Ep #119: The Art of Thinking Big (Part 1)

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 119.

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. So glad to have you here today. I hope you are doing well, staying healthy. I’m so excited to talk to you all. It’s been an amazing week. I hope your week has been amazing as well.

So I’m super excited to talk to you all today. I’ve decided to dedicate these next few weeks of the podcast to a series I’m calling the art of thinking big. Today is going to be the first episode in that series. I’m really excited to create that series for all of you. I’m excited to kick it off today.

Before we dive into the content, I do want to mention that if you’re looking to take your business to six figures, multiple six figures. Whether that’s $250K this year, $500K, or even a million, I do want to invite you to apply to my High Level Mastermind. This is my high level coaching program that I’ve developed for coaches who are looking to go to that multiple six figure and seven figure level. Who’ve already made six figures in their business or they’re trending very close, and they’re ready to scale. They’re ready to become an example of what is possible.

So this is a highly customized program that incorporated group coaching, one-on-one coaching, and a mastermind component. I just have to say we are up to some big, big things in this program. Clients in this program are doing some really amazing things and are in the process of scaling their businesses to the next level. I want to invite you to join us. If you are in that range of your business where you’re already at that six or multiple six figure mark in your business or you’re trending there, I want to invite you to join us.

2022 is going to be an amazing year. It’s going to be an amazing year, I can tell you, for these clients because of the work that they’re doing and who they are becoming in the process. So I want to encourage you. If your goal is to build a million dollar coaching business, this is the program that is going to help you do that.

So go to my website amandakarlstadcoaching.com. We’re going to link that up in the show notes as well. I would really encourage you to take action on that because there is a very high level of support in this program. One of my personal goals that I mentioned in last week’s episode is to coach and mentor as many coaches as possible in this group this year.

I know so many of you have big goals and so many of you are serious about taking your business to that million dollar level. So, again, go to amandakarlstadcoaching.com or go to the show notes, and you’ll see the next steps there.

All right. So for those of you who are working to build towards your first six figures, I do want to say you also have the invitation to apply for my six month business accelerator program. It’s called the Mastermind. This is where we take your business from wherever it is today, and we get you on track for your first six figures.

So I know a lot of you listening are also working to that first big milestone, that first $100K. If that is a serious goal for you in 2022, then I want to also invite you to join us in the Mastermind. Go to amandakarlstadcoaching.com/the-mastermind. We’ll link that up in the show notes as well.

All right. I am so excited to help you all go big this year. Let’s talk about thinking big. So this was a topic that I had been doing a lot of thinking about a few months ago. It was a series that I actually had planned to do a few months ago. I decided to put it on the back burner for a little while. As I was thinking about the upcoming weeks, I decided that now was the time to bring it to you.

The reason I decided it was time was because I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how important thinking big is to your success and to your success as an entrepreneur. I’ve been reflecting on this for not only myself but also just looking at so many of my clients and looking at the momentum that they’re creating in their businesses. The wins that they’re creating every day in their businesses. Being able to witness that when I look at them in their growth.

The real momentum that they’re building in their businesses, it comes down to a few different things. One of the things that I can say that is consistent across the board is that they made a shift into thinking bigger. They started to think bigger for their business. They started to think bigger of themselves. They started to see so much more possibility and started to focusing more on what was truly possible for them versus focusing on what wasn’t there, right. What wasn’t working.

One of the things that I have to tell you all that I observe in the industry whether it’s the coaching industry or even entrepreneurship as a whole is that in general I see so, so many that think way too small in their business. That think way too small of themselves. So this is why I wanted to bring the series to you is because that is how important thinking big really is. I believe, in fact, that if you want to build a very successful business, if you want to build a million dollar business, I believe that it’s a requirement.

One of the things that I love the most when I’m working with my clients is being able to see an expanded vision for them. A vision that is so big, it’s a 10X vision. That for most of my clients the truth is that they can’t see for themselves. It’s something that I’ve talked a little bit about before, but when I meet with a client, especially for the first time even in our initial meeting.

One of the things that naturally and very easily comes to me is that I can see very clearly based on where they are, based on their goals, based on the work that they’re doing, based on who they are I can see very clearly a 10X vision of their business. I can see what they at a 10X level would look like. That really comes naturally to me. It’s something that I’m always incorporating into my work with clients.

Along with that, the other piece of that is not only can I see the vision, that big 10X expanded vision, but I can also see very clearly the exact pathway of how to bring that to life. So when it comes to the actual how, that’s something because of my years of study, because of my background, because of my own journey and having helped so many other clients build and scale businesses. Because I operate from true business principles instead of fads, I can also very clearly see the how and the actual tactical steps that we can take to make that happen.

So I was thinking about this topic and what I wanted to really bring to you in this series. I want to start out by having a conversation with you about just how important thinking big truly is to your success as a business owner.

I heard a quote recently that said, “It’s just as easy to build a very big business as it is to build a small business.” When I heard that that really hit me because the more and more that I do my work, the more and more clients that I work with, the more true that I see that this statement really is. So not only has thinking big profoundly impacted my own life and my own business, but it’s also profoundly impacting my client’s lives as well.

One of the reasons, outside of all of that, one of the reasons why I think thinking big matters is because what thinking big will require of you. I’ve talked recently and in past podcast episodes about the importance of your future self and being able to live into your future self. When I think about thinking big and especially through the lens of business, the truth is that being able to think big in your business about yourself, it requires a much, much higher level of skill.

It requires a very profound skill of first allow yourself to go there, to go to that big vision. It also requires a tremendous amount of emotional maturity and emotional management, which is so, so important. So when you allow yourself to have big dreams in your business, to think of yourself as worth enough to achieve the goals that you have, that is when you open yourself up to a whole new level.

So this is really, really important because as humans, the truth is that we have a natural desire to grow. Even when you look at nature. If you look at anything like plants or trees, for example. You look at a plant or a tree from a very basic level, the truth is that they’re always growing, right. They start as a seed and they grow to a mature plant or a mature tree, right. They grow continuously throughout their life. When it comes to the end of their life, right, when they’re no longer growing, that is when they start to die.

The same is true for us as humans. We have an evolutionary need for growth. We have a desire for growth. When you think big, when you allow yourself to think big, your brain, it will start to pave the way for you. It will start to identify the possibilities for you in order to achieve that which you most want. You’ll start to see the possibility versus the challenge in your business. What happens from there is new opportunities and so many of them that you never thought possible or that you never could have anticipated will start to appear.

So what happens in this process as you start to take action from this place of thinking big, when you start to step into this future version of yourself. It forces you to grow. It forces you to go through the process of growth, which I want to talk about more in just a second. It’s really just the starting point of creating something so much greater than you ever thought possible. It’s truly where becoming an example of what is possible is where the process of becoming that example starts.

So this is one really important reason and aspect as to why I think thinking big matters and why I believe it’s one of the things that is required of you if you want to grow your business to a significant level. When you think big in your business, one very important byproduct of that is that when you develop a habit of this, you immediately start to shift your focus, your energy into the direction of your dreams. Into the direction of what’s possible. That’s really significant because what we focus on is what we create.

When you’re able to channel your focus, when you channel your energy to the right place and when you do that consistently over time, that is when you start to see real momentum happen. So the ripple effect of thinking big is huge.

The next piece to this, when you start to think big, when you are thinking big in your business, it creates in your business the skill of believing in that 10X vision. The skill of believing in yourself, in your value, in the impact that you have the potential to make.

So when you start to believe in something that at the moment might feel impossible, you’ll start to take action from a place of possibility. You’ll start to take action from a place of belief. The effect of that is that the things around you will start to change.

There’s a famous Wayne Dyer quote that I love. He says, “Change the way you think about things, and the things you think about change.” I just think this is one of the most profound quotes that I’ve ever heard. It’s by far one of my favorites.

If you really look at that quote, if you look at the truth in that quote, what actually starts to happen is that we begin to change the results that we experience. We start to change our experience in our business or the experience we have in our life. It allows us to move from what might seem impossible today to being able to create extraordinary. So this is where you have the potential to create extraordinary results in your business and in your life.

I was coaching a client recently. This was a client who hit $1.2 million in 2021, which is just amazing and so, so exciting. We were talking recently. It was really interesting. I was coaching this client on some different things in this business. The truth is that right now being at a million dollar level, they’re at a very different place than they were just two years ago, even just a year ago. So because of that, they’re now experiencing all sorts of new things at this level. There’s all sorts of things coming up that they have to solve. There’s new things that they have to consider.

One of the things that I was challenging this particular client on was really looking and starting to consider what the 10X vision of their business was. Now that they’ve reached the point in their business where they’ve hit such a huge milestone in their business and they’ve been able to create a really, really successful million dollar plus business.

I could see that in this conversation, in questioning what that 10X vision look like. Being a million dollar business owner and taking that to a 10X level, I could see that there was definitely some resistance. There was definitely a challenge for them to be able to see clearly what that would look like.

After this client had some time to consider the question and really allow themselves to think about that and to really go there, it was so interesting because immediately what emerged was such a new level of possibility. To be able to think at an entirely new level that before that conversation was not even in their awareness.

If I were to look at just the long term impact that client from that conversation by now just starting to formulate that 10X vision, by starting to think at a much bigger level, even at a million dollar level, to be able to see how tactically that vision can come to life. The truth is that question, that conversation, that act of thinking bigger has the potential to literally be worth millions of dollars in their business.

So I share that with you all because this is why thinking big matters. It matters no matter what level of business of you’re at. It matters because it also challenges your current identity. I did a series a couple of months ago called the Identity Series, and we’ll link that up in the show notes. Where I went deep into identity and why your identity as a coach, as a business owner is so important. I’d highly recommend you go back, and you listen to that series because I went really deep into the concept of your identity.

The truth is when you start thinking big, when you start to think bigger of yourself what happens is you start to make a real identity shift. You start to move from who you’ve always thought yourself to be to who you believe yourself to be. That’s a very important shift that I’ve learned that you have to be willing to make if you want to grow and scale a highly successful business. You must be willing to let go of who you’ve been and be willing to become who you need to be in order to leady our business forward.

The reality is that I believe that this is one of the most challenging parts of the process of growing a business. It’s very painful. It’s painful because you’re literally in so many cases you’re shedding earlier versions of yourself, earlier belief systems, earlier stories identities that you’ve carried with you for years and in most cases for decades. I see this all of the time with my clients.

This is a big part of the work that I do where they’re shedding these old identities. They’re shedding these old belief systems and truly becoming the next version of themselves. I have to tell you all, in most cases it’s a really painful process. It’s always filled with a lot of discomfort. There are many times where there are tears involved. It, at the same time, is also what’s required.

Because I intentionally coach them all through this process and just by nature of being in a coaching container where they’re being coached at a much higher level to think much bigger of  their business, to think much bigger of themselves. It allows them to move through these changes at a very accelerated pace. It’s why they’re able to create a level of momentum, to create a level of results in a very short amount of time.

So thinking big is so, so important. It requires more of you. Thinking big asks you to become that even more extraordinary version of yourself. I think this is an extremely beautiful and required thing that you get to exp as an entrepreneur.

So here’s what else happens when you start to make that shift in identity. What happens is that the day to day, the so called challenges that you’re facing on a daily basis. It makes things like the tactics in your business so much more easy to execute upon because you’re thinking at a much higher caliber. When you’re looking at your calendar for the day or for the week and when you’re looking at what needs to be done, what needs to be accomplished in order to grow the business.

When you are thinking bigger in your business, what happens is that you start some of these lesser goals, these lower level tasks become so much easier to complete. There’s so much less resistance because you’re not focused on the doubt. Fear is not gripping you. You aren’t as worried about failure. You start to recognize that the smaller, the shorter term failures just aren’t as big of an issue as they might seem today.

When you start to do this on a consistent basis, what will also happen is that you’ll start to take massive action in your business. You’ll start to take massive action in your business that will lead to the outcomes that you want. It will allow you to also think so much more clearly about the strategies that you’re using. It will allow you to operate from a true place of discernment rather than being clouded by strong negative emotions and giving your power away to the emotion. It will allow you to move forward with so much more confidence.

So when you start operating from this place of belief that’s creating massive action in your business, that is when your results will start to appear. They’ll start to manifest. This is when the evidence will start to build. It’s when you start to be able to clearly see just how possible your dream really is.

So I want to encourage you all to think big now. Start practicing the skill of thinking big. Really feel into it. Start living into thinking big now. You all have the opportunity to be so much more deliberate about your future, about your future business. It all starts with thinking big. All right my friends, have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again very soon. Take care. Bye, bye.

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.