Is the “C” word, holding you back from success? Let’s get into it.
My name is Caitlin Bacher, founder and CEO of Scale with Success®. And I’m on a mission to help course creators all over the world grow their business in a way that is profitable and scalable. We’re sharing, reviewing conversations about what it really takes to scale an online course business to millions of dollars per year. Join us here to discover the tough decisions we’ve had to make, the biggest failures we’ve had to bounce back from and the learnings that emerged every step of the way. We are so grateful that we have the chance to share it all with you right here on Scale with Success®: The Podcast Built for Course Creators™. Let’s get started.
So I’m sure you have someone in your life who you look back on, whether that was a teacher or parent of one of your really good friends or maybe it was one of your own parents or maybe it was an older sibling. Whatever the case may be, I’m sure you have someone in your life who when you think of that person, you always think of that phrase that they used to say.
And so the person in my life who I associate with a very specific phrase is my father. And my father was infamous for saying, “Can’t is not a word in my vocabulary.” And growing up my sister and I used to hear it all the time and it would drive us crazy.
So here’s an example. I’d be, getting ready for school and taking my time to figure out what I was going to wear and da, da, da. And my dad would say, “Hey, come on, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” And I would be saying, “I can’t.” He’s like, “You need to, we need to get dressed., let’s go.” I be like “I can’t.” And then my dad or it could be when I was… I remember when I was learning how to tie my shoes and I was like, “Dad, can you just do it for me? Can you please just tie this for me?” I had graduated from velcro to shoelaces and it was time to tie my own shoes and I was having a very difficult time. I was like, “Please, please.” And my dad would just say, “Can’t is not a word in my vocabulary.”
We would always go on these different walks or hikes. We lived in a really remote area where there was a lot of dirt, there weren’t sidewalks. We basically lived way out in the country. So when I say a walk, I basically mean a mountain hike. So we would go on walks, otherwise known as hikes and whenever we did that, sometimes it would be hot outside or I’d be thirsty. And I’d be like, “Dad, I can’t, I can’t.” And he would just say the same thing. “Can’t is not a word in my vocabulary.”
And it’s funny because both my younger sister and I had that so ingrained in us that when my sister was, I think she was in the second or third grade, but I think it was second grade. She actually got into an argument with her teacher because one of the words on the weekly spelling test was “can’t”, right? Because they were learning all about contractions.
And so the word was “can’t” and my sister was like, “This is not a real word.” And the teacher was like, “Yes, it is. It’s a contraction for can not.” And my sister was like, “Nope, it’s not a word. My dad says it’s not a word.” So it was really funny because the teacher had to end up contacting my parents and be like, “What’s going on here?”
But in any case, what my dad understood about me that in that moment I didn’t understand is that I was 100% capable of doing the thing that I wanted to give up on, of doing the thing that I didn’t want to do.
And so when he was saying “can’t is not a word in my vocabulary”, he knew that I was just looking for an excuse. And that one phrase while it was incredibly infuriating at the time, I am so grateful for it now.
Having a challenge in front of you and knowing that can’t is out the window, right? It’s not even an option.
What that does is it causes you to think differently. It creates a situation where you have to really get clear on, okay, first of all, what is it that I’m actually trying to do? Because maybe you can’t accomplish that thing in the way that you are going about doing it. Maybe you have to go about it in a different way, but before you think about going about it in a different way, you have to get clear on, okay, what is the outcome that I’m going to create?
So there are likely things happening right now in your business that you feel you can’t do. And maybe it’s an outcome that you are looking to create, like reaching a new revenue goal. Maybe it’s hiring a new team member that your team is like you really need someone that can really contribute to your company in a really specific way. It might be streamlining your product suite into one signature offer that you can then scale to a million dollars in annual revenue.
Now, sometimes when I talk about the phrase, “can’t is not a word in my vocabulary,” a lot of people misinterpret what I mean. So letting go of the word can’t does NOT mean ignoring your feelings, pushing through, leaning really, really hard into things that are not working. It doesn’t mean any of that. In no way am I suggesting that the only way to succeed is just to shut off your emotions like a robot and pull yourself up by your bootstraps and just power through. I’m not suggesting that at all.
In fact, it’s just the opposite.
So today I want to share three specific ways that you can achieve your goals even if you’ve spent the last three months, six months, one year thinking that it’s something that you can’t do. So today I want to share three specific steps to achieving your goals even if it’s something that for the last three months, the last six months, last year, you have been telling yourself that it’s something that you just can’t do.
So here are three steps to achieve your goals even if they feel impossible.
Step number one: shift your perspective.
If you are attempting to solve the same problem in the same way over and over again and it’s not working, it’s time to stop pushing and start thinking. It’s time to zoom out, shift your perspective and see the problem from a new angle. So there’s a great book out there called The Road Less Stupid.
Listen, I know that title is kind of offensive, but it’s actually a really amazing book. And the premise of that book is that businesses don’t fail because the CEO is not busy solving problems every day. It’s not that they’re not solving problems, it’s that they’re solving the wrong problems.
When it comes to scaling an online course business to 6, 7, 8 figures, one of the biggest problems that I see happening over and over again is that the owner is spending all of their time solving the wrong problem.
So here’s a specific example. Imagine spending weeks or even months trying to fix your sales funnel. You have completely convinced yourself that the reason why you aren’t meeting your revenue goals is because your sales funnel doesn’t work. You believe something is wrong with your funnel. So you begin to ignore everything else happening in your business and you redo the webinar, you rewrite the emails, you’re ignoring every other thing happening around you, but all of your work isn’t working.
In fact, sales start to dip and you take that to further convince yourself that your sales funnel isn’t working. Is it possible that your sales funnel is not the problem and that the reason why you’re not meeting your revenue goals is because you are dedicating way too much time to fixing something that isn’t broken and not enough time growing your audience, nurturing them and moving them into your sales funnel that already works.
One of the things I’m always telling my team and always telling my clients is that you need to look at the numbers. What is the data telling you? Is your webinar conversion rate really the problem if only five people have actually seen that webinar in the last month? Are your sales emails really the problem, if you are consistently exceeding benchmarks for open rate and click through rate? You may be thinking that you aren’t meeting your revenue goals because you have a sales funnel problem. When in fact, you have a traffic problem. You may think that you have a traffic problem because your audience isn’t being nurtured enough. When in fact, the problem is that your audience is being nurtured, but it’s not growing enough.
Each problem requires a very different strategy to fix. And identifying the right problem is the first step to finding the right solution. If you have not read The Road Less Stupid, I highly recommend it.
So step number one, shift your perspective and make sure you have identified the right problem.
Step number two: to achieve your goals – even if it feels impossible – is to get help from someone who has already solved the problem that you are trying to achieve.
So this could be anything from books, courses, coaching. I am constantly investing in my own education and in my team’s education. I gave up trying to figure out everything all by myself a long time ago because it just doesn’t work. It’s slow, painful and I don’t have the time. I invest in education from people who have already done the thing I’m trying to do. People who share the same values and people who I feel I can connect with.
One of the mistakes that I see course creators make is that they are looking for solutions that are fast, cheap or easy.
In my experience:
- Reaching for the cheapest fix ends up being the most expensive and the most problematic in the long run.
- Reaching for the quickest solution ends up being the slowest solution in the long run.
- And reaching for the easiest solution fails to address the root cause. The problem keeps popping up over and over again. And you end up overwhelmed, exhausted and nothing feels easy anymore.
You were never meant to know everything there is to know about building a business all on your own.
The most successful people that are out there choose to consistently invest in themselves, whether that is investing time by reading books, by listening to podcasts, whether it’s investing money by investing in paid programs or a mentor or a coach. They know that in the long run, they have a much better chance of getting to where they want to go if they are looking to people who have already done the thing that they want to do.
Step number three to achieving your goals even if they feel impossible, is to make a plan.
You have already shifted your perspective and made sure you’re solving the right problem. You’ve already reached out for help from someone. And now it’s time to get that plan onto paper.
Now, if you are me, you like to jump into action without a plan and I get it. Making a plan can sometimes feel really annoying for people like us that like to take action quickly. Why should I take time to write things down? I already know what to do, so why can’t I just go do it? That’s what I used to think. And in fact, I thought that a plan had to be this super detailed step-by-step thing and my brain just didn’t work that way.
So remember, this is your plan and you get to decide how detailed it’s going to be. At the minimum, you need a basic outline with milestones and due dates to hold yourself accountable and make sure that you stay on track. Milestones are little steps that take you to the big outcome that you’re trying to create.
So let’s say the big outcome you’re trying to create is you want to build a new webinar. Well, building a webinar sounds pretty vague and who knows when it’s going to get done. A better plan would be complete the webinar outline by April 1st, complete the deck by April 3rd, record by April 4th, done.
I know some of you are listening right now and are thinking to yourself, oh my gosh, that I need way more details in my plan and that’s totally fine. I prefer to keep things simple, to reduce my own overwhelm. So do what works for you.
You may also be thinking, oh my gosh, four days to create a webinar. That sounds crazy. That’s way too fast. But my own personal working style is that I would rather just buckle down and write a new webinar in a few days than to work a little bit on it each day, over a longer period of time. That’s my best style of working, putting my head down and getting things done. If I try to do a little bit each day, I end up losing interest and motivation. You may work differently and that’s totally fine.
So you might be thinking, oh my gosh, Caitlin, did you ever learn how to get ready for school faster? Did you ever learn how to tie your shoes? Did you ever learn how to go on a longer hike? The answer is yes, but I had to change the way I was doing things in order to make that happen. I had to plan ahead and make my lunch and lay out my clothes the night before. I had to learn the hard way that sometimes the ropy shoelaces require a double knot, but the flat shoelaces are okay with the single knot. I had to take extra breaks during that long hike so that I didn’t burn out before I made it to the end.
So three steps to achieving your goals, even if they feel impossible:
- Number one, shift your perspective and make sure you have identified the right problems to solve.
- Number two, get help from someone who has done the thing that you’re trying to do before.
- And number three, make a plan.
I’ve really enjoyed our time together and really digging into how we can move from why I can’t to how I can.
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