Ep #11: Transformation Vs. Implementation

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast, Episode #11.

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. So glad you’re tuning in today. If you’re a new listener, welcome. I am so happy that you’re joining me today. I’m really excited to deliver this episode to you today. And, for those of you that are my loyal listeners, thank you. I want you to know how much I appreciate your support each week as I create this content and launch these episodes to you.

I think you’re all going to find today’s episode to be extremely helpful. At least that’s what I hope, especially if you’re feeling stuck or blocked in any way in your business. So, I’m really excited to bring you today’s content.

But before we dive in, I want to tell you all that I am currently snowed in. For those of you who don’t know, I live in Minnesota, and if you know anything about Minnesota, you know that our winters are no joke. Right? They are cold, they are long, and they are full of snow and that is exactly what’s happening right now.

And every year around this time, I always ask myself why we choose to live here. But at the same time, I think if I didn’t live here, I’d really miss not having the changing seasons. Because, at the end of the day, every season really does have its own personality, and I do think it’s fun to switch it up.

All right, let’s get down to business, you guys. Today, I want to talk to you about the importance of transformation and implementation as it relates to you as a business owner and as you’re growing your business. And, this is something that I’ve been coaching quite a few of my clients on, as of late. And, I think it’s a conversation that a lot of you will be able to benefit from, especially if you’re in a place where you’re trying to take things to the next level. Or, if you feel like you’re blocked, and you just can’t seem to get unblocked.

And I know this is a lot of you, because it’s almost inevitable as you’re growing and building a business, that along this journey, there are inevitable seasons, inevitable times that you will go through, especially when you’re leveling up, where you feel stuck. And, you’re going to feel blocked.

And sometimes you might be able to quickly recognize what it is that’s holding you back, and other times you might be in a place where you just can’t put your finger on it. And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

So, what I’ve learned through my own journey of building my business is that there is almost this dance, if you will, that’s required if you want to be able to move yourself and your business forward. And it’s this dance between allowing yourself to be in a state of transformation and allowing yourself to be in a mode of implementation.

And I have to say, for me, it’s really become this subtle dance that I have become really attuned to, that I have really embraced. And it’s something I’m always assessing within myself and within my business. And really, on a daily basis, I’m checking in with myself as to, you know, whether I need to be in a state of transformation or whether I need to be in a state of implementation. And it’s something I’m constantly checking in on with my clients.

And so for both me and for my clients, the reason I find it’s so important to check in on this is because it really helps to decide what to say yes to in your business. And, it helps you constrain, and what you let in, into your brain, and it also helps to know where to put your focus. So, it’s something I’m constantly assessing within myself and with my clients, and I’m always looking at, where do we need to put our focus? So, let me explain.

When we can assess whether or not we need to be in a state of transformation, what that does is it allows us to get that and get to work on whatever it is that’s blocking us, or whatever it is that’s challenging us in that moment.

Versus when it becomes a matter of implementation, meaning we’ve already done the transformational work, so now it becomes the actual doing of the work, and it becomes more about being able to, let’s just say coexist with the fear, or coexist with the doubt or insecurity, or whatever that negative emotion is, instead.

So transformation, I want you to consider as I’m talking about it in the context of this topic, it’s the internal process of looking inward, and that process of building a new awareness of yourself, and making new decisions after you’ve developed this new awareness about, you know, for example, how you want to move forward or believe something different about whatever it is that might be blocking you.

And, this could look a number of different ways. It could be a matter of reframing something, creating new neural pathways about old beliefs that you might have. It might be stepping into that next version of yourself. It could also be related to vision. It might be creating that big-picture vision and really getting clear on what you’re creating within your business.

So, being able to get clear about what you want your life and your business to look like can be part of that process. It’s really that internal deep dive where all of our ideas, all of our iterations exist.

So, whatever that looks like for you, and I want to say it’s different for every one of us. It really comes down to that deep transformational work that can only happen when we’re consciously developing new levels of awareness within ourselves. And, in a lot of cases, it’s always going to require new ways of thinking, new ways of believing, new ways of perceiving.

Okay, so for that reason, it’s so, so important to be continually living in a state of transformation. To be experiencing your own transformation in your life, and uncovering new levels of yourself, especially as you’re building and growing your business.

Because I believe that especially if your work, if your craft, is helping others to reach new levels of transformation, I believe that it’s critical that you’re giving yourself the same space to explore and unpack the layers that might be holding you back.

So, let’s talk a little bit more about implementation. What I mean by implementation is being in the state of building within your business. And I like to think of it as the more tactical, as the doing, the actual execution, the actions that you’re taking in your business. So, the implementation is less about the internal work and it’s more about the external work.

So, let me give you an example. For some of you, you might be in a position right now where you know you need to build a solid business foundation. Maybe you’ve been putting a lot of focus on your transformation, and now you know that it’s time that you start, or level up the actual doing of your business.

And I’m thinking of one client of mine in particular right now who’s definitely in this place. She’s done a ton of transformational work over the years, and she’s put a huge focus on her own growth. And as a result, she’s grown tremendously because of that, and that’s why she’s an excellent coach.

But at the same time, she’s ready for that next level, and she also realizes that it’s time for her business to mature. And, up until this point, she’s done everything organically. But she realizes that in order to grow her business to the level that she really wants, eventually seven figures, that she needs to put some structure, some systems, and a solid foundation in place. And so that’s where our focus is currently.

Now, that doesn’t mean that we’re not in this dance between implementation and transformation. In fact, for her, it’s now become, how do we take her current level of transformation, which has been quite high, how do we take that even farther, and help her take that to a whole new level, that’s going to allow her to step more powerfully into the role and be the leader her business needs her to be?

And also, it’s going to make her a better coach, because she’s leveling up her own internal transformation, and as a result, her own capability to lead others in their own transformation. So, this might look like taking action and, you know, working to build a solid business foundation. Or, it might look like creating a new marketing funnel, or running a new ad campaign, launching a new program, or even implementing a new initiative. This could be a new business model, something of that sort.

And what I want to really express here is that both stages are equally important, both the implementation and the transformation. And it’s really important to understand that, as I said, you’re going to need to dance between these two stages throughout your journey of building your business, regardless of your level of revenue, or to what level you’re currently at.

And they’re both so important, because in order to take meaningful and intelligent action in your business, you’re going to have to first do the deep transformational work to even know where you’re going. And if you’re making progress in your business, there’s a good chance that you’ve done a decent job of balancing both.

But if you’re not making the progress you want to make right now, or if you’re feeling blocked, I really want you to look at this for yourself, and look at how you’ve been balancing and moving between these two phases. Because there’s a place and a time when it’s best to focus on your own inner transformation, and there’s also a time when it’s best to focus on the implementation, on the doing part of your business.

But let’s take a look at this even deeper. What I have found for myself and now find with my clients is that when you feel stuck, when you feel like you’re not moving forward, when you can’t get any traction in your business, a lot of times it’s because we’re trying to skip over that deep, inner transformational work that’s required of us in order to move us into that action.

So that we can then take action and create that what it is we want to create, that we can truly bring that vision of where we want to go to life. And, in most cases, what ends up happening is that instead, we start taking all sorts of action, and doing everything under the sun, and telling ourselves that we’re doing everything.

But the problem is that it’s action that’s not fully in alignment with what we want to create. And when we’re in this space, what tends to happen is, is we always feel like we’re in this constant struggle. And it’s because we’re in this place of misalignment. And when we’re working from a place of misalignment, it’s really hard to get any traction.

But let’s look at the opposite, because I also see the opposite happening. And what I mean by this is that I’ve seen coaches who have spent months in transformation, where they’re focused solely on their inner work, and what ends up happening is that they then shut down everything on the outside world. Where they’ve pulled themselves completely away from their business and they’ve fallen into this place where they’re no longer showing up in their business.

And both places can be extremely difficult to navigate when, number one, you don’t have this level of awareness. And therefore, you don’t understand the difference between the two and you’re not clear on where your focus needs to be.

And number two, when you’re focusing too much on one area, and neglecting the other area. So, this is why it’s so important to first have the awareness, and secondly, to understand where you need to focus at any given time. It’s so, so important.

Okay, so next, I think it’s important to understand that this process, this dance, between personal transformation and implementation, it’s something that will be ongoing in your journey. Let me give you an example of this.

You know, for a lot of coaches that I work with, most of them, they’ve all been professionally trained. They’ve been certified as a coach through one organization or another. And for a lot of newer coaches who have more recently gone through a certification program, there’s usually this phase when they’re recently out of their training, when they’re still trying to gain their footing, if you will.

And, they’re still trying to figure out how to really put everything together, and how to effectively build your business. And when they’re in this phase, I find it’s really common for them to rely solely on the tools that they’ve learned through their training.

And I also want to say that I think that’s fine, and I think that’s all well and good, especially in the beginning, as you’re learning. As you mature in your practice, it usually requires you to move beyond the tools that you’ve been given, and start creating tools of your own. And it’s finding your own true approach that’s in alignment with who you really are.

And I see for a lot of coaches, this can be a difficult move. And for some, it’s hard to move beyond the tools they’ve been given, and to be able to step into their next iteration where they’re creating, and they’re developing, and they’re establishing their own practice, and really establishing their own voice in their work.

And it’s because they’ve spent so much time and put so much effort into just learning the tools, and trying to become masterful at using them and applying them to clients, that it’s really hard to see beyond what they’ve been doing.

And so, whenever a client or a coach is in this place, and they’re trying to break through that, when they’re trying to really step into their own voice with their work, it always requires that they go back into this space of transformation.

And the reason that they have to go back into this space of transformation is because that’s where the next iteration, that’s where their own practice, where their own voice lives. But I see a lot of them that want to skip this step, and instead just skip to the implementation.

But what happens whenever we try to skip over this phase, is that we never really give ourselves the opportunity to step into the authentic and aligned version of ourselves.

And this always comes up in some way, and I see over and over again, where whether it’s a client or even a colleague of mine, where they’re effectively forced back into this phase of transformation, so that they can emerge as a different and higher version of themselves.

So if this is something you can relate with, currently, I want you to know that it’s 100% normal and that nothing has gone wrong. In fact, it’s a really important process for you to work through.

But I want you to realize it’s important to also give yourself the space and the time to work through the inner transformation, and still maintain your outer implementation. Still maintain the doing, and have patience with yourself, and give yourself some grace in the process.

Know that this is just what’s required right now, in order for you to emerge as an even more powerful leader, and version of yourself within your business.

All right, you guys, I hope today’s episode served you. I encourage you all to do an assessment of where you’re at and where you need to be. Are you in transformation? And do you need to be in implementation? Or are you too far in implementation, and you need to step into transformation? There are huge benefits of being able to live and dance between both spaces, and it’s required if you want to get to the next level.

All right, everyone, have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.

Hey, before you go, I have something amazing I want to share with you. To celebrate the launch of this show, I’m going to be giving away three free VIP Strategy Sessions, where I’ll be diving deep into your business and helping you put a strategy in place for the next 90 days, so you have a real game plan on how to create results in your business and finally gain momentum.

I’m going to be giving away one free VIP Strategy Session, the same VIP Strategy Session I offer to all of my highest-level clients, to three lucky listeners who subscribe, rate, and review this show on Apple Podcasts. Visit amandakarlstadcoaching.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. Thanks so much.

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.