Hi, I'm Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting podcast. This season we're talking about consultants and consulting and today I wanted to introduce a special topic that is very close to my heart, and that is celebration. It's one of the best ways to make things happen that you want to have in your business to reward yourself, for the wins you’ve gotten, for the successes that you've gotten and you can really use it to change your life. So I'm going to share with you several examples of how I'm using this.

But the first thing I want to say is that what I've noticed about using celebration in my business and with my clients is that it's this wonderful, positive affirmation, positive confirmation of things that we're doing that are making a difference and that causes us to be able to more quickly shift our attitude when things are hard, build new habits like do new things venture outside of our comfort zone and in general really see the kind of results that we want to have in our business? The reason why is because we're constantly affirming, “Yes, this is the kind of thing I want to have happening. This is the kind of thing I want to see more of in my business.” So I very much encourage you to celebrate more. And here is exactly how you can do it.

So, years ago I heard this really interesting story from a woman who was teaching money, consciousness and awareness. And she said, “I always pick up pennies. Why? Because a penny is the smallest part of a million dollars.” And I loved that and I do now pick up pennies and nickels and dimes, like whatever it's like, it's worth it to me to bend over, I'm like, that's the smallest part of a million dollars. So what's good about this in terms of celebration? Well, a lot of people feel like to celebrate, I really need an accomplishment or like a success or a win before they can do that. And I'm like, no way. You can celebrate absolutely everything. Like, any time you do a hard thing, any time you push yourself outside your comfort zone so here's a funny example. I was working with some clients, a super successful business, several hundred thousand dollars wanting to grow to a million. I did a VIP day with them, we wrote together an article because this had been a kind of a sticking area for them. And I said, and now we're going to go and post it on LinkedIn, oh terrible now I have to go redo it now, no, no, no, no. We're going to take what we have, which is going to work perfectly for you and go and post it on your LinkedIn, I will wait. So then everybody kind of made peace with the fact that we're about to do this, it took a little time and effort and whatever, and then post, you know, hit the publish button. And then we all stood there and guess what I did? We celebrated the heck out of that. It was a big and hard and difficult thing, we did happy dancing, we were cheering each other on, a big kind of silly, over-the-top celebration. Why did we do that? Well, if you publish on LinkedIn every day, I'm sure you're like, what? They did it, this was a hard thing for them, it was new, it was outside their comfort zones, it was a risk, it was vulnerable. So I wanted to award that, reward, acknowledge that with a commensurate level of emotional acknowledgment and celebration. So by celebrating that, all of us together again in a kind of a silly, over-the-top way, we marked like, wow, we just did a hard thing, thank you for acknowledging that. We sent a message to our unconscious like, that's the thing that I want to do, I want to be the kind of person who does that, I want to do more of that. I believe we send a message to the universe that says, hey, this is what I just did and this is a really big deal and I want to see more of that in my life. So doing even teeny things that are very difficult for you and celebrating the heck out of them when you do that, that's an amazing way to begin behavior change.

So the second time you do a LinkedIn post, when you're a little hesitant to do it, you do it and you're like, yeah. So it's not maybe the exaggerated celebration the second time, but still ok, good. And then after a while you're like, oh man, I post on LinkedIn every day it's no big deal, right? So there you go and a habit has been formed, something that you want to have happen. You've managed to affect change in your life in kind of a not very difficult way, right? That kind of went smoothly.

Now I want you to think about the applications of that, not just for yourself, but also for your clients. So what's another time we can use celebration marking success with clients. It's so easy for us to go like, hey, we did the campaign, got some results from that ok, now let's move on to the next thing. We need to stop and celebrate and everything along the way, did we get a sale from that? Yes woo hoo! Hey, did so-and-so end the meeting on time? Wow we just actually had a 60 minute meeting instead of a 90 minute meeting yeah, this is terrific. Everything that you're wanting to have happen, you can acknowledge it and celebrate it, right? So celebration changes the way we look at things and the way we feel about them. And it's the most positive, kind of gentle, even though it's a silly thing, way to affect that change, I believe.

Sometimes there are funny situations in which I will do a celebration, maybe not that funny, for example, someone has had a difficult client and that difficult client has finally left them in a huff. And we are having a coaching session about that, we will do a postmortem on that entire situation and talk about what we learned, what's the benefit actually of this having happened? And then I might say, well, let's actually celebrate this, because this is a conclusion of a thing that wasn't working for either of you. So, yay, universe, yay! I might say, meaning I'm celebrating, I'm telling the Universe, hey, thanks for taking that out of my hands and Yay Universe yay is one of my come and go-to to celebration phrases so you can shift your attitude about a seemingly negative thing that has happened to you, which really if you look at it like there's kind of a gift in it for you and well, if there's a gift, let's celebrate it.

You can see how I'm using it and a little bit of a reverse psychology way or positive psychology way to say how can I turn this thing which feels like a loss into a win? How can I learn from it? How can I keep my attitude positive going forward? So that's a way to do that. There are so many situations that you can celebrate. I want you to just keep in mind as you're looking, client successes, your successes. We always analyze failure, but so infrequently do we really spend time to say, wow, why did that work? And what was great about that? And hold on, by the way, just yay, just yay ok, let's take a moment and have fun.

So I've had coaching calls where a client will say over the many coaching calls, they're in the process of closing a client and then while we were away during the week that we weren't talking, the client closed and so they get on the call with me and it's like, oh, yeah and then I closed that client and I'm like, well, hold on, hold on like, has anybody celebrated with them? So, yeah, we make a concerted effort to really mark that thing and celebrate together. I'm teaching my clients to build the habit of celebration because it can change their life, because it can change their work life and their work attitude. I want to make sure that that's something that they take away from me.

Now, what's great, that happens as a result of this is I'll have clients now who will text me or message me in between meetings to say I just closed that client. It's 60K, lots of celebration emojis,you know dancing women and the little having a party emojis because they know that I want to celebrate. I think this is something that's super key. You want your clients to associate those wins with you, you want them to share that. A lot of times in our society, there's hesitation and shame around celebrating wins, right? We don't want to seem like we're bragging, we don't want to seem like everything good is happening to us when, gosh, things are really difficult for everybody else in the world, I want to create a safe place for my clients to come and by the way, my friends and family and everybody else, including you, if you've got something you want to celebrate, you can come to me and have a great time about it. I've written about this elsewhere, but I had a buddy who inherited a million dollars and he couldn't tell anyone because oh my gosh, like you want to look like the jerk has just inherited a million dollars and like, who do you tell? And so he felt safe telling me and I was like, yay! And we did a lot of celebrating, I was like you're a millionaire, this is great. It's an amazing feeling to be able to celebrate stuff. So maybe you found a penny on the ground Or maybe you inherited a million dollars. Believe me, the frequency and the energy of that in your body can be the same thing and do you feel like if you're constantly celebrating that money is coming into your life, that maybe you might eventually bring in a million dollars? Not that's probably a stretch, but I do know that my clients who are consistently celebrating, they always have more and more and more stuff to celebrate, right? There's a lot of stuff.

So a couple of things about how to celebrate. Always be prepared to celebrate. The first way I do this is personally, I've always got champagne or Prosecco in the fridge. I'm always ready to toast and celebrate a wonderful thing that's happened. Now, if you'd like a nonalcoholic version of celebration, what you might choose is a phrase or an expression. So you've heard a few of mine. Yay! And I like to do it with a happy dance, I like to incorporate physicality into it. It's a whole body celebration. You're really programming yourself for winning, so yay. And if I were standing, you'd see that the legs there's a leg component to this too, does it feel silly? Well, not to me anymore, because I've been doing it for years and years and years and I want my clients to lean into it. What it feels to me is like the whole body yes, so do the extent of that you can do. My beloved BJ Fogg, author of Tiny Habits, has wonderful letters, little celebration that he does which is awesome. I highly encourage you to try that one, because it's super fun for all your little small wins. Every time I come down from working out, my husband and I look at each other and we go, I'm awesome, so I'm awesome is a great way for you to celebrate. In his book Tiny Habits, he has a list of I think there's a hundred ways that you can celebrate. Another one I like is yayyyyyy! When I was training my dog in agility, the teacher, a wonderful woman, Linda Ryan, had a Southern accent because we were in Arkansas and like I like I also do at times. And when the dog would do something good, she would say, yayyyy! And I got in the habit of yayyy! Sometimes we'll do something and my husband will do the yay! with the Southern accent, so yay! let's celebrate that.

So have your go to phrases that you can say and try them out, even though they might sometimes feel a little uncomfortable and new to you, I want you to get in the habit of celebrating like what's the worst thing that happened if you got in the habit of celebrating, like you might have to celebrate all the time. When to celebrate is when you've done a hard thing, when you've gotten out of your comfort zone, when the client has done something great, when you have done something great, when a difficult situation has gone out of your life, like when you're done with something like a private client leaves or a project that was really costing you is over, like celebrate all of that.

Now, I have an assignment for you. Three things I want you to do next. First, I want you to choose your way to celebrate, I'm awesome, happy dance, yay! Whatever you want to say so, just think of one at least, and maybe two or three of those that will be your go to. The second thing I want you to do is I want you to celebrate everything. I told the penny story because a penny is the smallest part of a million dollars, I want you to celebrate penny level wins. This is what I tell my clients. What's the smallest part of a win? Did you post on LinkedIn? Did you write the post? Did you think about some things you can post on LinkedIn? Like whatever is the smallest part of a goal that you can do and move towards, do it and then celebrate that you did it, ok, build yourself up towards the hard things. So celebrate even penny level wins so that you're always celebrating every day in your business.

And last of all, and this is really important. Share your wins, find somebody to celebrate with you. So either you go to them and say, hey, what's going on? And you find the things that they tell you and you celebrate that with them you say, yay! that's really great actually, that's a huge accomplishment, that's really big or you say, I had this thing happen and I would love to happy dance with you about it. Would you jump up and down with me for a few minutes? People would love to be included in that, well, some people would, so find your people who want to celebrate with you.

We're looking at going into a new year, I hope it's going to be a much less difficult year than 2020 was and I would love to celebrate your wins with you. So if you were looking to take your business to the next level, double without exhaustion is my promise, then I would love to help you do that. You can feel free to get in touch with me through any of the mediums that offer you this podcast. So thank you. I'm wishing you the happiest holiday season and I hope you have so many things to celebrate that you run out of champagne and you have to go into 50 new variations of your celebration message. Yay, yay.