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Personal Effectiveness

Stop listening to other people!

July 27, 2022 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

Why is it that when you’re ready to start your business, all of a sudden everyone has so much input and advice to give?

And why is it that something works so well for someone else, but just doesn’t seem to work for you?

Perhaps it’s time to stop listening to other people… and I’ll tell you why in the video below!

Filed Under: Personal Effectiveness

Journaling Practice

June 15, 2022 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

This Coaching with Sarah session is on my absolute favorite journaling practice.  Whether you already journal or don’t, I am certain you’re going to love the structure of this particular practice.

You can use this journaling practice whenever you feel stuck, need to make a decision, feel anxious, have lots of thoughts in your head, are hitting fear, and more. It’ll help you sort through your fears and worries and come out the other end feeling calmer, more inspired and ready to take action.

Having a good journaling practice is so important for personal growth, especially as you build and grow a business.  And this specific practice has been a game changer for me and my clients. So grab a coffee, tea or any other beverage of choice and hit play!

Filed Under: Personal Effectiveness

Overcoming Fear of Failure

February 9, 2022 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

If there’s one thing that gets in the way of kind-hearted, soul-lit people starting their own businesses, it’s fear of failure.  So in this article, I’m going to break down the four steps to overcoming fear of failure.  

Step #1: Identify your fears

There are many ways to do this, but the simplest and the most effective is to just spend some time on your own, sitting in silence, center yourself, take a few grounding breaths and then just ask yourself “What am I afraid of?”

Sometimes you’ll get a whole host of things come up, and sometimes it’ll be something very specific to your current circumstance (for example, related to a launch if you’re in launch mode).  Let all your fears surface.  You might find that some of your fears are related to your abilities e.g. “I fear I won’t be able to get my clients the results they want”, or they might be related to things seemingly outside your sphere of control e.g. “I fear no one will pay this price for a candle”, or they might be related to deeply ingrained limiting beliefs e.g. “I worry that I won’t be able to make the money I desire working the hours I want to work”.

At this point, you might choose to write down your fears.  You can create a list, “I fear…”, “I worry…”, “I’m concerned about…” etc.  Alternatively, if you’re not into journalling, you can continue doing this in a meditative state.  

Step #2: Take away your fear’s power

Continuing from Step 1, whatever fears come up, take them one at a time, acknowledge them, thank them for making an appearance and let them go.  You might say to the fear “I see you, I acknowledge you, I thank you for everything you have done for me in the past, and I release you.”  

You see, the key is to acknowledge that the fear you feel is coming up because it once served a very important purpose – to keep you safe.  But if you’re looking to create something new in your life and your business, staying in the safe zone won’t get you there.  You need to break through.  You need to let your fear know that you see it, you acknowledge it, and you’re still going to go ahead anyway.  

And before you move onto Step 3, you’ll want to create some trust in yourself.  What proof or evidence do you have that you can take the action that’s causing the fear?  Where have you done something similar in the past?  Who around you has done something like this?  Build up your evidence bank.  Also think about what you would do if it really did go horribly wrong.  You would likely figure it out, right?  How would you do that and what evidence do you have of handling situations that went wrong in the past?

Step #3: Create safety to lean into

Your fear is just trying to keep you safe.  That is its job.  So instead of fighting the fear, work with it.  In the previous step, we released it.  In this step, we’ll take it one step further by creating a Plan B (and C and D and E if you need it) to calm the fear down.  

If we look at the example of fear that comes up when promoting your products and services, we can break this down in the following manner:

  1. Fear: I’ll promote and no one will buy.
  2. Fear’s Power: I’m going to look stupid and people will talk about me behind my back.
  3. Taking the Power Away: I will learn what works and what doesn’t, and I will prove to myself and others that I am willing to do the work to achieve my goal.
  4. Creating Safety: If promoting via Instagram doesn’t work, I can adjust my strategy.  If that doesn’t work, I can try another platform.  If that still doesn’t work, I can hire a Social Media Coach to teach me how to make it work.

Other examples for creating safety might be working on your business while holding a corporate job so you can keep the steady income until you know you can make it work.  Or launching your products/services to a test group first and collecting feedback before launching to the world.  Or finding a coach or mentor to guide you through the areas you need help with.  Or knowing that you can always go back to doing whatever you were doing earlier if this new direction doesn’t work (this worked really well for my clients in corporate).  

Words of encouragement

So in conclusion, don’t let your fears stop you!  You were made for great things.  And your fears are evidence of you stepping into that vast field of possibility.  Learn to manage your fears instead of your fears managing you and watch as you smash your goals – and more!

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Filed Under: Personal Effectiveness

Change is hard: How to make it easier

October 27, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and I’ll definitely keep saying it: Change is hard.  If it were easy, everyone would be doing it ALL. THE. TIME.  But they’re not, and the reason for that is because creating a change in your life or in your business requires alignment and action on multiple levels.  Yes, I’m talking strategy + action + mindset. 

Strategy

Of course, when it comes to creating change in your business, your strategy is essential.  You absolutely need to know what you’re going to change and how you’ll go about doing it.  In fact, most change efforts focus primarily on this one area.  And that’s why they usually fail.  Because focusing just on strategy doesn’t help you implement and stick with the change.  For that, you need mindset and action.  

But, before we move onto mindset and action, let’s examine the importance of strategy.  Strategy work results in making a decision on where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there.  It creates clarity around your vision and the pathway to get you there.  Strategy is a very essential component of change.  It’s just not the only component.  

Action

Having decided where you’re headed and how you’re going to get there, you’ll now need to take action on those initiatives or steps.  This is where the resistance starts to come up.  When you’re working on your strategy, everything is still theoretical, so it’s a lot easier to accept and move through.  But when you start creating the change, that’s when your subconscious kicks in to “protect” you.  

Your brain is designed to keep you safe.  If it senses danger, it will initiate thoughts and actions that it considers to be “for your safety”.  Of course, these things are not necessarily what we would consciously consider to be things to be kept safe from, but since they are new – and with new territory comes an element of the unknown, which then leads to the possibility of danger – your brain believes otherwise.  

Mindset

Supporting all your strategy and action initiatives is your mindset.  This is where your efforts are either amplified or chopped down.  Going through the motions without necessarily being 100% in will not get you the results you’re hoping for.  

Your mindset supports you in carrying out your actions from your strategy in a way that produces results.  This can be frequency, it can be ideas, it can be the language you use, the energy you bring to conversations.  Mindset can literally affect anything and everything.  So getting this right is also key.

5 steps to make change happen

Now that you know how the three business elements – strategy, action and mindset – affect your ability to create that change you’ve been wanting, let’s look at the 5 steps to make it happen. 

  1. Understand the reason for change

Before embarking on any change at any level, you need to prep yourself and your mind with why this change is needed.  Look at the parts of your life or your business that are not making you feel good.  Really feel the pain that it’s causing you.  And then think about what you’d like to have in the future and create that picture in your mind.  Feel what you’d be feeling if that were true for you right now.  

And then write it all down.  Write down all your reasons why you need to create this change in your life or in your business.  Ideally, put this list somewhere you can easily access every day so you can read it and remind yourself why you need to do the things you’ve got planned out.  

  1. Find the right support system

Never underestimate the power of being supported.  When I talk about support, I like to categorize it into two buckets – the support that comes from family and friends and the support that comes from peers.  The former is great in giving you the space (and if you like to use the word, the permission) to create the change you seek.  The latter, however, is the one that gives you the perspective and the stories of their experience. 

When creating change in your life, having someone who has been through, is going through or has helped other people through the same change is invaluable.  It’s like having your own personal guide or team of guides.  The right support system can help you figure out what path to take, how to overcome obstacles, what issues to look out for and what to do when you’re ready to give up.  

  1. Create your vision (and communicate it to your team, if you have one)

So by this point you’ve got your reason for change and you have a support system.  Next, you’ll have to create your vision.  You will have certainly started this process when you were understanding your reason for change, but now is the time to work out all the details.  What exactly is this future you want to create?  How will you get there?  What are all the steps and actions you need to plan and work through?  

The key here is clarity.  The more clear the vision, the more likely you’ll be to get there.  This is especially true if you have a team.  Can each person on your team articulate the vision?  And when they do, are they all saying the same thing?  

  1. Start generating small wins, and then move onto bigger changes

To ensure that your mind and body feel safe (because, don’t forget that change is something your brain categorizes as a potential threat), create small wins at first.  These are the little things that push you a little, but still produce a desired outcome that nudges you a little closer to your end goal.  

After a few small wins, start working on some larger tasks.  You might find that you face some internal resistance.  If you do, it’s time to work through it.  There are many things you can do here.  My favorite is journalling.  Write down everything you’ve accomplished so far, then move onto the things that are causing you to feel worried, or feel difficult.  As you list these down, look for evidence that disproves each one of them.  You can wrap up with some affirmations or future pacing (where you write about the future scenario in the present tense).  

  1. Celebrate your wins

Celebrate every single win, no matter how small! In fact, I like to tell my clients to celebrate everything at every stage.  For example, if you were on a sales call and the person you were talking to said they wanted to sign up for your program, celebrate! And then when the payment comes through, celebrate again! 

The energy around celebrating is one of pure gratitude.  And we all know gratitude is so incredibly important.  It cultivates the energy and the frequency within you to create more gratitude through more wins and more of the actions that got you there in the first place.  So celebrate as much as you can!

Final words on creating lasting change

In short, any change requires you to create the right strategy, take the right actions and have the right mindset to support it all.  These three things are embedded across the five steps that I’ve found to work in creating any change in your life and in your business: 

  1. Understand the reason for change.  
  2. Find the right support system
  3. Create your vision (and communicate it to your team, if you have one)
  4. Start generating small wins, and then move onto bigger changes
  5. Celebrate your wins

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Filed Under: Personal Effectiveness Tagged With: action, change, strategy

Decision Making: Your Greatest Asset

September 22, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

Decision making is one of the hardest things that you, as a business owner and founder will have to do.  Hands down.  Why?  Because it always feels so permanent.  In this article, I’m going to cover three types of decisions: (1) Your overall business proposition (2) Your business direction and (3) Your mindset. 

Why Decisions Matter

Before we explore the three types of decisions, let’s take a moment to examine why this is an important topic.  Whether you’re in corporate or running your own business, whether you’re a small, medium, large or global business, the same reason applies.  Trying to move a business forward without being able to make decisions is highly unlikely to happen.  Basically, you just can’t move forward if you’re unable to make decisions.  

If you think about places you’ve worked at where your boss, manager or the president of the company were unable to make decisions, I’m sure you’ll find that the people within the teams reporting into them were always confused about what the right thing to do was, always doing something then changing course, and always busy working but producing a low result for the business.  And here’s the thing – it’s not the team’s fault.  Unless everyone knows what they’re meant to be working towards, it’s just always going to be this way.  Sometimes, the results can still be great – because of luck.  But most of the time, they just won’t be.    

The Impact of Decisions

So now what about the decisions you need to make (and could be struggling with) in your business?  How do they affect your business?  Whether you’re a solopreneur or have a team, not making the decisions you need to make will invariably slow you down by either stopping work from progressing or progressing it in multiple directions.  If you don’t have a team, this could manifest as doing and re-doing work such as changing your business purpose, your target audience or your services.  It could also result in changing your priorities every time you think you’ve made that decision, and therefore impacting the activities you’re currently focused on.  Eventually, this will lead to burnout and more than that – to that undesirable feeling of failure.  And if you have a team and are unable to make business decisions to guide them, you will cause them to spend their time in ways that won’t result in the ROI you need to make their hire a good investment.  But it wouldn’t be their fault!

How to make decisions

Decision making is a difficult skill.  It’s scary.  It feels permanent.  It feels like all eyes are on you, and any error in your decision will make you as the leader look bad.  But actually, none of that is true.  The first thing to know about making decisions is that any decision is better than no decision.  So even if you do make a decision that doesn’t produce the outcome you want, it’s still better than not having made that decision in the first place.  Why?  Because now you know that the direction you went in wasn’t the best for your business.  If you hadn’t made a decision, you wouldn’t know that.  You wouldn’t know anything, in fact.  Secondly, having made a decision also helps you and your team feel better because you have clarity.  You know what you’re working on.  You know what direction you’re heading in.  You know what you need to do and why you’re doing it.  Lastly, it demonstrates strong leadership skills.  One of the things people look up to leaders for is their ability to make decisions.  As a business owner, you need to be able to own that space within your business.  To help you, let’s look at three major types of decisions business owners need to make.

Decision Making Scenario #1: Your Business Proposition

In this scenario, the type of decision you’re making impacts the business at a fundamental level.  What is your business?  Who do you serve and how do you serve them?  What are your products and services?  How do they get delivered?  How do you make money?  Essentially, this is figuring out your business model.  Perhaps you have a ton of ideas about how you want to serve your customers.  Or perhaps you don’t.  Maybe you know exactly who your customers are.  But then again, maybe you don’t.  At the early stages of your business or when you’re going through a major change, pivot or adding a new line of products/services, you’ll find yourself in this scenario.  There are several decisions that need to be made here, but altogether, they’re your business model.  Most people I work with come to me with this piece of their business unanswered and we work on it together.  

To be able to make a decision on this, there are three major components that need to be considered: what your customers want and need, what your competitors currently provide and what you can do to stand out in the market.  Once you’ve collected the information across these areas, you’ll be in a position to create some options for your business model, and then pick the one that resonates most with you.  Don’t just go for the easy one, or the one that feels safest.  Go for the one that excites you – the one that gives you butterflies in your stomach and goosebumps on your skin.

Decision Making Scenario #2: Your Business Direction

This decision is the output of the earlier decision (on your business proposition or your business model).  Once you’ve decided what you want to do, you need to figure out how you’re going to get there.  This is where a business plan or a roadmap will come into play.  Knowing where you want to go and what you want to do is a prerequisite.  If you’re not sure about that, then figure that out first.  Once you have that, you can start crafting your plan or roadmap.

The way I like to do this is to break down my goal into 5 strategic areas: Sales, marketing, product, operations and finance.  I then identify what I need across each of those and then break that down into smaller goals.  Once that’s done, I can see the roadmap more clearly and it becomes easier to map out the step by step actions I need to take to make it all happen.  I follow this structure with my clients.  We first get their business model clarified – who they serve, how they serve them, how they deliver the products/services that serve them and how they make money doing that.  And then depending on their strengths, their preferences and what feels good – expansive, stretching but still in line with their values – we identify the steps required to get there, starting from the goals and working backwards.  

Decision Making Scenario #3: Your Mindset

This last decision is the most powerful one.  In order to get anything done in your business, whether it’s deciding to make an investment or deciding that you will fill up your program or sell out your stock, it all starts with the decision.  Why?  Because what you set your mind to is what you’ll eventually manifest in your physical reality.  This isn’t something we grew up realizing, nor is it something we’re taught in our corporate careers.  But the world of entrepreneurship is abundant with this knowledge.  And here’s how it plays out:  If you decide that you will get something, you will unconsciously act and do the things required to make that a reality.  It may seem farfetched, but it’s not.  You will show up, deliver, add value, work towards, and anything else to make that decision come true – if you truly believe it.  But when you don’t make that decision, it leads to an inconsistent set of actions on your behalf.  You just won’t show up in the same way.  

So how can you decide and change your mindset?  It takes practice.  It takes being understanding and curious as to why your mindset isn’t decisive or positive.  You can explore why you choose to see things in a negative or inconclusive manner.  And then, you absolutely need to practice making those decisions.  Decide that you will post on social media today.  Decide that you will meet a perfect client.  Decide that your content is being devoured by all your ideal customers.  Decide that your product will land in front of your target audience.  Decide those things first and see the magic happen.

Decision Making and You

In the end, only you can take control and start making decisions.  Eventually, you might be able to outsource some of these decisions, but when you’re in the early stages of starting and growing your business, it’s important that you shape it the way you want it to be.  Start small, make decisions that are easy, and then grow from there.  And with each decision, you want to ask yourself:  Does this excite me?  Does it give me butterflies in my stomach?  Does it scare me a little but also get me really pumped?  Does it give me goosebumps?  Remember, the direction you’ll head in with your business is dependent on these decisions.  And so you want your decisions to be expansive and push you without causing you to burn out.  You’ve got this. 

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Filed Under: Personal Effectiveness Tagged With: business plan, business planning, decision, decision making, decisions, direction, making decisions, mindset, roadmap, strategy

The Definition of Success

August 11, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

What is the definition of success to you?  When you think of success, do you immediately think of money?  We’re all so accustomed to associating success with money.  After all, a successful person in business is someone who has moved up the ranks of the corporate ladder, or has their own business that brings in lots of revenue.  Right?  But success doesn’t have to be associated primarily with money.  In fact, looking at success through other lenses has so many benefits.  

What are the benefits of defining success through non-monetary factors?

The first thing that comes to mind when answering this question is that there are so many things to celebrate and consider an accomplishment that do not have to do with money.  For example, when a client has a “win”, that’s also a win for me.  If you’ve ever had the pleasure of being on the receiving end of a very genuine “thank you” for something you did, created or delivered to someone, then you know the feeling I’m talking about.  And is that not a success?  Imagine getting hundreds of those a month.  Would that not give you a feeling of being successful in your business?  So the benefit of looking at the impact your business has on your clients and your customers is that it opens up your focus point.  Instead of focusing on the money, chasing the money, looking at ways to make more money… you’re now focusing on creating more impact.  And with that impact, you will almost certainly make more money, but you’ll do it in a way that feels good.  

Secondly, when you focus only on the monetary measures, you limit yourself to being able to celebrate only one metric.  But on the other hand, if you had several measures of success, such as the client wins described above, along with some social media metrics, referral metrics, free event sign-ups, email subscribers, and also (very importantly) non-business measures such as hours per week spent working, being able to take evenings and weekends off, feeling grounded and happy, or excited and energized… then you increase the number of opportunities you have to see “success” in your business.  

Lastly, when you include things in your success measurement that are non-typical business measures, such as how much time can spend with your kids, your spouse or your family, or that you can take an extra day off to help a friend or family member out quite easily, or that you’re able to sleep in on a day when you feel especially tired, or that your work doesn’t cause you anxiety or overwhelm, or that you genuinely feel happy all (or most of) the time.  These things aren’t your typical success metrics, but when you think of them as a measure of your business success, you begin to realize that the success of your business isn’t just in the amount of money it brings in, but in the quality of life that gives you.  And that is an absolute game-changer.  

A New Definition of Success

So in the spirit of changing the way you look at and feel about your business, in order to create more excitement, more satisfaction, more gratitude and more joy, let’s redefine success.  Let’s define success using measures that actual matter in your life.  Below, I’ve listed my top 6 favorite measures of success for my business and my life.  Feel free to take as many of them as you want, and make them your own!  And remember to add anything that matters to you and begin to track it.  

Success Measure #1: Happiness

As my business grows, my happiness grows.  It’s a direct correlation.  I love every new stage of my business, every new program or service I create and offer.  Sure, there are times I get a bit stressed out because I have a few things going on at the same time.  But I am never unhappy.  And if that can’t be counted as success, what can?

Success Measure #2: Location freedom

I’ve mentioned this before, but I have really enjoyed being able to take my laptop and work from anywhere in the world.  I spent time in Lebanon with my parents a couple of times over the past year, and was able to do some work from there.  I went on two unplanned holidays with my husband, and managed to get an hour or so of work done every morning, which was all I needed to keep things on track.  

Success Measure #3: Owning my schedule

Being able to increasingly move things around such as launch dates or free workshops has given me the freedom to plan my days, weeks and months in a way that allows me to do all the other things I want to do in my life.  

Success Measure #4: Client wins

I built my business doing something I love, and all my clients have businesses that also capitalize on things they love too.  So when a client has a win in their business, they are so excited.  And of course, since my business is built on helping them, their happiness has a knock on effect on me.  It’s more than just satisfying, it’s energizing.

Success Measure #5: Giving back

It’s so heartwarming that all the entrepreneurs I have worked with have a giving back pillar in their businesses through which they support causes they care deeply for.  I eventually want to have 5 causes that I support, and this past year I was able to support one of them in providing food to the hungry in Lebanon (owing largely to the devaluation of the local currency).

Success Measure #6: Feeling appreciated

We’ve all been in situations where we’ve worked hard and hoped for some appreciation which never came.  One of my measures of success is how appreciated I feel every time I work with my clients through my business.  And the more appreciated I feel, the more successful I feel.  Because that’s a reflection of the impact that I made and which, in turn, was acknowledged.  

Today’s a great day to revise your definition of success

Maybe some day the word success will no longer immediately bring to mind the correlation with money.  Until then, let’s all do our part, largely for ourselves and the shift the way we see our own success.  Let’s rewrite our definition of success and share it with all those around us. 

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Filed Under: Personal Effectiveness

5 Things to Inspire You to Take Action Today

July 14, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

We all have dreams.  We always have.  And yet at some point in our lives, some of us go chasing our dreams and others cast them aside and live life the way we’ve grown accustomed to.  And so, whether you’re already chasing your dreams or you’ve all but forgotten about them, I want to inspire you to take action – today.

The truth is, we all have a dream, or if you prefer – a goal, and not only that, but we all have a gift too.  And I believe that we should all be living our lives in such a way that we give our gift to the world, because then and only then, will we be living our lives with purpose.  You can read more about my beliefs right here, and hopefully get even more inspired!

Inspiration #1: Days will come and go, no matter what

Where do you want to be a year from now?  Time is going to tick along.  You’re going to get to that one year mark in exactly one year.  It’s going to happen.  And at that point, do you want to be exactly where you are today, or do you want to be one step closer to your dream life, if not living it?  Time will pass, no matter what.  Think about all the things you already wish you would have done in your life.  Do you want to add one more thing to that list?    

Inspiration #2: Feeling your best, every day

What if you could feel great, purposeful, energized, excited and content every day?  Even if not every day, what if you could feel those things almost every day?  Wouldn’t you do whatever it takes to get there?  That is the result of creating a life that’s filled with purpose.  And creating a life filled with purpose starts with identifying your goals and your dreams, and then working to achieve them.  

Inspiration #3: Success is inevitable

What if you knew that success was inevitable?  What if you knew and truly believed that if you put in the work, and you continued to invest in your goals, that you would eventually accomplish them?  Would you start now?  Because realistically, it’s going to take the same amount of time whether you start now, tomorrow or next year.  So the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll reach your goal, right?  

Inspiration #4: Time is available to us all

There is always enough time.  It’s counterintuitive that a lot of people don’t get started on their dreams and their goals because “there isn’t enough time”.  And yet there are others who also only have 24 hours in a day but who accomplish so much within that timeframe.  All it takes is drive and determination to “find” that lost time.  And whether it takes a month, a year or 5 years to accomplish your goals, knowing that you’re working towards it is so satisfying that you just might “find” more and more time in your day.   

Inspiration #5: We CAN build a better world  

A friend of mine once asked me this thought-provoking question, “What if all jobs paid equally?  People would then do the things they loved.  They wouldn’t pursue higher-paying jobs just for the money.  Everyone would do what everyone was best at, what they enjoyed doing.  Imagine how much better people would feel.  Imagine how much better products and services would be, and customer service, too.”  I want you to think about that too.  How much better would the world be if we all pursued our dreams?  If we all did the things that we were great at?  If we all did the things that we were passionate about doing?  

Putting it all into perspective…

I’m not saying be reckless, abandon everything and start living your dream life even if it’s beyond your means.  But I AM saying take a step towards it.  The possibility of turning your dream life to reality is constrained only by your actions.  And that, in turn, means this is really in your hands, and your hands alone.  You can choose to carry on the way you are today, getting the results you’re getting today.  Or you can make a change, starting today, starting right now.  You can do the things you need to do to move you one step closer to your goals.  In fact, only you can do this for yourself.  No one else can do it for you.  

Remember: You can do this.  You were born to do this.  

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Filed Under: Personal Effectiveness

The Power of Questions

June 30, 2021 by Sarah Lakhani Leave a Comment

If you’ve been thinking about whether you need a coach in your life, particularly a business coach, keep reading.  You see, the benefits of a business coach are two-fold: (1) You learn their strategies and methods, drawing from their skills and their experience (2) You build your “business muscles” which help you beyond the coaching program.  How?  Through the power of questions.  

When you work with a coach, particularly when you work 1:1, your coach will ask you questions that help you clarify your thoughts, your goals, your next steps, your vision – pretty much everything you need to get done in your business.  These questions are not one-off questions.  They will come back again and again throughout your business life and entrepreneurial journey.  And it is these questions that you will learn to ask yourself whenever you’re feeling confused, lost or at a crossroad.  

So you might be thinking: well, can’t I just ask myself these questions now?  And the honest answer to that is, sure, you can ask your questions… but will they be the RIGHT questions?  Because the power of questions is in asking the right ones at the right time.  And that takes experience, skill, practice and working with different clients and different stages of their business.  But the good news is that once you know what these questions are, you can absolutely begin asking them to yourself and exploring your answers, every time they’re needed.  

So let’s look at some places where the power of questions will help, and more than that, let’s look at HOW they can help.  We’re going to explore three business “phases” and break down the way in which the right questions will help move you through them.  This is by no means all the phases nor is it all the possible questions or ways in which coaching questions can help you.  These are a sample of what’s possible.  

Phase #1: Questions to help you find your purpose, your aligned business idea and your vision 

When you’re starting your business, and even before you’ve taken the first step, you’ll be going through a phase where you’re still building that business idea.  You’re probably trying to pick something that aligns to your future vision of your life and your lifestyle.  (If not, you absolutely should be!) And you’re trying to figure out whether it’ll work and how exactly it’ll work. 

At this stage of your business lifecycle, you should be asking yourself questions around what you would be best suited to start, what your future life looks like, and whether your business fits in with that future vision.  Questions around a day in your daily life in the future will help you explore this area deeply and see whether you’re working towards something that is truly aligned with your purpose and your life vision, or not.  

Phase #2: Questions to collect feedback to improve your product/service

As you begin to build your product or service, and you start testing or even selling it, you’ll want to know what your customers or clients really and truly think about it.  This is when you’ll want to collect feedback from them. 

The questions that you ask your customers should serve three purposes: understanding their impact of your product or service on their lives, gathering feedback on the actual product or service, and lastly, finding out what else they would like.  It’s this combination of three groups of questions that will help you create better products and services, market them in a manner that makes them irresistible and develop new ideas for your business.      

Phase #3: Questions to help you gain clarity on your strategy, your next steps and the path you choose to pursue

As your business takes off and you start selling your products or services, you’ll find yourself having to make many, many, many decisions along the way.  These decisions vary from how to spend your time, to what to focus on next, to whether you should pursue a partnership or start a YouTube channel.  The possibilities in business are endless, and so your options and the questions to help you decide how to move forward will be as well. 

So at this point in your business, you’ll want to be exploring the paths that are most aligned to where you are and what you want to achieve at that time.  You’ll also want to make sure you’re picking strategies and tactics that are aligned to you and your strengths.  Lastly, you’ll want to make sure that your chosen path is still in alignment with your larger vision.  

Why questions work

There is something about being asked a question and having to formulate your response to it.  Often, we give a response and it sits well with us.  Sometimes, even as soon as we respond, we back-peddle and say “no, that’s not what I meant”.  If this has ever happened to you, then you’ve experienced the real power of questions – the way in which they make us really explore what we want and what feels right.  

Without questions, we often find ourselves mulling over the same options, over and over again, thinking and re-thinking about scenarios, decisions to be made and paths to follow.  It is only when asked to provide a solid answer, that we finally move into making that decision.  

How to use the power of questions

I mentioned earlier that a coach can help you, precisely because coaching is all about asking questions to guide a client to find their path.  A coach is also skilled and experienced in their coaching niche and so will be able to choose the right questions to ask.  But there are other options as well.  I have found two great options outside of coaching that have helped me tremendously. 

The first option is journalling.  Whenever I find myself at a crossroad, I journal it out.  I write down my question.  I explore options.  I map out scenarios.  Sometimes, I do this over and over and over again, until I find the answer that resonates best with me.  Journalling combined with coaching is extremely powerful, but it’s also great on its own.  

The second option is starting a mastermind.  You can easily do this, on your own, for free.  All you need is 2-3 more members to start it.  Every week, you’ll meet, and one person will be allocated the “hot seat” for the session.  They present a challenge they’re facing and the rest of the group begins to ask questions to help them find clarity.  They might even share resources or provide an experience-backed point of view or piece of advice.  Masterminds made up of the right people are an excellent place to get asked questions you might not have thought of before.  

Leveraging the power of questions

Armed with this information, it’s now up to you to take action.  Will you start journalling?  Will you create a mastermind?  Will you hire a coach?  Whichever path you choose, remember this: you stop growing when you stop asking questions.  So keep those questions coming, seek new ones and ones that really push you to think, explore, learn and grow.  

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