Do you ever feel stuck and don’t know why things don’t seem to be working for you? Do you ever feel like you could do something or should do something and circumstances don’t seem to be alignment with that? This is a presentation about mindset and finding your constructive voice. Becca Biedler talks about 4 main characteristics and how they relate: Power, Autonomy, Confidence, Affirmation.
Here is the transcript from the presentation:
Ryan: Awesome, all right. Well, good morning, everybody, my name is Ryan Henry. I am the Idea Guy and Co-founder of INSPIREsmall.biz, where entrepreneurs grow, learn and connect. I help business owners who are looking to build the skills and make new connections that are necessary as part of building your own business.
Ryan: I love working with solopreneurs who are looking for a way to translate the things that they love doing into a business that their clients are happy to pay good money for their services or products.
Ryan: Most challenging thing facing me this week in one word is probably consistency. Making sure that on Friday I still have the same motivation and will to get through my To Do List that I did earlier this morning. So, I, I think keeping that at a nice consistent balance all week means that I’m not trying to do, do everything up front and then let it drop off later in the week. Just keep things at a nice even burn.
Ryan: Alright, so now everybody I would like to introduce our speaker today who is going to share some great information with us Becca Biedler, and Becca, you have the floor.
Becca: Hey, thank you. I’m going to see if I can screen share here. Um, makes it easier to follow along.
Becca: Let me see, uh, this is fine, even though it’s the edit version, OK?
Becca: So, my primary topic, and my coworker asked me, oh, what are you speaking on today, and I’m like, well, autonomy and basically taking ownership of your business, and maybe not just, I mean, this can apply to multiple areas of your life.
Becca: And when we run a business, we have to do, we have to wear many different hats, and just kind of be in charge of, like the behind-the-scenes portion. We also have to, especially in my case walk the walk and not just talk the talk.
Becca: We have to communicate with people, we have to follow up, so we can’t just- Following up is, is extremely important in communication and getting our message out there, so, let me just go ahead and introduce myself briefly.
Becca: Again, I am Becca. I am a personal trainer, so I train people in fitness. I’m also a coach and I train people in weightlifting, but I had my beginnings in endurance.
Becca: So, I started this business, umm, a few, couple years ago, and I was an instructional designer, for, even before that, and I just kind of continue, and this is sort of something I do on the side and I have sort of merged the two together, because instructional design is basically, um, doing the behind the scenes work in building a training course or plan so that the training actually matches the client, because we need to be more client first as opposed to content first when it comes to our approach in communicating what we’re doing.
Becca: So, here’s sort of a rhetorical question, and I’ll probably be asking some questions, and I think it would be great if anyone wants to answer out loud or in the chat.
Becca: So, uh, what if we do the work that is our business or whatever it is that we’re doing and are indifferent to extrinsic rewards. How would that affect your purpose?
Becca: Your, or ethos? You know, when you’re thinking about purpose and why am I doing this? How would that affect your message? How would that affect the outcome of the work that you do?
Becca: And when I think about these things, extrinsic rewards help push and motivate us to a degree, but when we are autonomous, our ethos pushes us, why we do what we do, so I, uh-
Becca: And if you’re interacting with people, it’s very important quality to have strong ethos. Autonomy is owning yourself, your actions, your reactions, and your decisions.
Becca: You have agency, uh, this will allow you to try and fail and learn from your experiences and give you confidence to voice your passion and ethos.
Becca: Which I assume, that if you’ve gone into business for yourself, you have that passion. Whether it is to, um, you have, you want to have some sort of impact, right?
Becca: So, we have two desires. And these desires will oftentimes influence the decisions that we make and how we react to things.
Becca: So, a lot of times we are looking for affirmation.
Becca: You think of all the behaviors that you perform in the day or in a week. We’re looking for affirmation, especially if you’re on social media or you are working with coworkers or clients or potential clients, networking groups. We’re looking for affirmation. And a lot of behaviors are influenced by that.
Becca: We also desire power, we desire to control surroundings, to affect people, to control people. Uh, and not necessarily in a bad way, per say, but if you think about remember back to a time when say you were a kid and, uh, I don’t know if any of, maybe you have siblings, but I remember my sister was not a morning person, so I had to make sure that I definitely was a morning person and made her very irritable. But this was my influence over her. This was how I was trying to exert my power over her. So, I was trying to affect her, but these are two desires that people have.
Becca: These are two needs, down here at the bottom, and they’re all related to each other, so affirmation in a way is related to confidence. Affirmation is more contingent on external edification, right? Whereas confidence is more internal, it is almost as if it’s like the affirmation that comes from yourself on the inside.
Becca: And it’s, it’s a belief, and we’re going to dive more into these, but autonomy is related to power, so power again is contingent on other people or circumstances, and that’s why we get so frustrated, because we really have little power over everything else, I mean, whereas autonomy is more like power over yourself, your reactions, what you create and produce.
Becca: And so, oh, someone’s coming in. So, these are- I used to use zoom all the time, teaching online, and so I, I like, you know, get distracted.
Becca: These are four things to think about, that, that will affect your behaviors and decisions that you make.
Becca: So, we’ll go to affirmation again, that one’s, first square.
Becca: What behaviors or decisions do you make to seek approval or affirmation? What can you think of off the top of your head, that maybe, maybe it was something you did in the past, maybe something you do now, your business.
Becca: We have the option to answer out loud or in the chat, but it’s OK. I intended this to be more discussional.
Becca: I think that social media maybe plays a role, trying to make sure you’ve got the right image. Has anyone used Canva oh, yeah, selfies? Yeah, and it’s, selfies are difficult right?
Becca: Cause for me, I love digital photography, because there are so many selfies that I’ve had to delete just because I’m like, I’m not going to get the right kind of approval from this, like this doesn’t, especially as a personal trainer, image is kind of important. Yeah, there’s, a lot of people do this without necessarily realizing it. They’re seeking affirmation and approval from the group.
Becca: And, and it’s normal, people want to make sure that we’re liked. We will dress a certain way or do certain things to get affirmation. We’ll join groups, go to conferences that align with us, rather than challenge us.
Becca: People also desire to be a part and feel liked, unfortunately with affirmation, we do lose a lot of our individuality and genuineness. And again, of course, it’s also based on extrinsic rewards that we get rather than our own internal personal drive. So we lose a little bit of our voice in that.
Becca: And then, of course, here’s the bandwagon, the social media bandwagon.
Becca: Social media is a good tool to communicate with people, I will say that.
Becca: Who uses social media here for their business? Yeah, I do. And a lot of times it’s free. There, there is some advertising, like with Facebook. But hey, you know, you’re get- you’re putting yourself out there and, and it is important to address an audience.
Becca: When I, affirmation also, I also want to clarify something too, people use that word a lot. It’s kind of a buzz word, especially in the life coaching world, where it’s kind of, people use that word to sort of describe the way you talk to yourself, but I am describing it as more like us seeking affirmation from people on the outside of us.
Becca: So, I think of it more in terms of agreement. When I think about it in terms of groupthink, or being a part of a group, bandwagon mentalities, social media likes and posts. That’s what I was thinking of when I think of affirmation more in general terms.
Becca: So, in a little bit, hopefully we’ll get some more involvement here, because I’d like to create a thesis statement with you and your business, or, or a hypothesis if you will, which is kind of the same thing.
Becca: Here is a question, kind of a rhetorical question for you. Why do we research in general? Why do we research? A to affirm our beliefs, B to test our beliefs, or C to see what other people believe?
Bill: I kind of do it mostly to affirm what I already feel like I’m pretty confident in. So, it’s, A would be my answer mostly.
Becca: Yeah, going back to that confidence, it’s good to have confidence, so and then, Oh yeah, OK.
Becca: So, let me look at the answers again. Yeah, well see, to see what other people believe. All of the above.
Becca: OK, so in general people, do research for these different reasons, and I, kind of like, there could be more.
Becca: I mean, there’s obviously going to be a spectrum, but there’s lots of reasons why people research, look things up on Google. They want to seek out these things sometimes. I think B, though is probably the most challenging one.
Becca: Now, when it comes to research, and I, I also have this background in teaching how to write empirical papers. So, people who are engineers or in medicine, I’ve helped them write papers and communicate their research findings because of my English background, so they were focusing more on B, so I’m going to try to examine each of these three reasons here.
Becca: And so, if we pick A, which is to firm our beliefs, if you’re thinking this from maybe a more scientific perspective, our biases are entering in, and our blind spots can affect our effectiveness and our learning. So, we tend to gravitate toward research that supports our belief.
Becca: Sometimes it is intentional, like cherry picking the data, you know, I, I know people do that sometimes, but a lot of times it’s just incidental.
Becca: And, you know, you do have these major algorithms, pretty much when you search for something, and those algorithms are pointing you in the direction of things that are going to affirm you rather than challenge you and test you. Because sometimes things are not as black and white as, as we’d like them to be, and everyone has their perspective.
Becca: And of course, when it comes to sales and things like that, perspective is a very important thing.
Becca: Uh, when we pick C, I’ll jump down to C, we want to see maybe what other people believe, there is a, there may be a lack to critical thinking or, or too much trust from other sources, but there needs to be a balance, right? So, balancing our beliefs, what other people believe.
Becca: So, in science, for answer B, we take some background information and create a hypothesis, and that hypothesis is a statement that is to be tested and we write the test or the experiment and then we look for data and info that contradicts or challenges it, which almost seems counterintuitive in a way, because there is nuance, we’ve got to struggle with nuance, and that’s how we grow and learn. And confidence comes through testing.
Becca: And as a teacher, I’ve made this kind of motto, I guess, be confident in your ability to learn, more so than in what you already know. There’s always more, um, for us to learn.
Becca: So, this helps us grow and we gain more confidence after we are tested. Sometimes our ideas fail and that’s OK, it just it helps us grow.
Becca: So, instead of affirmation, affirmation is a desire, but confidence is a need, and it comes through testing, so being your, being confident in your ability to learn and get back up when you need to, because owning a business is a struggle a lot of times.
Becca: So, now we’ve changed, we’ve changed affirmation into confidence, and it’s OK to be contradicted sometimes.
Becca: Now autonomy, so I’m not going to say opposite, but what the desire that matches autonomy is power, right? But autonomy is more like the power over your own self.
Becca: And the very first thing in autonomy is just deciding for yourself and doing right. So, taking that first step, you have to decide first.
Becca: A lot of times we look around us, maybe we blame others. We blame our circumstances. And yeah, people’s circumstances can be pretty crummy sometimes, and I am a fitness coach and I do have a lot of clients that are interested in fat loss. And that is a very difficult goal, and it requires lasting lifestyle changes that have to be made, like nutritional changes as well as perhaps physical changes.
Becca: And when it comes to weight loss, a lot of times, or sometimes there are people who have other, additional health struggles that they have to overcome that are circumstantial and not necessarily, oh, they aren’t making the right choices.
Becca: So, really the autonomy is supposed to be more empowering for yourself, not so much putting blame on you for not getting ahead or getting started, but I feel like autonomy is something you have. It just needs to be realized.
Becca: And, um, yeah. I’ve, actually, used to be up to 200 pounds myself and I have 4 kids, but I managed to get to the gym, cook food, be selective. So, I had a weight loss journey myself in one day.
Becca: And I’ve been asked this, what, what was my success? How did I become successful in this? And it was just, I just decided, I just decided that it was, I can change this, and I did, and I’ve been able to keep my weight off for, like all these years.
Becca: Autonomy is, is owning yourself, owning your circumstances, and your choices that you make now.
Becca: A part of that is discipline. Because getting up at 4:30, cooking the food when you’re tired, going to bed at night instead of like watching TV late into the night or studying, even, you know, if you have to study something. If you have to put money aside to buy equipment you need. It all requires discipline.
Becca: And we’re going to clarify our goals here in a minute, but discipline is believing that the goal is more important than how you feel in the moment.
Becca: So, motivation won’t always be there. You have to fall back on discipline.
Becca: When you have a goal, like a, you clarify your goal, and that’s one of the things I do with my clients, is we sit down and I also, we just kind of review and I remind them what their goal is.
Becca: What is your goal? Well, I wanna be able to pick my kids up, you know, and, and hold them or carry them and I can’t do that because, you know, I, I just can’t so. When you, when you think about that ,it, it gives you more drive towards that goal, and you have to fight it.
Becca: You just have to turn off the TV, get out of bed, you know, put that fifth cookie back in the box. Whatever it is that you have to do.
Becca: And I can’t stress the importance of discipline in autonomy, more so.
Becca: And, uh, it’s, it’s a hard thing. It’s a hard road. That, that’s good.
Becca: So, power is what people seek. They want to control circumstances or other people, which is not really something you can do. Power is contingent on others.
Becca: Just like affirmation is contingent on other people, whereas confidence you’re responsible for and autonomy, that’s you.
Becca: Power it, it is a desire to have control and what we need is autonomy, which is ownership.
Becca: So, imagine yourself as being captain of your ship, ownership.
Becca: And so, you own your own business. Thinking about, we could maybe write a statement about your business, and that can be maybe what you focus on, what your, what kind of becomes your ethos.
Becca: And so, when I create a really good thesis statement and as you work through just doing your day-to-day activities for your business and you think about this statement that is kind of an overarching summary of your entire business, what is, we’ll just kind of break that down, and, and what I, how I’ve broken it down. This is gonna be a one sentence, by the way. It’s going to be your topic.
Becca: And what about your topic, you know?
Becca: I mean, I could say fitness. Fitness is very big, very. Because there are so many topics within fitness, there’s physique, there’s endurance, there’s weightlifting. There’s CrossFit. What am I talking about when I’m talking about specifics.
Becca: So, the topic is going to be a bit specific, rather than just saying fitness or finance, or you know. And then what about your topic? And then the how and why? So we’re going to kind of like break that down into a full sentence summary.
Becca: And in a way, that can be your goal that can be tested over time as you, as you go through.
Becca: This is the last slide and I think that we can maybe have a discussion about, about this, and form our statements.
Becca: Does anyone want to go first?
Becca: Maybe you already have a statement, like a purpose statement of your, maybe you already have one.
Kwan: For me, I don’t think it’s like, too hard to like, pretty much, like, find new customers because I, I’d be thinking, like if I can wash your car, I can wash your house, and that’s, that’s a good start because I know people like their car clean and it really be hard for people to get their house clean, even if you don’t own your house, it can’t get dirty from like algae and whatnot, but if you can see how, how fast we can get your car clean, maybe you could do the same thing to your house.
Becca: OK, so you, and you use a pressure washer. What else do you use to clean?
Kwan: Yes, just a pressure washer and trying to figure out different chemicals, see what’s the best for cars and like different types of cars and the same thing for houses. You get your house washed up. Some driveways be having like, oil stains and whatnot, and picket fences even, get dirty over time. And it’s, it’s, it’s really a lot that need to be cleaned, that people really don’t look at, at least within your house.
Becca: OK, so your topic is pressure washing, right? Alright, pressure washing, we’re going to make, um, kind of, a sentence, is a way to clean your car and your, well, house. How about we, we try to make a claim, in a way, so pressure washing is an effective, effective way to clean your car and your house.
Becca: So, that’s almost like, what about your topic? Well, my topic, my topic is pressure washing is an effective way to clean your car and your house. Why is it an effective way to clean your car and your house? One, maybe if you, if you don’t necessarily have to use chemicals, that’s probably not always a requirement, right?
Kwan: The chemicals is, just like, a purpose I use for like soap. So, like, some, some, some soap do have chemicals in it, and some soap do have chemicals that’s eco-friendly.
Becca: OK, maybe with eco-friendly soaps or you could say it’s effective because, you know, it’s, it’s accessible. You travel to the to the client, obviously. I mean they can’t pick up their house and take it to you, so pressure washing is an effective way to clean your car and your house with eco-friendly soaps.
Becca: And this statement, can it be it can be tested, right? You can see, OK, is this the most effective way to clean, in fact, you are looking into other chemicals to kind of test this statement, right?
Becca: So, I kind of put the how and the why all the way up here, so kind of breaking it down. And there could be other ways to, to state this. Actually, I’ll put it down.
Becca: Anyone else want to go or maybe you have something in your mind already?
Ryan: Becca, we, we share education with people. So, I guess to boil it down to its most basic way, there’s a lot of things to do on your phone and your computer that business owners don’t necessarily know they have to have. And so we kind of put it into one place for people to learn it, whatever their, whatever their preferred way is, it’s either watching videos or reading or attending events like these, but it’s something that everyone walks away knowing something they didn’t prior.
Becca: So, is the topic?
Ryan: Probably education.
Becca: What type of education?
Ryan: Mostly around technical skills and proficiency, like, for example, how to use Facebook for your business, how to use Instagram, how to use YouTube. So, maybe a good statement would be.
Becca: Something like that.
Ryan: With technical proficiency, saves business owners time. I mean, if you, if you know how to do it, you, you jump on the computer or your phone and you get it done and then you go back to doing other things. You don’t have to sit there all day and waste your time.
Becca: Yeah, and they could become more efficient, because, because, you know, they’re not wasting time trying to figure something out and providing those technical proficiency skills.
Becca: Or, I guess it’s more skill based, right, than knowledge-based type of education.
Ryan: Yeah, because we kind of follow a principle of problem-based learning, like if you have a real-life problem you want to solve and you learn how to do it, you’re retention of that expertise, it is more likely to stick in your mind because it’s applied to how does it solve your problem.
Becca: So, good and I, I like that it is also specific, so it’s not too general, so you don’t necessarily want, like a make a giant book about it, you know.
Becca: Well, maybe you do, uh, some people write books right? But, having it specific, testable? So, you can almost test, you know, you can measure efficiency. You can measure time. Yeah, time, efficiency, productivity.
Ryan: Yeah, the number one thing that comes up in our in our reviews is how much time people save. Now that, you know, after they’ve done business with us, they feel like they’re able to get things done quicker. They spend less time trying to understand why it’s important to do these things and then fumble through it. They just open up the app, complete what they need to do, and they set the phone down. They walk away from the computer because their clients are face to face.
Ryan: Bill, it’s time to pick on you.
Bill: Pick on me, huh? Let’s go. You know, what I try to do is blend people skills and management. Improve productivity and efficiency.
Becca: Blend people skills and management to improve productivity and efficiency.
Bill: You know, a lot of times when I’m dealing with small business owners, they manage the business fairly well, but they are rotten at people skills. And so, I try to get those two to blend. Which kind of, that’s a little dumb. When you’re talking about, you went to autonomy and power, you know, guy who has his own construction business.
Bill: It’s been his baby for a long time. You know, good at that, but, you know, his people skills at times, when we sit down, or just like as far as retaining the skilled labor and so forth that he needs or even the semi-skilled labor, can, can be a challenge. So, that’s why I try to work with getting those two and, and getting to that, you know, where they can be. You know, where they can be better at both and therefore their business will be more productive and efficient.
Becca: Yeah, and I can see that, too, because there are people who are really, really good at their skills, like, you know, construction, but the, but working with people, yeah.
Bill: Yeah, it, it, it doesn’t make any difference with construction. It’s, it usually, what I found is the small business owner, you know, it’s his baby. He birthed it. When you talk about power and, and autonomy, you hit the nail on the head. You, you, you can’t really challenge them too much. But, you gotta, and, and, but you gotta try to blend them, blend their people skills into it or else in today’s world they’re just not gonna survive.
Bill: And that’s kind of like what I’m, what I’m doing when, when, that, that, that’s mostly what I do.
Becca: So, what do you use? What do you use? Do you just kind of teach them or?
Bill: It’s, it’s a lot of teaching, education, listening, providing. When I, when I went to the thing of, where you had that one up about research, a lot of times it’s, it’s showing them that, hey, this is, this works and I gotta pull them, you know, I, I know the research. I know the business. And I just have to convince them with it, with, you know, the documentation. A lot of times that’s what it takes, is saying, you know, this is, this is what, this is what the research says.
Bill: Today, you can’t, you can’t ignore the people side of the business and just concentrate on the management side. What you, what you’ve done for years, you’ve got to change a few things, and sometimes that’s hard.
Becca: So, I was thinking about including something about the word business in there.
Bill: It’s stated, but what it, it’s?
Bill: Anyway, it’s trying to get those two, and I do it through education, listening. And then it’s mostly education, that’s what I would call, blend people skills and business management with education, to, to produce to improve productivity and efficiency.
Becca: To improve with education, to improve productivity and efficiency.
Bill: And that’ll get close enough.
Becca: Is it testable? Is it a testable statement? Like can you prove this with, like, in theory?
Bill: In, in theory I can, I can prove it. It’s generally as you go along, my client says, yep, you’re-
Bill: It’s testable from the standpoint of dollars and cents. I can get, I can, we can, return on that investment of, of the time. The money’s paying me and the time that they spend. And if, if things work right, you know their return on investment is quite good. And they will know it, and they will, they’ll continue being my client, and, you know, all of those things, but the, the big test is the ROI.
Bill: I’m not just, we’re not getting there. Then I either gotta change something or they’re gonna have to find somebody else. That’s fine, if you ask for a test. That’s the major test I use.
Bill: Is is what I provided, giving them the return on their investment.
Becca: Yeah, yeah.
Becca: Yeah, I think that in education it’s changed a lot and one of the, I mean the things is that we need to do is just, yeah, same thing with the with the hospital here, thinking about dollars and cents, yeah?
Bill: Well, it’s not as squishy as it used to be.
Becca: And when it comes to education, our outcome is to be something that we want to see others doing as a result of the education, rather than just taking a test and passing it. We actually want to see some kind of a behavior change, that the nurses are profiling a procedure, for example, or my clients are improving, like their weight, maybe their like, lifting heavier things, like that, those are behavior changes that you might wanna see.
Becca: And thinking of it from that perspective again is more client first than content first, because everybody’s content has value and it’s important, and it’s our baby, but being client first will help address their need and, you know, allow for more change to happen.
Becca: Because you know they need to be able to apply the knowledge, especially with technical proficiency or people skills and things like that. They have to practice it, those things.
Becca: The pressure washing, I want to say, is probably more like definitely stronger. This is like clean cut as far as you, you can test it, whereas, you know, when it comes to people skills, uh, you know, it’s a little more, I guess, of a spectrum there with proficiencies and things like that and nuanced, whereas here it’s like a more clean cut, you know, science fair project for sure, or you can see the most effective way, an eco-friendly way to clean your house.
Becca: It’s, it’s an important part of your, part of your life. So, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s everything, that’s everything from my slide show.
Becca: But, thank you for participating. I like it when people discuss topics.
Becca: And thank you, Ryan. Thank you, William and Kwan. Thank you guys.
Ryan: Awesome, uh, does anyone have any other questions for Becca?
Ryan: All right, let’s give her a hand for her presentation today.
