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Welcome to the Joy Joya podcast where jewelry is joy and everyone is encouraged to add more polish and sparkle to the world with topics ranging from marketing tips to business development, best practices and beyond. This is the go to podcast for ambitious jewelry industry dreamers like you. Hi, I'm your host Larissa Worstiek.

Through this podcast, I aim to empower and inspire jewelry entrepreneurs and professionals so they can thrive while adding more beauty to the world. I'm passionate about digital marketing for jewelry brands and I'm excited to share my passion with you. As we all know, jewelry is joy, so I'll gladly seize any opportunity to talk about it.

This is episode 224. You're checking out a weekly segment of this podcast called The Goldmine, which is a more intimate, personal and brief take for me about a topic of my choosing, but typically in categories like entrepreneurship, growth, mindset, as well as my own personal observations about the industry. If you're new to this podcast, welcome.

You can get interviews and business development and marketing tips on Sundays and The Goldmine with me on Wednesdays. And if you're a return listener or viewer, thanks for following along. In this week's episode, I'll be talking about how to get comfortable with change.

I have to admit, I'm not super comfortable with change in my personal life, but for some reason in business and in my professional life, I feel very confident about change and I embrace and welcome it. I guide my clients through change and I encourage it for them when, of course, when it's guided by a strategic decision and I'm not afraid to quote unquote, blow things up. As a marketer, I think I realize that you need to keep changing to keep trying new things.

Even when something seems to work, especially in our fast-paced digital age, something can work in one moment and in the next moment, an external circumstance can really just knock you off your feet. So you need to be nimble always and never complacent. I'll be discussing why change is scary for people, maybe people like you, how you can get comfortable with change, and how to know when it's really time to make a change in your business.

So first, let's talk about why change is scary in general. Well, of course, the new year, it just lends itself to change. I mean, every year, when it comes to business, it's going to have different economic circumstances, different trends, some new social media platform, some new preference in consumer shopping, et cetera, that people try to predict.

Heck, I even tried to predict, but no one can ever really know the future. It's all very uncertain. Change is happening right under our noses.

Change is scary because, of course, it pushes people out of their comfort zones. We all want to be comfy. We all want to stay in a place that's familiar to us, of course, as humans, we love routine.

But change typically means that we'll have to grow, we'll have to adjust and potentially stretch ourselves to learn something new. And that's super uncomfortable. And sometimes it can be inconvenient and annoying.

And then when you're talking about change within a business, it can be even more scary and daunting because a lot of times it's not just one person who's going to have to change or be impacted, but many people will have to adapt to the change. And that in itself can be really difficult to manage. Change might make people worry that they won't be able to handle it.

And so they worry about failure or not being able to perform. And the other thing is that even if you are able to go through the change and make it through that, what happens is that process is hardly ever perfect. So you're probably going to be anticipating those unforeseen obstacles in the uncertain future ahead.

That all sounds terrible, right? I know. I don't really like the sound of it just talking about it. But let me tell you how you can get comfortable with change.

So I think personally, the reason I actually like change in business and that I do feel comfortable with it is because I know from past experience and thankfully from good past experience that I've had that any change I embark on, I've done it based on a specific strategic reason, never on a whim, always because I had data or specific feedback that was backing my reason for the change. And that gives me confidence and motivates me to push through all of those uncomfortable things that I just mentioned earlier in this podcast. So having numbers, specific feedback, strategic reason, those things should give you confidence about change.

I can also clearly see the new future ahead. And I try to stay focused on that and the possibility of the improvements in the new horizons rather than the messy stuff that's going to happen on the way to that. I would say I would say you need to realize that sometimes change is 100% necessary and really the only option and could at some point be the difference between moving forward in a business and stopping operations completely.

So knowing that, putting those kind of stakes around it could make you more comfortable with it and realize that it is the best possible option. And then I would say get curious about your resistance to a change. So why don't you feel like you want to move forward? It's not ever just one reason or a universal reason.

Are you exhausted by all of the work it's going to require? Are you nervous about the uncertain future? If you are able to be really honest with yourself, then there's always a way to overcome your doubts and then devise a solution that really will make change more comfortable. You just need to be able to face all of that head first. And then start implementing these small actions, especially the ones that can result in quick wins upfront and help you move forward so that you can kind of see the fruit of your efforts and then feel more comfortable and not so overwhelmed by the prospect of this major shift.

And then notice if you're a naysayer and looking for reasons why something can't be done or can't change, that may be a clue that you actually do need a change. So if you're always the one saying that can't happen or we can't ever change that thing, it's probably the best sign that something needs to happen. And try as best as you can to stop anticipating possible failure.

Yeah, of course, there's always a chance that change won't work out like you had planned, but a change will only ever lead you to future learnings. So in the past on this podcast, I've talked about how marketing can never be a failure and that that's one thing I really love about marketing because you'll always learn something and get to a place you never would have gone otherwise. So tell yourself that change also can never be a failure because you're going to learn something important that's going to move you forward regardless.

So how do you know that it's time to make a change in your business now in 2023? Here are some signs, definitely not an exhaustive list, but maybe your revenue is down and you're not hitting other important goals. Maybe you don't feel excited about your business anymore or you're burnt out, you haven't been as productive. You don't seem to be resonating with the customers who you think you should be reaching.

Maybe the economy is changing or shopping habits are changing and perhaps your suppliers or even technologies that you utilize have changed. So those are just a few signs. How do you feel about change? Do you struggle with it or do you embrace it openly? Please leave a comment on YouTube or let me know in a podcast review.

You can also email me Larissa, that's L-A-R-Y-S-S-A at JoyJoya.com and thanks for listening or watching. Thanks for listening.

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