81. Result surprise

You've done all the things. Checked all the boxes. So... why isn't your business working?

I call that "result surprise", and it's one of the most useful things you can gain insight into. 

Because it means the story you're telling yourself about how results get created has a gap in it. This episode helps you find that gap. 

Once you can see that clearly, the surprise goes away, and so does a lot of the suffering. And that means better results.

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I’m Simone Grace Seol. Let me help you build community care, social responsibility, and spirituality into every part of your business.

📩 My emails — my most intimate writing, sent in real time: simonegraceseol.com/get-emails

📷 Instagram — @simone.grace.seol

Transcript

Hey, this is Simone. I'm bringing back some episodes from my archived podcast that I think very much stand the test of time and are just as useful now as they were back then. So today you're gonna hear me talk about the pervasive phenomenon of what I termed result surprise — which is when something in your business is not working, but the more important thing is that you don't understand why it's not working. So I'm sharing some of my insights on that.

And now, you know I love me some coaches, life coaches, and a lot of this episode that I recorded many years ago talks to coaches about coaches. However, just know that the principles truly apply to any kind of business you have, even if you're not a coach. So listen up and enjoy.

What is result surprise?

Hey, friends. I'm gonna talk today about what I'm going to call result surprise. It's a phenomenon that I have named. Result surprise — it's literally when you are surprised by the results that you are getting in your business.

So result surprise can happen in two ways. It can happen in a positive way, where you're pleasantly, delightedly surprised by the results you're getting in your business. But today, I would like to focus on, for lack of a better term, let's call it negative result surprise.

I hear from lots of coaches about their own result surprise, and they'll usually tell me things like, "I've done this, I've done that. I've been doing all of these things consistently, and I've..." And they'll tell me all the things that they've been so busy with, right? And then they'll tell me, "But I still don't have anybody reaching out. I still have not made the money I want."

And I think there are lots of people who don't have the results they want yet, and they could even be frustrated about it, but they're not surprised. Today, I really wanna focus on the times when people feel genuinely surprised — because their expectation of what the result should be is not matching up with what is turning up in reality.

The three reasons it happens

So result surprise happens very simply for one of three reasons that I have identified. So here are the three reasons that result surprise happens.

Number one: there has been an over-focus on action.

Number two — which is very much related to number one, because you've been over-focusing on the actions that you're taking — there has been what I'm calling a belief negligence. A belief negligence is when you are ignoring, neglecting, not bringing full awareness to how your beliefs, that is to say your thoughts, are operating underneath the actions to influence your actions, and then hence the results.

And number three is what I'm going to call expectation error.

I'm gonna talk about these one by one.

Reason one: over-focus on action

So over-focus on action, like I said, is literally what it sounds like. It's when you think that your work in business — your work in creating the results that you want in your business — happens as a result of the actions that you take.

Lots of coaches who report result surprise to me, when they talk about it, it's very clear to me that they have been very, very action-focused. They have this long list of to-dos, like, "I did this post. I did this training. I created these freebies. I posted three times a day. All these things, I did these." And what that reveals is the belief that action creates results.

Action creates results, yes — but the action is almost like a carrier of the belief that is motivating the action. So let me give you an example, 'cause I think that sounded really abstract.

So let's say you have the thought about your business, "It's not working." You have that thought. You believe that thought. You don't question it. It just feels like a fact. And because you believe that it's not working, you try to fix what you think is the problem of it not working by doing more action.

So — I'm just making this up as an example — but I've been doing one post a day, and it's not working, so I'm gonna do one post a day plus do a live every other day to make it work. So you added on the extra task, the extra action of going live. But what is motivating that extra action that you're taking is the belief it's not working, okay?

And when you're believing that it's not working, you might feel the emotions of confused, insecure, uncertain. And then you are carrying all those feelings of uncertainty and confusion and insecurity into the action that you're taking — into the live that you're doing, into the pre-preparation of it, in the delivery of it, in your evaluation of it. What's pervasive in all of those actions might be your feelings of confusion and uncertainty.

Versus — if you were to add to your list of marketing tasks, say, "Okay, I'm gonna decide to do an extra live," but that same action was motivated by a very different belief, a very different thought. Say something like, "What I have to offer is so valuable, and I want more people to hear it." Then when you go live with that thought, the emotional fuel that it creates is certain and confident. And you might even be feeling generous, because you're like, "Yeah, I have this great, valuable thing, and I'm showing up with it so I can be helpful to other people."

So then you're feeling confident, you're feeling generous, you're feeling powerful. And then from those emotions, the live that you're going to do is very different from the live that you're going to do while feeling uncertain and confused about your business. And it might be the same topic. You might even talk about the same points. But the effect is going to be very different. You're gonna carry yourself differently.

So I see coaches doing this all the time, where they decide on a strategy, and then they don't immediately get the results they want, and then they decide that the problem was the actions. So they go ahead and change all the actions, because they think something else might be the solution. And as soon as they see another ad for another whatever strategy or program, they think, "Oh, maybe that's the missing key," and then they go and change up their entire course of action.

So all of this keeps you, like I said, very busy, keeps you uncentered, and it keeps you — in most of the cases that I've seen — kind of annoyed and resentful at the whole thing. 'Cause who wants to be doing more all the time? So you wanna be wary about when you are over-focusing on action and you're not looking at what's underneath the surface.

Reason two: belief negligence

So the second thing is belief negligence. Most of the time, people neglect to look at belief because it takes less thinking. It takes a lot less awareness to just think about the actions, 'cause they're visible from the outside, right? Like, it's obvious when somebody's doing an action versus not — versus it's not quite so obvious what they're believing.

So I would say most cases that I've seen, most coaches fall into this pattern of neglecting to look at their beliefs. Neglecting to bring awareness to them, neglecting to create active acceptance of them, neglecting the work of changing them, taking responsibility for them so that their beliefs are actually creating the results they want.

So when I coach coaches who have been in action over-focus, and I ask them to, for example, write down a self-coaching model or just do a thought download and look at the beliefs that are causing their actions, they're usually surprised. I just said all that, and if you're like, "I'm not sure what that means" — it's basically just taking inventory, taking stock of the habitual thoughts that run in your brain as you are working on your business.

And lots of people — myself included, 'cause I'm human and I have a human brain that likes to just be negative and point out everything that's wrong all the time, right? — a lot of the self-dialogue that's running in the back of our minds could be, "I don't understand. This is confusing. It's not working. Nobody's paying attention. This is hard," da, da, da, da, right?

And it's a problem when you don't have awareness of how much... I hate using the word negative, because I just don't like the binary between negative and positive. It feels judgmental in a way that's not helpful. But just for now, bear with me. For lack of a better word, I'm gonna say negative self-talk. By which I mean the kind of inner dialogue that's not necessarily helpful, not useful towards where you wanna go, right?

So if you've been thinking like a lot of people who think, "I've been doing everything right" — they're usually far from having adequate awareness of how much negative or defeated or confused self-talk is running in the background. They might get hyped up in moments of belief and say, "Oh, yeah, I'm making a difference. This is working. I feel aligned. I feel confident." They might have moments of feeling that way, but then they get so attached to when they feel that way that they kind of forget — they check out of being aware of what's happening in their brains the rest of the time.

Cultivating awareness without judgment of the dialogue that's happening in your mind is one of the most critical skills you can cultivate as an entrepreneur, because they truly determine so much of your results.

I'm almost never surprised. I would say 99% of the time, I'm not surprised in a negative way about the results I'm getting. I'm never taken aback by a certain result I got that I would've not preferred, because I'm always so aware of all the work that I have to do in my brain to be aware of what are all the shitty stories. It's kind of a bummer when I'm aware of all of it, but also, it gives me power over all those thoughts. Because only when I notice that they're there can I begin to just begin the work of accepting them and bringing acceptance and compassion to them, so that I can begin to talk to that part of myself in a productive way.

You cannot have power over what you are not aware of. If you're not aware of the beliefs, the thoughts, the emotions that are animating, that are fueling your actions on your business, you do not have the power to change them.

And by beliefs fueling your actions, I don't mean anything fancier than just you taking a piece of paper and a pen, or you sitting down on a computer and typing — being able to type just what is on your mind, like stream of consciousness. One of the simplest and most powerful awareness exercises that I recommend for people is to just start to write down...

Like, for example, somebody comes to me and says, "You know, I haven't signed a client in a month," and I would ask them, "What do you think is the reason that you haven't signed a client in a month?" And they will tell me all the reasons. I will make them write it down. And all the reasons that they think is the reason will reveal what thoughts they were having the entire time that created that result.

So if I say, "Okay, write down why you think you haven't been able to sign a client in a month," they might write down thoughts like, "Because there aren't enough people in my audience who are interested in what I have to say. My copy isn't quite good enough. I'm not consistent enough on social media." And they will just list all of these reasons of what they think is wrong with their businesses — and none of it will be a fact. All of it will be thoughts, unquestioned thoughts that get noticed once we write them down. But if you're not bringing awareness to them, the whole time they are running your mind.

The thought that "I'm not consistent enough" — that's a belief that you have about yourself that's entirely optional, that probably creates emotions of inadequacy and shame that you feel like you have to fix, and then that is coloring your entire experience of showing up to work on your business.

So here's the simplest technique that I recommend to you. It's hardly a technique. You just write down: okay, why don't you think your business is working? Why do you think that you don't have the results that you want? And then your brain will just go to town with all the stories about what is wrong, and what is not enough. You will have all the excuses. You will have all your brain's most familiar go-to issues, like, "Oh, I'm not being supported enough. I can't afford the training program I want, da, da, da, da. I don't have enough followers." It'll just give you all the excuses.

There is your work. Those are the beliefs that are creating your results. Those beliefs are in your brain all the time. They are creating emotions all the time, and sometimes in a more pronounced way than others.

I'm not saying that these are the only thoughts that create your actions. 'Cause a lot of times when I talk about belief awareness, I also get pushback, like, "But Simone, those aren't the only thoughts I have. I also have a lot of positive thoughts." And listen, I don't doubt you. Of course you do. And that's why a lot of what's happening in your business is also working. I'm not saying that there are no useful thoughts, that you don't have any productive, powerful, results-creating thoughts. But let's bring the rest to light so that we can start to work with them. 'Cause again, you do not have power over what you are not bringing awareness to.

This is such important work. That's why these two go in a pair — over-focus on action and belief negligence.

Reason three: expectation error

The third thing you can think about, in terms of how to correct, how to get out of result surprise, is to consider where you might be making an expectation error. An expectation error is simply when you have an erroneous, wrong expectation for what should happen.

Because they're used to the way things work at the conventional workplace or in school, people have an inaccurate, simply erroneous idea — an erroneous accounting of how much, for example, failure and rejection it takes to get your business first off the ground.

So for example, if you talk to a professional... uh, what do you call those people who make sales calls for a living? I guess salespeople. I've talked to several professional salespeople whose job is to make phone calls to make sales on behalf of companies, right? I don't know the exact math, I don't know the exact numbers, but something like — for every sale you make, there are 95 calls that end in a no, or something like that. They just have an expectation that it takes, like, 95 nos to get to a yes. So they'll just pick up the phone and keep making the calls, keep making the calls until they get to their yes. They have an expectation of what it takes to create a yes that is informed by lots and lots of experience, and just an awareness of "Yep, that's what it takes in the industry."

I think a lot of newer entrepreneurs... you don't even have to be a new entrepreneur. You can be an old entrepreneur who's been at it for a long time. But if you haven't kind of faced the music of "Oh, I thought it would take this much work, this much failure, this much rejection, this much trial and error to get to a win, but it could be that I was wrong, and it actually takes five times as much."

I have also used a different analogy to describe this point. It's like trying to build a house with 30 bricks when you actually need, like, 500 bricks to build a house. And for whatever reason, you thought you only needed 30 bricks, so you brought 30 bricks to the construction site. And no matter what you do with those bricks, you just cannot seem to build a house, right? And you're like, "Oh no, what is wrong? Are these bricks wrong? Am I stupid? Is this blueprint flawed? What is happening? Why can't I build this house?"

And it's like — listen, go back to the brick shop and get way more bricks. You just need way, way more bricks than that to build a house with. If you had the requisite number of bricks, you could also easily build a house. You just don't have enough bricks yet.

I think people get the erroneous idea from watching what it looks like other people are producing from the outside, right? Other people look like they're having overnight success. Other people look like they're taking less time, less effort, less failure, less emotional risk, less financial investment, less whatever than you to create the results you want. Again, that's how it appears from the outside. And so that can kind of feed into your expectation error.

Today, I am the queen of marketing, the queen of copywriting. And people see that. And what they don't see is the years and years and years of having zero visibility, having incredibly little effectiveness in my copy, nobody reaching out to me after, like, dozens and dozens and hundreds and hundreds of attempts to make my work known and to convey to other people that I have something valuable to offer them. Countless, giant, mountainous piles of things that I have produced and put out into the world and shared that nobody noticed. People don't see that. But I was there. I know that's what it took, right?

And so if somebody has no background in terms of building a coaching business, and they see me and they think, "Oh, I should just be able to create the levels of effectiveness that Simone is creating just by working at it for a month" — I'm gonna say probably not, right? There's, of course, ways you can shorten the learning curve — that's why creators and teachers like myself, we create programs out there, like for example Joyful Marketing, that really, really shorten the learning curve. But learning the shortcuts... the shortcut really is learning how to manage your mind. The shortcut is knowing how to have the kind of relationship with yourself where you can show up feeling the way you want to in a way that creates authentic connection, in a way that creates true power to influence.

All of that you can learn. And knowing the value of that is completely different from feeling entitled to a result without learning what you need to learn. It's like — so many people are tired of failing when they have the belief that it should take less failure.

And it might seem like a bummer to think that you have to fail so much more, or that you have to... I don't wanna put the emphasis on failing, 'cause it's not really about failing, it's about learning. There's usually so much more that you have to learn in order to make something work to the extent that you want to. But then, you can think that it's a bummer, or...

There's an odd kind of freedom in that, I find. It means I'm off the hook for having to figure it all out correctly the first time. If I just accept that there might be a lot more fucking learning involved before I get to the result I want, then I can actually start to enjoy the process of learning.

If you genuinely come to peace with the fact that there's so much learning to do, and that the result is inevitable — it's completely available to you as long as you've learned everything that you needed to learn — then you can just, like, relax and enjoy the learning. It's like, all right, let's do another experiment. All right, let's take some more action. All right, let's examine my beliefs. Let's do the work for the next piece of learning.

I think there's so much more satisfaction in chasing the learning. Because when you're chasing the learning, one, you get the enjoyment out of it — the pride and the satisfaction of it. And secondly, when you're focused on that, the result kind of happens by itself, right? You do have more power over it, to try to tweak the variables and to begin to see different results, where you're like, "Oh, I understand how I created that."

That's what I want for all of you. Okay. I hope that helped, and I'll talk to you next time. Bye.