Ep #29: How to Achieve the Impossible in the Next 90 Days

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast, episode number 29.

Welcome to The Life Coach Business Podcast, a show for coaches who are ready to up-level their business and take their impact, leadership, and results to a whole new level. If you’re ready to start taking powerful action and become the leader your business needs in order to grow and thrive, this show is for you. I’m your host, Amanda Karlstad, certified life and business coach, and entrepreneurial leadership expert. Now, let’s get down to business.

Hello and welcome, everyone. I hope you’re doing well. I hope you are healthy and your family is healthy. And wherever you happen to be listening to this, I hope you are safe and taking care.

Alright, so, today’s episode is going to be a bit of a continuation from last week’s episode where I talked a lot about the power of intention and why having intention during this time is so important. And so, today’s episode is the fifth episode I am doing in a special series that I’ve decided to dedicate to really helping you navigate your business and thrive not only right now, but in a way that positions you to emerge from all of this even stronger, even more successfully than before.

So, everything I’m sharing in these episodes, my intention with these episodes are to bring you the mindset shifts and the strategies you need in order to successfully weather the challenges we’re all facing. And once again, my goal is for you to position you and your business for success, once we’ve moved through this pandemic and we’re on the other side of this.

Okay, so, as I was thinking about what I wanted to share on today’s podcast, I felt compelled and inspired to approach today’s episode in terms of ho important intention is, not only for our long-term goals but also over the course of the next 90 days.

And so, if you’ve been listening to my podcast or if you follow my work, you know that I talk a lot about vision. You know that I’m all about getting crystal clear on your vision so that you can hold that image and ultimately bring that into your reality. It’s one of the most important things you can do as an entrepreneur because the reality is that we must first see it in our mind in order to create it.

And what inspired me this week was my coach, Brooke Castillo, who I know some of you are familiar with, who recently talked about the same topic. She was talking about this same idea of having intention and the importance of it in one of her recent podcasts.

And so, what I want to talk to you today about your intention is your vision and your goals, not only for the long-term, but over the course of the next 90 days. So, I want to look at this today through a shorter-term lens. Because here’s the thing; having a long-term vision and knowing where you’re going is extremely important.

When you’re building a business, your vision is your North Star. It’s really the foundation for everything that you do. So, vision is something that is always important. But especially right now, as we’re all in the midst of so many new challenges, and we have so many new competing priorities, whether it’s homeschooling the kids, building the business, taking care of the family, taking care of ourselves, all of it, having and focusing on a long-term vision is very good for us emotionally right now. It’s a way to focus our brains and to focus forward.

So, having your long-term vision is more important now than ever. But today, I want to talk about your vision for the next 90 days. Because let’s be real about what’s happening. Most people, most of our society right now is living in some level of fear. Now, that might be fear that’s being perpetuated in the news, or fear that’s coming from a loved one that is perhaps sick or might be vulnerable, or even the fear of being impacted economically.

Maybe you’ve even been impacted economically or you’re anticipating to be impacted economically. It’s pretty clear that, right now, there’s a lot of fear. It’s all around us.

Now, when we look at fear and the results of when we’re living in fear, what happens is fear causes us to also contract in our lives. And when we contract, we tend to move into a passive state of being. And so, when we look at what’s happening with the shelter-in-place regulations and being quarantined, we are all very much, in a sense, being forced right now to contract in our lives.

And that looks like staying in our homes, staying physically distant, all of those things. And so, if you’re building a business right now, I think this is something you need to be very aware of in your own life. I think it’s really important that if you’re an entrepreneur or you’re a coach and you’re working to build your business, it’s really important for you to be aware about how this is filtering into how you’re setting your intentions and your goals over the next 90 days.

And here’s why. None of us really know how long we’re going to be in this situation. None of us know how long before things return back to “normal.” It could be a couple of months. It could be much longer. At this point, nobody really knows.

But at some point, the fact is that we will move through this and we will be on the other side of this. And so, that’s the first reason why looking at your next 90 days is really, really important.

And so, one of the things that I think is extremely important to consider is that when you look at any recession that we’ve been through in history, some of the largest companies, some of the largest growth for companies has happened during and following the actual recession. So, I want you to really keep that perspective because when I look at the coaching industry as a whole, I think one of the most detrimental things you can be doing for your business right now is falling into the , “Let’s just wait this out,” type of mentality.

And here’s why. When you look at the, “Let’s just wait this out,” way of being, it’s a very passive way to approach the situation. It’s a very passive way to approach your business. And so, when you look at what the effect is of that on your business, it’s really not moving anything forward. Instead, it’s just a passive state that you’re in.

And so, when you look at the collective, when you look at wat’s happening, it’s interesting that that’s exactly what most people are doing right now. And when we’re in this state of contraction, the natural reaction we have is to fall into more of this wait and see way of operating.

And what I want to offer to you is that right now, over the next 90 days, you have the ability to make amazing things happen in your business. You have the ability to create more value in your business than ever before. You have the ability to learn new skills and to do what I’ve been referring to over the past couple of weeks as skilling up, meaning learning the things you need to learn in order to advance your business.

This could be things like online marketing, learning new technologies. Perhaps for some of you this means updating your programs so that you’re actually supporting your clients more closely with where they’re at. Maybe you need to solve new or different problems than before. Maybe you need a new niche.

The fact is that it’s important to be looking at how you may need to pivot. And now is not the time to sit back and do nothing. Now is not the time to let things drift in your business. And I you feel like you’re currently drifting or you’ve lost sight of your vision or you don’t have momentum, I want you to know this; you have the ability in the next 90 days to make more money than you ever had in your business.

All of this is available to you because despite the new challenges we’ve been navigating, if you’ve been listening to my most recent episodes, I’ve been talking, over the last few weeks, about why right now is an amazing time to be a coach, to be an entrepreneur. It’s so amazing because there has never been a need like there is right now for coaches. The demand has increased exponentially.

More people are looking in desperation for solutions. They want help navigating and coping through what they’re going through. So, the way that I see this, it honestly doesn’t matter what type of coach you are. You have more opportunity in front of you than ever before.

And here’s what I also want you to consider. Given the fact that our world has gone digital overnight, more and more businesses are being forced to find new ways to operate virtually. Online businesses have now become our new reality. And really, as coaches with online businesses, it’s really the perfect combination. We have a real advantage to be ahead of the curve on this.

But I also want you to understand why these next 90 days are going to be extremely important for you. When you look at these next 90 days – so, as of the time that you’re likely listening to this, or if you’re listening to this further down the line, just think about this 90 days out. But for right now, let’s assume that’s mid-July. You have the ability right now to decide what you want to accomplish in your business over the next three months.

And that is the power of decision. And if you’ve been listening to my show for any length of time, you know that I talk a lot about the power of decision. This is work that I do with every single one of my clients because it’s that important. And it’s because decisions literally shape our lives. Decisions shape the outcomes we have in our lives and in our businesses.

So much of what we want in our lives comes down to making the decision and then fully committing to that decision. And as far as commitment is concerned, I’ve also talked about that in earlier episodes, but I’m going to be diving much deeper into that in future episodes because this is one of the most important concepts you can get as an online business owner. Yet the reality is that most do not actually apply it in their life.

So, we’re going to get real deep on that and what it means to be truly committed versus being interested in being committed, because there’s a huge difference and I want to talk more about that. So, stay tuned for that.

But here’s why else making some powerful decisions about your next 90 days is so critical. Making decisions and committing to them generates power. Deciding and committing to what you are going to accomplish over the next 90 days, there is power that you are generating when you make a decision like this.

Making committed decisions in your life and in your business generates internal power. And right now, there couldn’t be a better time to do that because so many people, essentially our society is living in a state of fear, is living in a state of contraction that is focused on the external, that is focused on what is happening outside of ourselves.

And the result of that is leaving so much in our lives, and in our business up to the effect of what’s happening externally. So, whether that’s the virus or the economic situation or even having the kids at home, the collective, the masses right now are living from the external. They’re basing what they do based on what is happening outside of them, based on what is happening in the world.

And what I want to encourage you is to take back your power. Make decisions based on what you want to create, based on your vision for what you want to achieve in your life and in your business. There is so much power you can generate in that.

So, I want you all to pause and think about that for a minute. I want you to take all of the fear, all of the worry, all of the concern and just put it aside for a moment. I want you to get really present to the fact that you are a business owner. Get present to what you’ve been working so hard to build. And I want you to think, what is the result you want most in your business right now?

For most of you, I know it’s probably a revenue goal. It’s probably an amount of money that you want to generate in your business. So, I want you to think of what that number is, that number that feels impossible to you right now. And I want it to feel impossible for a reason, so stay with me.

What is that number? Think about what that impossible number is and what would really excite you if you generated that in your business over the next 90 days. Feel into that. I want it to be impossible.

Here’s why. We are conditioned our entire lives, growing up, within our school system, in our jobs, in every system in our society that failure is bad. Failure means that we didn’t do it right. Failure is wrong. So, what we do then is we do everything we can to escape and to try and prevent failure.

And here’s the bad news with all of that. If you’ve signed up to be an entrepreneur, you must fail. In fact, the quicker and the more that you fail, the quicker you’ll actually see success, the quicker you’ll actually see the results you want.

And I know, for some of you, this seems illogical. And for some of you, you might think you know this to some degree intellectually. And here’s what I want to offer to you. You don’t truly know this until you actually do it. this isn’t something you sit back and passively think about. This is something that you must decide you’re going to do and you must start taking action forward.

And it’s through that process that that’s when you truly start to understand this. And the reason this is so important to your overall success is because you will not create the level of results you want sitting back and taking passive action. You will not create the revenue or the clients or the business you really want by sitting back and waiting things out.

You must start taking action and doing things that, quite frankly, you’re going to fail at. And the sooner you accept that you will fail, and that failure actually means that you are moving closer to your goal, the more successful you will be because the truth is, who you are being has gotten you to where you are today.

And for most of you, that means you’ve been successful in your professional life. I know for my clients and for me, you’ve built up a successful career. And that’s important to recognize. But what is more important to recognize is that that level of being, that identity will not get you to where you want to go in your business.

If you want to create a highly successful coaching practice, you must first become the coach that creates those levels of results. You must first do the thing that that level of coach would do. That means learning the necessary skills to market yourself online, to learn the technology so that you can deliver your programs and your services online. That means embodying that person today. It’s acting as if…

But even then, once you’ve done all of that, here’s what else you need to know. You will fail when you do this. You will not likely get the results you want right away. You will launch a new marketing campaign or offer your program to a brand-new group of clients. And it’s highly likely that you won’t get the results you want. And then here’s what happens. You’ll start to doubt yourself. You’ll start to doubt the process.

You’ll start questioning everything. And the result is you’ll fall back into the patterns and the habits and the behaviors that are more familiar to you. You’ll immediately want to go back to what is comfortable. You’ll want to go back and rely on that corporate salary. You’re going to want to lower your goals and your expectations because it feels better. You’ll start to grip onto things that you know you don’t really want.

But you’re going to it because they feel safe and they feel certain. And what ends up happening is you’ll create a wider gap between where you are and where you want to go. And the result of that is you’ll start to contract, just like I talked about earlier.

So, this is really important for you all to understand, especially right now. And what I want you to see here is that even though that goal might feel impossible, it’s exactly what you need in order to put your focus in the right direction, in order to get you to where you want to be.

Because the difference between those that create wildly successful business and those that don’t is this distinction that I’m talking about. It’s being able to show up, to think big, to take massive action, to fail, and to repeat, and to repeat, and to repeat, and to repeat, despite the “failure…”

The difference is the ones who create wildly successful businesses do the work and do what it takes until the goal is reached, despite the failure, despite the discomfort. That is it. That is the secret, my friends.

So, I want to leave you with this. Now is not the time to lower your expectations. Now is not the time to contract and sit back and passively see what happens. Now is not the time to lose sight of your vision. Now is not the time to tell yourself that you’re confused or that you can’t do this. Now is the time to make an even more committed decision to yourself and to your business that you are going to create that impossible result.

So, I want you to decide right now, what do you want to achieve in your business by mid-July 2020, over the next 90 days? What feels impossible to you right now, yet at the same time, excites you more than anything? That is exactly what you need to go out and create. That is exactly what you need to sit down and write on paper and decide what that means you must focus on and what you must do. Because it’s all available to you.

No one and nothing – no virus, nothing – is in your way, except yourself. Decide what you want in the next 90 days. Make it impossible. This will force you to evolve to your next level. Your life and your business will expand because of that.

Alright, my friends, set your impossible goal right now. Don’t wait. Decide and commit. You’ve got this. I’ll talk to you all next week. Take care, bye-bye.

Hey, before you go, I have something amazing I want to share with you. To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m going to be giving away three free VIP Strategy Sessions where I’ll be diving deep into your business and helping you put a strategy in place for the next 90 days, so you have a real game plan on how to create results in your business, and finally gain momentum.

I’m going to be giving away one free VIP Strategy Session, the same VIP Strategy Session I offer to all of my highest-level clients, to three lucky listeners who subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Visit amandakarlstadcoaching.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. Thanks so much.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Life Coach Business Podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build, grow and scale your business and accelerate your results, visit amandakarlstadcoaching.com.