Consistency or Excuses with Amy Barg

Consistency or excuses. We can have one or the other. We can't have both. I had the please of speaking with Amy Barg and we talked about making the choice that we get to make to be consistent or not to make excuses or not to move forward in life or not.

What is what is on your heart that you would want our listeners to hear today?

I think top of mind right now and my heart is I started interviewing people, and hearing the personal growth stories of other people has just absolutely, lit me on fire. I mean, I know the power of personal growth. I've lived it for many years. But when you start hearing other people share their stories. Then I know the impact that that can have on other people who hear those stories. Like I almost can't contain myself.

Why would you think that you would never start a podcast?

What I do in my business is helping people, paying attention to their growth, I call myself a personal growth environment specialist. I started thinking about, if there was a way to get this message out to more people without having to, book the speaking event, what might that be? I realized a podcast. So I started, by just listening to podcasts. What I found was, I was immediately drawn in to that platform. Then I started thinking, maybe you shouldn't do this. I had no idea how to do it. So I went back to the okay, what can you do if you don't know how to do something, and it's find, somebody else who's doing it? And that's what I did.

I started listening to people who were doing it, and who were talking about how you can do it. And I started taking the steps. So it I mean, it's been, almost a 10 month journey from the time I first said, I think I want to do this, too, when I finally you know, hit record, and started it. And honestly, part of the reason I did it was because I had a conversation with my women's group that I facilitate called Women Growing On Purpose.

I told them, I think I'm going to do this and say that, okay, you cannot say you're going to do this thing to grow yourself and then not do it. And that's really helped to hold me accountable, even though they weren't, you know, bothered me about it. I'm like, I put this out there to them, I, I need to do this. So I just kept taking the steps. Then in December, I am part of an email list from one of the thought leaders through Maxwell leadership, and he said, ‘If you'll send me your goal for the year, I'll tell you mine like it was he put it in the email.’ So I told this guy that it was to launch my podcast. I put it out there to someone who's like another higher level. And he said, Well, if you ever do it, I'll be a guest on your show.

Now I really had to do it. I started, writing my scripts for what I would say, for those solo shows. I realized the place I got stuck was I didn't know how to do the technical recording side of it. So I found help.

This phrase; ‘I put it out there. I put it out there. I put it out there’ as a personal growth expert, but you are what is the power of having that be the first step vocalizing it putting it out there?

What is the power of taking just that step?

It gets it out of your head. Then out into the world, because you have now said those words. As we know, our brain as soon as you say I am going to, it starts looking for the way to make that happen. So yes, I absolutely believe that I've had it happen so many times in my life, that the power of speaking what you want. Then like I said, your subconscious mind doesn't know how to reject it. It just accepts this like okay, I'm gonna look for ways to make this happen.

I do believe you have to you have to take some action. Like if I hadn't picked up the phone or answered the text, nothing would have happened with the guy who's doing my sound engineering. You never know how what someone else hears then they may lead you to that next step.

How do you help someone take those steps past the actual, like helping someone dig through their brain and really identify what their goals are, what their dreams are? How do you then help them take a first step? A second step? How do you put them on that trajectory of asking for help of speaking things out so that people can connect them with the right people?

That's happened through my coaching. That's one of the reasons that I have kind of moved from, going after the speaking lanes. I mean, I still love to speak. But what I found was, when I'm doing coaching, and I can really listen to what somebody else is saying they want, most of the time, it's asking them the question that gets them to think about it, because nine times out of 10, when I asked the question that forces their brain to then start looking for the answer. In the coaching process that I know, you and I have both learned, it's never about asking a closed question where it's going to be a yes, no, it's always about making the person go think in their own head. And like I said, so many times, I asked the question, I always know, it's a good question when there's like dead silence on the other end of the phone or the zoom call, because I know their brain is at work.

What would that look like for you to act on that?

What is what's the smallest thing that you could do to move yourself toward that, and what I've learned is, if they come up with that smallest thing, they're much more likely to do it. If I said, you know, all I need to do is XYZ, it might be great advice, but it didn't come from within them. So it's using that what I've learned through coaching, that's really been the thing that's helped people, then they take their own next step, and next step, and then they get they tell me about, you know, like, right now my coaching clients will send me little pictures and text messages of things that they've done that they said they were going to do. And I always just feel like, I am so excited to get to be on the journey, like right with them as they're taking the actions like the best.

What would you want your growth journey? How long have you been a part of Maxwell leadership? Why did you even do it?

I really believe it's very providential the way it all happened. And it was a friend of mine who had just joined Maxwell leadership, she came over to my house, I'm literally baking sugar cookies at Christmas time. And she said, I joined this thing, would you be interested? And there was something in my spirit that just said, Yes. And I didn't even know why at the time. But I said, Yes, I in fact, joined the team, like within the week, so that was late December 2014. The first week of January in 2015. I said to my husband, Sam, you know, I'm going to this certification thing. And I wish I had more time to really learn some of the stuff before I go, you know, take these, you know, take these classes or whatever, I didn't know what I was doing, really. And I had my boss at the time said, sure you can go because I said this is going to help me with my job. Anyway, two days later, my position was eliminated at work. And so I just felt like it was God saying, You know what? You've been saying you think you needed to do something new? Here you go, why don't you start a business and I again, no clue how to do it. But I went to that conference. And that is where I heard John Maxwell say, an entire talk actually on the power of personal growth. And he recommended the 15 invaluable laws of growth. I purchased the book, I started reading it. And one of the questions in that book was what's the farthest you can imagine going? And I realized that even though I've done a lot of amazing cool things in my life, I had never really considered that question. And it just sparks something in And I'm like, You know what, I'm gonna do this growth thing, and I'm gonna see where it takes me. That is what really, really got us started.

What does consistency look like? To you? What is if you could describe the power of consistency to us? How How would you do that? And what does it look like in your life?

Well, this is where it's kind of fun to talk about it because I have lived this in so many ways through this, you know personal growth journey. And it's it's morphed and changed. So it's kind of fun. Because when I first started out, one of the mentors said you need to be consistent about emailing the people that you want to be in contact with. And he, I'm like, well, I'll write an email once a month. And he said, Yeah, that's not enough. You need to be doing it at least once a week. I'm like, once a week, what am I? But I was like, okay, that's what he's saying. So I started consistently writing an email once a week, and I did it without fail for about a year and a half. And then I took all of those things that I had written, and I actually created my first book out of it, seen blind spots, because someone said, Hey, Seth Godin writes a book every year and he just takes his blog posts and put them into a book and people buy it. And I'm like, well, Seth Godin can do it. I can do my consistency, and that led to my first book. Then I decided, well, I really want to be speaking more. So I stopped doing the weekly Email and I started doing a weekly video on Facebook. And for another I think I did it about three years, I did a video every Friday called Friday's perspective, you can go find them there on YouTube under Amy barge. Now, I didn't know how to market it. So nobody has hardly seen them. But I put them out there. And I did it every like I did not miss a Friday in three years. And to me that was this, you know, the past and see compounding, which now in a weird, crazy kind of way has led me to this idea of okay, now I'm going to move to the podcast world. And I remember people saying, oh, my gosh, what are you going to talk about every week? How will you ever think of anything? And my initial thought was, that's a breeze. I've been doing this kind of stuff for the last, you know, what, five, six years?

So for me to come up with things to talk about? Not a problem. But is that consistency that led me to that point, that could not have happened in any other way, except by being consistent?

I remember when I was looking at starting my own podcast and talking with the group of people that do all of my, like, you know, I show up here and I have the fun part of talking to you. Then I click a button and it goes off to the podcast protectors. And it magically shows up on all these podcast sites, right?

I remember talking to them. And they said the number one thing you can do to grow this podcast is to stay consistent. Stay consistent. If you are a once a week podcaster something goes out every week, if you want to take a few weeks off, and we repurpose something, we can do that. But something has to go out every week. And they gave me the statistics. And I don't remember what it was of the number of podcasts that actually stay consistent, and it is very small.

So when we think, well, the world of podcasting is oversaturated it's not because most podcasters show up and disappear, show up and disappear. And without consistency. No one hits a subscribe button because you don't know when you're going to ever get another podcast episode. And that has proven to be amazingly true. I have not missed an episode since we started in May of 2020. started during the pandemic. Wow. And something goes out every week. And there has been growth simply because I showed up simply because something Something went out. Every ‘no’ is interesting you say that? Because when I was trying to decide, what am I going to call my podcast, I did some research on different titles. And I found some titles that were similar to kind of what I thought I wanted. And the person did three episodes, or maybe five episodes. And then I couldn't find anything after that. So I thought well, do I still use that title? And anyway, I decided not to go with any of those. But to your point. I mean, that to me was such an eye opening thing. Yeah. What you would start this and then not not keep doing it?

It's why consistency was my word for this year.

Because it is the hardest thing. Maybe it's because I'm an I on the DISC assessment. But consistency is difficult. And so that's why I chose it as my word because every day I have to look at this little paper here. It's I am consistent. Okay, I'll do the things right. But there's so much more, more work yet to be done. That consistency piece.

Journal Prompt:

When was the last time you did something for the first time?

Anytime you take action on something that you have told yourself prior to this is too hard for me or I'm too scared to do that when you do it. That action like you said, it empowers you in ways that you almost can't fully describe, but it happens.

If people can get that into their heads that every thought I have is a seed. I can plant it and water it and help it to grow. There's just no telling where you might go with that. It's being able to share how other people have done that in their lives, and what growth has done for them. It's why I am so passionate about it.