Val Selby [00:00:06]:

Hey, this is Val Selby and after over 20 years online, I can track where my mindset has blocked me. If procrastination, impostor syndrome and a lack of focus have been blocking your biz, then Val Full Volume is here to help you see choices you are making. Get ready to use your expertise to collaborate like a pro as you create the business of your dreams. Now is the time to make changes and live your best life. Let's get to it!   

Val Selby [00:00:3]:
Hello. Hello. Here we are into the New Year. And I'm curious. Are you coming into the new year with fresh start in mind? Like, burn that shit down, fresh start, or are you coming in as you've got some momentum and you're like, yes, here. Focus. Go. This is the the direction. We've got this.

Val Selby [00:01:06]:
I've already been working towards this in December, maybe the whole last quarter, and here it goes. Neither one are wrong. Neither one are bad. Neither one's right. It's just how are you going forward into this? And, yeah, to be wishy washy, I'm doing a little of both. Yeah. How's that? Here, I'm gonna ask you a question, but I'm doing both. I'm gonna let you know why.

Val Selby [00:01:32]:
So if you've been listening, if you're on the newsletter, you had 2023. Wow. Done. Burned some of that shit down. So for me, like, I've closed down one LLC. Businesses are still moving, but I closed down one LLC and opened up another one. Fresh start. Absolutely fresh start.

Val Selby [00:01:55]:
Feels great. Needed that, needed the full disconnect, and the full ownership feeling. So that's a fresh start. That feels great. However, the wishy washy part is, luckily, the last couple of months, things have come into focus of okay, here, we've worked through so much stuff. Here we go, Val. Here's where the direction is.

Val Selby [00:02:20]:
Here's where the excitement is, here's what we're doing, and that gets me so excited. I'm not recreating the wheel, okay? The last couple years, I've been really leaning into everything. Old is new again, and I've seen that be the case. I mean, blogging has picked up. The blogging has changed, so it's more about blogging. The better blogs without all of the freaking 50 million ads going through them, they're getting more traction, right? Google finally saw after 20 years of what we've been telling them about. Hey, people are getting information from these posts. 

Val Selby [00:02:59]:
Maybe just because it's not an epic 14 million word post, you should give it some credit, some expertise credit, right? So that was just one of the things. The email marketing, it's gonna have to be - there's so much noise. We have to be connecting. We have to be talking to our people. It just has to happen because there's so much noise out there. People are quick to unsubscribe.

Val Selby [00:03:24]:
I know I am. I have been unsubscribing like crazy, and it feels amazing to to get rid of some of the stuff that I'm just deleting anyways. I'm not connecting with those people. I'm not doing anything with them. I'm just deleting them when it comes in. I'm not even opening. Blogging, email connecting, memberships. That's a big one, memberships.

Val Selby [00:03:46]:
So many people are in so many memberships and we're getting a lot of noise from that. Be in this one. Be in that one. Connect in this one. Connect in that one. We don't have time to connect and everything the way that we would like to, right? It sounds amazing.

Val Selby [00:04:02]:
Yes. I wanna be in this group, this group, this group. These are all good groups. They could all help me. They could - I could grow. This membership can help for this. This membership can help for that. I've downsized all of it. I've downsized every bit of what I am a part of.

Val Selby [00:04:18]:
For one, some of it's like contradictory information, which is just going to confuse my brain, right? Human brain. Let's choose a focus. Let's try one direction, not learn from this, learn from that. And going back to everything as old as new again, also, I brought back my membership. I love meeting weekly with entrepreneurs, with people like you that have questions. If you're new, if you're old, I love the group meetings, getting together, and knowing that at that moment, with the people that are in that room, I don't have to have all of the answers because there's going to be other people that are in there that might have more on on a certain topic than I do. And the beauty of where I'm at with all my growth is I don't feel like I have to have the answers.

Val Selby [00:05:07]:
Like I said, it doesn't hurt my ego. I don't have an ego about the fact that I don't know all the answers. It's like, there's no way know how, nobody that does. Professors do not know all the answers even in their topic of expertise, okay? So reminding ourselves of that of really, for me, leaning into collaboration of bringing other people in, of knowing that there's going to be somebody in the room, in the meeting, that somebody asks a specific question about of some topic, and it's not my expertise that you know what? Hey. Go for it. Please do answer the question. You've got the information.

Val Selby [00:05:47]:
Let's all learn from you. Let's learn from each other. So the membership's back open. I had closed it down at the beginning of 2023 because I couldn't do it all. Thank goodness I did. It was the right thing to do because I couldn't give my all to it, and I don't like it when it makes me feel hypocritical if I'm not all in. So it was closed for, I don't know, 9 months or so. So we're back.

Val Selby [00:06:13]:
The Bash Pass membership now includes weekly meetings, and I am looking forward to the learning we're all going to do together. The true collaborations that we're all going to do together. The really connecting, and I'm gonna use the word networking. Don't turn off because I said networking. Don't think networking scam. That's what everybody thinks. That's not what everybody thinks. That's me generalizing.

Val Selby [00:06:39]:
I know that is what many people feel when they think of networking. They think of scam or they think of icky salespeople or or going to the yicky - the icky team or commerce meetings where nothing's getting done. All of those things I've been a part of for the years, so I understand. It's the true networking where you're, like, in a meeting or in an email and you're talking to somebody and they come up with something and this is my zone of genius, is I'll be having a conversation with someone. And as they're describing what they're going through, needing help with, all of that, somebody's name will pop up in my head, okay? And I've worked through enough that it's like, okay, I don't have to be the one that helped them because what goes around comes around, and that's not a negative statement. That also happens for the positive in light.

Val Selby [00:07:33]:
So if I am sharing okay, this person popped in my head. Hey. I wanna connect you with this person or go to this website. You're gonna get really great information from there. I'm not looking for affiliate commission. Yeah. It would be great if I did, but I'm that's not what I'm looking for.

Val Selby [00:07:48]:
And I know in return, there's other people out there that are doing the same for me, okay? Because I've been witnessing it. I've been witnessing it a lot. So I want a membership where people are connecting, where we're knowing what each other's businesses and expertise is. That's not to say that these aren't gonna be - you might be newer, and that's okay. That is okay. It's okay if you don't really know what your expertise is. Come on in.

Val Selby [00:08:15]:
Have conversations with us. You'll work it out. I mean, it's taken me years to figure out where my zone - I only found my zone of genius a few months ago, and this is something that I've been doing for a long time with the collaborations. So just because it's not first and foremost, this is my expertise, don't think that you can't join in. We'll help you work out. We'll figure it out for you. It happens pretty easily when you're in a group setting because all of a sudden, you start rattling something off we're like, ding, ding, ding.

Val Selby [00:08:47]:
Hey. That was it. Look at you go. You can talk about this all the time and give really useful information. So that's the everything is old part of everything all just new again, this wasn't a sales pitch for the Bash Pass. This was me coming in because I'm excited. I'm excited to be doing things that I've done for years because I was running that for 3 years. Things that I've done for years, bringing it back and refreshing it, right? Not a fresh start, but refreshing it.

Val Selby [00:09:19]:
Taking the bits and pieces that I knew were working, taking the bits and the ideas that we had started Bundle Bash with and getting them connected now. It's all about connecting and getting things focused, and that to me is exciting. I'm not recreating a wheel. I'm freshening things up and getting it focused. And I really am feeling like that is the direction 2024 has to go. I have to let go of expectations of how everything is going to work out. That doesn't mean I'm not putting action steps into place to start doing stuff. I just have to be prepared for the fact that, okay, I'm gonna do step this and step that, and I'm gonna be evaluating as we go, line and something new might come up, and then we're gonna take a look.

Val Selby [00:10:11]:
Is that part of what we add in or not? Is this congruent or not? Do we wanna add this back in? Is this working? It's going to be trial and error, and I'm being very open talking to my clients about it as well because we're all working on this for 2024, we are open. We are doing this. I don't wanna say it's not an experiment, but it it kinda is because you can't figure out what's gonna work until you do something. You have to do it. So as we're doing it, we're just going to keep adapting, and we're gonna know, okay, maybe this didn't work out right this time. Here, we're going to make some changes, and we're gonna run it again. And it's going to be better this time because we're taking what we've learned. And I'm not sure if this is going off topic.

Val Selby [00:10:59]:
I do wanna keep this short. I know that you are coming into the new year with whatever feelings you were having. I would love it if you would share. What feelings are you having? Are you overwhelmed? Are you excited? Are you both? I mean, it's okay. We're human. We don't just have one emotion running at the same time, and it it gets all cobbly coupled up, right? Just, oooh, sometimes. So I would love to hear back from you.

Val Selby [00:11:29]:
How are you starting this year? What's your focus? How excited are you? What are you excited about? What are you dropping? What didn't work? What are you a no to anymore? I would love to hear all of that. So hit me up in the contact form. Hit me up in the email. I will be the one getting back to you, and I'm excited. I invite you to join us in the Bash Pass. I am excited to be meeting regularly face to face Zoom. I'm excited for so much new stuff going forward into 2024 as well, the new events we have planned, taking some of the events that have worked great and expanding on them and reworking them because it's all that can happen is you take the ideas, and you're like, okay, this one worked. This one didn't. 

Val Selby [00:12:18]:
And where do we go forward from here? And the beauty of being in business for a little while now is I can take a look at stuff and see what's been working, what hasn't, what didn't work, why did it not work, topics. It's not necessarily a topic that didn't work. It could be everything other things that were a part of it. So I'm sure that you've been going through planning. I'm sure that you've been going through review, I would love to hear what's going on and where your thoughts are. What are you coming into 2024 with? So, alright. I will leave you with that, and I hope that whichever holiday you celebrate, you have had an amazing time with friends and family or spent some time completely alone just being present, that would be amazing.

Val Selby [00:13:05]:
I wish that for all of us to make sure we're taking that time. And 2024 is going to be glorious, fabulous, and I am so looking forward to talking to you all throughout the year. Bye.