Ep #70: Commitment to Transformation as a Coach

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast, episode number 70.

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 hope you’re doing well. I’m doing amazing. Right before I sat down to record today’s episode, I checked the temperature because it is cold here. And I have to tell you, it is four degrees. It is cold; frigid cold.

And if you’ve ever experienced a frigid winter day, especially in Minnesota, you know what I mean. It’s one of those days where you don’t go outside, and if for some reason you have to, you must get full gear on. You must put on the boots and the hat and the scarf and the mittens and all of the things.

And so, it’s one of those days here. But it’s also beautiful because it’s a clear blue sky and bright shining sun. And the sun is actually, it’s shining on the snow and so the snow is glistening. So, it’s really, really beautiful.

And so, it’s funny because I was having a conversation earlier this week with someone who is based in San Diego. And he originally grew up on the East Coast. And he was telling me how he actually really misses the cold. He actually really misses the winter. And he said he was embarrassed to say it, but he gets bored sometimes with the weather in San Diego.

And I thought that was so funny. But I also can understand that because I kind of feel the same way. As much as we might think we don’t want the cold and we might not want the snow, I actually think that I would miss it. I would miss the winter. I would miss the changing seasons.

But I will say, I will be a snowbird at some point. We will definitely have a place somewhere warm that we can escape to when we need to and still be able to enjoy the seasons because I do enjoy them.

So, I’m excited to talk to you all today. And I want to talk to you all today about something that is really, really important to your business growth. And that is your commitment to transformation.

So, here’s what I mean by that. By being a coach and being a business owner, especially as you are growing and scaling your business, you are going to be confronted with all sorts of things. You’re going to be confronted with all of the self-doubt. You’re going to be confronted with all of your internal limiting beliefs.

And many of you, especially if you are still working in your nine to five job, you’re going to be faced with the identity shift from moving from your corporate identity into the identity of an entrepreneur. And I have to tell you that this is a huge shift. It was a huge shift for me and it’s also a huge shift for my clients that have been and are in that process as well.

And not only that, but typically when I work with clients, I want to tell you that they’re usually in a position where if they’re still in their corporate job, if they’re looking to leave their corporate job and move into coaching full-time, they’re usually in a position where they’re leaving a very successful career.

And so, that might be medicine. It might be engineering. It might be law. It might be HR. It might be education. There’s many, many different areas that that might be. And so, for my clients, for the most part, many of them have many, many years, even decades in some cases, that they’ve dedicated to their careers.

And so, I share this with you because, in a lot of ways, this makes the stakes a bit higher. And it’s a bit higher because they have, quote unquote climbed the ladder. They have, quote unquote arrived in their career. And they’ve built their lives, up until this point, with and through that career and they have the identity that’s attached to that. Yet they found themselves in a position where they’re not in love anymore with that career. And so this, for a lot of them, is part of the reason that they’re building they’re coaching practice, so that they can do more fulfilling work, so they can fulfill their true purpose and build a highly successful and lucrative busines while they do it. That’s really, really important.

And so, there’s a certain freedom that they are building towards. There’s a certain freedom with all of this. And that was also really important to me when I made the transition myself a few years ago and decided to open my own practice and build my own business.

And I will say that for my clients who have already fully transitioned into their business, whether they’ve left their career, they’ve made the decision, they have fully moved into their business, or they might have been working in their business, they may be full-time in their business and maybe have been for a while, I have to say this, the same is true for all of them. And that is that transformation and the level of commitment to that transformation is really, really important to their business growth.

And here is why. It has been my own experience and the experience of my most successful clients, and even when I look at other industries, when I look at other successful entrepreneurs in other industries, my observation is that your business growth is in direct correlation with your own growth as the leader of your business.

So, I want to say that again. Your business growth is in direct correlation with your own inner growth and development as the leader of your business. And so, this is why my work, the work that I do in the world, the work that I do with my clients and within my programs is always, always centered around this. It’s always centered around, what is that inner work? What is it that we need to lean into? What is that next level from an inner side of things that is ultimately going to help them, hep my clients, then take the actions they need in order to grow the business they really want?

Because the truth of the matter is this. I could give you the best strategies in the world, which I do want to say, on a side note, is something that I’m continually actually doing in my programs. But unless you’re at a place internally, unless you’re in a place and in a position where you are evolving and you are leaning into your own transformation, unless you’re leaning into and open to that, it doesn’t matter what strategies you use. Things will always fall short of where you want them to.

And the reason is because it’s about the who that is doing the what. And the who is you. The what is the strategy. It’s the execution. It’s the action. And you do need both in order to be successful. But you have to first calibrate the who.

So, this is really, really important. And this only comes, I believe, when you have a deep commitment to your own transformation. And I think, as a coach, for me personally, this is a nonnegotiable and it’s one of the things that I am most proud of when I look at my work.

So, when I look at the clients that I have helped hit six figures and beyond, who have really grown immensely in their business, and also the clients who are building to that level, because there’s a certain level of transformation that has to occur to build a business to that level.

And it’s so amazing to look at that and there’s a lot of pride that I have when I look at who they’ve actually become, who they’ve actually become as a coach and why they’ve actually become as a business owner, as the CEO of their business.

And I truly believe this. One of my most important roles as a coach, as a mentor, as an advisor, as a guide in this process to my clients is to also help them learn how to lead their business. How to lead their clients.

And that’s something that’s really, really important to me and it’s something that personally I have a very deep commitment to. And it’s something that I’ve been 100% committed to since I started my own journey, since I decided to build my own business, I have been 100% committed to transformation.

And how that has looked is I’ve ensured that I’ve been continually supported and that I have done my own work and that I have showed up and I have gotten coached. And it’s also why I have had coaches throughout my entire process, throughout this entire journey and I’ll continue to have coaches.

So, when I look back over these years, I’ve invested a lot. I’ve invested 10s and 10s of thousands over the years. And right now in this moment, I’m also investing at a very high level in my own growth and I my own development, in the development of my business. And I’m going to continue to invest at that level.

And when I look back at the years that I’ve been growing my business, I would not be where I am today, I would not be able to deliver what I’m able to deliver to my clients had I not make that decision. Had I not continually committed to that decision.

So, for me, this is a very deep and personal commitment. It’s part of how I operate. It’s part of who I am. And I believe that it allows me to show up powerfully and lead my clients powerfully today.

So, I want to encourage all of you to take a look at this for yourself. I want you to think about your own level of commitment to your own transformation. I want you to look at how you’re currently supporting yourself here. I want you to think about how this is impacting the results that you have.

I want you to ask yourself how you’ve been showing up and leading yourself in this area. How committed have you been to the process, to your own transformation? Have you been fully committed? I think this is a really important question.

And what’s great about this is when you do make the decision, when you do fully commit and you do the work, you will become a stronger coach in the process because it creates an environment for your own expansion. It creates an environment for your own inner growth and it allows you to translate that to your own work with your clients.

And I think this is one of the most valuable things that you can do as a coach, is to ensure that you are doing this work and you’re committing to your own transformation and you’re getting support in that. And it’s also from the business perspective. When you show up and you can operate your business from that expanded version of yourself, from that version of yourself that is taking full radical responsibility for your business, I am telling you, the sky is the limit.

I’m telling you, the sky is the limit for all of you. But it has to start with that commitment. It starts with you leaning into and actually doing the word, leading yourself in the area, getting yourself the support that you need in order to do this work.

Because it’s been my experience that even though you might have the best tools, and maybe from a coaching certification standpoint, you have the best tools, and even from a business standpoint, it isn’t until you’re able to show up and operate your business from a place where you’re doing your own work, where your commitment to transformation is at a level that allows you to show up powerfully in your business. That is when things start to open up. That is when you become in energetic alignment with that which you really want and you start creating the results that you really want.

So, for those of you who might in this moment be feeling a bit lost, for those of you who through this conversation are recognizing that you haven’t fully leaned into this yet for yourself, for those of you who might be hesitant about investing right now in your growth, in your business growth, I want to encourage you to lean in. I want you to consider what it would really do for you if you knew you had the proper support.

And if by having that proper support you were able to do this deep work, you were able to do the work from both an inner and an outer perspective, how would that change your business? How would that change your life? For me, it’s a nonnegotiable. I will always choose to support myself. I will always choose to be supported. I will always choose expansion. I will always choose possibility and continue to evolve.

My choice is for continual evolution and expansion and possibility. And it’s the same for my clients. So, I encourage you to choose transformation, choose to get supported in this area, choose evolution for yourself, choose evolution for your business, choose the expansion that’s available to you and available for your business. Step into that possibility. Step into that possibility for your business and for your life.

Alright, my friends, have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

Hey, if you’re ready for a real breakthrough in your business and want to grow and scale your business to at least six figures or more in annual revenue, I invite you to apply for my exclusive program The Mastermind at amandakarlstadcoaching.com/the-mastermind. I look forward to seeing you there.

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.