Ep #49: How to Protect Your Energy When Building Your Business

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast episode number 49.

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. I hope you had an amazing week. We had a great week. The kids officially went back to school and they are loving it. And I have to say that I’m loving it too.

So today I want to talk to you all about something that I think especially in our environment today, in the climate of what’s happening in our world right now, it’s something that is really, really, really important. And I recently did an episode talking about the energy and the importance of your energy when you’re building a business.

And today I want to talk a little bit more about that and also share with you some best practices and some strategies that you can use that will help you protect your energy. And ensure that you’re maximizing your energy so that you can build your business. And the reason I believe this is so, so important is because for many of you I know that the reason you’re listening, I know that your goal is to build a six, and for many of you, ultimately seven figure and beyond practice.

And I am all for that, in fact that is my goal with all of my clients no matter what stage of business growth they’re in. And that’s how I have developed my programs, that the work that we do is focused on that. It’s focused on getting them to either that first six figure mark. Or if they’re already at that point in their business it’s really helping them to scale. So to scale beyond and move into multiple six and eventually seven figures.

And I have to say that when you’re in this process, when I’ve been in this process and my clients can definitely attest to this, what we’re going to talk about today, it’s really, really important. And so I want to talk to you about protecting your energy in a way that allows you to be focused, that allows you to be very intentional with your time. And also in a way that allows you to essentially reach a level so that you can become known in your particular area of expertise.

And I really want to reiterate that last point, the idea of being known in your particular area of expertise. And I want to talk a little bit about why that’s important. So, many of you, I’m guessing, have heard the saying, ‘if you’re talking to everyone you’re talking to no one’. And I really couldn’t agree more with that statement, especially within the coaching industry. And for most of you, especially if you want to grow and scale your business to a big level you’re going to have to be very particular about where you’re spending your time and what you’re choosing to focus on.

And in order to become that expert, to become known in a particular area, there’s a high level of discernment that’s required. It’s a higher level of thought that you have to put into play in order to get to that level. And so to do that you have to be protecting your energy in a way where you aren’t allowing distractions, where you’re clear on where you’re headed. And you’re also very clear on what you’re working on.

And so in order to start this conversation I think one of the best questions that I can offer to you to help you move in this direction is this. And that is what do I really want to create? And I want you to sit with that for a minute and maybe do that after the episode and sit down and really take some time to journal on that. That would be my recommendation. And I want you to really answer that question in detail.

And I know on the surface some of you might be thinking, well, that’s a pretty basic question and it is. But here’s the reality, most people and most entrepreneurs that I see, don’t ask themselves that question. And they don’t ask themselves that question and really allow themselves to answer that question to the level of detail that’s required in order to build a business to that level.

And I want to offer to you today that to the level that you answer that question, to the level of detail that you answer that question will correlate with the results that you have in your business. Because the reality is, is that every single day as I’m working with clients I see more and more evidence that our businesses are a direct reflection of how we answer that question.

So it is a really important question that I want you to take some time and ask yourself. Because what happens is, is when we don’t ask ourself this question and we don’t get clear on what it is that we want to create, the danger is, is that we don’t know where we’re going. And when that happens, when we’re in a space where we’re confused, or we’re unclear, or we’re second guessing things. What happens is, is our energy becomes very quickly fragmented. And when our energy is fragmented, distractions take over.

And as you’re building a business, as you are, whether you’re building your practice full-time or even on the side, there are going to be distractions everywhere. And what it comes down to is where we’re placing our energy is what ultimately we grow in our life, what ultimately we grow in our business.

So I want you to really see here that if we’re not clear on where we’re going and what it is that we want to create. If we aren’t clear on this for ourselves, and also for our business what it is that we’re even building, what happens is, is we start to create more and more confusion within ourselves. And we tend to get more and more distracted.

And I think especially when you’re first starting out, it can be really hard to distinguish what is a distraction and also what isn’t. And this is where I see the importance of getting coaching and why I believe coaching is so, so critical as you are building your business. Because what can happen very quickly is that when you’re not able to discern what is a distraction and what isn’t, you start to make decisions. And you start to go down different ‘radicals’ with things that at the end of the day aren’t actually contributing to the growth of your business.

And so I want to give you an example of this. One great example of this is not niching down. This is one of the things that I think can cause some of the most distractions as a new coach and business owner is not knowing who you serve, it’s not niching down. And what happens is, is instead I see a lot of people that try to be a generalist. They try to help everyone.

And so yes, I do believe that as coaches we can help anyone, especially given the tools that we have. But there is tremendous power when you know exactly who you serve, when you know exactly the problem you solve for them, and you know exactly how you solve it. And not only is this powerful in the sense that your clients can then relate to what it is that you’re saying in your marketing and any messages that you’re putting out, but for you on an internal level.

When you have this focus, this level of clarify, this level of detail as far as what you’re creating you have such a stronger ability to discern based on what it is that you’re trying to create, based on who you serve and the problem that you also solve.

And so I want you all to think about this for a moment. And I want to give you another example. I want you to imagine for a moment that you were in the process of looking for a coach yourself. So let’s say that you had a particular life issue. Let’s just use relationships as an example. And let’s say that you wanted to hire a coach to help you fix the problem you’re having in your relationship. And that can be in your marriage, it can be in your partnership, whatever that looks like for you.

And I want you to really consider this, what would be more powerful to you, a coach that says they can help you because they’re a life coach. Or a coach that says they can help you because they specialize in relationship coaching and they have a particular method that they use with their clients that gets proven results. I want you to just ponder that for a moment. Which one is more compelling? Which one would you actually pay for?

I think it’s pretty unanimous that you’d probably be more willing to pay the coach that specializes in relationship coaching, that has a particular method that he or she uses, that is positioning themselves as the expert in that area.

So that’s what I’m talking about here, niching down, deciding exactly who you help and who you don’t as well as the problem you solve is everything. And it’s especially important if you want to grow your practice to six or seven figures. Because a funny thing happens when you do decide to niche down and you put your focus into serving a certain type of client and solving a certain type of problem. What happens is, is that the people, those ideal clients that you want to work with start to become attracted to you.

And when it comes to developing content and getting into the actual marketing of your business, unless you are niched down, your marketing will not land, it won’t attract your ideal clients to you. And the only way to do this is to niche down and position yourself as the person, as that expert that can help them.

And I want to talk for a moment about one of the byproducts that I see with this, that I think again, as you are starting out in this industry, sometimes you don’t always understand the power of this. But one of the byproducts that I think is one of the most important aspects is that when you have this level of clarify in what you’re doing on a daily basis, when you know very clearly what you’re building, it will allow you to communicate so much more powerfully to your audience.

And on an energetic level it’s also going to ensure that you don’t get lost in what I call shiny object syndrome, where you start bouncing from one strategy to the next or you start putting out conflicting messages in your messaging. And what happens is, is when you do this, this is actually when you start to see your business grow so much faster, when you really get clear on these things and in particular in your niche and your ideal clients and how you help them. So this is super, super important.

Alright, so another reason I believe that protecting your energy is one of the most important things you can do is because it allows you to take charge of your time. Time is our most precious asset, especially as entrepreneurs. And what happens is, is when we are in a place, if we are lost in what I call shiny object syndrome, it’s one of the things that we very quickly can start wasting.

It’s one of the biggest reasons in fact, that I see coaches struggle when it comes to building their businesses. It’s because they aren’t consciously deciding what they’re focusing on. And instead they’re spending the majority of their time in reaction mode. And they’re essentially reacting to things around them.

And I believe that even when you’re not working in or on your business, one of the most important things you can be doing is to take charge of your time, is to take charge of what you’re focusing on. So that the time that you’re spending outside of your business is actually recharging you. It’s actually feeding you in a way instead of taking more energy from you.

And so this is another reason I wanted to bring this conversation to you today is because we are in an unprecedented time in our history. And we have so much more access and so much more information coming to us every single day. And right now especially there is a lot of opinions that are showing up everywhere. It’s showing up on social media, in all of our feeds, it’s showing up on the television, it’s really everywhere.

And so with that I think now especially given what’s happening in our world I think it’s really, really important to be conscious of our energy and to be conscious of where we’re placing our focus. And so what happens is, is when we do this or when we don’t do this we’re essentially giving our power away to those things that are external to us.

And so in many ways we’re giving the power of our emotions to the news for instance, the things that are happening outside of us, to the things that are happening in our world. And when that starts to happen we start losing focus, we start losing our discernment and we become at the effect of our emotions, instead of consciously choosing and maintaining our internal power.

And so I want to offer to you today the importance of protecting your energy when it comes to building your business. And I want you to see that your power comes from your own self-leadership. It comes from your ability to manage and protect your power and to protect and maintain your focus so that you can ultimately help more and more people build the business you really, really want.

Alright my friends, ask yourselves what you really want to create. Ask yourselves what do you really want, really think about your answers to these questions. Protect your energy in a way that allows you to hone in on your goals and in a way that cuts out the noise and the distractions, then go out and create. Have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again 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.