Jen Aly, Money Coach for Creatives

A brand of Happily Ever Now, Inc.

The best advice for new business owners

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The best advice for business owners may not be what you think.

A holistic practitioner starting a new practice asked for advice recently.

The first thing that came to mind was this: Learn business skills and get business support from someone you trust. This could be from the endless resources available, from a course, or a mentor or coach.

Most of the time, new business owners focus on the product or service they are offering, which makes sense.

In business, understanding who wants what you offer, how they’ll find it, & how to convey the value are as important as what you are offering.

Developing your business is about 50% of your holistic practice. And there’s rarely sufficient business training including when you are learning your trade.

It’s not uncommon to resist marketing and sales if you are a holistic or creative business owner. And there are ways to leverage your strengths and gifts to apply effective, aligned, and authentic marketing strategies that generate sales.

best business advice

The financial, marketing, and sales aspects are what nurture it to grow and thrive so so you can take care of yourself, you can support more people, and make a good living ongoing. No matter how good you are at your craft, if you don’t have clients and grow it as a business, you won’t get very far.

A lot of holistic practitioners don’t see the business part as spiritual or worthwhile. And it’s one way to sabotage your business and growth.

Approaching business as a spiritual practice categorizes it as a growth process instead of a boring subject you avoided in college. This is what helped me embrace business more fully.

It’s also true in my experience of growing 7 businesses over the past 17 years and supporting others to do the same.

Growth is optional.

But if you want to create a vision and grow a business, then growth is not optional.

It takes courage to step into unfamiliar areas and subjects. And as a dynamic being with the innate capacity to grow and transform, you were made for opportunities just like this. But it’s not easy to do it alone.

Courage dear heart. C.S. Lewis quote

After you dive into learning about business, remember to take everything you hear with a grain of salt.

Not all advice is helpful:

What may seem like the best advice for business owners may be counter to what you need because it’s not individualized and your business is unique.

Always follow your gut about what’s right for you.

Get advice from someone you trust who has business experience and who understands your vision, your strengths, and your resistance/challenges.

Recently a client came to me and said that someone had advised her to create an ebook.

The thing is, without understanding your vision, goals, and creating an aligned strategy leading to your vision, any advice could very well take you off of your path instead of further along. It’s easier than you think to end up somewhere you never intended.

This is true in her case. Whipping out an ebook as advised would have distracted her from creating a long term, sustainable marketing strategy that is aligned with her vision, her strengths, and her target market. 

Take a deep breath and dive into unfamiliar territory with resources and support that resonate with you.

The best advice for one business owner is not always the best advice for you. Be sure the advice you receive or the ideas you’re considering are aligned with YOUR vision and goals before you act on them.

And remember that marketing is always an experiment and learning process. If something doesn’t work one way, tweak it to see if it works a different way. Keep putting it out there!

In case you need it, here’s an article that describes how to effectively hire a business coach.

If you don’t have the money to hire a coach yet, start here for free business counseling support.

For more fresh perspectives on business, watch my TEDx talk.

Doing a TEDx Talk: The Truth About My Experience

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Doing a TEDx talk took way more than I could have imagined. When I first applied, I had no idea what I was in for.

I didn’t know there would be so much to learn about what to do and what not to do during a TED talk.  And so much to learn about myself, my message, and the creative process.

tedx talk ted talk Photo by Erica Mueller Photography.

It was just over a year ago that I stood up on a big red dot on a stage in front of 500 people and gave a TEDx talk in Asheville, North Carolina. It was the first year Asheville could have an audience of 500 instead of just 100.

I had worked tirelessly for months applying, interviewing, preparing, writing, and researching. The process also included lots of rewriting, editing, freaking out, getting and giving support, practicing, resisting, and planning more details than I ever expected. I even had a custom shirt made for my stage time.

But, it didn’t go as planned. Usually, I would get a burst of exhilaration and energy from connecting with an audience. Instead, as soon as I looked out from the stage, I felt like a deer in headlights and could barely breathe.

All I saw was black in front of me due to the stage lights shining on me and the completely dark lights in the audience.

This was the closest I’ve ever come to a panic attack in public. I did my best to hide it because of the 500 people, a live stream running, and 3 other cameras filming me for TED.

Even though I didn’t normally have a fear of public speaking, the pressure of it being a TED talk and having to remember 17 minutes of my talk was a lot. Then, looking into the darkness with no connection to the audience and months of stress pushed me further than my capacity could handle.

I don’t know how I made it through that talk because my brain didn’t seem to be getting enough oxygen. One miracle was that I had someone off stage queuing my lines to me. I didn’t know that was an option until I asked not long before the talk. (I doubt this is always the case.)

But because I had never practiced with support, waiting for my lines contributed to my stress level. At times I couldn’t hear her because the audience was laughing. I also knew she was skipping some content that I felt attached to. But I kept talking somehow.

After I finished giving my talk, I thought it had been a disgrace. The critical voices in my head were screaming nasty judgments at me. From my panicked perspective, there had been long, eternal, gaping pauses.

I had forgotten a bunch of ideas that I had planned to say, and I couldn’t catch my breath more than once. To imagine that it was coherent at all felt delusional.

Luckily, my speaker coach assured me it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But those who know me could see it. In the theater lobby afterward, a stranger even said, “You did a good job of pulling it together there.” She saw my stress too.

tedx talk jen aly creative process business doing a ted talk

Later when I watched the video, there were a few times, especially one that was edited out, where you could see I was having a hard time catching my breath.

And yet miraculously, somehow the ideas and points I wanted to make came through. The only explanation for it coming together is grace….and the support of a great team of colleagues and friends.

The video you see on TED.com was edited from a 3 camera shoot. Luckily I had a say in the edits (not always the case apparently).

Later in the year, I found out that my talk was among the 10% of TEDx talks chosen to be on TED.com(instead of just TED’s YouTube channel). My mind was blown. The process felt more worth it because more people would see it and I felt a level of satisfaction.

The talk, “Harness Creativity as your Greatest Business Asset” is all about being in the creative process and trusting it no matter what you are creating. Even though it’s simple, it’s not always easy to see it through whether it’s a painting, a project, or a business venture.

Getting through the creative process of applying for, preparing, and completing a TEDx talk was one of the most intense creative processes of my life.

In the talk, I share that harnessing the creative process is an asset in creating a business. It is focused on growth instead of a more traditional or linear idea of building a business. 

As more of a holistic and creative-minded person, I had tried to ignore aspects of business in the earlier years before filing bankruptcy. Later, I re-framed and embraced business concepts that I had previously resisted to create new businesses that thrive.

components of business tedx talk creative processPhoto by Erica Mueller Photography.

Creating my TEDx talk was a major creative process for me. It had a life of its own and morphed more times than I can remember. My living room was TEDx talk central for the last two months of the process with a rigged-up practice space with piles of papers and Post-Its.

When you speak out against the grain, old emotional gunk rises to the surface. When you stretch and grow, old stuff you didn’t even know you had in you comes up. Needless to say, I cleared a lot of emotional energy through the process.

And I became stronger through it all. I was able to more fully embody the lessons I was teaching in my TED talk and to trust my voice because no one could really edit my talk except me. I eventually sought less external validation because I survived through a public speaking nightmare.

Even though it wasn’t perfect, I’ve received feedback that the talk has had a positive impact. It has helped people honor their creativity, heal from challenges they experienced in the education system, and inspired them to face their fear of not getting it “right.”

As one of my mentors used to say, “Done is better than perfect.”

What are you afraid of not getting right?

What are you wanting to do but you’re waiting until the conditions are perfect?

How can you show up in your messiness?

TED.com TEDx Talk Jen Aly

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Why Business Coaching Gets a Bad Rap & How to Hire One

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An effective business coach works toward your vision, not their own agenda

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

A colleague called me recently feeling deflated after she had received one of those free business coaching sessions where the coach tries to sell you on working with them.

My friend shared with the coach where she was at in her successful practice, impacting many clients, creating new programs, and making six figures, with a goal to double her income.

In response, the coach said, “If that’s where you’re at and that’s your goal, ‘You are playing grossly small.’”

Where the heck did this scale of measurement come from?

This judgment, projection, and criticism are exactly why coaching gets a bad rap. Because the coaching industry has become more about the coaches than the clients.

As soon as coaching becomes about whatever the business coach projects on the client, instead of the clients’ goals and hearts desires, you are in a pool of ego, identity, imbalanced masculine drive, projection, scarcity, and power struggle.

There is a time to call people out for “playing small.” This is when they have a clear desire they are not owning up to, they are limiting their potential in THEIR vision, and there are mental or emotional blocks keeping them from moving forward.

You can say that it’s a limiting belief to not set goals that are triple or more their current income.

I say it’s limiting to compare yourself in a field where the expectations have become to make seven figures to have “success.”

I measure success by how aligned my lifestyle is with my values. Health, freedom, and autonomy are a few of my most treasured values. And quadrupling my income in one year is not in alignment with any of those.

Effective business coaching is client-led. This begins in the sales process.

It is not useful to the client to come from “let me tell you why you need to set more massive goals which I project on you through my ego and scarcity…and then you’ll need to hire me to tell you how to make those goals happen.”

Creating income is a form of freedom and is a valid goal. But to what end? Where are you trying to get to? Here is one of my favorite quotes on prosperity:

“Let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need. It frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you already have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands. What you appreciate appreciates. You can’t get to prosperity through the portal of more…only enough.” ~ Lynne Twist

The “portal of more” is not enough, never enough. Is $250k enough, is $500k enough? No number is enough when you are looking for external validation and identifying yourself through how much money you make. (Here’s a prosperity practice to feel more abundant.)

This programming is an infiltration from our super-sized consumerist culture.

And I’m shocked to see it in an industry that is known for empowerment and personal growth.

It wasn’t always this way.

Back in 2003, when I became a Martha Beck certified coach, coaching was about supporting people to clarify their values and live within those values, to move through limiting beliefs that were holding them back, and to take aligned action steps toward their authentic purpose.

This was so early in the coaching world, you still had to explain to people in California what life coaching was. It was still new and it was coaching in its purest form. It wasn’t mingled with consulting so much and there wasn’t an established industry culture of what it “should” look like to be a coach. You made it up for yourself.

If you hire a business coach to help you create what they want for you, instead of what you want, you are engaged in a special kind of self-sabotage.

If you decide not to sign up with a business coach you’re not aligned with, you are not “playing grossly small.” You would be playing small if you plugged in to someone else’s vision for you life instead of creating your own.

No where in my coaching training, or any sales training I’ve gone through was I taught to tell the client what they need and then tell them they need me to help them do it.

This is manipulation. In this scenario, the client becomes the coach’s minion. The client ends up trying to create a life or business they didn’t want in the first place because it’s coming from the external instead of the internal.

It doesn’t work. No matter how amazing that coach’s business system or program is, if the vision the client is working toward is not aligned for them on a heart and soul level, it won’t stick.

I’ve seen coaches who were amazing sales people sign on clients who are not aligned, and I’ve seen breech of contract, lawsuits, and drama.

When my clients set goals, I dig deeper to understand what it is about that goal that they want. What is underneath the goal? What value is underlying the desire? Why do they want what they say they want? Is it really their vision or are they “shoulding” on themselves? Are they committed to making it happen?

If the desire and vision doesn’t connect with the client at a deep level, at the heart and soul, it will not only be unsustainable, it won’t flow, and it may even drag them down. This is especially true for people who are already hard on themselves.

Moving to the next level of your life and your business, is about becoming that next version of yourself. It’s about sloughing off all the programming and bullshit stories that you cling to, but are not authentically you. It’s clarifying and focusing on your values and speaking and acting from them.

In order to grow, some people need more pushing. I am not one of those people. My clients are not those people. We push ourselves too much and need to gently integrate the parts of ourselves that create pressure. We are learning to listen to our gut and create more balance and sustainability in our lives.

Before you hire a coach consider these action steps:

-Review their web-site, read their bio, and read testimonials

-Ask colleagues why they have worked with to see if they can refer someone.

-Get to know their approach before you talk with them. Get on their email lists, watch their videos, attend a class, etc.

If you are considering hiring a business coach, ask yourself the following questions:

Why are you looking for a coach?

Where are you now and where do you want to go? Why?

Why is that important to you?

What do you want to get out of working with a business coach?

What would make the experience more than worth the resources you invest?

Once you meet them, do you feel a sense of trust in them? Is this someone you would look forward to connecting with on Zoom or phone often?

What kind of balance of challenge and support works best for you?

When you talked with the coach, did you appreciate their sales process, and did you feel heard?

Some coaches can support you to figure out what you need and if it’s a fit because they ask questions and listen. Be sure you’re clear on the kind of coach you are shopping for, so you become more of who you are in the process instead of giving your power (and money) away.

I’ve seen coaches coach people “into their greatness” but it doesn’t land because it’s a projection and it doesn’t come from the client. I’ve seen coaches who intuitively tell the client what’s best for them, even if the client doesn’t vibe with it. And I’ve seen clients believe what the coach said to them about who they are or what they should want and beat themselves up with it.

This is simply not effective. It’s an ego trip for the coach and any kind of impact is short-lived for the client – if not traumatic with long-lasting impact on self-esteem.

If a coach dictates unattainable goals for a client and the client fails to reach those goals, where does this lead the client?

Right into a puddle of “not enough.”

This is may even be where the client began. Self-worth is such a huge factor in creating and receiving the life you want.

Giving one’s power away to someone else is not the way to build up self-worth.  Instead, it is a vicious cycle that results in one more person having a bad experience with a coach who probably doesn’t even realize what they are doing.

Another reason business coaching gets a bad rap is that some coaches have a cookie-cutter system or a one-size-fits-all step-by-step success path. This model is more about who they are and what they want than what the client wants.

Are you kidding me? Business is not an algebra problem or a fool-proof recipe.

I’ve been in those programs and heard countless stories from those who’ve tried them. They are not effective for everyone because they do not take into account the client’s personality, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Yes, people can learn from them, but the percentage of people who get the results touted in the testimonials is small.

The most effective business coaches are listeners. They listen to clients, they ask questions that pull out the vision, desires, and values of their clients. They challenge and support them to become their best selves. The coaching-client relationship leaves the client feeling stronger, more confident, and more self-trusting. They are more capable and prepared for than they were before they started.

This is why I’m still a coach. The opportunity to connect with and support someone who wants to create more freedom and choice in their life and more value in the world is a priceless gift.

Those who want to evolve their life and/or their business deserve to have support from a business coach that honors and respects where they are at, THEIR vision, and their strengths. No matter what anyone else says.