Facilitating Smooth Transitions: Adapting to Change in Business

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving.

Hi and welcome to this episode of the Overgiver’s Anonymous Podcast. My name is Angela Mondor and I’m also known as the Geeky Girl. Today’s topic is it’s going to be interesting, kind of a double sworded edge, double edged sword. Give me a few minutes here, I swear stick around because this could be very um, are in the world.

The idea of having smooth transitions in business, adapting to changes in your business. I think this is wildly well timed because I usually set these topics fairly well in advance, to be honest. But based on what’s happening in the world right now the most recent election in the United States, Canada is also facing an election year as well this year.

And a lot of these things, I mean, What’s happening currently in the United States with the new president there, is changing business massively. Our election here in Canada could see us facing similar things. We don’t know what’s going to happen here yet. We’ve got some time yet before our election, but I think it’s really important and speaking to a lot of business owners about what’s happening in the world as how it’s impacting their business and being mindful that it’s important not to gloss over what’s going on to pretend like it’s not happening, it’s happening, there are massive changes.

If you’ve been following me for any length of time, if you’ve been around for a little while, you know I care about people. I care about inclusion. I care about making people feel safe and comfortable. And I have no patience for people who don’t want to include everyone. What I do and how I am in the world I appreciate that some people don’t like the way I am and that’s okay because I may not be there.

I may not be the right person for you, and that’s okay. Same goes for you. You may do things that maybe I don’t like and that’s okay, too. We all need to be honest and true to who we are, but my core thing, you may not believe everything I believe in, but as long as you believe In the things that are, I think, so important, looking after each other caring about each other and I’m going to say it, DEI is really important to our planet, to where we’re going in this world, I really believe that diversity, equity, and inclusion is important, the fact that it is being worse than challenged, it’s being reversed, that to me is unacceptable, but I know that it’s impacting your business.

It impacts all of our businesses in different ways. And some of you are more closely tied to DEI in your business than others. And this is the time of change. I was speaking to a client recently, and we were talking about how it’s impacting their business and how they need to pivot and what they need to do differently moving forward.

And it feels. It’s oddly reminiscent to me of 2020. We didn’t know what 2020 was going to bring. We put together a plan on how we were going to move forward and hopefully you did that in 2019. 2020 showed up and the first quarter happened and we all went, wait a minute, that was not my plan. And then we all had to revisit and review and decide how we were going to pivot.

For the next three quarters of the year. Guess what? We’re here again. Only it didn’t take us an entire quarter to get there this year. So let’s talk about how you can adapt, and how you can change. And try to make this as smooth as possible for yourself, depending on how much these changes are going to impact your business.

You may have to make big changes. Some of them might be small changes, but ultimately there’s some changes to be made probably in your business and how you are going to move forward and adapt to the change. So it’s important to know that change happens, right? Like I said, we did it in 2020, here we are 2025, I can’t believe we’re in 2025, and now some big changes are happening again.

So it is important to rely on your strategies. And to rely on your planning, even if the planning you did in 2024, the end of 2024, kind of feels like it’s gone to shit, that’s okay, you’ve at least laid some groundwork, and now you can look at the plan that you had put into motion and go, okay, of the plans that I had for this year, what are the things that are going to be impacted by the political arena of what’s happening.

And it is an arena. It’s like a circus. It’s okay. Look at what’s going to be impacted. Then ask yourself, these things are being impacted and what is my reaction? Your reaction could be, I need to stand down in X, Y, and Z. Your reaction could be, I need to get louder in E, F, and G. Okay, whatever it is that you need to do for your business, look at your plan that you put together.

Don’t just throw it out, right? That whole concept of throwing the baby out with bathwater, take a breath, zoom out a bit. When we’re doing the planning in the business, it’s really important to try to take the emotion out of it first, to look at the overall plan and see where is the impact coming from.

Then now you can look at this and through a less, well, through filtered eyes, but like less Things are falling. Take that as you will. But take it, take out that emotion and look at it through clearer eyes. And maybe you need somebody to be with you to help you through that. Maybe you need to have a community to surround you to go through these things and have conversations to be able to move through it.

Maybe you need to meditate or journal or I don’t know, go to the woods and scream. Whatever you need to do to get you to a place where you can look at this with less emotion is going to be helpful. It’ll reduce some of the overwhelm that you might feel with some of the things that are going on. Change can be overwhelming, especially when you have decided a certain direction, and change can be difficult for us with neurodivergent tendencies.

Neurotypicals have trouble with change too, but sometimes change is really hard for those of us who are neurodivergent. So try to flow as much as possible. Look at what, where your energy is at, and what’s working for you and what’s not working for you. Look for support, because that’s going to be important.

And the support could be internal, your support could be people your support could be music, art, whatever it is that’s going to support you through these massive changes. There is power in predictability. And the predictability is that everything changes. I realize that I’m sort of you know, flipping on both sides of this coin, but it’s true.

It is overwhelming and sometimes it can be overwhelming to have change. However, it’s really important to understand that it is predictable that change is going to happen. There’s going to be a lot of changes in our world from here on out. If it’s one thing I’ve learned after being on this planet, as long as I have The things we think aren’t going to change are probably going to change.

So, use that predictability to your advantage, and know that you can find ways to get you through these situations. I have a client who talks about having a toolbox, I love the way she puts that. Figure out what it is that works for you and find multiple things that work for you because all things aren’t going to work all the time, okay?

Yesterday I had a work day where I literally wasn’t going to work in the afternoon. I planned on taking the afternoon off, but I started working on something and I was just very excited and the energy was good and I felt really good about what I was doing and I was enjoying the work. So instead of saying, well, I said, I’m taking the time off.

So I’m going to, I said, I’m going to allow myself to continue to be happy in this particular work in this particular column that I was in. So use those things to your advantage. What is it that’s going to work for you now talking about the plan and how are you going to do this? It’s important to be flexible.

Okay, your end in mind goal might not change. You may still have the same end in mind goals for the year. You just might need to tweak how you get there. So maybe you thought you were going to write a book this year, but maybe the book is really not the thing that’s going to spur you forward right now.

Maybe you thought you would focus on live appearance appearances. And let’s be honest as Canadians, You know, when we are doing a lot of speaking, a lot of our speaking gigs are in the United States, so Canadians. We have to make some decisions here. Are you traveling to the United States? What’s that going to look like?

Are you going to be able to? Because sometimes we have a hard time with working in the United States as a speaker. So those kinds of things, when you’re looking at how does this impact your business. What are those things? How can you adjust what you’re wanting to do? So if that was your plan, and you now have to look at what are the logistics of that plan, and what changes do you need to make, okay?

Just zoom out. Look at them. And then say, well, is there another way? Is it, is there another way for me to still do the things I want to do and make some adjustments or changes to those things, okay? That flexibility is going to help you. That’s why it’s, I always say it’s really important to have a repository of ideas.

Have a place that you can just jot all your ideas down. Remember, this is not just post it notes and random places. The Rockstar Planner actually has a back page for a repository so you can put all your things together. If you’re using something like ClickUp, you can have one space where you’re putting all your Next ideas in have one place where you can always go so that you don’t, you know, forget that you’ve done them.

And so when you get to this point and go, ah, I had these great ideas. Did I put it in that book or those sticky notes? Are they still on the wall? Right. Have a place where you can go back to. It’s like your well of knowledge for your business. When you have that in place in something like this happens, you can go, okay, hold on a second.

That was what I wanted to do. Not going to work out well. Let me go back to the well and you can go see what are the other ideas I have. What are some other things I can do? You’re creative. You’re amazing. You can think outside the box, but we need to be able to make sure you can find the box or find the not box when you’re looking for those ideas.

So, Remember that embracing flexibility, being creative, using your ability to think outside the box, those are your strengths. So when you create a plan B or C or D, make sure you know where you can find those other plans so that you can go and review those and say which one of these things are going to work.

I talked about support systems already, but I think it’s important to note again, make sure that you have support around you. You want to make sure you have people who believe in you, or who believe in your cause, or who are willing to support you even if they don’t believe in your cause, but they believe in you enough that they believe that you can do this.

Have those people with you, even if people don’t know you very well or your cause very well, but they know that supporting you is valuable because you support them. Find those people, find that community, be part of that community, and really embrace helping yourself by helping others. When I help other people, when I’m there for other people, I learn so much.

Not only about them and their situation and what they’re going through, but I learn about myself as well. And sometimes it really, even though it’s not a question I ever had about my business, when I help somebody with their business, like, oh, that’s really cool. I didn’t think about it from that angle. Or now I have something else to think about.

So you can Really rely on, you know, supporting other people to support yourself as well. So, find that community of people, whoever they are, wherever they are, local or globally and rely on those, lean on those people and help them along the way, because they’re going to go through some of the same stuff you’re going through too right now.

The biggest important piece of all of this is to allow yourself to reflect. Not to should all over yourself, but to reflect. And learn from what’s going on now, but also look back after and say, how did I handle this situation? You may come out of it and go, I wish I would have done this or that or, okay, now we’re shitting on ourselves.

But instead look back and say, okay, so when this happened, here was my reaction. Here’s what I did or didn’t do. Remember, making a choice is the same thing as not making a choice. You’re still making a choice. If you crawl up into a circle. You huddle down and do nothing. You’re still making a choice. It just means other people are making them for you.

So you have the ability to say I’m either going to take action or I’m gonna sit back and wait. Both of those are choices and both of those things will impact your situation. So you can look back and say okay, this is what I chose to do and it’s okay to be passive. It’s okay to say hey, I’m just gonna sit back here for a second and wait and see what happens.

That is a choice and it’s, it could be a good choice for you depending on where you are and what’s happening in your world. That could be a good choice. On the other hand, there’s the other choice of taking action and that could be a good choice for you, too. Knowing that you, making a choice is important.

Owning that choice. Going forward with that choice allows you to reflect back and go, okay, here’s the choice I made. And here’s, I mean, this is why I chose to do it. Did it help me or hinder me? And then you can learn from those situations. You can add to that toolbox of the things that you can do next time, because remember predictability changes are going to happen again, right now.

I realize that there’s a lot of energy, a lot of there’s a lot of fear right now. And. You have the choice right now to decide how you want to impact your life and your business and ultimately the other people around you that you help. So I encourage you to find a way through what you’re feeling, even if you have to put it in a box and set it aside for now.

Look at your business with new eyes for 2025. Zoom out a bit and see what it is that you want to change. What do you want to do? Do you want, what do you want to keep the same? And then create a new plan and take action. I hope you have a fantastic day and I look forward to talking to you next week. Bye for now.