To get from point A to point B, you have to know where, exactly, point A is. You can’t begin a journey to a destination without being clear from where you are departing.
One of my mentors used to say “If I dropped you in the desert with a map and you didn’t know your current location, it would be useless.”
Makes total sense, right?
Only as a business coach, I frequently see people who have no idea where they actually are, and this is tragic.
Why does it matter?
You can’t know the most effective next action to take if you don’t know what direction to head first. You may invest in the wrong things, and waste time and money.
Your action isn’t in alignment if you don’t know where you are. You may be showing up in a way that is inconsistent with your marketing, for example.
You will stress out for no reason, and possibly flip-flop or quit, if you’re not aware that what you are experiencing is perfectly normal for where you are.
Where are you?
Let’s explore a few areas that will help you to identify where you actually are. I’ve broken it into two main categories to consider – mindset and resources.
| 1. | Mindset | |
| a. | Clarity. Are you happy and confident doing what you’re doing and does that show, or is something blocking you from experiencing joy and clarity in your work? It’s amazing how often people don’t notice that they aren’t happy! | |
| b. | Energy. Is how you are showing up, your energy or way of being, in alignment with your action? The biggest killer of sales is when what you’re saying doesn’t match who you’re being. Many entrepreneurs are completely unaware of how they are showing up. | |
| c. | Commitment. Are you on fire with commitment? Are you so 100% certain of what you’re doing that nothing will stop you? | |
| d. | Money. Are you confident you are going to make money in your business, and willing to charge what you desire for your gifts? Are you able to stay calm about money, knowing that where the desire is present the way to fulfill it is also present? Do you have complete faith in you and the Universe? | |
| You do not need to have a “perfect” mindset to run your business. We are always going in and out of alignment. What you do need is to be aware of where you actually are in your mindset. There are stages for heavy mindset work, for small adjustments, and there are stages for saying, “I’m aligned enough, let’s take some massive action, get some results, and see how I feel then.” | ||
| 2. | Resources | |
| a. | Money. Do you have the financial resources you need right now or do you need a cash injection? There are stages where you need to be 100% focused on bringing in private clients and must resist the urge to write the book, create the radio show, or write content for a group program. Then there are stages in which your basic needs are handled and you can be creative, pay to rebrand yourself, or invest in a big live event. And by all means, if you expect your cash to be where it isn’t for the stage of business you are in, it will wreak havoc on your mindset. | |
| b. | Offerings. Do you have offerings that you know work, or are you in a mode of testing? There are stages in which you have something you have sold over and over again and you will focus on turning that thing into a system or a passive income stream, because you know it works. There are times in which you’ll need to try a bunch of things and see what sticks. | |
| c. | Support. Do you have the team of people and the technology in place to grow to the next level, or do you need to create some structures to support you in selling and fulfilling first? Your initial clients can come in with just you. If you are looking to significantly uplevel your results, you MUST build the support team structure for where you are going NOW. So many people think they can skip this, and create massive problems. | |
| d. | Prospects. Do you know what resources you have that will lead you to your next clients? If you have no list, you probably don’t want to launch a product. Take a look at your best assets right now. Is it your list, your network, your developed online marketing funnel, your local community, past clients who love you? Knowing this will help you decide which action to take next. | |
| e. | Skills. You need to know what your skills are, but also what stage you are in in terms of using them. Do you need to be leveraging what you’re already good at right now because you need quick results, or are you in a stage in which you can experiment and learn and grow by developing some new competencies. If you have mastered selling and serving 1-on-1 clients, maybe it is time to get your online funnel in order and experiment with ads in social media, for example. | |
| Trying to be where you’re not in terms of resources brings on an incredible amount of stress. If your attitude about things isn’t in alignment with where you are, you will struggle and resist what you actually need to be doing. It is easy to look at what other people in your industry are doing and think you should model them. But you must remember that you don’t actually know where they are. You can’t see inside their mindset or their resources, so you don’t know why they are making those choices. You need someone to help you focus on you. | ||
Examples
| A business owner meets someone at a networking event who tells them they can help them with their SEO (search engine optimization). They say they can help them get on the first page of google. The business owner invests in this help. Only she has only ever brought in one client, and therefore is not clear on her message and her website is fuzzy at best. She does not have an opt-in box to collect names, and does not stay in touch with people who visit her website. She is nervous about where money will come from so she has a hard time selling people who do call her. The consultant recommends keywords based on looking at what gets searched, but they are not in alignment with what the business owner loves. The campaign gets no results. SEO can be a great investment for a business owner with a clear message, a confident sales team, and an online marketing funnel that converts. But for our business owner, not so much. |
| An inspired entrepreneur has a vision (a divine download perhaps?) of 200 people at an event put on by her. She decides that will be her next focus. She does have enough cash coming in to pay the bills through her 3 private clients, so she starts planning out the content for her event. Only she has just 150 people on her subscriber list (less than she wants in the room!). She has great ideas for content and is a great teacher, but she has never done an event, especially one in which she was selling herself. She doesn’t know anything about the logistics of selling tickets for an event like this, or how to work with the venue and plan out all of the details. She also has no idea that an event of that magnitude with a skilled event planner and all the high-class touches she pictures is often a 6-figure outlay of cash up front.The vision for the event is great! She just needs to know where she is in order to map out what to do to get there, and a realistic time frame. Build the list via her network, host a few 1-day events, learn to sell from the stage, begin saving the money to pay for the larger event. |
If you don’t know where you are, I suggest you get really freaking serious about that, pronto. First of all it eliminates a whole host of stressful thoughts when you are clear that the result you are getting is exactly what you need right now. (EVEN the FAILURES). Second, it is absolutely the only way to get to where you need to go.
If this article has stirred up a lack of confidence in where you are, please don’t stay there. Email support@alignedentrepreneurs.com to apply talk about joining me for our next Inner Alignment Intensive so we can create your action map.