Ep #195: 10 Lessons to Transform Your Business

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 195.

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 having an amazing week, and I hope you’re all doing well wherever you’re tuning in from. I am really excited as I am in the process of finalizing some things for my upcoming retreat for my High Level Mastermind clients. Which if you’re new to my work or if you’re not familiar with the work that I do with my clients, this is my High Level Mastermind for coaches who are scaling.  

So these are coaches who many of them have either reached that six figure mark in their business or they’re trending towards that six figure mark in their business, and now they’re at a point where they’re ready to take their business to that next level. So for a lot of them, that might be 200,000, that 200K mark. It might be 500,000. We even have clients that are currently in the process of scaling to a million dollars and beyond. 

So this is exactly the work that we do in this mastermind. I am just so proud of my clients and the success that they are all creating in their businesses and how they through the process really do become these next versions of themselves. That next version of not only who they are as coaches, but the next version of themselves as business owners, as true CEOs of their business. And how that really allows them to break through to their next level and really step more fully into who it is that they’re meant to be.

It’s just so much fun. It’s so fun to also see them create such massive growth in such a short amount of time, both from a financial perspective but also from a personal growth perspective. 

So one of the elements of this program that I do offer is I do offer within this program retreats. We actually do three retreats per year. It is a yearlong program. So everyone gets the opportunity to participate in these retreats. And it is just the best. So I’m really excited as we have our retreat coming up very soon. I am so, so looking forward to it. 

I’m so excited for all of the breakthroughs that I know are about to happen, for all of the next level thinking that’s going to be happening, for all of the next level strategy, for all of the million dollar, literally, conversations that we’re going to have. The strategies that are coming out of this retreat is going to be off the hook. 

So if you are a coach, and you are ready to scale, and if you’re at that six figure mark or you’re trending towards that in your business, I highly recommend you join us. That you apply to this program. We’re going to link up the application in the show notes. I have really created this program to help you build your business to that multi-figure level, to that seven figure level in the most accelerated way. I’m so proud of this program. I am so proud of the clients in this program and the work that we are doing, and I would love for you to join us. 

I will say because we do have so much support. So not only is it a mastermind where you are part of a mastermind with other successful coaches, but there’s also a very high level of support in terms of the coaching that I deliver, the mentorship, the strategy, the one-on-one support, and really all of the tools and resources that you need in order to take your business to a million dollars and beyond. 

So there is an application process for this as I truly believe this is the most elite mastermind for coaches who want to do big things in the world, who have big visions for their business, who know that they’re capable of creating and building a highly successful business. It’s exactly the work that we do. 

So one of my goals this year, as some of you know, is to coach and mentor as many coaches as possible in this container. Because it’s such a powerful container and because of the process that I take all of the clients through in the coaching and the conversations that happen, it truly is next level.

So if you are at that place in your business and you are ready for your next level. You know that you need expert support, you know that you need high level support both from a mindset perspective and also from a strategy perspective, then I want to invite you to apply and let’s have a conversation. I would love to share with you what I see is possible for you. 

I will say for those of you listening who might not yet be at that six figure mark in your business. So you are probably working with a few clients, perhaps on a one-on-one basis. You’re maybe more in the building phase of your business and you need a solid foundation. You know that you are ready to take your business to that first six figures and beyond, but you know that you also need support in doing that, I want to invite you as well to check out my six month business accelerator program. 

This is called the Mastermind. This is where I help coaches build their business foundation, to that first six figures and beyond in the most accelerated and streamlined way. 

So if this is something that you are ready to do this year, I want to invite you to apply because just like the same with my High Level Mastermind, because of the high level of coaching and support and mentorship that is part of this program, there are also limited spots in this program. I do only offer this program a couple of times a year. There will be a cohort that will be starting coming up. So I do recommend that you apply and you secure your spot in this program as it’s only offered a couple of times per year. 

All right, so exciting. I’m so excited to welcome so many new clients into these containers. It really is the culmination of all of my work in building both my business and really now at this point, so many other businesses that I’ve really designed both of these programs to be everything you need. No matter if you’re building to that multiple six figures or seven or even that first 100k. So alright, let’s dive in. 

Let’s talk about lessons that I have learned in my business.  The reason that I want to talk about this today is I, over the last couple of days, have been thinking about today’s episode and what I wanted to create in terms of content and the conversation that I wanted to have. I decided that, you know, I talk about a lot of concepts. 

I bring you a lot of concepts that I have developed in my coaching practice, that I use with my clients, that I have found to be very useful in my own journey. I decided that I wanted to create really an episode for all of you today that in many ways summarizes some of the key lessons that I have had the opportunity to learn over the years as I’ve grown my business. 

And many of these lessons that I’m about to talk to you about, they’re all concepts, again, and topics that I have brought to you in some way through the podcast. As I was thinking about this and what I wanted to share, I really want this episode to lay out what I believe are some of the most important lessons that I believe that you must learn. Some of the most important concepts that you must consider, that you must integrate and implement if you want to build a highly successful business. 

I think it’s because, again, I’ve been building and working not only in my own business, but also in so many other businesses, in my clients’ businesses for so long and at this point helping hundreds of coaches to build their business. I think sometimes it’s easy to lose sight and to not consciously think about some of the things that I’m about to share with you. 

And what tends to happen, in this case when we’re not consciously thinking about these things, we tend to look for what I would consider band aid solutions. We really start to miss some of the most important elements in what it takes to really grow a highly successful coaching practice. So that’s what we’re going to talk about here today. 

My goal is to distill this down in a way so that I can really explain some of the most important lessons that I’ve learned, that I have also observed as I’ve helped so many clients build, grow, and scale. That I know this can really serve you wherever you are right now in your journey. 

So the first lesson that I’ve learned is the importance of vision. Now, if you’ve been listening to my show, especially for any length of time, you know how important I believe your vision is to your success as a coach, as a business owner. It’s definitely been one of the most important lessons that I have learned myself and that I have observed in my clients as well.

What I mean by this is not only the vision that you have in the short term, right. So not only looking at, okay, how do I create clients? How do I create this business right now in the short term? But this is really about your vision for your business in the long term. 

One of the things that I have observed that stops a lot of coaches from getting to the level that they truly want in their business is because they’re not clear on their long term vision. What happens instead is that so often when you’re starting out in business. And the truth of this is for most coaches, in the majority of cases, this is really the first time that many coaches have ever built a business. Or it’s really their first step into true entrepreneurship. 

What tends to happen is that when you’re starting out, there are so many things to learn. There are so many things that need to be decided upon. There are so many things that when you look at a highly successful business, there’s a lot of things that make up that business, right. 

So, I see in a lot of cases when coaches are new in this process, that in a lot of cases that they get very impatient if they don’t experience a certain level of success right away. When you’re in a place like this and when the focus is only on what isn’t working or why a certain thing that maybe you’re trying to implement or trying to get working in your business isn’t working, we start looking through this very short sighted lens. I see this happen so, so often. 

So what I want to offer to you here, especially if this is resonating with you, is this. This is where having a vision, a vision that goes beyond where you might be today, that why. That bigger purpose. That bigger reason that you’re doing what it is that you’re doing. It’s so, so important. 

It’s why when I’m working with new clients, it’s one of the things that I really work to address right away, right from the start is what is that vision of who they want to be? What impact do they want to make in the world? What is it that they truly want to build? What does that dream business really look like? Right? What does that dream life really look like? What is it that they want to be known for? Who do they want to help? How do they want to help them? All of these important decisions and these commitments that need to be made in the business. 

That can only really come when you have a sense of your long term vision. That can only come when you’re able to stay focused on the long game. So this is the first lesson that I want to impart to you all. 

The second lesson that I have learned is the importance of creating value. When I say creating value, what I’m talking about here is creating a level of value for your clients, for your most ideal clients, that you are creating value in a way that truly helps them solve the problem they have. It helps them truly get to where the it is that they want to go. 

So that might be, for some of you, with their relationships. It might be with their health, or it could even be a personal challenge that that client might be having. But what I want you to understand is that it’s so important to be creating value for your people. It’s why I truly believe in the process that I teach and that I take my clients through is really thinking through this from the lens of creating value at a level that is 10 times the investment of their coaching program or whatever it is that they happen to be selling. You have to create real value. 

To do that I have found that it also requires a certain level of expertise. It requires intention. It requires a level of skill. It requires you to, also, as the coach, as the business owner to be sold on the value that you’ve created and can provide that to your clients. So that one is really, really important. 

The third lesson that I’ve experienced in my own business and that of my clients is the importance of what I call a holistic growth strategy. What I mean by a holistic growth strategy is this. It is building your business in a way that allows you to grow it and eventually scale it in a way that’s truly holistic. 

We don’t have time in this episode, but there’s a lot of elements to this. But essentially, my goal for you, for my clients, is for you to be able to build your business in a way that is truly sustainable. That allows for growth. That allows for growth in the short term, and also sets up the business for growth. And sets up the ability to scale when the time is right, when the business is at a point for that to happen. 

I found that especially in the coaching industry, being able to build the business in a holistic way, in a way that provides true value for clients and facilitates real transformation. From a business perspective, being able to take your client through a process, whether it be the onboarding process or the sales process or the marketing process. The idea here with this is that all of that process, all of the different phases of that journey, we really want that to support one another, right. We want all parts of the business to be working together holistically. So that’s been really, really important.

The next lesson is also a really important one. This is lesson number four. That is taking full responsibility for your success. Now, when needed, at times, this also means taking full responsibility for your lack of success. The truth is that I have found this to be a requirement if you want to build and grow a successful coaching business. 

I will say that my clients, my most successful clients, this is absolutely a differentiator that if I look from a bird’s eye view at their business, at the results in every case where the client is taking that full responsibility, even if that means taking responsibility for a lack of success, which does happen. This is by far one of the most important characteristics that’s required if you want to be a high earner in this industry. If you want to be a six, multiple six or seven, even eight figure coach, this is required. 

I believe in this so much. I even have created a whole masterclass, a whole training for my clients that goes in-depth into the different characteristics of being and operating as a multiple six, as a seven figure coach, and it’s absolutely something that’s required. I will tell you all this particular one, in most cases, especially when the results aren’t there, this one is not fun. 

The truth is most of what I’m laying out here in today’s podcast, it’s not the fun work. But what I will say is that it’s also the real work that will help you get to your goals. It’s the real work of becoming the leader that your business needs you to be. It’s the real work of treating your business as that successful business even before you might have the evidence, even before you might have the results. 

So this is one of the characteristics that I, throughout my life, really have done a lot of work on myself. I will say that it’s something that I can really see how well it has served me in my business and in my life. It’s always taking that full responsibility and never abdicating that responsibility to someone else. And looking at whatever it is and asking great questions of myself that gets to the truth, that gets to the core of whatever it is, and then allowing myself to go out and solve the problem if that’s what’s needed. But never giving that power to anything else or anyone outside of myself. That’s been really, really key. All right. 

The fifth lesson that I want to share is your ability to manage your doubt. Now, what I have learned is that no matter how good you think you are at managing your doubt, the truth is when you’re building a business, you will be challenged in ways that you’ve likely never been challenged before. 

So even if you’ve successfully managed doubt throughout your life. And I will say this, it’s really interesting when I look at my clients and how amazing they are. So many of them have done so many big things in their life. They’re all amazing in their own way. And for many of them, what they have already overcome already in their life, the things that they have worked through, it really does blow my mind. 

What’s so interesting is that when it comes to the process of building a business, the level of doubt that has to be overcome for most people, the honest truth is that it’s a level of doubt that they’ve probably never experienced before. It’s a level of doubt that tends to creep up in so many different ways, and even in little ways. 

So it’s really interesting as I watch this happen and also have experienced this myself. I think when you can really recognize when you’re in a place of doubt and when you can recognize that you have agency, that you have choice as far as whether or not you can believe that doubt or whether or not you choose to believe that doubt. I think this is where the real power is. 

It’s also one of the reasons why I will say I think your ability to effectively manage your doubt and your emotions that doubt produces in you is by far one of the most important skills you can develop. It’s one of the most important muscles that I think you can build. All right.

The next lesson, lesson number six, that I also think is a huge differentiator when it comes to building a successful business is your ability, your skill, or not only being a great coach, but also being a great business owner. So having the skill of being a great coach is step number one, right. As a coach, growing a coaching business, to me that is really a given, right. Like that is step number one.

The second step to that is understanding the difference between your skill as a coach and your skill of building a business. There is a real difference between the two. Something that I have observed that I think comes up no matter where you are in your journey and something important to understand is that this difference between being a coach and having the skill of coaching and being able to effectively coach others is really important.

I will say that for my clients, they are great coaches. All of them whether that’s been through a certification program or a series of certification programs or trainings that they have gone through, they are all really skilled when it comes to coaching. Again, the other side to this is the skill of being an effective business owner.

So what I have learned and experienced is that you have to be the type of leader to your business, you have to develop the skills and the competencies to be a skilled business owner that is capable of building a business to whatever level it is that you want. I actually think this is one of the most profound transformations that I am able to witness as a coach. That I have the opportunity to witness with my clients is the transformation that happened when someone comes into the program, when they go through the transformation of not only being a great coach but also moving that into becoming a great business owner. 

It’s a really exciting thing that I get to observe. What I will say about this is when this happens and when you experience this and when you do the work to actually make this happen in your life, so many limitations, so many stories, so many reasons just melt away and just fall to the wayside because of the new level of confidence that gets built in the process. Because of the new set of muscles that are built and the byproducts of that in the business. So understanding the importance of not only being a great coach but also being a great business owner, that combination, it truly does change the game.

All right. The next lesson, lesson number seven, is actually, I think, one of the more simple lessons. But just because it is simple, I want to encourage you all to not dismiss it as easy because it’s also one of the reasons why I see so many coaches who don’t reach their goals. It’s one, again, the differentiators that I see with coaches who do hit their goals versus the coaches who do not. That is your ability to stay focused and to be focused on the right things in your business, on the things that actually do matter in the business. This will change everything for you if you do this consistently and if you are focused first on the things that actually matter.

So one of the things that I see slow so many of you down is when you lose focus, when you don’t follow through on something. When you don’t follow something all the way through, when you get distracted by something that, in most cases, is a much lower priority in the business. Or even when you decide to try and implement all sorts of different things at one time, but not really mastering any of it.

So this one is really big. I was recently coaching some of my clients on this in one of our group coaching calls. The more that I was thinking about this and thinking about the work that I do and was thinking about this coaching call. And, you know, I have the advantage of being in the front row seat to a lot of businesses, to really being able to see what comes up when you’re in the process of growing and scaling the business. 

So when I say your ability to stay focused, to not get distracted by external things or to be distracted by doubt or any other internal emotions, or other internal narratives, it’s really, really important. So I want to encourage you all to be very discerning when it comes to where you’re putting your focus and where you’re putting your energy and where you’re putting your resources. Focus is one of those traits, one of those skill sets that I believe is a must in so many areas, and especially in business. 

All right, lesson number eight is the importance of failure. I’ve talked about this in a number of different ways in previous episodes, and I want to reiterate it here. That entrepreneurship, this game of entrepreneurship that we are all playing. If you are truly in the game, if you are actually on the field, if you are in the arena, “failure”, which side note, I believe is all learning. 

Anyways, it’s going to be required. Being able to recognize it as that, as learning, as growth instead of using it as a way to prove to yourself that you don’t have what it takes. Versus using it against yourself. Versus using it as evidence that what you want isn’t possible for you. How you view “failure” to the degree you try and resist failure in your business, the more you try and escape it, the more you try and resist it and use it as evidence against yourself, the farther it will take you away from where you want to go. 

So if you’re experiencing this in your business, if you’ve had a ton of failures, I want you to know that’s actually a great sign. It actually means that you’re in the game. It means that you’re on the playing field. The truth is you can’t win the game when you’re only in the stands.

All right. Lesson number nine is building an appreciation for and having reverence for the process. From my experience, I think this is one lesson that I think we really need to be conscious of. It’s something that I have found requires a very high level of self-awareness. It requires a high level of self-coaching. It requires a high level of skill when it comes to effectively managing your emotions. 

It’s also something that when you aren’t effectively managing your brain, when you aren’t effectively managing your emotions and you’re allowing the “process” to get to you, here’s what I want to say about that. It really never is about the process. It really never is about anything outside of yourself. It’s truly only what you make it mean. I know that can be hard to hear. In a lot of cases, it’s not the answer that I know most people want to hear. 

But if you can find the lesson and if you can live from the lesson that you’re being taught, that’s where you can start to think at a such higher level. That’s where you can think so much more clearly. It allows you to ultimately really transcend and be able to move beyond the process. 

All right, last but not least, lesson number 10 is lean into the hard. Here’s what I want to say about this. I see so much energy, so much time, so much mental real estate, precious real estate that is spent wishing, in many cases, that things were easier. 

What I will say is I want to encourage you to look at hard as the opportunity for what it is. Recognize that you have the opportunity to grow and become a version of yourself that you haven’t experienced before. That you have the capacity to build something that can be so much bigger and larger than you ever thought. That you truly have an opportunity that’s available to you. The opportunity to build a business. The opportunity that didn’t exist in generations past. 

These things aren’t easy, but nothing ever worth doing this. 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.