Episode 25
How to Love the Hard Parts of Business (So You Can Finally Grow)
Some parts of your business will never feel easy and that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re growing.
In this episode of The Solo Coach Podcast, we’re diving into why discomfort doesn’t mean misalignment and how learning to love the challenge actually makes your business feel easier.
If you’ve ever felt like you're constantly hitting resistance, this episode is for you.
We’ll explore:
- Why discomfort isn’t a sign to stop
- How resistance can deepen your wisdom
- What to do when it feels too hard to keep going
As a coach navigating business solo, especially if you’re over 50, this episode will empower you to stop second-guessing yourself and move forward with more ease.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to reframe discomfort as growth, not failure
- The nervous system’s role in sustainable business
- A personal story about my time racing Dragon Boats that’ll change how you see resistance
Resources Mentioned:
Find Coaching Clients Newsletter
Coach Growth Sprint 90-Day Accelerator (Book a call)
Happy & Successful Business Mastermind
Support the Show:
If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review! Your feedback helps me grow the podcast and helps other solo coaches discover the show and grow their businesses with more clarity and confidence.
Transcript
This is the Solo Coach podcast, where it's all about everything you need
Speaker:to build your business solo.
Speaker:Look, building a business alone can feel almost impossible.
Speaker:There's just so much to get done.
Speaker:That's just your DAO talking.
Speaker:I'm Michelle Sara, and I'm here to talk you through building a one-woman
Speaker:coaching business from the ground up.
Speaker:I'm talking marketing, time-saving systems, AI shortcuts, client attraction,
Speaker:energy, and belief, all to help you find your way, no matter your age,
Speaker:stage, or starting point. Ready?
Speaker:Let's get going.
Speaker:You know how to do hard things, so why do you question your business and the
Speaker:ability to build it or grow it?
Speaker:You don't need to just push through.
Speaker:What I would love for you to do.
Speaker:If you're in that place where you are feeling like your business is not
Speaker:growing by leaps and bounds and you want it to go faster
Speaker:and you want it to be easier, and this is just really hard, I want you to learn
Speaker:to love the challenge and stay with it.
Speaker:I bet there are many points in your life that you can look back at, especially if
Speaker:you are a coach who's over 50, and see where you handled really difficult things.
Speaker:So why does this even come up as a question?
Speaker:Meaning, of course you can do this, right?
Speaker:Of course you can do this.
Speaker:A lot of coaches think that the hard parts mean they're not in alignment.
Speaker:But what if the hard part is the path?
Speaker:What if that tension, discomfort, and resistance are actually pointing you
Speaker:somewhere, not away from your business, but deeper into it?
Speaker:By really digging in and having to figure some things out, even if it doesn't come
Speaker:easily, it deepens the experience and the wisdom that you're then unable
Speaker:to share with your clients.
Speaker:You're learning things so that you can grow your business and be not only the
Speaker:best coach that you can be, but the best business owner you can be, the
Speaker:best business builder you can be.
Speaker:Let's talk about what it really means when things feel hard in growing your coaching
Speaker:business and why learning to love the challenge is actually what
Speaker:makes it easier, ironically.
Speaker:I just have to say, I'm not saying these things because it is
Speaker:the latest SEO, right?
Speaker:It's not the latest phrase searched.
Speaker:And I say these things and I talk about these things because it's real life stuff.
Speaker:I deal with this periodically.
Speaker:Psychical things seem to start really ramping up and picking up and getting
Speaker:easier, and I roll with it, and I'm really happy, and things are great.
Speaker:And then suddenly something seems to not work.
Speaker:I just had this happen recently.
Speaker:And you did everything that you've done before, and it all worked really well,
Speaker:and then this time it just didn't.
Speaker:So That means I have to dig in and I have to figure out why it didn't
Speaker:work and do it again.
Speaker:So it doesn't mean that I'm not in alignment with it.
Speaker:There are certainly things that you may experience that is in fact, misalignment,
Speaker:and that's something we'll talk about in another episode.
Speaker:But for today, we're talking about when it just gets really hard and you know that
Speaker:you might have to learn new things or you might have to try again, or you might
Speaker:just have to push through and keep going.
Speaker:But I don't want you to just push through.
Speaker:I want you to learn to love the challenge.
Speaker:Look back in your life at other challenges you've had that you loved, and
Speaker:how can you make the connection.
Speaker:I think about years and years ago when I raced dragonboats in Japan.
Speaker:It was really, really, really difficult, but I loved it.
Speaker:And even in the moments when I thought, What in the heck did I do?
Speaker:Why am doing this. This is not me.
Speaker:This is too hard.
Speaker:I'm not a competitive person.
Speaker:I'm not a physically fit person.
Speaker:I had all the reasons in the world.
Speaker:This is so hard.
Speaker:Why am I doing it?
Speaker:And yet I loved it.
Speaker:And there came a point when I learned to love the challenge.
Speaker:So resistance to something, just like I shared, it is a signal, but it's
Speaker:not necessarily a stop sign.
Speaker:That thing that you're avoiding, whether it's emails or a sales page or a post or
Speaker:a something that you need to learn around technology, that's the exact
Speaker:thing that moves you forward.
Speaker:And no, the fact that it feels heavy or hard doesn't mean that
Speaker:you're misaligned with it.
Speaker:Or I should say, it doesn't mean that you're not aligned with it.
Speaker:Like I said, we'll talk about that in a different episode because
Speaker:that is important.
Speaker:But in this case, I can tell you from experience that that resistance, it is
Speaker:a signal, but it is not a stop sign.
Speaker:It just means that the territory you're in is unfamiliar.
Speaker:Temporarily, Only temporarily.
Speaker:Sometimes aligned to action feels like peace, and other times it feels
Speaker:like full body resistance.
Speaker:It's not always resistance, but it's when we hit, quote, resistance, When something
Speaker:becomes very difficult in our business, as I said, whether it's you have to learn a
Speaker:new piece of technology for that matter, like right now, are you leveraging AI as
Speaker:much as you can in your business, or does that just feel too hard
Speaker:and unfamiliar, foreign?
Speaker:It's It's not always a sign to stop.
Speaker:As I said, it's a sign that you're stretching, literally.
Speaker:And stretching is what creates growth, flexibility, and mobility, literally, for
Speaker:your business, for your capacity, and for your future.
Speaker:I mean, think about that.
Speaker:You know what stretching does for your physical body.
Speaker:What does stretching do for your inner self and for your business?
Speaker:Discomfort doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong.
Speaker:Let's normalize this.
Speaker:Discomfort is part of growing a business.
Speaker:You're always find points where you feel uncomfortable.
Speaker:You're going to always...
Speaker:There's never going to come a point where your day-to-day in your business
Speaker:is just rolling along and it's all perfect and familiar and easy
Speaker:and it's always that way forever.
Speaker:No, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker:That is not the way it works.
Speaker:So discomfort is a part of growing a business.
Speaker:And certainly, when you do hit a point of discomfort,
Speaker:just know that you're not going to be uncomfortable forever.
Speaker:Yes, we're going to always have discomfort in our experience of our businesses as
Speaker:we grow, but it doesn't last forever.
Speaker:Nothing ever does, right?
Speaker:Change is the only constant.
Speaker:But in the beginning, especially if you're in the first one to three years, and
Speaker:especially if you're over 50, you may feel like discomfort is the name of the game,
Speaker:that that's the daily experience, and that that means means this isn't for you.
Speaker:But discomfort can be a necessary passage to the place of, I can
Speaker:do this in my sleep now.
Speaker:The key isn't avoiding discomfort, it's letting go of the need to avoid it.
Speaker:You don't have to love how it feels.
Speaker:You just don't have to treat it like a threat.
Speaker:Most people freeze or pivot when something gets uncomfortable.
Speaker:But what have I experienced?
Speaker:The coaches who succeed feel just as uncomfortable, but they just move anyway.
Speaker:The example I gave earlier about racing dragonboats in Japan, I remember
Speaker:the day for our big race in Naha.
Speaker:We were racing in the ocean, and we were headed down to Naha to where
Speaker:all of the big boats come in.
Speaker:I had no idea what that looked like.
Speaker:It came time to go to our boat, and we're walking as a crew to our boat, and
Speaker:we get to the edge of this wall.
Speaker:Well, I mean, there's people ahead of me.
Speaker:It's 32 In our case, it was a 32-woman team.
Speaker:Everyone's in front of me in line, like I'm probably two-thirds back.
Speaker:I see them getting to the edge of this wall and then just going down,
Speaker:and they're gone.
Speaker:I thought, Oh, my God, where are the boats?
Speaker:Why can't I see?
Speaker:And there was this 50-foot drop with a ladder, a metal ladder
Speaker:bolted to the wall that you had to turn around and get on and walk go down.
Speaker:Now, for a lot of people, that's no big deal.
Speaker:But for me, that's a really big deal because I am afraid of heights.
Speaker:And I've never been super...
Speaker:Let's say that Grace is my middle name.
Speaker:I've never been or graceful or coordinated.
Speaker:So for me to, in front of all these people, flip myself around
Speaker:to get on this narrow ladder.
Speaker:It was only maybe, not even a foot and a half wide.
Speaker:It was very narrow.
Speaker:To I flip myself around and get on this ladder and go down, like I said, about 50
Speaker:feet and then get off the ladder into the rocking boat.
Speaker:I didn't know that was going to be the case.
Speaker:I was not prepared.
Speaker:I was not expecting that.
Speaker:Do you think I felt discomfort Oh, yeah.
Speaker:I was ready to turn around and leave. I was so afraid.
Speaker:That hadn't been in any of our training.
Speaker:We had practice on docks and got into the boat from docks right at the level.
Speaker:I had to pretty much to tell myself that I was going to love the challenge,
Speaker:and this was not a threat to me.
Speaker:This ladder, this wall was not a threat.
Speaker:I was going to love the challenge.
Speaker:Watch me do this.
Speaker:And I did, and I survived, and we won the race.
Speaker:So comfort discomfort, I should say, doesn't need to be put on a pedestal or
Speaker:you don't want to reinforce it in that way, or let your thoughts get super
Speaker:hyper-focused on the discomfort.
Speaker:Because then what What happens is your brain starts filtering out or filtering
Speaker:for only things that seem to be uncomfortable.
Speaker:And suddenly that's one thing after another.
Speaker:And you're just attracting more and more.
Speaker:It's actually what you're noticing more and more because you're not noticing
Speaker:all the other wonderful things.
Speaker:You're making yourself a magnet for it.
Speaker:Hello, manifesting.
Speaker:It's just like the ladder and the wall, right?
Speaker:I could have very easily, in a matter of fact, it took every ounce of effort I had
Speaker:to not do this, hyper focus in the probably 10 seconds I had so that by the
Speaker:time I reached the ladder and the wall, I would have been shaking horribly and could
Speaker:have slipped and fallen, or I could have embarrassed myself.
Speaker:There's a number of things that could have gone wrong had I let myself get
Speaker:hyper-focused on the discomfort.
Speaker:So you don't have to bring more attention to it, put it on a pedestal, just accept
Speaker:it that, yes, discomfort is a part of business.
Speaker:Don't argue with it.
Speaker:Just let it be there and take the next step anyway.
Speaker:This is what I see with coaches who are super successful or
Speaker:entrepreneurs in general, right?
Speaker:Even athletes, of course.
Speaker:There were women on this dragon boat team that flipped over onto that
Speaker:ladder and down that wall so fast.
Speaker:They did it before I could even blink, and it was no big deal for them.
Speaker:I had to take on that same energy.
Speaker:It's like saying, Yeah, I see you over there, discomfort.
Speaker:Stop being a lurker.
Speaker:I'm moving You've done hard things before, and this is no different.
Speaker:Maybe I don't need to point this out, but I will anyway.
Speaker:You already know how to do hard things.
Speaker:You learned from scratch.
Speaker:You've practiced, refined, and repeated until it clicked.
Speaker:Maybe you built up a career.
Speaker:Maybe you went to college in something that was incredibly difficult.
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:Maybe you had life circumstances that were really, really hard.
Speaker:You have done hard things before.
Speaker:Like I said, you've learned learned some things from scratch.
Speaker:I know there is something in your life that you have learned from scratch, and
Speaker:you practiced it and refined it and repeated it until it clicked.
Speaker:And maybe you did that because you had no other choice.
Speaker:This business building thing, same process.
Speaker:And it doesn't matter whether you're good at marketing or natural at sales.
Speaker:It's about understanding what to do and giving yourself time to master
Speaker:it and loving the challenge.
Speaker:I'm pretty sure someone somewhere has said that success comes from
Speaker:learning to love the challenge. It should be a poster.
Speaker:But don't feel like you need to go reinvent yourself either.
Speaker:Repetition is more important with a whole lot of letting go.
Speaker:Your nervous system is in the room with you.
Speaker:Don't forget that. Here's what most business advice ignores.
Speaker:If your nervous system is shut down, no strategy will stick.
Speaker:You can know exactly what to do, but if your body is in fight, flight,
Speaker:or freeze, you won't do it.
Speaker:This is where somatic awareness comes in.
Speaker:I love somatic work, and I'm not saying this as a healing practice,
Speaker:but as a business tool.
Speaker:Breath and movement and grounding, even a hand on your chest in the
Speaker:center, just over your heart.
Speaker:Two deep breaths can shift your energy enough to press publish.
Speaker:God knows that's me on a daily basis.
Speaker:You don't need to go full body woo unless you want to, which is totally cool.
Speaker:But you do need to recognize when your body is tapped out and give
Speaker:it a chance to come with you.
Speaker:Because sustainable business happens when you're actually present in it.
Speaker:If you are doing a hard push to increase visibility in your business, and that's
Speaker:always been a really big challenge for you, and you are becoming
Speaker:more and more visible.
Speaker:Chances are, if you are a super sensitive person, like me, if you are very
Speaker:introverted, even if you have a lot of trauma in your past,
Speaker:going through the process of becoming more visible in your business can be
Speaker:very, very draining and very quickly.
Speaker:So be sure to be aware of that and give yourself grace.
Speaker:Give your body a chance to rest and catch up and come with you for the next step.
Speaker:Look, you don't have to wait for it to feel easy.
Speaker:You just have to be willing to keep going even when it doesn't.
Speaker:You probably didn't want to hear that.
Speaker:But it's in the learning to love the challenge process that ease
Speaker:suddenly falls into place.
Speaker:It's in acknowledging the discomfort and telling it, It's okay, we're
Speaker:going to move through this.
Speaker:Just know that you've got this.
Speaker:This isn't too difficult for you.
Speaker:If you have to learn something from scratch, so be it.
Speaker:You can do it. Much love.
Speaker:Hey, thanks so much for joining me for the Solo Coach podcast.
Speaker:It means so much to me that someone out there is listening.
Speaker:Now, if you know it's time to do something different about your business, and you
Speaker:know if it is, consider joining me for my happy and successful business mastermind,
Speaker:where you can get clarity, support, and a plan.
Speaker:I'll leave details in the notes below.
Speaker:I also want to share a free resource for you.
Speaker:If you haven't already subscribed to my newsletter, Find Coaching
Speaker:Clients, I encourage you to do so.
Speaker:I'll deliver to your inbox tips and strategies that make finding coaching
Speaker:clients for your business much easier.
Speaker:I'll see you next time.
