What does it take to elevate your business?

My 1:1 mentoring programme is called Elevate. When I created it last year it was important to give it a title that encapsulated the feeling of growth and next-level-ness that I know many wellness professionals are looking to achieve.

And in my own way I’ve been elevating my business too this year. In the trenches along with my clients, I want to take what I’m doing to the next level as well. It wouldn’t feel right to tell others to ‘elevate’ and face all the fears that come with that, without doing it myself.

What does my elevation look like in 2022?

• Working with a mentor of my own, to learn from someone further ahead and share the wobbles and doubts that come up with someone objective to challenge and question me as I move through the process

• Getting my website redesigned by someone else after years of doing it myself, to a level that I feels matches what I now offer

• Hiring a personal stylist to revamp my wardrobe and get my outfits that match my aspiration and inspire others

• Releasing my book – feeling brave enough to claim space as an author and believe that my words are important and helpful enough to put them in book format and share that with the world (I’ve written more about the book release journey in this blog post).

But as with everything business, it’s not just the practical, tangible things that come with up-levelling that need to happen. It’s the way you think and feel that goes alongside it.

It’s not just what you do to elevate. It’s how you think to get to that next stage.

As I’ve been taking these steps and making these leaps in my business, I’ve had a lot come up that I need to tackle in terms of stories and fixed mindsets.

Here are the big ones, maybe you can identify:

 Scarcity around money and having enough

Every single example of elevating I shared above involves investment. Pretty large investments, four or figure figures.

That’s a lot of money. For anyone. It’s not money that’s ‘spare.’ We’re programmed to want to hoard money, keep it in the bank. We believe that abundance and wealth is about stock-piling and knowing it’s there to draw on.

Now I’m not saying having savings is foolish. It’s not. I have savings too. But I must own what I tell my clients: money is always in flow. In order for it to flow in to me and my business, I have to trust that it can and will flow out too.

Investing in these elevations has amped up my inner critic voice so that it shouts things like:

• This is going to be a bad investment

• You’re going to run out of money

• What if this doesn’t make things better?

But when I look at these statements, I know they’re not truths.

• All investments teach me something, even if it’s what not to spend on next time (trust me, I’ve learned those lessons before!)

• I have money. I always have done and I always will do (this is a mantra I have used before but has clearly reared its head again at this next junction in my growth)

• I am in control of what makes things better in my business. The investment itself is one thing, how I respond and embrace where it takes me is what gives me expansion. Not the investment or the person I choose to invest in alone.

And applying some logic, I’m in a wildly different place from where I was 5 years ago when I started all this. I know how to make money now (I didn’t at the start!). I know there are income streams and sales strategies I can ‘turn on’ to bring in funds if I need.

Despite the vastly different amounts that sit in my bank account from then to now, I find it incredible how the brain adapts so fast the figures and still plays the scarcity card.

I remember when I started my business transferring every €50 or €100 I earned from my PayPal into my bank account so that I had enough to just get the bus into town and buy a cup of tea to sit in a café.

Now I’m 5 years in and wanting to spend a bit of money on a mentor of my own or some clothes to feel great and inspire others, yet I’m having the same lack and scarcity thoughts!

That inner critic is crafty and persistent. It’s so desperate to keep me safe that it’s showing up and still shouting at me, even when I’m in a financial position that myself 5 years ago would have killed for.

If you’ve never spent more than a few pounds on your business before I talked more about when is it the right time to invest in your business in this blog post.

I have a well embedded mantra that I use often – the more I relax, the more I receive.

I think what I need to add: the more I invest, the more I receive.

*Plugs that in as a reminder on her phone*

 I don’t want beginners to feel I’m ‘leaving them behind’

This story and limiting belief has come up time and time again for me as I’m trying to stretch into this next stage of my business.

I have always taken huge pride and enjoyment in serving wellness practitioners at the start of their businesses. I have always seen there was an urgent need for it – when I started no-one was really catering to people at the start of their journeys, plugging the gap in a truly bespoke way for the industry from qualifying out of college, to fully fledged business owner. That’s where I came in.

And I still do help these people. However. The model has changed.

I cannot still serve people at this stage in their business on a purely 1:1 basis. I now reach a much larger audience and to help as many people as possible get the results that they want I have moved to a model where my assistance is most effectively delivered in a one-to-many format – a course and community that is Just Start Now.

I also found helping people at the early stages of set up on a 1:1 basis meant I became predominantly technical support, rather than a business mentor and coach. And whilst that tech set-up is needed (hello website design, social media and mailing lists!) and it is something I can do, it isn’t where I want to spend my time and energy. It’s not me playing in my zone of genius.

I also found I was repeating a lot of the same things when I helped people 1:1. After I’d been doing this long enough (years!) I figured out the pillars of content that I believed and saw needed to be covered by everyone. I could then turn this into a process and am now able to share this information far more effectively in a course format, releasing me to help people 1:1 with more of the deep rooted mindsets, stories and blocks they face as they implement what they’ve learned.

 That sense of repeating myself and knowing what I was saying would resonate with more than just a single client was also a big driver for writing the Just Start Now book, so it was all down in one place!

 So because of my growth and wanting to play to my strengths and do work I love, I now support people at the start of their journey primarily through Just Start Now.

In part, it’s a personal choice. A choice as to who I want to focus on and help with my skills and talents.

In part it’s about helping as many people as possible now I’ve found a formula that really changes the game and gets results. Why should I only share that with a small amount of people?

But with this comes a whole host of noisy voices in my head:

• Who do you think you are?

• What will my loyal fan base think of me?

• You’re leaving people behind that you could help

• You’re inaccessible

• You’re being selfish, you should / could help beginners if you wanted to

• If you grow any more you look too big for your boots

• Your business isn’t exactly ‘big’, you’re only a beginner yourself!

• This isn’t ‘you’

 A large part of my brand story for years has been that I’m “only a few steps ahead of where you are.” But as the years go by, that stretches the truth for some.

I’m now more than just a few steps ahead of some people. I’m a good few years ahead of those starting their business.

And the stories playing in my head are that because of that, I will lose and alienate people.

Partly this has come I think from watching more ‘aspirational’ business coaches who e.g. brag about their 6-7 figure turnovers or film from exotic locations. That has always been a huge turn off to me and my ideal customers, and I want to be the antithesis of that.

I want my brand and my personality to still feel accessible. To be relatable.

But I’m holding myself and my business back because I have stories that if I grow too much, I will lose people.

In my mind I’ve created a formula:

Earning more and elevating = Becoming an aspirational business coach sipping champagne and bragging about huge turnover + being inaccessible and un-relatable

What if that wasn’t the formula at all?

What if I could earn more and still be accessible?

What if I could have a great wardrobe and still be approachable?

What if I could charge more for my programmes and still be someone people aspire to?

What if the formula was actually:

Earning more and elevating =
Being totally myself + owning my growth and sharing that journey

What do you think? Can you relate to either of these feelings as your business has grown?

Reprogramming your brain for elevation is exactly what my book Just Start Now is all about.

I’ve packed loads of flips and swaps for the most common of negative stories and beliefs that I see wellness practitioners most commonly face.

Order your copy now.