Ep #191: Being a Successful Coach: A Simple Process

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 191.

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 well. I have a really important episode for you all today. A very powerful process that I am going to walk you through, and a process that I have used for several years to grow and scale my own business and really help facilitate the growth for all of my clients as well. So with that, I’m excited to bring to you today’s conversation. Let’s go to the show.

So let’s dive into today’s topic. Today, we are going to talk about how to create the results you want in your business. What I am going to share with you today is something that I feel currently really connected to. It’s because I think I’m, right now in this moment, living the result of having used this process in my own business. So, it feels very real to me, and I’m actually living, as I said, in a state of results today as a result of me doing this work that we’re going to talk about today. 

So I am really excited to share this with you because this process, the concepts that I’m going to share with you, really are everything when it comes to creating results in your business, but it’s also something you can use to create the results you want in your life. All right. So, let’s get started. 

I want you all to know that what I’m going to walk you through here today is a process that I use and that I use all the time daily to create results in my business. When I look back over the course of the last couple of years, this has been particularly vital to my success. It’s been vital to the results that I’ve been able to create in my business. I’m 100% confident that when you really start to implement this, when you really understand this process and really put it to use in your business, in your life, that it will also help you create the exact results that you want in your business.

All right. I want to start this conversation first by saying that thought is the preamble to everything. Here’s what I mean by this. Before something that hasn’t existed before exists, it must first be a thought. So let me explain this. I want you to take pause for a minute and think about this example. It’s because I think this is something we can really easily miss.

So, let’s think about our smartphones for a minute. I’m sure most of you are probably listening to this podcast right now on your smartphone. What I want you to consider is that one of the main reasons that your smartphone even exists is because it was first a thought. It was first just purely a thought. So, stay with me. 

Before your smartphone could be built, it was first an idea. It was literally a thought in someone’s mind. Let’s use the iPhone as an example. Before the iPhones were actually built, before they were actually in our existence, the iPhone was first just a thought. 

Once the concept of the iPhone was thought about and considered with repetition over and over again, it was then and only then that Steve Jobs and his team at Apple were able to start to actually build the first iPhone, when they could start to develop the actual phone and bring it into physical form. 

In fact, there wouldn’t have been a way for them to bring the iPhone into form without first having the idea and the thoughts about what they even wanted it to be. In contrast, the iPhone could not have been made first had Steve Jobs and his team not done the brainstorming and the thinking that I’m sure went into the development process. So, my point with this first is that this is truly the same with your business. If you want to bring what it is you want into your life within your business, it requires you to think about it first. It requires thought first. 

This is the first point I want to make with this topic. Thought truly is the preamble to everything. When you look around, think about this for a minute. Everything in our physical world is a direct product of someone’s thought. Literally everything. I think this is really very, very powerful to understand. 

When it comes to building a coaching business, when it comes to enrolling clients into your programs, every aspect of your business must also first come from a thought. It literally can’t come from anywhere else. It really is the only way that we’re able to bring anything into form, into results, is by first thinking about it.

So, what we’re going to be diving into today is an extremely powerful process for you to understand that as an entrepreneur, you are the only one that is responsible for your results in your business. I think that’s a really special gift that we have as entrepreneurs is that we do have full control. We do have full power over what it is that we create. 

I want you to see that this isn’t just a metaphor. I want you to see that there’s actual truth in this, and you can see how your reality truly is created by your thoughts, and that’s where it all begins. 

Now that we can see how our thoughts truly are the foundation to everything in our life, I want to take this a few steps further. Let’s just say that you’re at a point in your business where you’ve made your first $10,000. Let’s say that you’ve worked with a handful of clients, and based on how you’ve priced your program, you’ve generated about $10,000 so far in your business. Let’s say that your goal, where you really want to be in your business, is to have made your first $100,000. Your true goal is to make at least a $100K in your business.

Now, I know for a lot of you, that’s one of your initial goals. It’s to be able to make that for six figures in your business. What I want you to see here is that your level of thinking up until this point, that level of thinking that got you to $10K, is a very different level of thought from a place that is going to generate $100K in your business.

For some of you, it might be related to your niche. It might be related to the thoughts you’re having about your program, to the way that you’re marketing, to how you’re perceiving yourself as a coach. For a lot of you, it might be all of that. But I want you to follow with me here that there is a level of thinking that produced that first $10,000 in your business, but there is a different level of thinking that’s required in order to produce that first $100K in your business. 

Let me explain this on a biological level. The way that the brain works is that once we have a thought, that thought then triggers an emotion within us. At which point we then act from that emotion. The actions that we then take, the sum of those actions, then produce the results that we have, and that creates our reality. In this case, obviously, we’re talking about your coaching business. 

Now, there’s a lot of things that are happening within our brains when we’re thinking. One of the most important things to understand is the power of repetition when it comes to your brain. That is because 95% of what we do on a daily basis is purely driven by our habitual behavior. It’s driven by our unconscious thinking.

When we think a thought repetitively, whether it’s a good or it’s a bad thought, what that does is it creates either a neural pathway or it strengthens that current neural pathway. So, it gets more reinforced the more we think that thought .The more reinforced that that thought becomes, the more habitual it will become, and the less we notice it because it becomes a habit. When things are habits, we’re not consciously thinking of them as much as we do when it’s something that’s not a habit.

One simple example of this is brushing your teeth. For all of us, brushing our teeth is a daily habit. It’s a given. We don’t have to think about it. It probably happens for all of us around the same time every day. When you think about your morning routine, at some point within that routine, I’m sure that you brush your teeth. When that usually happens is probably the same way every day. That’s an easy example of where we can see the power of repetition and habits.

When we look at this from the lens of growing a business, what I want you to see here is that there’s also a collection of thoughts or at least a main thought that we think over and over when it comes to our business. For a lot of coaches that I see, I would say it’s more of a collection of thoughts that all support kind of one main thought. 

What happens is the more that thought or those collection of thoughts are consciously thought or unconsciously thought, the stronger those neural pathways become and then the more that belief is reinforced. 

Let’s just say that one of those thoughts or the collection of those thoughts are predominantly thoughts that are surrounding a belief that you’re not good enough in some way. That maybe you’re not good enough to be a multi-figure coach. That you’re not good enough to create the level of results that you really want. It might be that you’re not good enough that clients will even pay you.

Whatever that is, I want you to look at that for yourself because the truth is that we all have a version of that somewhere. What I want you to recognize is that in order to change your results, in order to overcome your current level of results and be able to create that new level of results that you want in your business, you must first start thinking differently. This is really, really important.

So, if your goal, if your true desire, is to have a coaching business that generates $100K in revenue then you must start thinking different thoughts, and those thoughts have to be aligned to that result. One of the most effective ways that I have learned to do this is by first connecting to, and visualizing, and spending time already having that result.

For me, when I think back to this place when I was building my business to my first six figures, I had to first start thinking and reinforcing the thoughts so that they became beliefs. So that they became habitual for me. Because once they started to become more habitual, it was then that I was able to start living and working from a different emotional state, from an emotional state that supported me in taking different actions in my business. From those actions, I was then able to create the results that I wanted in my business. 

When I think about where I am today, where I’m finalizing the details of my upcoming retreat, where I’ve hired some new team members to help me with certain aspects of my business, where I’m coaching amazing clients in the exact program that I visualized. I want you to know that this all happened as a result of my thinking and being able to develop new levels of my own thought. 

I had to start questioning where I was at the time. When this wasn’t my reality, I had to start questioning what was my current level of thought. I want you to all know that this type of change, this level of habitual thinking, takes time. It truly is a process, and it requires full intention, and it requires a lot of repetition.

Here’s a process that I highly recommend you practice if you’re trying to create a new level of result in your business. The first step is that you first must become aware. You have to first gain an understanding of what is your current level of thinking.

It’s crucial that you’re looking at the thoughts, at the collection of thoughts that you’re thinking repetitively throughout the day as it relates to your business. I want you to first become very curious about what those thoughts are and write them down. The reason it’s important to write them down is because it’s important for you to see on paper what those thoughts are.

Another great way, if you’re struggling with this, is to just look at your current results. The reason for this is because the physical, i.e. your results, are going to always follow the non-physical, i.e. your thoughts. If you want to make $100,000 in your business but yet you’ve only made $10,000 in your business, you have to start asking yourself what thoughts led me to make $10,000? I promise you that whatever those thoughts are, those are the reason that you have those results in your business.

Now, once you’ve identified your thoughts, I want you to ask yourself how do these thoughts make me feel? If you were able to identify the emotion, the one emotion that you’ve been predominantly feeling as it relates to your business, I want you to think about what that emotion is. Then I want you to look at what do you actually do when you’re in this emotional state.

For example, let’s say that you are feeling a lot of doubt. Let’s say that when you look back at the last few months as it relates to your business, you’ve been feeling a lot of self-doubt. That’s been your predominant emotion. When you feel doubt, I want you to really look at this through the lens with complete honesty. I want you to look at what have you actually done when you’re in that state of doubt and get really specific here. 

If you can relate to this, for a lot of you, this might mean that you’ve stopped showing up in your business. It might mean that you’ve been second guessing things, that you haven’t been clear on how to really approach things. It probably means that you’ve been spending a lot of time analyzing things and not a lot of time actually taking action and implementing. You’re probably spending a lot of time in passive activities or being in a state of what I call consumption mode. 

So, when you look at the result of all of those activities, of those actions, that’s what has actually created those current level of results that you have in your business. I want you to know that this is 100% true every single time.

If we want to first create new and different and better results, we have to first start thinking differently. Let me walk you through an exercise to help you see how you can use the same concept to create exactly the results you want in your business. Here’s what I want you to start with. If you can take notes here, this is going to really help. I would say grab a journal, grab a piece of paper, if you can.

What I want you to think about is what is the result that you want most in your business right now? For a lot of you, it’s probably a financial result. It might be to generate your first $100K this year in your business. For others of you, it could be a number of new clients. It could be dialing in your marketing. It could be getting a new program in place. Whatever that is, I want you to be really clear about what that is.

Then once you have that and once you’ve got full clarity on what is truly that end result that you want, I want you to write that at the bottom of your page. I want you to write that as your result. After you’ve done that, I want you to just move up the page slightly, and I want you to then consider what are all of the actions that are going to be required in order to create that result.

For example if your goal is to make $100,000 in 2020, I want you to list out every single action that you can think of that is going to support you, that is going to accomplish that goal. Here would be my recommendation if that is your goal. My recommendation for you, if that is your goal, would be to number one, you need to get a solid marketing strategy in place so that you can have a steady and predictable stream of clients that you’re attracting into your business.

Because the reality is if you don’t have a system that consistently attracts clients into your business, you’re going to continue to struggle enrolling clients into your programs because they don’t even know that you can help them. So, within that action of implementing a solid marketing strategy, unless you’ve done this before and unless you’re crystal clear on what that strategy is, you’re probably going to need to enlist some help.

Then I want you to ask yourself what are all of the actions within enlisting that help do you need to take? I want you to get very specific with this. So take your time. I want to say that this is one of the most important pieces for you to get really clear on is what are these actions?

Once you’ve listed out what all of these actions are, I want you to then ask yourself what are you going to need to feel on a consistent basis in order to consistently take action that you need to take on these things? I want you to really feel into this. I want you to really think and feel what is the one emotion that is going to fuel you, that is going to put you in an emotional state where you’re taking that action daily towards your goal?

Once you have that clarity, I want you to ask yourself what do I then need to think in order to feel that way? This is where I want you to put your focus. Because the more frequently that you think this thought, the more it will become habitual.

That is the key with this. At first, it’s not going to feel natural to you. You probably won’t fully believe this new thought, and that’s okay. But what I want you to understand is that your subconscious doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s not real. So, when you do focus your thoughts, your energy, on things that might not feel completely believable to you, it’s important to keep putting your conscious thoughts towards that which you do want.

Because what you’ll soon find is that the more you practice this and the more repetition that you’re thinking these new thoughts and you’re living in the emotional state of it, you’re going to start to see things come together. The things that you need in order to create that result.

For example, it might be someone coming into your life that can help you reach your goals. It might be a new idea that’s exactly what you need in order to reach your perfect clients. Or it could just be the inspiration that you need in order to take massive action towards your goal. 

Whatever it is, I want you to keep putting your focus on this. Keep consciously thinking these new thoughts that support you in reaching your goal. More importantly, keep believing that even though you might not have the results immediately, know that it’s working for you. That is the secret.

All right, my friends. I hope you have an amazing week and start putting this into practice for yourself. This really can change everything for you. 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.