Ep #176: Encore: The Battle of Becoming 2.0

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 176.

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’re doing well. I have a really important episode for you today. This is an episode I released a while back that is a foundational teaching. It’s foundational framework that I have used over and over in my own business and have taught to so many of my clients as well.

I wanted to bring this to you all today because it’s been something that I personally have gone back to time and time again to help me navigate whether it be times of uncertainty or navigating times of doubt or just general confusion, all of the things that come up as you’re scaling a business.

It’s been a really important framework for me that I have used to really help me shift my thinking, to help me think differently about the challenge, to help me shift my focus, to help me move through and go through the challenges that I faced.

So I decided to bring this to you today because I know that for all of you listening, no matter where you are in your journey, there will be times where you will experience doubt. There will be times where you will experience fear. There will be times where you will be in a place of confusion. So my intention is that today’s episode becomes a powerful resource for you that you can go back to time and time again, and really see where is this showing up? What can I do to really move forward. So with that, let’s get to today’s show.

The teaching that I am bringing to you today is a very special teaching for me. It’s special because it’s something that I have used repeatedly, and I still use repeatedly in my own business. It’s something that I’ve had the pleasure of teaching some of my clients, and I’ve coached them on this in many, many scenarios.

For me, it’s just been one of the lessons, one of the most impactful truths that I have learned in my journey. It’s a tool. My intention is that this is a tool for you that you can use whether you’re a coach or any entrepreneur, quite honestly, as you are working to grow and scale your business. I’m just really excited to be able to bring it to you all today.

So I want to start out by saying that I think it’s really important to consider that when you are an entrepreneur, when you are a business owner, that there are some things that are very important to understand if your goal, if your intention is to build a highly successful business. I know for all of you that that is your goal.

So one of the things that I want to say right off the bat is that it’s really important to consider that in order to win at this game, in order to be a “winner”, you also have to be in a “fight”. So there’s a saying that goes you can’t be a winner if you’re not in a fight.

Now on the surface, you might be thinking, “Okay that’s all well and good, but what does this have to do with building my business?” What I’m going to offer to you here is that it actually has everything to do with building your business. Here’s why.

For all of you listening and for all of you who tune into my show every week, for all of my clients, for those of you that are attracted to my work, I know that you have a burning desire to be great. I know that you have a burning desire to create and to build and to grow and to scale a very successful business. A business that is exceptional. A business that helps clients on a deep level where you make a huge impact with your clients, with your programs, and where you make a ton of revenue while you’re doing it. I love that.

What’s really important to understand is that in order to be great, in order to build a business to a level like that, it requires a level of greatness from you. It requires a whole new up level of self. It requires shifting into and becoming that next version of you that creates those levels of results. I think this is a really beautiful thing.

What happens is that along that journey, along the journey of moving through the process and building your business to an extraordinary level, you also have to understand that in that journey you’re going to be in a fight. I’m not talking about a physical fight, of course. I’m talking about the mental, the emotional, the subconscious fight that whether you’re aware of it or not, you will find yourself in inevitably at one point or another.

It’s the fight that we’re all engaged in, that we must engage in in order to be successful, in order to experience the level of success that we want. That battle is the battle of the becoming. The battle is in being able to overcome who we are and becoming who we must be in order to lead and grow a business to an extraordinary level.

I know for me and for my clients, this is the most important aspect. It is the most important part of being able to create the business and to create the results and to be able to overcome who we are, who we have known ourselves to be in order to become who we’re truly meant to be in this world. In order to fully step into our potential.

Y’all, so much of this battle, so much of this fight is going to happen underneath the surface. It’s going to happen underneath your conscious thought. It’s going to happen underneath your strategy, underneath all of the doing. Instead, it’s all about the subconscious belief systems, the subconscious habits, the subconscious ways of being, the identity of who we truly believe ourselves to be. That is the battle, my friends.

If you are building a business and you are working to make quantum leaps in your business, that is the battle that must be overcome. So the battle we’re really up against no matter where you’re at in your journey, no matter where you want to take your business is in the subconscious. It’s in the subconscious identity of self.

I’ve talked about this in-depth on the podcast. I have several episodes where I dive deep into identity. In fact, I have a three part series on identity I did a few months back. It was called The Identity Series. So we’ll link that up in the show notes. I recommend you go back and listen to that series where who we’re really up against in this battle, in this fight, is ourself.

In most cases, the conditioned part of ourselves that was formed at a very early age. For all of us, the majority of our conditioning, our belief systems were conditioned by the age of seven. When you look at the reality for how most of us were conditioned, for most of us we were conditioned from the idea of safety and security.

So most of us were brought up, whether it was our parents or whoever it was that played the most significant role in raising us. Typically we were raised in a way where we were conditioned in a way that kept us safe. We were brought up and conditioned in a way that kept us secure. Where there was a level of certainty that was involved.

If we didn’t have parents or have someone in our life that was raising us from that lens, from that survival lens, I know for some of you that might have also meant that you had to raise yourself. You had to create an environment where you could also find some level of safety, some level of security, some level of certainty. For most of us, that is our conditioning. That is what we learned from a very early age and how we operate. If we fast forward to today, that’s still the way many of us operate.

Here’s what’s really important to consider. When you look at the act of building a business, when you look at the circumstance of building a business, any type of business is going to contain risk. So to start a business from the ground up, to launch a business, to do the things that are required in order for the business to grow, there are certain risks that are going to be involved. These risks, they can be tangible, but they can also be intangible.

So whether it’s something that we consciously think about on a daily basis, whether it’s the finances, whether it’s the investments that you’re making in your business, or you want to make in your business, or maybe you’ve made in your business. Whether it’s the marketing or the advertising that you know you need to do in order to grow the business, or whether it’s something that we’re not even aware of subconsciously.

I see this happen a lot with my clients. It might be a matter of being able to put yourself out in a bigger way. It might be a fear of failure. It might be operating from this old programming, from these old patterns that ultimately have the intention of keeping you safe.

The thing that I want you all to realize here is that there is a level of battle that’s happening. For most clients I work with and in my own experience, this is not just a one-time battle. This, my friends, is a daily battle. It’s a daily battle where you’re fighting these programs, where you’re fighting with the conditioning. Which, let’s be honest, for most of us it’s been decades.

Here’s what happens. There are, what I believe, really six main elements that our subconscious or that the “enemy” uses in an attempt to keep us safe, in the attempt to maintain the status quo. In an attempt to maintain certainty. The first way that this tends to show up for clients is by causing them to move into a state of confusion.

Now typically this manifests in a number of ways. But for the most part, for my clients, and for all of you listening, if you’ve ever experienced or maybe you’re experiencing confusion right now in this moment. Know that this is the first way, one of the ways, that your subconscious is trying to keep you safe. It’s trying to keep you in the cave, so to speak.

Because here’s what happens. When you’re confused or when you are allowing yourself to be confused, what happens is when we look at what the feeling of confusion actually triggers on a daily basis, what happens is the feeling of confusion very often halts any progress. What it actually creates instead is what I call spinning in your business.

Depending on what level your business is at, typically when you’re in the startup phase and you’re building your business, that can look like spinning over things like your niche or your program or your prices or your social media or whether or not you even have what it takes to build the business.

If you’re more advanced, this might present differently. It might look like confusion or spinning over your next hiring moves or about the finances, the operations, or what the next steps are to focus on in order to go to the next level. I see at this level where a lot of the old programming, a lot of the emotions that so many of us have been carrying around, in some cases our entire lives, this is where all of that tends to come up.

So no matter where you’re at, no matter what revenue level you’re currently at, I see this both with clients who are in that build phase, who are building to their six figures, and I see this with my clients who’ve already hit the million dollar level or maybe are on their way to their first million dollars. The truth is that inner battle, there is always going to be some level of it being present.

How we combat that, how we move beyond that, is through vision. It’s through clarity. So this is why I talk so passionately about the importance of vision and about the importance of having clarity in your business. It’s so, so important.

The next way the battle tends to surface is through problems. Again, I see this at both the $100K level, and I see this at the more advanced level, at the million dollar level. When you’re in the process of growing a business, there’s going to be inevitable problems. There’s going to be a certain set of problems that you’re going to encounter as you move forward and grow in your business.

It might be a problem with your technology. It could be a problem with a contractor or an employee. It might be a problem in your marketing. It might be a problem with you and your time and the feeling of always being overwhelmed. The fact is that no matter where you’re at, there will always be certain problems that are going to surface.

It’s when we allow the problem to overtake our conscious thought, when we allow the problem to overtake the vision, when we allow the problem to overtake our drive in where we’re going. That’s when we start to lose the battle.

So the most important element if you’re feeling overwhelmed, if you’re finding yourself overly focused on the problems in your business and not the solution is to remember and to exercise your ability to choose. To remember and exercise your ability to choose how to respond to the problem, how to find the solution to the problem, how to focus your energy on the solution rather than the problem. This is huge.

It’s something that as a coach I observe everyday with my clients. I can see very clearly when clients are allowing the problem to be in the driver seat versus focusing on the solution versus maintaining and exercising choice when it comes to solving problems. It’s very important to choose to focus on solutions, to be aware of what you’re focusing on when you find yourself experiencing problems so that you can move towards the solution.

All right. The next thing that tends to come up in this process is doubt. Doubt when you’re trying to build the foundation in your business, doubt when you don’t have the evidence that things will work out, doubt when you don’t have clients consistently coming into your business. Doubt when a launch didn’t go as planned. Doubt when you’re up leveling.

I see this all of the time with my clients. Even my high level clients who are scaling their businesses who have either hit that million dollar mark already or they’re moving into that million dollar level. There tends to be a lot of doubt that comes up that really poses the question whether or not they’re truly capable of running a business at that level. Whether they can maintain that level of business. Whether it was a fluke to begin with, right. Whether they are qualified to run a business at that level.

So a lot of feelings of insignificance come up, feelings of who am I? Can I do this? Feelings of doubt are always there. So, again, I want to reiterate that whatever level you’re at, it’s important to have an awareness that doubt is going to be there. Doubt will inevitably surface in some form no matter where you’re at in your journey.

In order to solve for the doubt, in order to be able to move through the doubt, you have to have faith. Faith in your capacity to create the results that you truly want in your business. Faith in your ability to become the person, to become the business owner who can maintain those levels of results. Faith that no matter what, you get to choose. You get to create where you take your business. Faith is the answer to doubt.

The fourth element that shows up typically once the doubt appears is worry. I have to be honest with you all. Worry is something that I have struggled with my entire life. I’ve definitely struggled with this in my business journey. I’ve also, at the same time, come to know that worry is a very unproductive state to be in.

Allowing myself to be in a state of worry, it is highly unproductive. So in order to move through the worry, this is where we have to build our belief. Belief, again, in the capacity to achieve. Belief in the ability to create. Belief in what is available to choose. So to move from worry, we have to change that energy into belief.

The next level that tends to appear is fear. Now I know for all of you listening, you can relate with fear. It might be a fear of failure. It might be a fear of things not working out as planned. It might be a fear of not being able to do certain things or fear of not getting to the level that you want to get to. Fear of allowing yourself to step into that next level and to step into more visibility, for example, into your business. Every one of us is going to encounter fear, but this is where courage must come in. This is where we have to step forward in courage despite the fear.

All right. The last element in our battle that I believe is also the hardest to navigate is lies. This one can be very hard to overcome because in a lot of cases, lies present themselves to us in a way where they feel like actual fact. Where even though something might appear or feel like a fact, the truth is that it is actually a lie. There are a lot of cases of this.

I see this, again, with my clients. That, for instance, when things maybe don’t go as planned, or something doesn’t work right away in the business or in their marketing, that it’s very easy to immediately fall into a way of thinking that is actually a lie. It’s actually not true. What happens is that because we tend to be very emotional in this process, even though something might not be true we still tend to believe it is truth.

So often we’re not even aware of the fact that the thoughts that we’re having about a certain circumstance are untrue. So we go out and we believe, and we build even more evidence on that journey to support the untruths. Yet the only way to solve for the lies, the only way to move beyond the lies is to find the truth, is to see the truth in the situation. So finding the truth, finding the neutral circumstances of the thing, becoming aware of the lies that we’re choosing to believe or focus on. That, my friends, is the work.

So I hope this gives you a framework. I hope this gives you a way to help you move through these really six ways that our subconscious works to keep us in our comfort zone, to keep us in the known in the ways that help you to really overcome yourself and to truly step into that next version of yourself and ultimately become an example of what is possible.

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.