S2E9: Navigating the Push-Pull Relationship with Your Business
Welcome to Women Rocking Business, where we are here to help you rock yourself, rock your life, and rock the world as a woman entrepreneur, because the world needs you and the time is now. I’m Sage Lavine, CEO, trainer, unretired, camp counselor, and best-selling author of the Hay House book Women Rocking Business. We’ve had the honor of serving over a hundred thousand women entrepreneurs around the globe, just like you, who are here to do more, be more and have more by giving your gift to the planet. So let’s dive in.
Sage Lavine
00:00:30
Hello. Good morning, entrepreneurial rockstars! Today’s topic is pushing to get the baby out. And how many times have you been in a push-pull relationship with your business? How many times have you been in a push pull relationship with pushing itself?
It’s interesting to look to see that pushing has gotten a little bit of a bad rap. You know, we’ve heard this saying, “Pain pushes until vision pulls” and I’ve come to really understand, like, what if it’s both? What if it’s a dance? What if it’s that we actually have the opportunity to embrace all keys on the keyboard this week and in our lives and in our businesses as a spiritual path in order to use the building of our businesses, the growing of our businesses, the output of our energy in honor of getting a message out that changes the world, in honor of just getting out of our own way and letting the universe, letting God goddess spirit source, letting source be source energy through us, being the channel for that, which is wanting to come through us because we put up such a fight in response to just that, which is being asked of us.
Sage Lavine
00:01:48
It never looks the way we think it’s going to. I just got off an 18 mile trail to a place called Sykes Hot Springs in Big Sur, California. It was so epic with my dear friend, Grace. Here’s my backpack. I carried this thing for three days up and down switch backs. And I used to do this for a living. I used to take kids out backpacking for a living. We would do 60 miles a day, five or six or eight days at a time in Canada and the Canadian Rockies, Banff to Lake Louise. I was telling my friend Grace, while we were hiking up and down these switchbacks on this trail the last few days, you know, I said I was one of the only young women in Canada in 1998, 1997, 1996, who is taking kids out into the wilderness.
Sage Lavine
00:02:40
It was mostly men. And it’s no wonder that I’ve kind of launched this message that has a lot to do with women’s empowerment, because I used to pile out of the vans. I mean, granted, I had pigtails and I looked young. I was like 21, 22 years old. Right. We would pile out of these 15 passenger vans and we would be, you know, restocking our food supplies, staying in public campgrounds while we, you know, got everything organized in the way that we needed to go into the back country. Almost every day, we’d have people ask us, “where are your guides?” And what they met was where the boys were, the men who are in charge of you, crazy women out in the back country. I remember just being so offended and so pissed and so righteous.
Sage Lavine
00:03:25
Like we are women. We are young women in nature and we don’t need any men with us. And definitely it grew a little bit of an agenda inside of me to empower women, to go make the money they want to make, do the things they want to do in their lives and especially in their businesses now.
In getting my butt kicked for the last three days up and down, these mountains switchbacks with a full pack. Granted my pack was like half as heavy as it used to be 10 years ago. I mean, the gear that they have, like I picked up my sleeping pad that I used to carry versus the ultra light sleeping pad that’s like half a pound. It’s like a few ounces heavy.
Sage Lavine
00:04:07
I mean just the weight of the gear alone. Like I was so hardcore taking those girls out 15 mile days. In the process of revisiting that over the last few days and being out on the trail for the first time in many years, I was reminded how important it is to do hard things, to push ourselves in ways that have nothing to do with our business, because we get to be in relation with the push itself and not the push that we are associating with the business because when we associate the push with, I have to, and I didn’t start this business to have to feel like this. And I was feeling passionate about this last week, and now I’m not feeling passionate and there must be something wrong. I’m probably not supposed to do this. This isn’t really my way. This feels too salesy. The barrage of gremlins that comes snowballing and cascading down on top of us when we face our resistance and actually build a business and climb the mountain of technology and climb the mountain of marketing.
We are learning so many skills at once. It is easy to fall into pockets of our own total, not just resistance, but limiting beliefs, self-sabotage patterns, anger, frustration, jealousy, criticism, a comparison.
Sage Lavine
00:05:28
I’m sure none of you have any of that going on. I’m sure none of you do. Just end it. It’s not worth it, but yet like, just give me some love in the comments thread, if you’re like “Yeah. Busted. I totally hear where you’re coming from, beautiful Sagey-poo.
I mean, just the amount of coaxing that it took to get me up sof these switchbacks with my pack on thinking to myself, “What am I doing? I should be at the hot springs. I work for a living, right? I just had one of the most successful launches I’ve ever had. Why am I not at the hot springs?” What’s interesting is we were hiking to the hot springs. We decided to hike 18 miles to get there. So I could have driven to hot springs was the story that was going on in my mind, in the moment.
Sage Lavine
00:06:09
think especially with what’s happened in the world for the last couple of years and the shutdown that many of us have stood in the face of and just been kind of taken back by the isolation, the shift in lifestyle that we’ve needed to all make together. I continue to realize the power of just understanding grit, like just the sheer understanding of grit that we are willing to get our butts back up when we get knocked down. That we have the grit to just keep going. When it does feel hard…that we don’t let the universe throw a little bit of challenge in our face. …and then we stopped because of that. That we are loving ourselves enough to stand up for our dream, that we are committed enough to push through.
Sage Lavine
00:06:59
Women physiologically have to push to get a baby out and yes, our vision is going to pull us. Yes, we’re going to have times that we feel called, you know, I started out day one of this backpacking trip being like, “My pack’s not that heavy. Oh my God, it’s beautiful. Look at these views of the mountains.” You know, just elated, ecstatic that I was going to get to be on the trail for four days and little did I know that a couple hours down the trail, I was going to get my booty whooped and it’s like, that was part of it. That was part of the self love and the ecstasy that I sat with, my friend, Grace this morning, eating eggs benedict and drinking, like the best espresso and being like we did that. We did that. Not everybody can go do that.
Sage Lavine
00:07:41
It’s okay if you can’t do that, it’s okay if you practice stretching yourselves in other ways, but the willingness to not always have it be easy, the willingness to, instead of asking yourself constantly, how can this be easier? The willingness to ask, how can I actually know my strength and how can I be with myself when things get hard that doesn’t actually sabotage me? You know, like, oh, I’m noticing it got hard, right? Breathing through that. Stanford did a study on grit and they found that of all the qualities that leaders have, the intellect, the emotional intelligence, the IQ, the ability to work in a team, they did the studies and all of these different leaders.
Sage Lavine
00:08:26
They found that there was one quality that had the highest achieving of leaders stand apart from the other leaders. It was not IQ and it wasn’t intellect and it wasn’t even leadership. It wasn’t even team building. I was convinced it was leadership. It wasn’t leadership. It was grit. The one quality that the leaders had that allowed them to go the furthest in their careers. And they studied leaders across all different industries and Navy Seals and gold medal Olympic athletes and super incredible successful researchers and scientists and the quality that they all had in common was grit. Straight up grit.
Sage Lavine
00:09:06
The willingness to get back up when you get knocked down. The willingness to resource yourself enough to be able to push through, and notice that I’m not talking about pushing through in a way of pushing yourself too far… We all know our limits. But the question I want to ask of you today is: how can you resource yourself enough to have the support, the mental stamina and the ecstasy waiting for you on the other side, to be able to push through knowing that you do have support resources and celebration waiting for you on the other side.
Sage Lavine
00:09:46
This particular trip for me was like a coming home, getting up in the morning and smelling the mountains and the river, the opportunity to fire up my camp stove, make my little sippy cup of cacao while the sun was coming up with my beanie on pulling the bear bag out of the tree and going and digging a hole in the woods when it was time to go to the bathroom. Like I used to do that for days on end. So the trip that I just went on was like a reward for the last couple years of getting my business, my company, my multimillion dollar company through a pandemic.
Sage Lavine
00:10:27
There were days that I had to, there were weeks that I had to completely forgo my own desires to play, to go out in nature. I had to, to not completely forgo, but I had to really put those on the back burner and get those needs met in smaller ways so that I could get through an incredibly huge amount of work to pivot a company that had taken seven or eight years to build, you know, my company was based in live events. When the pandemic hit, I know for many of us, we had a lot of pivoting to do to get all of our protocols and all of our events and all of our fulfillment that we do with clients to get all of that into a place of being able to deliver virtually.
Sage Lavine
00:11:08
This trip for me was a reward, even though a lot of people would be like what? You went on an 18 mile, super hard backpacking trip as a reward? The answer is yes, that’s what I was craving. I wouldn’t have rather been anywhere else because it was a coming home. It was a complete elimination of all distractions. But this week I wanted to go rough it in the wilderness as a coming home from the last two years of a lot of technology and a lot of showing up for my business. And I just want to really say to you this week, as you’re going into your week…
Sage Lavine
00:11:48
You deserve to resource yourself enough to show up and push through. Instead of questioning the pushing through my invitation would be to ask yourself, what do you need? What do you need to know is waiting for you on the other side? What do you need to set up for yourself? Morning check-in calls with another entrepreneur that’s building his or her business, a trip that you put on the calendar. I’ve been looking forward to this trip for three months. You know, a trip that you put on the calendar for two or three months from now saying I’m going to go for it and no matter what happens in my business, I know that trip is waiting for me no matter what happens.
Sage Lavine
00:12:34
I know I’m going to get to be on the beach, on the trail, in the ocean, wherever you want to be with the people you love, what do you want to make happen for yourself? That’s going to pull you through and not just push, but pull you through the hard times of growing a business because it doesn’t, even though it’s hard, it doesn’t have to be suffering. There’s a difference between pain and suffering. That we remember the hard things are what make us who we are.
Sage Lavine
00:13:04
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Sage Lavine
00:14:08
One of my last trips that I ever did with teenage girls in the wilderness, I did an eight day trip from Banff to Lake Louise. Every single day, we crossed over a mountain pass and we did about 13 to 15 miles a day with full packs. I carried a lot of extra stuff because I had teenagers. I had first aid and all kinds of extra food. When we were about as far, the dust from roads, as we possibly could have been a storm came in unexpectedly. We were about 25 miles from any road and a storm came in and we lost the trail. We had a day that my girls would later refer to as hell day and about halfway through the day, one of my girls slipped on a ridge and hasn’t had an asthma attack.
Sage Lavine
00:14:51
You know, it really slowed us down. We had to put up the tent and boil water and get her calmed down. We did get her calmed down, which caused us to again, be a little bit behind on the trail. The rain had washed out the trail. So we were kind of traversing the river, looking for the trail.
By the time we were close to Canada, it was already getting dark. We ended up in a situation where we had to cross a river before we could get to camp before we could get to anywhere to even be able to put our tent up. This is how people die in the wilderness and this is especially how young people die in the wilderness in river crossings. So we crossed this river in the way that we had trained for. We linked arms. We took one step at a time. We had our fall packs on and the water was, you know, thigh high for a lot of us, except my little camper, Emily, the water was waist high for her.
Sage Lavine
00:15:39
At one point the river just got too strong. The current got too strong. She couldn’t keep her footing. She went down the river like down the river. This is a 13 year old young woman that I’m responsible for. I was the guide. I had a junior guide with me and what happened in that moment changed my life forever because I didn’t have any cognitive thoughts in that moment. I had a little girl’s life that was completely on my watch. She was submerged in a freezing cold river and the Canadian Rockies, 20 miles from any road. I remember forging that river. I started belting orders to all the other young women that were with me. “Get across the river, were getting across the river right now.”
Sage Lavine
00:16:21
We got across the river. I grabbed my two tallest strongest girls. “Drop your packs.” I had commands coming out of my mouth without any conscious thought. “Drop your packs, follow me down the river.” Now four of us are running down the river together. I see her. I got in front of her. You know, I said, “Link arms with me. I’m going in back out in the river.”
I watched myself with superhuman strength…. I watched my arm go out into the river and I watched myself literally pick this young girl out of the river with just crazy adrenaline going through my body. That wasn’t actually even, you know, enough leadership because when we got her out of the river, she was still breathing, but she was turning blue.
Sage Lavine
00:17:02
Without even any conscious thought, I knew exactly what to do. I continued to belt orders at the young women I was with. “Go get your packs, find something warm, find something dry.”
We got to get, you know, “take her clothes off.” You know, we got her in dry clothes. She couldn’t talk, she was freezing cold. She had been under for 20 or 30 seconds. I cried myself to sleep that night. I promised the universe, I will never take other people’s children out into the wilderness again in my whole life. I remember even then feeling the benevolent universe shining down on me going, “Really Sage, are you sure? Are you sure?”
Sage Lavine
00:17:43
You know, she made it. Even if she hadn’t made it, this, this is life. This is part of what happens in life. Two of my girls went on to write a story about that day and what happened the way our troop came together and pulled Emily out of the river that day. You know, the next day the sun came out and we had all our wet clothes hanging on our backpacks and we were crying and in tears and looking into each other’s eyes going, “We did it, we did it. We did that.”
The article that got published by two of my campers was on the front page of the paper. It said, “Nature doesn’t always bat last. Power of girls in the wild,” or something like that.
Sage Lavine
00:18:24
I remember reading that article. I’ll have to pull that out. I think it’s in one of my memory boxes and realizing that those girls are never going to be the same. You know, those girls, each one of them and myself included…we’ve gone on to do something with our lives that we’re really proud of. I’ve tracked several of them and one of them, a successful lawyer, and one of them’s an incredible entrepreneur.
I just want to say to all of you, when those hard times come, you know the teachers in the room, I wouldn’t take that experience back for anything, even though it was one of the hardest experiences I’ve ever lived through. And so I, again, remind you this week, don’t back down, do not back down this week, do not back down this week, keep your eye on the prize.
Sage Lavine
00:19:04
Realize, and remember that what’s been calling you is so much bigger than you are, and that every idea comes with its own infinite supply. It really does. There’s something bigger waiting for you than you even realize, and it’s worth it. It is worth it. Go push yourself in little ways and then luxuriate with yourself in little ways and focus on the self love that you get to feel when you show up for yourself and the incredible, incredible business that’s wanting to come through you because this idea was not born from your ego or some small part of you. This idea to grow this business, it came from the higher infinite, highly, highly skilled one of you that has star power that is unstoppable, and that is limitless.
Sage Lavine
00:19:45
You can do this one hour, one day at a time, you can do this. So make a note, please post here in the comments. What do you need to be able to go through the hard things? What do you need? Do you need more support? Do you need morning check-ins? Do you need a celebratory vacation on the calendar? Do you need to get weekly massages? What do you need? Write it down and then commit to it. Let’s keep rocking this because your clients are waiting. They’re not just waiting for someone like you. They’re actually waiting for you. I’ll see you next week.
Sage Lavine
00:20:25
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