Hey there, happy new year! It’s great to be back on board and all fired up to make this my best year ever. I always love the start of a new year, but the start of a new decade is something special, so I rekon it deserves a good crack at making it a special year as well.
Speaking of which. I have recently been reflecting on my business and where I’m at, something I recommend you do at the end of every quarter. And one thing I focused my attention on was reviewing my ideal average client or my avatar and if I was attracting the right people into my coaching program and how well they were achieving their outcomes as a result.
What I learnt was each year I have been in business, is I have learnt more and more about who my ideal average client really is. What they want and what they secretly really want, and the problems they need help with. Getting to know your avatar even more also helps with identify who really needs your help.
One of the biggest things I was challenged with when I first launched my business a few years ago was the importance of working in a niche.
I was so used to be a “generalist” in the corporate world, for instance I worked in Marketing and Communication and specialized across the whole communication mix including public relations, advertising, marketing, customer service, community engagement and issues management. I had great skills and capability across all these disciplines.
When I started my business I still had a mindset that wanted to spread my wings across lots of areas helping lots of people. I think my biggest fear if I was to be honest, was about missing any opportunities to bring in clients and replacing my corporate salary.
This mindset of casting the net far and wide brought me certainty (well I thought this), but really we all know the fisherman who targets the right fish with the right bait is the one that achieves success.
So whilst in my first year I had a great start to my business I was extremely busy and working my butt off.
I launched my brand Pop Life Coaching, which means Palette of Possibilities, and I wanted to help men and women (my avatar’s name was Charlie) go from a rut to a strut through building their inner world to have a strong and healthy self- esteem. Charlie’s that wanted to move forward with their lives, their careers, improve their relationships, finances etc, and finally live a life they had more control over. My goal was to live my dream so I could help others live theirs.
To become an inner strength coach, I focused my life coaching training on understanding how to create effective change in people through studying Meta Dynamics™.
This amazing methodology is the master mind of Sharon Pearson, CEO of The Coaching Institute in Australia. It is based on the premise that we don’t experience the world, we experience our construction of the world based on how we perceive or see the world. It was built from the foundations of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and seeks to help people learn how they construct their reality and thinking behind it and create effective strategies to change their lives across all spheres of influence such as health, wealth, careers and relationships.
It is such powerful training with proven results and was why I started my business as an inner strength coach. Despite hitting 10 paid clients quickly and a regular income, I still wanted to dabble in creating coaching in customer service, communication and leadership. I kind of felt I had so many skills to offer and I didn’t want to miss out on work by only offering my inner strength coaching program.
I spent heaps of hours designing many programs so I had a bag of coaching kits available should anyone need them.
Yes, I had done the biggest mistake. Build Rome and in the hope people will come! Well some came but inconsistently and because I had so many clients doing different programs from 1-1 coaching to running full day workshops, I was mentally and physically out of control.
Working as a generalist Life Coach didn’t hurt my bottom line, but I was running of steam and didn’t really have great systems in place. It was all a bit manic.
Eight months down the track in my first year I took a moment to pause and have a good hard look at myself. It actually took me a lot of courage to realise this. I don’t know if it was the stubborn German in me, (of course it isn’t), or I guess my fears of missing out on work that drove me this way, but once I decided to listen to my coach and niche out, then things changed in my business for the better very quickly.
This is how my Business and Mindset Members (B.A.M.M) came about. And the great thing about this is I get to use both my life coaching skills to help my clients transform their mindsets and my marketing and communication skills to help my clients build their business.
Now I have certainty because I now only focus on my niche, knowing my avatar deeply and giving them loads of value they don’t expect so they achieve their goals.
More so, taking this direction in my business has brought me a lot of confidence knowing going into 2020 I have clarity in who I am helping, and my Plan A is set.
I know this is a lot about me right now, but I really do want to share my personal experience because I do believe there is huge merit it focusing on a Plan A, because the more Plan B’s we have, the less we focus on making Plan A work.
This month with my clients, we have been focusing on this formula by world leading Strategic Coach, Dan Sullivan: Courage + Commitment + Capability = Confidence. He says, people who achieve success do so because of their confidence. And be known confidence is learnt. We are not born with it, but we learn how to grow it.
Having courage is a key part to this formula, because courage makes us grow. Courage pushes us through our boundary condition where growth is on the other side. I’m sure in your life you have experienced a time where something was so hard, but you pushed through it right? Let me ask you, what was this experience and how did you feel after this happened?
Growth is also one of our six core psychological human needs. If you want to know more about this, go back through my podcast list as there is an audio on this and what I have learnt from world leading life coach, Tony Robbins. However, universally speaking, everyone has a need for growth. When we grow, we feel a sense of achievement, accomplishment and that we are good enough. It takes courage to learn new things, try new things and experience new things.
My clients know I always encourage them to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Nothing bad happens from having a crack. Great things happen when we can learn from these experiences, good and bad.
When you are planning to change your career and leave your job to start your business, it takes a lot of courage to make this decision and take the actions to make it happen.
Any successful entrepreneur will tell you, their common secret sauce to success is they have found their purpose and do what they are truly passionate about. As a result, they attract their avatar because they are entrenched in who they are and exactly how they can help them.
When I had realised my true purpose, something woke up inside of me. When I had realised 8 months in my first year that I was really passionate about helping women transition from corporate jobs to working for themselves and use my marketing and communication and life coaching skills to help them achieve this, then getting out of bed every day sparked my value of determination.
There is something absolutely fundamentally right about courage, because it takes you out of the box. It opens your mind to possibility and it gives you power to rid fears and limiting beliefs so you can truly have what you want with your life.
And it does take a lot of courage to run your own business. When you have a job, you are nestled in loads of certainty. You have a safe salary and security every day as you don’t have to worry about where every dollar comes from, it lands in your bank account every fortnight or month. You get paid when you are sick, and you can receive other benefits like bonuses or superannuation.
But what I believe is having certainty in having a regular salary isn’t enough to make you happy. Whilst I had a great job with a 6-figure salary to match, I wasn’t happy because I wasn’t getting enough variety and I felt a bit caged in being told what to do, how to do it, what to learn and how to behave to the corporate values. I felt disrespected in toxic cultures and I after 25 years in marketing and communication, I stopped loving what I did.
I created so much pain for myself that the only way to find happiness was to change. This was my first experience of having a life coach and the benefits of having an expert help you make clear decisions with your life.
On this whole journey, courage was and continues to be the back-bone of my motivation. As well as my ability to drop my good girl mask I have been wearing for a long time and focusing my personal development to be who I am at core, the best version of me.
My coach Dean Graziosi also refers to having a mask as your inner villain. The nasty little inner person inside of you that takes away your super-powers and ability to feel and know you can do and achieve something. Your inner villain whispers self-doubt into your ear and brings you down. Your inner villain sparks your fears and fuels your anxiety and stress.
And the truth of it is, I do believe when you recognise you have an inner villain and an inner superhero, you are in a position where you can consciously manage your thoughts so much better.
In fact, sometimes your inner villain does serve a purpose because when fear triggers your flight and fright responses it can save you from bad things happening.
I know at times when I feel stressed in my business, my inner villain is a trigger that reminds that I must get my calm on and get perspective so I can bounce back and be resilient quickly to whatever has decided to jump up and hold me back.
This is why I believe personal development about how you see the world and how you can better manage your thoughts is critical. In fact, if it’s not on your list to do and you want success then now really is the time to reach out and get a coach to help build this capability.
When we live consciously and can manage our thoughts, we are far more able to have courage to take risks, see opportunities and be open to the many possibilities that can grow our business.
So, is now the time for you to work on your courage? Because remember to have confidence you need courage and capability. And when you developed your confidence foundation, you are able to conquer anything.
If you are transitioning or wanting to transition from the corporate world to working for yourself, you must do it the right way from the start. Reach out now and book a free strategy call and let’s have a chat today.
