033: The Magic of Acting As If You Already Have Your Perfect Business
Are you wondering when and how your business is going to grow to the level that you visualise? How you're actually going to get that success that you dream about? Are you feeling in a hurry and have some anxiety and despondency about where you are now? Wondering when exactly is this going to happen for me? What exactly do I need to do to make this happen?
Well, if so, you are not alone. I'm right there with you and nearly everybody I speak to has an element of this feeling too. The bigger question is - what can we do about it? That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. So, let's dive in.
When you're first building a coaching or course creator business, we know that it's going to take some time.
We know that you're not going to wake up a week in or a month in and suddenly have built your dream business. That's just simple fact, but quite often when we take our first steps along the road to building an online business, we perhaps don't recognise how much has to be achieved - all of the elements that have to come together before we've got a thriving business that attracts perfect clients, lights us up and builds impact and income.
For example, many of us have had to originate our purpose before we could even get started. I know that for some people you've literally just been able to go, yep, I know what I already do because I've been doing it for 10, 20 years, it's just a matter of transitioning to an online business. However, for so many people that I work with, it's a matter of actually finding your purpose first, taking all the skills and all of the gifts and turning them into an offering that you can actually promote, sell, and make a business of.
It's about identifying your perfect avatar, who your clients should be, so you can communicate effectively with them and create a perfect transformation. It's about creating an amazing offer - one that you're proud to put out there and one that people can't wait to buy. It's about building your audience. It's about building your mailing list. It's about doing all the things.
I know what a challenge this is and how much it has been for me personally, but also for my clients. The people that I coach one-to-one and in groups are doing all of these steps and I'm helping them get there, but it doesn't happen overnight. Anyone that tells you that it does is simply not telling you the truth, but there are clearly things that we can do to speed up the process and make it so much less stressful on ourselves.
Having some clarity on what you actually want to achieve is always the first step. Creating a vision, knowing what your perfect outcome should be, is of course the first step.
I'd be pretty surprised if you didn't already have a clear vision. What kind of business do you want? What kind of lifestyle do you want to live? What kind of clients do you want to work with? How much money do you want to make? How will this impact your family? You get it. You've been there. You've created the vision board. You've written the paragraphs. You've visualised. You've dreamt.
This is a brilliant start, but it's not enough.
If you've ever watched The Secret or learned about the law of attraction, we are told to ask, and it is given. We're encouraged to create visions, but essentially that's the easy bit, right? It's not so difficult to create the vision, but it seems so much harder to actually bring it into fruition.
That is because you have to align your energy with your vision. You have to create high vibrations and good feelings – and this is where we all fall down, or at least most of us - certainly me.
I just know that I could get everything I wanted if only I could align my energy, if I could have that high vibration, those good feelings, called in the intuition, took the inspired action, radiated that energy to all of the potential clients who are out there.
I've had moments. Boy, have I had moments and it has felt so good – but how do we align our energy and have high vibrations and good feelings more frequently?
Now, look, don't worry if you don't know much about law of attraction or even if you think it's really not for you - the principles that I'm talking about today are absolutely universal. Whether you take them as spiritual principles or simply really good business advice, they're going to work both ways. Ultimately, who doesn't want to feel good, who doesn't want to feel high vibe, take inspired action, and create fantastic results? I've been on a quest, particularly over the last few months, to really understand how to get there personally. My personality type, as I talked about in my podcast only a couple of weeks ago, is really quite Type A. I hold on quite tightly, I go for it in action, and I like results - but who doesn't like results? We all want to achieve things in our lives, and we all have dreams that we want to come true.
In my quest looking for high vibrations and good feelings, I've been diving into a lot of different aspects. I did a podcast episode all about self-care in episode 28 and about releasing control in episode 24 - even about how to raise your vibration, which is episode 22, if you'd like to go back and listen to those. All really good elements and things that have helped me along my journey - and yet something has not been falling into place.
The question that keeps coming up for me when I'm building my business is what do I need to do? I know what I want, but what actions do I need to take?
As much as I enjoy my journaling, my self-care, my meditating, the answers aren't always dropping in. I'm absolutely all about inspired action. In the past, I was about motivation and ‘efforting’ - now I'm about waiting for the inspiration to strike and doing what feels good. I have experienced first-hand the power of putting that out into the world and how so much more seems to come back than when I ‘effort’. That said, what happens when inspiration simply isn't dropping in yet? Where your intuition isn't telling you exactly what to do, or you feel that your intuition has told you something and yet it didn't seem to work out?
A really good example of this happened to me just recently. I've been on my lookout for my next level mentor; a business coach, that's going to take me in the direction that I need to go to level up my business next. I've told the universe I want it; I've meditated on it; I keep my eyes open and I'm ready to receive. As strange as it sounds, every time I feel like I might have found just the person to inspire me, something strange has happened and it hasn't worked out.
The first time, I reached out to a business coach whose model really impressed me, and I really wanted to learn from her, but she refocused her efforts away from one-to-one coaching and instead launched a membership that didn't really appeal to me. The next person I reached out to was a high flying seven-figure business coach launching a program that looked spot on for me, so I set up a call with her sales representatives and they never called. I did that twice - that's kind of weird and at this point I'm thinking, you know what, this is the message - the universe is telling me these just aren't the right people for me.
So, I spotted a third business coach, someone that I felt was just perfectly aligned with how I was feeling at the time, someone just a few steps ahead of me - so I reached out thinking that if she replied to me personally then I’d know that this is the one. Well, she did reply to me personally… saying that she's stopping her program. Now what are the chances of that! Three times I've reached out ready to invest, ready to level up, and yet three times it hasn't worked out.
Coincidence? Perhaps. I prefer to believe that there's a mentor and business coach waiting just around the corner that I have to be ready for when they come and, for that reason, I could not take up those opportunities. At the same time, it's easy to feel stuck, to feel like you're not quite getting where you want to go. Can you relate to something that you're trying to achieve in your business that just feels like you're not getting there, the inspiration isn't dropping in? You keep asking yourself, what do I need to do? What actions do I need to take?
I want to share a technique that I've recently learned that's really helping me out with this and it's part of the law of attraction. This is acting ‘as if’. Now imagine acting as if you already had something - now I'm not talking about pretending that you have something you don't, where you would spend too much money or do things that you wouldn't otherwise do.
What we're talking about here is actually creating a feeling inside, a vibration, about having something that causes excitement and causes ease.
This isn't a new thought. For example, we've always been told to dress for success, dress for the job you want. Or perhaps you've heard that if you want to call in a relationship into your life, clear out closet space - we have kind of accepted these as true. Yet we don't use the ‘act as if’ thought to take us beyond that feeling of frustration.
When you act ‘as if’ you're actually releasing that feeling of want, lack and scarcity, that keeps us feeling frustrated and keeps us locked in that holding pattern of not achieving what we want. I've recently been journaling about this and trying to understand how to use ‘act as if’ to help me solve the question of what I need to do for my business.
I'm going to share with you what journal prompts I've been writing about and how they're helping. There are just three basic prompts and if you're around a pen and a bit of paper, you might want to write them down.
The first question is what exactly you are acting ‘as if’ about. This is where you lean back on your vision. Now I'm not talking about your great vision for five years’ time or your ultimate happiness. What is it that you want to act ‘as if’ about that could be true in three months or six months’ time, the next level? Stretch it a little, be ambitious, but also look at something you can feel truly excited about - not dubious, whether you could ever achieve it.
For me, when I think about acting ‘as if’, I think about calling in those sums of money that are going to be the next level up from where I currently am - the number of clients I want to call in to my next program and my private coaching. The excitement levels I feel when I'm able to scale the amount of people that I help and also building on the passive flow of income that I've started now with my first evergreen course.
What are the things that you need to act ‘as if’? What's next for you?
Now, the next question I asked myself, which was so powerful, was how would I feel if that was done? How would you feel if what you're acting ‘as if’ was already in your life? We're calling to feelings here. I know that from my perspective, I would feel calm and relaxed. I'd feel excited and expectant.
It's really important to look within and ask yourself from a deep level, really, how would I feel?
So, you picture, and you visualise having what you've just written and then you feel it like it's already done. Now, the next question is the secret sauce, and this is what made all the difference to me. I was so excited when this question popped into my mind, and it was what would I do if it were done? How would I act if it were done? Suddenly it becomes action orientated.
I put myself ahead, having that ‘it's already done’ feeling, and then I asked myself, well, what would I do? How would I behave? How would I act if that were already true? And that's where it all came out.
It was about showing up more, being braver, taking more chances.
I could take each one of those elements and boil it down to specific actions - from going live more to moving out of the research phase for my next program and actually offering it.
So, what would you do? How would you act? What would be the things that you would actually do if you were already that person and you already had those things? It’s that feeling of it being done, that you can completely trust that it's already happened. I read a book recently by Richard Dotts called ‘It is done!’ and he'd identified that within the law of attraction process, there were several elements that people just don't always get. This is so spot on for so many of us - the ‘it is done’ phase, that element of trusting. He talks about how at the end of prayer we're used to saying amen, but actually the meaning behind that is it is now in God's hands - it is now done. In our spiritual practice, the three simple words ‘it is done’ are perfect for ending meditations and visualisations. It's an opportunity to let go, release desperation, and stop worrying.
Now I am and always have been a worrier and this was music to my ears because stopping worrying about the future, stopping worrying whether it's ever going to happen, when it's going to happen, how it's going to happen, is so fundamental to first of all, living such a happier, easier life and secondly, to actually getting your goals achieved. When we're in that state of trust, it's so much easier to be in a state of flow - to have those inspired action moments drop in.
And so, as I continue my quest to align my business with spirituality, to invite ease and trust into my business progression, I might have unlocked just a small amount of resistance for you too. Let's remember that building our businesses is supposed to be joyful.
The journey is every bit as important as the results.
If you need help with taking any actions - of deciding how to prioritise, to get your motivation high and take the actions you need to build your business, jump onto a free strategy call with me. My calendar link is in the show notes, and we can talk about where you are in your business, what's keeping you stuck and what you need to achieve your success. Have an inspired action week. Take care.
If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast today, please share this with your business besties. Hit the subscribe button and leave me a review. Your support is so appreciated. Take care.
>> Book a free strategy call with Jo Ingram >> CLICK HERE
