Ep #141: How to Measure Your Success

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 141.

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 excited to have you here. I hope you’re having a fantastic summer. We are having an amazing summer so far. I can’t believe we’re almost halfway through the year. It has been a really great summer so far, and a great year, really. I’m looking forward to the next six months and moving into the third quarter strong.

Before we dive into today’s episode, I have to tell you all. I am sitting here just blown away by the results that my clients are getting. One of the reasons that I share these examples with you, for all of you listening who are in the process of building and growing your business, is to really show you what is possible and to really share with you examples, real examples, of what my clients are doing so that you also see the possibility for yourself.

So just this week we had some really, really amazing wins. We had a client in my High Level Mastermind who just came off of her first $75,000 cash received month. I don’t know if you’ve ever done the math, but to hit a million dollars a year, it’s $84,000 a month. So we are just right there. That was really her goal from the start of this year was to grow to a million this year. So we are right there. She is just about at that run rate, which is so, so exciting. We’re only about five months in, and she’s already just within reaching distance. So that is super, super exciting.

We also have other high level clients who are launching brand new programs who literally within a matter of just a few short months have grown their programs to over $150,000 in revenue. Clients who are launching a new group offers at the highest price points that they’ve ever offered. So we have just so many clients who are gaining so much traction in their businesses. It’s just such an exciting time to be a coach and to do this work and to be able to build a business that allows you to make such an impact with your clients, such a deep impact and also such a deep impact on the world.

At the same time, it’s such an opportunity to create a business that allows you to have the lifestyle and a business that can really afford you a ton of freedom, a ton of money, and all of the things that come with that. So for all of you listening, I share these examples with you because I know, for me, when I was starting in my journey as I was growing my business, I know how important it was for me to hear examples and to see examples of this happening. I just feel it’s really important that I share these examples with you to really demonstrate and show you all what is possible for you as well.

So I’m so excited for these clients. But I’m also so excited for all of you who are on this journey of building your business, and the possibilities that are really available to you. I will tell you if you’ve been listening to my podcast, if you resonate with my teachings, with my approach, and if you’re serious about growing and scaling a highly successful coaching business, I want to really encourage you to apply to my High Level Mastermind.

If you are at the point where you’re ready to scale your business, and if you’re at that point, you’ve likely already hit or you’re trending towards that six figure mark in your business. Or if you’re looking to break through and really hit that first six figures and you’ve been working with clients probably on a one-on-one basis. You’ve had some success in your business, but you know at the same time that you’re ready for the next level, I also want to invite you to step into that and to step into your next level and join us. We have some amazing things happening, and I would love to help you do that.

So go to the show notes or go to my website amandakarlstadtcoaching.com. There is a short application. Once you fill that out, you’ll have the opportunity to book a call with us. We’ll see where you’re at and where you’d like to go, and we’ll see how we can help you do that.

All right, let’s go ahead and dive in. So today, I want to talk to you all about something that I haven’t talked about before. That is using your goals against yourself. This is something that I have been noticing quite a bit recently. It’s something I’ve been observing with a lot of coaches. I think it’s something that when you’re setting out to do big things in the world, when you are setting impossible goals, and when you are setting out and looking to do extraordinary things. It’s something that I think a lot of coaches, without even realizing it, where they start to use their goals against themselves.

So I want to talk to you about what I mean by that in just a minute. But before we get to that, what tends to happen especially if you have big goals for your business, especially if you are setting big, extraordinary goals, and you’re putting yourself out into the world. What so often can happen is that in this pursuit, as you move forward and as you take action towards the goal, it’s likely that the action that you’re taking and the things that you’re doing, the truth is that they usually don’t work the way you want them to work right out of the gate.

So, for instance, you might have an idea of how you wish something would work. Or you might plan a launch and move forward with that launch and do all the things that are required for that launch, and maybe because you’ve never done a launch before it’s likely that there will be things that won’t go as planned. So no matter where you are in the journey for most coaches who are growing and scaling their businesses, the truth is that you will experience what I’m talking about here today, especially when things aren’t going as planned in the business.

I know that so many of you can relate to this as you’re listening. So let’s talk about this. When you set an impossible goal for yourself, a goal that excites you, that motivates you, that seems impossible for you, what happens is that when you go out and when you pursue that goal. When you decide let’s say that you’re going to make multiple six figures in your business or you’re going to make a million dollars in your business or you’re going to make $10 million in your business, whatever that number is.

When you start to do the work that’s necessary to build your business to that level, you will inevitably face so many challenges. You will face so many different failures. You’ll experience so many things that won’t go as planned and experiencing results of not being what you expected them to be.

It’s when you get to this point in time when you’ve set that goal and you feel like you’re doing all the things and you feel like you’re working so hard, yet the results just aren’t quite there yet. It’s what you decide to do with that result. It’s what you decide to do with that circumstance. You can choose to either support yourself in growing your business to the level that you want.

Or, and this is what happens so often for so many coaches who are going after those big goals and for coaches who are playing the big game as I know all of you listening are because so many of you are already achievers. When you aren’t achieving that which you want to achieve, it’s very easy to start to use your goal against yourself.

Here’s what that looks like. When you’re using your goals against yourself, you’re being hard on yourself. You are beating yourself up. You are tearing yourself down. You are thinking thoughts like this will never happen or I’m not capable of making this happen or I’m not good enough or I really screwed this up. I should have known better. I don’t have what it takes. It can sound like so many different variations of thoughts like this.

So if you’re sitting in a place where you are thinking negative thoughts about yourself and in some way hoping that it’s going to help you achieve your goals, I want to tell you the reality is that that way of thinking only makes it more impossible for yourself. So I want you to consider for yourself right now, how might you be using your goals against yourself? How might you be thinking or saying things to yourself in a way, that’s actually creating more and more of what you don’t want.

If you’re realizing through this conversation, that you’re using your goals against yourself, I want you to instead consider this. I want you to consider instead how much committed action you’ve been taking towards your goals. Think about what it is that you have done. Think about the ways that you have shown up and done the things that you needed to do. Think about the results that you have created and think about what those results are telling you.

I want to encourage you all to ask yourself, What have you learned from the results that you have? What transformations have you already experienced as a result of taking committed action towards your goals? What can you learn from them? When you look at your progress, ask yourself how much progress have you already made? How much farther along are you than you weren’t even six months ago or even 12 months ago?

I promise you if you really sit with these questions, for many of you, I think you might be surprised with what you find. Because here’s the truth. When you are in the game and when you are going after big things in life in your business and you’re setting those impossible goals and you’re committing to those impossible goals and you’re taking committed action on those impossible goals. Even if that end result, even when it might seem like such a huge gap between where you are and where you’re going and what you want to build. The truth is, is that there is still progress. You have still made progress.

You’ve probably experienced huge transformations already. You’ve made some great progress already. But right now, you might not be seeing it because you’re so focused on that big impossible goal. It’s so important that you take time and celebrate your wins. That you take time and notice and celebrate the progress that you have made. That you acknowledge the transformations and the evolution that you’ve likely already experienced. But what you have to first be aware of is whether or not you’re doing this, you have to first beyond yourself as to whether or not you’re using your goals against yourself.

One of the ways that I’ve learned to practice this in my own life and in my business is by really looking at and acknowledging the gains that I’ve made. The learning and the growth and the evolution that I’ve experienced even if things didn’t go as planned, even if I’m falling short of my goals, even if I think certain things should be different. So by always looking for what those gains are and really looking at the learning and the lessons in those gains, it’s been so, so tremendously helpful for me.

I think another great way you can shift yourself away from using your goals against yourself is by measuring how much committed action you have been taking towards your goals. I will point out that this will be useful only if you have in fact been taking committed action in your business. So for some of you, you might be in a place where you need to start taking more committed action. But for those of you that are, really take a look at the committed action that you’ve taken and start to measure yourself by that.

Now, the other thing I want to say is that for many of you, you will want to also use your lack of financial progress as a reason to be hard on yourself. This can be extremely challenging, especially when you’re in the building phase of your business. For most coaches when you are in that phase, when you’re investing your time, you’re investing your energy, your resources, and you’re working to really build that momentum. But yet it’s not quite there.

If this is you and if this resonates for you, I want to really challenge you to not use the lack of revenue, to not use the lack of clients as a reason to be hard on yourself. Instead, I want you to acknowledge where you’re at. I want to encourage you to learn what you need to learn but do it in a way where you’re not beating yourself up.

Here’s why this is so important. Your transformation, the real transformation that you want will only begin as you start to overcome yourself, as you start to overcome old patterns and old behaviors. When you commit to your goal, when you take committed action towards that goal, you’ll start to create new neural pathways. The pathways that you once had will start to fade away.

So if you’re finding yourself having thoughts like it’s not happening fast enough, or this isn’t working or I’m not capable. I don’t have what it takes. I want you to instead focus your energy, focus your thoughts on what you can do today. Focus on what you can do today that could be epic. Think about who you need to be right now in this moment. Bring it back to the present moment.

Use your results to learn and to grow and to evolve. Don’t use your results or lack of results as a reason to believe that you’re not worthy of your goal. Know that you’re 100% worthy and you’ve always will be, and you’ve always been. Acknowledge your progress, celebrate your progress, look for the gains. No matter what don’t use your big impossible goal against yourself. You are here to do amazing things. You are being called to do amazing things. You have what it takes. It’s your time. Let’s go. I’ll talk to you all next week. 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.