Episode 8 A+A podcast: Do you have an Alignment problem or a Strategy problem?

Do you have an alignment problem, or do you have a strategy problem?

Such a juicy topic. For many of us, it can be difficult to tell. I want you to think about a problem or an issue, a challenge that you've had in your business in the past, or perhaps something that you're experiencing at the moment. It might be a launch that didn't go so well. It might be a gap in your business where you feel like you're not making enough income. You might not be attracting enough clients... When you look at that, would you guess that it's more likely to be an alignment issue - something within you - that is preventing you from being able to achieve those kinds of outcomes that you're looking for?

Or, do you think it's just something you need to learn?

It could be something that is more of a strategy issue. And if you were to make some really practical changes in your business, that would help you to move through those blocks and to create a greater level of success. Let's look at each of them in more detail. That's going to help you to discern for yourself in your own business, what the issue might be. Or maybe it's a bit of a combination of the two. And once you know what it is, the best part about that is then you can seek more support in that specific area or support yourself in that specific area. So if you're experiencing an alignment problem, that is something that is going to be more internal. It's more likely that YOU are kind of the problem...

Let's dive in.

It could be your doubts, fears, worries, perhaps you're overthinking - it's your emotions.

It's your stories about yourself, about things that have happened in the past. It's your beliefs. Those are the things that are holding you back from experiencing the kind of success you could create and actually taking the right kind of aligned actions that will help you to grow in your business. And so have a think for yourself... Do you find you have thoughts or feelings that prevent you from moving forward? Do you find that you get a bit stuck in your head, stuck in what's happening? Do you get onto that roller coaster, the emotional roller coaster of business and find it tricky to get off and stay objective and to continue to take the kinds of actions that you know are going to move you forward?

Now, if you've got an alignment problem, one of the ways you're going to know this is because somebody could tell you exactly what to do. You know what to do - but there's still a problem.

For example might have done one or more business courses. You might have worked with one or more business coaches, and you might've been told: "Hey, this is what you need to do." Or, you've learned specific strategies or steps or processes, but you don't execute them. You don't actually follow through and take those steps. And the reason is, it's not because you can't do it, or it's not because you don't know how to do it, it is something within you that feels like it blocks you. It brings up so much stuff.

It brings up fear or visibility issues, panic, worry, anxiety or self doubt.

And it's those aspects that stop you from taking action.

You might find that if you were actually doing what it is that you already know that you need to do, your sense is that you would be fine, that you would, at this point in your business, be able to continue to grow. To be able to continue to create more success. So for now, it feels like your business model is about right, the way you work with your clients or the balance of what you do in your business and the way your business makes money, those things feel like they are good for you at the moment. You know how to communicate. You've got some processes, you've got a few skills in marketing. And if you were doing those things, if you were actually implementing what you already know, then you'd be able to grow.

But you're not, or you're not doing it consistently. That's showing you that there is a bit of an alignment issue.

A sign that there could be an alignment issue is when you feel quite a high level of emotion.

The emotion is going to be the more negative or heavier variety. All emotions are fine, but if you're having a lot of emotion when you're just wanting to do a Facebook live or something like that, and then you get stuck in your head and you can't actually just follow through and do that. Or it takes you all day to build up to it, that's a bit of an alignment issue. You're not just able to take those actions with a degree of ease and then move onto the next thing. If your alignment is blocking you, then you might find that you can hit up against other kinds of challenges as well.

It could be that you're not actually walking your talk in your business, and that starts to impact on your work with clients. So for example, if in your business you're helping your clients to release money blocks, but because of your own alignment issues, you stop working through your own money blocks. Or you just get to a certain income level and you can't break through that yourself. The tools that you use with your clients, you're not using them for yourself or they're not working for yourself. That can become an alignment issue, of course, and whether or not your clients know that's happening or not energetically, there's going to be a misalignment. And you're certainly going to be aware of it.

It's not going to feel good for you, and you're not going to feel great when you're showing up.

Especially when giving suggestions and sharing teachings about "This is how you break through your money blocks," if you feel like you can't actually do it yourself at the moment. If you teach business strategy or you're teaching about how to grow your business, but you're not having the ability to grow your own business at the moment. Maybe you're not feeling confident about that, or you're having all these doubts coming up. You're not taking the actions that you know you need to take to grow your own business. And yet you're teaching other people certain strategies. Of course, as you can hear, that's going to be an alignment issue. It could also be that, for example, you're teaching your clients how to manage their energy levels or how to create a real sense of vitality in their energy...

If you're not looking after your own energy, that's going to be an alignment issue.

It can be, in terms of the topic that you're working on with your clients and, if you're not walking your talk with what it is that you're teaching, that can be an alignment issue as well. For some of us, we can have a lot more comfort or familiarity with this area, with having alignment blocks than we do with strategy. We might always go internally, and we might always assume that the problem is within us. And of course, that is not always going to be the case. So it's not always the case that it's because if your own internal blocks that you are not growing your income or attracting the number of clients you desire. It could be that you've got a strategy issue.

It's when you know what to do, but you're not doing it, or you're doing it and then it's just not connecting. That's when you know there is more likely to be an alignment issue. If you always tend to go towards getting support with your alignment, with your energy, with your mindset, with your emotions, then you might like to consider looking at strategy.

Let's dive into that now.

So, what does a strategy problem actually look like?

It's when you don't have the right business model for you. So part of the problem is you can't grow. Earlier in my career, I was working with one-on-one clients exclusively, and I was doing a beautiful job of attracting lots of clients. But I was only going to be able to grow to a certain level. I was charging $80 an hour the first year, $90 an hour the second year, a hundred dollars an hour the third year.

By this stage I was already booked out with clients. I was seeing the maximum number of people. For me to grow my business, that was not an alignment issue. I was aligned. What was my problem? I had a strategy problem. I needed to learn new strategies to grow my business. I needed to learn how to scale and leverage some of the skills and the knowledge that I had and the ways so that I could facilitate transformation and be able to do that in different ways. Now I did start to teach online courses, but that is an area that I have continued to need to learn and to grow in so that I don't max out at a certain level. Feeling good and loving the work that I'm doing, but being capped out because I become so busy - that's what stops me from being able to grow.

Creating a more successful business is not about working harder.

I'm sure you have heard that a million times. And yet, for so many of us, it can be that instinctive thing that we do. We just think that we need to work harder, or we just go ahead and do it rather than learning more about the strategies that will help us to work a little smarter while still being able to have that beautiful connection with our clients and to love the work that we do. For some of us, it can feel a bit less attractive to work on that stuff, but that's what frees you up. It's what allows you to grow.

So if there is a strategy problem, it might be that you feel good about the work you do with your clients, you might be enjoying the way that you communicate and connect, people really love what you do... But then you have a launch and it just doesn't do as well as what you would like.

And it's just because of the numbers. So it's to do with those basic percentages where often it's around one to two, maybe more depending on how engaged your mailing list is and how people find their way to your mailing list. Most people find their way there because they're a client, they're probably going to be way more engaged. When you launch something, those percentages may be much higher for you, but it might just be that your audience isn't large enough to have the size of launch that you would really need to grow your business.

You would need to look at strategy - how to grow your audience in different areas.

There are so many things that you could do. If you're not being strategic, you might just try a bunch of things. You may monitor what works and what doesn't, and it becomes more strategic. That's great, but you may actually try a specific strategy. For example, a webinar strategy or something along those lines, and then you actually put plans in place and execute specific processes and steps, which somebody else has taught you or guided you through, or that you've learned in a specific way. And then you assess how that's working, but it's a more strategic approach. It might be that you work with a business coach or do a course about learning how to do something differently. Specifically how to launch, specifically how to create an e-course and how to market that.

You might work on your marketing, you might work on your sales. You're learning specific strategies that you can execute. You've realised: "I have hit up against the limitations of what it is that I know, and I cannot really grow from here unless I learn something new."

And it does, of course, take skill to discern: "What is it that I need to learn? And what's going to be in alignment with me? What's going to really work for my specific ideal clients? What are they going to really connect with?" And with strategy, for some people, this can become an area that they overuse. So I mentioned before, some people will tend to lean into alignment, see everything as being a problem within themselves. Then other people will find that they're always looking at strategy. So they're always learning a new technique, a new tool.

Look at yourself and how YOU can build a sense of authority and leadership.

You can have that bright, shiny object syndrome about something new that pops up in marketing. You're always looking around at what other people are doing. What all the big names are doing? What are they teaching, getting onto everyone's mailing list, paying attention to the strategies that they're using, trying to model them or imitate them... But they're going too far in that direction, rather than looking at themselves and really developing and growing their own leadership capabilities, building up their own sense of authority, confidence and self-belief around what they know. And staying focused on their actual ideal client and what it is that they need rather than getting distracted in the end, by all of these different strategies. It can be a way of avoiding just connecting. Going sometimes for the simplest approach.

Going heavy on the strategy side is not always better.

Things can become really convoluted. Someone has to go through 16 steps and this whole funnel before you even offered them something, or you feel like you have to offer them a $27 product before you can offer them this before you can offer them that. It kind of almost becomes a system where people are having to jump through hoops and you're not making it easy for them. If you're going too far down that side of things, you may need to simplify. And come back to yourself, come back to your own alignment. You already know what to do. And now go ahead and actually do it, and go ahead and back yourself with that.

Do you think your issues tend to be more of an alignment type issue? Are they more internal? Or are they more of a strategy issue and they're something that you need to learn a little bit more about? If you've got an alignment issue, I can help you with that. And it's something that I teach in my Align + Attract program. I teach you how to release your own blocks to find out specifically what is blocking you in relation to your own individual goals and how to release that internally.

Keep on coming back to your centre, keep on coming back to feeling neutral, resourceful, focused on what it is that you are creating.

It's great for those of us who can get a bit caught up in our own stuff and it can keep you on track so you can keep on taking those aligned actions. It might also help you to discern more easily where there is a strategy problem. Because of course, once you're in alignment, if something isn't working, you can say, you can clearly see, because you're feeling more objective. You'd say: "Oh, okay, cool. There's a gap here. I need to learn something else." You don't make it about yourself. You can just see. You've got that ability to be more neutral as you look at things rather than being really emotional. If you have identified it's a strategy problem, that is not something I teach, but there are about eleven billion people on the internet who do teach strategy.

Get clear on what you think your gaps are and how you best learn.

Do you best learn when you're working one-on-one, do you best learn when you're a part of a group? Do you just want a path, like an online course that you can work through at your own pace? Do you need to be part of a group where you can ask questions? Put it out there: "I need to find something that's going to support me to do this" and then pay attention to what comes up and seek support in that area.

If this has been useful for you, I would love you to share this episode with a friend - you can then have a great chat about it.