Doing the Work
The Authentic Self Series: Part 2 of 3
Photo by Anete Lusina from Pexels
In the last post we covered the five steps to creating clarity. Now, it’s time to figure out how to bring that authenticity into your business and the services you offer. Think about it like building a house; we’ve established a strong foundation, but now it’s time to start building the walls.
I’d like to share with you five steps that I went through to do the work.
#1 Mindset: Getting Rid of Blocks
Many of us were taught growing up not to stand out, not to question authority, not to be different. But if we don’t find out what those differences are - those strengths, those gifts, those qualities, skills, and insights that make us unique - then we can never become our authentic self.
So, our first step to doing the work is to get rid of our blocks.
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”
Cynthia Occelli, Author
Is It True?
In working with a mindset coach, one of the first - and probably biggest - block I uncovered in my subconscious is this, if I am my true self, I don't deserve money.
And I won’t go into the backstory behind how that probably came to be, but what I did is look at this belief, and ask myself, is it true?
Why?
But to truly rid yourself of this block, it’s going to take some time and some reflecting. One of the simplest, yet tedious, methods is to ask yourself why at least five times.
I believe _______________________. Why?
Because _______________________. Why?
And so on and so forth.
Then, decide if that belief still serves you in your current life. If it does, wonderful, stop and feel some gratitude. If not, bless and release that belief, thanking it for the times in the past when it kept you safe or helped you.
If it was a false belief from the beginning, such as my block was, then I gave gratitude for my current realization. If you find that you continue to struggle, consider creating an affirmation around the topic.
“Stepping into your power isn’t a one time occurrence, it’s small daily actions as your nervous system slowly learns that being powerful is safe. It’s just that people, in their own wounds, had you convinced that shrinking was the only way to survive.”
Emma Zeck, Writer and Trauma Recovery Coach
Welcome these challenges, because they bring strength, wisdom, and grace to our lives. They provide us with the amazing opportunity to grow more fully into our authentic selves.
#2 Offering: Drill Down Into Your Niche
Next we have to really drill down into our niche.
Your niche, or micro-niche as some refer to it as, is similar to your target audience or buyer persona, but the more specific you can be, the better.
Define Your Niche
The first hint here is that your niche will share your values. These shared values are a huge part of why they are attracted to your offering or service in the first place. They will value who you are, what you do, and the benefit they will receive from you. But most importantly they will be 100% willing to invest in you according to the value you provide.
“Our ideal client is willing to pay us what we’re worth. Period.”
Find Your Unique Selling Proposition
What can you do better than anyone else? What is something you can offer your niche that no one else can? In marketing, this is referred to as your “unique selling proposition.” We can also think about it as our unique offering, our gift, or our talent.
For me, it’s taking the blend of my training in literary writing, human psychology, and business marketing and combining it with my unwavering passion for writing and for helping people.
Remember Your Core Values
In the first part of this series, I shared with you my values:
Integrity
Wisdom
Creativeness
Connectedness
Communication
Resiliency.
These values form the basis of how I deliver my service.
One of the most important things to me is to always show up as my best self, my well-rested, nourished, hydrated, inspired, insightful, creative self. Part of showing up as my best self means being intentional with my time away from my work.
Connect Your Values With Your Offering
Put yourself in the mind of your ideal client. What do they want? Need? How can you make that happen? Basically, how can you use your values and unique selling proposition to create an offering for your ideal client?
For me, this looks like removing their worries about facing a blank page or screen alone. It alleviates their anxiety, stress, and guilt that comes from feeling like their own writing is not good enough and being unable to find the time in their schedule to write.
Then, I perform my Business Character Analysis. This provides my clients with their defining characteristic, three supporting characteristics, and the culminating result. This gives them a positive view of themselves, increases their confidence, and provides them with clarity about the benefits that they bring to their own clients.
Finally, from this place of inspiration, we look at what their purpose and goals are for their book, the wisdom they want to share, and the takeaway messages they want to bring to their audience.
Then we build the book outline. I provide the client with a choice on how they provide their content to me. It can be a rough draft in sentences, a list of bullet points, an audio file, or video recording. Whatever they are most comfortable with.
While I write, my client can relax, because they know that nothing will ever be published without their approval, so they always retain control over the final manuscript.
#3 Systems in Place: Build a Strong Foundation of Support
There are four things you need to build a strong foundation:
A team
Templates and documents
Established systems
Policies and procedures
All of these require consideration, initial creation, and then periodic review.
When creating a team, I asked:
What do I love to do and want to spend the majority of my time doing?
What work do I absolutely need to do myself?
Once you figure this out, then you can start building a team so that you, like me, can delegate everything else to them. The key here is to find motivated, qualified people, and then give them the space, and trust, to do their jobs effectively.
I’ve refined my onboarding process and I’m continually looking for ways to streamline and make things easier for my clients, myself, and my team.
Remember: be sure to consult experts, including legal and financial experts where needed, as well as business experts.
#4 Routines and Structure for Productivity
The fourth step is putting routines and structures in place for productivity. This relates a bit to my team and how I interact with them, but mostly it's about my own workday structures (for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual routines).
Creativity and Productivity
Since my work requires a lot of creativity, I make sure to surround myself with positive, productive people and then read, listen, and watch content about creativity and productivity to continually stay inspired and motivated.
One book in particular is Mind Management Not Time Management by David Kadavy, which talks about managing your mind to increase your creativity and your productivity and having the flexibility to create your own schedule that includes taking the time to refresh and recharge. And to do so without feeling guilty.
Entrepreneurship Has No Set Rules
If you've chosen an entrepreneurial life, there's really nothing set in stone about it. It's full of change and adaptation and resiliency. So, it’s crucial to figure out what routines and structures work best for you.
10x Your Business
Another thing to think about is your business being 10 times the size that it is now.
One of the coaches that I worked with said this to me: it is so much cheaper to 10 times your business than it is to double it and double it. Think about it.
What if…
You had ten times as many clients.
Your team was big enough to handle them.
Your onboarding process needed to handle that many clients.
You were delivering that many more workshops or you had that many people signed up for your online courses.
You were having coaching calls with that many more people.
How would that all work out and how would it all blend into your existing system and set things up for you to grow into your bigger business?
#5 Find Your Balance
The fifth, and last, step to do the work in order to step into your authentic self is to always be creating, maintaining, and having an awareness of balance.
We all hear about work-life balance and the importance of healthy boundaries when you need time away from work. This is especially so when we work online. Sometimes our days are fluid. Sometimes we do a couple hours of work and then we are washing the dishes or doing the laundry. And then we're back to a client meeting on a Zoom call.
If that works well for you, that's awesome. If you prefer to keep a nine to five schedule and take your Saturdays and Sundays off, that's great. Whatever it is that works for you, just ensure that you're creating that time you want and you need for family hobbies, mental and physical health, community participation, volunteer work, and even spiritual practices.
If you want to learn more about this topic, specifically, I would highly recommend the book Essentialism by Greg McEwen.
Final Thoughts
We need to remember that caring for ourselves enables us to care for others and show up as our best selves to serve our ideal clients.
Here, I discussed showing up as my best self by doing the work. And that's really what I want to provide to my clients - me being well, rested, refreshed, full of energy and creativity, ready to go to work, and ready to serve them. That's what they deserve. That's what I deserve.
So, stepping into our authentic self requires doing the work: changing your mindset, finding your niche, and setting up your routines and systems all in order to gain valuable time and energy back once these systems are in place.
In the final part of this series we'll talk about how to communicate effectively when putting your authentic self out into the world.
If you are ready to do the work now, let's book a Zoom call. Just follow this link to get started.