The Shocking Reason You're Not Where You Want to Be

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 265. Today we are continuing with our miniseries all about the Reason number eight, as to why you might not be where you want to be and what to do instead. Are you ready? Let's get started.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast.

What's up, coach? Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson. So the number eight reason and common trap that you might not be where you want to be is you quit. And now I need to layer in the context around quitting because sometimes, and I've, I've shared emails about this before, because sometimes quitting is the best option. It's a nuanced conversation. We as human beings tend to live in these really intense pendulum of I'm doing nothing or at all costs and all or nothing. And we live in this world of I'm going to the gym with the flu or I'm not doing anything at all. And so the conversation around quitting is nuanced because we need to understand, well, you know, if I am in a toxic relationship and I'm really miserable and unhappy, but I listened to this podcast that told me I need to stop quitting, I'm going to stay in it, right? So sometimes there are appropriate times to quit. And so it's really important that you understand for you what is the best way to and to understand and to know the differences between I need to be disciplined and I need to stay, I need to ask myself, I need to make decisions from, you know, my higher self and decisions from Faith or I need to quit. And so I want to talk about this one because it's really, it's a. It's not only is it nuanced, if you have been in the personal development world for a minute, just even in the fitness space, when we are needing to be disciplined and move through feeling demotivated and how do you know whether or not you're just, you know, not feeling like it and that you need to be integrity of your word or you need to be disciplined or really, you need to quit? And in addition to that, it's also nuanced because if you've been in this experience, your ego. And when I say ego, I don't mean arrogance. I mean your brain. The ego side of your brain, your habits. Habits will be really sneaky and really tricky. And it. And when I say that, meaning that it will really keep you comfortable and have you believe, oh, you have the flu and you can't go to the gym, when in reality that's just not true. Your brain's trying to keep you safe. And so it can be a really nuanced conversation. Because what happens is that your brain. Yes. And you. And what happens in the quitting continuum. And we talk about this inside of Accelerator. And I had learned this from Mike Sharif when there was this. There's this study. It was Kelly and Connor's emotional, emotional cycle of change. This was their study. And what basically they're talking about is how when someone starts something new and they get really excited, there's this uninformed sense of optimism like, yes, I can do it. And then what happens is that they start to take action, and then the actions have an outcome and the outcomes have an effect and a feeling, and then they start to make that feeling mean something about. They make it mean something. That's just what it's like to have a human experience. And so then they start to get a little bit of what they call informed pessimism. Now, we see this a lot when, when people take action on something like, oh, like my accelerators, for example, we execute a 14 day rapid lean launch which is specifically designed to help you stress test your premium offer, whatever that premium offer is going to be. And so then what ends up happening? What? Regardless of the outcome, which, by the way, is only designed to reach the 3% of the 3% of your audience who's ready to say yes. And so if you do it to some. Whatever level of your capacity, then what ends up happening is that you start to feel like, oh, no one wants my. And not. And, you know, maybe no one raises their hand. And then you start to feel like, oh my gosh, this content doesn't work. This doesn't. No one wants my stuff. Whatever it is that we. You start to make it mean, there becomes this sense of informed pessimism, and then you continue to take this action and then you start to live in this valley of despair. Okay? And so this is a pivotal moment for you when you're in a valley of despair, when you're in a rut, when you are not high performing in the context of what it means to high perform for you, because what ends up happening is people quit. And then you start to do the reinforcement theory of quitting, which is you quit to avoid the pain, to avoid the valley of despair, which perpetuates you quitting more, and then you quit, and then you throw the baby out with the bathwater, for a lack of a better word. And then you go back to the uninformed optimism because you invest in a new course or you try a different strategy, or you decide to do something else. And then what ends up happening is you repeat that vicious cycle. And the reason why this becomes a vicious cycle is then because you now are doing the reinforcement theory, where you're quitting more often, you're avoiding. You're quitting more often to avoid the pain, and then you just keep quitting, and then you never get to that. So it's like the way that I equate it and the way that I feel like this shows up is it's like you're at the bottom of a squat, you're at the hole, and you got to come out of the hole, right? And so you just got to keep doing the reps so that you then become, oh, keep guessing and testing and assessing. And it goes back to what we said, number 10, the data. When you have that data, the difference in that data, and you realize and recognize, oh, I can just keep coming out of that data, you know, I'll test this next. I'll twe this. And then you start to go into informed optimism, which then all of a sudden, then you will have that exponential growth of success. But it will take you getting out of that hole. It will take you working through that valley of despair. And how do you. The difference is going to be in the data. And so how do you know if you're quitting and you are perpetuating the reinforcement theory of quitting to avoid pain, to continue to go back to the uninformed optimism side and then come down out of the valley despair. So the question becomes, well, how do you know if you're quitting and you need to quit or. Or you're feeling like I'm just. I'm just perpetuating this. So the reason I bring this up is because I. This is what happened to me, is that I was doing this really terrible thing of where I was. I was what I like to call. It's like, almost addicted to the. The chaos, like, addicted to the. The build, the stress of. Of the build. So what that means is that for me, I, you know, I'm A high achiever. So I'm constantly in this perpetual state of chasing, feeling like, oh, I need to chase this goal, I need to chase this achievement. I, I've said this in the context of, of when I was in musical theater, when I was feeling like I never felt like I was enough or I. Someone had told me, someone had told me that you need to love the process more than you love the outcome because you're going to spend more time in the process, which is true. And we all double tap that and go, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I need to fall in love with the process. But what people don't realize is that, is that for me, the process that I was in love with is, is the pain of not achieving. I was in the process of the pain of the chase. I was loving the pain of the chase. And now if you're anything like me and you're listening to this and you resonate with this at all, resonation can start to feel like that pit in your stomach where you're like, I know this to be true about me. And you might even feel a sense of resistance of like, that's not true, Beverly. I just know that I needed to quit because of the moon cycles. I needed to quit because that's what God said, whatever it is, okay? And I needed to quit because I. The data showed me it wasn't working. Many of these things are things I have told myself, right? Which is my intuition. I am faith based. So use whatever word works for you. God, intuition, higher self, it doesn't matter. I am faith based. So, you know, so for me, you know, I would tell myself these things all the time about this is what I was led to do, this is what I was inspired to do. And I wasn't really being relentlessly honest with myself about the truth of what was happening, which is that I was finding comfort in the chaos. And that's really hard for a lot of people to hear because nobody wants to hear that they're enjoying pain, okay? And nobody wants to hear that. But, but I know this to be true because when every time I shared with a client the behind the scenes look of what I was doing, like, okay, so I'll show something. Like I was working on a slo, for example, which is a self liquidating offer. And I was looking at the numbers and I was sharing the numbers and I was looking at it and I'm like, this was. With time had passed after I threw it out, I'm like, oh, turn that off. That's not working. And I was looking at it and I was taking a really close look at. And I was thinking to myself, oh my gosh, why did I turn that off? And so I was perpetually self sabotaging and throwing the baby out with the bathwater and quitting. I was getting into that valley of despair. I was getting into that stress and I was throwing it out. And then the worst part for me at least was that I had tricked myself into thinking that I had already moved past this, that I had already learned that lesson and that I wasn't going to keep doing it. And I have just been noticing myself like so. Like you remember how I told you in this miniseries, I'm going to give you the full behind the scenes look of what I'm going through. And what I'm learning is that, you know, in quarter two, as I have shared publicly on many times, that is that I wanted to. We were going to hit a million dollars this year and we're in September, we're about halfway. And so the most people are like, well, Beverly, shouldn't you be grateful? Shouldn't you be happy? And I am. But if you look at the P and L profits and losses from quarter two, you're going to see that my expenses were over my, my generating income. So. Meaning that I am holding the bag, which is what I teach my clients not to do. Do not hold the bag. You want to get a 1 ROAS, which stands for return on ad spend. So my roas was living at around 0.5, 0.7 for Q2 pretty consistently in that 90 day chunk. So on the back end, the business was growing based in the contracts that have been, that are being paid on. But the actual, but the roas, in terms of the investment that it took to get to whatever that, that back end is. Whatever, whatever. You know, so the, the ad spend I think was, you know, like 30,000 for the quarter. I'm, I don't have my piano up in front of me, but it was roughly that the cash collected was, you know, 26. So this is where marketer math gets you. Just so you know. Right. People will say all the time, like, I have a seven figure business, okay, cool. But if you spent eight figures to get there, that doesn't, that's not super impressive. Okay, but nobody will tell you that part. So anyway, so it is in my nature to go, oh, this doesn't work. Let's just throw it all out and start all over. But I know this, I know this about me and I have been Working through this. And I have been. I have been, you know, really trusting myself to know that I can go all in, know that I can figure it out, and that I am pushing the boundary of what I think I. Of what I know I can do. So what does that mean? That means that when I first started this business, if you told me I was going to spend $30,000 on ads, I would have said, you're insane. I'm never gonna do that. I'm never gonna give Mark Zuckerberg all that money. Okay, so that's what I would have gone through my mind. And then I started to push out that ladder of believability in terms of, oh, I believe that I can do this and that I would figure it out. And what I encourage my accelerator clients to do is when they're deciding how much should I spend on ads. Well, the question really is, what are you prepared to lose? So for me, I know that If I lost $30, $30,000 today. Notice how I tripped up on that word 30. Like, it feels like 30. If I lost. If you lost $30 today, could you figure it out and find it for me? I could. 30,000. I could find that. So what's that number for you? And then how can you work to pushing that, towards pushing that out? Okay. And we'll have a whole nother separate money conversation in a different miniseries. So let's. We'll stay on track here. So with that. With that being said, okay, your eight, you know, are you honest with yourself in terms of your. Your quitting component? Are you quitting? Are you. Are you throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Anyway, to. To close that. That loop up real quick. What I wanted to share is that when I saw that, when I was faced with that, I looked at that and said, okay, Beverly, this is your opportunity to know this about you. That. That left hand turn, it's available. Let's go right. Go right. So what does that mean? I went back to the data. I looked at the data. I saw the areas of opportunity. I can see where I am, where I need to improve performance in order to recoup and get to that one roas. And so I am going to keep guessing, testing and assessing and tweaking and taking the inspired action. The action that lights me up to course correct. And so that's what I'm doing as we finish out Q3 and as we go into Q4, because to remember that there is no timeline. It takes what it takes until it takes. That's what we're doing here in exchange in B Sims and Fitness. This is what we're doing in the PT Profit accelerator where we are literally building permission based pressure free sales systems that take what it takes, until it takes, and that we are just perpetually in a state of guessing, testing and assessing. And so that is how you start to stop quitting on yourself. And so instead of doing the reinforcement theory where you quit to avoid pain and then quit, what we want to do is we want to work on the, on the habit loop where we take action, consistent compounding action, because our brain, which I probably don't have to tell you, but we're 100% habit based, you probably already know this. This is one of those things that we double tap on Instagram, but then we don't stop and think, oh, what are my habits? We think, oh yeah, my habits are fine, I do all these things. But we have these unconscious patterns that are running in the back of our mind all the time that we're not present to. Because if we were present to it, we probably would change it if it was a habit we didn't like. So how do we know how you know? How do we know when's the right time to quit and that we are going all or nothing? And so here is what I want to say to you, okay? Because this is how I. Because I'm also navigating this with my children as they're like, I want to quit dance, I want to quit sports, I want to whatever it is that they tell me that they want to quit because I'm never going to force someone to do something. And and my kids too, to teach them that it's not okay to quit, because sometimes it is. If they're in a toxic relationship, I want them to quit. If they're doing something that is so. That is making them perpetually miserable, I want them to quit. So here are the three barometers that I ask myself that, that I give to myself and that what I give to my kids. And then I want to offer to you when deciding and determining what it is that it. What it is that I need to quit. And is this really not for me? The first question that I'll invite you to journal on and ask is the Ver. The 100k per month version of me, would they make this same would you make the same decision? So write this for yourself. Whatever this 10k month is for me, it's 100k because this is what I'm working towards is the 100k per month version of You, Beverly, would you make this decision? And whatever answer comes up for me, that's what I'm gonna, that's what I'm gonna answer. Now that's also, you know, in the context of I'm a manifesting generator. So I go through my gut, I have to ask myself yes or no questions. So sometimes that for me and if that question doesn't work for you, then, then make it open ended and invite yourself, especially if you're a projector, invite yourself to, to, to journal on what would the hundred k per month version of me do? Journal on that for me. I need to ask yes or no questions. One or one or either one of those. Whatever resonates with you. Try both. Okay. Second thing I will ask myself or that I'm evaluating both from my kids and for myself, is that just start like, it's like if I don't feel like working out and I'm like, but it's on my plan to do today, I'm just gonna start. So I'll do 10 minutes and if I'm like, get into it then. And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah. And I push through that uncomfortable resistance or laziness or demotivation or whatever it is, and I can do it, then I'm. Then I'm great, okay, then I can keep going. Now if I just start and after 10 minutes I'm like, still not in me. Then I'm gonna quit. Then I'm gonna say, okay, no, not for me. Okay. Last thing I'm gonna do and look at and evaluate is what is the context of me feeling like not wanting to do this? Meaning am I getting the Sunday scaries and I'm not looking forward to my schedule and. Or did I, or am I. Is it out of the context of I'm just about to do it? Meaning that it's like I'm dreading what's happening on Friday on a Monday. If that is happening, then I need to look at that and I need to look at that closer. Is that, is that going against one of my personal policies? And that is probably not in alignment. And I need to look at that. And I need to look at what specifically of that component do I need to change? Okay, so those are the three things that I'm really evaluating when it comes to is it the right time to quit? Because sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. And so you need to ask yourself where you are in that nuanced conversation. And I guess I'll leave you with the fourth, like last fourth thing. Which is? Which is look at the data, trust the data, and make sure that you're making decisions from data and not from emotional dysregulation. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today on this episode. If this episode helped you, you want some more clarity, come say hi on Social Instagram, specifically at BSimson Fitness. It'd be a huge favor to me if you screenshot this episode, tagged me in your story, and shared your biggest takeaway. Not only will it help me share this message with more people, I'd love to connect with you and support you and and have a conversation about what it is that you're going through. And if you're looking for the fast track to generating consistent 10 to 20k per month guaranteed, definitely send me a DM and we will get your free custom profit plan on the schedule. So thanks so much for hanging out with me today. I'll catch you on the next episode.

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