:29] Like I’m sure you set out with your own goals, I hope, of just, what do you need? Like what are your income goals based on your life, and your personal goals, your financial goals, based on what you want to do in your business, and how much time and energy you have, and the value of your product? So, I think before you probably started seeing all of these other things being thrown your way, it can just feel a little like high school-ish, where it’s like, I remember there was like this naiveness that was like pulled away when I went to the high school I ended up going to, because I had just been kind of a sports girl, and like didn’t really care what people thought about me, and all that kind of stuff, and then I went to this high school that ended up being pretty fancy pants, and I remember like feeling really embarrassed and ashamed to like learn what all the other girls were wearing, oh, my gosh, I’m even embarrassed to like say this, but like the other girls in my class, like as a freshman in high school, they were wearing 200-dollar jeans back in early 2000s, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:06:35] And I was like loving my jeans from the wherever, I don’t even know where I was wearing them from, but all of a sudden, I felt behind. Two days prior, when I had never even been to that high school, I just like didn’t care what anybody thought, and I thought it was cool, and it never bothered me. And I went from that to being like, I am so behind, right? I’m not living up to the standard when even I didn’t even know the standard existed, and who the hell said that wearing those kinds of jeans was like the good standard and what I was doing was the bad standard? Right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:07:04] So, obviously, that’s high school and there are like other—everybody wants to fit in and everyone wants to be accepted, but I do kind of feel like social media is a little high schooley, right? Like we are trying to fit in and trying to be accepted, and it is hard, especially with like, I’m always telling Ryan, my husband, like with the amount of metrics that they give you, I find it very hard to not take like personal reflection from that, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:07:31] Like if you post something and it doesn’t get a lot of feedback or it doesn’t get a lot of comments, like shares, whatever, it’s hard not to translate that into like, no one shared this because they don’t like me, they don’t like me because I look like this, they don’t like me because I sound like this, they don’t like me because I’m not that smart. And like it’s pretty easy to go down that path, or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know, but you’ll have to tell me.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:07:54] So, I just feel like social media can mimic a lot of those similar feelings, a lot of the like keeping up with the Joneses, people vying for attention. And it is a crowded space. And so, there are some people doing like wackier, louder things than others to stand out. Some people are more comfortable doing certain things, talking about certain things, presenting themselves in a certain way, producing a certain amount of content, and you might not or you also just might not be there yet.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:08:26] So, I know it’s so cliche, too, that when people say, well, when you’re on social media, don’t compare like your chapter one to somebody else’s Chapter 12 or something like that, it is very true, though, because we don’t really know what’s going on with what we’re seeing with them. We don’t know how long they’ve been at it. We don’t know if they have team members, and support, and all of that kind of stuff. We don’t even know if their business is profitable, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:08:48] I think we just like layer on a lot of assumptions about what we see on social media that it’s better than what we’re doing. It’s what we should be doing, that they must be successful. Successful makes them happy. It means they have no issues. It means they’re not going into debt. It means their business is profitable. It means their marriage is great. Like there are just like so many assumptions that we tend to roll into all of this.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:09:12] So, I guess this, I would just encourage you to become more aware of, as you are on the apps, and you’re consuming, or you’re taking people’s courses, or whatever. It’s like just remember that there technically is no rubric. There is no right timeline. What they’re doing doesn’t necessarily make it right. It might be right for them. It might not even be right for them, it might just be what they’re doing. And that definitely doesn’t make it right for you, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:09:39] So, we just want to be aware of it. But all this to say like this is a hard place to be in business, right? When you are feeling all of this, when you’re feeling like things, maybe you’re just really disappointed about how your business is doing in general, or maybe if you’re like me, it just never feels good enough, right? I just am never able to—I shouldn’t say never, but it’s not often that I’m able to fully cherish like the success of the business, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:10:14] And this comes from a load of things, and a load of childhood trauma, and PTSD, and constantly looking over my shoulder, feeling like another shoe is going to drop, and all of that, and all the things that I work through, don’t worry. But it is definitely my case, I don’t know about you, but that it’s like even if things are going well, that almost feels more uncomfortable for me, but even if like the smallest thing will happen, there are times when things don’t go as I want them to.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:10:42] I don’t think a launch goes as great as I wanted it to or a project doesn’t turn out as great as I wanted it to. A piece of content doesn’t land with people the way—sometimes, I’m like convinced that something’s going to do well, and it flops. And other times, I put something out in a whim, and it takes off. And so, that can be really disappointing. And then, that can lead to a lot of stories about why that’s the case, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:11:05] I’m kind of filling in the blanks because I don’t know. I’m filling in the blanks with like all of my insecurities about what that must mean about me and why people didn’t take the content, or purchase the product, or whatever that I thought they should or would. So, this is a really important conversation to have with yourself and with a peer. If you have somebody else who’s doing this in business, I find it really, really helpful to be open, and honest, and vulnerable as much as you can, because the truth is that there’s probably somebody in your circle who’s feeling the same way as you are, whatever this is like manifesting for you.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:11:47] I’m sure somebody in your circle feels that even if they’re not saying it directly, and you might bring up the conversation, and then they’re like, actually, I’ve been feeling that, too. And there’s a lot of, I feel like, relief in like letting go of that—of carrying that around, of like letting go of that shame of feeling like this is something that you’re experiencing by yourself when, in fact, it’s a collective issue, right? And there are a lot of people who are experiencing this, but they’re just kind of afraid to talk about it.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:12:12] It’s also really important for you to talk about this, not only because it’s obviously what you personally need the most, and that’s like most important to me, but from a business perspective, it takes you off of your game, right? Like being in this headspace really takes you out, because all this time that we spend like ruminating, and worrying, and feeling like we’re not enough, and beating ourselves up, and being our own worst critic, and filling in the blanks with all the worst options, that’s not a great mindset to go into when you need to move your business forward, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:12:47] None of that helps you. And just like any other form of anxiety, it’s like if it was that easy to just be logical about it, and be like tis isn’t helpful, so I’m going to move on, then like the world would be a much simpler, less anxious place, but that’s just not how anxiety works, right? And obviously, you should speak to a licensed therapist about that. I know. I know nothing. I’m not an expert. I just know like in my own experience, it’s just not like so easy to be like, well, it doesn’t help, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:13:13] But I guess I do think of it that way in terms of like, how is this really helping me? First of all, how is it serving me to like stay in this place and constantly feel like nothing’s good enough that’s serving me in a way? It’s keeping me running, but what is it keeping me running from? I think about that all the time. What am I so afraid to sit with if things are just good? Like what would that mean? So, I think about that a lot.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:13:36] And I also just think like that it’s a little bit—it can like veer into self-sabotage land when we spend all of this time focused on what we don’t have or what’s not going well. I would imagine, if you’re anything like me, it then keeps you from working on things that would go well that would shift that narrative for you, right? So, maybe a piece of content, you did fell flat, okay, but if we sit around, and we think about that only, and we just keep analyzing why that went bad, instead of being like, let me try something else or try something different, and put that out, and get more data, and test it, and play with it more, it’s just not helpful to stay in that place, where we’re just like sitting and ruminating, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:14:23] So, I want to share a quick story with you about something that happened with a neighbor of mine who I love like dearly before I get into a couple of concrete tips for you today on what to do if you’re feeling this way about your business right now or what’s going on in your business. So, we moved to the north shore of Long Island back in the fall, and I don’t know a soul here, and we moved to like the most wonderful neighborhood, definitely, that I’ve ever lived in, and it’s like full of a ton of academics, because we’re kind of in a university area, university town, and it’s just like a really cool—I feel like it’s like a cool vibe of people to be around. I love it. I love it.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:15:11] So, I keep joking that all my friends here are like in their 70s, and one of my favorite neighbors who lives here, and who we’ve befriended, and we go to dinner with him and his wife, Marty, is just like, I just think he’s so sweet. The very first time we like spent time together beyond just, we always like chat when we’re on walks and we see him while we’re walking Hudson, he loves Hudson. So, they invited us over for dinner and Marty had done some Google-sleuthing on me.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:15:44] And so, that doesn’t happen to me too often, thank goodness. I like to kind of go into those types of interactions like anonymous, like I don’t want someone looking at my social media, and it feels very exposing, I don’t know. But anyway, we went to their house for dinner. It was so lovely. And when we sat down, Marty was like, “So I looked you up and you’ve got like quite the business”. And I was like, “No, no, no, no, Marty, you’ve got it wrong. Like I wish you could see me blushing now, but like no, it’s not that big of a deal”, right? I totally downplayed like, “No, no, it’s just this”, or “Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I really like what I do. I’m lucky”, blah, blah, blah.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:16:24] And I really downplayed it. And it just so happened on this day that we went over to Marty’s house for dinner, I had had a really frustrating day. I feel like something I had done had like not gone great. I kind of gotten like a bad report about like something that wasn’t very profitable that I had done and I had a couple like mean comments, mean email-type things, and I was just generally feeling agitated and frustrated, which by the way, I notice directly correlates with burnout.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:16:54] Like when I don’t stop working, when I don’t take enough time for like creative expression and like downtime, quiet time, I tend to go in that direction, but it had been that kind of day. And so, when Marty said that, I did the whole kind of like self-deprecating, like, “Oh, it’s not that big of a deal”, but I also was like, “Oh, well, listen to what happened today”, right? And I launched into telling him all these negative things that had happened that day.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:17:20] And I’m like really frustrated, and I’m always animated and stuff, and towards the end me telling him this, all of a sudden, I see this big smile on Marty’s face, and I’m like, “What? Like what’s funny about this?” I’m like, “I’m sorry. Am I just like carrying on about it?” I was like, I always make a joke about how I work with myself, and so I have nobody to talk to about this, so it can just like feel like pent up.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:17:43] And he’s like, “No, no, no. I was just wondering whether you’ve read your testimonials page lately.” I was like, “My testimonials page, like on my website?”, and he’s like, “Yeah, have you read your testimonials?” And I was like, “Oh, I can’t tell you the last time I’ve ever read my testimonials”, and he was like, “Well, do me a favor. Tomorrow, why don’t you spend some time reading through your testimonials and like really read them, like sit with it and really try to take it in?” And I was just like, “Wow”, first of all, I’m just like, “Wow, Marty. Wow.”

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:18:21] First of all, he’s an incredible person, and how freaking sweet that he went and read my testimonial. It felt like a proud dad moment. I thought it was very cute. He read my testimonials, but I was also like, “Yeah, why—like not even that—”yes. First of all, I should be reading my testimonials, I think that would be really helpful and it’s a good practice, but even just like the thought of that was like, yeah, here I am focusing on these very tiny, small handful of things that aren’t going right, and I’ve got a football field length of testimonials on my website, which are only a tiny portion of the amount of testimonials we’ve actually received, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:18:59] In reality, we have like hundreds more that aren’t even on there, can’t keep up with them, and yet I don’t even read them, but you know what I do read? The mean comments, and I respond to it, and I get all upset, and I get all pissed off when I get a mean email, and I read that, but I have not read my testimonials in years. That was a real wake-up call for me. And ever since then, I come back to what I call the Marty Story, every time I see myself going down a path of reading all the bad shit and never reading the testimonials, and let’s like insert whatever we want for testimonials here, maybe it’s kind emails, nice social comments, nice DMs, like client emails that you’ve gotten, text, whatever, it can be whatever, but the point is I want you to think of that the next time you see yourself.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:19:47] I want you to have your own Marty. Everybody needs a Marty. Marty is my best unpaid employee. And I want you to have Marty in your mind being like, yeah, when’s the last time you’ve like actually taken in any portion of what’s gone well? Right? And to that, I want to hop into the tips, because I have a couple of tips of like—a couple of mindset shifts, I think, that have been helpful in terms of doing this.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:20:13] So, the first tip that I want to give you if you’re feeling this way about your business is that, going back to what I talked about in the beginning, I want you to create your own rubric. I don’t want you to use somebody else’s. And I really think step one with with tip number 1 is starting to recognize where and when you’re using somebody else’s rubric, right? When are you looking at somebody else’s success or somebody else’s marketing tactic of like, here’s how to reach 10K months, to make the logical fallacy that 10K months are the goal, or 10K months are what you want or need, or that you are not successful until you get to 10K months? Right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:20:54] So, just because that’s somebody else’s story and somebody else’s marketing, that doesn’t mean that it has to be yours. Your wins might look different for you based on a lot of things, based on your personality, based on your goals, based on where you’re at both in your business, or you’re knew, and then they’ve been doing this for six years, or also, where you’re at in your life, right? Maybe you’re caring for a sick parent. Maybe you’ve got little ones at home. Maybe you’ve still got a full-time job, right? Maybe money is particularly tight right now.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:21:30] So, there are a lot of different reasons why your rubric, and your wins, your goals, whatever it means to like achieve success for you, might look a lot different than me, her, him, them, everybody, right? And that’s okay. There is no objective standard here in online business about what is good, what is successful, what does it mean to have a successful business? That is something you get to decide. Don’t let somebody rob you of that.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:22:04] Have you ever felt lost about where to begin with the legal side of protecting your online business? Some people say you can just wing it at the beginning and get officially set up later. Not a good idea, by the way. Whether you’re afraid to even start working with clients, because you don’t want to do something wrong legally, and then get in trouble, or your business is growing and you sort of forgot to take care of the legal pieces, I’ve got you.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:22:26] I don’t want you to live in fear of the internet police coming after you and your business, but you do have to do certain things and get certain things in place in order to legally and safely run your business online. As much as it just feels like an unregulated Wild, Wild West online, that is very much not the case. As an attorney turned entrepreneur and former corporate litigator, I can assure you that there are rules, there are real steps that everybody who runs or starts an online business needs to take.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:22:54] And you’re not behind at all. We can get you set up in following the rules right away. In fact, we can even do it today. I want to teach you the five very simple steps to take to legally protect and grow your online business. You don’t need an MBA to be a successful entrepreneur and stay out of legal hot water, but you do need to dot your legal Is and cross your Ts in a few key areas that can’t be skipped.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:23:14] That’s exactly what I’ll teach you in my free one hour legal workshop called Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business. Just head to mylegalworkshop.com, drop in your email address, pick the time, and I’ll send you a link to watch the workshop video whenever you have time. This is the best place to begin if you’re just getting started legally legitimizing your business, so head on over to mylegalworkshop.com and sign up to watch Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business now.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:23:43] So, tip number 2 is that I want you to expand your idea of what wins you might have around you already, what things are going right. Alright. I think this is where Marty really comes in. And I have to tell, Marty is famous now. I think this is where Marty really comes in and is like you might be looking for these Super Bowl goals, winning the Super Bowl, but you’re missing all the little things along the way, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:24:12] You’re missing like maybe getting stronger and faster, and like achieving some of the smaller, to continue with the football analogy, like the number of yards, and touchdowns, and whatever else, right? So, I want you to expand your ideas of what you can find around you. It’s almost like a little scavenger hunt. What are those things that you can turn to? And also, is there a little system that you could put into place where you could easily collect these wins?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:24:39] So, one of the systems that I have in place that I kind of forgot about until I had this conversation with Marty, for example, was that when clients send us kind emails, and they respond to us in saying how much they love The Ultimate Bundle, they love this legal template, or it’s some piece of content, we always flag those in Gmail. I call it Client Love. So, it’s like I have like a tag in Gmail called Client Love, and I asked me and the team to be very liberal with that.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:25:07] So, like if somebody just sends something and was like, that podcast was so moving, or this template like ended up saving me a ton of money, or something like that, we flag it. And back when I started my business, I used to go through and read those every Friday, and I realized in this conversation with Marty that I hadn’t looked at them in years, and there are like thousands of them now, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:25:28] I also have those testimonials that Marty was talking about. I have an entire folder on Google Drive of screenshots of nice things that people have sent me through DMs. And you might be thinking like, well, that’s nice for you, but you might get a lot more messages than me, well, I started this process when I only got a handful of messages, maybe one per week, then two per week, then three per week, right? So, it was a lot different then than it is now, and looking back on it, I’m so glad that I did, because that stuff piles up a lot faster than you might think.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:25:58] So, you might feel like it’s kind of silly that if you only get like somebody reaching out once a month right now, you’re like, I’m going to put this in a folder, yes, you’re going to put this in a folder, because down the line, you’re going to look back at this, and there are going to be tens, hundreds, thousands of responses in there, but it has to start somewhere. It really has to start somewhere. And this is all part of an exercise of you looking for opportunities to celebrate smaller wins along the way. We cannot wait until we win the Super Bowl to celebrate our success. We have to celebrate along the way.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:26:32] The third tip I want to give you today is actually something that I took away from Todd Herman, who I can link to in the comments. I’ve never worked with Todd. To be honest, I don’t consume a lot of his content either, but I remember like a million years ago, I watched a—by that, I mean, maybe 2016, which feels like centuries ago, I watched, I think, a webinar of his at the time and there was like one big nugget of information that I took away from it that has stuck with me all these years, and I’m talking about this all the time.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:27:05] And once we talk about this nugget, you’re going to start seeing it all over the place. You’re going to see other people talk this way in marketing. You’re going to see it in yourself probably the most. I see it myself a lot. So, Todd talked about, and forgive me that like I don’t remember the specifics, as I want to attribute and credit him, but I don’t remember like exactly what he called it and all that kind of stuff, but essentially, it was a mindset measurement tool, and he talked about people who only measure where they are now versus where they want to be, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:27:38] So, like people who think of everything as the distance between where they are right now and where they want to be. So, for example, if I sat here and thought about, here’s what my business looks like right now today, and this is how far away it is from being a like Amy Porterfield-sized business, which is totally what I’d want, and that would be a big gap, that’s a big gap, versus measuring where I am right now, versus where I was, how far I’ve come, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:28:13] If I measured it in that way, first of all, it’s probably even a bigger gap, but it’s also a much more positive way of thinking about things. Can you see the difference? So, like in this case, I’d be looking at where my business is today, and I could go back six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, it depends on how long you’ve been in business, you can kind of stretch out these time periods, and I would probably be so shocked.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:28:41] Sometimes, I forget that like six months ago, I didn’t have like some big, big things. Like I mean, a week ago, I didn’t have a full-time employee. I have my first full-time employee right now, and she’s amazing, right? I didn’t even have that a week ago. That’s a huge accomplishment. So, should I sit here and think about the fact that I now have one full-time employee, but Amy Porterfield has 20, I believe, the last time I had heard on one of her podcast episodes?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:29:10] She has 20. That’s a huge gap, right? But how big of a freaking deal is it that a week ago, I didn’t have any? And how amazing is it to have hired my first full-time employee? This was such a huge goal for me. I know it’s not going to be my last either. And it was just like, this was so big to me, not based on anybody else’s rubric, not because people told me that you’re successful once you have a full-time employee, but because it always meant a lot to me, first of all, to build a company that was successful enough to sustain an employee, one that could provide that employee with a comfortable living, and one that would provide them with a positive, and supportive, encouraging, fun, cozy workplace, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:29:54] And that’s what I did and that’s what I’m trying to do, right? I don’t do it all perfectly, but that is my goal. And I have gotten the business to a point that has allowed me to hire my first full-time employee. That’s incredible. So, it would be like a big waste of my time if I just sat here, and was like, yeah, but I don’t have 20 employees. Yeah, but look how far I’ve come. And how do you think people get to 20 employees?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:30:18] They get one, two, three, four, and we could count all the way to 20. That’s how they add up over time, but you have to start somewhere. So, that has been a huge one for me. I carry this Todd Herman mindset tip with me like everywhere I go, thinking, ah, ah, ah, I’m starting to measure between where I am now and where I want to go, but I’m not remembering where I was, between now and where I was, and that really is the measure of growth to me.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:30:50] Tip number 4, and this is one I give a ton, and if you’re a customer of mine, if you’re in The Ultimate Bundle, you hear me say this a lot, I’m like the content mama bear that’s always like yelling at people about this, if you’re in this place, I want you to produce more—I want you to be like working on your own content and I want you to be working on your own business more than you’re consuming other people’s businesses.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:31:14] So, for all that time that you might be spending not only on social media, but even mentally thinking about, but she has it like this, and she’s already successful, she’s already talking about this, she already has a course on this, I want you to spend way more time actually producing the work, honing your craft, improving your skills, becoming a better coach, or creator, or writer than the amount of time that you’re spending doing all that consumption.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:31:42] I tend to go down those rabbit holes, and then I feel like I seek out more content, like it’s almost like self-punishment, and when I’m in that mood, it can just like go down, and down, and down, and the best thing I can do is like literally shut my phone off or put it in another room. I usually go listen to like a non-business-related podcast or just listen to music. I like taking a walk, and I kind of mentally reset, and I’m like, I’m going to get back to working on my own business. How is this serving me right now? This is not serving me. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. I’ve got to keep working on my own stuff if I ever want this thing to grow, right? So, just get back to working on your own stuff.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:32:19] Alright. Speaking of Amy Porterfield, the lovely Amy Porterfield, tip number 5 is a mantra that I actually heard in one of her podcast episodes the other day, I’m going to link to it in the show notes, because she had a great podcast episode with, I want to say it was four of her favorite mantras, and they were all really, really good, but for what we’re talking about today, this one really spoke to me, especially because I was feeling what we were talking about the other day when I listened to this.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:32:48] So, this mantra that Amy had said that works for her very well is, “I don’t chase, I attract. What belongs to me will simply find me.” I’m going to read that one more time. Okay. So, if you’re multitasking, come back, because Amy says that all the time. “I don’t chase, I attract. What belongs to me will simply find me.” Isn’t that a good one? Go, Amy. That is a good mantra. So, I really like this one, because when we’re feeling behind, it can, sometimes, put us in a kind of desperate place.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:33:26] I see this all the time with people copying people’s stuff, stealing content, because they were desperate to get ahead, so they steal people’s content. I see it with people spending too much time creating like all kinds of wacky like attempted viral content, instead of like actually working on the things that will move the needle in their business, and I was like, wow, what a relief just to think like, I don’t need to chase, I can just attract it, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:33:50] And I do believe that like what belongs to you will find you if you’re—what I would add to this, the subtext of this mantra, is like if you’re actually doing the work in your business, so I don’t think you could just—no offense to any like manifestation stuff, but I don’t think you can just like sit at home and like dream about Leonardo DiCaprio calling you to like star in a movie, and it’ll just happen, right? Like you would have to like work on your acting skills, and start getting out there, and putting yourself out there.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:34:18] But at some point, I really do believe in what Amy is saying like, there’s only so much you can do and chasing is not going to help it. You can attract it by, I think, showing up often, being really clear about who you are and what you do, producing like really high-quality, high-value content, being as helpful as possible, actually doing good work, which is something I talk about a lot, and something, I think, gets lost a lot in conversation and online business. So, I want you to think about this the next time you’re feeling like you’re behind and you start to maybe react in a certain way, right? I think Amy’s mantra can really come in handy.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:34:56] Last but not least, I want to leave you with the tip of letting your pizza dough rest. What the heck does that mean? And no, this is not a food tip, even though if I had my druthers, I would host a food podcast instead. But I love to cook more than anything in the world. If you know me, you know this already. And I cook constantly. And I always think about this whenever I make pizza, I’m just super visual. And so, I feel like pizza dough always teaches me this lesson.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:35:25] So, if you’ve ever made pizza dough from scratch, which is incredibly easy, by the way, and I highly recommend following Roberto’s pizza dough recipe from The New York Times. But if you’ve ever made it, it’s very easy, but when you get to the rest stage, so when you stretch it out, and you get it, you have to do like one final stretch and rest period. So, there’s like the initial rest period, proofing period, where it’s still like in a ball, but then once you stretch it out, I usually hand-stretch it, and if I’m doing like—I like to make kind of like Detroit-style pizza, I guess, on a sheet pan in the oven.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:35:58] And so, I’ll put like a ton of olive oil on the sheet pan, and I stretch out the dough, and when you go to put it on the sheet pan, a lot of times, it will contract a lot. So, even though you’ve done all the resting, even though you’ve done the proofing, you’ve done all the things, you stretch it out, and [making sounds] it like shrinks back up. And the thing that you do to combat this is that you let it rest. You let it rest for like at least 10 minutes at room temperature. It just sits out. It can sit right there on the olive-oiled pan. And then, you come back and you stretch it again.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:36:30] And sometimes, really annoyingly so, it will contract again, but a little bit less than the last time. And so, you let it rest again, and then you stretch it out. Do you see where I’m going with this? Sometimes, when we feel like we’re behind, it’s just a matter of letting the dough rest a little bit. And then, when we come back to it, it’s going to expand, right? So, I kind of see the “resting” as like continuing to do the work, plugging away, testing, being a scientist in your business, seeing what’s working, getting feedback, talking to people in real time, creating conversation, all of that, learning the client’s language, and then maybe the next time you go to do something, it expands a little bit more, right?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:37:14] And it might still contract, it might not still be perfect, but it’s going to be better than the last time if you let it rest. But if you keep wrestling with this, if you keep fighting, if you keep spending all of your time in this place of like, things aren’t good enough, things aren’t where I want them to be, I should be further along by now, she’s further along by now, he’s better at this than I am, then we’re never going to get the dough. We’re never going to get that perfectly crisp, perfect—now, I want pizza. Oh, man, the whole thing’s over. So, you know what I mean, we’re never going to get the product that we want. So, I want you to work on letting your pizza dough rest.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:37:52] Okay. Could you do me a favor really quickly before you go today? Could you head over to Instagram? I’m at Sam Vander Wielen on Instagram, and I want you to go, and send me a DM, and let me know what your number 1 favorite tip was from this episode. Just go over there right now, it only takes a sec, you can pop open the DM, send me a DM, hopefully, you’re following me already, send me a message, let me know you’re a podcast listener, I love chatting with you guys, and tell me, what were you inspired by today?

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:38:21] Creating your own rubric, expanding your idea of what wins you should have already, the Todd Herrmann mindset shift about where you are now versus where you want to be, producing more work than you consume, the mantra from Amy about I don’t chase, I attract, or letting your pizza dough rest, maybe you’re in a stage where you just need to let your pizza dough rest a little bit and stop futzing with it.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:38:43] So, I can’t wait to hear from you in my DMs about which one was most impactful for you. Until next Monday, I drop a brand new episode here on On Your Terms every single Monday, but until next Monday, I can’t wait to carry this conversation over to Instagram. I’ll talk to you soon.

Sam Vander Wielen: [00:39:01] Thanks so much for listening to the On Your Terms podcast. Make sure to follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen to podcasts. You can also check out all of our podcast episodes, show notes, links, and more at samvanderwielen.com/podcast. You can learn more about legally protecting your business and take my free legal workshop, Five Steps to Legally Protect and Grow Your Online Business at samvanderwielen.com. And to stay connected and follow along, follow me on Instagram at Sam Vander Wielen, and send me a DM to say hi.