Creating Success from the Inside Out (ep. 41)

Do you love the thought of being a successful coach or healer, but don’t love the thought of having to learn (and do!) enough ‘business stuff’ to get there? You’re not alone! In this 3-part series, Pamela shares the truth about why you’re blocked in achieving success, and the mindset you’ll want to achieve your goals.

In this episode, you will:

• Discover the 3 reasons that most coaches & healers are blocked in being successful.
• Experience the powerful identity shift you need to increase success, no matter where you’re starting.
• Uncover the paradox between ‘what you love’ and ‘what you have to do’ – and reconcile it so you skyrocket your results!

Timecode Guide:

• (02:19) 3 Reasons That Most Coaches & Healers Are Blocked In Being Successful
• (06:55) Experience The Powerful Identity Shift You Need To Increase Success
• (13:29) Uncover The Paradox Between ‘What You Love’ And ‘What You Have To Do’

Podcast Transcription

Episode 41: Creating Success from the Inside Out

Intro

Intro (00:00):
You’re listening to A Profitable Impact. Do you love the thought of being a successful coach or healer, but you don’t love to learn and do the businessy stuff? That means you’re probably blocked in achieving your success, and there’s a particular shift you need to get where you want to go.

Gene Monterastelli (00:15):
Welcome to A Profitable Impact where every single week we help experts like coaches and healers to expand their reach, to increase their impact in the world, and to be well paid for their extraordinary skills and talents. My name is Gene Monterastelli and I am the lead coach in Pamela Bruner’s Impact Accelerator Coaching Program, and please welcome my friend, my colleague, and the CEO of Attract Clients Online, Pamela Bruner. How are you doing today, Pamela?

Pamela Bruner (00:39):
I am doing great, Gene. Thank you. And we’re going to talk about creating success, not through strategies, but from the inside out today. Super exciting stuff.

Gene Monterastelli (00:50):
And I know that this is something that you are super excited about because you went rushing in to share this stuff with our audience.

Pamela Bruner (00:58):
As we’re trying to record this, I’m like, “Here, let me give the intro. Let me give the intro.” I just ran all over Gene’s intro. So yes, I am very excited about this content. In this episode, here’s what we’re going to do. The three reasons most coaches and healers are blocked in being successful, these may surprise you. Also, I want to take you through a powerful identity shift that you need to increase your success no matter where you’re starting. And we’ll uncover and unpack the paradox between, “I just want to do what I love,” and “Wow, this is what I have to do.” And reconcile that paradox so you can skyrocket your results.

Gene Monterastelli (01:34):
As we have the conversation today, I have a feeling we are going to tap into a new disposition for you. Not talking about something tactically, but these mindset pieces that help us to be more successful. As you hear this, if you’d like to have a deeper conversation around these mindset issues and how you can be more successful in these ways, we would love for you to have a free conversation with one of our coaches. All you need to do is go to BookMyBreakthroughCall.com. That’s BookMyBreakthroughCall.com, and you can get on the calendar right away to have a conversation with one of our coaches on how you could implement what we are talking about today. And so with that being said, Pamela, from your disposition, I would love to hear where you come from on this. What are the three reasons that most coaches and healers are blocked in being successful?

3 Reasons That Most Coaches & Healers Are Blocked In Being Successful

They Don’t Set Up A Practice In Business

Pamela Bruner (02:19):
Well, number one is that they don’t set up a practice in their business and I’m not talking about a healing practice or a coaching practice, but business is more like music or martial arts, or something that there’s no end game. I thought when I originally got into this that there was an end game and I also kind of hoped emotionally, subconsciously, it took me a long time to figure this out, but I hoped emotionally and subconsciously I would get to a place where it was completely safe in business and everything was easy, and there was just never anything new to take on. And I would just sort of live in the “om” of the world. And that has not been my experience. It wasn’t my experience as a professional musician. I’m guessing it’s not your experience as a performer. There are certainly easier times now that I am experienced in business, but the truth is that business is a practice. Marketing is a practice. Sales is a practice.

And so as you set these things up, even looking at your P&L’s, considering your money, your revenue and expenses, all of these things get set up or can be set up as a practice that you look at and go, “I’m going to get better at this.” Just like if you were studying music, you would say, “I’m going to get better at playing fast tempos,” or “I’m going to get better at playing in different keys,” or “I’m going to get better at playing different genres of music,” or something like that. And those are all parts of the practice of getting better at music. And there are these different parts of a practice in business. One of the reasons that coaches and healers are blocked in success is if they think about business as something where they approach it, what is the minimum that I need to do in order to just get the business stuff out of the way so I can focus on coaching or healing or just working with clients? As soon as you think that, you are short cutting the very thing that’s going to bring lifeblood into your business.

Gene Monterastelli (04:15):
And oftentimes a lot of those things that are that lifeblood are those things that we do in marketing and sales. And we hear this all the time from our clients. They’re like, “Well, I went and I posted something on social media and nothing happened.” And the question is, “Great. So what days of the week are you publishing? How often are you doing it?” And they’re like, “Well, what do you mean? I published something on social media.” And recognizing the fact that these things that we engage in, in practice, not only like you talked about as we do them do we persistently get better at them, but many of the things that we do in our business are these things that we practiced by doing them over and over and over again. And that’s the way that we build success. It’s not a one-off action, but it’s something that becomes a disposition in the way that we engage with our work.

Pamela Bruner (04:57):
Some people might even call it a discipline. Although, some people don’t like the word discipline. So use the word that serves you best. I know a lot of people have a meditation practice, so if you like the word practice and you think about it in terms of meditation, we sit down and meditate every day and sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. But what is the practice or where can you see the possibility that there is something in your business that’s a practice or that could be a practice that you haven’t been treating that way. So that’s just one of the reasons. Another reason is they have money blocks or limiting beliefs. And this is such an enormous area that we’re actually going to devote an entire podcast episode to it. We’ve talked about money blocks before, but I really want to dive deep into that.

They Have Money Blocks Or Limiting Beliefs

So I’m not going to go into it so much in this particular episode, but if you know that money makes you uncomfortable in any way, if you have discomfort quoting your fees, if you have discomfort charging, if you have discomfort thinking about making a certain amount of money that might be more than you’re used to or more than your family is used to, you’ll most certainly have blocks or limiting beliefs. And the third reason is I think the most insidious and the most tricky to identify. And that is that we as transformational entrepreneurs have very, very fulfilling businesses. We love what we do. We love taking care of our clients. And so often we experience that we get fed by serving our clients. And while it’s great to do something you are fulfilled at, whether you are an entrepreneur or an employee or whatever, it’s great to do something that you are fulfilled at.

They Get ‘fed’ By Serving Clients

If you are fed by your clients to the point where you don’t really want to take the money for it, you don’t want to set up the business for it, all you want to do is get that hit of, “I’m working with a client. It feels so good and I love that. Aha.” Then in that case, you have a disproportionate connection between the work you do for clients and the work you’re doing on your business.

Experience The Powerful Identity Shift You Need To Increase Success

Gene Monterastelli (06:55):
I think that it’s really good for us to have clarity around those three particular blocks of how those things are getting in our way. But you also mentioned at the top of the show that as we address those blocks, we also have this opportunity to create an identity shift in the way that we approach our work. And so I think that that dovetails really nicely off of recognizing what we get out of our business and how we show up in that. And so how do you identify that identity shift that we’re going to be going through as we go through this transformational process?

Call Yourself A Business Owner And Take Pride In Running A Successful Business

Pamela Bruner (07:21):
It’s interesting that we’re recording this right now because just the other day somebody asked me what I did and I said I run my own business. I didn’t say I’m a business coach. I didn’t say I’m a coach. I didn’t describe the transformation that I provided. Now, in some situations I would have given a more lengthy answer or sort of an elevator speech answer or something, whatever the situation was. And I don’t remember it, but I do remember thinking very clearly, oh, I said I run my own business and didn’t say anything more than that. Because to me, that identity of calling myself a business owner is something that I have over the years learned to take pride in and learned to own. And often with coaches and healers, we see, I want to call myself a coach or I want to call myself a healer, but I don’t want to call myself a business owner because there is a negative connotation with business owner or I don’t really want to do the business stuff.

I just want to do the coaching and healing. And there’s almost an embarrassment because often society portrays business owners, especially successful ones, they’re the antagonists. They’re the nasty people. If you watch Hollywood movies, the big successful rich businessman is the bad guy. And so how can we say, “I’m a business owner”? How can we take pride in running a successful business when society is painting us with this really negative brush?

Gene Monterastelli (08:52):
And I think the other important piece of that is this identity piece has two aspects to it. It has the aspect that you just talked about in how we are running a business and how we are seen as a business owner. The other thing I think is really, really important is at least for me, when I made the transition from practitioner into business owner, as a practitioner, it’s like, “Oh gosh, I have to do these business activities so I can do the thing that I love.” When I’m a business owner, I recognize doing the business type things, the organizational type things is me deliberately and consciously building an infrastructure so that not only do I get to do the client work that I love, but I get to do the client work that I love with the right client around the right issue, being compensated in the right way, where it’s not bleeding over into the rest of my life.

And so by claiming the identity that you were talking about, it immediately helped me when I went through this transition, is to reframe my time and reframe my relationship to all of the activities in my business that weren’t about serving clients, because they were all about serving clients. They weren’t these have tos, but these were “Ooh, if I do this well, then when I get to serve the clients, it is my ideal perfect client that I love. And so not only am I being well paid for the work that I’m doing, I really enjoy the time with the people I’m working with.”

Pamela Bruner (10:10):
I absolutely love that example. And in fact, I’m going to take it one step further. Now I’m going to go on shaky ground because neither one of us are parents. And yet as you were talking about that whole, when I do the business part better, I actually serve my clients better, I thought, if you’re a parent, you say, “Oh, I just love playing with my child, but I don’t want to cook for them. I don’t want to clean the house for them. I don’t want to make sure that there’s a roof over their head. I just want to play with my child.” We would think a parent who took that view was a little shortsighted because they’re not actually setting up their life in a way that cares for their child, and setting up a business to care for your clients is similar.

Want to know more about how to attract your ideal clients online?

We’d Love To Chat! Grab a Breakthrough Session with one of my coaches to learn how to create real impact and income online.

Uncover The Paradox Between ‘What You Love’ And ‘What You Have To Do’

Gene Monterastelli (10:51):
And so as we navigate this idea of this identity piece, you mentioned at the beginning, there’s this, how do we uncover the difference between what we love and what we have to do? And we’re stepping into that. How do you in your business, Pamela, reconcile that stuff to allow you to be in the place of both of those and still be able to grow your business in the way that you’ll love?

Pamela Bruner (11:10):
Well, one of my favorite sayings, and I think you love this saying too, is growing a business is the graduate school of personal growth. So your business is actually part of your growth practice. And I don’t know many coaches or healers who aren’t in some kind of growth practice. They’re in personal development or they’re in a spiritual pursuit or they’re expanding themselves and trying to grow and better themselves in a way with some kind of self-help. And so if you’re doing all of these things as practice, why not consider business as part of your growth practice? And looking at it that way, especially if you get some help from somebody who has this orientation in business as we do, as Gene and I do, the thing to look at is, “Wow, when I get better at business, I DO serve my clients better.” It’s kind of what you were saying before Gene, but it is, when I’m a better marketer, I am speaking to my ideal clients better.

I am reaching them better. I am speaking their language so they feel heard and understood. And that is a wonderful practice. The same way you might say, “I am studying communication so that I can communicate with my spouse better.” That’s a lovely thing to do in your life. Why not just take that into your business and consider business as part of your growth practice?

Gene Monterastelli (12:31):
And it’s funny that you say that because as you know, Pamela, I’m in the process of changing the way some of my business works and I’ve brought on a significant number of staff to help me with a number of tasks. And it has been a struggle of letting go of things that I should not be doing just because there’s this controlling, “I must have control over my life in order to do this transformation.” And in my business as I’m learning to let go of tasks that I don’t need to be doing and finding people I can trust to do those particular things, that is not a skill, that is just something that is happening in my business, that I also recognize the fact that in my personal life, I’m really bad at asking for help. I’m a person that likes to be self-sufficient in doing stuff.

And so, as I have expanded my ability to do that in my business for business needs, I’ve been sharpening that particular skill in my personal life as well and it’s been easier for me to reach out for the support and protection that I need for my loved ones who happily want to give it, but I’ve just been really crappy at asking for it in the past.

Pamela Bruner (13:29):
That’s such a great example of how business mirrors life. I love that. And a couple of other things to consider when we’re looking at the paradox of what you love versus what you have to do, you generally won’t love things that you don’t do well. Now there are exceptions. Sometimes there’s a game that you love playing even though you play it poorly. I’m not very good at pool and yet when I shoot pool, I still have fun, even though I’m not very good at it. But I do like it when I really hit a ball hard into the pocket. It feels great. But the truth is mostly, we don’t love things we don’t do well. We especially don’t love things we don’t do well when we feel like there’s stakes involved, when it matters, when I’m going to feel like a success or failure or when it’s going to mean how much money I bring in or don’t bring in. You’re not going to love things you don’t do well.

So as we consider business as part of our growth practice and we are practicing it and the have-to-do’s become part of our service, they become part of this growth process we’re in, learning to do them well gives us the opportunity to see if we can love them or at least like them. If we’re not going to do them well and the stakes are high, probably we’re going to dislike that opportunity. But the more we do it, the more we can get good at it. And then we have the opportunity not just to like it, but to love it. I can’t count the number of clients who have said to me, “Wow, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually really enjoyed the sales conversation,” or “I’ve never said this before, but I actually like networking now.” And that’s so rewarding to me because I know that means they’re set up for success.

Gene Monterastelli (15:06):
And when they’re speaking in that particular way, not only are they set up for success, it means that they’ve gone through that evolution from a practitioner into a business owner, because they don’t just love it because they enjoy doing the task, they love it because when I do this well, it means good things for me. It means good things for my audience. It means good things for my clients. And so that excitement is coming from a place of not just, boy, this task is now easy or fun, but we see it in the context of how it fits into who we are and how we’re navigating. And so as we’ve had this conversation, if you recognize that you would like to make that transition in identity of moving from a practitioner or a coach into a business owner who provides amazing services, but you are not exactly sure what those first steps are, we’d love for you to have a free conversation with one of our coaches so they can help you to navigate this transition in a way that allows you to be successful and allows you to serve your clients better.

Conclusion

All you need to do is go to BookMyBreakthroughCall.com. That’s BookMyBreakthroughCall.com, and absolutely free you can have a conversation with one of our coaches so they can help you in this amazing transition. If the conversation today is something that you think that there’s someone else in your life, another coach or healer that you know, please be our ambassador and pass the show along. The most common way people find a new piece of useful content is from the recommendation of a friend. If you have a question, if you have a comment or you have a topic you’d like us to cover at some point in a future show, we would love to hear from you.

All you need to do is go to AttractClientsOnline.com, click on that contact link. When you send us an email, make sure in that email you mention a question for the podcast so we get it to the right place so that we can address that on a future episode. If you haven’t done so already, you can subscribe to the show, absolutely free. You can get the show on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon music, Audible, basically everywhere you listen to audio online. All you need to do is search for A Profitable Impact. Make sure you click subscribe, turn on the follow, turn on the notifications so that every single time a new episode comes out, you hear about it right away.

For A Profitable Impact, I’m Gene Monterastelli. Until next time, I hope you have an impactful week.

ABOUT THE PODCAST

Building a business as a coach or expert is challenging, especially if you’re trying to find your clients online.

Join business coach and online marketing expert Pamela Bruner as she uncovers the secrets of successful transformational businesses. If you want to make a difference in people’s lives, expand your reach, and attract high-paying clients, you’ll love this show!