Has anyone ever said to you ‘trust the process’?
I used to hate this phase; I felt it was such a ‘coachy’ thing to say and it irritated the pants off me when anyone tried to use it with me.
It’s often said in the context of someone working hard, trying to get something to work. And if you’ve been in business for more than just a few months, you’ll know that there are plenty of things that can feel really hard work to get working.
Can’t get your marketing working? Trust the process.
Can’t find the right person to hire? Trust the process.
I didn’t have time to trust the process; I needed to get on and get stuff done. If something wasn’t working, I believed I just had to work harder at it.
Fast forward to today and ‘trust the process’ is a phase that me and my team use a lot with our clients. But not in the ‘coachy’ smug way that I remembered it as when I first got going back in 2004.
To be clear: trust the process can only work if you have a process in place to trust. It’s not about lighting your incense burners, closing your eyes and praying to the business gods to deliver. There is a process and system for anything and everything that you do in your business. From marketing to launching and from hiring new team members to letting go of the ones that don’t work out.
Let’s take my event, Embrace, as an example. Some may call me crazy to be putting together a three day event in just three weeks, but there are several reasons why it’s flowing together so easily.
1) Strategic Thinking: this isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to an urge I had.
Embrace has been brewing for some while now and there is a bigger vision that’s helping me steer this event.
2) Team: this isn’t something you try to do by yourself.
I already have a strong team; Alexia who started as my VA 12 years ago and now takes on the role of Operations Manager and Events Manager, and Melina who came on board as a Senior Coach for my Momentum clients. Plus I reached out to my good buddy, Nicki Williams, to co-host this particular event with me; I’ve realised it’s more fun to do projects like this with people you like 🙂
3) Asking for help: you don’t need to figure this out yourself.
One thing that was really important to me for this event was to have a diverse speaker line up. The recent #blacklivesmatter campaign this year opened my eyes to how much of a white privilege bubble I lived and worked in. So making sure I didn’t just rely on my business buddies and clients to fill the speaker slots, I asked in various communities for help in connecting me with women from different cultures and communities. We haven’t got it perfect and I know there’s more work I can do with more time available, but I am bloody proud of what we’ve created.
4) Process: everything runs more smoothly with a process.
Although this is the first three day event I’ve run, I’ve been running webinars and one day training events for most of my business life. Back in 2005 I launched a women’s networking group which grew to four venues across Surrey & Berkshire. I know that an event is easier to run because of the processes.
We have a process for speaker enrolment, for creating the event page, for registrations and using the zoom platform, for delegate packs and more. Everything that we do in my business more than once, quickly becomes a process. It gets documented either in a google doc or it gets Trelloed (we use Trello.com to manage our events, programmes and marketing campaigns).
And that’s why I now love the phrase ‘trust the process’.
With the right processes in place, it means you can trust through the good days as well as the bad. Because some things won’t go according to plan. Some expectations won’t be met. But with processes in place, it means I can release the worry and stress that I used to have many years ago.
It means I don’t have to get hung up on the exact, specific outcomes. I know where I am headed and the processes don’t restrict us but allow myself and my team open to possibilities and opportunities we hadn’t seen or thought of.
So how has this inspired you to take a look at your processes in your business?
I’d love to know.
There’s a really great chapter in my book True Profit Business that takes a look at the core processes that are fundamental to your business growth. If you are interested, let me know and I can write about it next week.
In the meantime, if you want to know more about our event Embrace Midlife & Menopause, here’s the link: www.karenskidmore.com/embrace
It’s a three day festival of inspiring conversations, expert interviews, panel discussions and women circles, which the amazing Nicki Williams, hormones specialist, is co-hosting with me. We are welcoming everyone and anyone -men & women, of any age – who wants to join the conversation. And if this isn’t for you, then can I ask you to think who do you know who needs to access this event?
Until next time, do less, be more and play bigger.