What Does It Mean To Be An Aligned Entrepreneur?

What does alignment have to do with business?

Well, I’m glad you asked. Short answer: everything. Longer answer: keep reading…

First, let’s talk about alignment. I’ve written and podcasted and talked about this before, but how I understand alignment currently is this: you are consciously and unconsciously working toward the same thing. Now, I get that that might be immediately like “woah, too woo” for some people, but let’s actually break that down to make it a little more digestible…

Let’s say that you insist that you want 10k months. But deep down (way deep) you believe that 10k months equal working 80 hour weeks. What you consciously think is that 10k months will give you is so much time freedom, and that’s great because you want that more than anything. But subconsciously you believe that 10k months will require too much time, and so you resist. You are out of alignment. There’s a disconnect between what you think you want and what you truly desire.

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Another example would be deciding to work with 1:1 clients even though you find 1:1 client work exhausting and it doesn’t give you the flexibility you desire. You decide that you “have to work with 1:1 clients first” because some guru on the internet said it and you decided that must be true because they are more successful and make more money than you do. So you force yourself to try and work with 1:1 clients even though it’s totally burning you out and draining your energy — that’s operating out of alignment.

Are you starting to get it?

So why does any of that matter in business?

Because when you are running your own business you get to make the rules! However, most exhausted entrepreneurs spend their time following other people’s random arbitrary rules even if it doesn’t fit what is truly aligned for them. They don’t do the work to uncover what is truly aligned for them, but just outsource all that decision making to someone else because it’s easier to trust someone else than themselves (which you might agree SOUNDS nuts, but you also are probably doing a little of this in your business too - it’s SO easy to fall into that trap).

So how can we become more aligned entrepreneurs?

What will that give us? In my experience in my own businesses and also from working with clients - it gets you RESULTS. Like money, clients, time, etc. All the things you are desiring - and I know that sounds like “it’s too good to be true!” but here’s the thing…

What you want wants you back. But y’all can’t meet up until you are aligned with each other. I’ve had many clients say they want more money but deep down they believe that means working way harder - and they DON’T want to do that (they are already working so hard which is why they even find me as their coach!). So they resist making more money in the current way they are approaching making money because the only way they think it’s possible to make more money is to put in more hours. Yuck.

When we pull back a bit and recognize that there are other ways they can approach their offers, ways that feel better for them, ways that maybe “break the rules” that they thought existed… the work gets easier. More fun. More aligned with who they are and what they actually want to do. And guess what? The money shows up. Because they are no longer associating more money with more exhaustion, but rather create the energetic space for money to flow in.

It’s not magic, it’s alignment.

So here are some tangible steps you can take to help yourself start getting into and operating from alignment.

First, tune out the noise. There is SO MUCH noise online. Podcasts, social media, newsletters, blah, blah, blah. So many people telling you how to do things, how to do it their way, and why their way is the only way to be successful. It’s literally all bullshit, I promise you. There’s a million ways to be successful and a million definitions of success. The mere fact that SO MANY people are selling you paths to success that have worked for them prove that there are a million ways to find what you are seeking. It’s not about consuming more of THEIR content, but instead listening to your own guidance system. It’s much more powerful and effective.

And that leads us to actually defining success for yourself. Because of all the noise we just assume that of course we want 50k months and first class tickets to Bali and whatever else the Gurus have. But like… do you actually want that? What do you actually want? It’s okay if it’s “different” and in fact, it probably will be once you really start to tune in. And that’s great! There are, again, no rules. No judgement. We each have our own paths and desires and that’s INCREDIBLE. Thank the universe we don’t all actually want the same thing - how BORING would that be?  So question yourself here - what do I really want? Why do I want it? What do I think having it will do for me?

With that comes this big idea of letting go of ‘shoulds’. We will ‘should’ ourselves into a dark place if we aren’t paying attention. I should want this. I should do that. I should be here. I should, I should, I should…

What if we just put a big ol’ FUCK THAT on the shoulds? The only thing you SHOULD do is what’s right and aligned for you. Everyone else telling you that you have to build a business their way, or follow their 10 step formula, or whatever can shut the heck up. Truly. A question to start with here when you notice you ‘should-ing’ yourself is… ‘wait, why should I?’ and start to really dig into what is just conditioning and beliefs from other people that aren’t actually true.

So this is, granted, easier said than done. This is why I have a coaching practice! Because people need support with actually doing these things, tuning in, listening to themselves, and taking aligned action.

It feels so much easier sometimes to assume that Guru X has the answers in their sweet little 10 step framework, and if you could just execute it then you’d be a gazillionaire in two weeks. But here’s the thing - you’ve tried to execute those steps before and it hasn’t worked, right? Chances are some part of it ISN’T in alignment for you. And that doesn’t make YOU wrong, that makes IT wrong for you and that’s OKAY. Because there’s a path that is perfect for you, perfectly aligned for you, and your work is to continually come back to it and keep going down it. That’s the magic.

Let’s create a more aligned business with my Aligned Business Audit.

This is a low investment workbook that I go through every year (and you can do it more often, there’s sections for monthly and quarterly too) to ask yourself the hard questions and dig into what is working and not working in your business, as well as what a more aligned business would look like.

What does an aligned business look like for you? Share with me in Instagram!

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