I was just at a four-day event in Santa Monica with a group of 25 people who are focused on creating in the world.
The event featured two coaches that I have worked with in the past and I would say about half of those in attendance were newer coaches building their businesses.
I was smack in the middle between the coaches who were “new” and those who had, at least in my mind, mature businesses.
But I put myself unconsciously in the “new” category. Until I caught myself.
How I Hold Myself Back
I do not have a business that I am satisfied with. While I love my clients and what I am able to create with them, I want more.
Not necessarily more individual clients, but more impact. With larger organizations.
I want to have a team of coaches who can support me as I expand my work from founders to their leadership teams.
I want to share in the growth of the organizations that I help.
I want to create freedom and abundance both personally and for my family.
In my mind, I have just started that. Hence my mindset that I am still a beginner.
What My First Coach Told Me At Dinner
The first coach that I worked with when I was getting started in 2016 was Rich Litvin. I did a small group with him for several months, and paid something like $15,000, which was an extraordinary amount for someone who had no paying clients when we started.
We had not really connected since then. Until dinner last Friday night with him and another coach that I have worked with, John Patrick Morgan.
They coached me and one other entrepreneur for four hours (Rich started as soon as we got in the Uber), and I came away seeing all the ways that I had been limiting myself. All of the things that I had not fully owned about my journey. I came away feeling like all the things that I want to create are not only possible, but inevitable.
Rich told me at one point, “So let me get this straight. You have built a business where you work by referral, with founders who pay you handsomely, and they renew for more work with you? That makes you in the top 0.1% of coaches on the planet.”
Now, I don’t know if that is true. But in that moment, I owned it as if it was. And I fully saw and owned what I had been able to accomplish.
What I Saw The Next Morning
I had trouble sleeping, both from the coaching (and the possibilities it unlocked) and the large Wagyu steaks we ate. I woke up early and journaled excitedly.
And then it all collapsed.
Saturday was the last full day of the event, the day where we were going to let go of our limiting beliefs, and I was enveloped in fear. All the stories that had held me back came crashing in—
That I was not good enough.
That it was dangerous to be myself fully.
That it was bragging to talk about true things from my experience and expertise.
That it was safer to stay small.
But one thing shifted as I worked through my discomfort that day.
I finally saw those stories as just that.
Stories.
I didn’t have to believe them. I could choose to believe my vision for the future over the limiting beliefs of my past.
And you can, too.
Where Have You Been Holding Yourself Back?
What does my story bring up in you?
What is the possibility that you see for yourself where you haven’t taken action?
Because you think it’s not practical or realistic?
Because you’re having trouble finding the right people?
Because you’re not sure you can get an investor?
Want to know the best way to get a result? Commit to it. Keep trying, even if you fail the first five, ten, twenty times. Keep going. Iterate. Allow your vision, your mission, to emerge from you and JUST KEEP GOING.
This isn’t about hustle culture or working 100 hours a week. It’s just about putting yourself out there, doing the thing you love, and continuing to try until you accomplish it.
It’s about what you do as the fullest and most authentic (spiritual even) expression of yourself.
This is my path, and this is who I support.
How To Go Deeper
I am convinced that more and more people are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning.
This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, at all stages of this journey.
The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.
If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.
If you want to build a coaching business where you get to be yourself, help amazing people, and replace your corporate income in the process, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—
http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches
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