Hey Reader,

This morning at run club I was telling a lovely person I just met about how Jon quit his job, and we moved to NYC (because everywhere we go people ask why we moved here, and we always just say 'for LIFE!') and she was very moved with an 'I wish that I could do that!'

And the truth is, we ALL can do it. The golden handcuffs are just another one of society's rules - a rule about your corporate job being the thing that is keeping you safe. But, my thought is that - that is ONE way to feel safe and secure. We forget that we get to be the one who keeps us safe, and there are many ways to make that happen.

The Golden Handcuffs are everywhere - and even though I didn't feel that way when I left my career, I felt a different version of these bad boys in my time being a business owner.

Today we are diving into my experience and what I focused on to feel more aligned than ever in biz.

Today In the Rebellion

• 10 Lessons I've Learned Running a Half a Million Dollar Coaching Business, LESSON 10: Three Things to do to Stay Aligned in Your Coaching Business.
• Notes & Quotes To Noodle On
• A nod to your ability (inspired by Mr. David Goggins)

It has been amazing to have one coaching business under my belt because there have been SO many lessons that I have learned that I get to implement this time around.

I feel so much more confident, ready, aligned, happy and certain in what I am creating and providing my clients and the world - and it makes all the difference.

This is lesson #10: Three Things to do to Stay Aligned in Your Coaching Business.

Aka breaking the rules of choosing your path.

Choosing the path of your life is no small deal. Obvi.

I haven’t told many people, 🤐 but I tried to pivot away from WholeYOUniversity at least two other times, but each time, I felt like I was so deep in, I already had so much success, starting over would be hard. I was helping so many people and I couldn’t abandon them - so I stuck with it - for two more years than I had originally wanted to.

Don't think I didn't love it, I did. It was an excellent thing for me to do with my life - but it wasn’t my genius thing to do with my life. Today we will totally get into that.

When I think about my time with my business, there were three ways that I was influenced down a path that was not 100% the one that I was supposed to be on.

1️⃣ Wearing the many hats of a small biz owner

2️⃣ Following other coaches and creators

3️⃣ Being in my ‘zone of excellence’

I am breaking down each one so that you can take this lesson and apply it to yourself NOW before you go too far down the path you aren’t actually supposed to be on.

The First: Wearing all the hats.

There are so many parts and pieces to a biz. And it is so easy to get caught up in all of them.

Especially in the beginning.

Being a solo-preneur we have to execute different roles to make our business run.

• We have to become marketers
• We have to become graphic designers
• We have to become financial advisors and bookkeepers
• We have to become operations who set up all of the systems and record what they are
• We have to be customer service on top of that
• And then we have to deliver our service!

It is not easy.

And so often I find that people look at the things they feel they are the weakest at and focus to grow there.

Which makes so much sense! Why would we not want to get stronger in our business.

How could I become a graphic designer and make my stuff look great? How could I market and look at SEO and write moving copy to get people to understand the result that my program could give them?

The deeper I went down any learning rabbit hole with those things 🛤 the further I went away from my strengths.

And when I wasn’t using my strengths two things happened.

1. My marketing wasn’t as good as it could have been because it was less genuine.
2. I wasn’t having as much fun because I wasn’t doing the things that light me up.

I WISH I would have looked at all the hats and asked - what are the skills I currently have? What do I know and do ALREADY that I could USE to help me with marketing, design etc.?

We have to come to it with an awareness that our superpowers are still our gifts. When we are putting on these hats, we NEED to view them and the tasks through our strengths: 💭 "how do my strengths apply here?"

The second piece is: Following other coaches and creators.

If you have been listening to this entire series than you will know that I struggled when I started my coaching business with looking at other coaches, business owners and content creators and thinking that how they were doing ‘it’ was the right way.

When I stepped into one of those other 'hats' of business - because I thought there was a ‘right’ way - I didn’t think to do it ‘my way.’

And the truth is - all this did was take everything away from me that would make me different, unique, interesting and cut through the noise of other coaches.

Maybe even more detrimental, it made me lose confidence in myself.

I went from being one of the best teachers in my school district, teaching at OSU, creating a curriculum that the three biggest school districts in Oregon have used, training teachers around the state, being on panels, speaking at a conference etc.... to feeling like I couldn’t even make a fucking IG post “correctly.” 😫

All because I was trying to do it someone else's way.

Getting out of my zone of Genius zapped my confidence because I was not using the skills that give me confidence.

The third part that led me down the wrong direction/path was: Being in my ‘zone of excellence.’

This was way trickier to spot. I feel like the zone of excellence is the golden handcuff equivalent of the small business world.

You know how they say corporate life is golden handcuffs because you have 401k, stock, and a predictable paycheck so it makes it hard to leave. 💰

Your zone of excellence is a place where you are GOOD at what you are doing, where you are getting people results with it and people tell you, you are good with it.

Health coaching was my zone of excellence.

I was VERY good at it, I got my clients great results, people loved me in that role, when I wanted to leave everyone IMMEDIATELY said ‘but you are so good at it’ and everyone recognized that I was different at it.

AND that made it so much harder to leave.

Health coaching was my zone of excellence BECAUSE of what my zone of genius is. I was great at health coaching because I am great at teaching people, I am great at motivating people, I am great at getting people to take action and be consistent so that they can be successful.

I am good at all of those things because I focus on how people think and learn - THAT is my zone of genius.

It is so easy to be stuck in that zone of excellence because it feels good, it is comfortable, it is safe - and when you go down that path for a while - it feels even harder to leave.

Closing down WholeYOU was so hard, I cried a lot, even though I knew what was next would be better and more aligned.

But it is hard to give up something good.

The second half of this year I am really feeling the reward of working hard on getting in and staying in my zone of genius.

And it's already proving to be so rewarding!

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Listen to this learning (with more detail and commentary) on the podcast:

Notes & Quotes To Noodle On 🧠

Both of the books, Rocket Fuel, by Gino Wickman and Mark C Winters and Who Not How, by Dan Sullivan stress the idea that we are not MEANT to be in this alone.

Rocket Fuel is all about how we (as business owners) can really sum ourselves up into two types of people - the visionary, and then the person who makes the vision a reality (the integrator).

The book is really for visionaries and integrators to SEE who they are.

It helped me see where my STRENGTHS were. I've always seen myself as BOTH a visionary and an operations person, but after reading this book, I can identify MORE with being a visionary and it really helped show me where I needed to focus my skills and where I needed to find a trusted person (Sam my Support Wizard) to take care of the rest for me.

Who, Not How stresses that for everything that you are not in your biz, there is someone out there that it IS their zone of genius. And our job is to find them and get them to join us.

One of my fave things that I have used from Who, Not How is the idea of an Impact Filter. This is a form that the visionary fills out that outlines the impact that an idea would have on everyone in the team.

And when everyone knows what impact that idea has, they get motivated and on board - and then everyone is inspired to make shit happen.🏆

It doesn't matter if you own a business or not. We are not the only people on the planet, or in our world. We get to ask for help. We aren't experts at everything, and we don't need to be.

I will repeat: we don't need to be.

But what we do get to do is allow other people to come in and help us!

A nod to your ability (inspired by Mr. David Goggins)

Another notes and quotes to noodle on will be coming soon on Can't Hurt Me, but I just finished reading it (finally!) and I want to leave you with a thought.

YOU ARE CAPABLE of SO MUCH MORE than YOU THINK!

I promise you. People are challenging their bodies and brains everywhere everyday. The other day on the treadmill I was going to only run 2.5 miles and was like WTFN and ran 7. SEVEN (p.s. I haven't been running more than 2.5-3.5ish at a time so yes it was hard).

And we just saw a spaceship come back down and PARK itself (like - that wasn't fake was it!?).

Goggins believes that most people only rise to 40% of their true potential. And when I look around, and think about the golden handcuffs, and people staying in their zone of excellence (or even just zone of competence) I can't help but wonder if he is right.

So my challenge today for you (and lots more days if you can!) is to do something BEYOND, even if it is just 3% more than you expected from yourself today.

3 extra lessons on DuoLingo

30 extra minutes of walking

3 more pushups in each set

3 more offers of your product

Then hit reply and CELEBRATE when you did it! 🎉

I hope you have the best rest of your week. Full of challenging yourself, building belief, creating an aligned life, and hopefully a holiday movie or two. 😉🎄

Until Next Week, Later Alligator,

Kayla

p.s. there are TWO ways to work with me.

1: Coaches College is my signature coaching skills program where I teach coaches autonomy based coaching strategies that will get their clients better and faster results and get the coach more money while doing it. You can get on the waitlist for the next cohort HERE!​

2: Want to get my hands on your brain, business and life? Hit reply and inquire about 1:1 coaching availability.

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