Ep #19: False Perceptions

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast episode number 19.

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. Thanks for joining me today. I hope you’re doing well. I am doing great. I am working on some really, really exciting things in my business and I’m really excited about it all. The first is actually a retreat that I will be offering to my highest-level clients this summer, and this has been a vision of mine over the past few months.

When I started my High-level Mastermind and let me explain for those of who might not be aware, this is a mastermind program I offer for my clients that have either gone through my initial six-month coaching program or are at a certain point in their business from a revenue standpoint and a foundation standpoint where they’re ready for this level of work.

What we do is we take our work much deeper and take the business building and the strategy much deeper in this program. The goal is to build their business to seven figures. That being said, I knew I wanted to include retreats into this particular program. So, being in the planning phase of this and being in the process of rolling this out to my clients has been so much fun. I’m so looking forward to it.

Really, the whole purpose is going to be going deeper and going deep into their CEO mindset, and do some really intense coaching, and business building, and masterminding. I’m so excited to be rolling out some amazing, new resources that will literally help them elevate their game, and business, and ultimately position them to be even bigger leaders in the industry. I’m very, very excited about all of this.

I’m also excited to be rolling out a new group program for all of my new clients, for clients that are still working to make their first six figures in their business. I’m so excited that I’ve created a brand-new Group Mastermind that is focused on helping them build the right foundation, so that they can make those first six figures and beyond in their business.

I have to say, that is some of the most important work, you all. There is a lot that goes into making your first six figures in your coaching business. If you’re currently in that phase of your business, which I know many of you are, I just want to emphasize how important it really is to have support and to have guidance that you need to help you do that.

I really do believe that anyone who is trying to build a coaching business in the market today is going to be so much farther ahead when they get the proper coaching, the support, the accountability, the guidance, all of it because the fact is I see way too many certified coaches that are trying to build their businesses off of freebies and free resources.

What ends up happening is that they waste so much time and so much energy, and they end up getting burnt out in the process. So, I don’t want that to happen for you. I encourage you, if you’re in that phase in your business, reach out, learn more. See if my group Coaching Mastermind is a fit for you.

All right. I want to give a big shout out to Erin from Level Up Coaching LLC for winning one of the three free VIP strategy sessions that I have given away as part of the launch of the show.

She left a review, and she said, “I am currently in the process of becoming a PCC, and this podcast has helped me so much. I get content for my classes, but how to apply the learnings to create a business was something I was lacking. I listen every day to one so that I can remain focused on my vision, and tips and tools I can use to help grow and scale my business. It does not matter where you are in the process. Amanda successfully covers every area, and it almost feels like she is truly coaching you. Looking forward to much, much more.”

Thank you so much, Aaron, for your amazing review. I love that you are listening, and I love that you’re finding this podcast to be so helpful for you. Don’t worry, there will be much, much more coming. I’m also looking forward to your free VIP session and helping you get a strategy and a game plan in place for you to reach your goals in 2020. So, so good.

All right. Let’s talk about today’s topic, false perceptions. Let me explain what I mean by this. False perceptions, as I want to talk to you about this today, is relating to the things that we might perceive to be true in our businesses, but when we really start to dig in and look at what they really are, we find that they’re not, in fact, a fact.

In fact, they’re things we’re perceiving to be true in our business and even in our life, but they’re actually untrue. They’re actually a false perception that we are deeming to be a true fact.

The reason I want to bring this topic to you all today is because I see this happening over and over and over again. What’s happening is that I see so many coaches making decisions, crucial decisions, about their business, in fact, that are based on these, quote on quote, facts that in reality are false perceptions. So, they’re not even facts. They’re merely perceptions that we are seen as actual facts.

I want to share an example of this with you. I was talking with a certified coach recently that has been working to build her business over the past give or take about two years. We were talking about where she was at and her business. What’s been going well, what hasn’t been going well, where she is personally at, all of those things.

What she shared with me was that she was feeling a lot of confusion and a lot of disappointment in her business. She was having lots of confusion about what she wanted to do, where she wanted to take things in her business, and especially a lot of confusion as it related to her niche.

I want to tell you that this was a niche that she had been extremely passionate about serving and had really been focused on throughout the entire process the entire last two years, but as of late had been feeling a little bit burnt out with it. She wasn’t sure if these women that she had initially been focusing on were actually who she wanted to serve and where she wanted her focus to be going forward.

So, we dug into this, and in doing so, I was able to peel back some layers into what was truly going on at a deeper level with all of this. What it came to is that she was frustrated with some recent open rates that she had had with some of her emails. To give you a little bit more context, she had been sending out weekly emails to her email list, and she was feeling discouraged because her open rates were a lot lower than they used to be, a lot lower than she wanted.

So, when we dug into this, what became really clear in this whole conversation was that there was a lot of deep things happening with her. Things that she had been working on over the last year. She had been working to make progress on all of those things, but they were still causing her to feel a certain way, and they were causing her to feel a certain way about her business.

What was happening was that because she was feeling this way about her business, she was feeling this certain way just in general, she was starting to have very specific thoughts about her niche that were not positive. What that ended up doing is it was causing her to then question the whole direction of her business. It was even causing her to question whether or not she wanted to continue to build her business.

So, I want to reiterate that because of her thoughts, her current thinking about these clients, she was considering giving up on her business. What I think is really important to understand here is that as we dug into these particular thoughts that she was having and really got underneath the hood and started to look at what was going on.

It was so clear that these thoughts were just, in fact, perceptions that she had been making in general because she hadn’t been regulating her emotions very well. And admittedly, hadn’t been managing her emotions very well as of late. She was basing her thoughts, basing all of her considerations for what she wanted to do with her business, on false perceptions. This was even to the point that she was considering possibly giving up on her business.

So, for all of you, this is why truly evaluating what is actually going on, and looking underneath the surface, and really exploring your thoughts is so, so important. This is also why it’s so important to be working with someone, working with a coach and getting guidance, on this kind of thing.

The truth is that most coaches are basing big decisions in their businesses on false facts. Decisions are being made on facts that are actually false perceptions. So, I want you to really step back from this, because I’ve talked a lot about the power of decision in the last few episodes, but I think this is a perfect example of this.

Where a coach was entertaining the idea of walking away from her business or going in a completely different direction and ultimately leaving a huge opportunity, a huge market on the table. Here’s what I want to say in this example. Her niche, and I’m telling you, it’s great, it’s dialed, it’s specific. There aren’t many people in this particular niche, and she’s got proof of concept in the niche. She also has a lot of expertise in the area.

But because she wasn’t properly regulating her thinking, she hadn’t been regulating those emotions, she was basing her next moves and making decisions solely on false perception. I hope you all see how huge this is. So, for those of you who might be in a similar situation, who might be feeling some confusion. Maybe you’re feeling some disappointment. Maybe you’re feeling some angst about your business.

I want you to really start investigating what is real versus what is actually a false perception that you have. I want you to start looking at how you’re basing your decisions because, in fact, these false perceptions have the potential to completely derail your business. They have the potential to completely derail your leadership and how you’re showing up in your business in all of it.

So, I can’t emphasize enough how important this really is if you’re trying to build a business, that you get a handle on your false perceptions. I want you to start looking at what you’re basing your decisions on and really looking at whether or not they’re actual facts versus false perceptions that we have.

Here’s what else I’ll say about this. I think this also comes up a lot around money with coaches and other entrepreneurs when they’re building their businesses. The reason I think this comes up so much is because typically in those first couple of years as you’re trying to build your business, you’re trying to get it to usually that first six figures especially. It’s very common for coaches and other entrepreneurs to have some level of anxiety around money.

For those of you that are in this phase, I bet you’re shaking your head right now because here’s the fact. Starting a business does require a certain level of investment. Starting a business requires a certain level of investment of time. It requires a certain level of investment of energy. And it requires a certain level of investment financially.

For those of you who are past your first six figures and you’ve been through this process, I know you understand this because once you’ve typically gotten beyond that first six figures, you kind of chill out a little bit about this. Where I see things get really difficult for coaches is when they are in this initial building phase, when they’re in that hustle phase of their business, when they’re trying so desperately to make things work and make that first six figures, that they tend to get a lot of anxiety, a lot of feelings of scarcity that come up.

It’s because they typically aren’t getting immediate results. Typically, their cash flow is low, and typically, they don’t have the evidence that any of this is even going to work out. So, what happens is then they start to go off the rails. It’s like they start to go off-roading, as I call it. What happens is they start questioning everything.

This is also where I usually see them, what I call, you guys have probably heard me say this, throw spaghetti at the wall. What I mean by that is they start posting all over social media. They’re running around to every networking event they can attend, even though they can’t stand networking. They might create a new funnel or even get to the point where they’re creating a new funnel every other week.

But because they don’t really have a clear strategy and they’re not very clear on what they’re even doing, they never really allow it to work. They don’t have a real cohesive growth strategy for the long game in their business.

They might start a Facebook ad, they might let it run for a week or two, and they’re not really letting it optimize. They might get frustrated because they’ve had some no-shows for their free consultations. They might decide they don’t want to work with that particular niche anymore. You name it, I’ve seen it.

So, I just want to bring your awareness to this because again, it’s so, so important for you to evaluate what you’re basing your decisions on and whether or not they’re based on actual facts or on these false perceptions. I honestly don’t think you can really do this well unless you’re working directly with someone, a coach, who can help you bring this to the surface, and someone that can help you then implement a real strategy in your business, someone that can help you separate the false perceptions from the facts.

So, here’s what I want to leave you all with today. I want you to understand and be open to the fact that you might be basing your decisions off of false perceptions. How you know whether or not you’re basing something off of a fact versus a false perception is this. Start questioning whether or not, whatever thought, whatever belief you’re having, is based on a circumstance that could actually be proven in the court of law.

So, let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re a coach, and let’s say that you’re currently questioning your niche. Let’s say that you’ve worked with a few clients, and you’ve made some money in your business, but you’re just not sure if you’re on the right track. What I want you to do is isolate the circumstance in the situation.

So if you’re questioning your niche, for example, I want you to isolate your niche as the circumstance. What I mean by that is it is a fact that there is a certain type of client that you work with. There is demographic information, there are attributes, things like that that we can attach to that particular group of clients.

From there, what I want you to do is I want you to list out. I want you to do a thought download. For those of you that maybe have not heard that term before, I want you to just allow yourself to journal, to just write out all of your current thoughts about that particular niche.

Once you’ve done that, I want you to look at what you wrote, and I want you to evaluate which thought, or which one of those, or which of those thoughts or beliefs you feel most strongly about. I want you to identify which ones you find yourself thinking most about, the ones that tend to take up the most mental real estate for you.

From there, I want you to ask yourself whether or not that thought, or those thoughts that you’ve identified, are actual facts. I want you to question that if you were in a courtroom and if there was a jury deciding whether or not what you were thinking was an actual fact. I want you to answer that for yourself.

Then I want you to step back, and I want you to evaluate how that thought, how that belief has been driving you to act. Or just the opposite, it has stopped you in your tracks from taking action in your business. This is huge, my friends. Don’t let false perceptions derail you. The world needs you and what you have to offer. All right. Have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

Hey, before you go, I have something amazing I want to share with you. To celebrate the launch of this 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 the 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.