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Welcome to the Jewelry Business Academy podcast. I'm your host, Robin Clark. And if you're a jewelry business owner looking to break through to the next level, then my courses, coaching programs and podcast are for you.

You'll learn how to overcome the biggest challenges in your business and build and scale your business with as much ease and simplicity as possible. I'm here to inspire and guide you with weekly episodes with ambitious entrepreneurs, where we chat about everything from marketing, mindset and sales to life as an entrepreneur and more. There will be lots of actionable tips for you to level up your business, your mindset and your life.

And let's face it, you can apply all of these strategies to any product-based business. I'm so glad you're here. Let's dive in.

Hello guys. I am back with a solo soad this week. I know it's been a few weeks since I did a solo soad, but I have had so many requests for these.

So I'm going to be dropping a few more solo soads out for you a little bit more frequently with lots of real, real discussions that I'm having with clients or other jewelry business owners with topics that they're actually struggling with real time. So it's always going to be content that I know is going to actually really helped you in your business, help you with your mindset and help you move forward. So I've had a really good week so far and I've had lots of client calls, lots of fun things happening, but I've had a conversation with a client the other day and I thought that this topic I've seen come up with multiple jewelry business owners and I thought it would be helpful to talk about it a little bit because it's actually something I see a lot of business owners bypassing.

So we are going to be chatting about self-discipline and entrepreneurship and how they're so how it's so crucial as an entrepreneur to have an incredible self-discipline. I honestly believe that this is the hardest part of being a business owner and this is the part that makes everything else in your business really struggle if you are not good at it because you can have the best strategies and all of this to implement in your business, but if you do not have strong self-discipline that ability to push yourself forward, stay motivated and take action regardless of what's going on and how you're feeling, you are really going to struggle to build a successful jewelry business. Now when I say that I don't want you to think like oh when I'm sick I shouldn't be I should be working and I'm not taking a break.

No that's definitely not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about having that consistent self-discipline over the years of your entrepreneurial journey. I'm talking about having really strong boundaries in place with yourself, with your family, with your friends, with your business partners.

I am talking about having that quality that helps you manage your time and your resources really well and so that you are getting the most out of your business and you're also living your life and you have that balance. So if you are somebody who has strong self-discipline, you have strong inner strength and you have that inner confidence that you know that you can take decisions and make decisions in a very calm and calculated way no matter what is going on in your environment and that is so important because as we all know, entrepreneurship can be really challenging sometimes. There are going to be times that you have to make really quick decisions and you have to have that inner confidence to know okay where I'm at right now I'm making the best decision with my experience and knowledge that I can and I know that whether or not this is the right decision I am going to make sure it turns out favorably for me and if not I'm going to pivot as necessary.

I'm going to make changes as necessary. So that's something to keep in mind. Having that inner strength and inner confidence is crucial when you are building your self-discipline.

Now if you are listening to this and you don't currently have a strong inner strength or you wouldn't describe yourself as having a strong inner strength or an inner confidence, the good news is that you can develop this and you want to be actively developing this every single day and it starts by keeping the promises that you make to yourself. So if you say to yourself I am going to go for a 15 minute walk every day before I start working on my business because it helps put me in the right mindset and it energizes me then you need to keep that promise that you've made to yourself. That is how we start developing that inner strength and inner confidence.

We keep the promises that we make to ourselves. So that is the first step, that's where you want to get started. Then that's going to help you also have the power to stick to the decisions that you do make.

So when challenges come up and you have to make a decision, you're number one able to make a decision quickly. You are able to commit to that decision and you have the power to stick to it and follow through and make the best of it. You're not going to make the decision and backtrack and doubt yourself.

If you are somebody who really struggles making even little decisions in your day, I want to encourage you to remove as many decisions as you can because as entrepreneurs it's very easy to get decision fatigue. I've had it in the past and I see a lot of entrepreneurs do get decision fatigue because the reality is you have to make so many decisions on a daily basis and it's challenging. I mean it's really challenging at some point you just can't make more decisions.

So you can literally start by simplifying your wardrobe, your work wardrobe. Anything that you can do that's going to remove decisions from your day is going to really help you building this confidence and this power to actually stick to your decision. So let's find a work wardrobe outfit or a five that work for you that you can wear every day that you know you don't have to put any of your thinking or brain energy into deciding what you need to wear.

Now obviously if you love choosing your outfits that's another story but a lot of people spend way too much time and energy on that every day especially entrepreneurs so that would be the number one step. The second step is planning your day the night before or the afternoon before. You never want to wake up in the morning and think okay what am I going to do today and start planning your day in the morning.

It is way too many decisions for you to be making. You want to wake up in the morning know that you have a plan and then just go with the plan and if you somebody like me who needs some flexibility with when your plan starts that's okay too but you want to wake up and be like okay I know I'm going to yoga and then I'm going for a walk and then I'm starting my work day at this time and I'm going to work on this this this and you keep that focus. So anyone who is struggling with decisions making I want you to start planning out your days I want you to reduce the number of decisions you're making every day even like what you're eating.

Simplify as many aspects of your life and your business as possible and it's going to make it easier and easier for you. I also want you to practice making decisions quickly and committing to them. For some people this will literally mean going to a restaurant ordering something off the menu and sticking to that order and not going back and making changes and not doubting their order and going and switching their order halfway through because this is just a sign that you don't trust yourself you don't trust your decisions and if you're like that in a restaurant when you are running a business it's going to have a very negative impact on your business.

So you want to know that when you're making decisions in your business you stick to them and you move forward and you make them have a positive outcome. Okay so we have chatted a little bit about self-discipline, building your inner strength, building that confidence, having the power to stick to your decisions and you know the other thing that I really want to talk about is boundaries and having the self-discipline to stick to your boundaries as a business owner. Now you should have boundaries in your business, you should have boundaries with your family and your friends because ultimately if you do not have these boundaries in place you're not going to number one probably have a good work-life balance and your business isn't actually going to be growing at the rate that it should be.

Highly successful jewelry business owners have very strong boundaries. I have not met any successful jewelry business owner making six plus to seven figures in their business who doesn't have strong boundaries. They value their time, they value their energy, they are self-disciplined when it comes to saying I'm going to work from this time to this time and that is my cutoff and then I'm going to spend time with my family or then something else is a priority.

You have to work out number one what are your boundaries in your business, what are your boundaries with family and friends because the other thing is that I see a lot of is if you are working from home and you have children you are often the one that is doing all the school pickups and drop-offs and seeing other friends children and doing all these activities and that's fine if that's something that you want to be doing then that's perfect but you also just want to make sure that it is intentional and that you're not just ending up doing it and it's taking away from your business if it wasn't the the balance that you wanted. So take a look at everything that is happening in your day-to-day life in your business in your personal life with your families and see if everything that's happening is intentional. Make sure that your day-to-day is intentional, you have those boundaries in place when you are working, you have that headspace to work, when you with your family you have that headspace to just be in the present moment with them and not worry about your business.

I've also talked about this quite a bit on Instagram but I just want to remind you that tasks in your business will fit into the allotted amount of time that you give them. So it's really important to set time limits for every single task in your business and I mean I work with my clients on this every week because we will literally be like you have five minutes for this task or you have 15 minutes or seven minutes or 30 minutes and you do not want to get into the habits of going over that time limit because as business owners we often think that we have unlimited time to complete a task and when your brain thinks that you have like a few hours to complete a little task let's pretend the task is posting a reel and stories to Instagram. I know for a fact that you can post a really good reel and stories in five to seven minutes but I also know a lot of business owners can easily take three to four hours of their morning to post that same amount of content if they have that time allotted to it.

So be really conscious of where you're spending your time in your business and how much time you're allotting to different elements of your business because if you're spending that much time creating content for Instagram it's going to be really hard for you to scale your business. It's not a sustainable model and it's not necessary. So take a look at where you're spending your time, where you're spending your energy and just do a little bit of an evaluation of your business and your life.

The other thing that is also really important as entrepreneurs who are building that self-discipline in your business is to understand that there are going to be challenges in business. It's inevitable. There is no easy way around building a business.

There are going to be the ebbs and flows. There are going to be the ups and downs and the key is that if you've built already a lot of self-discipline, you have inner confidence then when there are those ups and downs you're going to be flexible with them. You're not going to be too attached to what's happening.

You're going to have the ability to make the right decisions moving forward and to handle the ebbs and flows of your business. So you need to expect to have challenges that come your way in your business and you need to realize that you have the ability to handle those in the best way possible. Okay so another reason why it's so so important to have really strong self-discipline as a Tory business owner is that you have to understand that to thrive in life and business you have to first focus on yourself.

Your physical and spiritual and mental well-being have a significant impact on how successful your business is going to be and ultimately if you put that on the backhand and you think you know what when I've hit this number in my Tory business in sales then I'm going to have more time to do yoga then I'm going to have more time to go for walks then I'm going to have more time to eat healthy foods while you are setting yourself up for potential burnouts. So you really want to make sure that as you're scaling your business you're not waiting for the right time to give yourself permission to look after yourself. You want to from the very very beginning prioritize yourself and looking after your health and your wellness and your mental well-being every single day.

Your business should never be a priority above that so it's really important not to get caught up in the hustle in the first few years of your business. If you have transitioned from a job in the corporate world or you've transitioned from being a teacher and you're now a jewelry business owner and entrepreneur working for yourself what I see happens very often is that people come in with the same go-go-go mentality that they had when they were in their old jobs. Now there's a balance here because it is it does help to keep that structure maybe initially in terms of your work hours and all of this but if you were in an unhealthy work environment where you were encouraged to work from 8 30 in the morning till 7 30 at night and then do a few more hours in the evening and work on weekends and work on holidays well that's a toxic work environment and I don't care what anyone else has to say about that but that's simply toxic and that there's no way that that is sustainable for you.

So if you've come from an environment that made you feel like you are never doing enough it's going to be very hard for you to set end times such as 5 p.m. in your business that after 5 p.m. you don't work in your business. It's going to be really hard to do that and I've seen that with clients where they really struggle to switch off and they really struggle with just being and living their life their business has kind of become all-consuming and is their life and that's a really dangerous situation to be in for many many reasons number one you're putting yourself at high risk of burnout number two you actually have significantly lower productivity when you work consistently than when you have those set work hours so that's something to keep in mind if this is someone if this sounds like something that you do and number three when you are all involved in your business in that way and you're working on it 24 7 while you don't detach easily from it and you often then you often feel like your self-worth is connected to your results so it's really important to live your life outside your business have a separate life go out with your friends see your family go on trips go on adventures especially for jewelry business owners because for a lot of you you started out your business as a hobby and then that hobby got kind of taken away when it turned into a business and so you need to find another outlet you need to find something else outside of your business that interests you and makes you excited to be alive and and makes you want to jump out of bed in the morning as well okay so I think we've talked about a lot of different things here in terms of why self-discipline is so so important for jewelry business owners and entrepreneurs in general and how crucial it is to prioritize building that self-discipline building that inner confidence because yeah entrepreneurship is challenging and you know life is challenging and you have to prioritize looking after yourself building that those that inner confidence to stick to what you believe in that inner knowing that you can make things happen that self-discipline to say you know what I'm going to commit to stopping work at this time I'm gonna commit to showing up for myself and going for walks and taking care of myself before my business because honestly this is this is one of the keys to scaling a successful business you can have all the strategies and that for actually growing your business and driving brand awareness and driving sales but you're only going to hit certain sales numbers if you don't have strong self-discipline it's just not possible you will burn yourself out so if you feel like this has resonated with you I'd love to hear from you you can DM me on instagram it is robinplotcoaching and if you are a jewelry business owner who is ready for a season of growth I would love to invite you to join me in the jewelry business academy it is the most expansive program for jewelry business owners who are ready to scale their jewelry business to six plus figures without burning out so my program is really specialized in jewelry businesses we only work with jewelry business owners and we help you we teach you the strategies and I give you the tools that you need to scale your business but I also help you implement these strategies into your business and implementation is one of the biggest challenges that I've seen business owners struggle with which is why the whole program has been developed in a way that actually helps you implement these strategies in a step-by-step way so if you are ready to hit some big goals in your business if you're ready to build a solid foundation and have that balance in your business where you are driving brand awareness and driving sales and also not burning out then head to www.

jewelrybusinessacademy.co and you can learn more about my program and learn more about me there and you can also go ahead and sign up for a free consultation call where we'll see if you and your business are a good fit for the program so I have got a few very cool guests coming on in the next few weeks I'll also be doing a few more solo so it's on hot topics that I've seen people already struggling with and so I want to go ahead and give you a lot of support on those topics through the next few solo so it's so stay tuned for those and if you enjoyed this episode definitely let me know you can let me know on Instagram as I mentioned before or you can head to Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave a five star review I look forward to chatting to you guys next week and I hope you all having a really good week so far