Finola Howard (0:4.792)
Hello there and welcome back to Your Truth Shared. ⁓ And this is episode 129. If you've been listening, you've probably noticed there's a gap between this episode and the last episode I recorded. ⁓ And you'd be right, there is a gap. It's been a while since I released my last episode. But this isn't me popping in with a catch up. It's also not a progress update. It's not a report on what I've been doing behind the scenes.
This is ⁓ what I'd like to frame ⁓ as a return to the podcast. ⁓ And it's a deliberate one. Over the last while, I made a decision that genuinely changed how I work, not dramatically, not overnight, but fundamentally. And it stems from that decision that I made a while ago, which was that public decision around the joyful million challenge. ⁓ OK, in other words,
that I publicly declared that I would build a million euro business in the next year joyfully, intentionally and without burnout. That number though, just to be very clear from the outset, that number, that million euro number wasn't the point of this exercise and isn't the point of this exercise. The pressure is the point.
I didn't choose the goal because I wanted to talk about money or hustle or the hard graft I was going to put in. ⁓ I chose it because I wanted to force myself to reach, ⁓ to reach into my own potential and see if I could find out what lies within it and where it goes. And reaching, ⁓ properly reaching, is a skill most small businesses don't really get to practice. ⁓ I've heard this story and I want to share this story.
with you because it might be familiar to you of what I hear so often from small businesses. Well, if I don't fully try, then I can't really be accused of failing, can I? And it's that kind of self-sabotage that masquerades as self-protection, which is ⁓ awful really for small businesses. And I've seen that pattern time and time again. People stay just inside what works, just inside what's comfortable.
Finola Howard (2:29.621)
or feels good enough. So I've made a different choice. I'm actually very willing to try hard, hard enough that if I do fail, I'll be okay with it. ⁓ I just want to see what could happen if I really tried. Because not trying is a quieter kind of failure, isn't it? And one I'm no longer interested in. So let me share with you the real shift or some of the real shifts I'm seeing in myself.
so far on this journey, because that's what this episode is about. Let's start with kind of values. And they've been steady for a long time, and it's not really about my values. In fact, I'm probably leaning into them more clearly now. What changed was my relationship with my own potential. I've set goals before, big goals, but let's face it, they were quite goals, ones that I posted on my wall where nobody could see them, stated just for me.
And that inherently means there's no accountability. And the goal can then stay theoretical. And when a goal is theoretical, everything will amble along as it always does. The business will work as it always has. The work will continue to matter to me. It will continue to bring me joy and growth will continue to happen. But incrementally. When I committed to this joyful million goal properly,
not aspirationally and not creatively, but seriously, something became very apparent to me. Not a misalignment with who I am, but a gap. A gap between what I know is possible and what I was actually asking of myself. That gap isn't about fear, wasn't about fear, wasn't about habit. And that gap wasn't about fear.
was actually about habit. ⁓ About staying with familiar ways of working because they're known, because they're effective, because they had history. Nothing wrong with all that. It's just no longer sufficient anymore.
Finola Howard (4:43.723)
And there's a real vulnerability that comes with naming a goal like this. Not because it's big, but because it's public. You don't ⁓ get to hide behind intention or some day. You have to be willing to be seen trying. You have to be willing to move from thinking to acting ⁓ and committing. And that's something I care really deeply about because leadership, ⁓ real leadership.
isn't about certainty, it's about honesty. We've learned that here time and again in so many episodes where we've discussed what real leadership ⁓ is. It's about saying, ⁓ this matters enough to attempt.
This matters enough to reach for. This matters enough to risk not getting it right first time.
Finola Howard (5:43.252)
I am risking that too. Something unexpected has also happened since I named this challenge. The feedback I'm getting from people ⁓ isn't actually pressure, which surprised me. It's actually encouragement. People aren't watching from the sidelines. They're rooting for me. And what they're saying, I think, in this rooting for me and checking in with me is, well, Fiannail, if you can do this, maybe I can too.
And if I'm honest, there's always been a deeper reason behind my work and it's that reason that if I could make the way easier for someone else, then that would be worth it. So this isn't about achievement for its own sake, but an expansion of what feels possible for me ⁓ and for the people walking alongside me.
Finola Howard (6:39.157)
Okay, I want to pause for a second to be really clear about something. I'm not rejecting what happened before or the way I've worked or saying that the way I worked up until now was wrong. It did work. It served me. It supported meaningful growth for me. And this isn't about fixing mistakes. It's about asking a bigger question. Some ways of working were sufficient for the level I was playing at. They just aren't sufficient for the level I'm playing at now.
or aiming for now. And that's not judgment, that's evolution. ⁓ This ⁓ experiment or this shift is a reshaping of the future for me, not a critique of what came before. That's really important. Another big shift ⁓ is how this goal has ⁓ forced me to think about growth itself as an idea and what delivers real growth.
For so many small businesses, growth tends to happen through individual services, through programs, through ideas. One thing leads to another and you offer here a response to demand over there, an idea from somebody else. Again, this is kind of really normal. But scale doesn't come from individual offers. It comes from how those offers, those products and services work together.
how they take your customer on a journey from the moment they walk in the door to the transformation they seek with you. I've always advocated that approach, but now I've ramped up that perspective. What I'm actually shaping now is what I call an offer ecosystem. And it's apparent in everything I'm doing at the moment in all of the ⁓ programs I'm delivering, I'm sharing this with clients as I go. So that...
The offer ecosystem is not a collection of disconnected products. We start thinking in a connected way from the very beginning. So it's not a series of launches that each start from zero. It's an integrated system where every interaction builds on the last and makes the next one easier. Because starting from scratch every time is just exhausting for us, for the business and for the customer. Growth at this level ⁓ asks different questions.
Finola Howard (9:4.800)
Not, can I sell this? But if I sell this, what does it unlock next? How does this deepen trust? ⁓ How does this compound value? And how does it serve the same customer more fully over time? We see this everywhere, know, we're used to this ⁓ outside of small business. Like we see it in the food industry, where if you go to buy a burger, you're asked
Would you like fries with that? If we go to a supermarket and maybe we want to buy stuff to make an ice cream sundae on a really hot sunny day that are so common here in Ireland ⁓ and you'll see the sprinkles and the chocolate sauce and the wafer all in the same place to make it easier for you to get everything you need in one go. And this is about thinking as each offer and each product or service as an experience. And it's about how these experiences are designed.
yet so many businesses struggle, not because their ideas aren't good, but because the experience is fragmented for the customer. When businesses don't work, it's often because everything isn't connected. It's fragmented. And fragmentation kills momentum and kills scale. The other thing that's become even more central, though it's always mattered very deeply to me, is about leading with the customer, not the offer, not the product or the service, but the customer.
listening more closely, watching what actually helps ⁓ and equally where someone stalls ⁓ or encounters an obstacle with us, letting real needs ⁓ shape the ecosystem instead of forcing solutions onto the market. And I've known this for decades. The better I listen, the better my work becomes. What's changed is the scale at which I'm applying that truth and the discipline
to let coherence lead. Everything I'm sharing here isn't theoretical. It's being applied in everything I do now, in how I plan, how I structure my work, how and what I deliver to clients, and how everything connects. If someone engages with my work now, they will feel that through line in everything I do. They'll understand.
Finola Howard (11:32.674)
Well, there might be a few leaks that I'm still correcting, but ⁓ they'll understand that I'm living what I'm teaching and advising clients on because scaling a business doesn't fail from lack of effort. It fails from fragmentation. And this phase of my work is about building something that truly works together, exponentially. So ⁓ consider this episode a starting point, not of a challenge, but of a way of working.
a way of reaching. Everything that follows ⁓ grows from here. I'm glad to be back and I'm glad that you're here with me.
