Ep #103: How to Create Momentum in Q4

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 103.

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 here. Very special welcome to all of my new listeners. I’m so glad that you’re here. I’m super excited for our show today. Before we dive in, I want to remind you. If you haven’t yet downloaded and accessed the private three-part podcast series that I created for you all, it’s called The Three Vital Shifts That Every Life Coach Needs to Rapidly Scale Their Business. I want to really encourage you to do that. It’s a private three-part podcast series.

So, again, it’s only accessible if you go to my website. We’re going to put the link in the show notes. It’s amandakarlstadcoaching.com/3vitalshiftspodcast-2. So be sure to go to the show notes page and click on it there. So what will happen is you’ll go to that link and you’re going to see the option to get immediate access to the private podcast series. It’s a three-part private podcast series. Each episode is about 20 minutes.

I really developed this series and created this series with all of you in mind to really give you an additional resource. Some additional strategies, tools, mindset shifts that I have really learned that are required if you want to grow and scale a highly successful coaching practice. So there is some really great information in this series. I have a workbook that I’ve created that you’re also going to have that goes along with the series that is going to help you implement all of the things that I teach you in the series. You’re going to have immediate access to that workbook as well.

So I really want you to, if you haven’t already, go to that link. It’s amandakarlstadcoaching.com/3vitalshiftspodcasts-2. Again, we’re going to link that up in the show notes just because I know that’s a little bit long of a link. If you have something to write on, go ahead and write that down. It’s a great, great series. I’ve been getting so much great feedback from so many of you. I just know that it’s really going to help you all take things to the next level and really help you accelerate your results even more.

All right. So let’s dive into today’s topic. Today I want to talk to you all about how to create momentum in your business in this fourth quarter that we’re heading into, right. In this fourth quarter of the year. So in order to do that, I’m going to be sharing with you five strategies that you can use to really help you evaluate your business and to really evaluate your current results, right.

So my intention with today’s podcast is to give you these strategies to really help you set the stage for this fourth quarter and really help ultimately set the stage for next year. Because believe it or not, what you’re doing right now or what you’re not doing right now, you’re going to feel the effect of that next year. So let’s talk for a minute about why this is important to talk about.

So when you think about for most businesses, especially when you think of businesses for instance in the retail industry. The fourth quarter is typically the most important quarter of the year for most businesses. The reason is because it’s usually the highest revenue quarter of the year, right. When businesses have their revenues planned out, their projections, a lot of times the fourth quarter is the highest revenue quarter of the year. When you think about the timing, there are holidays. There are lots of things that tend to be happening in the fourth quarter. It’s also in a lot of cases the end of a business’s fiscal year, okay. So it’s a really important quarter.

I want to encourage. If you are right now a solopreneur or you’re an entrepreneur, maybe you don’t have a large team yet. The fact is that the fourth quarter is still a really important quarter for your business as well. One of the reasons for this is because I believe that the fourth quarter is, from a mental perspective, really important to you as the business owner in you being able to finish out the year strong. To be able to create significant momentum and to then be able to carry that momentum into the new year.

This is really, really important on a mental level. So this is why I want to bring you this topic today because, again, what you’re doing today or what you’re not doing today is going to really impact the level of results that you experience as you move into next year as you move into 2022 and start out the new year and likely the first few quarters of next year as well. So let’s talk about five key strategies that can help you really do this.

So the first key strategy that I want to offer to you is the fact that you have to consider the fact that business is just math. Okay. So I think it’s very easy, and I see this happen a lot with clients that I work with and just as I observe many in this industry. It’s very easy to start overcomplicating the business process, okay. So what I want to offer to you here today is that your business and the results that you experience in your business are literally just cause and effect.

So I have talked about this in depth before. In fact, I have a podcast episode where I go really deep into cause and effect. It’s episode number 68. So I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode. It’s a good time. That’s probably a really good refresher for you if you haven’t listened to it. Or if you listened to it, it was a while back. The idea and the concept in that episode and what I’m talking about here in this strategy is that the results that you have in your business are literally the effects of you as the business owner. As the leader of your business, you are the cause.

So whatever results you have in your business, whatever level of success you are experiencing or maybe you’re not experiencing is because of you. It’s because of how you’ve been approaching your business, how you’ve been showing up in your business, how you’ve been approaching things like your marketing and your business, which we’re going to get into in a minute. So all of that causes your results, which are those effects.

So if you’re in a place right now where you’re happy with those results, wonderful. Celebrate. You have been the cause of that. If you’re not happy with the results that you have, I know some of you might be in a place where you’re not as happy with your results. Then I want to offer to you that it’s important to set some of the emotion of that aside right now and to really consider that your business and the results that you have is truly just math.

So if you’re a coach and you have an offer. So you likely have a program, right? You’ve thought through. You’ve delivered. You’ve probably hopefully worked with some clients where you’ve been able to deliver that program. Maybe you’re an entrepreneur and you have a service, or you have a product, or you have something that you offer that people pay you for because it helps them solve a problem that they have.

So in both cases, you are offering a service. You’re offering a program. You’re offering something to a group of clients that helps them solve the problems that they have. Depending on what your business looks like and depending on what the results that you have, it really does come back to that math. What I mean by that is when you look at that offer whether it is a coaching program or maybe it’s a service or maybe it’s a product and you look at how many people have purchased that offer and how many people have not purchased that offer or product over the course of the year, you can really just do some simple math there, right. So it’s actually very simple.

So this is the first strategy that I want to offer to you and really encourage that you all implement here as you’re looking at your fourth quarter. As you’re looking at moving into 2022. So considering that your results, your revenue, your number of clients, whatever that is just math.

It’s important that you keep this at the forefront of your mind. Because for so many of you and for so many clients that I work with, it’s so easy to complicate things and to get overwhelmed with all the things in your business. The results, again in your business, they’re just the effect of you as the business owner as you as the cause of that effect. Okay. So keep that in mind. That’s number one.

All right, let’s move to strategy number two. Strategy number two is your irresistible offer. So I want to talk to you for a minute about the importance of having an irresistible offer. So this is one of the things that after working with so many clients and helping them develop and launch and tweak their offers that I think by far is one of the most important elements to their success. So let’s talk for a minute about why that is.

So the truth is that you could be a phenomenal coach. You could get the best results for your clients. If you don’t have an offer that is irresistible to your clients, that your clients think is irresistible, it’s going to be very hard for them to experience your brilliance. For them to experience the level of transformation that you can actually offer to them.

So your offer is very, very important. It’s important because it not only helps your clients see through your offer how you can help them. It’s also very important for you. Because when you have an irresistible offer, what it does is it allows you to approach so many aspects of your business with so much more clarity, with so much more certainty, with so much more confidence, especially when it comes to sales.

Versus when you don’t have an irresistible offer, and this is where I find for many of my clients. When they haven’t yet created that irresistible offer that isn’t fully clear yet for them. Which I do want to note that this is something that I help all of my clients create both in my six-month business accelerator program and in my high-level mastermind.

It makes it very difficult to show up with confidence. It makes it very difficult to show up with that level of certainty that is so, so important when you’re speaking with your ideal clients. It makes it so much more difficult in that sales process. So that strategy number two is that you need to make sure that you have an irresistible offer.

The third strategy is your marketing. Now, there is so much that we could talk about when it comes to your marketing. It’s probably by far one of the biggest challenges that I see for my clients, and I will say just across the board in this industry. That when it comes to your marketing, there are a lot of shiny objects out there. There’s a lot of what I call throwing spaghetti at the wall and crossing your fingers and hoping something is going to stick.

The truth is that maybe in the beginning, maybe that’s where you stated. That’s okay, right. What happens is that very quickly most coaches, most entrepreneurs understand very quickly that that’s not a long-term strategy, right. That it’s not a sustainable strategy that is actually going to serve your business. So to be clear here, throwing spaghetti at the wall and fingers crossed and hoping something sticks is not what actually builds a million-dollar plus business. Establishing and working to implement a very solid and a very holistic and a very consistent marketing strategy in your business is what builds a million dollar plus business.

So one of the things that I spend a lot of time with my clients on and developing for their business is actually implementing a strategy in their business. Is actually then once that strategy is implemented, and it’s been tweaked and it’s working then actually scaling that in their business. That’s a process, and it’s a very, very important one.

So I want to encourage you to right now really look at your own business and evaluate how well you are doing. Maybe you want to even rate yourself when it comes to your current marketing strategy. If you don’t yet have this established in your business, I want to recommend to you that you really start to get serious about that. 

All right, the fourth strategy I want to offer to you is to help you build momentum in this fourth quarter. Understanding what is working in your business and what is not working in your business. Now, this might seem very simplistic, but I don’t want you to get fooled by how simplistic this might appear. Because what I’m offering here with this strategy is that knowing in depth what is working well and what is not working well in your business when it comes to things like your marketing, when it comes to things like your irresistible offer, when it comes to things like what has been the math in your business. Okay?

So I’d really recommend that you get this down on paper and really do a download on all of the things that are currently working in your business. Also all of the things that aren’t working in your business. I do think that as you’re doing this, the more numbers you can incorporate the better. The reason for this is because—I have a client example of this that happened a few months ago where I was coaching my client, and I had her complete a debrief of one of her most recent launches.

So this is something that I teach all of my clients. I have a launch debrief process that I developed that I teach to all of my clients to help them with this strategy. To help them clearly and thoroughly debrief their business. To really look at their launches, to really understand the things that are working and the things that aren’t working in their business. So this is a really important element to the overall process.

When she went into this launch debrief, what was really interesting and what was so fascinating to me as her coach was that this is a client who is doing extremely well in her business. Who has grown her business to a high multiple six figure level in less than a year. When we were going over one of her recent debriefs, she was actually really shocked and surprised when she broke down her clients. When she broke down where her sales, where her clients were coming from.

Because the truth was is that she had a thought in her mind. She had a belief in her mind that most of her clients were coming from one particular part of her marketing campaign. So this was an organic marketing campaign that she did on social media, she did with some influencers on social media. So it was part of her overall strategy. She really believed that the majority of her sales came from this particular campaign.

What happened was as she really broke down her numbers, as she really got a deep understanding of what her numbers actually were, the truth was is that the majority of her clients, in fact only just a handful of her clients had actually come from that organic campaign that she thought was responsible for basically the whole launch.

So that’s really, really important to understand. Because what she found was is that in that campaign, in that launch, the majority of her clients, her sales, her revenue had actually come from the paid advertising campaign. It was a brand-new paid advertising campaign that we had launched that was actually behind the majority of her sales.

So for her being able to see that and for me as her coach being able to see that and being able to clearly see the facts, being able to clearly see the numbers was so, so important. Because then we were able to put together a strategy for her to then scale her business through that same campaign. That’s exactly what we’ve been working on over the last several months.

Had she not understood the truth and the facts and the actual math of what was happening in her business, there’s a really good likelihood that she would have continued with that same belief and really been putting much more stock in that organic campaign than what it was actually producing in her business. So this is why really understanding what’s working and what’s not working in your business is vitally important.

In this client’s case, had she not done this debrief, had she not actually gone through the process that I teach my clients, it literally would have cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars so far in her business. Probably much more over the course of her business. So that’s really, really important.

All right, let’s move to strategy number five. Strategy number five is your mind management. What I mean by this is the degree to which you consistently manage your mind, to the degree you consistently manage your mind in the process of growing your business. I talk about the importance of this in everything that I do and in everything that I teach. Because the truth is unless you’re managing your mind effectively in the process, unless you are really consistently working to manage the doubt and manage all of the things that are coming up, it’s going to be extremely difficult to implement the actual strategy in your business.

As you’re growing and as you’re scaling your business, you are going to face inevitable challenges. You are going to be faced with so many doubts in the process, so many fears, so many things. It’s really important that you are in a position where you can move beyond your doubt, where you can move beyond the discomfort. Or even just sit with the discomfort and still be showing up the way you need to be showing up.

Your ability to be willing to experience failure, to be okay with the fact that not everything is going to go as planned is really, really important. So this is why I want to encourage you to really look at this for yourself, and why I work very intensely with all of my clients on their mindset. On what’s really going on on that internal level so that we can overcome it, so we can address it and ultimately move things forward, move things past where they might be stuck.

So being able to keep yourself in the game, the importance of your inner game work is the most critical piece here. So you can keep your energy. You can keep your motivation. You can keep your belief moving forward and moving in the right direction.

So to recap here, we’ve talked about the five key strategies to help you build this moment. To help you build this momentum in the fourth quarter so that you can actually grow your business. You can actually look forward to scaling your business next year. To really end this year strong and really double down in your business. So I want to challenge you all to do this exercise, to really go through each of these five key strategies that I’ve given you and really evaluate your business. Really look at your numbers. Really look at your offer. Really look at how you’ve been managing your mind, okay.

The first strategy, again to recap, is to consider that your business is just math. At its most simplistic level, remember it’s truly cause and effect, as a business owner, you are in charge of that. That’s a great thing. The second strategy is to have an irresistible offer. Do you have an irresistible offer that your ideal client wants to buy? Is it an offer that’s fully aligned with your most ideal clients? Does it truly solve the problem that your most ideal client wants to be solved? I want you to really answer those questions.

The third strategy is your marketing. What is your overall marketing strategy? Do you have solid systems in place? Do you have a strategy that’s holistic, that’s sustainable, that’s going to help you actually truly grow your business? Number four is applying the scientific method. So really understanding, really knowing your numbers so that you can truly evaluate what’s working and what’s not working in your business.

The fifth and most important is your ability to manage your mind in the process. So that you can move beyond the doubt. You can keep yourself in a state of high energy. You can keep your commitment. You can keep the vision of what you’re building at the forefront so that you can feel the discomfort of growth. You can be willing to experience the failure that you’ll inevitably experience as part of the journey.

All right my friends. I hope this episode served you well. I’d love to know what resonates with you. 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.