Hey, welcome back to the podcast. I'm excited to have you here. I'm excited to share what's been on my mind and heart and some interesting themes that keep emerging with my private clients. And this one question, this one question that keeps coming up in different ways, in a different context. And I bet you have this question too.
And so we're going to dive into that question and we're going to dive into a powerful metaphor for people who resonate with my work. Not everyone does, but if you're listening to this on some level, there's some resonance. And so we're going to talk about this one question and this one metaphor. I'm being very cryptic on purpose. Stay with me.
This one question, this one metaphor and what that means for you, what that means for our industry, what that means for business and people who are like you and me, building something and who are up to something. And so a few weeks ago, I was on an Art of Impossible cohort call. And one of the questions that I asked on that call was like, what do you really want?
And the context could be anyone. So don't worry about the context. But for the person, the human, the woman that I was looking into in the Zoom room, I could tell there was some feelings of unknown in her body. Right. She didn't know what she wanted. Which happens to the best of us. Not a problem. It's happened to me many times. Confusion. This can feel like a fogginess. This can feel like I'm off my path or I don't know what to do next.
The problem that this creates in our business is that if we don't know what we want, we don't know what steps to take. You know, let's say you're in California and I say, do you want to go to Canada or do you want to go to Mexico? Your answer will help me know how to direct you. And so that's why I was poking on this call was like, what do you really want in your business? And if you don't know the answer, I don't know how to guide you or ask you questions.
I don't know how to support you. And so this is one of the paramount questions that we ask ourselves and have the answer to. And it evolves with us. And so if it's been a while since you asked yourself what you want in business, I highly recommend going through either journaling or getting your own coaching session, going through it with your coach.
If you don't have a coach, like chat GPT, some sort of process to get clarity about the kind of business model that you really want, which is relevant to what we're going to talk about in the metaphor that I have for you. Because if we don't know what we want, we can't make powerful decisions. And if we can't make powerful decisions, we can't have a powerful business. My business gets more powerful. And I don't say it in like a evil muhaha way.
The time between my ideas and when it's a reality is getting shorter and shorter. That's how I see power. So I have an idea and then I bring it to life. And it's gotten shorter and shorter as I've done the inner work and learned how to consciously create and learned how to actualize ideas, right. Turn thoughts into things. That being said, the number one, I guess, foundation that we have to have is clarity, which is why one of my most downloaded episodes is Lightning Bolt Clarity. That's from a few months back.
Lightning Bolt Clarity was when I figured out I wanted to do Lighthouse Mentorship. Lightning Bolt Clarity is when I also had the awareness that I wanted the Abundance Mastermind. And so those two offers came from a season of a lot of lack of clarity, from darkness or confusion. And it feels really bad to be in a season of darkness and confusion in business because we want to know we're making progress.
We can only know we're making progress if we know we're going to Canada or if we're going to Mexico. Does that make sense? You have to know where you're going or else you won't have clarity. So knowing what you want is the number one question to ask. In fact, I talk about this in my book, Quiet Wealth, right? If you don't know what you want, if you don't have a clear desire, you slip into chill chaos or constant comparison.
If you don't know what you want, you're either going to scroll social media and get lost in the sea of content creators. You're going to do business models that don't actually align with you and your values. You're going to push for things that feel like force. Or you're going to slip into what my default zone is, which is chill chaos. So I am kind of peaceful and good. Things are awesome, but I'm not making any meaningful progress and that doesn't feel good either.
And so the reason that we tend to postpone or delay the decision making about what we want is because as soon as you declare what you want, you are at the risk of being disappointed. And I see this holding people back in very different ways. But we will protect ourselves from being disappointed, probably because of stuff that happened when we were kids. I watch my daughters. They hate being disappointed and I hate disappointing them. Right.
And so this is where I'll catch myself. Mom, can we go to the aquarium today? And I'll say maybe because I don't want to say no. Maybe we'll see. One time my daughter was like, Mom, maybe doesn't mean anything. Yes or no. Because she knows that maybe is a delay in decision making. So what I've learned to say is, no, we're not going today because I say maybe as a placeholder of no. And what I want to teach them is how to get what they want.
And so I had to start really looking at myself and where I do that for myself instead of saying maybe operating in yes or no. Do I want this business model? Do I want to work with this kind of client? Is this my offer? Is this my pricing? Is this my business model? Yes or no. And if I don't know yet, that's okay, but like then my job becomes finding out what is true for me, what I really want. And so this question haunts us because I see it as two ways.
One, you have to experiment. You have to go through some trial and error to even get close to knowing what you want. Right. You have to kind of experiment and experience the consequences of your choices. Like as an example, starting an offer like a mastermind. Two of my mastermind clients launched and filled their own masterminds this week, which was so fun. We definitely celebrated.
But one of the things that I told them was like, you won't know that you want a mastermind until you try it. It's very hard to know something in concept only. You have to experience it. And so that's one part of this is like getting experience, going through trial and error, which means failing or going through something that you don't like in order to get to what you do want. This is contrast. This is by divine design that we have contrast in our lives and businesses.
And so we have to kind of submit to the process of contrast so that we can get clarity. Contrast creates clarity. Most people just avoid contrast because they don't want to fail or they don't want to be disappointed or they don't want to go through something that they feel is hard. The other part of this is kind of keeping your blinders on. So on the one hand, experiment, trial and error, get experience and exposure to stuff.
And on the other side is like, keep your blinders on. Know what's for you and what's not. And that being said, that doesn't mean that you're never going to fail if you do that path, but you have to be in tune with yourself and knowing what makes sense for the season of life that you're in, what makes sense for the amount of hours you want to work, what makes sense for the kind of person you want to work with, your ideal buyer, things like that.
And so we consider that and we go through our business and we go through our life learning along the way, walking our path. We get data. We learn what we like and what we don't like, what works and what doesn't. And this is how you come to know what you want, by asking yourself hard questions, by getting data, by looking at like the results. Do I like that?
Am I lit up by that? How's my energy? Do I feel inspired by my business model right now? Do I feel inspired by the clients that I'm working with? Am I creating prosperity because of my pricing or no? Does that matter to me? Some people that I've worked with through the years like money becomes an interesting conversation because what they realize is like sometimes you want to make a lot more than you're giving yourself capacity to receive because you're either undercharging or you're underselling.
And that's some of the work we have to do is like cleaning that up so you can receive and actually create the money that you are available for. All of this being said, getting clear about what you want, I would say, is the number one important question. You have to know what you want, which in the revamp, the masterclass that's coming, we're going to go deep into this because I think it's a difficult question to answer, especially if you've been in the game a little bit.
You might not have clarity because you're like, I've tried that. It's not awesome. That one looks too hard. I don't have a lot of time or whatever our objections are. We kind of like withhold or kind of hold ourselves back because of our fear or because of our judgment. And so we're going to dive into that. How do you move through fear? How do you move through judgment to get to what you really want in the revamp?
The second piece I told you is like a powerful metaphor because this has been on my mind. This has come up in most of my client sessions. This awareness of what they really want, right, which comes from asking yourself the question, what do I really want and spending time living in the answer and contemplating. I don't think it has to come instantly. Are there moments of lightning bolt inspiration? Sure.
But sometimes it's more like a sunrise where you're just like the light gradually fills the space. Sometimes awareness is like that. Sometimes the awareness is like a lightning bolt straight. Either way, we're waiting for that moment of like, aha. And it rarely comes when you're sitting at your desk or scrolling Instagram. It comes when you're living in your life, when you're in a journal session, when you're in a coaching session, when you're on a walk.
For me, it was when I was in the mountains. We create space to receive the revelation or the idea or the concept that drops in. Okay, so that leads me to the second piece, which is like a powerful metaphor. I want you to imagine that your business is like a plot of land that you get to decide how to set up to grow plants that will bear fruit. So you could imagine apple trees. You could imagine orange trees. You can imagine a grapevine. You can imagine tomato plants.
You can imagine berries being grown. You can imagine a banana tree. You can imagine potatoes or carrots. It doesn't matter. I hesitate to use the word garden just because of where I'm going. So it could be an orchard. It could be a vineyard. It could be a farm. It could be a backyard garden. It could be an industrial grade, massive acreage of farmland. Either way, all of us take up virtual space, virtual ground that we are growing plants. That's our business.
So we are all planting different things. The thing that my clients have become aware of is like what they are really up to in their business. Most of my clients resonate with this metaphor. They were taught by industrial farmers. So coaches, mentors, business gurus who have grown an industrial grade apple farm where there's like rows and rows of apple trees. They have workers. They have machinery. They have a giant warehouse.
And from that apple orchard, they grow apples for applesauce, apple juice, apples for pies, apples for the stores. It's like industrial grade. And the coach that's gardening in the industrial orchard takes on the role of CEO. They take on the role of leader. And I'm not saying that we'll get there, but they're leading the crew that is tending to the orchard. Does this make sense?
So what this actually looks like, to make it clear, it's like a coach that has a million followers who has coaches that work for them in their program, who has clients that they don't know their name. And there's nothing wrong with this. I should be very clear. There is nothing wrong with this kind of business. I used to think I wanted this kind of business. And most people start their coaching journey with this in mind, because these are the people who we read their books.
We bought their program or their membership. We see them as multimillionaires who are doing epic things in the world. And we're like, oh, that's what it means to be a successful coach. I know when I got started, that was what I thought, right? Like, oh, we're building an industrial orchard. That's what we're doing. So we're trying to go viral. We're trying to reach the masses. We're trying to build our audience so big, so that they can buy my low ticket product and then buy my mid ticket product and then come to my events. It's about being a bestselling author.
It's about having massive events. It's about filling the room. It's about being the best. It's about being on stage. But the downside and we're going to talk about the downsides of the alternative, too. But the downside of this is like the coach doesn't know all their clients, which is, like I said, not a bad thing if that's okay with you. Right. Just depends on what you want, which is why we started with the first question. What do you really want?
And so when I was a young coach and I was looking at all these coaches and mentors who are multimillionaires, they had built an industrial orchard business where they didn't know everyone's names. They didn't even necessarily coach their clients themselves. It could be through content. It could be through other coaches. It could be through curriculum, could be through trainings, right, like pre-scheduled modules, courses, etc.
Like I said, nothing wrong with this. You can tell probably from the tone of my voice, this doesn't resonate with me anymore. It used to. It's how I started my business, thinking that that's what I was going to do. Alternatively, I wanted to talk about the Lux Garden, which is deeply resonant for my soul, because the garden can be as big or as little as you can handle. I walk out into my garden, my business garden, and I could plant different plants. I know all the plants.
I decide if I want to plant new ones or if I want to till the earth or if I want to let my garden rest for a little bit. I could do a little grape vineyard. I could do some corn. I could do some berries. I could do some squash. Like I get to pick and choose and it looks a little different. Offers is what I mean when I think of like plants. Plants represent the offers and the fruit represents like the harvest or the clients that end up buying.
And so while some coaches are building industrial orchards with like a predefined process and like there's clear expectations of the workers and it's very focused on output and production, when I think of the garden, I think of joyful experience of the actual gardening. It's not just to produce as many apples as possible. It's like watching the plants grow. It's nurturing each one. It's going out and getting my hands dirty.
It's enjoying the process and I can grow it to whatever size I want. Some people are going to have three plants and they're going to love it. Like a windowsill garden. Some people, it's going to take up their whole backyard and there's going to be like I identify with like a pretty big garden. Still a garden, not an orchard, not an industrial grade orchard, but a pretty big garden.
So like I have rows of plants that I love watching grow to translate this into my business. It's like I have private clients. I have a mastermind. I have a group program. I do mini groups. I just wrapped up two of them, Art of Impossible and Money Mind. I have a book. I have a podcast. I do Voxer events. I have a three month one-on-one called Illuminate. There's a lot of different offers that I have because that's the kind of garden that I like to grow.
But like there's nothing wrong with your garden if you just do one-on-one coaching or if you have a mastermind only or if you do single sessions or if you do a group and a membership or you do a mastermind in one-on-one. But there's so many different varieties that can come from this and it is very individual. The reason that I think this resonates with my people is because you get to choose.
There's not one set pattern of how your business should or shouldn't look. And I think there's some unlearning that we have to do that like, oh, even if I love, I mean, I'm not going to name names, but I've talked to many of my clients who, you know, some of these coaches that built industrial orchard style businesses have changed my life. And I'm sure you would agree. They're the people with the best selling book. They're the people with a large membership.
You would know their names. They're famous. They've changed my life. I've read their books. I've attended their programs. I listen to their podcasts. Right. And they changed my life. And their model of business doesn't really resonate with my soul. And that's okay. And I get to choose what works for me in the season that I'm in. I have young babes. I have an eight year old, a seven year old and a four year old at the time of this recording.
I don't want to work all the time. I want to be available to pick them up from school. I want to do movie nights and snuggle like this morning. Me and Laney just like laid in bed giggling. It's like 7:30 a.m. right because we're early risers and we're just like we're joking about her play date with her friend and her silly glasses. And like we just snuggled. And I'm like, this is what I want. Right. I want space to do that.
I want space to read a lot of books, to go on walks in the sunshine, to go on trips with my husband, to sit and think. I also want deep dives with my clients and I want to be able to really know them. I love getting on a Zoom room. Where I know people personally, like I have had conversations with them. I know where they live. Not exactly, but you get what I'm saying. I feel their essence because we've had a conversation. We have a relationship.
That's the kind of business that I want. And I'm not saying that's the business that I think you should have. I'm just saying knowing what you want. And obviously this is a spectrum. There's like super industrial orchard and then there's like micro garden at home and everything in between. But I think knowing what you want is so important and knowing that you have options and knowing that you're not wrong.
If you used to want to build an industrial orchard and now you're like, you know, I really like the idea of a backyard garden and I like the idea of a variety of plants and I like the idea of speaking to my plants. I wish I took this video last summer. We had a garden and my daughters were singing to our corn because I had mentioned, like, did you know that plants who are loved grow better? Which is true. And so they're like, oh, we're going to do that.
We're going to sing to them. And they started singing these beautiful songs to them. And our garden was rocking last year. It was so fun. We'll do it again. I mean, it just like surpassed all of our expectations. And so that being said, that idea last year, watching my garden grow, my physical garden in my actual backyard where we grew corn and squash and green beans and cucumbers, and we tried to grow cantaloupe and watermelon.
It doesn't do so well, but like the corn took off, the squash took off so much. Cucumbers, we could not harvest them fast enough. Like it was amazing. It was so fun and so many lessons. And so I have that garden in my mind while I'm even recording this. What's funny about this is like some people grow their garden so big, they see that they have to turn their vision into an industrial orchard. And like some people listening to this will resonate with that.
They imagine themselves on a stage with thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And I've coached them, like I've coached people with that vision. What I'm sharing is not I can only coach people who want a garden because I've coached people who have an industrial orchard and I've coached people have a garden. What I want for my business is this luxe garden. But you have to know what you're building.
Some people are like going to go very automated. When I say the word automated, I think industrial orchard. When I think industrial orchard, I think funnel. I think virality. I think systems. When I think of a luxe garden, I think of proximity. I think of connection. I think of unpredictable, which we'll come back to. There's pros and cons for both. I think of custom. And like I said, there's a range.
Some of you are going to have a semi-industrial orchard with homegrown elements to it. And that's fine. We can go on and on about the silliness of this metaphor. But hopefully you get the essence of what I'm trying to share is like it's up to you to decide what kind of business you're growing and to choose your mentors based on who can help you create that.
Now, like I said, this doesn't mean that your coach or mentor has to have exactly the business model that you have. For example, I've worked with coaches who have the industrial orchard style business, and I learned something different from them than I learned from my one-on-one coach who has a business that really resonates with me. When I take programs or courses, it might be from these industrial sides, orchard style businesses.
And I'm learning something different. And so I'm not saying you can't learn from coaches who have the industrial orchard. It's just with discernment, learn the skills, learn the things, adopt the strategies or the mindset or the beliefs that serve what you really want. And this is why we started this episode with like, you have to know what you really want. You have to. And then you use the data constantly. It never really ends.
To kind of go with the silly metaphor, you might plant cucumbers and then you realize, like, I don't even like cucumbers. Then that's code for you launch an offer like a mastermind. And you're like, I don't even like masterminds. Right. And I'm going to change it as an example. Or maybe you're like, I'm going to launch a group program. And then you know what? I really love one-on-one. I don't know if I want to do group.
Or maybe you're like, you know what? I don't know if one-on-one is resonating with my soul. I think I need to move to more scaled, right? A membership model or a group program or courses. There's so many variations you can see. I can go on and on with all these silly metaphors. But like truly understanding what you want. What offers light you up? What offers you look forward to? What kinds of things you want to experience?
Because it is not just about the money. It is also very much about the experience of business that matters. And when I think of my growth since I started my business, some things have stayed true. I love one-on-one. I love long-term one-on-one. So I've had some clients for years with me, which is amazing. And at a minimum, I like to work with my clients for six months. I just started this three-month package for people who want to try out one-on-one.
Three months still. It's not short. It's a quarter of a year. I like even my groups to go long so that I can get to know people so that we can have a shared relationship, a shared timeline of growth and evolution. And so that has always been true about my business, that I've wanted to see people win and I've wanted to develop these deeper relationships. And so I have adjusted my business accordingly because I'm getting clearer and clearer about my business garden.
And so are you. If you've been in the industry longer than a week, which most of you have, you have some data. You have some data points that you can draw from to make an educated guess about what you like and what you don't like, what will work for your personality, for your energy type, for your human design, for your gene keys, like what will actually work for you. You can look at some of the experiences that you've had.
The other aspect of this is like how much money you really want to make, because like I use the word luxe garden because I'm still very interested in making a lot of money. I still enjoy growing that way. I say that business is a portal for prosperity and it's true. That doesn't mean that you need to make a bajillion dollars to experience prosperity.
And I feel like this is my sweet spot is like knowing what amount of money actually would help you feel and live a prosperous life, an abundant life, because that can look a variety of ways. And so all of this to be said is you have to do this work. I can't tell you what kind of business you should grow. I can't tell you what kind of business would best suit you because it's impossible to know that because there's so many variations and so many iterations and so many possibilities.
And so you have to take it upon yourself to get clear about what you want. I'll say this. If you're listening to this, most of my ideal clients want to do high proximity, high value work. So they care about making money. They care about their clients. They care that their business is profitable. They care that they get to do in-depth work, whether that's through one-on-one or groups like they care about their people. And so it's not just about making a quick buck.
Now, that being said, you opened a business because this whole thing is to generate an income. The only purpose of a business is to make money or else you would have started something different. And so you can have both, right? You can have a situation where you're making a lot of money and doing incredible work. That's my favorite zone to be in is like making a great income and doing transformational deep dive work. That's what I'm aiming for. That's what I'm up to. And be prone, right?
Like to continue with this silly metaphor, I mentioned this in the beginning. Some of the plants you're going to root out and not grow again. You might try and offer and be like, huh, learned a lot, not going to do that again. You might find a plant that you love and you're like, oh, I could do five more of these. And that could be like, I love this client. I want five more like them. And it could be a style of one-on-one. It could be a niche of one-on-one.
It could look so many different ways, but like the way that we do this is by getting our hands dirty, going out and laboring in the vineyard, right? And actually understanding what we like, what we're suited to, what works, what doesn't work, because business is a co-creation with the market, right? It's not just you. It's also the clients and the buyers that you have to think about and innovate for. And so the growth never ends. Harvests come and go.
Plants grow and then they die. And so we're constantly rebirthing our business. If you think about it like a garden, you're constantly looking for what can be better, what can be improved, what can be more aligned, what can be more profitable. What could I do that feels like my soul's path? What can I do that feels like my higher purpose? These are the questions that become, I think, as you start making money, the higher quality questions come.
The more spiritual type questions come because the money is taken care of. Then it's like, how do I walk the path that I feel I'm meant to walk on? And so lots of things for you to chew on. Lots of things for you to contemplate. Lots of things for you to take an honest look at of like what's working, what's not, what do you really want? What kinds of things are resonant in your business? What kinds of things are not? And have the courage to actually make a move.
These are the kinds of things that we're going to do on the revamp. And so I mentioned this at the beginning, but it's a free two hour masterclass that I'm hosting on May 16th. I'll have
Allyse link it in the show notes, but you can go to itsambersmith.com forward slash revamp and come spend two hours with me revamping your business. Especially if things have felt out of alignment or a little wacky, now would be the time. It's going to be really fun.
We're going to go deep into a lot of these things. And so we can get squeaky clean on your offer, your pricing, your ideal buyer, your ideal client, which are two different things, which we'll talk more in depth about, your ideal workflow and work schedule, calendar, revenue, all of it. We're going to go deep. So if you want to spend two hours with me on May 16th, register. It's free. So I hope to see you inside. It's going to be so fun.
And I'd love to connect with you there. As always, thank you for your time and attention. I could not do what I do without you. And so I'm very grateful for this gift and this opportunity. I was Voxing with a coach and she's like, you're living your dream life. And I laughed because like there's a few months ago that I released a podcast called “This is My Dream Life" because my daughter Laney used to say this all the time.
She doesn't say it as much anymore, but she used to just like shout it. We'd be like outside in the backyard and she'd be like, this is my dream life. But like this is my dream life. And are there more things that I want to create? Of course. But I love the daily experience of what I get to do. I'm grateful to be here with you.
I'm grateful for the people that I've connected with in so many ways I've come so far and in so many ways I feel like I'm just getting started, which is such a beautiful paradox. And I feel really blessed to be able to say that. So thank you for listening. I hope to see you in the revamp and I will talk to you soon. Bye.
