The Courage Formula with Katie Bell

[00:00:00] Katie Bell: I want to tell you the difference between fear and courage. Fear is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you’re supposed to do with wet pants. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Treat Your Business podcast. My name is Katie Bell. I am super excited to be bringing you this episode this week. And as you know, last week I went completely off piste.

[00:00:24] Katie Bell: Well, I am doing the same this week. Because last week’s episode was so well received and it was not planned. It was something that had I’d kind of just got a vibe of that. That was how people were feeling. And I’ve also just got a feeling this week, I need to trust myself a little bit more when I get these feelings. So I want you to keep in mind that everybody experiences fear, but it’s how you respond to fear that makes the biggest difference.

[00:00:58] Katie Bell: And there’s two options. There is courage and there’s courage avoidance. So you’re either courageous or you’re indulging yourself in some sort of method or activity to avoid courage, which often shows up as Paralysis, Procrastination, for some people, Addiction of some form. And courage avoidance means you’re not allowing yourself to actually experience something you’re supposed to experience in order to grow to the next level.

[00:01:32] Katie Bell: I’m going to say that again. Courage avoidance means you’re not allowing yourself to actually experience something you’re supposed to experience in order to grow to the next level. Having courage and pursuing a goal despite fear or despite discomfort is what actually moves you forwards. I cannot tell you how many times that, you know, we, I was sat when we were planning our big event this year, there was a massive part of me that was like, you know, who are you to run an event like this?

[00:02:08] Katie Bell: This is not what physios and osteos do. They just wanna Like we normally go to some boring CPD event, not every CPD event is boring, just want to say that, but you know, in a smelly hotel room, and and I wanted to bring the sequence, and I wanted to bring the energy, and I wanted to bring the dancing, and I wanted to bring the, transformations that we brought to that event.

[00:02:32] Katie Bell: The other time, This year was the I went for a book deal. I’m now allowed to tell you that because it’s actually happening. In fact, it’s happened. I’ve written it. It’s there. Got the samples ordered. Oh my goodness. Who even am I? I’m actually an author. That is just Completely mad. But I could have procrastinated.

[00:02:57] Katie Bell: I could have let fear show up in so many different ways that would have stopped me from experiencing something I was supposed to experience to grow to the next level. So today’s episode, today’s off piste episode, because I’m a rule breaker, is all about the four C’s, and it’s by a guy called Dan Southern.

[00:03:23] Katie Bell: I love Dan Sullivan. He is amazing. I love his work. He is he’s a coach. He’s a strategic coach. He’s unbelievably good at marketing. And he talks a lot about the four C’s and I’m going to introduce him to you. This principle, because if you all can recognize that confidence is the last thing that will show up, it will help you step forwards in your business and take that leap, take that next big jump that you are all committed to.

[00:03:56] Katie Bell: not doing right now because of fear or courage avoidance. So let’s dive in.

[00:04:03] Katie Bell: So from coaching lots of fabulous clinic owners like you listening to this, I found that courage is like the key part of the formula that everyone must go through in order to achieve the next level or greater levels of capability and confidence. If you look at anybody’s life, Where they’re like, they’re more success, whatever success means to you, but they, you would say they’re more successful than me.

[00:04:30] Katie Bell: Or if you look at, or somebody that’s frustrated or they’re failing, you’ll immediately see that the crucial difference is the presence of courage or the absence of courage. Like, intelligence is super important, education is super important, skills really important, successful experience is important.

[00:04:51] Katie Bell: But without courage, none of these will lead to transformative personal breakthroughs that can generate like these new kinds of growth in every area of your life, not just Your clinic.

[00:05:07] Katie Bell: So if you want to take your business to the next level, if you are like, you know, you’re procrastinating, if you know you should have taken a leap and something held you back, then this episode is for you. Now, last week at our amazing strategy days, I, I did a puppet show with Philippa. I mean, this is never, ever going to leave these people’s minds now, our fabulous client’s minds.

[00:05:33] Katie Bell: And I introduced the the monkey brain. So we’ve got logic and emotion. I introduced the elephant brain, which is just a conscious brain. And I introduced the primitive brain which we, use the lizard. So we had a lizard and elephant, and we had a logic monkey and an emotional monkey. Now, all you need to know, without being in that room, is that your elephant runs the show.

[00:05:56] Katie Bell: Like, he is the boss. That your subconscious brain runs the show. They are your thoughts, your beliefs, your ingrained habits, the shit that we were told when we were kids, by people in authority, and they are like deeply trodden in there, and they create What we see in our reality. We have to deal with our subconscious fears. We have to deal with our subconscious beliefs and our thought patterns. But sometimes in life, like You can do regression therapy. You can go back to when you were five and what did little Katie want when she was five. Yeah. I get all that. And I believe in all of that.

[00:06:44] Katie Bell: And I think there’s a place for it, but sometimes you’ve just got to have courage. And sometimes you’ve just got to have the balls to step forward and go, okay, I’m doing it anyway, even though I can’t see how I’m going to make that happen. And I don’t know what I need to know to make that happen. I’m going to commit.

[00:07:03] Katie Bell: Sometimes you just have to commit. When we look at this 4Cs formula, that Dan Sullivan introduced, Courage is actually stage two, okay? Capability is stage three. Confidence is stage four. And guess what stage one is? Commitment. Because nothing really starts until you commit to achieving a specific measurable result by a specific date in your future.

[00:07:29] Katie Bell: After you’ve made that commitment, courage is then required because you’ve got to actually take the action. So we get you often to like, write down what the vision is. What is the goal? That’s the easy bit, isn’t it? The courage that is then required to take action because you’ve acquired the capability to, before you’ve acquired the capability to achieve the result is, this is the crucial bit.

[00:07:56] Katie Bell: Capability is actually created because of your commitment and because of your courage. And then guess what? Confidence is the result of these first three stages. But how often do I observe clinic owners saying, when I get this, then I will commit. When I feel more confident, I will then price rise. When I feel like this, I will then take the next step in my business.

[00:08:24] Katie Bell: When I feel and see this, I will then hire that next person.

[00:08:29] Katie Bell: How? Everybody, everywhere grows is number one, commitment. Number two, commitment creates courage. Number three, the, capabilities show up through learning, through people, through connections, and then you get the confidence.

[00:08:49] Katie Bell: Most people don’t take the action on a project or on a goal until they feel capable and confident about it. Those are stages three and four. So if you are that person who is waiting to figure out a way of affording it before you actually make the commitment, you are ever going to be stuck in this cycle.

[00:09:10] Katie Bell: You can’t have confidence until you’ve created a new capability and you can’t acquire a new capability until you’ve first made a commitment and gone through a period of courage. Like I could not wait. To feel confident about delivering a massive event on stage in front of over 100 people where I had minimal notes to get me through the day.

[00:09:35] Katie Bell: I had my PowerPoint slide and like the odd word written down to remember stuff and prompt me. I couldn’t wait to feel confident in doing that before I actually made the commitment to Run the event. And so when I made the commitment to run the event, the courage then was like, okay, now I’ve actually said this out loud.

[00:09:55] Katie Bell: I now need to put this in action. So I had to book the venue. We had to pay a lot of money up front. We had to get an AV team. We had to get marketing and printing done. And we had to, I had to staff it. I had to make a commitment before we’d even sold one ticket. I had to make the commitment, I had to take the action.

[00:10:21] Katie Bell: I then figured it out. Because you have a cadence Clinic growth live. Can I just say, I think it was pretty awesome, but I figured it out. And then what happened? By the end of the day, my confidence level had gone through the roof because I’d created a new capability.

[00:10:40] Katie Bell: So where in your business or in your life are you waiting? Are you waiting for the capability, like the skill, the knowhow? Or, are you waiting to feel, in a certain way, confident, before you make the commitment and then step up?

[00:11:01] Katie Bell: Think about that. a personal growth experience from your past where you, like, you definitely will have gone through these four stages of growth, commitment, courage, capability, and confidence. You just won’t have realized that they’ve come in that order. It could be something that’s happened recently, or it could be like a long time ago.

[00:11:19] Katie Bell: But the important thing here to remember is that it’s, it, when you took a big jump in capability and confidence, not like a little thing, like a bit like running a massive event, going from running a very small event to a massive event. Going from Being a podcast producer. Producer. Am I a podcast producer?

[00:11:39] Katie Bell: Whatever I am. I’m a podcaster. Somebody else produces it for me, so I’m not going to take that credit. Whatever I am. One of these people that talks to myself on a computer screen every week. From that to being an author. Like, big jumping capability. Did I know how to write a book before I decided to write a book?

[00:11:57] Katie Bell: No.

[00:11:58] Katie Bell: Did I just decide that to create a bigger impact and to help my people, you, even more, I needed to get myself out there on a much, much bigger scale. People love reading books. Books are never going to go away. Did I know how to do it? No. But did I just make the commitment? I took the action. I got a publisher and then I started writing and I started learning from people that showed up.

[00:12:25] Katie Bell: My writing mentor, my marketing team, my like people around me.

[00:12:32] Katie Bell: And then I have now a published book. And so do I now have more confidence than I did six months ago when I didn’t even know how to write a book and go through that editing and processing and the manuscript phase and all of the stuff that I didn’t even know was a thing. I just thought I have to sit at home on my laptop, write a few chapters.

[00:12:57] Katie Bell: But now am I more likely to commit at a much higher level Next time round, because I’ve created that new capability and I know I can do it. Yes. Did it feel uncomfortable most of the way? Yes. So think about, like, remember a growth experience that you’ve had and think about what did you first of all commit to?

[00:13:19] Katie Bell: Like, what did you have to decide? Think about, like, how, what action you then needed to take. What was the courage? That you needed to have to move forwards in terms of your commitment. What capabilities turned up? Like who turned up in your network? Who did you start talking to? Like we had so many conversations on our strategy days and you were positioned next to people in the room for a reason so that you could have meaningful conversations.

[00:13:47] Katie Bell: And then how did you feel as a result of it?

[00:13:50] Katie Bell: So commitment is like, first sell yourself. It’s like this bigger, better future. It’s because without a strong, really specific, and I say specific, because our brain likes a specific, like, this is what we need to achieve when we need to achieve it by, You might not have the motivation to even begin. So it, commitment happens when you make a sale to yourself.

[00:14:14] Katie Bell: It requires selling yourself on doing something you don’t yet have the capability to pull off because if you already have the capabilities, you’d have already done it. Everybody talks about sales in terms of selling to someone else. Actually, the first sale you’ve got to make is to yourself.

[00:14:32] Katie Bell: In the four C’s process, you have to state the particular result. So in one year, in five years, in whatever, in one year’s time, I will have written and published a book and sold X amount of copies. It’s a measurable goal. It means that every month, every quarter, I’m going to be looking at, are we on track or off track towards the goal, the particular commitment that I made.

[00:15:04] Katie Bell: Now, when I made that commitment, I didn’t have the capability of creating the results

[00:15:11] Katie Bell: because if I did, then I’d have already done it.

[00:15:15] Katie Bell: But that’s what commitment requires you to do. It requires you to improve. The sort of communication and the methods you’re using. From the moment you commit, you might not recognize that there is a large amount of the project you cannot pull off right now or by yourself. But that then shifts you into that courage stage, because you simply have to get as much assistance as you possibly can.

[00:15:40] Katie Bell: Dan Sullivan writes another great book, Who, Not How. Who, Not How. It’s about who do I know or who do I need to know to help me get to where I need to be. And I said this to my Elevate team on Thursday. Your job as a leader is to not know it all. If you think you need to know it all as a leader, then you’re going to be delaying a lot of stuff.

[00:16:06] Katie Bell: Because you can’t possibly know it all. Your job is to inspire other people to figure it out for you.

[00:16:15] Katie Bell: When you make a commitment, We think about fear, don’t we? Like fear leads our decision often and uncertainty, but courage, which is the second C in the formula, is your response to those worries and fears. It’s the, important thing or the next most important thing is to keep going forwards despite the temptation to procrastinate or turn away from the commitment.

[00:16:43] Katie Bell: Like, I would say I probably am the le the least pro I don’t even know if this is a word. Like, I don’t procrastinate. I don’t really overthink things. In fact, I don’t often think. I just do. Now, sometimes I need to think more, and sometimes I need to less with mo move with less speed. Somebody said to me at our Christmas party on Friday night, Ha, like, you have been exceptionally busy, like, how have you pulled all of this off?

[00:17:14] Katie Bell: And I’m like, and Philippa actually spoke on my behalf, and she went, because she doesn’t procrastinate, she just does.

[00:17:21] Katie Bell: So the difference between procrastination and courage is that procrastination feels the fear and stops while the courageous person feels the fear and goes, okay, I’m going forwards anyway. Courage is a willingness to go forwards in spite of not feeling confident. Like, if you feel confident about something, like truly feel confident, it’s probably because you’ve already been there, done it, and you’ve got the capabilities to make it happen.

[00:17:46] Katie Bell: And I would also challenge the fact that you’re probably not playing a big enough game. The opposite of that, of courage, isn’t fear, it’s being a coward. Because all of us experience fear, like, all the time. It’s really normal. It’s how we respond to it that counts.

[00:18:03] Katie Bell: Now, the thing with, like, we all want to feel confident, because that feels good, doesn’t it? But courage doesn’t feel very good, because it can feel uncomfortable, it can feel like I am saying, I am pressing the button, I’m pushing the trigger, and I don’t know how I’m going to make this happen, or I don’t know what the next steps are.

[00:18:25] Katie Bell: So it’s about being comfortable feeling uncomfortable as a business owner. Like it’s normal. You have to lean into being uncomfortable. Might last an hour, might last a day, might last a month. Surround yourself with the right people, it’ll last a lot less time. But in the process towards like next level results, breakthrough results, we’re going to go through a period where we feel like fear, uncertainty, anxiety.

[00:18:54] Katie Bell: This is an uncomfortable period, but it’s a necessary period. If we’re going to achieve increased capability and a higher level of confidence. Like, if you’re going to grow as an individual, as an entrepreneur, because if you’re not growing, then you’re dying. Sorry, but that’s true. If you’re not growing, you like, what is it all about?

[00:19:17] Katie Bell: So courage is just as important as commitment, capability, or confidence. It’s just that courage needs to be taught about as a major skill, and it’s a necessary step in the process of building confidence in any area. You’re going to have to go through a period which feels really uneasy. And often when my clients explain this to us on our Q and A’s or our weekly calls or our pods and I go, do you know what this is?

[00:19:42] Katie Bell: This is a sign of growth, lean into it. And sometimes that’s all they need to do. They just, the people that make the most progress are those that get to the hurdle and step over it and keep moving forwards. You can’t avoid the feelings of fear. Like fear is your like lizard brain trying to keep you safe all the time.

[00:20:07] Katie Bell: It’s But it’s about surrounding yourself with the right people that give you and support you with the capability, encourage you to make the commitment, give you the capabilities to step forwards and move forwards. And then we watch this conference come through and then we’re like, Oh hell yes, they’ve just shown up.

[00:20:27] Katie Bell: They’ve just turned up. And this is what happens when you are surrounded by the right people who elevate you, who lift you, you go to the next level in every area of your life. You stop tolerating. Things that don’t align with that.

[00:20:43] Katie Bell: Now, for those of you who are like, Oh yeah, okay, I’m hearing this, I’m hearing this. But you know, sometimes we can just skip the courage step. What will happen is you’ll simply just operate within your present level of capability and confidence. Courage comes into play when you’ve committed yourself to something outside of your current level of confidence and capability.

[00:21:06] Katie Bell: It’s the commitment without the guarantee of capability or confidence that’s actually scaring you. But there’s an energy that you gain when you make a commitment and enter a state of courage that quickly leads to capability. There are so, many people I have the absolute pleasure of talking to that cannot commit because they are so focused on the how that they just forever hold themselves back.

[00:21:35] Katie Bell: And until they see the how, they can’t commit and they don’t then take the action that is needed to change their business. to elevate their business, to transform their business and their life. So I want you to just acknowledge

[00:21:49] Katie Bell: if you are feeling deeply uncomfortable in your business right now, I applaud you because this is often a sign of growth. I want to check that the discomfort is from a place of alignment that yes, we have just made a commitment and stepping out of our comfort zone. We’re doing something that we’re going down a path that we’ve never walked before.

[00:22:10] Katie Bell: And this is normal and Katie says that this is gonna happen and it’s gonna happen for a short term or a long term depending on how big we How, long this thing is gonna take, but the level of confidence that you’ll then gain will mean you are gonna step up at the next level next time this cycle comes round.

[00:22:28] Katie Bell: So acknowledge if you’re feeling uncomfortable, lean into it. Embrace it. This feels good. This is a growth phase. If you are not feeling uncomfortable, then I, invite you to play a bigger game. I invite you to look at what you are not happy with in your life right now because you get to choose. You get to choose what your life and business looks like.

[00:22:53] Katie Bell: Nobody else. And if you are somebody that is so obsessed about the how or so need all of the capabilities there before you can make the commitment and take the action, then I invite you in some way, some small way in your life to just go fuck it. I’m just going to go for it and see what happens. I hope you’ve enjoyed my off piste episode.

[00:23:21] Katie Bell: I am on my way, well I will be in 45 minutes, to Therapy Expo, when this episode is going to go live tomorrow 27th of November, if you listen to it live, or when it goes live, and you’re on your way to Therapy Expo then come and say hi. We are on stand TE11. I am presenting on both days how to Be fully booked without social media at the STA stand.

[00:23:45] Katie Bell: And we were also running a free 2025 strategy and marketing sessions on our stand, run by myself and Nicola for both of the days. Come and say, hi, give me a big cuddle. If you could bring me some form of refreshment. And then orange, that would be fabulous, because last year I didn’t even think I’d have a sip of water for 48.

[00:24:08] Katie Bell: If I see you at Therapy Expo, I look forward to it. I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s podcast episode. I will be back next week, maybe on plan, maybe off plan, who knows? F k it, just do it. Have a great week.