Episode 107: Do You Let Expectations Take Away Your Enjoyment As A Small Business Owner?

In this quick tip episode, Fiona shares her vulnerable thoughts as she shares how expectations have affected how she manages her business and personal life. If you’re someone who has high expectations, this is an episode you need as a reminder to enjoy the process and celebrate the small things in your business.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Introduction

• Fiona’s expectations

• How to manage expectations

• Conclusion

Episode transcript: 

Hello and welcome to Episode 107 of My Daily Business Coach podcast. Today, it is a tip episode, and I'm talking about something that affects all of us, whether you are a small business owner or not, it is definitely one of the biggest things that, you know, I'm going to be super vulnerable. I have had to learn myself and I am still learning like literally every week I have to remind myself of this tactic. So I'm just going to jump right in and be open and yeah, hopefully you receive it. All right, let's go.

So today's tip tool or tactic is really, I guess, what would you say it's a tip and it's also a tactic and it's something that, like I just said before, I have been massively reminded that I need to relearn this and relearn this and relearn this so many times in my life, in my personal life, in being a mum, in being a partner, in being a friend.

And of course, in business, it is something that comes up again and again and again. So what am I talking about? I'm talking about expectations. Oh, I feel like that, you know, really sad music or something really traumatic from like a cinematography soundtrack. But yeah, I'm talking about expectations because I think that we can confuse sometimes objectives with expectations, whereas I actually think they're quite different. And obviously when I work with clients, we talk about launches and campaigns and we think about “what's your objective, what are you trying to achieve?”

But on the flip side, there's also “What do you expect? What is the expectation?” So you might say I'm launching this new product line. My objective is to sell through of this many in this amount of time. Now, you either can sell through those or you don't. Either it's a yes or no. You kind of are going to look at it at the end and say, after three weeks, had we sold X, Y, Z, yes or no.

And that's cool. When it comes to expectations, sometimes they can be a lot murkier to kind of uncover because we might feel that even if we hit that that objective, we sold that many in that amount of time. We also had this expectation that perhaps we haven't shared with people that we'd not only sell that, but it would go bananas. We'd get this many people on the email list. We get everyone sharing it. People would buy this many pairs of shoes or this amount of product from us.

And those are the expectations that can sometimes lead to our downfall because we don't then celebrate the fact that we hit the objective. Maybe we didn't hit it in the way that we thought we were going to hit it, but we hit it. And so we let these kind of expectations potentially that haven't been matched sort of act like a dark cloud on the stuff that we have been able to do. So I love this quote. You know, I love my quotes, but Anne Lamott, who's an American novelist and non-fiction writer, once said “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.”

And I think I first read that in a book or maybe heard on a podcast, but I just remember it striking home. And I was like, oh, yeah, yes, they are. So I'll just repeat that quote in case you didn't hear it or, you know, had kids in the background screaming, “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.” And what I love about that is that we have control over how much we expect on something.

And it's not to say, oh, you should have no expectations. You should never want, you know, anything to be amazing. But I think sometimes we let amazing situations, situations that are actually really awesome and should be celebrated and we should feel great about them kind of be clouded by these sometimes unrealistic expectation of what should have happened. So I know, like I said before, being vulnerable and sharing that this is one of the biggest lessons that I am learning constantly.

I do have expectations of things. I have expectations that, you know, friends will show up in certain ways. And sometimes I've been really disappointed. And I'm sure on the flip side, I'm sure that I have been the friend that has disappointed people as well. I have expectations around meaningful dates. I am someone who's quite sentimental. And so, you know, big dates for me and I kind of expect that other people will remember them. I have expectations around, I don't know, new things that I launched in my business.

I have expectations around bringing staff on that. They will meet X, Y, Z expectation and sometimes I'm sure I haven't made that clear to them. And so it's just in my head. And then it's like, of course, they couldn't meet it because you never even talked about it. I have expectations for just so many things. Mothers Day expectations, or, you know, Christmas. I was brought up with an amazing family and my mother especially made a huge deal over Christmas and birthdays and every Christmas, even when we were growing up, and she'd say, you know, not going to get so many presents next year.

“I'm not going to do this. So I'm not going to you know, I'm not going to cook everything next year.” And inevitably the next year would come and mom would be making her Christmas cake like months ahead of time. She would crack out and make the Baileys. She'd make this and she loved baking and she loved providing a beautiful experience with food and with presents and with other things for her family, that was one of the ways that she showed love.

And so sometimes I will put those expectations on myself and imagine that every birthday for the people that I love has to be amazing and Christmas has to be incredible. And so, yeah, this is kind of something that I've had to learn. And I guess I wanted to share it today to sort of share that quote. Again, expectations are resentments waiting to happen and kind of urge you in your own life and your business to really be thinking about how are you letting expectations sort of sour what is amazing and is already there, I know in my own life, again, where potentially something has been really great and someone has put in a lot of effort.

But yet my expectations were up here with pretty much no one could make them. And so I haven't just enjoyed what was in front of me. I've been like, oh, well, that's awesome. But I did think that this and this and this would happen. And so it's something that I've had to really, really work on.

My sister even has said to me before, you know, you just have less expectations and you never disappointed and are not necessarily thinking you have to get there on everything, although I do agree with her in some regard. But I definitely think we can kind of look at our expectations and examine them, not necessarily lower them, but examine them and really think about if we are letting this perception of things having to be absolutely done a certain way, hinder the enjoyment that we could have from things just being done as they are and as they are in front of us, whether in business, whether in life.

So that is it. Again, just kind of really thinking about that quote and the concept behind it. Expectations are resentments waiting to happen from Anne Lamott and thinking about in your own life, how might you be letting expectations take away your enjoyment? That is it for today's Quick Tip episode.

Before I go, I just wanted to do a little shout out to somebody who listens to this podcast quite often. I managed to meet her at an event not that long ago and she was just absolutely lovely. And I know that she listens to this. So I wanted to say a big hello to Caroline from Cove Design Studio and Caroline Roberts. I hope she's listening and she listens to this in the car. And she was telling me how she just feels like she's kind of got me there sitting next to her, giving us some business advice. So, Caroline, if you're listening, I don't know whether you suffer from expectation-ish stuff like myself, but if you do, I hope you found this useful.

And for everyone else listening, I really hope you found this useful as well. So thank you again. You'll find a full transcript over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/107. See you next time. Bye.

Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.