Episode 004: Why You Keep Falling Victim to the “Start, Stop, Stuck” Cycle!

And we’re gonna talk today about the start stop and stuck cycle that people, a lot of us tend to be in, in our business sense, especially if you’re like new or if you are growing, like where I’m at right now.

Again, my name is Khadirah Muhammad. I am the founder of succeeding with systems.com. I am happy to be here and I’m happy to have all of you a part of this with me.

This is another episode of our succeeding with systems podcast, which by the way, if you’re not subscribed and listening to the podcast on a regular basis, I suggest that you do. You can actually find the podcast anywhere where podcasts are available like Spotify, Apple, Stitcher, and all the other ones.

<laugh> All of the other ones. So thank you all for being on here tonight. We’re gonna be talking about why you struggle and why you tend to be and keep falling victim to the start, stop stuck cycle.

Excuse me. If I have kind of like my notebook and I have my pen, the reason being is something about this really makes me feel a lot better when I’m, when I’m speaking everything.

And I enjoy this subject a lot because it’s something I really dealt with a lot. <laugh> and I still deal with it sometimes. When it comes to this kind of triple S territory, I don’t know what else to call it, but we’re just gonna call it that until I find something better.

I dealt with this a lot when I was in like the beginning stages of being a business owner, being an entrepreneur. And I didn’t have a team. I didn’t have really anybody in person who could help me understand why the cycle exists.

Why do I always seem to like go back and forth with it? And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a lot of struggle dealing with it. And so let’s talk a little bit about it.

So it’s, it’s the start, stop stuck. Now. I think some people may feel like, well, I’m stuck now and I haven’t even started, but this cycle is a bit different.

Right? So what it looks like is when you’re starting, you’re very excited. You’re into what you’re talking about. You’re into how you’re showing up you’re into your clients, you’re into your business. Maybe you have a new idea and like you’re super duper excited about it and you’re happy for it. And like everything’s working out in your favor, you might have some few referrals. You’re getting a few clients again. You’re very, very excited. It’s a moment of kind of high momentum in that way, cuz you’re excited.

So you’re starting well, what happens when you’re just kind of like one person or you have maybe a couple people and you get a new client that comes in most of us stop at that point in our business and what do we do? What do we stop? We stop our momentum. It’s the sales momentum. It’s the business momentum. It’s the excitement of it all.

We tend to stop it, right? We stop it because now we’re servicing that client or we’re servicing that customer or we’re dealing with the problems that get associated when you are servicing somebody and you’re helping somebody and there’s new things that come about in our business.

So like that can be you’re with a client right now and you’re doing services for that person. Well, if you’re the only person that’s performing services, then who who’s doing anything else, right? You have to put your time and attention into this client.

And if you don’t have a system or a process of how things get done, even just for yourself, like not something that necessarily gets copied to anybody else, but if you don’t have a process for things getting done, you’re just kind of doing whatever, which I know cuz I did the same thing.

So I know exactly what this feels like. Then you’re kind of making it up as you go. And that happens from time to time. Cuz you may not know everything, but you do know that you can’t exactly help this client, but you may feel like, well, I’m kind, I can do this. I can do that. You don’t really have a program. You don’t really have like a curriculum if you will.

And so it’s just kind of doing whatever well, that stops the process of everything. Why? Because not only are you doing fulfillment, but you’re figuring out the fulfillment as you go along and that’s extremely difficult to do and keep up the momentum everywhere else.

And when I say keep up the momentum everywhere else. I mean like continuing the marketing, doing the videos, doing the content, like recording the content and the content posting the content. I struggle personally with that, right? I’m like literally in the middle of hiring another person that lives here in the state because I am doing the content and I kind of have to have a level of control there because there’s a certain way I need my brand to be presented to the world.

Right? Cause there’s a certain level of education. There’s a certain way I want to be and a certain way I want to be perceived. And so I do need some level of control there, but I don’t need all the control. Okay. I’m ready to give this to somebody.

As soon as I develop a tighter process on how, not just how the content gets edited or something, cuz people edit different ways. But it can still be, you know, completed in a manner that we like. But what can happen is you can have a way that your brand gets presented.

You can have a brand book or a brand Bible. You know, this is how you present our logos. These are the colors that we use. This is the imagery, these are the vibes, this is the emotions we want our brand to carry. And I don’t necess say you have that quite yet.

It’s something I’m in the middle of developing and really just kind of refining for myself. Right. So right now I’m doing my own content. And if I didn’t have a real, like a nice process for my clients, when they would come in, I’d just be kind of making up stuff as a go, which takes a lot of brain power to do that because you have to equivalent you have to sufficiently like create that in real time as the person is either paying you money or they already paid you money or you’re like under a contract with them.

And so now you started, you have the momentum, the momentum helps you get the client. Now you are, you have the client and you stopped and you’re like, okay, we’re gonna take care of this client.

Well now what kind of happens in this moment, depending on your services agreement, maybe you have like a monthly recurring like clientele. I used to do that a lot when I discuss that. And then maybe you have also a kind of just a contracted term, right?

Meaning you don’t have a client like forever, forever, but you do have them for a certain amount of time. And that could be like three months. That could be a year. That could be, you know, a couple, it could be a couple weeks, just depends on what it is.

You’re exactly selling. And so that’s important and it can delay you from building back up the momentum, if you have them for a contracted period of time.

Again, if you don’t have your curriculum, if you don’t have your program really figured out, then you just might be you know, bringing on somebody and it’s good that you brought them on, but it’s not good.

<laugh> if like you are stopping everything that you’re doing, because then you become stuck. Cause it’s a good thing that you have the client, but it’s a bad thing that you’re not utilizing your momentum more to keep the client, right.

Not only to keep the client, but then get new clients and that’s really important. And it’s something that becomes very difficult to actually keep about.

So I’m mentioning this and we’re, we’re talking about this because if you don’t have a good structure and you don’t have a good process, you will find yourself in this cycle.

Like all the time, you will find yourself in this cycle all the time. I did, I personally did this quite a lot.

Sometimes I could still find my way in, in it too. If I’m not having a moment of clarity and I talked about clarity a lot in the last video that I did last week.

And we’ll talk more about clarity.

Actually I actually talked about this a lot in my second podcast episode, where I talked more about having Supreme clarity and like how you can help to do that because I’m only talking about things that I’ve been through that I went through that I’ve, you know, I’ve been able to make it to the other end. And I also talk about things that like, I may not be all the way over. <laugh> just quite frankly, and that’s just being honest, but if I can help somebody who did or somebody who’s in it right now and I can help them get over it, then that is a benefit to you.

And I’m happy to just benefit you in that way. Now something else with the start stop stuck cycle is that stuck part can last for quite a while.

It can last for quite a while.

And sometimes it lasts there because of this lack of clarity, but sometimes it also lasts there because you may not even realize you’re in it.

You think you’re just doing work and doing good work and everything’s great. But then as contrasts get

completed and as clients may move on, right, or you’ve just done the work that was needed to happen.

Now you’re at a place where there’s no clients or you can see the steady decline of clientele. Well, now you get into a level of panic and you’re like, I gotta start doing this.

I gotta start doing that. I gotta start doing this. And I felt that earlier this week, so I know I’m failure.

I know what this feels like. It was just in a different situation. And now it gets like a feeling of lack.

It gets a feeling of, I don’t have enough, it maybe get a feeling of like insecurities.

It gets a feeling of, am I doing the right thing? Am I what the right people do? I have the right plan.

So on and so forth. And you may feel like jumping into something else. Right? Shiny object syndrome happens a lot to entrepreneurs, business folks.

Again, I know it cuz I went through the same thing <laugh> so I know it happened. I just had a really good conversation with somebody and I was talking about how either’s somebody that we both know that we’re kind of trying to partner with and we’re just looking at it.

Right. And one of the things that they struggle with is doing something into completion. And I said that before, because when you struggle to complete stuff it comes off in like everything.

And I started thinking about myself and how I can be in this start, stop stuck cycle.

And you also get into shiny object syndrome. You know, it’s funny, I have a, a slight lisp and that’s a lot of S’s that I’m saying right now.

<laugh>, it’s a lot of S’s that I’m saying right now. I just thought that was funny. But you get to the cycle, you have SOS, you have shiny object syndrome and that can stop you from completing projects that can stop you from completing what you said that you’re gonna do and keeping your word and keeping

your word and being able to be committed. It’s like SU it’s not a small thing, but it, I think it’s like a it’s not subtle, but the word, I don’t know what the word is, but it’s underrated meaning.

And I’ve had this newfound commitment, not just to a process, not just even to my business, but it’s a commitment to myself and it’s a commitment to my God that I serve.

And I had, and I felt this over the weekend and it made me feel so enlightened because I knew it wasn’t just a feeling.

It wasn’t just me being inspired right. By a video. It wasn’t just me feeling motivated. Right, right now I do not feel motivated to do any of these live streams right now.

I don’t necessarily feel motivated to do this. I’m actually exhausted. Tuesdays are very long days for me. I get a lot of work done on Tuesdays.

I do a lot of phone calls on Tuesdays. I do a lot of check-ins on Tuesdays. I do a lot of just my own personal work on Tuesdays.

A lot of long conversations on Tuesdays. It’s an extremely tiring day and it’s not gonna stop. Even after this video.

And after this podcast show it my day, isn’t gonna end until maybe like 10 or 11 in terms of work.

And I’ve been up since like 7:00 AM literally doing work since 7:00 AM. And so that’s just a long time for me.

And I, you know, I took a nap earlier cause I knew I needed it. I had some re-energizing tea cuz I knew that I needed it.

And this is tiring right now. It can be a bit exhausting to do these videos, to do the shut up, right.

My setup isn’t exactly the way I want, but I gotta use what I have until I can get, you know what?

I need quite a a little bit later, but I was committed to doing this live stream. I was committed to doing this show.

I was committed to doing this podcast. I edited a podcast earlier today. I was supposed to do it yesterday, but I had a bunch of other stuff I did ended doing yesterday.

And so this morning I was like, okay, I need to do this podcast. I gotta sit down. I gotta focus because I have to edit this podcast.

I gotta create the show notes for it. I gotta make sure I, I get some of marketing col collateral and content.

So that way I can promote the episode throughout the week, excuse me. And I have this show right now that I have another one in like a half hour later.

I had to reschedule a bunch of stuff I’m exhausted, but I am committed to showing up. If you’re one of my Facebook friends, you probably got like a thousand notifications about me putting on an event and me inviting you to it because I’m in a few of these like Facebook groups and I’m doing this live

in front of like multiple of them right now.

And nobody might buy anything from me right now. And that’s okay because the point wasn’t to just sell this entire show.

I don’t wanna do that. The point is to show up and to be present and to be aware and for people to get used to me.

I have it on my calendar from five 30 to six 30 I’m I’m not available at all, right from six to six 30.

I do this show. I do the episodes I show up in the live streams. I I’m in the Facebook groups.

Right. I’m active in that way. And then from five 30 to six, I’m just prepping for the show, getting my setup together, checking my stream yard, making sure the links are working, making sure the events are there, you know, seeing anythings broken that I can see and I can kind of fix, you know, prior

to the show cuz when it’s six o’clock I’m on time, I’m on the show.

I was a little bit late today. I do believe. Because I’ve never used streamed very before. And I was like, this was, I only had like 30 minutes to kind of figure it out, put it together, get my setup together.

And all that. And it was a little bit late, but I still showed up and that’s the important part. And that’s the the showing up in the consistency of showing up in this way is what’s going to help me get to where I want to go.

It’s gonna help me create like a not, I actually like to consider a forever momentum, but it’s just right now, I’m building up my own momentum.

And I’m also because I have the mindset of it. I’m also building out the process. So that way life doesn’t stop just because I get a few more customers and a few more clients.

And I add on to what I already got going on right now. And when you’re in this cycle and you’ve been through it multiple times and you’ll, you’ll get to know it as you move along and like being an entrepreneur and owning your business.

Especially if you can be more systems minded earlier on what you will see is that you will notice when you’re in this cycle.

And if you can notice it when you’re in it, that means you can, you can you can overcome.

It is really what I want you to say. You can overcome it once, you know that you’re in it and you can recognize the signs of being stuck.

Right. And I’m a little bit better at recognizing the signs of being stuck because I hate being stuck. I don’t like being stuck, you know?

And so I can recognize it a little bit better, but sometimes it takes a little bit more. Right. I realized I needed to have a newfound commitment cause I didn’t have that in myself.

And so when I realized that that was really the issue, I made a change like almost immediately, right? I I’m in the middle of like, I’m gonna create like a new vision board this week.

Because I need new vision boards. I need new affirmations. Right. I need new goals. I need new, new, big goals, right.

Something that I could really look forward to, like when you’re in this cycle and you don’t know what’s going on or you are in this cycle and you do know what’s going on.

I mean, you can overcome it a lot faster and you can actually be available to them. But yeah.

So showing up in this way allows me to be present for you all. It allows me to, to give I had a really good conversation with somebody who’s helping me and kind of like credit a little bit kind of it’s I hate to oversimplify it like that, but it kind of is what it is.

And he told me that his whole plan of how he wants to make so much amount of money is based on him helping so many people get to a very phenomenal goal.

And I don’t wanna like give his personal stuff out right now. So I’m just gonna say like that, but his whole basis of being successful is giving and he gives and he helps.

And he assists in the way that he specifically does. You’re never gonna find him online. I barely found them, you know, like it was so it was like happenstance, but that made me think I’m like, okay, if I continue to show up and I can give and I can, you know, use my experiences and share them with you

all.

So that way you can know how to not do what I did and do way better than me, then that improves your life.

And not only do I feel good

doing that, but it helps me because you’re probably gonna come back to me and you know, want to learn more about what I can do and refer people to me it’s becomes a win-win, but you have to identify when you’ve hit that mark, where your momentum is kind of dying and you have

to have somewhat a process on dealing with that. Now with that being said, processes work. If the problems are always the same and sometimes the problems aren’t right.

I didn’t have a problem of not knowing what to do. I didn’t have a problem of not having enough information.

Some of you have a problem and you get stuck because you don’t know what to do.

You don’t have enough information, right? You don’t know what the next step is. And so that’s why you could be stuck.

Right? I wasn’t stuck because of that. I was stuck because I didn’t have a full level of commitment in, in the right place at the right time.

And that was my problem. But I didn’t know that until I had some feedback and I didn’t know that until I really looked into myself and I realized, oh, this is, this is why I’ve been stuck because I didn’t have the right level of commitment.

And when I realized that was the case and I rended myself, I was able to overcome me being stuck. And in business, sometimes you overcoming being stuck is not always again, just doing, doing, doing it’s a mindset, it’s a mental adjustment.

And the process of getting there requires you to really study your situation and study what’s going on.

And that’s how you get past that, right? That’s why the succeeding with systems show is not all about like just business processes or, or technology, right?

I think many of you expect it to just be about technology and it’s going to cover technology. It’s a, it’s a part of it.

But being successful with systems, life is a system. Our universe that we, we are all living in right now is a system we live in.

What’s called the silver system. Everything in life is a system. And my goal is to help you all be successful in every facet of life and being able to use the appropriate system.

So you can get past, you can overcome and you can exceed the goals that you have for yourself. And so as we kind of continue on we’re at the 20 minute mark, so I will kind of go ahead and, and, and close this out.

But as we come on this show, I’m gonna be bringing on people who talk about other faces of, of course, business and finances marketing, technology, operations, sales accounting, like all those things.

We’re also gonna bring on people who talk about mindset and, you know, mentality and, you know, even like, you know, emotionally how you’re feeling and in psychology, because all those things are important because they, they all have their own system, a system of your mind, a system of your, of your

own body, a system of your emotions. And how do you deal with that? What’s your process of going through that?

It’s very important. This one was more about mentality. You overcome the, the triple S kind of territory by sometimes taking a step back and really studying where you’re at right now, look at what’s happened and really, and write it down, like legitimately write it down somewhere.

So you can document what’s been going on. I’m writing more in my journal because I need to be doing more self and personal documentation.

I’ll do business documentation all day long, but in my personal documenting, what’s going on with me, what’s happening with me?

How, how I’m feeling, how you know, why this thing happened to me. And then what did I do after this thing happened to me, right?

And then that way that will allow me to go back into my journal and look at my old thoughts and really just, you know, find a solution on fashion.

So that is end of this episode. Thank you all for watching this. If you’re watching this on the stream, if you’re watching this on YouTube and thank you all for listening to this, if you’re listening to this on the podcast, which again, succeeding with systems podcast is available everywhere, where podcasts

are listening to apple, Spotify, Stitcher, but you can also find it in stream it for free, at succeeding with systems.com/podcast.

I will see you all in the next show that we always do on Tuesdays at 6:00 PM Eastern standard time. And if you wanna learn more about how you can be more successful with systems and processes and how you can start to implement them into your business, then I suggest you go to succeeding with systems.com

. And on that page, you’re gonna be invited to go and download my six VI six figure, low tech guide. Okay.

My six figure low tech guide. It’s absolutely for free. All you gotta do is just put an email and maybe a phone number, and you’ll be able to download it yourself.

Thank you all for watching my name’s KRE Muhammad. You can find me pretty much anywhere. <laugh> that? On social media, KD ES Mohamed.

You can find me on Instagram at Caira ES Muhammad. If you’re not already there, cause I’m actually live streaming there too.

So thank you all for watching. I will see you guys in the next episode.