Ep #120: The Art of Thinking Big (Part 2)

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 120.

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. Welcome to today’s show. I’m so glad to have you all here. I hope you’re doing well. I am super excited for today’s show. This is part two in the series called The Art of Thinking Big. This is a topic that I am extremely passionate about. Also one that I’ve found to be vital for you if your goal is to build and grow and scale a highly successful business.

So I’m super excited to talk to you all today and to be bringing you part two of this series. As I was thinking about today’s conversation, I was reflecting on just how significant the art of thinking big has been in my own journey and the role that this has played in my own growth, in the growth of my business and in all of my own personal growth in helping me to get to where I am today. I can see how significant this really has been for so many of my clients as well.

So it’s one of the things that I love talking about. It’s one of the things that I love most is really helping my clients expand the vision of what is possible for them and step into that bigger vision. That vision that they might feel is impossible for them. That 10x vision. It’s truly amazing.

So with that I was thinking about all of the wins that are happening right now in both my mastermind program, that’s my six month business accelerator program for coaches who are working towards $100,000 in their business and also in my High Level Mastermind. This is my 12 month coaching program for established coaches who are in the process of scaling their business. So they’re taking their business from that six or multiple six figure level, and who have a goal of taking their business to a million dollar level and beyond.

I just can’t emphasize enough how important what we’re talking about here in this series really is. How important thinking big is to your success and to the long term success of your business.

So I do want to invite you if you’re ready to take things to the next level in your business. If you are ready to make 2022 your best year yet, I do want to invite you to apply to my High Level Mastermind if you’re an established coach and if you’re ready to take your business to that million dollar level and beyond. I would love to help you do that this year.

If you’re a coach who is in the process of growing your business to $100,000 and you’re probably working with some clients on a one-on-one basis, but you’re really ready for that next level. Then I want to invite you to into my six month business accelerator program, into the mastermind. This program is really designed to take you from where you are, and to help you grow your business in the most accelerated way.

So go to amandakarlstadcoaching.com or go to the show notes of this episode. We’re going to link up those applications for those programs there. I do want to say that no matter where you’re at in your business building journey, I want you to know that whatever your goals are this year, trust me they are possible for you. I would love for you to join us. I would love for you to be the next success story.

All right let’s continue the conversation around the art of thinking big. So as I mentioned, I’ve been thinking a lot recently about this topic. One of the reasons why I decided to create this series is because I believe learning how to think big, learning the skill of thinking big on purpose in your business is absolutely one of the major keys of success that I have learned, that I’ve experienced in my own journey of growing my business.

Not only is there research that tells us this, that tells us just how important it truly is to be able to think big. I believe that thinking big as an entrepreneur, it’s one of the core skills that I personally believe that you must have. When you think about it, part of your job as an entrepreneur is to think bigger, right. Part of your job as an entrepreneur is to solve problems, to serve your clients.

As you’re growing and scaling your business, one of the things that you will be faced with is the need to think bigger. In my experience, one of the areas that I see a lot of you struggling with is in this area, is with  being able to think at a much bigger scale. I’ve talked about this in various podcast episodes, but I believe that one of the most important aspects to your growth as an entrepreneur, to your success is your ability to have vision and to be able to live into that vision on a daily basis.

So one of the reasons that I truly believe that my clients are able to make such accelerated progress in their own business and create extraordinary results in their businesses very quickly is because of this ability. Because of the ability and being in a container where they are being challenged to think bigger in their business.

So it’s really not uncommon for a new client to come to me and to be struggling with what to do next in their business. So many times clients have already achieved some level of success in their business. Whether that’s working one-on-one with clients or maybe they’ve even launched some form of group program.

I’ve had clients that have launched group coaching programs, memberships, all different types of programs. Yet when it comes to being able to take things to the next level in their business, one of these vital pieces is being able to be able to think bigger and to be able to think beyond where they are today.

I see this happen very often that for so many of them, and I think this is true for most everyone because we all have our own limitations. Because we all have what I call our own invisible glass ceilings that we’ve created around what we believe is possible for ourselves. I do find that being able to think big, to be able to 10x a vision can be a very difficult thing to do. Instead we want to think about what’s reasonable. We want to think about that which can be proven and that which can be done before.

What I really want to be able to offer in this series is the importance, is the necessity that you have as a business owner to be able to think bigger in your business. To be able to think bigger for your clients, to be able to think bigger for yourself.

I will share with you all I was recently doing some of my own personal work in this area. I was doing some work as it relates to my own business, to my own 10x vision for my business. I have to tell you, when you develop this skill, when you allow yourself to go to a place that is so far beyond where you currently are. Once you lock into that 10x vision for business, for yourself, for your clients, it truly does change everything.

What happens is it becomes the new standard by which you’re able to make all of your decisions. It becomes the new filter that you run everything else through. It becomes your North Star. In so many ways, it actually simplifies so much of your business. So one of the reasons that I love this concept, I love the art of thinking big is because of what it requires of you. What it requires of you in order to achieve that 10x vision.

One of the things that I love helping clients with is being able to create and to start seeing that 10x vision for themselves, for their businesses. Then being able to support this expanded vision with the actual business structures, with the actual strategies to go out and make that happen. Whether that’s $500,000 a year or a million or even multimillions. It’s being able to power that vision with an actual strategy behind it to truly bring it to life.

So there’s a few reasons that I want to talk to you today about why you might not be thinking big in your business as it’s something that I see, again, very often. If you’re finding yourself in this position, I want to be able to offer you some new perspectives today and some ways that you can move beyond whatever limitations you might be experiencing as it relates to thinking big in your business.

All right so in part one of the series, which was last week’s episode, we talked all about why it’s so important to be thinking big in your business. So if you haven’t listened to that episode, I do highly recommend that you go back and listen. I also want to address some of the reasons why I see clients, coaches, entrepreneurs in general who might be struggling to think bigger in their business.

The first reason that I see preventing so many of you from thinking bigger in your business is because of the how. It’s because you don’t know how exactly you’re going to create the million dollar business or the $10 million business. Because you don’t know how you can scale your business beyond one-on-one.

Now one of the most important lessons that I can share with you when it comes to the how of growing and scaling your business is that the truth is that you literally cannot know the exact how until you are there. Until you reach the million dollars or $250,000 or $500,000 in your business, it’s very difficult to know exactly how. Yet for so many of you, one of the reasons that I see you don’t allow yourselves to think bigger in your business is because you feel like you don’t know the how.

Here’s what I want you to consider today. I want you to consider for a moment something in your life, something in your business that you are most proud of. I want you to think about how you achieved whatever that was, right.

So maybe it was something in your career. Maybe it was something in your personal life. Think about whatever that is, whatever you’re most proud of. Did you know all of the details when you were first starting out? Did you know exactly how you were going to do that thing in your business or in your life or in your career? The truth is you probably didn’t, right?

What probably happened is that you first made a decision, and you made a committed decision to do whatever that thing was. You probably followed that up with a lot of action. You started to move forward and take action and really just put one foot in front of the other, right.

As you moved forward, as you took this action, what likely happened by default is that your actions added up over time. They probably turned into new opportunities, new opportunities that you probably could have never anticipated, and new opportunities that probably were the exact puzzle pieces that you needed in order to get to where you wanted to go.

So what I want you to see here is that the same is true for your business. When you make a committed decision to make a million dollars in your business, when you make a committed decision to make the best year in your business. When you make a conscious committed decision to grow your business and to take things to the next level then you also have to be willing to take the daily steps in that direction. You have to be willing to take that massive action that we talk about and continue taking that massive action. In an intentional way, in a way that moves you closer to your goals.

Now one of the advantages here that I believe my clients have when it comes to the how is the fact that I do teach real business strategy in my process. It’s something that we work with all of our clients on is making sure that every client has a very intentional, a very thought out, a very true business strategy that I have to tell you. I think is one of the things that does hold most coaches, most entrepreneurs from growing their business and making the level of revenue that they want is that they’re not even really setting themselves up to win in the first place.

So because my clients do have a very clear how, because this is part of the process that I teach and I work with my clients on, the great thing is that it allows them to move beyond the I don’t know how thoughts very, very quickly, right. We can move them quickly into implementation. We can work on mastering that which we need to in order to truly move the needle in the business.

So if you’re in a place right now where you feel like you need more of the how, I want to offer to you that for some of you, you might be right. You may need to have more expert guidance, more mentorship when it comes to having an actual business strategy to building your business.

I will say even with the how what I want to point out here is that there are still so many unknowns. Even when you’re implementing the how in the business, there are so many things that you can’t anticipate. So if we spend our time spinning in the how, the truth is that we’re going to be spinning for a long time.

So what’s really important here is that you have the courage to answer the question, to get support. To get to a level of the how that allows you to get into momentum. That gives you enough of the how to get into motion. I do want you all to really challenge yourselves to not let every single how to slow you don’t. Don’t let your lack of clarity to stop you from thinking bigger in your business. There are always solutions. So that’s number one.

The second reason that I see preventing many of you from thinking bigger in your business is because of some form of the thought of “I’m not capable.” I think for everyone there are different versions of this based on where you’re at in your business. Based on what’s going on with your business.

What I want to offer to you is that if this is coming up for you, I think it’s a great opportunity for you to get curious. I think it’s a great opportunity to ask yourself some deeper questions, to really question where this thought it coming from, and why you’re choosing this thought in the moment.

I think it’s one of the most powerful truths that truly I’ve learned in my journey of entrepreneurship. If I’m being truthful, even well before I was in the entrepreneurial space is really having the knowing and the understanding that I am in full control of what I choose to think, what I choose to place my energy on. What I choose to place my focus on.

So if you’re in a place where you have a narrative that you’re not capable, I want to encourage you to get curious about this. I want you to question why you’re choosing to think this. I want you to question why this has become the story for you.

Because at the end of the day whether you like it or not having this story, having this narrative is likely serving you in some way. It’s probably not serving your business growth, but it’s serving you in some other way. Your subconscious is perceiving it at a level where it’s protecting you in some manner. So having an awareness to this is really, really important. Challenge the thoughts, the stories, the narratives around why you’re choosing to believe you’re not capable.

All right. The third reason that I see so many of you not thinking big in your business is because of what I call other competing visions. Now what I mean by this is that inevitably when you go out and when you put yourself out into the world in a big way, when you go out and when you start to make bigger and bigger moves in your business.

When you set  bigger and bigger goals for yourself, those million dollar goals, what also will come up almost immediately is all of the doubt, all of the fear, and all of the worry. The “what if this doesn’t happen” starts to surface.

What happens very quickly, and I observe this all of the time, is that I see so many coaches do what I call off roading. Meaning they could have this beautiful, amazing vision and have all of those clarity as far as what they want to create in their business and in the world and where they want to take things. They can feel it so deeply. They can see it so clearly. They know it’s possible. They see what’s available to them.

When our brains take over, when our very human brains start to take the wheel, what very quickly happens is that our ego kicks in. The ego starts to feed us stories about why it might not be possible or what if things don’t work out as planned.

So when this happens, when you start to entertain this narrative, when you start to entertain the conversation in your mind, by default you’re creating a competing vision for yourself and in your business. What quickly happens is that this vision, so the vision where nothing works out. Where you fail miserably. Where whatever this narrative sounds like for you. It quickly becomes the competing vision to that original vision, to whatever you give your attention to, to wherever you put your focus.

So I do want to remind you all that wherever you do put your focus is where you will create more of. So we have to be very careful with the competing visions that we’re creating.

Be very careful with where you’re choosing to put your focus, with where you’re choosing to put your energy, with where you’re choosing to put your time. Because before you know it when you start to entertain these competing visions, this is when you start losing traction on that original vision. You start to actively create that competing vision that you’re so desperately trying to avoid.

Lastly the last thing that I see preventing so many of you from thinking big in your business is the need for certainty. I see this one come up so, so often both with my clients and just in general is the need to be certain before making a move. The need to be certain that something, some strategy or whatever that might be will work out.

What I want to offer you here is that living and operating from a place of knowing that you have the ability to figure things out, knowing that regardless of whether it works out or not that you have full agency. That you will find a solution. That you can find the way. This is where your true power lies.

What happens here is that I see a lot of coaches get caught up in desperately wanting that certainty. In wanting that need for certainty before they can take action. What happens is when we desperately search for that, it leads to analysis paralysis. It becomes the same spin cycle every single day.

So I want to offer to all of you that you have the ability to figure things out. Know that you have the power to create certainty in your results. How you get there, it might vary a bit how you originally thought you might get there. Remember that you have the ability to create any result you want my friends. That is true certainty.

All right everyone have an amazing week. Think big in your business. 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.