I want to chat about the experience of going all in and what that feels like versus dipping your toe in. So I’m gonna start with an analogy…
Do you jump all in or just dip your toes in?
Quite a few years ago, I went to Borneo. I had an amazing time there – we had these little huts on top of the water and they were gorgeous! The huts we were in were above the water in a big circle. It was so amazing because you could go out of your bedroom, essentially, and you could jump into the water. The cool thing about being in these amazing little places was that you could explore these things in a really different way.
I was there with some random backpackers that I happened to have met along the way (as you do when you’re a traveller, like me), and all of us had a different way of getting in the water. Some of us were jumping in and popping a toe in the water and we were like, “Ooh, it’s bit cold!” Some of us were in the water up to our belly buttons. If you’ve got kids or you enjoy the beach, you probably know what it feels like. You know, you can pop your feet in and you’re pretty safe. Pop the back of your knees in and it’s like, “Oh!” Get your bum in and it’s like, “Okay! I’m halfway there I may as well get my belly button in!” Right?!
But some of us give up once we hit the calf or belly button zone.
It’s like, “Okay, I’ve hit the belly button. I’ve had enough. I’ll just stay here and do my thing.” Then, some of us, like this girl I was travelling with, she just literally jumped all way in.
Her experience of jumping in and then seeing the fish, the turtles, the glorious nature around us, was from an ‘all in’ perspective. She didn’t just dip a toe in like some of us. I was in up to my belly button and this other girl was just dipping her toes in. So we were seeing things from that angle.
See the world from a different perspective
Things are really different from the ‘all in’ perspective. What she saw from under the water was really different to what we were seeing and experiencing. And, when she came up from under the water, she felt invigorated had a whole different perspective from being ‘all in.’
Ever since I saw how she jumped all in and how that affected her, I’ve been doing exactly the same thing.
When you see the result of being all in, it’s a very different result from dipping your toe in. And it can be really different for everybody.
Running an ‘all in’ business looks very different from running a hobby business. Running a clinic one-on-one looks different from expanding into a passive income stream, or training others, or a product based business. It’s all going to be very different. We’re all experiencing our businesses in different ways at different times.
But I’d love to know in the comments, what does your business experience look and feel like for you right now? Are you dipping a toe in,going up to your belly button, or have you jumped all in?
What part of your business are you treating like a hobby?
When you aren’t treating your business in a ‘going pro’ way, you end up looking like that little weirdo that’s standing at the edge of the water with their feet in but their towel on. They’re kind of half in, half out, not quite sure.
That is not going to give you the flow and the experience of going all in.
There’s a really cool book called Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield. He writes a whole bunch of really cool books but this one is specifically about how we might be treating our business as a hobby. We might not have realised it, or there might be an element of your business that you haven’t gone pro or all-in on just yet.
And you know it because you’ve been putting it off, making excuses, you feel unsure, you have constant mindset blocks holding you back, and you find yourself constantly holding onto the edges like a safety net.
Are you just dipping a toe into being professional?
Are you still testing out what “going pro” will be like but you haven’t followed through to go all in on running your business the best way you possibly can?
I did a little brainstorming on this today. Which one of these sounds like you?
- putting off publishing your newsletter
- procrastinating about doing a blog
- or, you have done a blog and it’s just sat there
- it’s been weeks or months since you did a blog
- you did a newsletter back at Christmas
- that box of receipts still hasn’t been put into the bookkeeping program. . .
- getting a bookkeeper was a good idea, but . . .
- you connected with a local GP or other practice and didn’t follow up
- bookkeeping seemed like a good idea when you did the Nat Biz Scav Hunt, you made a spreadsheet . . .
- getting your website finished is on your list, but. . .
- you thought about starting a YouTube channel or you put one video up, but then you didn’t tell anyone about it
- maybe you’ve thought about doing a Facebook Live and you did one last year when you were really motivated, but. . .
- you’re piecing together things like your calendar, maybe Acuity, something with a PDF. You know there are simple solutions like Cliniko out there, but you haven’t fully committed
- Easter weekend is coming up and someone is emailing you, but you haven’t set up an autoresponder telling people your working days
- people are calling your phone number but you haven’t switched it off or you haven’t gotten a different number so they know when you’re working and when you’re not
- you’ve got your iris lamp, or your blood pressure cuff, or your scales, but you haven’t made sure to have batteries for them
You’re amazing and you’re ready to jump but you’re holding onto a towel going, “hmm… it looks a bit cold/rocky/not for me today…”
Why are you holding yourself back?
Like jumping into the pool, taking the leap to go all in in your business could be embarrassing or scary. It’s unknown. We don’t know what’s on the other side of jumping in…
It could be invigorating and help you in a way that you’ve never experienced before. It could also become very clear this is not our right path.
Dipping a toe into so many different pies may seem like a good idea, but if you just went all in on one it could actually be the solution that you’re looking for.
There are so many different places where we might be dipping our toe in and then jumping out again and putting that towel back on. But if you were just to jump all in it could change everything for you.
Experiment with jumping in, going all in, and going pro every single time.
You’ll consistently get different results you’ve never seen before, and your opportunities will be unbelievable.
So, lean in.
It’s the same invigorating feeling you get when you jump into the ocean, your local river, or into a water hole you’ve never been in before. That ‘YES’ moment always brings a different result from just dipping your toe in and trying to stay in your comfort zone.
These reminders and conversations help us realise where we could go all in on something. We can go all in on:
- paying the bills on time rather than pushing them right to their finish date
- getting those receipts and into the bookkeeping program
- ring a bookkeeper and get them to take over
- get an extra client to pay for the bookkeeper or to pay for the VA to finish that work that you haven’t gone pro with
Forgetting to renew the batteries is just a symptom. There are other things that are in the background that are niggling on your business and holding you back from going pro in different areas.
Start by going ‘all in’ on your self-care
Lastly, this one came up in the Hub this week and I really want to address it because it’s a really big deal. Praccies need praccies and self-care. You can go all in on your self-care.
You can take your supplements every couple of days and think about the food that you’re going to eat or maybe do some other know movement. Or you can go all in and commit to accountability for looking after yourself. You can go all in and actually organise to go see a practitioner in your local area, whether it’s acupuncture therapy, or a kinesiologist, or whatever. This is your reminder.
If this is you and you know that’s the thing you need to be on top of your game, you need to go all in on it.
For me, what ‘all in’ looked like, when I started to notice fraying at the edges, was going and booking a whole year of going to the float tank, once every six weeks. It was booking a whole year of going to my chiropractor, and a whole year of going to my kinesiologist. Then when it’s time, I just show up for it. I’m all in and I have actually put skin in the game. I know that that’s going to cost a certain amount of money so I have to find a way to get that certain amount of money consistently coming through my business to support what I’m going all-in on.
When it comes to whatever you are going all-in on, once you choose it, go all-in on finding the ways to make that happen for you. Find the ways to make your website work for you, to complete the things that you know you need to do online, to set your boundaries, and to handle your own self-care so you can show up and don’t have to have the downtime that we are all going to experience over our professional lives where we are in burnout.
How can you go all-in on going pro as a professional, a practitioner, as a business owner, and as an amazing human being in the world?
Where can you go all in, show up, and do the things that you need to do rather than just dipping a toe in and doing it once and then pretending like that was enough?
Go all in and take action!
Hopefully, this is something for you to consider and then to take action on. Just like any of the Natupreneur trainings, the gold is in the action. It starts as a conversation and an idea to consider. Then it becomes reality. And then it’s about taking action to get the traction you want in your life for your business.
What is one thing you can fully jump into in your life or business?
Yep, i’m going all in – got my marketing materials, my referral letter (which I haven’t yet posted), my new clinic space and following up on tentative bookings. I don’t know how its all going to work but dipping my toes in at home just wasn’t working for me. I was playing it safe but also I had a young daughter I didn’t want to put into care. I was all-in for my family at that point and now I want a change in direction because my all-in at home was becoming stale.
This is amazing! I cant wait to see what you create