Episode 93: Living by Example and Growing Your Business

You’re listening to The Work Of Becoming podcast! My name is Dr. Karin Nordin. I am your host as well as a behavior change expert and self-proclaimed tornado girl. I spent years of my life struggling to change before I finally got my PhD and learned the psychological tools that I needed to actually make those changes happen. Now, I’m bringing you five-minute sneak peeks of how I’m applying the real science of self-help to my life. Let’s get started!

All right, y’all! Buckle up and put on your spiritual top hats because today is going to be a little bit more on the woo woo side, but I want to talk about my experience with growing my business and how it relates to me personally and where I’ve been at. Basically, what I’m trying to say is this. The moments where my business has grown the fastest have always come directly after I had moments where I did the personal self-work.

So, there are a couple of moments where my business has grown really fast. The first identifiable moment was August of 2021. This is when I launched Alliance Coaching. I was the only coach at the time, and I filled my 30 coaching slots within the first 6 weeks of the program existing. It was a massive moment for me as an entrepreneur. And directly proceeding that August, I had spent that summer taking a lot of time to figure myself out. I had worked with my own coach on — at that time it was nutrition coaching, and I had really figured a lot of shit out in terms of my relationship with food. I had gotten back into therapy, and I had gotten on mental health medication. I went through this sort of massive transformation where I was truly being supported, I was truly showcasing how I personally was changing in my own life, and then I opened Alliance Coaching, and boom, poof, there it went skyrocketing.

The second moment was a little over a year later after Jon and I had gone through this really, really, really, really rough period for both of us where we bought the condo that we were living in. So, the really fast version of the story is we were renting this condo. The owners decide to sell it. They offered us the opportunity to buy it. We were not prepared to be buying a condo, but it was an amazing opportunity, so we basically had to scramble, get money together, figure it out. We bought the condo, but the whole thing was just a bucket of chaos. I had to do a lot of work on trust in myself, on my own money mindset, and at that time, I was working with a business coach who was really, really helping me work through that type of stuff and work through my relationship with money and work through the behaviors that I had associated with money. Then we bought this house, and lo and behold, one month later we had one of the biggest launches of my entire time at BBA.

The third moment was very recently. So, in March, I really retreated. I went back into the cave with myself. I went completely off social media, and I went through a lot of gunk during that 30 days, and I emerged with a sense of confidence and a sense of peace and a sense of safety in myself that I didn’t have, and right after that, I went viral on two different platforms and I gained 130,000 followers on Facebook. When I look back at that, I don’t think those things are a coincidence.

And so, whenever I find my business stalling a little bit, whenever I find that things are stale, that things aren’t growing, whenever I find myself frustrated with the fact that things aren’t moving in my business, I ask myself, “Am I doing the work to personally grow? Am I getting coached? Am I putting myself in situations that scare me? Am I putting myself in new places that are teaching me new things? Am I experimenting?” If the answer is no, if I’m safely tucked into my personal comfort zone, then I know that that’s the reason why my business isn’t growing because my personal belief — and this is really woo woo, but my personal belief is that the universe will never give you a business that you are not ready for. You can have the most amazing offer in the world and the most amazing content in the world, but if you have not done the self-work to be able to handle the difficulty and chaos that is business growth, then you will not get there and your business will not grow.

And so, that is my way of kind of taking radical responsibility of something that is outside of my control, which is how much of my business is growing. I cannot control if we go viral or not, but I can control if I’m putting myself in a position where I am doing the work, where I am growing, where I am changing, where I am outside of my comfort zone, where I am scared shitless, where I’m having moments that challenge me, where I am scared and terrified and worried and I am pushing through that and returning to a place of safety. If I personally am growing, then I know that business growth is right around the corner.

So, if you are listening to this and you feel stagnant in your business, I want to ask you when’s the last time you personally took a risk? When’s the last time you personally audited your life and asked yourself, “Am I growing? Am I out of my comfort zone? Am I pushing?” If the answer is, “A long time ago,” that’s where I would recommend you start.

PS: if you are on a journey to become a better you, and you want to learn the tools and techniques that will actually help change your life, make sure you check out my Change Academy Membership. Each month, we do a 1.5-hour workshop on a different psychological topic, but we also provide resources like journal prompts, worksheets, and trackers. We host community events and more. If you’re struggling to close the gap between knowing what to do and actually doing it, this membership was built for you. Go to www.karinn4.sg-host.com/change-academy to learn more!